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Ebook has 396 lines and 70427 words, and 8 pages

Are they exiled out of stony breasts, Never to make return?

Once more is the blackbird's fluting a mystery save that it speaks of him, last of the Bards.

"Beautiful Mother," he sang, to Oxford, "too old not to be sad, too austere to look sad and to mourn! Sometimes thou art young to my eyes because thy children are always young, and for a little while it was a journey to youth itself to visit thee. More often, not only art thou old and austere, but thy fresh and youthful children seem to have learned austerity and the ways of age, for love of thee, graciously apparelling their youth,--so that I have met old Lyly in Holywell, and Johnson at the Little Clarendon Street bookshop, and Newman by Iffley rose-window,--with their age taken away, by virtue of a mellower light upon thy lawns and a mellower shade under thy towers, than other cities. Or have I truly heard thee weep when the last revelry is quiet, and the scholar by his lamp sees thee as thou wast and wilt be, and the moonlight has her will with the spires and gardens?

Oh, to the sad how pleasant thy age, to the joyous how admirable thy youth! Yet to the wise, perhaps, thou art neither young nor old, but eternal; and not so much beautiful as Beauty herself, masked as Cybele! And perhaps, oh sweet and wise and solemn mother, thou wilt not hear unkindly thy latest froward courtier, or at least will let him pass unnoticed, since one that speaks of thee,

"Cannot dispraise without a kind of praise."

Or will it more delight thee to be praised in a tongue that is out of time, as thou seemest out of space and time?--

"Vive Midae gazis et Lydo ditior auro Troica et Euphratea super diademata felix, Quem non ambigui fasces, non mobile vulgus, Non leges, non castra tenent, qui pectore magno Spemque metumque domas. Nos, vilia turba, caducis Deservire bonis semperque optare parati, Spargimur in casus. Celsa tu mentis ab arce Despicis errantes, humanaque gaudia rides."

THE STONES OF OXFORD

THE STONES OF OXFORD

Quia lapis de pariete clamabit, et lignum, quod inter juncturas aedificiorum est, respondebit.

Standing at Carfax, and occasionally moving a step to one side or another, I see with my eyes, indeed, the west front of Christ Church, with Tom Tower; the borders of All Saints' and St. Mary's; and that grim tower of St. Michael's; and the handsome curves of High Street and St. Aldate's, which are part of the mere good fortune of Oxford: but, especially if a dawn light recall the first dim shining, or a sunset recall the grey and golden splendour of its maturity, I may also see the past of the University unrolled again. For at Carfax I am in sight of monuments on which is implied or recorded all its history. On the south, above Folly Bridge, is the gravelly reach that formed the eponymous ford; between that and Christ Church was the old south gate; and, through Wolsey's gateway, lies the Cathedral, speaking of St. Frideswide, the misty, original founder,--King's daughter, virgin, martyr, saint,--and, with its newly revealed Norman crypt, which perhaps held the University chest in the beginning, representative of Oxford's piety and generosity. On the east, in the High Street, University College and St. Mary's and Brasenose speak clearly, although falsely, of King Alfred. There, by St. Peter's in the East, was the old east gate; and in sight of these is Merton, the fount of the collegiate idea. On the north, in Cornmarket Street, St. Michael's marks the place of the north gate, and while it is one of the oldest, is by far the oldest-looking place in Oxford, rising up always to our surprise, like a piece of substantial night left by the dark ages, yet clothed with green in June. On the west, the Castle tower, twin made with St. Michael's by the first Norman lord of Oxford, lies by the old west gate; and the quiet, monstrous mound beyond recalls the days of King Alfred's daughter's supremacy in Mercia. At Carfax itself there is still a St. Martin's church, a descendant of the one whose bells in the Middle Ages and again in the seventeenth century, called the city to arms against the University, but long ago deprived of its insolent height of tower, because the citizens pelted the scholars therefrom.

