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diff --git a/2444-h/2444-h.htm b/2444-h/2444-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d1a14fc --- /dev/null +++ b/2444-h/2444-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,4129 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Oxford, by Andrew Lang</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;} + P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; } + .GutSmall { font-size: 0.7em; } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4, H5 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + table { border-collapse: collapse; } +table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} + td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} + td p { margin: 0.2em; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-weight: normal; + color: gray; + } + img { border: none; } + img.dc { float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; } + p.gutindent { margin-left: 2em; } + div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; } + div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 100%; border-top: 1px solid;} + div.gapmediumline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + div.gapmediumdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; + margin-left: 40%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid; } + div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%; + margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + img.floatleft { float: left; + margin-right: 1em; + margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.floatright { float: right; + margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.clearcenter {display: block; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em} + --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Oxford, by Andrew Lang, Illustrated by George +F. Carline + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most +other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of +the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: Oxford + + +Author: Andrew Lang + + + +Release Date: January 24, 2015 [eBook #2444] +[This file was first posted on February 13, 2000] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OXFORD*** +</pre> +<p>Transcribed from the 1922 Seeley, Service & Co. edition by +David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/coverb.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Book cover" +title= +"Book cover" + src="images/covers.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/fpb.jpg"> +<img alt= +"St. Mary’s Church from the corner of Oriel Street and +Merton Street, with Oriel College on the right" +title= +"St. Mary’s Church from the corner of Oriel Street and +Merton Street, with Oriel College on the right" + src="images/fps.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<h1>OXFORD</h1> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">BY</span><br +/> +ANDREW LANG<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">SOMETIME FELLOW</span><br /> +<span class="GutSmall">OF MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORD</span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center">WITH ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">BY</span><br /> +GEORGE F. CARLINE<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">R.B.A.</span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center">LONDON<br /> +SEELEY, SERVICE & CO LTD<br /> +38 GREET RUSSELL STREET<br /> +1922</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">TO</span><br +/> +A. M. LEE</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<h2>PREFACE</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">These</span> papers do not profess even to +sketch the outlines of a history of Oxford. They are merely +records of the impressions made by this or that aspect of the +life of the University as it has been in different ages. +Oxford is not an easy place to design in black and white, with +the pen or the etcher’s needle. On a wild winter or +late autumn day (such as Father Faber has made permanent in a +beautiful poem) the sunshine fleets along the plain, revealing +towers, and floods, and trees, in a gleam of watery light, and +leaving them once more in shadow. The melancholy mist +creeps over the city, the damp soaks into the heart of +everything, and such suicidal weather ensues as has been +described, once for all, by the author of +<i>John-a-Dreams</i>. How different Oxford looks when the +road to Cowley Marsh is dumb with dust, when the heat seems +almost tropical, and by the drowsy banks of the Cherwell you +might almost expect some shy southern water-beast to come +crashing through the reeds! And such a day, again, is +unlike the bright weather of late September, when all the gold +and scarlet of Bagley Wood are concentrated in the leaves that +cover the walls of Magdalen with an imperial vesture.</p> +<p>Our memories of Oxford, if we have long made her a Castle of +Indolence, vary no less than do the shifting aspects of her +scenery. Days of spring and of mere pleasure in existence +have alternated with days of gloom and loneliness, of melancholy, +of resignation. Our mental pictures of the place are tinged +by many moods, as the landscape is beheld in shower and sunshine, +in frost, and in the colourless drizzling weather. Oxford, +that once seemed a pleasant porch and entrance into life, may +become a dingy ante-room, where we kick our heels with other +weary, waiting people. At last, if men linger there too +late, Oxford grows a prison, and it is the final condition of the +loiterer to take ‘this for a hermitage.’ It is +well to leave the enchantress betimes, and to carry away few but +kind recollections. If there be any who think and speak +ungently of their <i>Alma Mater</i>, it is because they have +outstayed their natural ‘welcome while,’ or because +they have resisted her genial influence in youth.</p> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> +<table> +<tr> +<td><p>CHAP.</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right">I.</p> +</td> +<td><p>THE TOWN BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page19">19</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: center">,,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right">II.</p> +</td> +<td><p>THE EARLY STUDENTS—A DAY WITH A MEDIEVAL +UNDERGRADUATE</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page43">43</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: center">,,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right">III.</p> +</td> +<td><p>THE RENAISSANCE AND THE REFORMATION</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page67">67</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: center">,,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right">IV.</p> +</td> +<td><p>JACOBEAN OXFORD</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page89">89</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: center">,,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right">V.</p> +</td> +<td><p>SOME SCHOLARS OF THE RESTORATION</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page111">111</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: center">,,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right">VI.</p> +</td> +<td><p>HIGH TORY OXFORD</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page133">133</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: center">,,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right">VII.</p> +</td> +<td><p>GEORGIAN OXFORD</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page153">153</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: center">,,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right">VIII.</p> +</td> +<td><p>POETS AT OXFORD: SHELLEY AND LANDOR</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page171">171</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: center">,,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right">IX.</p> +</td> +<td><p>A GENERAL VIEW</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page191">191</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: center">,,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right">X.</p> +</td> +<td><p>UNDERGRADUATE LIFE—CONCLUSION</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page209">209</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +</table> +<h2><a name="page19"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +19</span>CHAPTER I<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">THE TOWN BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY</span></h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Most</span> old towns are like +palimpsests, parchments which have been scrawled over again and +again by their successive owners. Oxford, though not one of +the most ancient of English cities, shows, more legibly than the +rest, the handwriting, as it were, of many generations. The +convenient site among the interlacing waters of the Isis and the +Cherwell has commended itself to men in one age after +another. Each generation has used it for its own purpose: +for war, for trade, for learning, for religion; and war, trade, +religion, and learning have left on Oxford their peculiar +marks. No set of its occupants, before the last two +centuries began, was very eager to deface or destroy the +buildings of its predecessors. Old things were turned to +new uses, or altered to suit new tastes; they were not overthrown +and carted away. Thus, in walking through Oxford, you see +everywhere, in colleges, chapels, and churches, doors and windows +which have been builded up; or again, openings which have been +cut where none originally existed. The upper part of the +round Norman arches in the Cathedral has been preserved, and +converted into the circular bull’s-eye lights which the +last century liked. It is the same everywhere, except where +modern restorers have had their way. Thus the life of +England, for some eight centuries, may be traced in the buildings +of Oxford. Nay, if we are convinced by some antiquaries, +the eastern end of the High Street contains even earlier +scratches on this palimpsest of Oxford; the rude marks of savages +who scooped out their damp nests, and raised their low walls in +the gravel, on the spot where the new schools are to stand. +Here half-naked men may have trapped the beaver in the Cherwell, +and hither they may have brought home the boars which they slew +in the trackless woods of Headington and Bagley. It is with +the life of historical Oxford, however, and not with these +fancies, that we are concerned, though these papers have no +pretension to be a history of Oxford. A series of pictures +of men’s life here is all they try to sketch.</p> +<p>It is hard, though not impossible, to form a picture in the +mind of Oxford as she was when she is first spoken of by +history. What she may have been when legend only knows her; +when St. Frideswyde built a home for religious maidens; when she +fled from King Algar and hid among the swine, and after a whole +fairy tale of adventures died in great sanctity, we cannot even +guess. This legend of St. Frideswyde, and of her +foundation, the germ of the Cathedral and of Christ Church, is +not, indeed, without its value and significance for those who +care for Oxford. This home of religion and of learning was +a home of religion from the beginning, and her later life is but +a return, after centuries of war and trade, to her earliest +purpose. What manner of village of wooden houses may have +surrounded the earliest rude chapels and places of prayer, we +cannot readily guess, but imagination may look back on Oxford as +she was when the <i>English Chronicle</i> first mentions +her. Even then it is not unnatural to think Oxford might +well have been a city of peace. She lies in the very centre +of England, and the Northmen, as they marched inland, burning +church and cloister, must have wandered long before they came to +Oxford. On the other hand, the military importance of the +site must have made it a town that would be eagerly contended +for. Any places of strength in Oxford would command the +roads leading to the north and west, and the secure, raised paths +that ran through the flooded fens to the ford or bridge, if +bridge there then was, between Godstowe and the later Norman +<i>grand pont</i>, where Folly Bridge now spans the Isis. +Somewhere near Oxford, the roads that ran towards Banbury and the +north, or towards Bristol and the west, would be obliged to cross +the river. The water-way, too, and the paths by the +Thames’ side, were commanded by Oxford. The Danes, as +they followed up the course of the Thames from London, would be +drawn thither, sooner or later, and would covet a place which is +surrounded by half a dozen deep natural moats. Lastly, +Oxford lay in the centre of England indeed, but on the very +marches of Mercia and Wessex. A border town of natural +strength and of commanding situation, she can have been no mean +or poor collection of villages in the days when she is first +spoken of, when Eadward the Elder ‘incorporated with his +own kingdom the whole Mercian lands on both sides of Watling +Street’ (Freeman’s <i>Norman Conquest</i>, vol. i. p. +57), and took possession of London and of Oxford as the two most +important parts of a scientific frontier. If any man had +stood, in the days of Eadward, on the hill that was not yet +‘Shotover,’ and had looked along the plain to the +place where the grey spires of Oxford are clustered now, as it +were in a purple cup of the low hills, he would have seen little +but ‘the smoke floating up through the oakwood and the +coppice,’</p> + +<blockquote><p> Καπνὸν +δ’ ἐνὶ +γέσσῃ<br /> +ἔδρακον +ὀφθαλμοῖσι +διὰ δρυμὰ +πυκνὰ καὶ +ὕλην</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The low hills were not yet cleared, nor the fens and the wolds +trimmed and enclosed. Centuries later, when the early +students came, they had to ride ‘through the thick forest +and across the moor, to the East Gate of the city’ +(<i>Munimenta Academica</i>, Oxon., vol. i. p. 60). In the +midst of a country still wild, Oxford was already no mean city; +but the place where the hostile races of the land met to settle +their differences, to feast together and forget their wrongs over +the mead and ale, or to devise treacherous murder, and close the +banquet with fire and sword.</p> +<p>Again and again, after Eadward the Elder took Mercia, the +Danes went about burning and wasting England. The wooden +towns were flaming through the night, and sending up a thick +smoke through the day, from Thamesmouth to Cambridge. +‘And next was there no headman that force would gather, and +each fled as swift as he might, and soon was there no shire that +would help another.’ When the first fury of the +plundering invaders was over, when the Northmen had begun to wish +to settle and till the land and have some measure of peace, the +early meetings between them and the English rulers were held in +the border-town, in Oxford. Thus Sigeferth and Morkere, +sons of Earngrim, came to see Eadric in Oxford, and there were +slain at a banquet, while their followers perished in the attempt +to avenge them. ‘Into the tower of St. Frideswyde +they were driven, and as men could not drive them thence, the +tower was fired, and they perished in the burning.’ +So says William of Malmesbury, who, so many years later, read the +story, as he says, in the records of the Church of St. +Frideswyde. There is another version of the story in the +<i>Codex Diplomaticus</i> (<span +class="GutSmall">DCCIX.</span>). Aethelred is made to say, +in a deed of grant of lands to St. Frideswyde’s Church +(‘mine own minster’), that the Danes were slain in +the massacre of St. Brice. On that day Aethelred, ‘by +the advice of his satraps, determined to destroy the tares among +the wheat, the Danes in England.’ Certain of these +fled into the minster, as into a fortress, and therefore it was +burned and the books and monuments destroyed. For this +cause Aethelred gives lands to the minster, ‘fro Charwell +brigge andlong the streame, fro Merewell to Rugslawe, fro the +lawe to the foule putte,’ and so forth. It is +pleasant to see how old are the familiar names +‘Cherwell,’ ‘Hedington,’ +‘Couelee’ or Cowley, where the college +cricket-grounds are. Three years passed, and the headmen of +the English and of the Danes met at Oxford again, and more +peacefully, and agreed to live together, obedient to the laws of +Eadgar; to the law, that is, as it was administered in older +days, that seem happier and better ruled to men looking back on +them from an age of confusion and bloodshed. At Oxford, +too, met the peaceful gathering of 1035, when Danish and English +claims were in some sort reconciled, and at Oxford Harold +Harefoot, the son of Cnut, died in March 1040. The place +indeed was fatal to kings, for St. Frideswyde, in her anger +against King Algar, left her curse on it. Just as the old +Irish kings were forbidden by their customs to do this or that, +to cross a certain moor on May morning, or to listen to the +winnowing of the night-fowl’s wings in the dusk above the +lake of Tara; so the kings of England shunned to enter Oxford, +and to come within the walls of Frideswyde the maiden. +Harold died there, as we have seen, but there he was not +buried. His body was laid at Westminster, where it could +not rest, for his enemies dug it up, and cast it forth upon the +fens, or threw it into the river. Many years later, when +Henry <span class="GutSmall">III.</span> entered Oxford, not +without fear, the curse of Frideswyde lighted also upon +him. He came in 1263, with Edward the prince, and +misfortune fell upon him, so that his barons defeated and took +him prisoner at the battle of Lewes. The chronicler of +Oseney Abbey mentions his contempt of superstitions, and how he +alone of English kings entered the city: ‘<i>Quod nullus +rex attemptavit a tempore Regis Algari</i>,’ an error, for +Harold <i>attemptavit</i>, and died. When Edward I. was +king, he was less audacious than his father, and in 1275 he rode +up to the East Gate and turned his horse’s head about, and +sought a lodging outside the town, <i>reflexis habenis equitans +extra moenia aulam regiain in suburbio positam +introivit</i>. In 1280, however, he seems to have plucked +up courage and attended a Chapter of Dominicans in Oxford.</p> +<p>The last of the meetings between North and South was held at +Oxford in October 1065. ‘<i>In urle quæ famoso +nomine Oxnaford nuncupatur</i>,’ to quote a document of +Cnut’s. (<i>Cod. Dipl.</i> <span +class="GutSmall">DCCXLVI</span>. in 1042.) There the +Northumbrian rebels met Harold in the last days of Edward the +Confessor. With this meeting we leave that Oxford before +the Conquest, of which possibly not one stone, or one rafter, +remains. We look back through eight hundred years on a +city, rich enough, it seems, and powerful, and we see the narrow +streets full of armed bands of men—men that wear the +cognisance of the horse or of the raven, that carry short swords, +and are quick to draw them; men that dress in short kirtles of a +bright colour, scarlet or blue; that wear axes slung on their +backs, and adorn their bare necks and arms with collars and +bracelets of gold. We see them meeting to discuss laws and +frontiers, and feasting late when business is done, and +chaffering for knives with ivory handles, for arrows, and +saddles, and wadmal, in the booths of the citizens. Through +the mist of time this picture of ancient Oxford may be +distinguished. We are tempted to think of a low, grey +twilight above that wet land suddenly lit up with fire; of the +tall towers of St. Frideswyde’s Minster flaring like a +torch athwart the night; of poplars waving in the same wind that +drives the vapour and smoke of the holy place down on the Danes +who have taken refuge there, and there stand at bay against the +English and the people of the town. The material Oxford of +our times is not more unlike the Oxford of low wooden booths and +houses, and of wooden spires and towers, than the life led in its +streets was unlike the academic life of to-day. The +Conquest brought no more quiet times, but the whole city was +wrecked, stormed, and devastated, before the second period of its +history began, before it was the seat of a Norman stronghold, and +one of the links of the chain by which England was bound. +‘Four hundred and seventy-eight houses were so ruined as to +be unable to pay taxes,’ while, ‘within the town or +without the wall, there were but two hundred and forty-three +houses which did yield tribute.’</p> +<p>With the buildings of Robert D’Oily, a follower of the +Conqueror’s, and the husband of an English wife, the +heiress of Wigod of Wallingford, the new Oxford begins. +Robert’s work may be divided roughly into two +classes. First, there are the strong places he erected to +secure his possessions, and, second, the sacred places he erected +to secure the pardon of Heaven for his robberies. Of the +castle, and its ‘shining coronal of towers,’ only one +tower remains. From the vast strength of this picturesque +edifice, with the natural moat flowing at its feet, we may guess +what the castle must have been in the early days of the Conquest, +and during the wars of Stephen and Matilda. We may guess, +too, that the burghers of Oxford, and the rustics of the +neighbourhood, had no easy life in those days, when, as we have +seen, the town was ruined, and when, as the extraordinary +thickness of the walls of its remaining tower demonstrates, the +castle was built by new lords who did not spare the forced labour +of the vanquished. The strength of the position of the +castle is best estimated after viewing the surrounding country +from the top of the tower. Through the more modern +embrasures, or over the low wall round the summit, you look up +and down the valley of the Thames, and gaze deep into the folds +of the hills. The prospect is pleasant enough, on an autumn +morning, with the domes and spires of modern Oxford breaking, +like islands, through the sea of mist that sweeps above the roofs +of the good town. In the old times, no movement of the +people who had their fastnesses in the fens, no approach of an +army from any direction could have evaded the watchman. The +towers guarded the fords and the bridge and were themselves +almost impregnable, except when a hard winter made the Thames, +the Cherwell, and the many deep and treacherous streams passable, +as happened when Matilda was beleaguered in Oxford. This +natural strength of the site is demonstrated by the vast mound +within the castle walls, which tradition calls the Jews’ +Mound, but which is probably earlier than the Norman +buildings. Some other race had chosen the castle site for +its fortress in times of which we know nothing. Meanwhile, +some of the practical citizens of Oxford wish to level the +Jews’ Mound, and to ‘utilise’ the gravel of +which it is largely composed. There is nothing to be said +against this economic project which could interest or affect the +persons who entertain it. M. Brunet-Debaines’ +illustration shows the mill on a site which must be as old as the +tower. Did the citizens bring their corn to be tolled and +ground at the lord’s mill?</p> +<p>Though Robert was bent on works of war, he had a nature +inclined to piety, and, his piety beginning at home, he founded +the church of St. George within the castle. The crypt of +the church still remains, and is not without interest for persons +who like to trace the changing fortunes of old buildings. +The site of Robert’s Castle is at present occupied by the +County Gaol. When you have inspected the tower (which does +not do service as a dungeon) you are taken, by the courtesy of +the Governor, to the crypt, and satisfy your archæological +curiosity. The place is much lower, and worse lighted, than +the contemporary crypt of St. Peter’s-in-the-East, but not, +perhaps, less interesting. The square-headed capitals have +not been touched, like some of those in St. Peter’s, by a +later chisel. The place is dank and earthy, but otherwise +much as Robert D’Oily left it. There is an +odd-looking arrangement of planks on the floor. It is +<i>the new drop</i>, which is found to work very well, and gives +satisfaction to the persons who have to employ it. Sinister +the Norman castle was in its beginning, ‘it was from the +castle that men did wrong to the poor around them; it was from +the castle that they bade defiance to the king, who, stranger and +tyrant as he might be, was still a protector against smaller +tyrants.’ Sinister the castle remains; you enter it +through ironed and bolted doors, you note the prisoners at their +dreary exercises, and, when you have seen the engines of the law +lying in the old crypt you pass out into the place of +execution. Here, in a corner made by Robert’s tower +and by the wall of the prison, is a dank little quadrangle. +The ground is of the yellow clay and gravel which floors most +Oxford quadrangles. A few letters are scratched on the soft +stone of the wall—the letters ‘H. R.’ are the +freshest. These are the initials of the last man who +suffered death in this corner—a young rustic who had +murdered his sweetheart. ‘H. R.’ on the prison +wall is all his record, and his body lies under your feet, and +the feet of the men who are to die here in after days pass over +his tomb. It is thus that malefactors are buried, +‘within the walls of the gaol.’</p> +<p>One is glad enough to leave the remains of Robert’s +place of arms—as glad as Matilda may have been when +‘they let her down at night from the tower with ropes, and +she stole out, and went on foot to Wallingford.’ +Robert seems at first to have made the natural use of his +strength. ‘Rich he was, and spared not rich or poor, +to take their livelihood away, and to lay up treasures for +himself.’ He stole the lands of the monks of +Abingdon, but of what service were moats, and walls, and +dungeons, and instruments of torture, against the powers that +side with monks?</p> +<p>The <i>Chronicle of Abingdon</i> has a very diverting account +of Robert’s punishment and conversion. ‘He +filched a certain field without the walls of Oxford that of right +belonged to the monastery, and gave it over to the soldiers in +the castle. For which loss the brethren were greatly +grieved—the brethren of Abingdon. Therefore, they +gathered in a body before the altar of St. Michael—the very +altar that St. Dunstan the archbishop dedicated—and cast +themselves weeping on the ground, accusing Robert D’Oily, +and praying that his robbery of the monastery might be avenged, +or that he might be led to make atonement.’ So, in a +dream, Robert saw himself taken before Our Lady by two brethren +of Abingdon, and thence carried into the very meadow he had +coveted, where ‘most nasty little boys,’ +<i>turpissimi pueri</i>, worked their will on him. Thereon +Robert was terrified and cried out, and wakened his wife, who +took advantage of his fears, and compelled him to make +restitution to the brethren.</p> +<p>After this vision, Robert gave himself up to pampering the +monastery and performing other good works. He it was who +built a bridge over the Isis, and he restored the many ruined +parish churches in Oxford—churches which, perhaps, he and +his men had helped to ruin. The tower of St. +Michael’s, in ‘the Corn,’ is said to be of his +building; perhaps he only ‘restored’ it, for it is in +the true primitive style—gaunt, unadorned, with +round-headed windows, good for shooting from with the bow. +St. Michael’s was not only a church, but a watchtower of +the city wall; and here the old northgate, called Bocardo, +spanned the street. The rooms above the gate were used till +within quite recent times, and the poor inmates used to let down +a greasy old hat from the window in front of the passers-by, and +cry, ‘Pity the Bocardo birds’:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Pigons qui sont en l’essoine,<br /> +Enserrez soubz trappe volière,’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>as a famous Paris student, François Villon, would have +called them. Of Bocardo no trace remains, but St. +Michael’s is likely to last as long as any edifice in +Oxford. Our illustrations represent it as it was in the +last century. The houses huddle up to the church, and hide +the lines of the tower. Now it stands out clear, less +picturesque than it was in the time of Bocardo prison. +Within the last two years the windows have been cleared, and the +curious and most archaic pillars, shaped like balustrades, may be +examined. It is worth while to climb the tower and remember +the times when arrows were sent like hail from the narrow windows +on the foes who approached Oxford from the north, while prayers +for their confusion were read in the church below.</p> +<p>That old Oxford of war was also a trading town. Nothing +more than the fact that it was a favourite seat of the Jews is +needed to prove its commercial prosperity. The Jews, +however, demand a longer notice in connection with the still +unborn University. Meanwhile, it may be remarked that +Oxford trade made good use of the river. The <i>Abingdon +Chronicle</i> (ii. 129) tells us that ‘from each barque of +Oxford city, which makes the passage by the river Thames past +Abingdon, a hundred herrings must yearly be paid to the +cellarer. The citizens had much litigation about land and +houses with the abbey, and one Roger Maledoctus (perhaps a very +early sample of the pass-man) gave Abingdon tenements within the +city.’ Thus we leave the pre-Academic Oxford a +flourishing town, with merchants and moneylenders. As for +the religious, the brethren of St. Frideswyde had lived but +loosely (<i>pro libito viverunt</i>), says William of Malmesbury, +and were to be superseded by regular canons, under the headship +of one Guimond, and the patronage of the Bishop of +Salisbury. Whoever goes into Christ Church new buildings +from the river-side, will see, in the old edifice facing him, a +certain bulging in the wall. That is the mark of the +pulpit, whence a brother used to read aloud to the brethren in +the refectory of St. Frideswyde. The new leaven of learning +was soon to ferment in an easy Oxford, where men lived <i>pro +libito</i>, under good lords, the D’Oilys, who loved the +English, and built, not churches and bridges only, but the great +and famous Oseney Abbey, beyond the church of St. Thomas, and not +very far from the modern station of the Great Western +Railway. Yet even after public teaching in Oxford certainly +began, after Master Robert Puleyn lectured in divinity there +(1133; cf. <i>Oseney Chronicle</i>), the tower was burned down by +Stephen’s soldiery in 1141 (<i>Oseney Chronicle</i>, p. +24).</p> +<h2><a name="page43"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +43</span>CHAPTER II<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">THE EARLY STUDENTS—A DAY WITH A +MEDIEVAL UNDERGRADUATE</span></h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Oxford</span>, some one says, ‘is +bitterly historical.’ It is difficult to escape the +fanaticism of Antony Wood, and of ‘our antiquary,’ +Bryan Twyne, when one deals with the obscure past of the +University. Indeed, it is impossible to understand the +strange blending of new and old at Oxford—the old names +with the new meanings—if we avert our eyes from what is +‘bitterly historical.’ For example, there is in +most, perhaps in all, colleges a custom called +‘collections.’ On the last days of term +undergraduates are called into the Hall, where the Master and the +Dean of the Chapel sit in solemn state. Examination papers +are set, but no one heeds them very much. The real ordeal +is the awful interview with the Master and the Dean. The +former regards you with the eyes of a judge, while the Dean says, +‘Master, I am pleased to say that Mr. Brown’s +<i>papers</i> are very fair, very fair. But in the matters +of <i>chapels</i> and of <i>catechetics</i>, Mr. Brown +sets—for a <i>scholar</i>—a very bad example to the +other undergraduates. He has only once attended divine +service on Sunday morning, and on that occasion, Master, his +dress consisted exclusively of a long great-coat and a pair of +boots.’ After this accusation the Master will turn to +the culprit and observe, with emphasis ill represented by +italics, ‘Mr. Brown, the <i>College</i> cannot hear with +pleasure of such behaviour on the part of a <i>scholar</i>. +You are <i>gated</i>, Mr. Brown, for the first fortnight of next +term.’ Now why should this tribunal of the Master and +the Dean, and this dread examination, be called +collections? Because (<i>Munimenta Academica</i>, Oxon., i. +129) in 1331 a statute was passed to the effect that ‘every +scholar shall pay at least twelve pence a-year for lectures in +logic, and for physics eighteenpence a-year,’ and that +‘all Masters of Arts except persons of royal or noble +family, shall be obliged to <i>collect</i> their salary from the +scholars.’ This <i>collection</i> would be made at +the end of term; and the name survives, attached to the solemn +day of doom we have described, though the college dues are now +collected by the bursar at the beginning of each term.</p> +<p>By this trivial example the perversions of old customs at +Oxford are illustrated. To appreciate the life of the +place, then, we must glance for a moment at the growth of the +University. As to its origin, we know absolutely +nothing. That Master Puleyn began to lecture there in 1133 +we have seen, and it is not likely that he would have chosen +Oxford if Oxford had possessed no schools. About these +schools, however, we have no information. They may have +grown up out of the seminary which, perhaps, was connected with +St. Frideswyde’s, just as Paris University may have had +some connection with ‘the School of the +Palace.’ Certainly to Paris University the academic +corporation of Oxford, the <i>Universitas</i>, owed many of her +regulations; while, again, the founder of the college system, +Walter de Merton (who visited Paris in company with Henry <span +class="GutSmall">III.</span>), may have compared ideas with +Robert de Sorbonne, the founder of the college of that +name. In the early Oxford, however, of the twelfth and most +of the thirteenth centuries, colleges with their statutes were +unknown. The University was the only corporation of the +learned, and she struggled into existence after hard fights with +the town, the Jews, the Friars, the Papal courts. The +history of the University begins with the thirteenth +century. She may be said to have come into being as soon as +she possessed common funds and rents, as soon as fines were +assigned, or benefactions contributed to the maintenance of +scholars. Now the first recorded fine is the payment of +fifty-two shillings by the townsmen of Oxford as part of the +compensation for the hanging of certain clerks. In the year +1214 the Papal Legate, in a letter to his ‘beloved sons in +Christ, the burgesses of Oxford,’ bade them excuse the +‘scholars studying in Oxford’ half the rent of their +halls, or hospitia, for the space of ten years. The +burghers were also to do penance, and to feast the poorer +students once a year; but the important point is, that they had +to pay that large yearly fine ‘propter suspendium +clericorum’—all for the hanging of the clerks. +Twenty-six years after this decision of the Legate, Robert +Grossteste, the great Bishop of Lincoln, organised the payment +and distribution of the fine, and founded the first of the +<i>chests</i>, the chest of St. Frideswyde. These +<i>chests</i> were a kind of Mont de Piété, and to +found them was at first the favourite form of benefaction. +Money was left in this or that <i>chest</i>, from which students +and masters would borrow, on the security of pledges, which were +generally books, cups, daggers, and so forth.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p48b.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Merton College from the Fields" +title= +"Merton College from the Fields" + src="images/p48s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Now, in this affair of 1214 we have a strange passage of +history, which happily illustrates the growth of the +University. The beginning of the whole affair was the +quarrel with the town, which, in 1209, had hanged two clerks, +‘in contempt of clerical liberty.’ The matter +was taken up by the Legate—in those bad years of King John +the Pope’s viceroy in England—and out of the +humiliation of the town the University gained money, privileges, +and halls at low rental. These were precisely the things +that the University wanted. About these matters there was a +constant strife, in which the Kings, as a rule, took part with +the University. The University possessed the legal +knowledge, which the monarchs liked to have on their side, and +was therefore favoured by them. Thus, in 1231 (Wood, +<i>Annals</i>, i. 205), ‘the King sent out his Breve to the +Mayor and Burghers commanding them not to overrate their +houses’; and thus gradually the University got the command +of the police, obtained privileges which enslaved the city, and +became masters where they had once been despised, starveling +scholars. The process was always the same. On the +feast of St. Scholastica, for example, in 1354, Walter de +Springheuse, Roger de Chesterfield, and other clerks, swaggered +into the Swyndlestock tavern in Carfax, began to speak ill of +John de Croydon’s wine, and ended by pitching the tankard +at the head of that vintner. In ten minutes the town bell +at St. Martin’s was rung, and the most terrible of all +Town-and-Gown rows began. The Chancellor could do no less +than bid St. Mary’s bell reply to St. Martin’s, and +shooting commenced. The Gown held their own very well at +first, and ‘defended themselves till Vespertide,’ +when the citizens called in their neighbours, the rustics of +Cowley, Headington, and Hincksey. The results have been +precisely described in anticipation by Homer:</p> +<blockquote><p>τόφρα δ’ +ἄρ +οἰχόμενοι +Κίκονες +Κικόνεσσι +γεγώνευν<br /> +οἴ σφῖν +γείτονες +ἦσαν ἅμα +πλέονες +καὶ +ἀρείους</p> +<p style="text-align: center">. . . . .</p> +<p>ἦμος δ’ +Ηέλιος +μετενίσσετο + +βουλυτόνδε<br +/> +καὶ τότε δὴ +Κίκονες +κλῖναν +δαμάσαντες +’Αχαιούς.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Which is as much as to say, ‘The townsfolk call for help +to their neighbours, the yokels, that were more numerous than +they, and better men in battle . . . so when the sun turned to +the time of the loosing of oxen the Town drave in the ranks of +the Gown, and won the victory.’ They were strong, the +townsmen, but not merciful. ‘The crowns of some +chaplains, viz. all the skin so far as the tonsure went, these +diabolical imps flayed off in scorn of their clergy,’ and +‘some poor innocents these confounded sons of Satan knocked +down, beat, and most cruelly wounded.’ The result, in +the long run, was that the University received from Edward <span +class="GutSmall">III.</span> ‘a most large charter, +containing many liberties, some that they had before, and +<i>others that he had taken away from the town</i>.’ +Thus Edward granted to the University ‘the custody of the +assize of bread, wine, and ale,’ the supervising of +measures and weights, the sole power of clearing the streets of +the town and suburbs. Moreover, the Mayor and the chief +Burghers were condemned yearly to a sort of public penance and +humiliation on St. Scholastica’s Day. Thus, by the +middle of the fourteenth century, the strife of Town and Gown had +ended in the complete victory of the latter.</p> +<p>Though the University owed its success to its clerkly +character, and though the Legate backed it with all the power of +Rome, yet the scholars were Englishmen and Liberals first, +Catholics next. Thus they had all English sympathy with +them when they quarrelled with the Legate in 1238, and shot his +cook (who, indeed, had thrown hot broth at them); and thus, in +later days, the undergraduates were with Simon de Montfort +against King Henry, and aided the barons with a useful body of +archers. The University, too, constantly withstood the +Friars, who had settled in Oxford on pretence of wishing to +convert the Jews, and had attempted to get education into their +hands. ‘The Preaching Friars, who had lately obtained +from the Pope divers privileges, particularly an exemption, as +they pretended, from being subject to the jurisdiction of the +University, began to behave themselves very insolent against the +Chancellors and Masters.’ (Wood, <i>Annals</i>, i. +399.) The conduct of the Friars caused endless appeals to +Rome, and in this matter, too, Oxford was stoutly national, and +resisted the Pope, as it had, on occasions, defied the +King. The King’s Jews, too, the University kept in +pretty good order, and when, in 1268, a certain Hebrew snatched +the crucifix from the hand of the Chancellor and trod it under +foot, his tribesmen were compelled to raise ‘a fair and +stately cross of marble, very curiously wrought,’ on the +scene of the sacrilege.</p> +<p>The growth in power and importance of academic corporations +having now been sketched, let us try to see what the outer aspect +of the town was like in these rude times, and what manner of life +the undergraduates led. For this purpose we may be allowed +to draw a rude, but not unfaithful, picture of a day in a +student’s life. No incident will be introduced for +which there is not authority, in Wood, or in Mr. Anstey’s +invaluable documents, the <i>Munimenta Academica</i>, published +in the collection of the Master of the Rolls. Some latitude +as to dates must be allowed, it is true, and we are not of course +to suppose that any one day of life was ever so gloriously +crowded as that of our undergraduate.</p> +<p>The time is the end of the fourteenth century. The +forest and the moor stretch to the east gate of the city. +Magdalen bridge is not yet built, nor of course the tower of +Magdalen, which M. Brunet-Debaines has sketched from Christ +Church walks. Not till about 1473 was the tower built, and +years would pass after that before choristers saluted with their +fresh voices from its battlements the dawn of the first of May, +or sermons were preached from the beautiful stone pulpit in the +open air. When our undergraduate, Walter de Stoke, or, more +briefly, Stoke, was at Oxford, the spires of the city were +few. Where Magdalen stands now, the old Hospital of St. +John then stood—a foundation of Henry <span +class="GutSmall">III.</span>—but the Jews were no longer +allowed to bury their dead in the close, which is now the +‘Physic Garden.’ ‘In 1289,’ as Wood +says, ‘the Jews were banished from England for various +enormities and crimes committed by them.’ The Great +and Little Jewries—those dim, populous streets behind the +modern Post Office—had been sacked and gutted. No +clerk would ever again risk his soul for a fair Jewess’s +sake, nor lose his life for his love at the hands of that eminent +theologian, Fulke de Breauté. The beautiful tower of +Merton was still almost fresh, and the spires of St. +Mary’s, of old All Saints, of St. Frideswyde, and the +strong tower of New College on the city wall, were the most +prominent features in a bird’s-eye view of the town. +But though part of Merton, certainly the chapel tower as we have +seen, the odd muniment-room with the steep stone roof, and, +perhaps, the Library, existed; though New was built; and though +Balliol and University owned some halls, on, or near, the site of +the present colleges, Oxford was still an university of poor +scholars, who lived in town’s-people’s dwellings.</p> +<p>Thus, in the great quarrel with the Legate in 1238, John +Currey, of Scotland, boarded with Will Maynard, while Hugh le +Verner abode in the house of Osmund the Miller, with Raynold the +Irishman and seven of his fellows. John Mortimer and Rob +Norensis lodged with Augustine Gosse, and Adam de Wolton lodged +in Cat Street, where you can still see the curious arched doorway +of Catte’s, or St. Catherine’s Hall. By the +time of my hero, Walter Stoke, the King had not yet decreed that +all scholars of years of discretion should live in the house of +some sufficient principal (1421); so let him lodge at Catte Hall, +at the corner of the street that leads to New College out of the +modern Broad Street, which was then the City Ditch. It is +six o’clock on a summer morning, and the bells waken Stoke, +who is sleeping on a flock bed, in his little +<i>camera</i>. His room, though he is not one of the +luxurious clerks whom the University scolds in various statutes, +is pretty well furnished. His bed alone is worth not less +than fifteenpence; he has a ‘cofer’ valued at +twopence (we have plenty of those old valuations), and in his +cofer are his black coat, which no one would think dear at +fourpence, his tunic, cheap at tenpence, ‘a roll of the +seven Psalms,’ and twelve books only ‘at his beddes +heed.’ Stoke has not</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Twenty bookes, clothed in blak and reed,<br +/> +Of Aristotil and of his philosophie,’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>like Chaucer’s Undergraduate, who must have been a +bibliophile. There are not many records of ‘as many +as twenty bookes’ in the old valuations. The great +ornament of the room is a neat trophy of buckler, bow, arrows, +and two daggers, all hanging conveniently on the wall. +Stoke opens his eyes, yawns, looks round for his clothes, and +sees, with no surprise, that his laundress has not sent home his +clean linen. No; Christina, of the parish of St. Martin, +who used to be Stoke’s <i>lotrix</i>, has been detected at +last. ‘Under pretence of washing for scholars, +<i>multa mala perpetrata fuerunt</i>,’ she has committed +all manner of crimes, and is now in the Spinning House, +<i>carcerata fuit</i>. Stoke wastes a malediction on the +laundress, and, dressing as well as he may, runs down to +Parson’s Pleasure, I hope, and has a swim, for I find no +tub in his room, or, indeed, in the <i>camera</i> of any other +scholar. It is now time to go, not to chapel—for +Catte’s has no chapel—but to parish Church, and Stoke +goes very devoutly to St. Peter’s, where we shall find him +again, later in the day, in another mood. About eight +o’clock he ‘commonises’ with a Paris man, +Henricus de Bourges, who has an admirable mode of cooking +omelettes, which makes his company much sought after at +breakfast-time. The University, in old times, was full of +French students, as Paris was thronged by Englishmen. +Lectures begin at nine, and first there is lecture in the hall by +the principal of Catte’s. That scholar receives his +pupils in a bare room, where it is very doubtful whether the +students are allowed to sit down. From the curious old seal +of the University of St. Andrews, however, it appears that the +luxury of forms was permitted, in Scotland, to all but the +servitors, who held the lecturer’s candles. The +principal of Catte’s is in academic dress, and wears a +black cape, boots, and a hood. The undergraduates have no +distinguishing costume. After an hour or two of +<i>vivâ voce</i> exercises in the grammar of Priscian, +preparatory lecture is over, and a reading man will hurry off to +the ‘schools,’ a set of low-roofed buildings between +St. Mary’s and Brasenose. There he will find the +Divinity ‘school’ or lecture-room in the place of +honour, with Medicine on one hand and Law on the other; the +lecture-rooms for grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, music, +geometry, and astronomy, for metaphysics, ethics, and ‘the +tongues,’ stretching down School Street on either +side. Here the Prælectors are holding forth, and all +newly made Masters of Arts are bound to teach their subject +<i>regere scholas</i>, whether they like it or not. Our +friend, Master Stoke, however, is on pleasure bent, and means to +pay his fine of twopence for omitting lecture, and go off to the +festival of his <i>nation</i> (he is of the Southern nation, and +hates Scotch, Welsh, and Irish) in the parish Church. He +stops in the Flower Market and at a barber’s shop on his +way to St. Peter’s, and comes forth a wonderful pagan +figure with a Bacchic mask covering his honest countenance, with +horns protruding through a wig of tow, with vine-leaves twisted +in and out of the horns, and roses stuck wherever there is room +for roses. Henricus de Bourges, and half a dozen Picardy +men, with some merry souls from the Southern side of the Thames, +are jigging down the High, playing bag-pipes and guitars. +To these Stoke joins himself, and they waltz joyously into the +church, and in and out of the gateways of the different halls, +singing,—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Mihi est propositum in taberna mori,<br /> +Vinum sit appositum morientis ori,<br /> +Ut dicant, quum venerint, angelorum chori<br /> +Deus sit propitius huic potatori.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The students of the Northern nations mock, of course, at these +revellers, thumbs are bitten, threats exchanged, and we shall see +what comes of the quarrel. But the hall bells chime +half-past noon; it is dinner-time in Oxford, and Stoke, as he +throws off his mask (<i>larva</i>) and vine-leaves, mutters to +himself the equivalent for ‘there <i>will</i> be a row +about this.’ There will, indeed, for the penalty is +not ‘crossing at the buttery,’ nor +‘gating,’ but—excommunication! (<i>Munim. +Academ.