’VARSITY LITERATURE--(_continued_)
_The Oxford Packet._--_Academia: or the Humours of Oxford._--_The
Oxford Act._--_The Oxford Sausage._--Present and latter day literature
summed up.
There were many other minor literary outputs which made their appearance
from time to time through the century, but it would be tedious to analyse
all of them. The outstanding ones were _The Oxford Packet_, _Academia: or
the Humours of Oxford_, _The Oxford Act_, Tom Warton’s fighting poem
entitled _The Triumph of Isis_, and _The Oxford Sausage_.
_The Oxford Packet_ was a purely topical piece of writing containing
heated articles on the burning questions of the moment in Oxford. It was
published in London, “printed for J. Roberts in 1714,” with a list of
contents including “(1) News from Magdalene College (Sacheverell’s
Inscription on a piece of plate); (2) Antigamus: or a Satire against
Marriage, written by Mr Thomas Sawyer; (3) A Vindication of the _Oxford_
Ladies, wherein are displayed the amours of some Gentlemen of _All Souls_
and _St John’s Colleges_.”
_Academia_, perpetrated by a woman, Alicia d’Anvers, ridiculed the manners
and customs of the university in a pointed and quite scurrilous manner. It
lived up to its sub-title, however, for it was an extremely humorous piece
of work.
In 1733 there appeared the _The Oxford Act_, a ballad opera. A crude and
unamusing play, it is nevertheless interesting as containing the germ of
modern musical comedy. The idea of the piece was to satirise university
politics, but the lack of construction and the laboured manner in which
the dramatist introduced his songs and manœuvred his characters makes it
tedious and rather difficult to appreciate.
_The Triumph of Isis_ was occasioned by a denunciation of Oxford by a
Cambridge man, William Mason, who was guilty of a poem entitled _Isis_. In
it he taunted Oxford upon the degeneracy of her sons who
“... madly bold
To Freedom’s foes infernal orgies hold.”
This was more than any devoted son of _Alma mater_ could stand.
Accordingly, Tom Warton, stung to a retort, girded up his loins and flung
off _The Triumph of Isis_, in which he hurled ten thousand thunderbolts at
_The Venal Sons of Slavish Cam_. Dr Anderson, who wrote a preface to the
collection of Warton’s poems, says, “It is remarkable that though neither
Mason nor Warton ever excelled these performances, each of them as by
consent, when he first collected his poems into a volume, omitted his own
party production.”[23]
It was not until 1764 that _The Oxford Sausage_ was concocted. Its title
is singularly apt. It was a volume of choice scraps--selected pieces in
prose and verse which had already made their appearance in other and
earlier publications. It included several poems by Tom Warton, who edited
_The Sausage_, and contained others from _The Student_ and the _Oxford
Journal_.
These then are the literary productions which distinguished the eighteenth
century in Oxford. From the numerous excerpts and passages quoted in
preceding chapters it will have been seen that there is not only an
enormous difference between the writing of the eighteenth century and
to-day in style and treatment, but in the method of conducting a paper.
To-day it is quite impossible to call a spade a spade. In those days it
was exactly the opposite. The whole point of writing was to call things by
their proper names. In fact, any other method would have been completely
misunderstood. The morals of the time were not more lax than now--that
would be impossible--but the language employed was, to put it mildly, very
much more unguarded.
Matters were openly discussed in the drawing-rooms of the eighteenth
century which nowadays are supposed to be whispered in smoking-rooms.
Drunkenness and other kindred vices were held in high esteem. It was “the
thing” for him who had any aspirations to be a man of the world to have a
half dozen bottles of wine to his own cheek at one sitting, and unless he
succeeded in arriving at that state of helplessness which necessitated
bodily assistance from persons unknown, he was a dismal social failure.
Women, whose husbands were carried home night after night, smiled
leniently and did not dream of interfering. Many ladies indeed did not
deny themselves the solace of the bottle, and in the records of the time I
have found more than one reference to women who were well-known, almost
licensed, topers. The question of toasts, too, and the light in which the
university held them, was Gilbertian. The statutes sternly forbade them
under penalty of dire pains and punishments, but for all practical
purposes the statutes were a waste of time. Oxford was famed for her
toasts, and their dealings were not confined solely to the gownsmen but
also to Dons and Heads of colleges, who, far from carrying out the
statutes which they had made, pooh-poohed them and indulged themselves to
their heart’s content.
