Chapter 3

"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 lie And 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 How should it deal with books indispensable for a short time, perhaps for one generation, and then superseded?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.

ORIEL COLLEGE

"Here at each coign of every antique street A 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, whose /Christian Year/ did 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.

QUEEN'S COLLEGE

"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 in Plate IX on 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 arrangement /after/ grace 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; the /aiguille et fil/ is 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."

NEW COLLEGE (1) FOUNDER AND BUILDINGS

"There the kindly fates allowed Me 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 the /militia clericalis/, which had been grievously reduced /pestilentiis, 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 in Plate X on 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]

NEW COLLEGE (2) HISTORY

"Round thy cloisters, in moonlight, Branching dark, or touched with white: Round old chill aisles, where, moon-smitten, Blanches the Orate, written Under 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; special /informafores/ were 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 be /pauperes/, 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.