U Unpublished Poems

Unpublished Poems

University students in former centuries were encouraged to keep commonplace books, manuscript volumes in which to record worthy sayings, memorable points from sermons or striking ideas from their private reading. But it was not unusual for students to compile compendia of a less edifying character, for example, books of humorous poems.

The College possesses a collection of miscellaneous manuscript poems dating from the mid-1710s. Some poems allude to the reign of Queen Anne, and others express contempt for Jacobitism, probably in response to the Rising of 1715. The manuscript is composed by several hands, some scrupulously neat, others exuberantly wild. Although the manuscript bears no ownership inscription, it clearly belonged to a student at Oxford. Some of the contents reflect serious studies, such as estimable translations from classical authors. But other entries are less high-minded, such as copies of poetical squibs by the scurrilous satirist Tom Brown (1662–1704), an Oxford wit and later Grub Street hack. A few of the poems appear to be original, if conventional, literary exercises in the taste of the day, dealing with the hopes and disappointments of courtship, or offering gallantries to women, real or imagined. Students of those times seemed to share with their modern counterparts fondness for the tavern, and one poem, written in English, drops into discreet Latin when describing disreputable episodes during an 18th-century pub crawl. Other poems are old favourites that survived far into the 19th century. One such is the facetious ‘On the Pye-House Memory of Nell Batchelor a woman yt kept a pastry Shop in Oxford’:

Beneath in the Dust The old mouldy Crust Of Nell Batchelor lately was shoven Who was skill’d in ye Arts Of Pyes, Custards & Tarts And knew every use of ye Oven.

When She had liv’d long enough She made her last puff, A Puff by her husband much prais’d Now here she doth lye And makes a Dirt Pye In hopes yt her Crust will be rais’d.

This poem, along with some others in the manuscript, later appeared in 1764 in an anthology with the unlikely name of The Oxford Sausage, or Select Poetical Pieces written by the Most Celebrated Wits of the University of Oxford.