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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/77240-0.txt b/77240-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..118fc3b --- /dev/null +++ b/77240-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7751 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77240 *** + + + + +THE ROMANCE OF THE OXFORD COLLEGES + +[Illustration: _Merton College._ + +_Photo. Hills & Saunders_ + +_Allen & Co. (London) Ltd. Sc._] + + + + + THE ROMANCE + OF THE + OXFORD COLLEGES + + BY + FRANCIS GRIBBLE + SOMETIME SCHOLAR OF EXETER, AUTHOR OF “GEORGE + SAND AND HER LOVERS,” ETC. + + WITH SEVENTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS + + MILLS & BOON, LIMITED + 49 WHITCOMB STREET + LONDON W.C. + + _Published 1910_ + + + + +PREFACE + + +This work does not purport to be either a history or a guide book. Of +Oxford Guide Books, and of Histories of Oxford, there is already an +adequate provision, and there is no dearth of Oxford Reminiscences, or +of Studies of Oxford Life and Manners. But there may still be room for +a modest volume which, while unscrupulously omitting whatever seems +tedious, or of purely local interest, recalls the stories concerning +which experience shows the average stranger to be most curious, and +answers the questions which the average stranger, when visiting the +various colleges, is most apt to ask. + +The book, indeed, is the outcome of an experience which revealed the +nature, and the limits, of that curiosity. It was lately the privilege +of the writer to act as guide to some ladies who were visiting Oxford +for the first time, and he made a mental note of the points on which +they showed themselves most avid of information. They did not, he found, +desire to burden their memories with dates, or to be entertained with +lists of the names of the Heads of Colleges and Halls, and they were +content to admire the architecture without entering into technical +details. On the other hand, stories of human interest—stories introducing +well-known names—stories of events in which the history of Oxford came +into close touch with the history of England—were constantly and eagerly +demanded. + +Why was Shelley expelled from University? Why did Dr. Johnson throw +the boots out of his window at Pembroke? What is the truth about the +Brasenose Hellfire Club, and the ghost? What was the origin of town and +gown rows? Is it true that Froude’s book was publicly burnt at Exeter? +What was Oxford like at the time of the Civil War? What sort of people +were the Tractarians, the Wesleyans, the Æsthetes and the Positivists? +Why was Jowett so famous? Why are so many Jesus men called Jones? Which +was Gladstone’s college, and which was Lord Randolph Churchill’s? Why +do they have boar’s head for dinner on Christmas Day at Queen’s? Is it +true that Beau Nash was an Oxford man? Can you tell me any stories about +Charles Reade—or Sir Richard Burton—or Southey—or de Quincey—or Pater? + +Such were a few of the questions asked. The book answers them, and +answers a good many other questions of the same sort. It proceeds on the +assumption that every college, at some period of its history, through +some notable name on its books, has been profoundly interesting, not only +to the University, but to the world, and it dwells on those interesting +moments and those interesting incidents as fully as space permits. + + FRANCIS GRIBBLE. + + + + +TABLE OF CONTENTS + + + PAGE + + UNIVERSITY COLLEGE 17 + + Founders and benefactors—Alfred the Great—William of + Durham—The Statutes—The conversion of Obadiah Walker—Lord + Herbert of Cherbury—Lord Eldon’s examination in Hebrew—The + screwing up of the Senior Proctor—Shelley—A “Stinks Man”—His + unpopularity with the dons—His “printing freaks”—His friendship + with Hogg—His conversation with the Baby—His Religious + Opinions—His publication of “The Necessity of Atheism”—His + expulsion. + + BALLIOL COLLEGE 36 + + The birching of Robert of Balliol by the Bishop of Durham—He + founds a College to make atonement for his fault—Insignificance + of the College in early times—Snell Exhibitioners—Adam + Smith—His scornful criticism of Oxford—Southey—His + introduction to Coleridge of Jesus, Cambridge—Their dream + of Pantisocracy—College “Rags” in the dark days—The dawn of + civilisation—Mastership of Parsons—Of Jenkyns—Of Jowett—Jowett + as tutor—His reforms—His conversation—His sermons—The + inscrutable secret which he guarded. + + MERTON COLLEGE 55 + + Antiquity of Merton—The model of subsequent + foundations—Friction between the University and the town—The + great “town and gown row” of 1354—The scholars of Merton + save the University—The wardenship of Sir Henry Savile—The + visit of Queen Elizabeth—Oxford during the Civil War—Queen + Henrietta Maria at Merton—How Merton ceased to be a reading + college—Scandalous proceedings in the gardens—Mandell + Creighton and Lord Randolph Churchill. + + EXETER COLLEGE 70 + + The West Country College—A Whig College—“Debauched by a + drunken Governor”—Eminent Alumni—“Parson Jack”—His bout + at fisticuffs—Garibaldi’s Englishman—His prowess on the + river—James Anthony Froude—His innate Protestantism—The burning + of his “Nemesis of Faith”—Burne Jones and William Morris. + + ORIEL COLLEGE 86 + + Foundation by Adam de Brome—Butler and his + “Analogy”—Causes of the efficiency of Oriel—The + “Noetics”—Eveleigh—Coplestone—Whately—The Tractarians—Who + started the Tractarian Movement?—What did the Tractarians + want?—The logical weakness of their position—The attitude of + the bishops—The stampede to Rome—The honest doubters—Matthew + Arnold and Arthur Hugh Clough—Cecil Rhodes at Oriel. + + QUEEN’S COLLEGE 106 + + What little Mr. Bouncer said of Queen’s—The inwardness of his + criticism—The boar’s head and the Canticle—Another song on + the same subject—The Provost and the alarm of fire—The Black + Prince at Queen’s—Wiclif at Queen’s—The first of the Oxford + Movements inaugurated by his poor preachers—Later times—Jeremy + Bentham—Walter Pater. + + NEW COLLEGE 118 + + William of Wykeham—A self-educated man—His liberality and + his elaborate Statutes—The College depressed by too much + founder’s kin—“Golden scholars, silver bachelors, and leaden + Masters”—Notable New College men—Sydney Smith—Sir Henry + Wotton—Canon Spooner and “Spoonerisms”—Stories of Warden + Shuttleworth and others. + + LINCOLN COLLEGE 129 + + A small college with many outstanding names—Mr. D. S. + Maccoll and his Newdigate—“Shifter” of the _Sporting + Times_—A reminiscence of “Shifter”—John Wesley and the + Methodists—Wesley’s meeting with Beau Nash of Bath—Mark + Pattison—His early connection with the Tractarians—His + abandonment of superstition—His great learning—His treatment of + undergraduates. + + ALL SOULS COLLEGE 145 + + Peculiarities of the Constitution—A College without + undergraduates—Court favourites jobbed into + fellowships—Fellowships bought and sold—All Souls Fellows, + a link between Oxford and the outside world—Sir William + Blackstone—Edward Young—The song of the All Souls Mallard and + the scandal connected therewith. + + MAGDALEN COLLEGE 153 + + The College which withstood James II.—President Routh—His great + age and eccentricities—Slackness of the College—The careers of + Addison—Of Gibbon—Of Charles Reade—Oscar Wilde and the æsthetic + movement at Magdalen—Persecution of Wilde and suppression of + the movement. + + BRASENOSE COLLEGE 171 + + The eponymous nose—The Hell Fire Club and its ghost—The + Phœnix—Dean Hole as the typical Brasenose man—Bishop Heber + and his prize poem—His _jeux d’esprit_—The note of satire in + his missionary hymns—Richard Heber the greatest bibliophile + that the world has ever seen—The author of “Ingoldsby + Legends”—Robertson of Brighton—Oxford objections to private + initiative in religion—Walter Pater and his philosophy of life. + + CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE 192 + + The foundation by Bishop Foxe—Compulsory Greek—Strict + discipline in early times—The visitation by the Parliamentary + Commissioners—The ejection of the Fellows—Eminent _alumni_—The + judicious Hooker and his injudicious marriage—The Duke of + Monmouth—General Oglethorpe—Keble, and Arnold of Rugby—An + estimate of their work—Celebrities of modern times. + + CHRIST CHURCH 209 + + Cardinal College—The fall of Wolsey—The foundation of + Christ Church—Notable scenes—The degradation of Cranmer—The + Parliamentary visitation—The eviction of Dean Fell, Mrs. Fell, + and all the little Fellses—Famous Deans of Christ Church—John + Fell—“I do not like you, Dr. Fell”—Aldrich—Atterbury—Cyril + Jackson—Gaisford—Eminent undergraduates—Sir Robert Peel’s + practical joke—Gladstone and Martin Farquhar Tupper. + + TRINITY COLLEGE 226 + + Founded with the spoils of monasteries—The sympathy of + Queen Elizabeth—President Kettell—His objection to long + hair—His trouble with the Court ladies during the Civil + War—Dr. Johnson’s love of the College—The expulsion of Walter + Savage Landor—Newman in his evangelical days—The gentleman + adventurers—Richard Burton’s revolt against discipline. + + SAINT JOHN’S COLLEGE 241 + + Founded by Sir Thomas White—Raised to fame by Archbishop + Laud—Calvinistic opposition to Laud—He triumphs over it and + makes Oxford a High Church University—His disciplinarian + regulations—His magnificent entertainment of royalty—The + entertainment of Admiral Tromp—He gets drunk and is taken home + in a wheelbarrow—Dean Mansel—His pugnacious Bampton Lectures + and his excruciating puns. + + JESUS COLLEGE 255 + + Statistics concerning the Joneses of Jesus—A Welsh + enclave—Rarity of great names at Jesus—Henry Vaughan the + “Silurist”—Sir Lewis Morris—Beau Nash—John Richard Green. + + WADHAM COLLEGE 267 + + Nicholas and Dorothy Wadham—A miscellaneous list of + Wadham men—The story of the great Wadham “Rag”—Wadham + Evangelicalism—Stories of Warden Symons—The Wadham + Positivists—“Three persons and no God”—Richard Congreve—Comte, + Clotilde de Vaux, and the Positivist schism—The last Oxford + Movement—Canon Barnett and Toynbee Hall. + + PEMBROKE COLLEGE 278 + + Broadgates Hall—Its illustrious and fashionable _alumni_—The + Hall becomes Pembroke College—Dr. Johnson at Pembroke—He rags + the servitors and argues with the dons—His “spirited refusal of + an eleemosynary supply of shoes”—He shows Hannah More over the + College—George Whitefield at Pembroke—His relations with the + Methodists and his religious excitability. + + WORCESTER COLLEGE 289 + + Early history of the buildings—Gloucester College—A College + for Benedictines—Its dissolution—Becomes the Bishop’s + palace—Gloucester Hall—Endowment of Worcester College—Remote + situation of Worcester—Stories bearing thereupon—Notable + Worcester men—Samuel Foote—Thomas de Quincey—Henry Kingsley—F. + W. Newman—Dean Burgon—Burgon’s famous Newdigate. + + HERTFORD COLLEGE 303 + + Hart Hall—The principalship of Dr. Richard Newton—Hart Hall + becomes Hertford College—Decline, fall, and dissolution of the + College—The buildings purchased for Magdalen Hall—Magdalen + Hall once more transformed into Hertford College—Famous + men at Hertford and Magdalen Hall—Charles James Fox—George + Selwyn—Robert Stephen Hawker. + + KEBLE COLLEGE 316 + + “Keble College, near Rome”—A memorial of the author of the + “Christian Year”—The ideals of the College—How far they have + been realised—Diversified results of the experiment—The Bishop + of London and Mr. Herbert Trench. + + EPILOGUE 321 + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + + MERTON COLLEGE _Frontispiece_ + + FACING PAGE + + UNIVERSITY COLLEGE 17 + + BALLIOL COLLEGE 36 + + EXETER COLLEGE: FELLOWS’ GARDEN 70 + + ORIEL COLLEGE 86 + + QUEEN’S COLLEGE CHAPEL 106 + + NEW COLLEGE CLOISTERS AND TOWER 118 + + REREDOS, ALL SOULS CHAPEL 145 + + MAGDALEN COLLEGE 153 + + BRASENOSE KNOCKER 171 + + CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE 192 + + TOM QUAD AND TOWER, CHRIST CHURCH 209 + + TRINITY COLLEGE 226 + + ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE 241 + + WADHAM COLLEGE 267 + + WORCESTER COLLEGE 289 + + KEBLE COLLEGE 316 + +_All the above are from photographs by Messrs. Hills & Saunders, Oxford._ + + + + +The Romance of the Oxford Colleges + + + + +UNIVERSITY COLLEGE + + Founders and benefactors—Alfred the Great—William of Durham—The + Statutes—The conversion of Obadiah Walker—Lord Herbert of + Cherbury—Lord Eldon’s examination in Hebrew—The screwing up + of the Senior Proctor—Shelley—A “Stinks Man”—His unpopularity + with the dons—His “printing freaks”—His friendship with + Hogg—His conversation with the baby—His religious opinions—His + publication of “The Necessity of Atheism”—His expulsion. + + +It has often been asserted, but it has never been proved, that University +College was founded by Alfred the Great. + +The principal evidence for the statement consists of a deed which is +known to have been forged and a quotation in Camden’s “Britannia” from +an alleged manuscript which cannot be found and probably never existed. +On the strength of that testimony the Court of King’s Bench ruled, in +1726, that Alfred was the founder; but the judgment seems to have been +based upon sentiment rather than evidence. “Religion,” it was argued by +the Fellows, “would receive a great scandal” if the Court decided that +“a succession of clergymen” had, for many generations, made the mistake +of thanking the wrong benefactor for their endowments. The Court was +moved by the plea and gave official sanction to the legend; but history, +as distinguished from legend, recognises the founder in William of +Durham, who, dying in 1249, bequeathed 310 marks to the University for +the benefit of Masters of Arts studying theology. A house was built for +the students to live in in 1253, and statutes for the governance of the +community were first drawn up in 1280. + +[Illustration: UNIVERSITY COLLEGE. + +[To face p. 17.] + +Fifty shillings a year was the stipend of a student in those days, and +the bursar received a further five shillings a year for keeping the +College accounts. As rooms could then be rented for 6s. 8d. a year, +however, their condition was less penurious than the figures might +seem to indicate. It was provided that they should converse in Latin +and comport themselves “as becomes holy persons,” not interrupting one +another’s studies by “noise or clamour,” and resisting the temptations of +such light literature as “Ballads or Fables about Lovers”—with a good +deal more, on the same severe disciplinary lines, which one need not +trouble to recite. + +The College, as Mr. Wells[1] states, “has been famous in the history of +Oxford rather for the careers of its sons than for any movements of which +it has been the centre”; and he might have added that the most notable +movement of which it has been the centre was a movement for the expulsion +of the most illustrious of its sons. + +[1] “Oxford and its Colleges.” By J. Wells (Methuen). + +Other interesting things, no doubt, have happened there. It was at +University that the junior members of the college resented the conversion +of their Master to Roman Catholicism by chanting, outside his door, the +impertinent refrain: + + “Old Obadiah + Sang Ave Maria, + But so would not I—a. + If you ask me for why—a, + I’d as soon be a fool as a knave—a”— + +a course of conduct which must have been very annoying to Obadiah Walker, +and very compromising to his dignity, if persisted in for long. + +It was to University, again, that Lord Herbert of Cherbury brought a +bride in his second year of residence; “and now,” he writes in his +Autobiography, “I followed my book more close than ever.” But this +particular stimulus to diligence in study is one with which modern +undergraduates must, as a rule, dispense. + +University, furthermore, was the scene of Lord Eldon’s memorable +examination in Hebrew. “What is the Hebrew for ‘the place of a skull’”? +the examiner asked him. “Golgotha,” he answered, and they let him +through, without even troubling him to translate “_Eloi, eloi, lama +sabacthani_” into English. + +At University, to continue, the Senior Proctor—the “_Big_ Shaver” as men +called him to distinguish him from his brother, the Bishop of Liverpool, +who is of smaller stature—awoke one morning, some thirty years ago, to +find himself “screwed up.” He cut a noble figure as he descended by a +ladder into the High, amid the encouraging cheers of the populace; and +the authors of the outrage were not discovered until after the Master—the +late Dean Bradley, of Westminster—had sent the whole College down. + +Every one of these stories has its merits, and some of them would be +worth relating at greater length if space allowed; but they all seem +trivial and local when set side by side with the story of the expulsion +of Shelley. + +Shelley is not the only poet of whom the College boasts. Father Faber, +who believed too much to please his College, was, curiously enough, of +the same household as Shelley, who believed too little. So was Sir Edwin +Arnold, who is said to have found spiritual balm in Buddhism, and so is +Mr. Saint John Lucas, whose conformity to the golden mean in matters of +faith may perhaps be inferred from the fact that he was lately awarded a +prize for a poem on a sacred subject. But Shelley was, of course, by far +the greatest of the four, as well as the only one of them who set the +dons deliberately at defiance. + +His defiance of the dons, indeed, assumed more forms than one, and the +publication of his notorious pamphlet, “The Necessity of Atheism,” was, +as it were, a last straw breaking the back of a patience which had long +been too severely tried. So, at all events, says Mr. Ridley, who was a +junior Fellow at the time, and so also says a Miss Grant, who happened to +be then on a visit to the Master. + +“There were few, if any,” says Mr. Ridley, “who were not afraid of +Shelley’s strange and fantastic pranks.” + +“The ringleader,” says Miss Grant, “in every species of mischief +within our grave walls was Mr. Shelley. He was very insubordinate, +always breaking some rule, the breaking of which, he knew, could not +be overlooked.... He was slovenly in his dress. When spoken to about +these and other irregularities, he was in the habit of making such +extraordinary gestures, expressive of humility under reproof, as to +overset, first the gravity, and then the temper, of the lecturing tutor.” + +The dons would have been more than human if they had liked an +undergraduate who received their admonitions in that style, and they +would have been in advance of their times if they had been conciliated +by Shelley’s predilections for scientific study. His science was of the +crude, experimental sort which has caused its devotees to be stigmatised +as “Stinks Men.” He charged the knob of his door with electricity for +the confusion of those who tried to open it, and he demonstrated his +knowledge of chemistry by spilling a corrosive acid on the carpet of a +tutor who reprimanded him. Naturally, therefore, authority was disposed +to seize the first handle that he might give, and the first handle given +was the perverse pamphlet above referred to. + + * * * * * + +The pamphlet was not, of course, Shelley’s maiden literary effort. While +still at Eton, he had written a “penny dreadful,” and found a publisher +willing to give him £40 for it; and he had cherished the naïve hope of +achieving fame at a bound by the simple device of bribing the reviewers. +Of the staff of the _British Review_ in particular he had written that +they were “venal villains” who might be relied upon, if well “pouched,” +to lavish the praise which he desired; and he seems to have thought that +£10, judiciously distributed, would suffice to corrupt the whole of Fleet +Street. + +Moreover, his literary ambitions were smiled upon by a blameless and +unsuspecting father. Mr. Timothy Shelley, M.P., when he brought his +son to Oxford, took him to the shop of Messrs. Munday and Slatter, +booksellers, in the High Street, and introduced him to one of the +partners. + +“My boy here,” he said, pointing proudly to the long-haired, wild-eyed +youth—“my boy here has a literary turn. He is already an author, and do +pray indulge him in his printing freaks.” + +Only a few months later, in that very shop—— But we must not anticipate, +but must first present Mr. Thomas Jefferson Hogg, also an undergraduate +of University. + + * * * * * + +Hogg was Shelley’s most intimate friend—and, indeed, practically his only +friend—at Oxford, and his “Life of Shelley” is our principal authority +for the incidents of Shelley’s Oxford career. Trelawny speaks of him as a +hard-headed man of the world who looked upon literature with contempt, +and he may have given that impression in later life, when he was a +Revising Barrister and a Municipal Corporation Commissioner, whatever +that may have been. Even then, however, he said that he regarded the +Greek language as “a prime necessary of life,” and in 1810 he would +have been remarked, not only as an ebullient but also as a romantic and +chivalrous young man. + +He and Shelley made each other’s acquaintance by sitting next to each +other in hall, though Hogg assures us that “such familiarity was +unusual”—an interesting precedent for the alleged rule that one Oxford +man must not presume even to rescue another from drowning unless he has +been introduced to him. They fell into conversation on the comparative +value of German and Italian literature, and, after hall, they continued +the discussion in Hogg’s rooms, and sat up nearly all night over it. +On the following afternoon they met, by appointment, in Shelley’s +rooms—the typical rooms of a prehistoric “Stinks Man,” furnished with “an +electrical machine, an air-pump, a galvanic trough, a solar microscope, +and large glass jars and receivers,” and pervaded with “an unpleasant and +penetrating effluvium”; and after that they were inseparable. + +Their Oxford, it must be remembered, was the early Oxford in which +no games were played. There was no “tubbing” in those days, and no +practising at the nets. Unless men haunted the prize ring and the rat +pit, their one way of amusing themselves was to walk and talk, and no +sporting “shop” could cast its monotonous shadow over their conversation. +The question whether the college was more likely to bump or to be bumped +did not arise, and no man burdened his brain with tables of “records” +or “averages.” The talk was about literature, about philosophy, and, +sometimes, about religion; and daring young thinkers hammered out for +themselves a good many subjects in which they were not called upon to be +examined. + +Shelley, as we have seen, began with literature, but he soon got on to +philosophy. In particular he was fascinated by the Platonic doctrine of +the pre-existence of the soul—the doctrine popularised in Wordsworth’s +famous “Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early +Childhood”; and he proceeded, as one would expect a chemist to do, to +try, as it were, to test the doctrine by experiment. + +He snatched a baby, so Hogg tells us, out of its mother’s arms, on +Magdalen Bridge, and while the mother clung desperately to its swaddling +clothes, in an agony of terror lest it should be dropped into the +Cherwell, he gravely questioned her. + +“Can your baby tell us anything about pre-existence, madam?” he asked, in +a piercing voice and with a wistful look. + +“He cannot speak, sir,” answered the mother stolidly. + +“Surely he can speak if he will,” Shelley insisted, “for he is only a +few weeks old. He cannot have entirely forgotten the use of speech in so +short a time.” + +But the mother was as firm as the poet. + +“It is not for me to argue with college gentlemen,” she rejoined, “but +babies of that age never do speak as far as _I_ know”; and with that she +begged that her infant might be returned to her before harm befell it, +and so the incident terminated. + + * * * * * + +The bearing of the baby story on the subject before us is only indirect, +but there is a reason for telling it. It shows in what spirit Shelley, as +an undergraduate, approached the profoundest problems of philosophy, and +there is no reason to suppose that the spirit in which he approached the +profoundest problems of religion was widely different. Just as he had got +a “rise” out of the Oxford matron, so he proposed to get a “rise” out of +the Oxford dons; and the dons being clergymen, atheism was the obvious +card to play. A profession of atheism might fairly be expected to affect +clergymen as a red rag affects a bull. + +That he was not actually an atheist at this time is as nearly +demonstrable as anything can ever be. The evidence is in his own +letters—not in one letter only, but in several. + +“It is impossible,” he wrote, “not to believe in the Soul of the +Universe, the intelligent, and necessarily beneficent, actuating +principle.” + +“Can we suppose,” he asked in another letter, “that our nature itself +could be without cause—‘First Cause’—a God?” + +In these expressions, as they were not written for publication, we may +presume that we see the real Shelley. But, on the other hand— + +1. Shelley, though not an atheist, fell short of the contemporary +standards of orthodoxy. He had been reading Hume, and felt that the +current answers to Hume were insufficient. + +2. Shelley had been conducting a philosophical correspondence with his +cousin, Harriet Grove. The correspondence had been broken off because his +philosophical opinions were unsatisfactory; and he was embittered, being +in love with his cousin, and regarded himself as a persecuted martyr. + +3. The temptation to exaggerate, and so “pull the legs” of grave and +reverend seniors, was irresistible. + +He began by writing, under an assumed name, to strangers—the most grave +and reverend strangers whom he thought likely to reply to him—submitting +brief abstracts of Hume’s arguments, and appealing for assistance in +rebutting them. If the person to whom he wrote “took the bait,” says +Hogg, Shelley “would fall upon the unwary disputant and break his bones.” +Once, it is said, by pretending to be a woman, he lured a bishop into +controversy, and handled him as the impertinent have delighted to handle +the pompous from the beginning of the world. It was splendid fun, he +thought, but it would be still better fun if he could “get a rise” out of +the Vice-Chancellor, the Proctors, the Regius Professors, and the Heads +of colleges and halls. So, Hogg agreeing, he and Hogg put their heads +together, and “The Necessity of Atheism” was produced, and advertised in +the _Oxford Herald_ of February 9, 1811, and copies of it were posted to +several of the dons, “with the compliments of Mr. Jeremiah Stukeley.” + +Nor was that all. There was the off-chance that the dons, scenting a +practical joke, might ignore the outrage, and Shelley, avid of publicity, +was determined to compel them to take notice. So he came down, with a +bundle of his pamphlets under his arm, to Messrs. Munday and Slatter’s +shop—the very shop in which an indulgent parent had given out that his +“printing freaks” were to be encouraged. He wished those pamphlets, he +said, to be offered for sale at sixpence each; he wished them to be well +displayed on the counter and in the window; in order that the window +might be dressed properly, he proposed to dress it himself. + +He did so with an obliging readiness which overwhelmed the amiable +bookseller’s assistant. In a minute or two “The Necessity of Atheism” was +displayed in Messrs. Munday and Slatter’s shop, much as the first number +of a new magazine with a gaudy cover might be displayed on one of the +railway bookstalls to-day. + +It remained so displayed for about twenty minutes; and then the Rev. John +Walker, a Fellow of New College, passed the shop, looked into the window +to see what new publications had arrived, read the title of Shelley’s +pamphlet, and, after being surprised and shocked, was moved to action. He +walked into the shop, demanded the proprietors, and gave them peremptory +instructions: + +“Mr. Munday, and Mr. Slatter! What is the meaning of this?” + +“We beg pardon, sir. We really didn’t know. We hadn’t examined the +publication personally. But, of course, now that our attention is drawn +to it——” + +“Now that your attention is drawn to it, Mr. Munday and Mr. Slatter, +you will be good enough to remove all the copies of it that lie on your +counter and in your window, and to take them out into your back kitchen +and there burn them.” + +Such was the dialogue, as one can reconstruct it from Mr. Slatter’s +recollections, contained in a letter addressed to Robert Montgomery, the +poet. + +Mr. Walker, of course, had no legal right to give the instructions which +he gave. From the strictly legal point of view, he was ordering a man +over whom he had no jurisdiction to destroy property which did not belong +to him; he would never have presumed to give such orders in, say, Mr. +Hatchard’s shop in Piccadilly. At Oxford, however, his foot was firmly +planted on his native heath, and Messrs. Munday and Slatter knew it. He +might speak to the Vice-Chancellor; and the Vice-Chancellor might forbid +undergraduates to deal at their establishment. So they were all bows and +smiles and obsequious anxiety to oblige. + +“By all means, Mr. Walker. An admirable idea, sir! Just what we were +ourselves on the point of suggesting. You may rely on us to carry out +your wishes.” + +“You will be good enough to carry them out in my presence. I will +accompany you to your kitchen for that purpose.” + +“That will be very good of you, Mr. Walker. It will be a great honour to +our kitchen. Will you please walk this way, sir?” + +So the holocaust was effected; and Messrs. Munday and Slatter begged +Shelley to call on them, and told him what they had been obliged to do. + +“We are really very sorry, Mr. Shelley. We really could not help +ourselves. Mr. Walker was so very firm in the matter; and even in your +own interest, you know——” + +_Et cetera._ There was to be no further publicity for Shelley through the +instrumentality of the booksellers; and as no one was likely to trouble +about the authorship of an anonymous brochure which had been reduced to +ashes, that would have been the end of the matter if Shelley had not +circulated his pamphlet through the post. But then he _had_ so circulated +it, and the covering “compliments of Jeremiah Stukeley” were very +obviously in his hand-writing; and the recipients of the presentation +copies, who included every bishop on the bench, were saying that +something really ought to be done; and the dons were not only willing but +anxious, and not only anxious but eager, to lay hold of the handle which +Shelley had given them. + +He was a “Stinks Man,” and he was a rowdy man; he made malodorous +chemical experiments, and he was impertinent when he was “ragged.” The +Senior Common-room was not going to stand atheism or any other nonsense +from such a man as that. So Shelley was sent for “with the Dean’s +compliments”—those compliments of evil omen—and the rest of the story may +best be told in the words of that Mr. Ridley already quoted, who is a +less prejudiced witness than Hogg. + +“It was announced one morning at a breakfast party towards the end of +the Lent Term,” writes Mr. Ridley, “that Percy Bysshe Shelley, who had +recently become a member of University College, was to be called before +a meeting of the common-room for being the supposed author of a pamphlet +called ‘The Necessity of Atheism.’ This anonymous work, consisting of +not many pages, had been studiously sent to most of the dignitaries of +the University and to others more or less connected with Oxford. The +meeting took place the same day, and it was understood that the pamphlet, +together with some notes sent with it, in which the supposed author’s +hand-writing appeared identified with that of P. B. S., was placed before +him. He was asked if he could or would deny the obnoxious production as +his. No direct reply was given either in the affirmative or negative. + +“Shelley having quitted the room, T. J. Hogg immediately appeared, +voluntarily on his part, to state that, if Shelley had anything to do +with it, he (Hogg) was equally implicated, and desired his share of the +penalty, whatever was inflicted. It has always been supposed that Hogg +wrote the Preface. + +“Towards the afternoon a large paper bearing the College seal, and signed +by the Master and Dean, was affixed to the hall door, declaring that the +two offenders were publicly expelled from the college _for contumacy in +refusing to answer certain questions put to them_. The aforesaid two had +made themselves as conspicuous as possible by great singularity of dress, +and by walking up and down the centre of the quadrangle, as if proud of +their anticipated fate,”—and, in modern times, they would doubtless have +driven to the station in triumph on the roofs of hansoms, escorted by a +long procession of uproarious admirers, though, as it was, they went away +quietly on the coach. + +That is all; for the subsequent picture of Mr. Timothy Shelley, M.P., +pursuing his peccant son to his London lodging, sending out for a +bottle of port, and reading aloud extracts from Paley’s “Evidences of +Christianity” while he drank it, belongs to Shelley’s Life, but not to +Oxford history. + + * * * * * + +Robert Montgomery, of Lincoln, who tried to compensate by the piety of +his sentiments for his lack of distinction as a poet, has recorded his +opinion that the offenders thoroughly deserved their punishment. “Strange +and unnatural as it may appear,” he writes, “there are many in Oxford +who think that a University, based on the immortal truths of the Gospel, +ought not to license or encourage blasphemy, however gilded by genius.” + +No doubt there are many, not in Oxford only but elsewhere as well, who +agree that this limitation of the functions of Universities is desirable. +The general proposition, at any rate, shall not be disputed here. Jowett +himself, an advanced thinker if the Church of England ever included one, +appears to have endorsed it when circumstances brought him face to face +with an undergraduate who declined to attend chapel on the ground that +he did not believe in a God. “If you do not believe in a God by eight +o’clock to-morrow morning, you will be sent down,” the Master of Balliol +is said to have chirruped on that occasion; and it is difficult to +applaud his keen sense of the necessity of discipline and condemn that of +the Master of University. + +It does not follow, however, that it is necessary to take the grave +Robert Montgomery’s solemn view of Shelley’s offence. His case was not +that of the conscientious and convinced blasphemer, but rather that +of a practical joker who over-reached himself and accepted martyrdom +rather than confess that he had been joking. And that, one concludes, +was the view of those later dignitaries of the college who permitted the +erection of a monument to Shelley within the college precincts—albeit in +a dark corner of those precincts, only to be reached by way of an obscure +passage which looks as if it led to a coal-hole wherein an unwary visitor +would run a serious risk of being arrested and charged with loitering +with intent to commit a felony. + + + + +BALLIOL COLLEGE + + The birching of Robert of Balliol by the Bishop of Durham—He + founds a College to make atonement for his fault—Insignificance + of the College in early times—Snell Exhibitioners—Adam + Smith—His scornful criticism of Oxford—Southey—His introduction + to Coleridge of Jesus, Cambridge—Their joint dream of + Pantisocracy—College “rags” in the dark days—The dawn of + civilisation—Mastership of Parsons—Of Jenkyns—of Jowett—Jowett + as tutor—His reforms—His conversation—His sermons—The + inscrutable secret which he guarded. + + +Balliol is the tangible and enduring product of one of the most +interesting of the abuses (as Protestants esteem them) of the Roman +Catholic religion. + +The story begins on the day on which Robert of Balliol—a lord of many +lands in the North of England—“got drunk,” as the chronicler puts it, +“in a manner unbecoming his station in life,” and insulted the Bishop +of Durham. It is resumed on the day on which Robert apologised to the +Bishop, and consented to do penance. The Bishop then “birched him in the +presence of the populace on the steps of the cathedral,” and sent him +forth with a tingling cuticle and an injunction to make amends for his +fault by spending money on a benevolent undertaking. So he hired a house +for the accommodation of sixteen poor scholars of Oxford, and allowed +them eightpence a day each for their expenses. After his death, his +widow, the Lady Devorguilla of Balliol, bearing no malice against the +Bishop for his treatment of her husband—having reason to know, perhaps, +that it had done him good—supplemented the endowment by a further +substantial donation. + +[Illustration: BALLIOL COLLEGE. + +[To face p. 36.] + +Such were the picturesque beginnings of the College in the reign of Henry +III. Other gifts and legacies enriched its chest from time to time. +The Snell Exhibitions connected it with the University of Glasgow. The +Blundell Endowment introduced a steady flow of scholars from Tiverton. +But the college remained unimportant. Its great period—a period which +began under the mastership of Dr. Parsons and culminated under the +mastership of Benjamin Jowett—belongs to the nineteenth century. Before +that time it has no history worth relating; and the few great men who, by +accident, went there to be educated, owed nothing to their tutors, but +were left to educate themselves as best they could. + +Adam Smith, who was up from 1740 to 1746, was the greatest of them; and, +if Adam Smith’s ghost still haunts the Balliol quadrangles, we may be +quite sure that it is an ungrateful and a growling ghost. + +He was one of the Snell Exhibitioners above-mentioned; and the Snell +Exhibitioners of the eighteenth century had a very uncomfortable time. +They came from Scotland; and the College took Dr. Johnson’s view of +Scotsmen, regarding them as pauper aliens, who ought to be repatriated, +and “smugs,” unfit to mix with civilised mankind. The worst rooms in the +college were invariably allotted to them by the dons; and their weird +accents and barbarous dress were the subject of the ribald mirth of +undergraduates. + +Things got, indeed, to such a pass, at one time, that the Exhibitioners +sent a formal complaint to Glasgow, and Glasgow made formal +representations to the Master of the College; but the Master’s answer +was unsatisfactory and curt. He said that he did not particularly want +the Snell Exhibitioners at Balliol and would raise no objection if they +liked to transfer themselves to another college. He even went so far as +to suggest that perhaps they would feel more at home at Hertford; and as +the hint was not taken, his relations with them continued to be strained. + +Such was the tone of the college when Adam Smith’s name was entered on +the books. The only friend whom he made there was Douglas, afterwards +Bishop of Salisbury, a Snell Exhibitioner like himself. We know little of +the circumstances of his career except that he habitually took tar-water +as a remedy for “an inveterate scurvy and shaking of the head”; that +undergraduates gibed at him for his poverty, exhorting him to gorge +himself in the hall on the ground that his long-delayed chance of eating +a full meal had come to him at last; and that a don reprimanded him for +reading Hume’s “Treatise on Human Nature” and confiscated the pernicious +book. It is not much; but it is enough to lead us to expect to find him +regarding his University with feelings of disgust and contempt; and there +is abundant evidence that he did so. + +Adam Smith, indeed, is a far more convincing witness than Gibbon, who +was at Magdalen a few years after he had gone down, of the deplorable +state of learning at Oxford in the eighteenth century. He was older; he +was longer in residence; he was more anxious to learn. But he sought in +vain, he says, for “the proper means of being taught the sciences which +it is the proper business of these incorporated bodies to teach”; and his +generalisation about the college tutors is that “every man consented +that his neighbour might neglect his duty provided he himself were +allowed to neglect his own.” Moreover he passed one criticism on Oxford +which is a delightful variant on a more famous utterance of another +Balliol man of a later date. + +Oxford, Matthew Arnold has told us, is the home of “lost causes” and +“impossible loyalties.” Adam Smith said pretty much the same thing, +but he said it very differently, speaking of the most venerable of our +seats of learning as “a sanctuary in which exploded systems and obsolete +prejudices find shelter and protection after they have been hunted out of +every corner of the world.” The sentiments are practically identical; and +there could be no more charming example of truth changing its aspect as +men change their point of view. + + * * * * * + +The only other name which counts in the annals of eighteenth century +Balliol is that of Southey, who was up in 1793. + +He was by way of being a reading man; but though the dark ages were +almost over and the dawn of civilisation was near at hand, the College +did little, if anything, to direct his studies. “Mr. Southey,” said one +of his tutors in a burst of candour, “you won’t learn anything from my +lectures sir, so if you have any studies of your own, you had better +pursue them.” + +He did so. He rose at five in order to do so, quickening his diligence +with “negus.” One suspects that he must have been drinking negus on the +morning of the day on which he went on the river “in a little skiff which +the least deviation from the balance would upset,” and “did not step +exactly in the middle,” with the result that “the boat tilted up” and +its occupant only saved himself from complete submersion by clinging to +the side of a barge. The incident does certainly seem to give colour to +his reflection that “temperance is much wanted at Oxford,” and that “the +waters of Helicon are too much polluted by the wine of Bacchus.” + +Nor did the studies pursued under the cheering influence of matutinal +negus belong to the ordinary curriculum of the place. Southey neglected +his Aristotle. He preferred, he says, “the brilliant colours of fancy, +nature, and Rousseau” to “the positive dogmas of the Stagirite”; and +though the _Contrat Social_ may serve as a substitute for the “Politics,” +the presumption is strong that Southey preferred “_La nouvelle Héloise_” +which can by no means be regarded as a worthy alternative to the “Ethics.” + +We may let that pass, however; and we may also let pass Southey’s +denunciation of the “waste of wigs and wisdom” which he discerned +among the dons and the “abandoned excess” which he detected among those +undergraduates who did not rise early to drink negus. The importance +of Southey’s Oxford career resides neither in these trifles nor even +in his refusal to have his hair powdered by the college barber before +sitting down to dinner. The most significant thing that happened to him +was that he made the acquaintance of a young man from a neighbouring +University—Mr. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, of Jesus College, Cambridge, who +was introduced to him by a bookseller. + +The young Cantab. and the young Oxonian took to each other at once, and +proceeded to see visions and dream dreams in concert. Rousseau and the +Revolutionists, with their cry of “Back to Nature!” and their belief in +the “perfectibility of the human race,” appealed to their imagination +and inspired it. The world, they agreed, was weary of the past. Why not +escape from it? So they sat in Southey’s rooms at Balliol—no doubt with +steaming tumblers of negus on the table—and discussed the ways and means +of doing so. + +America, of course, was to be the scene of the experiment. They would +cross the Atlantic, and settle on the banks of the Susquehanna—how could +they fail to be happy on the banks of a river with such a melodious +name? Land, they had been informed, was cheap there. An American land +agent had offered to sell them some, and had assured them that the danger +alike from buffaloes and from mosquitoes was much exaggerated. So they +would borrow money, and get married, and go there. They themselves would +till the soil, and their wives should “cook and perform all domestic +offices.” It would be delightful, Southey thought, “to go with all my +friends; to live with them in the most agreeable and most honourable +employment; to eat the fruits I have raised, and see every face happy +around me; my mother sheltered in her declining years from the anxieties +which have pursued her; my brothers educated to be useful and virtuous.” + +It came to nothing. The Pantisocracy, as it was to be called, was never +formed. Perhaps “the females of the party” did not take so kindly to +the idea of cooking and domestic offices—far away from bonnet-shops—as +had been expected; and there was, at any rate, the difficulty that the +capital required was not forthcoming. But the dream was a generous one +and sheds a golden glamour on the closing years of a dark age. Southey, +whether one cares about his poetry or not, is the most engaging figure in +eighteenth-century Balliol. + +The darkness of the dark age at Balliol could be illustrated by many +anecdotes of many “rags.” On one occasion the Dean was ragged—though +it does not appear that he was put on the bonfire, as once happened, +in quite recent times, to the Dean of an adjacent college. On another +occasion some Balliol Jacobites celebrated the birthday of Cardinal York +by sallying forth into the streets and ragging every notable Hanoverian +whom they met, including a Canon of Windsor, and cheering for King James +III.—an offence for which, after the Master had let them off with a Latin +imposition, they were brought to trial in the Court of King’s Bench, and +sentenced to two years’ imprisonment with hard labour. + +It was exploits of that order, and not any idle impulse to play upon +words, which first caused Balliol men to be spoken of as Men of Belial. +They were of frequent occurrence, and the bad name which they gave the +College was not redeemed by any intellectual distinction; but presently, +in 1798, Dr. Parsons became Master, and then a memorable change began. +Dr. Parsons organised the tutorial system, and cast his vote for throwing +Balliol fellowships open to outsiders. He also collaborated with the +Provost of Oriel and the Dean of Christ Church in the institution of +the Honours Schools, in which firsts were presently taken by two very +remarkable Balliol men, Sir William Hamilton, the philosopher, and J. G. +Lockhart, the author of the Life of Scott. And then came Dr. Jenkyns. + + * * * * * + +Undoubtedly Jenkyns was a great man, as much greater than Parsons as +Jowett was to be greater than himself. Judging him by results, one is led +irresistibly to that conclusion. Yet how he managed to be so great, and +to accomplish such results, is a perplexing puzzle; for among all the +stories of him which have been preserved there is hardly one in which he +does not cut a grotesque and undignified figure. + +There is the story, for example, of his encounter with Blaydes of +Balliol, who was afterwards to change his name to Calverley. Blaydes, it +is said, was taking ladies over the college, and wished to show them all +the lions. “That,” he said, pointing, “is the Master of Balliol’s study +window”; and he picked up a stone and threw it. The missile went crashing +through the glass, and an angry countenance became visible, glaring +through the aperture. “And that, I rather fancy,” Blaydes continued +calmly, “is the Master of Balliol himself.” + +Then there is the story of Jenkyns’s passage of arms with Sir William +Hamilton. Sir William, it is related, coming hurriedly out of his room, +discovered Jenkyns listening at the keyhole. Furious at this prying +curiosity, he clutched the spy by his coat collar, lifted him over the +balustrade, and held him howling in mid-air. Then, having terrified him +sufficiently, he lifted him back again, and apologised: “Good gracious, +sir! I’m so sorry, but I had no idea that it would possibly be you!” + +Finally, since there is no room for all the stories, one may recall, on +Jowett’s authority, the story of Jenkyns’s comic sermon. He gave out the +text, “The sin that doth so easily beset us”; and then he dropped into +bathos. “I mean,” he explained in severe and acid tones, “the habit of +contracting debts.” The undergraduates looked at each other and wondered. +Had the Master actually said this thing, or had he only seemed to say it? +They realised, at last, that he had actually said it; and then, for the +first and only time in its history, the walls of the College chapel shook +with the inextinguishable laughter of an insolvent congregation. It was +several minutes, Jowett tells us, before the preacher could proceed with +his discourse. + +Decidedly it is not in anecdotes such as these that the greatness of +Jenkyns comes out. But he took his position as Head of a college very +seriously, at a time when most Heads of colleges preferred their wine, +their ease, or their theology; and he was an astoundingly good judge +alike of a competent tutor and of a clever undergraduate. Hence his +success. The Balliol tutors, in his time, were the best. They taught the +men, with rare exceptions, instead of worrying them about “movements”; +and the Balliol scholarship became, at this time, the blue riband for +which the chief public schools most eagerly competed. Presumably it is so +still; and it certainly was so when, after the colourless interlude of +Scott, Jowett succeeded to the Mastership in 1870. + + * * * * * + +Jowett’s is the one name of supreme and outstanding consequence +in Balliol annals. He was elected to a scholarship there from St. +Paul’s School in 1836; he was promoted to a fellowship while still +an undergraduate; he became a tutor of the College at the age of +twenty-five; he continued to be associated with its fortunes, without a +break, until his death in 1893. He not only did more than any other man +to make Balliol just what Balliol is; he also aspired, as he said, to +“inoculate England with Balliol.” + +In that ambition he succeeded, for Balliol under Jowett was a nursery of +almost every kind of talent. Perhaps it was weak in divinity—it was a +Balliol man, according to the story, who told the examiner that Gamaliel +was “a hill at the foot of which Paul was brought up”—but it surpassed +all the other colleges in its “output” of statesmen, pro-consuls, +professors, and men of letters. Mr. Asquith, Lord Lansdowne, and Lord +Peel are Balliol men; so are Lord Milner and Lord Curzon. Balliol has +largely staffed the Universities of Scotland. At Jowett’s funeral seven +of the pall-bearers were Heads of Oxford houses who had been at Balliol, +and the list of Balliol representatives in recent and contemporary +literature includes the names of A. C. Swinburne, John Addington Symonds, +Mr. Andrew Lang, Mr. W. H. Mallock, Mr. J. A. Godley, Canon Beeching, Mr. +Anthony Hope Hawkins, and the late G. W. Steevens—“the Balliol prodigy,” +as they called him—who became a journalist and succeeded in sounding a +new note on the brazen trumpet of the _Daily Mail_. One could easily +extend the list, but to what end? We have no need of further witnesses. + +Jowett, as the table of results proves, was a great educator, and a great +organiser and director of education, but he was also something more than +that—a great personality, who fought a hard fight and won it, wearing +down opposition and smiling down detraction. + +He was not a particularly great scholar. “Hullo! Another howler!” is +said to have been the refrain occasionally uttered automatically in +his presence by friends to whom he submitted the manuscript of his +translations of Plato and Thucydides; and it was maliciously said that +his appointment to the Regius Professorship of Greek was a case of the +“endowment of research”—a pecuniary inducement held out to him to learn +the language. Nor was he a great philosopher, or, in spite of “Essays and +Reviews” and the Commentary on the Epistle to the Thessalonians, a great +divine. But he was, nevertheless, emphatically a great man, who grew into +a great institution. One could not hear of Oxford without hearing of him; +one could not live at Oxford without feeling that his presence pervaded +it. He was, in the end, the very _genius loci_, and one would no more +have spoken disrespectfully of him than of the Equator. + +It is said to have been Mrs. Grote who christened him “the cherub.” His +bust in the Bodleian certainly looks like the bust of a cherub, and the +sound of his voice was like a cherub’s chirp. It gave one the impression +of an innocent man who had never known anything of the passionate +temptations which distract the young, and for whom all the riddles of the +painful earth could be solved, without reference to such passions, by the +dry light of intellect alone. He seemed to come down to breakfast from a +higher plane of thought—an intellectual tribunal before which his guests +were summoned, and from which there was no appeal. He was criticism—as a +rule destructive criticism—incarnate. His praise was approbation from Sir +Hubert Stanley; his blame could make the cleverest man feel a fool. + +It followed that he could not be widely popular. Criticism, especially if +it be unemotional, is not very popular as a literary art, and is still +less popular as a social accomplishment; and though, if we may believe +the biographers, the Master was not really unemotional, he generally +contrived to seem to be so, being, in fact, very shy, and very much +afraid of his emotions. One may think of him most justly, perhaps, as a +man full of the milk of human kindness, but profoundly conscious that +milk makes a mess when it boils over, and firmly resolved to prevent that +catastrophe by keeping it in a refrigerator. He gave generously out of +his later abundance, and with a positive shrinking from advertisement. +But he did not suffer fools gladly, and he could even snub the deserving, +if they gave him the opportunity, in the knock-down style of Dr. Johnson. + +Nor was he an equally sound critic of all kinds of intellectual promise. +He divined, for instance, the potentialities of Mr. Asquith, but failed +to discern those of Mr. Andrew Lang. “Asquith is sure to succeed, he +is so direct,” was his verdict on the former; but to the latter, as Mr. +Lang has himself recorded, he tendered the advice: “Don’t write as if you +were writing for a penny paper.” And there is a story of a scholar of the +eighties, now an eminent teacher of youth, who shall be nameless here, +who suffered even more severely at his hands. + +It was at breakfast, and the conversation flagged, as it was a little apt +to do when parties of undergraduates breakfasted with the Master. The +scholar tried to stimulate it by a literary remark which he hoped might +give the silent Master something to talk about. “Master,” he ventured, +“I have been reading Matthew Arnold’s poems, and I think he is a great +poet.” There was a dead silence while the company waited for the Master +to follow up the theme. “We all think so, Mr. X.,” he piped in his high +treble, and it was felt that he could not have blanketed the conversation +more effectively if he had left the room, slamming the door behind him. + +“If you have nothing more sensible to say than that, you had better be +silent altogether,” is another of his recorded repartees to some one who +remarked upon the weather; and one could make a long list of similar +retorts of deadly finality behind which the Master entrenched himself. He +probably did not know how much they hurt, but fought, not aggressively, +but in self-defence, being sensitive, and fearing to be drawn, having +a lively recollection of cases in which men had tried to draw him by +arguing, in their weekly essays, in favour of atheism or anarchism, or +setting any other sort of pitfall into which it would be pleasant to +see one in authority stumbling. At all events men seem to have accepted +his severe rejoinders in that spirit, and to have had too profound a +reverence for his high intellectual standards to resent their rude +practical application. If they did not suffer a rebuff from him gladly, +at least they suffered it, as something inherent in the mysterious nature +of things, something the reason for which might thereafter, if they were +patient, be revealed to them. + +For Jowett was not only a great man, but also, like most great men, +a great enigma. Many wondered, and perhaps no one ever knew, how he +reconciled his position with his conscience. He had subscribed to the +Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, and then he had disproved +them, or a good many of them, and then he had subscribed to them again. +He had attached no condition to his second subscription of them except +the simple one, “if you will give me a new pen.” There was also a story +current, though it is probably untrue, as it is also told of Theodore +Hook, of St. Mary Hall, that he offered to sign forty Articles if the +signature of thirty-nine did not suffice. + +Why did he do these things? What remnant of belief remained to him after +he had done them? By what chain of argument was he bound to his office as +a clergyman of the Church of England? Those were the problems posed, but +he would have been a bold man who ventured to press the Master for the +solutions. + +His chief interests, at this stage, indeed, were rather practical than +speculative. He gave large house parties of people who had succeeded in +life. He bought an organ, and arranged for the Balliol Sunday evening +concerts. He shortened the chapel services, saying—or so it is said—that +if one could praise God adequately in half an hour, it was an absurd +waste of time to devote three-quarters of an hour to the proceeding. He +allowed Oxford to have a theatre—a thing forbidden by the pious wisdom of +the men of old. He quoted “_sat prata biberunt_,” and negotiated for the +drainage of the Oxford swamps. + +He also preached, of course, and his sermons were always interesting, and +sometimes pleasingly satirical, as when he smote Renan and Farrar with +a double stroke, expressing his desire to read a Life of Christ which +should be neither “sentimental” nor “picturesque”; but it could hardly +be said that they settled the vexed question of his personal attitude +towards the creeds which he recited without taking them too seriously or +the formulæ which he manipulated with a sort of spiritual sleight-of-hand. + +Possibly he argued that, as no clergyman ever believed all the Articles +of the Christian Faith, one clergyman had as good a right as another to +pick and choose among them. Or he may have felt that for a man to quit +the Church merely because he had demonstrated some of its propositions +to be erroneous was as ridiculous as for a doctor to take down his brass +plate merely because he had discovered a new treatment of a disease at +which the old-fashioned practitioners shook their heads. But, if that was +his view, he never uttered it, preferring to go his own way, possessing +his own soul and guarding his own secret. + +One could almost see him guarding it; so that our last glimpse may be of +a quaint-looking little old man in evening dress trotting through the +parks in that unusual costume on a Sunday afternoon: an arresting figure, +with venerable white hair, a beautifully fresh pink face, and the seal of +inscrutable mystery on his forehead. + + + + +MERTON COLLEGE + + Antiquity of Merton—The model of subsequent + foundations—Friction between the University and the town—The + great “town and gown row” of 1354—The scholars of Merton + save the University—The wardenship of Sir Henry Savile—The + visit of Queen Elizabeth—Oxford during the Civil War—Queen + Henrietta Maria at Merton—How Merton ceased to be a reading + college—Scandalous proceedings in the gardens—Mandell Creighton + and Lord Randolph Churchill. + + +Though in this work, as in the Oxford University Calendar, Merton stands +third among the colleges, there is a sense in which the first place may +be claimed for it. Both University and Balliol got their endowments at a +slightly earlier date, but Merton was the first College to be launched, +in 1264, a year before the meeting of the first English Parliament, as a +self-governing corporation. + +The bequest of William of Durham, which resulted in the foundation of +University, was in its origin merely a pension fund, and John of Balliol, +in the first instance, only paid for the support of scholars in a hired +house. Walter de Merton, on the contrary, began at once to build and to +legislate, and his Statutes were the model of the Statutes of subsequent +foundations, not only at Oxford, but at Cambridge also. The founder +of Peterhouse, the first of the Cambridge colleges, expressly decreed +that the Peterhouse students were to live according to “the rule of the +scholars of Merton at Oxford.” + +It follows that the history of Merton is more closely connected than that +of any other college with the earliest turmoils—which were many; and the +historian of Merton may properly begin with a glance at those brawls +which a later civilisation came to know as “town and gown rows.” + + * * * * * + +Discord between the town and the University began as soon as the +University became important and powerful, and it owed its origin, not to +incompatibility of temper between undergraduates and bargees, but to the +mutual jealousies of conflicting jurisdictions, ill-defined and therefore +liable to clash. Nowadays, of course, the object of the authorities on +both sides—the police on the one hand and the proctors on the other—is +to keep the peace between the combatants. In the Middle Ages the seniors +were as pugnacious as the juniors, and joined as ferociously in the +affrays. + +Theoretically it was the function of the town to prevent, or punish, +breaches of the peace by townsmen, while the University had a similar +responsibility with regard to breaches of the peace by gownsmen; but when +townsmen and gownsmen fell out, each authority resented the interference +of the other. That was one cause of friction, and further friction +occurred in connection with disputed points of sanitation and hygiene. +The gownsmen objected to the sale of stinking fish and to the brewing +of beer from water contaminated by sewage; the townsmen thought the +objection fastidious, and were very angry when the University appealed to +the King to interfere with these time-honoured customs. Hence constant +bickerings, and a frequent exchange of abusive language; hence ultimately +open war and that bloody Battle of Saint Scholastica’s Day, in which the +townsmen found the scholars of Merton their most formidable foes. + +The trouble began in a tavern, on February 10, 1354. Some scholars who +were drinking there found fault with the wine, and the vintner said that +it was quite good enough wine for them. The scholars then threw the wine +at the vintner’s head, and the vintner called his friends and neighbours +to the rescue. They rang the bell of the Church of Saint Martin at +Carfax, and the populace, summoned by that tocsin, shot at the scholars +with bows and arrows. The Chancellor of the University—the Lord Curzon +of Kedleston of his epoch—appeared upon the scene, ingeminating peace +where there was no peace, and he also was shot at. Then the bell of the +University Church of Saint Mary began to ring, and the gownsmen gathered, +and the _mêlée_ became general and lasted until the setting of the sun. +No one was killed; the gownsmen got the best of it, and the Chancellor +supposed that the riot was over. He issued a proclamation bidding the +scholars go to their lectures as usual on the following day. + +They went, but found the townsmen lying in wait for them. +Reinforcements—two thousand peasants carrying an ominous black flag—had +swarmed into the city from Cowley, Headington, and Hinksey. The Carfax +tocsin pealed out a second time, just after the dinner hour, and the +tocsin of Saint Mary’s responded as before. The townsmen, with their +bucolic allies, not only assailed the scholars in the streets, but +pursued them into their lodgings, inns, and halls, beating down the doors +with improvised battering-rams, killing all the gownsmen they could +catch, and stealing or destroying all the property that they could lay +their hands on. + +The Friars came out, carrying their huge crucifix and chanting their +Litany, to try to compose the strife, but their intervention was in +vain. They themselves became the objects of the popular fury, and one +scholar was struck down even while clinging to the crucifix. Other +scholars were followed into the churches and massacred at the foot of the +altar. Dead bodies were flung on to dunghills, the wounded were hailed to +prison, and even torture was not spared. “The crown of some chaplains,” +says the chronicler, “viz., all the skin so far as the tonsure went, +these diabolical imps flayed off in scorn of their clergy.” + +At last the University could resist no more. The gownsmen began to flee +into the country—all save the scholars of Merton. These had their solid +walls behind which they could retire. Withdrawing to their college, while +the town triumphed without—the sole representatives of learning in a +deserted city which the Bishop had laid under an interdict—they waited +for the day of vengeance and redress of grievances. + +It came. The King sent down a special commission to investigate the +matter. The Mayor of Oxford and his bailiffs were sent to prison; the +sheriff was removed from office; and presently the town was further +humiliated by the bestowal of fresh privileges upon the University +authorities. They thenceforward, and not the townsmen, were to decide +whether fish stank, and if they decided that it did, they were to +send it to the hospital for the consumption of the sick. In addition +to this privilege, they were to receive pecuniary compensation for the +damage done in the riot, and their supremacy was in various other ways +established on a firm constitutional basis. + +Merton, that is to say, saved the University at an hour when, but for +Merton, the townsmen would have wiped it out, and its clerks would have +been dispersed over the face of the country. + + * * * * * + +As Merton was, through the scenes above described, the first college to +be interesting, so, too, it was the first college to rise to conspicuous +dignity, and enjoy the glories of a golden age. The supreme position +achieved by Christ Church towards the end of the eighteenth and by +Balliol in the middle of the nineteenth century, was won by Merton in the +reign of Queen Elizabeth, under the Wardenship of Sir Henry Savile, and +at the time when the founder of the Bodleian Library was a Fellow of the +College. + +It may be that Savile’s name has not echoed down the corridors of time +quite as loudly as the names of some other Oxford men; but it is kept +alive by the Savilian Professorships, and one may fix his position fairly +well by saying that he was at once the Jowett and the Liddell of his +generation. He was, that is to say, a great scholar and a great teacher; +a great innovator and a man of great personal prestige; a link between +the academic world and the world of action; the sort of man whom kings +delighted to honour. Elizabeth honoured him, and so also did James I. + +It was Savile who entertained Elizabeth on her visit to Oxford in +1592. He presided over the disputations held in her honour in Saint +Mary’s Church, and delivered a ringing panegyric on her reign with the +inevitable reference to the British triumph over the Armada: “_Tuis +auspiciis Hispania Anglum non vidit nisi victorem, Anglia Hispanum nisi +captivum_.” It was after enjoying his hospitality at Merton that her +Majesty, as she rode away, paused on Shotover, and “looking wistfully +towards Oxford,” said: “Farewell, farewell, dear Oxford! God bless thee +and increase thy sons in number, holiness, and virtue!” + +Elizabeth furthermore made Savile Provost of Eton—an office which he held +concurrently with the Merton Wardenship. She gave him the office in spite +of the fact that the Statutes reserved it for clergymen, and that Savile +was a layman. He suggested to her Majesty that Statutes could not bind +a sovereign, and her Majesty agreed with him, and it was while he was +Provost of Eton that he entertained James I. and was made a baronet. + +The Fellows of Merton of those days were already far removed from their +early condition of “poor scholars.” They could hold their own at Court, +and were well qualified to serve their country as ambassadors. Elizabeth +sent one Merton man as Ambassador to Madrid, and another to Venice, +Switzerland, and France; but the College did not lose touch with learning +because it had gained touch with affairs. Sir Thomas Bodley, as all +the world knows, returned from his travels to found the library which +bears his name, and Savile assisted in the preparation of the Authorised +Version of the Bible, produced an edition of St. Chrysostom which cost +him £8,000, and founded the Professorships of Geometry and Astronomy in +order that the multitude might no longer think “that the most useful +branches of Mathematicks were spells and her professors limbs of the +devil.” + +He is said to have been a “very severe governor”—one whose students +“hated him for his austerity.” He preferred the plodding and persevering +to the brilliant. “If I would look for wits,” he said, “I would go to +Newgate. There be the wits.” And there is a story of his own assiduous +devotion to his studies, which probably illustrates the attitude of a +good many homely wives towards learned husbands. + + “He was so sedulous,” we read, “at his study that his lady + thereby thought herself neglected, and coming to him one day as + he was in his study, saluted him thus: ‘Sir Henry, I would I + were a book too, and then you would a little more respect me.’ + Whereto, one standing by replied, ‘Madam, you must then be an + almanack, that he might change every year.’ Whereat she was not + a little displeased.” + +Those were the great days; but the times were to be more exciting when +the Civil War broke out, and Oxford, after the battle of Edgehill, became +the Royalist headquarters, garrisoned by the royal troops, surrounded +by fortifications which townsmen and gownsmen helped to build, and +beleaguered, more or less—at first rather less than more, but finally +rather more than less—by the Parliamentary forces under Fairfax, who +threw a bridge over the Cherwell, near Marston, and mounted a battery on +Headington Hill. + +One cannot pause to tell that story at length, or draw that picture in +detail; but a stray fact or two will indicate what Oxford in general and +Merton College in particular then looked like. + +Soldiers were, of course, encamped wherever there was room for them. The +New College cloisters were turned into an arsenal, and a powder factory +was established at Osney. New Inn Hall was the mint at which the College +plate was being melted down and coined into money. A line of earthworks +ran from Folly Bridge across Christ Church Meadows. Parliament—the +Royalist section of Parliament, that is to say—met in the House of +Convocation. Prisoners of war were stowed away, and very nearly starved, +in the castle in which Queen Maud had once been beleaguered by King +Stephen. Charles I. held his Court at Christ Church, and Queen Henrietta +Maria held hers at Merton, the two royal apartments being connected by a +secret passage. + +It followed, therefore, that Merton was the centre of the light side of +war. The Warden, Nathaniel Brent, was a Parliamentarian, and was absent, +acting as Judge-Marshal in the Parliamentary Army; William Harvey, of +Caius College, Cambridge, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, +was thrust into his place; and Merton, having accepted him under protest, +lived joyously, doing its best to entertain the Queen and her ladies, +who, on their part, did their best to be gracious to Merton. “_Tota +Academia morbo castrensi afflicta_” is one Mertonian’s summing up; but +that is a grumbler’s unkind way of putting it. + +Regiments of University men were raised. They did good service, but they +could not always be fighting. They sallied, and raided, and cut up +convoys, and then returned to their headquarters; and, on their return, +the dust-soiled warriors were received by smiling ladies in the Merton +Gardens or the Christ Church Broad Walk, or listened, with the ladies, to +concerts in the college chapels, or played in a _masque_ in one of the +college halls for their diversion. + +It was a glorious time—a time when gaudily apparelled boys swaggered +about with the assurance of men and the sincere conviction that the only +life worth living was the life of the gallant who fought the King’s +enemies in the morning and made love to the Queen’s ladies at night. +But it was not a time at which students could be expected to mind their +books; and the habit of study, when once lost, is not easily recovered. +Amid the clash of arms Merton ceased to be a reading college, and +circumstances conspired to prevent it from reverting to that character +until after the lapse of many generations. + + * * * * * + +Three later royal visits—two by Charles II. and one by James II.—may be +supposed to have operated unfavourably to study; and another cause of +deterioration can be detected in the measures which the College took +for the relief of its pecuniary embarrassments. A resolution was passed +to the effect that the presence of poor men in the College should be +discouraged, and that preference should be shown to postulants who were +willing to present the College with silver tankards and subscribe heavily +to the replenishment of the College Library. + +The plan served its purpose. The Merton plate-chest was soon full to +overflowing, and the shelves of the Merton library were also filled. But +the College had, in the meantime, become a College of rich men, bent upon +amusement rather than profit, and more eager to kindle material bonfires +in the quad than to hand on the metaphoric torch of culture. Perhaps it +has, by this time, lived down that reputation, but it certainly retained, +and even nursed it, long after most of the other colleges had begun to +take life seriously. + +In the eighteenth century, indeed, one does not expect to find the +age anything but dark; but even in that scandalous period Merton was +distinguished by a special scandal of its own. Ladies of more charm than +reputation came to Oxford in large numbers in those days, and the gardens +of Merton were their favourite haunt. Their presence there has been +celebrated alike in verse and prose. The prose censor rudely complains of +“that multitude of Female Residentiaries who have of late infested our +learned retirements”; while the poetical satirist exclaims: + + “In vain his tutor with a watchful care + Rebukes his folly, warns him to beware, + Aspire above the common Merton crowd, + The vain, the lewd, the impudent and proud. + Beauty at Oxford is a thing so scarce + That all thy panegyrick turns to farce.” + +From which state of things there resulted “imprudent marriages”—and +worse—with the result that sleepy authority at last awoke to what was +going on, and locked the garden gates. + +The locking of the garden gates, however, did not in itself suffice to +make Merton a hive of industry, or even a home of order; and legends +of stormy occurrences within its walls continue to be frequent until a +comparatively recent date. “All that I can say, gentlemen,” said the +Warden, Dr. Marsham, on one occasion, haranguing the undergraduates in +hall—“all that I can say is, that if you want to behave like barbarian +savages, why—ahem! ahem!—you should come and ask leave first”; and an +authentic story relates that Dr. Mandell Creighton, the late Bishop of +London, was once, while an undergraduate, “employed to fetch in after +dinner a supply of penny whistles and other musical instruments, armed +with which, with tea-trays as drums, making the most horrible din, and +letting off squibs and crackers as they went, the undergraduates marched +round and round the Fellows’ quad.” + +And, if Creighton did these things, what may we suppose to have been +done by Creighton’s pupil, the late Lord Randolph Churchill? That is +a delicate subject on which Lord Randolph’s biographers do not as a +rule say more than is strictly necessary; but there is at any rate one +story of his undergraduate days which it seems right to tell, because +the delightful audacity of the future leader of the Fourth Party is +foreshadowed in it. + +Lord Randolph, it is said, was once “sent for” to be “ragged,” whether +for cutting lectures or for some other offence against discipline. He was +received by an indignant don, who began to deliver stern expostulations +from the hearthrug, on which he stood, warming his back at the fire. +In the heat of self-justification Lord Randolph advanced boldly, and +the don, intimidated, shrank away. As the interview was approaching its +conclusion, another undergraduate, who had also been summoned to the +presence, knocked and entered. He found Lord Randolph on the hearthrug, +with his coat-tails comfortably drawn up, delivering a vehement harangue, +while the don cowered submissively in a corner of the apartment listening +to him. + +Remembering that story, we cannot wonder that Lord Randolph is still a +hero with the rising generation of the College which educated him so +imperfectly that when, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he was confronted +with some decimal fractions, he had to send for a permanent official to +tell him “the meaning of those d—d dots.” + + + + +EXETER COLLEGE + + The West Country College—A Whig College—“Debauched by a + drunken governor”—Eminent _Alumni_—“Parson Jack”—His bout + at fisticuffs—Garibaldi’s Englishman—His prowess on the + river—James Anthony Froude—His innate Protestantism—The burning + of his “Nemesis of Faith”—Burne Jones and William Morris. + + +Exeter is the College for whose founder’s soul the author of this work +is particularly bound to pray; and he hereby renders grateful homage to +the memory of the Bishop of Exeter and Lord High Treasurer of England +in the sorry reign of Edward II., whose benefaction he enjoyed in the +character of a Stapledon scholar. If he says but little about Walter de +Stapledon, that is because there is little to be said, except that he was +a good bishop and a King’s man who lost his head in the King’s cause, +being charged with the defence of London when the King fled to Wales, +with the result that he was seized by the mob and brought to the block in +Cheapside. + +[Illustration: EXETER COLLEGE: FELLOWS’ GARDEN. + +[To face p. 70.] + +His period was one in which it was thought proper to combine the +patronage of learning with the patronage of a particular locality. He +wished the scholars, and also the Fellows, of his College to be taken +from the counties of Devon and Cornwall; and his patriotic injunctions +were faithfully observed until the University commissioners interfered, +happily leaving a certain number of West Country scholars, but condemning +the West Country fellowships to extinction. The last of the West Country +Fellows was the Rev. Charles Boase, who piloted the present writer +through the ceremony of matriculation, and concerning whom a statistician +with a pencil once computed that he talked in the course of a single +evening, on sixty-seven learned subjects, ranging from the Chemistry of +Agriculture to the Philosophy of the Unconditioned. + +Commoners, however, have followed where scholars led the way; and Exeter +has always been recognised as the particular College of West Countrymen. +Even the connection between Blundell’s School, Tiverton, and Balliol has +not broken down its claims to this distinction. In “Westward Ho” we find +Frank Leigh, as a matter of course, sent there from the Bideford Grammar +School; and one of the characters in “Tom Jones” went there, equally as a +matter of course, from Taunton, in the dark days in which the College was +reputed to be given over to “nothing but drunkenness and duncery.” + +The College was, at that melancholy period, known, equally with Merton, +as a Whig College; and one of the rectors is said to have carried +democratic principles to the point of marrying the daughter of the +College cook. It distinguished itself, at one of the borough elections, +by inviting Whig voters not only to pass through the College quadrangle +on their way to the poll, but also to taste the College beer while +passing. For several days, it is said, the Hall was filled with “a +smoking, drinking, expectorating crowd,”—a spectacle which it is indeed +difficult to conjure up in the decorous circumstances of contemporary +academic life. + +But let that pass. The interest of a college—of Exeter as of any other +college—depends, not upon the proceedings of the vulgar herd, but upon +its association with names which have left a trail of glory behind them. +In the days when Exeter was, as Wood says, “debauched by a drunken +governor,” and in the days immediately before and immediately after that +deplorable debauchery, the most conspicuous Exeter names are hardly names +which the plain man recognises at the first glance; but the nineteenth +century introduces names worthy of remark in more than one department of +endeavour. + +Let “Parson Jack” come first. + +To students of the Clergy List he is the Reverend John Russell, Perpetual +Curate of Swymbridge. To the West Country he is “Parson Jack”—the +hunting parson who kept the hounds and defied the Bishop who bade him +give up keeping them: a man, no doubt, of more energy than intellect, +but a clergyman—he would not have thanked any one for calling him a +priest—whose parishioners carefully minded what he said, holding, it may +be, that so good a judge of a horse must be an equally good judge of a +religion. + +Parson Jack won no laurels for his College in the schools, being +contented with a pass degree; but it is said that the supper-party at +which he bade the College farewell was the noisiest supper-party ever +given within College walls, and that, as this chronicler knows, is saying +a good deal. For, if he had not distinguished himself at his books, he +had at least distinguished himself with his fists, in circumstances +graphically described by his biographer. + +A certain gentleman-commoner named Gordon, addicted to the society of +out-college men, had, it appears, been boasting in hall of the superior +prowess “with the gloves” of some friends of his at Christ Church. A +certain Denne, lately from Eton, withstood him, saying: “Bring your three +best men from Christ Church to my rooms, and if they can only stand up +in a fair set-to against three of Exeter, we’ll give your heroes full +credit for all you say of them, but not till then.” + +Such a challenge, of course, could not be declined; and while Gordon +was accepting it on behalf of his out-college friends, Jack Russell, +overhearing the conversation, rose from his place and volunteered his +services. + +“Don’t forget me, Denne,” he said. “I’ll be one of the three, mind that, +and the sooner we meet the better.” + +So the meeting was arranged, and the result of it may best be given in +the words of Russell’s biographer: + + “Russell was deputed to open the ball, the antagonist selected + to meet him being the second best of the Christ Church lot. It + was a brisk set-to while it lasted, but evidently a one-sided + affair from beginning to end; for Russell’s long reach, and + quick, straight blows, which fell with tremendous thuds on his + adversary’s visage, brought the trial to a close in little more + than ten minutes. + + “The latter, admitting himself over-matched, then declined the + unequal contest; while Russell, self-reliant and still “fresh + as paint,” refused to take off his gloves, calling stoutly + for the next man to come on. Denne, however, interposed, and + would have his turn; going in first with No. 1, then No. 3, and + finally polishing them both off with as much ease as if they + had been two old women. + + “‘Now,’ said Russell, addressing Gordon aside, ‘I think you had + better take your three fellows home; and don’t make such fools + of them again.’” + +Another hero who flourished at a slightly later date in the same field of +prowess as Parson Jack was James Whitehead Peard. He had “the shoulders +of a bull,” and when he played his part in one of those town and gown +rows of which mention has just been made in the account of Merton, the +town, with one accord, fled before him. He was to become Colonel Peard, +to distinguish himself in a revolution in Italy, and to be known to +the whole world as Garibaldi’s Englishman. At Exeter, however, he was +principally a boating man. He rowed against Cambridge; and at a time +when, as the Rev. J. Pycroft has related, “the dons held the boat in +abhorrence and considered any man belonging to it as keeping rather +questionable company,” he insisted that rowing was not only a manly but a +moral recreation. + +In proof of his claim, he submitted the rules of the Boating Club to Mr. +Richards, then a tutor, and afterwards the Rector, pointing out that +they forbade to men in training the indulgences which one is accustomed +to couple in the pentameter line of elegiac verse as “_Bacchus et alma +Venus_.” Whereupon Mr. Richards fell upon him crushingly. + +“Exactly,” he said, “as I have always maintained. These rules show +plainly and are a written confession of the wild character of the men for +whom you can anticipate the necessity of such fines; no decent men would +want such rules.” + +Let us hope that modern boating men, at all events, are virtuous by +instinct and need no laws to keep them so; and then let us cull a few +other Exeter names, illustrious in other fields. + + * * * * * + +James Anthony Froude was elected a Fellow of Exeter from Oriel, in the +days when the Tractarians seemed likely to succeed in their great task +of turning Oxford upside down. More brilliant than industrious in those +days, he had only taken a Second; but he had the clean-cut intellect +which “penetrates through sophisms, ignores commonplaces, and gives to +conventional illusions their true value,” and it was inevitable that, +while looking for his way in life, he should come into violent collision +with the Obscurantists. He did so on at least two notable occasions. + +He began life in the shadow of his brother’s greater name and of the +expectation that he would adopt his brother’s point of view and echo +his brother’s opinions. Richard Hurrell Froude—a most imperious and +dictatorial personage—had bullied him into seeming acquiescence in his +doctrines. For the time being he presumably believed that he believed in +them; and his vivid literary gifts marked him out as an ideal contributor +to Newman’s projected series of “Lives of the Saints.” Newman wanted to +establish the continuity of miracle within the Church; and he regarded +Froude as a man credulous of miracles, and a dialectician capable of +making out a good case for them. His instructions to his contributors +were, not to try to find out whether the alleged miracles had really +happened or not, but, in effect, to accept as many of them as a man could +swallow without making himself too conspicuously ridiculous. + +Froude accepted the commission; and there is no reason to doubt that he +accepted it in good faith. The truth, however, was too strong for him; +the evidence was too weak; and he had a turn for biting irony which he +could not suppress. Saint Neot was his subject, and he ended his study +with the remarkable sentence: “This is all, and perhaps rather more than +all, that is known of the life of the blessed Saint Neot.” It was as +if he had played a practical joke on Newman; and there were those who +considered that to play practical jokes on Newman was almost as bad as +laying a profane hand on the Ark of the Covenant. Newman himself was +almost certainly of that opinion; but Protestantism “will out,” and +Froude was a Protestant in grain, and was to become something more than a +Protestant when he matured. + +He first matured into a deacon of the Church of England; but that meant +nothing. The College Fellows of those days took orders as normally as +they took their degrees, and without making more ado about it. There was +no more a question of a “call” to be a shepherd of souls than of a “call” +to be a Master of Arts. In travelling so far, Froude was only travelling +the common road. The desire to divagate from it did not come to him +until later; and, even so, no one would have troubled much about his +divagations if he had not chosen to divagate in print. + +Like most of the other “honest doubters,” however, he could not keep +his honest doubts to himself. He wrote and published “The Nemesis of +Faith,” and then the fat was in the fire. The publication cost him his +fellowship, and the book was burnt. The latter incident is famous, and +has been magnified by legend. The belief prevails that there was a +solemn and formal _auto da fé_ under the direction of the University +authorities. There was, in fact, only a private display of theological +temper on the part of the Rev. William Sewell. + +Sewell, afterwards the founder of Radley School, was a High Churchman, +encompassed by all the limitations of that intellectual state. He was +also a discursive lecturer who stood with his back to the fire, and made +Aristotle’s “Ethics” or Virgil’s “Georgics” an excuse for propounding his +opinions on matters of topical interest. He did not set out to talk about +“The Nemesis of Faith,” but came to talk of it by accident, and then +proceeded to denounce it with the vigour of a _Quarterly_ or _Saturday +Reviewer_. Finally he inquired whether any member of his audience +possessed a copy of the book. One of them admitted that he did. + +“Then bring it here, sir,” thundered Sewell. + +It was brought; and Sewell stripped off the binding, tore the pages +across, pitched the mutilated volume into the flames, and stood over it, +thrusting at it with the poker until it was burnt to ashes. + +Such was the actual occurrence, as related by Mr. Boase, who was present +at the lecture at which it took place. There was no public holocaust, +but only a spasmodic explosion of wrath on the part of a single excited +theologian. The act, however, gained piquancy from the fact that Froude +was Sewell’s colleague. The witnesses went out, and told what they had +seen; and the story lost nothing in the telling. In after years, as +we have seen, some of them recovered their historical consciences and +reduced it to its true proportions; but, at the moment, they indulged +their mythopœic faculties to their hearts’ content, and erected an +enduring edifice of romance on a scanty foundation of fact. + +And Froude, at any rate, had to go. The Rector and the Fellows asked him +whether he would prefer to resign or to be turned out; and he elected to +resign. The Visitor of the College—the Bishop of Exeter—applauded their +action; and Froude’s father, the Archdeacon of Totnes, “conceiving,” as +Mr. Herbert Paul puts it in his Life of Froude, “that the best remedy for +free thought was short commons, stopped his son’s allowance.” Such was +the message to him of “the last enchantments of the Middle Ages.” + + * * * * * + +Time passed. R. D. Blackmore, the immortal author of “Lorna Doone” took +his degree at Exeter in the forties. He and Charles Reade, of Magdalen, +of whom more in due course, are without dispute the two greatest +novelists whom Oxford has yet produced; and there shall be no attempt +here to prove that either of them was greater than the other. Has it not +been written that, to a West Countryman, “Lorna Doone” is “almost as +good as clotted cream”? Did not the author reply that he was too fond +of clotted cream not to be gratified by the compliment, but also too +fond of it to admit that any book whatever could successfully challenge +comparison therewith? He was a modest man, however—so modest that hardly +anything is known of him; and as no stories of his quiet passage through +Exeter have been preserved, we may pass on to our next interesting names, +which are those of William Morris and Edward Burne Jones. + +They came up in 1853; and Morris’ biographer, Mr. J. W. Mackail, has +given a good deal of offence by his supercilious account of the internal +condition of Exeter at that period. Himself a Balliol man, he appears to +take the view that outside Balliol there is no academical salvation. + +That is a proposition which we need not turn aside to discuss at any +length. It is neither to be desired nor to be expected that all the +colleges of the University should resemble each other like peas in a pod; +and it is not to be denied that there are some functions which Balliol +fulfils better than Exeter. It dry nurses its men with more success, +takes greater pains to make them conform to a type, and then lays itself +out to magnify the type to scale. The result is conspicuous in the higher +ranks of the most efficient Civil Service that the world has ever seen. +It is an excellent system for its purpose; but it has its limitations, +and is not equally suitable for all men, as even Jowett recognised. + +Jowett doubted whether, if a poet came to Balliol, Balliol “would be able +to hold him.” But Balliol held Swinburne; and the real danger is rather +lest Balliol should turn a poet into a Judge of the High Court, or a +stiff and starched Permanent Under-Secretary. Perhaps it would be a good +thing for many poets to be thus transfigured; but it is not good for all +of them; and it would not have been good for William Morris. What Morris +wanted was to be left alone and not worried by pastors and masters who +“generalise” and try to compel exceptional men to walk in conventional +paths. Whatever may be the case now, Exeter was, in no distant past, a +College in which a man might go his own way without excessive admonition; +and William Morris was indubitably one of the successes of the system. + +His tutor described him as “a rather rough and unpolished youth who +exhibited no special literary tastes or capacity but had no difficulty in +mastering the usual subjects of examination.” The opinion which he, on +his part, entertained of tutors generally was not more flattering. “The +name of ‘don,’” says his biographer, “was used by him as a synonym for +all that was narrow, ignorant, and pedantic.” But the dons did him a good +turn, though neither he nor they knew it at the time, by not going out of +their way to disturb his view of them, their interests, and pursuits. + +Except for Burne Jones, indeed, he had hardly a friend in his own +College. With the reading men and with the uproarious men—and Exeter has +always had its share of these—he had equally little in common. Men called +him “Topsy” on account of his uncombed woolly head of hair; he accepted +the nickname and was not to be driven by it into tidiness. Art, and +beauty, and antiquities, were the things which interested him; and Oxford +was for him, not a seat of learning, but “a vision of grey-roofed houses, +and a long, winding street, and the sound of many bells.” + +His rooms were in Hell Quad, and his favourite diversion was talking. +Burne Jones tells how, on one occasion, “Morris came tumbling in and +talked incessantly for the next seven hours and a half.” Most of his +talking, however, was done at Pembroke, where he had two great friends: +Faulkner, the mathematician who is said to have been ploughed in Divinity +for including the Prophet Isaiah in a list of the Twelve Apostles, and +Dixon, afterwards Canon Dixon, the pre-Raphaelite poet. He paid his +tribute to the influence of his ecclesiastical surroundings by talking of +devoting his entire private fortune of £900 a year to the foundation of +a monastery; but he happily was wise in time. And presently his friends +discovered his genius, though the dons did not. + +“He’s a big poet,” Burne Jones one day exclaimed. + +“Who is?” + +“Why, Topsy.” + +So he took his degree, and went down; and the rest of his career does +not concern us, except for the beginnings of his association with Dante +Gabriel Rossetti, who was brought up to Oxford to decorate the ceiling +of the Union Debating Hall. He and Morris and Burne Jones were always +together in Rossetti’s rooms in George Street; and a fourth member of +their coterie was Swinburne of Balliol, the poet whom Balliol “held.” + +They talked and talked interminably. Their talks were the beginning +of that pre-Raphaelitism which was, in due course, to develop (or to +degenerate) into the Æsthetic Movement; and the most picturesque incident +of their alliance took place when they set out together to accept an +invitation to dine at Christ Church. + +Morris, who had with difficulty been persuaded to dress for the +banquet, happened to remove his hat, and it was then discovered that +the connection between art and letters was symbolised by an enormous +daub of blue paint on his hair. But for that accident, and the hurried +visit to the barber which followed it, he would have sat at high table, +illuminated like a saintly figure in a missal or a stained-glass window. + + + + +ORIEL COLLEGE + + Foundation by Adam de Brome—Butler and his + “Analogy”—Causes of the efficiency of Oriel—The + “Noetics”—Eveleigh—Coplestone—Whately—The Tractarians—Who + started the Tractarian Movement?—What did the Tractarians + want?