Moved by the presence of a city whose strange beauty was partly interpreted from these vigorous hieroglyphics, mediaeval and later men, who had the advantage of living before history was invented, framed for it a divine or immensely ancient origin. Even kings, or such as quite certainly existed, were deemed unworthy to be the founders. We believe now that the first mention of Oxford was as an inconsiderable

There is, however, still a pleasant haze suspended over the early history of Oxford. It is unlikely that the place was of importance in Roman times; later, its position on a river and a boundary brought it many sufferings at the hands of Dane and Saxon. But no one need fear to believe that, early in the eighth century, Didan, an under king, and his daughter Frideswide established there a nunnery and built a church of stone, now perhaps mingled with the later masonry. It was rebuilt by Ethelred in the eleventh century with a quite exceptional fineness in the Saxon workmanship; and was girdled by the churches

of St. Martin, St. George, St. Mary Magdalen, St. Mary the Virgin, St. Ebbe, St. Michael, and St. Peter in the East; and the last two, to one who had stood at Carfax in 1100, would still be recognised, if he visited the shadowed doorway and stern crypt of the one, and the tower of the other, though he might look in vain for what he knew in "The Seven Deadly Sins lane" and elsewhere.

Whatever learning then flourished in the city is now to be found in its architecture, in Prior Philip's book on the miracles of St. Frideswide, and in the inestimable atmosphere of the place. We can guess that there was much that is worthy to be known, from the eloquent monkish figures of the corbels in Christ Church chapter-house; and can wistfully think of the wisdom that was uttered in Beaumont, the royal palace and learned resort, whose gardens lay at Broken Hays and near Worcester College; and in Osney Abbey, whose bells--Hautclere, Douce, Clement, Austin, Marie, Gabriel et John--made music that was known to the Eynsham abbot on May evenings, when it was a rich, calm retreat, and not as now, a shadowy outline and a sorrowful heap of stones beyond the railway station. More than the ghost of the abbey survives in the sketch of its ruined but still noble walls, in the background of that picture of its last abbot, in a window of the south choir aisle at Christ Church.

The history of that age in Oxford is indistinct, and recorded events therein have a suddenness, for modern readers, which is vivid and fascinating, but to the historian at least, painful and false. And so the birth of the University, in the midst of darkness and noise, is to us to-day a melodious sudden cry. It is as if a voice,

unexpectedly arose, calling--and the words are said to have been used by two poor Irish students in an ignorant and worldly land--"Here is wisdom for sale! Come, buy!" We know that famous lecturers from the continental universities came; but not with what eloquence and applause they spoke. It may confidently be surmised that there was something sweet to learned minds in the air or tradition of the place. The walls are fallen or forgotten that heard the prelusive lectures of Pullein and Vacarius; and the brilliant Franciscan house in St. Benedict's is chiefly known by its influence in the founding of Balliol, and by the greatest schoolmen, its alumni. But if we go to the grey domestic little lodgings, with "arms and rebusses that are depicted and cut in stone over each door," vestiges of a Benedictine scholastic house, at Worcester College, we may fancifully pierce beyond John Giffard's foundation and the preceding Carmelites, to the earliest lovers of learning who loved Oxford too. At St. Mary's the work of the fancy is easier and more sure. There the University books, and there a money chest, reposed. There were the highest deliberations and ceremonies. There a man was graduated, and from its porch he passed out a clerk of Oxford.

If the University was early associated with a place of holiness and beauty, still more firmly was it rooted in a becoming poverty. It had neither a roof nor a certain purse. For years it had not a name. The University was in fact but a spirit of wisdom and grace; men had heard of it and sought it; and where one or two were gathered together to take advantage of it, there was her school and her only endowment. Now and then to such a group came in a legacy of books or gold. But that was a crop for which no one sowed, and before it was possible, it had been rumoured that there was something in Oxford not visible, yet very present and necessary; and scholars came with as great zeal as was ever cherished by reports of gold. They brought what in their devotion they came to seek. Thus Gerald of Wales came, and for three days read aloud his glorious book to large audiences. Every day was marked by sumptuous and generous feasts. It was, indeed, "a costly and noble act," as he says himself, "for the authentic and ancient times of the poets were thus in some measure renewed." Carmelites, Dominicans, and Franciscans, and vivid men from the University of Paris, came to teach. Even then, the University quarrelled with the town over the price of victuals and rooms, and invaded the extortionate Jew. There, about the streets, walked the magnificent Franciscans, Roger Bacon and Grosseteste, and the pure and gracious and learned St. Thomas Cantelupe.

