CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGEIn the centre of the quadrangle rises a cylindrical dial, surmounted by a “pelican in her piety,” the badge of the Founder of the College. Behind, to the right, is the great entrance gateway and tower.The College cat gives scale.
CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGEIn the centre of the quadrangle rises a cylindrical dial, surmounted by a “pelican in her piety,” the badge of the Founder of the College. Behind, to the right, is the great entrance gateway and tower.The College cat gives scale.
CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE
In the centre of the quadrangle rises a cylindrical dial, surmounted by a “pelican in her piety,” the badge of the Founder of the College. Behind, to the right, is the great entrance gateway and tower.
The College cat gives scale.
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Hody of Wadham—was larger than one might conclude from the pages ofhonestThomas Hearne, of St. Edmund Hall.
It was upon an old monastic foundation—once Gloucester College, then Gloucester Hall—that the one new eighteenth-century college was established. Gloucester Hall had numbered among its inhabitants several famous, rather odd men, like Tom Coryat and Thomas Allen, but had fallen away after the Restoration. It was, in short, almost a possession of nettles. The buildings were only kept on the edge of desolation by the Principal and two or three families in residence. The seventeenth century had made one fantastic attempt to retrieve the Hall. A colony of twenty students from the four Patriarchates of the Eastern Church was to be regularly established there. But the dreamy plan was soon parched and destroyed in the odour of scandal. After much trifling procrastination, the Greeks were succeeded by Worcester College, and a lucky poverty left the worn old buildings for a little longer untroubled. A library, a hall, and a chapel were prepared for the new society. Wide spaces of land on every side of it were retained or acquired, which afterwards gave the college a fat rent and its incomparable bosky and watered garden.
While Worcester was being founded in the conventional way, Oxford was developed by such buildings as the cloister at Corpus, the Pembroke chapel, the hall at All Souls’, the front quadrangle at Queen’s, and the little Lincoln “Grove” cottages. Then also the[Pg 170]Trinity College lime trees were planted. In most of the work of that time Dean Aldrich of Christ Church had a hand or a word. This clever and genial tutor was one of the best men of his day, and quite typical of the early eighteenth century. He seems to have been one to whom action came more naturally than dreams, if he dreamed at all; and he could easily express the many sides of his personality in a lasting way. A happy and golden mediocrity! He encouraged Boyle in the dazzling indiscretion ofThe Epistles of Phalaris. He wrote the enduring Oxford Logic, a smoking catch, and “Hark! the bonny Christ Church bells”; and perhaps this translation:—
If on my theme I rightly think,There are five reasons why men drink,Good wine, a friend, or being dry,Or lest we should be, by and by,Or any other reason why.
If on my theme I rightly think,There are five reasons why men drink,Good wine, a friend, or being dry,Or lest we should be, by and by,Or any other reason why.
If on my theme I rightly think,There are five reasons why men drink,Good wine, a friend, or being dry,Or lest we should be, by and by,Or any other reason why.
The size of his architectural designs is seen in Peckwater quadrangle at Christ Church; their charm, in All Saints’, which the moon loves. Soon after his death in 1710, the stately library at Christ Church and that copious one at All Souls’ were begun.
In the year of the building of Pembroke chapel, Samuel Johnson entered the college, where they preserve his deal writing-table and china tea-pot. As Aldrich represents the early part of the century in Oxford, so Johnson represents the middle. Men are nowadays disposed to blame the cheerfulness of an age that produced a hundred immortals who do not give the true[Pg 172][Pg 171]
CHRIST CHURCH—PECKWATER QUADRANGLEThrough the opening between the west end of the College Library on the right, and some houses inhabited by Masters of the College on the left, appears the spire of the University Church of St. Mary. Part of the pediment of the buildings on the north side of Peckwater Quadrangle shows beneath.The piece of masonry on the extreme right of the picture is part of the wall of the passage leading to Tom Quadrangle.Two undergraduates converse to the left.
CHRIST CHURCH—PECKWATER QUADRANGLEThrough the opening between the west end of the College Library on the right, and some houses inhabited by Masters of the College on the left, appears the spire of the University Church of St. Mary. Part of the pediment of the buildings on the north side of Peckwater Quadrangle shows beneath.The piece of masonry on the extreme right of the picture is part of the wall of the passage leading to Tom Quadrangle.Two undergraduates converse to the left.
CHRIST CHURCH—PECKWATER QUADRANGLE
Through the opening between the west end of the College Library on the right, and some houses inhabited by Masters of the College on the left, appears the spire of the University Church of St. Mary. Part of the pediment of the buildings on the north side of Peckwater Quadrangle shows beneath.
The piece of masonry on the extreme right of the picture is part of the wall of the passage leading to Tom Quadrangle.
Two undergraduates converse to the left.
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ring. The college historians often entitle one of their eighteenth-century chapters the “dark” or “iron” age; and indeed, as a “school of universal learning,” the Oxford of that day might be called in question. It was more aristocratic and exclusive, perhaps, than it had ever been, and it failed to justify itself. “What class in life”—it was a song by a fellow in a play of the period—
What class in life, tho’ ne’er so great,With a good fellowship can compare?
What class in life, tho’ ne’er so great,With a good fellowship can compare?
What class in life, tho’ ne’er so great,With a good fellowship can compare?
