Page:Literary Landmarks of Oxford.djvu/142

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"Dagger"; the degree he takes, on passing, is a "degrugger"; and the train to London leaves him, not at Paddington Station, but at "Padder." All of which is very instructive, and of great value to him in the ordinary every-day conversation of later life!

Hertford has had a strange but comparatively uneventful history, which is too long and too complicated to be set down fully here. It was originally founded, at the end of the Thirteenth Century, as Hart Hall; and it seems to have been curiously and most confusedly mixed up with Exeter and New, and later, with Magdalen. In 1740 a zealous and executive Principal succeeded in obtaining a royal charter, making it a perpetual college under the name of Hertford; but as such, owing to serious lack of endowment, it went out of existence altogether at the end of about half a century. In 1818 the President and Fellows of Magdalen were authorized to repair the decayed buildings of Hertford for the reception of Magdalen Hall.

In 1874 it was determined to revert to the original style; the foundation of Magdalen Hall was dissolved, and the Principal and Scholars thereof, together with certain other Fellows, were incorporated as the Principal, Fellows and Scholars of Hertford College, in the University of Oxford. Men associated with Hart Hall, for the sake of