Early in the nineteenth century there was a Chancellor set over the scholars by the Bishop of Lincoln, in whose diocese Oxford lay. Very soon the Chancellor was elected by the University; and the Masters in congregation could legislate, and sometimes did, although questions were often effectually decided by a popular vote among the students,--who also themselves chose by vote the heads of their hostels or halls. For there were, at an early date, houses already associated with learning, and governed either by a common landlord or by a scholar of some standing and age. There a man might read, and comfort himself according to his means, and finally at night stamp up and down a passage, to warm his feet, before going to sleep in a crowded bed-chamber. On any day there was a chance that some splendid man, coming a little in the rear of his fame, would arrive in Oxford, and lecture or read a book. Should kings, or priests, or rude citizens interfere, the scholar could rusticate voluntarily--as he sometimes did--at Stamford, or Reading, or Maidstone, or Cambridge, and there, as best he might, by study and self-denial, as by a sacrament, recreate the University. The City, and until our own time the Crown, had to pay in round sums for such an insult as the hanging of several scholars; the money lined the bottom of St. Frideswide's chest. A man with no possessions but the leaf of a manuscript, or a dagger, or a cloak, left it with the keepers of the chest as security for a loan, whether he were Welsh, or Hungarian, or Italian, or French.

There had previously been similar Halls, and many were afterwards founded,--Hawk Hall, Perilous Hall, Elm Hall, Winton Hall, Beef Hall, Greek Hall, Segrim Hall; in fact so large a number that half the Oxford inns are or were perversions of the old Halls; and even tradesmen who are not innkeepers now make their rich accounts among the ghosts of forgotten principals. These had not in them the necessary statutes and "great bases for eternity" which a college deserves. But henceforward there were some fortunate students who might indeed have to sing or make Latin verses in order to earn a bed, or a crust and a pot of ale, while making their way to or from Oxford; but, once there, they were sure of such a home as no other place, unless, perhaps, the place of their nativity, could give.

"It is all," says Newman, speaking of a college, "and does all that is implied in the name of home. Youths, who have left the maternal roof, and travelled some hundred miles for the acquisition of knowledge, find an

The royal Dervorguilla was the godmother of the kindly college life of to-day. She was the wife of the founder of Balliol, and was often in Oxford, with her honoured Franciscan, Richard of Slikeburne, to look after her sixteen scholars at Old Balliol Hall, in Horsemonger Street, now Broad Street. Close by, at the Church of St. Mary Magdalen, she devised an oratory for the Balliol men. They chose their own Principal, who presided at disputations and meals. They had breakfast and supper together, and the more comfortable of them paid anything in excess of their allowance which the expenses of the common table might demand. One poor scholar lived on the crumbs. Thus were men less often compelled to borrow from the Jews at 60 per cent on the security of their books.

While Balliol was so progressing, and University College had its statutes, and Merton already had its Hall,

the spire of the church of St. Mary the Virgin first rose against the sky. Then also the ashes of St. Frideswide were promoted to a new and more precious place of rest. The sculptor at work upon the shrine had evidently at his side the leaves of maple and crowfoot and columbine, ivy and sycamore and oak, hawthorn and bryony, from the neighbouring woods, where the saint had lain in hiding or ministered to the calamities of the poor; and perhaps the season was late autumn, for among the oak leaves are acorns, and some of the cups are empty. All these things he carved on the base of the shrine.

And he was not right fat, I undertake, But looked holwe, and therto sobrely; Ful thredbare was his overeste courtepy; For he hadde geten hym yet no benefice, Ne was so worldly for to have office; For hym was levere have at his beddes heed Twenty bookes clad in black or reed Of Aristotle and his philosophic, Than rob?s riche, or fithele, or gay sautrie; But al be that he was a philosophre, Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre; But al that he myghte of his freendes hente On bookes and his lernynge he it spent, And bisily gan for the soules preye Of him that yaf hym wherewith to scoleye. Of studie tooke he moost cure and moost heede, Noght o word spake he moore than was neede, And that was seyd in forme and reverence, And short and quyk and ful of hy sentence. Sounynge in moral vertu was his speche, And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche.

But William of Wykeham, before that time, had given to New College a code of ornate and intricate rules for morals and manners, which became a legacy to the University at large; and in the first place checked the savage liberties of scholars; in the second, helped to make learning more "humane," to make the "Arts" the "humanities." He built a chapel for the exclusive use of the scholars of his foundation. That in itself

A place of friends! a place of books! A place of good things olden!

In the next century the ideas of Walter de Merton and Dervorguilla and William of Wykeham were borrowed and developed by loving founders, architects, and benefactors. The building of Lincoln College, next founded, was begun as soon as its charter was received; a chapel and a library, a hall and a kitchen, and chambers on three storys, finely and nobly built, were a matter of course. In the same way, All Souls' front quadrangle, practically as we see it to-day, was built at once by Archbishop Chichele, the founder; and at Magdalen, which was next founded, the tower began to rise on the extreme east of the city, to salute the rising sun with its pinnacles, and on May morning, with a song of choristers.

For Oxford, the fifteenth century was an age of libraries and books. Looking back upon it, Duke Humphrey of Gloucester seems its patron saint,--donor of books to the Benedictines who lived on the site of Worcester College, and to the University,--harbinger of the Bodleian. We can still catch the savour of the old libraries at Merton where the light coloured by painted glass used to inlay the gloom under the wooden roof, or behind the quiet latticed windows above the cloisters at Christ Church. "What pleasantness of teaching there is in books, how easy, how secret," says Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham, an old Oxford man, and the giver of the first library to Oxford. "They are masters who instruct us without rod or ferule, without angry words, without clothes or money. If you come to them, they are not asleep; if you ask and inquire of them, they do not withdraw themselves; they do not chide if you make mistakes; they do not laugh at you if you are ignorant. O

books, who alone are liberal and free, who give to all who ask of you and enfranchise all who serve you faithfully! by how many types ye are commended to learned men in the Scriptures given us by the inspiration of God!... Ye are the wells of living waters, which father Abraham first digged, Isaac digged again, and which the Philistines strive to fill up!..." Bury was a friend of Petrarch and Bradwardine, a Chancellor and Treasurer of England, and his love of books became so famous that he was reported "to burn with such a desire for books and especially old ones that it was more easy for any man to gain our favour by means of books than of money. The aumbries of the most famous monasteries were thrown open, cases were unlocked and caskets were undone, and volumes that had slumbered through long ages in their tombs wake up and are astonished." The great discoverer's pleasure at the university of Paris corresponds to that of visitors to Oxford in later years. "There," he says, "are delightful libraries, more aromatic than stores of spicery; there are luxuriant parks of all manner of volumes; there are Academic meads shaken by the tramp of scholars; there are lounges of Athens; walks of the Peripatetics; peaks of Parnassus; and porches of the Stoics. There is seen the surveyor of all Arts and Sciences, Aristotle, to whom belongs all that is most excellent in doctrine, so far as relates to this passing sublunary world; there Ptolemy measures epicycles and eccentric apogees and the nodes of the planets by figures and numbers; there Paul reveals the mysteries." And to complete the resemblance of Oxford to such a place, he gave all his books to "our hall at Oxford," where the masters and scholars were to pray for his soul. The fate of his collection may have been worthy, but is mysterious. It is said to have been divided, and part of it perhaps went to Balliol. It could have found no more honourable abode than the Balliol library. From the beginning gifts of books had come in, but chiefly what was even then old-fashioned, until the middle of the fifteenth century. It was the period when Guarino at Ferrara was an inspiration to Europe. Robert Fleming was one of his pupils, and sent beautiful manuscripts to Lincoln College library; and at Lincoln books flowed in before cash. Three others of Guarino's pupils were Balliol men: Gray, Bishop of Ely and Chancellor of the University, whose books were collected with Guarino's help, and passed, the finest of their day, to Balliol at his death; Free, public reader of physic at Ferrara, a great benefactor of libraries, and a historian of trees and plants; and Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, splendid, eloquent, cruel; who had made golden speeches to the Pope, the Cardinals, the men of Padua; had translated Cicero; and on his return, adorned England with his learning and patronage, and shocked it with the refined cruelties of Italy. His collection of manuscripts went with Duke Humphrey's to the University library, where a room was made for them, over the quiet Divinity School then being built between St. Mary's and Durham Hall. Tiptoft was the most striking type of

the Renaissance, of English blood. But it was the Italian Renaissance; and after his death the direct influence of Italy was small in Oxford.

"See how Jupiter shines; it is an omen," said he.

"Yes," said another, "and we have been listening to Apollo."

For a time the Grecians were ridiculed and attacked in the streets by men who called themselves Priam, Hector, and Paris, and behaved--like Trojans. In that first enthusiasm men seemed very near to the inaccessible gods. Perhaps some were disposed to follow Pico della Mirandola in pursuit of them. There was therefore a party which opposed the study of Greek as heretical; and More was withdrawn from Oxford to avoid the danger.

