DONS ANCIENT AND MODERN
MODERN
The senior members of the University are perhaps as interesting as they
have ever been. The freshman or other critical stranger to the city
finds them less picturesque, if his ideal be anything like that of the
youthful Ruskin, who looked for presences like the Erasmus of Holbein or
Titian’s Magnificoes, and was disappointed at Christ Church by all save
one. For the President or Master, whose absolutism used to be the envy
of kings, now bears his honours inconspicuously. The fellows of colleges
are no longer, indeed, a distinct and noticeable class, but are, for the
most part, purely and simply scholars, or historians, or instructors of
youth. The conscientious, capable, and hard-working Don is probably
commoner than he has ever been; and his success is great. But even he
might echo the cry against a possible tendency towards mere educational
efficiency in fellows, which is expressed in the exclamation: “Nothing
is so much to be feared as that we should one day compete with the
Board Schools.”
“O goodly usage of those antique times,” when it was a sufficient grace
to be a scholar, and it was a kind of virtue to quote from Horace and
never to play upon words outside Homer. Here and there such a man
survives, always old, married to the place, and yet with a widowed air,
looking as if he had crept out of one of the reverend pictures in the
hall, and still clear-sighted enough to see the length of Broad Street
and regret it, fumbling with the spectacles which he bought to protect
his eyes in the first year of railway travelling. No one could draw him
quite so happily as the Sub-Rector of Lincoln College, and in his latest
book he gives us a charming hint, and there, quite appropriately, but
too pathetically, he allows the old scholar to die.
“The Church, indeed,” he writes, “was mouldy enough, and the air within
was close and sleep-giving; and as the old parson murmured his sermon
twice a Sunday from the high old pulpit, his hearers gradually dropped
into a tranquil doze or a pleasant day-dream--all except the old
Scholar, who sat just below, holding his hand to his ear, and eagerly
looking for one of those subtle allusions, those reminiscences of old
reading, or even now and then three words of Latin from Virgil or the
_Imitatio_ with which his lifelong friend would strain a point to please
him. They had been at school together, and at college together, and now
they were spending their last years together, for the old Scholar had
come, none of us knew
[Illustration: MAGDALEN COLLEGE, FROM THE BOTANIC GARDEN
Part of the tower of Magdalen College is seen to the left of the
picture, under which are some of the glass houses of the Botanic
Garden.
Above the pillar surmounted by a vase appears the roof of the
College Hall, and farther to the right sets of rooms and the
kitchens.
Three arches of Magdalen Bridge show to the right.
]
whence, and settled down in the manor-house by the churchyard, hard by
the Rectory of his old companion. And so they walked together through
the still shady avenues of life’s evening, wishing for no change,
reading much and talking little, lovers of old times and old books,
seeking the truth, not indeed in the world around them, but in the
choice words of the wise men of old: _Pia et humilis inquisitio
veritatis per sanas patrum sententias studens ambulare_.
I
Such a one there was, until recently, to be met walking on a fine day
between Magdalen and Oriel; or even, in April, as far as the Shotover
road in expectation of hearing the nightingales; or as far as Carfax to
learn whether the tower was looking any older. He was exquisitely
courteous, without a tinge of mere courtliness, and could hate and
contemn. Such was his loathing of what was unseemly that he begged he
might be awakened by any one that heard him snore. If he was a
misogynist, it was because he was shy and ignorant of women. He would
gently insinuate, and as if it were temerity, that even good women
cannot distinguish between fiction and Jane Austen, and have been known
to deposit pins in ashtrays. He could not express an opinion upon
subjects which he ignored or disliked, and when they were discussed in
the Common Room, he had an irrepressible sympathy with both sides. Thus
he was no politician, but was at one with members of Parliament of both
sides, by means of a little genial commonplace. But on his
hobby-horses--_sublimis in equis_--he had a sweet eloquence which he
“hoped was not persuasive.” For he disliked proselytisers more than
proselytes. In later years, he became too deaf to be quite honest in
answering a stupid or knavish man. He had, too, a little vocal
impediment which he could use rhetorically. Preaching one day at a
country church, he was dwelling at length upon the good qualities of a
prophet.
“That’s parson all over,” murmured now and then a grey parishioner, and
inquired of whom he spoke.
“Isaiah or Habakkuk,” explained his neighbour.
“Then I don’t believe,” answered the disappointed man, “there is such a
person--unless ’tis another name for parson.”
When an old lady lay a-dying, and was troubled concerning the destiny of
her magpie and tame hare after her death, the curate amiably suggested
that Providence would take care of them.
“No, no,” she interposed, “give them to Mr.----.”
He was, despite features which the dull might call plain, remarkably,
and I had almost said physically, beautiful, because of the clear
shining of his character. The tender motives that often moulded his
lips, the purity and grace that found expression in his eyes, and that
fluctuation of the lines of the face in thought which is almost light
and shade, wrought an immortal beauty out of Nature’s poor endowment.