—The logical weakness of their position—The attitude of + the bishops—The stampede to Rome—The honest doubters—Matthew + Arnold and Arthur Hugh Clough—Cecil Rhodes at Oriel. + + +Edward II.’s almoner, Adam de Brome, obtained his charter for the +foundation of a new College at Oxford in 1324. Originally called the +House, or Hall, of the Blessed Mary at Oxford, it took the name of +Oriel from La Oriole—a tenement included in the premises. Among its +endowments was included the advowson and rectory of the Church of St. +Mary—a fact of which we shall perceive the importance as we proceed. +It was a small College, and a poor one, but it was to have its hour of +signal intellectual pre-eminence, though not until the early days of the +nineteenth century. Before that time the noteworthy names are scarce. + +[Illustration: ORIEL COLLEGE. + +[To face p. 86.] + +The most noteworthy of them all, if one could be sure of one’s facts, +would be that of Sir Walter Raleigh. Sir Walter is said to have been +an Oriel man, and one likes to think that he was—if only to furnish an +Elizabethan Oriel precedent for Cecil Rhodes; but the proofs offered are +inconclusive. Of the undisputed _alumni_ of the darker ages the greatest +was Bishop Butler, of the “Analogy”—a precedent, perhaps, if one is +looking for precedents, for those Oriel “Noetics” of whom we shall have +to speak; but Oriel owes more to Butler than Butler owed to Oriel. He +is a witness—like Gibbon of Magdalen and Adam Smith of Balliol—to the +inefficiency of Oxford teaching in the eighteenth century. + +“We are obliged,” Butler wrote, “to mis-spend so much time here in +attending frivolous lectures and unintelligible disputations that I am +quite tired out with such a disagreeable way of trifling.” + +He also threatened to leave Oxford and migrate to Cambridge, though, as +the historian of Oriel writes, “it saves the blushes of an Oxonian to +reflect that the migration was never carried out.” That is all that can +be said, however, for that is all that is known; so we will leave Butler, +and hasten on to the really interesting epoch. + + * * * * * + +The fame of Oriel, at the time when Oriel was famous, depended upon +the distinction of its Fellows. The Statutes allowed more latitude to +the electors there than at most of the other colleges. They were not +restricted in their choice to their own men, to their founders’ kin, +or, except in the case of a few specific fellowships, to candidates +from particular counties. A few happy selections made the tuition +exceptionally efficient. The reputation for efficiency attracted a +steady supply of good men. The attraction was the greater because the +electors chose for themselves, on principles of their own, and were but +little, if at all, influenced by records of successes gained in other +examinations. The ideal man for them, they said, was a man whose mind +was “an instrument and not a receptacle”; and they often, for that +reason, preferred men who had taken seconds to men who had taken firsts, +and their preference was generally justified by developments. Whately, +Newman, Matthew Arnold, Arthur Hugh Clough, and Richard Hurrell Froude +all took seconds, and became Fellows of Oriel. + +An Oriel fellowship became, in that way, like a Balliol scholarship, +the real “blue riband” of the University. It marked a man, not as a +precocious scholar, but as an intellectual force—a man who was expected +to make his mark on thought. Oriel, in consequence, came to be +recognised as a great intellectual centre—the seething source of the new +ideas which Oxford would presently diffuse through England. That was the +great and golden age of the Oriel Common-room. It began under Provost +Eveleigh, who was jointly concerned with the Master of Balliol and the +Dean of Christ Church in the institution of the Honours Schools. It +continued under Coplestone, who resigned to become Bishop of Llandaff in +1826. It came to an end, some time in the forties, under Hawkins. + +The golden age, however, ought really to be divided into three golden +ages, which ran into each other, but must here be glanced at separately. +The first period is that of the so-called “Noetics,” who had Whately +for their prophet and leader. The second is that of the Tractarians—the +period when the influence, first of Keble and then of John Henry Newman, +was paramount. The third, following on the secession of some of the +Tractarians to Rome, and the defeat, so far as Oxford was concerned, of +those who remained in the Church of England, may be called the period +of the Honest Doubters. The names belonging to it, which all the world +knows, are those of Clough and Matthew Arnold. First, then, of the +“Noetics.” + +The word “Noetic” has gone out of use. Our own generation hardly knows +what it means; and perhaps its meaning was not very precise, even when it +was bandied freely. If we render it “Intellectuals”—with a capital I—we +shall get as near to it as we need to go; but we must also remember that +the Noetics flattered themselves on being, above all things, logicians. +It was a common saying, in the Oxford of their time, that the Oriel +Common-room “stank of logic.” + +Provost Eveleigh, whom we have mentioned, was not exactly a Noetic +himself, but it was his policy which brought the Noetics together at +Oriel. He was the first Provost who insisted that the College should make +a proper use of its freedom in the choice of Fellows. The tendency of the +times was to use that freedom to serve the ends of private friendship, +and bring clubbable and convivial men together. Eveleigh took the line +that intellectual distinction was of more account than good manners or +geniality in social intercourse. There were those who said that, by doing +so, he made the Oriel Common-room a bear-garden; but that is only a way +of saying that it focussed heat as well as light. + +Coplestone, afterwards Bishop of Llandaff, Hampden, afterwards Bishop +of Hereford, Whately, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin, Arnold of Rugby, +Hawkins, presently to be Provost, Baden-Powell, Savilian Professor of +Geometry—these are the principal Noetic names. They formed no definite +school of thought; they had no common body of doctrine. Some of them were +more noetic than others, and one or two of them ended by relapsing into +reactionary ways. Some of them, again, were very polished, while others +were very rough diamonds. But they were, all of them, very clever, and +knew it, and liked other people to know it. They brought the dry light +of logic to bear upon ecclesiastical and other conundrums. Liberals in +theology, equally contemptuous of High Church aridity and oleaginous +Evangelicanism, they liked to express their Liberalism in terms of robust +and aggressive common sense. + +Arnold and Whately are perhaps the only two of them whose names now live; +and Arnold, of course, made his fame elsewhere than at Oxford. Whately, +however, was a tutor at Oriel for a considerable time, and afterwards +became Principal of St. Alban Hall. He was a Bohemian of Bohemians, +an eccentric of eccentrics, the least donnish of dons, and the most +carelessly defiant of all academical etiquette. The Provost of Oriel, who +hated tobacco, was once shocked to discover him on the roof of Oriel, +smoking a cigar among the leads. + +In costume, too, as well as in conduct, Whately outraged the prejudices +of his fellow-men. It is related that, when there were holes in his +archiepiscopal silk stockings he neither bought new ones nor sent the +old ones to be darned, but tried to conceal the deficiencies by affixing +black sticking-plaster to his calves. At a time when other dons were +never seen in Christ Church meadows except in cap and gown, he walked +there in his ordinary attire—described as consisting of “pea-green coat, +white waistcoat, stone-coloured shorts, flesh-coloured stockings.” He +took a number of dogs with him on his walks, and trained them to climb +trees and drop into the Cherwell; and when Coplestone accompanied him, +as he sometimes did, that very dignified man was quite appalled by his +proceedings. + +“Whately,” said Coplestone in a pained tone, “really forgot himself +during our walk this afternoon; he actually, while in sight of other +passengers, picked up a stone and threw it at a bird.” + +In the lecture-room, again, Whately’s deportment was all his own. He +lectured, lying on his back, on a sofa, with his legs dangling over the +end of it, puffing a large pipe. It was in that attitude, no doubt, +that he delivered himself of his famous aphorism that “woman is a +creature that cannot reason and pokes the fire from the top”—an alleged +example, of course, of definition _per genus et differentiam_. As for +his deportment at the breakfast-table, it is recorded that “he would +scatter tea-leaves over the table while he talked, and made rings on +the tablecloth with the wet bottom of his teacup”; while an account +of his demeanour in drawing-rooms may be borrowed from Mr. Tuckwell’s +“Reminiscences of Oxford”: + + “I remember,” Mr. Tuckwell writes, “my mother’s terror when he + came to call. She had met him in the house of newly-married + Mrs. Baden-Powell, who had filled her drawing-room with the + spider-legged chairs just then coming into fashion. On one of + these sat Whately, swinging, plunging, and shifting on his seat + while he talked. An ominous crack was heard; a leg of the chair + had given way; he tossed it on to the sofa without comment, and + impounded another chair.” + +It was while Whately was a tutor of Oriel that Newman was elected a +Fellow, and the two men saw a good deal of each other. Newman, in those +days, might have been described, as Lord Morley during his Lincoln days +has been described by one of his unauthorised biographers, as “somewhat +of a mooning evangelical.” He had lately been converted, in strict +accordance with the evangelical programme; and Whately decided to take +him in hand, wake him up, and teach him to think for himself. He did so, +though with results quite different from those which he anticipated; for +he was not other-worldly enough for Newman. Newman thought that he lacked +spirituality and inwardness—that he had too much common sense and too +large an appetite. He preferred the influence of the saintly Keble and +the “bright and beautiful” Richard Hurrell Froude; and so he set out, +first as a disciple, presently as a leader, on the long, straight road to +Rome. + +This brings us, of course, to the Tractarian Movement; and we will +glance, though space hardly suffers us to do more, at the part which +Oriel played in it. + + * * * * * + +Keble, Newman, Pusey, Richard Hurrell Froude—those are the great Oriel +names in this connection, though Pusey, at the time when he joined the +alliance, had left Oriel and become a Canon of Christ Church. Keble, if +one may draw invidious distinctions, was the saintliest of them, Newman +the most eloquent, Pusey the most learned, Richard Hurrell Froude the +most energetic. But for Pusey’s learning, the Movement might never have +taken seriously; but for Froude’s activity, it might never have been +started. + +Whether Froude had any firm intellectual grip on religious problems +may be questioned; but there can be no disputing that he was a very +strong man, and a very practical man, and a man who descended into the +fray, filled with the joy of battle. He reminds one, a little, _mutatis +mutandis_, of the “boss” in American politics, directing and controlling +the “machine.” “Here,” one seems to hear him saying, “is something +movable—let us have a Movement. Here is a ball—let us set it rolling.” +And he did set the ball rolling, and it continued to roll, long after +his premature death, at the age of thirty-three, had saddened his +fellow-workers. + +The Church, as it seemed to this little company, was being assailed +by dangers, alike from without and from within. It was neither +sufficiently respected nor sufficiently worthy of respect. Erastianism +and Indifferentism were in the air. There was a tendency, among Churchmen +as well as laymen, to regard the Church, not as a Catholic Apostolic +institution of Divine origin, but as “a branch of the Civil Service.” +Bishops had been mobbed in the riots which attended the passing of the +Great Reform Bill. A Liberal Statesman had presumed to warn bishops to +“set their house in order.” Superfluous bishoprics in Ireland—bishoprics +supported at the expense of a conquered people who did not want +them—were being suppressed; and that act of justice and common sense +was the “last straw.” Keble thundered at justice and common sense as +“national apostasy.” His thunder was the signal for the Movement, and its +first overt act. + +What, then, did the Tractarians want? The complete definition of their +aims must be left to theological controversialists, and a layman can only +presume to sketch the roughest outline of their objects. + +They insisted, in a general way, that the Church of England was the +creation, not of Parliament, but of God—that it was the duty of the State +to recognise the Church, and do it homage, and back it up, but that +these obligations carried with them no corresponding right to dictate to +the Church, or to interfere with it in any way. In doubtful matters of +doctrine the Church must decide and the State must accept its decisions. +The Church was the repository of truth, guaranteed by apostolic +succession, the sole interpreter of the teaching of the Bible, and of +its own traditions and formulæ; and the true interpretation of those +traditions and formulæ was—the interpretation which John Keble, John +Henry Newman, Edward Bouverie Pusey, and Richard Hurrell Froude chose to +give them. + +The logical weakness of the position was obvious. The Tractarians were +not the Church, but only members, more or less worthy, of the rank and +file of the Church. Oriel College had no more right than Exeter Hall to +define the doctrines of the Church. The doctrines of the Church had been +defined, once for all, by Act of Parliament; and there was no authority +within the Church empowered, even by ecclesiastical law, to define the +definitions. It needed a secular tribunal to “dismiss hell with costs,” +as other English Churchmen were presently to discover; and a Church +possessing the authority which the Tractarians thought that a Church +ought to have was only to be found at Rome. + +In due course the most logical of them realised that fact and ’verted. +They only worked their way slowly, however, to their conclusion; and, +in the meantime, remaining within the Church of England, they engaged +in vigorous propagandism. Their views were spread partly by the famous +Tracts from which they derived their name, partly by means of Newman’s +sermons in St. Mary’s Church, partly by their personal influence over +their juniors—partly also by their readiness to take the lead in the +persecution of the “unsound.” They were in the thick of the fight over +Hampden’s preferment, by Lord Melbourne, to the Regius Professorship +of Divinity; and it was one of them who denounced Hampden in a sermon +as “this atrocious professor” because he had proposed the opening of +the University to Nonconformists. Evidently they were too conscious of +meaning well to care to mince their words. + +Space forbids us to follow all the vicissitudes of their fortunes. Enough +to say that they made rapid progress at first, but presently ran upon +the rocks. There was a beauty in their holiness which aroused widespread +and sympathetic interest; it was generally recognised that they were +making religion poetical; but points were discovered in their doctrines, +as they developed them, which a Protestant people could not accept even +from the saintliest of men. When they came to recommending “reserve” in +the communication of religious knowledge, and argued, in the notorious +Tract 90, that the language of the Thirty-nine Articles was compatible +with Roman tenets, there was an outcry through the length and breadth of +England. Arnold of Rugby called them “Malignants,” and other theologians +called them other names, not less offensive. Shouts of “No Popery!” +assailed them; and, in the midst of the din, the more clear-sighted of +them discerned how hopelessly impossible was the position which they had +occupied. + +There was no way of escape for them from the Erastian net. Whatever the +Church of England ought to be, it actually was, among other things, a +branch of the Civil Service. The Tractarians were merely junior members +of the Civil Service, trying to ride rough-shod over the senior members; +and the heads of departments—which is to say the bishops—had no intention +of allowing their subordinates to dictate to them. They would neither +follow the Tractarians, nor allow the Tractarians to push them along in +front. On the contrary, they snubbed the Tractarians, called them to +order, exhorted them to sit down and hold their tongues, and practically +stopped the publication of the Tracts. + +Nor is it easy to see what else they could have done. The Church of +England, by the very nature of its constitution, lacked a spiritual +head exercising jurisdiction in matters of faith. It could not, even +in theory, obtain such a spiritual head without the sanction of King, +Lords, and Commons; it could not hope, in practice, to obtain such a +spiritual head by any means whatsoever. If individual members of the +Church of England tried to recognise, or set up, such a head on their +own responsibility, they would cease to be members of the Church of +England, and would become Dissenters—just as much Dissenters as those +Congregationalists and Methodists and Baptists for whose exclusion from +the Universities they had fought with such bigoted bitterness. The only +Church so constituted that it could legislate for itself in spiritual +matters, binding its own members, and expelling them if they refused to +be bound, was the Church of Rome. + +That discovery was the rock on which the Tractarian Movement split. Its +more logical adherents, scorning compromise, and “damning consequences,” +pursued the road to Rome. Others, like Pusey and Keble, held back in +the Church of England by the chain of old associations, either made the +best of things, or gravely pretended that the Church was something which +it was not. Others, like Mark Pattison, who had found his Tractarian +opinions an obstacle to his election to a fellowship, relapsed into +Indifferentism, and rejoiced that preoccupation with religion had ceased +to stand in the way of that sound learning which it was the main business +of a University to promote. + +So that, so far as Oxford in general and Oriel in particular were +concerned, the Movement came to an end. It was, indeed, still to exercise +a certain æsthetic influence throughout the country, and it was to +colour the churchmanship of such bishops as Samuel Wilberforce, of +such statesmen as Gladstone, of such lawyers as Lord Selborne, of such +newspaper proprietors as Beresford Hope of the _Saturday Review_. It +was also to stimulate the ritualistic innovations which brought about +the Public Worship Regulation Act, and the persecution, and passive +resistance, of the Rev. Arthur Tooth. But Oxford—the intellectual Oxford +which counted—had done with it, and was to give itself over to Liberalism +and Honest Doubt instead. + + * * * * * + +The most notable of the Honest Doubters, Matthew Arnold and Arthur Hugh +Clough, have already been mentioned. They were Arnold of Rugby’s most +brilliant pupils, and the pick of the Balliol scholars of their period. +Jowett once told John Addington Symonds that Clough was the only man +of his acquaintance whom he knew for certain to be a man of genius. On +Matthew Arnold’s remarkable talents and originality, no Oxford man, +writing for Oxford men, feels it in the least necessary to insist. Yet +both Arnold and Clough missed their firsts; and the blame for their +failure is commonly, and not altogether unjustly, attributed to the +Tractarians. + +They came into residence in the midst of the Movement, and spent too much +of their time in considering whether they could move with it or not. +Clough, in particular, was, for a time, conscious of the attraction, +and felt himself, as he put it, “like a straw drawn up the draught of a +chimney.” He was not, indeed, drawn very far—a pupil of Arnold’s hardly +could be. His mind was so constituted that “religion which has grown +incongruous with intelligence” appealed to his credulity in vain. He +shrugged his shoulders and withdrew—but not before he had devoted to the +doctrine of the apostolical succession many precious hours which were due +to the Ethics of Aristotle. The result was the painful surprise which the +class list had in store for him—a surprise which seems to warrant the +saying that the great Tractarian leader was not only a second-class man +himself, but was the cause of second classes in others. + +The winning of an Oriel fellowship redeemed Clough’s failure as it had +redeemed Newman’s. Like Newman, he became a tutor of the College; and his +connection with it, like Newman’s, was severed by the development of his +theological opinions. Newman had believed too much for Oriel, and Clough +believed too little. “I have given our Provost notice,” he presently +wrote to Arnold, “of my intention to leave his service at Easter. I feel +greatly rejoiced to think that this is my last term of bondage in Egypt.” +And he went on, speculating as to his prospects: “One may do worse than +hire oneself out as a common labourer; ’tis at any rate honester than +being a teacher of Thirty-nine Articles.” + +So he went his way—another of the prophets, though by no means the last +of them, whom Oxford has first cast out with unimpeachable solemnity, +and then regretted and made an idol of. No one needs to be told that he +is the “Thyrsis” of Matthew Arnold’s famous poem; but a passage from +“Thyrsis”—a passage which conjures up the picture of the Honest Doubter +taking his honest doubts very seriously, eating his heart out, unable, as +yet, to attain to that “Stoic-Epicurean acceptance of life” which was the +ultimate philosophy of his friend—may fittingly conclude this section: + + “It irk’d him to be here, he could not rest. + He loved each simple joy the country yields, + He loved his mates; but yet he could not keep, + For that a shadow lour’d on the fields, + Here with the shepherds and the silly sheep. + Some life of men unblest + He knew, which made him droop, and fill’d his head. + He went, his piping took a troubled sound + Of storms that rage outside our happy ground; + He could not wait their passing; he is dead.” + +And so we leave him, and come to Cecil Rhodes; and it seems as though we +had taken a very long journey indeed. + + * * * * * + +Rhodes went up to Oriel, with some South African experience behind him, +in 1873. He rowed for Oriel, in 1873, spent his long vacations at the +Cape, and ultimately took a pass degree. To the Dean who warned him +that he might be ploughed if he persisted in cutting his lectures, he +replied, “Oh, I promise you I’ll manage it. Leave me alone, and I shall +pull through.” And the Dean left him alone, and in due course he did pull +through. It is also recorded of him that he looked so little like an +Oxonian that he was able to deceive even the Proctor. This is the story +as he told it: + +“The Proctor,” he said, “took off his cap to me with the utmost +politeness, and I did the same to him. ‘Well, sir,’ said the Proctor to +me, ‘your name and college?’ ‘My name is Rhodes,’ I replied, ‘and I have +just come here from the Cape of Good Hope, and am making a short stay in +Oxford; and now, sir, may I ask your name and college?’” + +Whereupon the Proctor apologised for what he supposed to be his mistake, +and Cecil Rhodes escaped unfined. + +That is practically the only story that there is to be told of Cecil +Rhodes’s undergraduate days; and it would, of course, be superfluous to +relate how Oriel benefited by his will. One of the statements in that +will, however, was to the effect that he regarded the Oriel dons as +“children” in matters of finance; and if a man’s will were the proper +place for pleasant anecdotage, he might have illustrated and supported +that allegation by an Oriel story. + +Once upon a time, it is recorded, the Bursar discovered an inexplicable +deficiency in his accounts of something between £1,800 and £1,900. +He knew that he had not embezzled the money, but he did not see how +his balance-sheet was to be explained to the auditors except on the +hypothesis that he had done so. In his distress he took his accounts to +the Common-room, and asked his colleagues to check the figures. They did +so, pored over them, and could find nothing wrong in them, until, at +last, the Provost solved the mystery. + +“Good gracious!” he exclaimed. “Don’t you see what you’ve done?” + +“No, Mr. Provost, I don’t see any mistake.” + +“Why, on the liability side you’ve added the date of the year to the +pounds, shillings, and pence!” + + + + +QUEEN’S COLLEGE + + What little Mr. Bouncer said of Queen’s—The inwardness of his + criticism—The boar’s head and the canticle—Another song on + the same subject—The Provost and the alarm of fire—The Black + Prince at Queen’s—Wiclif at Queen’s—The first of the Oxford + Movements inaugurated by his poor preachers—Later times—Jeremy + Bentham—Walter Pater. + + +A Queen’s man observed lounging in the portico of his own College is +spoken of by Little Mr. Bouncer in “Verdant Green” as thus “openly +confessing his shame”; and the playful criticism doubtless mirrors the +public opinion of a period when social distinctions were marked by more +outward signs than at present. + +There were, and indeed there still are, at Queen’s a considerable +number of scholarships and exhibitions tenable only by youths educated +at certain specified North Country grammar schools. Religion and sound +learning may or may not have flourished in these remote educational +establishments, but they certainly were not, in past times, schools of +polished manners. Civilisation, as it were, filtered through to them, +leaving a good many of its graces in the filter. The undeniable virtues +of their _alumni_ were of the rugged order. They asserted themselves +in the broad accents of the fells and dales, and, in the matter of +dress, they supported the home industries of provinces in which the +art of tailoring was in its infancy. Such is the inwardness of Little +Mr. Bouncer’s comment, set forth as expressing the view of the “very +gentlemanly set of men” of the early Victorian Brasenose. + +[Illustration: QUEEN’S COLLEGE CHAPEL. + +[To face page 106.] + +All that, however, is ancient history. _Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur +in illis_, is doubtless the well-warranted reflection of the Queen’s men +of to-day. The old traditions which they still keep alive fall under the +head, not of manners, but of customs. There is the custom, for instance, +of blowing a trumpet to signify that dinner is ready; there is the custom +of using the founder’s horn as a loving-cup on gaudy days; there is the +Bursar’s custom of presenting every guest, on New Year’s Day, with a +needle threaded with silk, and wishing him prosperity in the formula, +“Take this and be thrifty.” Finally there is the Christmas Day custom, +which never fails to get a paragraph in the papers, of bringing in the +boar’s head to the accompaniment of music. + + * * * * * + +To this last custom, of course, a story is attached, which may or may +not be true. A scholar of Queen’s, we are told, went, in the remote past, +for a walk on Shotover, and there met a wild boar, which charged him. +Instead of running away, he thrust the Aristotle which he was reading +down the beast’s throat and choked it; and then he cut off its head and +brought it home for supper—an heroic act, emblematical of the triumph of +scholarship over brute force, which was duly celebrated in a canticle, +still sung every Christmas night in the College hall while the butler is +bringing in the delicacy, and running thus: + + “The boar’s head in hand bear I, + Bedecked with bays and rosemary. + And I pray you, my masters, merry be yee, + _Quot estis in convivio_. + + _Caput apri defero,_ + _Reddens laudes Domino._ + + The boar’s head, as I understand, + Is the bravest dish in all the land, + And thus bedecked with a gay garland + Let us _servire cantico_. + + _Caput apri defero,_ + _Reddens laudes Domino._ + + In memory of ye King of Bliss + Which on this day to be served is + _In Reginensi atrio_. + + _Caput apri defero,_ + _Reddens laudes Domino._” + +Such is the carol which, at Queen’s, links the present with the past; +and if any reader desires a more modern song on the same subject, he may +find one in “The Oxford Sausage.” It may suffice to quote the last three +stanzas: + + “So dreadful this bristle-backed foe did appear, + You’d have sworn he had got the wrong pig by the ear, + But instead of avoiding the mouth of the beast, + He rammed in a volume and cried—_Græcum est_. + + In this gallant action such fortitude shewn is, + As proves him no coward, or tender Adonis, + No armour but logic, by which we may find, + That logic’s the bulwark of body and mind. + + Ye squires, that fear neither hills nor rough rocks, + And think you’re full wise when you outwit a fox, + Enrich your poor brains and expose them no more, + Learn Greek and seek glory from hunting the boar. + Derry down, down, down, derry down.” + +This boar’s head story is, beyond question, the most picturesque item +in the Queen’s annals. In more recent times the College has twice +been seriously damaged by fire, and each of the two outbursts invites +a marginal comment. One of them originated in the bursary, and was +attributed by the wits to the action of the Bursar in cooking the +accounts. On the occasion of the other, the Provost nearly perished in +the flames as a concession to dignity and decorum. The Fellows and +scholars, who had fled into the quadrangle, missed him, and wondered what +had become of him. He had, in fact, lingered in the blazing building to +complete his toilet. He did not emerge from it, like the others, in his +night-gear, but in his wig, and cap and gowns, and bands, and complete +ecclesiastical trappings. A magnificent spectacle truly! Having conjured +it up, we may turn back and call the roll of the names of which Queen’s +is most justly proud. + + * * * * * + +The eponymous Queen of the College was Philippa of Hainault, the +consort of Edward III., whose chaplain and confessor was the founder. +It followed, most naturally, that Edward the Black Prince was for a +time a student there, though no legends, whether of his studies or his +diversions, have been handed down. It was, at any rate, on quite other +fields than those of learning that the Black Prince was to win his fame; +and the first serious Queen’s man whose reputation really counts is +Wiclif. + +Queen’s, it is true, has no exclusive claim to him. He was also, for a +period, Master of Balliol, and, for another period, Master of Canterbury +Hall—an extinct establishment on the site of the present Canterbury Quad, +at Christ Church. He is further said, though on doubtful evidence, to +have been, for a while, a Fellow of Merton. The brief years, however, +during which he occupied rooms at Queen’s were among the most important +of his life; for to those years belong the preparation and inauguration +of the first of the Oxford Movements. + +Personal details are almost entirely lacking—personal details are nearly +always to seek in the biographies of the great men of the Middle Ages. +It may be that Wiclif was the student who thrust the Aristotle down the +throat of the wild boar. It may also be—and, on the whole, it is quite +as likely—that he was not. There is no evidence either way, and the +probabilities are nicely balanced. But he was, at any rate, the Morning +Star of the Reformation. He translated the Bible; he stood up against the +Pope; and he called upon the laity to reform the clergy. Nor was that +all. He also missed preferment through his zeal, and organised “poor +preachers” to spread the light which he had kindled. + +Oxford, indeed, was in those days the only available centre for the +dissemination of a new idea. The light of Paris had temporarily paled, +and the light of Cambridge had hardly yet begun to shine; so that Oxford +was the most important of the stages in the pilgrimage of a wandering +scholar. Then, if ever, there was reason to hope that what Oxford thought +to-day England would think to-morrow. The machinery for bringing this +result about existed, and Wiclif set it in motion, “pressing the button,” +as we moderns say, in his room at Queen’s. The excesses of disciples who +joyously predicted the coming of a day when “priests’ heads would be as +cheap as sheeps’” no doubt outran his intentions; but it is worth while, +in view of current political conflicts, to note that this first Oxford +Movement was the occasion of an unsuccessful attempt on the part of the +House of Lords to usurp the privileges of the House of Commons. + +The Archbishop of Canterbury proposed, the Lords passed, and the King +assented to a law to the effect, broadly speaking, that the “poor +preachers” should be arrested wherever found, and locked up in whatever +house of detention was most convenient, until they gave such an account +of themselves as satisfied Holy Church. The Commons represented that this +so-called Statute was not a Statute, since it had not been laid before +them. They demanded its withdrawal, and it was withdrawn; the privileges +of the Lower House being thus asserted, in the interest of an Oxford +Movement, as long ago as 1382. + +Already at that date, however, the Movement had had its martyrs. Some +Fellows of Queen’s had been expelled as Wicliffites in 1376; and it +cannot be said that they had departed in a blaze of glory, for it appears +that they had taken with them the common seal, and some jewels and other +valuable property belonging not to them, but to the College. That, too, +may have been a picturesque proceeding; but the details are obscure, and +the subject cannot be discussed with profit. + + * * * * * + +Wiclif, of course, is eminent not only as a Reformer, but also as a man +of letters. His version of the Bible helped, no less than Chaucer’s +“Canterbury Tales,” to fix the English language; and so we are led on, by +a natural transition, to mention Wycherly, the dramatist, who was also a +Queen’s man, and Addison, and William Collins, the poet, who were both +tempted by the offer of demyships to migrate from Queen’s to Magdalen, +and Tickell, who contributed to Steele’s _Spectator_—Steele himself being +a Merton man—and William Mitford, the historian of Greece, and Jeremy +Bentham, whose “mark of everlasting light,” being “the greatest happiness +of the greatest number,” could hardly be said to be “above the howling +senses’ ebb and flow,” and Francis Jeffrey, the founder of the _Edinburgh +Review_, and Walter Pater, who is more interesting than any of them. + +Jeremy Bentham is, perhaps, most memorable as the third of the great trio +of Oxonians who have “shown up” the inefficiency of Oxford University +teaching in the eighteenth century. The comments of Adam Smith on that +branch of the subject have already been quoted; those of Gibbon will +have to be quoted presently; those of Bentham, of Queen’s, may as well +be quoted now. He learnt at Oxford, he said, nothing except “mendacity +and insincerity.” He found his tutor, Joseph Jefferson, morose—“a sort +of Protestant monk,” who even forbade him to play the innocent game of +battledore and shuttlecock. His lectures, and the lectures of the other +tutors also, were “foolish,” teaching only “something of logical jargon”; +and Bentham listened even to the law lectures of the great Blackstone, +Fellow of All Souls, “with rebel ears.” Moreover, he tells us that he was +afraid of encountering ghosts on the solitary staircases of the College. + +His own ghost, dreading other ghosts, is indeed one of the gloomiest +that one meets at Oxford. The pursuit of the greatest happiness of the +greatest number had not, in his college days, begun; and there was but +little happiness for “number one.” Bentham went up too young—he was only +thirteen; he was kept short of money, and he was badly dressed. “I wish +you would let me come home very soon,” he wrote to his father, “for my +clothes are dropping off my back”; and happiness is often a shy fugitive +when chased by a ragged man in the midst of more fashionably attired +companions. Indeed, the one service which Oxford rendered Jeremy Bentham +was to cure him of a taste for gambling. “They always,” he says, “forced +me to pay when I lost; and, as I could never get the money when I won, I +gave up the habit”—a statement which sheds a queerly lurid light upon the +conduct of the gamesters of Queen’s in the year 1761. They seem to have +bullied this lad of thirteen somewhat in the style of Flashman in “Tom +Brown.” We can only pity him, and leave him. + + * * * * * + +Of Pater, of course, there will be more to be said when we come to +Brasenose, where he won his fellowship and made his name. Even at +Queen’s, however, where his undergraduate days were passed, he did not +fail to make some mark. He was conspicuous, among other things, for +ugliness—an ugliness so extreme that it excited the sympathetic attention +of his friends, who formed themselves into a Committee to Consider what +could be Done for the Improvement of Pater’s Personal Appearance. A +suggestion that he should buy a new hat was discarded on the ground that +he could not be expected to wear his hat in bed. What was wanted, it was +agreed, was an irremovable addition to his features; and the Committee, +after taking all available evidence, reported in favour of a moustache. +The moustache, when ultimately grown, was at least a palliative. It was +no longer necessary for Pater, when examining himself in the mirror, to +exclaim that he would give ten years of his life to be better looking. +He acquired, according to Mr. Edmund Gosse, the aspect of a benevolent +dragon. + +His intellectual outlook, however, was already beginning, even in those +days, to divide attention with his physical features. He combined a +sceptical disdain for the doctrines of the Church of England with an +æsthetic sympathy for its ritual; and he made no secret of either the +sympathetic or the intellectual attitude. His friends were interested, +intrigued, and ultimately excited. They watched his spiritual +development, much as Lausanne watched the spiritual development of +Sainte-Beuve, when he was lecturing there on the Jansenists, and Vinet +was expected to convert him to Protestantism. Some of them even ended by +quarrelling with him and renouncing him. + +The trouble was that, having gone up to Oxford with a view of taking +Orders, he still proposed to take them, in spite of his effaced beliefs. +Others had done so, he said, so why should not he? And, suiting the +action to the argument, he asked the Bishop of London to ordain him. + +The Bishop, not being in his confidence, was aware of no reason why he +should not do so; but Pater’s friend, McQueen—who is only famous because +he was Pater’s friend—resolved to stop the crime. He sought advice on +the matter from Canon Liddon, then Principal of St. Edmund Hall; and +Liddon’s answer was: “Write to the Bishop of London. You might be able +to prevent ordination, and if not you will have delivered your soul.” He +did write, and he did prevent ordination; and no doubt it was well, for +Pater’s sake no less than for the sake of the Church, that ordination was +prevented. Having said that, we will leave Pater until we meet him again +at Brasenose. + + + + +NEW COLLEGE + + William of Wykeham—A self-educated man—His liberality and + his elaborate statutes—The College depressed by too much + Founder’s kin—“Golden Scholars, Silver Bachelors, and Leaden + Masters”—Notable new College men—Sydney Smith—Sir Henry + Wotton—Canon Spooner and “Spoonerisms”—Stories of Warden + Shuttleworth and others. + + +William of Wykeham, the founder of New College, was perhaps the greatest +pluralist in the history of the Church. Ecclesiastical benefices were +heaped upon him in unexampled profusion as the reward for services in no +sense of an ecclesiastical character. He served his King chiefly as a +Clerk of the Works—or perhaps one should say as a Chief Commissioner of +the Works—at Windsor and elsewhere; and the King, instead of paying him +an adequate salary, bestowed upon him prebends, canonries, deaneries, and +archdeaconries. No fewer than nine prebends were given to him in a single +year; he received three more prebends a year or two afterwards. While +holding them, he also held at least one deanery and two archdeaconries, +as well as several livings; and in the end he became Bishop of +Winchester. The story that he established himself in the royal esteem by +persuading his niece to become the King’s mistress may be the calumnious +invention of a later age; but it is evident, at any rate, that he was +more a man of the world than a Churchman, and only found that godliness +was great gain because he combined it with other qualities. + +[Illustration: NEW COLLEGE CLOISTERS AND TOWER. + +[To face page 118.] + +He was not himself a University man, but had left school early and +entered a notary’s office. Perhaps he was the more deeply impressed +with the value of “educational advantages” because he had enjoyed so +few of them. There are men who admire learning for that reason, just as +there are those who despise it on the ground that it unfits a youth for +walking in the wily paths of commerce; and William of Wykeham admired +it sufficiently to endow it in the grand style and on a great scale, +like the Rockefellers and the Johns Hopkinses of a later age and a newer +continent. He endowed Winchester School as well as New College—the former +to feed the latter, and “Manners makyth man” to be the motto of both; and +he gave his foundation both more elaborate buildings and more elaborate +Statutes than any previous college had had, with the result that Wiclif +sneered at him as a man “wise of building castles or worldly doing, +though he cannot read well his psalter.” + +While the Warden of Merton lived in a “lodging” and kept only four +horses, the Warden of New College was to keep six horses and have a house +to himself. That was one of the founder’s splendid provisions. He also +provided that there should be no fewer than five Deans and three Bursars; +and he made many minor stipulations which have had an enduring influence +upon University development. His sense that his soul stood in sore need +of the prayers of the faithful impelled him to prescribe that daily +attendance at the chapel services—Masses, of course, in those days—should +be compulsory. He believed in a simple and serious life, and therefore +forbade his scholars to play games. Not only “wrestlings, dances, jigs,” +&c., were forbidden by his regulations, but the prohibition extended to +games of “ball” and games of chess; while the interests of morality were +safeguarded by the direction that the College laundress should be “of +such age and condition that no sinister suspicion can, or ought to, fall +on her.” Finally, by enacting that there should be special teaching in +the College in addition to the teaching provided by the University, he +foreshadowed what is known as the “tutorial system.” + +The Statutes, it must be admitted, were, on the whole, in advance of +the times in which they were drafted. The founder had clear and, in the +main, sound ideas on the subject of educational reform. He understood, +for one thing, that classical Latin was better than monkish Latin; and +he understood that, in order to shape students as he wished, it was +necessary to catch them young. That was the significance of the linked +endowment of the College and the School; and no doubt it seemed to +William of Wykeham only an act of common justice that, in the selection +of recipients of his bounty, a preference should be shown to “founders’ +kin.” + +But he did not foresee. Or perhaps it would be juster to say that he +foresaw, and provided for, too much. The world moved, and New College +could not move with it because it was tied up and entangled. The +restrictions on the diversions of the students did not, of course, matter +much. They could be, and were, ignored, when it was recognised that they +were obsolete and unprofitable. The limitation of the choice of students +to a narrow field, and the provision of an income for them for life +whether they worked or were idle, had more pernicious consequences. It +condemned New College, in spite of the magnificence of its buildings, to +insignificance in the life of the University; and it now makes the task +of the historian in search of interesting _alumni_ an extremely hard one. + +Nowadays, let it be ungrudgingly admitted, New College is prosperous +and successful. Its scholars, and also its Fellows, have distinguished +themselves in many ways, and have won particular distinction in the +highest walks of journalism. Mr. Buckle, the editor of the _Times_, was +a scholar of New College, and so was Mr. E. T. Cook, who successively +edited the _Pall Mall Gazette_, the _Westminster Gazette_, and the _Daily +News_. Mr. W. L. Courtney, whose signature is familiar to every reader +of the _Daily Telegraph_, was a Fellow; as was also Viscount Milner, +a journalist before he became a pro-consul. In literature, too, the +College has been represented by Lionel Johnson—one of the most subtle and +delicate poets of our generation, though one whose course was brief like +that of Young Marcellus. + +But all those names are modern names, occurring subsequently to the +cutting of the entanglement by the University Commissioners. To plunge +into the past is to plunge into a very different state of things. We +quickly get back to a time when it was justly said of New College that +it had “golden scholars, silver bachelors, and leaden masters”—a time +when the College was famous, not for its output of learning, but for +its consumption of negus. There was once a dispute as to the comparative +merits of the negus of New College and of All Souls; and a jury of +Queen’s and Brasenose men who were invited to decide the question gave +a unanimous verdict in favour of the New College recipe. Balliol, where +Southey drank so much negus, was not in the competition. + +The notable New College names in this dark age, and in the ages hardly +less dark which preceded it, are names which mean little to the +University and less to the community at large. There are the names of +some respectable divines among them, and even the names of some more than +respectable bishops—two, for instance, of the seven who stood up against +James II; but there is hardly a single name which burns like a beacon; as +does, say, the name of Shelley at University, or the name of Dr. Johnson +at Pembroke. + + * * * * * + +There is Sydney Smith; but of his Oxford career hardly anything is known +except that he had to get through it on an allowance of £100 a year, and +consequently could not afford to play his part in the dissipations of +the day. He took his degree a year before Southey came into residence at +Balliol, “got into debt to buy books,” and formed such a poor opinion of +his _alma mater_ that he never, throughout the remainder of his life, +ceased to sneer at her. When, for example, the Honours Schools were +instituted, he wrote: + +“If Oxford is become at last sensible of the miserable state to which it +was reduced, as everybody else was out of Oxford, and if it is making +serious efforts to recover from the degradation into which it was plunged +a few years past, the good wishes of every respectable man must go with +it.” + +And when he heard that a lady of his acquaintance was sending her son to +Oxford, his comment was: + +“I feel for her about her son at Oxford, knowing, as I do, that the only +consequences of a University education are the growth of vice and the +waste of money.” + +On which the only reasonable comment is that, if Sydney Smith had been at +another college, he might have written less vituperatively. + + * * * * * + +Another name which arouses some, though only a mild, interest is that of +Sir Henry Wotton, the diplomatist, who ended by becoming Provost of Eton. +He was not on the foundation, but was a gentleman commoner—though few +gentlemen commoners were permitted to enter at New College—and it may be +hoped that he behaved better there than he did afterwards, when he lived, +for a while, in the house of Isaac Casaubon, at Geneva. He was the great +scholar’s “paying guest”; and he not only went away without paying, but +pledged his host’s credit for the horse on which he took his departure. +Casaubon ultimately got the money, but not until he had written to nearly +every classical scholar in Europe to expose Wotton’s outrageous behaviour. + +For the rest the stories which centre around New College are mainly +about celebrities whose celebrity is purely local. It would be possible, +of course, if reverence did not forbid, to speak at some length on the +alleged Spoonerisms of Canon Spooner; but most of those stories are +probably untrue. It cannot be true, for instance, that Canon Spooner, +at a dinner-party inadvertently stuck his fork into the white hand of +the lady sitting next to him, murmuring, “Excuse me, I think that is my +bread.” It is still less credible that Canon Spooner, when a lady of his +family was seeing him off at the railway-station, gave the lady sixpence +in mistake for the porter, and kissed the porter in mistake for the lady. +And who believes that Canon Spooner, setting out to propose the health +of “our dear old Queen,” found himself proposing the health of “our +queer old Dean” instead? The trail of the mythmaker is over all these +anecdotes; and indeed it is said that the fabrication of “Spoonerisms” is +a favourite undergraduate diversion on Sunday afternoons. + +An earlier Warden, Dr. Shuttleworth, is famous for a remarkable poem +which he composed while a Winchester boy—an Address to Learning, which +ends with the often-quoted lines: + + “Make me, O Sphere-descended Queen, + A Bishop, or at least a Dean.” + +His prayer was answered, and he became Bishop of Chichester, and, in that +capacity, made Manning an Archdeacon. He was, however, an opponent of the +Ritualists, and so formidable a one that his death was saluted by Pusey +as “a visible token of God’s presence in the Church of England”; whence +it appears that Pusey worshipped a God whom he believed to be capable of +killing off Broad Churchmen in order that High Churchmen might be spared +the embarrassment of meeting them in controversy. + +A few stories of Shuttleworth, and a few other stories of other New +College notables of the same generation, may be found in Mr. Tuckwell’s +entertaining “Reminiscences of Oxford.” There is the story, for instance, +of Lancelot Lee, the incumbent of the College living of Wootton, near +Woodstock. + + “Coming out of church one day, he found two disreputable + vagabonds in the churchyard. + + “‘What are you doing here?’ + + “‘Oh, sir, we are seeking the Lord.’ + + “‘Seeking the Lord, are you? Do you see those stocks? That is + where the Lord will find you if you stay here another minute.’” + +Then there is the story of Christopher Erle, who held a living in +Buckinghamshire, in the immediate vicinity of Lord Rothschild’s estate. +It seemed to Erle, as it has since seemed to Mr. Lloyd George, that it +was possible to have “too much of Lord Rothschild,” and he suppressed him: + + “It was Erle’s whim to dress carelessly; and the plutocrat, + walking one day with a large party and meeting his Rector in + the parish, had the bad taste to handle his sleeve and say, + ‘Rather a shabby coat, Parson, isn’t it?’ Erle held it up to + him—‘Will you buysh? Will you buysh?’ There ensued an _exitus + Israel_, and Erle walked on, chuckling and victorious.” + +But perhaps the most characteristic of the stories is that of the highway +robbery: + + “Some men were going to the Abingdon ball; and in the + common-room the conversation turned on a highway robbery + recently perpetrated near Wheatley. The ball-goers talked + valiantly of their own courage, contemptuously of brigand + dangers; their fly was announced, and off they drove. Coming + home, they were stopped in a dark part of Bagley Wood by + two masked men, one of whom held the horses’ heads, while + his mate pointed a pistol into the fly with the conventional + highwayman’s demand. Meekly our gallant travellers surrendered + money, watches, jewellery. One pleaded for a ring which had + belonged to his old mother; the deceased lady was consigned + to Tartarus, the ring was taken, and the marauders rode away. + Great commiseration was shown to the victims when they told + their tale, great activity displayed by the police; until on + going into Hall the next afternoon, they saw lying in a heap + on the centre of the high table the abstracted valuables, + including the maternal ring, while mounting guard over them + was a broken candle-stick which had done duty as a pistol. The + two practical jokers had ridden to the wood, tied their horses + to the trees, waited for the travellers, and played the wild + Prince Poins.” + +And so forth; for all the best New College stories are stories of that +sort—stories of which the heroes are jesters or eccentrics rather than +men of light and leading. The future, no doubt, will be much richer in +intellectual glory; but the College has had but a short time in which to +assert itself since the University Commissioners released it from William +of Wykeham’s Statutes. + + + + +LINCOLN COLLEGE + + A small College with many outstanding names—Mr. D. S. + MacColl and his Newdigate—“Shifter” of the “Sporting + Times”—A reminiscence of “Shifter”—John Wesley and the + Methodists—Wesley’s meeting with Beau Nash of Bath—Mark + Pattison—His early connection with the Tractarians—His + abandonment of superstition—His great learning—His treatment of + undergraduates. + + +For a small College—and it has always been one of the smallest—Lincoln +is associated with a goodly list of outstanding names, notable in +very diverse departments of endeavour. Mr. D. S. MacColl, of the +National Gallery, is, perhaps, the most distinguished of its recent +representatives. He won the Newdigate; and is said to have won it, as +Dean Burgon did, by the supreme merit of a single line. Burgon’s striking +line was, as all the world remembers: + + “A rose-red city—half as old as time.” + +To do full justice to Mr. MacColl’s line one must also quote the few +lines which precede it: + + “But better still, in slumber-slanting ease, + To be beside the falling of the seas, + To listen and to listen till the tune + Of all the life of all the afternoon + Deepens to one note of a long distress— + _The monotone of everlastingness_.” + +To quote Mr. MacColl, however, is to begin at the end. There are earlier +names which also scintillate with varying degrees of brilliance, and +make their appeal to hero-worshippers of various temperaments. The +most remarkable are those of John Wesley, “Ideal” Ward, more commonly +associated with Balliol, where he held a fellowship until his conversion +to Roman Catholicism, Mark Pattison, Lord Morley, Cotter Morrison, and +“Shifter.” + + * * * * * + +It was a question, earnestly considered, whether “Shifter” should +be mentioned in these pages. The question was finally put to a +representative assemblage of literary men—only a minority of them from +Oxford; and the answer was unanimously in the affirmative. The name of +“Shifter,” it was agreed, was by no means to be treated as if it had been +“writ in water.” If it had ceased to be a household word, at any rate it +was remembered. His case was interesting, if only because he had arrived +at fame by a road not commonly travelled by modern Oxford men; and there +were those, it was felt, who would learn, with a sort of scandalised +astonishment, that “Shifter” was once Goldberg of Lincoln. + +The present writer once met “Shifter,” and discovered that the vogue +of his pseudonym filled him with genuine pride. The meeting-place was +a printing office in the purlieus of Fleet Street. A diminutive man +of rather drowsy manner was sitting at the end of a long, bare table, +engaged in slow and careful literary composition. An impatient boy was +carrying off the sheets of his copy as he finished them. He looked up +with affability, yet with an air of self-importance, at the new arrival, +and introduced himself. “You know who I am, don’t you?” he said. “I’m +‘Shifter.’ I’m writing the Office Boy’s Diary”; and there followed +an invitation to partake of refreshment with him, after his task was +concluded. The invitation was accepted, and there ensued some talk of +Oxford—a place which, in those rather sordid surroundings, seemed very +far away. + +Oxford, in fact, used to figure, from time to time, in “Shifter’s” +contributions to the sporting press. He liked to describe himself as the +_enfant terrible_ returning to the respectable bosom of _alma mater_ and +creating a sensation there. He spoke, in particular, of a “respectable +brother,” in residence at another College, whom he used to visit—and to +shock. The stock story was that he stayed out all night, and came back +to College with the milk, and threatened to report the milkman to the +College authorities for neglecting to mix rum with it. + +Probably the story was untrue—such stories generally are. It reads like +the humorous invention of a “fanfaron of vice.” Of “Shifter’s” actual +career at Lincoln there are few authentic records except that he wore +plum-coloured clothes, and slopped about the quad in slippers. He might +easily, it is said, have been a good scholar if he had been industrious; +he was a very tolerable scholar in spite of his lack of industry, as, +indeed, were a good many members of the original team driven by the +famous “Master” of the pink _Sporting Times_. But the “Master” showed a +good many clever young men how the “fanfaron of vice” could make a living +out of the fanfaronade. Goldberg of Lincoln was one of the cleverest of +the young men who learnt the “Master’s” cynical lesson. He blossomed into +“Shifter,” and his name was more often in the mouths of men than those of +many worthier persons. + +It is tempting to moralise; but the temptation shall be resisted—or very +nearly so. “Shifter” was not, after all, an absolutely unique Oxford +product. One can find Oxford parallels and Oxford precedents for his +case. There are several precedents in Elizabethan Oxford, among the wits +who came to town, and wrote for the stage, and died young as the result +of too much tavern life—George Peele of Christ Church, for example. +“Shifter” also died young, not, one fears, because the gods loved him, +being of the same year as Oscar Wilde, and Mr. A. D. Godley, and Mr. L. +R. Farnell, and Dr. Horton, the Hampstead preacher. His appeal, it must +be granted, was to the lower elements in our fallen nature; but at least +he appealed to them wittily, and not like the vulgarians of the _Winning +Post_. _Sit terra levis!_ One may wish that for him, though one would not +wish it for them; and then one may pass on, striking a pleasant note of +contrast, to the very different case of John Wesley. + + * * * * * + +Let us be fair to Wesley. Above all, let us avoid the easy error of +supposing that we shall be helped to draw the picture of his manner and +deportment by visiting the nearest Wesleyan chapel and listening to any +Wesleyan minister who may happen to conduct the service there. + +The modern Wesleyan organisation is democratic in a sense in which the +Church of England is not. Its ministers are mostly men of the people, +fluent but shallow, good biblical scholars but not otherwise highly +educated, and lacking in social polish. Their accents are often broad; +their gesticulations are often violent; they are skilled in exhorting the +lower orders in language which the lower orders understand. + +Perhaps that is as it should be; perhaps their limitations are included +among the sources of their strength. Their congregations often think so, +and say so. One may sometimes hear Wesleyan Church members accounting for +their preference for Wesleyan places of worship on the express ground +that Wesleyan ministers are not, as they themselves choose to put it, +“gentlemen.” The priest of the Church of England, they aver, patronises +the artisan and small shopkeeper and keeps them at a distance. The +Wesleyan minister treats them as his brothers and sisters, and takes tea +with them, in a friendly way, in their back parlours. As the arrangement +pleases him, and pleases them, no one else is called upon to criticise +it. The matter is only mentioned here for the purpose of removing a +possible misapprehension and pointing out that Wesley of Lincoln was not +that sort of Wesleyan. + +Wesley of Lincoln, who had been at Charterhouse and Christ Church before +his election to a Lincoln Fellowship, was a gentleman and a scholar, +in the fullest sense of the words. He had as much of the Oxford manner +as had been invented in his time, and he was rather a reserved than an +effervescent man. One must picture him, to picture him rightly, as a +kind of High Church don, of studious habits and ascetic inclinations, a +little more anxious than the other dons to enroll undergraduates as his +disciples. One finds his closest counterpart in modern times, not in any +of the tub-thumpers of any of the denominational tabernacles, but in some +of the Canons of Christ Church—say Canon Pusey, or Canon King, or Canon +Liddon. He was the kind of man, in short, who, in slightly different +circumstances, might have inaugurated, not an evangelical revival, but a +Tractarian Movement. + +In order to understand him, one has to understand, not only the England, +but also the Oxford of the eighteenth century. It is not necessary to +enter into the alleged “aridity” of that century; but it is important +to remember that it was a century in which spiritual problems were very +generally waved aside. And the tendencies of the country as a whole were +reflected in an exaggerated shape at Oxford. + +Oxford was comfortable, and was taking no thought for the morrow. The +dons, being well provided for, liked to sit in coffee-houses and read +the papers, indolently jeering at the House of Hanover. It did not +occur to them to concern themselves with the salvation of their souls +or of the souls of their pupils. It hardly even occurred to them to +concern themselves with the education of their pupils. Gibbon’s tutor, +remembering that he had a salary to receive but forgetting that he had a +duty to perform, was, in spite of the exceptions which can be adduced, +a typical don of the date. Indifferentism, in short, was the note; and +enthusiasm, at Oxford, was regarded as the abomination of desolation +standing where it ought not. + +Such was the scene on which Wesley entered. He came from a country +parsonage where, in spite of the general trend of theological thought, +the lamp of piety had been kept burning. It was more natural to him to +work than to be idle, and he was keenly conscious that he had a soul +to be saved. He did not quite know how to save it; but he had picked +up hints from the writings of Thomas à Kempis, Jeremy Taylor, and John +Law. On the whole he was inclined to think that the way of salvation lay +in doing as the Churchmen did, only more so, in redeeming the time by +industry, and in sedulously observing the ritual prescriptions of the +Book of Common Prayer. + +He made the acquaintance of a small group of like-minded men. He, and his +brother Charles, and George Whitefield (of Pembroke), and James Hervey +(of his own College), who was to win fame by meditating among the tombs, +and one or two others, formed a Club. The rules of the Club, which was +called, in derision, the Holy Club, were merely to the effect that the +members must order their lives regularly, discharge all their duties +punctually, and receive the Sacrament at appointed intervals. Because +they were thus men of method, they were nicknamed Methodists. The name +had no more recondite origin than that. The actual thing—the spiritual +point of view distinctive of Methodism—was of later date. The young +Fellow of Lincoln and “those about” him were only feeling their way to +it. Far from being Dissenters, they were better Churchmen than their +neighbours; their purpose was not to rouse the country but to rouse the +Church. + +Wesley, moreover, was, at this date, an Oxonian of the type that clings +to Oxford. He could not bear the thought of “going down,” even for the +purpose of taking a cure of souls. It was put to him that he ought, for +family reasons, to take over his father’s country living; but he raised +objections—just the sort of objections which it is natural for an Oxford +man to raise. He knew, he said, of “no other place under heaven, save +Oxford, where I can always have at hand half a dozen persons of my own +judgment and engaged in the same studies.” The sociability, that is to +say, of Oxford appealed to him. He enjoyed his position as the sovereign +ruler of a small coterie, even though that coterie was unpopular with the +rest of the University. + +The University, in truth, had no case against the Methodists. If they +were zealots, they were not, as yet, schismatics. There was nothing to +be said against them except that they rose early, kept regular hours, +received the Sacrament as often as possible, visited the prisoners and +the sick, and lived economically in order that they might be able to +afford to be charitable—proceedings which it must have been exceedingly +difficult for other Churchmen to indict. Yet the University did, as a +matter of fact, dislike them; and its displeasure was justified by Dr. +Johnson, and was manifested in a variety of ways. “They were not fit,” +said Johnson, in his robust and ponderous way, “to be in the University +of Oxford. A cow is a very good animal in the field, but we turn her out +of a garden.” And there were others who said that the conduct of the +Methodists was only excusable if it could be assumed that they were mad; +others, again, who pelted them with mud when they were on their way to +church. It is worth while to remember that it was in the days when Oxford +was entirely in the hands of the orthodox that communicants were pelted +with mud near the porch of Saint Mary’s Church as a protest against the +strictness of their religious observances. + +And there we may leave them, for the story of Methodism is much too long +a story to be repeated. How Wesley presently ceased to make broad his +phylacteries, and suddenly awoke to a sense of the supreme importance of +the “inward witness” to the Christian propositions, and founded the vast +organisation which numbered 12,000,000 adherents before his death—all +this is written in innumerable biographies and need not be re-written +here. Here it is enough to indicate the personality of the man: to point +out that he was no ranter, but a don on whom Oxford had set its mark—a +scholar, quiet, reserved, and dignified, though with an immense fund of +strength and energy in reserve. And perhaps one may conclude with a story +of his passage of arms with another Oxford man of a very different type—a +passage of arms in which his quick wit and dignified demeanour easily won +him the victory. + +The place was Bath, and the time was near the beginning of Wesley’s +missionary journeys. A certain Nash of Jesus was there—the Nash of Jesus +whom the world knows as Beau Nash, the King of Bath. The two men met on a +narrow pavement, and one of them had to make way for the other. + +“I never make way for a fool,” said Nash of Jesus, insolently holding his +ground. + +“Don’t you? I always do,” replied Wesley of Lincoln, quietly stepping on +one side; and the world is agreed that it was Wesley of Lincoln who got +the best of that encounter. + +And now leaving Wesley, we will evoke the memory of another notable +Lincoln man, Mark Pattison, so long the Rector of the College. + + * * * * * + +Mark Pattison won his Lincoln fellowship from Oriel; and he resembled +Wesley in beginning life as a High Churchman. He was Newman’s curate, +and, being much attached to Newman, very nearly accompanied, or followed, +him into the Church of Rome. He only failed to do so, according to the +commonly accepted story, because he missed the train, or the omnibus, +or whatever conveyance it was by which he had arranged to travel to +the place appointed for his “reception.” While waiting for the next +train or omnibus, it is said, he changed his mind and decided to +remain, provisionally at all events, a member of the Church of England. +Nominally he remained a member of the Church of England until the end; +but it was an open secret, confirmed by statements in his “Memoirs,” that +he believed in nothing in particular and did not believe very profoundly +even in that. He is one of the many men who have been credited with the +pregnant saying: “Nothing is new, and nothing is true, but it doesn’t +matter much.” + +His reasons for not formally quitting the Church in which he had ceased +to believe need not detain us. He is said to have said that, as he had +taken Orders in good faith, he felt entitled to retain them through all +beliefs and none instead of facing an unpleasant alternative; but it +shall be left to casuists to estimate the value of that casuistry. The +really interesting thing to note is that, in later life, he looked upon +the years in which he had been religious in almost exactly the same light +as that in which the Methodists of whom we have been speaking looked upon +the years prior to their assurance of salvation. He came to think that +as a Christian—and more particularly as a Puseyite—he had lived in outer +darkness; and he despised, and almost hated, himself for having done so. + +“Fanaticism,” he says, “was laying its deadly grip around me.” He speaks +of his “fury of zeal” and his “abject prostration of mind” and his +“degrading superstition,” and of the “time-wasting and mind-drowning +occupation” in which he was involved by his too close attention to his +devotional exercises. He adds that he once “got so low by fostering a +morbid state of conscience as to go to confession to Dr. Pusey”; and he +continues: + +“Years afterwards it came to my knowledge that Pusey had told a fact +about myself, which he got from me on that occasion, to a friend of his, +who employed it to annoy me.” + +Presently, however, he began to discover that the Puseyites were “not +intellectually equal companions,” and that Newman himself was a man +of limited philosophical acquirements—a man to whom “all the grand +development of human reason from Aristotle down to Hegel was a sealed +book.” So, though there was a struggle—due to “that profound pietistic +impression which lay like lead upon my understanding”—reason got its way, +and Pattison’s intelligence evolved. There was a day when he called on +James Anthony Froude, desiring “to sympathise with his scepticism for +the purpose of helping him through it”; but presently he travelled on +the same road that Froude had taken, and travelled farther on it. The +Tractarian became an Essayist and Reviewer. The Essayist and Reviewer +came to regard all religions as vain guesses at the answer of an +unanswerable riddle. + +He enjoyed, in his later years, one of those great University reputations +which, recognised by instinct, and admitted by universal assent, do +not require to be based on visible or tangible achievement. It was +commonly assumed that he knew everything, not only on his own subject, +but on all subjects; also that he had thought out all problems and was +only restrained from throwing light on them because he despised his +fellow-creatures and resented their impertinent curiosity. He was too +much absorbed, in fact, in his thoughts to pay much attention to his +duties; and he ended his pilgrimage as a somewhat weird figure—somewhat +of an enigma to the old and a formidable terror to the young. + +Undergraduates, in particular, were too often the objects of a scorn +which he was at no pains to hide. The undergraduates of his own College +lived in an agony of apprehension lest he should ask them to go for walks +with him; and it cannot be said that their fears were altogether without +warrant. He did not speak when walking, but waited to be spoken to; and +the consequences of speaking to him were incalculable—not unlike the +consequences of trying to make friends with some strange and dangerous +wild beast. + +There is a stock story of an undergraduate who ventured to break the +embarrassing silence by contrasting the irony of Sophocles with the irony +of Euripides; but he only discovered that the irony of the Rector of +Lincoln was greater than either. “Quote, sir, quote,” was the Rector’s +only rejoinder; and as the timorous youth was not prepared with a +quotation, nothing further was said, on either side, on any subject, +for the remainder of the afternoon. But the undergraduate who confined +himself to simple topics which he did understand—the state of the +weather, for example—was handled still more roughly. “If that is all you +have to say, you are not a very intelligent young man,” was the retort +with which the Rector closured him. + + + + +ALL SOULS + + Peculiarities of the Constitution—A College without + undergraduates—Court favourites jobbed into + fellowships—Fellowships bought and sold—All Souls Fellows + a link between Oxford and the outside world—Sir William + Blackstone—Edward Young—The song of the All Souls mallard and + the scandal connected therewith. + + +The founder of All Souls was Archbishop Chichele, who had been educated +on the foundations of William of Wykeham at Winchester and New College. +The souls which the name commemorates are those of the soldiers who fell +in Henry V.’s French wars—wars for which the Archbishop’s pugnacious +patriotism was very largely responsible. The distinctive feature of the +College is that it neither supports scholars nor harbours commoners, +its only undergraduate members being a sprinkling of Bible clerks. +The purpose of the founder, that is to say, was to endow study—not +to endow teaching; and the fact that the College was small prevented +undergraduates from creeping into it. There was no provision for their +instruction, and there was no room for them. A few commoners did, at one +time, obtain admission, but they were soon eliminated. + +[Illustration: REREDOS, ALL SOULS CHAPEL. + +[To face p. 145.] + +Various consequences have followed from this state of things—some of +them good, and others not so good. The All Souls fellowships did not, in +practice, in the early days at all events, become the rewards of studious +virtue. They were regarded, on the contrary, as sinecures to be scrambled +for, to be jobbed into, to be bought and sold. No definite obligations, +unless it were of residence, attached to them; they were merely positions +in which a man might draw a living wage for doing nothing. Royal +favourites were pushed into fellowships, in the Stuart times, as a cheap +proof of royal favour, and fellowships could be purchased in the open +market, just like commissions in the Army—an abuse which was brought +about in this way: + +When a resignation created a vacancy, the College co-opted a successor +to it; but the retiring Fellow shared with the other Fellows the right +to nominate a candidate. On the principle of “scratch my back and I’ll +scratch yours,” the tacit understanding was established that the retiring +Fellow’s candidate should always be elected. This was an opportunity for +any Fellow to offer to retire in favour of a particular candidate in +consideration of a money payment; and many Fellows availed themselves +of the opportunity. Hence the scandal of “corrupt resignations,” not +unknown, indeed, at other colleges, but specially gross and glaring at +All Souls, where it flourished long, and was not suppressed without great +difficulty. + +Jobbery and corrupt resignations, in fact, combined to fill All Souls +with Fellows of a different stamp from the Fellows of the other colleges; +and the difference was, in some respects, for the better, and in other +respects for the worse. The Fellows, having no academic duties, were +idle; and Satan provided mischief for their idle hands. The Punishment +Book, and other official records, show them comporting themselves more +like junior than senior members of the University. We hear of several of +them being dropped upon for “noctivagation.” We find the Visitor calling +upon the Warden to “punish such of your Society as do spend their time +in taverns and ale-houses to the scandal of the House.” We discover a +representation that the College ale is too strong for students, and +that only small beer ought to be brewed there. We read that one of +the Fellows was reprimanded for “beating the Under-Butler.” Proof is +abundant, in short, that the College was by no means such a quiet resort +of industrious men as the founder had intended it to be. + +Such were the drawbacks of the system; but it also, incidentally, +produced advantages. While many of the Fellows were worthless and +indolent persons, the loose mode of election and the total absence of +academic duties resulted in the introduction of a type of Fellow who +served as a link, just as we have noted that some of the Merton Fellows +did, between the University and the external world—the type of Fellow +whom the College porter appears to have had in mind when he replied +to the visitor who inquired whether the Fellows read the books in the +College library: “Lord bless you, sir! They don’t need to read books. +They’re gentlemen!” + +“Well-born, well-dressed, and moderately educated,” is the hackneyed +description of a Fellow of All Souls. The candidates for fellowships, it +used to be said, instead of being put through an examination were invited +to dinner and given cherry-tart to eat; their fate depending upon the +manner in which they disposed of the cherry-stones. The story is told +of a Fellow who was elected as a reward for his delicacy in swallowing +the cherry-stones. It is not to be supposed that the story is literally +true; but no doubt a certain symbolical truth is enshrined in it. The +unmannerly bookworm has never been wanted at All Souls. The scholar who +is also a gentleman has always been preferred to him; and from the time +of Sir Christopher Wren to the time of Lord Curzon of Kedleston, the +College has generally been able to boast of some Fellow of wide fame, not +of a rigidly academic character. + + * * * * * + +Those great physicians Linacre and Sydenham were Fellows of All Souls; +and Linacre, in an age in which men could afford to specialise in more +than one subject, excelled in Greek as well as medicine. Sir Christopher +Wren has just been mentioned. The College owes to him its famous +sun-dial, with the motto: _Pereunt et imputantur_. It cost him £32 11s. +6d.; and its exactitude was such that Oxford watchmakers used to set +their clocks by it. General Codrington, to whom the College owes the +Codrington Library, went from All Souls to be Governor of Barbadoes, at +the time when Admiral Benbow was beating the French there; and other +Fellows whose names are known to all the world were Blackstone, of the +Commentaries, Edward Young, the author of “Night Thoughts,” and Bishop +Heber. + +Blackstone was Bursar of All Souls. The Vinerian professorship was +expressly founded for him. His “Commentaries on the Laws of England” +were first delivered as a course of professorial lectures. He took his +position so seriously that he declined to read his lectures to the Prince +of Wales on the ground that he could not quit his duties at Oxford. +Campbell says of him that he was, after Bacon, “the first practising +lawyer at the English bar who, in writing, paid the slightest attention +to the selection or collocation of words.” He served his College by +compelling the executors of the Duke of Wharton to pay over to it a +donation promised by him at the instance of Edward Young. + +Wharton was a rake; and Young, in his youth, was fond of consorting with +rakes. In later life, however, he repented and cancelled the dedications +of poems which he had addressed to his more disreputable associates. The +College books describe him as _poeta celeberrimus_; and he certainly had +for a time a vogue as great as that of Tennyson, or even Martin Farquhar +Tupper, though nowadays he is only remembered for the single sentiment: +“Procrastination is the thief of time.” A passage in Johnson shows that, +though he combined worldliness with his other-worldliness, he could be +effective as a Christian controversialist. + + “The other boys,” said the atheist, “I can always answer, + because I always know whence they have their arguments, which I + have read a hundred times; but that fellow Young is continually + pestering me with something of his own.” + +Heber remains; but what there is to be said about Heber may be better +said when we come to Brasenose. Here he is mentioned principally because, +in one of his letters home, he describes how, looking out from Brasenose, +he saw the All Souls Fellows searching for the All Souls mallard, and so +introduces us to the interesting legend of that bird. + +The story is that, when the foundations of the College was being dug, a +mallard flew out of a drain. Thereupon, or it may be at a later date, a +College poet wrote a song about the mallard, of which the first and last +verses and the chorus may be given here: + + “The griffin, bustard, turkey, capon, + Let other hungry mortals gape on, + And on their bones with stomach fall hard, + But let All Souls men have their mallard. + + CHORUS. + + Oh, by the blood of King Edward, + Oh, by the blood of King Edward, + It was a swapping, swapping mallard. + + Then let us drink and dance a galliard + In the remembrance of the mallard, + And as the mallard doth in poole, + Let’s dabble, dive, and duck in bowl. + + CHORUS. + + Oh, by the blood of King Edward, + Oh, by the blood of King Edward, + It was a swapping, swapping mallard.” + +The song is still sung at College gaudies. In the old days the Fellows, +after singing it, used to make a solemn pilgrimage round the College to +look for the mallard; but though the pilgrimage began solemnly, it was +apt to end uproariously. Bonfires were lighted; furniture was smashed; +the oaks of the unpopular were forced—all on pretence of discovering the +undiscoverable bird. The Fellows, in short, made their rounds “not on the +viewless wings of poesy, but charioted by Bacchus and his pards”; and +their proceedings attracted the attention of their Visitor, Archbishop +Abbot, who wrote to them: + + “The feast of Christmas drawing now to an end both put me in + mind of the great outrage which, as I am informed, was the last + year committed in your College, where, although matters had + formerly been conducted with some distemper, yet men did never + before break forth into such intolerable liberty as to tear + down doors and gates, and disquiet their neighbours, as if it + had been a camp or a town in war. Civil men should never so far + forget themselves under pretence of a foolish mallard as to do + things barbarously unbecoming.” + + + + +MAGDALEN COLLEGE + + The College which withstood James II.—President Routh—His great + age and eccentricities—Slackness of the College—The careers of + Addison—Of Gibbon—Of Charles Reade—Oscar Wilde and the Æsthetic + Movement at Magdalen—Persecution of Wilde and suppression of + the movement. + + +“Little is known,” say the works of reference, of William Waynflete, +Bishop of Winchester, the founder of Magdalen; and the little that does +happen to be known is of no absorbing interest. + +The event in its history of which the College is officially proudest is +its battle with James II. The King, for purposes of his own, proposed to +nominate a President. The College demonstrated that the royal nominee was +an unsuitable person to fill the office, and, “having first received the +blessed Eucharist,” proceeded to elect a man of their own choice, and +successfully upheld their election in the face of the royal displeasure. +“Is that Magdalen Tower?” asked the Prince Regent when he visited Oxford +with the allied sovereigns in 1814. “Yes, your Royal Highness,” replied +his travelling companion, “that’s the tower against which James II. broke +his head.” + +[Illustration: MAGDALEN COLLEGE. + +[To face p. 153.] + +A second object of the pride of Magdalen is the long presidency of Dr. +Routh, whose long life was a link between historical and modern times. + +There must be many men still living in Oxford who remember him, for +he only died (at the age of ninety-nine) in 1854. He, on his part, +remembered, and talked of, Dr. Johnson’s visits to Oxford, had attained +his majority before the American Declaration of Independence, was old +enough to be at a dame’s school when Wolfe was storming the Heights of +Abraham, and had an aunt who had known a lady who had seen Charles I. + +That he was either a great man or a great college ruler it would be an +exaggeration to affirm. He was famous rather for wearing a wig, defying +University Commissions, and favouring traditional abuses. His wig was +sent, after his death, to the Knaresborough well to be petrified, and he +himself was reverenced chiefly as an interesting relic of that remote +past which his conversation could recall. A crowd used to assemble daily +to see him shuffle from his lodgings to the chapel. He recollected +Gownsman’s Gallows, on which he had seen undergraduate members of the +University hanged for highway robbery. His politics, it is said, were +those of Strafford, and his religion was that of Laud. He spoke currently +of the Jacobite faction as a still living force; and his favourite +joke was to inquire after people who had long been dead, and express +astonishment when informed of their decease. + +Among a mass of stories told about him the best are perhaps those related +by the biographers of Charles Reade, who had been elected to a demyship +under his presidency. In one of those anecdotes we see an undergraduate +hauled before him by the tutors. The young man having delayed in town to +amuse himself, and not having arrived in Oxford until three days after +the commencement of the term, the tutors represented to the President +that he ought to be rusticated. + + “‘Three days late, is he?’ whimpered the old fellow in his + childish treble. ‘Well, sirs, there has been an heavy fall of + snow, and as the gentleman resides in Norfolk, no doubt the + coaches have been detained along the road.’ + + “‘But,’ urged the tutors, ‘he could have reached Oxford in a + few hours by railway.’ + + “‘Railway?’ quoth Dr. Routh incredulously. ‘Ah, well, I don’t + know anything about that’; and so, with the typical flea in its + ear, minor authority was dismissed.” + +Another story relates to the case of an undergraduate who, after being in +residence for three years and three-quarters, had not yet succeeded in +passing “Smalls.” The junior tutor called to propose that the young man +in question should be invited to remove his name from the College books. + + “The venerable President at once assumed an expression of + extreme astonishment. ‘I don’t know anything about your + examinations,’ he replied to the complaining don. ‘Have you + anything to say as regards the gentleman’s moral character or + conduct?’ The tutor responded in the negative. ‘Then,’ cried + the President in an outburst of righteous indignation, ‘how + dare you come here, sir, to attack a respectable member of the + College? His father, sir, is a friend of my friend, the Bishop + of Bath and Wells; and I will not listen, sir, to any such + frivolous allegations.’” + +And finally there is the story of the President’s visit to London. He +went there seldom, and always by coach, and the day came when competition +compelled the reduction of the fares: + + “Dr. Routh alighted, as was his wont, in Oxford Street, and + was assisted respectfully by the coachman, to whom he handed + £1 7s. 6d.—twenty-five shillings the fare, and half a crown, + the gratuity to John, who, as the money was being paid to him, + said, ‘The fare, Mr. President, is reduced to a guinea.’ Dr. + Routh paused and reflected. ‘Sir,’ he replied, ‘I always have + paid twenty-five shillings, and I always shall.’” + +Such is our picture—a picture of an imperious old gentleman, +constitutionally opposed to progress, looking upon his College as a Duke +looks upon his estate, regarding a reformer as a Duke regards a Radical +Chancellor of the Exchequer, convinced that the general well-being +depended upon his being left at liberty to manage, or mismanage, his own +affairs. + +And the point of view of the President was also, for many generations, +the point of view of the Fellows under him. They had a very fine piece +of property to cut up, and they carved it to their common satisfaction. +The endowment amounted to about £24,000 a year in all. The President +took about £4,000 a year, and the Fellows from £500 to £600 a year +each; while the Demies, who were nominated by the Fellows in their +turn, had a statutory right to succeed to the Fellowships as vacancies +occurred—the elections, save in rare instances, being governed by the +sacred principles of nepotism. “Your nominee, sir,” the President might +occasionally remark with sarcasm, “may be a very excellent young man, but +he is no scholar”; but the excellence was almost invariably allowed to +compensate for the lack of scholarship. + +It could only, in such circumstances, be by accident that the names of +good men were entered on the College books; but such happy accidents +did, of course, occur from time to time. Addison was the first accident, +Gibbon the second, and Charles Reade the third. + + * * * * * + +Addison, in fact, did get his demyship as the reward of merit. He was +originally at Queen’s, but was invited to migrate to Magdalen because his +Latin verses were admired. “Addison’s Walk” still keeps his memory alive +there. He is even said to have planted some of the trees in the walk, +though he was not the sort of man who was likely to spend much of his +time in planting trees; but little is recorded of the incidents of his +career, except that he “was always very nervous,” and that he “kept late +hours.” One pictures him as sleek, correct, precocious, grave, yet with a +sound appreciation of good claret. + +Of Gibbon there is more to be said; for the historian’s description of +the manners and tone of Magdalen society is one of the most pleasant +passages in his famous Autobiography. It is well known, but it must +nevertheless be quoted: + + “The fellows, or monks, of my time” (says Gibbon) “were decent + men who supinely enjoyed the gifts of the founder: their days + were filled by a series of uniform employments; the chapel and + the hall, the coffee-house, and the common-room, till they + retired, weary and well-satisfied, to a long slumber.... Their + conversation stagnated in a round of college business, Tory + politics, personal anecdotes, and private scandal: their dull + and deep potations excused the brisk intemperance of youth.” + +There were few lectures, he continues, and the tutors did not insist upon +attendance at such lectures as there were. He gravely tells us with what +impunity he “cut” them: + + “As they appeared equally devoid of profit and pleasure, I + was once tempted to try the experiment of a formal apology. + The apology was accepted with a smile. I repeated the offence + with less ceremony; the excuse was admitted with the same + indulgence; the slightest motive of laziness or indisposition, + the most trifling avocation at home or abroad, was allowed as + a worthy impediment; nor did my tutor appear conscious of my + absence or neglect.” + +Nor does it even appear to have been necessary for Gibbon to apply for an +_exeat_, or to plead the necessity of consulting his dentist or attending +the funeral of his grandmother, when he wished temporarily to absent +himself from Oxford. The tutor who, when granting his pupil a grudging +permission to attend such a funeral, added that he “could wish that it +had been a nearer relative” belongs to a later generation. Gibbon’s tutor +seems never to have known whether his pupil was in residence or not. + + “The want of experience, of advice, and of occupation” (he + says) “soon betrayed me into some improprieties of conduct, + ill-chosen company and inconsiderate expense. My growing debts + might be secret; but my frequent absence was visible and + scandalous; and a tour to Bath, a visit into Buckinghamshire, + and four excursions to London in the same winter, were costly + and dangerous frolics.... In all these excursions I eloped from + Oxford; I returned to College; in a few days I eloped again, + as if I had been an independent stranger in a hired lodging, + without once hearing the voice of admonition, without once + feeling the hand of control.” + +This in the case of a boy of fourteen (for Gibbon was no more when +he matriculated) and in a College in which religion, discipline, and +learning were jointly and severally endowed with £24,000 a year! There +could be no clearer proof of the darkness of the dark ages at Oxford; +and, in spite of the testimony of Adam Smith, already quoted, as to the +state of things at Balliol, it seems that they were really darker at +Magdalen than elsewhere. + +They were still dark, though not so dark as they had been, when Charles +Reade came into residence. + + * * * * * + +Charles Reade, in a sense, got his demyship by merit; but it was only by +accident that his merit was allowed to count. The nominee of a nepotist +had broken down so utterly in the qualifying examination that President +Routh for once lost his temper and declared that he would not consent to +the election of an absolute ignoramus. The examiners then proceeded to +look at the papers of the other candidates; and Charles Reade’s English +Essay impressed them. “Look here!” one of them was heard to shout into +the deaf President’s ear. “Here is a boy who gives us his own ideas +instead of other people’s!” The President read the essay, and agreed that +it was so; and Charles Reade was duly elected to a demyship, which led, +in due course, to a fellowship, tenable for life. + +Even so, however, he still needed accident to befriend him, and did not +trust to accident in vain. His election to the fellowship hung upon his +ability to pass an examination in the Rudiments of Faith and Religion—an +examination which has since come to be known, first as “Ruders” and +latterly as “Divers.” Candidates for that examination were required to +know all the Thirty-nine Articles by heart. Charles Reade had only learnt +three of them; but he happened to be asked to recite one of the three, +and came off with flying colours, though the odds, as can be shown by the +subtle processes of arithmetic, were thirteen to one against him. + +A little later he won the Vinerian Law Scholarship; and that success also +was a triumph, if not of accident, at least of favour. The election to +that scholarship, in those days, did not depend solely on the examiners, +but was decided, in the last resort, by the votes of all the Masters +of Arts whose names were on the books. Charles Reade and his mother +instituted a careful canvass of the country clergy and the country +squires, and even supplied conveyances to drive the voters to the polling +station. He was returned at the head of the poll, and defended his +corrupt practices by an ingenious argument. + +“The way,” he said, “in which my canvass was organised and carried out +was rather unusual, but it argues a talent of the practical kind superior +to that of my competitors. The University in its wisdom has chosen right.” + +Thereafter he lived a good deal, from time to time, in his Magdalen +rooms, and did a good deal of his work there. “The rooms he occupied in +No. 2, New Buildings,” say his biographers, “were scantily furnished. +MSS. and books littering in heaps on the floor, the walls being decorated +with looking-glasses instead of pictures.” He thought so highly of the +College cook that, when in London, he often had his dinner cooked at +Magdalen and sent up to town in a set of silver dishes. The cook, in +return, thought so highly of him that he spoke of “It is Never Too Late +to Mend” as “the fifth Gospel.” Mr. Tuckwell relates that he “would +beguile acquaintances into his ill-furnished rooms, and read to them _ad +nauseam_ from his latest MS.” + +Though he was never a College tutor, he held two College offices—those +of Dean of Arts and Vice-President. It is on record that he performed +the functions of Dean in a bright green coat with brass buttons—a +costume considered objectionable by Professor Goldwin Smith, who was +then a Magdalen undergraduate. It was also while Charles Reade was +Dean that John Conington, the future Professor of Latin, known to his +contemporaries as “the sick vulture,” was put under the College pump as +a punishment for starting a College debating society, and migrated in +consequence to University. + +Whether this last incident is really typical of the attitude of Magdalen +Philistinism towards culture may be arguable; but it forms, at any rate, +a fitting prelude to the story which remains to be told of the great +Magdalen outburst which finally overthrew the Æsthetic Movement. + + * * * * * + +The source of æstheticism is presumably to be found in +pre-Raphaelitism—that interesting revolt against the Philistinism and +general ugliness of early and mid-Victorian life. It established a new +religion of beauty, albeit on what must have seemed to the Philistines a +somewhat doleful basis. It lacked laughter. The enemies of Philistinism +who laughed, as Matthew Arnold did, were not pre-Raphaelites. The +pre-Raphaelites themselves were perhaps a little too conscious that the +overthrow of Philistinism was no laughing matter. Ecstasy was perhaps +their substitute for hilarity. It was a disposition to a sort of æsthetic +ecstasy which they bequeathed to their Oxford successors, specifically +known as Æsthetes, who had first Walter Pater, a Fellow of Brasenose, and +then Oscar Wilde, a demy of Magdalen, for their prophets. + +A number of Oxford men not yet middle-aged can well remember that +Æsthetic Movement and the strange jargon, initiated by Oscar Wilde, and +talked by the _illuminés_. They were “utter,” they said; they were “too +too”; they were “all but.” And no doubt the boast that they were “all +but” was the best founded, and received the most ironical justification. +They had not, that is to say, the sincerity of conviction which could +enable them to stand firm in the day of persecution; and that day of +persecution came upon them with the suddenness of a thunder-clap. + +What happened, to be precise, was this: Towards the end of a certain +summer term, and in the midst of the season of bump suppers, a certain +æsthete of some notoriety brought forward a resolution at the Oxford +Union proposing that the Society should discontinue its subscription to +_Punch_, because that journal was ridiculing the “New Renaissance.” The +proposal was rejected; but the end of the matter was not in the Debating +Hall, but at the æsthete’s own College, which happened to be Magdalen, +where a party of boating men were convivially celebrating their success +upon the river. The harmony of the evening ended in an attack upon the +æsthete. His collection of blue china was thrown out of his window, and +he himself, like John Conington, was put under the College pump. It was +threatened that the same measures would be taken with other æsthetes in +other colleges, and in the panic which ensued, the Æsthetic Movement +perished. The leading æsthetes hurried as one man to the barber’s to +get their hair cut, and to the haberdasher’s to buy high collars. Men +who, on the previous day, had resembled owls staring out of ivy-bushes +now cultivated the appearance of timid cows shyly peeping over white +walls; and all the available enthusiasm—since Oxford must always have +an enthusiasm of some sort—was transferred to Canon Barnett’s scheme +for conveying the higher life to the lower orders through the medium of +University Settlements in the slums of London. + +Such is the history of the Æsthetic Movement, compressed into a nutshell, +and related with the irreducible minimum of reference to Oscar Wilde; +but there is not really, at this time of day, any reason for leaving him +out. Magdalen, of course, is not proud of him, though he took two firsts +and won the Newdigate; but visitors to Magdalen are generally inquisitive +about him. He was a feature—an institution; and he belongs to literary +history. + +Probably no undergraduate ever attracted more attention while still an +undergraduate, or left a more enduring trail of legend behind him when +he went down. He understood, as the pre-Raphaelites whom he succeeded +had not understood it, the great art of posing—the art of challenging +attention, not for what he had done but for what he was. He was the +first to expound the art of life as the art of “existing beautifully.” +The conception appealed to the _âmes sensibles_ and the vain—especially, +no doubt, to the vain whose vanity had no _raison d’être_ in the way of +visible achievement. It supplied them with passwords and shibboleths; and +it filled Oxford with a long, limp, languishing procession of mild-eyed +enthusiasts, who preferred the easy morals of Greece to the stern code of +Palestine, and took their leader far more seriously than he took himself. + +His sayings were quoted, and anecdotes of his strange doings were passed +round. One heard, and talked, of the blue china which he “lived up to” +in the most æsthetically furnished rooms in Oxford, and of his discovery +of the “utter” loveliness of sunflowers. One was particularly proud of +the stories of his contemptuous treatment of the Professor of Poetry. +Principal Shairp, it was said, had read over his prize poem with him and +suggested alterations. He had listened with the politeness of a potentate +negotiating with a rival potentate, and had then printed his poem +without adopting a single one of the proposed amendments. + +There was a time when he was “ragged” on account of his eccentricities, +but he was ragged in vain. On one occasion eight stalwart Philistines +bound him with ropes and trailed him along the ground to the top of a +hill. Instead of losing his temper, he expressed himself as lost in +admiration of the view. After that, it seems to have been felt that he +had earned his right to be eccentric. At all events, the Philistines +troubled him no more. He had founded his school. It continued to flourish +for some years after his departure, and to feed itself upon stories of +his sayings and doings in the wider world. + +There were the stories, for instance, of his lecturing tour in America. +He had gone “to carry culture to a continent,” but he had been +“disappointed with the Atlantic Ocean.” There was the story of his +comment on the case of the man—a brother poet named John Barlas—who was +reported to have gone mad as the result of reading the Bible. “When I +think,” said Oscar, “of all the harm that book has done I despair of ever +writing anything to equal it.” And, finally, there were the innumerable +stories which identified him with Du Maurier’s Postlethwaite. A feeble +follower of his—one of those who ultimately suffered martyrdom for the +cause—was ridiculed in the Union, in the course of the debate above +referred to, as “the least of all the a-Postlethwaites and scarce worthy +to be called an a-Postlethwaite.” + +Afterwards, of course—but why dwell upon what happened afterwards? + +Wilde’s biographer, Mr. Sherard, suggests that he was “to a very +large extent a victim of the Oxford educational system, of the Oxford +environment.” He supports his view by the statement that Oxford “produces +side by side the saint, the sage, and the depraved libertine,” and “sends +men to Parnassus or to the public-house, to Latium or the lenocinium.” +But that will not do at all; for precisely the same thing might be said, +with equal truth, of any curriculum through which large masses of young +men pass, or any environment which they frequent. The descent to Avernus +is easy, and hell has many gates quite as accessible from the seats of +ignorance as from the seats of learning. + +“With my brain,” Oscar Wilde once said in later life, “I might have +become anything that I chose.” + +Undoubtedly he might; and it is a great tragedy that he chose so ill; but +it would be a gross injustice to hold Oxford responsible for his choice. +Oxford, as we have seen, did its best to curb his wantonness by trailing +him on the ground to the top of a hill; and even when he was no longer +_in statu pupillari_, Oxford planned a second effort for his salvation. + +He was at Oxford, on a visit to a friend at University College on the +night of the riot, already spoken of, which put the Æsthetic Movement +down. He had even accepted, for that night, an invitation to the rooms of +a Magdalen disciple; and the plot had been laid to seize him, and submit +him, together with his disciple, to the discipline of the College pump. +One of the conspirators privately warned him of his danger, and he made +an excuse, and stayed away. + +Perhaps, if he had gone, the pump would have saved him from himself; but +that, after all, is an idle speculation. + + + + +BRASENOSE COLLEGE + + The eponymous nose—The Hell Fire Club and its ghost—The + Phœnix—Dean Hole as the typical Brasenose man—Bishop Heber + and his prize poem—His _jeux d’esprit_—The note of satire in + his missionary hymns—Richard Heber the greatest bibliophile + that the world has never seen—The author of “Ingoldsby + Legends”—Robertson of Brighton—Oxford objections to private + initiative in religion—Walter Pater and his Philosophy of Life. + + +There are two questions which every visitor to Brasenose can be relied +upon to ask: What, he will demand, is the origin of the eponymous nose? +And what are the rights of the story about the Hell Fire Club and its +ghost? + +[Illustration: BRASENOSE KNOCKER. + +[To face p. 171.] + +As regards the nose, two doctrines have gained currency. The first is +contained in the works of the French traveller, Dr. Sorbière: + + “I shall not take upon me,” writes the Doctor, “to describe all + the colleges to you. There is one at whose gate I saw a great + brazen nose, like Punchinello’s vizard. I was also told they + call it ‘Brasen-Nose College,’ and that John Duns Scotus taught + here, in remembrance of which they set up the sign of his nose + at the gate.” + +The other explanation is to be found in that entertaining classic, +“Verdant Green”: + + “Mr. Larkyns,” we there read, “drew Verdant’s attention to + the brazen nose that is such a conspicuous object over the + entrance gate. ‘That,’ said he, ‘was modelled from a cast of + the principal feature of the first Head of the College, and so + the College was named Brazen-nose. The nose was formerly used + as a place of punishment for any misbehaving Brasenosian, who + had to sit upon it for two hours.... These punishments were so + frequent that they gradually wore down the nose to its present + small dimensions.’” + +It is hardly necessary to add that Dr. Sorbière, as well as Mr. Verdant +Green, was hoaxed. The nose seems originally to have been a knocker of +no importance, though, at a later date, it came to be regarded almost +as a fetish or a mascot, and acquired an accretion of legend. When, in +the year 1334, some members of Brasenose Hall (which preceded Brasenose +College) migrated from Oxford to Stamford, in Lincolnshire, because +Oxford was too riotous a place to suit their tastes, they took the +knocker with them. The students who stayed in Oxford procured another +nose in place of it; but the nose which had gone astray was bought back +by the College, 656 years after its removal, and now embellishes the +dining-hall. + +That point cleared up, we may go on to the story of the Hell Fire Club +and the ghost. + + * * * * * + +The Brasenose Hell Fire Club was an imitation of the more famous Hell +Fire Club of Medmenham Abbey. It flourished from 1828 to 1834, and its +_raison d’être_ was the defiance of religion and mortality. The meetings +were held in the various members’ rooms. The members sat at a table with +a vacant chair at the head of it—the theory being that their chairman was +the invisible but omnipresent Enemy of Mankind—and they drank hard and +competed with one another in blasphemous declamation and the telling of +indecorous stories. The dons, it appears, had some vague inkling of their +proceedings, but no precise information on which it was possible for them +to act. They did not know how the Club differed from other wine clubs, +nor had they a list of its members; but the truth was to be revealed to +them in a sudden and dramatic manner. + +One of the Brasenose dons had been dining with the dons of Exeter—in the +Senior Common-room of which College an excellent port is dispensed—and +his way home took him along Brasenose Lane, which, as strangers will +remark, is one of the darkest and loneliest thoroughfares in Oxford. +On one side of it is the forbidding _façade_ of Brasenose itself, +with savage iron bars fastened across all the windows to prevent +undergraduates from climbing out of them and seeking adventures at +unseemly hours; on the other side is the high, blank wall of the Exeter +Fellows’ garden. + +The hour was midnight, and as the don pursued his solitary way he heard +sounds of revelry—and then sounds which were not of revelry—proceeding +from a room on the ground floor in which the members of the Hell Fire +Club were assembled. He was startled; he stopped; he looked up, and saw +an astounding and appalling spectacle. The first figure which met his +eyes was that of Beelzebub, the Prince of Darkness—blue fire, and horns, +and hoofs, and all; and then he perceived that Beelzebub was not alone. +An undergraduate, well known to the don as a _mauvais sujet_, was in his +grip, struggling, resisting, with agony and terror in his face, while the +Evil One dragged his body in mocking triumph through the bars. + +Doubting the evidence of his senses, the don took to his heels and +ran all the way to the College gate. He knocked and was admitted, and +staggered, in an almost fainting condition, into the porch. At the same +time there was a cry and a rush of men from one of the rooms on the right +of the quadrangle. They came from a meeting of the Hell Fire Club, with +the news that the owner of the rooms in which the session had been held +had suddenly fallen dead—of apoplexy, as one gathers—in the midst of a +blasphemous tirade. + +The story is told by the Rev. F. G. Lee in his “Glimpses of the +Supernatural.” It was current in his own Oxford days, Mr. Lee says, “on +what could not but be regarded as good authority.” It is still current, +whatever be the value of the authority, and is invariably recalled +whenever a College debating society discusses the motion, “That this +House believes in ghosts.” Probably, since the ghost does not appear +in the record of the circumstances preserved in the Vice-Principal’s +Register, the supernatural element in the story is a later accretion, due +to the mythopœic faculty of youth; but the sudden death of the member of +the Hell Fire Club is history. + +Even that fact, indeed, has sometimes been denied by rationalising +sceptics, who have gone so far as to declare that there was no death +in the College in the year in which the Hell Fire Club was wound up; +but the death of Edward Leigh Trafford, the member in question, is duly +chronicled in the Register above referred to, and the present writer has +even heard a contemporary witness, an aged clergyman whose acquaintance +he made in a hotel smoking-room, relate that the dead man’s coffin was +solemnly laid out in the College hall, and that all the undergraduates +in residence were paraded before it, and warned of the judgment by which +sinners might at any hour be overtaken. + + * * * * * + +Another Brasenose Club, hardly less famous than the Hell Fire Club, and +much more worthy of fame, is the Phœnix. It is sometimes said that the +Phœnix was so called because it rose from the ashes of the Hell Fire +Club; but that is a mistake. The Phœnix is the older society of the two, +dating from 1781 or 1782, and is, in fact, the oldest social club in the +University. Its traditions, though convivial, are seemly. Many of its +members have risen to high places, alike in the University and in Church +and State. Five of its original twelve members, indeed, became Fellows of +Colleges; and one of its later members, Frodsham Hodson, became Principal +of Brasenose, and so great a man that, according to Mark Pattison, when +he returned to College after the Long Vacation, he drove the last stage +into Oxford with post horses, lest it should be said that “the first +Tutor of the first College of the first University of the world entered +it with a pair.” + +Other members of the Phœnix were Bishop Heber, R. H. Barham, the author +of “Ingoldsby Legends,” and the late Dean Hole. The names are of high +repute, a testimonial in themselves; and we probably shall not be wrong +in saying that it is characteristic of the tone of Brasenose that the +most intellectual as well as the least intellectual of its _alumni_, its +clerical as well as its sporting prodigies, have seen no harm in filling, +or in emptying, the flowing bowl. That, at any rate, has been one of the +characteristics of the College, though not, of course, the only one. + +“A very gentlemanly set” is the appreciation of Brasenose men in “Verdant +Green”; and as the author of “Verdant Green” speaks of an undergraduate +of another College as “openly confessing his shame” by displaying himself +in the porch of that College, we may take it that he was not using words +at random but affirming a proposition which he was prepared to defend in +argument. Most of the men, in fact, have belonged to good and well-to-do +families in the northern counties, and have exhibited both the qualities +and the limitations to be expected from such an origin. + +They have been terribly in earnest about athletic and other sports, +but they have seldom been very much in earnest about anything else. +Their scholarship, when they have been scholarly, has been more often +graceful than profound; and, in the matter of religion, they have shown +a disposition to save themselves the trouble of thinking by taking the +conventional for granted, accepting the religion provided for them in +the spirit in which one accepts the _plat du jour_ at a restaurant, but +accepting it in a hearty spirit, without feeling that it implied any +obligation to pull long faces or to mortify the flesh. We may find an +exception to the rule in the case of Robertson of Brighton, of whom more +presently; but if we desire an example of it, we may find one in the case +of Dean Hole. + + * * * * * + +The Dean was an excellent and breezy person who, even as an octogenarian, +gave one the impression of a young man rejoicing in his youth; but no +one ever accused him of endangering his intelligence by over-taxing it, +and he seems hardly to have been less at ease in Zion than at the jovial +gatherings of the Phœnix. That is not only a critic’s view of him; it is +also his own view of himself and his life, frankly expressed by him in +both prose and verse. “The reading men,” he tells us in his delightful +reminiscences, “were not, as a rule, such cheery companions as the men +who rode, and drove, and played cricket, and wore gay clothing, and +smoked fragrant regalias”; and when he drops into poetry, it is:— + + “How jollily, how joyously, we live at B.N.C.! + Our reading is all moonshine—the wind is not more free.” + +The Dean also tells us that he went to Brasenose with a serious intention +of studying, but soon found his energies diverted into other channels. +He read hard for two terms; but one day he “met a friend in black velvet +cap and scarlet coat, a bird’s-eye blue tie, buff kerseymere waistcoat, +buck-skin breeches, and pale brown tops,” and the splendid spectacle +aroused his envious ambition. He bought a horse, and wrote home for his +pink. It came, and he enjoyed, and distinguished, himself in the hunting +field; and his attitude towards the problems of the spiritual life became +that which seems generally to have found favour at Brasenose. + +Concerning the official attitude of Brasenose towards such matters he +tells two good stories. Two Brasenose men, it appears, on two different +occasions, being perplexed by religious doubts, ventured to lay their +difficulties before their tutor. The poor man was amazed. Such a thing +had never happened to him before in the whole course of his tutorial +experience. He told one of the young men that his digestion was probably +out of order, and that he had better see a doctor; he told the other +that, if he cherished this desire for auricular confession, he had +better join the Church of Rome. The Dean himself, one gathers, never +laid himself open to any such rebuke; but his comments on the Romeward +movement, of which he was a contemporary, are eloquent as to his +religious mentality. The fish caught in the Roman net, he says, were so +poor and flabby that a true sportsman would have thrown them back into +the water. + +So much for the jolly and Philistine Dean. It was worth while to dwell +on him because he seems to represent, better than any other Brasenose +man, the distinctive Brasenose point of view; but when we proceed to the +task of praising famous men, there are other famous men whom it is more +imperative to praise. + + * * * * * + +Bishop Heber is beyond question the most famous of them; and his +Newdigate on “Palestine” is the most famous Newdigate ever written. That +it is also the best will be disputed by admirers of Dean Burgon’s “Petra” +and Mr. D. S. MacColl’s “Carthage,” not to mention Sir Rennell Rodd’s +“Sir Walter Raleigh”; but that point of taste cannot be debated here. +“Palestine” has, at any rate, been reprinted several times, and derives a +special interest from the fact that it was amended at the suggestion of +Sir Walter Scott. The story is an old one; but it must be repeated. + +Scott was a friend of Heber’s half-brother, Richard, the +book-collector—“Heber the magnificent,” he called him, “whose library and +cellar are so superior to all others in the world.” Richard Heber took +him to Oxford, and they went together to see Reginald Heber, whose poem +had just won the prize. + + “Scott observed,” says Lockhart, “that in the verses on + Solomon’s Temple, one striking circumstance had escaped him, + namely that no tools were used in the erection. Reginald + retired for a few minutes to a corner of the room, and returned + with the beautiful lines: + + “No hammer fell, no ponderous axes rung, + Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung. + Majestic silence!” + +It may be added that Heber was not only a serious but also a humorous +poet. He wrote a satire called the _Whippiad_, and was also the author +of a _jeu d’esprit_ on the misfortunes of the Dean of the College, a +gentleman nicknamed “Dr. Toe,” whose _fiancée_, a Miss Belle H——, jilted +him and married a footman: + + “’Twixt footman John and Doctor Toe + A rivalship befell, + Which of the two should be the beau + To bear away the _Belle_. + + “The footman won the lady’s heart, + And who can blame her?