And in the same play, says one, of Horace, “He was a jollyutile dulcidog, and I believe formerly might be fellow at a college.” Yet in our backward glances over Oxford history, how often do we stop when we reach that age! whether we are drinking from an old reminding tankard with the date 17—, or looking at one of its books, or living in one of the rooms which it wainscotted or furnished, heavily but how genially! “You are a philosopher, Dr. Johnson,” said Edwards, his college friend. “I have tried too in my time to be a philosopher; but I don’t know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in.” Cheerfulness broke in pretty often in Oxford. And that was a time when there was more love of Oxford than ever before. Even the wealthy Fellows of All Souls’ (“that Eden to the fruitful mind,” as Lady Winchilsea called it at that time) never bought their college; and when one of them was taunted with the quip that Oxford was less learned than Bath, he was able to reply that it was also more fashionable. I find, too, in its love of the past, as[Pg 176]in its love of nature, something heartier, though I daresay less mystical, than our own. Johnson’s love of Pembroke is an example. He had lived there as an undergraduate only fourteen months, and there seems to have been little that was tangible, to take hold of him in so short a time. Yet when he came back long after, and heard old Camden’s grace after meat—which they still use—he was at home. It is true that men of that age could as little appreciate its blank verse as we can compose it, but there were many who could then appreciate what we can now only describe. The country (in summer)—antiquity—good living—were fine things; but when they wrote, it was theology, or morals, or inaccurate philology. There was a man, long ago with God, who after much waiting obtained a fine coveted room at New College: instead of writing a sonnet forthwith, he expressed a wish to kick some one downstairs incontinently. On one occasion, it is said, the head of a college, and a great lover of Oxford, who was jocund and recumbent after a feast, was with great circumstance invited by several wags “to accept the crown of this old and famous kingdom, since King George has resigned.” To which he slowly replied, without surprise, that “if we can hold our Court of St. James’s in this Common Room, we shall not demur.” Warton’sCompanion to the Guideand Wood’sModius Saliumare full of what we should call poor Oxford humour; but I think there is sufficient indication of the laughter it caused, to make us pause in any condemnation of it as compared with our own “thoughtful mirth,” which[Pg 178][Pg 177]
THE RADCLIFFE LIBRARY, OR CAMERA BODLEIANA, FROM ALL SOULS’ COLLEGEAcross the picture runs a cloistered screen separating the green quadrangle of All Souls’ College from Radcliffe Square. Over an entrance to the College to the left rises an octangular ogee roof, protecting some beautiful wrought-iron gates.To the right of this is the grand sweeping entablature of the Camera, bearing its majestic dome and lantern. This dome may compare with some of the finest in Europe.The time is morning.
THE RADCLIFFE LIBRARY, OR CAMERA BODLEIANA, FROM ALL SOULS’ COLLEGEAcross the picture runs a cloistered screen separating the green quadrangle of All Souls’ College from Radcliffe Square. Over an entrance to the College to the left rises an octangular ogee roof, protecting some beautiful wrought-iron gates.To the right of this is the grand sweeping entablature of the Camera, bearing its majestic dome and lantern. This dome may compare with some of the finest in Europe.The time is morning.
THE RADCLIFFE LIBRARY, OR CAMERA BODLEIANA, FROM ALL SOULS’ COLLEGE
Across the picture runs a cloistered screen separating the green quadrangle of All Souls’ College from Radcliffe Square. Over an entrance to the College to the left rises an octangular ogee roof, protecting some beautiful wrought-iron gates.To the right of this is the grand sweeping entablature of the Camera, bearing its majestic dome and lantern. This dome may compare with some of the finest in Europe.The time is morning.
Across the picture runs a cloistered screen separating the green quadrangle of All Souls’ College from Radcliffe Square. Over an entrance to the College to the left rises an octangular ogee roof, protecting some beautiful wrought-iron gates.
To the right of this is the grand sweeping entablature of the Camera, bearing its majestic dome and lantern. This dome may compare with some of the finest in Europe.
The time is morning.
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inspires mainly a desire to say something more mirthful and less thoughtful. And for those who care for none of these things, what sweeter or more dignified picture of quietness and study is there than at Lincoln in Wesley’s time, or at University under Scott, or Christ Church under Jackson? What handsomer than the Camera which was built in the middle of that century, or better to live in than Fisher’s buildings at Balliol? Or what inheritance more agreeable than the old bowling-greens, so happily celebrated in the Sphæristerium; or than the college gardens, which are nearly all eighteenth-century gifts? It has been said that the only movement in the eighteenth century was a very slow ascent to the nineteenth. That is not quite so, as many will agree who look at the re-fronting of University College chapel and hall, which was done when the wonderful century was reached at length. In fact, if we condemn the eighteenth century, we have to disown a large part of the nineteenth. In Oxford that is especially so. The destruction of the old chapels at Balliol and Exeter, and of the Grove at Merton, was carried out only fifty years ago; so long have the dark ages lingered in Oxford. As for the new buildings at New College, Christ Church, Merton, etc., they have been so widely condemned that it is to be presumed there is some merit in them, which an age nearer the millennium will praise.
But those works are only the less admirable and more conspicuous emblems of the nineteenth-century reformation. It had at length become possible again for[Pg 182]a man to keep his terms and take his degree without continual residence within college walls. The numbers of the University grew rapidly, and at a time when more efficient tutors and discipline made Oxford attractive to many who were neither frivolous nor rich. Oxford became, in fact, a place of education. The previous century had been conspicuous for great names and lack of system; what was achieved was due to individual endowment and energy; and the able men stood somewhat apart from their contemporaries. Wesley, for example, not only failed to make a strong party, but even to rouse an opposition of useful size. The nineteenth century, on the other hand, was a sociable one in matters of intellect. There were few lonely names. There were many groups. College after college—in a few cases before, in nearly all cases after, the first Commission—became known for their style of thought more than for their noblemen or wine. The fault of monkishness was either blotted out or exchanged for one that is more commonly pardoned to-day,nimium gaudens popularibus auris. At first, this meant an emphasis upon the distinction between college and college. It required more than a walk up Turl Street to get from Oriel to Balliol. The competition engendered by the new separate honour schools probably increased this for a time; and it was reported of one Head that, when told that Worcester College was above his own in a class list, he turned to the butler, and asked where Worcester was. But the east wind of the Commission changed all that. At the same time[Pg 184][Pg 183]
ENTRANCE GATEWAY OF HERTFORD COLLEGE AND THE RADCLIFFE LIBRARYThe gateway and wall have disappeared, this view of the Library being shut out by the new high buildings.To the left of the picture is a part of the College, and over the gateway shows a portion of the old Schools, the majestic dome and lantern of the Radcliffe Library filling the intervening space.A couple of undergraduates lean against the building to the left of the picture.
ENTRANCE GATEWAY OF HERTFORD COLLEGE AND THE RADCLIFFE LIBRARYThe gateway and wall have disappeared, this view of the Library being shut out by the new high buildings.To the left of the picture is a part of the College, and over the gateway shows a portion of the old Schools, the majestic dome and lantern of the Radcliffe Library filling the intervening space.A couple of undergraduates lean against the building to the left of the picture.