</i>, i. 18.) Dinner is not a very quiet affair, for +the Catte’s men have had to fight for their beer in the +public streets with some Canterbury College fellows who were set +on by their Warden, of all people, to commit this violence (<i>ut +vi et violentia raperent cerevisiam aliorum scholarum in +vico</i>): however, Catte’s has had the best of it, and +there is beer in plenty. It is possible, however, that fish +is scarce, for certain ‘forestallers’ +(<i>regratarii</i>) have been buying up salmon and soles, and +refusing to sell them at less than double the proper price. +On the whole, however, there a rude abundance of meat and bread; +indeed, Stoke may have fared better in Catte’s than the +modern undergraduate does in the hall of the college protected by +St. Catherine. After dinner there would be lecture in Lent, +but we are not in Lent. A young man’s fancy lightly +turns to the Beaumont, north of the modern Beaumont Street, where +there are wide playing-fields, and space for archery, foot-ball, +stool-ball, and other sports. Stoke rushes out of hall, and +runs upstairs into the <i>camera</i> of Roger de Freshfield, a +reading man, but a good fellow. He knocks and enters, and +finds Freshfield over his favourite work, the <i>Posterior +Analytics</i>, and a pottle of strawberries. ‘Come +down to the Beaumont, old man,’ he says, ‘and play +pyked staffe.’ Roger is disinclined to move, he +<i>must</i> finish the <i>Posterior Analytics</i>. Stoke +lounges about, in the eternal fashion of undergraduates after +luncheon, and picking up the <i>Philobiblon</i> of Richard de +Bury (then quite a new book), clinches his argument in favour of +pyke and staffe with a quotation: ‘You will perhaps see a +stiff-necked youth lounging sluggishly in his study . . . He is +not ashamed to eat fruit and cheese over an open book, and to +transfer his cup from side to side upon it.’ Thus +addressed, Roger lays aside his <i>Analytics</i>, and the pair +walk down by Balliol, to the Beaumont, where pyked staffe, or +sword and buckler, is played. At the Beaumont they find two +men who say that ‘sword and buckler can be played sofft and +ffayre,’ that is, without hard hitting, and with one of +these Stoke begins to fence. Alas! a dispute arose about a +stroke, the by-standers interfered, and Stoke’s opponent +drew his hanger (<i>extraxit cultellum vocatum hangere</i>), and +hit one John Felerd over the sconce. On this the Proctors +come up, and the assailant is put in Bocardo, while Stoke goes +off to a ‘pass-supper’ given by an <i>inceptor</i>, +who has just taken his degree. These suppers were not +voluntary entertainments, but enforced by law. At supper +the talk ranges over University gossip, they tell of the scholar +who lately tried to raise the devil in Grope Lane, and was +pleased by the gentlemanly manner of the foul fiend. They +speak of the Queen’s man, who has just been plucked for +maintaining that <i>Ego currit</i>, or <i>ego est currens</i>, is +as good Latin as <i>ego curro</i>. Then the party breaks +up, and Stoke goes towards Merton, with some undergraduates of +that college, Bridlington, Alderberk, and Lymby. At the +corner of Grope Lane, out come many men of the Northern nations, +armed with shields, and bows and arrows. Stoke and his +friends run into Merton for weapons, and ‘standing in a +window of that hall, shot divers arrows, and one that Bridlington +shot hit Henry de l’Isle, and David Kirkby unmercifully +perished, for after John de Benton had given him a dangerous +wound in the head with his faulchion, came Will de la Hyde and +wounded him in the knee with his sword.’</p> +<p>These were rough times, and it is not improbable that Stoke +had a brush with the Town before he got safely back to +Catte’s Hall. The old rudeness gave way gradually, as +the colleges swallowed up the irregular halls, and as the +scholars unattached, <i>infando nomine Chamber-Dekyns</i>, ceased +to exist. Learning, however, dwindled, as colleges +increased, under the clerical and reactionary rule of the House +of Lancaster.</p> +<h2><a name="page67"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +67</span>CHAPTER III<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">THE RENAISSANCE AND THE +REFORMATION</span></h2> +<p><span class="smcap">We</span> have now arrived at a period in +the history of Oxford which is confused and unhappy, but for us +full of interest, and perhaps of instruction. The hundred +years that passed by between the age of Chaucer and the age of +Erasmus were, in Southern Europe, years of the most eager +life. We hear very often—too often, perhaps—of +what is called the Renaissance. The energy of delight with +which Italy welcomed the new birth of art, of literature, of +human freedom, has been made familiar to every reader. It +is not with Italy, but with England and with Oxford, that we are +concerned. How did the University and the colleges prosper +in that strenuous time when the world ran after loveliness of +form and colour, as, in other ages, it has run after warlike +renown, or the far-off rewards of the saintly life? What +was Oxford doing when Florence, Venice, and Rome were striving +towards no meaner goal than perfection?</p> +<p>It must be said that ‘the spring came slowly up this +way.’ The University merely reflected the very +practical character of the people. In contemplating the +events of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in their +influence on English civilisation, we are reminded once more of +the futility of certain modern aspirations. No amount of +University Commissions, nor of well-meant reforms, will change +the nature of Englishmen. It is impossible, by +distributions of University prizes and professorships, to attract +into the career of letters that proportion of industry and +ingenuity which, in Germany for example, is devoted to the +scholastic life. Politics, trade, law, sport, religion, +will claim their own in England, just as they did at the Revival +of Letters. The illustrious century which Italy employed in +unburying, appropriating, and enjoying the treasures of Greek +literature and art, our fathers gave, in England, to dynastic and +constitutional squabbles, and to religious broils. The +Renaissance in England, and chiefly in Oxford, was like a bitter +and changeful spring. There was an hour of genial warmth, +there breathed a wind from the south, in the lifetime of Chaucer; +then came frosts and storms; again the brief sunshine of court +favour shone on literature for a while, when Henry <span +class="GutSmall">VIII.</span> encouraged study, and Wolsey and +Fox founded Christ Church and Corpus Christi College; once more +the bad days of religious strife returned, and the promise of +learning was destroyed. Thus the chief result of the +awakening thought of the fourteenth century in England was not a +lively delight in literature, but the appearance of the +Lollards. The intensely practical genius of our race turned +not to letters, but to questions about the soul and its future, +about property and its distribution. The Lollards were put +down in Oxford; ‘the tares were weeded out’ by the +House of Lancaster, and in the process the germs of free thought, +of originality, and of a rational education, were +destroyed. ‘Wyclevism did domineer among us,’ +says Wood; and, in fact, the intellect of the University was +absorbed, like the intellect of France during the heat of the +Jansenist controversy, in defending or assailing ‘267 +damned conclusions,’ drawn from the books of Wyclif. +The University ‘lost many of her children through the +profession of Wyclevism.’ Those who remained were +often ‘beneficed clerks.’ The Friars lifted up +their heads again, and Oxford was becoming a large ecclesiastical +school. As the University declared to Archbishop Chichele +(1438), ‘Our noble mother, that was blessed in so goodly an +offspring, is all but utterly destroyed and +desolate.’ Presently the foreign wars and the wars of +the Roses drained the University of the youth of England. +The country was overrun with hostile forces, or infested by +disbanded soldiers. Plague and war, war and plague, and +confusion, alternate in the annals. Sickly as Oxford is +to-day by climate and situation, she is a city of health compared +to what she was in the middle ages. In 1448 ‘a +pestilence broke out, occasioned by the overflowing of waters, . +. . also by the lying of many scholars in one room or dormitory +in almost every Hall, which occasioned nasty air and smells, and +consequently diseases.’ In the general dulness and +squalor two things were remarkable: one, the last splendour of +the feudal time; the other, the first dawn of the new learning +from Italy. In 1452, George Neville of Balliol, brother of +the King-maker, gave the most prodigious pass-supper that was +ever served in Oxford. On the first day there were 600 +messes of meat, divided into three courses. The second +course is worthy of the attention of the epicure:</p> +<p style="text-align: center">SECOND COURSE</p> +<table> +<tr> +<td><p>Vian in brase.</p> +</td> +<td><p>Carcell.</p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Crane in sawce.</p> +</td> +<td><p>Partrych.</p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Young Pocock.</p> +</td> +<td><p>Venson baked.</p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Coney.</p> +</td> +<td><p>Fryed meat in paste.</p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Pigeons.</p> +</td> +<td><p>Lesh Lumbert.</p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Byttor.</p> +</td> +<td><p>A Frutor.</p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Curlew.</p> +</td> +<td><p>A Sutteltee.</p> +</td> +</tr> +</table> +<p>Against this prodigious gormandising we must set that noble +gift, the Library presented to Oxford by Duke Humfrey of +Gloucester. In the Catalogue, drawn up in 1439, we mark +many books of the utmost value to the impoverished +students. Here are the works of Plato, and the +<i>Ethics</i> and <i>Politics</i> of Aristotle, translated by +Leonard the Aretine. Here, among the numerous writings of +the Fathers, are Tully and Seneca, Averroes and Avicenna, +<i>Bellum Trojae cum secretis secretorum</i>, Apuleius, Aulus +Gellius, Livy, Boccaccio, Petrarch. Here, with Ovid’s +verses, is the Commentary on Dante, and his <i>Divine +Comedy</i>. Here, rarest of all, is a Greek Dictionary, the +silent father of Liddel’s and Scott’s to be.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p72b.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Broad Street, a fine wide street containing many historic +buildings, and showing the Sheldonian and the old Clarendon +Building on the right" +title= +"Broad Street, a fine wide street containing many historic +buildings, and showing the Sheldonian and the old Clarendon +Building on the right" + src="images/p72s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>The most hopeful fact in the University annals, after the gift +of those manuscripts (to which the very beauty of their +illuminations proved ruinous in Puritan times), was the +establishment of a printing-press at Oxford, and the arrival of +certain Italians, ‘to propagate and settle the studies of +true and genuine humanity among us.’ The exact date +of the introduction of printing let us leave to be determined by +the learned writer who is now at work on the history of +Oxford. The advent of the Italians is dated by Wood in +1488. Polydore Virgil had lectured in New College. +‘He first of all taught literature in Oxford. +Cyprianus and Nicholaus, <i>Italici</i>, also arrived and dined +with the Vice-President of Magdalen on Christmas Day. Lily +and Colet, too, one of them the founder, the other the first Head +Master, of St. Paul’s School, were about this time studying +in Italy, under the great Politian and Hermolaus Barbarus. +Oxford, which had so long been in hostile communication with +Italy as represented by the Papal Courts, at last touched, and +was thrilled by the electric current of Italian +civilisation. At this conjuncture of affairs, who but is +reminded of the youth and the education of Gargantua? Till +the very end of the fifteenth century Oxford had been that +‘huge barbarian pupil,’ and had revelled in vast +Rabelaisian suppers: ‘of fat beeves he had killed three +hundred sixty seven thousand and fourteen, that in the entering +in of spring he might have plenty of powdered beef.’ +The bill of fare of George Neville’s feast is like one of +the catalogues dear to the Curé of Meudon. For +Oxford, as for Gargantua, ‘they appointed a great +sophister-doctor, that read him Donatus, Theodoletus, and Alanus, +in <i>parabolis</i>.’ Oxford spent far more than +Gargantua’s eighteen years and eleven months over +‘the book de Modis significandis, with the commentaries of +Berlinguandus and a rabble of others.’ Now, under +Colet, and Erasmus (1497), Oxford was put, like Gargantua, under +new masters, and learned that the old scholarship ‘had been +but brutishness, and the old wisdom but blunt, foppish toys +serving only to bastardise noble spirits, and to corrupt all the +flower of youth.’</p> +<p>The prospects of classical learning at Oxford (and, whatever +may be the case to-day, on classical learning depended, in the +fifteenth century, the fortunes of European literature) now +seemed fair enough. People from the very source of +knowledge were lecturing in Oxford. Wolsey was Bursar of +Magdalen. The colleges, to which B. N. C. was added in +1509, and C. C. C. in 1516, were competing with each other for +success in the New Learning. Fox, the founder of C. C. C., +established in his college two chairs of Greek and Latin, +‘to extirpate barbarism.’ Meanwhile, Cambridge +had to hire an Italian to write public speeches at twenty pence +each! Henry <span class="GutSmall">VIII.</span> in his +youth was, like Francis I., the patron of literature, as +literature was understood in Italy. He saw in learning a +new splendour to adorn his court, a new source of intellectual +luxury, though even Henry had an eye on the theological aspect of +letters. Between 1500 and 1530 Oxford was noisy with the +clink of masons’ hammers and chisels. Brasenose, +Corpus, and the magnificent kitchen of Christ Church, were being +erected. (The beautiful staircase, which M. Brunet-Debaines +has sketched, was not finished till 1640. The world owes it +to Dr. Fell. The Oriel niches, designed in the +illustration, are of rather later date.) The streets were +crowded with carts, dragging in from all the neighbouring +quarries stones for the future homes of the fair +humanities. Erasmus found in Oxford a kind of substitute +for the Platonic Society of Florence. ‘He would +hardly care much about going to Italy at all, except for the sake +of having been there. When I listen to Colet, it seems to +me like listening to Plato himself’; and he praises the +judgment and learning of those Englishmen, Grocyn and Linacre, +who had been taught in Italy.</p> +<p>In spite of all this promise, the Renaissance in England was +rotten at the root. Theology killed it, or, at the least, +breathed on it a deadly blight. Our academic forefathers +‘drove at practice,’ and saw everything with the eyes +of party men, and of men who recognised no interest save that of +religion. It is Mr. Seebohm (<i>Oxford Reformers</i>, +1867), I think, who detects, in Colet’s concern with the +religious side of literature, the influence of Savonarola. +When in Italy ‘he gave himself entirely to the study of the +Holy Scriptures.’ He brought to England from Italy, +not the early spirit of Pico of Mirandola, the delightful freedom +of his youth, but his later austerity, his later concern with the +harmony of scripture and philosophy. The book which the +dying Petrarch held wistfully in his hands, revering its very +material shape, though he could not spell its contents, was the +<i>Iliad</i> of Homer. The book which the young Renaissance +held in its hands in England, with reverence and eagerness as +strong and tender, contained the Epistles of St. Paul. It +was on the Epistles that Colet lectured in 1496–97, when +doctors and abbots flocked to hear him, with their note-books in +their hands. Thus Oxford differed from Florence, England +from Italy: the former all intent on what it believed to be the +very Truth, the latter all absorbed on what it knew to be no +other than Beauty herself.</p> +<p>We cannot afford to regret the choice that England and Oxford +made. The search for Truth was as certain to bring +‘not peace but a sword’ as the search for Beauty was +to bring the decadence of Italy, the corruption of manners, the +slavery of two hundred years. Still, our practical +earnestness did rob Oxford of the better side of the +Renaissance. It is not possible here to tell the story of +religious and social changes, which followed so hard upon each +other, in the reigns of Henry <span +class="GutSmall">VIII.</span>, Edward <span +class="GutSmall">VI.</span>, Mary, and Elizabeth. A few +moments in these stormy years are still memorable for some +terrible or ludicrous event.</p> +<p>That Oxford was rather ‘Trojan’ than +‘Greek,’ that men were more concerned about their +dinners and their souls than their prosody and philosophy, in +1531, is proved by the success of Grynaeus. He visited the +University and carried off quantities of MSS., chiefly +Neoplatonic, on which no man set any value. Yet, in 1535, +Layton, a Commissioner, wrote to Cromwell that he and his +companions had established the New Learning in the +University. A Lecture in Greek was founded in Magdalen, two +chairs of Greek and Latin in New, two in All Souls, and two +already existed, as we have seen, in C. C. C. This Layton +is he that took a Rabelaisian and unquotable revenge on that old +tyrant of the Schools, Duns Scotus. ‘We have set +Dunce in Bocardo, and utterly banished him from Oxford for ever, +with all his blind glosses . . . And the second time we came to +New College we found all the great quadrant full of the leaves of +Dunce, the wind blowing them into every corner. And there +we found a certain Mr. Greenfield, a gentleman of +Buckinghamshire, gathering up part of the same books’ +leaves, as he said, therewith to make him <i>sewers</i> or +<i>blanshers</i>, to keep the deer within his wood, thereby to +have the better cry with his hounds.’ Ah! if the +University Commissioners would only set Aristotle, and Messrs. +Ritter and Preller, ‘in Bocardo,’ many a young +gentleman out of Buckinghamshire and other counties would +joyously help in the good work, and use the pages, if not for +<i>blanshers</i>, for other sportive purposes!</p> +<p>‘<i>Habent sua fata libelli</i>,’ as Terentianus +Maurus says, in a frequently quoted verse. If +Cromwell’s Commissioners were hard on Duns, the Visitors of +Edward <span class="GutSmall">VI.</span> were ruthless in their +condemnation of everything that smacked of Popery or of +magic. Evangelical religion in England has never been very +favourable to learning. Thus, in 1550 ‘the ancient +libraries were by their appointment rifled. Many +manuscripts, guilty of no other superstition than red letters in +the front or titles, were condemned to the fire . . . Such books +wherein appeared angles were thought sufficient to be destroyed, +because accounted Papish or diabolical, or both.’ A +cart-load of MSS., lucubrations of the Fellows of Merton, chiefly +in controversial divinity, was taken away; but, by the good +services of one Herks, a Dutchman, many books were preserved, +and, later, entered the Bodleian Library. The world can +spare the controversial manuscripts of the Fellows of Merton, but +who knows what invaluable scrolls may have perished in the +Puritan bonfire! Persons, the librarian of Balliol, sold +old books to buy Protestant ones. Two noble libraries were +sold for forty shillings, for waste paper. Thus the reign +of Edward <span class="GutSmall">VI.</span> gave free play to +that ascetic and intolerable hatred of letters which had now and +again made its voice heard under Henry <span +class="GutSmall">VIII.</span> Oxford was almost +empty. The schools were used by laundresses, as a place +wherein clothes might conveniently be dried. The citizens +encroached on academic property. Some schools were quite +destroyed, and the sites converted into gardens. Few men +took degrees. The college plate and the jewels left by +pious benefactors were stolen, and went to the melting-pot. +Thus flourished Oxford under Edward <span +class="GutSmall">VI.</span></p> +<p>The reign of Mary was scarcely more favourable to +letters. No one knew what to be at in religion. In +Magdalen no one could be found to say Mass, the fellows were +turned out, the undergraduates were whipped—boyish +martyrs—and crossed at the buttery. What most +pleases, in this tragic reign, is the anecdote of Edward Anne of +Corpus. Anne, with the conceit of youth, had written a +Latin satire on the Mass. He was therefore sentenced to be +publicly flogged in the hall of his college, and to receive one +lash for each line in his satire. Never, surely, was a poet +so sharply taught the merit of brevity. How Edward Anne +must have regretted that he had not knocked off an epigram, a +biting couplet, or a smart quatrain with the sting of the wit in +the tail!</p> +<p>Oxford still retains a memory of the hideous crime of this +reign. In Broad Street, under the windows of Balliol, there +is a small stone cross in the pavement. This marks the +place where, some years ago, a great heap of wooden ashes was +found. These ashes were the remains of the fire of October +16th, 1555—the day when Ridley and Latimer were +burned. ‘They were brought,’ says Wood, +‘to a place over against Balliol College, where now stands +a row of poor cottages, a little before which, under the town +wall, ran so clear a stream that it gave the name of Canditch, +<i>candida fossa</i>, to the way leading by it.’ To +recover the memory of that event, let the reader fancy himself on +the top of the tower of St. Michael’s, that is, immediately +above the city wall. No houses interfere between him and +the open country, in which Balliol stands; not with its present +frontage, but much farther back. A clear stream runs +through the place where is now Broad Street, and the road above +is dark with a swaying crowd, out of which rises the vapour of +smoke from the martyrs’ pile. At your feet, on the +top of Bocardo prison (which spanned the street at the North +Gate), Cranmer stands manacled, watching the fiery death which is +soon to purge away the memory of his own faults and crimes. +He, too, joined that ‘noble army of martyrs’ who +fought all, though they knew it not, for one cause—the +freedom of the human spirit.</p> +<p>It was in a night-battle that they fell, and ‘confused +was the cry of the pæan,’ but they won the victory, +and we have entered into the land for which they contended. +When we think of these martyrdoms, can we wonder that the Fellows +of Lincoln did not spare to ring a merry peal on their gaudy-day, +the day of St. Hugh, even though Mary the Queen had just left her +bitter and weary life?</p> +<p>It would be pleasant to have to say that learning returned to +Oxford on the rising of ‘that bright Occidental star, Queen +Elizabeth.’ On the other hand, the University +recovered slowly, after being ‘much troubled,’ as +Wood says, ‘<i>and hurried up and down</i> by the changes +of religion.’ We get a glimpse, from Wood, of the +Fellows of Merton singing the psalms of Sternhold and Hopkins +round a fire in the College Hall. We see the sub-warden +snatching the book out of the hands of a junior fellow, and +declaring ‘that he would never dance after that +pipe.’ We find Oxford so illiterate, that she could +not even provide an University preacher! A country +gentleman, Richard Taverner of Woodeaton, would stroll into St. +Mary’s, with his sword and damask gown, and give the +Academicians, destitute of academical advice, a sermon beginning +with these words:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Arriving at the mount of St. Mary’s, +I have brought you some fine bisketts baked in the Oven of +Charitie, carefully conserved for the chickens of the Church, the +sparrows of the spirit, and the sweet swallows of +salvation.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In spite of these evil symptoms, a Greek oration and plenty of +Latin plays were ready for Queen Elizabeth when she visited +Oxford in 1566. The religious refugees, who had +‘eaten mice at Zurich’ in Mary’s time, had +returned, and their influence was hostile to learning. A +man who had lived on mice for his faith was above Greek. +The court which contained Sydney, and which welcomed Bruno, was +strong enough to make the classics popular. That famed +Polish Count, Alasco, was ‘received with Latin orations and +disputes (1583) in the best manner,’ and only a scoffing +Italian, like Bruno, ventured to call the Heads of Houses <i>the +Drowsy heads</i>—<i>dormitantes</i>. Bruno was a man +whom nothing could teach to speak well of people in +authority. Oxford enjoyed the religious peace (not extended +to ‘Seminarists’) of Elizabeth’s and +James’s reigns, and did not foresee that she was about to +become the home of the Court and a place of arms.