Part 8

And there we may leave them, for the story of Methodism is much too long a story to be repeated. How Wesley presently ceased to make broad his phylacteries, and suddenly awoke to a sense of the supreme importance of the “inward witness” to the Christian propositions, and founded the vast organisation which numbered 12,000,000 adherents before his death—all this is written in innumerable biographies and need not be re-written here. Here it is enough to indicate the personality of the man: to point out that he was no ranter, but a don on whom Oxford had set its mark—a scholar, quiet, reserved, and dignified, though with an immense fund of strength and energy in reserve. And perhaps one may conclude with a story of his passage of arms with another Oxford man of a very different type—a passage of arms in which his quick wit and dignified demeanour easily won him the victory.

The place was Bath, and the time was near the beginning of Wesley’s missionary journeys. A certain Nash of Jesus was there—the Nash of Jesus whom the world knows as Beau Nash, the King of Bath. The two men met on a narrow pavement, and one of them had to make way for the other.

“I never make way for a fool,” said Nash of Jesus, insolently holding his ground.

“Don’t you? I always do,” replied Wesley of Lincoln, quietly stepping on one side; and the world is agreed that it was Wesley of Lincoln who got the best of that encounter.

And now leaving Wesley, we will evoke the memory of another notable Lincoln man, Mark Pattison, so long the Rector of the College.

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Mark Pattison won his Lincoln fellowship from Oriel; and he resembled Wesley in beginning life as a High Churchman. He was Newman’s curate, and, being much attached to Newman, very nearly accompanied, or followed, him into the Church of Rome. He only failed to do so, according to the commonly accepted story, because he missed the train, or the omnibus, or whatever conveyance it was by which he had arranged to travel to the place appointed for his “reception.” While waiting for the next train or omnibus, it is said, he changed his mind and decided to remain, provisionally at all events, a member of the Church of England. Nominally he remained a member of the Church of England until the end; but it was an open secret, confirmed by statements in his “Memoirs,” that he believed in nothing in particular and did not believe very profoundly even in that. He is one of the many men who have been credited with the pregnant saying: “Nothing is new, and nothing is true, but it doesn’t matter much.”

His reasons for not formally quitting the Church in which he had ceased to believe need not detain us. He is said to have said that, as he had taken Orders in good faith, he felt entitled to retain them through all beliefs and none instead of facing an unpleasant alternative; but it shall be left to casuists to estimate the value of that casuistry. The really interesting thing to note is that, in later life, he looked upon the years in which he had been religious in almost exactly the same light as that in which the Methodists of whom we have been speaking looked upon the years prior to their assurance of salvation. He came to think that as a Christian—and more particularly as a Puseyite—he had lived in outer darkness; and he despised, and almost hated, himself for having done so.

“Fanaticism,” he says, “was laying its deadly grip around me.” He speaks of his “fury of zeal” and his “abject prostration of mind” and his “degrading superstition,” and of the “time-wasting and mind-drowning occupation” in which he was involved by his too close attention to his devotional exercises. He adds that he once “got so low by fostering a morbid state of conscience as to go to confession to Dr. Pusey”; and he continues:

“Years afterwards it came to my knowledge that Pusey had told a fact about myself, which he got from me on that occasion, to a friend of his, who employed it to annoy me.”

Presently, however, he began to discover that the Puseyites were “not intellectually equal companions,” and that Newman himself was a man of limited philosophical acquirements—a man to whom “all the grand development of human reason from Aristotle down to Hegel was a sealed book.” So, though there was a struggle—due to “that profound pietistic impression which lay like lead upon my understanding”—reason got its way, and Pattison’s intelligence evolved. There was a day when he called on James Anthony Froude, desiring “to sympathise with his scepticism for the purpose of helping him through it”; but presently he travelled on the same road that Froude had taken, and travelled farther on it. The Tractarian became an Essayist and Reviewer. The Essayist and Reviewer came to regard all religions as vain guesses at the answer of an unanswerable riddle.

He enjoyed, in his later years, one of those great University reputations which, recognised by instinct, and admitted by universal assent, do not require to be based on visible or tangible achievement. It was commonly assumed that he knew everything, not only on his own subject, but on all subjects; also that he had thought out all problems and was only restrained from throwing light on them because he despised his fellow-creatures and resented their impertinent curiosity. He was too much absorbed, in fact, in his thoughts to pay much attention to his duties; and he ended his pilgrimage as a somewhat weird figure—somewhat of an enigma to the old and a formidable terror to the young.

Undergraduates, in particular, were too often the objects of a scorn which he was at no pains to hide. The undergraduates of his own College lived in an agony of apprehension lest he should ask them to go for walks with him; and it cannot be said that their fears were altogether without warrant. He did not speak when walking, but waited to be spoken to; and the consequences of speaking to him were incalculable—not unlike the consequences of trying to make friends with some strange and dangerous wild beast.

