On the 2nd of January 1824 was issued the prospectus of the Lapsus Linguæ; or, the College Tatler; and on the 7th the first number appeared.  On Friday the 2nd of April “Mr. Tatler became speechless.”  Its history was not all one success; for the editor (who applies to himself the words of Iago, “I am nothing if I am not critical”) over-stepped the bounds of caution, and found himself seriously embroiled with the powers that were.  There appeared in No.  XVI. a most bitter satire upon Sir John Leslie, in which he was compared to Falstaff, charged with puffing himself, and very prettily censured for publishing only the first volume of a class-book, and making all purchasers pay for both.  Sir John Leslie took up the matter angrily, visited Carfrae the publisher, and threatened him with an action, till he was forced to turn the hapless Lapsus out of doors.  The maltreated periodical found shelter in the shop of Huie, Infirmary Street; and NO.  XVII. was duly issued from the new office.  NO.  XVII. beheld Mr. Tatler’s humiliation, in which, with fulsome apology and not very credible assurances of respect and admiration, he disclaims the article in question, and advertises a new issue of NO.  XVI. with all objectionable matter omitted.  This, with pleasing euphemism, he terms in a later advertisement, “a new and improved edition.”  This was the only remarkable adventure of Mr. Tatler’s brief existence; unless we consider as such a silly Chaldee manuscript in imitation of Blackwood, and a letter of reproof from a divinity student on the impiety of the same dull effusion.  He laments the near approach of his end in pathetic terms.  “How shall we summon up sufficient courage,” says he, “to look for the last time on our beloved little devil and his inestimable proof-sheet?  How shall we be able to pass N Infirmary Street and feel that all its attractions are over?  How shall we bid farewell for ever to that excellent man, with the long greatcoat, wooden leg and wooden board, who acts as our representative at the gate of Alma Mater?” But alas! he had no choice:  Mr. Tatler, whose career, he says himself, had been successful, passed peacefully away, and has ever since dumbly implored “the bringing home of bell and burial.”

Alter et idem.  A very different affair was the Lapsus Linguæ from the Edinburgh University Magazine.  The two prospectuses alone, laid side by side, would indicate the march of luxury and the repeal of the paper duty.  The penny bi-weekly broadside of session 1823-4 was almost wholly dedicated to Momus.  Epigrams, pointless letters, amorous verses, and University grievances are the continual burthen of the song.  But Mr. Tatler was not without a vein of hearty humour; and his pages afford what is much better:  to wit, a good picture of student life as it then was.  The students of those polite days insisted on retaining their hats in the class-room.  There was a cab-stance in front of the College; and “Carriage Entrance” was posted above the main arch, on what the writer pleases to call “coarse, unclassic boards.”  The benches of the “Speculative” then, as now, were red; but all other Societies (the “Dialectic” is the only survivor) met downstairs, in some rooms of which it is pointedly said that “nothing else could conveniently be made of them.”  However horrible these dungeons may have been, it is certain that they were paid for, and that far too heavily for the taste of session 1823-4, which found enough calls upon its purse for porter and toasted cheese at Ambrose’s, or cranberry tarts and ginger-wine at Doull’s.  Duelling was still a possibility; so much so that when two medicals fell to fisticuffs in Adam Square, it was seriously hinted that single combat would be the result.  Last and most wonderful of all, Gall and Spurzheim were in every one’s mouth; and the Law student, after having exhausted Byron’s poetry and Scott’s novels, informed the ladies of his belief in phrenology.  In the present day he would dilate on “Red as a rose is she,” and then mention that he attends Old Greyfriars’, as a tacit claim to intellectual superiority.  I do not know that the advance is much.

But Mr. Tatler’s best performances were three short papers in which he hit off pretty smartly the idiosyncrasies of the “Divinity,” the “Medical,” and the “Law” of session 1823-4.  The fact that there was no notice of the “Arts” seems to suggest that they stood in the same intermediate position as they do now ­the epitome of student-kind. Mr. Tatler’s satire is, on the whole, good-humoured, and has not grown superannuated in all its limbs.  His descriptions may limp at some points, but there are certain broad traits that apply equally well to session 1870-71.  He shows us the Divinity of the period ­tall, pale, and slender ­his collar greasy, and his coat bare about the seams ­“his white neckcloth serving four days, and regularly turned the third,” ­“the rim of his hat deficient in wool,” ­and “a weighty volume of theology under his arm.”  He was the man to buy cheap “a snuff-box, or a dozen of pencils, or a six-bladed knife, or a quarter of a hundred quills,” at any of the public sale-rooms.  He was noted for cheap purchases, and for exceeding the legal tender in halfpence.  He haunted “the darkest and remotest corner of the Theatre Gallery.”  He was to be seen issuing from “aerial lodging-houses.”  Withal, says mine author, “there were many good points about him:  he paid his landlady’s bill, read his Bible, went twice to church on Sunday, seldom swore, was not often tipsy, and bought the Lapsus Linguæ.”

The Medical, again, “wore a white greatcoat, and consequently talked loud” ­(there is something very delicious in that consequently).  He wore his hat on one side.  He was active, volatile, and went to the top of Arthur’s Seat on the Sunday forenoon.  He was as quiet in a debating society as he was loud in the streets.  He was reckless and imprudent:  yesterday he insisted on your sharing a bottle of claret with him (and claret was claret then, before the cheap-and-nasty treaty), and to-morrow he asks you for the loan of a penny to buy the last number of the Lapsus.

The student of Law, again, was a learned man.  “He had turned over the leaves of Justinian’s ‘Institutes,’ and knew that they were written in Latin.  He was well acquainted with the title-page of ’Blackstone’s Commentaries,’ and argal (as the gravedigger in Hamlet says) he was not a person to be laughed at.”  He attended the Parliament House in the character of a critic, and could give you stale sneers at all the celebrated speakers.  He was the terror of essayists at the Speculative or the Forensic.  In social qualities he seems to have stood unrivalled.  Even in the police-office we find him shining with undiminished lustre.  “If a Charlie should find him rather noisy at an untimely hour, and venture to take him into custody, he appears next morning like a Daniel come to judgment.  He opens his mouth to speak, and the divine precepts of unchanging justice and Scots law flow from his tongue.  The magistrate listens in amazement, and fines him only a couple of guineas.”

Such then were our predecessors and their College Magazine.  Barclay, Ambrose, Young Amos, and Fergusson were to them what the Café, the Rainbow, and Rutherford’s are to us.  An hour’s reading in these old pages absolutely confuses us, there is so much that is similar and so much that is different; the follies and amusements are so like our own, and the manner of frolicking and enjoying are so changed, that one pauses and looks about him in philosophic judgment.  The muddy quadrangle is thick with living students; but in our eyes it swarms also with the phantasmal white greatcoats and tilted hats of 1824.  Two races meet:  races alike and diverse.  Two performances are played before our eyes; but the change seems merely of impersonators, of scenery, of costume.  Plot and passion are the same.  It is the fall of the spun shilling whether seventy-one or twenty-four has the best of it.

In a future number we hope to give a glance at the individualities of the present, and see whether the cast shall be head or tail ­whether we or the readers of the Lapsus stand higher in the balance.