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diff --git a/old/oxfrd10.txt b/old/oxfrd10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5419e99 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/oxfrd10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3399 @@ +The Project Gutenberg Etext of Oxford[City/Univ], by Andrew Lang +#24 in our series by Andrew Lang + + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations* + +Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and +further information is included below. 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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 John-a-Dreams. +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. + +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 +Alma Mater, it is because they have outstayed their natural "welcome +while," or because they have resisted her genial influence in youth. + + + +CHAPTER I--THE TOWN BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY + + + +Most 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. + +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 English +Chronicle 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 grand pont, 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 Norman Conquest, 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," + + +[Greek text which cannot be reproduced] + + +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" (Munimenta Academica, 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. + +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 Codex Diplomaticus +(DCCIX.). 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 III. 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: +"Quod nullus rex attemptavit a tempore Regis Algari," an error, for +Harold attemptavit, 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, reflexis habenis equitans extra moenia aulam regiain in +suburbio positam introivit. In 1280, however, he seems to have +plucked up courage and attended a Chapter of Dominicans in Oxford. + +The last of the meetings between North and South was held at Oxford +in October 1065. "In urle quae famoso nomine Oxnaford nuncupatur," +to quote a document of Cnut's. (Cod. Dipl. DCCXLVI. 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." + +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? + +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 +archaeological 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 THE NEW DROP, 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." + +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? + +The Chronicle of Abingdon 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," turpissimi pueri, +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. + +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": + + +"Pigons qui sont en 1'essoine, +Enserrez soubz trappe voliere," + + +as a famous Paris student, Francois 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. + +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 Abingdon +Chronicle (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 +(pro libito viverunt), 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 pro libito, 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. Oseney Chronicle), the tower was burned down by +Stephen's soldiery in 1141 (Oseney Chronicle, p. 24). + + + +CHAPTER II--THE EARLY STUDENTS--A DAY WITH A MEDIEVAL UNDERGRADUATE + + + +Oxford, 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 PAPERS are very fair, +very fair. But in the matters of CHAPELS and of CATECHETICS, Mr. +Brown sets--for a SCHOLAR--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 COLLEGE cannot +hear with pleasure of such behaviour on the part of a SCHOLAR. You +are GATED, 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 (Munimenta Academica, +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 COLLECT +their salary from the scholars." This collection 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. + +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 Universitas, owed many of her +regulations; while, again, the founder of the college system, Walter +de Merton (who visited Paris in company with Henry III.), 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 CHESTS, +the chest of St. Frideswyde. These chests were a kind of Mont de +Piete, and to found them was at first the favourite form of +benefaction. Money was left in this or that chest, from which +students and masters would borrow, on the security of pledges, which +were generally books, cups, daggers, and so forth. + +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, Annals, 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: + +[Greek text which cannot be reproduced] + +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 III. "a most large charter, +containing many liberties, some that they had before, and OTHERS THAT +HE HAD TAKEN AWAY FROM THE TOWN." 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. + +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, Annals, 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. + +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 Munimenta +Academica, 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. + +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 III.--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 Breaute. +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. + +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 camera. 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 + + +"Twenty bookes, clothed in blak and reed, +Of Aristotil and of his philosophie," + + +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 lotrix, has been detected at last. "Under pretence of +washing for scholars, multa mala perpetrata fuerunt," she has +committed all manner of crimes, and is now in the Spinning House, +carcerata fuit. 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 +camera 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 viva voce 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 Praelectors are holding +forth, and all newly made Masters of Arts are bound to teach their +subject regere scholas, whether they like it or not. Our friend, +Master Stoke, however, is on pleasure bent, and means to pay his fine +of two-pence for omitting lecture, and go off to the festival of his +nation (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, - + + +"Mihi est propositum in taberna mori, +Vinum sit appositum morientis ori, +Ut dicant, quum venerint, angelorum chori +Deus sit propitius huic potatori." + + +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 +(larva) and vine-leaves, mutters to himself the equivalent for "there +WILL be a row about this." There will, indeed, for the penalty is +not "crossing at the buttery," nor "gating," but--excommunication! +(Munim. Academ., 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 (ut vi et violentia raperent +cerevisiam aliorum scholarum in vico): 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" (regratarii) 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 camera of Roger de Freshfield, a reading man, but a good fellow. +He knocks and enters, and finds Freshfield over his favourite work, +the Posterior Analytics, and a pottle of strawberries. "Come down to +the Beaumont, old man," he says, "and play pyked staffe." Roger is +disinclined to move, he MUST finish the Posterior Analytics. Stoke +lounges about, in the eternal fashion of undergraduates after +luncheon, and picking up the Philobiblon 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 Analytics, 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 (extraxit cultellum +vocatum hangere), 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 inceptor, 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 Ego currit, or ego est currens, is as good Latin as +ego curro. 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." + +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, infando nomine +Chamber-Dekyns, ceased to exist. Learning, however, dwindled, as +colleges increased, under the clerical and reactionary rule of the +House of Lancaster. + + + +CHAPTER III--THE RENAISSANCE AND THE REFORMATION + + + +We 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? + +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 VIII. 