The first little volume which contains the numbers of
this bi-weekly periodical (printed for R. Franklin, under Tom's
Coffee-house, in Russell Street, Covent Garden, MDCCXXVI.) is not at
all rare, and is well worth a desultory reading. What strikes one
most in Terrae Filius is the religious discontent of the bilious
author. One thinks, foolishly of course, of even Georgian Whigs as
orthodox men, at least in their undergraduate days. The mere aspect
of Mr. Leslie Stephen's work on the philosophers of the eighteenth
century is enough to banish this pleasing delusion. The Deists and
Freethinkers had their followers in Johnson's day among the
undergraduates, though scepticism, like Whiggery, was unpopular, and
might be punished. Johnson says, that when he was a boy he was a lax
TALKER, rather than a lax THINKER, against religion; "but lax talking
against religion at Oxford would not be suffered." The author of
Terrae Filius, however, never omits a chance of sneering at our
faith, and at the Church of England as by law established. In his
description of the exercises of the Club of Wits, only one
respectably clever epigram is quoted, beginning, -
"Since in religion all men disagree,
And some one God believe, some thirty, and some three."
This production "was voted heretical," and burned by the hands of the
small-beer drawer, while the author was expelled. In the author's
advice to freshmen, he gives a not uninteresting sketch of these
rudimentary creatures.
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