Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/627

 ii s. v. JUNE 29, 1912.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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on Uooks.

In Praise of Oxford : an Anthology in Prose and Verge. By Thomas Seccombe and H. Spencer Scott. Vol.11. Life and Planners. (Constable.

THIS volume " may/' say the authors in their Foreword, " under some future dynasty who knows ? become a great Goliardic text and the Codex A of a cycle of romances known as The Legend of Oxford." With the true English the true Oxonian readiness half-ironically to admit points against oneself, they have includec several passages of dispraise, and some nol originally written with such intent, yet in effect more or less disparaging. So that posterity, in creating the legend, is likely to be a little puzzled just as contemporaries also may be who know Oxford only by repute. The intrusion of an element of sadness was, of course, inevitable : ' ; Look o'er the door and read another's name" and inevitable, too, some melancholy, yet humor- ous, perception of futility as the Don says, " 1 was a man. Ah. say what am I now ? " but the position of the stanzas from which these lines are taken, printed motto-wise on a blank page at the beginning of the book, illustrates the com- pilers' tendency rather to over-emphasize a!] this, so that the strongest, though by no means the sole, impressions one gets from the book as a whole are those of jollity soon ended, and of a succession of quaint lives, crusted more or less with sloth, that come to nothing much.

There, are eighteen sections. In the first ' In Praise of Oxford ' we have the fine passage from ' Pictures in Oxford and Blenheim ' in which TIazlitt describes the glamour of the place, and ends with a warning not to " speak a word to any of the privileged inhabitants ; for if he does the spell will be broken."

The next five sections have to do with the road to Oxford, with freshmen, with the under- graduates' life generally. We noticed the charm- ing sentences about the Oxford bells from a letter of Pope's to Martha Blount : " The moon rose in the clearest sky I ever saw .... About a mile before I reached Oxford all the bells tolled in different notes " ; a wild outburst of Cobbett's against the Oxford " drones " and " wasps," and quotations the like of which crop up again from the ' Diary of Erasmus Philipps ' in ' X. <k Q.' for December, 1860. Here old novels have been drawn upon among them Merivale's ' Faucit of Balliol,' Henry Kingsley's ' Ravens- hoe,' Xewman's ' Loss and Gain,' as well as, of course, ' Tom Brown at Oxford ' ; while Boswell's ' Johnson,' Gibbon's ' Memoirs,' Hogg's ' Shelley,' and Mark Pattison duly furnish the bits that most readers will expect to find. Two amusing pages of a ' Tutor's Advice to a Freshman and his Father, 1688,' come from Stephen Penton's 4 The Guardian's Instruction,' and amusing too are the ' Shrove Tuesday Diversions ' from Anthony a Wood's ' Life.' Half a dozen lines are quoted from Archdeacon Denison's ' Our Memories : Shadows of Old Oxford,' to the effect that ' when I went up to Oxford, 1823-4, there were two things unknown in Christ Church, and I believe very generally in Oxford smoking and slang."

The section ' Oxford at Work ' is at once enter- taining and curiously depressing, made up chiefly, of tales some of them quite good concerning the behaviour of undergraduates, afterwards eminent, in presence of the authorities of their day, and of complaints and criticisms, which are now languid and haughty, now snarling. So strict here is the understatement in the way of praise that work itself the feel of it, whether in the doing or when it is done is not represented ; and yet we can testify to the fact that something of the kind does form a part, however incon- spicuous, of the manners and life of Oxford, wherefore we fear that the omission of it may tend to vitiate the future " legend." Lender ' Clubs and Libraries ' we get the terrific ghost - story of the Hell-Fire Club at Brasenose the version by W. Maskell, embodied in Mr. Buchan's ' History of Brasenose ' ; some pleasant para- graphs on the Bodleian, of which the best is the extract from Evelyn ; and Cowley's verses his Book presenting itself to the University Library of Oxford. ' Rimes and Pastimes ' is a good anil lively collection of pieces whose humour ranges, from Walter Pater on ' Bonfires ' " I like them r they light up the spire of St. Mary's so beautifully ' ' to Barry Pain's ' Boat-rice Dye.' The " Vic " and " the Xew Theatre," taken from Father- Adderley's ' Fight for the Drama at Oxford,' refer to an episode in Oxford history which might perhaps have been more fully illustrated. The account of the Oxford Pageant of 1907 comes from the columns of The Athentcum. Most of the boating pieces are well enough ; but we do not understand why such a feeble bit of writing as. ' How Ralph saved the Race ' obtained-admission.

The next section, ' Cap and Bells,' has two- witty pieces from ' The Shotover Papers ' ' Taine- Historien ' and ' They are Three." ' God Save the King,' Latine redditum, which was circulated in Oxford in 1809-10, comes from ' X. & Q.,' First Series, an ingenious and sonorous production, though the line " Horrido da " must have a comic sound when sung. In ' X. & Q.' likewise were treasured up a ' Revolutionary Manifesto headed ' Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity,' which fluttered the Oxonian crowd at the Com- memoration of 1849 ; and Jerom Terrent's address to Great Tom, " Wee '11 all be glad (great Tom) to see thee hanged." The more modern contributions are drawn from Mr. Methuen's ' Verses to Order,' Sir A. T. Quiller-Couch's ' Green Bays,' and other volumes of verse ; and there are numerous ' ; good stories," not all of equal merit, and some as familiar as " I am the Dean, this Mrs. Liddel," and "Just roughly so to speak, you know," which also have their due place here.

The ' Foreign Impressions ' are a very inter- esting collection some of them far from flatter- ng, excepting, indeed, so far as external beauty s concerned. Taine's remarks have a touch of jeevishness in them ; Bourget's a touch of superior amusement. " Pourquoi alors y travaJUe- )ilers have inserted the passage in Hawthorne's English Xotebooks ' about the Sir Joshua window at Xew College a curious passage in which the Sir* Joshua is sniffed at, and the gaudy windows within the chapel praised, and not a word is bestowed on the old glass in the ante- Chapel.
 * -on peu ? " asks M. Joseph Arnaud. The cora-