Corusodes, an Oxford student, and a farmer’s son, was never absent from prayers or lecture, nor once out of his college, after Tom had tolled.  He spent every day ten hours in his closet, in reading his courses, dozing, clipping papers, or darning his stockings; which last he performed to admiration.  He could be soberly drunk at the expense of others, with college ale, and at those seasons was always most devout.  He wore the same gown five years without draggling or tearing.  He never once looked into a playbook or a poem.  He read Virgil and Ramus in the same cadence, but with a very different taste.  He never understood a jest, or had the least conception of wit.

For one saying he stands in renown to this day.  Being with some other students over a pot of ale, one of the company said so many pleasant things, that the rest were much diverted, only Corusodes was silent and unmoved.  When they parted, he called this merry companion aside, and said, “Sir, I perceive by your often speaking, and your friends laughing, that you spoke many jests; and you could not but observe my silence:  But sir, this is my humour, I never make a jest myself, nor ever laugh at another man’s.”

Corusodes, thus endowed, got into holy orders; having, by the most extreme parsimony, saved thirty-four pounds out of a very beggarly fellowship, he went up to London, where his sister was waitingwoman to a lady, and so good a solicitor, that by her means he was admitted to read prayers in the family twice a-day, at fourteen[1] shillings a month.  He had now acquired a low, obsequious, awkward bow, and a talent of gross flattery both in and out of season; he would shake the butler by the hand; he taught the page his catechism, and was sometimes admitted to dine at the steward’s table.  In short, he got the good word of the whole family, and was recommended by my lady for chaplain to some other noble houses, by which his revenue (besides vales) amounted to about thirty pounds a-year:  His sister procured him a scarf from my lord, who had a small design of gallantry upon her; and by his lordship’s solicitation he got a lectureship in town of sixty pounds a-year; where he preached constantly in person, in a grave manner, with an audible voice, a style ecclesiastic, and the matter (such as it was) well suited to the intellectuals of his hearers.  Some time after, a country living fell in my lord’s disposal; and his lordship, who had now some encouragement given him of success in his amour, bestowed the living on Corusodes, who still kept his lectureship and residence in town; where he was a constant attendant at all meetings relating to charity, without ever contributing further than his frequent pious exhortations.  If any woman of better fashion in the parish happened to be absent from church, they were sure of a visit from him in a day or two, to chide and to dine with them.

[Footnote 6:  Scott has “ten shillings.” [T.S.]]