—No man. + The _whole_ prevailed against the _part_; + ’Twas _Foot_-man _versus_ _Toe_-man.” + +It will be agreed that there is something piquant and refreshing in the +discovery that these lines are the product of the same pen that wrote +“From Greenland’s Icy Mountains”; but even in that great missionary hymn +by a missionary bishop the hand of the satirist has been detected. The +hasty generalisation that, in the Orient, “only man is vile” is said to +have found its way into a devotional composition because Heber discovered +that a Cingalese tradesman had cheated him. If so, the interpolation may +be accepted as a delightful example of what may be styled “the Brasenose +touch.” + + * * * * * + +Reginald Heber’s brother Richard has already been mentioned; and there +are those who would consider him a greater man than the Bishop. The +Bishop, they would say, was only one bishop among many, whereas the +bibliophile was the greatest bibliophile that the world has ever seen. +He was less than sixty when he died, and he had already accumulated a +library of 146,827 volumes, stored in six houses in various parts of +England and the Continent. He was so occupied in collecting them that he +quite forgot to dispose of them by will, and his executors had to sell +them for the benefit of his estate. The sales extended over a period of +three years, and the English sales alone realised £56,774. One gets a +glimpse at the collection in the “Literary Reminiscences” of a brother +bibliophile, Dr. T. F. Dibdin. + +Dr. Dibdin had long been Richard Heber’s friend, and, hearing of his +unexpected death, he hastened to his house in Pimlico, and was admitted +to the room in which he lay in his coffin. + + “And then,” he writes, “the room in which he had breathed his + last! It had been that of his birth. The mystic veil, which + for twenty-five years had separated me from this chamber, and + which the deceased would never allow me, nor any one else, to + enter, was now effectually drawn aside by the iron hand of + Death. I looked around me with amazement. I had never seen + rooms, cupboards, passages, and corridors so choked, so + suffocated with books. Treble rows were there, double rows were + there. Hundreds of slim quartos—several upon each other—were + longitudinally placed over thin and stunted duodecimos, + reaching from one extremity of a shelf to another. Up to the + very ceiling the piles of volumes extended, while the floor was + strewed with them in loose and numerous heaps.” + +A marvellous spectacle truly, and a case to be quoted whenever it is said +that all Brasenose men are obtuse to the charms of literature, though, +of course, it may be said that Richard Heber was not a typical Brasenose +man. Yet we may find the Brasenose touch in the statement already quoted +from Scott, that his fine taste in books was combined with an equally +fine taste for port and claret; and if we continue to seek that touch +through the later history of the College, we may find it in the fact +that Dean Milman, another of the great men of Brasenose and a winner of +the Newdigate, began his literary career by producing a play at a London +theatre, and we may further find it in the one story which survives of +the Oxford career of the Rev. Richard Harris Barham. + +The piety of the author of the “Ingoldsby Legends” is described by his +biographer as “unostentatious.” It was, in fact, so little ostentatious +while he was at Brasenose that he was “sent for” to explain his too +frequent absence from the College chapel. + +“The fact is, sir,” urged his pupil, “you are too late for me.” + +“Too late?” repeated the tutor in astonishment. + +“Yes, sir—too late. I cannot sit up till seven o’clock in the morning; I +am a man of regular habits, and unless I get to bed by four or five at +latest I am really fit for nothing next day.” + + * * * * * + +If any one desired still further examples of the Brasenose touch, +he might have them by studying the career of Sir Tatton Sykes, that +excellent Yorkshire sportsman who used to breakfast off “a jug of new +milk and an immense apple-pie,” who broke stones to give him an appetite, +thrashed impertinent bargees for his amusement, and seldom missed a day’s +hunting till he had passed his seventy-sixth birthday, and lived to be +ninety-one. It so happens, however, that though Sir Tatton was classed +with York Minster and Fountains Abbey as one of the three great marvels +of his native county, his residence at Oxford has left no trail of +legend; so that we must leave him and pass on to the two eminent men of +whom it may fairly be said that, though they were in Brasenose, they were +not of it. They are F. W. Robertson—“Robertson of Brighton”—and Walter +Pater. + + * * * * * + +F. W. Robertson seems to have resembled the mass of Brasenose men in one +circumstance only: he took a pass degree. No doubt he would have obtained +high honours if he had sought them; but, like John Richard Green, of +Jesus, he did not seek them, and this may therefore be the proper place +in which to recall the untrue story that when, in the least intellectual +period of the history of Brasenose, the name of some commoner was, by +some accident, placed in a class list, the other commoners proceeded to +punish him under the pump as a violator of the unwritten law. + +For the rest, F. W. Robertson, while at Brasenose, resembled neither the +average Brasenosian nor the F. W. Robertson of later days. He was the +Broad Church philosopher in the making, but he was not yet the Broad +Church philosopher fully made. His views, according to Mr. Stopford +Brooke, were “those of the Evangelical school, with a decided leaning to +moderate Calvinism.” He organised “a society for the purposes of prayer +and conversation on the Scriptures,” but it languished and died, and he +was “chilled by the apathy and coldness of Oxford.” + +That one can understand and believe. Oxford has been a place of many +enthusiasms, many of them of a religious character, but private +initiative in religious matters, however devout, has never been +encouraged there. That sort of thing has always struck Oxford as odd, +and even a little disrespectful towards the ample official provision of +the means of grace. We saw the attitude exemplified when we spoke about +the experiences of the Wesleys at Lincoln, and there is a characteristic +story of a snub administered by the Head of a college to an undergraduate +who had taken to preaching at the corners of the streets. + +The young man challenged the Head with what he thought would prove an +awkward question. What answer would he be able to make, he asked, if his +Divine Master reproached him on the Day of Judgment for having neglected +this means of diffusing a knowledge of the gospel truth? But the Head was +equal to the occasion. “You need have no anxiety about that,” he replied; +“I myself will take the entire responsibility.” + +Robertson, one recognises, was the last man likely to feel at home in an +atmosphere in which some things were not only said, but said as a matter +of course, and approved. Probably they were heard with more approval at +Brasenose than at most other colleges; and Robertson appears to have +been hardly less out of his element there than was Nathaniel Hawthorne at +Brook Farm. In one field of Oxford activity, indeed, he did distinguish +himself. He was one of the orators of the Union Debating Society, where +he maintained against John Ruskin, then of Christ Church, that the +theatre was not an influence for good. “Pray for me,” he appealed to +the man sitting next to him when he rose, rather nervously, to make his +speech. But it cannot be said that he was, either in that or in any other +respect, a typical Brasenose man. + +Still less was Walter Pater a typical Brasenose man. + + * * * * * + +Pater came to Brasenose as a Fellow from Queen’s, where he had been a +Scholar. For a time he was a lecturer and tutor, and all the stories +indicate that, in engaging in those activities, he made a false start in +life. A pupil coming to him for advice as to his reading was recommended +to read the whole of Plato and the whole of Kant—which, from the point of +view of the examinations, was almost the worst counsel that could have +been given to him. His chief contribution to metaphysical thought is said +to have been an expression of opinion that Plato was “not such a fool +as he looked.” His attitude towards the discipline of the College was +illustrated by a commendation of the bonfires which destroyed the statue +of Cain and Abel, on the ground that they “lit up the spire of St. Mary’s +so beautifully.” He once was one of the adjudicators in a prize essay +competition, but when asked by the other adjudicators for his opinion, +he replied that he could only remember that one of the essayists was +called Sanctuary, and that Sanctuary had impressed him as a remarkably +euphonious name. + +In spite of this, however—and even to some extent because of it—Pater cut +a considerable figure, and exercised a considerable influence, in the +Oxford of his day; and he became the hero of almost as many legends as +either Jowett or Mark Pattison. Mr. Edmund Gosse, as has been mentioned, +graphically described his personal appearance as that of “a benevolent +dragon.” All the world knows that he was the “Mr. Rose” of Mr. Mallock’s +“New Republic,” and his place may be defined as that of the link between +the pre-Raphaelites and the Æsthetes. + +The note in his work which found the most eager listeners was the note of +artistic Epicureanism; the place in which it was most definitely sounded +was the “Conclusion” of the “Studies in the History of the Renaissance.” +There was the exhortation to “burn always with a hard gem-like flame”; +there was the eulogy of “great passions” as the source of a “quickened +sense of life”; there was the declamation on the best way of making the +most of life, leading up to the announcement that “the wisest” spend +it “in art and song”; there, finally, was the view of art “professing +frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they +pass, and simply for those moments’ sake.” + +The essay containing those precepts became the gospel of a considerable +number of young men, and it was an insidiously dangerous gospel. The +proclamation of it in a company of money-grubbers might, indeed, have +some force, but, as a matter of fact, the audience which had least need +of it was precisely the audience which heard it most gladly. It appeared +to them to set a seal upon a holy alliance between debauchery and art; +and whereas few of them were much concerned about art, a great many of +them were deeply interested in debauchery. Debauchery, they now gathered, +was being held up to admiration as the duty which lay nearest to them. +They recognised it as an easy and agreeable duty, and they made haste to +discharge it. + +Perhaps that was not precisely what Pater meant. He said that it was not, +and he ultimately struck the passage out lest it should “mislead some of +the young men into whose hands it might fall.” But he might nevertheless +have found it difficult to reply effectively to any controversialist who +urged that, if he had not meant what he had been taken to mean he could +not have meant anything at all. + + + + +CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE + + The foundation by Bishop Foxe—Compulsory Greek—Strict + discipline in early times—The visitation by the Parliamentary + Commissioners—The ejection of the Fellows—Eminent _alumni_—The + judicious Hooker and his unhappy marriage—The Duke of + Monmouth—General Oglethorpe—Keble, and Arnold of Rugby—An + estimate of their work—Celebrities of modern times. + + +Corpus Christi College was founded in 1516, by Bishop Foxe; and it may +be necessary to anticipate the questions of some strangers by stating +at once that he was not the author of the “Book of Martyrs” but the +predecessor of Cardinal Wolsey in the counsels of Henry VIII. He spoke +of the College as his “hive” and of the scholars as his “bees” whom he +expected to be “busy bees” and to “make honey.” + +[Illustration: CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE. + +[To face p. 192.] + +They have made plenty of it. The output of Corpus in the way of +scholarship has been out of all proportion to the small size of the +College. If it has never, like University, had an opportunity of +expelling a man of genius, it has trained innumerable men of talent; and +if the distinction of the most distinguished of its sons has not been, +with rare exceptions, of the sort that makes a magnetic appeal to the +imagination of mankind, there is, at least, no breach in the continuity +of its long list of _alumni_ illustrious through their services to humane +letters; a list which begins with the Hooker whom it is customary to call +“judicious” and is by no means ended when we come to Professor Case, who +alone, when Oxford seemed to be given over to the Hegelians, maintained, +with the robust vigour of a true sportsman, his belief in the reality of +the external world. + + * * * * * + +The original note of Corpus was an insistence upon compulsory Greek. + +Modern reformers appear to think that, in demanding that the study of +Greek should be optional at Oxford, they are marching forward—“moving +with the times.” As a matter of fact, they are proposing to revert to +a condition of things which prevailed at Oxford in the ignorant times +prior to the Revival of Learning. Greek was, in those times, in the noble +language of school prospectuses, an “extra”; and men could only learn it +at their own expense from private tutors. Bishop Foxe put it into the +curriculum, endowing a Reader in Greek, and required all Corpus men to +attend his classes on pain of “loss of commons”—the loss, that is to say, +of their dinner—if they should fail to do so. + +That was one of his severe regulations; and there were many others which +show him to have had a keen eye for discipline and detail. + +Every Fellow of Corpus, it was ordained, was to share his bedroom with a +Scholar; the Fellow sleeping in a high bed, and the Scholar in a truckle +bed. One also gathers, since the Statutes contain no provision for +scouts, that it was by the Scholars that the beds were to be made and +the slops emptied. Dinner was to be eaten in hall, and the diners were +only to converse in Greek or Latin. Those who went for walks were to go +in parties of three, carrying no weapons except bows and arrows; and the +only games permitted were “games of ball” in the College gardens. Certain +prayers, private as well as public, were obligatory. It was expressly +forbidden to any Scholar or Fellow—to any one, in fact, under the grade +of President—to carry his own washing to the laundress; and violations of +this, or any other rule, were to be punished in various ways. The junior +members of the society might, for sufficient cause, be whipped; or they +might be compelled to sit at separate tables in hall, consuming dry +bread and water, while the well-conducted dined. + +Such were the sanctions of industry and virtue; and the archives of the +College are full of records of their application. One of the Scholars was +once deprived of commons for a fortnight for “attempted murder”—a light +sentence which suggests that the Senior Common-room had but an imperfect +sympathy with the victim. Another, bearing the unusual name of Anne, was +castigated for writing a satirical poem on the Mass. As he was condemned +to receive a stripe for every line of his composition, he doubtless rose +from the block with a sincere conviction that brevity is the soul of wit +and crystallised epigram the best form in which to exhibit poetry. + +Save for incidents of that sort, however, Corpus has not had a specially +exciting history; and the first really animated scene in its annals +occurs when Oxford, so to say, changed hands, and Charles I. being a +prisoner, and the city having surrendered to Fairfax, the Lords and +Commons resolved upon the Visitation and Reformation of Oxford with +a View to “the due correction of offences, abuses, and disorders, +especially of late times, committed there.” + + * * * * * + +Corpus, curiously enough, is a College which preserved its plate at +a time when the plate of most of the colleges was melted down into +money to reinforce the royal treasury. The story goes that it was +preserved—exactly how, the story does not say—through the devotion of +a butler to the College interests. The exploration of a secret cellar, +or of an old drain, according to the legend, discovered the skeleton +of a butler with the grip of his bony fingers clenched upon a precious +punch-bowl. That is not the sort of story that one would willingly +give up; but the evidence for it does not appear to be very solid; and +the conjecture of Dr. Fowler that the bowl was first surrendered and +afterwards redeemed with a money payment has more of the ingredients of +plausibility. + +Be that as it may, however, the Corpus men suffered more than the members +of most colleges from the heavy hands of the Parliamentary Commissioners; +and we have to picture “a Drum with a guard of musketeers” marching +through the gate into the quadrangle—the drum beaten as a call for +silence—the affixing of the Visitors’ Orders in the porter’s lodge—and +the reading of a long list of Fellows and Scholars who were to be +expelled. + +It was a longer list than at some of the other colleges because the +Visitors had been received in a contumacious spirit. They had no sooner +entered the name of the new President of their choice, Dr. Staunton, in +the College Register than two Scholars of the College—Will Fulman and Tim +Parker—first erased the entry, and then tore out the sheet on which it +had been made. When they proceeded to break open the College Treasury, +which the Bursar would not unlock for them, they found that its valuable +contents had already been removed. Whence resulted wholesale evictions of +a brutally precipitate character. + +The proclamation, according to one of its victims, was to the effect that +“whosoever named in the Order should remain in Oxon, or within five miles +of it, after sunset, should be taken and prosecuted as a spy.” This, +it is added, was taken to mean that they would be hanged, “though many +knew not whither to go on so short warning, nor could they have time to +dispose their books and such goods as they had”; while, as an additional +affront, “some were searched for letters only to pick their pockets.” +It must have been a shocking scene, though the relation of it can be +relieved by an anecdote which has the merit of exhibiting Oliver Cromwell +in a more human light than usual. + +One of the ejected, it appears, a certain James Quin, was presented to +the Lord Protector; and the Lord Protector, having been told that he had +a good voice, called upon him for a song. He sang so well that the Lord +Protector “liquor’d him with sack,” and bade him ask a favour. He asked +that his place on the foundation of the College might be restored to him, +and his request was granted: a quaint incident, judged by our modern +notions, but one for which there is a parallel in the later annals of the +College, during the genial period of the Restoration. + +Dr. Staunton had, by that time, been turned out; and his predecessor, Dr. +Newlyn, had been brought back. This Dr. Newlyn was a shocking nepotist. +He filled all the profitable places on the foundation with relatives of +his own, and was only moderately shocked by the fact that one of them +broke into the rooms of one of the Fellows and tried to murder him in his +sleep; but there were some offences at which he drew the line, as the +occurrence of a gross scandal was presently to prove. + +This time there was a lady in the case. The offender was Matthew Curtois, +a Probationer Fellow, a Master of Arts, and a Clerk in Holy Orders; and +the offence was committed within the College walls. The punishment was +a refusal to confirm Matthew Curtois in his Fellowship; but Matthew +Curtois, instead of submitting and slinking away, made bold to appeal to +the King. His weakness, he judged, was one with which the lover of Nell +Gwynne and so many others was likely to sympathise; and his judgment +was correct. The King, acting through the Visitor, George Morley, Bishop +of Winchester, not only decreed his fellow-sinner’s restitution to his +honours and emoluments, but also ordered him to be paid a pecuniary +indemnity for his suspension: an act of royal interference with +academical affairs which marks, as well as any other, the difference +between those times and these. + +But now, before going farther, we must turn back, and glance at the +careers of a few of the representative men of whom Corpus is most justly +proud. + + * * * * * + +Bishop Jewell should properly come first; but he is less interesting +than Bishop Hooker, who comes next, and was introduced to Corpus through +Jewell’s patronage. First a Scholar, he afterwards became a Fellow and +a Lecturer in Hebrew; and we read of him, in the Life by Izaak Walton, +that “in four years he was but twice absent from the chapel prayers.” +Evidently he was just such a man as good Bishop Foxe would have wished to +inhabit his “bee-hive”; and the tragedy of his life, which Walton relates +in sympathetic detail, was his removal from it. The story must be told, +if only to show that it was not in the conduct of his private life that +the illustrious author of the “Ecclesiastical Polity” earned the fixed +epithet of “judicious.” + +He was, in fact, a pious don of the old-fashioned, simple-minded sort; +and, of course, he was a bachelor, and in Holy Orders. Appointed to +preach certain endowed sermons at Paul’s Cross, and coming up to London +from Corpus for that purpose, he lodged in the house of John Churchman, +sometime a draper in Watling Street. He caught a chill on the way; but +Mrs. Churchman gave him “drink proper for a cold,” and then proceeded to +admonish him in a motherly manner. + +“Mr. Hooker,” she said—so Walton tells us—“you are a man of tender +constitution. It would be best for you to have a wife that might prove a +nurse to you—such a one as might both prolong your life and make it more +comfortable, such a one as I can and will provide for you if you see fit +to marry.” + +It was, no doubt, in the abstract, good advice. It seemed very good +advice indeed to Hooker as he sat by the roaring fire and sipped the +comforting possets which Mrs. Churchman prepared for him. And he knew +too, as an earnest student of the Bible, that a busy man might find good +precedents for entrusting the choice of his wife to another. As Eleazar +had been trusted to seek a wife for Isaac, so Mrs. Churchman should be +trusted to choose a wife for him. But Mrs. Churchman had a daughter; +and her chief anxiety was not to make Mr. Hooker happy, but to get +her daughter off her hands. So she brought Joan Churchman forward and +presented her. + +“Take her—she is yours,” she said; and the simple-minded don forgot to be +judicious, but married Joan Churchman, as Mrs. Churchman had meant him to +do from the beginning, and lived unhappily with her ever afterwards. + +“By this marriage,” Walton continues, “the good man was drawn from the +tranquillity of his College, from that garden of piety, of pleasure, of +peace, and a sweet conversation, into the thorny wilderness of a busy +world.” And he draws a pathetic picture of a visit paid to the good man +by two of his old pupils, Edwin Sandys and George Cranmer, in the country +parsonage to which he retired together with the lady described by another +biographer as “a clownish, silly woman and withal a mere Xanthippe.” + +The pupils found their tutor in a field attached to the parsonage, +looking after the sheep; Mrs. Hooker having told him to do so, as she +wished to employ the shepherd as a man-servant in the house. They went +up to the parsonage with him, hoping to enjoy his conversation; but Mrs. +Hooker immediately called him away to rock the cradle. They fled, driven +out by Mrs. Hooker’s inhospitable proceedings; and one of them condoled +with him, saying that his wife evidently was not a very “comfortable +companion.” Whereupon Mr. Hooker made answer: + +“My dear George, if saints have usually a double share in the miseries of +this life, I, that am none, ought not to repine at what my wise Creator +hath appointed for me: but labour—as, indeed, I do daily—to submit myself +to His will, and possess my soul in patience and peace.” + +The story, of course, is full of morals for bachelor dons; only one +imagines that the dons of our own day do not need the moral, but are much +better able than was Hooker of Corpus to take care of themselves in the +matters of the heart and the bonds of holy matrimony. + + * * * * * + +Another Corpus man of a very different character was the Duke of +Monmouth, the favourite, and reputed natural son, of Charles II. He +entered his name when the Court was driven to Oxford by the plague in +1665; but little is known about his term of residence except that he gave +the College a piece of plate which the College is believed to have melted +down in order to express its disapproval of the Monmouth rebellion. Dr. +Pocock, the Oriental traveller, should also be mentioned, for he was the +first of a long list of Oxford men who have distinguished themselves in +the exploration of the Alps. He and William Windham, meeting at Geneva, +in 1741, made up a party to explore the glaciers of Chamonix—a place +till then unknown to tourists. General Oglethorpe, the associate of the +Wesleys, and the founder of the State of Georgia, is a third who must +not be overlooked. And a passing word may be given to Edward Young, +afterwards Fellow of All Souls, the pious author of “Night Thoughts,” +and the originator of the sentiment that “Procrastination is the thief +of time.” “There are those,” we read, in a biographical account of the +doings of this divine at Oxford, “who say that Young at this time was not +the ornament to religion and morality which he afterwards became”; and +that is credible enough, for we all know many ornaments of religion and +morality whose proceedings while _in statu pupillari_ invite a similar +remark. + +The remark, however, is, on the whole, less applicable to the divines +who have come from Corpus than to the divines who have come from a good +many of the other colleges; so we need not insist, but may pass on to +the period when the occurrence of more widely popular names gives Corpus +a blaze of glory perceptible from afar. That period was in the early +days of the nineteenth century, when Keble and Thomas Arnold—Arnold of +Rugby—were contemporaries. A third member of the society at that time +was John Taylor Coleridge—Mr. Justice Coleridge—who defeated them in +some competitions for University and College prizes, and lived to write +Keble’s Life, and to contribute a chapter of Corpus reminiscences to the +Life of Arnold written by Dean Stanley. + +Most of the time of the little company, when they were not reading for +their examinations, appears to have been given to argument; most of +Coleridge’s recollections are recollections of dialectical affrays. +Oxford, at this date, was beginning to think of other matters besides +political and academical affairs. The old wrangles between Jacobites and +Hanoverians had ceased; and no one any longer thought it worth while to +provoke authority by calling for cheers for the Young Pretender. Though +the older men could remember such things, the younger men regarded them +as belonging to history. The thing which was beginning to interest them +was religion—or in some cases irreligion; and it interested them as an +end in itself, and not merely in its relation to preferment and emolument. + +Keble and Arnold of Corpus, it is instructive to remember, were the +contemporaries at Oxford of Shelley of University; but Shelley does not +seem to have been known to the others. Being orderly persons, scrupulous +observers of the regulations, well-conducted reading men, they would +probably have regarded him, if they had known him, as a dangerous and +disreputable associate. Keble’s business in life was to be to preach +at, and Arnold’s to summon to his study and flog, those who were, like +Shelley, “tameless and swift and proud.” And yet he and they had more in +common than they knew. They all represented, in their several ways, the +new spirit of the dawning century; they were all, in their several ways, +revolutionists, or at least men definitely related to revolution. Shelley +was the revolutionist _pur sang_; Keble was the counter-revolutionist; +Arnold was the practical man—the reformer with a reformer’s turn for +compromise and opportunism—who knew how to make a little revolution go a +long way. + +Keble may perhaps be classed as an English analogue of Chateaubriand. +Personally, it is true, he bore not the faintest resemblance to the +religious reactionary who “took up religion as a subject,” and has been +described as the Catholic Don Juan; but he resembled Chateaubriand in +being a literary artist, with an artist’s feeling for the “beauty of +holiness,” and he launched the English Movement which corresponds to +the return of the æsthetes and aristocrats to their Catholic allegiance +in France. The principal story told of him at Corpus is that he damaged +the sun-dial in the quadrangle by throwing a bottle at it; and we may +permit ourselves to discover a certain symbolism in that performance. The +great sermon on National Apostasy—preached because reformers proposed to +curtail the scandalous superfluity of Irish bishoprics—may similarly be +described as a weak man’s heroic attempt to stop the clock. + +The story of that attempt, however, and of the consequences which ensued +from it, belongs more properly to the annals of Oriel than of Corpus. +Arnold as well as Keble went on from Corpus to Oriel as a Fellow; but +what there is to be said about him may best be said in the present +chapter. + +He and Keble became estranged in later years; but they continued +to respect each other’s characters while examining each other’s +propositions. To Arnold it seemed that Keble’s piety was no excuse for +the narrowness of his mind, and he would have nothing to say to Keble’s +view that a man could only achieve salvation by running in a groove. He +believed in earnestness, indeed—perhaps there never was a man in more +deadly earnest; but what he desired was an earnest conduct of the common +affairs of life, not an earnest adherence to a complicated series of +ecclesiastical propositions. + +Hence his success, and his fame, as a schoolmaster. It was predicted +of him, by the Provost of Oriel, when he stood for the Headmastership +of Rugby, that he would, if elected, “change the face of public school +education throughout England.” He was elected, and he did change it. Many +of the changes which he introduced at Rugby were, indeed, based upon a +system of school government already in force at Winchester; but Arnold +breathed a new spirit into the institutions which he adopted. Members of +the Sixth Form, under his inspiration, held up their heads with a new +kind of pride. Rugbeians were distinguished—and boasted that they were +distinguished—from other schoolboys by their “moral seriousness.” + +The other schoolboys, of course, have not accepted the Rugbeian example +without cavil or criticism. It has even been remarked—most notably by +Etonians—that the difference between the “moral seriousness” of Rugby and +the thing which is elsewhere called “priggishness” is not always visible +to the naked eye. Possibly it is not. Possibly Arnold “overdid it,” like +many another valuable innovator. But the thing which he did needed doing. +It was better to overdo it than not to do it at all; and the pride which +Corpus takes in Arnold is amply justified. + + * * * * * + +And so, of course, is the pride which Corpus takes in many _alumni_ +of a later date, distinguished in a great variety of fields—in Henry +Nettleship, Professor of Latin; in Professor Fowler, the historian of +the College, whose lectures on Logic used to be as good as a play; in +Professor Case, to whose robust faith in the external world a reference +has already been made; in Mr. F. T. Dalton, who, as an editor, has struck +out many purple passages from the compositions of the present writer; +in Mr. Horace Hutchinson, the greatest living authority on the game of +golf; in Mr. Henry Newbolt, the author of “Admirals All”; in Mr. Herbert +Paul; and in Mr. A. B. Walkley, the dramatic critic who thrusts Aristotle +down the throats of the vulgar, and concerning whom it was deposed by Mr. +Zangwill, before a Parliamentary Committee on the Dramatic Censorship, +that to him “nothing is sacred except the dancing of Adeline Genée.” + + + + +CHRIST CHURCH + + Cardinal College—The fall of Wolsey—The foundation of + Christ Church—Notable scenes—The degradation of Cranmer—The + parliamentary visitation—The eviction of Dean Fell, Mrs. Fell, + and all the little Fells—Famous Deans of Christ Church—John + Fell—“I do not like thee, Dr. Fell”—Aldrich—Atterbury—Cyril + Jackson—Gaisford—Eminent undergraduates—Sir Robert Peel’s + practical joke—Gladstone and Martin Farquhar Tupper. + + +Cardinal Wolsey founded Cardinal College, spent about £8,000 on it—say +£100,000 of our modern money—out of the proceeds of the disendowment of +the monasteries, and then fell like Lucifer. Henry VIII. first stopped +the work, but presently refounded the College, and united it with the +new bishopric of Oxford, which was removed to that site from Osney. The +Head of the College was also to be the Dean of the Cathedral; and the +number of students on the foundation was to be 101. The 101 strokes +of Great Tom, which are to be heard every evening of the year at nine +o’clock, were originally ordered as a separate reminder to each one of +the students that it was time to go to bed. Five minutes after the +last stroke, the gates, not of Christ Church only but of every college +in Oxford, are closed; though nowadays, as a concession to the modern +spirit, porters are in attendance to open them to those who knock. + +[Illustration: TOM QUAD AND TOWER, CHRIST CHURCH. + +[To face p. 209.] + +That is as much as space permits to be said concerning the “beginnings.” +They were not humble beginnings, like those of most of the other +colleges, but splendid and ostentatious. Christ Church started with a +flourish of trumpets which has hardly yet ceased sounding in our ears. +Henry VIII. himself often dined in its Hall; and it has ever since been +the frequent recipient of royal favours. It is impossible to walk in +Tom Quad without feeling that this is the college of all others which +kings, to whom life is a pageant, would delight to honour. Tom Quad, +with its great spaces, its fountain, its wide pavement, has “an air +about it” which no other college even simulates. There is an indefinable +suggestion, not of study for study’s sake, but rather of leisurely +preparation for the leadership of men. The very place, one would say, for +the training of statesmen and pro-consuls. It seems incredible that the +student who has had the right to pace Tom Quad should go away and fail in +life. It does not cease to seem incredible when one learns that it has +sometimes happened. + +The history of Christ Church, indeed, is more of a pageant—or is fuller +of pageants—than the history of any other college. Its full history would +fill a book—not a short book, but a long one; but those whose historic +sense bids them conjure up the picturesque features of the past will make +their first pause at the striking scene of the degradation of Archbishop +Cranmer, punished for being a Protestant at a time when the majority were +Catholics: a shocking spectacle, though an imposing ceremony, and one +anticipating, in all its meanest details of humiliation, that ceremony of +the degradation of Captain Dreyfus which, not many years since, stirred +the civilised world to horror. + +The exact locality of the degradation is uncertain; but it took place, +at any rate, somewhere close to the cathedral, and probably in the +cloisters. Within the cathedral, Cranmer was set up on the rood-screen +and made to listen to the recital of his iniquities. Then he was dragged +down again and invested in episcopal robes made, in mockery, of rags +and canvas. Then, when he had been declared, in the name of the Blessed +Trinity and by the authority of the Church, deposed, degraded, and cut +off from all the privileges attached to his episcopal Order, he was +marched outside to endure the remainder of his punishment. + + “One by one,” writes his biographer, Dean Hook, “all the + ornaments and distinctions of office were taken off.... A + barber clipped the hair round the Archbishop’s head; and + Cranmer was made to kneel before Bonner. Bonner scraped the + tips of the Archbishop’s fingers to desecrate the hand which, + itself anointed, had administered the unction to others. + The threadbare gown of a yeoman bedel was thrown over his + shoulders, and a townsman’s greasy cap was forced upon his + head. The Archbishop of Canterbury, or, as he was now called, + Thomas Cranmer, was handed over to the secular power. In + the lowest and most offensive manner the innate vulgarity + of Bonner’s mind displayed itself. Turning to Cranmer, he + exclaimed: ‘Now you are no longer my Lord,’ and he thought it + witty ever afterwards to speak of him as ‘this gentleman here.’” + +And so to Bocardo, and thence to the stake of martyrdom—a lamentable +illustration of the bitter saying that Cambridge educated Reformers and +that Oxford burnt them. + + * * * * * + +Such might be the first striking scene in a Christ Church pageant. A +further scene—a whole series of further scenes, less tragic, indeed, but +not less remarkable—may be found at the time of that Civil War to which +it has been necessary to make so many references. + +The King, as has already been mentioned, lodged at Christ Church, while +the Queen’s Court was at Merton. Almost all the Christ Church men save +the old and decrepit and the few who, as Wood puts it, “retained their +sacred habit as a cloak for their sloth or timidity,” were ready to fight +for the King; and they and many other men from other colleges mustered at +the Schools and were marched through the High to Christ Church, “where, +in the great quadrangle, they were reasonably instructed in the word of +command and their postures.” They fought valiantly—twenty of them as +officers—but with the result which the world knows; and presently, of +course, when the city surrendered, and the Parliament sent its Visitors, +there was as much trouble at Christ Church as anywhere. + +Dean Samuel Fell, who was also Vice-Chancellor of the University, did +his best to be dignified in extremely difficult circumstances. The +Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, who was Chancellor, harangued his +Vice-Chancellor in the coarse language of the camp, and told him that he +ought to be flogged; but Samuel Fell was not to be intimidated. These +Visitors, he said, his juniors in academic standing and position, were +too “inconsiderable” persons for the Dean of Christ Church to parley +with. He therefore refused to parley with them; and they haled him off +to prison, and then proceeded to the Deanery, where Mrs. Fell and the +children held the fort. + +They knocked, and there was no answer. They tried the door, and found +that it was locked and barred. They smashed their way through it with +sledge-hammers, entered, and waited for Mrs. Fell to go. But Mrs. Fell +did not budge. Mrs. Fell even said that she had no intention of budging. +When the Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery argued with her, she argued back +with equal vigour; and there was nothing for it but to bid the soldiers +act. They strapped Mrs. Fell into a chair, and they strapped all the +little Fells on to boards, and they lifted their living, screaming, +and protesting loads, and carried them out, and deposited them in the +middle of Tom Quad, where they remained until three of the canons came +to the rescue, and conducted them to a place of refuge in a neighbouring +apothecary’s house. It may be doubted whether Tom Quad has ever witnessed +so strange a scene, before or since. + + * * * * * + +Enough of the picturesque, however. We must next turn to personalities; +and, as we find more famous men among Deans of Christ Church than among +the Heads of any of the other Houses, we may fitly begin by saying +something about some of them in the Mainly about People style. Dr. Samuel +Fell’s son John has a fair title to come first. A popular rhyme preserves +his memory, and the story of that rhyme must be told. + +This second Dr. Fell was one of the first of the deans to take not only +himself but his duties seriously. He insisted that Christ Church men +should read, and also that they should wear academic dress; he raised the +standard of examinations, and was strict in all matters of discipline. As +he ruled in the loose days of the Restoration, he inevitably had trouble +with some of the livelier spirits; and one of the liveliest of the +recalcitrant was Tom Brown, an author and wit of some note in his day, +though now forgotten. Tom Brown, having offended, was to be sent down; +but, at the last moment, the Dean partially relented. He handed Tom Brown +Martial’s epigram beginning “_Non amo te, Sabidi_,” and promised to allow +him to remain in residence if he could extemporise a satisfactory English +version of it. Whereupon Tom Brown improvised the familiar quatrain: + + “I do not love thee, Dr. Fell, + The reason why I cannot tell, + But this I know, and know full well, + I do not love thee, Dr. Fell.” + +Hardly less famous is Aldrich—equally famous, as a logician, as a writer +of catches, and as a smoker. His Logic remained the textbook in common +use at Oxford for more than two centuries. Concerning his addiction to +tobacco a story is told of a bet made that he would be found smoking at +ten o’clock in the morning—a bet lost because, at the moment when the +clock struck, he was not puffing at his pipe, but refilling it. One of +his most popular catches was specially composed for the use of smokers, +being so arranged as to give each singer a breathing time in which to +keep his pipe alight. Moreover, much as the Dean loved his pipe, he loved +his bowl no less; and he was the author of a Latin epigram, enumerating +five excuses for the glass: + + “Si bene quid memini, sunt causæ quinque bibendi: + Hospitis adventus, præsens sitis atque futura, + Aut vini bonitas, aut quælibet altera causa.” + +Aldrich’s successor was Atterbury, who had been a tutor under him; +and Atterbury was the most brilliant of the Oxford representatives in +the famous “Battle of the Books” concerning the authenticity of the +“Epistles of Phalaris.” The ultimate victory in that encounter rested, +of course, with Bentley of Trinity, Cambridge, for the Oxford case +had not a leg to stand upon; but the Christ Church wits were at least +successful in obscuring the issue and throwing dust in the eyes of their +contemporaries: a cheap success, no doubt, but better than none at all. +It is a pretty story; but the reader who is curious about it must be +referred to Macaulay or Jebb, for there remain three other deans with +clamorous claims upon our space. + +Cyril Jackson is the greatest of them. He had been the tutor of the +Regent and his brothers, who had “imbibed” from him, according to his +biographer, “that elevation of sentiment, that pride of soul, and that +generosity of spirit which teaches them, as it were innately, to look +down upon everything which bears the semblance of mean, low, or sordid +feeling.” In that eulogy, no doubt, the exaggerations of the courtier are +combined with those of the necrologist; but it was not Cyril Jackson’s +fault if the lovers of Mrs. Fitzherbert and Mary Ann Clarke failed to +imbibe all the virtues which one could wish them to have displayed. He +was an excellent tutor and an admirable Dean, who raised the College to +a pitch of efficiency never before attained. He joined with Parsons of +Balliol and Eveleigh of Oriel in originating honours examinations, and +his own men did strikingly well in them. Sir Robert Peel was one of his +double-firsts. He was in correspondence with Sir Robert at the beginning +of his public career, and advised him to perfect his oratorical style +“by the continual reading of Homer.” + +His courtly dignity may be said to have laid the foundation of the +Christ Church manner—of the manner, at all events, which one associates +with the Deans of Christ Church. They, more than the Heads of any +other Houses, have aimed at fulfilling the ideal of the “magnificent +man” of Aristotle’s “Ethics”—with what success those who have seen +the towering figure of Dean Liddell, filling the aisles of the +cathedral with the pageant of his presence, are aware. This personal +majesty, it is understood, is rather the appanage of the office +than the accidental attribute of any individual; and the serene and +well-warranted self-sufficiency of Cyril Jackson, imitated, consciously +or unconsciously, by his successors, is its source. + +Cyril Jackson was so satisfied with his position that he refused all +offers of ecclesiastical preferment. Probably he felt that no other +office could be more exalted than that which he held and adorned. At all +events he declined more than one bishopric, and his reply to one of the +offers is historical. “_Nolo episcopari._ Try my brother Bill; he’ll +take it.” But he did not, on the other hand, cling to the office from +which he was unwilling to be promoted. He retired from it, at the age of +sixty-three, when his reputation was at its highest, and spent his last +years quietly in the country. Some Latin elegiacs in which he expressed +his preference for the simple life are too delightful not to be quoted: + + “Si mihi, si liceat traducere leniter ævum, + Non pompam, nec opes, nec mihi regna peto + Vellem ut divini pandens mysteria verbi, + Vitam in secreto rure quietus agam. + Curtatis decimis, modicoque beatus agello, + Virtutæ et pura sim pietate sacer.” + +Dean Hall, who succeeded, may be passed over. Dean Smith, who came next, +was known as “Presence of mind Smith.” While an undergraduate, it was +said, he had gone boating, and had returned alone. His companion, he +explained, had fallen into the river, and had clung to the side of the +boat. “Neither of us,” Smith said, “could swim; and if I had not, with +great presence of mind, hit him on the head with the boat-hook, _both_ of +us would have been drowned.” That story, however, is only repeated, as +the journalists say, “with reserve.” Having repeated it, one passes on to +Gaisford, whose memory has left more lasting traces. + + * * * * * + +Gaisford was a protégé of Cyril Jackson, who is said to have said to +him: “You will never be a gentleman, but you may succeed with certainty +as a scholar.” That he was not, at any rate, a man of the world, may be +inferred from his reply to the letter in which Lord Liverpool offered +him the Regius Professorship of Greek. “My lord,” he wrote bluntly, “I +have received your letter and accede to its contents. Yours, &c.” That +he succeeded as a scholar is attested by the fact that when he went to +Germany and called on Dindorf, the great Teuton, though he had never been +introduced to him, fell on his neck, and kissed him on both cheeks. + +Discipline, however, did not flourish in Gaisford’s time, or in that +of his immediate predecessors, as it had flourished in the time of the +great Cyril. This was the period in which an undergraduate was killed +in a “rag”—his back broken across a chair by the too athletic Lord +Hillsborough, he who, together with Peard of Brasenose (Garibaldi’s +Englishman), cleared the streets of bargees in “town and gown rows.” +This was also the period when the Marquis of Waterford and his company +painted the door of the Deanery, and the doors of the canons’ residences, +red, because of the objection taken to their hunting in pink. It was the +period, too, when the flowers were dug up out of the Deanery garden and +scattered about the quad—whence the expression “planting Peckwater” as a +picturesque synonym for a Christ Church rag. It was the period, finally, +when the statue of Mercury, formerly standing in the centre of the +fountain in Tom Quad, was dressed in the robes of a Doctor of Divinity. +The thing happened in the dead of winter, when the water in the fountain +was frozen hard. After the deed had been done, the ice was broken, so +that none could get to Mercury without wading through freezing water, +five feet deep. + +Though these things happened, however, there was a dignity about +Gaisford, none the less. It came out when he received a letter +beginning: “The Dean of Oriel presents his compliments to the Dean of +Christ Church”; on which communication Gaisford’s classical comment was +“Alexander the coppersmith sends greeting to Alexander the Great!” It +came out again in the sermon in which he exhorted his congregation to the +study of the Greek language on the ground that a knowledge of that tongue +would enable them “not only to read the oracles of God in the original, +but also to look down with contempt upon the vulgar herd.” + + * * * * * + +Leaving the deans, and turning to the undergraduates, one hardly +knows where to begin; for the great names are as thick as bilberries, +and belong to every department of activity. One might begin a very +miscellaneous list with the names of Hakluyt, John Locke the +philosopher, and William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania—a list which +does not become any the less miscellaneous by the addition of the names +of John and Charles Wesley, and Canon Liddon. Or one may recall that +Christ Church has educated three successive Viceroys of India in Lords +Dalhousie, Canning, and Elgin, and three successive Premiers in Gladstone +and Lords Salisbury and Rosebery, and various other Prime Ministers, +including Lord Liverpool, and George Canning, and Sir Robert Peel. + +Peel, it is to be remembered, was the first Christ Church man to take a +double first; and he took it with remarkable _éclat_. The _viva voce_ +part of the examination was much more important in those days than in +these. Theoretically it still takes place in the presence of spectators; +but the benches are usually empty. Then there often were crowded houses +to listen to the entertainment; and the examining of Peel was a great +occasion, like a first night at an important theatre. There was “standing +room only”; and when the examinee distinguished himself there was “loud +and prolonged applause,” if not actually an _encore_ and a “call.” One +wonders whether there were any who divined the verbosity of the future +orator when they heard him render _suave_ in _suave mari magno_, “It is a +source of gratification.” + +Yet Peel, prematurely solemn as he was, could sometimes unbend, and once +played a practical joke. The victim of it was a timorous freshman, known +to be a scholar of poor quality. The unhappy youth received a message to +the effect that the Vice-Chancellor, having heard of his ignorance, and +desiring to test it, proposed to examine him privately, in his rooms, in +the Greek Testament. The supposed Vice-Chancellor, who duly visited him, +was Peel in disguise, attended by a scout disguised as an Esquire Bedell. +Peel put the freshman through his paces, denounced his blunders in a +severe tone of voice, and told him that he would probably be expelled. +The freshman, so the story concludes, fled from the College without +waiting for the confirmation of this sentence of expulsion, and was never +heard of again. + +Gladstone, who was to be so ardent a disciple of Peel in many things, +imitated him, in the first instance, by taking a double first—he was +one of the five first-class men in both the classical and mathematical +lists; but his failures are quite as interesting as his successes. He was +beaten for a Divinity Prize by Martin Farquhar Tupper, the proverbial +philosopher, whose acquaintance he had made as the result of their +common habit of attending the Communion Service at the Cathedral. He +also competed unsuccessfully for the Ireland; and he has related how one +of the examiners explained his defeat to him. “He abused me,” he says, +“for my essay, on which he said his own memorandum was ‘desultory beyond +belief’; also for throwing dust in the examiners’ eyes, like a man who, +when asked who wrote ‘God save the King?’ replied, ‘Thompson wrote “Rule, +Britannia.”’” + +That, it will be allowed, was characteristic; and there is something not +less characteristic in the story which Lord Morley tells of his “Greats” +examination: + + “The excitement,” Lord Morley writes, “reached its climax when + the examiner, after testing his knowledge of some point of + theology, said: ‘We will now leave that part of the subject,’ + and the candidate, carried away by his interest in the subject, + answered: ‘No, sir; if you please, we will not leave it yet.’” + +One could tell other stories, of course, if there were room for them; +but Gladstone’s life at Oxford was not, except for his success in the +schools, either sensational or eventful. His diary shows that he gave, +or went to, a wine-party nearly every night; that he was very pleased +with himself when he succeeded in making a speech of three-quarters of +an hour’s duration at the Union; and that he “haunted sermons,” as the +Consistory of Geneva ordered the Prisoner of Chillon to do. That is +practically all that there is to be said; but one may conclude by quoting +Gladstone’s mature opinion of his University. “Oxford,” he wrote, two +generations later, “had rather tended to hide from me the great fact that +liberty is a great and precious gift of God, and that human excellence +cannot grow up in a nation without it.” + +Oxford, it is not to be denied, does sometimes tend thus to confound and +obscure the human spirit. That is one of the defects of the qualities +of its atmosphere. It not only clings to lost causes—it gets stuck to +them, as it were with glue; and it allows reactionary obscurantists like +Pusey—to take the first Christ Church instance that occurs—to have too +much to say. Gladstone evidently came to feel that, in later life, when +he had left the “weeds,” as he called them, of ecclesiasticism behind +him. But his deep love for his University was never affected by the +discovery. To say of any one, he once declared, that he was “a typically +Oxford man” was to pay him the highest possible compliment; and it will +readily be believed that that is not a proposition which this work is +written to dispute. + + + + +TRINITY COLLEGE + + Founded with the spoils of monasteries—The sympathy of + Queen Elizabeth—President Kettell—His objection to long + hair—His trouble with the Court ladies during the Civil + War—Dr. Johnson’s love of the College—The expulsion of Walter + Savage Landor—Newman in his evangelical days—The Gentlemen + Adventurers—Richard Burton’s revolt against discipline. + + +Trinity was founded with the spoils of monasteries, in 1554; and the +property of the “buzzing monks” was thus put to better uses than ever +before. The founder, Sir Thomas Pope, was Princess Elizabeth’s guardian +at Hatfield, in Queen Mary’s reign; and he interested the Princess in his +educational enterprise. It is on record that our virgin ruler interceded +on behalf of two early Fellows of Trinity who had got out of the College +by night by climbing over the wall—for what purpose the chronicler does +not relate. They had been expelled; but—“at my Lady Elizabeth her Grace’s +desire”—they were readmitted on payment of a fine. + +[Illustration: TRINITY COLLEGE. + +[To face p. 226.] + +The College, though a small one, and not very richly endowed, has always +had a claim to distinction. If one cannot say of it, as one can of some +of the other colleges, that, at a given moment, it stood for Oxford, +supplying the mind, or the energy, which set the mass in motion, one +can, at least, say that it preserved its intellectual activity in times +of sloth, and has an exceptionally long list of illustrious names on its +books—largely, perhaps, because it has been less hampered than some other +colleges by “close scholarships” and provisions for showing preference +to “founders’ kin.” It has educated statesmen like the Earl of Chatham +and Lord North; such prominent Parliament men as Ludlow and Ireton; +poets of varying degrees of merit from Elkanah Settle to Walter Savage +Landor; divines, of whom John Henry Newman is the most famous; a number +of gentlemen adventurers, of whom more presently; a number of men of +letters, among whom Mr. Quiller Couch must on no account be overlooked. + + * * * * * + +In the case of so small a College maintaining so high a standard, one +naturally looks for Presidents of commanding personality; and one finds +such a President in Dr. Kettell, who flourished in the reign of Charles +I., and whose memory is still preserved by Kettell Hall in the Broad. +Dr. Kettell, it is recorded, “had a very venerable person and was an +excellent governor”; and the chronicle of his governorship is happily +full of those picturesque details which make it interesting to realise +what the academic life of the past was like. + +In his gown and surplice and hood, he had, says Aubrey, “a terrible, +gigantic aspect with his sharp grey eyes”; but the impressiveness of +his appearance must have been of a different order when he was seen on +horseback, on Sundays, riding out to preach at Garsington, “with his +boy Ralph before him, with a leg of mutton and some College bread.” He +loved his College, and lived for it, and, where deeds of charity were +concerned, let not his right hand know what his left hand did. One of +the happy deeds done by his left hand was to thrust money secretly in at +the windows of students whom he knew to be poor; and one of his modes +of promoting sobriety was to see that the Trinity beer was the best in +Oxford, so that no Trinity man should have any excuse for visiting a +tavern. + +One of the best known of his idiosyncrasies was his objection to long +hair; for the wearing of long hair was not, as is sometimes carelessly +assumed, first introduced into Oxford by the æsthetes. Whereas they +wore their hair long as a mark of the sensibility of their souls, the +imitators of the Cavaliers had done so, long before them, in vanity, and +for the purpose of proving themselves to be men of fashion. President +Kettell was “irreconcilable” to the habit. He went about with a pair +of scissors for the purpose of cutting men’s hair when he found it +offensively long; and when he happened not to have his scissors with him, +he used a knife. + +“I remember,” says Aubrey, “he cut Mr. Radford’s hair with the knife that +chips the bread on the buttery hatch, and then he sang, + + “‘And was not Grim the collier finely trimm’d? + Tonedi, Tonedi.’” + +That was at dinner in hall—a curious incident; but times have changed, +and many things happened at Oxford in the reign of Charles I. which +happen there no longer. Probably, too, when the Court came to Oxford +at the beginning of the Civil War, the President’s hostility to long +hair relaxed. His principal trouble then was with the Court ladies who +attended Divine services in the Trinity chapel, “half-dressed,” to the +great scandal of the undergraduates, and walked in the Trinity Grove +with their gallants. Some of them, it seems, used to play the lute +there—a disconcertingly unacademical proceeding, most disadvantageous +to discipline; and the climax was reached when two specially audacious +ladies—“my Lady Isabella Thynne and fine Mistress Fenshawe, her great +and intimate friend”—carried frivolity to the point of calling on the +President. + +That, indeed, is a scene worth picturing: on the one hand the “Oxford +character,” neither accustomed to the society of ladies nor desirous of +it, a man of dignity and authority, though unpolished, very wroth at the +intrusion of “minxes” in the paths of academic peace; on the other hand +high-spirited and mischievous beauties, to whom great academic names +were nothing and great academic potentates were only so many “musty old +professors.” Their idea, apparently, was to ogle the President—to make +him flirt with them—and, failing that, to overwhelm him with satirical +reproaches as a cross-grained old gentleman. And, no doubt, the President +was cross-grained, and entirely indisposed to flirt; but he was a match +for his visitors none the less. + +“Madam,” he said, addressing himself to Mistress Fenshawe, “your husband +and father I bred up here, and I knew your grandfather. I know you to be +a gentlewoman, and I will not say you are a baggage; but get you gone for +a very woman!” + +And, so speaking, he drove the giggling intruders from his presence, as +summarily as Benjamin Jowett, at a later date, expelled a deputation +of the Balliol washerwomen from the Master’s lodge. He makes a +characteristic exit speech in that scene, and leaves us free to call up +ghosts of other men. + + * * * * * + +The ghost of Dr. Johnson would readily appear if called. He stayed at +Kettell Hall while working at his Dictionary; he said that he would +rather live at Trinity than anywhere else at Oxford; his young friends +Bennet Langton and Topham Beauclerk were both Trinity men. Dr. Johnson, +however, will be waiting for us when we come to speak of Pembroke; so +we may put him on one side, and recall the memory of the greatest of +the Trinity poets, Walter Savage Landor. He was one of the many Oxford +poets who, like Shelley and Swinburne, have left the University without a +degree; and his manner of leaving, like Shelley’s, was violent, and the +result of variance with the dons. + +Landor of Trinity, be it observed, was the contemporary of Southey of +Balliol. Like Southey, he distinguished himself by refusing to have +his hair powdered, in the conventional style, for dinner; but Southey +only knew him by repute, as he told Humphry Davy on the publication of +“Gebir.” Landor, Southey then wrote, was “notorious as a mad Jacobin.” +He would have sought his acquaintance, he said, for the sake of the +Jacobinism, if the concomitant madness had not deterred him; and he +concludes, giving chapter and verse for the madness: “He was obliged +to leave the University for shooting at one of the Fellows through +the window.” But that was not quite true. The story, after the way of +stories, had both gained and lost something on its short journey from +Trinity to Balliol; and Landor himself has left a record of the rights of +it in a letter written shortly after the occurrence. + +He was a Rugby man, of the days before Rugby had gone in for “moral +seriousness.” He exhibited the roughness of Rugby, together with a +spasmodic uncertainty of temper which was all his own; and, though he +was an excellent Grecian, he did not imitate the Greeks in mixing water +with his wine. In the rooms opposite to his there lived a man named +Leeds whom he did not like—a man of whom he writes that “with a figure +extremely disgusting, he was more so in his behaviour,” and that “he was +continually intruding himself where his company was not wanted.” + +One evening it happened that Leeds and Landor were both giving wines; +Leeds’s party consisting, according to Landor, of “servitors and other +raffs of every description.” The weather was warm, and both parties +had their windows open. Neither party, one suspects, was more than +relatively sober; and so, feelings running high, the two parties began to +express their opinions of each other in a slanging match, until presently +Leeds’s party, tired of the wordy war, closed the window, and fastened +the shutters. Then Landor, as a final expression of his contempt, +discharged a shot-gun at the shutters. + +Nobody was hurt—nobody could have been hurt; but Leeds complained and the +President sent for Landor; and Landor’s awkward temper was his undoing. +Availing himself of the fact that the shot had proceeded, not from the +sitting-room, but from the bedroom, he told the President that no gun +had been fired from the room in which his company were assembled; and he +added that, as no definite person was accused of the offence, he did not +feel called upon to reply to this vague charge. The President, however, +as it happened, was not the sort of man to be fooled or bluffed. + +“Have you got a gun, Mr. Landor?” he asked; and Landor admitted that he +had. + +“Will you show it to me?” + +“Certainly.” + +“Has it been fired lately?” + +“Yes.” + +“In that case, Mr. Landor, and as I have also taken occasion to question +your guests——” + +So the dialogue ran; and the cross-examination established, if not the +legal proof, at least the moral certainty of Landor’s guilt. But he still +tried to bluff. + +“Mr. President,” he said, “it is against the law of England to require a +prisoner to incriminate himself”; but the President retired to consult +the Senior Common-room, and returned to pronounce sentence. + +“Mr. Landor,” he said, “it is the opinion of the Fellows that you be +rusticated for two terms.” And so it happened; and Oxford lost another +of her poets—more through the poet’s fault, it must be admitted, than +through her own. + + * * * * * + +The link of poetry, though there is no other, may couple Landor’s name +with Newman’s. The most momentous events of Newman’s Oxford career have +been spoken of in the Oriel chapter; but he was a Trinity undergraduate, +and Trinity’s claim to him must be recognised. “Trinity,” he has written, +“has never been unkind to me”; and in 1885 he presented the College +library with a set of his works, expressing the hope that the yearly +festival of the College might be “as happy a day to you all as in 1818 it +was to me.” + +Yet there are indications that Newman’s happiness at Trinity was +diversified by spiritual distress, and by pained disapproval of the +frivolity of others. He had but lately been “converted”; and his +conversion made him a wet blanket in merry company. His thoughts, apart +from his studies, were not confined to the “snapdragon growing on the +walls opposite my freshman’s rooms” of which he afterwards spoke with +a poet’s grateful recollection. His Evangelicalism (for he was then +an Evangelical) was shocked by the too bibulous propensities of his +fellow-men. He could not share in such jollities, like Landor; and at the +approach of the College Gaudy, his letters take the tone of a Commination +Service: + + “To-morrow is our Gaudy. If there be one time of the year in + which the glory of our College is humbled, and all appearance + of goodness fades away, it is on Trinity Monday. Oh, how the + angels must lament over a whole society throwing off the + allegiance and service of their Maker, which they have pledged + the day before at His table, and showing themselves the sons of + Belial!” + +Is it really well, one wonders, for a young man to be quite so good as +that at quite such an early age? Probably not. The sentences seem to echo +the artificial ring of the Evangelicalism of the decadence, which is a +displeasing sound; and one turns, not without relief, from Newman to the +Gentlemen Adventurers. + + * * * * * + +It has been mentioned that the first Earl of Chatham was once Pitt of +Trinity; and it was under his direction that England conquered the +Empire “in a fit of absence of mind”—an Empire which, by the way, Lord +North of Trinity went the right way to lose. His name, therefore, though +no stories of his Oxford adventures have been preserved, fittingly +introduces our list. + +The first name on the list is that of Sir Francis Verney, of whom many +interesting stories may be read in the “Memoirs of the Verney Family”; +he was, in turn, a galley-slave, a common soldier, and a pirate on the +Barbary coast, and died miserably in the hospital at Messina in 1615. The +second name is that of Calvert, of Trinity, who became Lord Baltimore, +and founded the colony of Maryland. The third—to pass over minor names—is +that of Richard Burton. + +“Readers must be prepared,” says Lady Burton, writing of her husband’s +Oxford curriculum, “not to hear the recital of the College course of a +goody-goody boy of yesterday”; and though Burton did row in the Trinity +torpid, and compete for two scholarships, which he failed to win, his +proceedings were, on the whole, irregular. He had lived much abroad, and +came to Oxford with ideas somewhat different from those of the ordinary +public school boy. + +The first thing that happened to him on his arrival was that the College +authorities requested him to shave off his moustache. He declined to do +so unless they put their request in the shape of a formal written order. +Some undergraduates then laughed at his moustache; and he handed them +his card, and called them out, though the threatened duel was prevented +from taking place. He was next advised to sport his oak, lest he should +be ragged; but instead of doing that, he left the door wide open, and +thrust the poker in the fire, prepared to give his persecutors a warm +reception if they came. The opinion gained ground that he was a desperate +character, and he was left unmolested. + +His studies were as unconventional as his behaviour—he began to learn +Arabic—and so also were his recreations. Those were the days of +rowdyism—the days in which, as has just been related, the Marquis of +Waterford painted the door of the Dean and Canons of Christ Church red; +and Burton thoroughly enjoyed diversions of that order. He once caused +himself to be let down with a rope into the garden of the Master of +Balliol, pulled up that old gentleman’s choicest flowers, and planted +staring marigolds in their place. He also, when the Master of Balliol +was watering his flowers, shot at the watering-pot with an air-gun. +But, taking one consideration with another, nothing was quite so +characteristic of his life at Oxford as his leaving of it. + +He had told his father, during the vacation, that he would like to take +his name off the books; but his father had insisted on his returning. He +returned with the firm resolve of overreaching the parental authority by +doing something that would bring about his expulsion; and a race-meeting +in the neighbourhood gave him his opportunity. + +Undergraduates were not only forbidden to attend that race-meeting; they +were ordered to be present without fail at lectures, at the hour at which +the races took place. “Tyranny! Unjustifiable interference with the +liberty of the subject!” exclaimed Burton and a few other of the wilder +spirits; and they ordered tandems to be in waiting for them, behind +Worcester, and drove out of Oxford at a spanking pace at the very hour at +which the roll was being called. + +Of course they were missed; and of course they were sent for, and asked +for explanations. The explanations of the others were of a humble +character; but Burton’s explanations made matters worse. He blurted out +that he saw no harm in attending a race-meeting, and was aware of no +reason why undergraduates should be treated like babies in arms; and he +not only said that, but went on to moralise. + +“Trust begets trust,” he solemnly said, “and they who trust us elevate +us”; and it was not to be expected that the dons would put up with that. + +Nor did they. They expelled Burton, while contenting themselves with +rusticating his companions; and he received the sentence with the same +imperturbably high moral tone. He hoped, he said, “that the caution money +deposited by his father would be honestly returned to him.” At that there +was “movement.” It seemed, for the moment, as if the dons proposed to +expel Burton not only from the College, but from the room. He brought his +heels together, bowed to them in the courtly Austrian fashion, wished +them happiness and prosperity, and withdrew. Then he went down. + +But not immediately, and not without a demonstration; and the description +of the final scene may be taken from the Life by Mr. Francis Hitchman: + + “One of his rusticated friends—Anderson of Oriel,” writes + Mr. Hitchman, “had proposed that they should leave with a + splurge—‘go up from the land with a soar.’ There was now + no need for the furtive tandem behind Worcester College: it + was driven boldly up to the College doors. Richard’s bag and + baggage were stowed away in it, and, with a cantering leader + and a high-trotting horse in the shafts, carefully driven + over the beds of the best flowers, they started for the High + Street and the Queen’s highway to London, Richard energetically + performing upon a yard of tin, waving adieux to his friends, + and kissing his hand to the pretty shop-girls.” + + + + +SAINT JOHN’S COLLEGE + + Founded by Sir Thomas White—Raised to fame by Archbishop + Laud—Calvinistic opposition to Laud—He triumphs over it and + makes Oxford a High Church University—His disciplinarian + regulations—His magnificent entertainment of royalty—The + entertainment of Admiral Tromp—He gets drunk and is taken home + in a wheelbarrow—Dean Mansel—His pugnacious Bampton Lectures + and his excruciating puns. + + +Saint John’s College was founded in the reign of Queen Mary, a year after +the foundation of Trinity, by Sir Thomas White, a City merchant of the +Dick Whittington type, and one of the originators of the Muscovy Company. +Its connection with the Merchant Tailors’ School was early established; +and merchants generally recognised it as the most fitting college for +them to send their sons to. It blossomed into glory under its second +founder, Archbishop Laud, who added, among other things, that “garden +front” which is one of the architectural gems of Oxford. + +[Illustration: ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE. + +[To face p. 241.] + +Laud’s, in fact, is the chief name to be reckoned with in the College +annals. He occupied almost every position there, from the humblest to +the highest. He was, successively, commoner, Scholar, Fellow, Tutor, +President. While Tutor, he was also, for a time, Proctor. After being +President, he became Visitor of the College and Chancellor of the +University. One associates his name, in politics, with reaction; but he +was, in University matters, a reformer. He and his successor Juxon—the +Juxon who attended Charles I. on the scaffold—raised the College to its +highest pinnacle of honour. It led the van in education, and gave the +country two successive Primates. + + * * * * * + +Born in 1573, Laud matriculated in 1589, won his scholarship in 1590, +was elected to his fellowship in 1593, took deacon’s orders in 1600 and +priest’s orders in 1601, became a Doctor of Divinity in 1608, and was +chosen President in 1611. He held that office until he became Bishop of +St. David’s in 1621; but his interest in the College did not cease with +his preferment, as the new Statutes which Oxford owed to him bear witness. + +His period, as the dates show, was chiefly that of the first two Stuart +Kings; and the Stuarts, whatever their defects, were always full of +regard for the most ancient of the English seats of learning. They +valued its loyalty and liked to visit it in state; and Oxford repaid the +attention which it received from them by modifying its theological point +of view. Laud was the moving spirit of the transformation. The Oxford to +which he went was a Calvinistic Oxford. The Oxford which he left was a +High Church Oxford; and the change was more due to his influence than to +that of any other man. He got his way there by firmness and tact, wearing +down opposition, and making his enemies his friends. + +The records of his early Oxford days are scanty; but we know him always +to have been on the side of ceremony, alike in academic and in religious +observances. Of the former kind of ceremony we find a quotable example +in the account preserved of the reception of James I., on his visit to +Oxford, at the gate of Saint John’s: + + “Three young youths” (we read) “in habit and attire like nymphs + confronted him, representing England, Scotland, and Ireland, + and talking dialogue-wise each to other of their state, at last + concluding yielding themselves up to his gracious government. + The scholars stood all on one side of the street, and the + strangers of all sorts on the other. The Scholars stood first, + then the Bachelors, and at last the Masters of Arts.” + +Laud, we cannot doubt, had a hand in that performance; and we may also +presume him to have had something to do with the management of the +comedy which was played before the King, two days later—not, it is true, +with such unqualified success as the company might have desired: + + “It was acted” (we are told) “much better than either of + the others that he had seen before, yet the King was so + over-wearied that after a while he distasted it and fell + asleep. When he awaked, he would have been gone, saying, + ‘I marvel what they think me to be,’ with such other like + speeches, showing his dislike thereof. Yet he did tarry till + they had ended it, which was after one of the clock.” + +It was in connection with religion, however, that Laud’s appreciation of +splendid ceremony was most important. There is a legend to the effect +that he kept a set of Roman vestments in his rooms, and dressed up in +them and admired himself before the looking-glass when he thought that he +was alone and unobserved; but that story is probably untrue. Certainly +the fact that the College treasures include Roman vestments is no proof +of it. Personally, Laud was a man of very simple tastes. Fuller says so, +and illustrates the statement with an anecdote. + + “Once” (Fuller writes) “at a visitation in Essex, one in + orders (of good estate and extraction) appeared before him + very gallant in habit, whom Dr. Laud (then Bishop of London) + publickly reproved, showing to him the plainness of his own + apparel. ‘My Lord’ (said the minister), ‘you have better + cloaths at home and I have worse,’ whereat the Bishop rested + very well contented.” + +That is not the language of a man who desired priests to simulate +birds of paradise; and Laud’s chief anxiety was that the conduct of +public worship should be decent, decorous, and dignified. He found the +administration of the Holy Communion conducted in a slovenly manner. +The table was kept in the middle of the Church, and communicants had +acquired a habit of putting their hats and sticks on it. Laud railed it +off, at the East end, so that it could no longer be used as a hat-rack +and umbrella-stand; and he also preached sermons before the University +in favour of the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, and of the divine +origin of the episcopacy. + +This, at first, made him very unpopular. His election to the office of +President was only effected in the face of strenuous opposition—one +vehement antagonist presuming to seize the voting papers and tear them +up, in the vain hope of invalidating the election; and he was preached +at by the Regius Professor of Divinity in the University Church. “What!” +exclaimed the preacher, pointing at the future Archbishop. “Do you think +there be two heavens? If there be, get yourself to the other, and place +yourself there, for into this where I am ye shall not come.” + +To that sort of abuse Laud had to listen for hours together. It is said +that he listened patiently. Perhaps he listened with a smile. At any rate +he was in a position to smile, for he could see that he was winning. + +Probably other people did not see it; for Laud was neither overbearing +in manner nor formidable in appearance. Fuller describes him as “low in +stature, little in bulk.” When he was Proctor, a citizen of Oxford, whom +he discovered drunk on a bench and accosted with the voice of authority, +addressed him as “thou little morsel of justice” and bade him go away. +Apparently he went away. The Proctor’s Black Book contains no record +of punishment in his time, and in his college he had a reputation for +lenity. One can only in short, infer him to have been a disciplinarian +from the fact that he did, somehow or other, enforce discipline. + +He not only enforced discipline, indeed, but conciliated the +recalcitrant. The very man who had tried to invalidate his election to +the Presidency by destroying the voting papers became one of his most +loyal supporters, served as Vice-Chancellor during his Chancellorship, +and sent him regular reports of the progress of University affairs. +In the end, therefore, he was able to carry matters with a high hand, +informing the Heads of the other colleges that, if they did not institute +the reforms suggested to them, “his Majesty’s commissions will reform +whatsoever you do not,” and “this breach once made upon your privileges +might lay open a wider gap in many other particulars,” and “it will be +ordered in a sourer way not so agreeable to your liberties.” + +Laud, in short, was, like Lord Curzon, a Chancellor who took his +Chancellorship seriously; and no matter was too great or too little to +receive attention from him. He enriched the University with gifts of rare +and precious manuscripts; he procured fresh privileges for the University +Press; he revised the relation of the colleges to the University; and, in +addition to all that, he drafted regulations as to the conduct of junior +members of the University which we may assume to have been as necessary +in his time as they would be out of place in ours. + +He forbade, for instance, long hair, top boots, and slashed doublets, and +all garments of “light and garish colours.” He also forbade “the hunting +of beasts with any sort of dogs, ferrets, nets or toils,” and any use +or carrying of “muskets, crossbows or falcons,” and prescribed that +“neither rope-dancers, actors, nor shows of gladiators” should perform in +the precincts of the University without special leave. His schedule of +prohibited games included football and knuckle-bones; and the sanction +of his Draconian rules was to be “corporal punishment if, by reason of +age, it be becoming, fines, postponement of the degree, expulsion for +a time or for ever”; and though it is difficult for us to picture the +state of things which required to be amended by this drastic code, there +is testimony that the change which it introduced was for the better. Sir +John Coke may be our witness. + + “Scholars” (writes Sir John in 1636) “are no more to be found + in taverns nor seen loitering in the streets or other places + of idleness or ill-example, but all contain themselves within + the walls of their colleges and in the schools and public + libraries.” + +It is a picture of an Oxford very different from the Oxford which we +know—a picture of an Oxford of old heads on young shoulders. Let Laud +be given all the credit that is due to him for creating such an Oxford, +even though the elements of permanence were lacking to his creation. He +did not altogether ignore the need for recreation, though he thought +rough games undignified, and would have been appalled by the spectacle +of an undergraduate in a blazer. He admitted plays and pageants; and as +our account of him began with a pageant, so it may end with one. Only +three years before his arraignment and execution, he organised a pageant +of triumphant splendour for the entertainment of the King and Queen, the +Elector Palatine, and Prince Rupert. + +There was first a dinner of a unique description, with “baked meats” +disguised by the cook to look like Archbishops, Bishops, and Doctors of +Divinity. Then there was a play—“very merry,” Laud writes, “and without +offence.” He was very proud to think that Saint John’s was able to +stage the piece without needing to borrow a single actor from any other +college; and the costumes were so tasteful that the Queen borrowed them +for a subsequent performance by her own players at Hampton Court. All +things, in short, were in such very good order that “no man went out at +the gates, courtier or other, but content,” and all passed off “to the +great satisfaction of the King and the honour of that place.” + +It was a great day for Saint John’s, and a great day for Laud. +He proceeded to Oxford for the occasion with a retinue of from +forty to fifty horsemen, and he defrayed the whole cost of the +entertainment—£2,666—out of his own pocket. But the glory was like the +glory of the sunset which precedes the dark. Laud’s further progress was +to be to the prison and the block; and the College was presently to be +called upon, like the other colleges, to yield up its plate to the King, +and to devote a portion of its revenues to the payment of the King’s +soldiers. The King promised “on the word of a king” to repay the money +advanced within a month; but he did not keep his promise; and presently +the Parliamentarians began bombarding, and a cannon ball which lodged in +the gateway tower is still preserved. + + * * * * * + +Having had its day, Saint John’s was never again to be so pre-eminent +a college as under Laud’s administration. Intellectually, it was to be +surpassed by Balliol; socially it was to be surpassed by Christ Church. +The Methodism of the eighteenth century was to have no repercussion +within its walls. Ecclesiastically—though Mark Pattison speaks of it as +“corroded with ecclesiasticism”—it was never to attain to the interest of +Oriel. It fell, in short, with the fall of Charles I., into that place in +“the ruck” from which it is given to few colleges to emerge for more than +a little while. + +One distinction which may be claimed for the days of its obscurity is +that, once, it had a soldier for its President. President Mews had +attained the rank of captain during the Civil War, and it is related +that, while President, he lent the horses from his stable to draw +the royal artillery at the Battle of Sedgmoor, and himself not only +watched the engagement from the top of a hill, but gave advice as to +the tactics—an example which we may expect to see followed by Professor +Spenser Wilkinson (whose college was Merton) if ever the necessity should +arise. + +Another incident which diversified the annals of the College in the +latter part of the seventeenth century was a visit from the Dutch Admiral +Tromp. He is described by a contemporary as “a drunken greasy Dutchman”; +but he did not get drunk alone. A drinking match was arranged by Dr. John +Speed of Saint John’s, and five or six others, “as able men as himself.” +It is recorded that, though the contest was a severe one, the Oxonians +triumphed, and at the close of a merry evening, the ancient mariner was +conveyed to his lodgings in a wheelbarrow. + +And so forth, there being no other name on which it is necessary to pause +until we come to that of Dean Mansel. + + * * * * * + +Mansel is the divine whom Herbert Spencer claimed for his philosophical +ancestor. He had, he said, carried the speculations of Mansel a step +further—that was how he had arrived at the agnosticism expounded in +“First Principles.” Whether the one philosopher’s conclusions are really +deducible from the other philosopher’s premises is a thorny question +about which the mere historian may be contented to leave theologians +and metaphysicians wrangling. For him it is enough that Mansel was a +notable figure—a philosopher whom the average undergraduate of his period +forgave freely for being incomprehensible because he was so unmistakably +pugnacious. + +In his examination for his degree, Mansel distinguished himself by +arguing with his examiner, before an admiring audience, and putting him +to shame; and Dean Burgon’s “Twelve Good Men” contains a delightful +description of the delivery of his controversial Bampton Lectures. He was +much too deep, Burgon tells us, for his congregation—not one in a hundred +of them understood a word of what he was saying. But they understood, in +a general way, what he was about. + + “He was, single-handed, contunding a host of unbelievers—some + with unpronounceable names and unintelligible theories; and + sending them flying before him like dust before the wind. + And _that_ was quite enough for _them_. It was a kind of + gladiatorial exhibition which they were invited to witness: the + unequal odds against the British lion adding greatly to the + zest of the entertainment; especially as the noble animal was + always observed to remain master of the field in the end. But, + for the space of an hour, there was sure to be some desperate + hard fighting, during which they knew that Mansel would have to + hit both straight and hard: and _that_ they liked. It was only + necessary to look at their Champion to be sure that _he_ also + sincerely relished his occupation; and this completed their + satisfaction. So long as he was encountering his opponents’ + reasoning, his massive brow, expressive features, and earnest + manner suggested the image of nothing so much as resolute + intellectual conflict, combined with conscious intellectual + superiority. But the turning-point was reached at last. He + would suddenly erect his forefinger. This was the signal for + the decisive final charge. Resistance from that moment was + hopeless. Already were the enemy’s ranks broken. It only + remained to pursue the routed foe into some remote corner of + Germany and to pronounce the Benediction.” + +Truly there must have been theological giants in the land in those days; +and the spectacle must have been even more sublime than that of Tatham +of Lincoln contributing to Christian apologetics his famous wish that he +might see “all the German critics at the bottom of the German Ocean.” And +the curious thing is that, when Mansel was not confounding the Teuton +metaphysicians, he was engaged in building himself up a second reputation +as the most brilliant punster in the English language. Burgon credits him +with the delightful saying—sometimes attributed to Douglas Jerrold—that +“dogmatism is the maturity of puppyism”; and Burgon, in fact, fills +several pages with Mansel’s puns, setting them forth with a gusto which +may partially explain and justify the criticism once passed on Burgon +himself, to the effect that “buffoonery was his forte and piety his +foible.” + + + + +JESUS COLLEGE + + Statistics concerning the Joneses of Jesus—A Welsh + _enclave_—Rarity of great names at Jesus—Henry Vaughan the + “Silurist”—Sir Lewis Morris—Beau Nash—John Richard Green. + + +The belief currently entertained about Jesus College in the other +colleges is that the Principal, the Fellows, the Scholars, and the +Commoners—to say nothing of the porter, the cook, and the scouts—are all +alike called Jones. It is also generally understood that such Christian +names as David and Llewellyn occur too frequently to be of any use for +the denotation of individuals, with the result that it is only possible +to distinguish a given Jones from other Joneses by means of a reference +to his personal idiosyncrasies. “I mean,” people say, “the Mr. Jones who +...” &c. + +Legends of that sort, though seldom literally true, are seldom quite +devoid of foundation in fact; and the best thing to do is to take a +census. It appears from Foster’s “Alumni Oxonienses” that, between 1715 +and 1886, there were 716 Joneses at Oxford, and that 299 of them were +Joneses of Jesus. Jesus, that is to say, whose just share of Joneses +would be one twenty-first, has, as a matter of fact, educated rather +less than one-half and rather more than one-third of the total number of +Joneses available. Yet, by one of those curious ironies which make life +interesting, it so happens that the greatest of the Oxford Joneses—Sir +William Jones, to wit—was not at Jesus, but at University, and that the +most memorable of the Jesus ghosts are not the ghosts of Joneses, but of +a Vaughan, a Nash, a Green, and a Morris, while only one Jones has ever +risen to the dignity of Principal. + +So much for statistics. They are very interesting, but they do not carry +us very far. Our next step must be to picture Jesus—not the present +Jesus, of course, but the unreformed Jesus of old times—as a horrible +example of the evil (or perhaps it would be better to say the undesirable +limitations) of what may be called “hole-and-corner” educational +endowments. + +Jesus has always been, in a special sense, the Welshman’s college—a Welsh +_enclave_, as it were, in the midst of England. Benefactors made it so +by confining their benefactions to Welshmen; and one may feel that this +was a mistaken policy without speaking disrespectfully of Welshmen—which +has always, since Shakespeare’s time, been a dangerous thing to do. The +results have been somewhat like those which Matthew Arnold deplored in +the case of special schools for the education of the sons of licensed +victuallers and commercial travellers. The Welshmen brought their +own atmosphere to Oxford and formed their own circle there. Their +peculiarities, instead of being toned down, were crystallised; and their +many excellent qualities were consequently lost upon Oxford. Men of other +colleges gazed at them, as it were, across a social gulf, and regarded +them pretty much as they might have regarded Wild Men from Borneo. + +Nor did the Welshmen often bridge the social gulf by means of +intellectual achievement. They might have done so if they had been fairly +representative of Wales; but they were not. Jesus suffered more than +almost any other college from the dog-in-the-manger policy of theologians +in high places. While the College was the preserve of Welshmen, the +University was the preserve of members of the Church of England; and +Wales, as all the world knows, is a citadel of Nonconformity. The +intellect of Wales, therefore, was not justly represented at Jesus; while +the intellect of England, Scotland, and Ireland was hardly represented +there at all. + +It followed that even the people who regarded the religion at Jesus as +“true” could not allow that the learning there was “sound.” Fellowships +were frequently awarded to men who had taken only third or fourth-class +honours. The scholars could learn no more than the Tutors could teach +them; and the list of _alumni_ is singularly lacking in distinction. A +list of sixteen bishops can, indeed, be made out—with not a Jones among +them; and there have been a good many Cymric lexicographers, Cymric +grammarians, and Cymric antiquaries. But such names as a non-Cymric +public values are very scarce indeed. Archbishop Ussher—he who computed +that the world must have been created in the year 4004 B.C.—had some +connection with the College, though the precise nature of that connection +cannot be discovered; and then comes Henry Vaughan—the poet who called +himself “the Silurist,” because the country in which he lived and worked +was the ancient territory of the Silures. + + * * * * * + +Henry Vaughan is a charming religious poet, with a vein of mysticism. The +Reverend Alexander Grosart has written his life in a prose style of his +own, which suggests a careful man picking his way across a muddy road in +patent-leather shoes. But the life, when written, amounts to very little. +Hardly anything is known of the poet except that he began to study law, +but afterwards became a country doctor, and practised in Brecknockshire; +and the most interesting statement made concerning him is that, when the +war between King and Parliament broke out, he suffered a short term of +imprisonment as a royalist, but afterwards went home and “followed the +pleasant paths of poetry and philology.” + +Some will, no doubt, denounce him, on that account, as a poor, +mean-spirited person; but there are no known facts on which to base the +charge. Fighting, after all, is not an end in itself; and a man may +refrain from fighting, not because he is afraid of being killed, but +because he does not feel strongly enough to desire to kill the people +who do not share his opinions. A mystic, full of the belief that God is +manifested in all His creatures—King’s men and Parliament men alike—might +well sigh for quiet in the midst of civic storms, and prefer to realise +his Pantheism in a lonely place rather than draw the sword and let +himself be carried away by evil passions which his heart told him were +unprofitable and vain. + +The Silurist was, we may take it, a “God-intoxicated” man, and one on +whom the intoxication exercised a narcotic rather than an exciting +influence: a man, therefore, not to be roused from meditative torpor by +the thought that the King’s rights or the people’s liberties were in +peril. He could see visions and dream dreams which were worth infinitely +more to him than any of the objects of contention between Cavaliers and +Roundheads. He not only fancied that he could see—he actually saw: + + “Dear, beauteous death! the jewel of the just, + Shining nowhere, but in the dark; + What mysteries do lie beyond thy dust; + Could man out-look that mark! + + “If a star were confin’d into a tomb, + Her captive flames must needs burn there; + But when the hand that lock’d her up gives room, + She’ll shine through all the sphere!” + +One does not picture the man who wrote those lines galloping about with +a sword in his hand and charging with the drunken troopers who followed +Rupert of the Rhine. One could not so picture him if one would, and +one would not if one could. He was of a finer as well as a more sober +temper than any of those roystering men-at-arms; and in his “Retreate” +he anticipated Wordsworth’s more famous “Intimations of Immortality.” +Perhaps it is not without significance that he and Wordsworth both +divined that “our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting,” and that +“Heaven lies about us in our infancy,” in an age in which progress seemed +to have called a halt while wild men cut each other’s throats. + +All that, however, has nothing to do with the career of Vaughan the +Silurist at Jesus; and, indeed, there is nothing to be said on that +branch of the subject, except that Vaughan left the University without +taking his degree. The only other Jesus poet worthy of remark—one has +named, of course, Lewis Morris—not only took his degree, but also took +firsts in Moderations and in Greats, and won the Chancellor’s Prize for +an essay on “The greatness and decline of Venice,” and would have been +elected to a fellowship if he had not been disqualified by the possession +of private means. “Perhaps,” writes the official historian of Jesus, +“what the College lost the rest of the world may have gained by this +disqualification.” + +It may be so. Yet Sir Lewis Morris has left it on record that he wrote +most of his poetry on the underground railway before it was electrified; +and if the atmosphere of Jesus was less inspiring than that of the +unreformed District Line, it must have been more uninspiring than that of +any of the other colleges. The essential thing is, however, that Morris +did write his poetry, and gained his knighthood, and was at one time a +possible poet laureate. + +He had been much admired. His admirers had, at one time, numbered tens, +if not hundreds of thousands; and if the laureateship had fallen vacant +then, it would probably have been given to him amid acclamations. It fell +vacant too late, however, and was allowed to remain vacant too long to +please him. The demand for his poetical services was not vociferous. It +even seemed to him that he was the victim of a conspiracy of silence; and +he said as much to Oscar Wilde. + +“Oscar,” he asked, “what would you advise me to do in the face of this +conspiracy of silence?” + +“I would advise you to join the conspiracy,” was his brother poet’s cruel +reply. + + * * * * * + +Another—and one may even venture to say an unexpected—Jesus man was Beau +Nash, the uncrowned King of Bath: the autocratic dandy who directed the +etiquette of the Bath Assembly Rooms, where he ordered Duchesses to +take off their aprons and noblemen to take off their boots. All things +considered, it seems improbable that Beau Nash was very much like the +other Jesus men, or that the other Jesus men were very much like Beau +Nash; and it may be added that the example which he set them was not an +example which it would have been good for them to follow. + +The Beau, like the Silurist, left Oxford without a degree, after having +demonstrated, as his biographer, Dr. Oliver Goldsmith of Trinity College, +Dublin, puts it, that “though much might be expected from his genius, +nothing could be hoped from his industry.” And Dr. Goldsmith continues: + + “The first method Mr. Nash took to distinguish himself at + college was not by application to study, but by his assiduity + in intrigue. In the neighbourhood of every University there are + girls who, with some beauty, some coquetry, and little fortune, + lie upon the watch for every raw amorous youth more inclined + to make love than to study. Our Hero was quickly caught, and + went through all the mazes of a college intrigue before he was + seventeen; he offered marriage, the offer was accepted, but + the whole affair coming to the knowledge of his tutors, his + happiness, or perhaps his future misery, was prevented, and he + was sent home from college, with necessary advice to him and + proper instructions to his father.” + +His case, if correctly reported, is a warning to those young men of the +present day—supposing that there still are such—who listen to the lure of +the siren in the photographer’s shop; but the exactitude of the narrative +has been disputed. A contemporary reviewer of Dr. Goldsmith’s work had +heard from a Fellow of Jesus that “Mr. Nash, being too volatile to relish +the sober rules of a college life, took the opportunity of receiving his +quarter’s returns, and went off, leaving a debt behind him of about three +pounds eighteen shillings, which remains undischarged on the College +books to this day.” Which of the two stories is the true one it is, at +this distance of time, impossible to say; but the records which remain of +the Beau’s volatility do certainly indicate a manner of life for which a +University city was no proper setting. + +In the days before he went to Bath and found his _métier_, he earned his +living in very curious ways, but chiefly by undertaking, for a wager, +to do some ridiculous thing. One of his feats, accomplished from this +pecuniary motive, was to strip himself naked and ride through the streets +of a village on the back of a cow. That, it will be generally admitted, +is a thing which it is better to do in the remote country than in the +High, or the Broad, or even the Turl. + + * * * * * + +Next—and perhaps last—on the roll of Jesus celebrities comes the name of +John Richard Green, the historian of the English People; and his debt to +Jesus—and even to Oxford—does not seem to have been a heavy one. + +His place among the historians is undoubtedly better assured than the +place of Lewis Morris among the poets; but as an undergraduate he did +not shape so well. Instead of taking first class honours, he only took +a pass degree; instead of writing a prize essay, he wrote for a local +paper. His tutors thought him idle, and his contemporaries had some +reason to complain of him. He was part author of a satire—the “Gentiad,” +an imitation of the “Dunciad”—which ridiculed some of the characteristics +of Jesus men. This brought him unpopularity, and he passed through Oxford +without making many friends. + +One good and great friend, however, he did make, almost by accident; and +that story may be best told in the words of the Life by Leslie Stephen: + + “During his University career Arthur Penrhyn Stanley was + Professor of Ecclesiastical History. Green, during his last + term, went accidentally into the lecture-room where Stanley + was discoursing upon the Wesleys. The lecture fascinated him, + and he never missed another. In one lecture Stanley concluded + with the phrase, ‘_Magna est veritas et prævalebit_, words so + great that I could almost prefer them to the motto of our own + University, _Dominus illuminatio mea_.’ As Stanley left the + room, Green, who had been deeply interested, exclaimed, ‘_Magna + est veritas et prævalebit_ is the motto of the town!’ Stanley + was much pleased, invited his young admirer to walk home with + him, and asked him to dinner. The day appointed was early in + November (1859), and the ‘town and gown’ riots of the period + made the passage through the streets rather hazardous. ‘How + could you come at all?’ asked Stanley. ‘Sir,’ replied Green in + the words of Johnson, ‘it is a great honour to dine with the + Canons of Christ Church.’” + +The friendship thus formed was of great importance to Green. It put heart +into him, as he afterwards told Stanley, at a time when he “found no help +in Oxford theology,” and was apparently the influence which stimulated +him to the point of taking orders. Afterwards, of course, he found +that Oxford theology was not the only theology which puzzled instead +of satisfying his intelligence. He had very little of the theological +mentality, and he had a severe historical conscience. He could neither +believe what he knew to be untrue, nor could he pretend to believe it; +and consequently—but that has nothing to do with Jesus College. + + * * * * * + +And so the Jesus pageant passes—a pageant in which, as we see, the +apparently inevitable name of Jones does not appear. + + + + +WADHAM COLLEGE + + Nicholas and Dorothy Wadham—A miscellaneous list of + Wadham men—The story of the great Wadham “Rag”—Wadham + Evangelicalism—Stories of Warden Symons—The Wadham + Positivists—“Three Persons and no God”—Richard Congreve—Comte, + Clotilde de Vaux, and the Positivist schism—The last Oxford + Movement—Canon Barnett and Toynbee Hall. + + +The founders were Nicholas Wadham and Dorothy, his widow. Nicholas +accumulated the funds, and Dorothy applied them after his death, at her +discretion, in accordance with his wishes. The discreet and delightful +Wadham Gardens are said to have been due to her initiative; and she +also had the happy thought of exempting Fellows of the College from +the disconcerting necessity of taking Holy Orders. Though one knows +little else of her, one cannot but be prepossessed in her favour by the +beautiful euphony of her name. Mistress Dorothy Wadham—it is a name which +falls on the ear like the soft melody of silver bells. + +[Illustration: WADHAM COLLEGE. + +[To face p. 267.] + +The date of the Charter is 1610—an early year in the reign of the comic +King who loved learning almost as much as he hated tobacco. Its Jacobean +architecture is a serene and perfect poem in grey stone, though the +grass in the quadrangle which contrasts so effectively with the grey +was added by one of the Wardens at a later time. It seems natural and +proper that it should have been the College of the two greatest of the +Oxford architects—Sir Christopher Wren and T. G. Jackson. It is also the +College of Admiral Blake, Nicholas Love, the regicide, Thomas Sydenham, +the physician, Speaker Onslow, the “wicked” Earl of Rochester, Lord +Chancellor Westbury, who won his scholarship as a prodigy of fourteen in +“jacket and frills,” Dean Church, who, according to Mark Pattison, was +elected to an Oriel Fellowship on account of his “moral beauty,” Father +Maconochie of Saint Alban’s, Holborn, those great athletes, Messrs. T. A. +Cook (now the editor of the _Field_) and C. B. Fry, Mr. F. E. Smith, and +many other men of note. + +It is of the others that we will speak here, prefacing comment with the +remark that Wadham has been successively a Whig College, an Evangelical +College, a Positivist College—and also the College of the man who +launched the latest of the Oxford Movements, and the College which was +the scene of the last of the really historic Oxford “rags.” It may clear +the ground if one begins by saying a word about the “rag.” + + * * * * * + +The “rag” occurred as recently as 1880; and one must not pretend +to disentangle the rights and wrongs of it with the precision of a +scientific historian. In a general way, however, one may say that it +originated in an attempt on the part of authority to tighten the reins +of discipline at a time when pride at success on the river had made the +College restive. So first there were skirmishes, and then there was a +battle royal. + +A bonfire seems, as usual, to have been the first overt act; and the +lighting of a bonfire on the grass—that beautifully kept Wadham grass—is +an act no more to be condoned by the historian than by the dons. The +answer to it—surely a justifiable answer—was the prohibition of the +annual College Concert. But then tempers were lost, and fur began really +to fly. The wrath of the junior members of the College was vented upon +“Unbelieving Dick”—a don so called because he professed himself sceptical +of the articles of the Christian Faith. There was a sudden irruption +of youth, flown with insolence and wine, into Unbelieving Dick’s +apartments at the dead of night. Unbelieving Dick had no power to eject +his visitors, and no time to dress in order to receive them. He fled, it +is related, across the quadrangle in his night-shirt—for none, in those +days, wore pyjamas—pursued with missiles and howls of execration. + +Things, it was evident, could not be allowed to rest there. The +ring-leaders must be discovered and an example must be made. An appeal to +them to surrender themselves, however, met with no response; and the dons +presently engaged the services of a detective. The detective was himself +detected, and was severely punished under the pump. It only remained for +the dons to play their last card and send the whole College down. They +did so. Wadham, in the Autumn Term of 1880, was a howling wilderness, +with only a few freshmen in residence—a sorrowful spectacle indeed +for Dorothy Wadham, if she looked down on it from another world. The +rehabilitation of the College, though since fully accomplished, was only +a gradual process. + +And now we will leave the rag, and speak of the religious (and +irreligious) history of Wadham. + + * * * * * + +Religion, as has been said, appears at Wadham chiefly in the form of +Evangelicalism. The College was the stronghold, or the hotbed—whichever +be the better word—of Evangelicalism in the fiery days of the Tractarian +Movement. Warden Symons, who ruled over it from 1831 to 1871, appears +to have conformed, so far as a scholar could, to the type which one +associates with missionary meetings, tea, hassocks, and well buttered +crumpets. His wife held prayer meetings in the drawing-room, and kept a +“missionary cow,” the proceeds of whose milk—supplied to undergraduates +at specially high terms—were allocated to the propagation of the Gospel +in foreign parts. He himself altered the hour of the services in the +Wadham Chapel for the express purpose of preventing his young men from +attending Newman’s sermons at Saint Mary’s. On one occasion he knocked at +the door of Newman’s retreat at Littlemore and asked if he might be shown +over the monastery. “We have no monastery here,” was the reply; and the +door was slammed in his face. + +The Warden’s scorn of ceremonial observance was illustrated by his manner +of receiving the contents of the collection plate at the Communion +Service. It was his habit simply to shovel the money into his pocket and +walk off with it; and this brusque and indecorous proceeding naturally +furnished the basis of a legend. The Warden, it was said, had annexed the +offertory as a perquisite of his office, and exhorted undergraduates +to generosity in order to gain his private ends. “Gentlemen,” he was +reported to have said, “must really give a little more liberally; I have +been quite out of pocket by the last two or three collections.” It was +not true, of course; but it served him right. Every Warden becomes the +hero of the myths that he deserves. And, no doubt, it was largely in +consequence of the saponaceous slovenliness of Wadham religion that, +whereas the serious undergraduates of other colleges went over to Rome, +the serious undergraduates of Wadham, and the serious dons too, went over +to Paris and joined Comte in erecting Temples of Humanity on the ruins of +the Temples of God. + + * * * * * + +Those were the days in which it was said that Wadham was governed by a +Trinity consisting of Three Persons and No God; but the three persons +in question are differently identified by different cynics. The names +of Richard Congreve, Edmund Spencer Beesley, and Mr. Frederic Harrison +are those most commonly mentioned; but Mr. Harrison has stated, in an +autobiographical note, that he did not definitely adopt the Positivist +Religion until some years after he had gone down. It does not matter—or, +at all events, it does not matter very much. Wadham, in fact, has +harboured several generations of Positivists, so that there generally +have been at least three heads there which the caps fitted, right down to +the time of the Unbelieving Dick whose misadventures have been referred +to; and they all acknowledged Richard Congreve as their spiritual father. + +He was a Rugby boy who acted, for a time, as a Rugby Master. His case +may be taken as a fresh exemplification of that “moral seriousness” of +which Rugby boasts. The beliefs in which he had been brought up slipped +away from him; but he continued to respect the sacred impulse of the +human heart which impels people to dress in their best and go somewhere +to be edified on Sundays. Just as Comte had arranged for them to do so +in Paris, so he arranged for them to do so in Lamb’s Conduit Street; +and so, at a later date, Mr. Frederic Harrison arranged for them to do +so in Fetter Lane. Really intellectual people, he felt, having passed +beyond theology and beyond metaphysics, might nevertheless kneel to +Humanity—that abstraction of what was noblest in their noblest selves—and +invoke Saints carefully selected from + + “The choir invisible + Of the immortal dead who live again + In lives made better by their presence.” + +At a later date there was to be trouble among the Positivists—an outburst +of heresy, schism, and dissent. Comte, it turned out, was not the easiest +Master for rational and self-respecting disciples to follow blindly. He +had been in a lunatic asylum and was supported by the voluntary offerings +of the faithful. Fully persuaded that he who preached the gospel was +entitled to live by the gospel, he solicited contributions and quarrelled +with subscribers whose contributions seemed to him inadequate. Moreover, +being separated from his wife, he fell in love with a lady who had been +separated from her husband, and insisted upon incorporating his romance +in his religious system. The worship of Humanity in general might, he +claimed, be most happily symbolised by the specific worship of Clotilde +de Vaux. + +His relations with Clotilde de Vaux were, his biographers tell us, +“pure.” No doubt they had his word for it, and perhaps they also had +hers; but that detail cannot have mattered much to any one except the +philosopher and his affinity. To be called upon to worship another man’s +affinity, whatever the precise nature of his relations with his affinity, +is always a strain upon devout allegiance. It proved so in this instance. +There was a split, broadly speaking, between the Positivists who had a +sense of humour and the Positivists who had none; but we need not enter +into the rights and wrongs of the disruption. Enough to note the fact, +and to note also that, so far as England is concerned, Positivism has +been an Oxford Movement which Wadham has practically monopolised. + + * * * * * + +This brings us to the last of the Oxford Movements, with which Wadham is +also very definitely associated—the Social Movement which succeeded the +Æsthetic Movement, in or about the year 1884. + +Something has already been said about it in the Magdalen chapter which +related the æsthetic collapse. The principal thing to be added here is +that the man who had most to do with the launching of it was Barnett +of Wadham, who had taken a Second in History in 1865, and was then the +incumbent of Saint Jude’s, Whitechapel. + +Other forces were, indeed, indirectly at work. Sir Walter Besant’s +advocacy of a People’s Palace in “All Sorts and Conditions of Men” was +one. Mr. George R. Sims’s tract entitled “The Bitter Cry of Outcast +London” was another. Here, at all events, were the elements of stir, if +not of movement in the narrow sense—the vague suggestion that “something +ought to be done,” and that the people who had culture owed a debt of +some sort to the people who were trying to get along without it. Barnett +of Wadham, with many earnest helpers from other colleges, focussed the +Movement at Oxford in a memorable speech delivered in the Union Debating +Hall. + +The only hope for the East End of London, it was then laid down, was for +Oxford men to colonise it. They alone, or almost alone, possessed the +secret of culture. A number of them, therefore, must settle there, and +set good examples, illuminating Whitechapel by their shining influence. +Forthwith they jumped at the idea, and carried it out, almost in the +twinkling of an eye. Toynbee Hall was the result, and Barnett of Wadham, +now Canon Barnett, was its first Warden. + +Oxford, in those days, was, it must be admitted, a very serious +University indeed—as serious a University as even the Rugby men could +have wished to see it. Even unbelievers took to going to church, and +gravely envisaged the question whether a lack of belief was really a +sufficient excuse for not taking Holy Orders. The _Oxford Magazine_ +became the ponderous organ of the seriously minded, and, for a season, +no sermon was too tedious to be reported verbatim in its columns, until +one day there appeared a protest in the shape of a rhymed letter to the +editor: + + “Mr. Editor, surely some lightness of touch + Would be not unbecoming your famed magazine. + Of lectures and sermons you give us too much; + Toynbee Hall gets to pall, and I _loathe_ Bethnal Green.” + +The author of those lines was Mr. Quiller Couch of Trinity, whom the +world knows as “Q.” The immediate effect of them was to clear the air at +Oxford; though Mr. Barnett’s Oxonian procession continued to carry the +lamps of culture down the Mile End Road, with results which, according to +the latest reports, are eminently satisfactory. + + + + +PEMBROKE COLLEGE + + Broadgates Hall—Its illustrious and fashionable _alumni_—The + Hall becomes Pembroke College—Dr. Johnson at Pembroke—He rags + the servitors and argues with the dons—His “spirited refusal of + an eleemosynary supply of shoes”—He shows Hannah More over the + College—George Whitefield at Pembroke—His relations with the + Methodists and his religious excitability. + + +In the eyes of the average visitor to Pembroke, one fact outweighs all +other facts in importance. Pembroke was the college of Dr. Johnson. +It is much more profitable to tell a visitor that than to dwell on +the circumstances in which Pembroke College grew out of the earlier +Broadgates Hall. + +Broadgates Hall, it is true, had cut a considerable figure in the early +social history of Oxford. Christ Church men who could not be accommodated +in the House often had rooms there—a fact which the modern Christ Church +men should remember when they are tempted to their traditional gibe: +“Is that Pembroke? I always thought that was where the Christ Church +coals were kept.” John Pym, too, the great Parliamentary leader, was at +Broadgates Hall; and the Hall was “a nest of singing birds” long before +the greatest of her sons claimed that distinction for Pembroke. George +Peele, Francis Beaumont (of the Beaumont and Fletcher combination), and +Sir Fulke Greville were all poets of Broadgates Hall; but it is not easy +to arouse the curiosity of the visitor concerning them. He keeps most of +his curiosity for Dr. Johnson; and if he has any curiosity left over, he +bestows it upon George Whitefield, the Methodist preacher. + +Let us consider Dr. Johnson first. + + * * * * * + +Johnson went up in 1728; but his career was brief—about fourteen months +from start to finish. Carlyle says he was a servitor; but he was, in +fact, a commoner. A friend who offered him financial help did not fulfil +his promise. His father fell into financial difficulties, and he had to +go home, leaving his caution money to defray his dues. + +Old Michael Johnson brought him up, and took him to call upon his tutor. +He astonished the common-room, after a modest silence, by interjecting +a quotation from Macrobius, thus proving himself to be precocious and +well-read, though he was not to turn out to be the sort of model scholar +whom the donnish mind approves. Laziness was to be his besetting vice +through life. He was already lazy while an undergraduate; and he shared +with many men of meaner intelligence a disposition to cut his lectures, +and to excuse himself on grounds which the lecturers could not but regard +as inadequate. Of the Christ Church man it has been written by an Oxford +humourist that “he goeth not to lectures, for he saith: ‘How can a man +lecture in bags cut like that?’” Johnson was guilty of a more outspoken +rudeness. Summoned to account for his absence from the classroom, he +explained that he had been skating on Christ Church meadows. Fined +for his neglect of the obligation, he said: “Sir, you have sconced me +twopence for a lecture that was not worth a penny.” And the biography +continues: + + “BOSWELL: That, Sir, was great fortitude of mind. + + “JOHNSON: No, Sir; stark insensibility.” + +He was poor; but the picture of his poverty has sometimes been overdrawn. +His account for battells, which remains in the College archives, shows +that he had enough to eat and drink, and that, in that important +respect, at all events, he lived on the same scale as the majority of +his compeers. Nor did his lack of means compel him to an isolated and +unsociable existence. He joined with the other commoners in ragging +the servitors whose duty it was to knock at the doors of commoners and +ascertain whether they were in their own rooms at the appointed hour. He +hunted them down the stairs, it is recorded, “with the noise of pots and +candlesticks”; and there are contemporary recollections which show him to +have been somewhat of a leader of men. + + “I have heard,” wrote Bishop Percy, “from some of his + contemporaries, that he was generally to be seen lounging at + the College Gate with a circle of young students round him, + whom he was entertaining with wit, and keeping from their + studies, if not spiriting them up to rebellion against the + College discipline, which in his maturer years he so much + extolled. He would not let these idlers say ‘prodigious’ or + otherwise misuse the English tongue.” + +Dr. Adams, too, then a tutor, and afterwards Master of the College, told +Boswell that Johnson, as an undergraduate, was “a gay and frolicsome +fellow,” and was “caressed and loved by all about him”; but Boswell +proceeds: + + “When I mentioned to him this account, he said: ‘Ah, Sir, I + was mad and violent. It was bitterness which they mistook for + frolick. I was miserably poor, and I thought to fight my way by + my literature and my wit; so I disregarded all power and all + authority.’” + +Very likely, however, that recollection was coloured by later memories +of the struggle for bread in Grub Street. Between the manifestations +of bitterness and frolic the average undergraduate can, as a rule, +discriminate; and Pembroke was not a rich man’s college. The pangs of +poverty only became intense when Johnson crossed the road to Christ +Church, to see his friend Taylor. Then contrast made him conscious of his +shabbiness. As Boswell writes: + + “Mr. Bateman’s lectures were so excellent that Johnson used + to come and get them at second hand from Taylor, till his + poverty being so extreme that his shoes were worn out, and + his feet appeared through them, he saw that this humiliating + circumstance was perceived by the Christ Church men, and he + came no more. He was too proud to accept of money, and somebody + having set a pair of new shoes at his door, he threw them away + with indignation.” + +This “spirited refusal of an eleemosynary supply of shoes,” as Boswell +calls it, is the best known of all the stories of Johnson’s Oxford +career; but there is no evidence that the memory of the incident +mortified him in after life. He never vilified Oxford, as did Gibbon +and Adam Smith. On the contrary he was always proud to remember that he +was an Oxford man; he spoke very highly of the tutors whose instruction +he had neglected; and he delighted to revisit the University in his +prosperous and famous period. We have a graphic account of one such visit +from the pen of Hannah More: + + “Who do you think is my principal cicerone in Oxford? Only Dr + Johnson! And we do so gallant it about! You cannot imagine + with what delight he showed me every part of his own College, + nor how rejoiced Henderson looked to make one of the party. + Dr. Adams had contrived a very pretty piece of gallantry. We + spent the day and evening at his house. After dinner Johnson + begged to conduct me to see the College; he would let no one + show it me but himself. ‘This was my room; this Shenstone’s.’ + Then, after pointing out all the rooms of the poets who have + been of his College, ‘In short,’ he said, ‘we were a nest of + singing-birds. Here we walked, there we played at cricket.’ + He ran over with pleasure the history of the juvenile days he + passed there.” + +That may be, indeed, the language of a man whose undergraduate days +had been passed in poverty; but it assuredly is not the language of a +man whose poverty had made life unbearable in the manner which Carlyle +suggests. Johnson, it is hardly to be doubted, enjoyed himself at Oxford +as much as his constitutional tendency to melancholia ever permitted him +to enjoy himself anywhere; and one may even conjecture that the condition +of his shoe-leather was as much due to untidiness as to indigence. +To find a Pembroke man who was really poor, and really miserable and +morbid, we have to turn to the case of that eminent Methodist divine, the +Reverend George Whitefield. + + * * * * * + +Whitefield came up just after Johnson had gone down; and there was one +interesting link between them—a link which also associates them with that +eminent Magdalen man, the historian of the Roman Empire. They both read, +and were affected by, Law’s “Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life”; and +Law had been tutor to Gibbon’s father and was to end his days as a sort +of domestic chaplain to one of Gibbon’s aunts. It is curious to observe +how differently his exhortations influenced the minds of the three men. + +Gibbon devotes a good deal of space, in his Autobiography, to Law’s +“theological writings which our domestic connection has tempted me +to peruse”; and he holds the scales with a rigid impartiality. Law’s +“sallies of religious frenzy,” he says, “must not be allowed to +extinguish the praise which is due to Mr. William Law as a wit and a +scholar.” He thinks that, “had not his vigorous mind been clouded by +enthusiasm, he might be ranked with the most agreeable and ingenious +writers of the times.” His conclusion is that: + + “If he finds a spark of piety in his reader’s mind, he will + soon kindle it to a flame; and a philosopher must allow + that he exposes, with equal severity and truth, the strange + contradiction between the faith and practice of the Christian + world.” + +Gibbon, that is to say, looks at Law solely with the eye of a literary +critic, damns him with faint praise, but leaves his propositions +unexamined as childish conceptions which he has long since put away, +and does not propose to be concerned with any more. His tone is that of +a head-master who praises, while he corrects, a set of Latin verses. +Johnson read the book, expecting it to afford him ribald amusement, but +was “over-matched” by it, and even frightened by it some distance along +the road which leads to religious mania. Whitefield read it with real +Methodistical enthusiasm. + + * * * * * + +About the Oxford Methodists in general enough has already been said in +the chapter on Lincoln; but Whitefield is of sufficient importance to be +detached from the group and considered separately. + +He was not the originator of the movement, though he came to be a force +in it. The Wesleys were several years his seniors, and had set Methodism +going before he came into residence. But though he was their disciple he +was hardly of their type. They were scholars, gentlemen, and organisers. +He was a man of the people, half-educated, brought up in the tap-room +of his mother’s inn, a religious demagogue, a rhetorician, whose mouth, +foaming with sanctimonious phrases, suggests the froth on the tankards +of his mother’s beer. The dignity which compels even those who differ +from the Wesleys to respect them was entirely wanting in Whitefield. He +emerged from his humble station with the defects of his origin clinging +to him, and he never shook them off. It is impossible to think of him +as a man whom one would have liked to know at Oxford. It is, indeed, +difficult to think of him as anything but mad. + +His position at Pembroke was that of a servitor; and he was the +exaggerated type of the “pi-man” of his period. He had no joy in his +youth, and no power of concealing his abject terror of hell-fire. He made +himself conspicuous about it; it is not too much to say that he made +himself ridiculous. Here are a few extracts from his own admissions on +the subject: + + “I always chose the worst sort of food, though my place + furnished me with variety. I fasted twice a week. My apparel + was mean. I thought it unbecoming a penitent to have his hair + powdered. I wore woollen gloves, a patched gown, and dirty + shoes.” + + “Satan used to terrify me much, and threatened to punish me if + I discovered his wiles. It being my duty, as servitor, in my + turn to knock at the gentlemen’s doors by ten at night, to see + who were in their rooms, I thought the devil would appear to me + every stair I went up. And he so troubled me when I lay down to + rest that, for some weeks, I scarce slept above three hours at + a time.... Whole days and weeks have I spent in lying prostrate + on the ground and begging for freedom from those proud hellish + thoughts that used to crowd in upon and distract my soul.” + + “It was suggested to me that Jesus Christ was among the wild + beasts when He was tempted, and that I ought to follow His + example; and being willing, as I thought, to imitate Jesus + Christ, after supper I went into Christ Church walk, near our + college, and continued in silent prayer under one of the trees + for near two hours, sometimes lying flat on my face, sometimes + kneeling upon my knees, all the while filled with fear and + concern lest some of my brethren should be overwhelmed with + pride. The night being stormy, it gave me awful thoughts of the + day of judgment. I continued, I think, until the great bell + rung for retirement to the College, not without finding some + reluctance in the natural man against staying so long in the + cold.” + +And so forth. All things considered, it is not surprising that the +“polite students,” as Whitefield calls them, laughed, and even “threw +dirt,” or that his tutor advised him to take medicine. Academic +authorities are seldom sympathetic towards undergraduates who, as +Whitefield did, neglect their studies for their devotions—presumably +because the religious uneasiness of their pupils seems to them a +reflection on their own assured composure. + + + + +WORCESTER COLLEGE + + Early history of the buildings—Gloucester College—A College + for Benedictines—Its dissolution—Becomes the Bishop’s + Palace—Gloucester Hall—Endowment of Worcester College—Remote + situation of Worcester—Stories bearing thereupon—Notable + Worcester men—Samuel Foote—Thomas de Quincey—Henry Kingsley—F. + W. Newman—Dean Burgon—Burgon’s famous Newdigate. + + +The buildings and the site of what is now Worcester College have in their +time played many parts. + +First of all, in the very early days, a year after the foundation of +Merton, Gloucester College was instituted there. It was a monastic +establishment for the benefit of Benedictines who wanted to “live +properly” at Oxford, in cells, and with facilities for praise and +prayer, instead of mixing with the common herd in inns or lodgings; but +abuses crept in, and the monks ceased to live as properly as founders +and benefactors could have wished. We read of monks admonished for +“noctivagation,” for the haunting of taverns, for theft, and for assault +and battery, to say nothing of the neglect of the Lenten fast. On one +occasion, it is recorded, “four turbulent Benedictines” tried to kill +the Proctor; and a State Paper of 1539 exposes the fact that another +Benedictine, with a bookseller to help him, got through “twenty legs of +mutton, five rounds of beef, and six capons” between Ash Wednesday and +Good Friday. + +[Illustration: WORCESTER COLLEGE. + +[To face p. 289.] + +The dissolution of the monasteries implied, of course, the dissolution +of Gloucester College as its corollary. It served, for a time, as a +Palace for the Bishop of Oxford, but was afterwards separated from the +see and turned into Gloucester Hall—a Hall in which, at first, not only +students, but also miscellaneous lodgers were allowed to have rooms. Even +women were permitted to reside within its walls; and it had a bad name +as a place of refuge for Papists, open or concealed. It prospered under +these conditions for a season, but, after the Restoration, fell upon evil +days. There came a time when there were absolutely no undergraduates in +residence, when the grass overgrew the paths, when the Principal, sitting +alone in his glory, was distrained upon for arrears of taxes, and when +burglars broke into the Hall and carried off the plate. + +In William III.’s reign, however, under the principalship of Benjamin +Woodroffe, the Hall pulled up again. There was an attempt to turn +it into a special college for Greek students from Constantinople, +Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem—a kind of precedent, though an +imperfect one, for the endowment of the Rhodes Scholars. The experiment +failed—partly for lack of funds, and partly because the Principal +offended his Oriental pupils by trying to proselytise them; but +Gloucester Hall was not involved in the collapse, for Woodroffe had other +irons in the fire. He found a benefactor in Sir Thomas Cookes, who was +proposing to bequeath £10,000 to Oxford; and this £10,000 was devoted, +after long negotiations, to the transformation of Gloucester Hall into +Worcester College in 1714. + + * * * * * + +If Worcester is more famous for one thing than another, it is for its +remoteness from the centres of academical activity; and there are plenty +of stories bearing on this branch of the subject. Letters have been +addressed to Worcester College, _near_ Oxford; the nickname of Botany +Bay has been bestowed. A member of Gloucester Hall was once excused for +being late at a ceremony at Saint Mary’s “because of the distance, and, +the wind being against him, he could not hear the bell.” A Worcester +Proctor, summoning offending undergraduates to his presence at a later +period, had to find a means of coping with similar excuses. The men whom +he proctorised, and bade call on him, always made a point of asking him +where Worcester was; and when they kept the appointment, they generally +began with: “I’m so sorry, sir. I fear I’m behind my time; but the fact +is I had the greatest difficulty in finding my way. I made ever so many +inquiries, but no one was able to direct me.” + +And, if Worcester seems remote now that one can approach it on a tramcar +by way of Beaumont Street, it must have seemed much more remote in the +old days before Beaumont Street was made. A graphic picture has been +preserved of Provost Landon, as Vice-Chancellor, going and coming with +difficulty. Preceded, Coxe tells us, by his bedels with their gold and +silver maces, he proceeded: + + “through Gloucester Green, then the acknowledged site of the + pig-market, and down the whole length of Friars’ Entry, at the + risk of being besprinkled by trundled mops in those straits of + Thermopylæ, of stumbling over buckets, knocking over children, + of catching the rinsings of basins, and ducking under linen + lines suspended across from the opposite houses.” + +Enough, however, of that ancient gibe. We will next note that Worcester, +the only Oxford college founded in the eighteenth century, is able to +furnish a striking illustration of the academic manners and customs of +that age. + +What reading men thought of Oxford, and how they behaved themselves +there, in the eighteenth century, we have already remarked in the cases +of Adam Smith of Balliol, Gibbon of Magdalen, Joseph Butler of Oriel, +and Jeremy Bentham of Queen’s. The attitude and deportment of men of a +different type is illustrated by the career of Foote of Worcester, who +was no other than Samuel Foote the comedian. + +His great-grandfather having been the founder’s second cousin, Foote +put in a claim to a scholarship as founder’s kin. The claim, after +consideration, was allowed. He came into residence in 1737, and devoted +the whole of his time to the neglect of his duties and the defiance +of the dons. He acted Punch through the streets of Oxford. Finding a +bell-rope hanging in a church porch which opened on a field in which +cattle were turned out to graze, he tied hay round it, with the result +that a hungry cow, in her attempts to eat the hay, set the bell tolling +at the dead of night, and the Provost, half fearing that supernatural +agencies were at work, sat up, with the sexton, into the small hours, to +solve the mystery. + +He solved it, and Oxford laughed at him. He sent for Foote and +reprimanded him; but Foote was insolent, after an ingenious fashion of +his own. + +The Provost, Dr. Gower, was a pompous and pedantic person who picked his +words carefully and preferred polysyllabic vocables to any others; and +Foote appeared before him carrying an enormous dictionary under his arm. +The reprimand began; but, as soon as a long word occurred, Foote begged +the Provost to stop. + +“One moment, if you please, sir. You said ‘ebullitions,’ I think? It was +‘ebullitions,’ was it not? ‘Ebullitions’ means—ah, yes, I have it. Now, +if you will continue, sir, I am at your service.” + +And so forth. As often as the Provost used a word of more than ordinary +length, Foote, with a gravely submissive and apologetic air, arrested the +harangue by pleading ignorance of its meaning, searched for it in the +lexicon, read out the definition, and repeated his formula: “Ah, yes, I +see. That means—— Now I am once more ready, sir, and if you will please +proceed——” + +So that the lecture was turned into a farce; and Foote might perfectly +well have been sent down for so transmuting it, though, as a matter of +fact, his disappearance was due to an offence of a different character. + +He kept joyous company, and he kept it openly. In fact, he was one day +discovered driving a gay and painted “actress” through the streets of +Oxford, on the box seat of a coach and six—himself attired in garments +so far removed from the “subfusc” that he compelled the attention of all +beholders. It was useless for him, this time, to try to brazen matters +out with the help of a dictionary; and the entry regarding his conduct in +the College Register runs as follows: + + “Whereas Samuel Foote, Scholar of Worcester College, by a + long course of ill-behaviour has rendered himself obnoxious + to frequent censures of the society publick and private, and + having whilst he was under censure for lying out of college + insolently and presumptuously withdrawn himself and refused to + answer to several heinous crimes objected to him, though duly + cited by the Provost by an instrument in form, in not appearing + to the said citation for the above-mentioned reasons, his + scholarship is declared void, and he is hereby deprived of all + benefit and advantage of his said scholarship.” + +So Samuel Foote departed, though he does not seem to have been actually +expelled, and, in due course, became a public buffoon—which was what +he was most fitted to become; and though one would not venture to say, +with the example of Mr. Arthur Bourchier before one, that Oxford is no +proper place for comedians, it can hardly be denied that Oxford—even +eighteenth-century Oxford—was no proper place for Samuel Foote. + + * * * * * + +Our next interesting name is that of Thomas de Quincey, essayist and +opium-eater. + +His mother sent him up in 1803, with fifty guineas in his pocket, and +liberty to choose his own college. Professor Saintsbury, speaking from +the lofty standpoint of Merton, protests that wise guardians would have +counselled him to go anywhere rather than to Worcester; but one does +not quite know why. He was poor, and Worcester was one of the cheaper +colleges. In the matter of “caution money,” in particular, it let its +members off lightly. That fact appears to have been the determining +consideration; and de Quincey had too many queer experiences behind him +to be likely, in any case, or at any college, to acquire the Oxford +manner, and settle down into a typical Oxonian. + +He had run away from school and wandered about Wales, with a duodecimo +Euripides in his pocket, camping out on the hillsides in a tent, which he +carried on his back during the day. He had starved in a Soho lodging and +rubbed shoulders with the submerged tenth. After that, it was hardly to +be expected that he would have either the notions or the behaviour of the +ordinary public schoolboy who blossoms into the average University man. +There were three sets for him to choose among—sets known respectively, +according to the manner of their lives, as the Saints, the Sinners, +and the Smilers; but though he sat with the Smilers—with the men, that +is to say, who affected to be studious without being glum—in hall, his +soul dwelt almost as far apart from them as from the others. “I,” he has +written, “whose disease was to meditate too much and observe too little, +upon my first entrance upon college life, was nearly falling into a deep +melancholy, from brooding too much on the sufferings I had witnessed in +London.” + +It was while at Worcester, too, that de Quincey first took to opium, as +a remedy against neuralgia, and continued to take it because he liked +it, and came to believe that “here was the secret of happiness about +which philosophers had disputed for so many ages.” And the opium habit, +of course, like the more modern morphia habit, tends to make a man +self-sufficing and uncompanionable, and careless of clean collars and +other particularities of the toilet; and there are stories to show that +that was its effect upon de Quincey. + + “I neglected my dress habitually,” he says, “and wore my + clothes till they were threadbare, partly under the belief + that my gown would conceal defects, more from indisposition + to bestow on a tailor what I had destined for a bookseller. + At length, however, an official person sent me a message on + the subject. This, however, was disregarded, and one day + I discovered that I had no waistcoat that was not torn or + otherwise dilapidated, whereupon, buttoning my coat to the + throat and drawing my gown close about me, I went into hall.” + +And, of course, undergraduate opinion was not going to stand that sort of +thing even from a man of genius. It was an occasion for the Smilers to +smile, and they smiled—and also chaffed. Evidently, they said, de Quincey +had seen the Order in Council, printed in the _Gazette_, interdicting +the use of waistcoats. It would be a good idea if it were followed by +another Order interdicting the use of trousers. Trousers were such costly +garments, and so very troublesome to put on. Et cetera, et cetera, until +de Quincey learnt his lesson. + +Most curious also was de Quincey’s conduct when the time came for him +to try to satisfy the examiners. He handed in remarkably good papers. +One of the examiners spoke of him to one of the Worcester tutors as +“the cleverest man I ever met with.” But then, just as he seemed about +to triumph, he “scratched” and disappeared. It has been suggested that +he had some imaginary grudge against the examiners; but it seems more +likely that his nerves gave way before the prospect of the _viva voce_. +It was not in him to face the trial with the theatrical self-assurance of +Sir Robert Peel. He feared that his hair would stand up and his tongue +cleave to the roof of his mouth. So, without saying anything to any one, +he turned and fled; and for that incident also the opium was probably +responsible. + + * * * * * + +The interest of the remarkable Worcester names which remain to be +mentioned is chiefly theological. + +Among novelists, indeed, the College educated Henry Kingsley; but of +him little is recorded except that he was a boating man, and presented +the College with a pair of silver oars, to be competed for. He was by +way of being the bad boy of the Kingsley family, though most critics +incline to think that he was more inspired than his famous and earnest +brother Charles. Among economists, again, the College can boast of both +Bonamy Price, who was Arnold’s favourite pupil at Laleham and one of +his assistant masters at Rugby, and of Thorold Rogers, who quitted Holy +Orders, wrote a “History of Prices,” and was distinguished for his +Aristophanic humour. People are interested in them up to a point; but +they are more interested in F. W. Newman and Dean Burgon. + + * * * * * + +F. W. Newman, of course, was the famous Cardinal’s brilliant younger +brother—the grave dialectician who shocked the world, at a time when it +was more easily shocked than it is at present, by writing “Phases of +Faith.” He fought his way through theology as grimly as men fight their +way through the “Ethics,” and, starting from the Evangelical standpoint, +ultimately arrived at a creed of which one need say no more than that its +exceeding vagueness did not prevent him from being exceedingly earnest +about it. + +How, in the days of his early orthodoxy, he went out, together with a +dentist and a stonemason, as a missionary to Baghdad; how he and the +dentist and the stonemason sang hymns together on the ship which conveyed +them to the scene of their labours; how he was chased by a mob for +distributing copies of the New Testament in a Mohammedan centre; how +he was impressed by the remark of an Aleppo carpenter that the English +people, though skilled in the mechanical arts, were lacking in spiritual +insight; how he came to the conclusion that his hymn-singing was making +him ridiculous; how he found it impossible to speak the evangelical +jargon of his associates; how he quarrelled with the dentist and the +stonemason, and separated from them—all these matters may be studied +by the curious in his biography. It is not on account of any of these +exploits that Worcester is proud of him. Worcester’s pride depends upon +the fact that he is, so far as is known, the only undergraduate to whom +the Public Examiners ever made a present of books in order to testify to +their appreciation of his exceptional attainments. + + * * * * * + +Similarly with Burgon. Though he was a theologian, his theology has +nothing to do with Worcester, and Worcester has nothing to do with his +theology. His principal contribution to theological thought was his +famous criticism of Darwin’s “Descent of Man.” For his own part, he said, +he was quite content to look for his first parents in the Garden of Eden; +but if his opponents preferred to look for theirs in the Zoological +Gardens, they were perfectly welcome to do so. That is the _mot_ which +people generally have in mind when they say of Burgon that buffoonery was +his forte and piety his foible. Perhaps the one epigram fairly warrants +the other; but the fame of both epigrams is eclipsed by the fame of +Burgon’s Newdigate. + +He won that prize for English verse in his last year, having been +beaten in previous years by Matthew Arnold and Principal Shairp; and it +is hardly too much to say that his Newdigate is the best Newdigate ever +written. The one wonderful line which made it famous has already been +quoted in a reference to Newdigates contained in an earlier chapter; but +the present chapter may fairly end with a presentation of the jewel in +its setting: + + “Not virgin white—like that old Doric shrine + Where once Athena held her rites divine: + Not saintly grey—like many a minster fane + That crowns the hill or sanctifies the plain: + But rosy red—as if the blush of dawn + Which first beheld them were not yet withdrawn: + The hues of youth upon a brow of woe, + Which men called old two thousand years ago. + Match me such marvel, save in Eastern clime— + _A red-rose city—half as old as time_.” + +It will not be denied that Worcester has every title to be proud of +Burgon for writing that. + + + + +HERTFORD COLLEGE + + Hart Hall—The principalship of Dr. Richard Newton—Hart Hall + becomes Hertford College—Decline, fall, and dissolution of the + College—The buildings purchased for Magdalen Hall—Magdalen + Hall once more transformed into Hertford College—Famous + men at Hertford and Magdalen Hall—Charles James Fox—George + Selwyn—Robert Stephen Hawker. + + +The present Hertford College is the heir and successor of an earlier +Hertford College, and also of Hart Hall and Magdalen Hall; and one +must begin with a word on the strange vicissitudes of these various +foundations. + +Hart Hall came first, dating from some time in the thirteenth century; +but the founders of the halls of those days are no more to be +confounded with the benefactors of learning than are the keepers of the +boarding-houses in which the majority of University students reside on +the Continent. They were merely landlords who desired a particular class +of tenant; and the so-called Principal of the Hall was not a person set +in authority over the students, but a student reputed to be solvent +and elected by his fellow students, for that reason, to make himself +responsible to the landlord for the rent. It was not until a later date +that he was nominated from outside and charged to direct the studies and +control the conduct of the inmates. + +That was the first stage. The second began with the appointment to the +principalship of Dr. Richard Newton. He was a man of ambition and energy; +and he made it the object of his life to get Hart Hall incorporated as a +College. There was considerable opposition; but, after a long fight, he +got his way; and Hart Hall became Hertford College in 1737. + +The College was a success as long as Newton was at the head of it. He +had a reputation as a disciplinarian. Parents heard of him as a Head who +could compel even rich young men to work and to behave themselves. Hence +the College attracted a good many gentlemen-commoners, whose high fees +kept the place going. Two of those gentlemen-commoners were George Selwyn +and Charles James Fox. + +By degrees, however, after Newton’s death, the fashion changed, and +gentlemen-commoners went elsewhere. The endowments of the College +were scanty, and it could not stand the stress of evil times. The +fellowships were only worth £15 a year, and nobody wanted them. The +headship itself was only worth about £60 a year, and the day came when +no fit and qualified person would be satisfied with so small a stipend. +So matriculations ceased, and the men who had already matriculated +finished their course and left; and presently there remained nothing +but an empty college building, devoid alike of Principal, tutors, and +undergraduates—devoid of everything except an obstinate elderly gentleman +named Hewitt, who had elected himself to the vice-principalship, and +clamoured to be allowed to die in the enjoyment of that office. And then +a strange thing happened. + +A certain solicitor named Roberson, having no house of his own, but +wanting one, boldly, without asking any man’s leave, moved, with his +goods and chattels, into the late Principal’s vacant apartments. To +those who questioned him as to his doings, he said that he had assumed +the office of caretaker of an ancient building which seemed in danger of +falling into ruins. He had, of course, no shadow of a right to be there; +but he knew as a solicitor—a master of useful knowledge—that, unless and +until the extinct corporation was reconstituted, no one would have the +right either to turn him out or to compel him to pay rent. + +His example was quickly followed by other people, who argued that a legal +position which was good enough for a solicitor was good enough for +them. Any man who desired to live rent-free proceeded to appoint himself +caretaker of one of the vacant sets of rooms in Hertford College. Before +very long, the whole college was filled with self-appointed caretakers, +who took so little care that, at last, one of the buildings—a lath and +plaster affair containing at least a dozen sets of rooms—collapsed “with +a great crash and a dense cloud of dust.” Then, and not before it was +time, the University took it upon itself to interfere. + +A Commission was appointed to envisage the extraordinary situation. +It reported that Hertford College, on a certain date, “became and was +dissolved” and its property escheated to the Crown; and an Act of +Parliament was then obtained, enabling the Crown to grant the escheated +property to the University in trust for Magdalen Hall. + + * * * * * + +The memory of Magdalen Hall is now principally kept alive by scraps of +humorous rhyme. There is the rhyme which speaks of + + “Whiskered Tompkins from the Hall + Of seedy Magdalene.” + +There is also the rhyme which celebrates + + “A member of Magdalen Hall + Who knew next to nothing at all; + He was fifty-three + When he took his degree,— + Which was youngish for Magdalen Hall.” + +The rhymes obviously suggest a Hall populated by the intellectual tagrag +and bobtail of the University—men for whom the obtaining of a pass degree +was the protracted labour of a lifetime; and that was the condition to +which Magdalen Hall tended to lapse as the nineteenth century ran its +course. + +It had had, indeed, a distinguished past. Among the great men who took +their degrees, at a much earlier age than fifty-three, from Magdalen Hall +were included Jonathan Swift, William Waller, the poet, Sir Matthew Hale, +the distinguished judge, and Thomas Hobbes, the illustrious philosopher. +But that is ancient—or at all events it is not modern—history. Towards +the end of the eighteenth century Halls went out of fashion. They ceased +to attract in virtue either of the luxury of the life or of the laxity of +the discipline. Men of rank came to prefer Christ Church. Men of brains +were attracted to the Colleges by the scholarships and exhibitions. The +Halls tended more and more to become the refuges of the intellectually +destitute—establishments whose chief claim on the loyalty and gratitude +of their members was that they allowed them to remain in residence as +long as they liked, whether they succeeded in passing their examinations +or not. Their position, therefore, became precarious; and the question +of either merging them in colleges or transforming them into colleges +gradually arose. Thanks to the munificence of Mr. T. C. Baring, M.P., who +provided an ample endowment, Magdalen Hall was transformed into Hertford +College, and so entered upon a new lease of life in 1874. + +Such is the story; and it only remains to glance at a select few of the +distinguished names which illustrate it. Two of them have been already +mentioned—George Selwyn and Charles James Fox. A third—the Principal’s +private pupil—was Henry Pelham, the future Prime Minister. + + * * * * * + +These three young men were young men of pretty much the same sort. If +they had been contemporaries they would doubtless have been found in the +same set. For a picture of the kind of life they lived—a typical picture +of the life of fellow-commoners of the period—we may turn to the record +of the first Lord Malmesbury, who was up at the same time as Fox, though +not at the same college, being, in fact, a Merton man. + +“The men,” Lord Malmesbury says, “with whom I lived were very pleasant, +but very idle, fellows. Our life was an imitation of high life in London. +Luckily drinking was not the fashion; but what we did drink was claret, +and we had our regular round of evening card-parties, to the great +annoyance of our finances. It has often been a matter of surprise to me +how so many of us made our way so well in the world and so creditably.” + +No doubt the description is faithful enough in a general way—no statement +which connects Fox with cards or with claret is incredible; but, as a +matter of fact, nearly all our detailed information points to him as +having been considerably less idle than his associates. In later life, +as we know, when a friend remarked to him that it would be agreeable to +lie on the grass with a book, he replied that it would be still more +agreeable to lie on the grass without a book; but, in his Oxford days, +his indolence was so coloured by curiosity as to be hardly recognisable +as such. + +There is a story to the effect that he once took a “memorable leap” from +an upper window into the street in order to play his part in a town and +gown row; but that story rests upon doubtful evidence. His letters, and +those of his correspondents, show him to have read hard enough—especially +in mathematics, which, strange as it may seem, he found “entertaining”—to +make both his father and his tutor anxious. The former removed him, and +took him abroad; the latter urged him not to trouble about mathematics +until his return. + +“As to trigonometry,” he wrote, “it is a matter of entire indifference +to the other geometricians of the college whether they proceed to the +other branches of mathematics immediately, or wait a term or two longer. +You need not, therefore, interrupt your amusements by severe studies, for +it is wholly unnecessary to take a step onwards without you, and there we +shall stop until we have the pleasure of your company.” + +And Fox’s own letters from Oxford indicate that he did indeed regard the +University, not as a haunt of dissipation, but as a seat of learning. + + “I did not,” he says, “expect my life here could be so pleasant + as I find it; but I really think, to a man who reads a great + deal, there cannot be a more agreeable place.” + +If Fox was a credit to the college, however, the same could by no means +be said of George Selwyn, who got into trouble with the Proctors. + +George Selwyn, indeed, took Oxford seriously enough to read at the +Bodleian, and to seek the degree of B.C.L.; but the claret which he drank +went to his head, and he behaved unbecomingly in his cups. + +He was a leading spirit in a Wine Club—such a society, no doubt, as that +which one remembers at Exeter, roaring out the jovial refrain, with “the +eternal note of sadness” at the end of it: + + “Edite, bibite, + Conviviales: + Post multa sæcula, + Pocula nulla.” + +One day it came to the ears of the Vice-Chancellor and the Proctors +that, at a meeting of this club in the house of a certain Deverelle, an +“unlicensed seller of wines,” the rite of the administration of the Holy +Communion had been parodied. An actual eucharistic chalice, it was said, +had been procured; Rhine wine had been handed round in it; and George +“did ludicrously and profanely apply the words used by our Saviour at the +said Institution to the intemperate purposes of the said club.” + +Deverelle and the waiter were summoned to give evidence; and so were +several of George Selwyn’s boon companions—Lord Harley, and the sons of +Earl Gower and the Earl of Mansfield among them. Drunkenness was the +only possible defence; but the plea was not presented in the shape in +which it might have carried conviction. Instead of deposing that they had +themselves been too drunk to remember what had happened, the revellers +deposed that George Selwyn had been too drunk to know what he was doing; +and one of them even went so far as to try to secure his acquittal by +deposing that he was normally to be found in that condition after dinner. + +Whether inebriety is an extenuation or an aggravation of the offence of +blasphemy is a question which might be argued; so also is the question +whether private blasphemy is an offence of which public cognisance should +be taken. Neither of the questions need be argued here, however, for +neither of them was argued at the time. The fact having been established, +the punishment followed as a matter of course; and George Selwyn was +sentenced, in the noble language of the official decree, “to be utterly +expelled and banished from our said University, and never henceforward +to be permitted to enter and reside within the precincts of our said +University.” + + * * * * * + +So much, then, for the Hertford men of the first foundation. Of the +Hertford men of the second foundation, since it only dates from 1874, it +would be premature to speak, though one of them, Mr. G. H. Thring, is +the Secretary of the Incorporated Society of Authors. But there is just +one of the Magdalen Hall men of the intervening half century of whom one +cannot choose but speak. If Magdalen Hall had done nothing but afford a +shelter to Robert Stephen Hawker, the parson poet of Morwenstow, on the +northern coast of Cornwall, its existence would be amply justified. + +His case was curious. In the midst of his career at Oxford, his father +one day informed him that he could not afford to keep him at the +University any longer; but the quick instinct of genius showed the young +man a way out of the difficulty,—he would marry his godmother, a lady +twenty-one years his senior, who had an income of £200 a year. Jumping +on his horse, he rode in hot haste from Stratton to Bude, where the lady +lived, proposed to her, and was accepted. Then he returned to Oxford, +and, as they did not want married undergraduates at Pembroke, which was +his original college, he migrated to Magdalen Hall, where he won the +Newdigate with a poem on “Pompeii.” + +That is all that there is to be said of his Oxford days; and of his +marriage there is nothing to be related except that it turned out +happily, and that it was not out of disrespect for his excellent wife’s +memory that he wore a pink hat without a brim at her funeral. He was +always eccentric in his dress; and a pink hat without a brim was, at that +period of his life, his usual headgear. There was precedent for it, he +said, in the Eastern Church, of the ceremonies of which he was always an +earnest student. + +For the rest, he became Vicar of Morwenstow, on the rock-bound shore +of the Atlantic, and lived there in complete isolation, five miles from +the nearest butcher’s shop, and more than twenty miles from the nearest +railway station—the hero of many good stories which this is not the place +to relate—the author of much true poetry, composed, it is said, under the +influence of opium, which may be praised here, because praise of it is +nowhere out of place. And, if any reader demands that the praise should +be supported by quotation, then let him read this: + + “Forth gleamed the East, and yet it was not day: + A white and glowing steed outrode the dawn; + A youthful rider ruled the bounding rein + And he, in semblance of Sir Galahad shone: + A vase he held on high; one molten gem, + Like massive ruby or the chrysolite: + Thence gushed the light in flakes; and flowing, fell + As though the pavement of the sky brake up, + And stars were shed to sojourn on the hills, + From grey Morwenna’s stone to Michael’s tor, + Until the rocky land was like a heaven. + + “Then saw they that the mighty quest was won: + The Sangraal swooned along the golden air: + The sea breathed balsam like Gennesaret: + The streams were touched with supernatural light: + And fonts of Saxon rock stood, full of God.” + +That settles it, and we have no need of further evidence. It was a great +poet, and no mere versifier, who wrote those lines; and, in “The Quest +of the Sangraal,” the Newdigate prize-man from Magdalen Hall, who drank +opium and dreamt in the hut of driftwood which he had built himself on +the face of the black cliff looking out across the Atlantic to Labrador, +competed with Tennyson on his own ground and beat him. + + + + +KEBLE COLLEGE + + “Keble College, near Rome”—A memorial of the author of the + “Christian Year”—The ideals of the College—How far they have + been realised—Diversified results of the experiment—The Bishop + of London and Mr. Herbert Trench. + + +The last stage of our pilgrimage leads us away from Oxford to the +flaming bricks of Keble, adjacent to the Parks. It was a Keble man who +once presumed to address a letter to “Worcester College, near Oxford.” +The reply, so the story continues, was addressed to “Keble College, +near Rome,”—and did not go astray. And these things, of course, are an +allegory. + +How far the allegory is faithful—to what extent Rome and Keble are in +spiritual proximity—is a debatable question which it shall be left to +others to debate. The College may be regarded, at any rate, as a protest +and a reaction: a sectarian excrescence upon an age which seemed to be +beginning to be liberal. One may regard it, according to one’s point of +view, either as a gaudy monument to a lost cause or as a gaudy temple +erected to celebrate the renascence of a discredited idea. + +[Illustration: KEBLE COLLEGE. + +[To face p. 316.] + +Tractarianism seemed to have had its hour at Oxford. The secession of +the Newmanites had induced many Anglican Catholics to ask themselves +whether they were not living in a fool’s paradise. The Essayists and +Reviewers—the Seven against Christ as the wit of the orthodox party +styled them—had set men reconsidering their theological position. The +tendency of the hour was to look forward instead of backward, to break +down barriers instead of building them, and to get rid of formulæ instead +of offering money prizes to those who would subscribe to them. And +then came Keble, a “throwback,” as it were, announced by a flourish of +Puseyite trumpets. + +The College was founded by public subscription as a memorial of the +author of the “Christian Year,” and was designed to combine plain living +with High Church thinking. Self-denying ordinances were to be imposed in +the cause of economy, and the advantages of the institution were to be +confined to members of the Church of England. The central idea of the +College, in short, was to be the government of members of the Church of +England by members of the Church of England for the benefit of the Church +of England. “It is hoped,” ran the appeal for help, “that it will prove, +by God’s blessing, the loyal handmaid of our mother Church, to train up +men who, not in the ministry only, but in the manifold callings of the +Christian life, shall be steadfast in the faith.” + +Such was the ideal; and it does not need to be proved that it was an +ideal as narrow as it was lofty, reposing, not only upon piety, but also +upon confusion of thought. Religion being a spiritual experience, and the +Anglican Church being a branch of the Civil Service, it is only by loose +thinkers that the two things can be treated as one and indivisible; and +the implied proposition that Dissenters are poisonous is not a logical +corollary of any exhortation to a devout and holy life. Loose thinking +has, however, in this instance, proved a mainspring of generous giving, +and has resulted in an endowment of learning which is not without value +because it has concurrently endowed the speculative opinions and ritual +practices of a particular school of thought. The endowment of learning +for the exclusive benefit of Churchmen may not have much more _raison +d’être_ than the endowment of learning for the special benefit of +albinoes, or vegetarians, or anti-tobacconists; but it is a vast deal +better than no endowment of learning at all. + + * * * * * + +Whether the wisdom of the founders and benefactors of Keble has been +justified of its children is a delicate question of which it would at +present be premature to do more than lightly touch the fringe; but +certain generalisations may be hazarded. + +In the first place the economical advantages have not been so marked as +to attract a class of men previously excluded from the University. In the +second place the College has never been of the nature of a seminary, and +its particular influences have been largely overshadowed by the general +influences of the University itself. Keble men, that is to say, have been +very much like other Oxford men; and the test of Churchmanship has not +winnowed them to any really noticeable extent. Thought has, in effect, +been as free there as elsewhere, in spite of the nominal restrictions +of orthodox authority. Some of the men have thought as they were told +to think, and others have thought for themselves—encouraged, in some +instances, by unexpectedly latitudinarian dons. The wind has blown where +it listed, with the usual diversified results. + +There are those who would say that Keble at its best and most +characteristic is represented by the present Bishop of London: a +high-minded and popular prelate whose portraits—especially the portrait +in which he is to be seen beaming benignantly beside his favourite +crozier—are treasured by almost as many ladies as the portraits of Mr. +George Alexander himself; a prelate also in such a continual hurry to do +good that he too often gives the sober the impression of a man who speaks +before he thinks. But Keble is also the College of Mr. Herbert Trench: a +poet whose visions of the ultimate stand in no perceptible relation to +the metaphysics of the Establishment, and who resembles the author of +“The Christian Year” only in the accidental circumstance that some of his +compositions have been set to music; and it might puzzle the trustees +of Keble, as it would puzzle the writer of these pages, to find the +intellectual common denominator of Dr. Winnington-Ingram and the manager +of the Haymarket Theatre. + + + + +EPILOGUE + + +The pilgrimage is over, and the “dreaming spires” disappear into the +plain as we depart. It is time to say, as Queen Elizabeth said, pausing, +as has been told, on Shotover: “Farewell, farewell, dear Oxford! God +bless thee, and increase thy sons in number, holiness, and virtue!” + +In numbers, truly, they have been increased, and are still increasing. +New buildings, seldom as beautiful as the old ones, spring up continually +as witnesses and consequence of the increase. As for holiness and +virtue—well, these are not things which can be weighed or measured; and +as the words mean different things to different preachers, positive +asseveration would be out of place. + +Those who associate virtue and holiness with the domination of the Church +of England as by law established have some reason to view the prospect +gloomily. The religious tests have gone—except from Keble; and Oxford +Methodists are no longer liable to be pelted with mud in the High. +Nonconformists of all grades, from Romanists to Unitarians, come to +Oxford in battalions. + +A few of them secede. There is a story of a Wesleyan undergraduate, the +son of a Wesleyan minister, whose heart was so touched by the doctrine +of the apostolical succession that whenever, from that time forward, +he corresponded with his father, he refused him on principle the +complimentary title of “Reverend.” But that is an exceptional case. The +majority of the Oxford Dissenters maintain their own point of view, even +when they come into contact with the point of view of the University; and +the profit from the clash of opinions is mutual. Oxford learns something +from the new-comers, even while it keeps up, with proper dignity, the +pretence of having nothing to learn from any one; but Oxford also +influences them, and so indirectly extends its own influence into corners +of the world which previously it could not reach. Even the City Temple +has lately become, by this means, a remarkable centre of illumination. + +For, after all, in spite of all that we hear, and say, about Oxford +Schools and Oxford Movements, the secret of Oxford is not wrapped up in +any particular body of opinions; and the attitude of Oxford towards its +Movements may fairly remind one of the French Revolution devouring its +own children. The various Oxford Movements, though they have succeeded, +have not resembled one another. On the contrary, they have clashed +with, and have extinguished, one another. Oxford sent out Wiclif’s +“poor preachers”; but Oxford also burnt more than its fair share of the +Reformers. Oxford bred the Tractarians; but Oxford also confounded the +Tractarians in “Essays and Reviews.” Oxford nurtured the Æsthetes; but +Oxford also put the Æsthetes under the pump. + +And so on to the end of the chapter. Action, in Oxford, has always +been followed by reaction, and reformation by counter-reformation. The +bane and the antidote have always grown side by side in the Oxford +meadows; and the survey of Oxford history—the rapid evocation of +typically illustrious Oxford names—gives an impression of a University +as miscellaneously diversified as the Universe itself. And yet, in the +face of all these divergencies, there is a something in the atmosphere +of Oxford which never fails to affect the mentality of all the men who +breathe it. + +A part of the secret lies, no doubt, in the beauty of Oxford; a greater +part, perhaps, in the leisure, and the comparative isolation and +disinterestedness of the life. One is in touch with the world there, +without being of it. One is not hustled or hurried. One can acquire +knowledge for its own sake, without considering its immediate practical +application. One can pursue and possess one’s own soul, and face, with +help and sympathy, but undisturbed, all those perplexing problems of +the painful earth which most of those busier men who are bundled from a +school to an office can, as a rule, hardly so much as state. And all that +in the most impressionable years of one’s life. + +It is a great privilege—a privilege which it would be impossible to +overvalue. Among those who have enjoyed it—even if they are conscious +of not having made so much of it as they might—a kind of freemasonry +exists, even when they are engaged in confuting each other’s doctrines. +They are, or think they are, the initiated. Hence the reserve, the +aloofness, the air of calm composure, and the refusal to be startled into +emotion or surprise which go to the making of what is commonly called +the “Oxford manner”; and if those characteristics are sometimes too +prominently displayed to give unmixed pleasure in a mixed society, no one +is more ready than the Oxford man to admit in the abstract the truth of +Aristotle’s saying that an excess of virtue is a vice. + +And so once more: “Farewell, farewell, dear Oxford! God bless thee, and +increase thy sons in number, holiness, and virtue!” + + UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON. + + + + +A SELECTION FROM + +MILLS & BOON’S + +LIST OF GENERAL LITERATURE + + +=THE COURT OF WILLIAM III.= By EDWIN and MARION SHARPE GREW. With many +Illustrations. Demy 8vo. =15s.= net. + +=YVETTE GUILBERT: Struggles and Victories.= By YVETTE GUILBERT and HAROLD +SIMPSON. Profusely Illustrated with Caricatures, Portraits, Facsimiles of +Letters, &c. 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The +author seems to know the world of which he writes, and the book is full +of quaint characters and interesting details.” + +_Dundee Advertiser._—“The glare and glitter of the music-hall stage +obscure much that is shoddy, unreliable, and tragic. So at least this +very readable novel makes out. And Horace W. C. Newte seems to know. +The characters and incidents are such that some of them may have been +sketched from life. The tawdry hero, John Cellini, is the most likely of +the Company. 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But we have a few anthologists whose work +stands on a level with original work of the best kind, and of such is Mr +Hansard Watt.... I cannot imagine the work being better done, and it was +well worth doing.” + +_Daily Chronicle._—“A pleasant and surpriseful storehouse of good things +... a pleasure and a privilege to possess it.” + +_Westminster Gazette._—“In preparing parallel passages from the letters +and poems of Cowper for every day in the year, Mr Hansard Watt has paid a +handsome tribute to one of the most delightful of English letter-writers, +and earned the gratitude of many lovers of the poet for adding a fresh +interest to his work.... ‘Through the Loopholes of Retreat’ is a curious +and fascinating little book.” + +_Daily News._—“There is wit, wise seriousness, and a whimsical charm in +these pages. Mr Watt has prepared a very pleasant gift-book.” + +_Morning Post._—“One can be certain as one reads Cowper that taste will +return to him. It requires but some knowledge of life and some experience +of emotion to see what high lyrical power shines through his work, and Mr +Watt has done very well to present it in so novel and so striking a form +to the modern reader.” + +_Queen._—“This truly delightful book well illustrates the poet’s +beautiful ideas of domestic peace and happiness, and the volume should be +on the bookshelves of all those who have a love for natural, unaffected +poetry.” + +_Sphere_ (C. K. S.).—“Mr Hansard Watt has won the gratitude of all who +love the work of the poet Cowper.” + +_Daily Graphic._—“A pleasant and companionable little volume, and one +that will receive a hearty welcome.” + +_Dundee Courier._—“A permanent calendar of wise and beautiful sayings +from one of the most lovable of English poets.” + +_Newcastle Journal._—“Cowper, in a busy and restless age, comes as a +solace indeed, and his admirers, not less than those who know at present +little of the high thought and literary beauty of the poet of Olney, will +be grateful to Mr Hansard Watt for his work.” + +_Manchester Courier._—“Admirably reflects the many-sidedness of a great +and too little read poet.” + +_Eastern Daily Press._—“As a feat of industry Mr Watt’s performance is +tremendous.” + +MILLS & BOON, LTD., 49 WHITCOMB ST., W.C. + + + + +_A NOVEL OF RARE MERIT_ + +_THE RAJAH’S PEOPLE_ + +_By I. A. R. 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Stevens’ “THE VEIL.” +“THE RAJAH’S PEOPLE” is an intensely interesting novel of Indian life, +written with striking originality and fascination._ + +_MILLS & BOON will be glad if the date of publication is noted, and they +hope that “THE RAJAH’S PEOPLE” will be received with as much enthusiasm +and interest as “THE VEIL.”_ + +_A souvenir chapter will be sent post free to any address._ + +MILLS & BOON, LTD., 49 WHITCOMB STREET, W.C. + + + + +MILLS & BOON’S _NET_ + +SHILLING NOVELS + + +=CUMNER’S SON= (Entirely New Stories) By SIR GILBERT PARKER + +=BEWARE OF THE DOG= (Entirely New Long Novel). By MRS. BAILLIE REYNOLDS + +=THE DOLLAR PRINCESS= (The Novel of the Play). By HAROLD SIMPSON + +=ARSÈNE LUPIN= (The Novel of the Play) By EDGAR JEPSON & MAURICE LEBLANC + +=MARY= By WINIFRED GRAHAM + +=D’ARCY OF THE GUARDS= (The Novel of the Play). By L. E. SHIPMAN + +=FOR CHURCH AND CHIEFTAIN= By MAY WYNNE + +=THE LADY CALPHURNIA ROYAL= By ALBERT DORRINGTON and A. G. STEPHENS + +=THE VEIL= By E. 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Mr. Partridge makes a most exciting +business of it. He gives us hair-breadth escapes, heroic fights, +ingenious complications, a sufficient love interest, and a little high +diplomacy. It is a breathless and attractive adventure—admirably carried +through—the very thing for the holiday mood.” + +MILLS & BOON, LTD., 49 WHITCOMB STREET, W.C. + + + + +_“A WONDERFUL SHILLINGSWORTH” say the ‘World’ and the ‘Observer.’_ + +CUMNER’S SON + +BY + +SIR GILBERT PARKER + +Cloth =1s.= net. + + +_Daily Telegraph._—“Sir Gilbert Parker has been very generous in +presenting this book to the reading public at so cheap a price, for it +contains some of his best work. How good that is we all know. Better +examples of his rare skill have never been given us than here. Of the +tales there is not one that does not hold us, not one which has not real +point and importance. They interest us as vividly as do the pictures of +the biograph, we sit entranced as the action passes swiftly and clearly +before our eyes. The author has not given us anything so good for a long +time.” + +_Punch._—“One does not recall any writer who possesses in larger degree +the gift of being able to reproduce glowing scenery by a few strokes of +the pen. This quality is supplemented by a greater one, the power of +creating and describing human character. Sir Gilbert is indeed the Bret +Harte of the South Seas, telling in a few pages moving stories of the +rough and ready folk who people the islands. It is a charming volume, +full of light and life and colour.” + +_Morning Post._—“Vivid pictures.” + +_Daily News._—“Workmanlike.” + +_Westminster._—“Heroic.” + +_Standard._—“Remarkable.” + +_Globe._—“Capital.” + +_Scotsman._—“Vivid realism.” + +_Daily Express._—“Admirable.” + +_Daily Mail._—“Imperial.” + +_Birmingham Post._—“Full of incident.” + +_Ladies’ Field._—“Fresh.” + +MILLS & BOON, LTD., 49 WHITCOMB STREET, W.C. + + + + +FIRST LOVE + +BY + +MARIE VAN VORST + +Price =6s.= + + +_Observer._—“Miss Marie van Vorst’s new novel deals with no boy and +girl idyll; it gives a vivid emotional picture of another very common +phase of first love, that of a young man for a woman many years his +senior. John Bennett is a fine example of a young lover, tongue-tied and +ardent, strong-willed, reckless, and very attractive. He goes to stay +with two college friends, and the swift growth of his passion for their +step-mother, Mrs. Bathurst, wife of the usual brute in a fast New York +sporting set, is painted in with firm and telling strokes. He stakes +all to win her, but, when at last she is free, she ‘turns him down.’ +The character of Virginia Bathurst is so subordinated to the masculine +element which dominates the story that it is only at the end that one +realises her lovely selflessness, for it is indicated by touches as +subtle and delicate as her own personality. And it is only at the end, +when Bennett has married a girl as fresh and youthful as himself, that +one sees where the real cruelty of the situation lies. Miss van Vorst is +an artist, and she knows exactly how to give full value to the point she +wishes to make.” + +_Daily Mail._—“‘First Love’ is in every way a good novel.” + +_Dundee Advertiser._—“Several stories by Marie van Vorst have pleased +me greatly by their living interest and literary excellence, and this +one most of all. The incidents are instinct with fine and even exquisite +sentiment, and lead on to a finish that would make the fortunes of a +play.” + +_Morning Post._—“It will appeal largely to the novel reading public.” + +MILLS & BOON, LTD., 49 WHITCOMB STREET, W.C. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77240 *** diff --git a/77240-h/77240-h.htm b/77240-h/77240-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3e8dc2f --- /dev/null +++ b/77240-h/77240-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,12018 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> +<head> + <meta charset="UTF-8"> + <title> + The romance of the Oxford colleges | Project Gutenberg + </title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + <style> + +a { + text-decoration: none; +} + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +h1,h2,h3 { + text-align: center; + clear: both; +} + +h2.nobreak { + page-break-before: avoid; +} + +hr.chap { + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + clear: both; + width: 65%; + margin-left: 17.5%; + margin-right: 17.5%; +} + +img.w100 { + width: 100%; +} + +div.chapter { + page-break-before: always; + margin-bottom: 1em; +} + +.chapter p { + padding-left: 2em; + text-indent: -2em; + font-size: 90%; +} + +p { + margin-top: 0.5em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: 0.5em; + text-indent: 1em; +} + +table { + margin: 1em auto 1em auto; + max-width: 40em; + border-collapse: collapse; +} + +td { + padding-left: 2.25em; + padding-right: 0.25em; + vertical-align: top; + text-indent: -2em; + text-align: justify; +} + +.sub { + padding-bottom: 0.75em; +} + +.tdpg { + vertical-align: bottom; + text-align: right; + white-space: nowrap; +} + +blockquote { + margin: 1.5em 10%; +} + +.box, .box-middle { + margin: auto; + max-width: 35em; + border: 2px solid black; + padding: 0.5em; +} + +.box .top { + border-bottom: thin solid black; +} + +.box-bottom { + margin: auto; + max-width: 35em; + border-right: 2px solid black; + border-left: 2px solid black; + border-bottom: 2px solid black; + padding: 0.5em; +} + +.box-top { + margin: auto; + max-width: 35em; + border-right: 2px solid black; + border-left: 2px solid black; + border-top: 2px solid black; + padding: 0.5em; +} + +.center { + text-align: center; + text-indent: 0; +} + +figcaption p { + text-align: center; + font-size: 90%; + text-indent: 0; +} + +.figcenter { + margin: auto; + text-align: center; +} + +.footnotes { + margin-top: 1em; + border: dashed 1px; +} + +.footnote { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + font-size: 0.9em; +} + +.footnote .label { + position: absolute; + right: 84%; + text-align: right; +} + +.fnanchor { + vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none; +} + +.hanging { + padding-left: 2em; + text-indent: -2em; +} + +.larger { + font-size: 150%; +} + +.noindent { + text-indent: 0; +} + +.noindent2 { + padding-left: 2em; + text-indent: 0; +} + +.pagenum { + position: absolute; + right: 4%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + font-style: normal; +} + +.poetry-container { + text-align: center; +} + +.poetry { + display: inline-block; + text-align: left; +} + +.poetry .stanza { + margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em; +} + +.poetry .verse { + padding-left: 3em; +} + +.poetry .indent0 {text-indent: -3.0em;} +.poetry .indent2 {text-indent: -2.0em;} +.poetry .indent4 {text-indent: -1.0em;} +.poetry .indent6 {text-indent: 0.0em;} +.poetry .indent8 {text-indent: 1.0em;} +.poetry .indent14 {text-indent: 4.0em;} + +.right { + text-align: right; +} + +.box-middle .right { + margin-top: -2em; +} + +.smaller { + font-size: 80%; +} + +.smcap { + font-variant: small-caps; + font-style: normal; +} + +.allsmcap { + font-variant: small-caps; + font-style: normal; + text-transform: lowercase; +} + +.spacer { + margin-left: 5em; +} + +.tb { + margin-top: 2em; +} + +.titlepage { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 3em; + text-indent: 0; +} + +.u { + text-decoration: underline; +} + +.x-ebookmaker img { + max-width: 100%; + width: auto; + height: auto; +} + +.x-ebookmaker .poetry { + display: block; + margin-left: 1.5em; +} + +.x-ebookmaker blockquote { + margin: 1.5em 5%; +} + + +/* Illustration classes */ +.illowp100 {width: 100%;} +.illowp48 {width: 48%;} +.x-ebookmaker .illowp48 {width: 100%;} + </style> + </head> +<body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77240 ***</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[1]</span></p> + +<p class="center larger">THE ROMANCE OF THE OXFORD<br> +COLLEGES</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[2]</span></p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus01" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/illus01.jpg" alt=""> + <figcaption> + <p><i>Merton College.</i></p> + <p><i>Photo. Hills & Saunders</i> <span class="spacer"><i>Allen & Co. (London) Ltd. Sc.</i></span></p> + </figcaption> +</figure> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[3]</span></p> + +<p class="titlepage larger">THE ROMANCE<br> +<span class="smaller">OF THE</span><br> +OXFORD COLLEGES</p> + +<p class="titlepage"><span class="smaller">BY</span><br> +FRANCIS GRIBBLE<br> +<span class="smaller">SOMETIME SCHOLAR OF EXETER, AUTHOR OF “GEORGE<br> +SAND AND HER LOVERS,” ETC.</span></p> + +<p class="titlepage smaller">WITH SEVENTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS</p> + +<p class="titlepage">MILLS & BOON, LIMITED<br> +<span class="smaller">49 WHITCOMB STREET<br> +LONDON W.C.</span></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[4]</span></p> + +<p class="titlepage smaller"><i>Published 1910</i></p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[5]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="PREFACE">PREFACE</h2> + +</div> + +<p>This work does not purport to be either a +history or a guide book. Of Oxford Guide +Books, and of Histories of Oxford, there is +already an adequate provision, and there is no +dearth of Oxford Reminiscences, or of Studies +of Oxford Life and Manners. But there may +still be room for a modest volume which, +while unscrupulously omitting whatever seems +tedious, or of purely local interest, recalls the +stories concerning which experience shows the +average stranger to be most curious, and +answers the questions which the average +stranger, when visiting the various colleges, +is most apt to ask.</p> + +<p>The book, indeed, is the outcome of an +experience which revealed the nature, and the +limits, of that curiosity. It was lately the +privilege of the writer to act as guide to some +ladies who were visiting Oxford for the first +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[6]</span>time, and he made a mental note of the points +on which they showed themselves most avid +of information. They did not, he found, +desire to burden their memories with dates, +or to be entertained with lists of the names +of the Heads of Colleges and Halls, and they +were content to admire the architecture without +entering into technical details. On the +other hand, stories of human interest—stories +introducing well-known names—stories of +events in which the history of Oxford came +into close touch with the history of England—were +constantly and eagerly demanded.</p> + +<p>Why was Shelley expelled from University? +Why did Dr. Johnson throw the boots out of +his window at Pembroke? What is the truth +about the Brasenose Hellfire Club, and the +ghost? What was the origin of town and +gown rows? Is it true that Froude’s book was +publicly burnt at Exeter? What was Oxford +like at the time of the Civil War? What sort +of people were the Tractarians, the Wesleyans, +the Æsthetes and the Positivists? Why was +Jowett so famous? Why are so many Jesus +men called Jones? Which was Gladstone’s +college, and which was Lord Randolph +Churchill’s? Why do they have boar’s head +for dinner on Christmas Day at Queen’s? Is +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[7]</span>it true that Beau Nash was an Oxford man? +Can you tell me any stories about Charles +Reade—or Sir Richard Burton—or Southey—or de +Quincey—or Pater?</p> + +<p>Such were a few of the questions asked. +The book answers them, and answers a good +many other questions of the same sort. It +proceeds on the assumption that every college, +at some period of its history, through some +notable name on its books, has been profoundly +interesting, not only to the University, +but to the world, and it dwells on those +interesting moments and those interesting +incidents as fully as space permits.</p> + +<p class="right">FRANCIS GRIBBLE.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[8]</span></p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[9]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="TABLE_OF_CONTENTS">TABLE OF CONTENTS</h2> + +</div> + +<table> + <tr> + <td></td> + <td class="tdpg smaller">PAGE</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">University College</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#UNIVERSITY_COLLEGE">17</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="sub">Founders and benefactors—Alfred the Great—William + of Durham—The Statutes—The conversion + of Obadiah Walker—Lord Herbert of Cherbury—Lord + Eldon’s examination in Hebrew—The + screwing up of the Senior Proctor—Shelley—A + “Stinks Man”—His unpopularity with the + dons—His “printing freaks”—His friendship + with Hogg—His conversation with the Baby—His + Religious Opinions—His publication of “The + Necessity of Atheism”—His expulsion.</td> + <td class="tdpg"></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Balliol College</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#BALLIOL_COLLEGE">36</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="sub">The birching of Robert of Balliol by the Bishop of + Durham—He founds a College to make atonement + for his fault—Insignificance of the College + in early times—Snell Exhibitioners—Adam Smith—His + scornful criticism of Oxford—Southey—His + introduction to Coleridge of Jesus, Cambridge—Their + dream of Pantisocracy—College “Rags” + in the dark days—The dawn of civilisation—Mastership + of Parsons—Of Jenkyns—Of Jowett—Jowett + as tutor—His reforms—His conversation—His + sermons—The inscrutable secret which he + guarded.</td> + <td class="tdpg"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[10]</span></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Merton College</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#MERTON_COLLEGE">55</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="sub">Antiquity of Merton—The model of subsequent + foundations—Friction between the University and + the town—The great “town and gown row” of + 1354—The scholars of Merton save the University—The + wardenship of Sir Henry Savile—The visit + of Queen Elizabeth—Oxford during the Civil + War—Queen Henrietta Maria at Merton—How + Merton ceased to be a reading college—Scandalous + proceedings in the gardens—Mandell + Creighton and Lord Randolph Churchill.</td> + <td class="tdpg"></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Exeter College</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#EXETER_COLLEGE">70</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="sub">The West Country College—A Whig College—“Debauched + by a drunken Governor”—Eminent + Alumni—“Parson Jack”—His bout at fisticuffs—Garibaldi’s + Englishman—His prowess on the + river—James Anthony Froude—His innate Protestantism—The + burning of his “Nemesis of + Faith”—Burne Jones and William Morris.</td> + <td class="tdpg"></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Oriel College</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#ORIEL_COLLEGE">86</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="sub">Foundation by Adam de Brome—Butler and his + “Analogy”—Causes of the efficiency of Oriel—The + “Noetics”—Eveleigh—Coplestone—Whately—The + Tractarians—Who started the Tractarian + Movement?—What did the Tractarians want?—The + logical weakness of their position—The + attitude of the bishops—The stampede to Rome—The + honest doubters—Matthew Arnold and + Arthur Hugh Clough—Cecil Rhodes at Oriel.</td> + <td class="tdpg"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[11]</span></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Queen’s College</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#QUEENS_COLLEGE">106</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="sub">What little Mr. Bouncer said of Queen’s—The inwardness + of his criticism—The boar’s head and + the Canticle—Another song on the same subject—The + Provost and the alarm of fire—The Black + Prince at Queen’s—Wiclif at Queen’s—The first + of the Oxford Movements inaugurated by his poor + preachers—Later times—Jeremy Bentham—Walter + Pater.</td> + <td class="tdpg"></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">New College</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#NEW_COLLEGE">118</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="sub">William of Wykeham—A self-educated man—His + liberality and his elaborate Statutes—The College + depressed by too much founder’s kin—“Golden + scholars, silver bachelors, and leaden Masters”—Notable + New College men—Sydney Smith—Sir + Henry Wotton—Canon Spooner and “Spoonerisms”—Stories + of Warden Shuttleworth and + others.</td> + <td class="tdpg"></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Lincoln College</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#LINCOLN_COLLEGE">129</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="sub">A small college with many outstanding names—Mr. + D. S. Maccoll and his Newdigate—“Shifter” + of the <i>Sporting Times</i>—A reminiscence of + “Shifter”—John Wesley and the Methodists—Wesley’s + meeting with Beau Nash of Bath—Mark + Pattison—His early connection with the + Tractarians—His abandonment of superstition—His + great learning—His treatment of undergraduates.</td> + <td class="tdpg"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[12]</span></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">All Souls College</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#ALL_SOULS">145</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="sub">Peculiarities of the Constitution—A College without + undergraduates—Court favourites jobbed into + fellowships—Fellowships bought and sold—All + Souls Fellows, a link between Oxford and the outside + world—Sir William Blackstone—Edward + Young—The song of the All Souls Mallard and + the scandal connected therewith.</td> + <td class="tdpg"></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Magdalen College</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#MAGDALEN_COLLEGE">153</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="sub">The College which withstood James II.—President + Routh—His great age and eccentricities—Slackness + of the College—The careers of Addison—Of + Gibbon—Of Charles Reade—Oscar Wilde and + the æsthetic movement at Magdalen—Persecution + of Wilde and suppression of the movement.</td> + <td class="tdpg"></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Brasenose College</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#BRASENOSE_COLLEGE">171</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="sub">The eponymous nose—The Hell Fire Club and its + ghost—The Phœnix—Dean Hole as the typical + Brasenose man—Bishop Heber and his prize + poem—His <i>jeux d’esprit</i>—The note of satire in his + missionary hymns—Richard Heber the greatest + bibliophile that the world has ever seen—The + author of “Ingoldsby Legends”—Robertson of + Brighton—Oxford objections to private initiative + in religion—Walter Pater and his philosophy of + life.</td> + <td class="tdpg"></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Corpus Christi College</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CORPUS_CHRISTI_COLLEGE">192</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="sub">The foundation by Bishop Foxe—Compulsory Greek—Strict + discipline in early times—The visitation + by the Parliamentary Commissioners—The ejection<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[13]</span> + of the Fellows—Eminent <i>alumni</i>—The + judicious Hooker and his injudicious marriage—The + Duke of Monmouth—General Oglethorpe—Keble, + and Arnold of Rugby—An estimate of + their work—Celebrities of modern times.</td> + <td class="tdpg"></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Christ Church</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHRIST_CHURCH">209</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="sub">Cardinal College—The fall of Wolsey—The foundation + of Christ Church—Notable scenes—The + degradation of Cranmer—The Parliamentary + visitation—The eviction of Dean Fell, Mrs. Fell, + and all the little Fellses—Famous Deans of Christ + Church—John Fell—“I do not like you, Dr. Fell”—Aldrich—Atterbury—Cyril + Jackson—Gaisford—Eminent + undergraduates—Sir Robert Peel’s + practical joke—Gladstone and Martin Farquhar + Tupper.</td> + <td class="tdpg"></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Trinity College</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#TRINITY_COLLEGE">226</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="sub">Founded with the spoils of monasteries—The sympathy + of Queen Elizabeth—President Kettell—His + objection to long hair—His trouble with the + Court ladies during the Civil War—Dr. Johnson’s + love of the College—The expulsion of Walter + Savage Landor—Newman in his evangelical days—The + gentleman adventurers—Richard Burton’s + revolt against discipline.</td> + <td class="tdpg"></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Saint John’s College</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#SAINT_JOHNS_COLLEGE">241</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="sub">Founded by Sir Thomas White—Raised to fame by + Archbishop Laud—Calvinistic opposition to Laud—He + triumphs over it and makes Oxford a High<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[14]</span> + Church University—His disciplinarian regulations—His + magnificent entertainment of royalty—The + entertainment of Admiral Tromp—He gets drunk + and is taken home in a wheelbarrow—Dean + Mansel—His pugnacious Bampton Lectures and + his excruciating puns.</td> + <td class="tdpg"></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Jesus College</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#JESUS_COLLEGE">255</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="sub">Statistics concerning the Joneses of Jesus—A Welsh + enclave—Rarity of great names at Jesus—Henry + Vaughan the “Silurist”—Sir Lewis Morris—Beau + Nash—John Richard Green.</td> + <td class="tdpg"></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Wadham College</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#WADHAM_COLLEGE">267</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="sub">Nicholas and Dorothy Wadham—A miscellaneous list + of Wadham men—The story of the great Wadham + “Rag”—Wadham Evangelicalism—Stories + of Warden Symons—The Wadham Positivists—“Three + persons and no God”—Richard Congreve—Comte, + Clotilde de Vaux, and the Positivist + schism—The last Oxford Movement—Canon + Barnett and Toynbee Hall.</td> + <td class="tdpg"></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Pembroke College</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#PEMBROKE_COLLEGE">278</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="sub">Broadgates Hall—Its illustrious and fashionable + <i>alumni</i>—The Hall becomes Pembroke College—Dr. + Johnson at Pembroke—He rags the + servitors and argues with the dons—His “spirited + refusal of an eleemosynary supply of shoes”—He + shows Hannah More over the College—George + Whitefield at Pembroke—His relations + with the Methodists and his religious excitability.</td> + <td class="tdpg"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[15]</span></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Worcester College</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#WORCESTER_COLLEGE">289</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="sub">Early history of the buildings—Gloucester College—A + College for Benedictines—Its dissolution—Becomes + the Bishop’s palace—Gloucester Hall—Endowment + of Worcester College—Remote + situation of Worcester—Stories bearing thereupon—Notable + Worcester men—Samuel Foote—Thomas + de Quincey—Henry Kingsley—F. W. + Newman—Dean Burgon—Burgon’s famous Newdigate.</td> + <td class="tdpg"></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Hertford College</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#HERTFORD_COLLEGE">303</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="sub">Hart Hall—The principalship of Dr. Richard Newton—Hart + Hall becomes Hertford College—Decline, + fall, and dissolution of the College—The buildings + purchased for Magdalen Hall—Magdalen + Hall once more transformed into Hertford + College—Famous men at Hertford and Magdalen + Hall—Charles James Fox—George Selwyn—Robert + Stephen Hawker.</td> + <td class="tdpg"></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Keble College</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#KEBLE_COLLEGE">316</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="sub">“Keble College, near Rome”—A memorial of the + author of the “Christian Year”—The ideals of + the College—How far they have been realised—Diversified + results of the experiment—The + Bishop of London and Mr. Herbert Trench.</td> + <td class="tdpg"></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Epilogue</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#EPILOGUE">321</a></td> + </tr> +</table> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[16]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS">LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2> + +</div> + +<table> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Merton College</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus01"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td></td> + <td class="tdpg smaller">FACING PAGE</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">University College</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus02">17</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Balliol College</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus03">36</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Exeter College: Fellows’ Garden</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus04">70</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Oriel College</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus05">86</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Queen’s College Chapel</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus06">106</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">New College Cloisters and Tower</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus07">118</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Reredos, All Souls Chapel</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus08">145</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Magdalen College</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus09">153</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Brasenose Knocker</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus10">171</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Corpus Christi College</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus11">192</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Tom Quad and Tower, Christ Church</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus12">209</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Trinity College</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus13">226</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">St. John’s College</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus14">241</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Wadham College</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus15">267</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Worcester College</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus16">289</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Keble College</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus17">316</a></td> + </tr> +</table> + +<p class="center"><i>All the above are from photographs by Messrs. Hills & Saunders, Oxford.</i></p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[17]</span></p> + +<h1>The Romance of the<br> +Oxford Colleges</h1> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="UNIVERSITY_COLLEGE">UNIVERSITY COLLEGE</h2> + +<p>Founders and benefactors—Alfred the Great—William of +Durham—The Statutes—The conversion of Obadiah +Walker—Lord Herbert of Cherbury—Lord Eldon’s +examination in Hebrew—The screwing up of the +Senior Proctor—Shelley—A “Stinks Man”—His unpopularity +with the dons—His “printing freaks”—His +friendship with Hogg—His conversation with the +baby—His religious opinions—His publication of +“The Necessity of Atheism”—His expulsion.</p> + +</div> + +<p>It has often been asserted, but it has never +been proved, that University College was +founded by Alfred the Great.</p> + +<p>The principal evidence for the statement +consists of a deed which is known to have been +forged and a quotation in Camden’s “Britannia” +from an alleged manuscript which cannot +be found and probably never existed. On +the strength of that testimony the Court of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[18]</span>King’s Bench ruled, in 1726, that Alfred was +the founder; but the judgment seems to have +been based upon sentiment rather than evidence. +“Religion,” it was argued by the +Fellows, “would receive a great scandal” +if the Court decided that “a succession of +clergymen” had, for many generations, made +the mistake of thanking the wrong benefactor +for their endowments. The Court was moved +by the plea and gave official sanction to the +legend; but history, as distinguished from +legend, recognises the founder in William of +Durham, who, dying in 1249, bequeathed +310 marks to the University for the benefit +of Masters of Arts studying theology. A +house was built for the students to live in +in 1253, and statutes for the governance +of the community were first drawn up in +1280.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus02" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/illus02.jpg" alt=""> + <figcaption> + <p>UNIVERSITY COLLEGE.</p> + <p class="right">[To face p. 17.</p> + </figcaption> +</figure> + +<p>Fifty shillings a year was the stipend of a +student in those days, and the bursar received +a further five shillings a year for keeping the +College accounts. As rooms could then be +rented for 6s. 8d. a year, however, their condition +was less penurious than the figures +might seem to indicate. It was provided that +they should converse in Latin and comport +themselves “as becomes holy persons,” not +interrupting one another’s studies by “noise +or clamour,” and resisting the temptations of +such light literature as “Ballads or Fables +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[19]</span>about Lovers”—with a good deal more, on +the same severe disciplinary lines, which one +need not trouble to recite.</p> + +<p>The College, as Mr. Wells⁠<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> states, “has +been famous in the history of Oxford rather +for the careers of its sons than for any movements +of which it has been the centre”; and +he might have added that the most notable +movement of which it has been the centre +was a movement for the expulsion of the +most illustrious of its sons.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> “Oxford and its Colleges.” By J. Wells (Methuen).</p></div> +</div> + +<p>Other interesting things, no doubt, have +happened there. It was at University that the +junior members of the college resented the +conversion of their Master to Roman Catholicism +by chanting, outside his door, the +impertinent refrain:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Old Obadiah</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sang Ave Maria,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But so would not I—a.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">If you ask me for why—a,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I’d as soon be a fool as a knave—a”—</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">a course of conduct which must have been +very annoying to Obadiah Walker, and very +compromising to his dignity, if persisted in +for long.</p> + +<p>It was to University, again, that Lord Herbert +of Cherbury brought a bride in his second +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[20]</span>year of residence; “and now,” he writes in +his Autobiography, “I followed my book +more close than ever.” But this particular +stimulus to diligence in study is one with +which modern undergraduates must, as a rule, +dispense.</p> + +<p>University, furthermore, was the scene of +Lord Eldon’s memorable examination in +Hebrew. “What is the Hebrew for ‘the +place of a skull’”? the examiner asked him. +“Golgotha,” he answered, and they let him +through, without even troubling him to translate +“<i>Eloi, eloi, lama sabacthani</i>” into +English.</p> + +<p>At University, to continue, the Senior +Proctor—the “<i>Big</i> Shaver” as men called +him to distinguish him from his brother, the +Bishop of Liverpool, who is of smaller stature—awoke +one morning, some thirty years ago, +to find himself “screwed up.” He cut a +noble figure as he descended by a ladder into +the High, amid the encouraging cheers of the +populace; and the authors of the outrage were +not discovered until after the Master—the late +Dean Bradley, of Westminster—had sent the +whole College down.</p> + +<p>Every one of these stories has its merits, +and some of them would be worth relating at +greater length if space allowed; but they all +seem trivial and local when set side by side +with the story of the expulsion of Shelley.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[21]</span></p> + +<p>Shelley is not the only poet of whom the +College boasts. Father Faber, who believed +too much to please his College, was, curiously +enough, of the same household as Shelley, who +believed too little. So was Sir Edwin Arnold, +who is said to have found spiritual balm in +Buddhism, and so is Mr. Saint John Lucas, +whose conformity to the golden mean in +matters of faith may perhaps be inferred from +the fact that he was lately awarded a prize +for a poem on a sacred subject. But Shelley +was, of course, by far the greatest of the four, +as well as the only one of them who set the +dons deliberately at defiance.</p> + +<p>His defiance of the dons, indeed, assumed +more forms than one, and the publication of +his notorious pamphlet, “The Necessity of +Atheism,” was, as it were, a last straw breaking +the back of a patience which had long +been too severely tried. So, at all events, +says Mr. Ridley, who was a junior Fellow at +the time, and so also says a Miss Grant, who +happened to be then on a visit to the Master.</p> + +<p>“There were few, if any,” says Mr. Ridley, +“who were not afraid of Shelley’s strange +and fantastic pranks.”</p> + +<p>“The ringleader,” says Miss Grant, “in +every species of mischief within our grave +walls was Mr. Shelley. He was very insubordinate, +always breaking some rule, the +breaking of which, he knew, could not be +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[22]</span>overlooked.... He was slovenly in his +dress. When spoken to about these and other +irregularities, he was in the habit of making +such extraordinary gestures, expressive of +humility under reproof, as to overset, first the +gravity, and then the temper, of the lecturing +tutor.”</p> + +<p>The dons would have been more than +human if they had liked an undergraduate +who received their admonitions in that style, +and they would have been in advance of their +times if they had been conciliated by Shelley’s +predilections for scientific study. His science +was of the crude, experimental sort which has +caused its devotees to be stigmatised as +“Stinks Men.” He charged the knob of his +door with electricity for the confusion of those +who tried to open it, and he demonstrated his +knowledge of chemistry by spilling a corrosive +acid on the carpet of a tutor who reprimanded +him. Naturally, therefore, authority +was disposed to seize the first handle that he +might give, and the first handle given was the +perverse pamphlet above referred to.</p> + +<p class="tb">The pamphlet was not, of course, Shelley’s +maiden literary effort. While still at Eton, +he had written a “penny dreadful,” and found +a publisher willing to give him £40 for it; +and he had cherished the naïve hope of +achieving fame at a bound by the simple +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[23]</span>device of bribing the reviewers. Of the staff +of the <i>British Review</i> in particular he had +written that they were “venal villains” who +might be relied upon, if well “pouched,” to +lavish the praise which he desired; and he +seems to have thought that £10, judiciously +distributed, would suffice to corrupt the whole +of Fleet Street.</p> + +<p>Moreover, his literary ambitions were +smiled upon by a blameless and unsuspecting +father. Mr. Timothy Shelley, M.P., when +he brought his son to Oxford, took him to +the shop of Messrs. Munday and Slatter, booksellers, +in the High Street, and introduced him +to one of the partners.</p> + +<p>“My boy here,” he said, pointing proudly +to the long-haired, wild-eyed youth—“my boy +here has a literary turn. He is already an +author, and do pray indulge him in his +printing freaks.”</p> + +<p>Only a few months later, in that very +shop—— But we must not anticipate, but +must first present Mr. Thomas Jefferson Hogg, +also an undergraduate of University.</p> + +<p class="tb">Hogg was Shelley’s most intimate friend—and, +indeed, practically his only friend—at +Oxford, and his “Life of Shelley” is our +principal authority for the incidents of +Shelley’s Oxford career. Trelawny speaks of +him as a hard-headed man of the world +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[24]</span>who looked upon literature with contempt, +and he may have given that impression in +later life, when he was a Revising Barrister +and a Municipal Corporation Commissioner, +whatever that may have been. Even then, +however, he said that he regarded the Greek +language as “a prime necessary of life,” and +in 1810 he would have been remarked, not +only as an ebullient but also as a romantic +and chivalrous young man.</p> + +<p>He and Shelley made each other’s acquaintance +by sitting next to each other in hall, +though Hogg assures us that “such familiarity +was unusual”—an interesting precedent for +the alleged rule that one Oxford man must +not presume even to rescue another from +drowning unless he has been introduced to +him. They fell into conversation on the +comparative value of German and Italian +literature, and, after hall, they continued +the discussion in Hogg’s rooms, and sat +up nearly all night over it. On the following +afternoon they met, by appointment, in +Shelley’s rooms—the typical rooms of a prehistoric +“Stinks Man,” furnished with “an +electrical machine, an air-pump, a galvanic +trough, a solar microscope, and large glass +jars and receivers,” and pervaded with “an +unpleasant and penetrating effluvium”; and +after that they were inseparable.</p> + +<p>Their Oxford, it must be remembered, was +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[25]</span>the early Oxford in which no games were +played. There was no “tubbing” in those +days, and no practising at the nets. Unless +men haunted the prize ring and the rat pit, +their one way of amusing themselves was to +walk and talk, and no sporting “shop” could +cast its monotonous shadow over their conversation. +The question whether the college +was more likely to bump or to be bumped +did not arise, and no man burdened his brain +with tables of “records” or “averages.” +The talk was about literature, about philosophy, +and, sometimes, about religion; and +daring young thinkers hammered out for +themselves a good many subjects in which +they were not called upon to be examined.</p> + +<p>Shelley, as we have seen, began with literature, +but he soon got on to philosophy. +In particular he was fascinated by the Platonic +doctrine of the pre-existence of the soul—the +doctrine popularised in Wordsworth’s famous +“Ode on Intimations of Immortality from +Recollections of Early Childhood”; and he +proceeded, as one would expect a chemist to +do, to try, as it were, to test the doctrine by +experiment.