Chapter 2

It is refreshing to turn from the thought of so much dead industry, as these multitudes of unread books will represent, to the inspiration of the buildings. They are the very epitome of Oxford. The classic symmetry of Gibbs' dome looks across at the soaring spire of the mediaeval University Church, while the Bodleian is one of the best examples of the Jacobean Gothic, which still held its own in Oxford when the classical style was triumphing elsewhere. Such contrasts are typical of Oxford. The University had a European reputation in the days when it was one of the two great centres of mediaeval scholasticism. Roger Bacon, the most famous name in mediaeval science, no doubt saw the tower of St. Mary's beginning to rise. The University welcomed the Classical Revival, it survived the storms of the Reformation, it was the great centre of the building up of Anglican theology under the Laudian rule, it was one of the inspirations of English science in the seventeenth century, though Dr. Radcliffe's generous benefactions are a little later, and have hardly begun to yield their full fruit till our own day. Such are the learned traditions of the Radcliffe Square, while it has also been the centre of the young lives which, for seven centuries at least, have enjoyed their happiest years in Oxford.

The view from the Radcliffe roof is undoubtedly the best in Oxford. It has been thus described by the worst of the many poets who have celebrated the University:

"Spire, tower and steeple, roofs of radiant tile, The costly temple and collegiate pile, In sumptuous mass of mingled form and hue, Await the wonder of thy sateless view."

But Robert Montgomery is more likely to be remembered for Macaulay's merciless but well-deserved chastisement than for his praises of Oxford. Even their utter bathos cannot degrade a group of buildings so wonderful.

THE BROAD STREET

"Ye mossy piles of old munificence, At once the pride of learning and defence." J. WARTON, /Triumph of Isis/

The east side of the University buildings proper was shown in the last picture (Plate III); in the following (Plate IV), the north side of the same block is seen. The old University "schools" lay just inside the city wall, and Broad Street, which is there represented, occupies the site of the ditch, which ran on the north of the wall. This picture is a fitting supplement to the last, for the Sheldonian Theatre on the right of it and the Clarendon Building in the background may claim rank even with the Bodleian and the Radcliffe as the University's special buildings.

The Sheldonian celebrated its two hundred and fiftieth anniversary only last year (1919), when the music which had been performed at its opening was performed once more. It is a building interesting from many points of view. Architecturally it marks the first complete flowering of the genius of Sir Christopher Wren. He was only thirty- seven when it was completed, and had been previously known rather as a man of science than as an architect; he was Oxford's Professor of Astronomy; but Archbishop Sheldon chose him to build a worthy meeting place for his University, even as at the same time he was being called by the king to prepare plans for rebuilding London after the Great Fire.

The very existence of the Sheldonian marks the development of University ideas. The simple piety--or was it the worldliness?--of Pre-Reformation Oxford had seen nothing unsuitable in the ceremonies of graduate Oxford and the ribaldries of undergraduate Oxford taking place in the consecrated building of St. Mary's; but the more sober genius of Anglicanism was shocked at these secular intrusions, and Sheldon provided his University with a worthy home, where its great functions have been performed ever since.

The building is a triumph of construction; it is doubtful if so large an unsupported roof can be found elsewhere; but Wren is not to be held responsible for the outside ugly flat roof, which was put on 100 years ago, because it was said, quite falsely, that Wren's roof was unsafe. That architect had set himself the problem of getting the greatest number of people into the space at his disposal, and he managed to fit in a building that will hold 1,500. It was also intended for the Printing Press of the University, but was only used in that way for a short time, as in 1713 Sir John Vanbrugh put up the Clarendon Building, to house this department of University activity. The "heaviness" of Vanbrugh's buildings was a jest even in his own time; someone wrote as an epitaph for him

"Lie heavy on him. Earth, for he Laid many a heavy load on thee."

Blenheim Palace, his greatest work, is indeed a "heavy load." But the same criticism can hardly be brought against the columned portico, which forms a fine ending for the Broad Street. Vanbrugh's building was superseded in its turn, when the increasing business of the Oxford Printing Press was moved to the present building in 1830.

[Plate IV. Sheldonian Theatre, etc., Broad Street]

Since then, all kinds of University business have been carried on in the old Printing Press. The University Registrar and the University Treasurer (his style is "Secretary of the University Chest") have their offices there; the Proctors exercise discipline from there; the various University delegacies and committees meet there. And another side of Oxford life, not yet (in January 1920) fully recognized as belonging to the University, has found a home there; the top floor has been for twenty years past the centre of women's education in Oxford, a position elevated indeed, for it is up more than fifty stairs, but commodious and dignified when reached at last.

Perhaps the Clarendon Building has gained in lightness of effect by being contrasted with the clumsy mass of the Indian Institute, which forms the background of our picture. The nineteenth century proudly criticized the taste of the eighteenth; but it may well be doubted if any building in Oxford of the earlier and much-abused century is more inartistic and inappropriate than "Jumbo's Joss House," which used to rouse the scorn and anger of the late Professor of History, Edward A. Freeman.

