Part 5

In the early part of the eighteenth century there was some intellectual life in Christ Church, to which Westminster still sent up good scholars, and which was the resort of the nobility, in whom youthful ambition and desire for improvement might be stirred by the influences of political homes, and the prospects of a public life. Dean Aldrich was a scholar and a virtuoso. The spire of All Saints' Church is a soaring monument of his taste, if not of his genius, for architecture. In the controversy with Bentley about the Epistles of Phalaris, Christ Church, though she was hopelessly in the wrong, showed that she had some learning and some interest in classical studies. Otherwise the eighteenth century is a blank, or worse than a blank, in the history of the University. The very portraits on the College walls disclose the void of any but ecclesiastical eminence. That tendency to torpor, which, as Adam Smith and Turgot have maintained, is inherent in the system of endowments, fell upon Oxford in full measure. The Colleges had now, by the increase in value of their estates, become rich, some of them very rich. The estates of Magdalen, Gibbon tells us, were thought to be worth thirty thousand pounds a year, equivalent to double that sum now. Instead of being confined to their original Commons and Livery, the Heads and Fellows, as administrators of the estate, were now dividing among themselves annually large rentals, though they failed to increase in equal proportion the stipends of the Scholars and others who had no share in the administration. The statutes of mediæval Founders had become utterly obsolete, and were disregarded, notwithstanding the oath taken to observe them, or observed only so far as they guarded the interest of sinecurists against the public. Nor were any other duties assumed. A few of the Fellows in each College added to their income by holding the tutorships, the functions of which they usually performed in the most slovenly way, each Tutor professing to teach all subjects, while most of them knew none. In the Common Room, with which each of the Colleges now provided itself, the Fellows spent lives of Trulliberian luxury, drinking, smoking, playing at bowls, and, as Gibbon said, by their deep but dull potations excusing the brisk intemperance of youth. Even the obligation to residence was relaxed, and at last practically annulled, so that a great part of the Fellowships became sinecure stipends held by men unconnected with the University. About the only restriction which remained was that on marriage. Out of this the Heads had managed to slip their necks, and from the time of Elizabeth downwards there had been married Heads, to the great scandal of Anthony Wood and other academical precisians, to whom, in truth, one lady, at least, the wife of Warden Clayton of Merton, seems to have afforded some grounds for criticism by her usurpations. But in the case of the Fellows, the statute, being not constructive, but express, could not be evaded except by stealth, and by an application of the aphorism then current, that he might hold anything who would hold his tongue. The effect of this, celibacy being no longer the rule, was to make all the Fellows look forward to the benefices, of a number of which each College was the patron, and upon which they could marry. Thus devotion to a life of study or education in College, had a Fellow been inclined to it, was impossible, under the ordinary conditions of modern life. Idleness, intemperance, and riot were rife among the students, as we learn from the novels and memoirs of the day. Especially were they the rule among the noblemen and gentlemen-commoners, who were privileged by their birth and wealth, and to whom by the servility of the Dons every license was allowed. Some Colleges took only gentlemen-commoners, who paid high fees and did what they pleased. All Souls' took no students at all, and became a mere club which, by a strange perversion of a clause in their statutes, was limited to men of high family. The University as a teaching and examining body had fallen into a dead swoon. Few of the Professors even went through the form of lecturing, and the statutory obligation of attendance was wholly disregarded by the students. The form of mediæval disputations was kept up by the farcical repetition of strings of senseless syllogisms, which were handed down from generation to generation of students. The very nomenclature of the system had become unmeaning. Candidates for the theological degree paced the Divinity School for an hour, nominally challenging opponents to disputation, but the door was locked by the Bedel, that no opponent might appear. Examinations were held, but the candidates, by feeing the University officer, were allowed to choose their own examiners, and they treated the examiner after the ordeal. The two questions, "What is the meaning of Golgotha?" and "Who founded University College?" comprised the examination upon which Lord Eldon took his degree. A little of that elegant scholarship, with the power of writing Latin verses, of which Addison was the cynosure, was the most of which Oxford could boast. Even this there could hardly have been had not the learned languages happened to have formed an official part of the equipment of the clerical profession. Of science, or the mental habit which science forms, there was none. Such opportunities for study, such libraries, such groves, a livelihood so free from care could scarcely fail, now and then, to give birth to a learned man, an Addison, a Lowth, a Thomas Warton, an Elmsley, a Martin Routh.

