While at Oxford on this my first flying visit, I had a room in University College, the very college in which my son was hereafter to be an undergraduate. My host was Dr. Plumptre, the Master of the College, a tall, stiff, and to my mind, very imposing person. He was then Vice-Chancellor, and I believe I never saw him except in his cap and gown and with two bedels walking before him, the one with a gold, the other with a silver poker in his hands. We have no Esquire bedels any longer! All the professors, too, and even the undergraduates, dressed in their mediaeval academic costume, looked to me very grand, and so different from the German students at Leipzig or still more at Jena, walking about the streets in pink cotton trousers and dressing-gowns. It seemed to me quite a different world, and I made new discoveries every day. Being with Bunsen I was invited to all the official dinners during the meeting of the British a.s.sociation, and here, too, the Vice-Chancellor acted his part with becoming dignity.
He never unbent; he never indulged in a joke or joined in the laughter of his neighbours. When I remarked on his immovable features, I was told that he slept in starched sheets-and I believed it. At one of these dinners, Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte caused a t.i.tter during a speech about the freedom which people enjoyed in England. "In France,"
he said, "with all the declamations about _Liberte_, _egalite_, _Fraternite_, there is very little freedom, and, with all the trees of _liberte_ which are being planted along the boulevards, there is very little of real liberty to be found there!" "But you in England," he finished, "you have your old tree of liberty, which is always flowering and showering _peas_ on the whole world." He wanted to say peace. We tried to look solemn but failed, and a suppressed laugh went round till it reached the Vice-Chancellor. There it stopped. He was far too well bred to allow a single muscle of his face to move. "He throws a cold blanket on everything," my neighbour said; and my knowledge of English was still so imperfect that I accepted many of these metaphorical remarks in their literal sense, and became more and more puzzled about my host. It was evidently a pleasure to my friends to see how easily I was taken in. On the walls of the houses at Oxford I saw the letters F. P. about ten feet from the ground. Of course it was meant for Fire Plug, but I was told that it marked the height of the Vice-Chancellor, whose name was Frederick Plumptre.
My visit to Oxford was over all too soon, and I returned to London to toil away at my Sanskrit MSS. in the little room that had been a.s.signed to me in the Old East India House in Leadenhall Street. That building, too, in which the reins of the mighty Empire of India were held, mostly by the hands of merchants, has vanished, and the place of it knoweth it no more. However, I thought little of India, I only thought of the library at the East India House, a real Eldorado for an eager Sanskrit student, who had never seen such treasures before. I saw little else there, I only remember seeing Tippoo Sahib"s tiger which held an English soldier in his claws, and was regularly wound up for the benefit of visitors, and then uttered a loud squeak, enough to disturb even the most absorbed of students. I felt quite dazed by all the books and ma.n.u.scripts placed at my disposal, and revelled in them every day till it became dark, and I had to walk home through Ludgate Hill, Cheapside, and the Strand, generally carrying ever so many books and papers under my arms. I knew n.o.body in the city, and no one knew me; and what did I care for the world, as long as I had my beloved ma.n.u.scripts?
In March, 1848, I had to go over to Paris to finish up some work there, and just came in for the revolution. From my windows I had a fine view of all that was going on. I well remember the pandemonium in the streets, the aspect of the savage mob, the wanton firing of shots at quiet spectators, the hoisting of Louis Philippe"s nankeen trousers on the flag-staff of the Tuileries. When bullets began to come through my windows, I thought it time to be off while it was still possible.
Then came the question how to get my box full of precious ma.n.u.scripts, &c., belonging to the East India Company, to the train. The only railway open was the line to Havre, which had been broken up close to the station, but further on was intact, and in order to get there we had to climb three barricades. I offered my _concierge_ five francs to carry my box, but his wife would not hear of his risking his life in the streets; ten francs-the same result; but at the sight of a louis d"or she changed her mind, and with an "Allez, mon ami, allez toujours," dispatched her husband on his perilous expedition. Arrived in London I went straight to the Prussian Legation, and was the first to give Bunsen the news of Louis Philippe"s flight from Paris. Bunsen took me off to see Lord Palmerston, and I was able to show him a bullet that I had picked up in my room as evidence of the b.l.o.o.d.y scenes that had been enacted in Paris. So even a poor scholar had to play his small part in the events that go to make up history.