</p> + +<p>He snatched a baby, so Hogg tells us, out +of its mother’s arms, on Magdalen Bridge, and +while the mother clung desperately to its +swaddling clothes, in an agony of terror lest +it should be dropped into the Cherwell, he +gravely questioned her.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[26]</span></p> + +<p>“Can your baby tell us anything about +pre-existence, madam?” he asked, in a +piercing voice and with a wistful look.</p> + +<p>“He cannot speak, sir,” answered the +mother stolidly.</p> + +<p>“Surely he can speak if he will,” Shelley +insisted, “for he is only a few weeks old. +He cannot have entirely forgotten the use of +speech in so short a time.”</p> + +<p>But the mother was as firm as the poet.</p> + +<p>“It is not for me to argue with college +gentlemen,” she rejoined, “but babies of that +age never do speak as far as <i>I</i> know”; and +with that she begged that her infant might +be returned to her before harm befell it, and +so the incident terminated.</p> + +<p class="tb">The bearing of the baby story on the subject +before us is only indirect, but there is a +reason for telling it. It shows in what spirit +Shelley, as an undergraduate, approached +the profoundest problems of philosophy, and +there is no reason to suppose that the spirit +in which he approached the profoundest +problems of religion was widely different. Just +as he had got a “rise” out of the Oxford +matron, so he proposed to get a “rise” out +of the Oxford dons; and the dons being +clergymen, atheism was the obvious card +to play. A profession of atheism might fairly +be expected to affect clergymen as a red rag +affects a bull.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[27]</span></p> + +<p>That he was not actually an atheist at this +time is as nearly demonstrable as anything +can ever be. The evidence is in his own +letters—not in one letter only, but in several.</p> + +<p>“It is impossible,” he wrote, “not to +believe in the Soul of the Universe, the intelligent, +and necessarily beneficent, actuating +principle.”</p> + +<p>“Can we suppose,” he asked in another +letter, “that our nature itself could be without +cause—‘First Cause’—a God?”</p> + +<p>In these expressions, as they were not +written for publication, we may presume that +we see the real Shelley. But, on the other +hand—</p> + +<p>1. Shelley, though not an atheist, fell short +of the contemporary standards of orthodoxy. +He had been reading Hume, and felt that the +current answers to Hume were insufficient.</p> + +<p>2. Shelley had been conducting a philosophical +correspondence with his cousin, +Harriet Grove. The correspondence had been +broken off because his philosophical opinions +were unsatisfactory; and he was embittered, +being in love with his cousin, and regarded +himself as a persecuted martyr.</p> + +<p>3. The temptation to exaggerate, and so +“pull the legs” of grave and reverend +seniors, was irresistible.</p> + +<p>He began by writing, under an assumed +name, to strangers—the most grave and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[28]</span>reverend strangers whom he thought likely +to reply to him—submitting brief abstracts of +Hume’s arguments, and appealing for assistance +in rebutting them. If the person to +whom he wrote “took the bait,” says Hogg, +Shelley “would fall upon the unwary disputant +and break his bones.” Once, it is said, +by pretending to be a woman, he lured a +bishop into controversy, and handled him as +the impertinent have delighted to handle the +pompous from the beginning of the world. +It was splendid fun, he thought, but it would +be still better fun if he could “get a rise” +out of the Vice-Chancellor, the Proctors, the +Regius Professors, and the Heads of colleges +and halls. So, Hogg agreeing, he and Hogg +put their heads together, and “The Necessity +of Atheism” was produced, and advertised +in the <i>Oxford Herald</i> of February 9, 1811, +and copies of it were posted to several of the +dons, “with the compliments of Mr. Jeremiah +Stukeley.”</p> + +<p>Nor was that all. There was the off-chance +that the dons, scenting a practical joke, might +ignore the outrage, and Shelley, avid of publicity, +was determined to compel them to take +notice. So he came down, with a bundle of +his pamphlets under his arm, to Messrs. +Munday and Slatter’s shop—the very shop in +which an indulgent parent had given out that +his “printing freaks” were to be encouraged. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[29]</span>He wished those pamphlets, he said, to be +offered for sale at sixpence each; he wished +them to be well displayed on the counter and +in the window; in order that the window +might be dressed properly, he proposed to +dress it himself.</p> + +<p>He did so with an obliging readiness which +overwhelmed the amiable bookseller’s assistant. +In a minute or two “The Necessity of +Atheism” was displayed in Messrs. Munday +and Slatter’s shop, much as the first number +of a new magazine with a gaudy cover might +be displayed on one of the railway bookstalls +to-day.</p> + +<p>It remained so displayed for about twenty +minutes; and then the Rev. John Walker, a +Fellow of New College, passed the shop, +looked into the window to see what new +publications had arrived, read the title of +Shelley’s pamphlet, and, after being surprised +and shocked, was moved to action. +He walked into the shop, demanded the proprietors, +and gave them peremptory instructions:</p> + +<p>“Mr. Munday, and Mr. Slatter! What is +the meaning of this?”</p> + +<p>“We beg pardon, sir. We really didn’t +know. We hadn’t examined the publication +personally. But, of course, now that our +attention is drawn to it——”</p> + +<p>“Now that your attention is drawn to it, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[30]</span>Mr. Munday and Mr. Slatter, you will be +good enough to remove all the copies of it that +lie on your counter and in your window, and +to take them out into your back kitchen and +there burn them.”</p> + +<p>Such was the dialogue, as one can reconstruct +it from Mr. Slatter’s recollections, +contained in a letter addressed to Robert +Montgomery, the poet.</p> + +<p>Mr. Walker, of course, had no legal right to +give the instructions which he gave. From the +strictly legal point of view, he was ordering +a man over whom he had no jurisdiction to +destroy property which did not belong to him; +he would never have presumed to give such +orders in, say, Mr. Hatchard’s shop in Piccadilly. +At Oxford, however, his foot was firmly +planted on his native heath, and Messrs. +Munday and Slatter knew it. He might speak +to the Vice-Chancellor; and the Vice-Chancellor +might forbid undergraduates to deal +at their establishment. So they were all bows +and smiles and obsequious anxiety to oblige.</p> + +<p>“By all means, Mr. Walker. An admirable +idea, sir! Just what we were ourselves +on the point of suggesting. You may rely on +us to carry out your wishes.”</p> + +<p>“You will be good enough to carry them +out in my presence. I will accompany you +to your kitchen for that purpose.”</p> + +<p>“That will be very good of you, Mr. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[31]</span>Walker. It will be a great honour to our +kitchen. Will you please walk this way, sir?”</p> + +<p>So the holocaust was effected; and Messrs. +Munday and Slatter begged Shelley to call +on them, and told him what they had been +obliged to do.</p> + +<p>“We are really very sorry, Mr. Shelley. +We really could not help ourselves. Mr. +Walker was so very firm in the matter; and +even in your own interest, you know——”</p> + +<p><i>Et cetera.</i> There was to be no further +publicity for Shelley through the instrumentality +of the booksellers; and as no one was +likely to trouble about the authorship of an +anonymous brochure which had been reduced +to ashes, that would have been the end of the +matter if Shelley had not circulated his +pamphlet through the post. But then he <i>had</i> +so circulated it, and the covering “compliments +of Jeremiah Stukeley” were very +obviously in his hand-writing; and the recipients +of the presentation copies, who included +every bishop on the bench, were saying that +something really ought to be done; and the +dons were not only willing but anxious, and +not only anxious but eager, to lay hold of +the handle which Shelley had given them.</p> + +<p>He was a “Stinks Man,” and he was a +rowdy man; he made malodorous chemical +experiments, and he was impertinent when +he was “ragged.” The Senior Common-room +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[32]</span>was not going to stand atheism or any other +nonsense from such a man as that. So +Shelley was sent for “with the Dean’s compliments”—those +compliments of evil omen—and +the rest of the story may best be told in +the words of that Mr. Ridley already quoted, +who is a less prejudiced witness than Hogg.</p> + +<p>“It was announced one morning at a +breakfast party towards the end of the Lent +Term,” writes Mr. Ridley, “that Percy +Bysshe Shelley, who had recently become a +member of University College, was to be +called before a meeting of the common-room +for being the supposed author of a pamphlet +called ‘The Necessity of Atheism.’ This +anonymous work, consisting of not many +pages, had been studiously sent to most of the +dignitaries of the University and to others +more or less connected with Oxford. The +meeting took place the same day, and it was +understood that the pamphlet, together with +some notes sent with it, in which the supposed +author’s hand-writing appeared identified +with that of P. B. S., was placed before +him. He was asked if he could or would +deny the obnoxious production as his. No +direct reply was given either in the affirmative +or negative.</p> + +<p>“Shelley having quitted the room, T. J. +Hogg immediately appeared, voluntarily on +his part, to state that, if Shelley had anything +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[33]</span>to do with it, he (Hogg) was equally implicated, +and desired his share of the penalty, +whatever was inflicted. It has always been +supposed that Hogg wrote the Preface.</p> + +<p>“Towards the afternoon a large paper +bearing the College seal, and signed by the +Master and Dean, was affixed to the hall door, +declaring that the two offenders were publicly +expelled from the college <i>for contumacy in +refusing to answer certain questions put to +them</i>. The aforesaid two had made themselves +as conspicuous as possible by great +singularity of dress, and by walking up and +down the centre of the quadrangle, as if +proud of their anticipated fate,”—and, in +modern times, they would doubtless have +driven to the station in triumph on the roofs +of hansoms, escorted by a long procession of +uproarious admirers, though, as it was, they +went away quietly on the coach.</p> + +<p>That is all; for the subsequent picture of +Mr. Timothy Shelley, M.P., pursuing his +peccant son to his London lodging, sending +out for a bottle of port, and reading aloud +extracts from Paley’s “Evidences of Christianity” +while he drank it, belongs to +Shelley’s Life, but not to Oxford history.</p> + +<p class="tb">Robert Montgomery, of Lincoln, who tried +to compensate by the piety of his sentiments +for his lack of distinction as a poet, has +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[34]</span>recorded his opinion that the offenders +thoroughly deserved their punishment. +“Strange and unnatural as it may appear,” +he writes, “there are many in Oxford who +think that a University, based on the immortal +truths of the Gospel, ought not to license or +encourage blasphemy, however gilded by +genius.”</p> + +<p>No doubt there are many, not in Oxford +only but elsewhere as well, who agree that +this limitation of the functions of Universities +is desirable. The general proposition, at any +rate, shall not be disputed here. Jowett himself, +an advanced thinker if the Church of +England ever included one, appears to have +endorsed it when circumstances brought him +face to face with an undergraduate who declined +to attend chapel on the ground that +he did not believe in a God. “If you do +not believe in a God by eight o’clock to-morrow +morning, you will be sent down,” +the Master of Balliol is said to have chirruped +on that occasion; and it is difficult +to applaud his keen sense of the necessity of +discipline and condemn that of the Master of +University.</p> + +<p>It does not follow, however, that it is +necessary to take the grave Robert Montgomery’s +solemn view of Shelley’s offence. +His case was not that of the conscientious +and convinced blasphemer, but rather that +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[35]</span>of a practical joker who over-reached himself +and accepted martyrdom rather than confess +that he had been joking. And that, one +concludes, was the view of those later dignitaries +of the college who permitted the erection +of a monument to Shelley within the +college precincts—albeit in a dark corner +of those precincts, only to be reached by +way of an obscure passage which looks as +if it led to a coal-hole wherein an unwary +visitor would run a serious risk of being +arrested and charged with loitering with intent +to commit a felony.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[36]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="BALLIOL_COLLEGE">BALLIOL COLLEGE</h2> + +<p>The birching of Robert of Balliol by the Bishop of Durham—He +founds a College to make atonement for his fault—Insignificance +of the College in early times—Snell +Exhibitioners—Adam Smith—His scornful criticism of +Oxford—Southey—His introduction to Coleridge of +Jesus, Cambridge—Their joint dream of Pantisocracy—College +“rags” in the dark days—The dawn of +civilisation—Mastership of Parsons—Of Jenkyns—of +Jowett—Jowett as tutor—His reforms—His conversation—His +sermons—The inscrutable secret +which he guarded.</p> + +</div> + +<p>Balliol is the tangible and enduring product +of one of the most interesting of the abuses +(as Protestants esteem them) of the Roman +Catholic religion.</p> + +<p>The story begins on the day on which +Robert of Balliol—a lord of many lands in +the North of England—“got drunk,” as the +chronicler puts it, “in a manner unbecoming +his station in life,” and insulted the Bishop +of Durham. It is resumed on the day on +which Robert apologised to the Bishop, and +consented to do penance. The Bishop then +“birched him in the presence of the populace +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[37]</span>on the steps of the cathedral,” and sent him +forth with a tingling cuticle and an injunction +to make amends for his fault by spending +money on a benevolent undertaking. So he +hired a house for the accommodation of sixteen +poor scholars of Oxford, and allowed +them eightpence a day each for their expenses. +After his death, his widow, the Lady +Devorguilla of Balliol, bearing no malice +against the Bishop for his treatment of her +husband—having reason to know, perhaps, +that it had done him good—supplemented +the endowment by a further substantial +donation.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus03" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/illus03.jpg" alt=""> + <figcaption> + <p>BALLIOL COLLEGE.</p> + <p class="right">[To face p. 36.</p> + </figcaption> +</figure> + +<p>Such were the picturesque beginnings of the +College in the reign of Henry III. Other +gifts and legacies enriched its chest from +time to time. The Snell Exhibitions connected +it with the University of Glasgow. +The Blundell Endowment introduced a +steady flow of scholars from Tiverton. But +the college remained unimportant. Its great +period—a period which began under the +mastership of Dr. Parsons and culminated +under the mastership of Benjamin Jowett—belongs +to the nineteenth century. Before +that time it has no history worth relating; +and the few great men who, by accident, +went there to be educated, owed nothing to +their tutors, but were left to educate themselves +as best they could.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[38]</span></p> + +<p>Adam Smith, who was up from 1740 to +1746, was the greatest of them; and, if +Adam Smith’s ghost still haunts the Balliol +quadrangles, we may be quite sure that it is +an ungrateful and a growling ghost.</p> + +<p>He was one of the Snell Exhibitioners +above-mentioned; and the Snell Exhibitioners +of the eighteenth century had a very uncomfortable +time. They came from Scotland; +and the College took Dr. Johnson’s view of +Scotsmen, regarding them as pauper aliens, +who ought to be repatriated, and “smugs,” +unfit to mix with civilised mankind. The +worst rooms in the college were invariably +allotted to them by the dons; and their weird +accents and barbarous dress were the subject +of the ribald mirth of undergraduates.</p> + +<p>Things got, indeed, to such a pass, at one +time, that the Exhibitioners sent a formal +complaint to Glasgow, and Glasgow made +formal representations to the Master of the +College; but the Master’s answer was unsatisfactory +and curt. He said that he did +not particularly want the Snell Exhibitioners +at Balliol and would raise no objection if +they liked to transfer themselves to another +college. He even went so far as to suggest +that perhaps they would feel more at home +at Hertford; and as the hint was not taken, +his relations with them continued to be +strained.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[39]</span></p> + +<p>Such was the tone of the college when +Adam Smith’s name was entered on the books. +The only friend whom he made there was +Douglas, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury, a +Snell Exhibitioner like himself. We know +little of the circumstances of his career except +that he habitually took tar-water as a +remedy for “an inveterate scurvy and shaking +of the head”; that undergraduates gibed +at him for his poverty, exhorting him to gorge +himself in the hall on the ground that his +long-delayed chance of eating a full meal +had come to him at last; and that a don +reprimanded him for reading Hume’s “Treatise +on Human Nature” and confiscated the +pernicious book. It is not much; but it is +enough to lead us to expect to find him +regarding his University with feelings of +disgust and contempt; and there is abundant +evidence that he did so.</p> + +<p>Adam Smith, indeed, is a far more convincing +witness than Gibbon, who was at +Magdalen a few years after he had gone +down, of the deplorable state of learning at +Oxford in the eighteenth century. He was +older; he was longer in residence; he was +more anxious to learn. But he sought in +vain, he says, for “the proper means of being +taught the sciences which it is the proper +business of these incorporated bodies to +teach”; and his generalisation about the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[40]</span>college tutors is that “every man consented +that his neighbour might neglect his duty +provided he himself were allowed to neglect +his own.” Moreover he passed one criticism +on Oxford which is a delightful variant on +a more famous utterance of another Balliol +man of a later date.</p> + +<p>Oxford, Matthew Arnold has told us, is the +home of “lost causes” and “impossible +loyalties.” Adam Smith said pretty much +the same thing, but he said it very differently, +speaking of the most venerable of our seats +of learning as “a sanctuary in which exploded +systems and obsolete prejudices find shelter +and protection after they have been hunted +out of every corner of the world.” The +sentiments are practically identical; and +there could be no more charming example +of truth changing its aspect as men change +their point of view.</p> + +<p class="tb">The only other name which counts in the +annals of eighteenth century Balliol is that of +Southey, who was up in 1793.</p> + +<p>He was by way of being a reading man; +but though the dark ages were almost over +and the dawn of civilisation was near at hand, +the College did little, if anything, to direct +his studies. “Mr. Southey,” said one of his +tutors in a burst of candour, “you won’t +learn anything from my lectures sir, so if you +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[41]</span>have any studies of your own, you had better +pursue them.”</p> + +<p>He did so. He rose at five in order to do +so, quickening his diligence with “negus.” +One suspects that he must have been drinking +negus on the morning of the day on which he +went on the river “in a little skiff which the +least deviation from the balance would upset,” +and “did not step exactly in the middle,” +with the result that “the boat tilted up” and +its occupant only saved himself from complete +submersion by clinging to the side of a barge. +The incident does certainly seem to give +colour to his reflection that “temperance is +much wanted at Oxford,” and that “the +waters of Helicon are too much polluted by +the wine of Bacchus.”</p> + +<p>Nor did the studies pursued under the +cheering influence of matutinal negus belong to +the ordinary curriculum of the place. Southey +neglected his Aristotle. He preferred, he +says, “the brilliant colours of fancy, nature, +and Rousseau” to “the positive dogmas of +the Stagirite”; and though the <i>Contrat +Social</i> may serve as a substitute for the +“Politics,” the presumption is strong that +Southey preferred “<i>La nouvelle Héloise</i>” +which can by no means be regarded as a +worthy alternative to the “Ethics.”</p> + +<p>We may let that pass, however; and we +may also let pass Southey’s denunciation of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[42]</span>the “waste of wigs and wisdom” which he +discerned among the dons and the “abandoned +excess” which he detected among those +undergraduates who did not rise early to +drink negus. The importance of Southey’s +Oxford career resides neither in these trifles +nor even in his refusal to have his hair +powdered by the college barber before sitting +down to dinner. The most significant thing +that happened to him was that he made the +acquaintance of a young man from a neighbouring +University—Mr. Samuel Taylor +Coleridge, of Jesus College, Cambridge, who +was introduced to him by a bookseller.</p> + +<p>The young Cantab. and the young Oxonian +took to each other at once, and proceeded to +see visions and dream dreams in concert. +Rousseau and the Revolutionists, with their +cry of “Back to Nature!” and their belief +in the “perfectibility of the human race,” +appealed to their imagination and inspired +it. The world, they agreed, was weary of +the past. Why not escape from it? So they +sat in Southey’s rooms at Balliol—no doubt +with steaming tumblers of negus on the table—and +discussed the ways and means of doing +so.</p> + +<p>America, of course, was to be the scene +of the experiment. They would cross the +Atlantic, and settle on the banks of the +Susquehanna—how could they fail to be +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[43]</span>happy on the banks of a river with such a +melodious name? Land, they had been informed, +was cheap there. An American land +agent had offered to sell them some, and had +assured them that the danger alike from +buffaloes and from mosquitoes was much exaggerated. +So they would borrow money, and +get married, and go there. They themselves +would till the soil, and their wives should +“cook and perform all domestic offices.” It +would be delightful, Southey thought, “to go +with all my friends; to live with them in the +most agreeable and most honourable employment; +to eat the fruits I have raised, and +see every face happy around me; my mother +sheltered in her declining years from the +anxieties which have pursued her; my +brothers educated to be useful and virtuous.”</p> + +<p>It came to nothing. The Pantisocracy, as +it was to be called, was never formed. Perhaps +“the females of the party” did not +take so kindly to the idea of cooking and +domestic offices—far away from bonnet-shops—as +had been expected; and there was, at +any rate, the difficulty that the capital required +was not forthcoming. But the dream was a +generous one and sheds a golden glamour on +the closing years of a dark age. Southey, +whether one cares about his poetry or not, +is the most engaging figure in eighteenth-century +Balliol.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[44]</span></p> + +<p>The darkness of the dark age at Balliol +could be illustrated by many anecdotes of +many “rags.” On one occasion the Dean +was ragged—though it does not appear that he +was put on the bonfire, as once happened, in +quite recent times, to the Dean of an adjacent +college. On another occasion some Balliol +Jacobites celebrated the birthday of Cardinal +York by sallying forth into the streets and +ragging every notable Hanoverian whom they +met, including a Canon of Windsor, and +cheering for King James III.—an offence for +which, after the Master had let them off with +a Latin imposition, they were brought to trial +in the Court of King’s Bench, and sentenced +to two years’ imprisonment with hard labour.</p> + +<p>It was exploits of that order, and not any +idle impulse to play upon words, which +first caused Balliol men to be spoken of as +Men of Belial. They were of frequent occurrence, +and the bad name which they gave +the College was not redeemed by any intellectual +distinction; but presently, in 1798, +Dr. Parsons became Master, and then a +memorable change began. Dr. Parsons organised +the tutorial system, and cast his vote +for throwing Balliol fellowships open to outsiders. +He also collaborated with the Provost +of Oriel and the Dean of Christ Church in the +institution of the Honours Schools, in which +firsts were presently taken by two very remarkable +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[45]</span>Balliol men, Sir William Hamilton, +the philosopher, and J. G. Lockhart, the +author of the Life of Scott. And then +came Dr. Jenkyns.</p> + +<p class="tb">Undoubtedly Jenkyns was a great man, as +much greater than Parsons as Jowett was to +be greater than himself. Judging him by +results, one is led irresistibly to that conclusion. +Yet how he managed to be so great, and +to accomplish such results, is a perplexing +puzzle; for among all the stories of him +which have been preserved there is hardly one +in which he does not cut a grotesque and +undignified figure.</p> + +<p>There is the story, for example, of his +encounter with Blaydes of Balliol, who was +afterwards to change his name to Calverley. +Blaydes, it is said, was taking ladies over the +college, and wished to show them all the lions. +“That,” he said, pointing, “is the Master of +Balliol’s study window”; and he picked up +a stone and threw it. The missile went +crashing through the glass, and an angry +countenance became visible, glaring through +the aperture. “And that, I rather fancy,” +Blaydes continued calmly, “is the Master of +Balliol himself.”</p> + +<p>Then there is the story of Jenkyns’s passage +of arms with Sir William Hamilton. Sir +William, it is related, coming hurriedly out +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[46]</span>of his room, discovered Jenkyns listening at +the keyhole. Furious at this prying curiosity, +he clutched the spy by his coat collar, lifted +him over the balustrade, and held him +howling in mid-air. Then, having terrified +him sufficiently, he lifted him back again, +and apologised: “Good gracious, sir! I’m +so sorry, but I had no idea that it would +possibly be you!”</p> + +<p>Finally, since there is no room for all the +stories, one may recall, on Jowett’s authority, +the story of Jenkyns’s comic sermon. He +gave out the text, “The sin that doth so +easily beset us”; and then he dropped into +bathos. “I mean,” he explained in severe +and acid tones, “the habit of contracting +debts.” The undergraduates looked at each +other and wondered. Had the Master +actually said this thing, or had he only seemed +to say it? They realised, at last, that he had +actually said it; and then, for the first and +only time in its history, the walls of the +College chapel shook with the inextinguishable +laughter of an insolvent congregation. +It was several minutes, Jowett tells us, before +the preacher could proceed with his discourse.</p> + +<p>Decidedly it is not in anecdotes such as +these that the greatness of Jenkyns comes +out. But he took his position as Head of +a college very seriously, at a time when most +Heads of colleges preferred their wine, their +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[47]</span>ease, or their theology; and he was an +astoundingly good judge alike of a competent +tutor and of a clever undergraduate. Hence +his success. The Balliol tutors, in his time, +were the best. They taught the men, with +rare exceptions, instead of worrying them +about “movements”; and the Balliol +scholarship became, at this time, the blue +riband for which the chief public schools most +eagerly competed. Presumably it is so still; +and it certainly was so when, after the colourless +interlude of Scott, Jowett succeeded to +the Mastership in 1870.</p> + +<p class="tb">Jowett’s is the one name of supreme and +outstanding consequence in Balliol annals. +He was elected to a scholarship there from +St. Paul’s School in 1836; he was promoted +to a fellowship while still an undergraduate; +he became a tutor of the College +at the age of twenty-five; he continued to be +associated with its fortunes, without a break, +until his death in 1893. He not only did +more than any other man to make Balliol +just what Balliol is; he also aspired, as he +said, to “inoculate England with Balliol.”</p> + +<p>In that ambition he succeeded, for Balliol +under Jowett was a nursery of almost every +kind of talent. Perhaps it was weak in +divinity—it was a Balliol man, according to +the story, who told the examiner that Gamaliel +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[48]</span>was “a hill at the foot of which Paul was +brought up”—but it surpassed all the other +colleges in its “output” of statesmen, pro-consuls, +professors, and men of letters. Mr. +Asquith, Lord Lansdowne, and Lord Peel +are Balliol men; so are Lord Milner and Lord +Curzon. Balliol has largely staffed the Universities +of Scotland. At Jowett’s funeral +seven of the pall-bearers were Heads of +Oxford houses who had been at Balliol, and +the list of Balliol representatives in recent and +contemporary literature includes the names +of A. C. Swinburne, John Addington Symonds, +Mr. Andrew Lang, Mr. W. H. Mallock, Mr. +J. A. Godley, Canon Beeching, Mr. Anthony +Hope Hawkins, and the late G. W. Steevens—“the +Balliol prodigy,” as they called him—who +became a journalist and succeeded in +sounding a new note on the brazen trumpet +of the <i>Daily Mail</i>. One could easily extend +the list, but to what end? We have no need +of further witnesses.</p> + +<p>Jowett, as the table of results proves, was +a great educator, and a great organiser and +director of education, but he was also something +more than that—a great personality, +who fought a hard fight and won it, wearing +down opposition and smiling down detraction.</p> + +<p>He was not a particularly great scholar. +“Hullo! Another howler!” is said to have +been the refrain occasionally uttered automatically +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[49]</span>in his presence by friends to whom +he submitted the manuscript of his translations +of Plato and Thucydides; and it was +maliciously said that his appointment to the +Regius Professorship of Greek was a case of +the “endowment of research”—a pecuniary +inducement held out to him to learn the language. +Nor was he a great philosopher, or, +in spite of “Essays and Reviews” and the +Commentary on the Epistle to the Thessalonians, +a great divine. But he was, nevertheless, +emphatically a great man, who grew +into a great institution. One could not hear +of Oxford without hearing of him; one could +not live at Oxford without feeling that his +presence pervaded it. He was, in the end, +the very <i>genius loci</i>, and one would no more +have spoken disrespectfully of him than of +the Equator.</p> + +<p>It is said to have been Mrs. Grote who +christened him “the cherub.” His bust in the +Bodleian certainly looks like the bust of a +cherub, and the sound of his voice was like a +cherub’s chirp. It gave one the impression of +an innocent man who had never known anything +of the passionate temptations which distract +the young, and for whom all the riddles +of the painful earth could be solved, without +reference to such passions, by the dry light +of intellect alone. He seemed to come down +to breakfast from a higher plane of thought—an +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[50]</span>intellectual tribunal before which his +guests were summoned, and from which there +was no appeal. He was criticism—as a rule +destructive criticism—incarnate. His praise +was approbation from Sir Hubert Stanley; his +blame could make the cleverest man feel a +fool.</p> + +<p>It followed that he could not be widely +popular. Criticism, especially if it be +unemotional, is not very popular as a literary +art, and is still less popular as a social accomplishment; +and though, if we may believe the +biographers, the Master was not really unemotional, +he generally contrived to seem to +be so, being, in fact, very shy, and very much +afraid of his emotions. One may think of him +most justly, perhaps, as a man full of the +milk of human kindness, but profoundly +conscious that milk makes a mess when it boils +over, and firmly resolved to prevent that +catastrophe by keeping it in a refrigerator. +He gave generously out of his later abundance, +and with a positive shrinking from advertisement. +But he did not suffer fools gladly, +and he could even snub the deserving, if they +gave him the opportunity, in the knock-down +style of Dr. Johnson.</p> + +<p>Nor was he an equally sound critic of all +kinds of intellectual promise. He divined, +for instance, the potentialities of Mr. Asquith, +but failed to discern those of Mr. Andrew +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[51]</span>Lang. “Asquith is sure to succeed, he is so +direct,” was his verdict on the former; but to +the latter, as Mr. Lang has himself recorded, +he tendered the advice: “Don’t write as if you +were writing for a penny paper.” And there +is a story of a scholar of the eighties, now an +eminent teacher of youth, who shall be nameless +here, who suffered even more severely +at his hands.</p> + +<p>It was at breakfast, and the conversation +flagged, as it was a little apt to do when parties +of undergraduates breakfasted with the +Master. The scholar tried to stimulate it by +a literary remark which he hoped might give +the silent Master something to talk about. +“Master,” he ventured, “I have been reading +Matthew Arnold’s poems, and I think he is +a great poet.” There was a dead silence +while the company waited for the Master to +follow up the theme. “We all think so, Mr. +X.,” he piped in his high treble, and it was +felt that he could not have blanketed the +conversation more effectively if he had left +the room, slamming the door behind him.</p> + +<p>“If you have nothing more sensible to say +than that, you had better be silent altogether,” +is another of his recorded repartees to some +one who remarked upon the weather; and one +could make a long list of similar retorts of +deadly finality behind which the Master entrenched +himself. He probably did not know +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[52]</span>how much they hurt, but fought, not aggressively, +but in self-defence, being sensitive, +and fearing to be drawn, having a lively recollection +of cases in which men had tried to +draw him by arguing, in their weekly essays, +in favour of atheism or anarchism, or setting +any other sort of pitfall into which it would +be pleasant to see one in authority stumbling. +At all events men seem to have accepted his +severe rejoinders in that spirit, and to have +had too profound a reverence for his high +intellectual standards to resent their rude +practical application. If they did not suffer +a rebuff from him gladly, at least they suffered +it, as something inherent in the mysterious +nature of things, something the reason for +which might thereafter, if they were patient, +be revealed to them.</p> + +<p>For Jowett was not only a great man, but +also, like most great men, a great enigma. +Many wondered, and perhaps no one ever +knew, how he reconciled his position with his +conscience. He had subscribed to the Thirty-nine +Articles of the Church of England, and +then he had disproved them, or a good many +of them, and then he had subscribed to them +again. He had attached no condition to his +second subscription of them except the simple +one, “if you will give me a new pen.” There +was also a story current, though it is probably +untrue, as it is also told of Theodore +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[53]</span>Hook, of St. Mary Hall, that he offered to +sign forty Articles if the signature of thirty-nine +did not suffice.</p> + +<p>Why did he do these things? What +remnant of belief remained to him after he +had done them? By what chain of argument +was he bound to his office as a clergyman +of the Church of England? Those were the +problems posed, but he would have been a +bold man who ventured to press the Master +for the solutions.</p> + +<p>His chief interests, at this stage, indeed, +were rather practical than speculative. He +gave large house parties of people who had +succeeded in life. He bought an organ, and +arranged for the Balliol Sunday evening concerts. +He shortened the chapel services, saying—or +so it is said—that if one could praise +God adequately in half an hour, it was an +absurd waste of time to devote three-quarters +of an hour to the proceeding. He allowed +Oxford to have a theatre—a thing forbidden +by the pious wisdom of the men of old. He +quoted “<i>sat prata biberunt</i>,” and negotiated +for the drainage of the Oxford swamps.</p> + +<p>He also preached, of course, and his +sermons were always interesting, and sometimes +pleasingly satirical, as when he smote +Renan and Farrar with a double stroke, expressing +his desire to read a Life of Christ +which should be neither “sentimental” nor +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[54]</span>“picturesque”; but it could hardly be said +that they settled the vexed question of his +personal attitude towards the creeds which he +recited without taking them too seriously or +the formulæ which he manipulated with a +sort of spiritual sleight-of-hand.</p> + +<p>Possibly he argued that, as no clergyman +ever believed all the Articles of the Christian +Faith, one clergyman had as good a right as +another to pick and choose among them. Or +he may have felt that for a man to quit the +Church merely because he had demonstrated +some of its propositions to be erroneous was +as ridiculous as for a doctor to take down +his brass plate merely because he had +discovered a new treatment of a disease at +which the old-fashioned practitioners shook +their heads. But, if that was his view, he +never uttered it, preferring to go his own way, +possessing his own soul and guarding his own +secret.</p> + +<p>One could almost see him guarding it; +so that our last glimpse may be of a quaint-looking +little old man in evening dress trotting +through the parks in that unusual costume +on a Sunday afternoon: an arresting figure, +with venerable white hair, a beautifully fresh +pink face, and the seal of inscrutable mystery +on his forehead.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[55]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="MERTON_COLLEGE">MERTON COLLEGE</h2> + +<p>Antiquity of Merton—The model of subsequent foundations—Friction +between the University and the town—The +great “town and gown row” of 1354—The scholars of +Merton save the University—The wardenship of Sir +Henry Savile—The visit of Queen Elizabeth—Oxford +during the Civil War—Queen Henrietta Maria at +Merton—How Merton ceased to be a reading college—Scandalous +proceedings in the gardens—Mandell +Creighton and Lord Randolph Churchill.</p> + +</div> + +<p>Though in this work, as in the Oxford University +Calendar, Merton stands third among +the colleges, there is a sense in which the +first place may be claimed for it. Both +University and Balliol got their endowments +at a slightly earlier date, but Merton was the +first College to be launched, in 1264, a year +before the meeting of the first English Parliament, +as a self-governing corporation.</p> + +<p>The bequest of William of Durham, which +resulted in the foundation of University, was +in its origin merely a pension fund, and John +of Balliol, in the first instance, only paid for +the support of scholars in a hired house. +Walter de Merton, on the contrary, began at +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[56]</span>once to build and to legislate, and his Statutes +were the model of the Statutes of subsequent +foundations, not only at Oxford, but at Cambridge +also. The founder of Peterhouse, the +first of the Cambridge colleges, expressly +decreed that the Peterhouse students were to +live according to “the rule of the scholars +of Merton at Oxford.”</p> + +<p>It follows that the history of Merton is +more closely connected than that of any other +college with the earliest turmoils—which were +many; and the historian of Merton may properly +begin with a glance at those brawls +which a later civilisation came to know as +“town and gown rows.”</p> + +<p class="tb">Discord between the town and the University +began as soon as the University became +important and powerful, and it owed its origin, +not to incompatibility of temper between +undergraduates and bargees, but to the mutual +jealousies of conflicting jurisdictions, ill-defined +and therefore liable to clash. Nowadays, +of course, the object of the authorities +on both sides—the police on the one hand +and the proctors on the other—is to keep the +peace between the combatants. In the Middle +Ages the seniors were as pugnacious as the +juniors, and joined as ferociously in the +affrays.</p> + +<p>Theoretically it was the function of the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[57]</span>town to prevent, or punish, breaches of the +peace by townsmen, while the University had +a similar responsibility with regard to +breaches of the peace by gownsmen; but +when townsmen and gownsmen fell out, each +authority resented the interference of the +other. That was one cause of friction, and +further friction occurred in connection with +disputed points of sanitation and hygiene. The +gownsmen objected to the sale of stinking +fish and to the brewing of beer from water +contaminated by sewage; the townsmen +thought the objection fastidious, and were +very angry when the University appealed to +the King to interfere with these time-honoured +customs. Hence constant bickerings, and a +frequent exchange of abusive language; hence +ultimately open war and that bloody Battle of +Saint Scholastica’s Day, in which the townsmen +found the scholars of Merton their most +formidable foes.</p> + +<p>The trouble began in a tavern, on February +10, 1354. Some scholars who were +drinking there found fault with the wine, and +the vintner said that it was quite good enough +wine for them. The scholars then threw the +wine at the vintner’s head, and the vintner +called his friends and neighbours to the +rescue. They rang the bell of the Church +of Saint Martin at Carfax, and the populace, +summoned by that tocsin, shot at the scholars +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[58]</span>with bows and arrows. The Chancellor of +the University—the Lord Curzon of Kedleston +of his epoch—appeared upon the scene, ingeminating +peace where there was no peace, +and he also was shot at. Then the bell of +the University Church of Saint Mary began to +ring, and the gownsmen gathered, and the +<i>mêlée</i> became general and lasted until the +setting of the sun. No one was killed; the +gownsmen got the best of it, and the Chancellor +supposed that the riot was over. He +issued a proclamation bidding the scholars +go to their lectures as usual on the following +day.</p> + +<p>They went, but found the townsmen lying +in wait for them. Reinforcements—two +thousand peasants carrying an ominous black +flag—had swarmed into the city from Cowley, +Headington, and Hinksey. The Carfax tocsin +pealed out a second time, just after the +dinner hour, and the tocsin of Saint Mary’s +responded as before. The townsmen, with +their bucolic allies, not only assailed the +scholars in the streets, but pursued them into +their lodgings, inns, and halls, beating down +the doors with improvised battering-rams, +killing all the gownsmen they could catch, +and stealing or destroying all the property +that they could lay their hands on.</p> + +<p>The Friars came out, carrying their huge +crucifix and chanting their Litany, to try to +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[59]</span>compose the strife, but their intervention was +in vain. They themselves became the objects +of the popular fury, and one scholar was struck +down even while clinging to the crucifix. +Other scholars were followed into the churches +and massacred at the foot of the altar. Dead +bodies were flung on to dunghills, the +wounded were hailed to prison, and even +torture was not spared. “The crown of some +chaplains,” says the chronicler, “viz., all the +skin so far as the tonsure went, these diabolical +imps flayed off in scorn of their clergy.”</p> + +<p>At last the University could resist no more. +The gownsmen began to flee into the country—all +save the scholars of Merton. These had +their solid walls behind which they could +retire. Withdrawing to their college, while +the town triumphed without—the sole representatives +of learning in a deserted city which +the Bishop had laid under an interdict—they +waited for the day of vengeance and redress +of grievances.</p> + +<p>It came. The King sent down a special +commission to investigate the matter. The +Mayor of Oxford and his bailiffs were sent +to prison; the sheriff was removed from +office; and presently the town was further +humiliated by the bestowal of fresh privileges +upon the University authorities. They +thenceforward, and not the townsmen, were +to decide whether fish stank, and if they +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[60]</span>decided that it did, they were to send it to +the hospital for the consumption of the sick. +In addition to this privilege, they were to +receive pecuniary compensation for the +damage done in the riot, and their supremacy +was in various other ways established on a +firm constitutional basis.</p> + +<p>Merton, that is to say, saved the University +at an hour when, but for Merton, the townsmen +would have wiped it out, and its clerks +would have been dispersed over the face of +the country.</p> + +<p class="tb">As Merton was, through the scenes above +described, the first college to be interesting, +so, too, it was the first college to rise to +conspicuous dignity, and enjoy the glories of +a golden age. The supreme position achieved +by Christ Church towards the end of the +eighteenth and by Balliol in the middle of +the nineteenth century, was won by Merton +in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, under the +Wardenship of Sir Henry Savile, and at the +time when the founder of the Bodleian Library +was a Fellow of the College.</p> + +<p>It may be that Savile’s name has not +echoed down the corridors of time quite as +loudly as the names of some other Oxford +men; but it is kept alive by the Savilian Professorships, +and one may fix his position fairly +well by saying that he was at once the Jowett +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[61]</span>and the Liddell of his generation. He was, +that is to say, a great scholar and a great +teacher; a great innovator and a man of +great personal prestige; a link between the +academic world and the world of action; the +sort of man whom kings delighted to honour. +Elizabeth honoured him, and so also did +James I.</p> + +<p>It was Savile who entertained Elizabeth on +her visit to Oxford in 1592. He presided +over the disputations held in her honour in +Saint Mary’s Church, and delivered a ringing +panegyric on her reign with the inevitable +reference to the British triumph over the +Armada: “<i>Tuis auspiciis Hispania Anglum +non vidit nisi victorem, Anglia Hispanum nisi +captivum</i>.” It was after enjoying his hospitality +at Merton that her Majesty, as she rode +away, paused on Shotover, and “looking wistfully +towards Oxford,” said: “Farewell, farewell, +dear Oxford! God bless thee and increase +thy sons in number, holiness, and +virtue!”</p> + +<p>Elizabeth furthermore made Savile Provost +of Eton—an office which he held concurrently +with the Merton Wardenship. She gave him +the office in spite of the fact that the Statutes +reserved it for clergymen, and that Savile +was a layman. He suggested to her Majesty +that Statutes could not bind a sovereign, and +her Majesty agreed with him, and it was while +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[62]</span>he was Provost of Eton that he entertained +James I. and was made a baronet.</p> + +<p>The Fellows of Merton of those days were +already far removed from their early condition +of “poor scholars.” They could hold +their own at Court, and were well qualified +to serve their country as ambassadors. Elizabeth +sent one Merton man as Ambassador to +Madrid, and another to Venice, Switzerland, +and France; but the College did not lose touch +with learning because it had gained touch with +affairs. Sir Thomas Bodley, as all the world +knows, returned from his travels to found the +library which bears his name, and Savile +assisted in the preparation of the Authorised +Version of the Bible, produced an edition of +St. Chrysostom which cost him £8,000, and +founded the Professorships of Geometry and +Astronomy in order that the multitude might +no longer think “that the most useful +branches of Mathematicks were spells and her +professors limbs of the devil.”</p> + +<p>He is said to have been a “very severe +governor”—one whose students “hated him +for his austerity.” He preferred the plodding +and persevering to the brilliant. “If I would +look for wits,” he said, “I would go to Newgate. +There be the wits.” And there is a +story of his own assiduous devotion to his +studies, which probably illustrates the attitude +of a good many homely wives towards learned +husbands.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[63]</span></p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“He was so sedulous,” we read, “at his +study that his lady thereby thought herself +neglected, and coming to him one day as he +was in his study, saluted him thus: ‘Sir +Henry, I would I were a book too, and then +you would a little more respect me.’ Whereto, +one standing by replied, ‘Madam, you must +then be an almanack, that he might change +every year.’ Whereat she was not a little +displeased.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Those were the great days; but the times +were to be more exciting when the Civil War +broke out, and Oxford, after the battle of +Edgehill, became the Royalist headquarters, +garrisoned by the royal troops, surrounded +by fortifications which townsmen and gownsmen +helped to build, and beleaguered, more or +less—at first rather less than more, but finally +rather more than less—by the Parliamentary +forces under Fairfax, who threw a bridge over +the Cherwell, near Marston, and mounted a +battery on Headington Hill.</p> + +<p>One cannot pause to tell that story at +length, or draw that picture in detail; but +a stray fact or two will indicate what Oxford +in general and Merton College in particular +then looked like.</p> + +<p>Soldiers were, of course, encamped wherever +there was room for them. The New +College cloisters were turned into an arsenal, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[64]</span>and a powder factory was established at +Osney. New Inn Hall was the mint at which +the College plate was being melted down and +coined into money. A line of earthworks ran +from Folly Bridge across Christ Church +Meadows. Parliament—the Royalist section +of Parliament, that is to say—met in the +House of Convocation. Prisoners of war were +stowed away, and very nearly starved, in the +castle in which Queen Maud had once been +beleaguered by King Stephen. Charles I. +held his Court at Christ Church, and Queen +Henrietta Maria held hers at Merton, the two +royal apartments being connected by a secret +passage.</p> + +<p>It followed, therefore, that Merton was the +centre of the light side of war. The Warden, +Nathaniel Brent, was a Parliamentarian, and +was absent, acting as Judge-Marshal in the +Parliamentary Army; William Harvey, of +Caius College, Cambridge, the discoverer of +the circulation of the blood, was thrust into +his place; and Merton, having accepted him +under protest, lived joyously, doing its best +to entertain the Queen and her ladies, who, +on their part, did their best to be gracious to +Merton. “<i>Tota Academia morbo castrensi +afflicta</i>” is one Mertonian’s summing up; but +that is a grumbler’s unkind way of putting it.</p> + +<p>Regiments of University men were raised. +They did good service, but they could not +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[65]</span>always be fighting. They sallied, and raided, +and cut up convoys, and then returned to +their headquarters; and, on their return, +the dust-soiled warriors were received by +smiling ladies in the Merton Gardens or the +Christ Church Broad Walk, or listened, with +the ladies, to concerts in the college chapels, +or played in a <i>masque</i> in one of the college +halls for their diversion.</p> + +<p>It was a glorious time—a time when gaudily +apparelled boys swaggered about with the +assurance of men and the sincere conviction +that the only life worth living was the life of +the gallant who fought the King’s enemies +in the morning and made love to the Queen’s +ladies at night. But it was not a time at +which students could be expected to mind +their books; and the habit of study, when +once lost, is not easily recovered. Amid the +clash of arms Merton ceased to be a reading +college, and circumstances conspired to prevent +it from reverting to that character until +after the lapse of many generations.</p> + +<p class="tb">Three later royal visits—two by +Charles II. and one by James II.—may +be supposed to have operated unfavourably +to study; and another cause of deterioration +can be detected in the measures which the +College took for the relief of its pecuniary +embarrassments. A resolution was passed to +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[66]</span>the effect that the presence of poor men in +the College should be discouraged, and that +preference should be shown to postulants who +were willing to present the College with +silver tankards and subscribe heavily to the +replenishment of the College Library.</p> + +<p>The plan served its purpose. The Merton +plate-chest was soon full to overflowing, and +the shelves of the Merton library were also +filled. But the College had, in the meantime, +become a College of rich men, bent upon +amusement rather than profit, and more eager +to kindle material bonfires in the quad than +to hand on the metaphoric torch of culture. +Perhaps it has, by this time, lived down +that reputation, but it certainly retained, +and even nursed it, long after most of +the other colleges had begun to take life +seriously.</p> + +<p>In the eighteenth century, indeed, one does +not expect to find the age anything but +dark; but even in that scandalous period +Merton was distinguished by a special +scandal of its own. Ladies of more charm +than reputation came to Oxford in large +numbers in those days, and the gardens of +Merton were their favourite haunt. Their +presence there has been celebrated alike in +verse and prose. The prose censor rudely +complains of “that multitude of Female Residentiaries +who have of late infested our +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[67]</span>learned retirements”; while the poetical +satirist exclaims:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“In vain his tutor with a watchful care</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Rebukes his folly, warns him to beware,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Aspire above the common Merton crowd,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The vain, the lewd, the impudent and proud.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Beauty at Oxford is a thing so scarce</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That all thy panegyrick turns to farce.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">From which state of things there resulted +“imprudent marriages”—and worse—with the +result that sleepy authority at last awoke to +what was going on, and locked the garden +gates.</p> + +<p>The locking of the garden gates, however, +did not in itself suffice to make Merton a +hive of industry, or even a home of order; +and legends of stormy occurrences within its +walls continue to be frequent until a comparatively +recent date. “All that I can say, +gentlemen,” said the Warden, Dr. Marsham, +on one occasion, haranguing the undergraduates +in hall—“all that I can say is, +that if you want to behave like barbarian +savages, why—ahem! ahem!—you should +come and ask leave first”; and an authentic +story relates that Dr. Mandell Creighton, the +late Bishop of London, was once, while an +undergraduate, “employed to fetch in after +dinner a supply of penny whistles and other +musical instruments, armed with which, with +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[68]</span>tea-trays as drums, making the most horrible +din, and letting off squibs and crackers as +they went, the undergraduates marched round +and round the Fellows’ quad.”</p> + +<p>And, if Creighton did these things, what +may we suppose to have been done by Creighton’s +pupil, the late Lord Randolph Churchill? +That is a delicate subject on which Lord +Randolph’s biographers do not as a rule say +more than is strictly necessary; but there +is at any rate one story of his undergraduate +days which it seems right to tell, because the +delightful audacity of the future leader of the +Fourth Party is foreshadowed in it.</p> + +<p>Lord Randolph, it is said, was once “sent +for” to be “ragged,” whether for cutting +lectures or for some other offence against +discipline. He was received by an indignant +don, who began to deliver stern expostulations +from the hearthrug, on which he stood, +warming his back at the fire. In the heat of +self-justification Lord Randolph advanced +boldly, and the don, intimidated, shrank away. +As the interview was approaching its conclusion, +another undergraduate, who had also +been summoned to the presence, knocked and +entered. He found Lord Randolph on the +hearthrug, with his coat-tails comfortably +drawn up, delivering a vehement harangue, +while the don cowered submissively in a +corner of the apartment listening to him.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[69]</span></p> + +<p>Remembering that story, we cannot wonder +that Lord Randolph is still a hero with the +rising generation of the College which educated +him so imperfectly that when, as +Chancellor of the Exchequer, he was confronted +with some decimal fractions, he had +to send for a permanent official to tell him +“the meaning of those d—d dots.”</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[70]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="EXETER_COLLEGE">EXETER COLLEGE</h2> + +<p>The West Country College—A Whig College—“Debauched +by a drunken governor”—Eminent <i>Alumni</i>—“Parson +Jack”—His bout at fisticuffs—Garibaldi’s +Englishman—His prowess on the river—James +Anthony Froude—His innate Protestantism—The +burning of his “Nemesis of Faith”—Burne Jones and +William Morris.</p> + +</div> + +<p>Exeter is the College for whose founder’s +soul the author of this work is particularly +bound to pray; and he hereby renders grateful +homage to the memory of the Bishop of +Exeter and Lord High Treasurer of England +in the sorry reign of Edward II., whose benefaction +he enjoyed in the character of a +Stapledon scholar. If he says but little about +Walter de Stapledon, that is because there +is little to be said, except that he was a good +bishop and a King’s man who lost his head +in the King’s cause, being charged with the +defence of London when the King fled to +Wales, with the result that he was seized by +the mob and brought to the block in Cheapside.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus04" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/illus04.jpg" alt=""> + <figcaption> + <p>EXETER COLLEGE: FELLOWS’ GARDEN.</p> + <p class="right">[To face p. 70.</p> + </figcaption> +</figure> + +<p>His period was one in which it was thought +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[71]</span>proper to combine the patronage of learning +with the patronage of a particular locality. +He wished the scholars, and also the Fellows, +of his College to be taken from the counties +of Devon and Cornwall; and his patriotic +injunctions were faithfully observed until the +University commissioners interfered, happily +leaving a certain number of West Country +scholars, but condemning the West Country +fellowships to extinction. The last of the +West Country Fellows was the Rev. Charles +Boase, who piloted the present writer through +the ceremony of matriculation, and concerning +whom a statistician with a pencil once +computed that he talked in the course of +a single evening, on sixty-seven learned +subjects, ranging from the Chemistry of +Agriculture to the Philosophy of the Unconditioned.</p> + +<p>Commoners, however, have followed where +scholars led the way; and Exeter has always +been recognised as the particular College of +West Countrymen. Even the connection between +Blundell’s School, Tiverton, and Balliol +has not broken down its claims to this distinction. +In “Westward Ho” we find Frank +Leigh, as a matter of course, sent there from +the Bideford Grammar School; and one of +the characters in “Tom Jones” went there, +equally as a matter of course, from Taunton, +in the dark days in which the College was +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[72]</span>reputed to be given over to “nothing but +drunkenness and duncery.”</p> + +<p>The College was, at that melancholy period, +known, equally with Merton, as a Whig +College; and one of the rectors is said to +have carried democratic principles to the +point of marrying the daughter of the College +cook. It distinguished itself, at one of the +borough elections, by inviting Whig voters not +only to pass through the College quadrangle +on their way to the poll, but also to taste the +College beer while passing. For several days, +it is said, the Hall was filled with “a smoking, +drinking, expectorating crowd,”—a spectacle +which it is indeed difficult to conjure +up in the decorous circumstances of contemporary +academic life.</p> + +<p>But let that pass. The interest of a college—of +Exeter as of any other college—depends, +not upon the proceedings of the vulgar +herd, but upon its association with names +which have left a trail of glory behind them. +In the days when Exeter was, as Wood says, +“debauched by a drunken governor,” and +in the days immediately before and immediately +after that deplorable debauchery, +the most conspicuous Exeter names are hardly +names which the plain man recognises at the +first glance; but the nineteenth century introduces +names worthy of remark in more than +one department of endeavour.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[73]</span></p> + +<p>Let “Parson Jack” come first.</p> + +<p>To students of the Clergy List he is the +Reverend John Russell, Perpetual Curate of +Swymbridge. To the West Country he is +“Parson Jack”—the hunting parson who kept +the hounds and defied the Bishop who bade +him give up keeping them: a man, no doubt, +of more energy than intellect, but a clergyman—he +would not have thanked any one +for calling him a priest—whose parishioners +carefully minded what he said, holding, it +may be, that so good a judge of a horse must +be an equally good judge of a religion.</p> + +<p>Parson Jack won no laurels for his College +in the schools, being contented with a pass +degree; but it is said that the supper-party +at which he bade the College farewell was +the noisiest supper-party ever given within +College walls, and that, as this chronicler +knows, is saying a good deal. For, if he had +not distinguished himself at his books, he +had at least distinguished himself with his +fists, in circumstances graphically described +by his biographer.</p> + +<p>A certain gentleman-commoner named +Gordon, addicted to the society of out-college +men, had, it appears, been boasting in hall +of the superior prowess “with the gloves” of +some friends of his at Christ Church. A +certain Denne, lately from Eton, withstood +him, saying: “Bring your three best men +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[74]</span>from Christ Church to my rooms, and if they +can only stand up in a fair set-to against +three of Exeter, we’ll give your heroes full +credit for all you say of them, but not till +then.”</p> + +<p>Such a challenge, of course, could not be +declined; and while Gordon was accepting it +on behalf of his out-college friends, Jack +Russell, overhearing the conversation, rose +from his place and volunteered his services.</p> + +<p>“Don’t forget me, Denne,” he said. “I’ll +be one of the three, mind that, and the sooner +we meet the better.”</p> + +<p>So the meeting was arranged, and the result +of it may best be given in the words of +Russell’s biographer:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“Russell was deputed to open the ball, +the antagonist selected to meet him being the +second best of the Christ Church lot. It was +a brisk set-to while it lasted, but evidently a +one-sided affair from beginning to end; for +Russell’s long reach, and quick, straight blows, +which fell with tremendous thuds on his +adversary’s visage, brought the trial to a close +in little more than ten minutes.</p> + +<p>“The latter, admitting himself over-matched, +then declined the unequal contest; +while Russell, self-reliant and still “fresh as +paint,” refused to take off his gloves, calling +stoutly for the next man to come on. Denne, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[75]</span>however, interposed, and would have his turn; +going in first with No. 1, then No. 3, and +finally polishing them both off with as much +ease as if they had been two old women.</p> + +<p>“‘Now,’ said Russell, addressing Gordon +aside, ‘I think you had better take your +three fellows home; and don’t make such +fools of them again.’”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Another hero who flourished at a slightly +later date in the same field of prowess as +Parson Jack was James Whitehead Peard. +He had “the shoulders of a bull,” and when +he played his part in one of those town and +gown rows of which mention has just been +made in the account of Merton, the town, with +one accord, fled before him. He was to +become Colonel Peard, to distinguish himself +in a revolution in Italy, and to be known +to the whole world as Garibaldi’s Englishman. +At Exeter, however, he was principally a boating +man. He rowed against Cambridge; and +at a time when, as the Rev. J. Pycroft has +related, “the dons held the boat in abhorrence +and considered any man belonging to it as +keeping rather questionable company,” he insisted +that rowing was not only a manly but +a moral recreation.</p> + +<p>In proof of his claim, he submitted the +rules of the Boating Club to Mr. Richards, +then a tutor, and afterwards the Rector, pointing +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[76]</span>out that they forbade to men in training +the indulgences which one is accustomed to +couple in the pentameter line of elegiac verse +as “<i>Bacchus et alma Venus</i>.” Whereupon +Mr. Richards fell upon him crushingly.</p> + +<p>“Exactly,” he said, “as I have always +maintained. These rules show plainly and +are a written confession of the wild character +of the men for whom you can anticipate the +necessity of such fines; no decent men would +want such rules.”</p> + +<p>Let us hope that modern boating men, at +all events, are virtuous by instinct and need +no laws to keep them so; and then let us +cull a few other Exeter names, illustrious in +other fields.</p> + +<p class="tb">James Anthony Froude was elected a +Fellow of Exeter from Oriel, in the days when +the Tractarians seemed likely to succeed in +their great task of turning Oxford upside +down. More brilliant than industrious in +those days, he had only taken a Second; but +he had the clean-cut intellect which “penetrates +through sophisms, ignores commonplaces, +and gives to conventional illusions +their true value,” and it was inevitable that, +while looking for his way in life, he should +come into violent collision with the Obscurantists. +He did so on at least two notable +occasions.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[77]</span></p> + +<p>He began life in the shadow of his brother’s +greater name and of the expectation that he +would adopt his brother’s point of view and +echo his brother’s opinions. Richard Hurrell +Froude—a most imperious and dictatorial +personage—had bullied him into seeming acquiescence +in his doctrines. For the time +being he presumably believed that he believed +in them; and his vivid literary gifts marked +him out as an ideal contributor to Newman’s +projected series of “Lives of the Saints.” +Newman wanted to establish the continuity +of miracle within the Church; and he regarded +Froude as a man credulous of +miracles, and a dialectician capable of making +out a good case for them. His instructions +to his contributors were, not to try to find +out whether the alleged miracles had really +happened or not, but, in effect, to accept as +many of them as a man could swallow without +making himself too conspicuously ridiculous.</p> + +<p>Froude accepted the commission; and there +is no reason to doubt that he accepted it in +good faith. The truth, however, was too +strong for him; the evidence was too weak; +and he had a turn for biting irony which he +could not suppress. Saint Neot was his +subject, and he ended his study with the remarkable +sentence: “This is all, and perhaps +rather more than all, that is known of the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[78]</span>life of the blessed Saint Neot.” It was as +if he had played a practical joke on Newman; +and there were those who considered that to +play practical jokes on Newman was almost +as bad as laying a profane hand on the +Ark of the Covenant. Newman himself +was almost certainly of that opinion; but +Protestantism “will out,” and Froude was +a Protestant in grain, and was to become +something more than a Protestant when he +matured.</p> + +<p>He first matured into a deacon of the +Church of England; but that meant nothing. +The College Fellows of those days took orders +as normally as they took their degrees, and +without making more ado about it. There was +no more a question of a “call” to be a +shepherd of souls than of a “call” to be a +Master of Arts. In travelling so far, Froude +was only travelling the common road. The +desire to divagate from it did not come to +him until later; and, even so, no one would +have troubled much about his divagations if +he had not chosen to divagate in print.</p> + +<p>Like most of the other “honest doubters,” +however, he could not keep his honest doubts +to himself. He wrote and published “The +Nemesis of Faith,” and then the fat was in +the fire. The publication cost him his fellowship, +and the book was burnt. The latter +incident is famous, and has been magnified +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[79]</span>by legend. The belief prevails that there +was a solemn and formal <i>auto da fé</i> under +the direction of the University authorities. +There was, in fact, only a private display of +theological temper on the part of the Rev. +William Sewell.</p> + +<p>Sewell, afterwards the founder of Radley +School, was a High Churchman, encompassed +by all the limitations of that intellectual +state. He was also a discursive lecturer +who stood with his back to the fire, +and made Aristotle’s “Ethics” or Virgil’s +“Georgics” an excuse for propounding his +opinions on matters of topical interest. He +did not set out to talk about “The Nemesis +of Faith,” but came to talk of it by accident, +and then proceeded to denounce it with the +vigour of a <i>Quarterly</i> or <i>Saturday Reviewer</i>. +Finally he inquired whether any member of +his audience possessed a copy of the book. +One of them admitted that he did.</p> + +<p>“Then bring it here, sir,” thundered +Sewell.</p> + +<p>It was brought; and Sewell stripped off +the binding, tore the pages across, pitched +the mutilated volume into the flames, and +stood over it, thrusting at it with the poker +until it was burnt to ashes.</p> + +<p>Such was the actual occurrence, as related +by Mr. Boase, who was present at the lecture +at which it took place. There was no public +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[80]</span>holocaust, but only a spasmodic explosion +of wrath on the part of a single excited +theologian. The act, however, gained +piquancy from the fact that Froude was +Sewell’s colleague. The witnesses went out, +and told what they had seen; and the story +lost nothing in the telling. In after years, as +we have seen, some of them recovered their +historical consciences and reduced it to its +true proportions; but, at the moment, they +indulged their mythopœic faculties to their +hearts’ content, and erected an enduring +edifice of romance on a scanty foundation of +fact.</p> + +<p>And Froude, at any rate, had to go. +The Rector and the Fellows asked him +whether he would prefer to resign or to be +turned out; and he elected to resign. The +Visitor of the College—the Bishop of Exeter—applauded +their action; and Froude’s father, +the Archdeacon of Totnes, “conceiving,” as +Mr. Herbert Paul puts it in his Life of +Froude, “that the best remedy for free +thought was short commons, stopped his son’s +allowance.” Such was the message to him +of “the last enchantments of the Middle +Ages.”</p> + +<p class="tb">Time passed. R. D. Blackmore, the immortal +author of “Lorna Doone” took his +degree at Exeter in the forties. He and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[81]</span>Charles Reade, of Magdalen, of whom more in +due course, are without dispute the two greatest +novelists whom Oxford has yet produced; +and there shall be no attempt here to prove +that either of them was greater than the +other. Has it not been written that, to a +West Countryman, “Lorna Doone” is +“almost as good as clotted cream”? Did +not the author reply that he was too fond of +clotted cream not to be gratified by the compliment, +but also too fond of it to admit +that any book whatever could successfully +challenge comparison therewith? He was a +modest man, however—so modest that hardly +anything is known of him; and as no stories +of his quiet passage through Exeter have been +preserved, we may pass on to our next interesting +names, which are those of William +Morris and Edward Burne Jones.</p> + +<p>They came up in 1853; and Morris’ biographer, +Mr. J. W. Mackail, has given a good +deal of offence by his supercilious account of +the internal condition of Exeter at that period. +Himself a Balliol man, he appears to take +the view that outside Balliol there is no +academical salvation.</p> + +<p>That is a proposition which we need not +turn aside to discuss at any length. It is +neither to be desired nor to be expected that +all the colleges of the University should resemble +each other like peas in a pod; and it +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[82]</span>is not to be denied that there are some +functions which Balliol fulfils better than +Exeter. It dry nurses its men with more +success, takes greater pains to make them +conform to a type, and then lays itself out +to magnify the type to scale. The result is +conspicuous in the higher ranks of the most +efficient Civil Service that the world has ever +seen. It is an excellent system for its purpose; +but it has its limitations, and is not +equally suitable for all men, as even Jowett +recognised.</p> + +<p>Jowett doubted whether, if a poet came +to Balliol, Balliol “would be able to hold +him.” But Balliol held Swinburne; and the +real danger is rather lest Balliol should turn +a poet into a Judge of the High Court, or a +stiff and starched Permanent Under-Secretary. +Perhaps it would be a good thing for +many poets to be thus transfigured; but it is +not good for all of them; and it would not +have been good for William Morris. What +Morris wanted was to be left alone and not +worried by pastors and masters who “generalise” +and try to compel exceptional men +to walk in conventional paths. Whatever may +be the case now, Exeter was, in no distant +past, a College in which a man might go his +own way without excessive admonition; and +William Morris was indubitably one of the +successes of the system.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[83]</span></p> + +<p>His tutor described him as “a rather rough +and unpolished youth who exhibited no special +literary tastes or capacity but had no difficulty +in mastering the usual subjects of +examination.” The opinion which he, on his +part, entertained of tutors generally was not +more flattering. “The name of ‘don,’” says +his biographer, “was used by him as a +synonym for all that was narrow, ignorant, +and pedantic.” But the dons did him a good +turn, though neither he nor they knew it at +the time, by not going out of their way to +disturb his view of them, their interests, and +pursuits.</p> + +<p>Except for Burne Jones, indeed, he had +hardly a friend in his own College. With the +reading men and with the uproarious men—and +Exeter has always had its share of these—he +had equally little in common. Men called +him “Topsy” on account of his uncombed +woolly head of hair; he accepted the nickname +and was not to be driven by it into +tidiness. Art, and beauty, and antiquities, +were the things which interested him; and +Oxford was for him, not a seat of learning, +but “a vision of grey-roofed houses, and a +long, winding street, and the sound of many +bells.”</p> + +<p>His rooms were in Hell Quad, and his +favourite diversion was talking. Burne Jones +tells how, on one occasion, “Morris came +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[84]</span>tumbling in and talked incessantly for the +next seven hours and a half.” Most of his +talking, however, was done at Pembroke, +where he had two great friends: Faulkner, +the mathematician who is said to have been +ploughed in Divinity for including the Prophet +Isaiah in a list of the Twelve Apostles, and +Dixon, afterwards Canon Dixon, the pre-Raphaelite +poet. He paid his tribute to the +influence of his ecclesiastical surroundings by +talking of devoting his entire private fortune +of £900 a year to the foundation of a +monastery; but he happily was wise in time. +And presently his friends discovered his +genius, though the dons did not.</p> + +<p>“He’s a big poet,” Burne Jones one day +exclaimed.</p> + +<p>“Who is?”</p> + +<p>“Why, Topsy.”</p> + +<p>So he took his degree, and went down; +and the rest of his career does not concern +us, except for the beginnings of his association +with Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who was +brought up to Oxford to decorate the ceiling +of the Union Debating Hall. He and Morris +and Burne Jones were always together in +Rossetti’s rooms in George Street; and a +fourth member of their coterie was Swinburne +of Balliol, the poet whom Balliol +“held.”</p> + +<p>They talked and talked interminably. Their +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[85]</span>talks were the beginning of that pre-Raphaelitism +which was, in due course, to develop +(or to degenerate) into the Æsthetic Movement; +and the most picturesque incident of +their alliance took place when they set out +together to accept an invitation to dine at +Christ Church.</p> + +<p>Morris, who had with difficulty been persuaded +to dress for the banquet, happened +to remove his hat, and it was then discovered +that the connection between art and letters +was symbolised by an enormous daub of blue +paint on his hair. But for that accident, and +the hurried visit to the barber which followed +it, he would have sat at high table, illuminated +like a saintly figure in a missal or a stained-glass +window.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[86]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="ORIEL_COLLEGE">ORIEL COLLEGE</h2> + +<p>Foundation by Adam de Brome—Butler and his “Analogy”—Causes +of the efficiency of Oriel—The “Noetics”—Eveleigh—Coplestone—Whately—The +Tractarians—Who +started the Tractarian Movement?—What did +the Tractarians want?—The logical weakness of their +position—The attitude of the bishops—The stampede +to Rome—The honest doubters—Matthew Arnold and +Arthur Hugh Clough—Cecil Rhodes at Oriel.</p> + +</div> + +<p>Edward II.’s almoner, Adam de Brome, +obtained his charter for the foundation of a +new College at Oxford in 1324. Originally +called the House, or Hall, of the Blessed +Mary at Oxford, it took the name of Oriel +from La Oriole—a tenement included in the +premises. Among its endowments was included +the advowson and rectory of the +Church of St. Mary—a fact of which we shall +perceive the importance as we proceed. It +was a small College, and a poor one, but it +was to have its hour of signal intellectual +pre-eminence, though not until the early days +of the nineteenth century. Before that time +the noteworthy names are scarce.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus05" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/illus05.jpg" alt=""> + <figcaption> + <p>ORIEL COLLEGE.</p> + <p class="right">[To face p. 86.</p> + </figcaption> +</figure> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[87]</span></p> + +<p>The most noteworthy of them all, if one +could be sure of one’s facts, would be that +of Sir Walter Raleigh. Sir Walter is said to +have been an Oriel man, and one likes to +think that he was—if only to furnish an Elizabethan +Oriel precedent for Cecil Rhodes; but +the proofs offered are inconclusive. Of the +undisputed <i>alumni</i> of the darker ages the +greatest was Bishop Butler, of the “Analogy”—a +precedent, perhaps, if one is looking for +precedents, for those Oriel “Noetics” of +whom we shall have to speak; but Oriel owes +more to Butler than Butler owed to Oriel. He +is a witness—like Gibbon of Magdalen and +Adam Smith of Balliol—to the inefficiency +of Oxford teaching in the eighteenth century.</p> + +<p>“We are obliged,” Butler wrote, “to mis-spend +so much time here in attending frivolous +lectures and unintelligible disputations that +I am quite tired out with such a disagreeable +way of trifling.”</p> + +<p>He also threatened to leave Oxford and +migrate to Cambridge, though, as the historian +of Oriel writes, “it saves the blushes +of an Oxonian to reflect that the migration +was never carried out.” That is all that can +be said, however, for that is all that is known; +so we will leave Butler, and hasten on to the +really interesting epoch.</p> + +<p class="tb">The fame of Oriel, at the time when Oriel +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[88]</span>was famous, depended upon the distinction +of its Fellows. The Statutes allowed more +latitude to the electors there than at most of +the other colleges. They were not restricted +in their choice to their own men, to their +founders’ kin, or, except in the case of a +few specific fellowships, to candidates from +particular counties. A few happy selections +made the tuition exceptionally efficient. The +reputation for efficiency attracted a steady +supply of good men. The attraction was the +greater because the electors chose for themselves, +on principles of their own, and were +but little, if at all, influenced by records of +successes gained in other examinations. The +ideal man for them, they said, was a man +whose mind was “an instrument and not a +receptacle”; and they often, for that reason, +preferred men who had taken seconds to men +who had taken firsts, and their preference +was generally justified by developments. +Whately, Newman, Matthew Arnold, Arthur +Hugh Clough, and Richard Hurrell Froude +all took seconds, and became Fellows of +Oriel.</p> + +<p>An Oriel fellowship became, in that way, +like a Balliol scholarship, the real “blue +riband” of the University. It marked a +man, not as a precocious scholar, but as +an intellectual force—a man who was expected +to make his mark on thought. Oriel, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[89]</span>in consequence, came to be recognised as a +great intellectual centre—the seething source +of the new ideas which Oxford would presently +diffuse through England. That was the great +and golden age of the Oriel Common-room. +It began under Provost Eveleigh, who was +jointly concerned with the Master of Balliol +and the Dean of Christ Church in the institution +of the Honours Schools. It continued +under Coplestone, who resigned to become +Bishop of Llandaff in 1826. It came to an +end, some time in the forties, under Hawkins.</p> + +<p>The golden age, however, ought really +to be divided into three golden ages, +which ran into each other, but must here be +glanced at separately. The first period is +that of the so-called “Noetics,” who had +Whately for their prophet and leader. The +second is that of the Tractarians—the period +when the influence, first of Keble and then of +John Henry Newman, was paramount. The +third, following on the secession of some +of the Tractarians to Rome, and the defeat, +so far as Oxford was concerned, of those +who remained in the Church of England, may +be called the period of the Honest Doubters. +The names belonging to it, which all the +world knows, are those of Clough and +Matthew Arnold. First, then, of the +“Noetics.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[90]</span></p> + +<p>The word “Noetic” has gone out of use. +Our own generation hardly knows what it +means; and perhaps its meaning was not +very precise, even when it was bandied freely. +If we render it “Intellectuals”—with a +capital I—we shall get as near to it as +we need to go; but we must also remember +that the Noetics flattered themselves on being, +above all things, logicians. It was a common +saying, in the Oxford of their time, that the +Oriel Common-room “stank of logic.”</p> + +<p>Provost Eveleigh, whom we have mentioned, +was not exactly a Noetic himself, but +it was his policy which brought the Noetics +together at Oriel. He was the first Provost +who insisted that the College should make a +proper use of its freedom in the choice of +Fellows. The tendency of the times was to +use that freedom to serve the ends of private +friendship, and bring clubbable and convivial +men together. Eveleigh took the line that +intellectual distinction was of more account +than good manners or geniality in social intercourse. +There were those who said that, by +doing so, he made the Oriel Common-room a +bear-garden; but that is only a way of saying +that it focussed heat as well as light.</p> + +<p>Coplestone, afterwards Bishop of Llandaff, +Hampden, afterwards Bishop of Hereford, +Whately, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin, +Arnold of Rugby, Hawkins, presently to be +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[91]</span>Provost, Baden-Powell, Savilian Professor of +Geometry—these are the principal Noetic +names. They formed no definite school of +thought; they had no common body of +doctrine. Some of them were more noetic +than others, and one or two of them ended by +relapsing into reactionary ways. Some of +them, again, were very polished, while others +were very rough diamonds. But they were, +all of them, very clever, and knew it, and +liked other people to know it. They brought +the dry light of logic to bear upon ecclesiastical +and other conundrums. Liberals in +theology, equally contemptuous of High +Church aridity and oleaginous Evangelicanism, +they liked to express their Liberalism +in terms of robust and aggressive common +sense.</p> + +<p>Arnold and Whately are perhaps the only +two of them whose names now live; and +Arnold, of course, made his fame elsewhere +than at Oxford. Whately, however, was a +tutor at Oriel for a considerable time, and +afterwards became Principal of St. Alban +Hall. He was a Bohemian of Bohemians, an +eccentric of eccentrics, the least donnish of +dons, and the most carelessly defiant of all +academical etiquette. The Provost of Oriel, +who hated tobacco, was once shocked to discover +him on the roof of Oriel, smoking a +cigar among the leads.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[92]</span></p> + +<p>In costume, too, as well as in conduct, +Whately outraged the prejudices of his fellow-men. +It is related that, when there were holes +in his archiepiscopal silk stockings he neither +bought new ones nor sent the old ones to be +darned, but tried to conceal the deficiencies by +affixing black sticking-plaster to his calves. +At a time when other dons were never seen in +Christ Church meadows except in cap and +gown, he walked there in his ordinary attire—described +as consisting of “pea-green coat, +white waistcoat, stone-coloured shorts, flesh-coloured +stockings.” He took a number of +dogs with him on his walks, and trained them +to climb trees and drop into the Cherwell; +and when Coplestone accompanied him, as +he sometimes did, that very dignified man was +quite appalled by his proceedings.</p> + +<p>“Whately,” said Coplestone in a pained +tone, “really forgot himself during our walk +this afternoon; he actually, while in sight of +other passengers, picked up a stone and threw +it at a bird.”</p> + +<p>In the lecture-room, again, Whately’s deportment +was all his own. He lectured, lying +on his back, on a sofa, with his legs dangling +over the end of it, puffing a large pipe. It +was in that attitude, no doubt, that he +delivered himself of his famous aphorism that +“woman is a creature that cannot reason and +pokes the fire from the top”—an alleged +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[93]</span>example, of course, of definition <i>per genus et +differentiam</i>. As for his deportment at the +breakfast-table, it is recorded that “he would +scatter tea-leaves over the table while he +talked, and made rings on the tablecloth with +the wet bottom of his teacup”; while an +account of his demeanour in drawing-rooms +may be borrowed from Mr. Tuckwell’s +“Reminiscences of Oxford”:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“I remember,” Mr. Tuckwell writes, “my +mother’s terror when he came to call. She +had met him in the house of newly-married +Mrs. Baden-Powell, who had filled her +drawing-room with the spider-legged chairs +just then coming into fashion. On one of +these sat Whately, swinging, plunging, and +shifting on his seat while he talked. An +ominous crack was heard; a leg of the chair +had given way; he tossed it on to the sofa +without comment, and impounded another +chair.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>It was while Whately was a tutor of Oriel +that Newman was elected a Fellow, and the +two men saw a good deal of each other. +Newman, in those days, might have been +described, as Lord Morley during his Lincoln +days has been described by one of his unauthorised +biographers, as “somewhat of a +mooning evangelical.” He had lately been +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[94]</span>converted, in strict accordance with the evangelical +programme; and Whately decided to +take him in hand, wake him up, and teach +him to think for himself. He did so, though +with results quite different from those which +he anticipated; for he was not other-worldly +enough for Newman. Newman thought that +he lacked spirituality and inwardness—that +he had too much common sense and too large +an appetite. He preferred the influence of the +saintly Keble and the “bright and beautiful” +Richard Hurrell Froude; and so he set out, +first as a disciple, presently as a leader, on +the long, straight road to Rome.</p> + +<p>This brings us, of course, to the Tractarian +Movement; and we will glance, though space +hardly suffers us to do more, at the part which +Oriel played in it.</p> + +<p class="tb">Keble, Newman, Pusey, Richard Hurrell +Froude—those are the great Oriel names in +this connection, though Pusey, at the time +when he joined the alliance, had left Oriel +and become a Canon of Christ Church. +Keble, if one may draw invidious distinctions, +was the saintliest of them, Newman the most +eloquent, Pusey the most learned, Richard +Hurrell Froude the most energetic. But for +Pusey’s learning, the Movement might never +have taken seriously; but for Froude’s +activity, it might never have been started.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[95]</span></p> + +<p>Whether Froude had any firm intellectual +grip on religious problems may be questioned; +but there can be no disputing that he +was a very strong man, and a very practical +man, and a man who descended into the fray, +filled with the joy of battle. He reminds one, +a little, <i>mutatis mutandis</i>, of the “boss” in +American politics, directing and controlling +the “machine.” “Here,” one seems to hear +him saying, “is something movable—let us +have a Movement. Here is a ball—let us +set it rolling.” And he did set the ball rolling, +and it continued to roll, long after his +premature death, at the age of thirty-three, +had saddened his fellow-workers.</p> + +<p>The Church, as it seemed to this little company, +was being assailed by dangers, alike +from without and from within. It was neither +sufficiently respected nor sufficiently worthy of +respect. Erastianism and Indifferentism were +in the air. There was a tendency, among +Churchmen as well as laymen, to regard the +Church, not as a Catholic Apostolic institution +of Divine origin, but as “a branch of the +Civil Service.” Bishops had been mobbed +in the riots which attended the passing of +the Great Reform Bill. A Liberal Statesman +had presumed to warn bishops to “set their +house in order.” Superfluous bishoprics in +Ireland—bishoprics supported at the expense +of a conquered people who did not want +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[96]</span>them—were being suppressed; and that act +of justice and common sense was the “last +straw.” Keble thundered at justice and +common sense as “national apostasy.” His +thunder was the signal for the Movement, +and its first overt act.</p> + +<p>What, then, did the Tractarians want? +The complete definition of their aims must +be left to theological controversialists, and +a layman can only presume to sketch the +roughest outline of their objects.</p> + +<p>They insisted, in a general way, that the +Church of England was the creation, not of +Parliament, but of God—that it was the duty +of the State to recognise the Church, and do +it homage, and back it up, but that these +obligations carried with them no corresponding +right to dictate to the Church, or to interfere +with it in any way. In doubtful matters +of doctrine the Church must decide and the +State must accept its decisions. The Church +was the repository of truth, guaranteed by +apostolic succession, the sole interpreter of +the teaching of the Bible, and of its own +traditions and formulæ; and the true interpretation +of those traditions and formulæ was—the +interpretation which John Keble, John +Henry Newman, Edward Bouverie Pusey, and +Richard Hurrell Froude chose to give them.</p> + +<p>The logical weakness of the position was +obvious. The Tractarians were not the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[97]</span>Church, but only members, more or less +worthy, of the rank and file of the Church. +Oriel College had no more right than Exeter +Hall to define the doctrines of the Church. +The doctrines of the Church had been defined, +once for all, by Act of Parliament; and there +was no authority within the Church empowered, +even by ecclesiastical law, to define +the definitions. It needed a secular tribunal +to “dismiss hell with costs,” as other English +Churchmen were presently to discover; and +a Church possessing the authority which the +Tractarians thought that a Church ought to +have was only to be found at Rome.</p> + +<p>In due course the most logical of them +realised that fact and ’verted. They only +worked their way slowly, however, to their +conclusion; and, in the meantime, remaining +within the Church of England, they engaged +in vigorous propagandism. Their views were +spread partly by the famous Tracts from +which they derived their name, partly by +means of Newman’s sermons in St. Mary’s +Church, partly by their personal influence over +their juniors—partly also by their readiness +to take the lead in the persecution of the +“unsound.” They were in the thick of the +fight over Hampden’s preferment, by Lord +Melbourne, to the Regius Professorship of +Divinity; and it was one of them who denounced +Hampden in a sermon as “this +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[98]</span>atrocious professor” because he had proposed +the opening of the University to +Nonconformists. Evidently they were too +conscious of meaning well to care to mince +their words.</p> + +<p>Space forbids us to follow all the vicissitudes +of their fortunes. Enough to say +that they made rapid progress at first, but +presently ran upon the rocks. There was +a beauty in their holiness which aroused widespread +and sympathetic interest; it was +generally recognised that they were making +religion poetical; but points were discovered +in their doctrines, as they developed them, +which a Protestant people could not accept +even from the saintliest of men. When they +came to recommending “reserve” in the communication +of religious knowledge, and +argued, in the notorious Tract 90, that the +language of the Thirty-nine Articles was compatible +with Roman tenets, there was an +outcry through the length and breadth of +England. Arnold of Rugby called them +“Malignants,” and other theologians called +them other names, not less offensive. Shouts +of “No Popery!” assailed them; and, in the +midst of the din, the more clear-sighted of +them discerned how hopelessly impossible was +the position which they had occupied.</p> + +<p>There was no way of escape for them from +the Erastian net. Whatever the Church of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[99]</span>England ought to be, it actually was, among +other things, a branch of the Civil Service. +The Tractarians were merely junior members +of the Civil Service, trying to ride rough-shod +over the senior members; and the heads of departments—which +is to say the bishops—had +no intention of allowing their subordinates to +dictate to them. They would neither follow the +Tractarians, nor allow the Tractarians to push +them along in front. On the contrary, they +snubbed the Tractarians, called them to order, +exhorted them to sit down and hold their +tongues, and practically stopped the publication +of the Tracts.</p> + +<p>Nor is it easy to see what else they could +have done. The Church of England, by the +very nature of its constitution, lacked a +spiritual head exercising jurisdiction in +matters of faith. It could not, even in theory, +obtain such a spiritual head without the sanction +of King, Lords, and Commons; it could +not hope, in practice, to obtain such a spiritual +head by any means whatsoever. If individual +members of the Church of England tried to +recognise, or set up, such a head on their own +responsibility, they would cease to be members +of the Church of England, and would become +Dissenters—just as much Dissenters as those +Congregationalists and Methodists and Baptists +for whose exclusion from the Universities +they had fought with such bigoted bitterness. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[100]</span>The only Church so constituted that it could +legislate for itself in spiritual matters, binding +its own members, and expelling them if they +refused to be bound, was the Church of Rome.</p> + +<p>That discovery was the rock on which the +Tractarian Movement split. Its more logical +adherents, scorning compromise, and “damning +consequences,” pursued the road to +Rome. Others, like Pusey and Keble, held +back in the Church of England by the chain of +old associations, either made the best of things, +or gravely pretended that the Church was +something which it was not. Others, like +Mark Pattison, who had found his Tractarian +opinions an obstacle to his election to a fellowship, +relapsed into Indifferentism, and rejoiced +that preoccupation with religion had ceased +to stand in the way of that sound learning +which it was the main business of a University +to promote.</p> + +<p>So that, so far as Oxford in general and +Oriel in particular were concerned, the Movement +came to an end. It was, indeed, still +to exercise a certain æsthetic influence +throughout the country, and it was to colour +the churchmanship of such bishops as Samuel +Wilberforce, of such statesmen as Gladstone, +of such lawyers as Lord Selborne, of such +newspaper proprietors as Beresford Hope of +the <i>Saturday Review</i>. It was also to stimulate +the ritualistic innovations which brought +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[101]</span>about the Public Worship Regulation Act, and +the persecution, and passive resistance, of the +Rev. Arthur Tooth. But Oxford—the intellectual +Oxford which counted—had done with +it, and was to give itself over to Liberalism +and Honest Doubt instead.</p> + +<p class="tb">The most notable of the Honest Doubters, +Matthew Arnold and Arthur Hugh Clough, +have already been mentioned. They were +Arnold of Rugby’s most brilliant pupils, +and the pick of the Balliol scholars of their +period. Jowett once told John Addington +Symonds that Clough was the only man of +his acquaintance whom he knew for certain +to be a man of genius. On Matthew Arnold’s +remarkable talents and originality, no Oxford +man, writing for Oxford men, feels it in the +least necessary to insist. Yet both Arnold +and Clough missed their firsts; and the blame +for their failure is commonly, and not altogether +unjustly, attributed to the Tractarians.</p> + +<p>They came into residence in the midst of +the Movement, and spent too much of their +time in considering whether they could move +with it or not. Clough, in particular, was, +for a time, conscious of the attraction, and +felt himself, as he put it, “like a straw drawn +up the draught of a chimney.” He was not, +indeed, drawn very far—a pupil of Arnold’s +hardly could be. His mind was so constituted +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[102]</span>that “religion which has grown incongruous +with intelligence” appealed to his credulity +in vain. He shrugged his shoulders and withdrew—but +not before he had devoted to the +doctrine of the apostolical succession many +precious hours which were due to the Ethics +of Aristotle. The result was the painful surprise +which the class list had in store for him—a +surprise which seems to warrant the saying +that the great Tractarian leader was not only +a second-class man himself, but was the cause +of second classes in others.</p> + +<p>The winning of an Oriel fellowship redeemed +Clough’s failure as it had redeemed +Newman’s. Like Newman, he became a tutor +of the College; and his connection with it, +like Newman’s, was severed by the development +of his theological opinions. Newman +had believed too much for Oriel, and Clough +believed too little. “I have given our Provost +notice,” he presently wrote to Arnold, “of +my intention to leave his service at Easter. +I feel greatly rejoiced to think that this is +my last term of bondage in Egypt.” And he +went on, speculating as to his prospects: +“One may do worse than hire oneself out as +a common labourer; ’tis at any rate honester +than being a teacher of Thirty-nine Articles.”</p> + +<p>So he went his way—another of the +prophets, though by no means the last of +them, whom Oxford has first cast out with +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[103]</span>unimpeachable solemnity, and then regretted +and made an idol of. No one needs to be +told that he is the “Thyrsis” of Matthew +Arnold’s famous poem; but a passage from +“Thyrsis”—a passage which conjures up the +picture of the Honest Doubter taking his +honest doubts very seriously, eating his heart +out, unable, as yet, to attain to that “Stoic-Epicurean +acceptance of life” which was the +ultimate philosophy of his friend—may +fittingly conclude this section:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“It irk’d him to be here, he could not rest.</div> + <div class="verse indent6">He loved each simple joy the country yields,</div> + <div class="verse indent6">He loved his mates; but yet he could not keep,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For that a shadow lour’d on the fields,</div> + <div class="verse indent6">Here with the shepherds and the silly sheep.</div> + <div class="verse indent8">Some life of men unblest</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He knew, which made him droop, and fill’d his head.</div> + <div class="verse indent6">He went, his piping took a troubled sound</div> + <div class="verse indent6">Of storms that rage outside our happy ground;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He could not wait their passing; he is dead.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>And so we leave him, and come to Cecil +Rhodes; and it seems as though we had +taken a very long journey indeed.</p> + +<p class="tb">Rhodes went up to Oriel, with some South +African experience behind him, in 1873. He +rowed for Oriel, in 1873, spent his long vacations +at the Cape, and ultimately took a pass +degree. To the Dean who warned him that +he might be ploughed if he persisted in cutting +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[104]</span>his lectures, he replied, “Oh, I promise +you I’ll manage it. Leave me alone, and I +shall pull through.” And the Dean left him +alone, and in due course he did pull through. +It is also recorded of him that he looked so +little like an Oxonian that he was able to +deceive even the Proctor. This is the story +as he told it:</p> + +<p>“The Proctor,” he said, “took off his cap +to me with the utmost politeness, and I did +the same to him. ‘Well, sir,’ said the Proctor +to me, ‘your name and college?’ ‘My name +is Rhodes,’ I replied, ‘and I have just come +here from the Cape of Good Hope, and am +making a short stay in Oxford; and now, +sir, may I ask your name and college?’”</p> + +<p>Whereupon the Proctor apologised for what +he supposed to be his mistake, and Cecil +Rhodes escaped unfined.</p> + +<p>That is practically the only story that there +is to be told of Cecil Rhodes’s undergraduate +days; and it would, of course, be superfluous +to relate how Oriel benefited by his will. One +of the statements in that will, however, was +to the effect that he regarded the Oriel dons +as “children” in matters of finance; and if +a man’s will were the proper place for pleasant +anecdotage, he might have illustrated and supported +that allegation by an Oriel story.</p> + +<p>Once upon a time, it is recorded, the Bursar +discovered an inexplicable deficiency in his +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[105]</span>accounts of something between £1,800 and +£1,900. He knew that he had not embezzled +the money, but he did not see how his +balance-sheet was to be explained to the +auditors except on the hypothesis that he had +done so. In his distress he took his accounts +to the Common-room, and asked his colleagues +to check the figures. They did so, +pored over them, and could find nothing wrong +in them, until, at last, the Provost solved the +mystery.</p> + +<p>“Good gracious!” he exclaimed. “Don’t +you see what you’ve done?”</p> + +<p>“No, Mr. Provost, I don’t see any +mistake.”</p> + +<p>“Why, on the liability side you’ve added +the date of the year to the pounds, shillings, +and pence!”