IN PRAISE OF OXFORD
Many have written in praise of Oxford, and so finely that I have made
this selection with difficulty. I have excluded the work of living men,
because I am not familiar with it. Among that which is included will be
found passages from the writings of one who was at both Universities,
John Lyly; of two who were at Cambridge only, Dryden and Wordsworth; of
two who were at neither, Hazlitt and Hawthorne; and of several brilliant
lovers of Oxford whose faith was filial and undivided. Almost all the
quotations have wit or beauty enough to defend them, even had they been
less apposite: their charm is redoubled in this place, since they are in
Oxford’s praise. They are worthy of a city which a learned German
compares with the creations of Poussin and Claude. But they are in no
need of compliment. I could only wish that I had put down nothing
unworthy of their blessing. I have; and so they stand in place of
epilogue, where they perform the not unprecedented duty of apology.
“There are also in this Islande two famous Universities, the one
_Oxford_, the other _Cambridge_, both for the profession of all
sciences, for Divinitie, phisicke, Lawe, and for all kinde of
learning, excelling all the Universities of Christendome.
“I was myself in either of them, and like them both so well, that I
meane not in the way of controversie to preferre any for the better
in Englande, but both for the best in the world, saving this, that
Colledges in _Oxenford_ are much stately for the building, and
_Cambridge_ much more sumptuous for the houses in the towne, but
the learning neither lyeth in the free stones of the one, nor the
fine streates of the other, for out of them both do dayly proceede
men of great wisdome, to rule in the common welth, of learning to
instruct the Common people, of all singuler kinde of professions to
do good to all. And let this suffice, not to enquire which of them
is the superior, but that neither of them have their equall,
neither to ask which of them is the most auncient, but whether any
other bee so famous.”
JOHN LYLY.
“Where the Cherwell flows along with the Isis, and their divided
streams make several little sweet and pleasant islands, is seated
on a rising vale the most famous University of Oxford, in Saxon
Oxenford, our most noble Athens, the seat of the English Muses, the
prop and pillar, nay the sun, the eye, the very soul of the nation:
the most celebrated fountain of wisdom and learning, from whence
Religion, Letters and Good Manners, are happily diffused thro’ the
whole Kingdom. A delicate and most beautiful city, whether we
respect the neatness of private buildings, or the stateliness of
public structures, or the healthy and pleasant situation. For the
plain on which it stands is walled in, as it were, with hills of
wood, which keeping out on one side the pestilential south wind, on
the other, the tempestuous west, admit only the purifying east, and
the north that disperses all unwholesome vapours. From which
delightful situation, Authors tell us it was heretofore call’d
_Bellositum_”--CAMDEN.
Ye sacred Nurseries of blooming Youth!
In whose collegiate shelter England’s Flowers
Expand, enjoying through their vernal hours
The air of liberty, the light of truth;
Much have ye suffered from Time’s gnawing tooth:
Yet, O ye spires of Oxford! domes and towers!
Gardens and groves! your presence overpowers
The soberness of reason; till, in sooth,
Transformed, and rushing on a bold exchange
I slight my own beloved Cam, to range
Where silver Isis leads my stripling feet;
Pace the long avenue, or glide adown
The stream-like windings of that glorious street--
An eager Novice robed in fluttering gown!
WORDSWORTH.
“King James, 1605, when he came to our University of Oxford, and,
amongst other edifices, now went to view that famous Library,
renewed by Sir Thomas Bodley, in imitation of Alexander, at his
departure brake out into that noble speech, If I were not a King, I
would be an University man; and if it were so that I must be a
prisoner, if I might have my wish, I would desire to have no other
prison than that Library, and to be chained together with so many
good Authors _et mortuis magistris_. So sweet is the delight of
study, the more learning they have (as he that hath a Dropsy, the
more he drinks the thirstier he is), the more they covet to learn,
and the last day is _prioris discipulus_; harsh at first learning
is, _radices amaræ_, but _fructus dulces_, according to that of
Isocrates, pleasant at last; the longer they live, the more they
are enamoured of the Muses. _Heinsius_, the keeper of the Library
at Leyden in Holland, was mewed up in it all the year long; and
that which to my thinking should have bred a loathing caused in him
a greater liking. _I no sooner_ (saith he) _come into the Library,
but I bolt the door to me, excluding lust, ambition, avarice, and
all such vices, whose nurse is idleness, the mother of ignorance,
and Melancholy herself; in the very lap of eternity, amongst so
many divine souls, I take my seat, with so lofty a spirit and sweet
content, that I pity all our great ones, and rich men that know not
this happiness_.”
_The Anatomy of Melancholy._
But by the sacred genius of this place,
By every Muse, by each domestic grace,
Be kind to wit, which but endeavours well,
And, where you judge, presumes not to excel.
Our poets hither for adoption come,
As nations sued to be made free of Rome:
Not in the suffragating tribes to stand,
But in your utmost, last, provincial band.
If his ambition may those hopes pursue,
Who with religion loves your arts and you,
[Illustration: THE OLD ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM AND SHELDONIAN THEATRE
The Old Ashmolean Museum, with its noble entrance, stands to the left of
the picture; on the right side is part of the south front of the
Sheldonian Theatre.
An entrance to the enclosure from Broad Street is seen between the
thermes and a part of the north side of the street.
The collection of the Old Ashmolean Museum is removed to the Taylor
Institution.]
Oxford to him a dearer name shall be,
Than his own mother university.
Thebes did his green unknowing youth engage,
He chooses Athens in his riper age.
DRYDEN.
