He had a great fondness for literature and poetry and, following the customs of the times, he used occasionally to dash off an indiscreet sonnet, or a more sound criticism of the current publications. Italian, he declared, contained as a language more good poetry in it than any with which he was conversant. The essential quality in any subject was that it should be “entertaining.” Without this, Fox refused to consider it. The exact meaning which he read into the word is, however, somewhat difficult to gather, for, writing to his friend Macarthey, he stated that he was fond of mathematics and would concentrate upon it because it promised to be entertaining.
Oxford remained dear to Fox and the friendships he formed over the card-table, and the various “rags” in which he took part were never forgotten by him. When the triumvirate went down, their ways at first lay separate. Eden’s time was occupied first in getting called to the Bar, and then, through the patronage of the Duke of Marlborough, to Parliament as member for Woodstock. Malmesbury, an incipient diplomatist while still at Winchester, left England and joined the British Embassy at Madrid. Fox left Oxford before the age of twenty-one, and was immediately returned to Parliament for Midhurst. For some twenty years the tide of life kept the three apart, each striving in his own quarter. Then in 1782 Fox, who had climbed higher up the ladder of fame than either of the other two, was reminded of the old friendships of his Undergraduate days. Malmesbury, then Sir James Harris, Knight of the Bath, was invalided home from the Embassy at St Petersburg, and was instantly appointed by Fox to be Minister at the Hague. The year after this, Eden, whose political career under the banner of Lord North was a distinguished one, came again into touch with Fox, and exerted himself to bring about a coalition between his own chief and his old Oxford friend. It is practically certain that the touch of sentiment roused by the remembrance of the old days, when Eden and he played cards and drank claret beneath the spires of Oxford, was the only reason why the coalition was brought about by Eden, for Fox afterwards publicly avowed in the House of Commons, when the rupture between North and himself was final, that “the greatest folly of his life was in having supported Lord North.”
“To the University of Oxford,” wrote Gibbon in after years, “I acknowledge no obligation; and she will as cheerfully renounce me for a son as I am willing to disclaim her for a mother. I spent fourteen months at Magdalen College; they proved the fourteen months the most idle and unprofitable of my whole life.”
A boy of sixteen, thin and delicate, who from his earliest infancy had fallen from one illness into another, possessed of an abnormal brain, and for these two reasons shunning, and shunned by, his school-fellows both in playground and classroom, and therefore compelled joyfully to fall back upon books, with which he ate, drank, and slept—conceive such a boy, and one sees Gibbon at Magdalen. Add to this the facts concerning the debauch, the lack of “bookish fellows,” the gross and inert Dons, all of which characterised the times, and it is easy to appreciate the reasons why a man like Gibbon, a high-strung, dreamy creature to whom any crowd of human beings inspired positive fear, and whose interests were entirely removed from wenching, drinking, and gaming, received no benefit from Oxford. He went up intent on nothing but the pursuit of knowledge. In the course of his dealings with his various tutors—which have already been set forth in a previous chapter—he found that knowledge was to be obtained neither in the lecture rooms nor the common rooms. To these latter, being a gentleman commoner, he received invitations and went high in the expectation of learned conversations and brilliant dialogue. He found instead no subjects under discussion save horses, drink, and political preferment. This beardless boy, practically self-educated and big with ideas upon the important subjects of life, turned with disgust from the society of the “port bibbing” and stagnant Fellows. With no definite course of studies to occupy his attentions, and unchecked by any authority, the unaccustomed feeling of liberty swept him into the infringement of rules and statutes. To his tutor he gave casual excuses for non-attendance at lectures, and disappeared from Oxford for days at a time. The unscholarly condition of the university, and his own physical inability to join in any athletic pursuits, united in preventing Oxford from making any impression upon him. Her history, her architecture, her traditions, seem to have held no interest for him, and he was more interested in making expeditions to London and places in the surrounding country than in remaining in the university and studying Undergraduate life. Even the beauty of Oxford’s old walls, tree-bordered lawns and walks, and winding river, made no appeal to him. He was in sympathy with no single thing. It was a mistake on his parents’ part ever to have sent him up. A man of Gibbon’s peculiar temperament was entirely out of place in any university; more particularly Oxford, in the state in which she then was.
