The earliest science of a decidedly English school is due, for the most
part, to the University of Oxford, and specially to Merton College,--a
foundation of which Wood remarks, that there was no other for two
centuries, either in Oxford or Paris, which could at all come near it
in the cultivation of the sciences. But he goes on to say that large
chests full of the writers of this college were allowed to remain
untouched by their successors for fear of the magic which was supposed
to be contained in them. Nevertheless, it is not difficult to trace
the liberalising effect of scientific study upon the University in
general, and Merton College in particular; and it must be remembered
that to the cultivation of the mind at Oxford we owe almost all the
literary celebrity of the middle ages. In this period the University of
Cambridge appears to have acquired no scientific distinction. Taking
as a test the acquisition of celebrity on the continent, we find that
Bacon, Sacrobosco, Greathead, Estwood, &c. were all of Oxford. The
latter University had its morning of splendour while Cambridge was
comparatively unknown; it had also its noonday, illustrated by such men
as Briggs, Wren, Wallis, Halley, and Bradley.
The age of science at Cambridge may be said to have begun with Francis
Bacon; and but that we think much of the difference between him and
his celebrated namesake lies more in time and circumstances than in
talents or feelings, we would rather date from 1600 with the former
than from 1250 with the latter. Praise or blame on either side is out
of the question, seeing that the earlier foundation of Oxford, and its
superiority in pecuniary means, rendered all that took place highly
probable; and we are in a great measure indebted for the liberty of
writing our thoughts, to the cultivation of the liberalising sciences
at Oxford in the dark ages.
With regard to the University of Cambridge, for a long time there
hardly existed the materials of any proper instruction, even to the
extent of pointing out what books should be read by a student desirous
of cultivating astronomy.