THE HIGH STREET LOOKING EAST
The Mitre Inn is on the left of the picture, and above the white building rises the tower and lantern of All Saints’ Church. A part of these buildings has been removed for the extension of Brasenose College. Farther on, the spire of the University Church appears above the porch of All Saints’, and a portion of the battlements of All Souls’ College closes the perspective.
departing, when Christmas sports were dying, and Latin conversation at dinner and supper was going out of use; and Anthony à Wood laments that scholar-like conversation (“viz. by quoting the fathers, producing an antient verse from the poets suitable to his discourse”) was accounted pedantic, and “nothing but news and the affairs of Christendom,” he says scornfully, “is discoursed of, and that generally at coffee-houses.” At some, perhaps at all of them, there was a light library, which apparently resembled the library of a modern college barge. A copy of Rabelais, with poems and plays, all chained in the old manner, embellished Short’s coffee-house. Later came the Tatlers and Spectators and Connoisseurs, for “such as have neglected or lost their Latin or Greek,” as Tom Warton said:—
“As there are here books suited to every Taste, so there are liquors adapted to every species of reading. Amorous tales may be perused over Arrack punch and jellies; insipid odes over orgeat or capilaire; politics over coffee; divinity over port; and defences of bad generals and bad ministers over whipt syllabubs. In a word, in these libraries instruction and pleasure go hand in hand; and we may pronounce, in a literal sense, that learning remains no longer a dry pursuit.” And in Gibbon’s day the dons changed their seats from chapel to hall, and from common room to coffee-house, in an indolent circle; and not only dons, but the infinite variety of University types in the distinguishing raiment of that day[Pg 478]—
Such nice distinction one perceives
In cut of gown, and hoods and sleeves,
Marking degrees, or style, or station,
Of Members free, or on foundation,
That were old Cato here narrator
He must perforce have nomenclator.
There, or at an ale-house, which appears to have been less exposed to a proctorial raid, the sociable spent the Oxford evening, which grew longer as the nineteenth century approached. Sunday evenings were frequently devoted to the fair sex in Merton walks, which were always gay.
My hair in wires exact and nice,
I’ll trim my cap to smallest size,
That Polly sure may see me,
exclaims an eighteenth-century spark, with a hint that the kindly relations between town and gown sometimes reached the married state. Yet another writer with an eye for the amusing side of Oxford life drew the following picture, which a diligent seeker might, with difficulty, parallel to-day. Gainlove and Ape-all, two Oxford undergraduates, are talking:—