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Memorials and Other Papers V1

T >> Thomas de Quincey >> Memorials and Other Papers V1




What is a university almost everywhere else? It announces little more,
as respects the academic buildings, than that here is to be found the
place of rendezvous--the exchange, as it were, or, under a different
figure, the _palæstra_ of the various parties connected with the
prosecution of liberal studies. This is their "House of Call," their
general place of muster and parade. Here it is that the professors and
the students converge, with the certainty of meeting each other. Here,
in short, are the lecture-rooms in all the faculties. Well: thus far we
see an arrangement of convenience--that is, of convenience for one of
the parties, namely, the professors. To them it spares the disagreeable
circumstances connected with a private reception of their students at
their own rooms. But to the students it is a pure matter of
indifference. In all this there is certainly no service done to the
cause of good learning, which merits a state sanction, or the aid of
national funds. Next, however, comes an academic library, sometimes a
good one; and here commences a real use in giving a national station to
such institutions, because their durable and monumental existence,
liable to no flux or decay from individual caprice, or accidents of
life, and their authentic station, as expressions of the national
grandeur, point them out to the bequests of patriotic citizens. They
fall also under the benefit of another principle--the conservative
feeling of amateurship. Several great collections have been bequeathed
to the British Museum, for instance--not chiefly _as_ a national
institution, and under feelings of nationality, but because, being
such, it was also permanent; and thus the painful labors of collecting
were guaranteed from perishing. Independently of all this, I, for my
part, willingly behold the surplus of national funds dedicated to the
consecration, as it were, of learning, by raising temples to its honor,
even where they answer no purpose of direct use. Next, after the
service of religion, I would have the service of learning externally
embellished, recommended to the affections of men, and hallowed by the
votive sculptures, as I may say, of that affection, gathering in amount
from age to age. _Magnificabo apostolatum meum_ is a language
almost as becoming to the missionaries and ministers of knowledge, as
to the ambassadors of religion. It is fit that by pompous architectural
monuments, that a voice may forever be sounding audibly in human ears
of homage to these powers, and that even alien feelings may be
compelled into secret submission to their influence. Therefore, amongst
the number of those who value such things, upon the scale of direct
proximate utility, rank not me: that _arithmetica officina_ is in
my years abominable. But still I affirm that, in our analysis of an
ordinary university, or "college" as it is provincially called, we have
not yet arrived at any element of service rendered to knowledge or
education, large enough to call for very extensive national aid. Honor
has thus far been rendered to the good cause by a public attestation,
and that is well: but no direct promotion has been given to that cause,
no impulse communicated to its progress, such that it can be held out
as a result commensurate to the name and pretensions of a university.
As yet there is nothing accomplished which is beyond the strength of
any little commercial town. And as to the library in particular,
besides that in all essential departments it might be bought, to order,
by one day's common subscription of Liverpool or Glasgow merchants,
students very rarely indeed have admission to its free use.

What other functions remain to a university? For those which I have
mentioned of furnishing a point of rendezvous to the great body of
professors and students, and a point of concentration to the different
establishments of implements and machinery for elaborate researches
[as, for instance, of books and MSS., in the first place; secondly, of
maps, charts, and globes; and, thirdly, perhaps of the costly apparatus
required for such studies as Sideral astronomy, galvanic chemistry or
physiology, &c.]; all these are uses which cannot be regarded in a
higher light than as conveniences merely incidental and collateral to
the main views of the founders. There are, then, two much loftier and
more commanding ends met by the idea and constitution of such
institutions, and which first rise to a rank of dignity sufficient to
occupy the views of a legislator, or to warrant a national interest.
These ends are involved: 1st, in the practice of conferring
_degrees_, that is, formal attestations and guarantees of competence
to give advice, instruction, or aid, in the three great branches
of liberal knowledge applicable to human life; 2d, in that
appropriation of fixed funds to fixed professorships, by means of which
the uninterrupted succession of public and authorized teachers is
sustained in all the higher branches of knowledge, from generation to
generation, and from century to century. By the latter result it is
secured that the great well-heads of liberal knowledge and of severe
science shall never grow dry. By the former it is secured that this
unfailing fountain shall be continually applied to the production and
to the _tasting_ of fresh labors in endless succession for the
public service, and thus, in effect, that the great national fountain
shall not be a stagnant reservoir, but, by an endless _derivation_
(to speak in a Roman metaphor!), applied to a system of national
irrigation. These are the two great functions and qualifications of a
collegiate incorporation: one providing to each separate generation its
own separate rights of heirship to all the knowledge accumulated by its
predecessors, and converting a mere casual life-annuity into an estate
of inheritance--a mere fleeting _agonisma_ into a _ktæma es æi_; the
other securing for this eternal dowry as wide a distribution as
possible: the one function regarding the dimension of _length_ in the
endless series of ages through which it propagates its gifts; the other
regarding the dimension of _breadth_ in the large application
throughout any one generation of these gifts to the public service.
Here are grand functions, high purposes; but neither one nor the other
demands any edifices of stone and marble; neither one nor the other
presupposes any edifice at all built with human hands. A collegiate
incorporation, the church militant of knowledge, in its everlasting
struggle with darkness and error, is, in this respect, like the
church of Christ--that is, it is always and essentially invisible
to the fleshly eye. The pillars of this church are human champions; its
weapons are great truths so shaped as to meet the shifting forms of
error; its armories are piled and marshalled in human memories; its
cohesion lies in human zeal, in discipline, in childlike docility; and
all its triumphs, its pomps, and glories, must forever depend upon
talent, upon the energies of the will, and upon the harmonious
cooperation of its several divisions. Thus far, I say, there is no call
made out for _any_ intervention of the architect.

