It chanced that
Fell visited the press rather late one evening, and found "his press
working at such an imployment. The prints and plates he hath seased,
and threatened the owners of them with expulsion." "All Souls," adds
Prideaux, "is a scandalous place." Yet All Souls was the college of
young Mr. Guise, an Arabic scholar, "the greatest miracle in the
knowledge of that I ever heard of." Guise died of smallpox while
still very young.
Thus Prideaux prattles on, about Admiral Van Tromp, "a drunken greazy
Dutchman," whom Speed, of St. John's, conquered in boozing; of the
disputes about races in Port Meadow; of the breaking into the Mermaid
Tavern. "We Christ Church men bear the blame of it, our ticks, as
the noise of the town will have it, amounting to 1,500 pounds." Thus
Christ Church had little cause to throw the first stone at Balliol.
Prideaux shows little interest in letters, little in the press,
though he lived in palmy days of printing, in the time of the
Elzevirs; none at all in the educational work of the place. He
sneers at the Puritans, and at the controversy on "The Foundations of
Hell Torments shaken and removed." He admits that Locke "is a man of
very good converse, but is chiefly concerned to spy out the movements
of the philosopher, suspected of sedition, and to report them to
Ellis in town. About the new buildings, as of the beautiful western
gateway, where Great Tom is hung, the work of Wren, Prideaux says
little; St.
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