The ‘violent affection to vice’ in the University, or in the country, was, of course, the reaction against the godliness of Puritan captains of horse. Another form of the reaction is discernible in the revived High Church sentiments of Prideaux, Wood, and most of the students of the time.
The manners of the undergraduates were not much better than those of the pot-house-haunting seniors. Dr. Good, the Master of Balliol, ‘a good old toast,’ had much trouble with his students.
‘There is, over against Balliol College, a dingy, horrid, scandalous ale-house, fit for none but draymen and tinkers, and such as, by going there, have made themselves equally scandalous. Here the Balliol men continually, and by perpetuall bubbing, add art to their natural stupidity, to make themselves perfect sots.’
The envy and jealousy of the inferior colleges, alas! have put about many things, in these latter days, to the discredit of the Balliol men, but not even Humphrey Prideaux would, out of all his stock of epithets, choose ‘sottish’ and ‘stupid.’ In these old times, however, Dr. Good had to call the men together, and—
‘Inform them of the mischiefs of that hellish liquor called ale; but one of them, not so tamely to be preached out of his beloved liquor, made answer that the Vice-Chancelour’s men drank ale at the “Split Crow,” and why should not they too?’
On this, old Dr. Good posted off to the Vice-Chancellor, who, ‘being a lover of old ale’ himself, returned a short answer to the head of Balliol. The old man went back to his college, and informed his fellows, ‘that he was assured there were no hurt in ale, so that now they may be sots by authority.’ Christ Church men were not more sober. David Whitford, who had been the tutor of Shirley the poet, was found lying dead in his bed: ‘he had been going to take a dram for refreshment, but death came between the cup and the lips, and this is the end of Davy.’ Prideaux records, in the same feeling style, that smallpox carried off many of the undergraduates, ‘besides my brother,’ a student at Corpus.
The University Press supplied Prideaux with gossip. They printed ‘a book against Hobs,’ written by Clarendon. Hobbes was the heresiarch of the time, and when an unhappy fellow of Merton hanged himself, the doctrines of Hobbes were said to have prompted him to the deed. To return to the Press. ‘Our Christmas book will be Cornelius Nepos . . . Our marbles are now printing.’ Prideaux, as has been said, took no interest in his own work.
‘I coat (quote) a multitude of authors; if people think the better of me for that, I will think the worse of them for their judgement. It beeing soe easyly a thinge to make this specious show, he must be a fool that cannot gain whatsoever repute is to be gotten by it. If people will admire him for this, they may; I shall admire such for nothing else but their good indexs. As long as books have these, on what subject may we not coat as many others as we please, and never have read one of them?’
It is not easy to gather from this confession whether Prideaux had or had not read the books he ‘coated.’ It is certain that Dean Aldrich (and here again we recognise the eternal criticism of modern Oxford) held a poor opinion of Humphrey Prideaux. Aldrich said Prideaux was ‘incorrect,’ ‘muddy-headed,’ ‘he would do little or nothing besides heaping up notes’; ‘as for MSS. he would not trouble himself about any, but rest wholly upon what had been done to his hands by former editors.’ This habit of carping, this trick of collecting notes, this inability to put a work through, this dawdling erudition, this horror of manuscripts, every Oxford man knows them, and feels those temptations which seem to be in the air. Oxford is a discouraging place. College drudgery absorbs the hours of students in proportion to their conscientiousness. They have only the waste odds-and-ends of time for their own labours. They live in an atmosphere of criticism. They collect notes, they wait, they dream; their youth goes by, and the night comes when no man can work. The more praise to the tutors and lecturers who decipher the records of Assyria, or patiently collate the manuscripts of the Iliad, who not only teach what is already known, but add to the stock of knowledge, and advance the boundaries of scholarship and science.
One lesson may be learned from Prideaux’s cynical letters, which is still worth the attention of every young Oxford student who is conscious of ambition, of power, and of real interest in letters. He can best serve his University by coming out of her, by declining college work, and by devoting himself to original study in some less exhausted air, in some less critical society.