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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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Waterproof Cloth. =7s. 6d.= net. + +=THE ROMANCE OF THE OXFORD COLLEGES.= By FRANCIS GRIBBLE. With a +Frontispiece in Photogravure, and 16 Illustrations from Photographs. +Crown 8vo. =6s.= + +=THE BOLSTER BOOK.= A Book for the Bedside. By HARRY GRAHAM, author of +“Deportmental Ditties.” With an Illustrated Cover by Lewis Baumer. Crown +8vo. =6s.= + +=A HANDBOOK FOR NURSES.= By S. G. WELHAM, M.R.C.S. (Resident Medical +Officer, Charing Cross Hospital). Illustrated with Diagrams. Crown 8vo. +=3s. 6d.= net. + +=KINGS AND QUEENS OF FRANCE: A Concise History of France.= By MILDRED +CARNEGY. Crown 8vo. =3s. 6d.= + +_IN PREPARATION._ + +=THE ROMANCE OF THE CAMBRIDGE COLLEGES.= With 17 Illustrations. Crown +8vo. Uniform with “The Romance of the Oxford Colleges.” + + + + +“Jacqueline is a darling.”—_Observer._ + +THE EDUCATION OF JACQUELINE + +BY + +CLAIRE DE PRATZ + +(Author of “Elisabeth Davenay.”) + +With Frontispiece in Photogravure. =6s.= + + +_Mr. James Douglas._—“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.” + +_Daily Chronicle._—“The book is extraordinarily well written and full of +wisdom.” + +_Times._—“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.” + +_Morning Leader._—“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.” + +_Pall Mall Gazette._—“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 _chef d’œuvre_ of dramatic intensity and dramatic +reticence.” + +_The 5 notices, of which only extracts can be given above, appeared +within 24 hours of the publication of the book._ + +MILLS & BOON, LTD., 49 WHITCOMB STREET, W.C. + + + + +A GOLDEN STRAW + +BY + +J. E. BUCKROSE + +=6/-= + +SECOND EDITION + +_With a Frontispiece in Photogravure._ + + +_Times._—“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.” + +_T. P.’s Weekly._—“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.” + +_Standard._—“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.” + +_Daily Graphic._—“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_s._), 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.” + +_Manchester Courier._—“Her story is as natural, as pretty, and as +exciting as a novel from her pen should be.” + +_N. Y. Herald_ (Paris).—“Will strike the most jaded novel reader with its +freshness and simplicity.” + +MILLS & BOON, LTD., 49 WHITCOMB STREET, W.C. + + + + +THE BEST ABUSED BOOK OF THE YEAR + +_CALICO JACK_ + +_By HORACE W. C. NEWTE_ + +_Third Edition. Crown 8vo, 6s._ + + +_Globe._—“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.” + +_Times._—“Given with that unflinching realism which does enable Mr. Newte +to make uninteresting people interesting.” + +_Manchester Guardian._—“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.” + +_Sheffield Telegraph._—“Cellini’s surroundings, active and scenic, are +made to sustain a good programme, and the entertainment works up to a +capital curtain.” + +_Athenæum._—“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.” + +_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. 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.” + +MILLS & BOON, LTD., 49 WHITCOMB ST., LONDON, W.C. + + + + +THROUGH THE LOOPHOLES OF RETREAT + +BEING A CHOICE OF PASSAGES FROM THE LETTERS & POEMS OF WILLIAM COWPER + +SELECTED BY + +HANSARD WATT + +Fcap. 8vo. 3s. 6d. net + + +_British Weekly_ (“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.” + +_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. S. STEVENS + + [_June 15_ + +=THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN JACK= By MAX PEMBERTON + + [_July_ + +=THE END AND THE BEGINNING= By COSMO HAMILTON + + [_July_ + +=SPARROWS: THE STORY OF AN UNPROTECTED GIRL= By HORACE W. C. NEWTE + + [_July_ + +=THE PRODIGAL FATHER= By J. STORER CLOUSTON + + [_August_ + +MILLS & BOON, LTD., 49 WHITCOMB ST., LONDON, W.C. + + + + +_MILLS & BOON WILL PUBLISH VERY SHORTLY A REMARKABLE GOLFING BOOK +ENTITLED_ + +LETTERS OF A MODERN GOLFER TO HIS GRANDFATHER + +Being the Correspondence of + +RICHARD ALLINGHAM, Esq. + +Arranged by + +HENRY LEACH + +_WITH A PHOTOGRAVURE PORTRAIT_ + +Crown 8vo, 6s. + + +SIX REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD PURCHASE THIS BOOK— + +_1. If you are a keen Golfer, then it is invaluable to you._ + +_2. If you like worldly wisdom and common sense, then you can safely buy +it._ + +_3. If you admire a charming love story, then be certain to get it._ + +_4. If you want to improve your game, then you cannot do without it._ + +_5. 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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 *** |