The fact that a mere boy was elected to a position which provided for him for life was not calculated to stimulate subsequent intellectual activity, and Wykehamists themselves have been among the first to say that the intellectual distinction of the great bishop's beneficiaries has by no means corresponded to the magnificence of the foundation or the noble intentions of the Founder. Antony Wood records in the seventeenth century that there was already an "ugly proverb" as to New College men—"Golden scholars, silver Bachelors, leaden Masters, wooden Doctors," "which is attributed," he goes on, "to their rich fellowships, especially to their ease and good diet, in which I think they exceed any college else."
The nineteenth century has changed all this; the small and close college of pre-Commission days has become one of the largest and most intellectual in the University; but Winchester men in their Oxford college fully hold their own in every way against the scholars from the world outside, who are now admitted to share with them the advantages of Wykeham's foundation.
The bishop's careful provision, however, of good teaching at his school and in his college bore good fruit at first, whatever may have been the result later. If Corpus is especially the college of the revival of learning, New College had prepared the way, and the first Englishman to teach Greek in Oxford was the New College fellow, William Grocyn, whom Erasmus called the "most upright and best of all Britons." From the same college, about the same time, came the patron of Erasmus, Archbishop Warham, of whose saintly simplicity and love of learning he gives so attractive a picture. Warham was not forgetful of his old college, and presented the beautiful "linen fold" panelling which still adorns the hall.
At the time of the Reformation, New College was especially attached to the old form of the faith, and it has been maintained that the dangerous lowness of the wicket entrance in the Gate Tower was due to the deliberate purpose of the governing body, who resolved that everyone who entered the college, however Protestant his views, should bow his head under the statue of the Blessed Virgin above. At any rate, one New College man in the seventeenth century attributed his perversion to "the lively memorials of Popery in statues and pictures in the gates and in the chapel of New College."
Certain it is that under Elizabeth, after the purging of the college from its recusant fellows, who contributed a large share of the Roman controversialists to the colleges of Louvain and Douai, Wykeham's foundation sank, as has been said, into inglorious ease for two centuries. Yet, during this period, it had the honour of producing two of the Seven Bishops who resisted King James II's attack on the English Constitution—one of them the saintly hymn writer, Thomas Ken. And to the darkest days of the eighteenth century belongs the most famous picture of the ideal Oxford life: "I spent many years, in that illustrious society, in a well-regulated course of useful discipline and studies, and in the agreeable and improving commerce of gentlemen and of scholars; in a society where emulation without envy, ambition without jealousy, contention without animosity, incited industry and awakened genius; where a liberal pursuit of knowledge and a genuine freedom of thought was raised, encouraged, and pushed forward by example, by commendation, and by authority." These were the words of Bishop Lowth, whose great work on The Poetry of the Hebrews was delivered as lectures for the Chair of Poetry at Oxford.
The spirit of Oxford has never been better described, and even that bitter critic, the great historian Gibbon, admits that Lowth practised what he preached, and that he was an ornament to the University in its darkest period. Of the days of Reform a forerunner was found in Sydney Smith, the witty Canon of St. Paul's.
The names of New College men famous for learning or for political success, during the last half-century, are too recent to mention, but it is fitting to put on record that to New College belongs the sad distinction of having the longest Roll of Honour in the late War. It has lost about 250 of its sons, including four of the most distinguished young tutors in Oxford; History and Philosophy, Scholarship and Natural Science are all of them the poorer for the premature loss of Cheesman and Heath, Hunter and Geoffrey Smith; their names are familiar to everyone in Oxford, and they would have been familiar some day to the world of scholars everywhere. Dis aliter visum est .
[LINCOLN COLLEGE]
"This is the chapel; here, my son,
Thy father dreamed the dreams of youth,
And heard the words, which, one by one,
The touch of life has turned to truth."
NEWBOLT.