ENTRANCE GATEWAY OF HERTFORD COLLEGE AND THE RADCLIFFE LIBRARY
The gateway and wall have disappeared, this view of the Library being shut out by the new high buildings.To the left of the picture is a part of the College, and over the gateway shows a portion of the old Schools, the majestic dome and lantern of the Radcliffe Library filling the intervening space.A couple of undergraduates lean against the building to the left of the picture.
The gateway and wall have disappeared, this view of the Library being shut out by the new high buildings.
To the left of the picture is a part of the College, and over the gateway shows a portion of the old Schools, the majestic dome and lantern of the Radcliffe Library filling the intervening space.
A couple of undergraduates lean against the building to the left of the picture.
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the friendly and often stimulating intercourse between senior and junior members of the colleges grew apace, and was no doubt encouraged by the increasing fashionableness of athletic sports, which gave a “Blue” the importance of a fellow, and a greater consciousness of importance.
In its progress towards what is most admired in modern Oxford, Balliol is the most interesting college. Nearly all other colleges have indeed acquired a more or less thorough resemblance to Balliol in its good and bad points, but no other college has been so long, so persistently, and so progressively devoted to the same ideal. Even those who do not wholly like that ideal cannot fail to admire the consistency and energy of the men who have achieved it, or could find the like to any comparable extent in colleges that cherish other affections.
But nowhere has there been an entire rupture with the past, or anything new which has not in a sense been laid reverently upon the foundations of the old. If one could see Keble College without its buildings, it might well seem to be not the youngest of the colleges. So, too, with Hertford College, which is indeed but the rejuvenation of the old homes of Hobbes, Selden, and Matthew Hale: it has doffed knee-breeches and periwig, and even those perhaps unwillingly, since its fellowships are lifelong for the celibate. And in the architecture of Oxford, some of the most novel effects of last century were produced by work in the same spirit of reverence for the past. Here, a[Pg 188]window received back its casements again; there, a fine roof was rescued from its burial under the impertinent superimpositions of more egotistic innovators. No other age and city perhaps would have been so curious and fortunate in restoring the old, as when at Christ Church the old floral marble base of St. Frideswide’s shrine was restored after three hundred years in the wilderness. Part was found in the cemetery wall, part in a well-side, part in a staircase, part in a wall: and almost the whole now rests in the Cathedral again.[Pg 190][Pg 189]
INTERIOR OF THE CATHEDRAL OF CHRIST CHURCHAt the east end of the choir is seen the wheel-window with two circular-headed windows underneath, restored in 1871.Above these rises the late groined roof of the Choir, its richness contrasting well with the Norman arches below, which spring from corbels attached to the pillars.The Cathedral is also the College Chapel.
INTERIOR OF THE CATHEDRAL OF CHRIST CHURCHAt the east end of the choir is seen the wheel-window with two circular-headed windows underneath, restored in 1871.Above these rises the late groined roof of the Choir, its richness contrasting well with the Norman arches below, which spring from corbels attached to the pillars.The Cathedral is also the College Chapel.
INTERIOR OF THE CATHEDRAL OF CHRIST CHURCH
At the east end of the choir is seen the wheel-window with two circular-headed windows underneath, restored in 1871.Above these rises the late groined roof of the Choir, its richness contrasting well with the Norman arches below, which spring from corbels attached to the pillars.The Cathedral is also the College Chapel.
At the east end of the choir is seen the wheel-window with two circular-headed windows underneath, restored in 1871.
Above these rises the late groined roof of the Choir, its richness contrasting well with the Norman arches below, which spring from corbels attached to the pillars.
The Cathedral is also the College Chapel.
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Thesenior members of the University are perhaps as interesting as they have ever been. The freshman or other critical stranger to the city finds them less picturesque, if his ideal be anything like that of the youthful Ruskin, who looked for presences like the Erasmus of Holbein or Titian’s Magnificoes, and was disappointed at Christ Church by all save one. For the President or Master, whose absolutism used to be the envy of kings, now bears his honours inconspicuously. The fellows of colleges are no longer, indeed, a distinct and noticeable class, but are, for the most part, purely and simply scholars, or historians, or instructors of youth. The conscientious, capable, and hard-working Don is probably commoner than he has ever been; and his success is great. But even he might echo the cry against a possible tendency towards mere educational efficiency in fellows, which is expressed in the exclamation: “Nothing is so much to be feared[Pg 196]as that we should one day compete with the Board Schools.”
“O goodly usage of those antique times,” when it was a sufficient grace to be a scholar, and it was a kind of virtue to quote from Horace and never to play upon words outside Homer. Here and there such a man survives, always old, married to the place, and yet with a widowed air, looking as if he had crept out of one of the reverend pictures in the hall, and still clear-sighted enough to see the length of Broad Street and regret it, fumbling with the spectacles which he bought to protect his eyes in the first year of railway travelling. No one could draw him quite so happily as the Sub-Rector of Lincoln College, and in his latest book he gives us a charming hint, and there, quite appropriately, but too pathetically, he allows the old scholar to die.
“The Church, indeed,” he writes, “was mouldy enough, and the air within was close and sleep-giving; and as the old parson murmured his sermon twice a Sunday from the high old pulpit, his hearers gradually dropped into a tranquil doze or a pleasant day-dream—all except the old Scholar, who sat just below, holding his hand to his ear, and eagerly looking for one of those subtle allusions, those reminiscences of old reading, or even now and then three words of Latin from Virgil or theImitatiowith which his lifelong friend would strain a point to please him. They had been at school together, and at college together, and now they were spending their last years together, for the old Scholar had come, none of us knew[Pg 198][Pg 197]
MAGDALEN COLLEGE, FROM THE BOTANIC GARDENPart of the tower of Magdalen College is seen to the left of the picture, under which are some of the glass houses of the Botanic Garden.Above the pillar surmounted by a vase appears the roof of the College Hall, and farther to the right sets of rooms and the kitchens.Three arches of Magdalen Bridge show to the right.
MAGDALEN COLLEGE, FROM THE BOTANIC GARDENPart of the tower of Magdalen College is seen to the left of the picture, under which are some of the glass houses of the Botanic Garden.Above the pillar surmounted by a vase appears the roof of the College Hall, and farther to the right sets of rooms and the kitchens.Three arches of Magdalen Bridge show to the right.