Let me apply all this to Oxford. Among the four functions commonly
recognized by the founders of universities, which are--1st, to find a
set of halls or places of meeting; 2d, to find the implements and
accessaries of study; 3d, to secure the succession of teachers and
learners; 4th, to secure the profitable application of their
attainments to the public service. Of these four, the two highest need
no buildings; and the other two, which are mere collateral functions of
convenience, need only a small one. Wherefore, then, and to what end,
are the vast systems of building, the palaces and towers of Oxford?
These are either altogether superfluous, mere badges of ostentation and
luxurious wealth, or they point to some fifth function not so much as
contemplated by other universities, and, at present, absolutely and
chimerically beyond their means of attainment. Formerly we used to hear
attacks upon the Oxford discipline as fitted to the true
_intellectual_ purposes of a modern education. Those attacks, weak
and most uninstructed in facts, false as to all that they challenged,
and puerile as to what implicitly they propounded for homage, are
silent. But, of late, the battery has been pointed against the Oxford
discipline in its _moral_ aspects, as fitted for the government
and restraint of young men, or even as at all contemplating any such
control. The Beverleys would have us suppose, not only that the great
body of the students are a licentious crew, acknowledging no discipline
or restraints, but that the grave elders of the university, and those
who wield the nominal authority of the place, passively resign the very
shows of power, and connive at general excesses, even when they do not
absolutely authorize them in their personal examples. Now, when such
representations are made, to what standard of a just discipline is it
that these writers would be understood as appealing? Is it to some
ideal, or to some existing and known reality? Would they have England
suppose that they are here comparing the actual Oxford with some
possible hypothetic or imaginable Oxford,--with some ideal case, that
is to say, about which great discussions would arise as to its
feasibility,--or that they are comparing it with some known standard of
discipline actually realized and sustained for generations, in Leipsic,
suppose, or Edinburgh, or Leyden, or Salamanca? This is the question of
questions, to which we may demand an answer; and, according to that
answer, observe the dilemma into which these furciferous knaves must
drop. If they are comparing Oxford simply with some ideal and better
Oxford, in some ideal and better world, in that case all they have
said--waiving its falsehoods of fact--is no more than a flourish of
rhetoric, and the whole discussion may be referred to the shadowy
combats of scholastic declamation-mongers--those mock gladiators, and
_umbratiles doctores_. But if, on the other hand, they pretend to
take their station upon the known basis of some existing institution,--
if they will pretend that, in this impeachment of Oxford, they are
proceeding upon a silent comparison with Edinburgh, Glasgow, Jena,
Leipsic, Padua, &c.,--then are they self-exposed, as men not only
without truth, but without shame. For now comes in, as a sudden
revelation, and as a sort of _deus ex machina_, for the vindication
of the truth, the simple answer to that question proposed above,
Wherefore, and to what end, are the vast edifices of Oxford? A
university, as universities are in general, needs not, I have shown, to
be a visible body--a building raised with hands. Wherefore, then, is
the _visible_ Oxford? To what _fifth_ end, refining upon the
ordinary ends of such institutions, is the far-stretching system of
Oxford _hospitia_, or monastic hotels, directed by their founders,
or applied by their present possessors? Hearken, reader, to the answer:

These vast piles are applied to an end, absolutely indispensable to any
even tolerable system of discipline, and yet absolutely unattainable
upon any commensurate scale in any other university of Europe. They are
applied to the personal settlement and domestication of the students
within the gates and walls of that college to whose discipline they are
amenable. Everywhere else the young men live _where_ they please
and _as_ they please; necessarily distributed amongst the towns-
people; in any case, therefore, liable to no control or supervision
whatever; and in those cases where the university forms but a small
part of a vast capital city, as it does in Paris, Edinburgh, Madrid,
Vienna, Berlin, and Petersburg, liable to every mode of positive
temptation and distraction, which besiege human life in high-viced and
luxurious communities. Here, therefore, it is a mockery to talk of
discipline; of a nonentity there can be no qualities; and we need not
ask for the description of the discipline in situations where
discipline there can be none. One slight anomaly I have heard of as
varying _pro tanto_ the uniform features of this picture. In
Glasgow I have heard of an arrangement by which young academicians are
placed in the family of a professor. Here, as members of a private
household, and that household under the presiding eye of a
conscientious, paternal, and judicious scholar, doubtless they would
enjoy as absolute a shelter from peril and worldly contagion as parents
could wish; but not _more_ absolute, I affirm, than belongs,
unavoidably, to the monastic seclusion of an Oxford college--the gates
of which open to no egress after nine o'clock at night, nor after
eleven to any ingress which is not regularly reported to a proper
officer of the establishment. The two forms of restraint are, as
respects the effectual amount of control, equal; and were they equally
diffused, Glasgow and Oxford would, in this point, stand upon the same
level of discipline. But it happens that the Glasgow case was a
personal accident; personal, both as regarded him who volunteered the
exercise of this control, and those who volunteered to appropriate its
benefits; whereas the Oxford case belongs to the very system, is
coextensive with the body of undergraduates, and, from the very
arrangement of Oxford life, is liable to no decay or intermission.

Here, then, the reader apprehends the first great characteristic
distinction of Oxford--that distinction which extorted the rapturous
admiration of Lipsius as an exponent of enormous wealth, but which I
now mention as applying, with ruinous effect, to the late calumnies
upon Oxford, as an inseparable exponent of her meritorious discipline.
She, most truly and severely an "Alma Mater" gathers all the juvenile
part of her flock within her own fold, and beneath her own vigilant
supervision. In Cambridge there is, so far, a laxer administration of
this rule, that, when any college overflows, undergraduates are allowed
to lodge at large in the town. But in Oxford this increase of peril and
discretionary power is thrown by preference upon the senior graduates,
who are seldom below the age of twenty-two or twenty-three; and the
college accommodations are reserved, in almost their whole extent, for
the most youthful part of the society. This extent is prodigious. Even
in my time, upwards of two thousand persons were lodged within the
colleges; none having fewer than two rooms, very many having three, and
men of rank, or luxurious habits, having often large suites of rooms.
But that was a time of war, which Oxford experience has shown to have
operated most disproportionably as a drain upon the numbers disposable
for liberal studies; and the total capacity of the university was far
from being exhausted. There are now, I believe, between five and six
thousand names upon the Oxford books; and more than four thousand, I
understand, of constant residents. So that Oxford is well able to
lodge, and on a very sumptuous scale, a small army of men; which
expression of her great splendor I now mention (as I repeat) purely as
applying to the question of her machinery for enforcing discipline.
This part of her machinery, it will be seen, is unique, and absolutely
peculiar to herself. Other universities, boasting no such enormous
wealth, cannot be expected to act upon her system of seclusion.
Certainly, I make it no reproach to other universities, that, not
possessing the means of sequestering their young men from worldly
communion, they must abide by the evils of a laxer discipline. It is
their misfortune, and not their criminal neglect, which consents to so
dismal a relaxation of academic habits. But let them not urge this
misfortune in excuse at one time, and at another virtually disavow it.
Never let _them_ take up a stone to throw at Oxford, upon this
element of a wise education; since in them, through that original vice
in their constitution, the defect of all means for secluding and
insulating their society, discipline is abolished by anticipation--
being, in fact, an impossible thing; for the walls of the college are
subservient to no purpose of life, but only to a purpose of
convenience; they converge the students for the hour or two of what is
called lecture; which over, each undergraduate again becomes _sui
juris_, is again absorbed into the crowds of the world, resorts to
whatsoever haunts he chooses, and finally closes his day at----if, in
any sense, at home--at a home which is not merely removed from the
supervision and control, but altogether from the bare knowledge, of his
academic superiors. How far this discipline is well administered in
other points at Oxford, will appear from the rest of my account. But,
thus far, at least, it must be conceded, that Oxford, by and through
this one unexampled distinction--her vast disposable fund of
accommodations for junior members within her own private cloisters--
possesses an advantage which she could not forfeit, if she would,
towards an effectual knowledge of each man's daily habits, and a
control over him which is all but absolute.