</p> +<h2><a name="page89"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +89</span>CHAPTER IV<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">JACOBEAN OXFORD</span></h2> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> gardens of Wadham College on a +bright morning in early spring are a scene in which the memory of +old Oxford pleasantly lingers, and is easily revived. The +great cedars throw their secular shadow on the ancient turf, the +chapel forms a beautiful background; the whole place is exactly +what it was two hundred and sixty years ago. The stones of +Oxford walls, when they do not turn black and drop off in flakes, +assume tender tints of the palest gold, red, and orange. +Along a wall, which looks so old that it may well have formed a +defence of the ancient Augustinian priory, the stars of the +yellow jasmine flower abundantly. The industrious hosts of +the bees have left their cells, to labour in this first morning +of spring; the doves coo, the thrushes are noisy in the +trees. All breathes of the year renewal, and of the coming +April; and all that gladdens us may have gladdened some indolent +scholar in the time of King James.</p> +<p>In the reign of the first Stuart king of England, Oxford +became the town that we know. Even in Elizabeth’s +days, could we ascend the stream of centuries, we should find +ourselves much at home in Oxford. The earliest trustworthy +map, that of Agas (1578), is worth studying, if we wish to +understand the Oxford that Elizabeth left, and that the +architects of James embellished, giving us the most interesting +examples of collegiate buildings, which are both stately and +comfortable. Let us enter Oxford by the Iffley Road, in the +year 1578. We behold, as Agas enthusiastically writes:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘A citie seated, rich in everything,<br /> +Girt with wood and water, meadow, corn, and hill.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The way is not bordered, of course, by the long, straggling +streets of rickety cottages, which now stretch from the bridge +half-way to Cowley and Iffley. The church, called by +ribalds ‘the boiled rabbit,’ from its peculiar shape, +lies on the right; there is a gate in the city wall, on the place +where the road now turns to Holywell. At this time the +walls still existed, and ran from Magdalen past ‘St. +Mary’s College, called Newe,’ through Exeter, through +the site of Mr. Parker’s shop, and all along the south side +of Broad Street to St. Michael’s, and Bocardo Gate. +There the wall cut across to the castle. On the southern +side of the city, it skirted Corpus and Merton Gardens, and was +interrupted by Christ Church. Probably if it were possible +for us to visit Elizabethan Oxford, the walls and the five castle +towers would seem the most curious features in the place. +Entering the East Gate, Magdalen and Magdalen Grammar School +would be familiar objects. St. Edmund’s Hall would be +in its present place, and Queen’s would present its ancient +Gothic front. It is easy to imagine the change in the High +Street which would be produced by a Queen’s not unlike +Oriel, in the room of the highly classical edifice of Wren. +All Souls would be less remarkable; at St. Mary’s we should +note the absence of the ‘scandalous image’ of Our +Lady over the door. At Merton the fellows’ quadrangle +did not yet exist, and a great wood-yard bordered on +Corpus. In front of Oriel was an open space with trees, and +there were a few scattered buildings, such as Peckwater’s +Inn (on the site of ‘Peck’), and Canterbury +College. Tom Quad was stately but incomplete. Turning +from St. Mary’s past B. N. C., we miss the attics in +Brasenose front, we miss the imposing Radcliffe, we miss all the +quadrangle of the Schools, except the Divinity school, and we +miss the Theatre. If we go down South Street, past Ch. Ch. +we find an open space where Pembroke stands. Where Wadham +is now, the most uniform, complete, and unchanged of all the +colleges, there are only the open pleasances, and perhaps a few +ruins of the Augustinian priory. St. John’s lacks its +inner quadrangle, and Balliol, in place of its new buildings, has +its old delightful grove. As to the houses of the town, +they are not unlike the tottering and picturesque old roofs and +gables of King Street.</p> +<p>To the Oxford of Elizabeth’s reign, then, the founders +and architects of her successor added, chiefly, the +Schools’ quadrangle, with the great gate of the five +orders, a building beautiful, as it were, in its own +despite. They added a smaller curiosity of the same sort, +at Merton; they added Wadham, perhaps their most successful +achievement. Their taste was a medley of new and old: they +made a not uninteresting effort to combine the exquisiteness of +Gothic decoration with the proportions of Greek +architecture. The tower of the five orders reminds the +spectator, in a manner, of the style of Milton. It is rich +and overloaded, yet its natural beauty is not abated by the +relics out of the great treasures of Greece and Rome, which are +built into the mass. The Ionic and Corinthian pillars are +like the Latinisms of Milton, the double-gilding which once +covered the figures and emblems of the upper part of the tower +gave them the splendour of Miltonic ornament. ‘When +King James came from Woodstock to see this quadrangular pile, he +commanded the gilt figures to be whitened over,’ because +they were so dazzling, or, as Wood expresses it, ‘so +glorious and splendid that none, especially when the sun shone, +could behold them.’ How characteristic of James is +this anecdote! He was by no means <i>le roi soleil</i>, as +courtiers called Louis <span class="GutSmall">XIV.</span>, as +divines called the pedantic Stuart. It is easy to fancy the +King issuing from the Library of Bodley, where he has been +turning over books of theology, prosing, and displaying his +learning for hours. The rheumy, blinking eyes are dazzled +in the sunlight, and he peevishly commands the gold work to be +‘whitened over.’ Certainly the translators of +the Bible were but ill-advised when they compared his Majesty to +the rising sun in all his glory.</p> +<p>James was rather fond of visiting Oxford and the royal +residence at Woodstock. We shall see that his Court, the +most dissolute, perhaps, that England ever tolerated, corrupted +the manners of the students. On one of his Majesty’s +earliest visits he had a chance of displaying the penetration of +which he was so proud. James was always finding out +something or somebody, till it almost seemed as if people had +discovered that the best way to flatter him was to try to deceive +him. In 1604, there was in Oxford a certain Richard +Haydock, a Bachelor of Physic. This Haydock practised his +profession during the day like other mortals, but varied from the +kindly race of men by a pestilent habit of preaching all +night. It was Haydock’s contention that he preached +unconsciously in his sleep, when he would give out a text with +the greatest gravity, and declare such sacred matters as were +revealed to him in slumber, ‘his preaching coming by +revelation.’ Though people went to hear Haydock, they +were chiefly influenced by curiosity. ‘His auditory +were willing to silence him by pulling, haling, and pinching him, +yet would he pertinaciously persist to the end, and sleep +still.’ The King was introduced into Haydock’s +bedroom, heard him declaim, and next day cross-examined him in +private. Awed by the royal acuteness, Haydock confessed +that he was a humbug, and that he had taken to preaching all +night by way of getting a little notoriety, and because he felt +himself to be ‘a buried man in the University.’</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p96b.jpg"> +<img alt= +"New College Cloisters and Tower" +title= +"New College Cloisters and Tower" + src="images/p96s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>That a man should hope to get reputation by preaching all +night is itself a proof that the University, under James, was too +theologically minded. When has it been otherwise? The +religious strife of the reigns of Henry <span +class="GutSmall">VIII.</span>, Edward <span +class="GutSmall">VI.</span>, and Mary, was not asleep; the +troubles of Charles’s time were beginning to stir. +Oxford was as usual an epitome of English opinion. We see +the struggle of the wildest Puritanism, of Arminianism, of +Pelagianism, of a dozen ‘isms,’ which are dead +enough, but have left their pestilent progeny to disturb a place +of religion, learning, and amusement. By whatever names the +different sects were called, men’s ideas and tendencies +were divided into two easily recognisable classes. +Calvinism and Puritanism on one side, with the Puritanic haters +of letters and art, were opposed to Catholicism in germ, to +literature, and mundane studies. How difficult it is to +take a side in this battle, where both parties had one foot on +firm ground, the other in chaos, where freedom, or what was to +become freedom of thought, was allied with narrow bigotry, where +learning was chained to superstition!</p> +<p>As early as 1606, Mr. William Laud, B.D., of St. John’s +College, began to disturb the University. The young man +preached a sermon which was thought to look Romewards. Laud +became <i>suspect</i>, it was thought a ‘scandalous’ +thing to give him the usual courteous greetings in the street or +in the college quadrangle. From this time the history of +Oxford, for forty years, is mixed up with the history of +Laud. The divisions of Roundhead and of Cavalier have +begun. The majority of the undergraduates are on the side +of Laud; and the Court, the citizens, and many of the elder +members of the University, are with the Puritans.</p> +<p>The Court and the King, we have said, were fond of being +entertained in the college halls. James went from libraries +to academic disputations, thence to dinner, and from dinner to +look on at comedies played by the students. The Cambridge +men did not care to see so much royal favour bestowed on +Oxford. When James visited the University in 1641, a +Cambridge wit produced a remarkable epigram. For some +mysterious reason the playful fancies of the sister University +have never been greatly admired at Oxford, where the brisk air, +men flatter themselves, breeds nimbler humours. Here is +part of the Cantab’s epigram:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘To Oxenford the King has gone,<br /> + With all his mighty peers,<br /> +That hath in peace maintained us,<br /> + These five or six long years.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The poem maunders on for half a dozen lines, and ‘loses +itself in the sands,’ like the River Rhine, without coming +to any particular point or conclusion. How much more lively +is the Oxford couplet on the King, who, being bored by some +amateur theatricals, twice or thrice made as if he would leave +the hall, where men failed dismally to entertain him.</p> +<blockquote><p>‘“The King himself did +offer,”—“What, I pray?”<br /> +“He offered twice or thrice—to go +away!”’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>As a result of the example of the Court, the students began to +wear love-locks. In Elizabeth’s time, when men wore +their hair ‘no longer than their ears,’ long locks +had been a mark, says Wood, of ‘swaggerers.’ +Drinking and gambling were now very fashionable, undergraduates +were whipped for wearing boots, while ‘Puritans were many +and troublesome,’ and Laud publicly declared (1614) that +‘Presbyterians were as bad as Papists.’ Did +Laud, after all, think Papists so very bad? In 1617 he was +President of his college, St. John’s, on which he set his +mark. It is to Laud and to Inigo Jones that Oxford owes the +beautiful garden-front, perhaps the most lovely thing in +Oxford. From the gardens—where for so many summers +the beauty of England has rested in the shadow of the +chestnut-trees, amid the music of the chimes, and in air heavy +with the scent of the acacia flowers—from the gardens, +Laud’s building looks rather like a country-house than a +college.</p> +<p>If St. John’s men have lived in the University too much +as if it were a large country-house, if they have imitated rather +the Toryism than the learning of their great Archbishop, the +blame is partly Laud’s. How much harm to study he and +Waynflete have unwittingly done, and how much they have added to +the romance of Oxford! It is easy to understand that men +find it a weary task to read in sight of the beauty of the groves +of Magdalen and of St. John’s. When Kubla Khan +‘a stately pleasure-dome decreed,’ he did not mean to +settle students there, and to ask them for metaphysical essays, +and for Greek and Latin prose compositions. Kubla Khan +would have found a palace to his desire in the gardens of Laud, +or where Cherwell, ‘meandering with a mazy motion,’ +stirs the green weeds, and flashes from the mill-wheel, and flows +to the Isis through meadows white and purple with +fritillaries.</p> +<blockquote><p>‘And here are gardens bright with sinuous +rills,<br /> +Where blossoms many an incense-bearing tree’;</p> +</blockquote> +<p>but here is scarcely the proper training-ground of first-class +men!</p> +<p>Oxford returned to her ancient uses in 1625. Soon after +the accession of Charles I. the plague broke out in London, and +Oxford entertained the Parliament, as six hundred years before +she had received the Witan. There seemed something ominous +in all that Charles did in his earlier years—the air, or +men’s minds, was full of the presage of fate. It was +observed that the House of Commons met in the Divinity School, +and that the place seemed to have infected them with theological +passion. After 1625 there was never a Parliament but had +its committee to discuss religion, and to stray into the devious +places of divinity. The plague pursued Charles to +Oxford. In those days, and long afterwards, it was a common +complaint that the citizens built rows of poor cottages within +the walls, and that these cottages were crowded by dirty and +indigent people. Plague was bred almost yearly at Oxford, +and Charles really seems to have improved the sanitary +arrangements of the city.</p> +<p>Laud, the President of St. John’s, became, by some +intrigue, Chancellor of the University. He made Oxford many +presents of Greek, Chinese, Hebrew, Latin, and Arabic MSS. +There may have been—let us hope there were—quiet +bookworms who enjoyed these gifts, while the town and University +were bubbling over with religious feuds. People grumbled +that ‘Popish darts were whet afresh on a Dutch +grindstone.’ A series of anti-Romish and anti-Royal +sermons and pamphlets, followed as a rule by a series of +recantations, kept men’s minds in a ferment. The good +that Laud did by his gifts—and he was a munificent patron +of learning—he destroyed by his dogmatism. Scholars +could not decipher Greek texts while they were torturing biblical +ones into arguments for and against the opinions of the +Chancellor. What is the true story about the gorgeous +vestments which were found in a box in the house of the President +of St. John’s, and which are now preserved in the library +of that college? Did they belong to the last of the old +Catholic presidents of what was Chichele’s College of St. +Bernard before the Reformation? Were they, on the other +hand, the property of Laud himself? It has been said that +Laud would not have known how to wear them. Fancy sees him +treasuring that bright ecclesiastical raiment, +πέπλοι +παμποίκιλοι, +in some place of security. At night, perhaps, when candles +were lit and curtains drawn, and he was alone, he may have +arrayed himself in the gorgeous chasuble before the mirror, as +Hetty wore her surreptitious finery. ‘There is a +great deal of human nature in man.’ If Laud really +strutted in solitude, draped rather at random in these vestments, +the ecclesiastical gear is even more interesting than the thin +ivory-headed staff which supported him on his way to the +scaffold; more curious than the diary in which he recorded the +events of night and day, of dreaming hours and waking. In +the library at St. John’s they show his bust—a +tarnished, gilded work of art. He has a neat little +cocked-up moustache, not like a prelate’s; the face is that +of a Bismarck without strength of character.</p> +<p>In speaking of Oxford before the civil war, let us not forget +that true students and peaceable men found a welcome retreat +beyond the din of theological fictions. Lord +Falkland’s house was within ten miles of the town. +‘In this time,’ says Clarendon, in his immortal +panegyric, ‘in this time he contracted familiarity and +friendship with the most polished men of the University, who +found such an immenseness of wit and such a solidity of judgment +in him, so infinite a fancy, bound in by a most logical +ratiocination, such a vast knowledge that he was not ignorant in +anything, yet such an excessive humility as if he had known +nothing, that they frequently resorted and dwelt with him, as in +a college situated in a purer air; so that his house was a +university in a less volume, whither they came not so much for +repose as study; and to examine and refine those grosser +propositions, which laziness and consent made current in vulgar +conversation.’</p> +<p>The signs of the times grew darker. In 1636 the King and +Queen visited Oxford, ‘with no applause.’ In +1640 Laud sent the University his last present of +manuscripts. He was charged with many offences. He +had repaired crucifixes; he had allowed the ‘scandalous +image’ to be set up in the porch of St. Mary’s; and +Alderman Nixon, the Puritan grocer, had seen a man bowing to the +scandalous image—so he declared. In 1642 Charles +asked for money from the colleges, for the prosecution of the war +with the Parliament. The beautiful old college plate began +its journey to the melting-pot. On August 9th the scholars +armed themselves. There were two bands of musqueteers, one +of pikemen, one of halberdiers. In the reign of Henry <span +class="GutSmall">III.</span> the men had been on the other +side. Magdalen bridge was blocked up with heaps of +wood. Stones, for the primitive warfare of the time, were +transported to the top of Magdalen tower. The stones were +never thrown at any foemen. Royalists and Roundheads in +turn occupied the place; and while grocer Nixon fled before the +Cavaliers, he came back and interceded for All Souls College +(which dealt with him for figs and sugar) when the Puritans +wished to batter the graven images on the gate. On October +29th the King came, after Edgehill fight, the Court assembled, +and Oxford was fortified. The place was made impregnable in +those days of feeble artillery. The author of the <i>Gesta +Stephani</i> had pointed out, many centuries before, that Oxford, +if properly defended, could never be taken, thanks to the network +of streams that surrounds her. Though the citizens worked +grudgingly and slowly, the trenches were at last completed. +The earthworks—a double line—ran in and out of the +interlacing streams. A Parliamentary force on Headington +Hill seems to have been unable to play on the city with +artillery. Barbed arrows were served out to the scholars, +who formed a regiment of more than six hundred men. The +Queen held her little court in Merton, in the Warden’s +lodgings. Clarendon gives rather a humorous account of the +discontent of the fine ladies ‘The town was full of lords +(besides those of the Council), and of persons of the best +quality, with very many ladies, who, when not pleased themselves, +kept others from being so.’ Oxford never was so busy +and so crowded; letters, society, war, were all confused; there +were excursions against Brown at Abingdon, and alarms from +Fairfax on Headington Hill. The siege, from May 22nd to +June 5th, was almost a farce. The Parliamentary generals +‘fought with perspective glasses.’ Neither +Cromwell at Wytham, nor Brown at Wolvercot, pushed matters too +hard. When two Puritan regiments advanced on Hinksey, Mr. +Smyth blazed away at them from his house. As in Zululand, +any building made a respectable fort, when cannon-balls had so +little penetrative power, or when artillery was not at the +front. Oxford was surrendered, with other places of arms, +after Naseby, and—Presbyterians became heads of +colleges!</p> +<h2><a name="page111"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +111</span>CHAPTER V<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">SOME SCHOLARS OF THE +RESTORATION</span></h2> +<p><span class="smcap">In</span> Merton Chapel a little mural +tablet bears the crest, the name, and the dates of the birth and +death, of Antony Wood. He has been our guide in these +sketches of Oxford life, as he must be the guide of the gravest +and most exact historians. No one who cares for the past of +the University should think without pity and friendliness of this +lonely scholar, who in his lifetime was unpitied and +unbefriended. We have reached the period in which he lived +and died, in the midst of changes of Church and State, and +surrounded by more worldly scholars, whose letters remain to +testify that, in the reign of the Second Charles, Oxford was +modern Oxford. In the epistles of Humphrey Prideaux, +student of Christ Church, we recognise the foibles of the modern +University, the love of gossip, the internecine criticism, the +greatness of little men whom <i>rien ne peut plaire</i>.</p> +<p>Antony Wood was a scholar of a different sort, of a sort that +has never been very common in Oxford. He was a perfect +dungeon of books; but he wrote as well as read, which has never +been a usual practice in his University. Wood was born in +1632, in one of the old houses opposite Merton, perhaps in the +curious ancient hall which has been called Beham, Bream, and +<i>Bohemiæ Aula</i>, by various corruptions of the original +spelling. As a boy, Wood must have seen the siege of +Oxford, which he describes not without humour. As a young +man, he watched the religious revolution which introduced +Presbyterian Heads of Houses, and sent Puritanical captains of +horse, like Captain James Wadsworth, to hunt for +‘Papistical reliques’ and ‘massing +stuffs’ among the property of the President of C. C. C. and +the Dean of Ch. Ch. (1646–1648). In 1650 he saw the +Chancellorship of Oliver Cromwell; in 1659 he welcomed the +Restoration, and rejoiced that ‘the King had come to his +own again.’ The tastes of an antiquary combined, with +the natural reaction against Puritanism, to make Antony Wood a +High Churchman, and not averse to Rome, while he had sufficient +breadth of mind to admire Thomas Hobbes, the patriarch of English +learning. But Wood had little room in his heart or mind for +any learning save that connected with the University. +Oxford, the city, and the colleges, the remains of the old +religious art, the customs, the dresses—these things he +adored with a loverlike devotion, which was utterly +unrewarded. He owed no office to the University, and he was +even expelled (1693) for having written sharply against +Clarendon. This did not abate his zeal, nor prevent him +from passing all his days, and much of his nights, in the study +and compilation of University history.</p> +<p>The author of Wood’s biography has left a picture of his +sombre and laborious old age. He rose at four o’clock +every morning. He scarcely tasted food till +supper-time. At the hour of the college dinner he visited +the booksellers’ shops, where he was sure not to be +disturbed by the gossip of dons, young and old. After +supper he would smoke his pipe and drink his pot of ale in a +tavern. It was while he took this modest refreshment, +before old age came upon him, that Antony once fell in, and fell +out, with Dick Peers. This Dick was one of the men employed +by Dr. Fell, the Dean of Ch. Ch., to translate Wood’s +History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford into +Latin. The translation gave rise to a number of literary +quarrels. As Dean of Ch. Ch., Dr. Fell yielded to the +besetting sin of deans, and fancied himself the absolute master +of the University, if not something superior to mortal +kind. An autocrat of this sort had no scruples about +changing Wood’s copy whenever he differed from Wood in +political or religious opinion. Now Antony, as we said, had +eyes to discern the greatness of Hobbes, whom the Dean considered +no better than a Deist or an Atheist. The Dean therefore +calmly altered all that Wood had written of the Philosopher of +Malmesbury, and so maligned Hobbes that the old man, meeting the +King in Pall Mall, begged leave to reply in his own +defence. Charles allowed the dispute to go on, and Hobbes +hit Fell rather hard. The Dean retorted with the famous +expression about <i>irritabile illud et vanissimum Malmesburiense +animal</i>. This controversy amused Oxford, but bred bad +feeling between Antony Wood and Dick Peers, the translator of his +work, and the tool of the Dean of Ch. Ch. Prideaux +(<i>Letters to John Ellis</i>; Camden Society, 1875) describes +the battles in city taverns between author and translator:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘I suppose that you have heard of the +continuall feuds, and often battles, between the author and the +translator; they had a skirmish at Sol Hardeing [keeper of a +tavern in All Saints’ parish], another at the printeing +house [the Sheldonian theatre], and several other +places.