And yet in spite of the incompatibility between Gibbon and Oxford, his university career was marked by an all-important incident in the development of the great historian. By education and training he was a Protestant, but, as was his habit with every subject to which he turned his attention, he did not merely read books and swallow their contents as indisputable facts. Everything he read was deeply pondered, made to pass under his own criticism, and then compared with other authors on the opposite side of the case. Consequently the subject of his own creed underwent deep thought, and after reading Middleton’s “Free Enquiry into the Miraculous Powers which are Supposed to have Subsisted in the Christian Church,” Gibbon’s religious beliefs were shaken. He decided that Protestantism was inconsistent; he was dissatisfied with it. Filled with the restlessness engendered by uncertainty, Gibbon read many works, including Bossuet’s “Variations of Protestantism” and “Exposition of Catholic Doctrine,” and the writings of the Jesuit priest, Father Parsons. “These works,” he said, “achieved my conversion”—the arguments in favour of Roman Catholicism put forward by the Jesuit priest being the real turning point in the scale.
Having arrived at the conclusion that the Protestant religion paled into insignificance before the Roman Catholic one, the Magdalen man felt that he would know no happiness until he himself should join the ranks of the “Papists.” For once his thoroughness deserted him. He did not consider the question—and the question of a man’s entirely changing his religious beliefs is a very vital one—with his usual exhaustiveness. Like a baby with a new toy, Gibbon, the great and wonderful man of brain, world famous and immortal, made a complete fool of himself. He rushed off to London without more ado, and there, under the influence of a “momentary glow of enthusiasm,” “privately abjured the heresies” of his childhood before a certain Father Baker, also a Jesuit, and became a Roman Catholic. For the moment his belief was red hot, and he wrote a burningly defiant letter to his father announcing his change of creed. The elder Gibbon at once provided an excuse for his being sent down (a circumstance which very probably would have come about on the Magdalen Dons’ own initiative without any excuse being offered to them), and packed him off to the care of the Calvanistic minister at Lausanne, M. Pavilliard. The scattering of the hastily-swallowed, undigested arguments which had brought about Gibbon’s precipitate action, was a matter of a few months to M. Pavilliard, and in less than two years he was once more a fully convinced Protestant. The ex-Magdalen man’s amour propre is fully demonstrated by the unblushing assertion that although the Calvinist minister had “a handsome share in his re-conversion,” yet it was principally brought about “by his own solitary reflections.” Doubtless when he wrote those statements he fully realised the extent and powers of his own brain, and refused to admit that any ordinarily clever man could have, or ever did have, any influence in swaying him from one point of view to another. One is fully justified in assuming that had he not gone to a Calvinist minister, but, instead, continued under the roof of a Jesuit priest, none of the “philosophical arguments,” to which he refers so glibly, would have availed him, and Edward Gibbon, historian, would have remained a Roman Catholic to the end of his days.
“Lord, let me not live to be useless!” was the constant prayer of John Wesley, and it was the keynote of his character. The founder of the Methodists, famous throughout the civilised world, and a man whose personal magnetism and great brain were bound to bring him to the fore in whatever profession he might have chosen, was actuated by a consuming dread of being considered useless. A desire to achieve great things was fostered during his Undergraduate days at Christ Church. He went there with a sound knowledge of Hebrew, and began to achieve some note for his skill in logic. This was the beginning of the growth of ambition, and the fact that he was “noticed for his attainments” brought him great pleasure, for at all times he bubbled over with humour and good spirits in full realisation of his college notoriety. In consequence of this his reluctance at taking orders, when proposed by his family, was marked. He argued the question with himself fully while pacing his rooms at night, and he wrote to his father and explained his reluctance. It is conceivable that the life as led by gentleman commoners, with its wine parties, wild escapades, and general moral carelessness may have been the reason of Wesley’s hesitation. For this clever, amusing lad was popular in his college, and invited to take part in all the jollifications. Be that as it may, the question of devoting his life to religion was a difficult one. Wesley’s self-examination, assisted by his father’s scorn of becoming a “callow clergyman,” was doubtless attended by silent questionings as to what was his speciality. The atmosphere and traditions of Oxford had laid hold of him. The names of great men, sons of Alma mater, filled him with the desire to emulate them, to excel them even. Their names were spoken in awe and admiration. Why should not his be also? He was brilliantly clever, of a clever family, and already had tasted the joys of fame in however humble a manner. Why should he have to follow his father’s lead and enter the Church? Could he not do better for himself outside? Undoubtedly, for there was more scope, less subjection to rules and orders, more individual power. But, on the other hand, these speculations and desires to break away were held in check by filial respect and love. His father and mother were keenly desirous of his embracing a clerical life, and his mother especially was of opinion that the sooner he entered into deacon’s orders the better, as it would be an additional inducement to “greater application in the study of practical divinity.”