</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[106]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="QUEENS_COLLEGE">QUEEN’S COLLEGE</h2> + +<p>What little Mr. Bouncer said of Queen’s—The inwardness +of his criticism—The boar’s head and the canticle—Another +song on the same subject—The Provost and +the alarm of fire—The Black Prince at Queen’s—Wiclif +at Queen’s—The first of the Oxford Movements +inaugurated by his poor preachers—Later +times—Jeremy Bentham—Walter Pater.</p> + +</div> + +<p>A Queen’s man observed lounging in the +portico of his own College is spoken of by +Little Mr. Bouncer in “Verdant Green” as +thus “openly confessing his shame”; and +the playful criticism doubtless mirrors the +public opinion of a period when social distinctions +were marked by more outward signs +than at present.</p> + +<p>There were, and indeed there still are, at +Queen’s a considerable number of scholarships +and exhibitions tenable only by youths educated +at certain specified North Country +grammar schools. Religion and sound learning +may or may not have flourished in these +remote educational establishments, but they +certainly were not, in past times, schools of +polished manners. Civilisation, as it were, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[107]</span>filtered through to them, leaving a good many +of its graces in the filter. The undeniable virtues +of their <i>alumni</i> were of the rugged order. +They asserted themselves in the broad accents +of the fells and dales, and, in the matter of +dress, they supported the home industries of +provinces in which the art of tailoring was +in its infancy. Such is the inwardness of Little +Mr. Bouncer’s comment, set forth as expressing +the view of the “very gentlemanly set of +men” of the early Victorian Brasenose.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus06" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/illus06.jpg" alt=""> + <figcaption> + <p>QUEEN’S COLLEGE CHAPEL.</p> + <p class="right">[To face page 106.</p> + </figcaption> +</figure> + +<p>All that, however, is ancient history. +<i>Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis</i>, +is doubtless the well-warranted reflection of +the Queen’s men of to-day. The old traditions +which they still keep alive fall under +the head, not of manners, but of customs. +There is the custom, for instance, of blowing +a trumpet to signify that dinner is ready; +there is the custom of using the founder’s +horn as a loving-cup on gaudy days; there is +the Bursar’s custom of presenting every guest, +on New Year’s Day, with a needle threaded +with silk, and wishing him prosperity in the +formula, “Take this and be thrifty.” +Finally there is the Christmas Day custom, +which never fails to get a paragraph in the +papers, of bringing in the boar’s head to +the accompaniment of music.</p> + +<p class="tb">To this last custom, of course, a story is +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[108]</span>attached, which may or may not be true. +A scholar of Queen’s, we are told, went, in +the remote past, for a walk on Shotover, and +there met a wild boar, which charged him. +Instead of running away, he thrust the Aristotle +which he was reading down the beast’s +throat and choked it; and then he cut off +its head and brought it home for supper—an +heroic act, emblematical of the triumph of +scholarship over brute force, which was duly +celebrated in a canticle, still sung every +Christmas night in the College hall while the +butler is bringing in the delicacy, and running +thus:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“The boar’s head in hand bear I,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Bedecked with bays and rosemary.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And I pray you, my masters, merry be yee,</div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Quot estis in convivio</i>.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Caput apri defero,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Reddens laudes Domino.</i></div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">The boar’s head, as I understand,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Is the bravest dish in all the land,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And thus bedecked with a gay garland</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Let us <i>servire cantico</i>.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Caput apri defero,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Reddens laudes Domino.</i></div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">In memory of ye King of Bliss</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Which on this day to be served is</div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>In Reginensi atrio</i>.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Caput apri defero,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Reddens laudes Domino.</i>”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[109]</span></p> + +<p>Such is the carol which, at Queen’s, links +the present with the past; and if any reader +desires a more modern song on the same +subject, he may find one in “The Oxford +Sausage.” It may suffice to quote the last +three stanzas:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“So dreadful this bristle-backed foe did appear,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">You’d have sworn he had got the wrong pig by the ear,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But instead of avoiding the mouth of the beast,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He rammed in a volume and cried—<i>Græcum est</i>.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">In this gallant action such fortitude shewn is,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As proves him no coward, or tender Adonis,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">No armour but logic, by which we may find,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That logic’s the bulwark of body and mind.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Ye squires, that fear neither hills nor rough rocks,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And think you’re full wise when you outwit a fox,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Enrich your poor brains and expose them no more,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Learn Greek and seek glory from hunting the boar.</div> + <div class="verse indent6">Derry down, down, down, derry down.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>This boar’s head story is, beyond question, +the most picturesque item in the Queen’s +annals. In more recent times the College has +twice been seriously damaged by fire, and +each of the two outbursts invites a marginal +comment. One of them originated in the +bursary, and was attributed by the wits to +the action of the Bursar in cooking the +accounts. On the occasion of the other, the +Provost nearly perished in the flames as a +concession to dignity and decorum. The +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[110]</span>Fellows and scholars, who had fled into the +quadrangle, missed him, and wondered what +had become of him. He had, in fact, lingered +in the blazing building to complete his toilet. +He did not emerge from it, like the others, +in his night-gear, but in his wig, and cap and +gowns, and bands, and complete ecclesiastical +trappings. A magnificent spectacle truly! +Having conjured it up, we may turn back +and call the roll of the names of which +Queen’s is most justly proud.</p> + +<p class="tb">The eponymous Queen of the College was +Philippa of Hainault, the consort of +Edward III., whose chaplain and confessor +was the founder. It followed, most naturally, +that Edward the Black Prince was for a time +a student there, though no legends, whether +of his studies or his diversions, have been +handed down. It was, at any rate, on quite +other fields than those of learning that the +Black Prince was to win his fame; and the +first serious Queen’s man whose reputation +really counts is Wiclif.</p> + +<p>Queen’s, it is true, has no exclusive claim +to him. He was also, for a period, Master +of Balliol, and, for another period, Master of +Canterbury Hall—an extinct establishment on +the site of the present Canterbury Quad, at +Christ Church. He is further said, though +on doubtful evidence, to have been, for a +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[111]</span>while, a Fellow of Merton. The brief years, +however, during which he occupied rooms at +Queen’s were among the most important of his +life; for to those years belong the preparation +and inauguration of the first of the Oxford +Movements.</p> + +<p>Personal details are almost entirely lacking—personal +details are nearly always to seek +in the biographies of the great men of the +Middle Ages. It may be that Wiclif was the +student who thrust the Aristotle down the +throat of the wild boar. It may also be—and, +on the whole, it is quite as likely—that +he was not. There is no evidence either +way, and the probabilities are nicely balanced. +But he was, at any rate, the Morning Star +of the Reformation. He translated the Bible; +he stood up against the Pope; and he called +upon the laity to reform the clergy. Nor was +that all. He also missed preferment through +his zeal, and organised “poor preachers” to +spread the light which he had kindled.</p> + +<p>Oxford, indeed, was in those days the only +available centre for the dissemination of a +new idea. The light of Paris had temporarily +paled, and the light of Cambridge had hardly +yet begun to shine; so that Oxford was the +most important of the stages in the pilgrimage +of a wandering scholar. Then, if ever, there +was reason to hope that what Oxford thought +to-day England would think to-morrow. The +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[112]</span>machinery for bringing this result about +existed, and Wiclif set it in motion, “pressing +the button,” as we moderns say, in his room +at Queen’s. The excesses of disciples who +joyously predicted the coming of a day when +“priests’ heads would be as cheap as sheeps’” +no doubt outran his intentions; but it is worth +while, in view of current political conflicts, +to note that this first Oxford Movement was +the occasion of an unsuccessful attempt on +the part of the House of Lords to usurp the +privileges of the House of Commons.</p> + +<p>The Archbishop of Canterbury proposed, +the Lords passed, and the King assented to +a law to the effect, broadly speaking, that +the “poor preachers” should be arrested +wherever found, and locked up in whatever +house of detention was most convenient, until +they gave such an account of themselves as +satisfied Holy Church. The Commons represented +that this so-called Statute was not a +Statute, since it had not been laid before +them. They demanded its withdrawal, and +it was withdrawn; the privileges of the Lower +House being thus asserted, in the interest of +an Oxford Movement, as long ago as 1382.</p> + +<p>Already at that date, however, the Movement +had had its martyrs. Some Fellows of +Queen’s had been expelled as Wicliffites in +1376; and it cannot be said that they had +departed in a blaze of glory, for it appears +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[113]</span>that they had taken with them the common +seal, and some jewels and other valuable property +belonging not to them, but to the +College. That, too, may have been a picturesque +proceeding; but the details are +obscure, and the subject cannot be discussed +with profit.</p> + +<p class="tb">Wiclif, of course, is eminent not only as +a Reformer, but also as a man of letters. His +version of the Bible helped, no less than +Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales,” to fix the +English language; and so we are led on, +by a natural transition, to mention Wycherly, +the dramatist, who was also a Queen’s man, +and Addison, and William Collins, the poet, +who were both tempted by the offer of demyships +to migrate from Queen’s to Magdalen, +and Tickell, who contributed to Steele’s +<i>Spectator</i>—Steele himself being a Merton +man—and William Mitford, the historian of +Greece, and Jeremy Bentham, whose “mark +of everlasting light,” being “the greatest +happiness of the greatest number,” could +hardly be said to be “above the howling +senses’ ebb and flow,” and Francis Jeffrey, the +founder of the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>, and Walter +Pater, who is more interesting than any of +them.</p> + +<p>Jeremy Bentham is, perhaps, most memorable +as the third of the great trio of Oxonians +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[114]</span>who have “shown up” the inefficiency of +Oxford University teaching in the eighteenth +century. The comments of Adam Smith +on that branch of the subject have already +been quoted; those of Gibbon will have +to be quoted presently; those of Bentham, +of Queen’s, may as well be quoted now. +He learnt at Oxford, he said, nothing +except “mendacity and insincerity.” He +found his tutor, Joseph Jefferson, morose—“a +sort of Protestant monk,” who even +forbade him to play the innocent game of +battledore and shuttlecock. His lectures, and +the lectures of the other tutors also, were +“foolish,” teaching only “something of +logical jargon”; and Bentham listened even +to the law lectures of the great Blackstone, +Fellow of All Souls, “with rebel ears.” +Moreover, he tells us that he was afraid of +encountering ghosts on the solitary staircases +of the College.</p> + +<p>His own ghost, dreading other ghosts, is +indeed one of the gloomiest that one meets +at Oxford. The pursuit of the greatest happiness +of the greatest number had not, in his +college days, begun; and there was but little +happiness for “number one.” Bentham went +up too young—he was only thirteen; he was +kept short of money, and he was badly +dressed. “I wish you would let me come +home very soon,” he wrote to his father, “for +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[115]</span>my clothes are dropping off my back”; and +happiness is often a shy fugitive when chased +by a ragged man in the midst of more fashionably +attired companions. Indeed, the one +service which Oxford rendered Jeremy +Bentham was to cure him of a taste for +gambling. “They always,” he says, “forced +me to pay when I lost; and, as I could never +get the money when I won, I gave up the +habit”—a statement which sheds a queerly +lurid light upon the conduct of the gamesters +of Queen’s in the year 1761. They seem to +have bullied this lad of thirteen somewhat in +the style of Flashman in “Tom Brown.” We +can only pity him, and leave him.</p> + +<p class="tb">Of Pater, of course, there will be more to +be said when we come to Brasenose, where +he won his fellowship and made his name. +Even at Queen’s, however, where his undergraduate +days were passed, he did not fail +to make some mark. He was conspicuous, +among other things, for ugliness—an ugliness +so extreme that it excited the sympathetic +attention of his friends, who formed themselves +into a Committee to Consider what +could be Done for the Improvement of Pater’s +Personal Appearance. A suggestion that he +should buy a new hat was discarded on the +ground that he could not be expected to wear +his hat in bed. What was wanted, it was +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[116]</span>agreed, was an irremovable addition to his +features; and the Committee, after taking +all available evidence, reported in favour of +a moustache. The moustache, when ultimately +grown, was at least a palliative. It +was no longer necessary for Pater, when +examining himself in the mirror, to exclaim +that he would give ten years of his life to be +better looking. He acquired, according to +Mr. Edmund Gosse, the aspect of a benevolent +dragon.</p> + +<p>His intellectual outlook, however, was +already beginning, even in those days, to +divide attention with his physical features. +He combined a sceptical disdain for the doctrines +of the Church of England with an +æsthetic sympathy for its ritual; and he made +no secret of either the sympathetic or the intellectual +attitude. His friends were interested, +intrigued, and ultimately excited. They +watched his spiritual development, much as +Lausanne watched the spiritual development +of Sainte-Beuve, when he was lecturing there +on the Jansenists, and Vinet was expected to +convert him to Protestantism. Some of them +even ended by quarrelling with him and renouncing +him.</p> + +<p>The trouble was that, having gone up to +Oxford with a view of taking Orders, he still +proposed to take them, in spite of his effaced +beliefs. Others had done so, he said, so why +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[117]</span>should not he? And, suiting the action to +the argument, he asked the Bishop of London +to ordain him.</p> + +<p>The Bishop, not being in his confidence, +was aware of no reason why he should not do +so; but Pater’s friend, McQueen—who is only +famous because he was Pater’s friend—resolved +to stop the crime. He sought advice +on the matter from Canon Liddon, then Principal +of St. Edmund Hall; and Liddon’s +answer was: “Write to the Bishop of +London. You might be able to prevent +ordination, and if not you will have delivered +your soul.” He did write, and he did prevent +ordination; and no doubt it was well, for +Pater’s sake no less than for the sake of the +Church, that ordination was prevented. +Having said that, we will leave Pater until +we meet him again at Brasenose.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[118]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="NEW_COLLEGE">NEW COLLEGE</h2> + +<p>William of Wykeham—A self-educated man—His liberality +and his elaborate statutes—The College depressed by +too much Founder’s kin—“Golden Scholars, Silver +Bachelors, and Leaden Masters”—Notable new College +men—Sydney Smith—Sir Henry Wotton—Canon +Spooner and “Spoonerisms”—Stories of Warden +Shuttleworth and others.</p> + +</div> + +<p>William of Wykeham, the founder of New +College, was perhaps the greatest pluralist +in the history of the Church. Ecclesiastical +benefices were heaped upon him in unexampled +profusion as the reward for services +in no sense of an ecclesiastical character. +He served his King chiefly as a Clerk of the +Works—or perhaps one should say as a Chief +Commissioner of the Works—at Windsor and +elsewhere; and the King, instead of paying +him an adequate salary, bestowed upon him +prebends, canonries, deaneries, and archdeaconries. +No fewer than nine prebends +were given to him in a single year; he received +three more prebends a year or two +afterwards. While holding them, he also +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[119]</span>held at least one deanery and two archdeaconries, +as well as several livings; and +in the end he became Bishop of Winchester. +The story that he established himself in the +royal esteem by persuading his niece to become +the King’s mistress may be the calumnious +invention of a later age; but it is +evident, at any rate, that he was more a man +of the world than a Churchman, and only +found that godliness was great gain because +he combined it with other qualities.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus07" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/illus07.jpg" alt=""> + <figcaption> + <p>NEW COLLEGE CLOISTERS AND TOWER.</p> + <p class="right">[To face page 118.</p> + </figcaption> +</figure> + +<p>He was not himself a University man, but +had left school early and entered a notary’s +office. Perhaps he was the more deeply impressed +with the value of “educational +advantages” because he had enjoyed so few +of them. There are men who admire learning +for that reason, just as there are those who +despise it on the ground that it unfits a youth +for walking in the wily paths of commerce; +and William of Wykeham admired it sufficiently +to endow it in the grand style and +on a great scale, like the Rockefellers and the +Johns Hopkinses of a later age and a newer +continent. He endowed Winchester School +as well as New College—the former to feed +the latter, and “Manners makyth man” to +be the motto of both; and he gave his foundation +both more elaborate buildings and more +elaborate Statutes than any previous college +had had, with the result that Wiclif sneered +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[120]</span>at him as a man “wise of building castles or +worldly doing, though he cannot read well his +psalter.”</p> + +<p>While the Warden of Merton lived in a +“lodging” and kept only four horses, the +Warden of New College was to keep six horses +and have a house to himself. That was one +of the founder’s splendid provisions. He also +provided that there should be no fewer than +five Deans and three Bursars; and he made +many minor stipulations which have had an +enduring influence upon University development. +His sense that his soul stood in sore +need of the prayers of the faithful impelled +him to prescribe that daily attendance at the +chapel services—Masses, of course, in those +days—should be compulsory. He believed in +a simple and serious life, and therefore forbade +his scholars to play games. Not only +“wrestlings, dances, jigs,” &c., were forbidden +by his regulations, but the prohibition +extended to games of “ball” and games of +chess; while the interests of morality were +safeguarded by the direction that the College +laundress should be “of such age and condition +that no sinister suspicion can, or ought +to, fall on her.” Finally, by enacting that +there should be special teaching in the College +in addition to the teaching provided by the +University, he foreshadowed what is known as +the “tutorial system.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[121]</span></p> + +<p>The Statutes, it must be admitted, were, +on the whole, in advance of the times in which +they were drafted. The founder had clear +and, in the main, sound ideas on the subject +of educational reform. He understood, for +one thing, that classical Latin was better than +monkish Latin; and he understood that, in +order to shape students as he wished, it was +necessary to catch them young. That was the +significance of the linked endowment of the +College and the School; and no doubt it +seemed to William of Wykeham only an act +of common justice that, in the selection of +recipients of his bounty, a preference should +be shown to “founders’ kin.”</p> + +<p>But he did not foresee. Or perhaps it +would be juster to say that he foresaw, and +provided for, too much. The world moved, +and New College could not move with it because +it was tied up and entangled. The +restrictions on the diversions of the students +did not, of course, matter much. They could +be, and were, ignored, when it was recognised +that they were obsolete and unprofitable. The +limitation of the choice of students to a narrow +field, and the provision of an income for them +for life whether they worked or were idle, +had more pernicious consequences. It condemned +New College, in spite of the magnificence +of its buildings, to insignificance in +the life of the University; and it now makes +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[122]</span>the task of the historian in search of +interesting <i>alumni</i> an extremely hard one.</p> + +<p>Nowadays, let it be ungrudgingly admitted, +New College is prosperous and successful. +Its scholars, and also its Fellows, have distinguished +themselves in many ways, and have +won particular distinction in the highest walks +of journalism. Mr. Buckle, the editor of the +<i>Times</i>, was a scholar of New College, and so +was Mr. E. T. Cook, who successively edited +the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>, the <i>Westminster +Gazette</i>, and the <i>Daily News</i>. Mr. W. L. +Courtney, whose signature is familiar to every +reader of the <i>Daily Telegraph</i>, was a Fellow; +as was also Viscount Milner, a journalist +before he became a pro-consul. In literature, +too, the College has been represented by +Lionel Johnson—one of the most subtle and +delicate poets of our generation, though one +whose course was brief like that of Young +Marcellus.</p> + +<p>But all those names are modern names, +occurring subsequently to the cutting of the +entanglement by the University Commissioners. +To plunge into the past is to plunge +into a very different state of things. We +quickly get back to a time when it was justly +said of New College that it had “golden +scholars, silver bachelors, and leaden +masters”—a time when the College was +famous, not for its output of learning, but +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[123]</span>for its consumption of negus. There was +once a dispute as to the comparative merits +of the negus of New College and of All Souls; +and a jury of Queen’s and Brasenose men +who were invited to decide the question gave +a unanimous verdict in favour of the New +College recipe. Balliol, where Southey drank +so much negus, was not in the competition.</p> + +<p>The notable New College names in this +dark age, and in the ages hardly less dark +which preceded it, are names which mean little +to the University and less to the community at +large. There are the names of some respectable +divines among them, and even the names +of some more than respectable bishops—two, +for instance, of the seven who stood up +against James II; but there is hardly a single +name which burns like a beacon; as does, +say, the name of Shelley at University, or +the name of Dr. Johnson at Pembroke.</p> + +<p class="tb">There is Sydney Smith; but of his Oxford +career hardly anything is known except that he +had to get through it on an allowance of £100 +a year, and consequently could not afford to +play his part in the dissipations of the day. +He took his degree a year before Southey +came into residence at Balliol, “got into debt +to buy books,” and formed such a poor +opinion of his <i>alma mater</i> that he never, +throughout the remainder of his life, ceased +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[124]</span>to sneer at her. When, for example, the +Honours Schools were instituted, he wrote:</p> + +<p>“If Oxford is become at last sensible of +the miserable state to which it was reduced, +as everybody else was out of Oxford, and if +it is making serious efforts to recover from +the degradation into which it was plunged +a few years past, the good wishes of every +respectable man must go with it.”</p> + +<p>And when he heard that a lady of his +acquaintance was sending her son to Oxford, +his comment was:</p> + +<p>“I feel for her about her son at Oxford, +knowing, as I do, that the only consequences +of a University education are the growth of +vice and the waste of money.”</p> + +<p>On which the only reasonable comment is +that, if Sydney Smith had been at another +college, he might have written less vituperatively.</p> + +<p class="tb">Another name which arouses some, though +only a mild, interest is that of Sir Henry +Wotton, the diplomatist, who ended by becoming +Provost of Eton. He was not on the +foundation, but was a gentleman commoner—though +few gentlemen commoners were permitted +to enter at New College—and it may +be hoped that he behaved better there than +he did afterwards, when he lived, for a while, +in the house of Isaac Casaubon, at Geneva. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[125]</span>He was the great scholar’s “paying guest”; +and he not only went away without paying, +but pledged his host’s credit for the horse on +which he took his departure. Casaubon ultimately +got the money, but not until he had +written to nearly every classical scholar in +Europe to expose Wotton’s outrageous +behaviour.</p> + +<p>For the rest the stories which centre around +New College are mainly about celebrities +whose celebrity is purely local. It would +be possible, of course, if reverence did not +forbid, to speak at some length on the alleged +Spoonerisms of Canon Spooner; but most +of those stories are probably untrue. It cannot +be true, for instance, that Canon Spooner, +at a dinner-party inadvertently stuck his fork +into the white hand of the lady sitting next +to him, murmuring, “Excuse me, I think +that is my bread.” It is still less credible +that Canon Spooner, when a lady of his family +was seeing him off at the railway-station, gave +the lady sixpence in mistake for the porter, +and kissed the porter in mistake for the lady. +And who believes that Canon Spooner, setting +out to propose the health of “our dear old +Queen,” found himself proposing the health +of “our queer old Dean” instead? The trail +of the mythmaker is over all these anecdotes; +and indeed it is said that the fabrication of +“Spoonerisms” is a favourite undergraduate +diversion on Sunday afternoons.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[126]</span></p> + +<p>An earlier Warden, Dr. Shuttleworth, is +famous for a remarkable poem which he composed +while a Winchester boy—an Address to +Learning, which ends with the often-quoted +lines:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Make me, O Sphere-descended Queen,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A Bishop, or at least a Dean.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>His prayer was answered, and he became +Bishop of Chichester, and, in that capacity, +made Manning an Archdeacon. He was, however, +an opponent of the Ritualists, and so +formidable a one that his death was saluted +by Pusey as “a visible token of God’s +presence in the Church of England”; whence +it appears that Pusey worshipped a God whom +he believed to be capable of killing off Broad +Churchmen in order that High Churchmen +might be spared the embarrassment of meeting +them in controversy.</p> + +<p>A few stories of Shuttleworth, and a few +other stories of other New College notables +of the same generation, may be found in Mr. +Tuckwell’s entertaining “Reminiscences of +Oxford.” There is the story, for instance, of +Lancelot Lee, the incumbent of the College +living of Wootton, near Woodstock.</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“Coming out of church one day, he found +two disreputable vagabonds in the churchyard.</p> + +<p>“‘What are you doing here?’</p> + +<p>“‘Oh, sir, we are seeking the Lord.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[127]</span></p> + +<p>“‘Seeking the Lord, are you? Do you +see those stocks? That is where the Lord will +find you if you stay here another minute.’”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Then there is the story of Christopher Erle, +who held a living in Buckinghamshire, in +the immediate vicinity of Lord Rothschild’s +estate. It seemed to Erle, as it has since +seemed to Mr. Lloyd George, that it was +possible to have “too much of Lord Rothschild,” +and he suppressed him:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“It was Erle’s whim to dress carelessly; +and the plutocrat, walking one day with a +large party and meeting his Rector in the +parish, had the bad taste to handle his sleeve +and say, ‘Rather a shabby coat, Parson, isn’t +it?’ Erle held it up to him—‘Will you +buysh? Will you buysh?’ There ensued an +<i>exitus Israel</i>, and Erle walked on, chuckling +and victorious.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>But perhaps the most characteristic of the +stories is that of the highway robbery:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“Some men were going to the Abingdon +ball; and in the common-room the conversation +turned on a highway robbery recently +perpetrated near Wheatley. The ball-goers +talked valiantly of their own courage, contemptuously +of brigand dangers; their fly +was announced, and off they drove. Coming +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[128]</span>home, they were stopped in a dark part of +Bagley Wood by two masked men, one of +whom held the horses’ heads, while his mate +pointed a pistol into the fly with the conventional +highwayman’s demand. Meekly our +gallant travellers surrendered money, watches, +jewellery. One pleaded for a ring which had +belonged to his old mother; the deceased +lady was consigned to Tartarus, the ring was +taken, and the marauders rode away. Great +commiseration was shown to the victims when +they told their tale, great activity displayed +by the police; until on going into Hall the +next afternoon, they saw lying in a heap on +the centre of the high table the abstracted +valuables, including the maternal ring, while +mounting guard over them was a broken +candle-stick which had done duty as a pistol. +The two practical jokers had ridden to the +wood, tied their horses to the trees, waited +for the travellers, and played the wild Prince +Poins.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>And so forth; for all the best New College +stories are stories of that sort—stories of +which the heroes are jesters or eccentrics +rather than men of light and leading. The +future, no doubt, will be much richer in intellectual +glory; but the College has had but +a short time in which to assert itself since +the University Commissioners released it from +William of Wykeham’s Statutes.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[129]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="LINCOLN_COLLEGE">LINCOLN COLLEGE</h2> + +<p>A small College with many outstanding names—Mr. D. S. +MacColl and his Newdigate—“Shifter” of the +“Sporting Times”—A reminiscence of “Shifter”—John +Wesley and the Methodists—Wesley’s meeting +with Beau Nash of Bath—Mark Pattison—His early +connection with the Tractarians—His abandonment +of superstition—His great learning—His treatment of +undergraduates.</p> + +</div> + +<p>For a small College—and it has always been +one of the smallest—Lincoln is associated +with a goodly list of outstanding names, notable +in very diverse departments of endeavour. +Mr. D. S. MacColl, of the National +Gallery, is, perhaps, the most distinguished +of its recent representatives. He won the +Newdigate; and is said to have won it, as +Dean Burgon did, by the supreme merit of +a single line. Burgon’s striking line was, as +all the world remembers:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“A rose-red city—half as old as time.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">To do full justice to Mr. MacColl’s line one +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[130]</span>must also quote the few lines which precede +it:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“But better still, in slumber-slanting ease,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To be beside the falling of the seas,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To listen and to listen till the tune</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of all the life of all the afternoon</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Deepens to one note of a long distress—</div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>The monotone of everlastingness</i>.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>To quote Mr. MacColl, however, is to begin +at the end. There are earlier names which +also scintillate with varying degrees of +brilliance, and make their appeal to hero-worshippers +of various temperaments. The +most remarkable are those of John Wesley, +“Ideal” Ward, more commonly associated +with Balliol, where he held a fellowship until +his conversion to Roman Catholicism, Mark +Pattison, Lord Morley, Cotter Morrison, and +“Shifter.”</p> + +<p class="tb">It was a question, earnestly considered, +whether “Shifter” should be mentioned in +these pages. The question was finally put to +a representative assemblage of literary men—only +a minority of them from Oxford; and +the answer was unanimously in the affirmative. +The name of “Shifter,” it was agreed, +was by no means to be treated as if it had +been “writ in water.” If it had ceased to +be a household word, at any rate it was remembered. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[131]</span>His case was interesting, if only +because he had arrived at fame by a road not +commonly travelled by modern Oxford men; +and there were those, it was felt, who would +learn, with a sort of scandalised astonishment, +that “Shifter” was once Goldberg of +Lincoln.</p> + +<p>The present writer once met “Shifter,” +and discovered that the vogue of his pseudonym +filled him with genuine pride. The +meeting-place was a printing office in the +purlieus of Fleet Street. A diminutive man +of rather drowsy manner was sitting at the +end of a long, bare table, engaged in slow +and careful literary composition. An impatient +boy was carrying off the sheets of +his copy as he finished them. He looked up +with affability, yet with an air of self-importance, +at the new arrival, and introduced himself. +“You know who I am, don’t you?” +he said. “I’m ‘Shifter.’ I’m writing the +Office Boy’s Diary”; and there followed an +invitation to partake of refreshment with him, +after his task was concluded. The invitation +was accepted, and there ensued some talk of +Oxford—a place which, in those rather sordid +surroundings, seemed very far away.</p> + +<p>Oxford, in fact, used to figure, from time +to time, in “Shifter’s” contributions to the +sporting press. He liked to describe himself +as the <i>enfant terrible</i> returning to the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[132]</span>respectable bosom of <i>alma mater</i> and +creating a sensation there. He spoke, in +particular, of a “respectable brother,” in +residence at another College, whom he used +to visit—and to shock. The stock story was +that he stayed out all night, and came back +to College with the milk, and threatened to +report the milkman to the College authorities +for neglecting to mix rum with it.</p> + +<p>Probably the story was untrue—such stories +generally are. It reads like the humorous +invention of a “fanfaron of vice.” Of +“Shifter’s” actual career at Lincoln there +are few authentic records except that he wore +plum-coloured clothes, and slopped about the +quad in slippers. He might easily, it is said, +have been a good scholar if he had been +industrious; he was a very tolerable scholar +in spite of his lack of industry, as, indeed, +were a good many members of the original +team driven by the famous “Master” of the +pink <i>Sporting Times</i>. But the “Master” +showed a good many clever young men how +the “fanfaron of vice” could make a living +out of the fanfaronade. Goldberg of Lincoln +was one of the cleverest of the young men who +learnt the “Master’s” cynical lesson. He +blossomed into “Shifter,” and his name was +more often in the mouths of men than those +of many worthier persons.</p> + +<p>It is tempting to moralise; but the temptation +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[133]</span>shall be resisted—or very nearly so. +“Shifter” was not, after all, an absolutely +unique Oxford product. One can find Oxford +parallels and Oxford precedents for his case. +There are several precedents in Elizabethan +Oxford, among the wits who came to town, +and wrote for the stage, and died young as the +result of too much tavern life—George Peele +of Christ Church, for example. “Shifter” +also died young, not, one fears, because the +gods loved him, being of the same year as +Oscar Wilde, and Mr. A. D. Godley, and Mr. +L. R. Farnell, and Dr. Horton, the Hampstead +preacher. His appeal, it must be granted, was +to the lower elements in our fallen nature; +but at least he appealed to them wittily, and +not like the vulgarians of the <i>Winning Post</i>. +<i>Sit terra levis!</i> One may wish that for him, +though one would not wish it for them; and +then one may pass on, striking a pleasant +note of contrast, to the very different case of +John Wesley.</p> + +<p class="tb">Let us be fair to Wesley. Above all, let +us avoid the easy error of supposing that we +shall be helped to draw the picture of his +manner and deportment by visiting the nearest +Wesleyan chapel and listening to any +Wesleyan minister who may happen to conduct +the service there.</p> + +<p>The modern Wesleyan organisation is democratic +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[134]</span>in a sense in which the Church of +England is not. Its ministers are mostly men +of the people, fluent but shallow, good biblical +scholars but not otherwise highly educated, +and lacking in social polish. Their accents +are often broad; their gesticulations are often +violent; they are skilled in exhorting the +lower orders in language which the lower +orders understand.</p> + +<p>Perhaps that is as it should be; perhaps +their limitations are included among the +sources of their strength. Their congregations +often think so, and say so. One may +sometimes hear Wesleyan Church members +accounting for their preference for Wesleyan +places of worship on the express ground that +Wesleyan ministers are not, as they themselves +choose to put it, “gentlemen.” The +priest of the Church of England, they aver, +patronises the artisan and small shopkeeper +and keeps them at a distance. The Wesleyan +minister treats them as his brothers and +sisters, and takes tea with them, in a friendly +way, in their back parlours. As the arrangement +pleases him, and pleases them, no one +else is called upon to criticise it. The matter +is only mentioned here for the purpose of removing +a possible misapprehension and pointing +out that Wesley of Lincoln was not that +sort of Wesleyan.</p> + +<p>Wesley of Lincoln, who had been at +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[135]</span>Charterhouse and Christ Church before his +election to a Lincoln Fellowship, was a gentleman +and a scholar, in the fullest sense of +the words. He had as much of the Oxford +manner as had been invented in his time, and +he was rather a reserved than an effervescent +man. One must picture him, to picture him +rightly, as a kind of High Church don, +of studious habits and ascetic inclinations, a +little more anxious than the other dons to +enroll undergraduates as his disciples. One +finds his closest counterpart in modern times, +not in any of the tub-thumpers of any of the +denominational tabernacles, but in some of the +Canons of Christ Church—say Canon Pusey, +or Canon King, or Canon Liddon. He was +the kind of man, in short, who, in slightly +different circumstances, might have inaugurated, +not an evangelical revival, but a Tractarian +Movement.</p> + +<p>In order to understand him, one has to +understand, not only the England, but also +the Oxford of the eighteenth century. It is +not necessary to enter into the alleged +“aridity” of that century; but it is important +to remember that it was a century in which +spiritual problems were very generally waved +aside. And the tendencies of the country +as a whole were reflected in an exaggerated +shape at Oxford.</p> + +<p>Oxford was comfortable, and was taking +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[136]</span>no thought for the morrow. The dons, being +well provided for, liked to sit in coffee-houses +and read the papers, indolently jeering at the +House of Hanover. It did not occur to them +to concern themselves with the salvation of +their souls or of the souls of their pupils. It +hardly even occurred to them to concern themselves +with the education of their pupils. +Gibbon’s tutor, remembering that he had a +salary to receive but forgetting that he had +a duty to perform, was, in spite of the exceptions +which can be adduced, a typical don +of the date. Indifferentism, in short, was the +note; and enthusiasm, at Oxford, was regarded +as the abomination of desolation +standing where it ought not.</p> + +<p>Such was the scene on which Wesley +entered. He came from a country parsonage +where, in spite of the general trend of theological +thought, the lamp of piety had been +kept burning. It was more natural to him +to work than to be idle, and he was keenly +conscious that he had a soul to be saved. +He did not quite know how to save it; but +he had picked up hints from the writings of +Thomas à Kempis, Jeremy Taylor, and John +Law. On the whole he was inclined to think +that the way of salvation lay in doing as the +Churchmen did, only more so, in redeeming +the time by industry, and in sedulously observing +the ritual prescriptions of the Book +of Common Prayer.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[137]</span></p> + +<p>He made the acquaintance of a small group +of like-minded men. He, and his brother +Charles, and George Whitefield (of Pembroke), +and James Hervey (of his own +College), who was to win fame by meditating +among the tombs, and one or two others, +formed a Club. The rules of the Club, +which was called, in derision, the Holy +Club, were merely to the effect that the +members must order their lives regularly, +discharge all their duties punctually, and +receive the Sacrament at appointed intervals. +Because they were thus men of method, +they were nicknamed Methodists. The +name had no more recondite origin than +that. The actual thing—the spiritual point +of view distinctive of Methodism—was of later +date. The young Fellow of Lincoln and +“those about” him were only feeling their +way to it. Far from being Dissenters, they +were better Churchmen than their neighbours; +their purpose was not to rouse the country +but to rouse the Church.</p> + +<p>Wesley, moreover, was, at this date, an +Oxonian of the type that clings to Oxford. +He could not bear the thought of “going +down,” even for the purpose of taking a cure +of souls. It was put to him that he ought, +for family reasons, to take over his father’s +country living; but he raised objections—just +the sort of objections which it is natural +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[138]</span>for an Oxford man to raise. He knew, he +said, of “no other place under heaven, save +Oxford, where I can always have at hand +half a dozen persons of my own judgment +and engaged in the same studies.” The sociability, +that is to say, of Oxford appealed to +him. He enjoyed his position as the sovereign +ruler of a small coterie, even though that +coterie was unpopular with the rest of the +University.</p> + +<p>The University, in truth, had no case +against the Methodists. If they were zealots, +they were not, as yet, schismatics. There was +nothing to be said against them except that +they rose early, kept regular hours, received +the Sacrament as often as possible, visited the +prisoners and the sick, and lived economically +in order that they might be able to afford to +be charitable—proceedings which it must have +been exceedingly difficult for other Churchmen +to indict. Yet the University did, as a matter +of fact, dislike them; and its displeasure +was justified by Dr. Johnson, and was manifested +in a variety of ways. “They were not +fit,” said Johnson, in his robust and ponderous +way, “to be in the University of Oxford. +A cow is a very good animal in the field, +but we turn her out of a garden.” And there +were others who said that the conduct of the +Methodists was only excusable if it could be +assumed that they were mad; others, again, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[139]</span>who pelted them with mud when they were +on their way to church. It is worth while to +remember that it was in the days when Oxford +was entirely in the hands of the orthodox +that communicants were pelted with mud near +the porch of Saint Mary’s Church as a protest +against the strictness of their religious observances.</p> + +<p>And there we may leave them, for the story +of Methodism is much too long a story to +be repeated. How Wesley presently ceased +to make broad his phylacteries, and suddenly +awoke to a sense of the supreme importance +of the “inward witness” to the Christian propositions, +and founded the vast organisation +which numbered 12,000,000 adherents before +his death—all this is written in innumerable +biographies and need not be re-written +here. Here it is enough to indicate the personality +of the man: to point out that he +was no ranter, but a don on whom Oxford had +set its mark—a scholar, quiet, reserved, and +dignified, though with an immense fund of +strength and energy in reserve. And perhaps +one may conclude with a story of his passage +of arms with another Oxford man of a very +different type—a passage of arms in which his +quick wit and dignified demeanour easily won +him the victory.</p> + +<p>The place was Bath, and the time was +near the beginning of Wesley’s missionary +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[140]</span>journeys. A certain Nash of Jesus was there—the +Nash of Jesus whom the world knows as +Beau Nash, the King of Bath. The two men +met on a narrow pavement, and one of them +had to make way for the other.</p> + +<p>“I never make way for a fool,” said Nash +of Jesus, insolently holding his ground.</p> + +<p>“Don’t you? I always do,” replied Wesley +of Lincoln, quietly stepping on one side; and +the world is agreed that it was Wesley of +Lincoln who got the best of that encounter.</p> + +<p>And now leaving Wesley, we will evoke +the memory of another notable Lincoln man, +Mark Pattison, so long the Rector of the +College.</p> + +<p class="tb">Mark Pattison won his Lincoln fellowship +from Oriel; and he resembled Wesley in +beginning life as a High Churchman. He +was Newman’s curate, and, being much +attached to Newman, very nearly accompanied, +or followed, him into the Church of +Rome. He only failed to do so, according to +the commonly accepted story, because he +missed the train, or the omnibus, or whatever +conveyance it was by which he had arranged +to travel to the place appointed for his “reception.” +While waiting for the next train +or omnibus, it is said, he changed his mind +and decided to remain, provisionally at all +events, a member of the Church of England. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[141]</span>Nominally he remained a member of the +Church of England until the end; but it was +an open secret, confirmed by statements in +his “Memoirs,” that he believed in nothing +in particular and did not believe very profoundly +even in that. He is one of the many +men who have been credited with the pregnant +saying: “Nothing is new, and nothing is +true, but it doesn’t matter much.”</p> + +<p>His reasons for not formally quitting the +Church in which he had ceased to believe need +not detain us. He is said to have said that, +as he had taken Orders in good faith, he +felt entitled to retain them through all +beliefs and none instead of facing an +unpleasant alternative; but it shall be left +to casuists to estimate the value of that +casuistry. The really interesting thing to +note is that, in later life, he looked upon the +years in which he had been religious in almost +exactly the same light as that in which the +Methodists of whom we have been speaking +looked upon the years prior to their assurance +of salvation. He came to think that as a +Christian—and more particularly as a Puseyite—he +had lived in outer darkness; and he +despised, and almost hated, himself for having +done so.</p> + +<p>“Fanaticism,” he says, “was laying its +deadly grip around me.” He speaks of his +“fury of zeal” and his “abject prostration +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[142]</span>of mind” and his “degrading superstition,” +and of the “time-wasting and mind-drowning +occupation” in which he was involved by his +too close attention to his devotional exercises. +He adds that he once “got so low by fostering +a morbid state of conscience as to go to +confession to Dr. Pusey”; and he continues:</p> + +<p>“Years afterwards it came to my knowledge +that Pusey had told a fact about myself, +which he got from me on that occasion, +to a friend of his, who employed it to annoy +me.”</p> + +<p>Presently, however, he began to discover +that the Puseyites were “not intellectually +equal companions,” and that Newman himself +was a man of limited philosophical +acquirements—a man to whom “all the grand +development of human reason from Aristotle +down to Hegel was a sealed book.” So, +though there was a struggle—due to “that +profound pietistic impression which lay +like lead upon my understanding”—reason +got its way, and Pattison’s intelligence +evolved. There was a day when he called +on James Anthony Froude, desiring “to +sympathise with his scepticism for the purpose +of helping him through it”; but +presently he travelled on the same road that +Froude had taken, and travelled farther on +it. The Tractarian became an Essayist and +Reviewer. The Essayist and Reviewer came +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[143]</span>to regard all religions as vain guesses at the +answer of an unanswerable riddle.</p> + +<p>He enjoyed, in his later years, one of +those great University reputations which, +recognised by instinct, and admitted by +universal assent, do not require to be based +on visible or tangible achievement. It was +commonly assumed that he knew everything, +not only on his own subject, but on all +subjects; also that he had thought out all +problems and was only restrained from throwing +light on them because he despised his +fellow-creatures and resented their impertinent +curiosity. He was too much absorbed, in +fact, in his thoughts to pay much attention +to his duties; and he ended his pilgrimage +as a somewhat weird figure—somewhat of an +enigma to the old and a formidable terror to +the young.</p> + +<p>Undergraduates, in particular, were too +often the objects of a scorn which he was at +no pains to hide. The undergraduates of his +own College lived in an agony of apprehension +lest he should ask them to go for walks with +him; and it cannot be said that their fears +were altogether without warrant. He did not +speak when walking, but waited to be spoken +to; and the consequences of speaking to +him were incalculable—not unlike the consequences +of trying to make friends with some +strange and dangerous wild beast.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[144]</span></p> + +<p>There is a stock story of an undergraduate +who ventured to break the embarrassing +silence by contrasting the irony of Sophocles +with the irony of Euripides; but he only +discovered that the irony of the Rector of +Lincoln was greater than either. “Quote, +sir, quote,” was the Rector’s only rejoinder; +and as the timorous youth was not prepared +with a quotation, nothing further was said, +on either side, on any subject, for the remainder +of the afternoon. But the undergraduate +who confined himself to simple topics +which he did understand—the state of the +weather, for example—was handled still more +roughly. “If that is all you have to say, +you are not a very intelligent young man,” +was the retort with which the Rector closured +him.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[145]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="ALL_SOULS">ALL SOULS</h2> + +<p>Peculiarities of the Constitution—A College without +undergraduates—Court favourites jobbed into fellowships—Fellowships +bought and sold—All Souls Fellows +a link between Oxford and the outside world—Sir +William Blackstone—Edward Young—The song of +the All Souls mallard and the scandal connected +therewith.</p> + +</div> + +<p>The founder of All Souls was Archbishop +Chichele, who had been educated on the +foundations of William of Wykeham at Winchester +and New College. The souls which +the name commemorates are those of the +soldiers who fell in Henry V.’s French wars—wars +for which the Archbishop’s pugnacious +patriotism was very largely responsible. The +distinctive feature of the College is that +it neither supports scholars nor harbours +commoners, its only undergraduate members +being a sprinkling of Bible clerks. The +purpose of the founder, that is to say, was +to endow study—not to endow teaching; and +the fact that the College was small prevented +undergraduates from creeping into it. There +was no provision for their instruction, and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[146]</span>there was no room for them. A few commoners +did, at one time, obtain admission, +but they were soon eliminated.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp48" id="illus08" style="max-width: 28.125em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/illus08.jpg" alt=""> + <figcaption> + <p>REREDOS, ALL SOULS CHAPEL.</p> + <p class="right">[To face p. 145.</p> + </figcaption> +</figure> + +<p>Various consequences have followed from +this state of things—some of them good, and +others not so good. The All Souls fellowships +did not, in practice, in the early days +at all events, become the rewards of studious +virtue. They were regarded, on the contrary, +as sinecures to be scrambled for, to be jobbed +into, to be bought and sold. No definite +obligations, unless it were of residence, +attached to them; they were merely positions +in which a man might draw a living wage +for doing nothing. Royal favourites were +pushed into fellowships, in the Stuart times, +as a cheap proof of royal favour, and +fellowships could be purchased in the open +market, just like commissions in the Army—an +abuse which was brought about in this way:</p> + +<p>When a resignation created a vacancy, the +College co-opted a successor to it; but the +retiring Fellow shared with the other Fellows +the right to nominate a candidate. On the +principle of “scratch my back and I’ll +scratch yours,” the tacit understanding was +established that the retiring Fellow’s candidate +should always be elected. This was an opportunity +for any Fellow to offer to retire in +favour of a particular candidate in consideration +of a money payment; and many Fellows +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[147]</span>availed themselves of the opportunity. Hence +the scandal of “corrupt resignations,” not +unknown, indeed, at other colleges, but +specially gross and glaring at All Souls, where +it flourished long, and was not suppressed +without great difficulty.</p> + +<p>Jobbery and corrupt resignations, in fact, +combined to fill All Souls with Fellows of +a different stamp from the Fellows of the other +colleges; and the difference was, in some +respects, for the better, and in other respects +for the worse. The Fellows, having no +academic duties, were idle; and Satan provided +mischief for their idle hands. The +Punishment Book, and other official records, +show them comporting themselves more like +junior than senior members of the University. +We hear of several of them being dropped +upon for “noctivagation.” We find the +Visitor calling upon the Warden to “punish +such of your Society as do spend their time +in taverns and ale-houses to the scandal of +the House.” We discover a representation +that the College ale is too strong for students, +and that only small beer ought to be brewed +there. We read that one of the Fellows was +reprimanded for “beating the Under-Butler.” +Proof is abundant, in short, that the College +was by no means such a quiet resort of +industrious men as the founder had intended +it to be.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[148]</span></p> + +<p>Such were the drawbacks of the system; +but it also, incidentally, produced advantages. +While many of the Fellows were worthless and +indolent persons, the loose mode of election +and the total absence of academic duties +resulted in the introduction of a type of Fellow +who served as a link, just as we have noted that +some of the Merton Fellows did, between the +University and the external world—the type +of Fellow whom the College porter appears +to have had in mind when he replied to the +visitor who inquired whether the Fellows read +the books in the College library: “Lord bless +you, sir! They don’t need to read books. +They’re gentlemen!”</p> + +<p>“Well-born, well-dressed, and moderately +educated,” is the hackneyed description of a +Fellow of All Souls. The candidates for fellowships, +it used to be said, instead of being put +through an examination were invited to dinner +and given cherry-tart to eat; their fate depending +upon the manner in which they disposed +of the cherry-stones. The story is told of a +Fellow who was elected as a reward for his +delicacy in swallowing the cherry-stones. It +is not to be supposed that the story is literally +true; but no doubt a certain symbolical truth +is enshrined in it. The unmannerly bookworm +has never been wanted at All Souls. The +scholar who is also a gentleman has always +been preferred to him; and from the time +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[149]</span>of Sir Christopher Wren to the time of Lord +Curzon of Kedleston, the College has generally +been able to boast of some Fellow of wide +fame, not of a rigidly academic character.</p> + +<p class="tb">Those great physicians Linacre and Sydenham +were Fellows of All Souls; and Linacre, +in an age in which men could afford to +specialise in more than one subject, excelled +in Greek as well as medicine. Sir Christopher +Wren has just been mentioned. The College +owes to him its famous sun-dial, with the +motto: <i>Pereunt et imputantur</i>. It cost him +£32 11s. 6d.; and its exactitude was such +that Oxford watchmakers used to set their +clocks by it. General Codrington, to whom +the College owes the Codrington Library, went +from All Souls to be Governor of Barbadoes, +at the time when Admiral Benbow was beating +the French there; and other Fellows +whose names are known to all the world were +Blackstone, of the Commentaries, Edward +Young, the author of “Night Thoughts,” and +Bishop Heber.</p> + +<p>Blackstone was Bursar of All Souls. The +Vinerian professorship was expressly founded +for him. His “Commentaries on the Laws of +England” were first delivered as a course of +professorial lectures. He took his position so +seriously that he declined to read his lectures +to the Prince of Wales on the ground that +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[150]</span>he could not quit his duties at Oxford. +Campbell says of him that he was, after +Bacon, “the first practising lawyer at the +English bar who, in writing, paid the slightest +attention to the selection or collocation of +words.” He served his College by compelling +the executors of the Duke of Wharton to pay +over to it a donation promised by him at the +instance of Edward Young.</p> + +<p>Wharton was a rake; and Young, in his +youth, was fond of consorting with rakes. In +later life, however, he repented and cancelled +the dedications of poems which he had +addressed to his more disreputable associates. +The College books describe him as <i>poeta celeberrimus</i>; +and he certainly had for a time a +vogue as great as that of Tennyson, or even +Martin Farquhar Tupper, though nowadays he +is only remembered for the single sentiment: +“Procrastination is the thief of time.” A +passage in Johnson shows that, though he +combined worldliness with his other-worldliness, +he could be effective as a Christian +controversialist.</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“The other boys,” said the atheist, “I +can always answer, because I always know +whence they have their arguments, which I +have read a hundred times; but that fellow +Young is continually pestering me with something +of his own.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[151]</span></p> + +<p>Heber remains; but what there is to be +said about Heber may be better said when +we come to Brasenose. Here he is mentioned +principally because, in one of his letters home, +he describes how, looking out from Brasenose, +he saw the All Souls Fellows searching for the +All Souls mallard, and so introduces us to the +interesting legend of that bird.</p> + +<p>The story is that, when the foundations of +the College was being dug, a mallard flew +out of a drain. Thereupon, or it may be at +a later date, a College poet wrote a song about +the mallard, of which the first and last verses +and the chorus may be given here:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“The griffin, bustard, turkey, capon,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Let other hungry mortals gape on,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And on their bones with stomach fall hard,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But let All Souls men have their mallard.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="center"><span class="smcap">Chorus.</span></div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent4">Oh, by the blood of King Edward,</div> + <div class="verse indent4">Oh, by the blood of King Edward,</div> + <div class="verse indent4">It was a swapping, swapping mallard.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Then let us drink and dance a galliard</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In the remembrance of the mallard,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And as the mallard doth in poole,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Let’s dabble, dive, and duck in bowl.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="center"><span class="smcap">Chorus.</span></div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent4">Oh, by the blood of King Edward,</div> + <div class="verse indent4">Oh, by the blood of King Edward,</div> + <div class="verse indent4">It was a swapping, swapping mallard.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[152]</span></p> + +<p>The song is still sung at College gaudies. +In the old days the Fellows, after singing it, +used to make a solemn pilgrimage round the +College to look for the mallard; but though +the pilgrimage began solemnly, it was apt to +end uproariously. Bonfires were lighted; +furniture was smashed; the oaks of the unpopular +were forced—all on pretence of discovering +the undiscoverable bird. The +Fellows, in short, made their rounds “not on +the viewless wings of poesy, but charioted by +Bacchus and his pards”; and their proceedings +attracted the attention of their Visitor, +Archbishop Abbot, who wrote to them:</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>“The feast of Christmas drawing now to +an end both put me in mind of the great +outrage which, as I am informed, was the +last year committed in your College, where, +although matters had formerly been conducted +with some distemper, yet men did never before +break forth into such intolerable liberty as +to tear down doors and gates, and disquiet +their neighbours, as if it had been a camp or +a town in war. Civil men should never so far +forget themselves under pretence of a foolish +mallard as to do things barbarously unbecoming.”</p> + +</blockquote> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[153]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="MAGDALEN_COLLEGE">MAGDALEN COLLEGE</h2> + +<p>The College which withstood James II.—President Routh—His +great age and eccentricities—Slackness of the +College—The careers of Addison—Of Gibbon—Of +Charles Reade—Oscar Wilde and the Æsthetic Movement +at Magdalen—Persecution of Wilde and suppression +of the movement.</p> + +</div> + +<p>“Little is known,” say the works of reference, +of William Waynflete, Bishop of +Winchester, the founder of Magdalen; and +the little that does happen to be known is of +no absorbing interest.</p> + +<p>The event in its history of which the College +is officially proudest is its battle with James II. +The King, for purposes of his own, proposed to +nominate a President. The College demonstrated +that the royal nominee was an +unsuitable person to fill the office, and, +“having first received the blessed Eucharist,” +proceeded to elect a man of their own choice, +and successfully upheld their election in the +face of the royal displeasure. “Is that Magdalen +Tower?” asked the Prince Regent when +he visited Oxford with the allied sovereigns +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[154]</span>in 1814. “Yes, your Royal Highness,” +replied his travelling companion, “that’s the +tower against which James II. broke his +head.”</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus09" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/illus09.jpg" alt=""> + <figcaption> + <p>MAGDALEN COLLEGE.</p> + <p class="right">[To face p. 153.</p> + </figcaption> +</figure> + +<p>A second object of the pride of Magdalen +is the long presidency of Dr. Routh, whose +long life was a link between historical and +modern times.</p> + +<p>There must be many men still living in Oxford +who remember him, for he only died (at +the age of ninety-nine) in 1854. He, on his +part, remembered, and talked of, Dr. Johnson’s +visits to Oxford, had attained his majority +before the American Declaration of Independence, +was old enough to be at a dame’s school +when Wolfe was storming the Heights of +Abraham, and had an aunt who had known a +lady who had seen Charles I.</p> + +<p>That he was either a great man or a great +college ruler it would be an exaggeration to +affirm. He was famous rather for wearing +a wig, defying University Commissions, and +favouring traditional abuses. His wig was +sent, after his death, to the Knaresborough +well to be petrified, and he himself was reverenced +chiefly as an interesting relic of that +remote past which his conversation could +recall. A crowd used to assemble daily to see +him shuffle from his lodgings to the chapel. +He recollected Gownsman’s Gallows, on which +he had seen undergraduate members of the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[155]</span>University hanged for highway robbery. His +politics, it is said, were those of Strafford, +and his religion was that of Laud. He spoke +currently of the Jacobite faction as a still +living force; and his favourite joke was to +inquire after people who had long been dead, +and express astonishment when informed of +their decease.</p> + +<p>Among a mass of stories told about him +the best are perhaps those related by the +biographers of Charles Reade, who had been +elected to a demyship under his presidency. +In one of those anecdotes we see an undergraduate +hauled before him by the tutors. +The young man having delayed in town to +amuse himself, and not having arrived in +Oxford until three days after the commencement +of the term, the tutors represented to +the President that he ought to be rusticated.</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“‘Three days late, is he?’ whimpered the +old fellow in his childish treble. ‘Well, sirs, +there has been an heavy fall of snow, and as +the gentleman resides in Norfolk, no doubt +the coaches have been detained along the road.’</p> + +<p>“‘But,’ urged the tutors, ‘he could have +reached Oxford in a few hours by railway.’</p> + +<p>“‘Railway?’ quoth Dr. Routh incredulously. +‘Ah, well, I don’t know anything +about that’; and so, with the typical flea +in its ear, minor authority was dismissed.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[156]</span></p> + +<p>Another story relates to the case of an +undergraduate who, after being in residence +for three years and three-quarters, had not +yet succeeded in passing “Smalls.” The +junior tutor called to propose that the young +man in question should be invited to remove +his name from the College books.</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“The venerable President at once assumed +an expression of extreme astonishment. ‘I +don’t know anything about your examinations,’ +he replied to the complaining don. ‘Have +you anything to say as regards the gentleman’s +moral character or conduct?’ The tutor +responded in the negative. ‘Then,’ cried the +President in an outburst of righteous indignation, +‘how dare you come here, sir, to attack +a respectable member of the College? His +father, sir, is a friend of my friend, the +Bishop of Bath and Wells; and I will not +listen, sir, to any such frivolous allegations.’”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>And finally there is the story of the President’s +visit to London. He went there seldom, +and always by coach, and the day came when +competition compelled the reduction of the +fares:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“Dr. Routh alighted, as was his wont, in +Oxford Street, and was assisted respectfully +by the coachman, to whom he handed +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[157]</span>£1 7s. 6d.—twenty-five shillings the fare, and +half a crown, the gratuity to John, who, as +the money was being paid to him, said, ‘The +fare, Mr. President, is reduced to a guinea.’ +Dr. Routh paused and reflected. ‘Sir,’ he +replied, ‘I always have paid twenty-five +shillings, and I always shall.’”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Such is our picture—a picture of an +imperious old gentleman, constitutionally +opposed to progress, looking upon his College +as a Duke looks upon his estate, regarding +a reformer as a Duke regards a Radical +Chancellor of the Exchequer, convinced that +the general well-being depended upon his +being left at liberty to manage, or mismanage, +his own affairs.</p> + +<p>And the point of view of the President +was also, for many generations, the point of +view of the Fellows under him. They had +a very fine piece of property to cut up, and +they carved it to their common satisfaction. +The endowment amounted to about £24,000 +a year in all. The President took about +£4,000 a year, and the Fellows from £500 +to £600 a year each; while the Demies, who +were nominated by the Fellows in their turn, +had a statutory right to succeed to the Fellowships +as vacancies occurred—the elections, +save in rare instances, being governed by +the sacred principles of nepotism. “Your +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[158]</span>nominee, sir,” the President might occasionally +remark with sarcasm, “may be a very +excellent young man, but he is no scholar”; +but the excellence was almost invariably +allowed to compensate for the lack of scholarship.</p> + +<p>It could only, in such circumstances, be by +accident that the names of good men were +entered on the College books; but such happy +accidents did, of course, occur from time to +time. Addison was the first accident, Gibbon +the second, and Charles Reade the third.</p> + +<p class="tb">Addison, in fact, did get his demyship as +the reward of merit. He was originally at +Queen’s, but was invited to migrate to +Magdalen because his Latin verses were +admired. “Addison’s Walk” still keeps his +memory alive there. He is even said to have +planted some of the trees in the walk, though +he was not the sort of man who was likely +to spend much of his time in planting trees; +but little is recorded of the incidents of his +career, except that he “was always very +nervous,” and that he “kept late hours.” One +pictures him as sleek, correct, precocious, +grave, yet with a sound appreciation of good +claret.</p> + +<p>Of Gibbon there is more to be said; for +the historian’s description of the manners and +tone of Magdalen society is one of the most +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[159]</span>pleasant passages in his famous Autobiography. +It is well known, but it must nevertheless +be quoted:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“The fellows, or monks, of my time” (says +Gibbon) “were decent men who supinely +enjoyed the gifts of the founder: their days +were filled by a series of uniform employments; +the chapel and the hall, the coffee-house, +and the common-room, till they retired, +weary and well-satisfied, to a long slumber.... +Their conversation stagnated in a round +of college business, Tory politics, personal +anecdotes, and private scandal: their dull +and deep potations excused the brisk intemperance +of youth.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>There were few lectures, he continues, and +the tutors did not insist upon attendance at +such lectures as there were. He gravely tells +us with what impunity he “cut” them:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“As they appeared equally devoid of profit +and pleasure, I was once tempted to try the +experiment of a formal apology. The apology +was accepted with a smile. I repeated the +offence with less ceremony; the excuse was +admitted with the same indulgence; the +slightest motive of laziness or indisposition, +the most trifling avocation at home or abroad, +was allowed as a worthy impediment; nor +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[160]</span>did my tutor appear conscious of my absence +or neglect.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Nor does it even appear to have been +necessary for Gibbon to apply for an <i>exeat</i>, +or to plead the necessity of consulting his +dentist or attending the funeral of his grandmother, +when he wished temporarily to absent +himself from Oxford. The tutor who, when +granting his pupil a grudging permission to +attend such a funeral, added that he “could +wish that it had been a nearer relative” +belongs to a later generation. Gibbon’s tutor +seems never to have known whether his pupil +was in residence or not.</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“The want of experience, of advice, and +of occupation” (he says) “soon betrayed me +into some improprieties of conduct, ill-chosen +company and inconsiderate expense. My +growing debts might be secret; but my +frequent absence was visible and scandalous; +and a tour to Bath, a visit into Buckinghamshire, +and four excursions to London in the +same winter, were costly and dangerous +frolics.... In all these excursions I eloped +from Oxford; I returned to College; in a +few days I eloped again, as if I had been an +independent stranger in a hired lodging, without +once hearing the voice of admonition, without +once feeling the hand of control.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[161]</span></p> + +<p>This in the case of a boy of fourteen (for +Gibbon was no more when he matriculated) +and in a College in which religion, discipline, +and learning were jointly and severally endowed +with £24,000 a year! There could be +no clearer proof of the darkness of the dark +ages at Oxford; and, in spite of the testimony +of Adam Smith, already quoted, as to +the state of things at Balliol, it seems that +they were really darker at Magdalen than +elsewhere.</p> + +<p>They were still dark, though not so dark +as they had been, when Charles Reade came +into residence.</p> + +<p class="tb">Charles Reade, in a sense, got his demyship +by merit; but it was only by accident that +his merit was allowed to count. The nominee +of a nepotist had broken down so utterly in +the qualifying examination that President +Routh for once lost his temper and declared +that he would not consent to the election of +an absolute ignoramus. The examiners then +proceeded to look at the papers of the other +candidates; and Charles Reade’s English +Essay impressed them. “Look here!” one +of them was heard to shout into the deaf +President’s ear. “Here is a boy who gives +us his own ideas instead of other people’s!” +The President read the essay, and agreed that +it was so; and Charles Reade was duly +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[162]</span>elected to a demyship, which led, in due +course, to a fellowship, tenable for life.</p> + +<p>Even so, however, he still needed accident +to befriend him, and did not trust to accident +in vain. His election to the fellowship hung +upon his ability to pass an examination in the +Rudiments of Faith and Religion—an examination +which has since come to be known, +first as “Ruders” and latterly as “Divers.” +Candidates for that examination were required +to know all the Thirty-nine Articles by heart. +Charles Reade had only learnt three of them; +but he happened to be asked to recite one of +the three, and came off with flying colours, +though the odds, as can be shown by the +subtle processes of arithmetic, were thirteen +to one against him.</p> + +<p>A little later he won the Vinerian Law +Scholarship; and that success also was a +triumph, if not of accident, at least of favour. +The election to that scholarship, in those days, +did not depend solely on the examiners, but +was decided, in the last resort, by the votes +of all the Masters of Arts whose names were +on the books. Charles Reade and his mother +instituted a careful canvass of the country +clergy and the country squires, and even +supplied conveyances to drive the voters to +the polling station. He was returned at the +head of the poll, and defended his corrupt +practices by an ingenious argument.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[163]</span></p> + +<p>“The way,” he said, “in which my canvass +was organised and carried out was rather unusual, +but it argues a talent of the practical +kind superior to that of my competitors. The +University in its wisdom has chosen right.”</p> + +<p>Thereafter he lived a good deal, from time +to time, in his Magdalen rooms, and did a +good deal of his work there. “The rooms +he occupied in No. 2, New Buildings,” say +his biographers, “were scantily furnished. +MSS. and books littering in heaps on the +floor, the walls being decorated with looking-glasses +instead of pictures.” He thought so +highly of the College cook that, when in +London, he often had his dinner cooked at +Magdalen and sent up to town in a set of +silver dishes. The cook, in return, thought +so highly of him that he spoke of “It is Never +Too Late to Mend” as “the fifth Gospel.” +Mr. Tuckwell relates that he “would beguile +acquaintances into his ill-furnished rooms, and +read to them <i>ad nauseam</i> from his latest MS.”</p> + +<p>Though he was never a College tutor, he +held two College offices—those of Dean of Arts +and Vice-President. It is on record that he +performed the functions of Dean in a bright +green coat with brass buttons—a costume considered +objectionable by Professor Goldwin +Smith, who was then a Magdalen undergraduate. +It was also while Charles Reade +was Dean that John Conington, the future +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[164]</span>Professor of Latin, known to his contemporaries +as “the sick vulture,” was put under +the College pump as a punishment for starting +a College debating society, and migrated in +consequence to University.</p> + +<p>Whether this last incident is really typical +of the attitude of Magdalen Philistinism +towards culture may be arguable; but it +forms, at any rate, a fitting prelude to the +story which remains to be told of the great +Magdalen outburst which finally overthrew the +Æsthetic Movement.</p> + +<p class="tb">The source of æstheticism is presumably +to be found in pre-Raphaelitism—that +interesting revolt against the Philistinism and +general ugliness of early and mid-Victorian +life. It established a new religion of beauty, +albeit on what must have seemed to the +Philistines a somewhat doleful basis. It +lacked laughter. The enemies of Philistinism +who laughed, as Matthew Arnold did, were +not pre-Raphaelites. The pre-Raphaelites +themselves were perhaps a little too conscious +that the overthrow of Philistinism was no +laughing matter. Ecstasy was perhaps their +substitute for hilarity. It was a disposition +to a sort of æsthetic ecstasy which they bequeathed +to their Oxford successors, specifically +known as Æsthetes, who had first +Walter Pater, a Fellow of Brasenose, and then +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[165]</span>Oscar Wilde, a demy of Magdalen, for their +prophets.</p> + +<p>A number of Oxford men not yet middle-aged +can well remember that Æsthetic Movement +and the strange jargon, initiated by +Oscar Wilde, and talked by the <i>illuminés</i>. +They were “utter,” they said; they were “too +too”; they were “all but.” And no doubt +the boast that they were “all but” was the +best founded, and received the most ironical +justification. They had not, that is to say, +the sincerity of conviction which could enable +them to stand firm in the day of persecution; +and that day of persecution came upon them +with the suddenness of a thunder-clap.</p> + +<p>What happened, to be precise, was this: +Towards the end of a certain summer term, +and in the midst of the season of bump +suppers, a certain æsthete of some notoriety +brought forward a resolution at the Oxford +Union proposing that the Society should discontinue +its subscription to <i>Punch</i>, because +that journal was ridiculing the “New +Renaissance.” The proposal was rejected; +but the end of the matter was not in the +Debating Hall, but at the æsthete’s own +College, which happened to be Magdalen, +where a party of boating men were convivially +celebrating their success upon the river. +The harmony of the evening ended in an +attack upon the æsthete. His collection of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[166]</span>blue china was thrown out of his window, +and he himself, like John Conington, was put +under the College pump. It was threatened +that the same measures would be taken with +other æsthetes in other colleges, and in the +panic which ensued, the Æsthetic Movement +perished. The leading æsthetes hurried as +one man to the barber’s to get their hair cut, +and to the haberdasher’s to buy high collars. +Men who, on the previous day, had resembled +owls staring out of ivy-bushes now cultivated +the appearance of timid cows shyly peeping +over white walls; and all the available enthusiasm—since +Oxford must always have an +enthusiasm of some sort—was transferred to +Canon Barnett’s scheme for conveying the +higher life to the lower orders through the +medium of University Settlements in the slums +of London.</p> + +<p>Such is the history of the Æsthetic Movement, +compressed into a nutshell, and related +with the irreducible minimum of reference +to Oscar Wilde; but there is not really, at +this time of day, any reason for leaving him +out. Magdalen, of course, is not proud of +him, though he took two firsts and won the +Newdigate; but visitors to Magdalen are +generally inquisitive about him. He was a +feature—an institution; and he belongs to +literary history.</p> + +<p>Probably no undergraduate ever attracted +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[167]</span>more attention while still an undergraduate, +or left a more enduring trail of legend behind +him when he went down. He understood, as +the pre-Raphaelites whom he succeeded had +not understood it, the great art of posing—the +art of challenging attention, not for what he +had done but for what he was. He was the +first to expound the art of life as the art of +“existing beautifully.” The conception appealed +to the <i>âmes sensibles</i> and the vain—especially, +no doubt, to the vain whose +vanity had no <i>raison d’être</i> in the way of +visible achievement. It supplied them with +passwords and shibboleths; and it filled +Oxford with a long, limp, languishing procession +of mild-eyed enthusiasts, who preferred +the easy morals of Greece to the stern +code of Palestine, and took their leader far +more seriously than he took himself.</p> + +<p>His sayings were quoted, and anecdotes of +his strange doings were passed round. One +heard, and talked, of the blue china which +he “lived up to” in the most æsthetically +furnished rooms in Oxford, and of his discovery +of the “utter” loveliness of sunflowers. +One was particularly proud of +the stories of his contemptuous treatment of +the Professor of Poetry. Principal Shairp, +it was said, had read over his prize poem +with him and suggested alterations. He had +listened with the politeness of a potentate +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[168]</span>negotiating with a rival potentate, and had +then printed his poem without adopting a +single one of the proposed amendments.</p> + +<p>There was a time when he was “ragged” +on account of his eccentricities, but he was +ragged in vain. On one occasion eight +stalwart Philistines bound him with ropes and +trailed him along the ground to the top of a +hill. Instead of losing his temper, he expressed +himself as lost in admiration of the +view. After that, it seems to have been felt +that he had earned his right to be eccentric. +At all events, the Philistines troubled him no +more. He had founded his school. It continued +to flourish for some years after his +departure, and to feed itself upon stories of +his sayings and doings in the wider world.</p> + +<p>There were the stories, for instance, of his +lecturing tour in America. He had gone “to +carry culture to a continent,” but he had been +“disappointed with the Atlantic Ocean.” +There was the story of his comment on the +case of the man—a brother poet named John +Barlas—who was reported to have gone mad +as the result of reading the Bible. “When +I think,” said Oscar, “of all the harm that +book has done I despair of ever writing anything +to equal it.” And, finally, there were +the innumerable stories which identified him +with Du Maurier’s Postlethwaite. A feeble +follower of his—one of those who ultimately +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[169]</span>suffered martyrdom for the cause—was ridiculed +in the Union, in the course of the debate +above referred to, as “the least of all the a-Postlethwaites +and scarce worthy to be called +an a-Postlethwaite.”</p> + +<p>Afterwards, of course—but why dwell upon +what happened afterwards?</p> + +<p>Wilde’s biographer, Mr. Sherard, suggests +that he was “to a very large extent a victim +of the Oxford educational system, of the +Oxford environment.” He supports his view +by the statement that Oxford “produces side +by side the saint, the sage, and the depraved +libertine,” and “sends men to Parnassus +or to the public-house, to Latium or the +lenocinium.” But that will not do at all; +for precisely the same thing might be said, +with equal truth, of any curriculum through +which large masses of young men pass, +or any environment which they frequent. +The descent to Avernus is easy, and hell +has many gates quite as accessible from the +seats of ignorance as from the seats of +learning.</p> + +<p>“With my brain,” Oscar Wilde once said +in later life, “I might have become anything +that I chose.”</p> + +<p>Undoubtedly he might; and it is a great +tragedy that he chose so ill; but it would +be a gross injustice to hold Oxford responsible +for his choice. Oxford, as we have +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[170]</span>seen, did its best to curb his wantonness by +trailing him on the ground to the top of a +hill; and even when he was no longer <i>in +statu pupillari</i>, Oxford planned a second +effort for his salvation.</p> + +<p>He was at Oxford, on a visit to a friend +at University College on the night of the +riot, already spoken of, which put the +Æsthetic Movement down. He had even +accepted, for that night, an invitation to the +rooms of a Magdalen disciple; and the plot +had been laid to seize him, and submit him, +together with his disciple, to the discipline +of the College pump. One of the conspirators +privately warned him of his danger, and he +made an excuse, and stayed away.</p> + +<p>Perhaps, if he had gone, the pump would +have saved him from himself; but that, after +all, is an idle speculation.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[171]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="BRASENOSE_COLLEGE">BRASENOSE COLLEGE</h2> + +<p>The eponymous nose—The Hell Fire Club and its ghost—The +Phœnix—Dean Hole as the typical Brasenose +man—Bishop Heber and his prize poem—His <i>jeux +d’esprit</i>—The note of satire in his missionary hymns—Richard +Heber the greatest bibliophile that the world +has never seen—The author of “Ingoldsby Legends”—Robertson +of Brighton—Oxford objections to private +initiative in religion—Walter Pater and his Philosophy +of Life.</p> + +</div> + +<p>There are two questions which every visitor +to Brasenose can be relied upon to ask: +What, he will demand, is the origin of the +eponymous nose? And what are the rights +of the story about the Hell Fire Club and its +ghost?</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp48" id="illus10" style="max-width: 28.125em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/illus10.jpg" alt=""> + <figcaption> + <p>BRASENOSE KNOCKER.</p> + <p class="right">[To face p. 171.</p> + </figcaption> +</figure> + +<p>As regards the nose, two doctrines have +gained currency. The first is contained in the +works of the French traveller, Dr. Sorbière:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“I shall not take upon me,” writes the +Doctor, “to describe all the colleges to you. +There is one at whose gate I saw a great +brazen nose, like Punchinello’s vizard. I was +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[172]</span>also told they call it ‘Brasen-Nose College,’ +and that John Duns Scotus taught here, in +remembrance of which they set up the sign +of his nose at the gate.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>The other explanation is to be found in +that entertaining classic, “Verdant Green”:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“Mr. Larkyns,” we there read, “drew Verdant’s +attention to the brazen nose that is +such a conspicuous object over the entrance +gate. ‘That,’ said he, ‘was modelled from +a cast of the principal feature of the first +Head of the College, and so the College was +named Brazen-nose. The nose was formerly +used as a place of punishment for any misbehaving +Brasenosian, who had to sit upon +it for two hours.... These punishments +were so frequent that they gradually wore +down the nose to its present small +dimensions.’”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>It is hardly necessary to add that Dr. Sorbière, +as well as Mr. Verdant Green, was +hoaxed. The nose seems originally to have +been a knocker of no importance, though, at +a later date, it came to be regarded almost +as a fetish or a mascot, and acquired an accretion +of legend. When, in the year 1334, some +members of Brasenose Hall (which preceded +Brasenose College) migrated from Oxford to +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[173]</span>Stamford, in Lincolnshire, because Oxford was +too riotous a place to suit their tastes, they +took the knocker with them. The students +who stayed in Oxford procured another nose +in place of it; but the nose which had gone +astray was bought back by the College, 656 +years after its removal, and now embellishes +the dining-hall.</p> + +<p>That point cleared up, we may go on to +the story of the Hell Fire Club and the ghost.</p> + +<p class="tb">The Brasenose Hell Fire Club was an imitation +of the more famous Hell Fire Club of +Medmenham Abbey. It flourished from 1828 +to 1834, and its <i>raison d’être</i> was the defiance +of religion and mortality. The meetings +were held in the various members’ rooms. The +members sat at a table with a vacant chair +at the head of it—the theory being that their +chairman was the invisible but omnipresent +Enemy of Mankind—and they drank hard and +competed with one another in blasphemous +declamation and the telling of indecorous +stories. The dons, it appears, had some vague +inkling of their proceedings, but no precise +information on which it was possible for them +to act. They did not know how the Club +differed from other wine clubs, nor had they +a list of its members; but the truth was to be +revealed to them in a sudden and dramatic +manner.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[174]</span></p> + +<p>One of the Brasenose dons had been dining +with the dons of Exeter—in the Senior +Common-room of which College an excellent +port is dispensed—and his way home took +him along Brasenose Lane, which, as strangers +will remark, is one of the darkest and loneliest +thoroughfares in Oxford. On one side of it +is the forbidding <i>façade</i> of Brasenose itself, +with savage iron bars fastened across all the +windows to prevent undergraduates from +climbing out of them and seeking adventures +at unseemly hours; on the other side +is the high, blank wall of the Exeter Fellows’ +garden.</p> + +<p>The hour was midnight, and as the don +pursued his solitary way he heard sounds of +revelry—and then sounds which were not of +revelry—proceeding from a room on the +ground floor in which the members of the +Hell Fire Club were assembled. He was +startled; he stopped; he looked up, and +saw an astounding and appalling spectacle. +The first figure which met his eyes was that +of Beelzebub, the Prince of Darkness—blue +fire, and horns, and hoofs, and all; and then +he perceived that Beelzebub was not alone. +An undergraduate, well known to the don +as a <i>mauvais sujet</i>, was in his grip, struggling, +resisting, with agony and terror in his face, +while the Evil One dragged his body in +mocking triumph through the bars.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[175]</span></p> + +<p>Doubting the evidence of his senses, the +don took to his heels and ran all the way to +the College gate. He knocked and was admitted, +and staggered, in an almost fainting +condition, into the porch. At the same time +there was a cry and a rush of men from one +of the rooms on the right of the quadrangle. +They came from a meeting of the Hell Fire +Club, with the news that the owner of the +rooms in which the session had been held +had suddenly fallen dead—of apoplexy, as +one gathers—in the midst of a blasphemous +tirade.</p> + +<p>The story is told by the Rev. F. G. Lee +in his “Glimpses of the Supernatural.” It +was current in his own Oxford days, Mr. Lee +says, “on what could not but be regarded as +good authority.” It is still current, whatever +be the value of the authority, and is invariably +recalled whenever a College debating society +discusses the motion, “That this House believes +in ghosts.” Probably, since the ghost +does not appear in the record of the circumstances +preserved in the Vice-Principal’s +Register, the supernatural element in the story +is a later accretion, due to the mythopœic +faculty of youth; but the sudden death of +the member of the Hell Fire Club is history.</p> + +<p>Even that fact, indeed, has sometimes been +denied by rationalising sceptics, who have +gone so far as to declare that there was no +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[176]</span>death in the College in the year in which the +Hell Fire Club was wound up; but the death +of Edward Leigh Trafford, the member in +question, is duly chronicled in the Register +above referred to, and the present writer has +even heard a contemporary witness, an aged +clergyman whose acquaintance he made in +a hotel smoking-room, relate that the dead +man’s coffin was solemnly laid out in the +College hall, and that all the undergraduates +in residence were paraded before it, and +warned of the judgment by which sinners +might at any hour be overtaken.</p> + +<p class="tb">Another Brasenose Club, hardly less +famous than the Hell Fire Club, and much +more worthy of fame, is the Phœnix. It is +sometimes said that the Phœnix was so called +because it rose from the ashes of the Hell +Fire Club; but that is a mistake. The +Phœnix is the older society of the two, dating +from 1781 or 1782, and is, in fact, the oldest +social club in the University. Its traditions, +though convivial, are seemly. Many of its +members have risen to high places, alike in +the University and in Church and State. Five +of its original twelve members, indeed, became +Fellows of Colleges; and one of its later +members, Frodsham Hodson, became Principal +of Brasenose, and so great a man that, +according to Mark Pattison, when he returned +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[177]</span>to College after the Long Vacation, he drove +the last stage into Oxford with post horses, +lest it should be said that “the first Tutor +of the first College of the first University of +the world entered it with a pair.”</p> + +<p>Other members of the Phœnix were Bishop +Heber, R. H. Barham, the author of “Ingoldsby +Legends,” and the late Dean Hole. +The names are of high repute, a testimonial +in themselves; and we probably shall not be +wrong in saying that it is characteristic of +the tone of Brasenose that the most intellectual +as well as the least intellectual of its +<i>alumni</i>, its clerical as well as its sporting +prodigies, have seen no harm in filling, or in +emptying, the flowing bowl. That, at any +rate, has been one of the characteristics of +the College, though not, of course, the only +one.</p> + +<p>“A very gentlemanly set” is the appreciation +of Brasenose men in “Verdant +Green”; and as the author of “Verdant +Green” speaks of an undergraduate of +another College as “openly confessing his +shame” by displaying himself in the porch +of that College, we may take it that he was +not using words at random but affirming a +proposition which he was prepared to defend +in argument. Most of the men, in fact, +have belonged to good and well-to-do families +in the northern counties, and have exhibited +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[178]</span>both the qualities and the limitations to be +expected from such an origin.</p> + +<p>They have been terribly in earnest about +athletic and other sports, but they have +seldom been very much in earnest about anything +else. Their scholarship, when they have +been scholarly, has been more often graceful +than profound; and, in the matter of religion, +they have shown a disposition to save themselves +the trouble of thinking by taking the +conventional for granted, accepting the religion +provided for them in the spirit in which +one accepts the <i>plat du jour</i> at a restaurant, +but accepting it in a hearty spirit, +without feeling that it implied any obligation +to pull long faces or to mortify the flesh. +We may find an exception to the rule in the +case of Robertson of Brighton, of whom more +presently; but if we desire an example of it, +we may find one in the case of Dean Hole.</p> + +<p class="tb">The Dean was an excellent and breezy +person who, even as an octogenarian, gave +one the impression of a young man rejoicing +in his youth; but no one ever accused him +of endangering his intelligence by over-taxing +it, and he seems hardly to have been less at +ease in Zion than at the jovial gatherings of +the Phœnix. That is not only a critic’s +view of him; it is also his own view of himself +and his life, frankly expressed by him +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[179]</span>in both prose and verse. “The reading men,” +he tells us in his delightful reminiscences, +“were not, as a rule, such cheery companions +as the men who rode, and drove, and played +cricket, and wore gay clothing, and smoked +fragrant regalias”; and when he drops into +poetry, it is:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“How jollily, how joyously, we live at B.N.C.!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Our reading is all moonshine—the wind is not more free.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>The Dean also tells us that he went to +Brasenose with a serious intention of studying, +but soon found his energies diverted into other +channels. He read hard for two terms; but +one day he “met a friend in black velvet cap +and scarlet coat, a bird’s-eye blue tie, buff +kerseymere waistcoat, buck-skin breeches, and +pale brown tops,” and the splendid spectacle +aroused his envious ambition. He bought a +horse, and wrote home for his pink. It came, +and he enjoyed, and distinguished, himself in +the hunting field; and his attitude towards +the problems of the spiritual life became that +which seems generally to have found favour +at Brasenose.</p> + +<p>Concerning the official attitude of Brasenose +towards such matters he tells two good +stories. Two Brasenose men, it appears, on +two different occasions, being perplexed by +religious doubts, ventured to lay their difficulties +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[180]</span>before their tutor. The poor man was +amazed. Such a thing had never happened +to him before in the whole course of his +tutorial experience. He told one of the young +men that his digestion was probably out of +order, and that he had better see a doctor; +he told the other that, if he cherished this +desire for auricular confession, he had better +join the Church of Rome. The Dean himself, +one gathers, never laid himself open to +any such rebuke; but his comments on the +Romeward movement, of which he was a contemporary, +are eloquent as to his religious +mentality. The fish caught in the Roman +net, he says, were so poor and flabby that a +true sportsman would have thrown them back +into the water.</p> + +<p>So much for the jolly and Philistine Dean. +It was worth while to dwell on him because +he seems to represent, better than any other +Brasenose man, the distinctive Brasenose point +of view; but when we proceed to the task of +praising famous men, there are other famous +men whom it is more imperative to praise.</p> + +<p class="tb">Bishop Heber is beyond question the most +famous of them; and his Newdigate on +“Palestine” is the most famous Newdigate +ever written. That it is also the best will +be disputed by admirers of Dean Burgon’s +“Petra” and Mr. D. S. MacColl’s “Carthage,” +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[181]</span>not to mention Sir Rennell Rodd’s “Sir +Walter Raleigh”; but that point of taste +cannot be debated here. “Palestine” has, +at any rate, been reprinted several times, +and derives a special interest from the fact +that it was amended at the suggestion of +Sir Walter Scott. The story is an old one; +but it must be repeated.</p> + +<p>Scott was a friend of Heber’s half-brother, +Richard, the book-collector—“Heber the +magnificent,” he called him, “whose library +and cellar are so superior to all others in the +world.” Richard Heber took him to Oxford, +and they went together to see Reginald Heber, +whose poem had just won the prize.</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>“Scott observed,” says Lockhart, “that in +the verses on Solomon’s Temple, one striking +circumstance had escaped him, namely that no +tools were used in the erection. Reginald +retired for a few minutes to a corner of the +room, and returned with the beautiful lines:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“No hammer fell, no ponderous axes rung,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Majestic silence!”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +</blockquote> + +<p>It may be added that Heber was not only +a serious but also a humorous poet. He +wrote a satire called the <i>Whippiad</i>, and was +also the author of a <i>jeu d’esprit</i> on the misfortunes +of the Dean of the College, a gentleman +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[182]</span>nicknamed “Dr. Toe,” whose <i>fiancée</i>, +a Miss Belle H——, jilted him and married a +footman:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“’Twixt footman John and Doctor Toe</div> + <div class="verse indent2">A rivalship befell,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Which of the two should be the beau</div> + <div class="verse indent2">To bear away the <i>Belle</i>.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“The footman won the lady’s heart,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">And who can blame her?—No man.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The <i>whole</i> prevailed against the <i>part</i>;</div> + <div class="verse indent2">’Twas <i>Foot</i>-man <i>versus</i> <i>Toe</i>-man.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>It will be agreed that there is something +piquant and refreshing in the discovery that +these lines are the product of the same pen +that wrote “From Greenland’s Icy Mountains”; +but even in that great missionary +hymn by a missionary bishop the hand of +the satirist has been detected. The hasty +generalisation that, in the Orient, “only man +is vile” is said to have found its way into a +devotional composition because Heber discovered +that a Cingalese tradesman had +cheated him. If so, the interpolation may be +accepted as a delightful example of what +may be styled “the Brasenose touch.”</p> + +<p class="tb">Reginald Heber’s brother Richard has +already been mentioned; and there are those +who would consider him a greater man than +the Bishop. The Bishop, they would say, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[183]</span>was only one bishop among many, whereas +the bibliophile was the greatest bibliophile +that the world has ever seen. He was less +than sixty when he died, and he had already +accumulated a library of 146,827 volumes, +stored in six houses in various parts of +England and the Continent. He was so +occupied in collecting them that he quite +forgot to dispose of them by will, and his +executors had to sell them for the benefit of +his estate. The sales extended over a period +of three years, and the English sales alone +realised £56,774. One gets a glimpse at +the collection in the “Literary Reminiscences” +of a brother bibliophile, Dr. T. F. +Dibdin.</p> + +<p>Dr. Dibdin had long been Richard Heber’s +friend, and, hearing of his unexpected death, +he hastened to his house in Pimlico, and was +admitted to the room in which he lay in his +coffin.