From the beautiful Magdalen cloisters came the men who launched Corpus Christi College, just after Erasmus had published the New Testament in Greek and the ancient Brasenose Hall had at last grown into a college. The founder gave copies of Homer, Herodotus, Plato, and Horace, which still survive. There was a public lecturer in Greek on the foundation. Erasmus himself applauded and prophesied liberally of its future. It was the "new college" of the Renaissance, as Wykeham's had been of the Middle Ages. The readers were to be chosen from England or Greece or Italy. And among the first members of the college was the mystical Bavarian dialler, Nicholas Kratzer, who made a dial in Corpus garden, and that exquisite one for Wolsey, which is to be seen, in drawing, in the library. Wolsey's own college was built over against St. Frideswide's, part of which, together with one side of its cloisters, was destroyed to give it place. It contained the largest quadrangle and the most princely kitchen in Oxford. When Henry the Eighth spoiled the monasteries, the bells of Osney were carried to Christ Church; and one of them, over Wolsey's gateway, does what it can to

call the undergraduates home at nine, with a deep voice, as if it spoke through its beard, which pretends to be B flat--"Bim-bom," as the old leonine hexameter says.

Hark! the bonny Christ Church bells--1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6-- They sound so wondrous great, so wondrous sweet, As they trowl so merrily, merrily. Oh! the first and second bell, That every day, at four and ten, cry, "Come, come, come to prayers!" And the verger troops before the Dean. Tinkle, tinkle, ting, goes the small bell at nine, To call the bearers home: But the devil a man Will leave his can Till he hears the mighty Tom.

So runs the catch of a later Dean. At Christ Church also there was a lecturer in Greek. The dialler, Kratzer, was made mathematical professor. Wolsey's chapel never rose above a few feet in height, and the uncompleted walls remained for a century; St. Frideswide's became, almost at the same time, the cathedral of the newly-created see of Oxford, and the chapel of the college.

The grandiose Christ Church kitchen, which caused so much laughter because it was the Cardinal's first contribution to his college, was in fact rather characteristic of the age that followed. It was built with the revenues of suppressed monasteries. It was almost contemporaneous with the destruction of many priceless books by reformers who were as ignorant of what is dangerous in books as a Russian censor. The shelves of Duke Humphrey's library were denuded and sold. The shrine of St. Frideswide's, where the University had long offered reverence twice a year, was shattered; the fragments were used here and there in the buildings of the time. The relics of the saint were husbanded by a pious few in hope of a restoration; but they were finally interred with those of Peter Martyr's wife--a significant mixture. It was the age when the University became the playground of the richer classes, and the nobleman's son took the place of the poor scholar in a fellowship. Now men found time to dispute with Cambridge as to which university was of the greatest antiquity. The arguments put forward in Oxford were seldom more convincing than this: that Oxford was named from a ford, Cambridge from a bridge; and since the ford must have been older than the bridge, Oxford was therefore founded first. Greek for the time decayed, and the founder of Trinity College feared that its restoration was impossible in that age. As to Latin, Sir Philip Sidney, who was at Christ Church, told his brother that Ciceronianism was become an abuse among the Oxonians, "who neglected things for words." Oxford was dignified mainly by the architecture of Christ Church; by the foundation of Trinity, St. John's, and Jesus College, all on learned and holy ground; by the martyrdom of Latimer and Ridley, opposite Balliol; and by great names, like those of Burton and Marston at Brasenose, Peele at Broadgates Hall , Raleigh at Oriel, Hooker at Corpus Christi. Religion was still in the pot, and men could not confidently tell what it would turn out to be. On the one hand,

the Earl of Leicester, as Chancellor of the University, mended and confirmed its organisation; on the other hand, John Lyly was "the fiddlestick of Oxford," and other Magdalen men, lovers of open air, and especially in the windy forest of Shotover, slew the King's deer. At the new college of St. John's, fellows and presidents suffered for the old religion, and Edwin Campion was hanged; they preserved, and still preserve, the statue of St. Bernard from the old foundation to which their college succeeded. At the end of the century, the most effective Oxford man of his time, William Laud, became Fellow of St. John's. He built a new quadrangle, and as Chancellor made of the statutes that long and many-tailed whip which every one knows. He created modern Broad Street by deleting the cottages which stood near and opposite to Trinity. The impressive, uncomfortable Convocation House was his work. Within sight of it was the library which Sir Thomas Bodley earlier in the century had built and stored. It became the calmest, most inviolate, and most learned place in Europe.