No Oxford colleges are in this picture, though a small part of Exeter, one of Sir Gilbert Scott's least happy erections in Oxford, appears on the right, and a little piece of Trinity on the left; the last-named is the college of Professor Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, better known as "Q," one of the most delightful of Oxford's minor poets. The opening lines of his poem, "Alma Mater,"

"Know ye her secret none can utter, Hers of the book, the tripled crown? Still on the spire the pigeons flutter, Still by the gateway flits the gown, Still in the street from corbel and gutter Faces of stone look down,"

may well have been inspired by this very scene in the Broad, for the grim faces of stone that surround the Sheldonian are one of the features and the puzzles of Oxford. Are they the Roman Emperors, or the Greek Philosophers, or neither? It does not matter, for they are unlike anything in heaven or in earth, and yet they are loved by all true Oxford men for their uncompromising ugliness, which has been familiar to so many generations.

BALLIOL COLLEGE

"For the house of Balliol is builded ever By all the labours of all her sons, And the great deed wrought and the grand endeavour Will be hers as long as the Isis runs." F. S. BOAS

The story is told of the old Greek admirals, after their victory at Salamis over the Persian king, that, when invited to name the two most deserving commanders, they each put their own name first, and then one and all put the Athenian Themistocles second. If a vote, on these principles, were taken in Oxford as to which was the best college, there is little doubt that Balliol would secure most of the second votes.

It is one of the three oldest colleges, and actually has been in occupation of its present site longer than any other of our Oxford foundations--for more than six centuries and a half. Yet its greatness is but a thing of yesterday compared to the antiquity of Oxford, and it is fitting that a college which has come to the front in the nineteenth century should be mainly housed in nineteenth century buildings.

Balliol has indeed ceased to be the "most satisfactory pile and range of old lowered and gabled edifices," which Nathaniel Hawthorne saw in the "fifties" of the last century. The painful imitation of a French chateau, the work of Sir Alfred Waterhouse, which forms the main part of our picture, was put up about 1868 (mainly by the munificence of Miss Hannah Brackenbury), and only the old hall and the library, which lie behind, remain of Pre-Reformation Balliol.

In the background of our picture (Plate V) can be seen the Fisher Building, known to all Balliol men for the still existing inscription, "Verbum non amplius Fisher," which tradition says was put up at the dying request of the eighteenth-century benefactor.

While it is true that the pre-eminence of Balliol is a growth of the nineteenth century, yet the college can count among its worthies one of the greatest names in English mediaeval history, that of John Wycliffe. He was probably a scholar of Balliol, and certainly Master for some years about 1360. But he left the college for a country living, and his time at Balliol is not associated with either of his most important works--his translation of the Bible or his order of "Poor Preachers." While at Balliol, he was rather "the last of the Schoolmen" than "the first of the Reformers."

The modern greatness of Balliol is due to the fact that the college awoke more rapidly from the sleep of the eighteenth century than most of Oxford, and as early as 1828 threw open its scholarships to free competition. Hence even as early as the time of Dr. Arnold at Rugby, a "Balliol scholarship" had become "the blue riband of public-school education." It has now passed into popular phraseology to such an extent that lady novelists, unversed in academic niceties, confer a "Balliol scholarship" on their heroes, even when entering Cambridge.

Balliol has known how to take full advantage of its opportunity. Governed by a series of eminent masters, especially Dr. Scott of Greek dictionary fame, and Professor Jowett, the translator of Plato and the hero of more Oxford stories than any other man, it has been ready to adapt itself to every new movement. While the governing bodies of other colleges in the middle of the last century were too often looking only to raising their own fellowships to the highest possible point, the Balliol dons were denying their own pockets to enrich and strengthen their college.

Hence, undoubtedly, Balliol for a long time past has had a lion's share of Oxford's great men; two Archbishops of Canterbury, Tait and Temple, the present Archbishop of York, Cardinal Manning, a Prime Minister in Mr. Asquith, a Speaker in Lord. Peel, two Viceroys of India in Lord Lansdowne and Lord Curzon, poets like Clough, Matthew Arnold and Swinburne, these are only some of the more outstanding names. It is this which makes Balliol Hall so particularly interesting to the ordinary man; knowledge of present-day affairs, not of history, is all that is needed to appreciate its array of portraits.

Nor has Balliol been unmindful of the social movements of our time. It is the chosen home of the Workers' Educational Association in Oxford, and in Arnold Toynbee it produced one of the pioneers and martyrs of modern social progress. Truly Balliol has much more to show to the visitor than its ultra-modern front on the Broad would promise.

The street, on which Balliol looks out, is associated with the most famous scene of Oxford history; the stone with a cross in the middle of the road marks the traditional site of the burning of the bishops, Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, although their memorial has been erected 200 yards further north in St. Giles', and though antiquarians argue (probably correctly) that the actual pyre was a little further south, in fact, behind the present row of Broad Street houses.

But it is the living activity of the college, not the sad memories of the street in front, that gives the interest to the picture. The intellectual life of the Balliol men has been well described by Professor J. C. Shairp, whose verses on "Balliol Scholars" are likely to be remembered by Oxford in long days to come for their associations, if not for their poetic merits. He describes what a privilege it is "to have passed," with men who became famous afterwards,

"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 joy That 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]

MERTON COLLEGE

"I passed beside the reverend walls In 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 their /alma 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 the /Tatler/. 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 his /Tatler/; 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 raised /monumentum aere perennius/ to himself, in his /History of the University of Oxford/ and his /Athenae Oxonienses/.

[Plate VII. Merton College : The Library Interior]

MERTON LIBRARY

"Hail, tree of knowledge! thy leaves fruit; which well Dost 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 lie To enrich, with interest, posterity." COWLEY.

"The appearance of the library" (at Merton), says the great Cambridge scholar, J. Willis Clark, in his /Care 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 in Plate 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: