burnishing, the unused virtue in these abjects. “I have avoided what is called vice,” he said, “because it is so easy, and I do not love easy things;” and for the same reason he frowned but tenderly on those who had not avoided it.
While the sunlight was failing, we were left by ourselves. But Philip was not alone. He had laid his book and ale aside, and looked at the solemn row of empty chairs against the wall. His eyes wore the creative look of eyes that apprehend more than is visible. In those chairs he beheld seated what he called his Loves—the very faces and hair and hands of his dead friends. I have heard him say that they appeared “in their old coats.” Night after night they revisited him—“of terrible aspect,” yet sweet and desirable. They were as saints are to men whose religion is of another name than his. He could say and act nothing which those faces approved not, or which those faint hands would have stayed. Embroidered by the day upon the border of the night, their life was an hour. Out of doors he saw them, too, in well-loved places—gateways above Hinksey, hilltops at Cumnor or Dorchester, Christ Church groves, or fitting Oxford streets—such as (he believed) had something in them which they owed to his passionate contemplation in their midst. There he heard them speak softlier than the wings of fritillaries in Bagley Wood. Si quis amat novit quid hæc vox clamat.... But his own face comes not to satisfy the longing of those who watch as faithfully, with eyes dimmer or of less felicity.[Pg 238]
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.