MAGDALEN COLLEGE, FROM THE BOTANIC GARDEN
Part of the tower of Magdalen College is seen to the left of the picture, under which are some of the glass houses of the Botanic Garden.Above the pillar surmounted by a vase appears the roof of the College Hall, and farther to the right sets of rooms and the kitchens.Three arches of Magdalen Bridge show to the right.
Part of the tower of Magdalen College is seen to the left of the picture, under which are some of the glass houses of the Botanic Garden.
Above the pillar surmounted by a vase appears the roof of the College Hall, and farther to the right sets of rooms and the kitchens.
Three arches of Magdalen Bridge show to the right.
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whence, and settled down in the manor-house by the churchyard, hard by the Rectory of his old companion. And so they walked together through the still shady avenues of life’s evening, wishing for no change, reading much and talking little, lovers of old times and old books, seeking the truth, not indeed in the world around them, but in the choice words of the wise men of old:Pia et humilis inquisitio veritatis per sanas patrum sententias studens ambulare.
Such a one there was, until recently, to be met walking on a fine day between Magdalen and Oriel; or even, in April, as far as the Shotover road in expectation of hearing the nightingales; or as far as Carfax to learn whether the tower was looking any older. He was exquisitely courteous, without a tinge of mere courtliness, and could hate and contemn. Such was his loathing of what was unseemly that he begged he might be awakened by any one that heard him snore. If he was a misogynist, it was because he was shy and ignorant of women. He would gently insinuate, and as if it were temerity, that even good women cannot distinguish between fiction and Jane Austen, and have been known to deposit pins in ashtrays. He could not express an opinion upon subjects which he ignored or disliked, and when they were discussed in the Common Room, he had an irrepressible sympathy with both sides. Thus he was no politician,[Pg 202]but was at one with members of Parliament of both sides, by means of a little genial commonplace. But on his hobby-horses—sublimis in equis—he had a sweet eloquence which he “hoped was not persuasive.” For he disliked proselytisers more than proselytes. In later years, he became too deaf to be quite honest in answering a stupid or knavish man. He had, too, a little vocal impediment which he could use rhetorically. Preaching one day at a country church, he was dwelling at length upon the good qualities of a prophet.
“That’s parson all over,” murmured now and then a grey parishioner, and inquired of whom he spoke.
“Isaiah or Habakkuk,” explained his neighbour.
“Then I don’t believe,” answered the disappointed man, “there is such a person—unless ’tis another name for parson.”
When an old lady lay a-dying, and was troubled concerning the destiny of her magpie and tame hare after her death, the curate amiably suggested that Providence would take care of them.
“No, no,” she interposed, “give them to Mr.——.”
He was, despite features which the dull might call plain, remarkably, and I had almost said physically, beautiful, because of the clear shining of his character. The tender motives that often moulded his lips, the purity and grace that found expression in his eyes, and that fluctuation of the lines of the face in thought which is almost light and shade, wrought an immortal beauty out of Nature’s poor endowment. Nor was that only when he was in a fit small company. Some men, when[Pg 203]not moved by such an influence, lapse into that sculptured and muddy expression which is the chief quality of photographs. You may surprise them void and waste. But if he was ever surprised, it might be seen that he turned to the intruder fresh from a spiritual colloquy. His smile, on opening Plutarch, was as if he blessed and was blessed, and restored the beholder to the age of the first revival of learning. Very soft—some said mincing—was his step among his books, as not knowing what or whom he might disturb. If you saw him in the Bodleian, he seemed its familiar spirit, and in some way its outward and visible expression or heraldic device. Though a wide and learned reader, he had published nothing that had anything to do with books. In his youth he had circulated “An Elegy written within sight of Keble College,” and in later years speculations on the Jurassic sea and the migration of birds. He often read aloud to himself, and even to others on being provoked, in his sounding wainscotted room in sight of All Saints steeple. Especially he liked to chant Sophocles, and to the opening ofElectragave a solemn and almost religious sweetness in the rendering. Then it was that we knew how he had gained and preserved that notable grace of pronunciation. He used to say, “It is a fine day,” instead of “Tserfineday.” And thus of every day he made a rosary of gracious thoughts and deeds among men and Nature and books; and apparelling a worldly life with the sanctity of unworldly temperance and charity, his homeliness became dignified without[Pg 204]losing its simplicity, and almost ornate with courtesies that never set a blush in the face of truth.
Of the successful man who is a Don by accident I confess an ignorance that borders on dislike. He is perhaps a scholar, certainly a courtier. He has the open secret of perennial youth. It is very likely that he dabbles in light literature, and may have written a book of fiction or history with a wide circulation. He was a gay, discursive parodist in his youth; chose his own ties, or thought he did; worked hard, and concealed the fact from his inferiors. His extreme caution to-day might appear indiscreet to an impartial judge. He writes letters to theTimeson important matters on which he seeks information; or if his old self should be assertive, he writes over the name of “Justice” or “One who knows” in a penny paper, and is indignant towards the friends who fail to recognise his style and point of view. In this and every possible way he keeps a firm connection with the great outer world. He knows the female cousins of all the undergraduates of his college, and many of them have been mildly in love with him in a punt. He is often in London, where he is very academic, and would wish to appear merely well-informed. When he meets London friends in Oxford, he is anxious to prove that he at least is not a mere Don; yet his friends can only wonder that there is now no such thing as an Oxford point of view, but only an[Pg 205]Oxford drawl. His sitting-room is magnificent, and like style, conceals the man. It is no wonder that a man with such arm-chairs should be well satisfied. His books are noble up to the year 1800—abundant and select, often old, always fine; but after the year 1800 a certain timidity of taste may be observed. Of course his friends’ books are there, with the books which you are expected to know in country houses. For the rest, he has overcome the difficulty of selection by not selecting. As the college has good port and is indifferent in its choice of white wine, so he has good classics and a jumble of later work. He is charitable, a ready contributor to approved causes. He has travelled, and is never reduced to silence in company. He is a good talker, knowing how not to offend. He is a brilliant host, suave, considerate,—with comprehensive views,—and ready to make allowances for those who are not Dons. Perhaps he is in the main a summer bird. Then he shows that he is a gallant as well as a scholar and man of the world. He is the figure-head of his college barge during The Eights, and with an eye-glass, that is a kind of sixth sense, he surveys womankind, and sees that it is good.