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The Universities being the regular finishing schools of the gentry and the professions, men who had passed through them became eminent in after life, but they owed little or nothing to the University. Only in this way can Oxford lay claim to the eminence of Bishop Butler, Jeremy Bentham, or Adam Smith, while Gibbon is her reproach. The figures of Lord Eldon and Lord Stowell, whose ponderous twin statues sit side by side in the Library of University College, were more academical, especially that of Lord Stowell, who was Tutor of his College, and held a lectureship of Ancient History. Here and there a Tutor of the better stamp, no doubt, would try to do his duty by his pupils. A rather pathetic interest attaches to Richard Newton, who tried to turn Hart Hall into a real place of education, and had some distinguished pupils, among them Charles Fox. But the little lamp which he had kindled went out in the uncongenial air. On the site, thanks to the munificence of Mr. Baring, now stands Hertford College. Johnson's residence at Pembroke College was short, and his narrative shows that it was unprofitable, though his High Church principles afterwards made him a loyal son and eulogist of the University. One good effect the interdiction of marriage had. It kept up a sort of brotherhood, and saved corporate munificence from extinction by the private interest of fathers of families. As the College revenues increased, building went on, though after the false classical fashion of the times and mostly for the purpose of College luxury. Now rose the new quadrangle of Queen's, totally supplanting the mediæval College, and the new buildings at Magdalen and Corpus. A plan is extant, horrible to relate, for the total demolition of the old quadrangle of Magdalen, and its replacement by a modern palace of idleness in the Italian style. To this century belong Peckwater and Canterbury quadrangles, also in the classical style, the first redeemed by the Library which fills one side of the square, and which has a heavy architectural grandeur as well as a noble purpose. To the eighteenth century we also mainly owe the College gardens and walks as we see them; and the gardens of St. John's, New College, Wadham, Worcester, and Exeter, with the lime walk at Trinity and the Broadwalk--now unhappily but a wreck--at Christ Church, may plead to a student's heart for some mitigation of the sentence on the race of clerical idlers and wine-bibbers, who, for a century, made the University a place, not of education and learning, but of dull sybaritism, and a source, not of light, but of darkness, to the nation. It is sad to think how different the history of England might have been had Oxford and Cambridge done their duty, like Harvard and Yale, during the last century.

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At the end of the last or beginning of the present century came the revival. At the end of the last century Christ Church had some brilliant classical scholars among her students, though the great scene of their eminence was not the study but the senate. The portraits of Wellesley and Canning hang in her Hall. In the early part of the present century the general spirit of reform and progress, which had been repressed during the struggle with revolutionary France, began to move again over the face of the torpid waters. Eveleigh, Provost of Oriel, led the way. At his College and at Balliol the elections to Fellowships were free from local or genealogical restrictions. They were now opened to merit, and those two Colleges, though not among the first in wealth or magnificence, attained a start in the race of regeneration which Balliol, being very fortunate in its Heads, has since in a remarkable manner maintained. The examination system of Laud had lacked a motive power, and had depended, like his policy, on his fiat instead of vital force. There was no sufficient inducement for the examiner to be strict or for the candidate to excel. The motive power was now supplied by a list of honours in classics and mathematics, and among the earliest winners in the first class in both schools was Robert Peel.

