“Dickey Bateman has picked up a whole cloister full of old chairs in Herefordshire.  He bought them one by one, here and there in farm-houses, for three and sixpence and a crown apiece.  They are of wood, the seats triangular, the backs, arms, and legs loaded with turnery.  A thousand to one but there are plenty up and down Cheshire, too.  If Mr. and Mrs. Wetenhall, as they ride or drive out, would now and then pick up such a chair, it would oblige me greatly.  Take notice, no two need be of the same pattern.”—­Private Correspondence of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford, Vol.  II. p. 279.

HORACE WALPOLE TO THE REV.  MR. COLE.

“Strawberry Hill, March 9, 1765.

“When you go into Cheshire, and upon your ramble, may I trouble you with a commission? but about which you must promise me not to go a step out of your way.  Mr. Bateman has got a cloister at old Windsor furnished with ancient wooden chairs, most of them triangular, but all of various patterns, and carved and turned in the most uncouth and whimsical forms.  He picked them up one by one, for two, three, five, or six shillings apiece, from different farm-houses in Herefordshire.  I have long envied and coveted them.  There may be such in poor cottages in so neighboring a county as Cheshire.  I should not grudge any expense for purchase or carriage, and should be glad even of a couple such for my cloister here.  When you are copying inscriptions in a churchyard in any Village, think of me, and step into the first cottage you see, but don’t take further trouble than that.”—­Ibid., Vol.  III. pp. 23, 24, from Peirce’s Hist.  Harv.  Univ., p. 312.

An engraving of the chair is to be found in President Quincy’s
History of Harvard University, Vol.  I. p. 288.

PREVARICATOR.  A sort of an occasional orator; an academical phrase in the University of Cambridge, Eng.—­Johnson.

He should not need have pursued me through the various shapes of a divine, a doctor, a head of a college, a professor, a prevaricator, a mathematician.—­Bp.  Wren, Monarchy Asserted, Pref.

It would have made you smile to hear the prevaricator, in his jocular way, give him his title and character to face.—­A.  Philips, Life of Abp.  Williams, p. 34.

See TERRAE-FILIUS.

PREVIOUS EXAMINATION.  In the English universities, the University examination in the second year.

Called also the LITTLE-GO.

The only practical connection that the Undergraduate usually has with the University, in its corporate capacity, consists in his previous examination, alias the “Little-Go,” and his final examination for a degree, with or without honors.—­Bristed’s Five Years in an Eng.  Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 10.

PREX.  A cant term for President.

After examination, I went to the old Prex, and was admitted. Prex, by the way, is the same as President.—­The Dartmouth, Vol.  IV. p. 117.