There was lately also a more Roman type amongst us. He had a lusty Terentian wit that was not in the fashion of these times; and his proud frankness about everything but his soul found even less welcome from a[Pg 206]generation that liked to talk of little else. “A little hypocrisy”—such was his advice to freshmen, but not his practice—“a little hypocrisy is useful to a virtuous man, since it is hard not to appear a hypocrite, especially when one is not.” He was what is called an intemperate man. For, though a small, fastidious eater and short sleeper, he was a man of many bottles; nor had he the common gift of repenting of the truths which claret inspired and port enabled him to express. He never learned to whine over private infelicity—a weighty shortcoming; or to moralise on the infelicities of others—which was almost a virtue. A small Kantian once asked him how he felt after a bereavement. “It has never occurred to me,” was his reply, “to think how I felt.” An unsuccessful man himself, and burdened by his more successful and more indolent relatives, his catchword was, nevertheless, “Success.” But he perhaps hated more than a noisy failure a noisy success. Always scheming on behalf of others, he laid no plans for himself, except by writing his own epitaph, on the day before his death. He ate, drank, was merry, and did his duty. He was the life and soul and financial saviour of his college. At no time was he a profound student; he had been elected to a fellowship on account of his birth; yet the brilliant scholar and the nice courtier of the college admitted that he, the chapel, and the cook were equally indispensable. In fact, he was as near to the ideal head of a college as it would be wise to have in an ancient university. He could not lecture, and was a poor judge of imitation Greek prose. He radiated[Pg 207]a clean and vigorous worldly influence through both Common Rooms. He knew every undergraduate who was within the reach of knowledge. His judgment of men was as consummate and as untransferable as his judgment of wine. It was his custom to say that there had been three philosophers, two ancient, one modern, in the history of the world—Ecclesiastes, Democritus, and Sir William Temple of Moor Park. To his pupils he used to pronounce that, “since you are average men and will never be able to understand Ecclesiastes or take the trouble to understand Democritus,” they should follow the Englishman. He then repeated from memory this passage (with such solemnity that I believe he felt it to be his own):—
“Some writers, in casting up the goods most desirable in life, have given them this rank—health, beauty, and riches. Of the first, I find no dispute; but to the two others much may be said; for beauty is a good that makes others happy rather than one’s self; and how riches should claim so high a rank I cannot tell, when so great, so wise, and so good a part of mankind have, in all ages, preferred poverty before them—the Therapeutae and Ebionites among the Jews, the primitive monks and modern friars among Christians, so many dervises among the Mahometans, the Brachmans among the Indians, and all the ancient philosophers; who, whatever else they differed in, agreed in this, of despising riches, and at best esteeming them an unnecessary trouble or encumbrance of life: so that whether they are to be reckoned among goods or evils, is yet left in doubt.[Pg 208]
“When I was young, and in some idle company, it was proposed that every one should tell what their three wishes should be, if they were sure to be granted: some were very pleasant, and some very extravagant; mine were health, and peace, and fair weather; which, though out of the way among young men, yet perhaps might pass well enough among old: they are all of a strain; for health in the body is like peace in the state, and serenity in the air; the sun, in our climate at least, has something so reviving, that a fair day is a kind of sensual pleasure, and of all others the most innocent.”
The last words he would often repeat, with this comment: that people to-day were so much busied with sunsets and landscapes and colours that they had no such hearty feeling for Nature as the old seventeenth-century statesman, philosopher, and gardener had.
“Read Cowley and Pope,” was his only criticism in English literature. “Any one can be a Keats, though few can write as well,” he argued, “but it is not so easy to be like Pope.” Meeting Browning one day, and telling him that he enjoyed some of his poetry, the poet asked him whether he understood it. “No,” said the Don, “do you?”
For twenty years, when men spoke of—— College, they thought of him. “The University of Oxford,” said an old pupil who lived to send his son to that college, “the University of Oxford, at least as a place of education, consists of old——, the river, and the college pump.” That college is now like Roman[Pg 210][Pg 209]
THE RADCLIFFE LIBRARY, OR CAMERA BODLEIANA, FROM BRASENOSE COLLEGE QUADRANGLEThe gateway to the left of the centre of the picture is the entrance to the College from the Square in which stands the Radcliffe Library.The great dome of the Library rises above the gateway tower, dominating the Square, the College, and indeed all Oxford.On the extreme right is the entrance to the Hall, running east, the direction in which we are looking. In this Quadrangle formerly stood a metal group of Samson slaying the lion, which, it is to be regretted, has been removed. It served to give scale to the Quadrangle.
THE RADCLIFFE LIBRARY, OR CAMERA BODLEIANA, FROM BRASENOSE COLLEGE QUADRANGLEThe gateway to the left of the centre of the picture is the entrance to the College from the Square in which stands the Radcliffe Library.The great dome of the Library rises above the gateway tower, dominating the Square, the College, and indeed all Oxford.On the extreme right is the entrance to the Hall, running east, the direction in which we are looking. In this Quadrangle formerly stood a metal group of Samson slaying the lion, which, it is to be regretted, has been removed. It served to give scale to the Quadrangle.
THE RADCLIFFE LIBRARY, OR CAMERA BODLEIANA, FROM BRASENOSE COLLEGE QUADRANGLE
The gateway to the left of the centre of the picture is the entrance to the College from the Square in which stands the Radcliffe Library.The great dome of the Library rises above the gateway tower, dominating the Square, the College, and indeed all Oxford.On the extreme right is the entrance to the Hall, running east, the direction in which we are looking. In this Quadrangle formerly stood a metal group of Samson slaying the lion, which, it is to be regretted, has been removed. It served to give scale to the Quadrangle.
The gateway to the left of the centre of the picture is the entrance to the College from the Square in which stands the Radcliffe Library.
The great dome of the Library rises above the gateway tower, dominating the Square, the College, and indeed all Oxford.
