"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]