Nor was that only when he was in a fit small company. Some men, when
not moved by such an influence, lapse into that sculptured and muddy
expression which is the chief quality of photographs. You may surprise
them void and waste. But if he was ever surprised, it might be seen that
he turned to the intruder fresh from a spiritual colloquy. His smile, on
opening Plutarch, was as if he blessed and was blessed, and restored the
beholder to the age of the first revival of learning. Very soft--some
said mincing--was his step among his books, as not knowing what or whom
he might disturb. If you saw him in the Bodleian, he seemed its familiar
spirit, and in some way its outward and visible expression or heraldic
device. Though a wide and learned reader, he had published nothing that
had anything to do with books. In his youth he had circulated “An Elegy
written within sight of Keble College,” and in later years speculations
on the Jurassic sea and the migration of birds. He often read aloud to
himself, and even to others on being provoked, in his sounding
wainscotted room in sight of All Saints steeple. Especially he liked to
chant Sophocles, and to the opening of _Electra_ gave a solemn and
almost religious sweetness in the rendering. Then it was that we knew
how he had gained and preserved that notable grace of pronunciation. He
used to say, “It is a fine day,” instead of “Tserfineday.” And thus of
every day he made a rosary of gracious thoughts and deeds among men and
Nature and books; and apparelling a worldly life with the sanctity of
unworldly temperance and charity, his homeliness became dignified
without losing its simplicity, and almost ornate with courtesies that
never set a blush in the face of truth.
II
Of the successful man who is a Don by accident I confess an ignorance
that borders on dislike. He is perhaps a scholar, certainly a courtier.
He has the open secret of perennial youth. It is very likely that he
dabbles in light literature, and may have written a book of fiction or
history with a wide circulation. He was a gay, discursive parodist in
his youth; chose his own ties, or thought he did; worked hard, and
concealed the fact from his inferiors. His extreme caution to-day might
appear indiscreet to an impartial judge. He writes letters to the
_Times_ on important matters on which he seeks information; or if his
old self should be assertive, he writes over the name of “Justice” or
“One who knows” in a penny paper, and is indignant towards the friends
who fail to recognise his style and point of view. In this and every
possible way he keeps a firm connection with the great outer world. He
knows the female cousins of all the undergraduates of his college, and
many of them have been mildly in love with him in a punt. He is often in
London, where he is very academic, and would wish to appear merely
well-informed. When he meets London friends in Oxford, he is anxious to
prove that he at least is not a mere Don; yet his friends can only
wonder that there is now no such thing as an Oxford point of view, but
only an Oxford drawl. His sitting-room is magnificent, and like style,
conceals the man. It is no wonder that a man with such arm-chairs should
be well satisfied. His books are noble up to the year 1800--abundant and
select, often old, always fine; but after the year 1800 a certain
timidity of taste may be observed. Of course his friends’ books are
there, with the books which you are expected to know in country houses.
For the rest, he has overcome the difficulty of selection by not
selecting. As the college has good port and is indifferent in its choice
of white wine, so he has good classics and a jumble of later work. He is
charitable, a ready contributor to approved causes. He has travelled,
and is never reduced to silence in company. He is a good talker, knowing
how not to offend. He is a brilliant host, suave, considerate,--with
comprehensive views,--and ready to make allowances for those who are not
Dons. Perhaps he is in the main a summer bird. Then he shows that he is
a gallant as well as a scholar and man of the world. He is the
figure-head of his college barge during The Eights, and with an
eye-glass, that is a kind of sixth sense, he surveys womankind, and sees
that it is good.
III
There was lately also a more Roman type amongst us. He had a lusty
Terentian wit that was not in the fashion of these times; and his proud
frankness about everything but his soul found even less welcome from a
generation that liked to talk of little else. “A little hypocrisy”--such
was his advice to freshmen, but not his practice--“a little hypocrisy is
useful to a virtuous man, since it is hard not to appear a hypocrite,
especially when one is not.” He was what is called an intemperate man.
For, though a small, fastidious eater and short sleeper, he was a man of
many bottles; nor had he the common gift of repenting of the truths
which claret inspired and port enabled him to express. He never learned
to whine over private infelicity--a weighty shortcoming; or to moralise
on the infelicities of others--which was almost a virtue. A small
Kantian once asked him how he felt after a bereavement. “It has never
occurred to me,” was his reply, “to think how I felt.” An unsuccessful
man himself, and burdened by his more successful and more indolent
relatives, his catchword was, nevertheless, “Success.” But he perhaps
hated more than a noisy failure a noisy success. Always scheming on
behalf of others, he laid no plans for himself, except by writing his
own epitaph, on the day before his death. He ate, drank, was merry, and
did his duty. He was the life and soul and financial saviour of his
college. At no time was he a profound student; he had been elected to a
fellowship on account of his birth; yet the brilliant scholar and the
nice courtier of the college admitted that he, the chapel, and the cook
were equally indispensable. In fact, he was as near to the ideal head of
a college as it would be wise to have in an ancient university. He could
not lecture, and was a poor judge of imitation Greek prose. He radiated
a clean and vigorous worldly influence through both Common Rooms. He
knew every undergraduate who was within the reach of knowledge. His
judgment of men was as consummate and as untransferable as his judgment
of wine. It was his custom to say that there had been three
philosophers, two ancient, one modern, in the history of the
world--Ecclesiastes, Democritus, and Sir William Temple of Moor Park. To
his pupils he used to pronounce that, “since you are average men and
will never be able to understand Ecclesiastes or take the trouble to
understand Democritus,” they should follow the Englishman. He then
repeated from memory this passage (with such solemnity that I believe he
felt it to be his own):--
“Some writers, in casting up the goods most desirable in life, have
given them this rank--health, beauty, and riches. Of the first, I find
no dispute; but to the two others much may be said; for beauty is a good
that makes others happy rather than one’s self; and how riches should
claim so high a rank I cannot tell, when so great, so wise, and so good
a part of mankind have, in all ages, preferred poverty before them--the
Therapeutae and Ebionites among the Jews, the primitive monks and modern
friars among Christians, so many dervises among the Mahometans, the
Brachmans among the Indians, and all the ancient philosophers; who,
whatever else they differed in, agreed in this, of despising riches, and
at best esteeming them an unnecessary trouble or encumbrance of life: so
that whether they are to be reckoned among goods or evils, is yet left
in doubt.
