"The threshold of young life,Where the man meets, not yet absorbs, the boy,And ere descending to the dusky strife,Gazed from clear heights of intellectual joyThat an undying image left enshrined."
This will come home to many, as they think on their happy Oxford days when they had life all before them, even though their contemporaries have not become archbishops like Temple or poets like Matthew Arnold.
Plate V. Balliol College, Broad Street Front
"I passed beside the reverend wallsIn which of old I wore the gown."TENNYSON.
Plate VI. Merton College : The Tower
Merton is not only the oldest college in Oxford, it is also, as is claimed on the monument of the founder, Walter de Merton, in his Cathedral of Rochester, the model of "omnium quotquot extant collegiorum." Peterhouse, the first college at Cambridge, which was founded (1281) seven years later than Merton, had its statutes avowedly copied from those of its Oxford predecessor.
So important a new departure in education calls for special notice. It is interesting to see how the English college system grew out of the long rivalry between the Regular and the Secular clergy which was so prominent in the mediaeval church. The Secular clergy, who had in their ranks all the "professional men" of the day, civil servants, architects, physicians, as well as, those devoted to religious matters in the strict sense, were always jealous of the monks and the friars, who, living by a "rule" in their communities, were much less in sympathy with English national feelings than the Seculars, who lived among the laity. Hence the growing influence of the Regular Orders, especially of the Franciscans and the Dominicans, in thirteenth-century Oxford, excited the alarm of a far-seeing prelate like Walter de Merton. There was a real danger that the most prominent and best of the students might be drawn into the great new communities, which were rapidly adding to their learning and their piety the further attractions of great buildings and splendid ceremonial.
The founder of Merton had the same purpose as the founder of the College of the Sorbonne at Paris, a slightly earlier institution (1257). He intended that his college should rival the houses of the Dominicans and the Franciscans. These friaries were in the southern part of Oxford, and have completely perished, leaving behind only the names of two or three mean streets; but the college system which Walter de Merton founded has grown with the growth of Oxford and of England, and is to-day as vigorous and as useful as ever.
Walter de Merton provided his fellows with noble buildings, at once for their common life and for their own private accommodation, and also with endowments sufficient to enable them to live in comfort, free from anxiety; most important of all, he gave them powers of self-government, so that they might recruit their own numbers and carry out for themselves the objects prescribed by him in his Statutes.
In this great foundation then the three characteristic features of a college are found—a common life, powers of self-government, with the right of choosing future members, and endowments that enable religion and learning to flourish, free from more pressing cares. It is these features which distinguish the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, and which have determined their history.
Walter de Merton definitely prescribed that none of the fellows who benefited by his foundation should be monks or friars; to take the vows involved forfeiture of a fellowship. He also especially urged on the members of his society that, when any of them rose to "ampler fortune"(uberior fortuna), they should not forget theiralma mater.
The founder died in 1277, so that none of the college buildings were complete in his time, except perhaps the treasury, which, with its high-pitched roof of stone, lies in the opposite corner of the Mob Quad to that shown in our picture. Why the Quad is called "The Mob Quad," nobody knows. As was fitting, the chapel was the first part of the college to be finished—about 1300—and it is a splendid specimen of early Geometrical Gothic; it retains a little of the old glass, given by one of the early fellows.
The north side of the Mob Quad, which is shown in our picture, is very little later than the Chapel, and the whole of the Quad was finished before 1400; the rooms in it have been the homes of Oxford men for more than five centuries. It is sad to think that so unique a building was almost destroyed in the middle of the nineteenth century, by the zeal of "reformers"; it was actually condemned to be pulled down, to make way for modern buildings, but, fortunately, there was an irregularity in the voting. Mr. G. C. Brodrick, then a young fellow, later the Warden of the college, insisted on the matter being discussed again at a later meeting, and at this the Mob Quad was saved by a narrow majority. "He will go to Heaven for it," as Corporal Trim said of the English Guards, who saved his broken regiment at Steinkirk.
The "reformers" of Merton had to be content with cutting down their beautiful "Grove" and spoiling the finest view in Oxford by erecting the ugliest building which Mid-Victorian taste inflicted on the University.