CHAPTER VII
EARLY DAYS AT OXFORD
It had been settled that my edition of the Rig-veda should be printed at the Oxford University Press, and I found that I had often to go there to superintend the printing. Not that the printers required much supervision, as I must say that the printing at the University Press was, and is, excellent-far better than anything I had known in Germany. In providing copy for a work of six volumes, each of about 1000 pages, it was but natural that _lapsus calami_ should occur from time to time. What surprised me was that several of these were corrected in the proof-sheets sent to me. At last I asked whether there was any Sanskrit scholar at Oxford who revised my proof-sheets before they were returned. I was told there was not, but that the queries were made by the printer himself. That printer was an extraordinary man. His right arm was slightly paralysed, and he had therefore been put on difficult slow work, such as Sanskrit. There are more than 300 types which a printer must know in composing Sanskrit.
Many of the letters in Sanskrit are incompatible, i. e. they cannot follow each other, or if they do, they have to be modified. Every _d_, for instance, if followed by a _t_, is changed to _t_; every _dh_ loses its aspiration, becomes likewise _t_, or changes the next _t_ into _dh_. Thus from _budh_ + _ta_, we have _Buddha_, i. e. awakened.
In writing I had sometimes neglected these modifications, but in the proof-sheets these cases were always either queried or corrected. When I asked the printer, who did not of course know a word of Sanskrit, how he came to make these corrections, he said: "Well, sir, my arm gets into a regular swing from one compartment of types to another, and there are certain movements that never occur. So if I suddenly have to take up types which entail a new movement, I feel it, and I put a query." An English printer might possibly be startled in the same way if in English he had to take up an _s_ immediately following an _h_. But it was certainly extraordinary that an unusual movement of the muscles of the paralysed arm should have led to the discovery of a mistake in writing Sanskrit. In spite of the extreme accuracy of my printer, however, I saw, that after all it would be better for myself, and for the Veda, if I were on the spot, and I decided to migrate from London to Oxford.
My first visit had filled me with enthusiasm for the beautiful old town, which I regarded as an ideal home for a student. Besides, I found that I was getting too gay in London, and in order to be able to devote my evenings to society, I had to get up and begin work soon after five. May, therefore, saw me established for the first time in Oxford, in a small room in Walton Street. The moving of my books and papers from London did not take long. At that time my library could still be accommodated in my portmanteau, it had not yet risen to 12,000 volumes, threatening to drive me out of my house. A happy time it was when I possessed no books which I had not read, and no one sent books to me which I did not want, and yet had to find a place for in my rooms, and to thank the author for his kindness.
I at once found that my work went on more rapidly at Oxford than in London, though if I had expected to escape from all hospitality I certainly was not allowed to do that. Accustomed as I was to the Spartan diet of a German _convictorium_, or a dinner at the Palais Royal _a deux francs_, the dinners to which I was invited by some of the Fellows in Hall, or in Common Room, surprised me not a little. The old plate, the old furniture, and the whole style of living, impressed me deeply, particularly the after-dinner railway, an ingenious invention for lightening the trouble of the guests who took wine in Common Room. There was a small railway fixed before the fireplace, and on it a wagon containing the bottles went backwards and forwards, halting before every guest till he had helped himself. That railway, I am afraid, is gone now; and what is more serious, the pleasant, chatty evenings spent in Common Room are likewise a thing of the past.
Married Fellows, if they dine in Hall, return home after dinner, and junior Fellows go to their books or pupils. In my early Oxford days, a married Fellow would have sounded like a solecism. The story goes that married Fellows were not entirely unknown, and that you could hold even a fellowship, if you could hold your tongue. Young people, however, who did not possess that gift of silence, had often to wait till they were fifty, before a college living fell vacant, and the quinquagenarian Fellow became a young husband and a young vicar.
What impressed me, however, even more than the great hospitality of Oxford, was the real friendliness shown to an unknown German scholar.