“When I was young, and in some idle company, it was proposed that every
one should tell what their three wishes should be, if they were sure to
be granted: some were very pleasant, and some very extravagant; mine
were health, and peace, and fair weather; which, though out of the way
among young men, yet perhaps might pass well enough among old: they are
all of a strain; for health in the body is like peace in the state, and
serenity in the air; the sun, in our climate at least, has something so
reviving, that a fair day is a kind of sensual pleasure, and of all
others the most innocent.”
The last words he would often repeat, with this comment: that people
to-day were so much busied with sunsets and landscapes and colours
that they had no such hearty feeling for Nature as the old
seventeenth-century statesman, philosopher, and gardener had.
“Read Cowley and Pope,” was his only criticism in English literature.
“Any one can be a Keats, though few can write as well,” he argued, “but
it is not so easy to be like Pope.” Meeting Browning one day, and
telling him that he enjoyed some of his poetry, the poet asked him
whether he understood it. “No,” said the Don, “do you?”
For twenty years, when men spoke of---- College, they thought of him.
“The University of Oxford,” said an old pupil who lived to send his son
to that college, “the University of Oxford, at least as a place of
education, consists of old----, the river, and the college pump.” That
college is now like Roman
[Illustration: THE RADCLIFFE LIBRARY, OR CAMERA BODLEIANA, FROM
BRASENOSE COLLEGE QUADRANGLE
The gateway to the left of the centre of the picture is the
entrance to the College from the Square in which stands the
Radcliffe Library.
The great dome of the Library rises above the gateway tower,
dominating the Square, the College, and indeed all Oxford.
On the extreme right is the entrance to the Hall, running east, the
direction in which we are looking. In this Quadrangle formerly
stood a metal group of Samson slaying the lion, which, it is to be
regretted, has been removed. It served to give scale to the
Quadrangle.
]
literature without Lucretius, or a wine-glass of cold water.
When I look back and see him, more military than ecclesiastical (except
for a snuffle) in his doctorial scarlet, I think that it was partly his
brow that was his power. It was a calm, ample, antique brow. In the
ancient world the brow made the man and the god. It was as divine as
ægis or thunder or eagle. It was more magisterial than the fasces. It
commanded the Consulate and troubled the dominion of Persia and cast
down the power of Hannibal. The brow of Jupiter--of Plato--of
Augustus--was a hill of majesty equal with Olympus. The history of old
sculpture is an _Ave!_ to the brow. Now the soul has descended to the
eyes. In politics, war, literature, above all in finance, victory is
with the eyes. The old man had the godlike span of curving bone; but his
eyes slept. It was his good fortune and Oxford’s honour that he ruled an
Oxford college.
IV
Among the younger men is one who spent perhaps a year in trying to
combine high living and high thinking; then made a compromise by
dropping the high thinking; and at last, perhaps as the result of some
solemn intervention, became ascetic. He is a friend of authors and
potentates. He understands a bishop, and takes a kindly interest in
east-enders, so long as they are in Oxford. His aspect is grave and
calm, since life, in losing half its vices, has lost all its charm. Like
fine cutlery, his manners lack nothing but originality; he has a good
taste in flowers, and can even arrange them. Nor is the taste in books
limited by his connoisseurship in binding. He is a free and fearless
reader, yet careful in the choice of books to be left on the table. If
style were finish, his writing would be famous; but his beautiful style
is always subordinated to a really beautiful handwriting. His originally
dilettante interest in palæography has lured him into some genuine
research among old manuscripts. His lectures are therefore fresh,
thoughtful, and perfect in gesture, delivery, and composition. I seem to
behold Virgil himself at the end of one of his descants, or Politian at
least. If he had not more love of the applause of his most graceful
pupils than of the learned world, he might be renowned. But he is
content to be three-quarters of a specialist in history and more than
one of the arts, and to be a lodestar to the ladies of his audience.
Perhaps only they can do him justice.
V
There is (or was) to be found at the top of a mouldy Oxford staircase
the most unpedantic man in the world, seated underneath and upon and
amidst innumerable books. In the more graceful than sufficient garments
of his leisure, he looked like Homer, with hair still ungrizzled. He
spoke, and back came the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ on that stormy sound.