In the old buildings which so narrowly escaped destruction may have lived John Wycliffe, who is claimed as a fellow of Merton in an almost contemporary list; his activity in Oxford belongs rather to the later time, when he was Master of Balliol. His is one of the outstanding names in English history; the success of Merton in producing great men of a more ordinary kind can be judged from the fact that between 1294 and 1366 six out of the seven Archbishops of Canterbury were Merton men.
In the great period of the seventeenth century, Merton had the distinction of being one of the few colleges which were Parliamentarian in sympathy. Hence the Warden was deposed by King Charles, who installed in his place a really great man, William Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood. But the king did more harm than good to the college; it was turned into lodgings for Queen Henrietta Maria and her court, and ladies were intruded and children born within college walls. These proceedings were respectable, though unusual; but the college was even more humiliated by the visit of Charles II, who installed there, among other court ladies, the notorious Duchess of Cleveland. The college, however, with the Revolution, returned to less courtly views, and its Whig connection found an honourable representative in Richard Steele, the founder of theTatler. It is not surprising that so cheerful a gentleman left Oxford without a degree, but "with the love of the whole society." The college register specially notes his gift of hisTatler; he was acting on the sound rule, by no means so universally followed as it ought to be, that Oxford authors should present their books to their college library.
Merton, as has been said, is the "type" college, if one may thus apply a scientific term; hence it is fitting that to it belong the two men to whom perhaps Oxford owes most. Thomas Bodley was a fellow and lecturer in Greek there, before he left Oxford for diplomacy, and accumulated that wealth which he used to endow the oldest and the most fascinating, if not the largest, of British libraries. And among the men who have gained from "the rare books in the public library" a way to a "perfect elysium," none better deserves remembrance than the Mertonian, Antony Wood, whose monument stands in Merton Chapel, but who has raisedmonumentum aere perenniusto himself, in hisHistory of the University of Oxfordand hisAthenae Oxonienses.
"Hail, tree of knowledge! thy leaves fruit; which wellDost in the midst of Paradise arise,Oxford, the Muses' paradise,From which may never sword the blest expel.Hail, bank of all past ages! where they lieTo enrich, with interest, posterity."COWLEY.
Plate VII. Merton College : The Library Interior
"The appearance of the library" (at Merton), says the great Cambridge scholar, J. Willis Clark, in hisCare of Books, "is so venerable, so unlike any similar room with which I am acquainted, that it must always command admiration."
He classes it with the libraries at Oxford of Corpus, St. John's, Jesus, and Magdalen, and he regretfully adds that no college library in his own University has retained the same old features as these have done. But none of the four can compare with Merton, either in antiquarian interest or in picturesqueness; it stands in a class by itself.
The Library was built by the munificence of Bishop Reed of Chichester between 1377 and 1379; the dormer windows, however (seen inPlate VII), are later in date. The bookcases in the larger room were made in 1623; one of the original half cases, however, was spared, that nearest to the entrance on the north side, and this is the most interesting single feature in the whole library. It need hardly be said that the reading-desk in early times was actually attached to the bookcase; the library then was a place to read in, not one from which books were taken to be read. The books were to be kept "in some common and secure place," and they were "chained in the library chamber for the common use of the fellows" (J. W. Clark).
The old case that has been retained still has its chained books, and traces of the arrangement for chains can be seen in the other cases. Merton was one of the last libraries in Oxford to keep its books in chains; these were only removed in 1792; in the Bodleian the work had been begun a generation earlier (in 1757).
Not all books, however, were chained; by special arrangements in old college statutes, some of them were allowed out to the fellows. The register of Merton contains interesting entries as to how the books were distributed, e.g. on August 26, 1500, "choice was made of the books on philosophy; it was found there were in all 349 books, which were then distributed." This was a large number: at King's, Cambridge, less than half a century before, there were only 174 books on all subjects, and in the Cambridge University Library in 1473, only 330.
If a book was borrowed, great precautions were taken; the Warden of Merton in 1498 had to obtain the leave of the college to take out a book which he wanted; then, "in the presence of the four seniors," he received his book, depositing two volumes of St. Jerome's Commentaries as pledges for its safe return. A similar ceremony, with a similar entry in the register, marked the replacement of the book in the library. Though printing was already beginning to multiply books, yet then, and for long after, a book was a most valuable possession. The features of these venerable tomes are well described by Crabbe:
"That weight of wood, with leathern coat o'erlaid,Those ample clasps, of solid metal made,The close pressed leaves, unclosed for many an age,The dull red edging of the well-filled page,On the broad back the stubborn ridges rolled,Where yet the title shines in tarnished gold,These all a sage and laboured work proclaim,A painful candidate for lasting fame."
