Page:Dean Aldrich A Commemoration Speech.djvu/19

 main lines in which his thought ran—for Aldrich exhibits a variety and a range of genius so wide and so capable as not to be unworthy to be ranked with that Titanic breadth, grasp, and vigour which astound us in the Da Vincis and Buonarottis of the Italian Renaissance. Logician, Theologian, Musician, Scholar, Architect—he is one who had mastered the principles of Latin and the intricacies of Greek; who could wield the subtle weapons of theological warfare; who could turn from these to revel in the Entablatures of Vignola and the Orders of Palladio; who was familiar with Bass-Viols and Theorboes, and at his ease in Fugue and double Descant, in Counterpoint and Canon—one, above all to us in Oxford, who had trodden all the dark paths of Barbara and gazed unscathed into the deep secrets of Bocardo.

First, as to his scholarship and literary culture. He became Dean when this House was at its highest eminence. The first College to right itself thoroughly after the Rebellion, under the energetic government of Dr. Fell, supplied inexhaustibly with excellent material from under the birch of Dr. Busby, it absorbed all the interest and brilliancy of the University. Great names crowd it—Fell, Hammond, South, Jane, Atterbury, Alsop, Boyle, the great Dr. Smalridge, Robert Freind, John Freind, the noble first-fruit of science in Oxford; Wake, our great Archbishop; and conspicuous by his absence, one not indeed filled with the spirit that made Christ Church famous then, but yet one who will make it famous for all time, John Locke.

Aldrich is found a worthy head to all this talent. Every new year, he presents his scholars with a new edition of a