The Past
The Oxford graduate of the past is far too pale a ghost in literature. He lies in old books, like a broken sculpture waiting to be reconstructed, and survives but in an anecdote and from his importance after leaving Oxford for a bishopric or a civil place. For one memory of a Don there are a hundred of soldiers, statesmen, priests, in the quadrangles and streets. He is in danger of being treated as merely the writer of a quaint page among the records of the college muniment-room. Erasmus, Fuller, Wood, Tom Warton, preserve and partly reveal the spirit of the past, and help us to call up something of the lusty, vivid life which the fellows and canons and presidents led in their “days of nature.” There is, for example, a Dean of Christ Church, afterwards Bishop of Oxford and last of Norwich, who has still the breath of life in him, on John Aubrey’s page.
I
He was “very facetious and a good fellow,” and Ben Jonson’s friend. When a Master of Arts, if not a Bachelor of Divinity, he was often merry at a good ale parlour in Friar Bacon’s study, that welcomed Pepys and stood till 1779. It was rumoured that the building would fall if a more learned man than Bacon entered, a mischance of which the Dean had no fear. When he was a Doctor of Divinity “he sang ballads at the Cross at Abingdon on a market-day.” The usual[Pg 239] ballad-singer could not compete with such a rival, and complained that he sold no ballads. Whereat “the jolly Doctor put off his gown and put on the ballad-singer’s leathern jacket, and being a handsome man, and had a rare full voice,” he had a great audience and a great sale of sheets. His conversation was “extreme pleasant.” He and Dr. Stubbinge, a corpulent Canon of Christ Church, were riding in a dirty lane, when the coach was overturned. “Dr. Stubbinge,” said the Dean, “was up to his elbows in mud, but I was up to the elbows in Stubbinge.” He was a verse-maker, of considerable reputation, of some wit and abundant mirth, with a quaint looking backward upon old places and old times that is almost pathetic in these verses:—
Farewell rewards and fairies,
Good housewives now may say,
For now foul sluts in dairies
Do fare as well as they.
And though they sweep their hearths no less
Than maids were wont to do,
Yet who of late for cleanliness
Finds sixpence in her shoe?
Lament, lament, old abbeys,
The fairies’ lost command;
They did but change priests’ babies,
But some have changed your land;
And all your children sprung from thence
Are now grown Puritans;
Who live as changelings ever since,
For love of your domains.
When Bishop of Oxford, he had “an admirable, grave, and venerable aspect.” But his pontifical state[Pg 240] permitted some humanities, and he was married to a pretty wife. “One time,” says Aubrey, “as he was confirming, the country people pressing in to see the ceremony, said he, ‘Bear off there, or I’ll confirm you with my staff.’ Another time, being about to lay his hand on the head of a man very bald, he turns to his chaplain (Lushington) and said, ‘Some dust, Lushington’ (to keep his hand from slipping).” He and Dr. Lushington, of Pembroke College, “a very learned and ingenious man,” would sometimes lock themselves in the wine-cellar. Then he laid down first his episcopal hat, with, “There lies the doctor”; next, his gown, with, “There lies the bishop”; and then ’twas “Here’s to thee, Corbet” and “Here’s to thee, Lushington.” Three years after attaining the bishopric of Norwich he died. “Good-night, Lushington,” were his last words.
II
There is also in Aubrey another such ruddy memory of a fine old gentleman—a scholar, a thoughtful and genial governor of youth, “a right Church of England man,” and President of Trinity. In gown and surplice and hood “he had a terrible gigantic aspect, with his sharp grey eyes” and snowy hair. He had a rich, digressive mind, “like a hasty pudding, where there was memory, judgment, and fancy all stirred together,” not suited to his day; and began a sermon happily, but not at all to Aubrey’s taste:—
“Being my turn to preach in this place, I went into[Pg 242][Pg 241]
TRINITY COLLEGE
The entrance to the College is under the tower at the west end of the Chapel, which appears towards the right of the picture.
The architecture of the Chapel is worthy of being seen, though the covering of green prevents this—a custom carried to excess in Oxford buildings.
Opposite, at the extreme left, is a portion of the east end of the Chapel of Balliol College, and the trees are standing in that remnant of an old orchard fronting the Broad which forms the spacious approach to Trinity College.
my study to prepare myself for my sermon, and I took down a book that had blue strings, and looked in it, and ’twas sweet Saint Bernard. I chanced to read such a part of it, on such a subject, which has made me to choose this text....”
He concluded, says Aubrey:—
“‘But now I see it is time for me to shut up my book, for I see the doctors’ men come in wiping of their beards from the ale-house.’ He could from the pulpit plainly see them, and ’twas their custom in sermon to go there, and about the end of sermon to return to wait on their masters.”