On the extreme right is the entrance to the Hall, running east, the direction in which we are looking. In this Quadrangle formerly stood a metal group of Samson slaying the lion, which, it is to be regretted, has been removed. It served to give scale to the Quadrangle.
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literature without Lucretius, or a wine-glass of cold water.
When I look back and see him, more military than ecclesiastical (except for a snuffle) in his doctorial scarlet, I think that it was partly his brow that was his power. It was a calm, ample, antique brow. In the ancient world the brow made the man and the god. It was as divine as ægis or thunder or eagle. It was more magisterial than the fasces. It commanded the Consulate and troubled the dominion of Persia and cast down the power of Hannibal. The brow of Jupiter—of Plato—of Augustus—was a hill of majesty equal with Olympus. The history of old sculpture is anAve!to the brow. Now the soul has descended to the eyes. In politics, war, literature, above all in finance, victory is with the eyes. The old man had the godlike span of curving bone; but his eyes slept. It was his good fortune and Oxford’s honour that he ruled an Oxford college.
Among the younger men is one who spent perhaps a year in trying to combine high living and high thinking; then made a compromise by dropping the high thinking; and at last, perhaps as the result of some solemn intervention, became ascetic. He is a friend of authors and potentates. He understands a bishop, and takes a kindly interest in east-enders, so long as they are in Oxford. His aspect is grave and calm, since life, in losing half its vices, has lost all its charm. Like fine[Pg 214]cutlery, his manners lack nothing but originality; he has a good taste in flowers, and can even arrange them. Nor is the taste in books limited by his connoisseurship in binding. He is a free and fearless reader, yet careful in the choice of books to be left on the table. If style were finish, his writing would be famous; but his beautiful style is always subordinated to a really beautiful handwriting. His originally dilettante interest in palæography has lured him into some genuine research among old manuscripts. His lectures are therefore fresh, thoughtful, and perfect in gesture, delivery, and composition. I seem to behold Virgil himself at the end of one of his descants, or Politian at least. If he had not more love of the applause of his most graceful pupils than of the learned world, he might be renowned. But he is content to be three-quarters of a specialist in history and more than one of the arts, and to be a lodestar to the ladies of his audience. Perhaps only they can do him justice.
There is (or was) to be found at the top of a mouldy Oxford staircase the most unpedantic man in the world, seated underneath and upon and amidst innumerable books. In the more graceful than sufficient garments of his leisure, he looked like Homer, with hair still ungrizzled. He spoke, and back came theIliadand theOdysseyon that stormy sound. But he could so well dissemble this physical magnificence that he passed in[Pg 216][Pg 215]
BISHOP KING’S HOUSEThe part of the house showing in this picture faces to the north; the east front, at right angles with this, being in St. Aldate’s. The white buildings at the left are on the east side of St. Aldate’s. It was built by Bishop King, the last Abbot of Osney and the first Bishop of Oxford. The front was rebuilt in 1628.Inside, on the first floor, is a coffered ceiling, richly painted and gilt, probably of the sixteenth century, and by Italian workmen.
BISHOP KING’S HOUSEThe part of the house showing in this picture faces to the north; the east front, at right angles with this, being in St. Aldate’s. The white buildings at the left are on the east side of St. Aldate’s. It was built by Bishop King, the last Abbot of Osney and the first Bishop of Oxford. The front was rebuilt in 1628.Inside, on the first floor, is a coffered ceiling, richly painted and gilt, probably of the sixteenth century, and by Italian workmen.
BISHOP KING’S HOUSE
The part of the house showing in this picture faces to the north; the east front, at right angles with this, being in St. Aldate’s. The white buildings at the left are on the east side of St. Aldate’s. It was built by Bishop King, the last Abbot of Osney and the first Bishop of Oxford. The front was rebuilt in 1628.Inside, on the first floor, is a coffered ceiling, richly painted and gilt, probably of the sixteenth century, and by Italian workmen.
The part of the house showing in this picture faces to the north; the east front, at right angles with this, being in St. Aldate’s. The white buildings at the left are on the east side of St. Aldate’s. It was built by Bishop King, the last Abbot of Osney and the first Bishop of Oxford. The front was rebuilt in 1628.
Inside, on the first floor, is a coffered ceiling, richly painted and gilt, probably of the sixteenth century, and by Italian workmen.
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different clothing for an able-bodied seaman and a member of Parliament.
He loved the forest and cloud and sea as if they had been brothers. To visit him in his ancient room was to take a journey to Nature: to walk with him, in all weathers—to Wood Eaton, Sunningwell, Fyfield, Northmoor—was to go with a talking and genial embodiment of the north-west wind and a dash of orchard scent.
His room was alive with the spirit of old histories. Famous men—Pericles or Alexander or John XXII.—seemed to live once more when they were discoursed of in that eloquent chamber. It may have been illusion,—for there was little talk of historical principles,—but on leaving him, a man felt that he had gone away “before the mysteries,” and that if he could but live in the rooms of Urbanus, the past would be wonderfully revealed. Then, a day or two afterwards, he could remember only Urbanus himself, and, after a brief indignation at the cheiromancy quite unwittingly practised, admitted that that was sufficient.
I am not sure whether he professed history or divinity or Chinese. He wrote, however, an epoch-making treatise on “The Literature of Aboriginal Races, with special reference to Sumatra”; an invaluable brochure on “The Jewellery of the Visigothic Kings”; “A Complete Exposition of the Ancient Game of Tabblisk”; and “A Brief Summary of the Loves of Diarmad O’Diubhne.” His sonnet to M. Mallarmé, though it has been described astrop mallarmisé, is justly[Pg 220]admired. But he did not write ten volumes of reminiscences.
I can see him, in a brown library or a pictured hall, beginning a lecture. He moves about a little uneasily, like the late William Morris, and as if he would rather use deeds than words. An old book lies open before him: now and then he turns over a page, reads to himself, and smiles. The conscientious undergraduate looks at his watch and begins spoiling his pen upon the blotting-paper. He comes to take notes; but Urbanus does not care. Suddenly the lecturer laughs heartily at a good passage and begins:—
“I think perhaps you will like this story....”
And he reads, punctuating the matter with his own lively appreciation. Somerville and Lady Margaret and St. Hugh’s look resigned; future first (or third) class men look contemptuous; a Blue feels that his time is being wasted,—he must complain,—he rises and walks out as Urbanus remarks:—
“I don’t know your name, sir, but you can sleephere, if you wish.”