There is a stock story of an undergraduate who ventured to break the embarrassing silence by contrasting the irony of Sophocles with the irony of Euripides; but he only discovered that the irony of the Rector of Lincoln was greater than either. “Quote, sir, quote,” was the Rector’s only rejoinder; and as the timorous youth was not prepared with a quotation, nothing further was said, on either side, on any subject, for the remainder of the afternoon. But the undergraduate who confined himself to simple topics which he did understand—the state of the weather, for example—was handled still more roughly. “If that is all you have to say, you are not a very intelligent young man,” was the retort with which the Rector closured him.

ALL SOULS

Peculiarities of the Constitution—A College without undergraduates—Court favourites jobbed into fellowships—Fellowships bought and sold—All Souls Fellows a link between Oxford and the outside world—Sir William Blackstone—Edward Young—The song of the All Souls mallard and the scandal connected therewith.

The founder of All Souls was Archbishop Chichele, who had been educated on the foundations of William of Wykeham at Winchester and New College. The souls which the name commemorates are those of the soldiers who fell in Henry V.’s French wars—wars for which the Archbishop’s pugnacious patriotism was very largely responsible. The distinctive feature of the College is that it neither supports scholars nor harbours commoners, its only undergraduate members being a sprinkling of Bible clerks. The purpose of the founder, that is to say, was to endow study—not to endow teaching; and the fact that the College was small prevented undergraduates from creeping into it. There was no provision for their instruction, and there was no room for them. A few commoners did, at one time, obtain admission, but they were soon eliminated.

[Illustration: REREDOS, ALL SOULS CHAPEL.

[To face p. 145.]

Various consequences have followed from this state of things—some of them good, and others not so good. The All Souls fellowships did not, in practice, in the early days at all events, become the rewards of studious virtue. They were regarded, on the contrary, as sinecures to be scrambled for, to be jobbed into, to be bought and sold. No definite obligations, unless it were of residence, attached to them; they were merely positions in which a man might draw a living wage for doing nothing. Royal favourites were pushed into fellowships, in the Stuart times, as a cheap proof of royal favour, and fellowships could be purchased in the open market, just like commissions in the Army—an abuse which was brought about in this way:

When a resignation created a vacancy, the College co-opted a successor to it; but the retiring Fellow shared with the other Fellows the right to nominate a candidate. On the principle of “scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours,” the tacit understanding was established that the retiring Fellow’s candidate should always be elected. This was an opportunity for any Fellow to offer to retire in favour of a particular candidate in consideration of a money payment; and many Fellows availed themselves of the opportunity. Hence the scandal of “corrupt resignations,” not unknown, indeed, at other colleges, but specially gross and glaring at All Souls, where it flourished long, and was not suppressed without great difficulty.

Jobbery and corrupt resignations, in fact, combined to fill All Souls with Fellows of a different stamp from the Fellows of the other colleges; and the difference was, in some respects, for the better, and in other respects for the worse. The Fellows, having no academic duties, were idle; and Satan provided mischief for their idle hands. The Punishment Book, and other official records, show them comporting themselves more like junior than senior members of the University. We hear of several of them being dropped upon for “noctivagation.” We find the Visitor calling upon the Warden to “punish such of your Society as do spend their time in taverns and ale-houses to the scandal of the House.” We discover a representation that the College ale is too strong for students, and that only small beer ought to be brewed there. We read that one of the Fellows was reprimanded for “beating the Under-Butler.” Proof is abundant, in short, that the College was by no means such a quiet resort of industrious men as the founder had intended it to be.

Such were the drawbacks of the system; but it also, incidentally, produced advantages. While many of the Fellows were worthless and indolent persons, the loose mode of election and the total absence of academic duties resulted in the introduction of a type of Fellow who served as a link, just as we have noted that some of the Merton Fellows did, between the University and the external world—the type of Fellow whom the College porter appears to have had in mind when he replied to the visitor who inquired whether the Fellows read the books in the College library: “Lord bless you, sir! They don’t need to read books. They’re gentlemen!”

“Well-born, well-dressed, and moderately educated,” is the hackneyed description of a Fellow of All Souls. The candidates for fellowships, it used to be said, instead of being put through an examination were invited to dinner and given cherry-tart to eat; their fate depending upon the manner in which they disposed of the cherry-stones. The story is told of a Fellow who was elected as a reward for his delicacy in swallowing the cherry-stones. It is not to be supposed that the story is literally true; but no doubt a certain symbolical truth is enshrined in it. The unmannerly bookworm has never been wanted at All Souls. The scholar who is also a gentleman has always been preferred to him; and from the time of Sir Christopher Wren to the time of Lord Curzon of Kedleston, the College has generally been able to boast of some Fellow of wide fame, not of a rigidly academic character.

