With respect to myself, I excited a great talk, receiving invitations to dine with almost all the respectable families in Gottingen. I had the honour of being waited on by Doctor Dedimus Dunderhead, who, after shaking me by the hand in the kindest manner, made me give a long account of my feelings at the instant of coming alive. Of course, I concealed everything connected with the Metempsychosis, and kept out many circumstances which at the time I did not wish to be known. He was nevertheless highly delighted, and gave it as his opinion (which, being oracular, was instantly acted upon), that a description of the whole should be inserted in the Annals of the University. I had the farther honour of being invited to dinner at his house--an honour which I duly appreciated, knowing that it is almost never conferred except on the syndics, burgomasters, and deacons of the town, and a few of the professors.
These events, which are here related at full, I can only attest by my own word, except indeed the affair of the coming alive, which everybody in Gottingen knows of. If any doubt the more unlikely parts of the detail, I cannot help it. I have not written this with the view of empty fame, and still less of profit. Philosophy has taught me to despise the former, and my income renders the latter an object of no importance. I merely do it to put my fellow-citizens on their guard against the machinations of the old fellow with the snuff-coloured surtout, the scarlet waistcoat, and the wooden leg. Above all, they should carefully abstain from signing any paper he may present to them, however plausible his offers may be. By mere thoughtlessness in this respect, I brought myself into a multitude of dangers and difficulties, from which every one in the same predicament may not escape so easily as I have done. I shall conclude with acknowledging that a strong change has been wrought in my opinions; and that from ridiculing the doctrines of the sage of Samos, I am now one of their firmest supporters. In a word, I am what I have designated myself,
It wanted but two or three weeks to the Christmas vacation (alas! how many years ago!) and we, the worshipful society of undergraduates of ---- College, Oxford, were beginning to get tired of the eternal round of supper-parties which usually marked the close of our winter's campaign, and ready to hail with delight any proposition that had the charm of novelty. A three weeks' frost had effectually stopped the hunting; all the best tandem-leaders were completely screwed; the freshmen had been "larked" till they were grown as cunning as magpies; and the Dean had set up a divinity lecture at two o'clock, and published a stringent proclamation against rows in the Quad. It was, in short, during a particularly uninteresting state of things, with the snow falling lazily upon the grey roofs and silent quadrangle, that some half-dozen of us had congregated in Bob Thornhill's rooms, to get over the time between lunch and dinner with as little trouble to our mental and corporeal faculties as possible. Those among us who had been for the last three months promising to themselves to begin to read "next week," had now put off that too easy creditor, conscience, till "next term." One alone had settled his engagements of that nature, or, in the language of his "_Testamur_"--the prettiest bit of Latin, he declared, that he ever saw--"_satisfecit examinatoribus_." Unquestionably, in his case, the examiners must have had the rare virtue of being very easily satisfied. In fact, Mr Savile's discharge of his educational engagements was rather a sort of "whitewashing" than a payment in full. His passing was what is technically called a "shave," a metaphor alluding to that intellectual density which finds it difficult to squeeze through the narrow portal which admits to the privileges of a Bachelor of Arts. As Mr S. himself, being a sporting man, described it, it was "a very close run indeed;" not that he considered that circumstance to derogate in any way from his victory; he was rather inclined to consider, that, having shown the field of examiners capital sport, and fairly got away from them in the end without the loss of his brush, his examination had been one of the very best runs of the season. In virtue whereof he was now mounted on the arm of an easy-chair, with a long chibouque, which became the gravity of an incipient bachelor better than a cigar, and took upon himself to give Thornhill (who was really a clever fellow, and professing to be reading for a first) some advice as to his conducting himself when his examination should arrive.