Such books are numbered by hundreds in every college library, and it is only too true of them that:
"Hence in these times, untouched the pages lieAnd slumber out their immortality."
The reception of such a book in a library was an event, and the record of one gift occupies six whole lines in the Merton Register; its donors are named as "two venerable men," and the entry sweetly concludes, "Let us, therefore, pray for them."
The library, problem, acute everywhere, is perhaps especially so in a college library. How can it keep pace with the multiplicity of studies? How should it deal with books indispensable for a short time, perhaps for one generation, and then superseded? Even apart from the question of the cost of purchase, the amount of space available is small, considering modern needs. These problems and such as these have not yet been solved by college librarians; but the college library, quite apart from the books in it, is an education in itself. The old days of neglect are past, the days reflected in the scandalous story—told of more than one college—about the old fellow who was missing for two months, and, after being searched for high and low, was found hanging dead in the college library. Now the libraries everywhere are being used continually, and men can realize in them, perhaps better than anywhere else, how great the past of Oxford has been, and can form some idea of the labours of forgotten generations, which have made the University what it was and what it is.
Every library has its treasures, to show the present generation how beautiful an old book can be which was produced in days when its production was not a mere publisher's speculation, but the work of a scholar seeking to promote knowledge and advance the cause of Truth. And it does not require much imagination for a student, in a building like Merton Library, to conjure up the picture of his mediaeval predecessor, sitting on his hard wooden bench, with his chained MSS. volume on the shelf above, and poring over the crabbed pages in the unwarmed, half-lighted chamber. If the picture brings with it the thought of the transitoriness of human endeavour, and if the words of the Teacher seem doubly true, "Of making of books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh," yet in the fresh life of young Oxford, such reflections are only salutary; pessimism, despair of humanity, are not vices likely to flourish among undergraduates in the healthy society of modern colleges.
Those only, it might be said, can properly reform the present who understand the past, and it is perhaps the spirit of the Merton Library, at once old and new, which has inspired the statesmen whom Merton has sent to take part in the government of Britain during the last half-century. Lord Randolph Churchill, the founder of Tory democracy, his present-day successor in the same role, Lord Birkenhead, and the ever young Lord Halsbury are men of the type which Walter de Merton wished to train, "for the service of God in Church and State," men who champion the existing order, but who are willing to develop and improve it on the old lines.
"Here at each coign of every antique streetA memory hath taken root in stone,Here Raleigh shone."L. JOHNSON.
Plate VIII. Oriel College and St. Mary's Church
It is a curious coincidence that three of the most troubled reigns of English history have been marked by double college foundations in Oxford. That of Henry VI, in spite of constant civil war, threatening or actual, saw the beginnings of All Souls' and of Magdalen; the short and sad reign of Mary Tudor restored to Oxford Trinity and St. John's; and in an earlier century the ministers of Edward II, the most unroyal of our Plantagenet kings, gave to Oxford Exeter and Oriel. The king himself was graciously pleased to accept the honour of the latter foundation, and his statue adorns the College Quad, along with that of Charles I, in whose day the whole College was rebuilt. The front may be compared architecturally with those of Wadham and of University, which date from about the same period (the first part of the seventeenth century), when, under the fostering care of Archbishop Laud, Oxford increased greatly in numbers, in learning, and in buildings. Though Oriel has neither the bold sweep of University nor the perfect proportions of Wadham, it yet is a pleasing building, at least in its front.
Like New College, Oriel is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, and, also like New College, the name of "St. Mary's" early gave way to a popular nickname. The College at once on its foundation received the gift of a tenement called "L'Oriole," which occupied its present site, and its name has displaced the real style of the College in general use.
It is only fitting that, as in our picture, St. Mary's Church should be combined with Oriel, for the founder was Vicar of St. Mary's, and the presentation to that living has ever since been in the hands of the College. It was as a Fellow of Oriel that Newman became, in 1828, Vicar of St. Mary's, from the pulpit of which, during thirteen years, he moulded all that was best in the religious life of Oxford. The glorious spire of the church was still new when the College was founded.
