LYLY SE PLAINT DE SON ALMA MATER

Yet may I of all the rest most condemne Oxford of vnkindnes, of vice I cannot, who seemed to weane me before she brought me foorth, and to giue me boanes to gnaw, before I could get the teate to sucke. Wherin she played the nice mother in sending me into the country to nurse, where I tyred at a dry breast three yeares, and was at the last enforced to weane my self. But it was destinie, for if 1 had not bene gathered from the tree in the budde, I should beeing blowne haue proued a blast, and as good it is to bee an addle egge as an idle bird. (To my very good friends the Gentlemen Scholers of Oxford, épître agoutée à la seconde édition de l’ Anatomy

of Wit [Midsummer 1579], Works, I, 325.)