CHAPTER LXIII.

And as for me, tho' that I can but lite
On bookes for to read I me delight,
And to hem give I faith and full credence;
And in mine heart have hem in reverence,
So heartily that there is game none,
That fro' my bookes maketh me to gone.
--Chaucer.

Christopher Clutterbuck was a common individual of a common order, but
little known in this busy and toiling world. I cannot flatter myself that
I am about to present to your notice that rara avis, a new character--yet
there is something interesting, and even unhacknied, in the retired and
simple class to which he belongs: and before I proceed to a darker period
in my memoirs, I feel a calm and tranquillizing pleasure in the rest
which a brief and imperfect delineation of my college companion, affords
me. My friend came up to the University with the learning one about to
quit the world might, with credit, have boasted of possessing, and the
simplicity one about to enter it would have been ashamed to confess.
Quiet and shy in his habits and his manners, he was never seen out of the
precincts of his apartment, except in obedience to the stated calls of
dinner, lectures, and chapel. Then his small and stooping form might be
marked, crossing the quadrangle with a hurried step, and cautiously
avoiding the smallest blade of the barren grass-plots, which are
forbidden ground to the feet of all the lower orders of the collegiate
oligarchy. Many were the smiles and the jeers, from the worse natured and