Oriel and its chapel are among the places for religious pilgrimage in Oxford. As Lincoln draws from all parts of the world those who reverence the name of John Wesley, so the Oxford Movement and the Anglican Revival had their starting-point, and for some time their centre, in Oriel. The connection of the College with the Movement was not in either case a mere accident; the Oxford Revival, at any rate, was profoundly influenced by the personality of Newman, and Newman, both by attraction and by repulsion, was largely what Oriel made him. Among those who were with him at the College were Archbishop Whately, whose Liberalism repelled him, Hawkins, the Provost, whose views on "Tradition" began to modify the Evangelicalism in which he had been brought up, Keble, whoseChristian Yeardid more for Church teaching in England than countless sermons, Pusey, already famous for his learning and his piety, who was to give his name to the Movement, and, slightly later, Church, afterwards Dean of St. Paul's, the historian of the Movement, and Samuel Wilberforce, who, as Bishop of Oxford, was to show how profoundly it would increase the influence of the English Church.
Such a combination of famous names at one time is hardly found in the history of any other college, and it would be easy to add others hardly less known, who were also members of the same body at that famous time. Hero-worshippers can still see the rooms where these great men lived, and the Common Room in which they met and argued, in the days when Oxford did less teaching and had more time for talking and for thinking than the busy, hurrying ways of the twentieth century allow. But Oriel has many other associations besides those of the Oxford Movement. Walter Raleigh, the most fascinating of Elizabethans, was a student there, and probably in Oxford met the great historian of travel and discovery, Richard Hakluyt (a Christ Church man), whose influence did so much to bring home to Oxford the wonders of the strange worlds beyond the seas. It was probably also through his connection with Oriel that Raleigh made the acquaintance of Harriot, who shared in his colonial ventures in Virginia, and who became the historian of that foundation, so full of importance as the beginning of the new England across the Atlantic. It was only fitting that the Raleigh of the nineteenth century, Cecil John Rhodes, should also be an Oriel man, who was never weary of acknowledging what he owed to Oxford, and who showed his faith in her by his works. The Rhodes' Foundation expends his millions in bringing scholars to Oxford from the whole world; already its influence has been great during its twenty years of existence; what it will be in the future, only the future can show. If Mr. Rhodes gave his millions to the University, he gave his tens of thousands to his old College. The result on the High Street is—to put it gently—not altogether happy; but perhaps time may soften the lines of Mr. Champney's somewhat uninspired front, though it is not likely to quicken interest in the statues of the obscure provosts which adorn it.
"The building, parent of my young essays,Asks in return a tributary praise;Pillars sublime bear up the learned weight,And antique sages tread the pompous height."TICKELL.
Queens's is one of the six oldest colleges in Oxford, and is far on to celebrating its sexcentenary, but it has purged itself of the Gothic leaven in its buildings more completely than any other Oxford foundation. It does not even occupy its own old site, for the building originally lay well back from the High Street. It was only the "civilities and kindnesses" of Provost Lancaster which induced the Mayor and Corporation of Oxford, in 1709, to grant to Queen's College "for 1,000 years," "so much ground on the High Street as shall be requisite for making their intended new building straight and uniform." And so the most important of "the streamlike windings of the glorious street" was in part determined by a corrupt bargain between "a vile Whig" (as Hearne calls this hated Provost) and a complaisant mayor. But much of the credit for the beauty of this part of the High must also be given to the architect of University College (seen inPlate IXon the left), who, whether by skill or by accident, combined at a most graceful angle the two quads, erected with an interval of some eighty years between them (1634 and 1719).
A man must, indeed, be a Gothic purist who would wish away the stately front quadrangle of Queen's, designed by Wren's favourite pupil, Hawkmoor, while the master himself is said to be responsible for the chapel of the College, the most perfect basilican church in Oxford.
If Queen's has been revolutionary in its buildings, it has been singularly tenacious of old customs. Its members still assemble at dinner to the sound of the trumpet (blown by a curious arrangementaftergrace has been said); it still keeps up the ancient and honoured custom of bringing in the boar's head—"the chief service of this land"—for dinner on Christmas Day; while on New Year's Day, the Bursar still, as has been done for nearly 600 years, bids his guests "take this and be thrifty," as he hands each a "needle and thread," wherewith to mend their academic hoods; theaiguille et filis probably a pun on the name of the founder, Robert Eglesfield. The College at these festivities uses the loving, cup, given it by its founder, perhaps the oldest piece of plate in constant use anywhere in Great Britain; five and a half centuries of good liquor have stained the gold-mounted aurochs' horn to a colour of unrivalled softness and beauty.