Urbanus closes the book five minutes before or after the appointed hour; some one mutters about “the worst lecturer in this incubator of bad lecturers”: such is his influence, not so much injecting knowledge as dredging and maturing what is already gained, that others can think of him easily as a humanist of the great days, who has survived in his old college, with an indifference to mere time which is not incredible in Oxford, where memories three centuries old are still alive in oral tradition.[Pg 221]
Philip Amberley, late fellow of——, took it much to heart that he was not born in 1300. He would have been a monk, and would have illuminated Ovid to the astonishment of all ages. All he could do in this age was to perform his tutorial duty, and to write a few pages of noble English in a caligraphy that was worthy of the ages he loved. He wrote but one book, which he burned, because nobody would give him £5 for it. A not very old or very credible story tells how an intelligent alien blurted out the question, at the high table of Philip’s college: Whether the uncomely heads before the Sheldonian Theatre were not the fellows of that same college. The inquirer was corrected with asperity; and in revenge he always stated that he afterwards received photographs of the younger fellows, by way of removing the mote from his eye. But Philip sent a photograph of the least human physiognomy, signed with full name and college. For the rest, he had that uncertainty of character which is called conscience in the good and timidity in the bad, and in him meant merely that he exchanged an act for a dream. He was filled with a supreme pity, even for the Devil, whom he called “that immortal scapegoat of gods and men.”
He died on an evening of July, while the scent of hay in passing waggons filled and pleased his nostrils, lying in his half-monastic, half-manorial home, not far from Oxford. How often had he celebrated the sweet[Pg 222]ness of the dead grass as an emblem of comely human death! For a little while he spoke of his friends, of the “beautiful gate” of St. Mary’s, of his columbines (the older sort), and of a copy of Virgil newly come from Italy. We listened silently. Life was still an eloquent poet on his lips. But Death was a strong sculptor already at work upon his face and hands. The last waggon passed below his window as he lay dead, and the friendly carter shouted “Good-night.”
Now, we three were ashamed that we could find no tears for the loss of such a man; and again, that we should suffer any alteration of our joy, at having seen what we had seen. We recalled the past through half the night. As we sat, none of us looked more alive than he, amidst the old gloomy furniture, refashioned by the moon. We were but the toys of night, of the smooth perfumes and the sounds of nothing known, and of the presence which was like a great thought in the room. Then as the coming day mingled with the passing night, a cold pale beam—ῶ φάος ἁγνὸν—came to the four. As often a symbol becomes an image, so the beam of light seemed to be the very spirit of which it was a messenger, hailed by our eyes and hearts. It was beautiful as the Grail with many angels about it,—awful as the woman of stern aspect and burning eyes that visited the dream of Boethius. It was worthy to have ushered visions yet more august. Ah! the awful purity of the dawn. The light grew; our fancies were unbuilt; we became aware of a holy excellence in the light itself, and enjoyed an almost sensual[Pg 224][Pg 223]
THE CLARENDON BUILDING, LOOKING EASTOn the right stand those grotesque thermes partly surrounding and forming an entrance to the enclosure of the Sheldonian Theatre, the old Ashmolean, and the Schools.They are a quaint and conspicuous feature in Broad Street.Above them towers the Clarendon Building, with its worn and richly coloured surface, the columns of the portico relieved against the sky. A portion of the Indian Museum appears in the centre of the picture, the old houses forming picturesque foreground objects to the left.
THE CLARENDON BUILDING, LOOKING EASTOn the right stand those grotesque thermes partly surrounding and forming an entrance to the enclosure of the Sheldonian Theatre, the old Ashmolean, and the Schools.They are a quaint and conspicuous feature in Broad Street.Above them towers the Clarendon Building, with its worn and richly coloured surface, the columns of the portico relieved against the sky. A portion of the Indian Museum appears in the centre of the picture, the old houses forming picturesque foreground objects to the left.
THE CLARENDON BUILDING, LOOKING EAST
On the right stand those grotesque thermes partly surrounding and forming an entrance to the enclosure of the Sheldonian Theatre, the old Ashmolean, and the Schools.They are a quaint and conspicuous feature in Broad Street.Above them towers the Clarendon Building, with its worn and richly coloured surface, the columns of the portico relieved against the sky. A portion of the Indian Museum appears in the centre of the picture, the old houses forming picturesque foreground objects to the left.
On the right stand those grotesque thermes partly surrounding and forming an entrance to the enclosure of the Sheldonian Theatre, the old Ashmolean, and the Schools.
They are a quaint and conspicuous feature in Broad Street.
Above them towers the Clarendon Building, with its worn and richly coloured surface, the columns of the portico relieved against the sky. A portion of the Indian Museum appears in the centre of the picture, the old houses forming picturesque foreground objects to the left.
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melancholy repose. The owls were silent. The nightingales joined their songs to the larks’. And I went out and walked and remembered his epitaph—Vita dulcis, sed dulcior mors—and another July day, when Philip Amberley was alive.
How he would walk! with what an air, an effluence, humble, and of consequence withal! Half the village dallied among their flowers or beehives to see him going. His long staff was held a foot from the upper end, which almost entered his beard. He bore it, not airily with twirling and fantastic motion, as our younger generation likes to do, but solemnly, making it work, and leaning on it as if it were a sceptre, a pillar, a younger brother. His eyes appeared to study the ground; yet indeed all that was to be seen and much that is commonly invisible lay within their sway. It was said he kept eyes in his pockets. His shanks were of the extreme tenuity that seems no more capable of weariness than of being diminished. Returning or setting forth, especially when seen against the sky at sunset or dawn, he was a portent rather than a man. His person was an emblem of human warfaring on earth—a hieroglyph—a monument. His movements were of epic significance. His beard did not merely wag; it transacted great matters. In setting out he himself said he never contemplated return; it was unnecessary; at most it was one of several possibilities. Yet had he a big laugh that came from his beard like a bell from a grey tower. He would even sing as he walked, and was the sole appreciator of his own rendering[Pg 228]of “The All Souls’ Mallard,” in a broken, grim baritone.