But he could so well dissemble this physical magnificence that he passed
in
[Illustration: BISHOP KING’S HOUSE
The part of the house showing in this picture faces to the north;
the east front, at right angles with this, being in St. Aldate’s.
The white buildings at the left are on the east side of St.
Aldate’s. It was built by Bishop King, the last Abbot of Osney and
the first Bishop of Oxford. The front was rebuilt in 1628.
Inside, on the first floor, is a coffered ceiling, richly painted
and gilt, probably of the sixteenth century, and by Italian
workmen.
]
different clothing for an able-bodied seaman and a member of Parliament.
He loved the forest and cloud and sea as if they had been brothers. To
visit him in his ancient room was to take a journey to Nature: to walk
with him, in all weathers--to Wood Eaton, Sunningwell, Fyfield,
Northmoor--was to go with a talking and genial embodiment of the
north-west wind and a dash of orchard scent.
His room was alive with the spirit of old histories. Famous
men--Pericles or Alexander or John XXII.--seemed to live once more when
they were discoursed of in that eloquent chamber. It may have been
illusion,--for there was little talk of historical principles,--but on
leaving him, a man felt that he had gone away “before the mysteries,”
and that if he could but live in the rooms of Urbanus, the past would be
wonderfully revealed. Then, a day or two afterwards, he could remember
only Urbanus himself, and, after a brief indignation at the cheiromancy
quite unwittingly practised, admitted that that was sufficient.
I am not sure whether he professed history or divinity or Chinese. He
wrote, however, an epoch-making treatise on “The Literature of
Aboriginal Races, with special reference to Sumatra”; an invaluable
brochure on “The Jewellery of the Visigothic Kings”; “A Complete
Exposition of the Ancient Game of Tabblisk”; and “A Brief Summary of the
Loves of Diarmad O’Diubhne.” His sonnet to M. Mallarmé, though it has
been described as _trop mallarmisé_, is justly admired. But he did not
write ten volumes of reminiscences.
I can see him, in a brown library or a pictured hall, beginning a
lecture. He moves about a little uneasily, like the late William Morris,
and as if he would rather use deeds than words. An old book lies open
before him: now and then he turns over a page, reads to himself, and
smiles. The conscientious undergraduate looks at his watch and begins
spoiling his pen upon the blotting-paper. He comes to take notes; but
Urbanus does not care. Suddenly the lecturer laughs heartily at a good
passage and begins:--
“I think perhaps you will like this story....”
And he reads, punctuating the matter with his own lively appreciation.
Somerville and Lady Margaret and St. Hugh’s look resigned; future first
(or third) class men look contemptuous; a Blue feels that his time is
being wasted,--he must complain,--he rises and walks out as Urbanus
remarks:--
“I don’t know your name, sir, but you can sleep _here_, if you wish.”
Urbanus closes the book five minutes before or after the appointed hour;
some one mutters about “the worst lecturer in this incubator of bad
lecturers”: such is his influence, not so much injecting knowledge as
dredging and maturing what is already gained, that others can think of
him easily as a humanist of the great days, who has survived in his old
college, with an indifference to mere time which is not incredible in
Oxford, where memories three centuries old are still alive in oral
tradition.
VI
Philip Amberley, late fellow of----, took it much to heart that he was
not born in 1300. He would have been a monk, and would have illuminated
Ovid to the astonishment of all ages. All he could do in this age was to
perform his tutorial duty, and to write a few pages of noble English in
a caligraphy that was worthy of the ages he loved. He wrote but one
book, which he burned, because nobody would give him £5 for it. A not
very old or very credible story tells how an intelligent alien blurted
out the question, at the high table of Philip’s college: Whether the
uncomely heads before the Sheldonian Theatre were not the fellows of
that same college. The inquirer was corrected with asperity; and in
revenge he always stated that he afterwards received photographs of the
younger fellows, by way of removing the mote from his eye. But Philip
sent a photograph of the least human physiognomy, signed with full name
and college. For the rest, he had that uncertainty of character which is
called conscience in the good and timidity in the bad, and in him meant
merely that he exchanged an act for a dream. He was filled with a
supreme pity, even for the Devil, whom he called “that immortal
scapegoat of gods and men.”
He died on an evening of July, while the scent of hay in passing waggons
filled and pleased his nostrils, lying in his half-monastic,
half-manorial home, not far from Oxford. How often had he celebrated the
sweetness of the dead grass as an emblem of comely human death! For a
little while he spoke of his friends, of the “beautiful gate” of St.
Mary’s, of his columbines (the older sort), and of a copy of Virgil
newly come from Italy. We listened silently. Life was still an eloquent
poet on his lips. But Death was a strong sculptor already at work upon
his face and hands. The last waggon passed below his window as he lay
dead, and the friendly carter shouted “Good-night.”