Robert Eglesfield was almoner of the good Queen Philippa, wife of Edward III, and, like Adam de Brome, the founder of Oriel, he, too, commended his college to a royal patron. Ever since his time, the "Queen's College" has been under the patronage of the Queen's consort of England, and the connection has been duly acknowledged by many of them, especially by Henrietta Maria, the evil genius of Charles I, and by Queen Caroline, the good genius of George II. Her present Gracious Majesty, too, has recognized the college claim. The Queens Regnant have no obligations to the college, but Queen Elizabeth gave it the seal it still uses, and good Queen Anne was a liberal contributor to the rebuilding of the college in her day; her statue still adorns the cupola on the front to the High.
Plate IX. High Street
No doubt it was the royal connection which brought to Queen's, if tradition may be trusted, two famous warrior princes, the Black Prince and Henry V; though it is at least doubtful whether the Queen's poet, Thomas Tickell, Addison's flattering friend, had any authority for the picture he gives of their college life. He describes them as:
"Sent from the Monarch's to the Muses' Court,Their meals were frugal and their sleeps were short;To couch at curfew time they thought no scorn,And froze at matins every winters morn."
The College has an interesting portrait of the great Henry, which may be authentic; but that of the Black Prince, which adorns the college hall, is known to have been painted from a handsome Oxford butcher's boy, in the eighteenth century. While we condemn the lack of historic sense in the Provost and Fellows of that day, we may at least acquit them of any intention of pacificist irony in their choice of a model.
Queen's has had better poets than Tickell on its rolls, but, by a curious chance, the two most eminent—Joseph Addison and William Collins—were both tempted away from their first college by the superior wealth and attractions of Magdalen.
The old local connections which were such a marked feature in the statutes of founders, and which so profoundly influenced Oxford down to the Commission of 1854, have been almost swept away at other colleges; but at Queen's they have always been strongly maintained. It has been, and is, emphatically, a north-country college. Not the least important factor in maintaining this tradition has been the great benefaction of Lady Elizabeth Hastings, fondly and familiarly known to all Queen's men as "Lady Betty." Steele wrote of her when young, that to "love her was a liberal education"; this may have been flattery, but her bounty, at any rate, has given a "liberal education" to hundreds of north-country men, who come up from the twelve schools of her foundation to her college at Oxford.
It is interesting to note in Modern Oxford, attempts to re-establish those local connections, which the wisdom of our ancestors established, and which the self-complacency of Victorian reformers "vilely cast away."
"There the kindly fates allowedMe too room, and made me proud,Prouder name I have not wist,With the name of Wykehamist."L. JOHNSON.
Plate X. New College : The Entrance Gateway
Among the "Founders" of Oxford colleges, three stand out pre-eminent —all three bishops of Winchester and great public servants. If Wolsey has undisputed claims for first place, there can be little doubt that, in spite of the great public services of Bishop Foxe, the Founder of Corpus, the second place must be assigned to William of Wykeham, "sometime Lord High Chancellor of England, the sole and munificent founder of the two St. Mary Winton colleges." Others, beside Wykehamists, hear with pleasure the magnificent roll of the titles of the Founder of New College, when one of his intellectual sons occupies the University pulpit, and gives thanks for "founders and benefactors, such as were William of Wykeham."
In Oxford, without doubt, his great claim to be remembered will be held to be his college with the school at Winchester, which he linked to it. But he was also a reformer and a champion of Parliamentary privilege in the days when the "Good Parliament" set to work to check the misgovernment of Edward III in his dotage, and, as an architect, he is equally famous as having given to Windsor Castle its present shape, and as having secured the final triumph of the Perpendicular style by his glorious nave at Winchester.