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>From the record of these combats, we learn that the recluse +Antony was a man of his hands:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘As Peers always cometh off with a bloody +nose or a black eye, he was a long time afraid to goe annywhere +where he might chance to meet his too powerful adversary, for +fear of another drubbing, till he was pro-proctor, and now Woods +(<i>sic</i>) is as much afraid to meet him, least he should +exercise his authority upon him. And although he be a good +bowzeing blad, yet it hath been observed that never since his +adversary hath been in office hath he dared to be out after nine, +least he should meet him and exact the rigor of the statute upon +him.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The statute required all scholars to be in their rooms before +Tom had ceased ringing. It was, perhaps, too rash to say +that the Oxford of the Restoration was already modern +Oxford. The manners of the students were, so to speak, more +accentuated. However much the lecturer in Idolology may +dislike the method and person of the Reader in the Mandingo +language, these two learned men do not box in taverns, nor take +off their coats if they meet each other at the Clarendon +Press. People are careful not to pitch into each other in +that way, though the temper which confounds opponents for their +theory of irregular verbs is not at all abated. As Wood +grew in years he did not increase in honours. ‘He was +a mere scholar,’ and consequently might expect from the +greater number of men disrespect. When he was but +sixty-four, he looked eighty at least. His dress was not +elegant, ‘cleanliness being his chief object.’ +He rarely left his rooms, that were papered with MSS., and where +every table and chair had its load of books and yellow parchments +from the College muniment rooms. When strangers came to +Oxford with letters of recommendation, the recluse would leave +his study, and gladly lead them about the town, through Logic +Lane to Queen’s, which had not then the sublimely classical +front, built by Hawksmoor, ‘but suggested by Sir +Christopher Wren.’ It is worthy of his genius. +Wood died in 1695, ‘forgiving every one.’ He +could well afford to do so. In his <i>Athenæ +Oxonienses</i> he had written the lives of all his enemies.</p> +<p>Wood, ‘being a mere scholar,’ could, of course, +expect nothing but disrespect in a place like Oxford. His +younger contemporary, Humphrey Prideaux, was, in the Oxford +manner, a man of the world. He was the son of a Cornish +squire, was educated at Westminster under Busby (that awful +pedagogue, whose birch seems so near a memory), got a studentship +at Christ Church in 1668, and took his B.A. degree in 1672. +Here it may be observed that men went up quite as late in life +then as they do now, for Prideaux was twenty-four years old when +he took his degree. Fell was Dean of Christ Church, and was +showing laudable zeal in working the University Press. What +a pity it is that the University Press of to-day has become a +trading concern, a shop for twopenny manuals and penny +primers! It is scarcely proper that the University should +at once organise examinations and sell the manuals which contain +the answers to the questions most likely to be set. To +return to Fell; he made Prideaux edit Lucius Florus, and publish +the <i>Marmora Oxoniensia</i>, which came out 1676. We must +not suppose, however, that Prideaux was an enthusiastic +archæologist. He did the <i>Marmora</i> because the +Dean commanded it, and because educated people were at that +period not uninterested in Greek art. At the present hour +one may live a lifetime in Oxford and only learn, by the accident +of examining passmen in the Arundel Room, that the University +possesses any marbles. In the walls of the Arundel Room (on +the ground-floor in the Schools’ quadrangle) these touching +remains of Hellas are interred. There are the funereal +stelæ, with their quiet expression of sorrow, of hope, of +resignation. The young man, on his tombstone, is +represented in the act of rising and taking the hand of a +friend. He is bound on his latest journey.</p> +<blockquote><p>‘He goeth forth unto the unknown land,<br /> + Where wife nor child may follow; thus far tell<br /> +The lingering clasp of hand in faithful hand,<br /> + And that brief carven legend, <i>Friend</i>, +<i>farewell</i>.</p> +<p>O pregnant sign, profound simplicity!<br /> + All passionate pain and fierce remonstrating<br /> +Being wholly purged, leave this mere memory,<br /> + Deep but not harsh, a sad and sacred thing.’ +<a name="citation120"></a><a href="#footnote120" +class="citation">[120]</a></p> +</blockquote> +<p>The lady chooses from a coffer a trinket, or a ribbon. +It is her last toilette she is making, with no fear and no +regret. Again, the long-severed souls are meeting with +delight in the home of the just made perfect.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p120b.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Trinity College Gates, Parks’ Road" +title= +"Trinity College Gates, Parks’ Road" + src="images/p120s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Even in the Schools these scraps of Greek lapidary’s +work seem beautiful to us, in their sober and cheerful acceptance +of life and death. We hope, in Oxford, that the study of +ancient art, as well as of ancient literature, may soon be made +possible. These tangible relics of the past bring us very +near to the heart and the life of Greece, and waken a kindly +enthusiasm in every one who approaches them. In Humphrey +Prideaux’s letters there is not a trace of any such +feeling. He does his business, but it is hack-work. +In this he differs from the modern student, but in his caustic +description of the rude and witless society of the place he is +modern enough. In his letters to his friend, John Ellis, of +the State Paper Office, it is plain that Prideaux wants to get +preferment. His taste and his ambition alike made him +detest the heavy, beer-drinking doctors, the fast ‘All +Souls gentlemen,’ and the fossils of stupidity who are +always plentifully imbedded in the soil of University life. +Fellowships were then sold, at Magdalen and New, when they were +not given by favour. Prideaux grumbles (July 28th, 1674) at +the laxness of the Commissioners, who should have exposed this +abuse: ‘In town, one of their inquirys is whether any of +the scholars weare pantaloons or periwigues, or keep +dogs.’ The great dispute about dogs, which raged at a +later date in University College, had already begun to disturb +dons and undergraduates. The choice language of Oxford +contempt was even then extant, and Prideaux, like Grandison in +<i>Daniel Deronda</i>, spoke curtly of the people whom he did not +like as ‘brutes.’ ‘Pembroke—the +fittest colledge in the town for brutes.’ The +University did not encourage certain ‘players’ who +had paid the place a visit, and the players, in revenge, had gone +about the town at night and broken the windows.</p> +<p>When the journey from London to Oxford is so easily performed, +it is amusing to read of Prideaux’s miserable adventures, +in the diligence, between a lady of easy manners, a +‘pitiful rogue,’ and two undergraduates who +‘sordidly affected debauchery.’</p> +<blockquote><p>‘This ill company made me very miserable all +the way. Only once I could not but heartily laugh to see +Fincher be sturdyly belaboured by five or six carmen with whips +and prong staves for provoking them with some of his extravagant +frolics.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The ‘violent affection to vice’ in the University, +or in the country, was, of course, the reaction against the +godliness of Puritan captains of horse. Another form of the +reaction is discernible in the revived High Church sentiments of +Prideaux, Wood, and most of the students of the time.</p> +<p>The manners of the undergraduates were not much better than +those of the pot-house-haunting seniors. Dr. Good, the +Master of Balliol, ‘a good old toast,’ had much +trouble with his students.</p> +<blockquote><p>‘There is, over against Balliol College, a +dingy, horrid, scandalous ale-house, fit for none but draymen and +tinkers, and such as, by going there, have made themselves +equally scandalous. Here the Balliol men continually, and +by perpetuall bubbing, add art to their natural stupidity, to +make themselves perfect sots.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The envy and jealousy of the inferior colleges, alas! have put +about many things, in these latter days, to the discredit of the +Balliol men, but not even Humphrey Prideaux would, out of all his +stock of epithets, choose ‘sottish’ and +‘stupid.’ In these old times, however, Dr. Good +had to call the men together, and—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Inform them of the mischiefs of that +hellish liquor called ale; but one of them, not so tamely to be +preached out of his beloved liquor, made answer that the +Vice-Chancelour’s men drank ale at the “Split +Crow,” and why should not they too?’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>On this, old Dr. Good posted off to the Vice-Chancellor, who, +‘being a lover of old ale’ himself, returned a short +answer to the head of Balliol. The old man went back to his +college, and informed his fellows, ‘that he was assured +there were no hurt in ale, so that now they may be sots by +authority.’ Christ Church men were not more +sober. David Whitford, who had been the tutor of Shirley +the poet, was found lying dead in his bed: ‘he had been +going to take a dram for refreshment, but death came between the +cup and the lips, and this is the end of Davy.’ +Prideaux records, in the same feeling style, that smallpox +carried off many of the undergraduates, ‘besides my +brother,’ a student at Corpus.</p> +<p>The University Press supplied Prideaux with gossip. They +printed ‘a book against Hobs,’ written by +Clarendon. Hobbes was the heresiarch of the time, and when +an unhappy fellow of Merton hanged himself, the doctrines of +Hobbes were said to have prompted him to the deed. To +return to the Press. ‘Our Christmas book will be +Cornelius Nepos . . . Our marbles are now printing.’ +Prideaux, as has been said, took no interest in his own work.</p> +<blockquote><p>‘I coat (quote) a multitude of authors; if +people think the better of me for that, I will think the worse of +them for their judgement. It beeing soe easyly a thinge to +make this specious show, he must be a fool that cannot gain +whatsoever repute is to be gotten by it. If people will +admire him for this, they may; I shall admire such for nothing +else but their good indexs. As long as books have these, on +what subject may we not coat as many others as we please, and +never have read one of them?’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It is not easy to gather from this confession whether Prideaux +had or had not read the books he ‘coated.’ It +is certain that Dean Aldrich (and here again we recognise the +eternal criticism of modern Oxford) held a poor opinion of +Humphrey Prideaux. Aldrich said Prideaux was +‘incorrect,’ ‘muddy-headed,’ ‘he +would do little or nothing besides heaping up notes’; +‘as for MSS. he would not trouble himself about any, but +rest wholly upon what had been done to his hands by former +editors.’ This habit of carping, this trick of +collecting notes, this inability to put a work through, this +dawdling erudition, this horror of manuscripts, every Oxford man +knows them, and feels those temptations which seem to be in the +air. Oxford is a discouraging place. College drudgery +absorbs the hours of students in proportion to their +conscientiousness. They have only the waste odds-and-ends +of time for their own labours. They live in an atmosphere +of criticism. They collect notes, they wait, they dream; +their youth goes by, and the night comes when no man can +work. The more praise to the tutors and lecturers who +decipher the records of Assyria, or patiently collate the +manuscripts of the <i>Iliad</i>, who not only teach what is +already known, but add to the stock of knowledge, and advance the +boundaries of scholarship and science.</p> +<p>One lesson may be learned from Prideaux’s cynical +letters, which is still worth the attention of every young Oxford +student who is conscious of ambition, of power, and of real +interest in letters. He can best serve his University by +coming out of her, by declining college work, and by devoting +himself to original study in some less exhausted air, in some +less critical society.</p> +<p>Among the aversions of Humphrey Prideaux were the +‘gentlemen of All Souls.’ They certainly showed +extraordinary impudence when they secretly employed the +University Press to print off copies of Marc Antonio’s +engravings after Giulio Romano’s drawings. It chanced +that Fell visited the press rather late one evening, and found +‘his press working at such an imployment. The prints +and plates he hath seased, and threatened the owners of them with +expulsion.’ ‘All Souls,’ adds Prideaux, +‘is a scandalous place.’ Yet All Souls was the +college of young Mr. Guise, an Arabic scholar, ‘the +greatest miracle in the knowledge of that I ever heard +of.’ Guise died of smallpox while still very +young.</p> +<p>Thus Prideaux prattles on, about Admiral Van Tromp, ‘a +drunken greazy Dutchman,’ whom Speed, of St. John’s, +conquered in boozing; of the disputes about races in Port Meadow; +of the breaking into the Mermaid Tavern. ‘We Christ +Church men bear the blame of it, our ticks, as the noise of the +town will have it, amounting to £1,500.’ Thus +Christ Church had little cause to throw the first stone at +Balliol. Prideaux shows little interest in letters, little +in the press, though he lived in palmy days of printing, in the +time of the Elzevirs; none at all in the educational work of the +place. He sneers at the Puritans, and at the controversy on +‘The Foundations of Hell Torments shaken and +removed.’ He admits that Locke ‘is a man of +very good converse,’ but is chiefly concerned to spy out +the movements of the philosopher, suspected of sedition, and to +report them to Ellis in town. About the new buildings, as +of the beautiful western gateway, where Great Tom is hung, the +work of Wren, Prideaux says little; St. Mary’s was +suffering restoration, and ‘the old men,’ including +Wood, we may believe, ‘exceedingly exclaim against +it.’ That is the way of Oxford, a college is +constantly rebuilding amid the protests of the rest of the +University. There is no question more common, or less +agreeable than this, ‘What are you doing to your +tower?’ or ‘What are you doing to your hall, library, +or chapel?’ No one ever knows; but we are always +doing something, and working men for ever sit, and drink beer, on +the venerable roofs.</p> +<p>Long intercourse with Prideaux’s letters, and mournful +memories of Oxford new buildings, tempt a writer to imitate +Prideaux’s spirit. Let us shut up his book, where he +leaves Oxford, in 1686, to become rector of Saham-Toney, in +Norfolk, and marry a wife, though, says he, ‘I little +thought I should ever come to this.’</p> +<h2><a name="page133"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +133</span>CHAPTER VI<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">HIGH TORY OXFORD</span></h2> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> name of her late Majesty Queen +Anne has for some little time been a kind of party +watch-word. Many harmless people have an innocent loyalty +to this lady, make themselves her knights (as Mary Antoinette has +still her sworn champions in France and Mary Stuart in Scotland), +buy the plate of her serene period, and imitate the dress. +To many moral critics in the press, however, Queen Anne is a kind +of abomination. I know not how it is, but the terms +‘Queen Anne furniture and blue china’ have become +words of almost slanderous railing. Any didactic journalist +who uses them is certain at once to fall heavily on the artistic +reputation of Mr. Burne Jones, to rebuke the philosophy of Mr. +Pater, and to hint that the entrance-hall of the Grosvenor +Gallery is that ‘by-way’ with which Bunyan has made +us familiar. In the changes of things our admiration of the +Augustan age of our literature, the age of Addison and Steele, of +Marlborough and Aldrich, has become a sort of reproach. It +may be that our modern preachers know but little of that which +they traduce. At all events, the Oxford of Queen +Anne’s time was not what they call +‘un-English,’ but highly conservative, and as dull +and beer-bemused as the most manly taste could wish it to be.</p> +<p>The <i>Spectator</i> of the ingenious Sir Richard Steele gives +us many a glimpse of non-juring Oxford. The old fashion of +Sanctity (Mr. Addison says, in the <i>Spectator</i>, No. 494) had +passed away; nor were appearances of Mirth and Pleasure looked +upon as the Marks of a Carnal Mind. Yet the Puritan Rule +was not so far forgotten, but that Mr. Anthony Henley (a +Gentleman of Property) could remember how he had stood for a +Fellowship in a certain College whereof a great Independent +Minister was Governor. As Oxford at this Moment is much +vexed in her Mind about Examinations, wherein, indeed, her whole +Force is presently expended, I make no scruple to repeat the +account of Mr. Henley’s Adventure:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘The Youth, according to Custom, waited on +the Governor of his College, to be examined. He was +received at the Door by a Servant, who was one of that gloomy +Generation that were then in Fashion. He conducted him with +great Silence and Seriousness to a long Gallery which was +darkened at Noon-day, and had only a single Candle burning in +it. After a short stay in this melancholy Apartment, he was +led into a Chamber hung with black, where he entertained himself +for some time by the glimmering of a Taper, till at length the +Head of the College came out to him from an inner Room, with half +a dozen Night Caps upon his Head, and a religious Horror in his +Countenance. The Young Man trembled; but his Fears +increased when, instead of being asked what progress he had made +in Learning, he was ask’d “how he abounded in +Grace?” His <i>Latin</i> and <i>Greek</i> stood him +in little stead. He was to give an account only of the +state of his Soul—whether he was of the Number of the +Elect; what was the Occasion of his Conversion; upon what Day of +the Month and Hour of the Day it happened; how it was carried on, +and when completed. The whole Examination was summed up in +one short Question, namely, <i>Whether he was prepared for +Death</i>? The Boy, who had been bred up by honest Parents, +was frighted out of his wits by the solemnity of the Proceeding, +and by the last dreadful Interrogatory, so that, upon making his +Escape out of this House of Mourning, he could never be brought a +second Time to the Examination, as not being able to go through +the Terrors of it.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>By the year 1705, when Tom Hearne, of St. Edmund’s Hall, +began to keep his diary, the ‘honest folk’—that +is, the High Churchmen—had the better of the Independent +Ministers. The Dissenters had some favour at Court, but in +the University they were looked upon as utterly reprobate. +From the <i>Reliquiæ</i> of Hearne (an antiquarian +successor of Antony Wood, a <i>bibliophile</i>, an +archæologist, and as honest a man as Jacobitism could make +him) let us quote an example of Heaven’s wrath against +Dissenters:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘<i>Aug.</i> 6, 1706. We have an +account from Whitchurch, in Shropshire, that the Dissenters there +having prepared a great quantity of bricks to erect a spacious +conventicle, a destroying angel came by night and spoiled them +all, and confounded their Babel in the beginning, to their great +mortification.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Hearne’s common-place books are an amusing source of +information about Oxford society in the years of Queen Anne, and +of the Hanoverian usurper. Tom Hearne was a Master of Arts +of St. Edmund’s Hall, and at one time Deputy-Librarian of +the Bodleian. He lost this post because he would not take +‘the wicked oaths’ required of him, but he did not +therefore leave Oxford. His working hours were passed in +preparing editions of antiquarian books, to be printed in very +limited number, on ordinary and <span class="smcap">Large +Paper</span>. It was the joy of Tom’s existence to +see his editions become first scarce, then <span +class="smcap">Very Scarce</span>, while the price augmented in +proportion to the rarity. When he was not reading in his +rooms he was taking long walks in the country, tracing Roman +walls and roads, and exploring Woodstock Park for the remains of +‘the labyrinth,’ as he calls the Maze of Fair +Rosamund. In these strolls he was sometimes accompanied by +undergraduates, even gentlemen of noble family, ‘which gave +cause to some to envy our happiness.’ Hearne was a +social creature, and had a heart, as he shows by the entry about +the death of his ‘very dear friend, Mr. Thomas Cherry, +A.M., to the great grief of all that knew him, being a gentleman +of great beauty, singular modesty, of wonderful good nature, and +most excellent principles.’</p> +<p>The friends of Hearne were chiefly, perhaps solely, what he +calls ‘honest men,’ supporters of the Stuart family, +and always ready to drink his Majesty’s (King James’) +health. They would meet in ‘Antiquity Hall,’ an +old house near Wadham, and smoke their honest pipes. They +held certain of the opinions of ‘the Hebdomadal +Meeting,’ satirised by Steele in the <i>Spectator</i> (No. +43). ‘We are much offended at the Act for importing +<i>French</i> wines. A bottle or two of good solid Edifying +Port, at honest <i>George’s</i>, made a Night cheerful, and +threw off Reserve. But this plaguy <i>French</i> Claret +will not only cost us more Money but do us less +good.’ Hearne had a poor opinion of ‘Captain +Steele,’ and of ‘one Tickle: this Tickle is a +pretender to poetry.’ He admits that, though +‘Queen’s people are angry at the <i>Spectator</i>, +and the common-room say ’tis silly dull stuff, men that are +indifferent commend it highly, as it deserves.’ Some +other satirist had a plate etched, representing Antiquity +Hall—a caricature of Tom’s antiquarian +engravings. It may be seen in Skelton’s book.</p> +<p>Thanks to Hearne, it is easy to reproduce the common-room +gossip, and the more treasonable talk of honest men at Antiquity +Hall. The learned were much interested, as they usually are +at Oxford, in theological discussion. Some one proved, by +an ingenious syllogism, that all men are to be saved; but Hearne +had the better of this Latitudinarian, easily demonstrating that +the comfortable argument does not meet the case of madmen, and of +deaf-mutes, whom Tom did not expect to meet in a future +state. The ingenious, though depressing speculations of Mr. +Dodwell were also discussed: ‘He makes the air the +receptacle of all souls, good and bad, and that they are under +the power of the D—l, he being prince of the +air.’ ‘The less perfectly good’ hang out, +if we may say so, ‘in the space between earth and the +clouds,’ all which is subtle, and creditable to Mr. +Dodwell’s invention, but not susceptible of exact +demonstration. The whole controversy is an interesting +specimen of Queen Anne philosophy, which, with all respect for +the taste of the period, we need not wish to see revived. +The Bishop of Worcester, for example, ‘expects the end of +the world about nine years hence.’ While the theology +of Oxford is being mentioned, the zeal of Dr. Miller, Regius +Professor of Greek, must not be forgotten. The learned +Professor endeavoured to convert, and even ‘writ a Letter +to Mrs. Bracegirdle, giving her great encomiums (as having +himself been often to see plays acted whilst they continued here) +upon account of her excellent qualifications, and persuading her +to give over this loose way of living, and betake herself to such +a kind of life as was more innocent, and would gain her more +credit.’ The Professor’s advice was wasted on +‘Bracegirdle the brown.’