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Scarcely, however, had the University begun to awake to a new life, when it was swept by another ecclesiastical storm, the consequence of its unhappy identification with clericism and the State Church. The liberal movement which commenced after the fall of Napoleon and carried the Reform Bill, threatened to extend to the religious field, and to withdraw the support of the State from the Anglican Church. This led the clergy to look out for another basis, which they found in the reassertion of High Church and sacerdotal doctrines, such as apostolical succession, eucharistical real presence, and baptismal regeneration. Presently the movement assumed the form of a revival of the Church of the Middle Ages, such as High Church imagination pictured it, and ultimately of secession to Rome. Oxford, with her mediæval buildings, her High Church tradition, her half-monastic Colleges, and her body of unmarried clergy, became the centre of the movement. The Romanising tendencies of Tractarianism, as from the "Tracts for the Times" it was called, visible from the first, though disclaimed by the leaders, aroused a fierce Protestant reaction, which encountered Tractarianism both in the press and in the councils of the University. The Armageddon of the ecclesiastical war was the day on which, in a gathering of religious partisans from all sections of the country which the Convocation House would not hold, so that it was necessary to adjourn to the Sheldonian Theatre, Ward, the most daring of the Tractarian writers, after a scene of very violent excitement, was deprived of his degree. This was the beginning of the end. Newman, the real leader of the movement, though Pusey, from his academical rank, was the official leader, soon recognised the place to which his principles belonged, and was on his knees before a Roman Catholic priest, supplicating for admission to the Church of Rome. A ritualistic element remained, and now reigns, in the Church of England; but the party which Newman left, bereft of Newman, broke up, and its relics were cast like drift-wood on every theological or philosophical shore. Newman's poetic version of mediæval religion, together with the spiritual graces of his style and his personal influence, had for a time filled the imaginations and carried away the hearts of youth, while the seniors were absorbed in the theological controversy, renounced lay studies, and disdained educational duty except as it might afford opportunities of winning youthful souls to the Neo-Catholic faith. Academical duty would have been utterly lost in theological controversy, had it not been for the Class List, which bound the most intellectual undergraduates to lay studies by their ambition, and kept on foot a staff of private teachers, "coaches," as they were called, to prepare men for the examinations, who did the duty which the ecclesiastical Fellows of the University disdained. The Oxford movement has left a monument of itself in the College founded in memory of Keble, the gentle and saintly author of "The Christian Year." It has left an ampler monument in the revival of mediæval architecture at Oxford, and the style of new buildings which everywhere meet the eye. The work of the Oxford Architectural Society, which had its birth in the Neo-Catholic movement, may prove more durable than that movement itself. Of the excess to which the architectural revival was carried, the new Library at University College, more like a mediæval Chapel than a Library, is a specimen. It was proposed to give Neo-Catholicism yet another monument by erecting close to the spot where Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley died for truth, the statue of Cardinal Newman, the object of whose pursuit through life had been, not truth, but an ecclesiastical ideal. Of the reaction against the Tractarian movement the monument is the memorial to the Protestant martyrs Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley, the subscription for which commenced among the Protestants who had come up to vote for the condemnation of Ward, and which Tractarians scornfully compared to the heap of stones raised over the body of Achan.