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: + + +SECOND COURSE + +Vian in brase. Carcell. +Crane in sawce. Partrych. +Young Pocock. Venson baked. +Coney. Fryed meat in paste. +Pigeons. Lesh Lumbert. +Byttor. A Frutor. +Curlew. A Sutteltee. + + +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 +Ethics and Politics of Aristotle, translated by Leonard the Aretine. +Here, among the numerous writings of the Fathers, are Tully and +Seneca, Averroes and Avicenna, Bellum Trojae cum secretis secretorum, +Apuleius, Aulus Gellius, Livy, Boccaccio, Petrarch. Here, with +Ovid's verses, is the Commentary on Dante, and his Divine Comedy. +Here, rarest of all, is a Greek Dictionary, the silent father of +Liddel's and Scott's to be. + +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, Italici, 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 Cure of Meudon. For Oxford, as for +Gargantua, "they appointed a great sophister-doctor, that read him +Donatus, Theodoletus, and Alanus, in parabolis." 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." + +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 VIII. 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. + +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 (Oxford Reformers, +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 Iliad 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. + +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 VIII., Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth. A few +moments in these stormy years are still memorable for some terrible +or ludicrous event. + +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 sewers or +blanshers, 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 blanshers, for other sportive purposes! + +"Habent sua fata libelli," as Terentianus Maurus says, in a +frequently quoted verse. If Cromwell's Commissioners were hard on +Duns, the Visitors of Edward VI. 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 VI. gave free play to that ascetic and +intolerable hatred of letters which had now and again made its voice +heard under Henry VIII. 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 VI. + +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! + +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, candida fossa, 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. + +It was in a night-battle that they fell, and "confused was the cry of +the paean," 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? + +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, "AND HURRIED UP AND DOWN 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: + + +"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. + + +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 THE DROWSY HEADS--dormitantes. 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. + + + +CHAPTER IV--JACOBEAN OXFORD + + + +The 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. + +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: + + +"A citie seated, rich in everything, +Girt with wood and water, meadow, corn, and hill." + + +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. + +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 le roi soleil, as courtiers called +Louis XIV., 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. + +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." + +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 VIII., Edward VI., 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! + +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 SUSPECT, 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. + +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: + + +"To Oxenford the King has gone, +With all his mighty peers, +That hath in peace maintained us, +These five or six long years." + + +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. + + +"The King himself did offer,"--"What, I pray?" +"He offered twice or thrice--to go away!" + + +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. + +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. + + +"And here are gardens bright with sinuous rills, +Where blossoms many an incense-bearing tree"; + + +but here is scarcely the proper training-ground of first-class men! + +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. + +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, [Greek text which +cannot be reproduced], 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. + +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." + +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 III. 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 +Gesta Stephani 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! + + + +CHAPTER V--SOME SCHOLARS OF THE RESTORATION + + + +In 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 rien ne peut plaire. + +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 Bohemiae Aula, 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. + +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 irritabile illud et vanissimum +Malmesburiense animal. 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 (Letters to John +Ellis; Camden Society, 1875) describes the battles in city taverns +between author and translator: + + +"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." + + +From the record of these combats, we learn that the recluse Antony +was a man of his hands: + + +"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 (sic) 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." + + +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 Athenae Oxonienses he had written the lives of all his +enemies. + +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 Marmora Oxoniensia, which came out 1676. We must not +suppose, however, that Prideaux was an enthusiastic archaeologist. +He did the Marmora 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 stelae, 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. + + +"He goeth forth unto the unknown land, +Where wife nor child may follow; thus far tell +The lingering clasp of hand in faithful hand, +And that brief carven legend, Friend, farewell. + +O pregnant sign, profound simplicity! +All passionate pain and fierce remonstrating +Being wholly purged, leave this mere memory, +Deep but not harsh, a sad and sacred thing." {1} + + +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. + +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 Daniel +Deronda, 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. + +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." + + +"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." + + +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. + +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. + + +"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." + + +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 - + + +"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?" + + +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. + +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. + + +"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?" + + +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 Iliad, who not only teach +what is already known, but add to the stock of knowledge, and advance +the boundaries of scholarship and science. + +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. + +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. + +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 pounds." 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. + +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." + + + +CHAPTER VI--HIGH TORY OXFORD + + + +The 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. + +The Spectator 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 Spectator, 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: + + +"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 Latin and Greek 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, WHETHER HE +WAS PREPARED FOR DEATH? 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." + + +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 Reliquiae of Hearne (an antiquarian +successor of Antony Wood, a bibliophile, an archaeologist, and as +honest a man as Jacobitism could make him) let us quote an example of +Heaven's wrath against Dissenters + + +"Aug. 