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MODERN TYPES.

(_By Mr. Punch's Own Type-Writer._)

No. XIII.--THE PRECOCIOUS UNDERGRADUATE.

[Illustration]

EVER since undergraduates existed at all, there must have been some
who, in the precocity of their hearts, set themselves up or were
set up by the admiration of their fellows as patterns of life, and
knowledge, and manners. But before steam and electricity made Oxford
and Cambridge into suburbs of London, these little deities were
scarcely heard of outside the limits of their particular University,
the sphere of their influence was restricted, and they were unable to
impress the crowd of their juvenile worshippers by the glamour which
comes of frequent plunges into the dizzy whirlpool of London life.
Now, however, all that is changed. Our seats of learning are within
a stone's throw of town, and the callow nestlings who yesterday
fluttered feebly over King's Parade or the High, may to-day attempt
a bolder flight in Piccadilly and the Park. The simpler pleasures of
Courts and Quads soon pall upon one who believes emphatically, that
life has no further secrets when the age of twenty has been reached,
and that an ingenuous modesty is incompatible with the exercise of
manliness. He despises the poor fools who are content to be merely
young while youth remains. He himself, has sought for and found in
London a fountain of age, from which he may quaff deep draughts, and
returning, impart his experience to his envious friends.

The Precocious Undergraduate, then, was (and is, for the type remains,
though the individual may perish) one who attempted in his own opinion
with perfect success, to combine an unerring knowledge of men with a
smooth cheek and a brow as unwrinkled as late hours could leave it.
In the sandy soil of immaturity he was fain to plant a flourishing
reputation for cunning, and to water it with the tears of those
who being responsible for his appearance in the world dreaded his
premature affectation of its wisdom and its follies.

They had given him, however, as befitted careful parents, every chance
of acquiring an excellent education. In order that he might afterwards
shine at the Bar or in the Senate, he was sent to one of our larger
public schools, where he soon found that with a very small life-belt
of Latin and Greek a boy may keep his head safe above the ripple of a
master's anger. But his school career was not without honour. He was a
boy of a frank and generous temperament, candid w