L. C. PREFACE. THE following pages are the result of several months' miscellaneous reading of the ephemeral literature and of the biographies which bear upon Social Life in the English Universities during the eighteenth century. That so portly a volume is now sent out into the world, is due partly to the inexperience of the compiler, in part to the interest which he could not fail to feel even in the minute and comparatively trivial particulars of the life of those who, in earlier generations and very different times, had passed through the same stages through which he was passing; in a measure also to the circumstances under which the first instalment of the work was written, as a prize competition to be completed by a fixed date; and in no slight degree to the abundance of material which the libraries poured forth. It was hoped that the end proposed by the authorities of our University in their choice of a subject for the Le Bas Essay in 1871, viz. University L. B. E. b |