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. + + +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 LARGE PAPER. It was the joy of Tom's +existence to see his editions become first scarce, then VERY SCARCE, +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." + +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 Spectator (No. 43). "We are +much offended at the Act for importing French wines. A bottle or two +of good solid Edifying Port, at honest George's, made a Night +cheerful, and threw off Reserve. But this plaguy French 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 Spectator, 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. + +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." + +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.": + + +"He's o'er the seas and far awa', +He's o'er the seas and far awa'; +Altho' his back be at the wa' +We'll drink his health that's far awa'." + + +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. + +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. + +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, King James the Third! The true +king! No Usurper. 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 a priori principles when they arrived at +this remarkable conclusion. + +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." + +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. + +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 +AND HOUSES FOR MARRIED DONS 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 Turl Gate" +(a corruption for Thorold 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 Patey's Quad 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. + + + +CHAPTER VII--GEORGIAN OXFORD + + + +Oxford 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. + +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." + +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. + +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 +pounds, 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. + + +Carmina vis nostri scribant meliora poetae +Ingenium jubeas purior baustus alat. + + +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." + +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. + +Of all the carping, cross-grained, scandal-loving, Whiggish +assailants of Alma Mater, the author of Terrae Filius 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, MDCCXXVI.) is not at +all rare, and is well worth a desultory reading. What strikes one +most in Terrae Filius 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 +TALKER, rather than a lax THINKER, against religion; "but lax talking +against religion at Oxford would not be suffered." The author of +Terrae Filius, 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, - + + +"Since in religion all men disagree, +And some one God believe, some thirty, and some three." + + +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 DAMNABLE DRUNK, and carry you, as they +call it, a CORPSE 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 CHURCHMEN, and +that you believe as the CHURCH 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 TRUE CHURCHMAN in that which the words bear, and in that which +they were written." + +This is pretty plain speaking, and Terrae Filius 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. + +Terrae Filius, 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. Terrae Filius thus describes a "smart," as these dandies +were called--Mr. Frippery: + + +"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 REGULARS 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." + + +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. + + +"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." + + +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. + +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 pounds, 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. + +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 pounds, 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. + + + +CHAPTER VIII--POETS AT OXFORD: SHELLEY AND LANDOR + + + +At 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 afflatus. When the +college poet has composed a sonnet, ode, or what not, he sends it to +the Editor of the Nineteenth Century, and it returns to him after +many days. At last it appears in print, in College Rhymes, 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 formulae of +Mr. Bradlaugh. + +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. + +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." + +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 Dolores), 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? + +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. + +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. + +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 Life of Shelley, 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? + +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 OFFICIAL 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 Sturm und Drang, 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 III. after tea." + +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. + + +"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. + +""Will your baby tell us anything about pre-existence, Madam?" he +asked, in a piercing voice, and with a wistful look." + + +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 + + +"in winter, on the causeway chill, +Where home through flooded fields foot travellers go," + + +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: + +[Greek verse which cannot be reproduced] + +"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!" + + + +CHAPTER IX--A GENERAL VIEW + + + +We 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, WHITHER HAST THOU COME? 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. + +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. + +The Tractarian movement was, of course, the first of the religious +disturbances to which we refer, and much the most powerful. + +It is curious to read about that movement in the Apologia, 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. + +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 Abbe, +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 aesthetic 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 Tracts, 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. + +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 apologiae +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 Lives of the English Saints, and the Nemesis of Faith, +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 Essays and Reviews +were what the Tracts 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. + +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. + +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 +archaeology, 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) MERELY 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. + +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. + +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 Gelehrter, 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. + +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 - + + +[Greek text which cannot be reproduced] + + +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 +"aesthetic" 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. + +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. + +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. + + + +CHAPTER X--UNDERGRADUATE LIFE--CONCLUSION + + + +A hundred 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 Verdant Green, +and who, at some period, have paid a flying visit to Cambridge. An +exhaustive knowledge of Verdant Green, 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. + +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 + + +"Whiskered Tomkins from the hail +Of seedy Magdalene." + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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, - + + +"When wickets are bowled and defended, +When Isis is glad with the eights, +When music and sunset are blended, +When Youth and the Summer are mates, +When freshmen are heedless of "Greats," +When note-books are scribbled with rhyme, +Ah! these are the hours that one rates +Sweet hours, and the fleetest of Time!" + + +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 - + + +"Went in his youth and the sunshine rejoicing, to Nuneham and +Godstowe." + + +Further afield men seldom go in summer, there is so much to delight +and amuse in Oxford. {2} 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. + +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. + + + +Footnotes: + +{1} Poems by Ernest Myers. London, 1877. + +{2} A very pleasing account of the scenery near Oxford appeared in +the Cornhill for September 1879. + + + + + +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Oxford[City/Univ], by Andrew Lang + |