Now, we three were ashamed that we could find no tears for the loss of
such a man; and again, that we should suffer any alteration of our joy,
at having seen what we had seen. We recalled the past through half the
night. As we sat, none of us looked more alive than he, amidst the old
gloomy furniture, refashioned by the moon. We were but the toys of
night, of the smooth perfumes and the sounds of nothing known, and of
the presence which was like a great thought in the room. Then as the
coming day mingled with the passing night, a cold pale beam--ῶ φάος
ἁγνὸν--came to the four. As often a symbol becomes an image, so the beam
of light seemed to be the very spirit of which it was a messenger,
hailed by our eyes and hearts. It was beautiful as the Grail with many
angels about it,--awful as the woman of stern aspect and burning eyes
that visited the dream of Boethius. It was worthy to have ushered
visions yet more august. Ah! the awful purity of the dawn. The light
grew; our fancies were unbuilt; we became aware of a holy excellence in
the light itself, and enjoyed an almost sensual
[Illustration: THE CLARENDON BUILDING, LOOKING EAST
On the right stand those grotesque thermes partly surrounding and
forming an entrance to the enclosure of the Sheldonian Theatre, the
old Ashmolean, and the Schools.
They are a quaint and conspicuous feature in Broad Street.
Above them towers the Clarendon Building, with its worn and richly
coloured surface, the columns of the portico relieved against the
sky. A portion of the Indian Museum appears in the centre of the
picture, the old houses forming picturesque foreground objects to
the left.
]
melancholy repose. The owls were silent. The nightingales joined their
songs to the larks’. And I went out and walked and remembered his
epitaph--_Vita dulcis, sed dulcior mors_--and another July day, when
Philip Amberley was alive.
How he would walk! with what an air, an effluence, humble, and of
consequence withal! Half the village dallied among their flowers or
beehives to see him going. His long staff was held a foot from the upper
end, which almost entered his beard. He bore it, not airily with
twirling and fantastic motion, as our younger generation likes to do,
but solemnly, making it work, and leaning on it as if it were a sceptre,
a pillar, a younger brother. His eyes appeared to study the ground; yet
indeed all that was to be seen and much that is commonly invisible lay
within their sway. It was said he kept eyes in his pockets. His shanks
were of the extreme tenuity that seems no more capable of weariness than
of being diminished. Returning or setting forth, especially when seen
against the sky at sunset or dawn, he was a portent rather than a man.
His person was an emblem of human warfaring on earth--a hieroglyph--a
monument. His movements were of epic significance. His beard did not
merely wag; it transacted great matters. In setting out he himself said
he never contemplated return; it was unnecessary; at most it was one of
several possibilities. Yet had he a big laugh that came from his beard
like a bell from a grey tower. He would even sing as he walked, and was
the sole appreciator of his own rendering of “The All Souls’ Mallard,”
in a broken, grim baritone.
All day we walked along an ancient Oxfordshire road. It was the most
roundabout and kindly way towards our end, and so disguised our purpose
that we forgot it. The road curved not merely as a highway does.
Demurring, nicely distinguishing between good and better, rashly
advancing straight, coyly meandering, it had fallen in love with its own
foibles, and its progress was not to be measured by miles. At one loop
(where the four arms of a battered signpost all pointed to--nowhere) the
first man who trod this way must have paused to think, or not to think,
and have lost all aim save perambulation. So it stole through the land
without arresting the domesticities of the quiet hills. Often it was not
shut out from the fields by hedge or fence or bank. For some leagues it
became a footpath--its second childhood--“as though a rose should shut
and be a bud again”--with grass and flowers unavoidable under foot and
floating briers and hops overhead. In places the hedges had united and
unmade the road. From every part of it some church could be seen: Philip
would sometimes enter in, having some faith in the efficacy of reverence
offered by stealth on these uncanonical holy days. On our way he
sometimes paused, where bees made a wise hum in glowing gardens; or
where the corn-shocks looked like groups of women covered by their
yellow hair, as the sun ascended; or where the eye slumbered, and yet
not senselessly or in vain, amidst a rich undistinguished landscape,
made unreal and remote by mist; and he would whisper an oath or a line
of Theocritus or a self-tormenting speech--“Six hundred years ago
perhaps one of my name passed along this road. Oh! for one hour of his
joy as he spied his inn, or carved a cross in the church of St. John, or
kissed the milkmaid at yonder gateway. Or would that I could taste his
grief, even; his fresh and lively grief, I think, had something in it
which my pale soul is sick for. For me the present is made of the future
and the past. But he--perhaps--he could say, ‘Here am I with a can of
mead and a fatigue that will do honour to my lavendered sheets; _Ave
Maria!_ here’s to you all!’” Yet Philip’s mood was not seldom as clear
and simple as that.
At the inn--a classic inn to Oxford scholars--while the wind was purring
in a yew tree, he put all his gloomier fancies in a tankard, where they
were transmuted by a lambent ale and the “flaming ramparts” of that
small world. The landlord was unloading a dray. As it is with men and
clothes, remarked Philip, so with ale; the one grace of new ale is that
it will one day be old. “May I,” he said, “in some world or another, be
at least as old as this tankard, in the course of time: if I deserve it,
as old as this inn: if I can, as old as these hills, with their whiskers
of yew. Or, so long as I am not solitary, may I be as old as the sun,
which alone of all visible things has obviously reached a fine old age!”
