An American at Oxford

by John Corbin

When mods and finals approach, the tune is altered. Weeks and months together the fellows dig and dig, morning, noon, and night. All sport and recreation is now regarded only as sustaining the vital forces for the ordeal. Sometimes, in despair at the distractions of Oxford life, knots of fellow sufferers form reading parties, gain permission to take a house together in the country, and draw up a code of terrible penalties against the man who suggests a turn at whist, the forbidden cup, or a trip to town. From the simplest tutorial cram-book to the profoundest available monograph, no page is left unturned. And this is only half. The motto of Squeers is altered. When a man knows a thing, he goes and writes it. Passages apt for quotation are learned by rote; phrases are polished until they are luminous; periods are premeditated; paragraphs and sections prevised. An apt epigram turns up in talk or in reading—the wary student jots it down, polishes it to a point, and keeps it in ambush to dart it at this or that possible question. One man I knew was electrified with Chaucer's description of the Sergeant of the Law,—

No wher so bisy a man as he ther nas,
And yet he semed bisier than he was;—

and fell into despair because he could not think of any historical personage in his subject-matter to whom it might aptly apply. On the other hand, there was Alfred the Great, whose character was sure to be asked for. Did I know any line of Chaucer that would hit off Alfred the Great? So unusual to quote Chaucer.

All this sort of thing has, of course, its limits. In the last days of preparation, the brains are few that do not reel under their weight of sudden knowledge; the minds are rare that are not dazzled by their own unaccustomed brilliance. The superlatively trained athlete knocks off for a day or two before an important contest—and perhaps has a dash at the flesh-pots by way of relaxing tension from the snapping point. So does the over-read examinee. He goes home to his sisters and his aunts, and to all the soothing wholesomeness of English country life.

And then that terrible week of incessant examinations! All the facts and any degree of style will fail to save a man unless he has every resource ready at command. No athletic contest, perhaps no battle, could be a severer test of courage. Life does not depend upon the examination, but a living may. In America, degrees are more and more despised; but in England, it still pays to disarrange the alphabet at the end of one's name, or to let it be known to a prospective employer that one is a first-class honor man. The nature of the young graduate's employment and his salary too have a pretty close correspondence with his class at graduation. If he can add a blue to a first, the world is his oyster. The magnitude of the issue makes the examinee—or breaks him. Brilliant and laborious students too often come off with a bare third, and happy audacity has as often brought the careless a first. It may seem that the ordeal is unnecessarily severe; but even here the reason may be found, if it be only granted that the aim of a university is to turn out capable men. The honor examination requires some knowledge, more address, and most of all pluck—pluck or be plucked, as the Cambridge phrase is; and these things in this order are what count in the life of the British Empire.

VI

OXFORD QUALITIES AND THEIR DEFECTS

Under the German-American system, the main end is scholarly training. Our graduates are apt to have the Socratic virtue of knowing how little they know—and perhaps not much besides. Even for the scholar this knowledge is not all. Though the English undergraduate is not taught to read manuscripts and decipher inscriptions—to trace out knowledge in its sources—the examination system gives him the breadth of view and mental grasp which are the only safe foundations of scholarship. If he contributes to science, he usually does so after he has left the university. The qualities which then distinguish him are rare among scholars—sound common sense and catholicity of judgment. Such qualities, for instance, enabled an Oxford classical first to recognize Schliemann's greatness while yet the German universities could only see that he was not an orthodox researcher according to their standards. If a man were bent on obtaining the best possible scholarly training, he probably could not do better than to take an English B. A. and then a German or an American Ph.D. As for the world of deeds and of men, the knowledge which is power is that which is combined with address and pluck; and the English system seems based on practical sense, in that it lays chief stress on producing this rare combination.

To attribute to the honor schools the success with which Englishmen have solved the problems of civic government and colonial administration would be to ignore a multitude of contributory causes; but the honor schools are highly characteristic of the English system, and are responsible for no small part of its success. A striking illustration of this may be seen in the part which the periodical press plays in public affairs. In America, nothing is rarer than a writer who combines broad information with the power of clear and convincing expression. The editor of any serious American publication will bear me out in the observation that, notwithstanding the multitude of topics of the deepest and most vital interest, it is difficult to find any one to treat them adequately; and any reader can satisfy himself on this point by comparing the best of our periodicals with the leading English reviews. Now the writing of a review article requires nothing more nor less than the writing of a first-class examination paper, even to the element of pluck; for to marshal the full forces of the mind in the pressure of public life or of journalism requires self-command in a very high degree. The same thing is as obvious in the daily papers. The world is filled with English newspaper men who combine with reportorial training the power of treating a subject briefly and tellingly in its broadest relations.

The public advantage of this was not long ago very aptly exemplified. When our late war suddenly brought us face to face with the fact that our national destiny had encountered the destinies of the great nations of the world, the most thoughtful people were those who felt most doubt and uncertainty; the more one considered, the less could one say just what he thought. At that crisis a very clear note was sounded. The London correspondents of our papers—Englishmen, and for the most part honor men—presented the issue to us from British and imperialistic point of view with a vigor and conviction that had immediate effect, as we all remember, and gave the larger part of the nation a new view of the crisis, and a new name for it. It was not until weeks later that our own most thoughtful writers as a body perceived the essential difference between our position and that of Great Britain, and we have scarcely yet discarded the word "imperialism." The knowledge, address, and pluck—or shall we call it audacity?—of the English correspondents enabled them to make a stroke of state policy. This is only one of many citable instances.