 was Mr. Jumble his own
tutor, who could not at all digest the mortifying affront he had received, and
was resolved to be revenged on the insulting author. With this view he watched
the conduct of Mr. Pickle with the utmost rancour of vigilance, and let slip no
opportunity of treating him with disrespect, which he knew the disposition of
his pupil could less brook than any other severity it was in his power to
exercise.
    Peregrine had been several mornings absent from chapel; and as Mr. Jumble
never failed to question him in a very peremptory stile about his
non-attendance, he invented some very plausible excuses; but, at length, his
ingenuity was exhausted; he received a very galling rebuke for his profligacy of
morals, and that he might feel it the more sensibly, was ordered, by way of
exercise, to compose a paraphrase in English verse, upon these two lines in
Virgil,
 
Vane ligur, frustraque animis elate superbis,
Necquicquam, patrias, tentasti lubricus, artes.
 
The imposition of this invidious theme had all the desired effect upon
Peregrine, who not only considered it as a piece of unmannerly abuse levelled
against his own conduct, but also as a retrospective insult on the memory of his
grandfather, who (as he had been informed) was in his life-time more noted for
his cunning than candour in trade.
    Exasperated at this instance of the pedant's audacity, he had well nigh (in
his first transports) taken corporal satisfaction on the spot; but foreseeing
the troublesome consequences that would attend such a flagrant outrage against
the laws of the university, he checked his indignation, and resolved to revenge
the injury in a more cool and contemptuous manner. Thus determined, he set on
foot an inquiry into the particulars of Jumble's parentage and education, and
learnt that the father of this insolent tutor was a bricklayer, and that his
mother sold pies, and that the son, at different periods of his youth, had
amused himself in both occupations, before he converted his views to the study
of learning. Fraught with this intelligence, he composed the following ballad in
doggerel rhymes, and next day presented it as a gloss upon the text which the
tutor had chosen.
 
                                       I
Come, listen ye students of ev'ry degree,
I sing of a wit and a tutor perdie,
A statesman profound, a critick immense,
In short, a meer jumble of learning and sense;
And yet of his talents, tho' laudably vain,
His own family arts he could never attain.
 
                                       II
His father intending his fortune to build,
In his
