(4) "On the Extension of the Universities—Letter II,"
Inquirer, April 1, 1854, pp. 196-197.
The allusions to Bacon, Cobden, Wellington, and Derby are all
characteristic of Bagehot (all are referred to in the essay on Oxford), and
they show touches of his humour or parallelisms with his identified
writings. For instance, the Inquirer correspondent
humourously remarks that "it will be no longer, as in the last war, a
principal parliamentary difficulty that the Duke of Wellington would persist
in winning victories at places not mentioned in the classics." As for
parallelisms, the writer further states, "Mr. Cobden took occasion, not long
ago, to speak with disrespect of 'all the works of Thucydides' . . ." In the
essay on Oxford, Bagehot had written that the uneducated man "knows as
well as Mr. Cobden what is to be found in all the works of
Thucydides . . ." (p. 366).
Other kinds of parallelism are discoverable, as well. The writer in the
Inquirer states, "An uneducated man has an opinion on every
question which you ask him; some writer says that if you ask a common
person what colour is the unseen side of the moon, he would have an
answer ready . . ." In the essay on Oxford, Bagehot had written (p. 366),
"An uneducated man has no notion of being without an opinion: he is
distinctly aware whether Venus is inhabited . . ."
