Gibbon made a scornful allusion to the salary of tutors. On this subject Dr Newton penned a multitude of indignant sheets because a certain Undergraduate, named Joseph Somaster, demanded permission to leave Hart Hall and transfer himself to Balliol for the reason that he had an offer of obtaining a tutor there who required no fees. With regard therefore to tutors’ fees, “it may be observed,” wrote the reverend Doctor, “that the University doth allow Tutors to Receive a consideration for their care of the Youth entrusted to them; that, as this is very Reasonable in itself, so hath it ever been the Practice of Tutors to Receive a Consideration for such their care; that the consideration they have received, not being limited by any Statute, hath varied, and is, at this day, different in different Houses of Education within the University; that the tutor’s demand being known, and not objected to before a Scholar is enter’d under his care, the same, upon entrance, becomes the consideration that is agreed to be paid for his care. That the Labourer is worthy of his Hire; that some Hire is both a better Encouragement to a Tutor, and a greater obligation upon him to take a due care, than no Hire; that the greatest Hire, of which any tutor in the University is, at this day thought worthy, compar’d with the Expence he hath been at, and the Pains he hath taken, and the Years he hath spent in order to Qualifie himself for this trust, and also, with the further Labour and Time he must employ in discharging it faithfully, is very small. That unless Learning be the very lowest of all attainments, and the Education of Youth the very lowest of all Professions, Thirty Shillings a Quarter, for near three times as many Lectures, is not so extravagant a demand, as that he who pays it, should do it with an unwilling hand. Much less that any one, who hath Himself been a Tutor, and who hath experienc’d a faithful Tutor’s trouble and anxiety, should think it too much for any of his Fellow-Labourers in the same Vocation, although their circumstances should be so affluent that they need not any reward, or their Friendship so particular that they do not desire it.”[25]

In the time of Dr Johnson the college tutors lectured in Hall as well as in their own rooms, and, in addition, they set weekly themes for composition—for the non-performance of which the fine was half a crown. The day for giving in these themes was Saturday. George Whitefield, though only a poor starveling servitor with scarce a penny to bless himself with, was twice fined by his tutor because he failed to compose his theme.

Christopher Wordsworth in his book on the universities in the eighteenth centuries made it clear that when Dr Johnson was at Pembroke in 1728, “Undergraduates generally depended entirely upon the Tutor to guide all their reading. His first tutor Jordon was like a father to his pupils, but he was intellectually incompetent for his important position. For this reason Johnson recommended his old schoolfellow Taylor to go to Christ Church on account of the excellent lectures of Bateman then tutor there.” In Johnson’s own words in reference to Mr Jordon, “He was a very worthy man, but a heavy man, and I did not profit much by his instructions. Indeed, I did not attend him much. The first day after I came to college, I waited upon him, and then staid away four. On the sixth, Mr Jordon asked me why I had not attended. I answered, I had been sliding in Christchurch meadow. And this I said with as much non-chalance as I am now talking to you. I had no notion that I was wrong or irreverent to my tutor.” To this self accusation Boswell replied, “That, Sir, was great fortitude of mind!” “No, Sir,” snapped Johnson, “stark insensibility.”[26]

It is unnecessary to arraign further damning evidence against the Georgian tutor. He stands convicted on the cases which I have related. Were I called upon indeed to summon other witnesses for the prosecution, I have but to turn to any eighteenth-century authority. No one has a word to say in his favour. By every one he is pronounced to be an idle, self-indulgent, dishonest, utterly unintellectual creature, conspicuously lacking in “learning, probity, and sincere religion.”

The next division of the genus Don is the public lecturer, in regard to whom there are, so Amhurst informed us, a number of statutes concerning the public lecturers in all faculties: appointing, with the utmost exactness, where they shall read, when they shall read, what they shall read, how they shall read, and to whom they shall read. “All these (as I have frequently observed) are almost totally neglected; out of twenty public lectures, not above three or four being observed at all, and they not statutably observed: for the auditors, who belong to the same college with the lecturer in any faculty, do not wait upon him to the school, where he reads, and back again, as they ought to do; so far from it, that not one in ten goes to hear these lectures, nor do they (who do attend) take down what they hear in writing; neither do they (I believe) diligently read over the same author at home, which the public professor undertook to explain; nor are persons punished (as the statutes require) for any of these omissions.” Even if it be admitted that three or four is an exaggeratedly low estimate of the number of these lectures, and that the “auditors” are just as lazy as the men who deliver them, yet it is not to be wondered at that the Undergraduates did not read over the authors, or write down what they heard. All the lectures were delivered by Dons who knew next to nothing about their subject, and they were in consequence very tedious and worthless affairs.

The lectureships were bestowed “upon such as are utterly and notoriously ignorant of them, and never made them their study in their lives. They are given away, as pensions and sinecures, to any body that can make a good interest for them, without any respect to his abilities or character in general, or to what faculty in particular he has apply’d his mind. I have known a profligate debauchee chosen professor of moral philosophy; and a fellow, who never look’d upon the stars soberly in his life, professor of astronomy; we have had history professors, who never read anything to qualify them for it, but Tom Thumb, Jack the Giant-killer, Don Belicanis of Greece, and such like valuable records; we have had likewise numberless professors of Greek, Hebrew and Arabick, who scarce understood their mother tongue; and, not long ago, a famous gamester and stock-jobber was elected to M—g—t, professor of divinity; so great it seems is the analogy between dusting of cushions, and shaking of elbows, or between squand’ring away of estates, and saving of souls!”

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A South View of the Observatory at Oxford.

Terrae Filius was moved to the above denunciations and reminiscences of lecturers, who, he said, were elected perhaps on the principle that “he can do no mischief; ergo, he shall be our man,” by the receipt of a letter from a Wadham man who recounted his own personal experiences of lecturers and their ways. It runs thus:—