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Here ended the reign of ecclesiasticism, of the Middle Ages, and of religious exclusion. The collision into which Romanising Oxford had been brought with the Protestantism of the British nation, probably helped to bring on the revolution which followed, and which restored the University to learning, science, and the nation. The really academical element in the University invoked the aid of the national government and Legislature. A Royal Commission of Inquiry into the state of the University and its Colleges was appointed, and though some Colleges closed their muniment rooms, and inquiry was obstructed, enough was revealed in the Report amply to justify legislative reform and emancipation. An act of Parliament was passed which set free the University and Colleges alike from their mediæval statutes, restored the University Professoriate, opened the Fellowships to merit, and relaxed the religious tests. The curriculum, the examination system, and the honour list were liberalised, and once more, as in early times, all the great departments of knowledge were recognised and domiciled in the University. Science, long an exile, was welcomed back to her home at the moment when a great extension of her empire was at hand. Strictly professional studies, such as practical law and medicine, could not be recalled from their professional seats. Elections to Fellowships by merit replaced election by local or school preferences, by kinship, or by the still more objectionable influences which at one time had been not unfelt. Colleges which had declined the duty of education, which had been dedicated to sinecurism and indolence, and whose quadrangles had stood empty, were filled with students, and once more presented a spectacle which would have gladdened the heart of the Founder. A Commission, acting on a still more recent Act of Parliament, has carried the adaptation of Oxford to the modern requirements of science and learning further than the old Commission, which acted in the penumbra of mediæval and ecclesiastical tradition, dared. The intellectual Oxford of the present day is almost a fresh creation. Its spirit is new; it is liberal, free, and progressive. It is rather too revolutionary, grave seniors say, so far as the younger men are concerned. This is probably only the first forward bound of recovered freedom, which will be succeeded in time by the sober pace of learning and scientific investigation. Again, as in the thirteenth century, the day of Grosseteste and Simon de Montfort, Oxford is a centre of progress, instead of being, as under the later Stuarts, the stronghold of reaction. Of the College revival, the monuments are all around in the new buildings, for which increasing numbers have called, and which revived energy has supplied. Christ Church, New College, Magdalen, Merton, Balliol, Trinity, University have all enlarged their courts, and in almost every College new life has been shown by improvement or restoration. Of the reign of mediævalism the only trace is the prevalence in the new buildings of the mediæval style, which architectural harmony seemed to require, though the new buildings of Christ Church and Trinity are proofs of a happy emancipation from architectural tradition. The University revival has its monument in the new examination Schools in High Street, where the student can no longer get his degree by giving the meaning of Golgotha and the name of the Founder of University College. There are those who, like Mark Pattison, look on it with an evil eye, regarding the examination system as a noxious excrescence and as fatal to spontaneous study and research; though they would hardly contend that spontaneous study and research flourished much at Oxford before the revival of examinations, or deny that since the revival Oxford has produced the fruits of study and research, at least to a fair extent. The restoration of science is proclaimed by the new Museum yonder; a strange structure, it must be owned, which symbolises, by the unfitness of its style for its purpose, at once the unscientific character of the Middle Ages, and the lingering attachment of Oxford to the mediæval type. Of the abolition of the religious tests, and the restoration of the University to the nation, a monument is Mansfield College for Congregationalists, a vision of which would have thrown an orthodox and Tory Head of a College into convulsions half a century ago. Even here the mediæval style of architecture keeps its hold, though the places of Catholic Saints are taken by the statues of Wycliffe, Luther, John Knox, Whitefield, and Wesley. By the side of Mansfield College rises also Manchester College for Independents, in the same architectural style. Neither of them, however, is in the Oxford sense a College; both are places of theological instruction.

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On the North of the city, where fifty years ago stretched green fields, is now seen a suburb of villas, all of them bespeaking comfort and elegance, few of them overweening wealth. These are largely the monuments of another great change, the removal of the rule of celibacy from the Fellowships, and the introduction of a large body of married teachers devoted to their profession, as well as of the revival of the Professorships, which were always tenable by married men. Fifty years ago the wives of Heads of Houses, who generally married late in life if they married at all, constituted, with one or two officers of the University, the whole female society of Oxford. The change was inevitable, if education was to be made a profession, instead of being, as it had been in the hands of celibate Fellows of Colleges, merely the transitory occupation of a man whose final destination was the parish. Those who remember the old Common Room life, which is now departing, cannot help looking back with a wistful eye to its bachelor ease, its pleasant companionship, its interesting talk and free interchange of thought, its potations neither "deep" nor "dull." Nor were its symposia without important fruits when such men as Newman and Ward, on one side, encountered such men as Whately, Arnold, and Tait, on the other side, in Common Room talk over great questions of the day. But the life became dreary when a man had passed forty, and it is well exchanged for the community that fills those villas, and which, with its culture, its moderate and tolerably equal incomes, permitting hospitality but forbidding luxury, and its unity of interests with its diversity of acquirements and accomplishments, seems to present the ideal conditions of a pleasant social life. The only question is, how the College system will be maintained when the Fellows are no longer resident within the walls of the College to temper and control the younger members, for a barrack of undergraduates is not a good thing. The personal bond and intercourse between Tutor and pupil under the College system was valuable as well as pleasant; it cannot be resigned without regret. But its loss will be compensated by far superior teaching. Half a century ago conservatism strove to turn the railway away from Oxford. But the railway came, and it brings, on summer Sundays, to the city of study and thought not a few leaders of the active world. Oxford is now, indeed, rather too attractive; her academical society is in danger of being swamped by the influx of non-academical residents.

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