With such a condition of things it is not very remarkable that the
literature of the time should be characterised by coarseness of language
and ideas. Its humour was of the riper kind which permitted of no
possible misunderstanding. Many of the jokes printed in such periodicals
as the _Oxford Journal_ and the _Oxford Magazine_--both papers in high
repute which circulated among Dons, Undergraduates and residents--would be
quite unprintable to-day even in the most yellow of the sporting papers.
The pen of Amhurst was hampered by no considerations of delicacy or
modesty. Whatever he felt on any subject that he wrote, boldly and without
mincing, and the fact that his articles were read with interest and
delight by male and female alike is proof that there is no blame attaching
to him for scurrility. He was merely in the period. There are also
instances of women who wrote with almost the same degree of frankness as
did Alicia d’Anvers, who had, as I have shown, an immodesty of style
unique in the entire century. She satirised all the manners, customs,
hobbies and vices of the university with flagrant lack of good taste
which, judging by the characteristics of the time, made her poem a great
success.
In the eighteenth century there were neither advertisements--except in the
_Oxford Journal_, and they were few in number--nor athletic fixtures. The
editors, therefore, had to rely entirely upon the merits of the articles
printed in their paper. Their sole hope of life lay in circulation, and as
they had not then discovered such “adventitious aids” as idols and open
letters, they were forced to do their utmost to make their paper bright
and readable. That they did so is obvious from the great number of
contributors who sent in articles regularly, and that, too, without any
hope of payment.
From the point of view of journalism there is no paper in Oxford to-day
which can survive a comparison with Terrae Filius. He did not go outside
the university for his subjects, and yet in each paper he was topical,
forcible, and to the point. Beyond this he was amusing, and there was a
sting in each single word which made the unhappy subject of his attack
squirm in his place. He did not indulge in long-winded and abortive
discussions about matters of no interest whatever to the university, such
as are invariably to be seen in twentieth-century papers. He instinctively
hit upon the only subject each week that was before the eye of Oxford, and
in straightforward, pithy language wrote it down, laughed at it, or cried
over it. In whatever spirit he treated it he left nothing more to be said.
He used it up, exhausted it, and turned to the next point. Not having any
advertisers to consider--and he would certainly not have considered them
had they existed--he said what he wanted to say without fear or favour,
and if he did not attain to such financial success as does the milk and
water stuff of to-day, he did establish, beyond all argument, a reputation
which has already survived two centuries. Which of the existing Oxford
journals can hope to compete against such a record?
However much eighteenth-century writers merit the charge of
coarseness--and it is not laid at their door in the spirit of blame but
merely as an illustration of things as they existed--they undoubtedly
attained a higher literary standard than the Undergraduate writers of
to-day. As, however, I have said that the modern standard does not rise
above mediocrity, I am not paying a very great compliment to the writers
of the Rowlandson period. Such is, however, my intention, for I cannot see
that there is such great brilliance in the eighteenth-century papers as to
justify my launching out into paeans of adulation. In all the publications
of the time there were, as I have shown, some excellent pieces of writing.
The sonnets and epigrams, dashed off at the coffee-houses to the beauties
of the reigning toast, were filled with classical allusions and subtle
parallels. This is somewhat remarkable because the Bloods admittedly never
did any reading. They had no time for it. However likeable and readable
these were, there was no genius, no striking merit in any of them. They
certainly showed more promise than the greater part of the work of
twentieth-century Oxford men--a point which is emphasised by the fact that
our predecessors were generally three or four years younger on going up to
the university. To-day we go up at about nineteen years of age. In those
days it was the fashion for men to arrive in Oxford in their fifteenth or
sixteenth year.
With the exception of Nicholas Amhurst, from whom I have drawn with so
much pleasure, there can be found no Undergraduate of Georgian times whose
genius, in however crude a form, awoke in the pages of university
literature.