Undergraduates who pleased him not were warned that he might “bring an hour-glass two hours long” into the hall. He was inexorable towards wearers of long hair, and would cut it off with “the knife that chips the bread on the buttery hatch.” It was his fashion to peep through key-holes in order to find out idlers. Says one: “He scolded the best in Latin of any one that ever he knew.” It seemed to him good discipline to keep at a high standard the beer of Trinity, because he observed that “the houses that had the smallest beer had most drunkards, for it forced them to go into the town to comfort their stomachs.” Yet in his exhortations to a temperate life, he admitted that the men of his college “ate good commons and drank good double beer, and that will get out.” And he was a man of tender and exquisite charity. When he saw that a diligent scholar was also poor, “he would many times put money in at his window,” and gave work in[Pg 246] transcription to servitors who wrote a good hand. His right foot dragged somewhat upon the ground, so that “he gave warning (like the rattlesnake) of his coming,” and an imitative wag of the college “would go so like him that sometimes he would make the whole chapel rise up, imagining he had been entering in.” The Civil War, thinks Aubrey, killed the old man, just before he would have been fifty years President. For it “much grieved him that was wont to be so absolute in the college to be affronted and disrespected by rude soldiers.” The cavaliers and their ladies invaded the college grove to the sound of lute or theorbo. Some of the gaudy women even came, “half dressed, like angels,” to morning chapel. A foot-soldier broke the President’s hour-glass. So he gathered his old russet cloth gown about him and closed his eyes upon the calamity and died, still a fresh and handsome old man.
III
John Earle, a notable scholar and divine of the seventeenth century, a fellow of Merton, and afterwards Bishop of Worcester and Bishop of Salisbury, has drawn the picture of “a downright scholar,” which I may not omit. Earle had the most concentrated style of any man of his time; each of his sentences is a document. His characters are as clear and firm as the brasses on Merton altar platform, and likely to endure as long.
“A downright scholar,” he writes, “is one that has[Pg 248][Pg 247]
INTERIOR OF THE LIBRARY OF MERTON COLLEGE
The newel posts, balusters, and hand-rails of the staircase leading to the ground-floor show in the centre of the picture, to the right and left of which are bookcases and the quaint “Jacobean” screens peculiar to this Library.
The ribbed barrel roof is covered with timber, the dormer windows which light the Library appearing on the left, over the staircase.
An old oak coffer, bound with iron, is placed to the left of the staircase.
much learning in the ore, unwrought and untried, which time and experience fashions and refines. He is good metal in the inside, though rough and unsecured without, and therefore hated of the courtier that is quite contrary. The time has got the vein of making him ridiculous, and men laugh at him by tradition, and no unlucky absurdity but is put upon his profession, and done like a scholar. But his fault is only this, that his mind is somewhat much taken up with his mind, and his thoughts not laden with any carriage besides. He has not put on the quaint garb of the age, which is now become a man’s total. He has not humbled his meditations to the industry of compliment, nor afflicted his brain in an elaborate leg. His body is not set upon nice pins, to be turning and flexible for every motion, but his scrape is homely, and his nod worse. He cannot kiss his hand and cry Madam, nor talk idly enough to bear her company. His smacking of a gentlewoman is somewhat too savoury, and he mistakes her nose for her lip. A very woodcock would puzzle him in carving, and he wants the logic of a capon. He has not the glib faculty of gliding over a tale, but his words come squeamishly out of his mouth, and the laughter commonly before the jest. He names this word College too often, and his discourse beats too much on the University. The perplexity of mannerliness will not let him feed, and he is sharp set at an argument when he should cut his meat. He is discarded for a gamester at all games but ‘one and thirty,’ and at tables he reaches not beyond doublets. His[Pg 252] fingers are not long and drawn out to handle a fiddle, but his fist is clenched with the habit of disputing. He ascends a horse somewhat sinisterly, though not on the left side, and they both go jogging in grief together. He is exceedingly censured by the Inns of Court men for that heinous vice being out of fashion. He cannot speak to a dog in his own dialect, and understands Greek better than the language of a falconer. He has been used to a dark room, and dark clothes, and his eyes dazzle at a satin doublet. The hermitage of his study makes him somewhat uncouth in the world, and men make him worse by staring on him. Thus he is silly and ridiculous, and it continues with him for some quarter of a year, out of the University. But practise him a little in men, and brush him over with good company, and he shall outbalance those glisterers as much as a solid substance does a feather, or gold gold lace.” One story is told of him. He was sharp-tempered and much beloved; his servitor was endeared to his faults, and inquired respectfully one day why his master had not boxed his ears. To which he replied “that he thought he had done so; but indeed he had forgot many things that day”; it being the day of Charles I.’s execution. Whereat the servitor wept, and received the admonition unexpectedly for his pains.[Pg 253]