This knowledge and this control is much assisted and concentrated by
the division of the university into separate colleges. Here comes
another feature of the Oxford system. Elsewhere the university is a
single college; and this college is the university. But in Oxford the
university expresses, as it were, the army, and the colleges express
the several brigades, or regiments.

To resume, therefore, my own thread of personal narration. On the next
morning after my arrival in Oxford, I assembled a small council of
friends to assist me in determining at which of the various separate
societies I should enter, and whether as a "commoner," or as a
"gentleman commoner." Under the first question was couched the
following latitude of choice: I give the names of the colleges, and the
numerical account of their numbers, as it stood in January, 1832; for
this will express, as well as the list of that day, (which I do not
accurately know), the _proportions_ of importance amongst them.

Mem.
1. University College ................. 207
2. Balliol " ................. 257
3. Merton " ................. 124
4. Exeter " ................. 299
5. Oriel " ................. 293
6. Queen's " ................. 351
7. New " ................. 157
8. Lincoln " ................. 141
9. All Souls' " ................. 98
10. Magdalene " ................. 165
11. Brazennose " ................. 418
12. Corpus Christi " ................. 127
13. Christ Church " ................. 949
14. Trinity " ................. 259
15. St. John's " ................. 218
16. Jesus " ................. 167
17. Wadham " ................. 217
18. Pembroke " ................. 189
19. Worcester " ................. 231

Then, besides these colleges, five _Halls_, as they are technically
called, (the term _Hall_ implying chiefly that they are societies not
endowed, or not endowed with fellowships as the colleges are), namely:

Mem.
1. St. Mary Hall. .............. 83
2. Magdalen " .............. 178
3. New Inn " .............. 10
4. St. Alban " .............. 41
5. St. Edmund " .............. 96

Such being the names, and general proportions on the scale of local
importance, attached to the different communities, next comes the very
natural question, What are the chief determining motives for guiding
the selection amongst them? These I shall state. First of all, a man
not otherwise interested in the several advantages of the colleges has,
however, in all probability, some choice between a small society and a
large one; and thus far a mere ocular inspection of the list will serve
to fix his preference. For my part, supposing other things equal, I
greatly preferred the most populous college, as being that in which any
single member, who might have reasons for standing aloof from the
general habits of expense, of intervisiting, etc., would have the best
chance of escaping a jealous notice. However, amongst those "other
things" which I presumed equal, one held a high place in my estimation,
which a little inquiry showed to be very far from equal. All the
colleges have chapels, but all have not organs; nor, amongst those
which have, is the same large use made of the organ. Some preserve the
full cathedral service; others do not. Christ Church, meantime,
fulfilled _all_ conditions: for the chapel here happens to be the
cathedral of the diocese; the service, therefore, is full and
ceremonial; the college, also, is far the most splendid, both in
numbers, rank, wealth, and influence. Hither I resolved to go; and
immediately I prepared to call on the head.

The "head," as he is called generically, of an Oxford college (his
_specific_ appellation varies almost with every college--
principal, provost, master, rector, warden, etc.), is a greater man
than the uninitiated suppose. His situation is generally felt as
conferring a degree of rank not much less than episcopal; and, in fact,
the head of Brazennose at that time, who happened to be the Bishop of
Bangor, was not held to rank much above his brothers in office. Such
being the rank of heads generally, _a fortiori_, that of Christ
Church was to be had in reverence; and this I knew. He is always, _ex
officio_, dean of the diocese; and, in his quality of college head,
he only, of all deans that ever were heard of, is uniformly considered
a greater man than his own diocesan. But it happened that the present
dean had even higher titles to consideration. Dr. Cyril Jackson had
been tutor to the Prince of Wales (George IV.); he had repeatedly
refused a bishopric; and _that_, perhaps, is entitled to place a
man one degree above him who has accepted one. He was also supposed to
have made a bishop, and afterwards, at least, it is certain that lie
made his own brother a bishop. All things weighed, Dr. Cyril Jackson
seemed so very great a personage that I now felt the value of my long
intercourse with great Dons in giving me confidence to face a lion of
this magnitude.

