"The youth whose heart pants for the honour of a Bachelor of Arts degree must wait patiently till near four years have revolved.... He is obliged during this period, once to oppose and once to respond.... This opposing and responding is termed, in the cant of the place, doing generals. Two boys or men, as they call themselves, agree to do generals together. The first step in this mighty work is to procure arguments. These are always handed down, from generation to generation, on long slips of paper, and consist of foolish syllogisms on foolish subjects, of the foundation or significance of which the respondent and opponent seldom know more than an infant in swaddling cloaths. The next step is to go for a liceat to one of the petty officers, called the Regent-Master of the Schools, who subscribes his name to the questions and receives sixpence as his fee. When the important day arrives, the two doughty disputants go into a large dusty room, full of dirt and cobwebs.... Here they sit in mean desks, opposite to each other from one o'clock till three. Not once in a hundred times does any officer enter; and, if he does, he hears a syllogism or two, and then makes a bow, and departs, as he came and remained, in solemn silence. The disputants then return to the amusement of cutting the desks, carving their names, or reading Sterne's Sentimental Journey, or some other edifying novel. When the exercise is duly performed by both parties, they have a right to the title and insignia of Sophs: but not before they have been formally created by one of the regent-masters, before whom they kneel, while he lays a volume of Aristotle's works on their heads, and puts on a hood, a piece of black crape, hanging from their necks, and down to their heels.... There remain only one or two trifling forms, and another disputation almost exactly similar to doing generals, but called answering under bachelor previous to the awful examination. Every candidate is obliged to be examined in the whole circle of the sciences by three masters of arts of his own choice.... Schemes, as they are called, or little books containing forty or fifty questions on each science, are handed down from age to age, from one to another. The candidate employs three or four days in learning these by heart, and the examiners, having done the same before him, know what questions to ask, and so all goes on smoothly. When the candidate has displayed his universal knowledge of the sciences, he is to display his skill in philology. One of the masters therefore asks him to construe a passage in some Greek or Latin classic, which he does with no interruption, just as he pleases, and as well as he can. The statutes next require that he should translate familiar English phrases into Latin. And now is the time when the masters show their wit and jocularity.... This familiarity, however, only takes place when the examiners are pot-companions of the candidate, which indeed is usually the case; for it is reckoned good management to get acquainted with two or three jolly young masters of arts, and supply them well with port previously to the examination. If the vice-chancellor and proctors happen to enter the school, a very uncommon event, then a little solemnity is put on.... As neither the officer, nor anyone else, usually enters the room (for it is reckoned very ungenteel), the examiners and the candidates often converse on the last drinking-bout, or on horses, or read the newspapers or a novel."
The supply of port was the eighteenth-century relic of the feasts which used to accompany Determination and Inception, and with which so many sumptuary regulations of colleges and universities are concerned. There is a reference to a Determining Feast in the Paston Letters, in which the ill-fated Walter Paston, writing in the summer of 1479, a few weeks before his premature death, says to his brother: "And yf ye wyl know what day I was mead Baschyler, I was maad on Fryday was sevynyth, and I mad my fest on the Munday after. I was promysyd venyson ageyn my fest of my Lady Harcort, and of a noder man to, but I was desevyd of both; but my gestes hewld them plesyd with such mete as they had, blyssyd be God. Hoo have yeo in Hys keeping. Wretyn at Oxon, on the Wedenys day next after Seynt Peter."
A few glimpses of the life of this fifteenth-century Oxonian may conclude our survey. Walter Paston had been sent to Oxford in 1473, under the charge of a priest called James Gloys. His mother did not wish him to associate too closely with the son of their neighbour, Thomas Holler. "I wold," she says, "Walter schuld be copilet with a better than Holler son is ... howe be it I wold not that he schuld make never the lesse of hym, by cause he is his contre man and neghbour." The boy was instructed to "doo welle, lerne well, and be of good rewle and disposycion," and Gloys was asked to "bydde hym that he be not to hasty of takyng of orderes that schuld bynd him." To take Orders under twenty-three years of age might lead, in Margaret Paston's opinion, to repentance at leisure, and "I will love hym better to be a good secular man than to be a lewit priest." We next hear of Walter in May 1478 when he writes to his mother recommending himself to her "good moderchypp," and asking for money. He has received £5, 16s. 6d., and his expenses amount to £6, 5s. 5d. "That comth over the reseytys in my exspenses I have borrowed of Master Edmund and yt draweth to 8 shillings." He might have applied for a loan to one of the "chests" which benevolent donors had founded for such emergencies, depositing some article of value, and receiving a temporary loan: but he preferred to borrow from his new tutor, Edmund Alyard. By March 1479, Alyard was able to reassure the anxious mother about her boy's choice of a career; he was to go to law, taking his Bachelor's degree in Arts at Midsummer. His brother, Sir John, who was staying at the George at Paul's Wharf in London, intended to be present at the ceremony, but his letter miscarried: "Martin Brown had that same tyme mysch mony in a bage, so that he durst not bryng yt with hym, and that same letter was in that same bage, and he had forgete to take owt the letter, and he sent all togeder by London, so that yt was the next day after that I was maad Bachyler or than the letter cam, and so the fawt was not in me." This is the last we hear of Walter Paston. On his way home, on the 18th August 1479, he died at Norwich, after a short illness. He left a number of "togae" to his Oxford friends, including Robert Holler, the son of his Norfolk neighbour, to whom he also bequeathed "unum pulvinar vocatum le bolstar." The rest of his Oxford goods he left to Alyard, but his sheep and his lands to his own family. The cost of his illness and funeral amounted to about thirty shillings. No books are mentioned in the will; possibly they were sold for his inception feast, or he may never have possessed any. As a junior student, he would not have been allowed to use the great library which Humphrey of Gloucester had presented to the University; but there were smaller libraries to which he might have access, for books were sometimes chained up in St Mary's Church that scholars might read them.
APPENDIX
My attention has been called (too late for a reference in the text) to a medieval Latin poem giving a gloomy account of student life in Paris in the twelfth century. The verses, which have been printed in the American Journal of Philology (vol. xi. p. 80), insist upon the hardships of the student's life, and contrast his miserable condition with the happier lot of the citizens of Paris. For him there is no rejoicing in the days of his youth, and no hope even of a competence in the future. His lodgings are wretched and neglected; his dress is miserable, and his appearance slovenly. His food consists of peas, beans, and cabbage, and
"libido
Mensæ nulla venit nisi quod sale sparsa rigorem
Esca parum flectit."
His bed is a hard mattress stretched on the floor, and sleep brings him only a meagre respite from the toils of the day:--
"Sed in illa pace soporis
Pacis eget studii labor insopitus, et ipso
Cura vigil somno, libros operamque ministrat
Excitæ somnus animæ, nec prima sopori
Anxietas cedit, sed quæ vigilaverat ante
Sollicitudo redit, et major summa laboris
Curarum studiis in somnibus obicit Hydram."
In the early hours of the morning he goes to his lectures, and the whole of his day is given to study. The description of the student at lecture is interesting:--
"Aure et mente bibit et verba cadentia promo
Promptus utroque levat, oculique et mentis in illo
Fixa vigilque manet acies aurisque maritat
Pronuba dilectam cupida cum meute Minervam."