After all, I had done very little as yet, but the kind words which Bunsen and Dr. Prichard had spoken about me at the meeting of the British a.s.sociation, had evidently produced an impression in my favour far beyond what I deserved. I must have seemed a very strange bird, such as had never before built his nest at Oxford. I was very young, but I looked even younger than I was, and my knowledge of the manners of society, particularly of English society, was really nil. Few people knew what I was working at. Some had a kind of vague impression that I had discovered a very old religion, older than the Jewish and the Christian, which contained the key to many of the mysteries that had puzzled the ancient, nay, even the modern world. Frequently, when I was walking through the streets of Oxford, I observed how people stared at me, and seemed to whisper some information about me.
Tradespeople did not always trust me, though I never owed a penny to anybody; when I wanted money I could always make it by going on faster with printing the Rig-veda, for which I received four pounds a sheet.
This seemed to me then a large sum, though many a sheet took me at first more than a week to get ready, copy, collate, understand, and finally print. If I was interested in any other subject, my exchequer suffered accordingly-but I could always retrieve my losses by sitting up late at night. Poor as I was, I never had any cares about money, and when I once began to write in English for English journals, I had really more than I wanted. My first article in the _Edinburgh Review_ appeared in October, 1851.
At that time the idea of settling at Oxford, of remaining in this academic paradise, never entered my head. I was here to print my Rig-veda and work at the Bodleian; that I should in a few years be an M.A. of Christ Church, a Fellow of the most exclusive of colleges, nay, a married Fellow-a being not even invented then-and a professor of the University, never entered into my wildest dreams. I could only admire, and admire with all my heart. Everything seemed perfect, the gardens, the walks in the neighbourhood, the colleges, and most of all the inhabitants of the colleges, both Fellows and undergraduates. My ideas were still so purely continental that I could not understand how the University could do such a thing as incorporate a foreign scholar-could, in fact, govern itself without a Minister of Education to appoint professors, without a Royal Commissioner to look after the undergraduates and their moral and political sentiments. And here at Oxford I was told that the Government did not know Oxford, nor Oxford the Government, that the only ruling power consisted in the Statutes of the University, that professors and tutors were perfectly free so long as they conformed to these statutes, and that certainly no minister could ever appoint or dismiss a professor, except the Regius professors. "If we want a thing done," my friends used to explain to me, "we do it ourselves, as long as it does not run counter to the statutes."
But Oxford changes with every generation. It is always growing old, but it is always growing young again. There was an old Oxford four hundred years ago, and there was an old Oxford fifty years ago. To a man who is taking his M.A. degree, Oxford, as it was when he was a freshman, seems quite a thing of the past. By the public at large no place is supposed to be so conservative, so unchanging, nay, so stubborn in resisting new ideas, as Oxford; and yet people who knew it forty or fifty years ago, like myself, find it now so changed that, when they look back they can hardly believe it is the same place. Even architecturally the streets of the University have changed, and here not always for the better. Architects unfortunately object to mere imitation of the old Oxford style of building; they want to produce something entirely their own, which may be very good by itself, but is not always in harmony with the general tone of the college buildings.
I still remember the outcry against the Taylor Inst.i.tution, the only Palladian building at Oxford, and yet everybody has now grown reconciled to it, and even Ruskin lectured in it, which he would not have done, if he had disapproved of its architecture. He would never lecture in the Indian Inst.i.tute, and wrote me a letter sadly reproving me for causing Broad Street to be defaced by such a building, when I had had absolutely nothing to do with it. He was very loud in his condemnation of other new buildings. He abused even the New Museum, though he had a great deal to do with it himself. He had hoped that it would be the architecture of the future, but he confessed after a time that he was not satisfied with the result.
In his days we still had the old Magdalen Bridge, the Bodleian unrestored, and no trams. Ruskin was so offended by the new bridge, by the restored Bodleian, and by the tram-cars, that he would go ever so far round to avoid these eyesores, when he had to deliver his lectures; and that was by no means an easy pilgrimage. There was, of course, no use in arguing with him. Most people like the new Magdalen Bridge because it agrees better with the width of High Street; they consider the Bodleian well restored, particularly now that the new stone is gradually toning down to the colour of the old walls, and as to tram-cars, objectionable as they are in many respects, they certainly offend the eye less than the old dirty and rickety omnibuses. The new buildings of Merton, in the style of a London police-station, offended him deeply, and with more justice, particularly as he had to live next door to them when he had rooms at Corpus.