He told me that his only valued dream was of an immemorial man, seated
on a star near the zenith; and his beard’s point swept the hilltops,
while with one hand he raised a goblet as large as the dome of the
Radcliffe to his lips, and with the other stroked his beard and caused
golden coins to flow in cascades into the countless hands of those
underneath; and in a melodious bass he said continually, “It is well.”
In his youth he had wedded Poverty, and when in the course of nature she
forsook him, he gently transferred his heart to Humility, regretting
only that he could no longer dress badly or make his own toast, without
affectation. He would give a beggar a handful of tobacco, and ask
sincerely, “Is it enough?” At the inn, he might have been lightly
treated for the respect with which he shamed the most unhappy outcast,
if he had not indifferently accepted the homage of the squire.
“Which book of the _Æneid_,” said that magnate of fifteen stone, at
seeing a Virgil in his hand, “do you like best?”
“The sixth.”
“And why?”
“Because I have just read it over again.”
“And which do you like next?”
“The second, because I read it first, and loved it (I was twelve) better
than anything but rackets.”
So he turned to the five tramps, the first I ever saw leave their hats
undoffed at his approach, who sat opposite.
They spoke, proclaiming themselves human; but their clothes, their
twisted bodies, and their gnarled, grey, bare feet, seemed to be the
original material from which some power had adventured to carve their
desperate faces, and then desisted in alarm, lest it should make a
gnome. They might seem to have newly risen out of the soil, with all its
lugubrious dishonours about them, and in an elder world might have
commanded the reverence of simple men, as Chthonian apparitions. I have
seen dead pollard-willows like them, and rocks out of which the sea has
wrought figures more humane. “Pedestalled haply in a palace court,” they
would have amazed the curious and confounded the wise; drinking beer at
“The Pilgrim’s Chair,” they happened to agree with Philip’s “idea of a
wild man,” which he had treasured on a dusty Platonic shelf of his mind
for fifty years. The _urpflanze_ found at last could not bring a finer
joy to a botanist than they to him. His mind wandered about his
discovery. “These great men”--he said--“are the victims of a community
that permits nobody to break its own law, and is indignant that a
poacher or a thief should claim the foregone privilege. On these men
falls the duty of keeping up the capacity of our race for breaking
law--a natural capacity. I should like to see--fill the pot,
landlord--something like the American arbor-day established in this fine
country. On that day men should plant, not a tree, but a wild emotion.
Not all of us, alas! could find one to plant. But such a wild man’s day
would be a noble opportunity for the divine instincts that are now
relieved or ill-fed by politics, fiction, religious reform, and so on.
I am for a more than Stuart, indulgent, anti-parliament government on
one day, when the policeman should clink tankards with the tramp, as if
he too were a man. See here!”--he mildly concluded, exposing the
unwilling palm of the nearest tramp,--“this good fellow is so
appreciative that he has taken my coppers and left the silver in my
purse.” Ordering the landlord to fill tankards all round--“for this
gentleman,” he said, pointing to the pickpocket--he soon made the whole
party harmonious, eloquent, and gay.
He spoke few words. His Virgil lay open still. Now and then his random
speech or a laugh at a bad jest floated joyously--like lemons in a
punch-bowl--over the company. Every one astonished every one with shrewd
or witty things. Not a man but thought himself almost as fine a fellow
as Philip Amberley. Not a man but on leaving him was a little abashed as
he took a last glance at my friend, and saw what manner of man he was.
“There he goes,” said Philip solemnly, as he leaned forward to watch
them reeling up the lane, singing as if their feet were shod and their
pockets full, “There he goes--an almost perfect man. I seem to see them
as one man, made up of the virtues or unselfish vices (which are all the
most of us can achieve) of all five, as a painter collects a beautiful
face from many mediocrities. Every one of them has his fustian soul
‘trimmed with curious lace.’” And so he continued; with generous and
cunning speech freeing of rust, nay!
[Illustration: ALL SAINTS’ CHURCH, FROM TURL STREET
All Saints’ Church was built in 1708 from a design by Dr. Aldrich,
Dean of Christ Church. The tower, lantern, and spire, which appear
in the picture, are well proportioned.
There are some ancient half-timbered buildings on the right, and
between them and the Church tower, at the south end of Turl Street,
is a glimpse of the High Street.
North of the nave of the Church, along “The Turl,” shows a portion
of the buildings of Lincoln College.
]
burnishing, the unused virtue in these abjects. “I have avoided what is
called vice,” he said, “because it is so easy, and I do not love easy
things;” and for the same reason he frowned but tenderly on those who
had not avoided it.
While the sunlight was failing, we were left by ourselves. But Philip
was not alone. He had laid his book and ale aside, and looked at the
solemn row of empty chairs against the wall. His eyes wore the creative
look of eyes that apprehend more than is visible. In those chairs he
beheld seated what he called his Loves--the very faces and hair and
hands of his dead friends. I have heard him say that they appeared “in
their old coats.” Night after night they revisited him--“of terrible
aspect,” yet sweet and desirable. They were as saints are to men whose
religion is of another name than his. He could say and act nothing which
those faces approved not, or which those faint hands would have stayed.