</p> +<p>Politics were naturally much discussed in these doubtful +years, when the Stuarts, it was thought, had still a chance to +win their own again. In 1706, Tom says, ‘The great +health now is “The Cube of Three,” which is the +number 27, i.e. the number of the protesting Lords.’ +The University was most devoted, as far as drinking toasts +constitutes loyalty. In Hearne’s common-place book is +carefully copied out this ‘Scotch Health to K. +J.’:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘He’s o’er the seas and far +awa’,<br /> +He’s o’er the seas and far awa’;<br /> +Altho’ his back be at the wa’<br /> +We’ll drink his health that’s far +awa’.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The words live, and ring strangely out of that dusty +past. The song survives the throne, and sounds +pathetically, somehow, as one has heard it chanted, in days as +dead as the year 1711, at suppers that seem as ancient almost as +the festivities of Thomas Hearne. It is not unpleasant to +remember that the people who sang could also fight, and spilt +their blood as well as their ‘edifying port.’ +If the Southern ‘honest men’ had possessed hearts for +anything but tippling, the history of England would have been +different.</p> +<p>When ‘the allyes and the French fought a bloudy battle +near Mons’ (1709, ‘Malplaquet’), the Oxford +honest men, like Colonel Henry Esmond, thought ‘there was +not any the least reason of bragging.’ The young King +of England, under the character of the Chevalier St. George, +‘shewed abundance of undaunted courage and resolution, led +up his troups with unspeakable bravery, appeared in the utmost +dangers, and at last was wounded.’ +Marlborough’s victories were sneered at, his new palace of +Blenheim was said to be not only ill-built, but haunted by signs +of evil omen.</p> +<p>It was not always safe to say what one thought about politics +at Oxford. One Mr. A. going to one Mr. Tonson, a barber, +put the barber and his wife in a ferment (they being rascally +Whigs) by maintaining that the hereditary right was in the P. of +W. Tonson laid information against the gentleman; +‘which may be a warning to honest men not to enter into +topicks of this nature with barbers.’ One would not +willingly, even now, discuss the foreign policy of her +Majesty’s Ministers with the person who shaves one. +There are opportunities and temptations to which no decent person +should be wantonly exposed. The bad effect of Whiggery on +the temper was evident in this, that ‘the Mohocks are all +of the Whiggish gang, and indeed all Whigs are looked upon as +such Mohocks, their principles and doctrines leading thus to all +manner of barbarity and inhumanity.’ So true is it +that Conservatives are all lovers of peace and quiet, that (May +29th, 1715) ‘last night a good part of the Presbyterian +meeting-house in Oxford was pulled down. The people ran up +and down the streets, crying, <i>King James the Third</i>! +<i>The true king</i>! <i>No Usurper</i>. In the +evening they pulled a good part of the Quakers’ and +Anabaptists’ meeting-houses down. The heads of houses +have represented that it was begun by the Whiggs.’ +Probably the heads of houses reasoned on <i>à priori</i> +principles when they arrived at this remarkable conclusion.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p144b.jpg"> +<img alt= +"The Cottages, Trinity College" +title= +"The Cottages, Trinity College" + src="images/p144s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>In consequence of the honesty, frankness, and consistency of +his opinions, Mr. Hearne ran his head in danger when King George +came to the throne, which has ever since been happily settled in +the possession of the Hanoverian line. A Mr. Urry, a +Non-juror, had to warn him, saying, ‘Do you not know that +they have a mind to hang you if they can, and that you have many +enemies who are very ready to do it?’ In spite of +this, Hearne, in his diaries, still calls George I. the Duke of +Brunswick, and the Whigs, ‘that fanatical +crew.’ John, Duke of Marlborough, he styles +‘that villain the Duke.’ We have had enough, +perhaps, of Oxford politics, which were not much more prejudiced +in the days of the Duke than in those of Mr. Gladstone. +Hearne’s allusions to the contemporary state of buildings +and of college manners are often rather instructive. In All +Souls the Whigs had a feast on the day of King Charles’s +martyrdom. They had a dinner dressed of woodcock, +‘whose heads they cut off, in contempt of the memory of the +blessed martyr.’ These men were ‘low Churchmen, +more shame to them.’ The All Souls men had already +given up the custom of wandering about the College on the night +of January 14th, with sticks and poles, in quest of the +mallard. That ‘swopping’ bird, still justly +respected, was thought, for many ages, to linger in the college +of which he is the protector. But now all hope of +recovering him alive is lost, and it is reserved for the +excavator of the future to marvel over the fossil bones of the +‘swopping, swopping mallard.’</p> +<p>As an example of the paganism of Queen Anne’s +reign—quite a different thing from the +‘Neo-paganism’ which now causes so much anxiety to +the moral press-man—let us note the affecting instance of +Geffery Ammon. ‘He was a merry companion, and his +conversation was much courted.’ Geffery had but +little sense of religion. He is now buried on the west side +of Binsey churchyard, near St. Margaret’s well. +Geffery selected Binsey for the place of his sepulchre, because +he was partial to the spot, having often shot snipe there. +In order to moisten his clay, he desired his friend Will Gardner, +a boatman of Oxford, who was accustomed to row him down the +river, to put now and then a bottle of ale by his grave when he +came that way; an injunction which was punctually complied +with.</p> +<p>Oxford lost in Hearne’s time many of her old +buildings. It is said, with a dreadful appearance of truth, +that Oxford is now to lose some of the few that are left. +Corpus and Merton, if they are not belied, mean to pull down the +old houses opposite Merton, halls and houses consecrated to the +memory of Antony Wood, and to build lecture-rooms <i>and houses +for married dons</i> on the site. The topic, for one who is +especially bound to pray for Merton (and who now does so with +unusual fervour), is most painful. A view of the +‘proposed new buildings,’ in the Exhibition of the +Royal Academy (1879), depresses the soul. In the same +spirit Hearne says (March 28th, 1671), ‘It always grieves +me when I go through Queen’s College, to see the ruins of +the old chapell next to High Street, the area of which now lies +open (the building being most of it pulled down) and trampled +upon by dogs, etc., as if the ground had never been +consecrated. Nor do the Queen’s Coll. people take any +care, but rather laught at it when ’tis +mentioned.’ In 1722 ‘the famous postern-gate +called the <i>Turl</i> Gate’ (a corruption for +<i>Thorold</i> Gate) was ‘pulled down by one Dr. Walker, +who lived by it, and pretended that it was a detriment to his +house. As long ago as 1705, they had pulled down the +building of Peckwater quadrangle, in Ch. Ch.’ +Queen’s also ‘pulled down the old refectory, which +was on the west side of the old quadrangle, and was a fine old +structure that I used to admire much.’ It appears +that the College was also anxious to pull down the chamber of +King Henry V. This is a strange craze for destruction, that +some time ago endangered the beautiful library of Merton, a place +where one can fancy that Chaucer or Wyclif may have +studied. Oxford will soon have little left of the beauty +and antiquity of <i>Patey’s Quad</i> in Merton, as +represented in our illustration. What the next generation +will think of the multitudinous new buildings, it is not hard to +conjecture. Imitative experiments, without style or fancy +in structure or decoration, and often more than medievally +uncomfortable, they will seem but evidences of Oxford’s +love of destruction. People of Hearne’s way of +thinking, people who respect antiquity, protest in vain, and, +like Hearne, must be content sadly to enjoy what is left of grace +and dignity. He died before Oxford had quite become the +Oxford of Gibbon’s autobiography.</p> +<h2><a name="page153"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +153</span>CHAPTER VII<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">GEORGIAN OXFORD</span></h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Oxford</span> has usually been described +either by her lovers or her malcontents. She has suffered +the extremes of filial ingratitude and affection. There is +something in the place that makes all her children either adore +or detest her; and it is difficult, indeed, to pick out the truth +concerning her past social condition from the satires and the +encomiums. Nor is it easy to say what qualities in Oxford, +and what answering characteristics in any of her sons, will beget +the favourable or the unfavourable verdict. Gibbon, one +might have thought, saw the sunny, and Johnson the shady, side of +the University. With youth, and wealth, and liberty, with a +set of three beautiful rooms in that ‘stately pile, the new +building of Magdalen College,’ Gibbon found nothing in +Oxford to please him—nothing to admire, nothing to +love. From his poor and lofty rooms in Pembroke Gate-tower +the hypochondriac Johnson—rugged, anxious, and conscious of +his great unemployed power—looked down on a much more +pleasant Oxford, on a city and on schools that he never ceased to +regard with affection. This contrast is found in the +opinions of our contemporaries. One man will pass his time +in sneering at his tutors and his companions, in turning +listlessly from study to study, in following false tendencies, +and picking up scraps of knowledge which he despises, and in +later life he will detest his University. There are wiser +and more successful students, who yet bear away a grudge against +the stately mother of us all, that so easily can disregard our +petty spleens and ungrateful rancour. Mr. Lowe’s most +bitter congratulatory addresses to the ‘happy Civil +Engineers,’ and his unkindest cuts at ancient history, and +at the old philosophies which ‘on Argive heights divinely +sung,’ move her not at all. Meanwhile, the majority +of men are more kindly compact, and have more natural affections, +and on them the memory of their earliest friendships, and of that +beautiful environment which Oxford gave to their years of youth, +is not wholly wasted.</p> +<p>There are more Johnsons, happily, in this matter, than +Gibbons. There is little need to repeat the familiar story +of Johnson’s life at Pembroke. He went up in the +October term of 1728, being then nineteen years of age, and +already full of that wide and miscellaneous classical reading +which the Oxford course, then as now, somewhat discouraged. +‘His figure and manner appeared strange’ to the +company in which he found himself; and when he broke silence it +was with a quotation from Macrobius. To his tutor’s +lectures, as a later poet says, ‘with freshman zeal he +went’; but his zeal did not last out the discovery that the +tutor was ‘a heavy man,’ and the fact that there was +‘sliding on Christ Church Meadow.’ Have any of +the artists who repeat, with perseverance, the most famous scenes +in the Doctor’s life—drawn him sliding on Christ +Church meadows, sliding in these worn and clouted shoes of his, +and with that figure which even the exercise of skating could not +have made ‘swan-like,’ to quote the young lady in +‘Pickwick’? Johnson was ‘sconced’ +in the sum of twopence for cutting lecture; and it is rather +curious that the amount of the fine was the same four hundred +years earlier, when Master Stoke, of Catte Hall (whose career we +touched on in the second of these sketches), deserted his +lessons. It was when he was thus sconced that Johnson made +that reply which Boswell preserves ‘as a specimen of the +antithetical character of his wit’—‘Sir, you +have sconced me twopence for non-attendance on a lecture not +worth a penny.’</p> +<p>Sconcing seems to have been the penalty for offences very +various in degree. ‘A young fellow of Balliol College +having, upon some discontent, cut his throat very dangerously, +the master of his College sent his servitor to the buttery-book +to sconce him five shillings; and,’ says the Doctor, +‘tell him that the next time he cuts his throat I’ll +sconce him ten!’ This prosaic punishment might +perhaps deter some Werthers from playing with edged tools.</p> +<p>From Boswell’s meagre account of Johnson’s Oxford +career we gather some facts which supplement the description of +Gibbon. The future historian went into residence +twenty-three years after Johnson departed without taking his +degree. Gibbon was a gentleman commoner, and was permitted +by the easy discipline of Magdalen to behave just as he +pleased. He ‘eloped,’ as he says, from Oxford, +as often as he chose, and went up to town, where he was by no +means the ideal of ‘the Manly Oxonian in +London.’ The fellows of Magdalen, possessing a +revenue which private avarice might easily have raised to +£30,000, took no interest in their pupils. +Gibbon’s tutor read a few Latin plays with his pupil, in a +style of dry and literal translation. The other fellows, +less conscientious, passed their lives in tippling and tattling, +discussing the ‘Oxford Toasts,’ and drinking other +toasts to the king over the water. ‘Some +duties,’ says Gibbon, ‘may possibly have been imposed +on the poor scholars,’ but ‘the velvet cap was the +cap of liberty,’ and the gentleman commoner consulted only +his own pleasure. Johnson was a poor scholar, and on him +duties were imposed. He was requested to write an ode on +the Gunpowder Plot, and Boswell thinks ‘his vivacity and +imagination must have produced something fine.’ He +neglected, however, with his usual indolence, this opportunity of +producing something fine. Another exercise imposed on the +poor was the translation of Mr. Pope’s +‘Messiah,’ in which the young Pembroke man succeeded +so well that, by Mr. Pope’s own generous confession, future +ages would doubt whether the English or the Latin piece was the +original. Johnson complained that no man could be properly +inspired by the Pembroke ‘coll,’ or college beer, +which was then commonly drunk by undergraduates, still guiltless +of Rhine wines, and of collecting Chinese monsters.</p> +<blockquote><p><i>Carmina vis nostri scribant meliora +poetæ</i><br /> + <i>Ingenium jubeas purior baustus alat</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In spite of the muddy beer, the poverty, and the +‘bitterness mistaken for frolic,’ with which Johnson +entertained the other undergraduates round Pembroke gate, he +never ceased to respect his college. ‘His love and +regard for Pembroke he entertained to the last,’ while of +his old tutor he said, ‘a man who becomes Jorden’s +pupil becomes his son.’ Gibbon’s sneer is a +foil to Johnson’s kindliness. ‘I applaud the +filial piety which it is impossible for me to imitate . . . To +the University of Oxford I acknowledge no obligations, and she +will as cheerfully renounce me for a son, as I am willing to +disclaim her for a mother.’</p> +<p>Johnson was a man who could take the rough with the smooth, +and, to judge by all accounts, the Oxford of the earlier half of +the eighteenth century was excessively rough. Manners were +rather primitive: a big fire burned in the centre of Balliol +Hall, and round this fire, one night in every year, it is said +that all the world was welcome to a feast of ale and bread and +cheese. Every guest paid his shot by singing a song or +telling a story; and one can fancy Johnson sharing in this +barbaric hospitality. ‘What learning can they have +who are destitute of all principles of civil behaviour?’ +says a writer from whose journal (printed in 1746) Southey has +made some extracts. The diarist was a Puritan of the old +leaven, who visited Oxford shortly before Johnson’s period, +and who speaks of ‘a power of gross darkness that may be +felt constantly prevailing in that place of wisdom and of +subtlety, but not of God . . . In this wicked place the scholars +are the rudest, most giddy, and unruly rabble, and most +mischievous.’ But this strange and unfriendly critic +was a Nonconformist, in times when good Churchmen showed their +piety by wrecking chapels and ‘rabbling’ +ministers. In our days only the Davenport Brothers and +similar professors of strange creeds suffer from the manly piety +of the undergraduates.</p> +<p>Of all the carping, cross-grained, scandal-loving, Whiggish +assailants of <i>Alma Mater</i>, the author of <i>Terræ +Filius</i> was the most persistent. The first little volume +which contains the numbers of this bi-weekly periodical (printed +for R. Franklin, under Tom’s Coffee-house, in Russell +Street, Covent Garden, <span class="GutSmall">MDCCXXVI.</span>) +is not at all rare, and is well worth a desultory reading. +What strikes one most in <i>Terræ Filius</i> is the +religious discontent of the bilious author. One thinks, +foolishly of course, of even Georgian Whigs as orthodox men, at +least in their undergraduate days. The mere aspect of Mr. +Leslie Stephen’s work on the philosophers of the eighteenth +century is enough to banish this pleasing delusion. The +Deists and Freethinkers had their followers in Johnson’s +day among the undergraduates, though scepticism, like Whiggery, +was unpopular, and might be punished. Johnson says, that +when he was a boy he was a lax <i>talker</i>, rather than a lax +<i>thinker</i>, against religion; ‘but lax talking against +religion at Oxford would not be suffered.’ The author +of <i>Terræ Filius</i>, however, never omits a chance of +sneering at our faith, and at the Church of England as by law +established. In his description of the exercises of the +Club of Wits, only one respectably clever epigram is quoted, +beginning,—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Since in religion all men disagree,<br /> +And some one God believe, some thirty, and some three.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This production ‘was voted heretical,’ and burned +by the hands of the small-beer drawer, while the author was +expelled. In the author’s advice to freshmen, he +gives a not uninteresting sketch of these rudimentary +creatures. The chrysalis, as described by the preacher of a +University sermon, ‘never, in his wildest moments, dreamed +of being a butterfly’; but the public schoolboy of the last +century sometimes came up in what he conceived to be gorgeous +attire. ‘I observe, in the first place, that you no +sooner shake off the authority of the birch but you affect to +distinguish yourselves from your dirty school-fellows by a new +drugget, a pair of prim ruffles, a new bob-wig, and a +brazen-hilted sword.’ As soon as they arrived in +Oxford, these youths were hospitably received ‘amongst a +parcel of honest, merry fellows, who think themselves obliged, in +honour and common civility, to make you <i>damnable drunk</i>, +and carry you, as they call it, a <span +class="GutSmall">CORPSE</span> to bed.’ When this +period of jollity is ended, the freshman must declare his +views. He must see that he is in the fashion; ‘and +let your declarations be, that you are <i>Churchmen</i>, and that +you believe as the <i>Church</i> believes. For instance, +you have subscribed the Thirty-nine Articles; but never venture +to explain the sense in which you subscribed them, because there +are various senses; so many, indeed, that scarce two men +understand them in the same, and no <i>true Churchman</i> in that +which the words bear, and in that which they were +written.’</p> +<p>This is pretty plain speaking, and <i>Terræ Filius</i> +enforces, by an historical example, the dangers of even political +freethought. In 1714 the Constitution Club kept King +George’s birthday. The Constitutional Party was then +the name which the Whigs took to themselves, though, thanks to +the advance of civilisation, the Tories have fallen back upon the +same. The Conservative undergraduates attacked the club, +sallying forth from their Jacobite stronghold in Brasenose (as +seen in our illustration), where the ‘silly statue,’ +as Hearne calls it, was about that time erected. The Whigs +took refuge in Oriel, the Tories assaulted the gates, and an +Oriel man, firing out of his window, wounded a gownsman of +Brasenose. The Tories, ‘under terror of this +dangerous and unexpected resistance, retreated from +Oriel.’ Yet such was the academic strength of the +Jacobites and the Churchmen, that a Freethinker, or a +‘Constitutioner,’ could scarcely take his degree.</p> +<p><i>Terræ Filius</i>, who lashes the dons for +covetousness, greed, dissipation, rudeness, and stupidity, often +corroborates the Puritan’s report about the bad manners of +the undergraduates. Yet Oxford, then as now, did not lack +her exquisites, and her admirers of the fair. +<i>Terræ Filius</i> thus describes a ‘smart,’ +as these dandies were called—Mr. Frippery:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘He is one of those who come in their +academical undress, every morning between ten and eleven, to +Lyne’s Coffee-house; after which he takes a turn or two +upon the park, or under Merton Wall, whilst the dull +<i>regulars</i> are at dinner in their hall, according to +statute; about one he dines alone in his chamber upon a boiled +chicken or some pettitoes; after which he allows himself an hour +at least to dress in, to make his afternoon’s appearance at +Lyne’s; from whence he adjourns to Hamilton’s about +five; from whence (after strutting about the room for a while, +and drinking a dram of citron), he goes to chapel, to show how +genteelly he dresses, and how well he can chaunt. After +prayers he drinks tea with some celebrated toast, and then waits +upon her to Magdalen Grove or Paradise Garden, and back +again. He seldom eats any supper, and never reads anything +but novels and romances.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The dress of this hero and his friends must have made the +streets more gay than do the bright-coloured flannel coats of our +boating men.</p> +<blockquote><p>‘He is easily distinguished by a stiff silk +gown, which rustles in the wind as he struts along; a flax +tie-wig, or sometimes a long natural one, which reaches down +below his [well, say below his waist]; a broad bully-cock’d +hat, or a square cap of about twice the usual size; white +stockings; thin Spanish leather shoes. His clothes lined +with tawdry silk, and his shirt ruffled down the bosom as well as +at the wrists.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>These ‘smarts’ cut no such gallant figure when +they first arrived in Oxford, with their fathers (rusty old +country farmers), in linsey-woolsey coats, greasy, sun-burnt +heads of hair, clouted shoes, yarn stockings, flapping hats, with +silver hatbands, and long muslin neck-cloths run with red at the +bottom.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p166b.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Magdalen College and Bridge from the Cherwell" +title= +"Magdalen College and Bridge from the Cherwell" + src="images/p166s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>After this satire of the undergraduates we may look at the +contemporary account-book of a Proctor. In 1752 Gilbert +White of Selborne was Proctor, and may have fined young Gibbon of +Magdalen, who little thought that Oxford boasted an official who +was to become an English classic. White paid some attention +to dress, and got a feather-topp’d, grizzled wig from +London; cost him £2, 5s. He bought ‘mountain +wine, very old and good,’ and had his crest engraved on his +teaspoons, that everything might be handsome about him. +When he treated the Masters of Arts in Oriel Hall they ate a +hundred pounds weight of biscuits—not, we trust, without +marmalade. ‘A bowl of rum-punch from +Horsman’s’ cost half a crown. Fancy a jolly +Proctor sending out for bowls of rum-punch, and that in +April! Eggs cost a penny each, and ‘three oranges and +a mouse-trap’ ninepence.</p> +<p>White, a generous man, gave the Vice-Chancellor ‘seven +pounds of double-refined white sugar.’ I like to +fancy my learned friend, the Proctor, going to the present +Vice-Chancellor’s with a donation of white sugar! +Manners have certainly changed in the direction of +severity. ‘Share of the expense for Mr. +Butcher’s release’ came to ten and sixpence. +What had Mr. Butcher been doing? The Proctor went ‘to +Blenheim with Nan,’ and it cost him fifteen and +sixpence. Perhaps she was one of the ‘Oxford +Toasts’ of a contemporary satire. Strawberries were +fourpence a basket on the ninth of June; and on November 6, White +lost one shilling ‘at cards, in common room.’ +He went from Selborne to Oxford, ‘in a post-chaise with +Jenny Croke’; and he gave Jenny a ‘round +Chinaturene.’ Tea cost eight shillings a pound in +1752, while rum-punch was but half a crown a bowl. +White’s highest terminal battels were but £12, though +he was a hospitable man, and would readily treat the other +Proctor to a bowl of punch. It is well to remember White +and Johnson when the Gibbon of that or any other day bewails the +intellectual poverty of Oxford.</p> +<h2><a name="page171"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +171</span>CHAPTER VIII<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">POETS AT OXFORD: SHELLEY AND +LANDOR</span></h2> +<p><span class="smcap">At</span> any given time a large number of +poets may be found among the undergraduates at Oxford, and the +younger dons. It is not easy to say what becomes of all +these pious bards, who are a marked and peculiar people while +they remain in residence. The undergraduate poet is a not +uninteresting study. He wears his hair long, and divides it +down the middle. His eye is wild and wandering, and his +manner absent, especially when he is called on to translate a +piece of an ancient author in lecture. He does not +‘read’ much, in the technical sense of the term, but +consumes all the novels that come in his way, and all the minor +poetry. His own verses the poet may be heard declaiming +aloud, at unholy midnight hours, so that his neighbours have been +known to break his windows with bottles, and then to throw in all +that remained of the cold meats of a supper party, without +interfering with the divine <i>afflatus</i>. When the +college poet has composed a sonnet, ode, or what not, he sends it +to the Editor of the <i>Nineteenth Century</i>, and it returns to +him after many days. At last it appears in print, in +<i>College Rhymes</i>, a collection of mild verse, which is (or +was) printed at regular or irregular intervals, and was never +seen except in the rooms of contributors. The poet also +speaks at the Union, where his sentiments are either +revolutionary, or so wildly conservative that he looks on Magna +Charta as the first step on the path that leads to +England’s ruin. As a politician, the undergraduate +poet knows no mean between Mr. Peter Taylor and King John. +He has been known to found a Tory club, and shortly afterwards to +swallow the formulæ of Mr. Bradlaugh.</p> +<p>The life of the poet is, not unnaturally, one long warfare +with his dons. He cannot conform himself to pedantic rules, +which demand his return to college before midnight. Though +often the possessor of a sweet vein of clerical and Kebleian +verse, the poet does not willingly attend chapel; for indeed, as +he sits up all night, it is cruel to expect him to arise before +noon. About the poet’s late habits a story is told, +which seems authentic. A remarkable and famous contemporary +singer was known to his fellow-undergraduates only by this +circumstance, that his melodious voice was heard declaiming +anapaests all through the ambrosial night. When the voice +of the singer was lulled, three sharp taps were heard in the +silence. This noise was produced by the bard’s Scotch +friend and critic in knocking the ashes out of his pipe. +These feasts of reason are almost incompatible with the early +devotion which, strangely enough, Shelley found time and +inclination to attend.</p> +<p>Now it is (or was) the belief of undergraduates that you might +break the decalogue and the laws of man in every direction with +safety and the approval of the dons, if you only went regularly +to chapel. As the poet cannot do this (unless he is a +‘sleepless man’), his existence is a long struggle +with the fellows and tutors of his college. The manners of +poets vary, of course, with the tastes of succeeding +generations. I have heard of two (Thyrsis and Corydon) +‘who lived in Oxford as if it were a large +country-house.’</p> +<p>Of other singers, the latest of the heavenly quire, it is +invidiously said that they build shrines to Blue China and other +ceramic abominations of the Philistine, and worship the same in +their rooms. Of this sort it is not the moment to +speak. Time has not proved them. But the old poets of +ten years ago lived a militant life; they rarely took good +classes (though they competed industriously for the Newdigate, +writing in the metre of <i>Dolores</i>), and it not uncommonly +happened that they left Oxford without degrees. They were +often very agreeable fellows, as long as one was in no way +responsible for them; but it was almost impossible—human +nature being what it is—that they should be much +appreciated by tutors, proctors, and heads of houses. How +could these worthy, learned, and often kind and courteous persons +know when they were dealing with a lad of genius, and when they +had to do with an affected and pretentious donkey?</p> +<p>These remarks are almost the necessary preface to a +consideration of the existence of Shelley and Landor at +Oxford—the Oxford of 1793–1810. Whatever the +effects may be on Shelleyan commentators, it must be said that, +to the donnish eye, Percy Bysshe Shelley was nothing more or less +than the ordinary Oxford poet, of the quieter type. In +Walter Savage Landor, authority recognised a noisier and rowdier +specimen of the same class. People who have to do with +hundreds of young men at a time are unavoidably compelled to +generalise. No don, that was a don, could have seen Shelley +or Landor as they are described to us without hastily classing +them in the category of poets who would come to no good and do +little credit to the college. Landor went up to Trinity +College in 1793. It was the dreadful year of the Terror, +when good Englishmen hated the cruel murderers of kings and +queens. Landor was a good Englishman, of course, and he +never forgave the French the public assassination of Marie +Antoinette. But he must needs be a Jacobin, and wear his +own unpowdered hair—the Poet thus declaring himself at once +in the regular recognised fashion. ‘For a portion of +the time he certainly read hard, but the results he kept to +himself; for here, as at Rugby, he declined everything in the +shape of competition.’ (Now competition is the +essence of modern University study.) ‘Though I wrote +better Latin verses than any undergraduate or graduate in the +University,’ says Landor, ‘I could never be persuaded +by my tutor or friends to contend for any prize +whatever.’ The pleasantest and most profitable hours +that Landor could remember at Oxford ‘were passed with +Walter Birch in the Magdalen Walk, by the half-hidden +Cherwell.’ Hours like these are indeed the +pleasantest and most profitable that any of us pass at +Oxford. The one duty which that University, by virtue of +its very nature, has never neglected, is the assembling of young +men together from all over England, and giving them three years +of liberty of life, of leisure, and of discussion, in scenes +which are classical and peaceful. For these hours, the most +fruitful of our lives, we are grateful to Oxford, as long as +friendship lives; that is, as long as life and memory remain with +us. And, ‘if anything endure, if hope there +be,’ our conscious existence in the after-world would ask +for no better companions than those who walked with us by the +Isis and the Cherwell.</p> +<p>Landor called himself ‘a Jacobin,’ though his own +letters show that he was as far as the most insolent young +‘tuft’ from relishing doctrines of human +equality. He had the reputation, however, of being not only +a Jacobin, but ‘a mad Jacobin’; too mad for Southey, +who was then young, and a Liberal. ‘Landor was +obliged to leave the University for shooting at one of the +Fellows through a window,’ is the account which Southey +gave of Landor’s rustication. Now fellows often put +up with a great deal of horse-play. There is scarcely a +more touching story than that of the don who for the first time +found himself ‘screwed up,’ and fastened within his +own oak. ‘What am I to do?’ the victim asked +his sympathising scout, who was on the other, the free side of +the oak. ‘Well, sir, Mr. Muff, sir, when +’e’s screwed up ’e sends for the +blacksmith,’ replied the servant. What a position for +a man having authority, to be in the constant habit of sending +for the blacksmith! Fellows have not very unfrequently been +fired at with Roman candles, or bombarded with soda-water bottles +full of gunpowder. One has also known sparrows shot from +Balliol windows on the Martyrs’ Memorial of our +illustration. In this case, too, the sportsman was a +poet. But deliberately to pot at a fellow, ‘to go for +him with a shot gun,’ as the repentant American said he +would do in future, after his derringer missed fire, is certainly +a strong measure. No college which pretended to maintain +discipline could allow even a poet to shoot thus wildly. In +truth, Landor’s offence has been exaggerated by +Southey. It was nothing out of the common. The poet +was giving ‘an after-dinner party’ in his +rooms. The men were mostly from Christ Church; for Landor +was intimate, he says, with only one undergraduate of his own +college, Trinity. On the opposite side of the quadrangle a +Tory and a butt, named Leeds, was entertaining persons whom the +Jacobin Landor calls ‘servitors and other raff of every +description.’ The guests at the rival wine-parties +began to ‘row’ each other, Landor says, adding, +‘All the time I was only a spectator, for I should have +blushed to have had any conversation with them, particularly out +of a window. But my gun was lying on a table in the room, +and I had in a back closet some little shot. I proposed, as +they had closed the casements, and as the shutters were on the +outside, to fire a volley. It was thought a good trick, and +accordingly I went into my bedroom and fired.’ Mr. +Leeds very superfluously complained to the President. +Landor adopted the worst possible line of defence, and so the +University and this poet parted company.</p> +<p>It seems to have been generally understood that Landor’s +affair was a boyish escapade. A copious literature is +engaged with the subject of Shelley’s expulsion. As +the story is told by Mr. Hogg, in his delightful book, the +<i>Life of Shelley</i>, that poet’s career at Oxford was a +typical one. There are in every generation youths like him, +in unworldliness, wildness, and dreaminess, though unlike him, of +course, in genius. The divine spark has not touched them, +but they, like Shelley, are still of the band whom the world has +not tamed. As Mr. Hogg’s book is out of print, and +rare, it would be worth while, did space permit, to reproduce +some of his wonderfully life-like and truthful accounts of Oxford +as she was in 1810. The University has changed in many +ways, and in most ways for the better. Perhaps that old, +indolent, and careless Oxford was better adapted to the life of +such an almost unexampled genius as Shelley. When his Eton +friends asked him whether he still meant to be ‘the +Atheist,’ that is, the rebel he had been at school, he +said, ‘No; the college authorities were civil, and left him +alone.’ Let us remember this when the learned +Professor of Poetry at Oxford, Mr. Shairp, calls Shelley +‘an Atheist.’ Mr. Hogg sometimes complains that +undergraduates were left too much alone. But who could have +safely advised or securely guided Shelley?</p> +<p>Undergraduates are now more closely looked after, as far as +reading goes, than perhaps they like—certainly much more +than Shelley would have liked. But when we turn from study +to the conduct of life, is it not plain that no <i>official</i> +interference can be of real value? Friendship and +confidence may, and often does, exist between tutors and +pupils. There are tutors so happily gifted with sympathy, +and with a kind of eternal youth of heart and intellect, that +they become the friends of generation after generation of +freshmen. This is fortunate; but who can wonder that +middle-aged men, seeing the generations succeed and resemble each +other, lose their powers of understanding, of directing, of +aiding the young, who are thus cast at once on their own +resources? One has occasionally heard clever men complain +that they were neglected by their seniors, that their hearts and +brains were full of perilous stuff, which no one helped them to +unpack. And it is true that modern education, when it meets +the impatience of youth, often produces an unhappy ferment in the +minds of men. To put it shortly, clever students have to go +through their age of <i>Sturm und Drang</i>, and they are +sometimes disappointed when older people, their tutors, for +example, do not help them to weather the storm. It is a +tempest in which every one must steer for himself, after all; and +Shelley ‘was borne darkly, fearfully afar,’ into +unplumbed seas of thought and experience. When Mr. Hogg +complains that his friend was too much left to himself to study +and think as he pleased, let us remember that no one could have +helped Shelley. He was better at Oxford without his old Dr. +Lind, ‘with whom he used to curse George <span +class="GutSmall">III.</span> after tea.’</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p182b.jpg"> +<img alt= +"In the Garden of Worcester College. By Richard Seeley" +title= +"In the Garden of Worcester College. By Richard Seeley" + src="images/p182s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>There are few chapters in literary history more fascinating +than those which tell the story of Shelley at Oxford. We +see him entering the hall of University College—a tall, shy +stripling, bronzed with the September sun, with long +elf-locks. He takes his seat by a stranger, and in a moment +holds him spell-bound, while he talks of Plato, and Goethe, and +Alfieri, of Italian poetry, and Greek philosophy. Mr. Hogg +draws a curious sketch of Shelley at work in his rooms, where +seven-shilling pieces were being dissolved in acid in the +teacups, where there was a great hole in the floor that the poet +had burned with his chemicals. The one-eyed scout, +‘the Arimaspian,’ must have had a time of tribulation +(being a conscientious and fatherly man) with this odd +master. How characteristic of Shelley it was to lend the +glow of his fancy to science, to declare that things, not +thoughts, mineralogy, not literature, must occupy human minds for +the future, and then to leave a lecture on mineralogy in the +middle, and admit that ‘stones are dull things after +all!’ Not less Shelleyan was the adventure on +Magdalen Bridge, the beautiful bridge of our illustration, from +which Oxford, with the sunset behind it, looks like a fairy city +of the Arabian Nights—a town of palaces and princesses, +rather than of proctors.</p> +<blockquote><p>‘One Sunday we had been reading Plato +together so diligently, that the usual hour of exercise passed +away unperceived: we sallied forth hastily to take the air for +half-an-hour before dinner. In the middle of Magdalen +Bridge we met a woman with a child in her arms. Shelley was +more attentive at that instant to our conduct in a life that was +past, or to come, than to a decorous regulation of the present, +according to the established usages of society, in that fleeting +moment of eternal duration styled the nineteenth century. +With abrupt dexterity he caught hold of the child. The +mother, who might well fear that it was about to be thrown over +the parapet of the bridge into the sedgy waters below, held it +fast by its long train.</p> +<p>‘“Will your baby tell us anything about +pre-existence, Madam?” he asked, in a piercing voice, and +with a wistful look.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Shelley and Hogg seem almost to have lived in reality the life +of the Scholar Gipsy. In Mr. Arnold’s poem, which has +made permanent for all time the charm, the sentiment of +Oxfordshire scenery, the poet seems to be following the track of +Shelley. In Mr. Hogg’s memoirs we hear little of +summer; it seems always to have been in winter that the friends +took their long rambles, in which Shelley set free, in talk, his +inspiration. One thinks of him</p> +<blockquote><p> ‘in +winter, on the causeway chill,<br /> +Where home through flooded fields foot travellers go,’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>returning to the supper in Hogg’s rooms, to the curious +desultory meals, the talk, and the deep slumber by the roaring +fire, the small head lying perilously near the flames. One +would not linger here over the absurd injustice of his expulsion +from the University. It is pleasant to know, on Mr. +Hogg’s testimony, that ‘residence at Oxford was +exceedingly delightful to Shelley, and on all accounts most +beneficial.’ At Oxford, at least, he seems to have +been happy, he who so rarely knew happiness, and who, if he made +another suffer, himself suffered so much for others. The +memory of Shelley has deeply entered into the sentiment of +Oxford. Thinking of him in his glorious youth, and of his +residence here, may we not say, with the shepherd in Theocritus, +of the divine singer:</p> +<blockquote><p>αἰθ’ ἐπ’ +ἐγμῦ ζωοῖς +ἐναρίθμιος +ὤφελες +εἶμεν,<br /> +ὥς τοι ἐγὼν +ἐνόμευον ἀν +ὤρεα τὰς +καλὰς +αἶγας<br /> +φωνᾶς +εἰσαίων, τὺ +δ’ ὑπὸ +δρυσὶν ἦ +ὑπὸ +πεύκαις<br /> +ἁδὺ +μελισδόμενος + +κατεκέκλισο, +θεῖε +Κομᾶτα.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>‘Ah, would that in my days thou hadst been numbered with +the living, how gladly on the hills would I have herded thy +pretty she-goats, and listened to thy voice, whilst thou, under +oaks and pine-trees lying, didst sweetly sing, divine +Comatas!’</p> +<h1><a name="page191"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +191</span>CHAPTER IX<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">A GENERAL VIEW</span></h1> +<p><span class="smcap">We</span> have looked at Oxford life in so +many different periods, that now, perhaps, we may regard it, like +our artist, as a whole, and take a bird’s-eye view of its +present condition. We may ask St. Bernard’s question, +<i>Whither hast thou come</i>? a question to which there are so +many answers readily given, from within and without the +University. It is not probable that the place will vary, in +essential character, from that which has all along been its +own. We shall have considered Oxford to very little +purpose, if it is not plain that the University has been less a +home of learning, on the whole, than a microcosm of English +intellectual life. At Oxford the men have been thinking +what England was to think a few months later, and they have been +thinking with the passion and the energy of youth. The +impulse to thought has not, perhaps, very often been given by any +mind or minds within the college walls; it has come from +without—from Italy, from France, from London, from a +country vicarage, perhaps, from the voice of a wandering +preacher. Whencesoever the leaven came, Oxford (being so +small, and in a way so homogeneous) has always fermented readily, +and promptly distributed the new forces, religious or +intellectual, throughout England.</p> +<p>It is characteristic of England that the exciting topics, the +questions that move the people most, have always been religious, +or deeply tinctured with religion. Conservative as Oxford +is, the home of ‘impossible causes,’ she has always +given asylum to new doctrines, to all the thoughts which +comfortable people call ‘dangerous.’ We have +seen her agitated by Lollardism, which never quite died, perhaps, +till its eager protest against the sacerdotal ideal was fused +into the fire of the Reformation. Oxford was literally +devastated by that movement, and by the Catholic reaction, and +then was disturbed for a century and a half by the war of +Puritanism, and of Tory Anglicanism. The latter had +scarcely had time to win the victory, and to fall into a doze by +her pipe of port, when Evangelical religion came to vex all that +was moderate, mature, and fond of repose. The revolutionary +enthusiasm of Shelley’s time was comparatively feeble, +because it had no connection with religion; or, at least, no +connection with the religion to which our countrymen were +accustomed. Between the era of the Revolution and our own +day, two religious tempests and one secular storm of thought have +swept over Oxford, and the University is at present, if one may +say so, like a ship in a heavy swell, the sea looking much more +tranquil than it really is.</p> +<p>The Tractarian movement was, of course, the first of the +religious disturbances to which we refer, and much the most +powerful.</p> +<p>It is curious to read about that movement in the +<i>Apologia</i>, for example, of Cardinal Newman. On what +singular topics men’s minds were bent! what queer survivals +of the speculations of the Schools agitated them as they walked +round Christ Church meadows! They enlightened each other on +things transcendental, yet material, on matters unthinkable, and, +properly speaking, unspeakable. It is as if they +‘spoke with tongues,’ which had a meaning then, and +for them, but which to us, some forty years later, seem as +meaningless as the inscriptions of Easter Island.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p195b.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Old Episcopal Palace. From a Drawing by R. Kent Thomas" +title= +"Old Episcopal Palace. From a Drawing by R. Kent Thomas" + src="images/p195s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>This was the shape, the Tractarian movement was the shape, in +which the great Romantic reaction laid hold on England and +Oxford. The father of all the revival of old doctrines and +old rituals in our Church, the originator of that wistful return +to things beautiful and long dead, was—Walter Scott. +Without him, and his wonderful wand which made the dry bones of +history live, England and France would not have known this +picturesque reaction. The stir in these two countries was +curiously characteristic of their genius. In France it put +on, in the first place, the shape of art, of poetry, painting, +sculpture. Romanticism blossomed in 1830, and bore fruit +for ten years. The religious reaction was a punier thing; +the great Abbé, who was the Newman of France, was himself +unable to remain within the fantastic church that he built out of +medieval ruins. In England, and especially in Oxford, the +æsthetic admiration of the Past was promptly transmuted +into religion. Doctrines which men thought dead were +resuscitated; and from Oxford came, not poetry or painting, but +the sermons of Newman, the <i>Tracts</i>, the whole religious +force which has transformed and revivified the Church of +England. That force is still working, it need hardly be +said, in the University of to-day, under conditions much changed, +but not without thrills of the old volcanic energy.</p> +<p>Probably the Anglican ideas ceased to be the most powerfully +agitating of intellectual forces in Oxford about 1845. A +new current came in from Rugby, and the influence of Dr. Arnold +and the natural tide of reaction began to run very strong. +If we had the <i>apologiæ</i> of the men who thought most, +about the time when Clough was an undergraduate, we should see +that the influence of the Anglican divines had become a thing of +sentiment and curiosity. The life had not died out of it, +but the people whom it could permanently affect were now limited +in number and easily recognisable. This form of religion +might tempt and attract the strongest men for a while, but it +certainly would not retain them. It is by this time a +matter of history, though we are speaking of our contemporaries, +that the abyss between the <i>Lives of the English Saints</i>, +and the <i>Nemesis of Faith</i>, was narrow, and easily +crossed. There was in Oxford that enthusiasm for certain +German ideas which had previously been felt for medieval +ideas. Liberalism in history, philosophy, and religion was +the ruling power; and people believed in Liberalism. What +is, or used to be, called the Broad Church, was the birth of some +ten or fifteen years of Liberalism in religion at Oxford. +The <i>Essays and Reviews</i> were what the <i>Tracts</i> had +been; and Homeric battles were fought over the income of the +Regius Professor of Greek. When that affair was settled +Liberalism had had her innings, there was no longer a single +dominant intellectual force; but the old storms, slowly +subsiding, left the ship of the University lurching and rolling +in a heavy swell.