These new buildings could not be helped at Oxford. The stone, with which most of the old colleges were built, was taken from a quarry close to Oxford, and began to peel off and to crumble in a very curious manner. Artists like these chequered walls, and by moonlight they are certainly picturesque, but the colleges had to think of what was safe. My own college, All Souls, has ever so many pinnacles, and we kept an architect on purpose to watch which of them were unsafe and had to be restored or replaced by new ones. Every one of these pinnacles cost us about fifty pounds, and at every one of our meetings we were told that so many pinnacles had been tested, and wanted repairing or replacing. Many years ago, when I was spending the whole Long Vacation at Oxford, I could watch from my windows a man who was supposed to be testing the strength of these pinnacles. He was armed with a large crowbar, which he ran with all his might against the unfortunate pinnacle. I doubt whether the walls of any Roman castellum could have resisted such a ram. I spoke to some of the Fellows, and when the builder made his next report to us, we rather objected to the large number of invalids. He was not to be silenced, however, so easily, but told us with a very grave countenance that he could not take the responsibility, as a pinnacle might fall any day on our Warden when he went to chapel. This, he thought, would settle the matter. But no, it made no impression whatever on the junior Fellows, and the number of annual cripples was certainly very much reduced in consequence.
It is true that Oxford has always loved what is old better than what is new, and has resisted most innovations to the very last. A well-known liberal statesman used to say that when any measure of reform was before Parliament, he always rejoiced to see an Oxford pet.i.tion against it, for that measure was sure to be carried very soon. It should not be forgotten, however, that there always has been a liberal minority at Oxford. It is still mentioned as something quite antediluvian, that Oxford, that is the Hebdomadal Council, pet.i.tioned against the Great Western Railway invading its sacred precincts; but it is equally true that not many years later it pet.i.tioned for a branch line to keep the University in touch with the rest of the world.
Many things, of course, have been changed, and are changing every year before our very eyes; but what can never be changed, in spite of some recent atrocities in brick and mortar, is the natural beauty of its gardens, and the historical character of its architecture. Whether Friar Bacon, as far back as the thirteenth century, admired the colleges, chapels, and gardens of Oxford, we do not know; and even if we did, few of them could have been the same as those which we admire to-day. We must not forget that Greene"s _Honourable History of Friar Bacon_ does not give us a picture of what Oxford was when seen by that famous philosopher, who is sometimes claimed as a Fellow of Brasenose College, probably long before that College existed; but what is said in that play in praise of the University, may at least be taken as a recollection of what Greene saw himself, when he took his degree as Bachelor of Arts in 1578. In his play of the _History of Friar Bacon_, Greene introduces the Emperor of Germany, Henry II, 1212-50, as paying a visit to Henry III of England, 1216-73, and he puts into his mouth the following lines, which, though they cannot compare with Sh.e.l.ley"s or Mat Arnold"s, are at all events the earliest testimony to the natural attractions of Oxford. Anyhow, Sh.e.l.ley"s and Mat Arnold"s lines are well known and are always quoted, so that I venture to quote Greene"s lines, not for the sake of their beauty, but simply because they are probably known to very few of my readers:
"Trust me, Plantagenet, these Oxford schools Are richly seated near the river-side: The mountains full of fat and fallow deer, The battling[10] pastures lade with kine and flocks, The town gorgeous with high built colleges, And scholars seemly in their grave attire."
[10] Will it be believed that the battels (bills) in College are connected with this word?
The mountains round Oxford we must accept as a bold poetical licence, whether they were meant for Headington Hill or Wytham Woods. The German traveller, Hentzner, who described Oxford in 1598, is more true to nature when he speaks of the wooded hills that encompa.s.s the plain in which Oxford lies.
But while the natural beauty of Oxford has always been admired and praised by strangers, the doctors and professors of the old University have not always fared so well at the hands of English and foreign critics. I shall not quote from Giordano Bruno, who visited England in 1583-5, and calls Oxford "the widow of true science[11]," but Milton surely cannot be suspected of any prejudice against Oxford. Yet he writes in 1656 in a letter to Richard Jones: "There is indeed plenty of amenity and salubrity in the place when you are there. There are books enough for the needs of a University: if only the amenity of the spot contributed so much to the genius of the inhabitants as it does to pleasant living, nothing would seem wanting to the happiness of the place."