All day we walked along an ancient Oxfordshire road. It was the most roundabout and kindly way towards our end, and so disguised our purpose that we forgot it. The road curved not merely as a highway does. Demurring, nicely distinguishing between good and better, rashly advancing straight, coyly meandering, it had fallen in love with its own foibles, and its progress was not to be measured by miles. At one loop (where the four arms of a battered signpost all pointed to—nowhere) the first man who trod this way must have paused to think, or not to think, and have lost all aim save perambulation. So it stole through the land without arresting the domesticities of the quiet hills. Often it was not shut out from the fields by hedge or fence or bank. For some leagues it became a footpath—its second childhood—“as though a rose should shut and be a bud again”—with grass and flowers unavoidable under foot and floating briers and hops overhead. In places the hedges had united and unmade the road. From every part of it some church could be seen: Philip would sometimes enter in, having some faith in the efficacy of reverence offered by stealth on these uncanonical holy days. On our way he sometimes paused, where bees made a wise hum in glowing gardens; or where the corn-shocks looked like groups of women covered by their yellow hair, as the sun ascended; or where the eye slumbered, and yet not senselessly or in vain, amidst a rich undistinguished[Pg 229]landscape, made unreal and remote by mist; and he would whisper an oath or a line of Theocritus or a self-tormenting speech—“Six hundred years ago perhaps one of my name passed along this road. Oh! for one hour of his joy as he spied his inn, or carved a cross in the church of St. John, or kissed the milkmaid at yonder gateway. Or would that I could taste his grief, even; his fresh and lively grief, I think, had something in it which my pale soul is sick for. For me the present is made of the future and the past. But he—perhaps—he could say, ‘Here am I with a can of mead and a fatigue that will do honour to my lavendered sheets;Ave Maria!here’s to you all!’”Yet Philip’s mood was not seldom as clear and simple as that.
At the inn—a classic inn to Oxford scholars—while the wind was purring in a yew tree, he put all his gloomier fancies in a tankard, where they were transmuted by a lambent ale and the “flaming ramparts” of that small world. The landlord was unloading a dray. As it is with men and clothes, remarked Philip, so with ale; the one grace of new ale is that it will one day be old. “May I,” he said, “in some world or another, be at least as old as this tankard, in the course of time: if I deserve it, as old as this inn: if I can, as old as these hills, with their whiskers of yew. Or, so long as I am not solitary, may I be as old as the sun, which alone of all visible things has obviously reached a fine old age!” He told me that his only valued dream was of an immemorial man, seated on a star near[Pg 230]the zenith; and his beard’s point swept the hilltops, while with one hand he raised a goblet as large as the dome of the Radcliffe to his lips, and with the other stroked his beard and caused golden coins to flow in cascades into the countless hands of those underneath; and in a melodious bass he said continually, “It is well.”
In his youth he had wedded Poverty, and when in the course of nature she forsook him, he gently transferred his heart to Humility, regretting only that he could no longer dress badly or make his own toast, without affectation. He would give a beggar a handful of tobacco, and ask sincerely, “Is it enough?” At the inn, he might have been lightly treated for the respect with which he shamed the most unhappy outcast, if he had not indifferently accepted the homage of the squire.
“Which book of theÆneid,” said that magnate of fifteen stone, at seeing a Virgil in his hand, “do you like best?”
“The sixth.”
“And why?”
“Because I have just read it over again.”
“And which do you like next?”
“The second, because I read it first, and loved it (I was twelve) better than anything but rackets.”
So he turned to the five tramps, the first I ever saw leave their hats undoffed at his approach, who sat opposite.
They spoke, proclaiming themselves human; but[Pg 231]their clothes, their twisted bodies, and their gnarled, grey, bare feet, seemed to be the original material from which some power had adventured to carve their desperate faces, and then desisted in alarm, lest it should make a gnome. They might seem to have newly risen out of the soil, with all its lugubrious dishonours about them, and in an elder world might have commanded the reverence of simple men, as Chthonian apparitions. I have seen dead pollard-willows like them, and rocks out of which the sea has wrought figures more humane. “Pedestalled haply in a palace court,” they would have amazed the curious and confounded the wise; drinking beer at “The Pilgrim’s Chair,” they happened to agree with Philip’s “idea of a wild man,” which he had treasured on a dusty Platonic shelf of his mind for fifty years. Theurpflanzefound at last could not bring a finer joy to a botanist than they to him. His mind wandered about his discovery. “These great men”—he said—“are the victims of a community that permits nobody to break its own law, and is indignant that a poacher or a thief should claim the foregone privilege. On these men falls the duty of keeping up the capacity of our race for breaking law—a natural capacity. I should like to see—fill the pot, landlord—something like the American arbor-day established in this fine country. On that day men should plant, not a tree, but a wild emotion. Not all of us, alas! could find one to plant. But such a wild man’s day would be a noble opportunity for the divine instincts that are now relieved or ill-fed by[Pg 232]politics, fiction, religious reform, and so on. I am for a more than Stuart, indulgent, anti-parliament government on one day, when the policeman should clink tankards with the tramp, as if he too were a man. See here!”—he mildly concluded, exposing the unwilling palm of the nearest tramp,—“this good fellow is so appreciative that he has taken my coppers and left the silver in my purse.” Ordering the landlord to fill tankards all round—“for this gentleman,” he said, pointing to the pickpocket—he soon made the whole party harmonious, eloquent, and gay.
He spoke few words. His Virgil lay open still. Now and then his random speech or a laugh at a bad jest floated joyously—like lemons in a punch-bowl—over the company. Every one astonished every one with shrewd or witty things. Not a man but thought himself almost as fine a fellow as Philip Amberley. Not a man but on leaving him was a little abashed as he took a last glance at my friend, and saw what manner of man he was.
“There he goes,” said Philip solemnly, as he leaned forward to watch them reeling up the lane, singing as if their feet were shod and their pockets full, “There he goes—an almost perfect man. I seem to see them as one man, made up of the virtues or unselfish vices (which are all the most of us can achieve) of all five, as a painter collects a beautiful face from many mediocrities. Every one of them has his fustian soul ‘trimmed with curious lace.’”And so he continued; with generous and cunning speech freeing of rust, nay![Pg 234][Pg 233]