While Worcester was being founded in the conventional way, Oxford was developed by such buildings as the cloister at Corpus, the Pembroke chapel, the hall at All Souls’, the front quadrangle at Queen’s, and the little Lincoln “Grove” cottages. Then also the[Pg 170] Trinity College lime trees were planted. In most of the work of that time Dean Aldrich of Christ Church had a hand or a word. This clever and genial tutor was one of the best men of his day, and quite typical of the early eighteenth century. He seems to have been one to whom action came more naturally than dreams, if he dreamed at all; and he could easily express the many sides of his personality in a lasting way. A happy and golden mediocrity! He encouraged Boyle in the dazzling indiscretion of The Epistles of Phalaris. He wrote the enduring Oxford Logic, a smoking catch, and “Hark! the bonny Christ Church bells”; and perhaps this translation:—
If on my theme I rightly think,
There are five reasons why men drink,
Good wine, a friend, or being dry,
Or lest we should be, by and by,
Or any other reason why.
The size of his architectural designs is seen in Peckwater quadrangle at Christ Church; their charm, in All Saints’, which the moon loves. Soon after his death in 1710, the stately library at Christ Church and that copious one at All Souls’ were begun.
In the year of the building of Pembroke chapel, Samuel Johnson entered the college, where they preserve his deal writing-table and china tea-pot. As Aldrich represents the early part of the century in Oxford, so Johnson represents the middle. Men are nowadays disposed to blame the cheerfulness of an age that produced a hundred immortals who do not give the true[Pg 172][Pg 171]
CHRIST CHURCH—PECKWATER QUADRANGLE
Through the opening between the west end of the College Library on the right, and some houses inhabited by Masters of the College on the left, appears the spire of the University Church of St. Mary. Part of the pediment of the buildings on the north side of Peckwater Quadrangle shows beneath.
The piece of masonry on the extreme right of the picture is part of the wall of the passage leading to Tom Quadrangle.
Two undergraduates converse to the left.