</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“And then,” he writes, “the room in which +he had breathed his last! It had been that +of his birth. The mystic veil, which for +twenty-five years had separated me from this +chamber, and which the deceased would never +allow me, nor any one else, to enter, was now +effectually drawn aside by the iron hand of +Death. I looked around me with amazement. +I had never seen rooms, cupboards, passages, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[184]</span>and corridors so choked, so suffocated with +books. Treble rows were there, double rows +were there. Hundreds of slim quartos—several +upon each other—were longitudinally +placed over thin and stunted duodecimos, +reaching from one extremity of a shelf to +another. Up to the very ceiling the piles of +volumes extended, while the floor was strewed +with them in loose and numerous heaps.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>A marvellous spectacle truly, and a case +to be quoted whenever it is said that all +Brasenose men are obtuse to the charms of +literature, though, of course, it may be said +that Richard Heber was not a typical Brasenose +man. Yet we may find the Brasenose +touch in the statement already quoted from +Scott, that his fine taste in books was combined +with an equally fine taste for port and +claret; and if we continue to seek that touch +through the later history of the College, we +may find it in the fact that Dean Milman, +another of the great men of Brasenose and +a winner of the Newdigate, began his literary +career by producing a play at a London +theatre, and we may further find it in the +one story which survives of the Oxford career +of the Rev. Richard Harris Barham.</p> + +<p>The piety of the author of the “Ingoldsby +Legends” is described by his biographer as +“unostentatious.” It was, in fact, so little +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[185]</span>ostentatious while he was at Brasenose that +he was “sent for” to explain his too frequent +absence from the College chapel.</p> + +<p>“The fact is, sir,” urged his pupil, “you +are too late for me.”</p> + +<p>“Too late?” repeated the tutor in astonishment.</p> + +<p>“Yes, sir—too late. I cannot sit up till +seven o’clock in the morning; I am a man +of regular habits, and unless I get to bed by +four or five at latest I am really fit for nothing +next day.”</p> + +<p class="tb">If any one desired still further examples +of the Brasenose touch, he might have them +by studying the career of Sir Tatton Sykes, +that excellent Yorkshire sportsman who used +to breakfast off “a jug of new milk and an +immense apple-pie,” who broke stones to +give him an appetite, thrashed impertinent +bargees for his amusement, and seldom missed +a day’s hunting till he had passed his seventy-sixth +birthday, and lived to be ninety-one. +It so happens, however, that though Sir Tatton +was classed with York Minster and Fountains +Abbey as one of the three great marvels of +his native county, his residence at Oxford has +left no trail of legend; so that we must +leave him and pass on to the two eminent men +of whom it may fairly be said that, though +they were in Brasenose, they were not of it. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[186]</span>They are F. W. Robertson—“Robertson of +Brighton”—and Walter Pater.</p> + +<p class="tb">F. W. Robertson seems to have resembled +the mass of Brasenose men in one circumstance +only: he took a pass degree. No +doubt he would have obtained high honours +if he had sought them; but, like John Richard +Green, of Jesus, he did not seek them, and +this may therefore be the proper place in +which to recall the untrue story that when, in +the least intellectual period of the history of +Brasenose, the name of some commoner was, +by some accident, placed in a class list, the +other commoners proceeded to punish him +under the pump as a violator of the unwritten +law.</p> + +<p>For the rest, F. W. Robertson, while at +Brasenose, resembled neither the average +Brasenosian nor the F. W. Robertson of later +days. He was the Broad Church philosopher +in the making, but he was not yet the Broad +Church philosopher fully made. His views, +according to Mr. Stopford Brooke, were +“those of the Evangelical school, with a decided +leaning to moderate Calvinism.” He +organised “a society for the purposes of +prayer and conversation on the Scriptures,” +but it languished and died, and he was +“chilled by the apathy and coldness of +Oxford.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[187]</span></p> + +<p>That one can understand and believe. +Oxford has been a place of many enthusiasms, +many of them of a religious character, +but private initiative in religious matters, however +devout, has never been encouraged there. +That sort of thing has always struck Oxford +as odd, and even a little disrespectful towards +the ample official provision of the means of +grace. We saw the attitude exemplified +when we spoke about the experiences of +the Wesleys at Lincoln, and there is a +characteristic story of a snub administered +by the Head of a college to an undergraduate +who had taken to preaching at the corners of +the streets.</p> + +<p>The young man challenged the Head with +what he thought would prove an awkward +question. What answer would he be able to +make, he asked, if his Divine Master reproached +him on the Day of Judgment for +having neglected this means of diffusing a +knowledge of the gospel truth? But the Head +was equal to the occasion. “You need have +no anxiety about that,” he replied; “I myself +will take the entire responsibility.”</p> + +<p>Robertson, one recognises, was the last man +likely to feel at home in an atmosphere in +which some things were not only said, but +said as a matter of course, and approved. +Probably they were heard with more approval +at Brasenose than at most other colleges; +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[188]</span>and Robertson appears to have been hardly +less out of his element there than was +Nathaniel Hawthorne at Brook Farm. In +one field of Oxford activity, indeed, he did +distinguish himself. He was one of the +orators of the Union Debating Society, where +he maintained against John Ruskin, then of +Christ Church, that the theatre was not an +influence for good. “Pray for me,” he appealed +to the man sitting next to him when +he rose, rather nervously, to make his speech. +But it cannot be said that he was, either in +that or in any other respect, a typical Brasenose +man.</p> + +<p>Still less was Walter Pater a typical +Brasenose man.</p> + +<p class="tb">Pater came to Brasenose as a Fellow from +Queen’s, where he had been a Scholar. For +a time he was a lecturer and tutor, and all +the stories indicate that, in engaging in those +activities, he made a false start in life. A +pupil coming to him for advice as to his +reading was recommended to read the whole +of Plato and the whole of Kant—which, from +the point of view of the examinations, was +almost the worst counsel that could have been +given to him. His chief contribution to metaphysical +thought is said to have been an expression +of opinion that Plato was “not such +a fool as he looked.” His attitude towards +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[189]</span>the discipline of the College was illustrated +by a commendation of the bonfires which +destroyed the statue of Cain and Abel, on +the ground that they “lit up the spire of +St. Mary’s so beautifully.” He once was +one of the adjudicators in a prize essay competition, +but when asked by the other adjudicators +for his opinion, he replied that he could +only remember that one of the essayists was +called Sanctuary, and that Sanctuary had impressed +him as a remarkably euphonious +name.</p> + +<p>In spite of this, however—and even to some +extent because of it—Pater cut a considerable +figure, and exercised a considerable influence, +in the Oxford of his day; and he became the +hero of almost as many legends as either +Jowett or Mark Pattison. Mr. Edmund Gosse, +as has been mentioned, graphically described +his personal appearance as that of “a benevolent +dragon.” All the world knows that +he was the “Mr. Rose” of Mr. Mallock’s +“New Republic,” and his place may be defined +as that of the link between the pre-Raphaelites +and the Æsthetes.</p> + +<p>The note in his work which found the most +eager listeners was the note of artistic Epicureanism; +the place in which it was most +definitely sounded was the “Conclusion” of +the “Studies in the History of the Renaissance.” +There was the exhortation to “burn +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[190]</span>always with a hard gem-like flame”; there +was the eulogy of “great passions” as the +source of a “quickened sense of life”; there +was the declamation on the best way of +making the most of life, leading up to the +announcement that “the wisest” spend it “in +art and song”; there, finally, was the view +of art “professing frankly to give nothing but +the highest quality to your moments as they +pass, and simply for those moments’ sake.”</p> + +<p>The essay containing those precepts became +the gospel of a considerable number of young +men, and it was an insidiously dangerous +gospel. The proclamation of it in a company +of money-grubbers might, indeed, have some +force, but, as a matter of fact, the audience +which had least need of it was precisely the +audience which heard it most gladly. It +appeared to them to set a seal upon a holy +alliance between debauchery and art; and +whereas few of them were much concerned +about art, a great many of them were +deeply interested in debauchery. Debauchery, +they now gathered, was being held up to +admiration as the duty which lay nearest to +them. They recognised it as an easy and +agreeable duty, and they made haste to discharge +it.</p> + +<p>Perhaps that was not precisely what Pater +meant. He said that it was not, and he +ultimately struck the passage out lest it should +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[191]</span>“mislead some of the young men into whose +hands it might fall.” But he might nevertheless +have found it difficult to reply effectively +to any controversialist who urged that, +if he had not meant what he had been taken +to mean he could not have meant anything +at all.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[192]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CORPUS_CHRISTI_COLLEGE">CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE</h2> + +<p>The foundation by Bishop Foxe—Compulsory Greek—Strict +discipline in early times—The visitation by the +Parliamentary Commissioners—The ejection of the +Fellows—Eminent <i>alumni</i>—The judicious Hooker and +his unhappy marriage—The Duke of Monmouth—General +Oglethorpe—Keble, and Arnold of Rugby—An +estimate of their work—Celebrities of modern +times.</p> + +</div> + +<p>Corpus Christi College was founded in +1516, by Bishop Foxe; and it may be necessary +to anticipate the questions of some +strangers by stating at once that he was not +the author of the “Book of Martyrs” but the +predecessor of Cardinal Wolsey in the +counsels of Henry VIII. He spoke of the +College as his “hive” and of the scholars +as his “bees” whom he expected to be “busy +bees” and to “make honey.”</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus11" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/illus11.jpg" alt=""> + <figcaption> + <p>CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE.</p> + <p class="right">[To face p. 192.</p> + </figcaption> +</figure> + +<p>They have made plenty of it. The output +of Corpus in the way of scholarship has been +out of all proportion to the small size of +the College. If it has never, like University, +had an opportunity of expelling a man of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[193]</span>genius, it has trained innumerable men of +talent; and if the distinction of the most +distinguished of its sons has not been, with +rare exceptions, of the sort that makes a +magnetic appeal to the imagination of mankind, +there is, at least, no breach in the continuity +of its long list of <i>alumni</i> illustrious +through their services to humane letters; a +list which begins with the Hooker whom it +is customary to call “judicious” and is by +no means ended when we come to Professor +Case, who alone, when Oxford seemed to be +given over to the Hegelians, maintained, with +the robust vigour of a true sportsman, his +belief in the reality of the external world.</p> + +<p class="tb">The original note of Corpus was an insistence +upon compulsory Greek.</p> + +<p>Modern reformers appear to think that, +in demanding that the study of Greek should +be optional at Oxford, they are marching +forward—“moving with the times.” As a +matter of fact, they are proposing to revert to +a condition of things which prevailed at Oxford +in the ignorant times prior to the Revival +of Learning. Greek was, in those times, in +the noble language of school prospectuses, +an “extra”; and men could only learn it +at their own expense from private tutors. +Bishop Foxe put it into the curriculum, endowing +a Reader in Greek, and required all +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[194]</span>Corpus men to attend his classes on pain +of “loss of commons”—the loss, that is to +say, of their dinner—if they should fail to +do so.</p> + +<p>That was one of his severe regulations; +and there were many others which show him +to have had a keen eye for discipline and +detail.</p> + +<p>Every Fellow of Corpus, it was ordained, +was to share his bedroom with a Scholar; +the Fellow sleeping in a high bed, and the +Scholar in a truckle bed. One also gathers, +since the Statutes contain no provision for +scouts, that it was by the Scholars that the +beds were to be made and the slops emptied. +Dinner was to be eaten in hall, and the diners +were only to converse in Greek or Latin. +Those who went for walks were to go in +parties of three, carrying no weapons except +bows and arrows; and the only games permitted +were “games of ball” in the College +gardens. Certain prayers, private as well as +public, were obligatory. It was expressly +forbidden to any Scholar or Fellow—to any +one, in fact, under the grade of President—to +carry his own washing to the laundress; +and violations of this, or any other rule, +were to be punished in various ways. The +junior members of the society might, for +sufficient cause, be whipped; or they might +be compelled to sit at separate tables in +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[195]</span>hall, consuming dry bread and water, while +the well-conducted dined.</p> + +<p>Such were the sanctions of industry and +virtue; and the archives of the College are +full of records of their application. One of +the Scholars was once deprived of commons +for a fortnight for “attempted murder”—a +light sentence which suggests that the Senior +Common-room had but an imperfect sympathy +with the victim. Another, bearing the unusual +name of Anne, was castigated for writing +a satirical poem on the Mass. As he was +condemned to receive a stripe for every line +of his composition, he doubtless rose from +the block with a sincere conviction that brevity +is the soul of wit and crystallised epigram +the best form in which to exhibit poetry.</p> + +<p>Save for incidents of that sort, however, +Corpus has not had a specially exciting +history; and the first really animated scene +in its annals occurs when Oxford, so to say, +changed hands, and Charles I. being a +prisoner, and the city having surrendered to +Fairfax, the Lords and Commons resolved +upon the Visitation and Reformation of Oxford +with a View to “the due correction of offences, +abuses, and disorders, especially of late times, +committed there.”</p> + +<p class="tb">Corpus, curiously enough, is a College which +preserved its plate at a time when the plate +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[196]</span>of most of the colleges was melted down +into money to reinforce the royal treasury. +The story goes that it was preserved—exactly +how, the story does not say—through the +devotion of a butler to the College interests. +The exploration of a secret cellar, or of an +old drain, according to the legend, discovered +the skeleton of a butler with the grip of his +bony fingers clenched upon a precious punch-bowl. +That is not the sort of story that one +would willingly give up; but the evidence for +it does not appear to be very solid; and the +conjecture of Dr. Fowler that the bowl was +first surrendered and afterwards redeemed +with a money payment has more of the ingredients +of plausibility.</p> + +<p>Be that as it may, however, the Corpus +men suffered more than the members of most +colleges from the heavy hands of the Parliamentary +Commissioners; and we have to +picture “a Drum with a guard of musketeers” +marching through the gate into the quadrangle—the +drum beaten as a call for silence—the +affixing of the Visitors’ Orders in the +porter’s lodge—and the reading of a long +list of Fellows and Scholars who were to be +expelled.</p> + +<p>It was a longer list than at some of the +other colleges because the Visitors had been +received in a contumacious spirit. They had +no sooner entered the name of the new President +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[197]</span>of their choice, Dr. Staunton, in the +College Register than two Scholars of the +College—Will Fulman and Tim Parker—first +erased the entry, and then tore out the sheet +on which it had been made. When they proceeded +to break open the College Treasury, +which the Bursar would not unlock for them, +they found that its valuable contents had +already been removed. Whence resulted +wholesale evictions of a brutally precipitate +character.</p> + +<p>The proclamation, according to one of its +victims, was to the effect that “whosoever +named in the Order should remain in Oxon, +or within five miles of it, after sunset, should +be taken and prosecuted as a spy.” This, +it is added, was taken to mean that they +would be hanged, “though many knew not +whither to go on so short warning, nor +could they have time to dispose their +books and such goods as they had”; while, +as an additional affront, “some were +searched for letters only to pick their +pockets.” It must have been a shocking +scene, though the relation of it can be relieved +by an anecdote which has the merit of exhibiting +Oliver Cromwell in a more human light +than usual.</p> + +<p>One of the ejected, it appears, a certain +James Quin, was presented to the Lord Protector; +and the Lord Protector, having been +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[198]</span>told that he had a good voice, called upon him +for a song. He sang so well that the Lord +Protector “liquor’d him with sack,” and bade +him ask a favour. He asked that his place +on the foundation of the College might be +restored to him, and his request was granted: +a quaint incident, judged by our modern +notions, but one for which there is a parallel +in the later annals of the College, during the +genial period of the Restoration.</p> + +<p>Dr. Staunton had, by that time, been turned +out; and his predecessor, Dr. Newlyn, had +been brought back. This Dr. Newlyn was a +shocking nepotist. He filled all the profitable +places on the foundation with relatives of his +own, and was only moderately shocked by the +fact that one of them broke into the rooms of +one of the Fellows and tried to murder him +in his sleep; but there were some offences at +which he drew the line, as the occurrence of a +gross scandal was presently to prove.</p> + +<p>This time there was a lady in the case. The +offender was Matthew Curtois, a Probationer +Fellow, a Master of Arts, and a Clerk in Holy +Orders; and the offence was committed within +the College walls. The punishment was a +refusal to confirm Matthew Curtois in his +Fellowship; but Matthew Curtois, instead of +submitting and slinking away, made bold to +appeal to the King. His weakness, he judged, +was one with which the lover of Nell Gwynne +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[199]</span>and so many others was likely to sympathise; +and his judgment was correct. The King, acting +through the Visitor, George Morley, Bishop +of Winchester, not only decreed his fellow-sinner’s +restitution to his honours and emoluments, +but also ordered him to be paid a +pecuniary indemnity for his suspension: an +act of royal interference with academical +affairs which marks, as well as any other, the +difference between those times and these.</p> + +<p>But now, before going farther, we must +turn back, and glance at the careers of a few +of the representative men of whom Corpus +is most justly proud.</p> + +<p class="tb">Bishop Jewell should properly come first; +but he is less interesting than Bishop Hooker, +who comes next, and was introduced to Corpus +through Jewell’s patronage. First a Scholar, +he afterwards became a Fellow and a Lecturer +in Hebrew; and we read of him, in the Life +by Izaak Walton, that “in four years he +was but twice absent from the chapel +prayers.” Evidently he was just such a man +as good Bishop Foxe would have wished to +inhabit his “bee-hive”; and the tragedy +of his life, which Walton relates in sympathetic +detail, was his removal from it. The +story must be told, if only to show that it was +not in the conduct of his private life that +the illustrious author of the “Ecclesiastical +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[200]</span>Polity” earned the fixed epithet of “judicious.”</p> + +<p>He was, in fact, a pious don of the old-fashioned, +simple-minded sort; and, of course, +he was a bachelor, and in Holy Orders. +Appointed to preach certain endowed sermons +at Paul’s Cross, and coming up to London +from Corpus for that purpose, he lodged in the +house of John Churchman, sometime a draper +in Watling Street. He caught a chill on the +way; but Mrs. Churchman gave him “drink +proper for a cold,” and then proceeded to +admonish him in a motherly manner.</p> + +<p>“Mr. Hooker,” she said—so Walton tells +us—“you are a man of tender constitution. +It would be best for you to have a wife that +might prove a nurse to you—such a one as +might both prolong your life and make it more +comfortable, such a one as I can and will +provide for you if you see fit to marry.”</p> + +<p>It was, no doubt, in the abstract, good +advice. It seemed very good advice indeed +to Hooker as he sat by the roaring fire +and sipped the comforting possets which +Mrs. Churchman prepared for him. And +he knew too, as an earnest student of +the Bible, that a busy man might find +good precedents for entrusting the choice +of his wife to another. As Eleazar had +been trusted to seek a wife for Isaac, so +Mrs. Churchman should be trusted to choose a +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[201]</span>wife for him. But Mrs. Churchman had a +daughter; and her chief anxiety was not to +make Mr. Hooker happy, but to get her +daughter off her hands. So she brought Joan +Churchman forward and presented her.</p> + +<p>“Take her—she is yours,” she said; and +the simple-minded don forgot to be judicious, +but married Joan Churchman, as Mrs. +Churchman had meant him to do from the +beginning, and lived unhappily with her ever +afterwards.</p> + +<p>“By this marriage,” Walton continues, +“the good man was drawn from the tranquillity +of his College, from that garden of +piety, of pleasure, of peace, and a sweet conversation, +into the thorny wilderness of a busy +world.” And he draws a pathetic picture of a +visit paid to the good man by two of his old +pupils, Edwin Sandys and George Cranmer, +in the country parsonage to which he retired +together with the lady described by another +biographer as “a clownish, silly woman and +withal a mere Xanthippe.”</p> + +<p>The pupils found their tutor in a field +attached to the parsonage, looking after the +sheep; Mrs. Hooker having told him to do so, +as she wished to employ the shepherd as a +man-servant in the house. They went up to +the parsonage with him, hoping to enjoy his +conversation; but Mrs. Hooker immediately +called him away to rock the cradle. They +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[202]</span>fled, driven out by Mrs. Hooker’s inhospitable +proceedings; and one of them condoled with +him, saying that his wife evidently was not +a very “comfortable companion.” Whereupon +Mr. Hooker made answer:</p> + +<p>“My dear George, if saints have usually +a double share in the miseries of this life, I, +that am none, ought not to repine at what my +wise Creator hath appointed for me: but +labour—as, indeed, I do daily—to submit myself +to His will, and possess my soul in patience +and peace.”</p> + +<p>The story, of course, is full of morals for +bachelor dons; only one imagines that the +dons of our own day do not need the moral, +but are much better able than was Hooker of +Corpus to take care of themselves in the +matters of the heart and the bonds of holy +matrimony.</p> + +<p class="tb">Another Corpus man of a very different +character was the Duke of Monmouth, the +favourite, and reputed natural son, of Charles +II. He entered his name when the Court was +driven to Oxford by the plague in 1665; but +little is known about his term of residence +except that he gave the College a piece of +plate which the College is believed to have +melted down in order to express its disapproval +of the Monmouth rebellion. Dr. +Pocock, the Oriental traveller, should also be +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[203]</span>mentioned, for he was the first of a long list +of Oxford men who have distinguished themselves +in the exploration of the Alps. He +and William Windham, meeting at Geneva, +in 1741, made up a party to explore the +glaciers of Chamonix—a place till then unknown +to tourists. General Oglethorpe, the +associate of the Wesleys, and the founder of +the State of Georgia, is a third who must not +be overlooked. And a passing word may be +given to Edward Young, afterwards Fellow +of All Souls, the pious author of “Night +Thoughts,” and the originator of the sentiment +that “Procrastination is the thief +of time.” “There are those,” we read, in a +biographical account of the doings of this +divine at Oxford, “who say that Young at +this time was not the ornament to religion +and morality which he afterwards became”; +and that is credible enough, for we all know +many ornaments of religion and morality +whose proceedings while <i>in statu pupillari</i> +invite a similar remark.</p> + +<p>The remark, however, is, on the whole, less +applicable to the divines who have come from +Corpus than to the divines who have come from +a good many of the other colleges; so we +need not insist, but may pass on to the period +when the occurrence of more widely popular +names gives Corpus a blaze of glory perceptible +from afar. That period was in the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[204]</span>early days of the nineteenth century, when +Keble and Thomas Arnold—Arnold of Rugby—were +contemporaries. A third member of the +society at that time was John Taylor Coleridge—Mr. +Justice Coleridge—who defeated them in +some competitions for University and College +prizes, and lived to write Keble’s Life, and +to contribute a chapter of Corpus reminiscences +to the Life of Arnold written by Dean +Stanley.</p> + +<p>Most of the time of the little company, when +they were not reading for their examinations, +appears to have been given to argument; +most of Coleridge’s recollections are recollections +of dialectical affrays. Oxford, at +this date, was beginning to think of other +matters besides political and academical +affairs. The old wrangles between Jacobites +and Hanoverians had ceased; and no one +any longer thought it worth while to provoke +authority by calling for cheers for the Young +Pretender. Though the older men could remember +such things, the younger men +regarded them as belonging to history. The +thing which was beginning to interest them +was religion—or in some cases irreligion; +and it interested them as an end in itself, and +not merely in its relation to preferment and +emolument.</p> + +<p>Keble and Arnold of Corpus, it is instructive +to remember, were the contemporaries at +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[205]</span>Oxford of Shelley of University; but Shelley +does not seem to have been known to the +others. Being orderly persons, scrupulous +observers of the regulations, well-conducted +reading men, they would probably have regarded +him, if they had known him, as a +dangerous and disreputable associate. Keble’s +business in life was to be to preach at, and +Arnold’s to summon to his study and flog, +those who were, like Shelley, “tameless and +swift and proud.” And yet he and they had +more in common than they knew. They all +represented, in their several ways, the new +spirit of the dawning century; they were +all, in their several ways, revolutionists, or +at least men definitely related to revolution. +Shelley was the revolutionist <i>pur sang</i>; Keble +was the counter-revolutionist; Arnold was +the practical man—the reformer with a reformer’s +turn for compromise and opportunism—who +knew how to make a little revolution go +a long way.</p> + +<p>Keble may perhaps be classed as an +English analogue of Chateaubriand. Personally, +it is true, he bore not the faintest resemblance +to the religious reactionary who +“took up religion as a subject,” and has +been described as the Catholic Don Juan; +but he resembled Chateaubriand in being a +literary artist, with an artist’s feeling for the +“beauty of holiness,” and he launched the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[206]</span>English Movement which corresponds to the +return of the æsthetes and aristocrats to +their Catholic allegiance in France. The +principal story told of him at Corpus is that +he damaged the sun-dial in the quadrangle by +throwing a bottle at it; and we may permit +ourselves to discover a certain symbolism in +that performance. The great sermon on +National Apostasy—preached because reformers +proposed to curtail the scandalous +superfluity of Irish bishoprics—may similarly +be described as a weak man’s heroic attempt +to stop the clock.</p> + +<p>The story of that attempt, however, and of +the consequences which ensued from it, +belongs more properly to the annals of Oriel +than of Corpus. Arnold as well as Keble +went on from Corpus to Oriel as a Fellow; +but what there is to be said about him may +best be said in the present chapter.</p> + +<p>He and Keble became estranged in later +years; but they continued to respect each +other’s characters while examining each +other’s propositions. To Arnold it seemed +that Keble’s piety was no excuse for the +narrowness of his mind, and he would have +nothing to say to Keble’s view that a man +could only achieve salvation by running +in a groove. He believed in earnestness, +indeed—perhaps there never was a man in +more deadly earnest; but what he desired +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[207]</span>was an earnest conduct of the common affairs +of life, not an earnest adherence to a complicated +series of ecclesiastical propositions.</p> + +<p>Hence his success, and his fame, as a +schoolmaster. It was predicted of him, by +the Provost of Oriel, when he stood for the +Headmastership of Rugby, that he would, if +elected, “change the face of public school +education throughout England.” He was +elected, and he did change it. Many of the +changes which he introduced at Rugby were, +indeed, based upon a system of school government +already in force at Winchester; but +Arnold breathed a new spirit into the institutions +which he adopted. Members of the Sixth +Form, under his inspiration, held up their +heads with a new kind of pride. Rugbeians +were distinguished—and boasted that they +were distinguished—from other schoolboys by +their “moral seriousness.”</p> + +<p>The other schoolboys, of course, have not +accepted the Rugbeian example without cavil +or criticism. It has even been remarked—most +notably by Etonians—that the difference +between the “moral seriousness” of Rugby +and the thing which is elsewhere called +“priggishness” is not always visible to the +naked eye. Possibly it is not. Possibly +Arnold “overdid it,” like many another valuable +innovator. But the thing which he +did needed doing. It was better to overdo +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[208]</span>it than not to do it at all; and the pride +which Corpus takes in Arnold is amply +justified.</p> + +<p class="tb">And so, of course, is the pride which Corpus +takes in many <i>alumni</i> of a later date, distinguished +in a great variety of fields—in +Henry Nettleship, Professor of Latin; in Professor +Fowler, the historian of the College, +whose lectures on Logic used to be as good +as a play; in Professor Case, to whose robust +faith in the external world a reference has +already been made; in Mr. F. T. Dalton, +who, as an editor, has struck out many purple +passages from the compositions of the present +writer; in Mr. Horace Hutchinson, the greatest +living authority on the game of golf; in Mr. +Henry Newbolt, the author of “Admirals +All”; in Mr. Herbert Paul; and in Mr. +A. B. Walkley, the dramatic critic who thrusts +Aristotle down the throats of the vulgar, and +concerning whom it was deposed by Mr. +Zangwill, before a Parliamentary Committee +on the Dramatic Censorship, that to him +“nothing is sacred except the dancing of +Adeline Genée.”</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[209]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHRIST_CHURCH">CHRIST CHURCH</h2> + +<p>Cardinal College—The fall of Wolsey—The foundation of +Christ Church—Notable scenes—The degradation of +Cranmer—The parliamentary visitation—The eviction +of Dean Fell, Mrs. Fell, and all the little Fells—Famous +Deans of Christ Church—John Fell—“I do +not like thee, Dr. Fell”—Aldrich—Atterbury—Cyril +Jackson—Gaisford—Eminent undergraduates—Sir +Robert Peel’s practical joke—Gladstone and Martin +Farquhar Tupper.</p> + +</div> + +<p>Cardinal Wolsey founded Cardinal College, +spent about £8,000 on it—say £100,000 of +our modern money—out of the proceeds of the +disendowment of the monasteries, and then fell +like Lucifer. Henry VIII. first stopped the +work, but presently refounded the College, +and united it with the new bishopric of +Oxford, which was removed to that site +from Osney. The Head of the College was +also to be the Dean of the Cathedral; and +the number of students on the foundation was +to be 101. The 101 strokes of Great Tom, +which are to be heard every evening of the +year at nine o’clock, were originally ordered +as a separate reminder to each one of the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[210]</span>students that it was time to go to bed. Five +minutes after the last stroke, the gates, not +of Christ Church only but of every college +in Oxford, are closed; though nowadays, as a +concession to the modern spirit, porters are in +attendance to open them to those who knock.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus12" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/illus12.jpg" alt=""> + <figcaption> + <p>TOM QUAD AND TOWER, CHRIST CHURCH.</p> + <p class="right">[To face p. 209.</p> + </figcaption> +</figure> + +<p>That is as much as space permits to be said +concerning the “beginnings.” They were not +humble beginnings, like those of most of the +other colleges, but splendid and ostentatious. +Christ Church started with a flourish of +trumpets which has hardly yet ceased sounding +in our ears. Henry VIII. himself often +dined in its Hall; and it has ever since been +the frequent recipient of royal favours. It +is impossible to walk in Tom Quad without +feeling that this is the college of all others +which kings, to whom life is a pageant, would +delight to honour. Tom Quad, with its great +spaces, its fountain, its wide pavement, has +“an air about it” which no other college +even simulates. There is an indefinable +suggestion, not of study for study’s sake, but +rather of leisurely preparation for the leadership +of men. The very place, one would +say, for the training of statesmen and pro-consuls. +It seems incredible that the student +who has had the right to pace Tom Quad +should go away and fail in life. It does not +cease to seem incredible when one learns that +it has sometimes happened.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[211]</span></p> + +<p>The history of Christ Church, indeed, is +more of a pageant—or is fuller of pageants—than +the history of any other college. Its +full history would fill a book—not a short +book, but a long one; but those whose historic +sense bids them conjure up the picturesque +features of the past will make their +first pause at the striking scene of the degradation +of Archbishop Cranmer, punished for +being a Protestant at a time when the majority +were Catholics: a shocking spectacle, though +an imposing ceremony, and one anticipating, +in all its meanest details of humiliation, that +ceremony of the degradation of Captain +Dreyfus which, not many years since, stirred +the civilised world to horror.</p> + +<p>The exact locality of the degradation is +uncertain; but it took place, at any rate, +somewhere close to the cathedral, and probably +in the cloisters. Within the cathedral, +Cranmer was set up on the rood-screen and +made to listen to the recital of his iniquities. +Then he was dragged down again and invested +in episcopal robes made, in mockery, of rags +and canvas. Then, when he had been +declared, in the name of the Blessed Trinity +and by the authority of the Church, deposed, +degraded, and cut off from all the privileges +attached to his episcopal Order, he was +marched outside to endure the remainder of +his punishment.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[212]</span></p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“One by one,” writes his biographer, Dean +Hook, “all the ornaments and distinctions of +office were taken off.... A barber clipped +the hair round the Archbishop’s head; and +Cranmer was made to kneel before Bonner. +Bonner scraped the tips of the Archbishop’s +fingers to desecrate the hand which, itself +anointed, had administered the unction to +others. The threadbare gown of a yeoman +bedel was thrown over his shoulders, and a +townsman’s greasy cap was forced upon his +head. The Archbishop of Canterbury, or, as +he was now called, Thomas Cranmer, was +handed over to the secular power. In the +lowest and most offensive manner the innate +vulgarity of Bonner’s mind displayed itself. +Turning to Cranmer, he exclaimed: ‘Now +you are no longer my Lord,’ and he thought +it witty ever afterwards to speak of him as +‘this gentleman here.’”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>And so to Bocardo, and thence to the +stake of martyrdom—a lamentable illustration +of the bitter saying that Cambridge +educated Reformers and that Oxford burnt +them.</p> + +<p class="tb">Such might be the first striking scene in +a Christ Church pageant. A further scene—a +whole series of further scenes, less tragic, +indeed, but not less remarkable—may be +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[213]</span>found at the time of that Civil War to which +it has been necessary to make so many +references.</p> + +<p>The King, as has already been mentioned, +lodged at Christ Church, while the Queen’s +Court was at Merton. Almost all the Christ +Church men save the old and decrepit and +the few who, as Wood puts it, “retained their +sacred habit as a cloak for their sloth or +timidity,” were ready to fight for the King; +and they and many other men from other +colleges mustered at the Schools and were +marched through the High to Christ Church, +“where, in the great quadrangle, they were +reasonably instructed in the word of command +and their postures.” They fought valiantly—twenty +of them as officers—but with the result +which the world knows; and presently, of +course, when the city surrendered, and the +Parliament sent its Visitors, there was as much +trouble at Christ Church as anywhere.</p> + +<p>Dean Samuel Fell, who was also Vice-Chancellor +of the University, did his best to +be dignified in extremely difficult circumstances. +The Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, +who was Chancellor, harangued his +Vice-Chancellor in the coarse language of the +camp, and told him that he ought to be +flogged; but Samuel Fell was not to be +intimidated. These Visitors, he said, his +juniors in academic standing and position, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[214]</span>were too “inconsiderable” persons for the +Dean of Christ Church to parley with. He +therefore refused to parley with them; and +they haled him off to prison, and then proceeded +to the Deanery, where Mrs. Fell and +the children held the fort.</p> + +<p>They knocked, and there was no answer. +They tried the door, and found that it was +locked and barred. They smashed their way +through it with sledge-hammers, entered, and +waited for Mrs. Fell to go. But Mrs. Fell +did not budge. Mrs. Fell even said that she +had no intention of budging. When the Earl +of Pembroke and Montgomery argued with +her, she argued back with equal vigour; and +there was nothing for it but to bid the soldiers +act. They strapped Mrs. Fell into a chair, +and they strapped all the little Fells on to +boards, and they lifted their living, screaming, +and protesting loads, and carried them out, +and deposited them in the middle of Tom +Quad, where they remained until three of the +canons came to the rescue, and conducted +them to a place of refuge in a neighbouring +apothecary’s house. It may be doubted +whether Tom Quad has ever witnessed so +strange a scene, before or since.</p> + +<p class="tb">Enough of the picturesque, however. We +must next turn to personalities; and, as we +find more famous men among Deans of Christ +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[215]</span>Church than among the Heads of any of the +other Houses, we may fitly begin by saying +something about some of them in the Mainly +about People style. Dr. Samuel Fell’s son +John has a fair title to come first. A popular +rhyme preserves his memory, and the story of +that rhyme must be told.</p> + +<p>This second Dr. Fell was one of the first +of the deans to take not only himself but his +duties seriously. He insisted that Christ +Church men should read, and also that they +should wear academic dress; he raised the +standard of examinations, and was strict in +all matters of discipline. As he ruled in the +loose days of the Restoration, he inevitably +had trouble with some of the livelier spirits; +and one of the liveliest of the recalcitrant +was Tom Brown, an author and wit of some +note in his day, though now forgotten. Tom +Brown, having offended, was to be sent down; +but, at the last moment, the Dean partially +relented. He handed Tom Brown Martial’s +epigram beginning “<i>Non amo te, Sabidi</i>,” +and promised to allow him to remain in residence +if he could extemporise a satisfactory +English version of it. Whereupon Tom Brown +improvised the familiar quatrain:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“I do not love thee, Dr. Fell,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The reason why I cannot tell,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But this I know, and know full well,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I do not love thee, Dr. Fell.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[216]</span></p> + +<p>Hardly less famous is Aldrich—equally +famous, as a logician, as a writer of catches, +and as a smoker. His Logic remained the textbook +in common use at Oxford for more than +two centuries. Concerning his addiction to +tobacco a story is told of a bet made that he +would be found smoking at ten o’clock in the +morning—a bet lost because, at the moment +when the clock struck, he was not puffing at +his pipe, but refilling it. One of his most +popular catches was specially composed for +the use of smokers, being so arranged as to +give each singer a breathing time in which +to keep his pipe alight. Moreover, much as +the Dean loved his pipe, he loved his bowl no +less; and he was the author of a Latin epigram, +enumerating five excuses for the glass:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Si bene quid memini, sunt causæ quinque bibendi:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Hospitis adventus, præsens sitis atque futura,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Aut vini bonitas, aut quælibet altera causa.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>Aldrich’s successor was Atterbury, who had +been a tutor under him; and Atterbury was +the most brilliant of the Oxford representatives +in the famous “Battle of the +Books” concerning the authenticity of the +“Epistles of Phalaris.” The ultimate victory +in that encounter rested, of course, with +Bentley of Trinity, Cambridge, for the Oxford +case had not a leg to stand upon; but the +Christ Church wits were at least successful +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[217]</span>in obscuring the issue and throwing dust in +the eyes of their contemporaries: a cheap +success, no doubt, but better than none at +all. It is a pretty story; but the reader who +is curious about it must be referred to +Macaulay or Jebb, for there remain three other +deans with clamorous claims upon our space.</p> + +<p>Cyril Jackson is the greatest of them. He +had been the tutor of the Regent and his +brothers, who had “imbibed” from him, +according to his biographer, “that elevation +of sentiment, that pride of soul, and that +generosity of spirit which teaches them, as +it were innately, to look down upon everything +which bears the semblance of mean, low, or +sordid feeling.” In that eulogy, no doubt, +the exaggerations of the courtier are combined +with those of the necrologist; but it +was not Cyril Jackson’s fault if the lovers +of Mrs. Fitzherbert and Mary Ann Clarke +failed to imbibe all the virtues which one +could wish them to have displayed. He +was an excellent tutor and an admirable Dean, +who raised the College to a pitch of efficiency +never before attained. He joined with +Parsons of Balliol and Eveleigh of Oriel in +originating honours examinations, and his +own men did strikingly well in them. Sir +Robert Peel was one of his double-firsts. He +was in correspondence with Sir Robert at the +beginning of his public career, and advised +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[218]</span>him to perfect his oratorical style “by the +continual reading of Homer.”</p> + +<p>His courtly dignity may be said to have +laid the foundation of the Christ Church +manner—of the manner, at all events, which +one associates with the Deans of Christ +Church. They, more than the Heads of any +other Houses, have aimed at fulfilling the +ideal of the “magnificent man” of Aristotle’s +“Ethics”—with what success those who have +seen the towering figure of Dean Liddell, filling +the aisles of the cathedral with the pageant +of his presence, are aware. This personal +majesty, it is understood, is rather the appanage +of the office than the accidental attribute +of any individual; and the serene and well-warranted +self-sufficiency of Cyril Jackson, +imitated, consciously or unconsciously, by his +successors, is its source.</p> + +<p>Cyril Jackson was so satisfied with his +position that he refused all offers of ecclesiastical +preferment. Probably he felt that no +other office could be more exalted than that +which he held and adorned. At all events +he declined more than one bishopric, and his +reply to one of the offers is historical. “<i>Nolo +episcopari.</i> Try my brother Bill; he’ll take +it.” But he did not, on the other hand, cling +to the office from which he was unwilling to +be promoted. He retired from it, at the age +of sixty-three, when his reputation was at its +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[219]</span>highest, and spent his last years quietly in the +country. Some Latin elegiacs in which he +expressed his preference for the simple life +are too delightful not to be quoted:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Si mihi, si liceat traducere leniter ævum,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Non pompam, nec opes, nec mihi regna peto</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Vellem ut divini pandens mysteria verbi,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Vitam in secreto rure quietus agam.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Curtatis decimis, modicoque beatus agello,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Virtutæ et pura sim pietate sacer.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">Dean Hall, who succeeded, may be passed +over. Dean Smith, who came next, was known +as “Presence of mind Smith.” While an +undergraduate, it was said, he had gone boating, +and had returned alone. His companion, +he explained, had fallen into the river, and +had clung to the side of the boat. “Neither +of us,” Smith said, “could swim; and if I +had not, with great presence of mind, hit him +on the head with the boat-hook, <i>both</i> of us +would have been drowned.” That story, however, +is only repeated, as the journalists say, +“with reserve.” Having repeated it, one +passes on to Gaisford, whose memory has +left more lasting traces.</p> + +<p class="tb">Gaisford was a protégé of Cyril Jackson, +who is said to have said to him: “You will +never be a gentleman, but you may succeed +with certainty as a scholar.” That he was +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[220]</span>not, at any rate, a man of the world, may be +inferred from his reply to the letter in which +Lord Liverpool offered him the Regius Professorship +of Greek. “My lord,” he wrote +bluntly, “I have received your letter and +accede to its contents. Yours, &c.” That he +succeeded as a scholar is attested by the fact +that when he went to Germany and called on +Dindorf, the great Teuton, though he had +never been introduced to him, fell on his neck, +and kissed him on both cheeks.</p> + +<p>Discipline, however, did not flourish in +Gaisford’s time, or in that of his immediate +predecessors, as it had flourished in the time +of the great Cyril. This was the period in +which an undergraduate was killed in a +“rag”—his back broken across a chair by +the too athletic Lord Hillsborough, he who, +together with Peard of Brasenose (Garibaldi’s +Englishman), cleared the streets of bargees in +“town and gown rows.” This was also the +period when the Marquis of Waterford and +his company painted the door of the Deanery, +and the doors of the canons’ residences, red, +because of the objection taken to their hunting +in pink. It was the period, too, when the +flowers were dug up out of the Deanery +garden and scattered about the quad—whence +the expression “planting Peckwater” as a +picturesque synonym for a Christ Church rag. +It was the period, finally, when the statue of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[221]</span>Mercury, formerly standing in the centre of +the fountain in Tom Quad, was dressed in the +robes of a Doctor of Divinity. The thing +happened in the dead of winter, when the +water in the fountain was frozen hard. After +the deed had been done, the ice was broken, +so that none could get to Mercury without +wading through freezing water, five feet deep.</p> + +<p>Though these things happened, however, +there was a dignity about Gaisford, none the +less. It came out when he received a letter +beginning: “The Dean of Oriel presents +his compliments to the Dean of Christ +Church”; on which communication Gaisford’s +classical comment was “Alexander +the coppersmith sends greeting to Alexander +the Great!” It came out again in +the sermon in which he exhorted his congregation +to the study of the Greek language +on the ground that a knowledge of that tongue +would enable them “not only to read the +oracles of God in the original, but also to +look down with contempt upon the vulgar +herd.”</p> + +<p class="tb">Leaving the deans, and turning to the +undergraduates, one hardly knows where to +begin; for the great names are as thick as +bilberries, and belong to every department of +activity. One might begin a very miscellaneous +list with the names of Hakluyt, John +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[222]</span>Locke the philosopher, and William Penn, +the founder of Pennsylvania—a list which +does not become any the less miscellaneous +by the addition of the names of John and +Charles Wesley, and Canon Liddon. Or one +may recall that Christ Church has educated +three successive Viceroys of India in Lords +Dalhousie, Canning, and Elgin, and three +successive Premiers in Gladstone and Lords +Salisbury and Rosebery, and various other +Prime Ministers, including Lord Liverpool, +and George Canning, and Sir Robert Peel.</p> + +<p>Peel, it is to be remembered, was the first +Christ Church man to take a double first; and +he took it with remarkable <i>éclat</i>. The <i>viva +voce</i> part of the examination was much more +important in those days than in these. Theoretically +it still takes place in the presence +of spectators; but the benches are usually +empty. Then there often were crowded houses +to listen to the entertainment; and the +examining of Peel was a great occasion, like +a first night at an important theatre. There +was “standing room only”; and when the +examinee distinguished himself there was +“loud and prolonged applause,” if not actually +an <i>encore</i> and a “call.” One wonders +whether there were any who divined the +verbosity of the future orator when they heard +him render <i>suave</i> in <i>suave mari magno</i>, “It +is a source of gratification.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[223]</span></p> + +<p>Yet Peel, prematurely solemn as he was, +could sometimes unbend, and once played +a practical joke. The victim of it was +a timorous freshman, known to be a scholar +of poor quality. The unhappy youth received +a message to the effect that the +Vice-Chancellor, having heard of his ignorance, +and desiring to test it, proposed to +examine him privately, in his rooms, in +the Greek Testament. The supposed Vice-Chancellor, +who duly visited him, was Peel +in disguise, attended by a scout disguised as +an Esquire Bedell. Peel put the freshman +through his paces, denounced his blunders in +a severe tone of voice, and told him that he +would probably be expelled. The freshman, +so the story concludes, fled from the College +without waiting for the confirmation of this +sentence of expulsion, and was never heard +of again.</p> + +<p>Gladstone, who was to be so ardent a +disciple of Peel in many things, imitated him, +in the first instance, by taking a double first—he +was one of the five first-class men in both +the classical and mathematical lists; but his +failures are quite as interesting as his successes. +He was beaten for a Divinity Prize +by Martin Farquhar Tupper, the proverbial +philosopher, whose acquaintance he had made +as the result of their common habit of attending +the Communion Service at the Cathedral. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[224]</span>He also competed unsuccessfully for the +Ireland; and he has related how one of the +examiners explained his defeat to him. “He +abused me,” he says, “for my essay, on which +he said his own memorandum was ‘desultory +beyond belief’; also for throwing dust in +the examiners’ eyes, like a man who, when +asked who wrote ‘God save the King?’ replied, +‘Thompson wrote “Rule, Britannia.”’”</p> + +<p>That, it will be allowed, was characteristic; +and there is something not less characteristic +in the story which Lord Morley tells of his +“Greats” examination:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“The excitement,” Lord Morley writes, +“reached its climax when the examiner, after +testing his knowledge of some point of theology, +said: ‘We will now leave that part +of the subject,’ and the candidate, carried +away by his interest in the subject, answered: +‘No, sir; if you please, we will not leave +it yet.’”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>One could tell other stories, of course, if +there were room for them; but Gladstone’s +life at Oxford was not, except for his success +in the schools, either sensational or eventful. +His diary shows that he gave, or went to, a +wine-party nearly every night; that he was +very pleased with himself when he succeeded in +making a speech of three-quarters of an hour’s +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[225]</span>duration at the Union; and that he “haunted +sermons,” as the Consistory of Geneva ordered +the Prisoner of Chillon to do. That is practically +all that there is to be said; but one +may conclude by quoting Gladstone’s mature +opinion of his University. “Oxford,” he +wrote, two generations later, “had rather +tended to hide from me the great fact that +liberty is a great and precious gift of God, +and that human excellence cannot grow up +in a nation without it.”</p> + +<p>Oxford, it is not to be denied, does sometimes +tend thus to confound and obscure the +human spirit. That is one of the defects of the +qualities of its atmosphere. It not only clings +to lost causes—it gets stuck to them, as it were +with glue; and it allows reactionary obscurantists +like Pusey—to take the first Christ +Church instance that occurs—to have too much +to say. Gladstone evidently came to feel that, +in later life, when he had left the “weeds,” as +he called them, of ecclesiasticism behind him. +But his deep love for his University was never +affected by the discovery. To say of any +one, he once declared, that he was “a typically +Oxford man” was to pay him the highest +possible compliment; and it will readily be +believed that that is not a proposition which +this work is written to dispute.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[226]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="TRINITY_COLLEGE">TRINITY COLLEGE</h2> + +<p>Founded with the spoils of monasteries—The sympathy of +Queen Elizabeth—President Kettell—His objection to +long hair—His trouble with the Court ladies during the +Civil War—Dr. Johnson’s love of the College—The +expulsion of Walter Savage Landor—Newman in his +evangelical days—The Gentlemen Adventurers—Richard +Burton’s revolt against discipline.</p> + +</div> + +<p>Trinity was founded with the spoils of +monasteries, in 1554; and the property of the +“buzzing monks” was thus put to better uses +than ever before. The founder, Sir Thomas +Pope, was Princess Elizabeth’s guardian at +Hatfield, in Queen Mary’s reign; and he interested +the Princess in his educational enterprise. +It is on record that our virgin ruler +interceded on behalf of two early Fellows of +Trinity who had got out of the College by +night by climbing over the wall—for what +purpose the chronicler does not relate. They +had been expelled; but—“at my Lady Elizabeth +her Grace’s desire”—they were readmitted +on payment of a fine.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus13" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/illus13.jpg" alt=""> + <figcaption> + <p>TRINITY COLLEGE.</p> + <p class="right">[To face p. 226.</p> + </figcaption> +</figure> + +<p>The College, though a small one, and not +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[227]</span>very richly endowed, has always had a claim +to distinction. If one cannot say of it, +as one can of some of the other colleges, +that, at a given moment, it stood for +Oxford, supplying the mind, or the energy, +which set the mass in motion, one can, +at least, say that it preserved its intellectual +activity in times of sloth, and has an +exceptionally long list of illustrious names +on its books—largely, perhaps, because it has +been less hampered than some other colleges +by “close scholarships” and provisions for +showing preference to “founders’ kin.” It +has educated statesmen like the Earl of +Chatham and Lord North; such prominent +Parliament men as Ludlow and Ireton; poets +of varying degrees of merit from Elkanah +Settle to Walter Savage Landor; divines, +of whom John Henry Newman is the most +famous; a number of gentlemen adventurers, +of whom more presently; a number of men +of letters, among whom Mr. Quiller Couch +must on no account be overlooked.</p> + +<p class="tb">In the case of so small a College maintaining +so high a standard, one naturally looks +for Presidents of commanding personality; +and one finds such a President in Dr. Kettell, +who flourished in the reign of Charles I., and +whose memory is still preserved by Kettell +Hall in the Broad. Dr. Kettell, it is recorded, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[228]</span>“had a very venerable person and was an +excellent governor”; and the chronicle of +his governorship is happily full of those +picturesque details which make it interesting +to realise what the academic life of the past +was like.</p> + +<p>In his gown and surplice and hood, he +had, says Aubrey, “a terrible, gigantic aspect +with his sharp grey eyes”; but the impressiveness +of his appearance must have been +of a different order when he was seen on +horseback, on Sundays, riding out to preach +at Garsington, “with his boy Ralph before +him, with a leg of mutton and some College +bread.” He loved his College, and lived for +it, and, where deeds of charity were concerned, +let not his right hand know what +his left hand did. One of the happy deeds +done by his left hand was to thrust money +secretly in at the windows of students whom +he knew to be poor; and one of his modes +of promoting sobriety was to see that the +Trinity beer was the best in Oxford, so that +no Trinity man should have any excuse for +visiting a tavern.</p> + +<p>One of the best known of his idiosyncrasies +was his objection to long hair; for the wearing +of long hair was not, as is sometimes +carelessly assumed, first introduced into +Oxford by the æsthetes. Whereas they wore +their hair long as a mark of the sensibility of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[229]</span>their souls, the imitators of the Cavaliers had +done so, long before them, in vanity, and for +the purpose of proving themselves to be men +of fashion. President Kettell was “irreconcilable” +to the habit. He went about with +a pair of scissors for the purpose of cutting +men’s hair when he found it offensively long; +and when he happened not to have his +scissors with him, he used a knife.</p> + +<p>“I remember,” says Aubrey, “he cut Mr. +Radford’s hair with the knife that chips the +bread on the buttery hatch, and then he sang,</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“‘And was not Grim the collier finely trimm’d?</div> + <div class="verse indent6">Tonedi, Tonedi.’”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>That was at dinner in hall—a curious +incident; but times have changed, and many +things happened at Oxford in the reign of +Charles I. which happen there no longer. +Probably, too, when the Court came to Oxford +at the beginning of the Civil War, the President’s +hostility to long hair relaxed. His +principal trouble then was with the Court +ladies who attended Divine services in the +Trinity chapel, “half-dressed,” to the great +scandal of the undergraduates, and walked in +the Trinity Grove with their gallants. Some +of them, it seems, used to play the lute there—a +disconcertingly unacademical proceeding, +most disadvantageous to discipline; and the +climax was reached when two specially +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[230]</span>audacious ladies—“my Lady Isabella Thynne +and fine Mistress Fenshawe, her great and +intimate friend”—carried frivolity to the point +of calling on the President.</p> + +<p>That, indeed, is a scene worth picturing: +on the one hand the “Oxford character,” +neither accustomed to the society of ladies +nor desirous of it, a man of dignity and +authority, though unpolished, very wroth at +the intrusion of “minxes” in the paths of +academic peace; on the other hand high-spirited +and mischievous beauties, to whom +great academic names were nothing and great +academic potentates were only so many +“musty old professors.” Their idea, +apparently, was to ogle the President—to +make him flirt with them—and, failing that, +to overwhelm him with satirical reproaches +as a cross-grained old gentleman. And, no +doubt, the President was cross-grained, and +entirely indisposed to flirt; but he was a +match for his visitors none the less.</p> + +<p>“Madam,” he said, addressing himself to +Mistress Fenshawe, “your husband and father +I bred up here, and I knew your grandfather. +I know you to be a gentlewoman, and I will +not say you are a baggage; but get you gone +for a very woman!”</p> + +<p>And, so speaking, he drove the giggling intruders +from his presence, as summarily as +Benjamin Jowett, at a later date, expelled a +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[231]</span>deputation of the Balliol washerwomen from +the Master’s lodge. He makes a characteristic +exit speech in that scene, and leaves +us free to call up ghosts of other men.</p> + +<p class="tb">The ghost of Dr. Johnson would readily +appear if called. He stayed at Kettell Hall +while working at his Dictionary; he said that +he would rather live at Trinity than anywhere +else at Oxford; his young friends Bennet +Langton and Topham Beauclerk were both +Trinity men. Dr. Johnson, however, will be +waiting for us when we come to speak of +Pembroke; so we may put him on one side, +and recall the memory of the greatest of the +Trinity poets, Walter Savage Landor. He +was one of the many Oxford poets who, +like Shelley and Swinburne, have left the +University without a degree; and his manner +of leaving, like Shelley’s, was violent, and +the result of variance with the dons.</p> + +<p>Landor of Trinity, be it observed, was the +contemporary of Southey of Balliol. Like +Southey, he distinguished himself by refusing +to have his hair powdered, in the conventional +style, for dinner; but Southey only knew +him by repute, as he told Humphry Davy +on the publication of “Gebir.” Landor, +Southey then wrote, was “notorious as a mad +Jacobin.” He would have sought his acquaintance, +he said, for the sake of the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">[232]</span>Jacobinism, if the concomitant madness had +not deterred him; and he concludes, giving +chapter and verse for the madness: “He +was obliged to leave the University for shooting +at one of the Fellows through the +window.” But that was not quite true. The +story, after the way of stories, had both gained +and lost something on its short journey from +Trinity to Balliol; and Landor himself has +left a record of the rights of it in a letter +written shortly after the occurrence.</p> + +<p>He was a Rugby man, of the days before +Rugby had gone in for “moral seriousness.” +He exhibited the roughness of Rugby, together +with a spasmodic uncertainty of temper which +was all his own; and, though he was an +excellent Grecian, he did not imitate the +Greeks in mixing water with his wine. In +the rooms opposite to his there lived a man +named Leeds whom he did not like—a man +of whom he writes that “with a figure extremely +disgusting, he was more so in his +behaviour,” and that “he was continually intruding +himself where his company was not +wanted.”</p> + +<p>One evening it happened that Leeds and +Landor were both giving wines; Leeds’s +party consisting, according to Landor, of +“servitors and other raffs of every description.” +The weather was warm, and both +parties had their windows open. Neither +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[233]</span>party, one suspects, was more than relatively +sober; and so, feelings running high, the two +parties began to express their opinions of +each other in a slanging match, until presently +Leeds’s party, tired of the wordy war, closed +the window, and fastened the shutters. Then +Landor, as a final expression of his contempt, +discharged a shot-gun at the shutters.</p> + +<p>Nobody was hurt—nobody could have been +hurt; but Leeds complained and the President +sent for Landor; and Landor’s awkward +temper was his undoing. Availing himself of +the fact that the shot had proceeded, not from +the sitting-room, but from the bedroom, he +told the President that no gun had been fired +from the room in which his company were +assembled; and he added that, as no definite +person was accused of the offence, he did not +feel called upon to reply to this vague charge. +The President, however, as it happened, was +not the sort of man to be fooled or bluffed.</p> + +<p>“Have you got a gun, Mr. Landor?” he +asked; and Landor admitted that he had.</p> + +<p>“Will you show it to me?”</p> + +<p>“Certainly.”</p> + +<p>“Has it been fired lately?”</p> + +<p>“Yes.”</p> + +<p>“In that case, Mr. Landor, and as I +have also taken occasion to question your +guests——”</p> + +<p>So the dialogue ran; and the cross-examination +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[234]</span>established, if not the legal proof, +at least the moral certainty of Landor’s guilt. +But he still tried to bluff.</p> + +<p>“Mr. President,” he said, “it is against +the law of England to require a prisoner +to incriminate himself”; but the President +retired to consult the Senior Common-room, +and returned to pronounce sentence.</p> + +<p>“Mr. Landor,” he said, “it is the opinion +of the Fellows that you be rusticated for two +terms.” And so it happened; and Oxford +lost another of her poets—more through the +poet’s fault, it must be admitted, than through +her own.</p> + +<p class="tb">The link of poetry, though there is no +other, may couple Landor’s name with Newman’s. +The most momentous events of +Newman’s Oxford career have been spoken +of in the Oriel chapter; but he was a Trinity +undergraduate, and Trinity’s claim to him +must be recognised. “Trinity,” he has +written, “has never been unkind to me”; +and in 1885 he presented the College library +with a set of his works, expressing the hope +that the yearly festival of the College might be +“as happy a day to you all as in 1818 it was +to me.”</p> + +<p>Yet there are indications that Newman’s +happiness at Trinity was diversified by +spiritual distress, and by pained disapproval +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[235]</span>of the frivolity of others. He had but lately +been “converted”; and his conversion +made him a wet blanket in merry company. +His thoughts, apart from his studies, were +not confined to the “snapdragon growing on +the walls opposite my freshman’s rooms” of +which he afterwards spoke with a poet’s grateful +recollection. His Evangelicalism (for he +was then an Evangelical) was shocked by the +too bibulous propensities of his fellow-men. +He could not share in such jollities, like +Landor; and at the approach of the College +Gaudy, his letters take the tone of a Commination +Service:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“To-morrow is our Gaudy. If there be +one time of the year in which the glory of +our College is humbled, and all appearance +of goodness fades away, it is on Trinity +Monday. Oh, how the angels must lament +over a whole society throwing off the allegiance +and service of their Maker, which they +have pledged the day before at His table, +and showing themselves the sons of Belial!”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Is it really well, one wonders, for a young +man to be quite so good as that at quite +such an early age? Probably not. The +sentences seem to echo the artificial ring of +the Evangelicalism of the decadence, which +is a displeasing sound; and one turns, not +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[236]</span>without relief, from Newman to the Gentlemen +Adventurers.</p> + +<p class="tb">It has been mentioned that the first Earl +of Chatham was once Pitt of Trinity; and +it was under his direction that England conquered +the Empire “in a fit of absence of +mind”—an Empire which, by the way, Lord +North of Trinity went the right way to lose. +His name, therefore, though no stories of his +Oxford adventures have been preserved, fittingly +introduces our list.</p> + +<p>The first name on the list is that of Sir +Francis Verney, of whom many interesting +stories may be read in the “Memoirs of the +Verney Family”; he was, in turn, a galley-slave, +a common soldier, and a pirate on the +Barbary coast, and died miserably in the +hospital at Messina in 1615. The second +name is that of Calvert, of Trinity, who +became Lord Baltimore, and founded the +colony of Maryland. The third—to pass over +minor names—is that of Richard Burton.</p> + +<p>“Readers must be prepared,” says Lady +Burton, writing of her husband’s Oxford curriculum, +“not to hear the recital of the College +course of a goody-goody boy of yesterday”; +and though Burton did row in the Trinity +torpid, and compete for two scholarships, +which he failed to win, his proceedings were, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[237]</span>on the whole, irregular. He had lived much +abroad, and came to Oxford with ideas somewhat +different from those of the ordinary +public school boy.</p> + +<p>The first thing that happened to him on +his arrival was that the College authorities +requested him to shave off his moustache. +He declined to do so unless they put their +request in the shape of a formal written order. +Some undergraduates then laughed at his +moustache; and he handed them his card, +and called them out, though the threatened +duel was prevented from taking place. He +was next advised to sport his oak, lest he +should be ragged; but instead of doing that, +he left the door wide open, and thrust the +poker in the fire, prepared to give his persecutors +a warm reception if they came. The +opinion gained ground that he was a desperate +character, and he was left unmolested.</p> + +<p>His studies were as unconventional as his +behaviour—he began to learn Arabic—and +so also were his recreations. Those were +the days of rowdyism—the days in which, as +has just been related, the Marquis of Waterford +painted the door of the Dean and Canons +of Christ Church red; and Burton thoroughly +enjoyed diversions of that order. He once +caused himself to be let down with a rope +into the garden of the Master of Balliol, +pulled up that old gentleman’s choicest +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[238]</span>flowers, and planted staring marigolds in +their place. He also, when the Master of +Balliol was watering his flowers, shot at the +watering-pot with an air-gun. But, taking +one consideration with another, nothing was +quite so characteristic of his life at Oxford +as his leaving of it.</p> + +<p>He had told his father, during the vacation, +that he would like to take his name off the +books; but his father had insisted on his +returning. He returned with the firm resolve +of overreaching the parental authority by +doing something that would bring about his +expulsion; and a race-meeting in the neighbourhood +gave him his opportunity.</p> + +<p>Undergraduates were not only forbidden to +attend that race-meeting; they were ordered +to be present without fail at lectures, at +the hour at which the races took place. +“Tyranny! Unjustifiable interference with +the liberty of the subject!” exclaimed Burton +and a few other of the wilder spirits; and +they ordered tandems to be in waiting for +them, behind Worcester, and drove out of +Oxford at a spanking pace at the very hour +at which the roll was being called.</p> + +<p>Of course they were missed; and of +course they were sent for, and asked for +explanations. The explanations of the others +were of a humble character; but Burton’s +explanations made matters worse. He +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[239]</span>blurted out that he saw no harm in attending +a race-meeting, and was aware of no reason +why undergraduates should be treated like +babies in arms; and he not only said that, but +went on to moralise.</p> + +<p>“Trust begets trust,” he solemnly said, +“and they who trust us elevate us”; and +it was not to be expected that the dons would +put up with that.</p> + +<p>Nor did they. They expelled Burton, while +contenting themselves with rusticating his +companions; and he received the sentence +with the same imperturbably high moral tone. +He hoped, he said, “that the caution money +deposited by his father would be honestly +returned to him.” At that there was “movement.” +It seemed, for the moment, as if +the dons proposed to expel Burton not only +from the College, but from the room. He +brought his heels together, bowed to them in +the courtly Austrian fashion, wished them +happiness and prosperity, and withdrew. +Then he went down.</p> + +<p>But not immediately, and not without a +demonstration; and the description of the +final scene may be taken from the Life by +Mr. Francis Hitchman:</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>“One of his rusticated friends—Anderson +of Oriel,” writes Mr. Hitchman, “had proposed +that they should leave with a splurge—‘go +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">[240]</span>up from the land with a soar.’ There +was now no need for the furtive tandem +behind Worcester College: it was driven +boldly up to the College doors. Richard’s +bag and baggage were stowed away in it, and, +with a cantering leader and a high-trotting +horse in the shafts, carefully driven over the +beds of the best flowers, they started for +the High Street and the Queen’s highway to +London, Richard energetically performing +upon a yard of tin, waving adieux to his +friends, and kissing his hand to the pretty +shop-girls.”</p> + +</blockquote> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">[241]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="SAINT_JOHNS_COLLEGE">SAINT JOHN’S COLLEGE</h2> + +<p>Founded by Sir Thomas White—Raised to fame by Archbishop +Laud—Calvinistic opposition to Laud—He +triumphs over it and makes Oxford a High Church +University—His disciplinarian regulations—His magnificent +entertainment of royalty—The entertainment +of Admiral Tromp—He gets drunk and is taken home +in a wheelbarrow—Dean Mansel—His pugnacious +Bampton Lectures and his excruciating puns.</p> + +</div> + +<p>Saint John’s College was founded in the +reign of Queen Mary, a year after the foundation +of Trinity, by Sir Thomas White, a City +merchant of the Dick Whittington type, and +one of the originators of the Muscovy +Company. Its connection with the Merchant +Tailors’ School was early established; and +merchants generally recognised it as the most +fitting college for them to send their sons to. +It blossomed into glory under its second +founder, Archbishop Laud, who added, among +other things, that “garden front” which is +one of the architectural gems of Oxford.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp48" id="illus14" style="max-width: 28.125em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/illus14.jpg" alt=""> + <figcaption> + <p>ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE.</p> + <p class="right">[To face p. 241.</p> + </figcaption> +</figure> + +<p>Laud’s, in fact, is the chief name to be +reckoned with in the College annals. He +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">[242]</span>occupied almost every position there, from the +humblest to the highest. He was, successively, +commoner, Scholar, Fellow, Tutor, President. +While Tutor, he was also, for a time, Proctor. +After being President, he became Visitor of +the College and Chancellor of the University. +One associates his name, in politics, with reaction; +but he was, in University matters, a +reformer. He and his successor Juxon—the +Juxon who attended Charles I. on the scaffold—raised +the College to its highest pinnacle +of honour. It led the van in education, and +gave the country two successive Primates.</p> + +<p class="tb">Born in 1573, Laud matriculated in 1589, +won his scholarship in 1590, was elected to +his fellowship in 1593, took deacon’s orders +in 1600 and priest’s orders in 1601, became +a Doctor of Divinity in 1608, and was chosen +President in 1611. He held that office until +he became Bishop of St. David’s in 1621; +but his interest in the College did not cease +with his preferment, as the new Statutes which +Oxford owed to him bear witness.</p> + +<p>His period, as the dates show, was chiefly +that of the first two Stuart Kings; and the +Stuarts, whatever their defects, were always full +of regard for the most ancient of the English +seats of learning. They valued its loyalty +and liked to visit it in state; and Oxford repaid +the attention which it received from them +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[243]</span>by modifying its theological point of view. +Laud was the moving spirit of the transformation. +The Oxford to which he went was a +Calvinistic Oxford. The Oxford which he +left was a High Church Oxford; and the +change was more due to his influence than to +that of any other man. He got his way there +by firmness and tact, wearing down opposition, +and making his enemies his friends.</p> + +<p>The records of his early Oxford days are +scanty; but we know him always to have +been on the side of ceremony, alike in +academic and in religious observances. Of +the former kind of ceremony we find a +quotable example in the account preserved +of the reception of James I., on his visit to +Oxford, at the gate of Saint John’s:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“Three young youths” (we read) “in +habit and attire like nymphs confronted him, +representing England, Scotland, and Ireland, +and talking dialogue-wise each to other of +their state, at last concluding yielding themselves +up to his gracious government. The +scholars stood all on one side of the street, +and the strangers of all sorts on the other. +The Scholars stood first, then the Bachelors, +and at last the Masters of Arts.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Laud, we cannot doubt, had a hand in that +performance; and we may also presume him +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">[244]</span>to have had something to do with the management +of the comedy which was played before +the King, two days later—not, it is true, with +such unqualified success as the company might +have desired:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“It was acted” (we are told) “much better +than either of the others that he had seen +before, yet the King was so over-wearied that +after a while he distasted it and fell asleep. +When he awaked, he would have been gone, +saying, ‘I marvel what they think me to be,’ +with such other like speeches, showing his +dislike thereof. Yet he did tarry till they had +ended it, which was after one of the clock.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>It was in connection with religion, however, +that Laud’s appreciation of splendid +ceremony was most important. There is a +legend to the effect that he kept a set of +Roman vestments in his rooms, and dressed +up in them and admired himself before the +looking-glass when he thought that he was +alone and unobserved; but that story is +probably untrue. Certainly the fact that the +College treasures include Roman vestments is +no proof of it. Personally, Laud was a man +of very simple tastes. Fuller says so, and +illustrates the statement with an anecdote.</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“Once” (Fuller writes) “at a visitation in +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">[245]</span>Essex, one in orders (of good estate and extraction) +appeared before him very gallant in +habit, whom Dr. Laud (then Bishop of +London) publickly reproved, showing to him +the plainness of his own apparel. ‘My Lord’ +(said the minister), ‘you have better cloaths +at home and I have worse,’ whereat the +Bishop rested very well contented.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>That is not the language of a man who +desired priests to simulate birds of paradise; +and Laud’s chief anxiety was that the conduct +of public worship should be decent, decorous, +and dignified. He found the administration +of the Holy Communion conducted in a +slovenly manner. The table was kept in the +middle of the Church, and communicants had +acquired a habit of putting their hats and +sticks on it. Laud railed it off, at the East +end, so that it could no longer be used as a +hat-rack and umbrella-stand; and he also +preached sermons before the University in +favour of the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, +and of the divine origin of the +episcopacy.</p> + +<p>This, at first, made him very unpopular. +His election to the office of President was +only effected in the face of strenuous opposition—one +vehement antagonist presuming to +seize the voting papers and tear them up, in +the vain hope of invalidating the election; +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">[246]</span>and he was preached at by the Regius Professor +of Divinity in the University Church. +“What!” exclaimed the preacher, pointing +at the future Archbishop. “Do you think +there be two heavens? If there be, get yourself +to the other, and place yourself there, +for into this where I am ye shall not come.”</p> + +<p>To that sort of abuse Laud had to listen +for hours together. It is said that he listened +patiently. Perhaps he listened with a smile. +At any rate he was in a position to smile, +for he could see that he was winning.</p> + +<p>Probably other people did not see it; for +Laud was neither overbearing in manner nor +formidable in appearance. Fuller describes +him as “low in stature, little in bulk.” When +he was Proctor, a citizen of Oxford, whom he +discovered drunk on a bench and accosted +with the voice of authority, addressed him as +“thou little morsel of justice” and bade him +go away. Apparently he went away. The +Proctor’s Black Book contains no record of +punishment in his time, and in his college he +had a reputation for lenity. One can only +in short, infer him to have been a disciplinarian +from the fact that he did, somehow or +other, enforce discipline.</p> + +<p>He not only enforced discipline, indeed, +but conciliated the recalcitrant. The very +man who had tried to invalidate his election +to the Presidency by destroying the voting +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">[247]</span>papers became one of his most loyal +supporters, served as Vice-Chancellor during +his Chancellorship, and sent him regular +reports of the progress of University affairs. +In the end, therefore, he was able to carry +matters with a high hand, informing the +Heads of the other colleges that, if they did +not institute the reforms suggested to them, +“his Majesty’s commissions will reform whatsoever +you do not,” and “this breach once +made upon your privileges might lay open a +wider gap in many other particulars,” and “it +will be ordered in a sourer way not so agreeable +to your liberties.”</p> + +<p>Laud, in short, was, like Lord Curzon, a +Chancellor who took his Chancellorship seriously; +and no matter was too great or too +little to receive attention from him. He +enriched the University with gifts of rare and +precious manuscripts; he procured fresh +privileges for the University Press; he +revised the relation of the colleges to the +University; and, in addition to all that, he +drafted regulations as to the conduct of junior +members of the University which we may +assume to have been as necessary in his time +as they would be out of place in ours.</p> + +<p>He forbade, for instance, long hair, top +boots, and slashed doublets, and all garments +of “light and garish colours.” He also +forbade “the hunting of beasts with any sort +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_248">[248]</span>of dogs, ferrets, nets or toils,” and any use or +carrying of “muskets, crossbows or falcons,” +and prescribed that “neither rope-dancers, +actors, nor shows of gladiators” should perform +in the precincts of the University without +special leave. His schedule of prohibited +games included football and knuckle-bones; +and the sanction of his Draconian rules was +to be “corporal punishment if, by reason of +age, it be becoming, fines, postponement of +the degree, expulsion for a time or for ever”; +and though it is difficult for us to picture the +state of things which required to be amended +by this drastic code, there is testimony that +the change which it introduced was for the +better. Sir John Coke may be our witness.</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“Scholars” (writes Sir John in 1636) +“are no more to be found in taverns nor +seen loitering in the streets or other places +of idleness or ill-example, but all contain +themselves within the walls of their colleges +and in the schools and public libraries.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>It is a picture of an Oxford very different +from the Oxford which we know—a picture +of an Oxford of old heads on young shoulders. +Let Laud be given all the credit that is due +to him for creating such an Oxford, even +though the elements of permanence were lacking +to his creation. He did not altogether +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_249">[249]</span>ignore the need for recreation, though he +thought rough games undignified, and would +have been appalled by the spectacle of an +undergraduate in a blazer. He admitted +plays and pageants; and as our account +of him began with a pageant, so it may +end with one. Only three years before his +arraignment and execution, he organised a +pageant of triumphant splendour for the +entertainment of the King and Queen, the +Elector Palatine, and Prince Rupert.</p> + +<p>There was first a dinner of a unique +description, with “baked meats” disguised +by the cook to look like Archbishops, Bishops, +and Doctors of Divinity. Then there was a +play—“very merry,” Laud writes, “and without +offence.” He was very proud to think +that Saint John’s was able to stage the piece +without needing to borrow a single actor from +any other college; and the costumes were so +tasteful that the Queen borrowed them for +a subsequent performance by her own players +at Hampton Court. All things, in short, were +in such very good order that “no man went +out at the gates, courtier or other, but +content,” and all passed off “to the great +satisfaction of the King and the honour of that +place.”</p> + +<p>It was a great day for Saint John’s, and a +great day for Laud. He proceeded to Oxford +for the occasion with a retinue of from forty +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_250">[250]</span>to fifty horsemen, and he defrayed the whole +cost of the entertainment—£2,666—out of his +own pocket. But the glory was like the glory +of the sunset which precedes the dark. Laud’s +further progress was to be to the prison and +the block; and the College was presently to +be called upon, like the other colleges, to +yield up its plate to the King, and to devote +a portion of its revenues to the payment of +the King’s soldiers. The King promised “on +the word of a king” to repay the money +advanced within a month; but he did not +keep his promise; and presently the Parliamentarians +began bombarding, and a cannon +ball which lodged in the gateway tower is still +preserved.</p> + +<p class="tb">Having had its day, Saint John’s was never +again to be so pre-eminent a college as under +Laud’s administration. Intellectually, it was +to be surpassed by Balliol; socially it was +to be surpassed by Christ Church. The +Methodism of the eighteenth century was to +have no repercussion within its walls. +Ecclesiastically—though Mark Pattison speaks +of it as “corroded with ecclesiasticism”—it +was never to attain to the interest of Oriel. +It fell, in short, with the fall of Charles I., +into that place in “the ruck” from which it +is given to few colleges to emerge for more +than a little while.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">[251]</span></p> + +<p>One distinction which may be claimed for +the days of its obscurity is that, once, it had +a soldier for its President. President Mews +had attained the rank of captain during the +Civil War, and it is related that, while +President, he lent the horses from his stable +to draw the royal artillery at the Battle of +Sedgmoor, and himself not only watched the +engagement from the top of a hill, but gave +advice as to the tactics—an example which +we may expect to see followed by Professor +Spenser Wilkinson (whose college was +Merton) if ever the necessity should arise.</p> + +<p>Another incident which diversified the +annals of the College in the latter part of +the seventeenth century was a visit from the +Dutch Admiral Tromp. He is described by +a contemporary as “a drunken greasy Dutchman”; +but he did not get drunk alone. A +drinking match was arranged by Dr. John +Speed of Saint John’s, and five or six others, +“as able men as himself.” It is recorded +that, though the contest was a severe one, +the Oxonians triumphed, and at the close +of a merry evening, the ancient mariner was +conveyed to his lodgings in a wheelbarrow.</p> + +<p>And so forth, there being no other name +on which it is necessary to pause until we +come to that of Dean Mansel.</p> + +<p class="tb">Mansel is the divine whom Herbert Spencer +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_252">[252]</span>claimed for his philosophical ancestor. He +had, he said, carried the speculations of +Mansel a step further—that was how he had +arrived at the agnosticism expounded in +“First Principles.” Whether the one philosopher’s +conclusions are really deducible from +the other philosopher’s premises is a thorny +question about which the mere historian may +be contented to leave theologians and metaphysicians +wrangling. For him it is enough +that Mansel was a notable figure—a philosopher +whom the average undergraduate of +his period forgave freely for being incomprehensible +because he was so unmistakably +pugnacious.</p> + +<p>In his examination for his degree, Mansel +distinguished himself by arguing with his +examiner, before an admiring audience, and +putting him to shame; and Dean Burgon’s +“Twelve Good Men” contains a delightful +description of the delivery of his controversial +Bampton Lectures. He was much too deep, +Burgon tells us, for his congregation—not one +in a hundred of them understood a word +of what he was saying. But they understood, +in a general way, what he was about.</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“He was, single-handed, contunding a host +of unbelievers—some with unpronounceable +names and unintelligible theories; and sending +them flying before him like dust before +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">[253]</span>the wind. And <i>that</i> was quite enough for +<i>them</i>. It was a kind of gladiatorial exhibition +which they were invited to witness: the +unequal odds against the British lion adding +greatly to the zest of the entertainment; +especially as the noble animal was always +observed to remain master of the field in the +end. But, for the space of an hour, there was +sure to be some desperate hard fighting, +during which they knew that Mansel would +have to hit both straight and hard: and <i>that</i> +they liked. It was only necessary to look at +their Champion to be sure that <i>he</i> also sincerely +relished his occupation; and this completed +their satisfaction. So long as he was +encountering his opponents’ reasoning, his +massive brow, expressive features, and earnest +manner suggested the image of nothing so +much as resolute intellectual conflict, combined +with conscious intellectual superiority. +But the turning-point was reached at last. +He would suddenly erect his forefinger. This +was the signal for the decisive final charge. +Resistance from that moment was hopeless. +Already were the enemy’s ranks broken. It +only remained to pursue the routed foe into +some remote corner of Germany and to pronounce +the Benediction.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Truly there must have been theological +giants in the land in those days; and the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">[254]</span>spectacle must have been even more sublime +than that of Tatham of Lincoln contributing +to Christian apologetics his famous wish that +he might see “all the German critics at the +bottom of the German Ocean.” And the +curious thing is that, when Mansel was not +confounding the Teuton metaphysicians, he +was engaged in building himself up a second +reputation as the most brilliant punster in the +English language. Burgon credits him with +the delightful saying—sometimes attributed to +Douglas Jerrold—that “dogmatism is the +maturity of puppyism”; and Burgon, in fact, +fills several pages with Mansel’s puns, setting +them forth with a gusto which may partially +explain and justify the criticism once passed +on Burgon himself, to the effect that +“buffoonery was his forte and piety his +foible.”</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_255">[255]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="JESUS_COLLEGE">JESUS COLLEGE</h2> + +<p>Statistics concerning the Joneses of Jesus—A Welsh +<i>enclave</i>—Rarity of great names at Jesus—Henry +Vaughan the “Silurist”—Sir Lewis Morris—Beau +Nash—John Richard Green.</p> + +</div> + +<p>The belief currently entertained about Jesus +College in the other colleges is that the +Principal, the Fellows, the Scholars, and the +Commoners—to say nothing of the porter, the +cook, and the scouts—are all alike called Jones. +It is also generally understood that such +Christian names as David and Llewellyn occur +too frequently to be of any use for the denotation +of individuals, with the result that it is +only possible to distinguish a given Jones +from other Joneses by means of a reference +to his personal idiosyncrasies. “I mean,” +people say, “the Mr. Jones who ...” &c.</p> + +<p>Legends of that sort, though seldom literally +true, are seldom quite devoid of foundation +in fact; and the best thing to do is to take +a census. It appears from Foster’s “Alumni +Oxonienses” that, between 1715 and 1886, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_256">[256]</span>there were 716 Joneses at Oxford, and that +299 of them were Joneses of Jesus. Jesus, +that is to say, whose just share of Joneses +would be one twenty-first, has, as a matter of +fact, educated rather less than one-half and +rather more than one-third of the total number +of Joneses available. Yet, by one of those +curious ironies which make life interesting, +it so happens that the greatest of the Oxford +Joneses—Sir William Jones, to wit—was not +at Jesus, but at University, and that the most +memorable of the Jesus ghosts are not the +ghosts of Joneses, but of a Vaughan, a Nash, +a Green, and a Morris, while only one Jones +has ever risen to the dignity of Principal.</p> + +<p>So much for statistics. They are very +interesting, but they do not carry us very far. +Our next step must be to picture Jesus—not +the present Jesus, of course, but the unreformed +Jesus of old times—as a horrible +example of the evil (or perhaps it would be +better to say the undesirable limitations) of +what may be called “hole-and-corner” educational +endowments.</p> + +<p>Jesus has always been, in a special sense, +the Welshman’s college—a Welsh <i>enclave</i>, as +it were, in the midst of England. Benefactors +made it so by confining their benefactions to +Welshmen; and one may feel that this was +a mistaken policy without speaking disrespectfully +of Welshmen—which has always, since +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_257">[257]</span>Shakespeare’s time, been a dangerous thing +to do. The results have been somewhat like +those which Matthew Arnold deplored in the +case of special schools for the education of +the sons of licensed victuallers and commercial +travellers. The Welshmen brought +their own atmosphere to Oxford and formed +their own circle there. Their peculiarities, +instead of being toned down, were crystallised; +and their many excellent qualities were +consequently lost upon Oxford. Men of other +colleges gazed at them, as it were, across a +social gulf, and regarded them pretty much as +they might have regarded Wild Men from +Borneo.</p> + +<p>Nor did the Welshmen often bridge the +social gulf by means of intellectual achievement. +They might have done so if they had +been fairly representative of Wales; but they +were not. Jesus suffered more than almost +any other college from the dog-in-the-manger +policy of theologians in high places. While +the College was the preserve of Welshmen, +the University was the preserve of members of +the Church of England; and Wales, as all +the world knows, is a citadel of Nonconformity. +The intellect of Wales, therefore, +was not justly represented at Jesus; while +the intellect of England, Scotland, and Ireland +was hardly represented there at all.</p> + +<p>It followed that even the people who +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_258">[258]</span>regarded the religion at Jesus as “true” could +not allow that the learning there was “sound.” +Fellowships were frequently awarded to men +who had taken only third or fourth-class +honours. The scholars could learn no more +than the Tutors could teach them; and the list +of <i>alumni</i> is singularly lacking in distinction. +A list of sixteen bishops can, indeed, be made +out—with not a Jones among them; and there +have been a good many Cymric lexicographers, +Cymric grammarians, and Cymric +antiquaries. But such names as a non-Cymric +public values are very scarce indeed. Archbishop +Ussher—he who computed that the +world must have been created in the year +4004 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span>—had some connection with the +College, though the precise nature of that +connection cannot be discovered; and then +comes Henry Vaughan—the poet who called +himself “the Silurist,” because the country in +which he lived and worked was the ancient +territory of the Silures.</p> + +<p class="tb">Henry Vaughan is a charming religious +poet, with a vein of mysticism. The Reverend +Alexander Grosart has written his life in a +prose style of his own, which suggests a +careful man picking his way across a muddy +road in patent-leather shoes. But the life, +when written, amounts to very little. Hardly +anything is known of the poet except that +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_259">[259]</span>he began to study law, but afterwards became +a country doctor, and practised in Brecknockshire; +and the most interesting statement +made concerning him is that, when the war +between King and Parliament broke out, he +suffered a short term of imprisonment as a +royalist, but afterwards went home and +“followed the pleasant paths of poetry and +philology.”</p> + +<p>Some will, no doubt, denounce him, on that +account, as a poor, mean-spirited person; but +there are no known facts on which to base the +charge. Fighting, after all, is not an end in +itself; and a man may refrain from fighting, +not because he is afraid of being killed, but +because he does not feel strongly enough to +desire to kill the people who do not share his +opinions. A mystic, full of the belief that +God is manifested in all His creatures—King’s +men and Parliament men alike—might well +sigh for quiet in the midst of civic storms, +and prefer to realise his Pantheism in a lonely +place rather than draw the sword and let +himself be carried away by evil passions which +his heart told him were unprofitable and vain.</p> + +<p>The Silurist was, we may take it, a “God-intoxicated” +man, and one on whom the +intoxication exercised a narcotic rather than +an exciting influence: a man, therefore, not +to be roused from meditative torpor by the +thought that the King’s rights or the people’s +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_260">[260]</span>liberties were in peril. He could see visions +and dream dreams which were worth infinitely +more to him than any of the objects of contention +between Cavaliers and Roundheads. +He not only fancied that he could see—he +actually saw:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Dear, beauteous death! the jewel of the just,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Shining nowhere, but in the dark;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What mysteries do lie beyond thy dust;</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Could man out-look that mark!</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“If a star were confin’d into a tomb,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Her captive flames must needs burn there;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But when the hand that lock’d her up gives room,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">She’ll shine through all the sphere!”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>One does not picture the man who wrote +those lines galloping about with a sword in his +hand and charging with the drunken troopers +who followed Rupert of the Rhine. One could +not so picture him if one would, and one would +not if one could. He was of a finer as well +as a more sober temper than any of those +roystering men-at-arms; and in his “Retreate” +he anticipated Wordsworth’s more +famous “Intimations of Immortality.” Perhaps +it is not without significance that he and +Wordsworth both divined that “our birth is +but a sleep and a forgetting,” and that +“Heaven lies about us in our infancy,” in an +age in which progress seemed to have called +a halt while wild men cut each other’s throats.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_261">[261]</span></p> + +<p>All that, however, has nothing to do with +the career of Vaughan the Silurist at Jesus; +and, indeed, there is nothing to be said on that +branch of the subject, except that Vaughan left +the University without taking his degree. The +only other Jesus poet worthy of remark—one +has named, of course, Lewis Morris—not only +took his degree, but also took firsts in Moderations +and in Greats, and won the Chancellor’s +Prize for an essay on “The greatness and +decline of Venice,” and would have been +elected to a fellowship if he had not been +disqualified by the possession of private +means. “Perhaps,” writes the official historian +of Jesus, “what the College lost the +rest of the world may have gained by this disqualification.”</p> + +<p>It may be so. Yet Sir Lewis Morris has left +it on record that he wrote most of his poetry +on the underground railway before it was +electrified; and if the atmosphere of Jesus +was less inspiring than that of the unreformed +District Line, it must have been more uninspiring +than that of any of the other colleges. +The essential thing is, however, that Morris +did write his poetry, and gained his knighthood, +and was at one time a possible poet +laureate.</p> + +<p>He had been much admired. His admirers +had, at one time, numbered tens, if not +hundreds of thousands; and if the laureateship +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_262">[262]</span>had fallen vacant then, it would probably +have been given to him amid acclamations. +It fell vacant too late, however, and was +allowed to remain vacant too long to please +him. The demand for his poetical services +was not vociferous. It even seemed to him +that he was the victim of a conspiracy of +silence; and he said as much to Oscar Wilde.</p> + +<p>“Oscar,” he asked, “what would you +advise me to do in the face of this conspiracy +of silence?”</p> + +<p>“I would advise you to join the conspiracy,” +was his brother poet’s cruel reply.</p> + +<p class="tb">Another—and one may even venture to say +an unexpected—Jesus man was Beau Nash, +the uncrowned King of Bath: the autocratic +dandy who directed the etiquette of the Bath +Assembly Rooms, where he ordered Duchesses +to take off their aprons and noblemen to +take off their boots. All things considered, +it seems improbable that Beau Nash was very +much like the other Jesus men, or that the +other Jesus men were very much like Beau +Nash; and it may be added that the example +which he set them was not an example which +it would have been good for them to follow.