</p> +<p>People believed in Liberalism! Their faith worked +miracles; and the great University Commission performed many +wonderful works, bidding close fellowships be open, and giving +all power into the hands of Examiners. Their dispensation +still survives; the large examining-machine works night and day, +in term time and vacation, and yet we are not happy. The +age in Oxford, as in the world at large, is the age of collapsed +opinions. Never men believed more fervidly in any +revelation than the men of twenty years ago believed in political +economy, free trade, open competition, and the reign of +Common-sense and of Mr. Cobden. Where is that faith +now? Many of the middle-aged disciples of the Church of +Common-sense are still in our midst. They say the old +sayings, they intone the old responses, but somehow it seems that +scepticism is abroad; it seems that the world is wider than their +system. Not even open examinations for fellowships and +scholarships, not half a dozen new schools, and science, and the +Museum, and the Slade Professorship of Art, have made Oxford that +ideal University which was expected to come down from Heaven like +the New Jerusalem.</p> +<p>We have glanced at the history of Oxford to little purpose if +we have not learned that it is an eminently discontented +place. There is room in colleges and common rooms for both +sorts of discontent—the ignoble, which is the child of +vanity and weakness; and the noble, which is the unassuaged +thirst for perfection. The present result of the last forty +years in Oxford is a discontent which is constantly trying to +improve the working, and to widen the intellectual influence, of +the University. There are more ways than one in which this +feeling gets vent. The simplest, and perhaps the most +honest and worthy impulse, is that which makes the best of the +present arrangements. Great religious excitement and +religious discussion being in abeyance, for once, the energy of +the place goes out in teaching. The last reforms have made +Oxford a huge collection of schools, in which physical science, +history, philosophy, philology, scholarship, theology, and almost +everything in the world but archæology, are being taught +and learned with very great vigour. The hardest worked of +men is a conscientious college tutor; and almost all tutors are +conscientious. The professors being an ornamental, but +(with few exceptions) <i>merely</i> ornamental, order of beings, +the tutors have to do the work of a University, which, for the +moment, is a teaching-machine. They deliver I know not how +many sets of lectures a year, and each lecture demands a fresh +and full acquaintance with the latest ideas of French, German, +and Italian scholars. No one can afford, or is willing, to +lag behind; every one is ‘gladly learning,’ like +Chaucer’s clerk, as well as earnestly teaching. The +knowledge and the industry of these gentlemen is a perpetual +marvel to the ‘bellelettristic trifler.’ New +studies, like that of Celtic, and of the obscurer Oriental +tongues, have sprung up during recent years, have grown into +strength and completeness. It is unnecessary to say, +perhaps, that these facts dispose of the popular idea about the +luxury of the long vacation. During the more part of the +long vacation the conscientious teacher must be toiling after the +great mundane movement in learning. He must be acquiring +the very freshest ideas about Sanscrit and Greek; about the Ogham +characters and the Cyprian syllabary; about early Greek +inscriptions and the origins of Roman history, in addition to +reading the familiar classics by the light of the latest +commentaries.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p200b.jpg"> +<img alt= +"The Ante Chapel, New College" +title= +"The Ante Chapel, New College" + src="images/p200s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>What is the tangible result, and what the gain of all these +labours? The answer is the secret of University +discontent. All this accumulated knowledge goes out in +teaching, is scattered abroad in lectures, is caught up in +note-books, and is poured out, with a difference, in +examinations. There is not an amount of original literary +work produced by the University which bears any due proportion to +the solid materials accumulated. It is just the reverse of +Falstaff’s case—but one halfpenny-worth of sack to an +intolerable deal of bread; but a drop of the spirit of learning +to cart-loads of painfully acquired knowledge. The time and +energy of men is occupied in amassing facts, in lecturing, and +then in eternal examinations. Even if the results are +satisfactory on the whole, even if a hundred well-equipped young +men are turned out of the examining-machine every year, these +arrangements certainly curb individual ambition. If a +resident in Oxford is to make an income that seems adequate, he +must lecture, examine, and write manuals and primers, till he is +grey, and till the energy that might have added something new and +valuable to the acquisitions of the world has departed.</p> +<p>This state of things has produced the demand for the +‘Endowment of Research.’ It is not necessary to +go into that controversy. Englishmen, as a rule, believe +that endowed cats catch no mice. They would rather endow a +theatre than a <i>Gelehrter</i>, if endow something they +must. They have a British sympathy with these beautiful, if +useless beings, the heads of houses, whom it would be necessary +to abolish if Researchers were to get the few tens of thousands +they require. Finally, it is asked whether the learned +might not find great endowment in economy; for it is a fact that +a Frenchman, a German, or an Italian will ‘research’ +for life on no larger income than a simple fellowship +bestows.</p> +<p>The great obstacle to this ‘plain living’ is +perhaps to be found in the traditional hospitality of +Oxford. All her doors are open, and every stranger is +kindly entreated by her, and she is like the ‘discreet +housewife’ in Homer—</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: +center">εἴδατα +πόλλ’ +ἐπιθεῖσα, +χαριζομένη +παρεόντων.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In some languages the same word serves for +‘stranger’ and ‘enemy,’ but in the Oxford +dialect ‘stranger’ and ‘guest’ are +synonymous. Such is the custom of the place, and it does +not make plain living very easy. Some critics will be +anxious here to attack the ‘æsthetic’ +movement. One will be expected to say that, after the ideas +of Newman, after the ideas of Arnold, and of Jowett, came those +of the wicked, the extravagant, the effeminate, the immoral +‘Blue China School.’ Perhaps there is something +in this, but sermons on the subject are rather luxuries than +necessaries in the present didactic mood of the Press. +‘They were friends of ours, moreover,’ as Aristotle +says, ‘who brought these ideas in’; so the subject +may be left with this brief notice. As a piece of practical +advice, one may warn the young and ardent advocate of the +Endowment of Research that he will find it rather easier to +curtail his expenses than to get a subsidy from the +Commission.</p> +<p>The last important result of the ‘modern spirit’ +at Oxford, the last stroke of the sanguine Liberal genius, was +the removal of the celibate condition from certain +fellowships. One can hardly take a bird’s-eye view of +Oxford without criticising the consequences of this +innovation. The topic, however, is, for a dozen reasons, +very difficult to handle. One reason is, that the +experiment has not been completely tried. It is easy enough +to marry on a fellowship, a tutorship, and a few small +miscellaneous offices. But how will it be when you come to +forty years, or even fifty? No materials exist which can be +used by the social philosopher who wants an answer to this +question. In the meantime, the common rooms are perhaps +more dreary than of old, in many a college, for lack of the +presence of men now translated to another place. As to the +‘society’ of Oxford, that is, no doubt, very much +more charming and vivacious than it used to be in the days when +Tony Wood was the surly champion of celibacy.</p> +<p>Looking round the University, then, one finds in it an +activity that would once have seemed almost feverish, a highly +conscientious industry, doing that which its hand finds to do, +but not absolutely certain that it is not neglecting nobler +tasks. Perhaps Oxford has never been more busy with its own +work, never less distracted by religious politics. If we +are to look for a less happy sign, we shall find it in the +tendency to run up ‘new buildings.’ The +colleges are landowners: they must suffer with other owners of +real property in the present depression; they will soon need all +their savings. That is one reason why they should be chary +of building; another is, that the fellows of a college at any +given moment are not necessarily endowed with architectural +knowledge and taste. They should think twice, or even +thrice, before leaving on Oxford for many centuries the uncomely +mark of an unfortunate judgment.</p> +<h2><a name="page209"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +209</span>CHAPTER X<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">UNDERGRADUATE +LIFE—CONCLUSION</span></h2> +<p>A <span class="smcap">hundred</span> pictures have been drawn +of undergraduate life at Oxford, and a hundred caricatures. +Novels innumerable introduce some Oxford scenes. An author +generally writes his first romance soon after taking his degree; +he writes about his own experience and his own memories; he mixes +his ingredients at will and tints according to fancy. This +is one of the two reasons why pictures of Oxford, from the +undergraduate side, are generally false. They are either +drawn by an aspirant who is his own hero, and who idealises +himself and his friends, or they are designed by ladies who have +read <i>Verdant Green</i>, and who, at some period, have paid a +flying visit to Cambridge. An exhaustive knowledge of +<i>Verdant Green</i>, and a hasty view of the Fitzwilliam Museum +and ‘the backs of the Colleges’ (which are to +Cambridge what the Docks are to Liverpool), do not afford +sufficient materials for an accurate sketch of Oxford. The +picture daubed by the emancipated undergraduate who dabbles in +fiction is as unrecognisable. He makes himself and his +friends too large, too noisy, too bibulous, too learned, too +extravagant, too pugnacious. They seem to stride down the +High, prodigious, disproportionate figures, like the kings of +Egypt on the monuments, overshadowing the crowd of dons, +tradesmen, bargees, and cricket-field or river-side cads. +Often one dimly recognises the scenes, and the acquaintances of +years ago, in University novels. The mildest of men +suddenly pose as heroes of the Guy Livingstone type, fellows who +‘screw up’ timid dons, box with colossal watermen, +and read all night with wet towels bound round their fevered +brows. These sketches are all nonsense. Men who do +these things do not write about them; and men who write about +them never did them.</p> +<p>There is yet another cause which increases the difficulty of +describing undergraduate life with truth. There are very +many varieties of undergraduates, who have very various ways of +occupying and amusing themselves. A steady man that reads +his five or six hours a day, and takes his pastime chiefly on the +river, finds that his path scarcely ever crosses that of him who +belongs to the Bullingdon Club, hunts thrice a week, and rarely +dines in hall. Then the ‘pale student,’ who is +hard at work in his rooms or in the Bodleian all day, and who has +only two friends, out-college men, with whom he takes walks and +tea,—he sees existence in a very different aspect. +The Union politician, who is for ever hanging about his club, +dividing the house on questions of blotting-paper and quill pens, +discussing its affairs at breakfast, intriguing for the place of +Librarian, writing rubbish in the suggestion-book, to him Oxford +is only a soil carefully prepared for the growth of that fine +flower, the Union. He never encounters the undergraduate +who haunts billiard-rooms and shy taverns, who buys jewelry for +barmaids, and who is admired for the audacity with which he +smuggled a fox-terrier into college in a brown-paper +parcel. There are many other species of undergraduate, +scarcely more closely resembling each other in manners and modes +of thought than the little Japanese student resembles the +metaphysical Scotch exhibitioner, or than the hereditary war +minister of Siam (whose career, though brief, was vivacious) +resembled the Exeter Sioux, a half-reclaimed savage, who +disappeared on the warpath after failing to scalp the Junior +Proctor. When The Wet Blanket returned to his lodge in the +land of Sitting Bull, he doubtless described Oxford life in his +own way to the other Braves, while the squaws hung upon his words +and the papooses played around. His account would vary, in +many ways, from that of</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Whiskered Tomkins from the hall<br /> + Of seedy Magdalene.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And he, again, would not see Oxford life steadily, and see it +whole, as a more cultivated and polished undergraduate +might. Thus there are countless pictures of the works and +ways of undergraduates at the University. The scene is ever +the same—boat-races and foot-ball matches, scouts, schools, +and proctors, are common to all,—but in other respects the +sketches must always vary, must generally be one-sided, and must +often seem inaccurate.</p> +<p>It appears that a certain romance is attached to the three +years that are passed between the estate of the freshman and that +of the Bachelor of Arts. These years are spent in a kind of +fairyland, neither quite within nor quite outside of the +world. College life is somewhat, as has so often been said, +like the old Greek city life. For three years men are in +the possession of what the world does not enjoy—leisure; +and they are supposed to be using that leisure for the purposes +of perfection. They are making themselves and their +characters. We are all doing that, all the days of our +lives; but at the Universities there is, or is expected to be, +more deliberate and conscious effort. Men are in a position +to ‘try all things’ before committing themselves to +any. Their new-found freedom does not merely consist in the +right to poke their own fires, order their own breakfasts, and +use their own cheque-books. These things, which make so +much impression on the mind at first, are only the outward signs +of freedom. The boy who has just left school, and the +thoughtless life of routine in work and play, finds himself in +the midst of books, of thought, and discussion. He has time +to look at all the common problems of the hour, and yet he need +not make up his mind hurriedly, nor pledge himself to +anything. He can flirt with young opinions, which come to +him with candid faces, fresh as Queen Entelechy in Rabelais, +though, like her, they are as old as human thought. Here +first he meets Metaphysics, and perhaps falls in love with that +enchantress, ‘who sifts time with a fine large blue silk +sieve.’ There is hardly a clever lad but fancies +himself a metaphysician, and has designs on the Absolute. +Most fall away very early from this, their first love; and they +follow Science down one of her many paths, or concern themselves +with politics, and take a side which, as a rule, is the opposite +of that to which they afterwards adhere. Thus your +Christian Socialist becomes a Court preacher, and puts his trust +in princes; the young Tory of the old type will lapse into +membership of a School Board. It is the time of liberty, +and of intellectual attachments too fierce to last long.</p> +<p>Unluckily there are subjects more engrossing, and problems +more attractive, than politics, and science, art, and pure +metaphysics. The years of undergraduate life are those in +which, to many men, the enigmas of religion present +themselves. They bring their boyish faith into a place (if +one may quote Pantagruel’s voyage once more) like the Isle +of the Macraeones. On that mournful island were confusedly +heaped the ruins of altars, fanes, temples, shrines, sacred +obelisks, barrows of the dead, pyramids, and tombs. Through +the ruins wandered, now and again, the half-articulate words of +the Oracle, telling how Pan was dead. Oxford, like the Isle +of the Macraeones, is a lumber-room of ruinous philosophies, +decrepit religions, forlorn beliefs. The modern system of +study takes the pupil through all the philosophic and many of the +religious systems of belief, which, in the distant and the nearer +past, have been fashioned by men, and have sheltered men for a +day. You are taught to mark each system crumbling, to watch +the rise of the new temple of thought on its ruins, and to see +that also perish, breached by assaults from without or sapped by +the slow approaches of Time. This is not the place in which +we can well discuss the merits of modern University +education. But no man can think of his own University days, +or look with sympathetic eyes at those who fill the old halls and +rooms, and not remember, with a twinge of the old pain, how +religious doubt insists on thrusting itself into the +colleges. And it is fair to say that, for this, no set of +teachers or tutors is responsible. It is the modern +historical spirit that must be blamed, that too clear-sighted +vision which we are all condemned to share of the past of the +race. We are compelled to look back on old philosophies, on +India, Athens, Alexandria, and on the schools of men who thought +so hard within our own ancient walls. We are compelled to +see that their systems were only plausible, that their truths +were but half-truths. It is the long vista of failure thus +revealed which suggests these doubts that weary, and torture, and +embitter the naturally happy life of discussion, amusement, +friendship, sport, and study. These doubts, after all, +dwell on the threshold of modern existence, and on the +threshold—namely, at the Universities—men subdue +them, or evade them.</p> +<p>The amusements of the University have been so often described +that little need be said of them here. Unhealthy as the +site of Oxford is, the place is rather fortunately disposed for +athletic purposes. The river is the chief feature in the +scenery, and in the life of amusement. From the first day +of term, in October, it is crowded with every sort of +craft. The freshman admires the golden colouring of the +woods and Magdalen tower rising, silvery, through the blue +autumnal haze. As soon as he appears on the river, his +weight, strength, and ‘form’ are estimated. He +soon finds himself pulling in a college ‘challenge +four,’ under the severe eye of a senior cox, and by the +middle of December he has rowed his first race, and is regularly +entered for a serious vocation. The thorough-going +boating-man is the creature of habit. Every day, at the +same hour, after a judicious luncheon, he is seen, in flannels, +making for the barge. He goes out, in a skiff, or a pair, +or a four-oar, or to a steeplechase through the hedges when +Oxford, as in our illustration, is under water. The +illustration represents Merton, and the writer recognises his old +rooms, with the Venetian blinds which Mr. Ruskin denounced. +Chief of all the boating-man goes out in an eight, and rows down +to Iffley, with the beautiful old mill and Norman church, or +accomplishes ‘the long course.’ He rows up +again, lounges in the barge, rows down again (if he has only +pulled over the short course), and goes back to dinner in +hall. The table where men sit who are in training is a +noisy table, and the athletes verge on +‘bear-fighting’ even in hall. A statistician +might compute how many steaks, chops, pots of beer, and of +marmalade, an orthodox man will consume in the course of three +years. He will, perhaps, pretend to suffer from the +monotony of boating shop, boating society, and broad-blown +boating jokes. But this appears to be a harmless +affectation. The old breakfasts, wines, and suppers, the +honest boating slang, will always have an attraction for +him. The summer term will lose its delight when the May +races are over. Boating-men are the salt of the University, +so steady, so well disciplined, so good-tempered are they. +The sport has nothing selfish or personal in it; men row for +their college, or their University; not like running—men, +who run, as it were, each for his own hand. Whatever may be +his work in life, a boating-man will stick to it. His +favourite sport is not expensive, and nothing can possibly be +less luxurious. He is often a reading man, though it may be +doubted whether ‘he who runs may read’ as a +rule. Running is, perhaps, a little overdone, and +Strangers’ cups are, or lately were, given with injudicious +generosity. To the artist’s eye, however, few sights +in modern life are more graceful than the University +quarter-of-a-mile race. Nowhere else, perhaps, do you see +figures so full of a Hellenic grace and swiftness.</p> +<p>The cream of University life is the first summer term. +Debts, as yet, are not; the Schools are too far off to cast their +shadow over the unlimited enjoyment, which begins when lecture is +over, at one o’clock. There are so many things to +do,—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘When wickets are bowled and defended,<br /> + When Isis is glad with the eights,<br /> +When music and sunset are blended,<br /> + When Youth and the Summer are mates,<br /> +When freshmen are heedless of “Greats,”<br /> + When note-books are scribbled with rhyme,<br /> +Ah! these are the hours that one rates<br /> + Sweet hours, and the fleetest of Time!’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>There are drags at every college gate to take college teams +down to Cowley. There is the beautiful scenery of the +‘stripling Thames’ to explore; the haunts of the +immortal ‘Scholar Gipsy,’ and of Shelley, and of +Clough’s Piper, who—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Went in his youth and the sunshine +rejoicing, to Nuneham and Godstowe.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Further afield men seldom go in summer, there is so much to +delight and amuse in Oxford. <a name="citation221"></a><a +href="#footnote221" class="citation">[221]</a> What day can +be happier than that of which the morning is given (after a +lively college breakfast, or a ‘commonising’ with a +friend) to study, while cricket occupies the afternoon, till +music and sunset fill the grassy stretches above Iffley, and the +college eights flash past among cheering and splashing? +Then there is supper in the cool halls, darkling, and half-lit +up; and after supper talk, till the birds twitter in the elms, +and the roofs and the chapel spire look unfamiliar in the blue of +dawn. How long the days were then! almost like the days of +childhood; how distinct is the impression all experience used to +make! In later seasons Care is apt to mount the college +staircase, and the ‘oak’ which Shelley blessed cannot +keep out this visitor. She comes in many a shape—as +debt, and doubt, and melancholy; and often she comes as +bereavement. Life and her claims wax importunate; to many +men the Schools mean a cruel and wearing anxiety, out of all +proportion to the real importance of academic success. We +cannot see things as they are, and estimate their value, in +youth; and if pleasures are more keen then, grief is more +hopeless, doubt more desolate, uncertainty more gnawing, than in +later years, when we have known and survived a good deal of the +worst of mortal experience. Often on men still in their +pupilage the weight of the first misfortunes falls heavily; the +first touch of Dame Fortune’s whip is the most +poignant. We cannot recover the first summer term; but it +has passed into ourselves and our memories, into which Oxford, +with her beauty and her romance, must also quickly pass. He +is not to be envied who has known and does not love her. +Where her children have quarrelled with her the fault is theirs, +not hers. They have chosen the accidental evils to brood +on, in place of acquiescing in her grace and charm. These +are crowded and hustled out of modern life; the fever and the +noise of our struggles fill all the land, leaving still, at the +Universities, peace, beauty, and leisure.</p> +<p>If any word in these papers has been unkindly said, it has +only been spoken, I hope, of the busybodies who would make Oxford +cease to be herself; who would rob her of her loveliness and her +repose.</p> +<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2> +<p><a name="footnote120"></a><a href="#citation120" +class="footnote">[120]</a> Poems by Ernest Myers. +London, 1877.</p> +<p><a name="footnote221"></a><a href="#citation221" +class="footnote">[221]</a> A very pleasing account of the +scenery near Oxford appeared in the <i>Cornhill</i> for September +1879.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OXFORD***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 2444-h.htm or 2444-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/4/2444 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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