William of Wykeham is a very striking instance of what is too often Forgotten—viz., that in the Mediaeval Church all professional men, and not simply spiritual pastors, found their work and their reward in the ranks of the clergy. As "supervisor of the king's works," he earned the royal favour, which, after sixteen years of service, rewarded him with the rich bishopric of Winchester. Such a career and such a reward seem to modern ideas incongruous, even as they did to John Wycliffe, his great contemporary, who complained of men being made bishops because they were "wise in building castles." But many forms of service were needed to create England; Wykeham and Wycliffe both have a place in the roll of its "Makers." At all events, if Wykeham obtained his wealth by secular service, he spent it for the promoting of the welfare of the Church, as he conceived it. The purpose of his two colleges was to remedy the shortness of clergy in his day, and to assist themilitia clericalis, which had been grievously reducedpestilentiis, guerris et aliis mundi miseriis(an obvious reference to the Black Death).
New College was planned on a scale of magnificence which far exceeded any of the earlier colleges. It was emphatically the "New College," [1] and its foundation (it was opened in 1386) marks the final triumph of the college system.
[1] The popular name has entirety displaced its official style. Rather more than a generation ago, an historically minded Wykehamist tried to revive the proper style of his college, and headed all his letters "The College, of St. Mary of Winchester, Oxford." The result was disastrous for him; the replies came to the Vicar of St. Mary's, to St. Mary's Hall, to Winchester, anywhere but to him; and very soon practical necessity overcame antiquarian, propriety.
Its Warden was to have a state corresponding to that of the great mitred abbots; the stables, where he kept his six horses, on the south side of New College Lane (to be seen inPlate Xon the right), show, by their perfect masonry, how well the architect-bishop chose his materials and how skilfully they were worked.
The entrance tower, in the centre of the picture, with its statues of the Blessed Virgin and of the Founder in adoration below on her left, was the abode of the Warden; but his lodgings, still the most magnificent home in Oxford, extended in both directions from the tower.
Behind this front lay Wykeham's Quad, nestling under the shadow of the towering chapel and hall on the north side. Here also, as in the stables, the technical knowledge of the Founder is seen; his "chambers," after more than 500 years, have still their old stone unrenewed; while the third story, added 300 years later on (1674-5), has had to be entirely refaced.
But it is in the public buildings, and especially in the chapel, that the greatness of Wykeham, as an architect, is best seen. In spite of the destructive fanaticism of the Reformation, and the almost equally destructive "restorations" of the notorious Wyatt, and of Sir Gilbert Scott (who inexcusably raised the height of the roof), the chapel still is indisputably the finest in Oxford. And its glass may challenge a still wider field. The eight great windows in the ante-chapel, dating from the Founder's time, rival the glories of the French cathedrals; the windows of the chapel proper, whatever be thought of their artistic success, are a unique instance of what English glass-makers could do in the eighteenth century; and Sir Joshua Reynolds' west window (the outside of which is seen in the centre of the next picture) has at all events the suffrages of the majority, who agree with Horace Walpole that it is "glorious," and that "the sun shining through the transparencies has a magic effect." It must be added, however, that Walpole soon changed his mind, and was very severe on Sir Joshua's "washy virtues," which have been compared to "seven chambermaids."
Not the least interesting feature of the Founder's chapel is its detached bell-tower, seen in the next picture, on the north side of the cloisters. He obtained leave to place this on the city wall, a large section of which the College undertook to maintain-thus adding a permanent charm to their own garden.
The magnificence of the Founder Bishop is well seen in his splendid crozier, bequeathed to him by his college, and still preserved on the north side of the chapel. The results of his work, for Oxford and for learning, will be briefly told of in the next chapter.
Plate XI. New College : The Tower
"Round thy cloisters, in moonlight,Branching dark, or touched with white:Round old chill aisles, where, moon-smitten,Blanches the Orate, writtenUnder each worn old-world face."L. JOHHSON.
William of Wykeham's College had other marked features besides its magnificent scale. Previous colleges had grown; at New College everything was organized from the first. As the great architectural History of Cambridge says: "For the first time, chapel, hall, library, treasury, the Warden's lodgings, a sufficient range of chambers, the cloister, the various domestic offices, are provided for and erected without change of plan." The chapel especially gave the model for the T shape, a choir and transepts without a nave, which has become the normal form in Oxford. The influence of Wykeham's building plan may be traced elsewhere also—at Cambridge and even in Scotland.
In these well-planned buildings, definite arrangements were made for college instruction, as opposed to the general teaching open to the whole University; specialinformaforeswere provided, who were to supervise the work of all scholars up to the age of sixteen. This marks the beginning of the Tutorial System, which has ever since played so great a part in the intellectual life of England's two old Universities.