</p> + +<p>The Beau, like the Silurist, left Oxford +without a degree, after having demonstrated, +as his biographer, Dr. Oliver Goldsmith of +Trinity College, Dublin, puts it, that “though +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_263">[263]</span>much might be expected from his genius, +nothing could be hoped from his industry.” +And Dr. Goldsmith continues:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“The first method Mr. Nash took to distinguish +himself at college was not by application +to study, but by his assiduity in intrigue. +In the neighbourhood of every University +there are girls who, with some beauty, some +coquetry, and little fortune, lie upon the watch +for every raw amorous youth more inclined to +make love than to study. Our Hero was +quickly caught, and went through all the +mazes of a college intrigue before he was +seventeen; he offered marriage, the offer was +accepted, but the whole affair coming to the +knowledge of his tutors, his happiness, or +perhaps his future misery, was prevented, and +he was sent home from college, with necessary +advice to him and proper instructions to his +father.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>His case, if correctly reported, is a warning +to those young men of the present day—supposing +that there still are such—who listen +to the lure of the siren in the photographer’s +shop; but the exactitude of the narrative +has been disputed. A contemporary reviewer +of Dr. Goldsmith’s work had heard from a +Fellow of Jesus that “Mr. Nash, being too +volatile to relish the sober rules of a college +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_264">[264]</span>life, took the opportunity of receiving his +quarter’s returns, and went off, leaving a debt +behind him of about three pounds eighteen +shillings, which remains undischarged on the +College books to this day.” Which of the two +stories is the true one it is, at this distance +of time, impossible to say; but the records +which remain of the Beau’s volatility do +certainly indicate a manner of life for which +a University city was no proper setting.</p> + +<p>In the days before he went to Bath and +found his <i>métier</i>, he earned his living in very +curious ways, but chiefly by undertaking, for +a wager, to do some ridiculous thing. One of +his feats, accomplished from this pecuniary +motive, was to strip himself naked and ride +through the streets of a village on the back +of a cow. That, it will be generally admitted, +is a thing which it is better to do in the remote +country than in the High, or the Broad, or +even the Turl.</p> + +<p class="tb">Next—and perhaps last—on the roll of +Jesus celebrities comes the name of John +Richard Green, the historian of the English +People; and his debt to Jesus—and even to +Oxford—does not seem to have been a heavy +one.</p> + +<p>His place among the historians is undoubtedly +better assured than the place of +Lewis Morris among the poets; but as an +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_265">[265]</span>undergraduate he did not shape so well. Instead +of taking first class honours, he only +took a pass degree; instead of writing a prize +essay, he wrote for a local paper. His tutors +thought him idle, and his contemporaries had +some reason to complain of him. He was +part author of a satire—the “Gentiad,” an +imitation of the “Dunciad”—which ridiculed +some of the characteristics of Jesus men. +This brought him unpopularity, and he passed +through Oxford without making many friends.</p> + +<p>One good and great friend, however, he +did make, almost by accident; and that story +may be best told in the words of the Life by +Leslie Stephen:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“During his University career Arthur +Penrhyn Stanley was Professor of Ecclesiastical +History. Green, during his last term, +went accidentally into the lecture-room where +Stanley was discoursing upon the Wesleys. +The lecture fascinated him, and he never +missed another. In one lecture Stanley concluded +with the phrase, ‘<i>Magna est veritas et +prævalebit</i>, words so great that I could almost +prefer them to the motto of our own +University, <i>Dominus illuminatio mea</i>.’ As +Stanley left the room, Green, who had been +deeply interested, exclaimed, ‘<i>Magna est +veritas et prævalebit</i> is the motto of the +town!’ Stanley was much pleased, invited +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_266">[266]</span>his young admirer to walk home with him, +and asked him to dinner. The day appointed +was early in November (1859), and the +‘town and gown’ riots of the period made +the passage through the streets rather +hazardous. ‘How could you come at all?’ +asked Stanley. ‘Sir,’ replied Green in the +words of Johnson, ‘it is a great honour to +dine with the Canons of Christ Church.’”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>The friendship thus formed was of great +importance to Green. It put heart into him, +as he afterwards told Stanley, at a time when +he “found no help in Oxford theology,” and +was apparently the influence which stimulated +him to the point of taking orders. +Afterwards, of course, he found that Oxford +theology was not the only theology which +puzzled instead of satisfying his intelligence. +He had very little of the theological mentality, +and he had a severe historical conscience. +He could neither believe what he +knew to be untrue, nor could he pretend to +believe it; and consequently—but that has +nothing to do with Jesus College.</p> + +<p class="tb">And so the Jesus pageant passes—a pageant +in which, as we see, the apparently inevitable +name of Jones does not appear.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_267">[267]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="WADHAM_COLLEGE">WADHAM COLLEGE</h2> + +<p>Nicholas and Dorothy Wadham—A miscellaneous list of +Wadham men—The story of the great Wadham “Rag”—Wadham +Evangelicalism—Stories of Warden +Symons—The Wadham Positivists—“Three Persons +and no God”—Richard Congreve—Comte, Clotilde de +Vaux, and the Positivist schism—The last Oxford +Movement—Canon Barnett and Toynbee Hall.</p> + +</div> + +<p>The founders were Nicholas Wadham and +Dorothy, his widow. Nicholas accumulated +the funds, and Dorothy applied them after +his death, at her discretion, in accordance with +his wishes. The discreet and delightful +Wadham Gardens are said to have been due +to her initiative; and she also had the happy +thought of exempting Fellows of the College +from the disconcerting necessity of taking +Holy Orders. Though one knows little else +of her, one cannot but be prepossessed in +her favour by the beautiful euphony of her +name. Mistress Dorothy Wadham—it is a +name which falls on the ear like the soft +melody of silver bells.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus15" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/illus15.jpg" alt=""> + <figcaption> + <p>WADHAM COLLEGE.</p> + <p class="right">[To face p. 267.</p> + </figcaption> +</figure> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_268">[268]</span></p> + +<p>The date of the Charter is 1610—an early +year in the reign of the comic King who +loved learning almost as much as he hated +tobacco. Its Jacobean architecture is a serene +and perfect poem in grey stone, though the +grass in the quadrangle which contrasts so +effectively with the grey was added by one +of the Wardens at a later time. It seems +natural and proper that it should have been +the College of the two greatest of the Oxford +architects—Sir Christopher Wren and T. G. +Jackson. It is also the College of Admiral +Blake, Nicholas Love, the regicide, Thomas +Sydenham, the physician, Speaker Onslow, the +“wicked” Earl of Rochester, Lord Chancellor +Westbury, who won his scholarship +as a prodigy of fourteen in “jacket and +frills,” Dean Church, who, according to Mark +Pattison, was elected to an Oriel Fellowship +on account of his “moral beauty,” Father +Maconochie of Saint Alban’s, Holborn, those +great athletes, Messrs. T. A. Cook (now +the editor of the <i>Field</i>) and C. B. Fry, +Mr. F. E. Smith, and many other men of +note.</p> + +<p>It is of the others that we will speak here, +prefacing comment with the remark that +Wadham has been successively a Whig +College, an Evangelical College, a Positivist +College—and also the College of the man who +launched the latest of the Oxford Movements, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_269">[269]</span>and the College which was the scene of the +last of the really historic Oxford “rags.” It +may clear the ground if one begins by saying +a word about the “rag.”</p> + +<p class="tb">The “rag” occurred as recently as +1880; and one must not pretend to disentangle +the rights and wrongs of it with the +precision of a scientific historian. In a +general way, however, one may say that it +originated in an attempt on the part of +authority to tighten the reins of discipline +at a time when pride at success on the river +had made the College restive. So first there +were skirmishes, and then there was a battle +royal.</p> + +<p>A bonfire seems, as usual, to have been +the first overt act; and the lighting of a +bonfire on the grass—that beautifully kept +Wadham grass—is an act no more to be +condoned by the historian than by the dons. +The answer to it—surely a justifiable answer—was +the prohibition of the annual College +Concert. But then tempers were lost, and +fur began really to fly. The wrath of the +junior members of the College was vented +upon “Unbelieving Dick”—a don so called +because he professed himself sceptical of the +articles of the Christian Faith. There was +a sudden irruption of youth, flown with +insolence and wine, into Unbelieving Dick’s +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_270">[270]</span>apartments at the dead of night. Unbelieving +Dick had no power to eject his visitors, and +no time to dress in order to receive them. +He fled, it is related, across the quadrangle +in his night-shirt—for none, in those days, +wore pyjamas—pursued with missiles and +howls of execration.</p> + +<p>Things, it was evident, could not be allowed +to rest there. The ring-leaders must be discovered +and an example must be made. An +appeal to them to surrender themselves, however, +met with no response; and the dons +presently engaged the services of a detective. +The detective was himself detected, and was +severely punished under the pump. It only +remained for the dons to play their last card +and send the whole College down. They did +so. Wadham, in the Autumn Term of 1880, +was a howling wilderness, with only a few +freshmen in residence—a sorrowful spectacle +indeed for Dorothy Wadham, if she looked +down on it from another world. The rehabilitation +of the College, though since fully +accomplished, was only a gradual process.</p> + +<p>And now we will leave the rag, and speak +of the religious (and irreligious) history of +Wadham.</p> + +<p class="tb">Religion, as has been said, appears at +Wadham chiefly in the form of Evangelicalism. +The College was the stronghold, or the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_271">[271]</span>hotbed—whichever be the better word—of Evangelicalism +in the fiery days of the Tractarian +Movement. Warden Symons, who ruled over +it from 1831 to 1871, appears to have conformed, +so far as a scholar could, to the +type which one associates with missionary +meetings, tea, hassocks, and well buttered +crumpets. His wife held prayer meetings in +the drawing-room, and kept a “missionary +cow,” the proceeds of whose milk—supplied to +undergraduates at specially high terms—were +allocated to the propagation of the Gospel +in foreign parts. He himself altered the hour +of the services in the Wadham Chapel for +the express purpose of preventing his young +men from attending Newman’s sermons at +Saint Mary’s. On one occasion he knocked +at the door of Newman’s retreat at Littlemore +and asked if he might be shown over +the monastery. “We have no monastery +here,” was the reply; and the door was +slammed in his face.</p> + +<p>The Warden’s scorn of ceremonial observance +was illustrated by his manner of receiving +the contents of the collection plate at +the Communion Service. It was his habit +simply to shovel the money into his pocket +and walk off with it; and this brusque and +indecorous proceeding naturally furnished the +basis of a legend. The Warden, it was said, +had annexed the offertory as a perquisite of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_272">[272]</span>his office, and exhorted undergraduates to +generosity in order to gain his private ends. +“Gentlemen,” he was reported to have said, +“must really give a little more liberally; I +have been quite out of pocket by the last two +or three collections.” It was not true, of +course; but it served him right. Every +Warden becomes the hero of the myths that +he deserves. And, no doubt, it was largely +in consequence of the saponaceous slovenliness +of Wadham religion that, whereas the +serious undergraduates of other colleges went +over to Rome, the serious undergraduates of +Wadham, and the serious dons too, went over +to Paris and joined Comte in erecting Temples +of Humanity on the ruins of the Temples of +God.</p> + +<p class="tb">Those were the days in which it was said +that Wadham was governed by a Trinity consisting +of Three Persons and No God; but +the three persons in question are differently +identified by different cynics. The names +of Richard Congreve, Edmund Spencer +Beesley, and Mr. Frederic Harrison are those +most commonly mentioned; but Mr. Harrison +has stated, in an autobiographical note, +that he did not definitely adopt the Positivist +Religion until some years after he had gone +down. It does not matter—or, at all events, +it does not matter very much. Wadham, in +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_273">[273]</span>fact, has harboured several generations of +Positivists, so that there generally have been +at least three heads there which the caps +fitted, right down to the time of the Unbelieving +Dick whose misadventures have +been referred to; and they all acknowledged +Richard Congreve as their spiritual +father.</p> + +<p>He was a Rugby boy who acted, for a +time, as a Rugby Master. His case may be +taken as a fresh exemplification of that +“moral seriousness” of which Rugby boasts. +The beliefs in which he had been brought +up slipped away from him; but he continued +to respect the sacred impulse of +the human heart which impels people to +dress in their best and go somewhere to be +edified on Sundays. Just as Comte had +arranged for them to do so in Paris, so he +arranged for them to do so in Lamb’s Conduit +Street; and so, at a later date, Mr. +Frederic Harrison arranged for them to do so +in Fetter Lane. Really intellectual people, +he felt, having passed beyond theology and +beyond metaphysics, might nevertheless +kneel to Humanity—that abstraction of what +was noblest in their noblest selves—and invoke +Saints carefully selected from</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent14">“The choir invisible</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of the immortal dead who live again</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In lives made better by their presence.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_274">[274]</span></p> + +<p>At a later date there was to be trouble +among the Positivists—an outburst of heresy, +schism, and dissent. Comte, it turned out, +was not the easiest Master for rational +and self-respecting disciples to follow +blindly. He had been in a lunatic asylum +and was supported by the voluntary offerings +of the faithful. Fully persuaded that +he who preached the gospel was entitled +to live by the gospel, he solicited contributions +and quarrelled with subscribers +whose contributions seemed to him inadequate. +Moreover, being separated from his wife, he +fell in love with a lady who had been +separated from her husband, and insisted upon +incorporating his romance in his religious +system. The worship of Humanity in general +might, he claimed, be most happily symbolised +by the specific worship of Clotilde +de Vaux.</p> + +<p>His relations with Clotilde de Vaux were, +his biographers tell us, “pure.” No doubt +they had his word for it, and perhaps they +also had hers; but that detail cannot have +mattered much to any one except the philosopher +and his affinity. To be called upon +to worship another man’s affinity, whatever +the precise nature of his relations with his +affinity, is always a strain upon devout allegiance. +It proved so in this instance. There +was a split, broadly speaking, between the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_275">[275]</span>Positivists who had a sense of humour and +the Positivists who had none; but we need +not enter into the rights and wrongs of the +disruption. Enough to note the fact, and to +note also that, so far as England is concerned, +Positivism has been an Oxford Movement +which Wadham has practically monopolised.</p> + +<p class="tb">This brings us to the last of the Oxford +Movements, with which Wadham is also very +definitely associated—the Social Movement +which succeeded the Æsthetic Movement, in +or about the year 1884.</p> + +<p>Something has already been said about it +in the Magdalen chapter which related the +æsthetic collapse. The principal thing to be +added here is that the man who had most +to do with the launching of it was Barnett +of Wadham, who had taken a Second in +History in 1865, and was then the incumbent +of Saint Jude’s, Whitechapel.</p> + +<p>Other forces were, indeed, indirectly at +work. Sir Walter Besant’s advocacy of a +People’s Palace in “All Sorts and Conditions +of Men” was one. Mr. George R. Sims’s +tract entitled “The Bitter Cry of Outcast +London” was another. Here, at all events, +were the elements of stir, if not of movement +in the narrow sense—the vague suggestion +that “something ought to be done,” and that +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_276">[276]</span>the people who had culture owed a debt of +some sort to the people who were trying to +get along without it. Barnett of Wadham, +with many earnest helpers from other colleges, +focussed the Movement at Oxford in a memorable +speech delivered in the Union Debating +Hall.</p> + +<p>The only hope for the East End of London, +it was then laid down, was for Oxford men to +colonise it. They alone, or almost alone, +possessed the secret of culture. A number +of them, therefore, must settle there, and set +good examples, illuminating Whitechapel by +their shining influence. Forthwith they +jumped at the idea, and carried it out, almost +in the twinkling of an eye. Toynbee Hall +was the result, and Barnett of Wadham, now +Canon Barnett, was its first Warden.</p> + +<p>Oxford, in those days, was, it must be +admitted, a very serious University indeed—as +serious a University as even the Rugby +men could have wished to see it. Even unbelievers +took to going to church, and gravely +envisaged the question whether a lack of belief +was really a sufficient excuse for not taking +Holy Orders. The <i>Oxford Magazine</i> became +the ponderous organ of the seriously minded, +and, for a season, no sermon was too tedious +to be reported verbatim in its columns, until +one day there appeared a protest in the shape +of a rhymed letter to the editor:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_277">[277]</span></p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Mr. Editor, surely some lightness of touch</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Would be not unbecoming your famed magazine.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of lectures and sermons you give us too much;</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Toynbee Hall gets to pall, and I <i>loathe</i> Bethnal Green.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>The author of those lines was Mr. Quiller +Couch of Trinity, whom the world knows as +“Q.” The immediate effect of them was +to clear the air at Oxford; though Mr. +Barnett’s Oxonian procession continued to +carry the lamps of culture down the Mile +End Road, with results which, according to +the latest reports, are eminently satisfactory.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_278">[278]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="PEMBROKE_COLLEGE">PEMBROKE COLLEGE</h2> + +<p>Broadgates Hall—Its illustrious and fashionable <i>alumni</i>—The +Hall becomes Pembroke College—Dr. Johnson +at Pembroke—He rags the servitors and argues with +the dons—His “spirited refusal of an eleemosynary +supply of shoes”—He shows Hannah More over the +College—George Whitefield at Pembroke—His +relations with the Methodists and his religious +excitability.</p> + +</div> + +<p>In the eyes of the average visitor to Pembroke, +one fact outweighs all other facts in +importance. Pembroke was the college of +Dr. Johnson. It is much more profitable to +tell a visitor that than to dwell on the circumstances +in which Pembroke College grew +out of the earlier Broadgates Hall.</p> + +<p>Broadgates Hall, it is true, had cut a considerable +figure in the early social history of +Oxford. Christ Church men who could not be +accommodated in the House often had rooms +there—a fact which the modern Christ Church +men should remember when they are tempted +to their traditional gibe: “Is that Pembroke? +I always thought that was where the Christ +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_279">[279]</span>Church coals were kept.” John Pym, too, +the great Parliamentary leader, was at Broadgates +Hall; and the Hall was “a nest of +singing birds” long before the greatest of +her sons claimed that distinction for Pembroke. +George Peele, Francis Beaumont (of +the Beaumont and Fletcher combination), and +Sir Fulke Greville were all poets of Broadgates +Hall; but it is not easy to arouse the +curiosity of the visitor concerning them. He +keeps most of his curiosity for Dr. Johnson; +and if he has any curiosity left over, he +bestows it upon George Whitefield, the +Methodist preacher.</p> + +<p>Let us consider Dr. Johnson first.</p> + +<p class="tb">Johnson went up in 1728; but his career +was brief—about fourteen months from start +to finish. Carlyle says he was a servitor; +but he was, in fact, a commoner. A friend +who offered him financial help did not fulfil +his promise. His father fell into financial +difficulties, and he had to go home, leaving +his caution money to defray his dues.</p> + +<p>Old Michael Johnson brought him up, and +took him to call upon his tutor. He +astonished the common-room, after a modest +silence, by interjecting a quotation from +Macrobius, thus proving himself to be precocious +and well-read, though he was not to turn +out to be the sort of model scholar whom +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_280">[280]</span>the donnish mind approves. Laziness was to +be his besetting vice through life. He was +already lazy while an undergraduate; and he +shared with many men of meaner intelligence +a disposition to cut his lectures, and to excuse +himself on grounds which the lecturers +could not but regard as inadequate. Of the +Christ Church man it has been written by +an Oxford humourist that “he goeth not to +lectures, for he saith: ‘How can a man lecture +in bags cut like that?’” Johnson was guilty +of a more outspoken rudeness. Summoned +to account for his absence from the classroom, +he explained that he had been skating +on Christ Church meadows. Fined for his +neglect of the obligation, he said: “Sir, you +have sconced me twopence for a lecture that +was not worth a penny.” And the biography +continues:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“<span class="smcap">Boswell</span>: That, Sir, was great fortitude +of mind.</p> + +<p>“<span class="smcap">Johnson</span>: No, Sir; stark insensibility.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>He was poor; but the picture of his poverty +has sometimes been overdrawn. His account +for battells, which remains in the College +archives, shows that he had enough to eat +and drink, and that, in that important respect, +at all events, he lived on the same scale as +the majority of his compeers. Nor did his +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_281">[281]</span>lack of means compel him to an isolated and +unsociable existence. He joined with the +other commoners in ragging the servitors +whose duty it was to knock at the doors of +commoners and ascertain whether they were +in their own rooms at the appointed hour. He +hunted them down the stairs, it is recorded, +“with the noise of pots and candlesticks”; +and there are contemporary recollections +which show him to have been somewhat of +a leader of men.</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“I have heard,” wrote Bishop Percy, +“from some of his contemporaries, that he +was generally to be seen lounging at the +College Gate with a circle of young students +round him, whom he was entertaining with +wit, and keeping from their studies, if not +spiriting them up to rebellion against the +College discipline, which in his maturer years +he so much extolled. He would not let these +idlers say ‘prodigious’ or otherwise misuse +the English tongue.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Dr. Adams, too, then a tutor, and afterwards +Master of the College, told Boswell +that Johnson, as an undergraduate, was “a +gay and frolicsome fellow,” and was +“caressed and loved by all about him”; +but Boswell proceeds:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“When I mentioned to him this account, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_282">[282]</span>he said: ‘Ah, Sir, I was mad and violent. +It was bitterness which they mistook for +frolick. I was miserably poor, and I thought +to fight my way by my literature and my wit; +so I disregarded all power and all authority.’”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Very likely, however, that recollection was +coloured by later memories of the struggle +for bread in Grub Street. Between the manifestations +of bitterness and frolic the average +undergraduate can, as a rule, discriminate; +and Pembroke was not a rich man’s college. +The pangs of poverty only became intense +when Johnson crossed the road to Christ +Church, to see his friend Taylor. Then contrast +made him conscious of his shabbiness. +As Boswell writes:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“Mr. Bateman’s lectures were so excellent +that Johnson used to come and get them at +second hand from Taylor, till his poverty +being so extreme that his shoes were worn +out, and his feet appeared through them, he +saw that this humiliating circumstance was +perceived by the Christ Church men, and he +came no more. He was too proud to accept +of money, and somebody having set a pair of +new shoes at his door, he threw them away +with indignation.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>This “spirited refusal of an eleemosynary +supply of shoes,” as Boswell calls it, is the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_283">[283]</span>best known of all the stories of Johnson’s +Oxford career; but there is no evidence that +the memory of the incident mortified him in +after life. He never vilified Oxford, as did +Gibbon and Adam Smith. On the contrary +he was always proud to remember that he +was an Oxford man; he spoke very highly +of the tutors whose instruction he had +neglected; and he delighted to revisit the +University in his prosperous and famous +period. We have a graphic account of one +such visit from the pen of Hannah More:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“Who do you think is my principal +cicerone in Oxford? Only Dr Johnson! +And we do so gallant it about! You cannot +imagine with what delight he showed me every +part of his own College, nor how rejoiced +Henderson looked to make one of the party. +Dr. Adams had contrived a very pretty piece +of gallantry. We spent the day and evening +at his house. After dinner Johnson begged +to conduct me to see the College; he would +let no one show it me but himself. ‘This +was my room; this Shenstone’s.’ Then, after +pointing out all the rooms of the poets who +have been of his College, ‘In short,’ he said, +‘we were a nest of singing-birds. Here we +walked, there we played at cricket.’ He ran +over with pleasure the history of the juvenile +days he passed there.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_284">[284]</span></p> + +<p>That may be, indeed, the language of a +man whose undergraduate days had been +passed in poverty; but it assuredly is not the +language of a man whose poverty had made +life unbearable in the manner which Carlyle +suggests. Johnson, it is hardly to be doubted, +enjoyed himself at Oxford as much as his +constitutional tendency to melancholia ever +permitted him to enjoy himself anywhere; +and one may even conjecture that the condition +of his shoe-leather was as much due +to untidiness as to indigence. To find a +Pembroke man who was really poor, and +really miserable and morbid, we have to turn +to the case of that eminent Methodist divine, +the Reverend George Whitefield.</p> + +<p class="tb">Whitefield came up just after Johnson had +gone down; and there was one interesting +link between them—a link which also +associates them with that eminent Magdalen +man, the historian of the Roman Empire. +They both read, and were affected by, Law’s +“Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life”; +and Law had been tutor to Gibbon’s father +and was to end his days as a sort of +domestic chaplain to one of Gibbon’s aunts. +It is curious to observe how differently his +exhortations influenced the minds of the three +men.</p> + +<p>Gibbon devotes a good deal of space, in +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_285">[285]</span>his Autobiography, to Law’s “theological +writings which our domestic connection has +tempted me to peruse”; and he holds the +scales with a rigid impartiality. Law’s +“sallies of religious frenzy,” he says, “must +not be allowed to extinguish the praise which +is due to Mr. William Law as a wit and a +scholar.” He thinks that, “had not his +vigorous mind been clouded by enthusiasm, +he might be ranked with the most agreeable +and ingenious writers of the times.” His conclusion +is that:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“If he finds a spark of piety in his reader’s +mind, he will soon kindle it to a flame; and +a philosopher must allow that he exposes, +with equal severity and truth, the strange +contradiction between the faith and practice +of the Christian world.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Gibbon, that is to say, looks at Law solely +with the eye of a literary critic, damns him +with faint praise, but leaves his propositions +unexamined as childish conceptions which he +has long since put away, and does not propose +to be concerned with any more. His +tone is that of a head-master who praises, +while he corrects, a set of Latin verses. +Johnson read the book, expecting it to afford +him ribald amusement, but was “over-matched” +by it, and even frightened by it +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_286">[286]</span>some distance along the road which leads to +religious mania. Whitefield read it with real +Methodistical enthusiasm.</p> + +<p class="tb">About the Oxford Methodists in general +enough has already been said in the chapter +on Lincoln; but Whitefield is of sufficient importance +to be detached from the group and +considered separately.</p> + +<p>He was not the originator of the movement, +though he came to be a force in it. The +Wesleys were several years his seniors, and +had set Methodism going before he came into +residence. But though he was their disciple +he was hardly of their type. They were +scholars, gentlemen, and organisers. He was +a man of the people, half-educated, brought +up in the tap-room of his mother’s inn, a +religious demagogue, a rhetorician, whose +mouth, foaming with sanctimonious phrases, +suggests the froth on the tankards of his +mother’s beer. The dignity which compels +even those who differ from the Wesleys to +respect them was entirely wanting in Whitefield. +He emerged from his humble station +with the defects of his origin clinging to him, +and he never shook them off. It is impossible +to think of him as a man whom one would +have liked to know at Oxford. It is, indeed, +difficult to think of him as anything but mad.</p> + +<p>His position at Pembroke was that of a +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_287">[287]</span>servitor; and he was the exaggerated type +of the “pi-man” of his period. He had no +joy in his youth, and no power of concealing +his abject terror of hell-fire. He made himself +conspicuous about it; it is not too much +to say that he made himself ridiculous. Here +are a few extracts from his own admissions +on the subject:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“I always chose the worst sort of food, +though my place furnished me with variety. +I fasted twice a week. My apparel was mean. +I thought it unbecoming a penitent to have +his hair powdered. I wore woollen gloves, +a patched gown, and dirty shoes.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<blockquote> +<p>“Satan used to terrify me much, and +threatened to punish me if I discovered his +wiles. It being my duty, as servitor, in my +turn to knock at the gentlemen’s doors by +ten at night, to see who were in their rooms, +I thought the devil would appear to me every +stair I went up. And he so troubled me +when I lay down to rest that, for some weeks, +I scarce slept above three hours at a time.... +Whole days and weeks have I spent in +lying prostrate on the ground and begging +for freedom from those proud hellish thoughts +that used to crowd in upon and distract my +soul.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<blockquote> +<p>“It was suggested to me that Jesus Christ +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_288">[288]</span>was among the wild beasts when He was +tempted, and that I ought to follow His example; +and being willing, as I thought, to +imitate Jesus Christ, after supper I went +into Christ Church walk, near our college, +and continued in silent prayer under one of +the trees for near two hours, sometimes lying +flat on my face, sometimes kneeling upon my +knees, all the while filled with fear and concern +lest some of my brethren should be overwhelmed +with pride. The night being stormy, +it gave me awful thoughts of the day of judgment. +I continued, I think, until the great +bell rung for retirement to the College, not +without finding some reluctance in the natural +man against staying so long in the cold.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>And so forth. All things considered, it is +not surprising that the “polite students,” as +Whitefield calls them, laughed, and even +“threw dirt,” or that his tutor advised him to +take medicine. Academic authorities are +seldom sympathetic towards undergraduates +who, as Whitefield did, neglect their studies +for their devotions—presumably because the +religious uneasiness of their pupils seems to +them a reflection on their own assured +composure.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_289">[289]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="WORCESTER_COLLEGE">WORCESTER COLLEGE</h2> + +<p>Early history of the buildings—Gloucester College—A +College for Benedictines—Its dissolution—Becomes +the Bishop’s Palace—Gloucester Hall—Endowment of +Worcester College—Remote situation of Worcester—Stories +bearing thereupon—Notable Worcester men—Samuel +Foote—Thomas de Quincey—Henry Kingsley—F. W. +Newman—Dean Burgon—Burgon’s famous +Newdigate.</p> + +</div> + +<p>The buildings and the site of what is now +Worcester College have in their time played +many parts.</p> + +<p>First of all, in the very early days, a year +after the foundation of Merton, Gloucester +College was instituted there. It was a +monastic establishment for the benefit of +Benedictines who wanted to “live properly” +at Oxford, in cells, and with facilities for +praise and prayer, instead of mixing with the +common herd in inns or lodgings; but abuses +crept in, and the monks ceased to live as +properly as founders and benefactors could +have wished. We read of monks admonished +for “noctivagation,” for the haunting of +taverns, for theft, and for assault and battery, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_290">[290]</span>to say nothing of the neglect of the Lenten +fast. On one occasion, it is recorded, “four +turbulent Benedictines” tried to kill the +Proctor; and a State Paper of 1539 exposes +the fact that another Benedictine, with a bookseller +to help him, got through “twenty legs +of mutton, five rounds of beef, and six +capons” between Ash Wednesday and Good +Friday.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus16" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/illus16.jpg" alt=""> + <figcaption> + <p>WORCESTER COLLEGE.</p> + <p class="right">[To face p. 289.</p> + </figcaption> +</figure> + +<p>The dissolution of the monasteries implied, +of course, the dissolution of Gloucester College +as its corollary. It served, for a time, as a +Palace for the Bishop of Oxford, but was +afterwards separated from the see and turned +into Gloucester Hall—a Hall in which, at first, +not only students, but also miscellaneous +lodgers were allowed to have rooms. Even +women were permitted to reside within its +walls; and it had a bad name as a place of +refuge for Papists, open or concealed. It +prospered under these conditions for a season, +but, after the Restoration, fell upon evil days. +There came a time when there were absolutely +no undergraduates in residence, when the +grass overgrew the paths, when the Principal, +sitting alone in his glory, was distrained +upon for arrears of taxes, and when +burglars broke into the Hall and carried off +the plate.</p> + +<p>In William III.’s reign, however, under the +principalship of Benjamin Woodroffe, the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_291">[291]</span>Hall pulled up again. There was an attempt +to turn it into a special college for Greek +students from Constantinople, Alexandria, +Antioch, and Jerusalem—a kind of precedent, +though an imperfect one, for the endowment +of the Rhodes Scholars. The experiment +failed—partly for lack of funds, and partly +because the Principal offended his Oriental +pupils by trying to proselytise them; but +Gloucester Hall was not involved in the +collapse, for Woodroffe had other irons in +the fire. He found a benefactor in Sir +Thomas Cookes, who was proposing to bequeath +£10,000 to Oxford; and this £10,000 +was devoted, after long negotiations, to the +transformation of Gloucester Hall into +Worcester College in 1714.</p> + +<p class="tb">If Worcester is more famous for one thing +than another, it is for its remoteness from the +centres of academical activity; and there are +plenty of stories bearing on this branch of +the subject. Letters have been addressed to +Worcester College, <i>near</i> Oxford; the nickname +of Botany Bay has been bestowed. A +member of Gloucester Hall was once excused +for being late at a ceremony at Saint Mary’s +“because of the distance, and, the wind being +against him, he could not hear the bell.” +A Worcester Proctor, summoning offending +undergraduates to his presence at a later +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_292">[292]</span>period, had to find a means of coping with +similar excuses. The men whom he proctorised, +and bade call on him, always made +a point of asking him where Worcester was; +and when they kept the appointment, they +generally began with: “I’m so sorry, sir. +I fear I’m behind my time; but the fact is +I had the greatest difficulty in finding my way. +I made ever so many inquiries, but no one +was able to direct me.”</p> + +<p>And, if Worcester seems remote now that +one can approach it on a tramcar by way +of Beaumont Street, it must have seemed much +more remote in the old days before Beaumont +Street was made. A graphic picture has been +preserved of Provost Landon, as Vice-Chancellor, +going and coming with difficulty. +Preceded, Coxe tells us, by his bedels with +their gold and silver maces, he proceeded:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“through Gloucester Green, then the +acknowledged site of the pig-market, and +down the whole length of Friars’ Entry, at +the risk of being besprinkled by trundled mops +in those straits of Thermopylæ, of stumbling +over buckets, knocking over children, of catching +the rinsings of basins, and ducking under +linen lines suspended across from the opposite +houses.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Enough, however, of that ancient gibe. We +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_293">[293]</span>will next note that Worcester, the only Oxford +college founded in the eighteenth century, is +able to furnish a striking illustration of the +academic manners and customs of that age.</p> + +<p>What reading men thought of Oxford, and +how they behaved themselves there, in the +eighteenth century, we have already remarked +in the cases of Adam Smith of Balliol, Gibbon +of Magdalen, Joseph Butler of Oriel, and +Jeremy Bentham of Queen’s. The attitude +and deportment of men of a different type is +illustrated by the career of Foote of +Worcester, who was no other than Samuel +Foote the comedian.</p> + +<p>His great-grandfather having been the +founder’s second cousin, Foote put in a claim +to a scholarship as founder’s kin. The claim, +after consideration, was allowed. He came +into residence in 1737, and devoted the whole +of his time to the neglect of his duties and +the defiance of the dons. He acted Punch +through the streets of Oxford. Finding a +bell-rope hanging in a church porch which +opened on a field in which cattle were turned +out to graze, he tied hay round it, with the +result that a hungry cow, in her attempts to +eat the hay, set the bell tolling at the dead of +night, and the Provost, half fearing that supernatural +agencies were at work, sat up, with +the sexton, into the small hours, to solve the +mystery.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_294">[294]</span></p> + +<p>He solved it, and Oxford laughed at him. +He sent for Foote and reprimanded him; but +Foote was insolent, after an ingenious fashion +of his own.</p> + +<p>The Provost, Dr. Gower, was a pompous +and pedantic person who picked his words +carefully and preferred polysyllabic vocables +to any others; and Foote appeared before +him carrying an enormous dictionary under +his arm. The reprimand began; but, as soon +as a long word occurred, Foote begged the +Provost to stop.</p> + +<p>“One moment, if you please, sir. You +said ‘ebullitions,’ I think? It was ‘ebullitions,’ +was it not? ‘Ebullitions’ means—ah, +yes, I have it. Now, if you will continue, +sir, I am at your service.”</p> + +<p>And so forth. As often as the Provost +used a word of more than ordinary length, +Foote, with a gravely submissive and apologetic +air, arrested the harangue by pleading +ignorance of its meaning, searched for it in +the lexicon, read out the definition, and repeated +his formula: “Ah, yes, I see. That +means—— Now I am once more ready, sir, +and if you will please proceed——”</p> + +<p>So that the lecture was turned into a farce; +and Foote might perfectly well have been sent +down for so transmuting it, though, as a +matter of fact, his disappearance was due to +an offence of a different character.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_295">[295]</span></p> + +<p>He kept joyous company, and he kept it +openly. In fact, he was one day discovered +driving a gay and painted “actress” through +the streets of Oxford, on the box seat +of a coach and six—himself attired in +garments so far removed from the “subfusc” +that he compelled the attention of all beholders. +It was useless for him, this time, to +try to brazen matters out with the help of a +dictionary; and the entry regarding his +conduct in the College Register runs as +follows:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“Whereas Samuel Foote, Scholar of +Worcester College, by a long course of ill-behaviour +has rendered himself obnoxious to +frequent censures of the society publick and +private, and having whilst he was under +censure for lying out of college insolently +and presumptuously withdrawn himself and +refused to answer to several heinous crimes +objected to him, though duly cited by the +Provost by an instrument in form, in not +appearing to the said citation for the above-mentioned +reasons, his scholarship is declared +void, and he is hereby deprived of all benefit +and advantage of his said scholarship.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>So Samuel Foote departed, though he does +not seem to have been actually expelled, and, +in due course, became a public buffoon—which +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_296">[296]</span>was what he was most fitted to become; and +though one would not venture to say, with +the example of Mr. Arthur Bourchier before +one, that Oxford is no proper place for +comedians, it can hardly be denied that +Oxford—even eighteenth-century Oxford—was +no proper place for Samuel Foote.</p> + +<p class="tb">Our next interesting name is that of Thomas +de Quincey, essayist and opium-eater.</p> + +<p>His mother sent him up in 1803, with fifty +guineas in his pocket, and liberty to choose +his own college. Professor Saintsbury, speaking +from the lofty standpoint of Merton, +protests that wise guardians would have +counselled him to go anywhere rather than to +Worcester; but one does not quite know why. +He was poor, and Worcester was one of the +cheaper colleges. In the matter of “caution +money,” in particular, it let its members off +lightly. That fact appears to have been the +determining consideration; and de Quincey +had too many queer experiences behind him +to be likely, in any case, or at any college, +to acquire the Oxford manner, and settle +down into a typical Oxonian.</p> + +<p>He had run away from school and wandered +about Wales, with a duodecimo Euripides in +his pocket, camping out on the hillsides in a +tent, which he carried on his back during the +day. He had starved in a Soho lodging and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_297">[297]</span>rubbed shoulders with the submerged tenth. +After that, it was hardly to be expected that +he would have either the notions or the +behaviour of the ordinary public schoolboy +who blossoms into the average University +man. There were three sets for him to choose +among—sets known respectively, according to +the manner of their lives, as the Saints, the +Sinners, and the Smilers; but though he sat +with the Smilers—with the men, that is to say, +who affected to be studious without being +glum—in hall, his soul dwelt almost as far +apart from them as from the others. “I,” +he has written, “whose disease was to meditate +too much and observe too little, upon my +first entrance upon college life, was nearly +falling into a deep melancholy, from brooding +too much on the sufferings I had witnessed +in London.”</p> + +<p>It was while at Worcester, too, that de +Quincey first took to opium, as a remedy +against neuralgia, and continued to take it +because he liked it, and came to believe that +“here was the secret of happiness about which +philosophers had disputed for so many ages.” +And the opium habit, of course, like the more +modern morphia habit, tends to make a man +self-sufficing and uncompanionable, and careless +of clean collars and other particularities +of the toilet; and there are stories to show +that that was its effect upon de Quincey.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_298">[298]</span></p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“I neglected my dress habitually,” he says, +“and wore my clothes till they were threadbare, +partly under the belief that my gown +would conceal defects, more from indisposition +to bestow on a tailor what I had destined for +a bookseller. At length, however, an official +person sent me a message on the subject. +This, however, was disregarded, and one day +I discovered that I had no waistcoat that was +not torn or otherwise dilapidated, whereupon, +buttoning my coat to the throat and drawing +my gown close about me, I went into hall.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>And, of course, undergraduate opinion was +not going to stand that sort of thing even from +a man of genius. It was an occasion for the +Smilers to smile, and they smiled—and also +chaffed. Evidently, they said, de Quincey had +seen the Order in Council, printed in the +<i>Gazette</i>, interdicting the use of waistcoats. It +would be a good idea if it were followed by +another Order interdicting the use of trousers. +Trousers were such costly garments, and so +very troublesome to put on. Et cetera, et +cetera, until de Quincey learnt his lesson.</p> + +<p>Most curious also was de Quincey’s conduct +when the time came for him to try to +satisfy the examiners. He handed in remarkably +good papers. One of the examiners +spoke of him to one of the Worcester tutors +as “the cleverest man I ever met with.” But +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_299">[299]</span>then, just as he seemed about to triumph, he +“scratched” and disappeared. It has been +suggested that he had some imaginary grudge +against the examiners; but it seems more +likely that his nerves gave way before the +prospect of the <i>viva voce</i>. It was not in him +to face the trial with the theatrical self-assurance +of Sir Robert Peel. He feared that +his hair would stand up and his tongue cleave +to the roof of his mouth. So, without saying +anything to any one, he turned and fled; and +for that incident also the opium was probably +responsible.</p> + +<p class="tb">The interest of the remarkable Worcester +names which remain to be mentioned is chiefly +theological.</p> + +<p>Among novelists, indeed, the College educated +Henry Kingsley; but of him little is +recorded except that he was a boating man, +and presented the College with a pair of silver +oars, to be competed for. He was by way of +being the bad boy of the Kingsley family, +though most critics incline to think that he +was more inspired than his famous and earnest +brother Charles. Among economists, again, +the College can boast of both Bonamy Price, +who was Arnold’s favourite pupil at Laleham +and one of his assistant masters at Rugby, and +of Thorold Rogers, who quitted Holy Orders, +wrote a “History of Prices,” and was distinguished +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_300">[300]</span>for his Aristophanic humour. +People are interested in them up to a point; +but they are more interested in F. W. +Newman and Dean Burgon.</p> + +<p class="tb">F. W. Newman, of course, was the famous +Cardinal’s brilliant younger brother—the +grave dialectician who shocked the world, at a +time when it was more easily shocked than it is +at present, by writing “Phases of Faith.” He +fought his way through theology as grimly +as men fight their way through the “Ethics,” +and, starting from the Evangelical standpoint, +ultimately arrived at a creed of which one need +say no more than that its exceeding vagueness +did not prevent him from being exceedingly +earnest about it.</p> + +<p>How, in the days of his early orthodoxy, he +went out, together with a dentist and a stonemason, +as a missionary to Baghdad; how he +and the dentist and the stonemason sang hymns +together on the ship which conveyed them +to the scene of their labours; how he was +chased by a mob for distributing copies of the +New Testament in a Mohammedan centre; +how he was impressed by the remark of an +Aleppo carpenter that the English people, +though skilled in the mechanical arts, were +lacking in spiritual insight; how he came to +the conclusion that his hymn-singing was +making him ridiculous; how he found it impossible +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_301">[301]</span>to speak the evangelical jargon of his +associates; how he quarrelled with the dentist +and the stonemason, and separated from +them—all these matters may be studied by +the curious in his biography. It is not on +account of any of these exploits that Worcester +is proud of him. Worcester’s pride depends +upon the fact that he is, so far as is known, +the only undergraduate to whom the Public +Examiners ever made a present of books in +order to testify to their appreciation of his +exceptional attainments.</p> + +<p class="tb">Similarly with Burgon. Though he was +a theologian, his theology has nothing to do +with Worcester, and Worcester has nothing +to do with his theology. His principal contribution +to theological thought was his +famous criticism of Darwin’s “Descent of +Man.” For his own part, he said, he was +quite content to look for his first parents in +the Garden of Eden; but if his opponents +preferred to look for theirs in the Zoological +Gardens, they were perfectly welcome to do +so. That is the <i>mot</i> which people generally +have in mind when they say of Burgon that +buffoonery was his forte and piety his foible. +Perhaps the one epigram fairly warrants the +other; but the fame of both epigrams is +eclipsed by the fame of Burgon’s Newdigate.</p> + +<p>He won that prize for English verse in his +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_302">[302]</span>last year, having been beaten in previous years +by Matthew Arnold and Principal Shairp; +and it is hardly too much to say that his +Newdigate is the best Newdigate ever written. +The one wonderful line which made it famous +has already been quoted in a reference to +Newdigates contained in an earlier chapter; +but the present chapter may fairly end with +a presentation of the jewel in its setting:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Not virgin white—like that old Doric shrine</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where once Athena held her rites divine:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Not saintly grey—like many a minster fane</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That crowns the hill or sanctifies the plain:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But rosy red—as if the blush of dawn</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Which first beheld them were not yet withdrawn:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The hues of youth upon a brow of woe,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Which men called old two thousand years ago.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Match me such marvel, save in Eastern clime—</div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>A red-rose city—half as old as time</i>.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>It will not be denied that Worcester has +every title to be proud of Burgon for writing +that.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_303">[303]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="HERTFORD_COLLEGE">HERTFORD COLLEGE</h2> + +<p>Hart Hall—The principalship of Dr. Richard Newton—Hart +Hall becomes Hertford College—Decline, fall, +and dissolution of the College—The buildings purchased +for Magdalen Hall—Magdalen Hall once more +transformed into Hertford College—Famous men at +Hertford and Magdalen Hall—Charles James Fox—George +Selwyn—Robert Stephen Hawker.</p> + +</div> + +<p>The present Hertford College is the heir and +successor of an earlier Hertford College, and +also of Hart Hall and Magdalen Hall; and +one must begin with a word on the strange +vicissitudes of these various foundations.</p> + +<p>Hart Hall came first, dating from some +time in the thirteenth century; but the +founders of the halls of those days are no +more to be confounded with the benefactors +of learning than are the keepers of the +boarding-houses in which the majority of +University students reside on the Continent. +They were merely landlords who desired a +particular class of tenant; and the so-called +Principal of the Hall was not a person set +in authority over the students, but a student +reputed to be solvent and elected by his fellow +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_304">[304]</span>students, for that reason, to make himself +responsible to the landlord for the rent. It +was not until a later date that he was nominated +from outside and charged to direct the +studies and control the conduct of the inmates.</p> + +<p>That was the first stage. The second began +with the appointment to the principalship of +Dr. Richard Newton. He was a man of +ambition and energy; and he made it the +object of his life to get Hart Hall incorporated +as a College. There was considerable opposition; +but, after a long fight, he got his +way; and Hart Hall became Hertford College +in 1737.</p> + +<p>The College was a success as long as +Newton was at the head of it. He had a +reputation as a disciplinarian. Parents heard +of him as a Head who could compel even rich +young men to work and to behave themselves. +Hence the College attracted a good many +gentlemen-commoners, whose high fees kept +the place going. Two of those gentlemen-commoners +were George Selwyn and Charles +James Fox.</p> + +<p>By degrees, however, after Newton’s death, +the fashion changed, and gentlemen-commoners +went elsewhere. The endowments +of the College were scanty, and it could not +stand the stress of evil times. The fellowships +were only worth £15 a year, and nobody +wanted them. The headship itself was only +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_305">[305]</span>worth about £60 a year, and the day came +when no fit and qualified person would be +satisfied with so small a stipend. So matriculations +ceased, and the men who had already +matriculated finished their course and left; +and presently there remained nothing but +an empty college building, devoid alike +of Principal, tutors, and undergraduates—devoid +of everything except an obstinate +elderly gentleman named Hewitt, who had +elected himself to the vice-principalship, and +clamoured to be allowed to die in the enjoyment +of that office. And then a strange thing +happened.</p> + +<p>A certain solicitor named Roberson, having +no house of his own, but wanting one, boldly, +without asking any man’s leave, moved, with +his goods and chattels, into the late Principal’s +vacant apartments. To those who questioned +him as to his doings, he said that he had +assumed the office of caretaker of an ancient +building which seemed in danger of falling +into ruins. He had, of course, no shadow of +a right to be there; but he knew as a solicitor—a +master of useful knowledge—that, unless +and until the extinct corporation was reconstituted, +no one would have the right either to +turn him out or to compel him to pay rent.</p> + +<p>His example was quickly followed by other +people, who argued that a legal position which +was good enough for a solicitor was good +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_306">[306]</span>enough for them. Any man who desired to +live rent-free proceeded to appoint himself +caretaker of one of the vacant sets of rooms +in Hertford College. Before very long, the +whole college was filled with self-appointed +caretakers, who took so little care that, at +last, one of the buildings—a lath and plaster +affair containing at least a dozen sets of rooms—collapsed +“with a great crash and a dense +cloud of dust.” Then, and not before it +was time, the University took it upon itself +to interfere.</p> + +<p>A Commission was appointed to envisage +the extraordinary situation. It reported that +Hertford College, on a certain date, “became +and was dissolved” and its property escheated +to the Crown; and an Act of Parliament was +then obtained, enabling the Crown to grant +the escheated property to the University in +trust for Magdalen Hall.</p> + +<p class="tb">The memory of Magdalen Hall is now +principally kept alive by scraps of humorous +rhyme. There is the rhyme which speaks of</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Whiskered Tompkins from the Hall</div> + <div class="verse indent4">Of seedy Magdalene.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">There is also the rhyme which celebrates</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“A member of Magdalen Hall</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Who knew next to nothing at all;</div> + <div class="verse indent4">He was fifty-three</div> + <div class="verse indent4">When he took his degree,—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Which was youngish for Magdalen Hall.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_307">[307]</span></p> + +<p>The rhymes obviously suggest a Hall populated +by the intellectual tagrag and bobtail +of the University—men for whom the obtaining +of a pass degree was the protracted labour +of a lifetime; and that was the condition to +which Magdalen Hall tended to lapse as the +nineteenth century ran its course.</p> + +<p>It had had, indeed, a distinguished past. +Among the great men who took their degrees, +at a much earlier age than fifty-three, from +Magdalen Hall were included Jonathan Swift, +William Waller, the poet, Sir Matthew Hale, +the distinguished judge, and Thomas Hobbes, +the illustrious philosopher. But that is +ancient—or at all events it is not modern—history. +Towards the end of the eighteenth +century Halls went out of fashion. They +ceased to attract in virtue either of the luxury +of the life or of the laxity of the discipline. +Men of rank came to prefer Christ Church. +Men of brains were attracted to the Colleges +by the scholarships and exhibitions. The +Halls tended more and more to become +the refuges of the intellectually destitute—establishments +whose chief claim on the +loyalty and gratitude of their members was +that they allowed them to remain in residence +as long as they liked, whether they succeeded +in passing their examinations or not. Their +position, therefore, became precarious; and +the question of either merging them in +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_308">[308]</span>colleges or transforming them into colleges +gradually arose. Thanks to the munificence +of Mr. T. C. Baring, M.P., who provided an +ample endowment, Magdalen Hall was transformed +into Hertford College, and so entered +upon a new lease of life in 1874.</p> + +<p>Such is the story; and it only remains to +glance at a select few of the distinguished +names which illustrate it. Two of them have +been already mentioned—George Selwyn and +Charles James Fox. A third—the Principal’s +private pupil—was Henry Pelham, the future +Prime Minister.</p> + +<p class="tb">These three young men were young men +of pretty much the same sort. If they had +been contemporaries they would doubtless +have been found in the same set. For a +picture of the kind of life they lived—a typical +picture of the life of fellow-commoners of the +period—we may turn to the record of the first +Lord Malmesbury, who was up at the same +time as Fox, though not at the same college, +being, in fact, a Merton man.</p> + +<p>“The men,” Lord Malmesbury says, “with +whom I lived were very pleasant, but very +idle, fellows. Our life was an imitation of +high life in London. Luckily drinking was +not the fashion; but what we did drink was +claret, and we had our regular round of +evening card-parties, to the great annoyance +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_309">[309]</span>of our finances. It has often been a matter of +surprise to me how so many of us made our +way so well in the world and so creditably.”</p> + +<p>No doubt the description is faithful enough +in a general way—no statement which connects +Fox with cards or with claret is incredible; +but, as a matter of fact, nearly all +our detailed information points to him as +having been considerably less idle than his +associates. In later life, as we know, when +a friend remarked to him that it would be +agreeable to lie on the grass with a book, +he replied that it would be still more agreeable +to lie on the grass without a book; but, +in his Oxford days, his indolence was so +coloured by curiosity as to be hardly recognisable +as such.</p> + +<p>There is a story to the effect that he once +took a “memorable leap” from an upper +window into the street in order to play his +part in a town and gown row; but that story +rests upon doubtful evidence. His letters, and +those of his correspondents, show him to have +read hard enough—especially in mathematics, +which, strange as it may seem, he found +“entertaining”—to make both his father and +his tutor anxious. The former removed him, +and took him abroad; the latter urged him +not to trouble about mathematics until his +return.</p> + +<p>“As to trigonometry,” he wrote, “it is a +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_310">[310]</span>matter of entire indifference to the other +geometricians of the college whether they proceed +to the other branches of mathematics +immediately, or wait a term or two longer. +You need not, therefore, interrupt your amusements +by severe studies, for it is wholly unnecessary +to take a step onwards without you, +and there we shall stop until we have the +pleasure of your company.”</p> + +<p>And Fox’s own letters from Oxford indicate +that he did indeed regard the University, not +as a haunt of dissipation, but as a seat of +learning.</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“I did not,” he says, “expect my life +here could be so pleasant as I find it; but I +really think, to a man who reads a great +deal, there cannot be a more agreeable +place.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>If Fox was a credit to the college, however, +the same could by no means be said of George +Selwyn, who got into trouble with the +Proctors.</p> + +<p>George Selwyn, indeed, took Oxford seriously +enough to read at the Bodleian, and to +seek the degree of B.C.L.; but the claret +which he drank went to his head, and he +behaved unbecomingly in his cups.</p> + +<p>He was a leading spirit in a Wine Club—such +a society, no doubt, as that which one +remembers at Exeter, roaring out the jovial +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_311">[311]</span>refrain, with “the eternal note of sadness” +at the end of it:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Edite, bibite,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Conviviales:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Post multa sæcula,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Pocula nulla.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>One day it came to the ears of the Vice-Chancellor +and the Proctors that, at a meeting +of this club in the house of a certain +Deverelle, an “unlicensed seller of wines,” +the rite of the administration of the Holy Communion +had been parodied. An actual eucharistic +chalice, it was said, had been procured; +Rhine wine had been handed round in it; +and George “did ludicrously and profanely +apply the words used by our Saviour at the +said Institution to the intemperate purposes of +the said club.”</p> + +<p>Deverelle and the waiter were summoned to +give evidence; and so were several of George +Selwyn’s boon companions—Lord Harley, and +the sons of Earl Gower and the Earl of +Mansfield among them. Drunkenness was the +only possible defence; but the plea was not +presented in the shape in which it might have +carried conviction. Instead of deposing that +they had themselves been too drunk to remember +what had happened, the revellers +deposed that George Selwyn had been too +drunk to know what he was doing; and one +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_312">[312]</span>of them even went so far as to try to secure +his acquittal by deposing that he was normally +to be found in that condition after +dinner.</p> + +<p>Whether inebriety is an extenuation or an +aggravation of the offence of blasphemy is +a question which might be argued; so also +is the question whether private blasphemy is +an offence of which public cognisance should +be taken. Neither of the questions need be +argued here, however, for neither of them was +argued at the time. The fact having been +established, the punishment followed as a +matter of course; and George Selwyn was +sentenced, in the noble language of the official +decree, “to be utterly expelled and banished +from our said University, and never henceforward +to be permitted to enter and reside +within the precincts of our said University.”</p> + +<p class="tb">So much, then, for the Hertford men of the +first foundation. Of the Hertford men of the +second foundation, since it only dates from +1874, it would be premature to speak, though +one of them, Mr. G. H. Thring, is the Secretary +of the Incorporated Society of Authors. But +there is just one of the Magdalen Hall men +of the intervening half century of whom one +cannot choose but speak. If Magdalen Hall +had done nothing but afford a shelter to +Robert Stephen Hawker, the parson poet of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_313">[313]</span>Morwenstow, on the northern coast of Cornwall, +its existence would be amply justified.</p> + +<p>His case was curious. In the midst of his +career at Oxford, his father one day informed +him that he could not afford to keep him at +the University any longer; but the quick instinct +of genius showed the young man a way +out of the difficulty,—he would marry his godmother, +a lady twenty-one years his senior, who +had an income of £200 a year. Jumping on +his horse, he rode in hot haste from Stratton to +Bude, where the lady lived, proposed to her, +and was accepted. Then he returned to +Oxford, and, as they did not want married +undergraduates at Pembroke, which was his +original college, he migrated to Magdalen +Hall, where he won the Newdigate with a +poem on “Pompeii.”</p> + +<p>That is all that there is to be said of +his Oxford days; and of his marriage there +is nothing to be related except that it turned +out happily, and that it was not out of disrespect +for his excellent wife’s memory that he +wore a pink hat without a brim at her funeral. +He was always eccentric in his dress; and +a pink hat without a brim was, at that period +of his life, his usual headgear. There was precedent +for it, he said, in the Eastern Church, +of the ceremonies of which he was always an +earnest student.</p> + +<p>For the rest, he became Vicar of Morwenstow, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_314">[314]</span>on the rock-bound shore of the Atlantic, +and lived there in complete isolation, five miles +from the nearest butcher’s shop, and more +than twenty miles from the nearest railway +station—the hero of many good stories which +this is not the place to relate—the author +of much true poetry, composed, it is said, +under the influence of opium, which may be +praised here, because praise of it is nowhere +out of place. And, if any reader demands +that the praise should be supported by quotation, +then let him read this:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Forth gleamed the East, and yet it was not day:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A white and glowing steed outrode the dawn;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A youthful rider ruled the bounding rein</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And he, in semblance of Sir Galahad shone:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A vase he held on high; one molten gem,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Like massive ruby or the chrysolite:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thence gushed the light in flakes; and flowing, fell</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As though the pavement of the sky brake up,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And stars were shed to sojourn on the hills,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">From grey Morwenna’s stone to Michael’s tor,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Until the rocky land was like a heaven.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Then saw they that the mighty quest was won:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The Sangraal swooned along the golden air:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The sea breathed balsam like Gennesaret:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The streams were touched with supernatural light:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And fonts of Saxon rock stood, full of God.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>That settles it, and we have no need of +further evidence. It was a great poet, and no +mere versifier, who wrote those lines; and, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_315">[315]</span>in “The Quest of the Sangraal,” the Newdigate +prize-man from Magdalen Hall, who +drank opium and dreamt in the hut of driftwood +which he had built himself on the face +of the black cliff looking out across the +Atlantic to Labrador, competed with Tennyson +on his own ground and beat him.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_316">[316]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="KEBLE_COLLEGE">KEBLE COLLEGE</h2> + +<p>“Keble College, near Rome”—A memorial of the author of +the “Christian Year”—The ideals of the College—How +far they have been realised—Diversified results +of the experiment—The Bishop of London and Mr. +Herbert Trench.</p> + +</div> + +<p>The last stage of our pilgrimage leads us +away from Oxford to the flaming bricks of +Keble, adjacent to the Parks. It was a Keble +man who once presumed to address a letter +to “Worcester College, near Oxford.” The +reply, so the story continues, was addressed +to “Keble College, near Rome,”—and did not +go astray. And these things, of course, are +an allegory.</p> + +<p>How far the allegory is faithful—to what +extent Rome and Keble are in spiritual proximity—is +a debatable question which it shall +be left to others to debate. The College may +be regarded, at any rate, as a protest and a +reaction: a sectarian excrescence upon an +age which seemed to be beginning to be +liberal. One may regard it, according to +one’s point of view, either as a gaudy monument +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_317">[317]</span>to a lost cause or as a gaudy temple +erected to celebrate the renascence of a discredited +idea.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus17" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/illus17.jpg" alt=""> + <figcaption> + <p>KEBLE COLLEGE.</p> + <p class="right">[To face p. 316.</p> + </figcaption> +</figure> + +<p>Tractarianism seemed to have had its hour +at Oxford. The secession of the Newmanites +had induced many Anglican Catholics to ask +themselves whether they were not living in a +fool’s paradise. The Essayists and Reviewers—the +Seven against Christ as the wit of the +orthodox party styled them—had set men reconsidering +their theological position. The +tendency of the hour was to look forward +instead of backward, to break down barriers +instead of building them, and to get rid of +formulæ instead of offering money prizes to +those who would subscribe to them. And +then came Keble, a “throwback,” as it were, +announced by a flourish of Puseyite trumpets.</p> + +<p>The College was founded by public subscription +as a memorial of the author of the +“Christian Year,” and was designed to combine +plain living with High Church thinking. +Self-denying ordinances were to be imposed +in the cause of economy, and the advantages +of the institution were to be confined to +members of the Church of England. The +central idea of the College, in short, was to +be the government of members of the Church +of England by members of the Church of +England for the benefit of the Church of +England. “It is hoped,” ran the appeal for +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_318">[318]</span>help, “that it will prove, by God’s blessing, +the loyal handmaid of our mother Church, +to train up men who, not in the ministry only, +but in the manifold callings of the Christian +life, shall be steadfast in the faith.”</p> + +<p>Such was the ideal; and it does not need +to be proved that it was an ideal as narrow +as it was lofty, reposing, not only upon piety, +but also upon confusion of thought. Religion +being a spiritual experience, and the Anglican +Church being a branch of the Civil Service, +it is only by loose thinkers that the two things +can be treated as one and indivisible; and +the implied proposition that Dissenters are +poisonous is not a logical corollary of any +exhortation to a devout and holy life. Loose +thinking has, however, in this instance, proved +a mainspring of generous giving, and has +resulted in an endowment of learning which +is not without value because it has concurrently +endowed the speculative opinions and +ritual practices of a particular school of +thought. The endowment of learning for the +exclusive benefit of Churchmen may not have +much more <i>raison d’être</i> than the endowment +of learning for the special benefit of albinoes, +or vegetarians, or anti-tobacconists; but it +is a vast deal better than no endowment of +learning at all.</p> + +<p class="tb">Whether the wisdom of the founders and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_319">[319]</span>benefactors of Keble has been justified of its +children is a delicate question of which it +would at present be premature to do more +than lightly touch the fringe; but certain +generalisations may be hazarded.</p> + +<p>In the first place the economical advantages +have not been so marked as to attract +a class of men previously excluded from the +University. In the second place the College +has never been of the nature of a seminary, +and its particular influences have been largely +overshadowed by the general influences of the +University itself. Keble men, that is to say, +have been very much like other Oxford men; +and the test of Churchmanship has not winnowed +them to any really noticeable extent. +Thought has, in effect, been as free there as +elsewhere, in spite of the nominal restrictions +of orthodox authority. Some of the men have +thought as they were told to think, and others +have thought for themselves—encouraged, in +some instances, by unexpectedly latitudinarian +dons. The wind has blown where it listed, +with the usual diversified results.</p> + +<p>There are those who would say that Keble +at its best and most characteristic is represented +by the present Bishop of London: a +high-minded and popular prelate whose portraits—especially +the portrait in which he is +to be seen beaming benignantly beside his +favourite crozier—are treasured by almost as +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_320">[320]</span>many ladies as the portraits of Mr. George +Alexander himself; a prelate also in such +a continual hurry to do good that he too +often gives the sober the impression of a man +who speaks before he thinks. But Keble is +also the College of Mr. Herbert Trench: a +poet whose visions of the ultimate stand in +no perceptible relation to the metaphysics of +the Establishment, and who resembles the +author of “The Christian Year” only in the +accidental circumstance that some of his compositions +have been set to music; and it +might puzzle the trustees of Keble, as it would +puzzle the writer of these pages, to find the +intellectual common denominator of Dr. +Winnington-Ingram and the manager of the +Haymarket Theatre.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_321">[321]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="EPILOGUE">EPILOGUE</h2> + +</div> + +<p>The pilgrimage is over, and the “dreaming +spires” disappear into the plain as we depart. +It is time to say, as Queen Elizabeth said, +pausing, as has been told, on Shotover: +“Farewell, farewell, dear Oxford! God bless +thee, and increase thy sons in number, holiness, +and virtue!”</p> + +<p>In numbers, truly, they have been increased, +and are still increasing. New buildings, seldom +as beautiful as the old ones, spring up +continually as witnesses and consequence of +the increase. As for holiness and virtue—well, +these are not things which can be weighed +or measured; and as the words mean different +things to different preachers, positive asseveration +would be out of place.</p> + +<p>Those who associate virtue and holiness +with the domination of the Church of England +as by law established have some reason to +view the prospect gloomily. The religious +tests have gone—except from Keble; and +Oxford Methodists are no longer liable to be +pelted with mud in the High. Nonconformists +of all grades, from Romanists to Unitarians, +come to Oxford in battalions.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_322">[322]</span></p> + +<p>A few of them secede. There is a story +of a Wesleyan undergraduate, the son of a +Wesleyan minister, whose heart was so +touched by the doctrine of the apostolical +succession that whenever, from that time forward, +he corresponded with his father, he +refused him on principle the complimentary +title of “Reverend.” But that is an exceptional +case. The majority of the Oxford +Dissenters maintain their own point of view, +even when they come into contact with the +point of view of the University; and the profit +from the clash of opinions is mutual. Oxford +learns something from the new-comers, even +while it keeps up, with proper dignity, the +pretence of having nothing to learn from any +one; but Oxford also influences them, and so +indirectly extends its own influence into +corners of the world which previously it could +not reach. Even the City Temple has lately +become, by this means, a remarkable centre +of illumination.</p> + +<p>For, after all, in spite of all that we hear, +and say, about Oxford Schools and Oxford +Movements, the secret of Oxford is not +wrapped up in any particular body of +opinions; and the attitude of Oxford towards +its Movements may fairly remind one of the +French Revolution devouring its own children. +The various Oxford Movements, though they +have succeeded, have not resembled one +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_323">[323]</span>another. On the contrary, they have clashed +with, and have extinguished, one another. +Oxford sent out Wiclif’s “poor preachers”; +but Oxford also burnt more than its fair +share of the Reformers. Oxford bred the +Tractarians; but Oxford also confounded the +Tractarians in “Essays and Reviews.” Oxford +nurtured the Æsthetes; but Oxford also +put the Æsthetes under the pump.</p> + +<p>And so on to the end of the chapter. +Action, in Oxford, has always been followed +by reaction, and reformation by counter-reformation. +The bane and the antidote have +always grown side by side in the Oxford +meadows; and the survey of Oxford history—the +rapid evocation of typically illustrious +Oxford names—gives an impression of a +University as miscellaneously diversified as +the Universe itself. And yet, in the face of +all these divergencies, there is a something +in the atmosphere of Oxford which never +fails to affect the mentality of all the men +who breathe it.</p> + +<p>A part of the secret lies, no doubt, in the +beauty of Oxford; a greater part, perhaps, +in the leisure, and the comparative isolation +and disinterestedness of the life. One is in +touch with the world there, without being of +it. One is not hustled or hurried. One can +acquire knowledge for its own sake, without +considering its immediate practical application. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_324">[324]</span>One can pursue and possess one’s own +soul, and face, with help and sympathy, but +undisturbed, all those perplexing problems of +the painful earth which most of those busier +men who are bundled from a school to an +office can, as a rule, hardly so much as state. +And all that in the most impressionable years +of one’s life.</p> + +<p>It is a great privilege—a privilege which +it would be impossible to overvalue. Among +those who have enjoyed it—even if they are +conscious of not having made so much of it +as they might—a kind of freemasonry exists, +even when they are engaged in confuting each +other’s doctrines. They are, or think they +are, the initiated. Hence the reserve, the +aloofness, the air of calm composure, and +the refusal to be startled into emotion or +surprise which go to the making of what +is commonly called the “Oxford manner”; +and if those characteristics are sometimes +too prominently displayed to give unmixed +pleasure in a mixed society, no one is +more ready than the Oxford man to admit +in the abstract the truth of Aristotle’s saying +that an excess of virtue is a vice.</p> + +<p>And so once more: “Farewell, farewell, +dear Oxford! God bless thee, and increase +thy sons in number, holiness, and virtue!”</p> + +<p class="center">UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="box"> + +<div class="top"> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="A_SELECTION_FROM"><span class="smaller">A SELECTION FROM</span><br> +MILLS & BOON’S<br> +<span class="smaller">LIST OF GENERAL LITERATURE</span></h2> + +</div> + +<p class="hanging"><b>THE COURT OF WILLIAM III.</b> By <span class="smcap">Edwin</span> and <span class="smcap">Marion +Sharpe Grew</span>. With many Illustrations. Demy 8vo. <b>15s.</b> net.</p> + +<p class="hanging"><b>YVETTE GUILBERT: Struggles and Victories.</b> By +<span class="smcap">Yvette Guilbert</span> and <span class="smcap">Harold Simpson</span>. Profusely Illustrated +with Caricatures, Portraits, Facsimiles of Letters, &c. 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Uniform with “The Romance +of the Oxford Colleges.”</p> + +</div> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="box-top"> + +<p class="center">“Jacqueline is a darling.”—<i>Observer.</i></p> + +<h3>THE EDUCATION<br> +OF JACQUELINE</h3> + +<p class="center"><span class="smaller">BY</span><br> +CLAIRE DE PRATZ<br> +<span class="smaller">(Author of “Elisabeth Davenay.”)</span></p> + +<p class="center">With Frontispiece in Photogravure. <b>6s.</b></p> + +</div> + +<div class="box-middle"> + +<p><i>Mr. James Douglas.</i>—“It is not a vapid and insipid love story, but +a vividly imaginative study of the real growth of a real soul. Jacqueline +is a fascinating girl, and Mlle. de Pratz makes her live, with +her impetuous independence, her joyous freedom, and her incorrigible +coquetry.... The dramatic power of the episode in +Jerome’s studio is undeniable. It is the great culminating point of +the story, and Mlle. de Pratz handles the whole tragedy with absolute +mastery. A false touch would have ruined it, but the pathos of the +situation redeems it from any tinge or taint of coarseness. Altogether +‘The Education of Jacqueline’ is a novel that will delight everybody, +so fresh is its theme, so light is its style, and so charming is +its sentiment.”</p> + +<p><i>Daily Chronicle.</i>—“The book is extraordinarily well written +and full of wisdom.”</p> + +<p><i>Times.</i>—“A third novel by the author of ‘Eve Norris’ and +‘Elisabeth Davenay.’ We like ‘Jacqueline’ a good deal the best of +the three—both the heroine and the book. It is a well-written +story with thought in it, the scene mostly in Paris.”</p> + +<p><i>Morning Leader.</i>—“It is a real triumph for Mlle. Claire de +Pratz that she has presented a full-length portrait of a modern +Frenchwoman which English readers cannot but understand and +admire.”</p> + +<p><i>Pall Mall Gazette.</i>—“Jacqueline learns her mother’s secret in a +scene which is a masterpiece of emotional analysis.... The scene +at the opening of the book is a <i>chef d’œuvre</i> of dramatic intensity +and dramatic reticence.”</p> + +<p class="center"><i>The 5 notices, of which only extracts can be given above, appeared within +24 hours of the publication of the book.</i></p> + +</div> + +<div class="box-bottom"> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">MILLS & BOON, Ltd.</span>, 49 WHITCOMB STREET, W.C.</p> + +</div> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="box-top"> + +<h3>A GOLDEN STRAW</h3> + +<p class="center"><span class="smaller">BY</span><br> +J. E. BUCKROSE</p> + +<p class="center"><b>6/-</b></p> + +<p class="center smaller">SECOND EDITION</p> + +<p class="center"><i>With a Frontispiece in Photogravure.</i></p> + +</div> + +<div class="box-middle"> + +<p><i>Times.</i>—“The story of the present book is only a little less well +written than the atmosphere. It is a story of a girl and her two +lovers, one of whom has robbed the other of a fortune and something +more; and of the secret reason why the girl was unable to +marry either of them. Miss Buckrose is so clever at keeping the +secret that it would be unfair to tell it here; but more important to +the book than its secret is the actuality of the handful of people +concerned in the story, who are all real and alive.”</p> + +<p><i>T. P.’s Weekly.</i>—“Walgate’s old uncle dies in the first chapter, a +piece of powerful writing that sets for the rest of this remarkable +novel a standard from which Miss Buckrose never descends.”</p> + +<p><i>Standard.</i>—“Miss Buckrose has great virtues. She writes +excellently. She has an acute feeling for scenery, and she never +exceeds a proper limit in her word-painting. She sees life for herself; +she goes on no personally conducted tours through the lands +of romance, and her observation is fresh and vivid.”</p> + +<p><i>Daily Graphic.</i>—“In some novels there is a mysterious bloom +and promise, such as belongs to youth. That sincere compliment +we can pay to Miss J. E. Buckrose’s ‘A Golden Straw’ (Mills & Boon, +6<i>s.</i>), which is a story of invincible freshness and charm. Averild, +the heroine, is an enchanting creature, the real young girl, drawn +with sympathy, but without sentimentality; and the springs of her +caprice are hidden so ingeniously that only when they are at last +revealed is the complete naturalness of the character justified. Old +Miss Walgate is a vigorously limned personality; and the speech +and atmosphere of Holderness are indicated with facility and +truth.”</p> + +<p><i>Manchester Courier.</i>—“Her story is as natural, as pretty, and +as exciting as a novel from her pen should be.”</p> + +<p><i>N. Y. Herald</i> (Paris).—“Will strike the most jaded novel reader +with its freshness and simplicity.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="box-bottom"> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">MILLS & BOON, Ltd.</span>, 49 WHITCOMB STREET, W.C.</p> + +</div> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="box-top"> + +<p class="center">THE BEST ABUSED BOOK OF THE YEAR</p> + +<h3><i>CALICO JACK</i></h3> + +<p class="center"><i>By HORACE W. C. NEWTE</i></p> + +<p class="center"><i>Third Edition. Crown 8vo, 6s.</i></p> + +</div> + +<div class="box-middle"> + +<p><i>Globe.</i>—“Calico Jack, the music-hall sketch actor, is a host in himself, +something of a modern Crummles, with an added viciousness. +His endless stories concerning himself and the adoring ‘ladies,’ his +posturing, and his habit of coolly annexing the ‘fat’ from any of +the parts of his military sketches, make the most entertaining +reading. And one feels, too, that Calico Jack is no mere creature +of invention, but the real thing.”</p> + +<p><i>Times.</i>—“Given with that unflinching realism which does enable +Mr. Newte to make uninteresting people interesting.”</p> + +<p><i>Manchester Guardian.</i>—“We recommend it to the youth of +either sex who may, unwarranted by actual genius, be indulging +a dream of glory in the halls, and for whom plain and certain bread +and butter is more palatable than occasional fried ‘middle-bits’ in +the fingers, even to the accompaniment of Calico Jack’s thousand-and-one +‘love’ affairs.”</p> + +<p><i>Sheffield Telegraph.</i>—“Cellini’s surroundings, active and scenic, +are made to sustain a good programme, and the entertainment +works up to a capital curtain.”</p> + +<p><i>Athenæum.</i>—“A story of music-hall life told with much +lively humour. The author seems to know the world of which he +writes, and the book is full of quaint characters and interesting +details.”</p> + +<p><i>Dundee Advertiser.</i>—“The glare and glitter of the music-hall stage +obscure much that is shoddy, unreliable, and tragic. So at least +this very readable novel makes out. And Horace W. C. Newte +seems to know. The characters and incidents are such that some +of them may have been sketched from life. The tawdry hero, +John Cellini, is the most likely of the Company. His grandiose +bearing, his very eloquence, his belief in his irresistible attractions, +and the pathetic intensity of his convictions regarding the immense +drawing power of his ‘turns’—all belong to a real type.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="box-bottom"> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">MILLS & BOON, Ltd., 49 Whitcomb St., London, W.C.</span></p> + +</div> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="box-top"> + +<h3>THROUGH THE<br> +LOOPHOLES OF RETREAT</h3> + +<p class="center"><span class="smaller">BEING A CHOICE OF PASSAGES<br> +FROM THE LETTERS & POEMS OF</span><br> +WILLIAM COWPER</p> + +<p class="center"><span class="smaller">SELECTED BY</span><br> +HANSARD WATT</p> + +<p class="center">Fcap. 8vo. 3s. 6d. net</p> + +</div> + +<div class="box-middle"> + +<p><i>British Weekly</i> (“A Man of Kent”).—“I have read ‘Through the Loopholes +of Retreat’ with the greatest delight. This Cowper book is a new thing in +literature, and it is executed with such loving care and such literary perception +that it ought to take its place among the very best of anthologies. Most of the +anthologies published nowadays are very bad indeed. They are chosen loosely +and carelessly from well-known books, and depend almost entirely for circulation +on the taste with which their publishers print and bind them. But we have a +few anthologists whose work stands on a level with original work of the best +kind, and of such is Mr Hansard Watt.... I cannot imagine the work being +better done, and it was well worth doing.”</p> + +<p><i>Daily Chronicle.</i>—“A pleasant and surpriseful storehouse of good things ... +a pleasure and a privilege to possess it.”</p> + +<p><i>Westminster Gazette.</i>—“In preparing parallel passages from the letters and +poems of Cowper for every day in the year, Mr Hansard Watt has paid a handsome +tribute to one of the most delightful of English letter-writers, and earned +the gratitude of many lovers of the poet for adding a fresh interest to his work.... +‘Through the Loopholes of Retreat’ is a curious and fascinating little +book.”</p> + +<p><i>Daily News.</i>—“There is wit, wise seriousness, and a whimsical charm in +these pages. Mr Watt has prepared a very pleasant gift-book.”</p> + +<p><i>Morning Post.</i>—“One can be certain as one reads Cowper that taste will +return to him. It requires but some knowledge of life and some experience of +emotion to see what high lyrical power shines through his work, and Mr Watt +has done very well to present it in so novel and so striking a form to the modern +reader.”</p> + +<p><i>Queen.</i>—“This truly delightful book well illustrates the poet’s beautiful ideas +of domestic peace and happiness, and the volume should be on the bookshelves +of all those who have a love for natural, unaffected poetry.”</p> + +<p><i>Sphere</i> (C. K. S.).—“Mr Hansard Watt has won the gratitude of all who love +the work of the poet Cowper.”</p> + +<p><i>Daily Graphic.</i>—“A pleasant and companionable little volume, and one that +will receive a hearty welcome.”</p> + +<p><i>Dundee Courier.</i>—“A permanent calendar of wise and beautiful sayings from +one of the most lovable of English poets.”</p> + +<p><i>Newcastle Journal.</i>—“Cowper, in a busy and restless age, comes as a solace +indeed, and his admirers, not less than those who know at present little of the +high thought and literary beauty of the poet of Olney, will be grateful to Mr +Hansard Watt for his work.”</p> + +<p><i>Manchester Courier.</i>—“Admirably reflects the many-sidedness of a great and +too little read poet.”</p> + +<p><i>Eastern Daily Press.</i>—“As a feat of industry Mr Watt’s performance is +tremendous.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="box-bottom"> + +<p class="center">MILLS & BOON, LTD., 49 WHITCOMB ST., W.C.</p> + +</div> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="box-top"> + +<p class="center"><span class="u">A NOVEL OF RARE MERIT</span></p> + +<h3><i>THE<br> +RAJAH’S PEOPLE</i></h3> + +<p class="center"><i>By I. 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Stevens’ +“THE VEIL.” “THE RAJAH’S PEOPLE” is +an intensely interesting novel of Indian life, written with +striking originality and fascination.</i></p> + +<p><i><span class="u">MILLS & BOON will be glad if the date of +publication is noted, and they hope that “THE +RAJAH’S PEOPLE” will be received with as much +enthusiasm and interest as “THE VEIL.”</span></i></p> + +<p class="center"><i>A souvenir chapter will be sent post free to any address.</i></p> + +</div> + +<div class="box-bottom"> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">MILLS & BOON, Ltd.</span>, 49 WHITCOMB STREET, W.C.</p> + +</div> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="box-top"> + +<h3><span class="smaller">MILLS & BOON’S <span class="u">NET</span></span><br> +SHILLING NOVELS</h3> + +</div> + +<div class="box-middle"> + +<p class="hanging"><b>CUMNER’S SON</b> (Entirely New Stories)</p> + +<p class="noindent2">By <span class="smcap">Sir</span> GILBERT PARKER</p> + +<p class="hanging"><b>BEWARE OF THE DOG</b> (Entirely New Long Novel).</p> + +<p class="noindent2">By <span class="smcap">Mrs.</span> BAILLIE REYNOLDS</p> + +<p class="hanging"><b>THE DOLLAR PRINCESS</b> (The Novel of the Play).</p> + +<p class="noindent2">By HAROLD SIMPSON</p> + +<p class="hanging"><b>ARSÈNE LUPIN</b> (The Novel of the Play)</p> + +<p class="noindent2">By EDGAR JEPSON & MAURICE LEBLANC</p> + +<p class="hanging"><b>MARY</b></p> + +<p class="noindent2">By WINIFRED GRAHAM</p> + +<p class="hanging"><b>D’ARCY OF THE GUARDS</b> (The Novel of the +Play).</p> + +<p class="noindent2">By L. 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If you like worldly wisdom and common sense, then you can +safely buy it.</i></p> + +<p><i>3. If you admire a charming love story, then be certain to get it.</i></p> + +<p><i>4. If you want to improve your game, then you cannot do +without it.</i></p> + +<p><i>5. If you have a Golfing friend, make him a present of it.</i></p> + +<p><i>6. Both sexes will find this Golfing Book a great treat.</i></p> + +<p class="center">A Special Prospectus containing Gems from the Modern +Golfer’s Letters will be sent post-free to any address.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="box-bottom"> + +<p class="center">MILLS & BOON, Ltd., 49 Whitcomb Street, London, W.C.</p> + +</div> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="box-top"> + +<p class="center"><i>A Fine Romance of Love and Adventure</i></p> + +</div> + +<div class="box-middle"> + +<h3>THE<br> +SWORD MAKER</h3> + +<p class="center"><span class="smaller">BY</span><br> +ROBERT BARR<br> +<span class="smaller">Author of “Cardillac,” “The Countess Tekla,” etc., etc.</span></p> + +<p class="center"><i>Crown 8vo. 6s.</i></p> + +<p class="titlepage"><i>Reader’s Report on The Sword Maker.</i></p> + +<p>“A rousing and dramatic tale. A book like this +in which swords flash, great surprises are undertaken, +and daring deeds done, is a joy inexpressible in these +days of everyday fiction. The book has the supreme +merit of holding the reader’s attention from start to +finish.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="box-bottom"> + +<p class="center"><i>MILLS & BOON, Ltd., 49 WHITCOMB STREET, LONDON, W.C.</i></p> + +</div> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="box-top"> + +<h3><span class="smaller">MILLS & BOON’S</span><br> +COMPANION SERIES</h3> + +</div> + +<div class="box-middle"> + +<p class="hanging"><b>The Chauffeur’s Companion.</b></p> + +<p class="noindent2">By “<span class="smcap">A Four-Inch Driver</span>.” With 4 Plates and 5 Diagrams. +Waterproof cloth. 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Crown 8vo, <b>2s. 6d.</b> net.</p> + +<p class="hanging"><b>The Mother’s Companion.</b></p> + +<p class="noindent2">By Mrs. <span class="smcap">M. A. Cloudesley Brereton</span> (Officier d’Académie). +With an Introduction by Sir <span class="smcap">Lauder Brunton</span>, M.D., +F.R.C.P., F.R.S. Crown 8vo, <b>2s. 6d.</b> net.</p> + +<p class="hanging"><b>The Rifleman’s Companion.</b></p> + +<p class="noindent2">By <span class="smcap">L. R. Tippins</span>. With 6 Illustrations. Crown 8vo, +<b>2s. 6d.</b> net.</p> + +<p class="hanging"><b>The Poultry-Keeper’s Companion.</b></p> + +<p class="noindent2">By <span class="smcap">Arthur Tysilio Johnson</span>. With 60 Illustrations. +Crown 8vo, <b>2s. 6d.</b> net.</p> + +<p class="hanging"><b>The Nursery Nurse’s Companion.</b></p> + +<p class="noindent2">By <span class="smcap">Honnor Morten</span>. 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Here are Ruritania in a new setting and +Socialism in a new light. Here is adventure piled on +adventure, and a story told with a dash and high spirit +which carry the reader along. Mr. Partridge makes +a most exciting business of it. He gives us hair-breadth +escapes, heroic fights, ingenious complications, +a sufficient love interest, and a little high diplomacy. +It is a breathless and attractive adventure—admirably +carried through—the very thing for the holiday mood.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="box-bottom"> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">MILLS & BOON, Ltd.</span>, 49 WHITCOMB STREET, W.C.</p> + +</div> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="box-top"> + +<p class="center"><i>“A WONDERFUL SHILLINGSWORTH” say the ‘World’ and +the ‘Observer.’</i></p> + +<h3>CUMNER’S SON</h3> + +<p class="center"><span class="smaller">BY</span><br> +SIR GILBERT PARKER</p> + +<p class="center">Cloth <b>1s.</b> net.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="box-middle"> + +<p><i>Daily Telegraph.</i>—“Sir Gilbert Parker has been very generous +in presenting this book to the reading public at so cheap a price, for +it contains some of his best work. How good that is we all know. +Better examples of his rare skill have never been given us than here. +Of the tales there is not one that does not hold us, not one which +has not real point and importance. They interest us as vividly as +do the pictures of the biograph, we sit entranced as the action +passes swiftly and clearly before our eyes. The author has not +given us anything so good for a long time.”</p> + +<p><i>Punch.</i>—“One does not recall any writer who possesses in larger +degree the gift of being able to reproduce glowing scenery by a few +strokes of the pen. This quality is supplemented by a greater one, +the power of creating and describing human character. Sir Gilbert +is indeed the Bret Harte of the South Seas, telling in a few pages +moving stories of the rough and ready folk who people the islands. +It is a charming volume, full of light and life and colour.”</p> + +<p><i>Morning Post.</i>—“Vivid pictures.”</p> + +<p><i>Daily News.</i>—“Workmanlike.”</p> + +<p><i>Westminster.</i>—“Heroic.”</p> + +<p><i>Standard.</i>—“Remarkable.”</p> + +<p><i>Globe.</i>—“Capital.”</p> + +<p><i>Scotsman.</i>—“Vivid realism.”</p> + +<p><i>Daily Express.</i>—“Admirable.”</p> + +<p><i>Daily Mail.</i>—“Imperial.”</p> + +<p><i>Birmingham Post.</i>—“Full of incident.”</p> + +<p><i>Ladies’ Field.</i>—“Fresh.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="box-bottom"> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">MILLS & BOON, Ltd.</span>, 49 WHITCOMB STREET, W.C.</p> + +</div> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="box-top"> + +<h3>FIRST LOVE</h3> + +<p class="center"><span class="smaller">BY</span><br> +MARIE VAN VORST</p> + +<p class="center">Price <b>6s.</b></p> + +</div> + +<div class="box-middle"> + +<p><i>Observer.</i>—“Miss Marie van Vorst’s new novel deals with no boy +and girl idyll; it gives a vivid emotional picture of another very +common phase of first love, that of a young man for a woman many +years his senior. John Bennett is a fine example of a young lover, +tongue-tied and ardent, strong-willed, reckless, and very attractive. +He goes to stay with two college friends, and the swift growth of +his passion for their step-mother, Mrs. Bathurst, wife of the usual +brute in a fast New York sporting set, is painted in with firm and +telling strokes. He stakes all to win her, but, when at last she is +free, she ‘turns him down.’ The character of Virginia Bathurst is +so subordinated to the masculine element which dominates the story +that it is only at the end that one realises her lovely selflessness, for +it is indicated by touches as subtle and delicate as her own personality. +And it is only at the end, when Bennett has married a girl as +fresh and youthful as himself, that one sees where the real cruelty of +the situation lies. Miss van Vorst is an artist, and she knows +exactly how to give full value to the point she wishes to make.”</p> + +<p><i>Daily Mail.</i>—“‘First Love’ is in every way a good novel.”</p> + +<p><i>Dundee Advertiser.</i>—“Several stories by Marie van Vorst have +pleased me greatly by their living interest and literary excellence, +and this one most of all. The incidents are instinct with fine and +even exquisite sentiment, and lead on to a finish that would make +the fortunes of a play.”</p> + +<p><i>Morning Post.</i>—“It will appeal largely to the novel reading +public.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="box-bottom"> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">MILLS & BOON, Ltd.</span>, 49 WHITCOMB STREET, W.C.</p> + +</div> + +<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77240 ***</div> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/77240-h/images/cover.jpg b/77240-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..6e1158b --- /dev/null +++ b/77240-h/images/cover.jpg diff --git a/77240-h/images/illus01.jpg b/77240-h/images/illus01.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..ec764c2 --- /dev/null +++ b/77240-h/images/illus01.jpg diff --git a/77240-h/images/illus02.jpg b/77240-h/images/illus02.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..1f5a751 --- /dev/null +++ b/77240-h/images/illus02.jpg diff --git a/77240-h/images/illus03.jpg b/77240-h/images/illus03.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..d4d6cff --- /dev/null +++ b/77240-h/images/illus03.jpg diff --git a/77240-h/images/illus04.jpg b/77240-h/images/illus04.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..7d06ea1 --- /dev/null +++ b/77240-h/images/illus04.jpg diff --git a/77240-h/images/illus05.jpg b/77240-h/images/illus05.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..f2067ef --- /dev/null +++ b/77240-h/images/illus05.jpg diff --git a/77240-h/images/illus06.jpg b/77240-h/images/illus06.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..5ab473c --- /dev/null +++ b/77240-h/images/illus06.jpg diff --git a/77240-h/images/illus07.jpg b/77240-h/images/illus07.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..628bb53 --- /dev/null +++ b/77240-h/images/illus07.jpg diff --git a/77240-h/images/illus08.jpg b/77240-h/images/illus08.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..7e73a42 --- /dev/null +++ b/77240-h/images/illus08.jpg diff --git a/77240-h/images/illus09.jpg b/77240-h/images/illus09.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..dde3921 --- /dev/null +++ b/77240-h/images/illus09.jpg diff --git a/77240-h/images/illus10.jpg b/77240-h/images/illus10.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2205189 --- /dev/null +++ b/77240-h/images/illus10.jpg diff --git a/77240-h/images/illus11.jpg b/77240-h/images/illus11.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..ee79fa4 --- /dev/null +++ b/77240-h/images/illus11.jpg diff --git a/77240-h/images/illus12.jpg b/77240-h/images/illus12.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..017d132 --- /dev/null +++ b/77240-h/images/illus12.jpg diff --git a/77240-h/images/illus13.jpg b/77240-h/images/illus13.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..0cb7183 --- /dev/null +++ b/77240-h/images/illus13.jpg diff --git a/77240-h/images/illus14.jpg b/77240-h/images/illus14.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..cf5618a --- /dev/null +++ b/77240-h/images/illus14.jpg diff --git a/77240-h/images/illus15.jpg b/77240-h/images/illus15.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..eda0308 --- /dev/null +++ b/77240-h/images/illus15.jpg diff --git a/77240-h/images/illus16.jpg b/77240-h/images/illus16.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..a0696f7 --- /dev/null +++ b/77240-h/images/illus16.jpg diff --git a/77240-h/images/illus17.jpg b/77240-h/images/illus17.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..b882524 --- /dev/null +++ b/77240-h/images/illus17.jpg diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6c72794 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This book, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1b00acc --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for eBook #77240 +(https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77240) |