Embroidered by the day upon the border of the night, their life was an
hour. Out of doors he saw them, too, in well-loved places--gateways
above Hinksey, hilltops at Cumnor or Dorchester, Christ Church groves,
or fitting Oxford streets--such as (he believed) had something in them
which they owed to his passionate contemplation in their midst. There he
heard them speak softlier than the wings of fritillaries in Bagley Wood.
_Si quis amat novit quid hæc vox clamat_.... But his own face comes not
to satisfy the longing of those who watch as faithfully, with eyes
dimmer or of less felicity.
THE PAST
The Oxford graduate of the past is far too pale a ghost in literature.
He lies in old books, like a broken sculpture waiting to be
reconstructed, and survives but in an anecdote and from his importance
after leaving Oxford for a bishopric or a civil place. For one memory of
a Don there are a hundred of soldiers, statesmen, priests, in the
quadrangles and streets. He is in danger of being treated as merely the
writer of a quaint page among the records of the college muniment-room.
Erasmus, Fuller, Wood, Tom Warton, preserve and partly reveal the spirit
of the past, and help us to call up something of the lusty, vivid life
which the fellows and canons and presidents led in their “days of
nature.” There is, for example, a Dean of Christ Church, afterwards
Bishop of Oxford and last of Norwich, who has still the breath of life
in him, on John Aubrey’s page.
I
He was “very facetious and a good fellow,” and Ben Jonson’s friend. When
a Master of Arts, if not a Bachelor of Divinity, he was often merry at a
good ale parlour in Friar Bacon’s study, that welcomed Pepys and stood
till 1779. It was rumoured that the building would fall if a more
learned man than Bacon entered, a mischance of which the Dean had no
fear. When he was a Doctor of Divinity “he sang ballads at the Cross at
Abingdon on a market-day.” The usual ballad-singer could not compete
with such a rival, and complained that he sold no ballads. Whereat “the
jolly Doctor put off his gown and put on the ballad-singer’s leathern
jacket, and being a handsome man, and had a rare full voice,” he had a
great audience and a great sale of sheets. His conversation was “extreme
pleasant.” He and Dr. Stubbinge, a corpulent Canon of Christ Church,
were riding in a dirty lane, when the coach was overturned. “Dr.
Stubbinge,” said the Dean, “was up to his elbows in mud, but I was up to
the elbows in Stubbinge.” He was a verse-maker, of considerable
reputation, of some wit and abundant mirth, with a quaint looking
backward upon old places and old times that is almost pathetic in these
verses:--
Farewell rewards and fairies,
Good housewives now may say,
For now foul sluts in dairies
Do fare as well as they.
And though they sweep their hearths no less
Than maids were wont to do,
Yet who of late for cleanliness
Finds sixpence in her shoe?
Lament, lament, old abbeys,
The fairies’ lost command;
They did but change priests’ babies,
But some have changed your land;
And all your children sprung from thence
Are now grown Puritans;
Who live as changelings ever since,
For love of your domains.
When Bishop of Oxford, he had “an admirable, grave, and venerable
aspect.” But his pontifical state permitted some humanities, and he was
married to a pretty wife. “One time,” says Aubrey, “as he was
confirming, the country people pressing in to see the ceremony, said he,
‘Bear off there, or I’ll confirm you with my staff.’ Another time, being
about to lay his hand on the head of a man very bald, he turns to his
chaplain (Lushington) and said, ‘Some dust, Lushington’ (to keep his
hand from slipping).” He and Dr. Lushington, of Pembroke College, “a
very learned and ingenious man,” would sometimes lock themselves in the
wine-cellar. Then he laid down first his episcopal hat, with, “There
lies the doctor”; next, his gown, with, “There lies the bishop”; and
then ’twas “Here’s to thee, Corbet” and “Here’s to thee, Lushington.”
Three years after attaining the bishopric of Norwich he died.
“Good-night, Lushington,” were his last words.
II
There is also in Aubrey another such ruddy memory of a fine old
gentleman--a scholar, a thoughtful and genial governor of youth, “a
right Church of England man,” and President of Trinity. In gown and
surplice and hood “he had a terrible gigantic aspect, with his sharp
grey eyes” and snowy hair. He had a rich, digressive mind, “like a hasty
pudding, where there was memory, judgment, and fancy all stirred
together,” not suited to his day; and began a sermon happily, but not at
all to Aubrey’s taste:--
“Being my turn to preach in this place, I went into
[Illustration: TRINITY COLLEGE
The entrance to the College is under the tower at the west end of
the Chapel, which appears towards the right of the picture.
The architecture of the Chapel is worthy of being seen, though the
covering of green prevents this--a custom carried to excess in
Oxford buildings.
Opposite, at the extreme left, is a portion of the east end of the
Chapel of Balliol College, and the trees are standing in that
remnant of an old orchard fronting the Broad which forms the
spacious approach to Trinity College.
]
my study to prepare myself for my sermon, and I took down a book that
had blue strings, and looked in it, and ’twas sweet Saint Bernard. I
chanced to read such a part of it, on such a subject, which has made me
to choose this text....”