“Rome has been called the ‘Sacred City’--might not _our_ Oxford be
called so too? There is an air about it, resonant of joy and hope:
it speaks with a thousand tongues to the heart: it weaves its
mighty shadow over the imagination: it stands in lowly sublimity,
on the ‘hill of ages,’ and points with prophetic fingers to the
sky: it greets the eager gaze from afar, ‘with glistening spires
and pinnacles adorned,’ that shine with an eternal light as with
the lustre of setting suns; and a dream and a glory hover round its
head, as the spirits of former times, a throng of intellectual
shapes, are seen retreating or advancing to the eye of memory: its
streets are paved with the names of learning that can never wear
out: its green quadrangles breathe the silence of thought,
conscious of the weight of yearnings innumerable after the past, of
loftiest aspirations for the future: Isis babbles of the Muse, its
waters are from the springs of Helicon, its Christ Church meadows,
classic, Elysian fields!--We could pass our lives in Oxford without
having or wanting any other idea--that of the place is enough. We
imbibe the air of thought; we stand in the presence of learning. We
are admitted into the Temple of Fame, we feel that we are in the
Sanctuary, on holy ground, and ‘hold high converse with the mighty
dead.’ The enlightened and the ignorant are on a level, if they
have but faith in the tutelary genius of the place. We may be wise
by proxy, and studious by prescription. Time has taken upon himself
the labour of thinking; and accumulated libraries leave us leisure
to be dull. There is no occasion to examine the buildings, the
churches, the colleges, by the rules of architecture, to reckon up
the streets to compare it with Cambridge (Cambridge lies out of the
way, on one side of the world)--but woe to him who does not feel in
passing through Oxford that he is in ‘no mean city,’ that he is
surrounded with the monuments and lordly mansions of the mind of
man, outvying in pomp and splendour the courts and palaces of
princes, rising like an exhalation in the night of ignorance, and
triumphing over barbaric foes, saying, ‘All eyes shall see me, and
all knees shall bow to me!’--as the shrine where successive ages
came to pay their pious vows, and slake the sacred thirst of
knowledge, where youthful hopes (an endless flight) soared to truth
and good, and where the retired and lonely student brooded over the
historic, or over fancy’s page, imposing high tasks for himself,
framing high destinies for the race of man--the lamp, the mine, the
well-head whence the spark of learning was kindled, its stream
flowed, its treasures were spread out through the remotest corners
of the land and to distant nations. Let him who is fond of
indulging a dream-like existence go to Oxford, and stay there; let
him study this magnificent spectacle, the same under all aspects,
with the mental twilight tempering the glare of noon, or mellowing
the silver moonlight; let him not catch the din of scholars or
teachers, or dine or sup with them, or speak a word to any of its
privileged inhabitants; for if he does, the spell will be broken,
the poetry and the religion gone, and the palace of enchantment
will melt from his embrace into thin air!”
HAZLITT.
“Oxford ... must remain its own sole expression; and those whose
sad fortune it may be never to behold it have no better resource
than to dream about grey, weather-stained, ivy-grown edifices,
wrought with quaint Gothic ornament, and standing around grassy
quadrangles, where cloistered walks have echoed to the quiet
footsteps of twenty generations,--lawns and gardens of luxurious
repose, shadowed with canopies of foliage, and lit up with sunny
glimpses through archways of great boughs,--spires, towers, and
turrets, each with its history and legend,--dimly magnificent
chapels, with painted windows of rare beauty and brilliantly
diversified hues, creating an atmosphere of richest gloom,--vast
college halls, high-windowed, oaken-panelled, and hung around with
portraits of the men in every age whom the University has nurtured
to be illustrious,--long vistas of alcoved libraries, where the
wisdom and learned folly of all time is shelved,--kitchens (we
throw in this feature by way of ballast, and because it would not
be English Oxford without its beef and beer) with huge fireplaces,
capable of roasting a hundred joints at once,--and cavernous
cellars, where rows of piled-up hogsheads seethe and fume with that
mighty malt-liquor which is the true milk of Alma Mater: make all
these things vivid in your dream, and you will never know nor
believe how inadequate is the result to represent even the merest
outside of Oxford.”--HAWTHORNE.
“Beautiful city! so venerable, so lovely, so unravaged by the
fierce intellectual life of our century, so serene!
There are our young barbarians, all at play!
And yet steeped in sentiment as she lies, spreading her gardens to
the moonlight, and whispering from her towers the last enchantments
of the Middle Age, who will deny that Oxford, by her ineffable
charm, keeps ever calling us nearer to the true goal of all of us,
to the ideal, to perfection,--to beauty, in a word, which is only
truth seen from another side?--nearer, perhaps, than all the
science of Tübingen. Adorable dreamer, whose heart has been so
romantic! who hast given thyself so prodigally, given thyself to
sides and to heroes not mine, only never to the Philistines! home
of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and
impossible loyalties! whose example could ever so inspire us to
keep down the Philistine in ourselves, what teacher could ever so
save us from that bondage to which we are all so prone, that
bondage which Goethe, in his incomparable lines on the death of
Schiller, makes it his friend’s highest praise (and nobly did
Schiller deserve the praise) to have left miles out of sight
behind him--the bondage of _Was uns alle bändigt, DAS GEMEINE!_ She
will forgive me, even if I have unwittingly drawn upon her a shot
or two aimed at her unworthy son; for she is generous, and the
cause in which I fight is, after all, hers. Apparitions of a day,
what is our puny warfare against the Philistines, compared with the
warfare which this queen of romance has been waging against them
for centuries, and will wage after we are gone?”
MATTHEW ARNOLD.
THE END
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