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Those great physicians Linacre and Sydenham were Fellows of All Souls; and Linacre, in an age in which men could afford to specialise in more than one subject, excelled in Greek as well as medicine. Sir Christopher Wren has just been mentioned. The College owes to him its famous sun-dial, with the motto: _Pereunt et imputantur_. It cost him £32 11s. 6d.; and its exactitude was such that Oxford watchmakers used to set their clocks by it. General Codrington, to whom the College owes the Codrington Library, went from All Souls to be Governor of Barbadoes, at the time when Admiral Benbow was beating the French there; and other Fellows whose names are known to all the world were Blackstone, of the Commentaries, Edward Young, the author of “Night Thoughts,” and Bishop Heber.

Blackstone was Bursar of All Souls. The Vinerian professorship was expressly founded for him. His “Commentaries on the Laws of England” were first delivered as a course of professorial lectures. He took his position so seriously that he declined to read his lectures to the Prince of Wales on the ground that he could not quit his duties at Oxford. Campbell says of him that he was, after Bacon, “the first practising lawyer at the English bar who, in writing, paid the slightest attention to the selection or collocation of words.” He served his College by compelling the executors of the Duke of Wharton to pay over to it a donation promised by him at the instance of Edward Young.

Wharton was a rake; and Young, in his youth, was fond of consorting with rakes. In later life, however, he repented and cancelled the dedications of poems which he had addressed to his more disreputable associates. The College books describe him as _poeta celeberrimus_; and he certainly had for a time a vogue as great as that of Tennyson, or even Martin Farquhar Tupper, though nowadays he is only remembered for the single sentiment: “Procrastination is the thief of time.” A passage in Johnson shows that, though he combined worldliness with his other-worldliness, he could be effective as a Christian controversialist.

“The other boys,” said the atheist, “I can always answer, because I always know whence they have their arguments, which I have read a hundred times; but that fellow Young is continually pestering me with something of his own.”

Heber remains; but what there is to be said about Heber may be better said when we come to Brasenose. Here he is mentioned principally because, in one of his letters home, he describes how, looking out from Brasenose, he saw the All Souls Fellows searching for the All Souls mallard, and so introduces us to the interesting legend of that bird.

The story is that, when the foundations of the College was being dug, a mallard flew out of a drain. Thereupon, or it may be at a later date, a College poet wrote a song about the mallard, of which the first and last verses and the chorus may be given here:

“The griffin, bustard, turkey, capon, Let other hungry mortals gape on, And on their bones with stomach fall hard, But let All Souls men have their mallard.

CHORUS.

Oh, by the blood of King Edward, Oh, by the blood of King Edward, It was a swapping, swapping mallard.

Then let us drink and dance a galliard In the remembrance of the mallard, And as the mallard doth in poole, Let’s dabble, dive, and duck in bowl.

CHORUS.

Oh, by the blood of King Edward, Oh, by the blood of King Edward, It was a swapping, swapping mallard.”

The song is still sung at College gaudies. In the old days the Fellows, after singing it, used to make a solemn pilgrimage round the College to look for the mallard; but though the pilgrimage began solemnly, it was apt to end uproariously. Bonfires were lighted; furniture was smashed; the oaks of the unpopular were forced—all on pretence of discovering the undiscoverable bird. The Fellows, in short, made their rounds “not on the viewless wings of poesy, but charioted by Bacchus and his pards”; and their proceedings attracted the attention of their Visitor, Archbishop Abbot, who wrote to them:

“The feast of Christmas drawing now to an end both put me in mind of the great outrage which, as I am informed, was the last year committed in your College, where, although matters had formerly been conducted with some distemper, yet men did never before break forth into such intolerable liberty as to tear down doors and gates, and disquiet their neighbours, as if it had been a camp or a town in war. Civil men should never so far forget themselves under pretence of a foolish mallard as to do things barbarously unbecoming.”

MAGDALEN COLLEGE

The College which withstood James II.—President Routh—His great age and eccentricities—Slackness of the College—The careers of Addison—Of Gibbon—Of Charles Reade—Oscar Wilde and the Æsthetic Movement at Magdalen—Persecution of Wilde and suppression of the movement.

“Little is known,” say the works of reference, of William Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester, the founder of Magdalen; and the little that does happen to be known is of no absorbing interest.

The event in its history of which the College is officially proudest is its battle with James II. The King, for purposes of his own, proposed to nominate a President. The College demonstrated that the royal nominee was an unsuitable person to fill the office, and, “having first received the blessed Eucharist,” proceeded to elect a man of their own choice, and successfully upheld their election in the face of the royal displeasure. “Is that Magdalen Tower?” asked the Prince Regent when he visited Oxford with the allied sovereigns in 1814. “Yes, your Royal Highness,” replied his travelling companion, “that’s the tower against which James II. broke his head.”