He concluded, says Aubrey:--
“‘But now I see it is time for me to shut up my book, for I see the
doctors’ men come in wiping of their beards from the ale-house.’ He
could from the pulpit plainly see them, and ’twas their custom in sermon
to go there, and about the end of sermon to return to wait on their
masters.”
Undergraduates who pleased him not were warned that he might “bring an
hour-glass two hours long” into the hall. He was inexorable towards
wearers of long hair, and would cut it off with “the knife that chips
the bread on the buttery hatch.” It was his fashion to peep through
key-holes in order to find out idlers. Says one: “He scolded the best in
Latin of any one that ever he knew.” It seemed to him good discipline to
keep at a high standard the beer of Trinity, because he observed that
“the houses that had the smallest beer had most drunkards, for it forced
them to go into the town to comfort their stomachs.” Yet in his
exhortations to a temperate life, he admitted that the men of his
college “ate good commons and drank good double beer, and that will get
out.” And he was a man of tender and exquisite charity. When he saw that
a diligent scholar was also poor, “he would many times put money in at
his window,” and gave work in transcription to servitors who wrote a
good hand. His right foot dragged somewhat upon the ground, so that “he
gave warning (like the rattlesnake) of his coming,” and an imitative wag
of the college “would go so like him that sometimes he would make the
whole chapel rise up, imagining he had been entering in.” The Civil War,
thinks Aubrey, killed the old man, just before he would have been fifty
years President. For it “much grieved him that was wont to be so
absolute in the college to be affronted and disrespected by rude
soldiers.” The cavaliers and their ladies invaded the college grove to
the sound of lute or theorbo. Some of the gaudy women even came, “half
dressed, like angels,” to morning chapel. A foot-soldier broke the
President’s hour-glass. So he gathered his old russet cloth gown about
him and closed his eyes upon the calamity and died, still a fresh and
handsome old man.
III
John Earle, a notable scholar and divine of the seventeenth century, a
fellow of Merton, and afterwards Bishop of Worcester and Bishop of
Salisbury, has drawn the picture of “a downright scholar,” which I may
not omit. Earle had the most concentrated style of any man of his time;
each of his sentences is a document. His characters are as clear and
firm as the brasses on Merton altar platform, and likely to endure as
long.
“A downright scholar,” he writes, “is one that has
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE LIBRARY OF MERTON COLLEGE
The newel posts, balusters, and hand-rails of the staircase leading
to the ground-floor show in the centre of the picture, to the right
and left of which are bookcases and the quaint “Jacobean” screens
peculiar to this Library.
The ribbed barrel roof is covered with timber, the dormer windows
which light the Library appearing on the left, over the staircase.
An old oak coffer, bound with iron, is placed to the left of the
staircase.
]
much learning in the ore, unwrought and untried, which time and
experience fashions and refines. He is good metal in the inside, though
rough and unsecured without, and therefore hated of the courtier that is
quite contrary. The time has got the vein of making him ridiculous, and
men laugh at him by tradition, and no unlucky absurdity but is put upon
his profession, and done like a scholar. But his fault is only this,
that his mind is somewhat much taken up with his mind, and his thoughts
not laden with any carriage besides. He has not put on the quaint garb
of the age, which is now become a man’s total. He has not humbled his
meditations to the industry of compliment, nor afflicted his brain in an
elaborate leg. His body is not set upon nice pins, to be turning and
flexible for every motion, but his scrape is homely, and his nod worse.
He cannot kiss his hand and cry Madam, nor talk idly enough to bear her
company. His smacking of a gentlewoman is somewhat too savoury, and he
mistakes her nose for her lip. A very woodcock would puzzle him in
carving, and he wants the logic of a capon. He has not the glib faculty
of gliding over a tale, but his words come squeamishly out of his mouth,
and the laughter commonly before the jest. He names this word College
too often, and his discourse beats too much on the University. The
perplexity of mannerliness will not let him feed, and he is sharp set at
an argument when he should cut his meat. He is discarded for a gamester
at all games but ‘one and thirty,’ and at tables he reaches not beyond
doublets. His fingers are not long and drawn out to handle a fiddle,
but his fist is clenched with the habit of disputing. He ascends a horse
somewhat sinisterly, though not on the left side, and they both go
jogging in grief together. He is exceedingly censured by the Inns of
Court men for that heinous vice being out of fashion. He cannot speak to
a dog in his own dialect, and understands Greek better than the language
of a falconer. He has been used to a dark room, and dark clothes, and
his eyes dazzle at a satin doublet. The hermitage of his study makes him
somewhat uncouth in the world, and men make him worse by staring on him.
Thus he is silly and ridiculous, and it continues with him for some
quarter of a year, out of the University. But practise him a little in
men, and brush him over with good company, and he shall outbalance those
glisterers as much as a solid substance does a feather, or gold gold
lace.” One story is told of him. He was sharp-tempered and much beloved;
his servitor was endeared to his faults, and inquired respectfully one
day why his master had not boxed his ears. To which he replied “that he
thought he had done so; but indeed he had forgot many things that day”;
it being the day of Charles I.’s execution. Whereat the servitor wept,
and received the admonition unexpectedly for his pains.
UNDERGRADUATES OF THE PRESENT AND THE PAST