Wykeham's scholars all came from Winchester, and were supposed to bepauperes, but as one of the first, Henry Chichele, afterwards Henry V's Archbishop of Canterbury and the Founder of All Souls', was a son of the Lord Mayor of London, it is obvious that the qualification of "poverty" was interpreted with some laxity. It was not until the middle of the nineteenth century that others than Wykehamists were admitted as scholars.
The fact that a mere boy was elected to a position which provided for him for life was not calculated to stimulate subsequent intellectual activity, and Wykehamists themselves have been among the first to say that the intellectual distinction of the great bishop's beneficiaries has by no means corresponded to the magnificence of the foundation or the noble intentions of the Founder. Antony Wood records in the seventeenth century that there was already an "ugly proverb" as to New College men—"Golden scholars, silver Bachelors, leaden Masters, wooden Doctors," "which is attributed," he goes on, "to their rich fellowships, especially to their ease and good diet, in which I think they exceed any college else."
The nineteenth century has changed all this; the small and close college of pre-Commission days has become one of the largest and most intellectual in the University; but Winchester men in their Oxford college fully hold their own in every way against the scholars from the world outside, who are now admitted to share with them the advantages of Wykeham's foundation.
The bishop's careful provision, however, of good teaching at his school and in his college bore good fruit at first, whatever may have been the result later. If Corpus is especially the college of the revival of learning, New College had prepared the way, and the first Englishman to teach Greek in Oxford was the New College fellow, William Grocyn, whom Erasmus called the "most upright and best of all Britons." From the same college, about the same time, came the patron of Erasmus, Archbishop Warham, of whose saintly simplicity and love of learning he gives so attractive a picture. Warham was not forgetful of his old college, and presented the beautiful "linen fold" panelling which still adorns the hall.
At the time of the Reformation, New College was especially attached to the old form of the faith, and it has been maintained that the dangerous lowness of the wicket entrance in the Gate Tower was due to the deliberate purpose of the governing body, who resolved that everyone who entered the college, however Protestant his views, should bow his head under the statue of the Blessed Virgin above. At any rate, one New College man in the seventeenth century attributed his perversion to "the lively memorials of Popery in statues and pictures in the gates and in the chapel of New College."
Certain it is that under Elizabeth, after the purging of the college from its recusant fellows, who contributed a large share of the Roman controversialists to the colleges of Louvain and Douai, Wykeham's foundation sank, as has been said, into inglorious ease for two centuries. Yet, during this period, it had the honour of producing two of the Seven Bishops who resisted King James II's attack on the English Constitution—one of them the saintly hymn writer, Thomas Ken. And to the darkest days of the eighteenth century belongs the most famous picture of the ideal Oxford life: "I spent many years, in that illustrious society, in a well-regulated course of useful discipline and studies, and in the agreeable and improving commerce of gentlemen and of scholars; in a society where emulation without envy, ambition without jealousy, contention without animosity, incited industry and awakened genius; where a liberal pursuit of knowledge and a genuine freedom of thought was raised, encouraged, and pushed forward by example, by commendation, and by authority." These were the words of Bishop Lowth, whose great work onThe Poetry of the Hebrewswas delivered as lectures for the Chair of Poetry at Oxford.
The spirit of Oxford has never been better described, and even that bitter critic, the great historian Gibbon, admits that Lowth practised what he preached, and that he was an ornament to the University in its darkest period. Of the days of Reform a forerunner was found in Sydney Smith, the witty Canon of St. Paul's.
The names of New College men famous for learning or for political success, during the last half-century, are too recent to mention, but it is fitting to put on record that to New College belongs the sad distinction of having the longest Roll of Honour in the late War. It has lost about 250 of its sons, including four of the most distinguished young tutors in Oxford; History and Philosophy, Scholarship and Natural Science are all of them the poorer for the premature loss of Cheesman and Heath, Hunter and Geoffrey Smith; their names are familiar to everyone in Oxford, and they would have been familiar some day to the world of scholars everywhere.Dis aliter visum est.
"This is the chapel; here, my son,Thy father dreamed the dreams of youth,And heard the words, which, one by one,The touch of life has turned to truth."NEWBOLT.