There was a prelusive struggle between town and gown in the year before the war. The chancellorship of Laud had roused opposition; but the University was almost unanimous for Charles, and easily chose

its side, when he demanded a loan on the eve of the war.

Van Ling had just painted the windows of University College chapel. The Dean of Christ Church, or rather "Smith of London," had just finished the airy over-traceried approach to Christ Church hall, upon which every one looks back as he steps down to the cloisters. Other work was in preparation at Christ Church. But all building suddenly ceased.

Plague came in 1643, fire in the following year. The Cavaliers were reputed to have embezzled books from the Bodleian, which had formerly resisted, and won the respect of, Charles himself. The colleges

made what some call a "friendly loan" of all their plate: it was never returned or replaced by the King. Week by week, they furnished him with labour and cash. And when the Parliamentarians entered at last, there were at Merton, for example, "no Bachelors, hardly any Scholars, and few Masters," and the hall was untenantable. The triumph of Parliament brought with it an inquisition in Oxford, which resulted in the exile, not without force, of the greater number of heads of houses and fellows for refusal to submit. The soldiers broke the Magdalen chapel window-glass; Cromwell himself took away the college organ to Hampton Court. But "the first thing General Fairfax did, was to set a good guard of soldiers to preserve the Bodleian Library. He was a lover of learning, and had he not taken this special care, that noble library had been utterly destroyed." The chief objection to the intruded fellows and heads of houses seems to have been that they were intruded and were likely to stay. As for their accomplishments, though some lacked humour, they seem to have been respectable. The undergraduates and bachelors were in the main loyal to Cromwell; and when Prince Charles was rumoured to be approaching Oxford, New College tower became a Parliament citadel, and a troop of horse was enlisted from the colleges. The old glory of religion faded; the sound of distant Latin chanted was no longer heard in Christ Church and New College. But in one house, three devoted men preserved the old religion right through the Commonwealth, constantly and without molestation. Other changes made men more content. Three coffee-houses were opened in Oxford and patronised by royalists and "others who esteemed themselves virtuosi and wits." Men who would have adorned any age came up. Christopher Wren came to Wadham, and thence to All Souls'. Evelyn revisited Oxford and found no just ground to regret the former times, ... "creation of Doctors, by the cap, ring, kiss, etc., those ancient ceremonies and institutions, as yet not wholly abolished." At All Souls' he heard "music, voices, and theorbos, performed by some ingenious scholars." At New College "the chapel was in its ancient garb, notwithstanding the scrupulosity of the times," and the chapel at Magdalen was "in pontificial order, the altar only I think turned table-wise." Then he dined at Wadham, and wrote down an account of what he saw at the Warden's, "that most obliging and universally curious Dr. Wilkins." The transparent apiaries, hollow speaking statues, dials, waywisers, and other "artificial mathematical and magical curiosities," which he saw, well illustrate the activities of the time in the cradle of the Royal Society.

A little after Wren came Thomas Traherne, the poet, to Brasenose, still enjoying that childhood which he praised so adeptly. We may think of him in the peaceful embowered city as having that characteristic ecstasy at the sight of common things which his lyrical prose describes. "The corn was orient and immortal wheat which never should be reaped nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to

everlasting. The dust and stones of the street were as precious as gold: the gates were at first the end of the world. The green trees, when I saw them first through one of the gates, transported and ravished me; their sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to leap, and almost mad with ecstasy, they were such strange and wonderful things. The men! O what venerable and reverend creatures did the aged men seem! Immortal cherubim! And young men glittering and sparkling angels, and maids strange seraphic pieces of life and beauty!"

Again, books began to flow in their natural courses to the libraries. Selden's eight thousand came to the Bodleian. Building was resumed; for Brasenose chapel was half built by the time of the Restoration.

High-thundering Jove cannot withstand thy charms, That Britain's mighty monarch in thy arms Canst hold so fast, and quite to overcome The greatest potentate in Christendom.

lay under the theatre, and, says a ballad of the time--

What structure else but prides it to reveal Treasures? which bashful this would fain conceal; ... Spain, Gascoin, Florence, Smyrna, and the Rhine May taste their language there, tho' not the wine. The Jew, Mede, Edomite, Arabian, Crete, In those deep vaults their wandring ideoms meet, And to compute, are in amazement hurld, How long since Oxford has been all the world.

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