Those who know Oxford are aware of the peculiar feelings which have
gathered about the name and pretensions of Christ Church; feelings of
superiority and leadership in the members of that college, and often
enough of defiance and jealousy on the part of other colleges. Hence it
happens that you rarely find yourself in a shop, or other place of
public resort, with a Christ-Church man, but he takes occasion, if
young and frivolous, to talk loudly of the Dean, as an indirect
expression of his own connection with this splendid college; the title
of _Dean_ being exclusively attached to the headship of Christ
Church. The Dean, as may be supposed, partakes in this superior dignity
of his "House;" he is officially brought into connection with all
orders of the British aristocracy--often with royal personages; and
with the younger branches of the aristocracy his office places him in a
relation of authority and guardianship--exercised, however, through
inferior ministry, and seldom by direct personal interference. The
reader must understand that, with rare exceptions, all the princes and
nobles of Great Britain, who choose to benefit by an academic
education, resort either to Christ Church College in Oxford, or to
Trinity College in Cambridge; these are the alternatives. Naturally
enough, my young friends were somewhat startled at my determination to
call upon so great a man; a letter, they fancied, would be a better
mode of application. I, however, who did not adopt the doctrine that no
man is a hero to his valet, was of opinion that very few men indeed are
heroes to themselves. The cloud of external pomp, which invests them to
the eyes of the _attoniti_ cannot exist to their own; they do not,
like Kehama, entering the eight gates of Padalon at once, meet and
contemplate their own grandeurs; but, more or less, are conscious of
acting a part. I did not, therefore, feel the tremor which was expected
of a novice, on being ushered into so solemn a presence.


II.

OXFORD.



The Dean was sitting in a spacious library or study, elegantly, if not
luxuriously furnished. Footmen, stationed as repeaters, as if at some
fashionable rout, gave a momentary importance to my unimportant self,
by the thundering tone of their annunciations. All the machinery of
aristocratic life seemed indeed to intrench this great Don's
approaches; and I was really surprised that so very great a man should
condescend to rise on my entrance. But I soon found that, if the Dean's
station and relation to the higher orders had made him lofty, those
same relations had given a peculiar suavity to his manners. Here,
indeed, as on other occasions, I noticed the essential misconception,
as to the demeanor of men of rank, which prevails amongst those who
have no personal access to their presence. In the fabulous pictures of
novels (such novels as once abounded), and in newspaper reports of
conversations, real or pretended, between the king and inferior
persons, we often find the writer expressing _his_ sense of
aristocratic assumption, by making the king address people without
their titles. The Duke of Wellington, for instance, or Lord Liverpool,
figures usually, in such scenes, as "Wellington," or "Arthur," and as
"Liverpool." Now, as to the private talk of George IV. in such cases, I
do not pretend to depose; but, speaking generally, I may say that the
practice of the highest classes takes the very opposite course. Nowhere
is a man so sure of his titles or official distinctions as amongst
_them_; for, it is upon giving to every man the very extreme
punctilio of his known or supposed claims, that they rely for the due
observance of their own. Neglecting no form of courtesy suited to the
case, they seek, in this way, to remind men unceasingly of what they
expect; and the result is what I represent--that people in the highest
stations, and such as bring them continually into contact with
inferiors, are, of all people, the least addicted to insolence or
defect of courtesy. Uniform suavity of manner is indeed rarely found,
except in men of high rank. Doubtless this may arise upon a motive of
self-interest, jealous of giving the least opening or invitation to the
retorts of ill-temper or low breeding. But, whatever be its origin,
such I believe to be the fact. In a very long conversation of a general
nature upon the course of my studies, and the present direction of my
reading, Dr. Cyril Jackson treated me just as he would have done his
equal in station and in age. Coming, at length, to the particular
purpose of my visit at this time to himself, he assumed a little more
of his official stateliness. He condescended to say that it would have
given him pleasure to reckon me amongst his flock; "But, sir," he said,
in a tone of some sharpness, "your guardians have acted improperly. It
was their duty to have given me at least one year's notice of their
intention to place you at Christ Church. At present I have not a dog-
kennel in my college untenanted." Upon this, I observed that nothing
remained for me to do but to apologize for having occupied so much of
his time; that, for myself, I now first heard of this preliminary
application; and that, as to my guardians, I was bound to acquit them
of all oversight in this instance, they being no parties to my present
scheme. The Dean expressed his astonishment at this statement. I, on my
part, was just then making my parting bows, and had reached the door,
when a gesture of the Dean's, courteously waving me back to the sofa I
had quitted, invited me to resume my explanations; and I had a
conviction at the moment that the interview would have terminated in
the Dean's suspending his standing rule in my favor. But, just at that
moment, the thundering heralds of the Dean's hall announced some man of
high rank: the sovereign of Christ Church seemed distressed for a
moment; but then recollecting himself, bowed in a way to indicate that
I was dismissed. And thus it happened that I did not become a member of
Christ Church.

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