The time is late afternoon.
the tables shine with flagons and tankards, and great “sprig salts” of silver plate, which were the main college investment, the pledges of affection, or, as at Wadham, the customary gift of those who were admitted to the dignity of the high table. The shining of most was put out for ever in Charles I.’s melting-pot at New Inn Hall; and only the lists survive, each tankard and ewer and candlestick described by its donor’s name.
Thus, by the fact of their coming from neighbour villages and towns, perhaps also from one school, to a home on which they depended for their learning and the necessities of life, the fellows and scholars became knit together, with noticeable characteristics and peculiarities—almost a family resemblance; and in religious or political difficulties they made a solid strength of opinion and influence. A little heresy might break out under Henry the Eighth or Mary. A great benefaction might encourage the building of another quadrangle or a new library, and the institution of more fellowships and scholarships. They contributed a handsome quantity of plate to the king, and an officer to his army; or, to a man, resisted the Puritan intrusion after his death. Such were the more conspicuous events of centuries. The conflicts in the University, according to some proverbial Latin verses, were in early times at least as important as the boat race to-day. They were a subtle measure of the state of parties and movements; and in these the college played its part. And when the days of fighting were over, there was the University lampoon: “These[Pg 452] paltry scholars,” says an old ballad, supposed to be addressed by an Oxford alderman to the Duke of Monmouth,—
These paltry scholars, blast them with one breath,
Or they’ll rhime your Grace and us to death.
The college was busy in sending out into the world of Church and State its more vigorous members—those who excelled in the age when examinations were disputations that sometimes became almost a form of athletic sport; and in keeping within its walls the quieter spirits, who were willing to spend a life among manuscripts, in perfecting the management of the college estates, or in the education and discipline of others. From a scholarship to a fellowship, and from a fellowship to a college living, were frequently made the very calmest windings to a happy decent age, though no doubt the last stage sometimes led to such a regret as this:—
Why did I sell my College Life
(He cries) for Benefice and Wife?
Return, ye Days! when endless Pleasure
I found in Reading or in Leisure!
When calm around the Common Room
I puff’d my daily Pipe’s Perfume!
Rode for a stomach, and inspected,
At Annual Bottlings, corks selected:
And din’d untax’d, untroubled, under
The Portrait of our pious Founder!
It was a fine thing to sit day after day, in rooms sweetened, as in Burton’s day, with juniper, or in the college library, which was as a bay or river mouth leading into the very land of silence—to sit and write, or not write, as you pleased; and, in the days when[Pg 453] books were no longer shelved with their faces to the wall, look up at
Bullarium
Cherubini
printed in gold upon the glowing calf, and making mystical combinations as night came on. There, and in hall, chapel, study, and garden, men doomed to very diverse fates and stations went and still go, and found it possible to live a more enchanted life than anywhere else.