[Illustration: MAGDALEN COLLEGE.

[To face p. 153.]

A second object of the pride of Magdalen is the long presidency of Dr. Routh, whose long life was a link between historical and modern times.

There must be many men still living in Oxford who remember him, for he only died (at the age of ninety-nine) in 1854. He, on his part, remembered, and talked of, Dr. Johnson’s visits to Oxford, had attained his majority before the American Declaration of Independence, was old enough to be at a dame’s school when Wolfe was storming the Heights of Abraham, and had an aunt who had known a lady who had seen Charles I.

That he was either a great man or a great college ruler it would be an exaggeration to affirm. He was famous rather for wearing a wig, defying University Commissions, and favouring traditional abuses. His wig was sent, after his death, to the Knaresborough well to be petrified, and he himself was reverenced chiefly as an interesting relic of that remote past which his conversation could recall. A crowd used to assemble daily to see him shuffle from his lodgings to the chapel. He recollected Gownsman’s Gallows, on which he had seen undergraduate members of the University hanged for highway robbery. His politics, it is said, were those of Strafford, and his religion was that of Laud. He spoke currently of the Jacobite faction as a still living force; and his favourite joke was to inquire after people who had long been dead, and express astonishment when informed of their decease.

Among a mass of stories told about him the best are perhaps those related by the biographers of Charles Reade, who had been elected to a demyship under his presidency. In one of those anecdotes we see an undergraduate hauled before him by the tutors. The young man having delayed in town to amuse himself, and not having arrived in Oxford until three days after the commencement of the term, the tutors represented to the President that he ought to be rusticated.

“‘Three days late, is he?’ whimpered the old fellow in his childish treble. ‘Well, sirs, there has been an heavy fall of snow, and as the gentleman resides in Norfolk, no doubt the coaches have been detained along the road.’

“‘But,’ urged the tutors, ‘he could have reached Oxford in a few hours by railway.’

“‘Railway?’ quoth Dr. Routh incredulously. ‘Ah, well, I don’t know anything about that’; and so, with the typical flea in its ear, minor authority was dismissed.”

Another story relates to the case of an undergraduate who, after being in residence for three years and three-quarters, had not yet succeeded in passing “Smalls.” The junior tutor called to propose that the young man in question should be invited to remove his name from the College books.

“The venerable President at once assumed an expression of extreme astonishment. ‘I don’t know anything about your examinations,’ he replied to the complaining don. ‘Have you anything to say as regards the gentleman’s moral character or conduct?’ The tutor responded in the negative. ‘Then,’ cried the President in an outburst of righteous indignation, ‘how dare you come here, sir, to attack a respectable member of the College? His father, sir, is a friend of my friend, the Bishop of Bath and Wells; and I will not listen, sir, to any such frivolous allegations.’”

And finally there is the story of the President’s visit to London. He went there seldom, and always by coach, and the day came when competition compelled the reduction of the fares:

“Dr. Routh alighted, as was his wont, in Oxford Street, and was assisted respectfully by the coachman, to whom he handed £1 7s. 6d.—twenty-five shillings the fare, and half a crown, the gratuity to John, who, as the money was being paid to him, said, ‘The fare, Mr. President, is reduced to a guinea.’ Dr. Routh paused and reflected. ‘Sir,’ he replied, ‘I always have paid twenty-five shillings, and I always shall.’”

Such is our picture—a picture of an imperious old gentleman, constitutionally opposed to progress, looking upon his College as a Duke looks upon his estate, regarding a reformer as a Duke regards a Radical Chancellor of the Exchequer, convinced that the general well-being depended upon his being left at liberty to manage, or mismanage, his own affairs.

And the point of view of the President was also, for many generations, the point of view of the Fellows under him. They had a very fine piece of property to cut up, and they carved it to their common satisfaction. The endowment amounted to about £24,000 a year in all. The President took about £4,000 a year, and the Fellows from £500 to £600 a year each; while the Demies, who were nominated by the Fellows in their turn, had a statutory right to succeed to the Fellowships as vacancies occurred—the elections, save in rare instances, being governed by the sacred principles of nepotism. “Your nominee, sir,” the President might occasionally remark with sarcasm, “may be a very excellent young man, but he is no scholar”; but the excellence was almost invariably allowed to compensate for the lack of scholarship.

It could only, in such circumstances, be by accident that the names of good men were entered on the College books; but such happy accidents did, of course, occur from time to time. Addison was the first accident, Gibbon the second, and Charles Reade the third.

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