Jackson’s daily system of work has only of late been changed to suit the needs of continual examinations. The terminal “Collections” or Examinations from his time to the end of Dean Gaisford’s, were intended to supply the want of general University Examinations before their regular institution; and many have thought that the pass-work for a Degree had better be done in College, since the College presents the candidate. The weekly themes and Latin verses in the Hall are gone; but the Bachelors’ prizes for Latin prose; the Undergraduates’ for hexameters; the public lectures in logic, grammar, and mathematics; the Censor’s annual address to the whole House, were in full force thirty years ago.
One more curious tradition remains of his subtle influence—that all the handwriting of the leading Christ Church Dons of the last generation is imitated from their chief’s; with great difference of character, but strong relation to his thoroughly-formed letters, to the graceful unhurried hand that everybody can read easily. This has been said of Dean Gaisford and many Censors of earlier days; Osborne Gordon’s writing, though, has a freedom of its own.
Perhaps the chief secret of Cyril Jackson’s success was that he did his work so much himself; and yet was always Dean. He would have order in College; and he had a regular police to enforce it, and attended to it himself. He entertained his undergraduates daily, seven or eight at a time, all round. He lectured and taught personally in Greek, logic, and composition, sometimes in mathematics. He tried to understand and make the acquaintance of every youth in the House; and like St. Paul, he was all desire to impart any excellent gift. When he felt his strength failing in his work, he gave it up. He had refused bishoprics and an archbishopric; he bade farewell to Christ Church and the world in love unfeigned, and turned his spirit wholly to God whom he desired, and so died full of years and honours; nor can we anywhere find a word about him that is not in his praise. Dr. Parr, who professed a not ill-natured hostility to “the Æde-Christians,” forgets it heartily and with handsome language when he speaks of the Dean (see Notes to Spital Sermon, published 1800)—“Long have I thought and often have I said that the highest station in an ecclesiastical establishment would not be more than an adequate recompense for the person who presides over this College.” It is worthily said; but if the notes are as sonorous as this, what must be the rumble of the text?
Dean Gaisford, as we have said, continued Jackson’s educational method ably and faithfully; and his view that pass-work should be done entirely in College, and Colleges be made responsible for it, may well find advocates now. All men respected the stout old scholar, and had in most things to own the shrewdness, and particularly the justice, of his judgment. The piquancy of many anecdotes and sketches of him has departed with the generation who honoured him as the first Greek scholar of England in his time. He too felt his high position sufficient, and had real happiness in efficient discharge of its duties, which were thoroughly well suited to him; and he had perhaps a better understanding of the nature and ways of his undergraduates than many younger and less outwardly formidable seniors.
Two more great names, as of a father and son, so faithfully did the younger reflect the mind and second the purposes of the elder, must of right find mention here;—not due honour, since that would involve the whole history of the Oxford Movement, both earlier and later. It is hoped that the late Dr. Liddon’s Life of Dr. Pusey is so far advanced, or its material is so well ordered and prepared, that it may soon appear—as a monument to two great English Doctors. The elder entered at Christ Church in 1819, and returned as Canon in 1828, after having been Fellow of Oriel College; the younger matriculated at the House in 1846. Dr. Barnes, then Sub-Dean, made Henry Parry Liddon Student in 1846. From thenceforth Pusey had one near him like-minded: not in the obsequious mimicry of imitation which has produced so many pseudo-Newmans, but in true following of one Master, in intelligent apprehension of and devotion to the principles of the Catholic Church of England, and in self-denying holiness of life. Many friendships for life date from Christ Church, but this has excelled them all: and these two rest from their labours.
Some brief account of the latest buildings and restorations, on which the fine taste of Dean Liddell has left its mark, seems desirable here. The new buildings, before-mentioned ([p. 309]), are by Mr. Thomas Deane, son of Sir T. N. Deane. They consist of six staircases, containing forty-three sets of students’ chambers of three rooms each, and ten chaplains’ or tutors’ rooms of four apartments and upwards. The front towards the Meadow is partly masked by the trees of the old Broad Walk (planted by Dean Fell in Feb. 1670) and the other avenue to the river. The roof is continuous on the meadow front, but there are gables towards the quadrangle. The roof-supports rest on corbels, and the beam-ends are free. The whole is 331 feet long and 37 deep. The stone walls are carried through to the roof between the staircases and lined with brickwork. The style is a variety of Italian Gothic, massively built, story upon story, with good pointed arches, but not in any Northern or regularly “arcuated” style. But the ornament is all beautiful flower-work, and by the artist-workmen whom Messrs. Woodward and Dean gathered round them, whom Prof. Ruskin himself educated in the then Working-Man’s College. In as far as that teaching has succeeded, a share of the honour is due to Christ Church, through that son of hers who has done her highest and most honour in the literature of the century, and whose name will for ever be a call to all artists who love honour and their work.[261]
A recent Oxford Almanac represents the Interior of the Cathedral as it appeared in 1876, before the new woodwork of the Choir and the Reredos. Both were needed, and both are beautiful in their way; but the reredos has the fault or misfortune of the new one in St. Paul’s, London—nothing can make it look like part of the structure. The rich depth of tint and carven gloom are fine. Still the general effect of the Cathedral, with its bright windows and warm stone-tints, is rather one of lightness and pleasant colour, like pages of a Missal, as Ruskin says of St. Mark’s. The new glass by Morris and Faulkner, after Burne Jones, is decidedly beyond any praise we have room to give it here: the great North Transept window glows with all the fires which a fervid fancy can bestow on the inwards of the Dragon. Clayton and Bell’s windows are beautiful in crimson and white; and all we can say of Jonah’s dear old gourd is that we hope its shadow may now never be less.
There are some works of art of considerable interest in the Library, amidst a number of no particular value. On the right of the door, the Nativity of Titian was certainly a part of Charles I.’s collection, and is probably an original, though it reminds one of Bonifazio. There is a portrait of A. Vezale by Tintoret; and a small head attributed to Holbein, of the greatest beauty. We cannot feel sure about the John Bellini Madonna; but the Piero della Francesca Madonna with Angels is beautiful and interesting. There are four very authentic Mantegnas, one of which (No. 59, Christ bearing the Cross) certainly belonged to Charles I. The possible Giorgione of Diana and her Nymphs is worth attention; and there is a genuine-looking Veronese, with his beautiful striped silk drapery, of the Marriage of St. Catherine. Two good portraits and the unfinished man-at-arms by Vandyke, with the admirable brush-work in white on the horse, are in the east room on the other side of the great door, and complete our list of the more modern pictures.
The more ancient Italian schools, from the semi-Byzantine Margheritone to Taddeo Gaddi and the Giotteschi, are well represented at the western end of the lower floor of the Library. Margheritone is said, in the notes to Mrs. Browning’s Casa Guidi Windows, to have died of disgust (“infastidito”) at the successes of the new, Italian or Cimabue, school; and she remarks that