[11] _Opere_, ed. Wagner, i. p. 179.
These ill-natured remarks about the Oxford Dons seem to go on to the very beginning of our century. The buildings and gardens are praised, but by way of contrast, it would seem, or from some kind of jealousy, their inhabitants are always treated with ridicule. Not long ago a book was published, _Memoirs of a Highland Lady_. Though published in 1898, it should be remembered that the memoirs go back as far as 1809.
Nor should it be forgotten that at that time the auth.o.r.ess was hardly more than thirteen years of age, and certainly of a very girlish, not to say frivolous, disposition. She stayed some time with the then Master of University, Dr. Griffith, and for him, it must be said, she always shows a certain respect. But no one else at Oxford is spared.
She arrived there at the time of Lord Grenville"s installation as Chancellor of the University. Though so young, she was taken to the Theatre, and this is her description of what she saw and heard:-"It was a shock to me; I had expected to be charmed with a play, instead of being nearly set to sleep by discourses in Latin from a pulpit.
There were some purple, and some gold, some robes and some wigs, a great crowd, and some stir at times, while a deal of humdrum speaking and dumb show was followed by the noisy demonstrations of the students, as they applauded or condemned the honours bestowed; but in the main I tired of the heat and the mob, and the worry of these mornings, and so, depend upon it, did poor Lord Grenville, who sat up in the chair of state among the dignitaries, like the Grand Lama in his temple guarded by his priests." One thing only she was delighted with, that was the singing of Catalani at one of the concerts. Yet even here she cannot repress her remark that she sang "Gott safe the King." She evidently was a flippant young lady or child, and with her sister, who afterwards joined her at Oxford, seems to have found herself quite a fish out of water in the grave society of the University.
The room in the Master"s Lodge which appalled her most and seems to have been used as a kind of schoolroom, was the Library, full of Divinity books, but without curtains, carpet, or fireplace. Here they had lessons in music, drawing, arithmetic, history, geography, and French. "And the Master," she adds, "opened to us what had been till then a sealed book, the New Testament, so that this visit to Oxford proved really one of the fortunate chances of my life."
This speaks well for the young lady, who in later life seems to have occupied a most honoured and influential position in Scotch society.
But Oxford society evidently found no favour in her eyes.
Her uncle and aunt, as she tells us, were frequently out at dinner with other Heads of Houses, for there was, of course, no other society. These dinners seem to have been very sumptuous, though their own domestic life was certainly very simple. For breakfast they had tea, and b.u.t.ter on their bread, and at dinner a small gla.s.s of ale, college home-brewed ale. "How fat we got!" she exclaims. The Master seems to have been a man of refined taste, fond of drawing, and what was called poker-painting; he was given also to caricaturing, and writing of squibs. The two young ladies were evidently fond of his society, but of the other Oxford society she only mentions the ultra-Tory politics, and the stupidity and frivolity of the Heads of Houses. "The various Heads," she writes, "with their respective wives, were extremely inferior to my uncle and aunt. More than half of the Doctors of Divinity were of humble origin, the sons of small gentry or country clergy, or even of a lower grade. Many of these, constant to the loves of their youth, brought ladies of inferior manners to grace what appeared to them so dignified a station. It was not a good style; there was little talent, and less polish, and no sort of knowledge of the world. And yet the ignorance of this cla.s.s was less offensive than the a.s.sumption of another, when a lady of high degree had fallen in love with her brother"s tutor, and got him handsomely provided for in the Church, that she might excuse herself for marrying him. Of the lesser clergy, there were young witty ones-odious; young learned ones-bores; and elderly ones-pompous; all, however, of all grades, kind and hospitable. But the Christian pastor, humble, gentle, considerate, and self-sacrificing, had no representative, as far as I could see, among these dealers in old wines, rich dinners, fine china, and ma.s.sive plate."
"The religion of Oxford appeared in those days to consist in honouring the King and his Ministers, and in perpetually popping in and out of chapel. Chapel was announced by the strokes of a big hammer, beaten on every staircase half an hour before by a scout. The education was suited to Divinity. A sort of supervision was said to be kept over the young, riotous community, and to a certain extent the Proctors of the University and the Deans of the different colleges did see that no very open scandal was committed. There were rules that had in a general way to be obeyed, and lectures that had to be attended, but as for care to give high aims, provide refining amus.e.m.e.nts, give a worthy tone to the character of responsible beings, there was none ever even thought of. The very meaning of the word "education" did not appear to be understood. The college was a fit sequel to the school. The young men herded together; they lived in their rooms, and they lived out of them, in the neighbouring villages, where many had comfortable establishments.... All sorts of contrivances were resorted to to enable the dissipated to remain out all night, to shield a culprit, to deceive the dignitaries." This was in 1809, and even later.
And yet with all this, and while we are told that those who attended lectures were laughed at, it seems strange that the best divines, and lawyers, and politicians of the first half of our century, some of whom we may have known ourselves, must have been formed under that system. We can hardly believe that it was as bad as here described, and we must remember that much of the _Memoirs_ of this Scotch lady can have been written from memory only, and long after the time when she and her sister lived at University College. Life there, no doubt, may have been very dull, as there were no other young ladies at Oxford, and it cannot have been very amusing for these young girls to dine with sixteen Heads of Houses, all in wide silk ca.s.socks, scarves and bands, one or two in powdered wigs, so that, as we are told, they often went home crying. All intercourse with the young men was strictly forbidden, though it seems to have been not altogether impossible to communicate, from the garden of the Master"s Lodge, with the young men bending out of the college windows, or climbing down to the gardens.
One of these young men, who was at University College at the same time, might certainly not have been considered a very desirable companion for these two Scotch girls. It was no other than Sh.e.l.ley.
What they say of him does not tell us much that is new, yet it deserves to be repeated. "Mr. Sh.e.l.ley," we read, "afterwards so celebrated, was half crazy. He began his career with every kind of wild prank at Eton. At University he was very insubordinate, always infringing some rule, the breaking of which he knew could not be overlooked. He was slovenly in his dress, and when spoken to about these and other irregularities, he was in the habit of making such extraordinary gestures, expressive of his humility under reproof, as to overset first the gravity and then the temper of the lecturing tutor. When he proceeded so far as to paste up atheistical squibs on the chapel doors, it was considered necessary to expel him privately, out of regard to Sir Timothy Sh.e.l.ley, the father, who came up at once.
He and his son left Oxford together."
No one would recognize in this picture the University of Oxford, as it is at present. _Nous avons change tout cela_ might be said with great truth by the Heads of Houses, the Professors, and Fellows of the present day. And yet what the Highland lady, or rather the Highland girl, describes, refers to times not so long ago but that some of the men we have known might have lived through it. How this change came about I cannot tell, though I can bear testimony to a few survivals of the old state of things.
The Oxford of 1848 was still the Oxford of the Heads of Houses and of the Hebdomadal Board. That board consisted almost entirely of Heads of Houses, and a most important board it was, considering that the whole administration of the University was really in its hands. The colleges, on the other hand, were very jealous of their independence; and even the authority of the Proctors, who represented the University as such, was often contested within the gates of a college. It is wonderful that this old system of governing the University through the Heads of Houses should have gone on so long and so smoothly. Having been trusted by the Fellows of his own society with considerable power in the administration of his own college, it was supposed that the Head would prove equally useful in the administration of the University. A Head of a House became at once a member of the Council.
And, on the whole, they managed to drive the coach and horses very well. But often when I had to take foreigners to hear the University Sermon, and they saw a most extraordinary set of old gentlemen walking into St. Mary"s in procession, with a most startling combination of colours, black and red, scarlet and pink, on their heavy gowns and sleeves, I found it difficult to explain who they were. "Are they your professors?" I was asked. "Oh, no," I said, "the professors don"t wear red gowns, only Doctors of Divinity and of Civil Law, and as every Head of a House must have something to wear in public, he is invariably made a Doctor." I remember one exception only, and at a much later time, namely, the Master of Balliol, who, like Canning at the Congress of Vienna, considered it among his most valued distinctions never to have worn the gown of a D.C.L. or D.D. It is well known that when Marshal Blucher was made a Doctor at Oxford he asked, in the innocence of his heart, that General Gneisenau, his right-hand man, might at least be made a chemist. He certainly had mixed a most effective powder for the French army under Napoleon.
"But," my friend would ask, "have you no _Senatus Academicus_, have you no faculties of professors such as there are in all other Christian universities?" "Yes and no," I said. "We have professors, but they are not divided into faculties, and they certainly do not form the _Senatus Academicus_, or the highest authority in the University."
It seems very strange, but it is nevertheless a fact, that as soon as a good tutor is made a professor, he is considered of no good for the real teaching work of the colleges. His lectures are generally deserted; and I could quote the names of certain professors who afterwards rose to great eminence, but who at Oxford were simply ignored and their lecture-rooms deserted. The real teaching or coaching or cramming for examination is left to the tutors and Fellows of each college, and the examinations also are chiefly in their hands.
Many undergraduates never see a professor, and, as far as the teaching work of the University is concerned, the professorships might safely be abolished. And yet, as I could honestly a.s.sure my foreign friends, the best men who take honour degrees at Oxford are quite the equals of the best men at Paris or Berlin. The professors may not be so distinguished, but that is due to a certain extent to the small salaries attached to some of the chairs. England has produced great names both in science and philosophy and scholarship, but these have generally drifted to some more attractive or lucrative centres. When I first came to Oxford one professor received 40 a year, another 1,500, and no one complained about these inequalities. A certain amount of land had been left by a king or bishop for endowing a certain chair, and every holder of the chair received whatever the endowment yielded. The mode of appointing professors was very curious at that time. Often the elections resembled parliamentary elections, far more regard being paid to political or theological partisanship than to scientific qualifications. Every M.A. had a vote, and these voters were scattered all over the country. Canva.s.sing was carried on quite openly. Travelling expenses were freely paid, and lists were kept in each college of the men who could be depended on to vote for the liberal or the conservative candidate. Imagine a professor of medicine or of Greek being elected because he was a liberal! Some appointments rested with the Prime Minister, or, as it was called, the Crown; and it was quoted to the honour of the Duke of Wellington, that he, when Chancellor of the University, once insisted that the electors should elect the best man, and they had to yield, though there were electors who would declare their own candidate the best man, whatever the opinion of really qualified judges might be. All this election machinery is much improved now, though an infallible system of electing the best men has not yet been discovered. One single elector, who is not troubled by too tender a conscience, may even now vitiate a whole election; to say nothing of the painful position in which an elector is placed, if he has to vote against a personal friend or a member of his own college, particularly when the feeling that it is dishonourable to disclose the vote of each elector is no longer strong enough to protect the best interests of the University.
It took me some time before I could gain an insight into all this. The old system pa.s.sed away before my very eyes, not without evident friction between my different friends, and then came the difficulty of learning to understand the working of the new machinery which had been devised and sanctioned by Parliament. Reformers arose even among the Heads of Houses, as, for instance, Dr. Jeune, the Master of Pembroke College, who was credited with having _rajeuni l"ancienne universite_.
But he was by no means the only, or even the chief actor in University reform. Many of my personal friends, such as Dr. Tait, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, the Rev. H. G. Liddell, afterwards Dean of Christ Church, Professor Baden-Powell, and the Rev. G. H. S. Johnson, afterwards Dean of Wells, with Stanley and Goldwin Smith as Secretaries, did honest service in the various Royal and Parliamentary Commissions, and spent much of their valuable time in serving the University and the country. I could do no more than answer the questions addressed to me by the Commissioners and by my friends, and this is really all the share I had at that time in the reform of the University, or what was called Germanizing the English Universities.
At one time such was the unpopularity of these reformers in the University itself that one of them asked one of the junior professors to invite him to dinner, because the Heads of Houses would no longer admit him to their hospitable boards.
Certainly to have been a member of the much abused Hebdomadal Board, and a Head of a College in those pre-reform days must have been a delightful life. Before the days of agricultural distress the income of the colleges was abundant; the authority of the Heads was unquestioned in their own colleges; not only undergraduates, but Fellows also had to be submissive. No junior Fellow would then have dared to oppose his Head at college meetings. If there was by chance an obstreperous junior, he was easily silenced or requested to retire.
The days had not yet come when a Master of Trinity ventured to remark that even a junior Fellow might possibly be mistaken. Colleges seemed to be the property of the Heads, and in some of them the Fellows were really chosen by them, and the rest of the Fellows after some kind of examination. The management of University affairs was likewise entirely in the hands of the Heads of Colleges, and it was on rare occasions only that a theological question stirred the interest of non-resident M.A.s, and brought them to Oxford to record their vote for or against the const.i.tuted authorities. Men like the Dean of Christ Church, Dr. Gaisford, the Warden of Wadham, Dr. Parsons, and the Provost of Oriel, Dr. Hawkins, were in their dominions supreme, till the rebellious spirit began to show itself in such men as Dr.
Jeune, Professor Baden-Powell, A. P. Stanley, Goldwin Smith and others.
Nor were there many very flagrant abuses under the old regime. It was rather the want of life that was complained of. It began to be felt that Oxford should take its place as an equal by the side of foreign Universities, not only as a high school, but as a home of what then was called for the first time "original research." There can be no question that as a teaching body, as a high school at the head of all the public schools in England, Oxford did its duty n.o.bly. A man who at that time could take a Double First was indeed a strong man, well fitted for any work in after life. He would not necessarily turn out an original thinker, a scholar, or a discoverer in physical science, but he would know what it was to know anything thoroughly. To take honours at the same time in cla.s.sics and mathematics required strength and grasp, and the effort was certainly considerable, as I found out when occasionally I read a Greek or Latin author with a young undergraduate friend. What struck me most was the accurate knowledge a candidate acquired of special authors and special books, but also the want of that familiarity with the language, Greek or Latin, which would enable him to read any new author with comparative ease. The young men whom I knew at the time they went in for their final examination, were certainly well grounded in cla.s.sics, and what they knew they knew thoroughly.
The personal relations existing between undergraduates and their tutors were very intimate. A tutor took a pride in his pupils, and often became their friend for life. The teaching was almost private teaching, and the idea of reading a written lecture to a cla.s.s in college did not exist as yet. It was real teaching with questions and answers; while lectures, written and read out, were looked down upon as good enough for professors, but entirely useless for the schools.
The social tone of the University was excellent. Many of the tutors and of the undergraduates came of good families, and the struggle for life, or for a college living, or college office, was not, as yet, so fierce as it became afterwards. College tutors toiled on for life, and certainly did their work to the last most conscientiously. There was perhaps little ambition, little scheming or pushing, but the work of the University, such as the country would have it, was well done. If the Honour-Lists were small, the number of utter failures also was not very large.
For a young scholar, like myself, who came to live at Oxford in those distant days, the peace and serenity of life were most congenial, though several of my friends were among the first who began to fret, and wished for more work to be done and for better use to be made of the wealth and the opportunities of the University. My impression at that time was the same as it has been ever since, that a reform of the Universities was impossible till the public schools had been thoroughly reformed. The Universities must take what the schools send them. There is every year a limited number of boys from the best schools who would do credit to any University. But a large number of the young men who are sent up to matriculate at Oxford are not up to an academic standard. Unless the colleges agree to stand empty for a year or two, they cannot help themselves, but have to keep the standard of the matriculation examination low, and in fact do, to a great extent, the work that ought to have been done at school. Think of boys being sent up to Oxford, who, after having spent on an average six years at a public school, are yet unable to read a line of Greek or Latin which they have not seen before. Yet so it was, and so it is, unless I am very much misinformed. It is easy for some colleges who keep up a high standard of matriculation to turn out first-cla.s.s men; the real burden falls on the colleges and tutors who have to work hard to bring their pupils up to the standard of a pa.s.s degree, and few people have any idea how little a pa.s.s degree may mean. Those tutors have indeed hard work to do and get little credit for it, though their devotion to their college and their pupils is highly creditable. Fifty years ago even a pa.s.s degree was more difficult than it is now, because candidates were not allowed to pa.s.s in different subjects at different times, but the whole examination had to be done all at once, or not at all.
I had naturally made it a rule at Oxford to stand aloof from the conflict of parties, whether academical, theological, or political. I had my own work to do, and it did not seem to me good taste to obtrude my opinions, which naturally were different from those prevalent at Oxford. Most people like to wash their dirty linen among themselves; and though I gladly talked over such matters with my friends who often consulted me, I did not feel called upon to join in the fray. I lived through several severe crises at Oxford, and though I had some intimate friends on either side, I remained throughout a looker on.