Plate XII. Lincoln College : The Chapel Interior
The name of Lincoln College recalls a fact familiar to all students of ecclesiastical history, though surprising to the ordinary man—viz., that Oxford, till the Reformation, was in the great diocese of Lincoln, which stretched right across the Midlands from the Humber to the Thames. This fact had an important bearing on the history of the University; its bishop was near enough to help and protect, but not near enough to interfere constantly. Hence arose the curious position of the Oxford Chancellor, the real head of the mediaeval University and still its nominal head; though an ecclesiastical dignitary, and representing the Bishop, the Oxford Chancellor was not a cathedral official, but the elect of the resident Masters of Arts. How important this arrangement was for the independence of the University will be obvious.
The ecclesiastical position of Oxford is responsible also for the foundation of four of its colleges; both Lincoln and Brasenose, colleges that touch each other, were founded by Bishops of Lincoln; Foxe and Wolsey, too, though holding other sees later, ruled over the great midland diocese.
Richard Fleming, the Bishop of Lincoln, who founded the college that bears the name of his see, was in some ways a remarkable man. When resident in Oxford, he had been prominent among the followers of John Wycliffe and had shared his reforming views; but he was alarmed at the development of his master's teaching in the hands of disciples, and set himself to oppose the movement which he had once favoured. He founded his "little college" with the express object of training "theologians" "to defend the mysteries of the sacred page against those ignorant laics, who profaned with swinish snouts its most holy pearls." It is curious that Lincoln's great title to fame—and it is a very great one—is that its most distinguished fellow was John Wesley, the Wycliffe of the eighteenth century.
The connection of Oxford and Lincoln College with Wesley and his movement is no accidental one, based merely on the fact that he resided there for a certain time. Humanly speaking, Wesley's connection with Lincoln was a determining factor in his spiritual and mental development, and it was while he was there that his followers received the name of "Methodists," a name given in scorn, but one which has become a thing of pride to millions. Wesley was a fellow of Lincoln for nine years, from 1726 to 1735. During the most impressionable years of a man's life—he was only twenty-three when he was elected fellow—he was developing his mental powers by an elaborate course of studies, and his spiritual life by the careful use of every form of religious discipline which the Church prescribed. A college, with its daily services and its life apart from the world, rendered the practice of such discipline possible. It was because Wesley and his followers, his brother Charles, George Whitefield and others, observed this discipline so carefully that they obtained their nickname. It is with good reason that Lincoln Chapel is visited by his disciples from all parts of the world; it has been little altered since his time, his pulpit is still here, and the glass and the carving which make it very interesting, if not beautiful, are those which he saw daily.
The chapel is the memorial of the devotion to Lincoln of another churchman, more successful than Wesley from a worldly point of view, but now forgotten by all except professed students of history. John Williams, Bishop of Lincoln from 1621 to 1641, was the last ecclesiastic who "kept" the Great Seal of England. He had the misfortune to differ from Laud on the Church Question of the day, and was prosecuted before the Star Chamber for subornation of perjury, and heavily fined. There seems no doubt that he was guilty; but it was to advocacy of moderation and to his dislike of the king's arbitrary rule that he owed the severity of his punishment. Whatever his moral character, at all events he gave his college a beautiful little chapel, which is often compared to the slightly older one at Wadham; that of Lincoln is much the less spacious of the two, but in its wood carvings, at any rate, it is superior.
Lincoln had the ill-fortune, in the nineteenth century, to produce the writer of one of those academic "Memoirs," which reveal, with a scholar's literary style, and also with a scholar's bitterness, the intrigues and quarrels that from time to time arise within college walls. Mark Pattison is likely to be remembered by the world in general because he is said to have been the original of George Eliot's "Mr. Casaubon"; in Oxford he will be remembered not only for the "Memoirs," but also as one who upheld the highest ideal of "Scholarship" when it was likely to be forgotten, and who criticized the neglect of "research." The personal attacks were those of a disappointed man; the criticisms, one-sided as they were, were certainly not unjustified.
A university should certainly exist to promote learning, and Mark Pattison, with all his unfairness, certainly helped its cause in Oxford. But a university exists also for the promotion of friendships among young men, and for the development of their social life. Of this duty, Oxford has never been unmindful, and perhaps it is in small colleges like Lincoln that the flowers of friendship best flourish. It is needless to make comparisons, for they flourish everywhere; but it is appropriate to quote, when writing of one of the smaller Oxford colleges, the verses on this subject of a recent Lincoln poet (now dead); they will come home to every Oxford man: