OXFORD. If we turn over the pages of what is called rather humorously, a "Historic Peerage," we find that the great families, of which England is so justly proud, can generally point to a number of authentic ancestors of flesh and blood. But this number is in some cases too small to satisfy modern requirements. Accordingly mythical Norman knights and barons with bellicose names are evolved to launch the family with due ceremony upon its genealogical career. By a quaint inversion of nature's rule, the ingenuity of the descendant creates the ancestor. A like wish on the part of the historians of the English universities has been the father of a like thought. Oxford and Cambridge can boast, and are by no means averse from boasting, of an antiquity venerable and undisputed. For seven or eight hundred years their history forms no slight part of the history of the nation. But their champions have not been content with such legitimate claims to glory. Unwilling to admit that the Universities had a modest origin in the 12th century, they have carried back their institution to an age when a university was as little known as a telephone. Modern criticism has not spared even the Peerage. Before its cold light many ancestors once held in high regard have faded away from recent editions. So it has been with the University pedigree also. The early narrators of Oxford's story tell us without a blush that certain Greek professors came over with Brutus, or Brute, the Trojan, grandson of Æneas, after the fall of Troy. They settled at Greeklade, now Cricklade, in Wiltshire, and formed there a University, which was afterwards removed to Oxford. Even the most faithful sons of Oxford had seasons of doubt and despondency with regard to Brute, the Trojan. But the foundation of the University by Alfred the Great was fervently believed in till recent times. Learned writers were so anxious to defend it that they are strongly suspected of tampering with ancient manuscripts. I see that the Calendar, speaking of University College, says, in a rather chastened way : This college is said to have been founded in the year 872 by Alfred the Great." Modern antiquarians have exposed so mercilessly the weak points in this legend-and strong points it never enjoyed—that he must be a stalwart indeed who builds his faith on Alfred's foundation. But Oxford had no monopoly of myths. The fire of academic loyalty burns no less fiercely in the Cambridge breast. Her historians have ascribed the origin of that University now to a Spanish Prince Cantaber a shadowy personage whom it has never been thought decorous to pin down to a particular date-now to King Arthur of the Table Round; now to a Saxon King Sigebert. Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones. Let us gently leave these pious fictions to the professional students of mythology. The real history of the University of Oxford begins in the 12th century. It is probable that two Universities in Europe-and two only— can claim to be a little older. These are Bologna and Paris. All three originated in the same epoch, and sprang from the same spiritual and intellectual revival which has been well called the Twelfth Century Renaissance. Europe then awakened like the Fairy Princess from her sleep of centuries. From the time-six hundred years earlier when the northern barbarians broke the Roman Empire into fragments, art and science, literature and philosophy had been almost forgotten. The human spirit, continually working out its freedom can never be utterly crushed. Even in the darkest age there were no doubt some eyes which strove to pierce through the veil of the material to the spiritual reality behind it, some minds busy with the eternal problems of man's destiny, some hearts stirred by the beauty of the earth and the sky. But the monk, speaking generally, who painfully illuminated his missal or copied the ancient manuscript which was the treasure of his monastery, was the only artist, the only scholar. Not till the 12th century did Italy, France and England begin to dream of an education which should not be confined to the cloister as the handmaid of theology, but should fit the parish priest, the lawyer, the doctor, for his life in the work-a-day world. The earliest universities passed through three distinct stages of evolution : 1. Two or three celebrated teachers settled in one city and students flocked to that place to attend their lectures. The teachers were not grouped together, they had no official status of any kind, and degrees had not yet been thought of. For example, the fame of Abelard as a philosopher and theologian drew students to Paris from all parts of Europe. It is said that twenty of his pupils afterwards became cardinals, and fifty became bishops. As Paris became known as the great home of scholastic theology, so Bologna became the centre of legal instruction. Thousands were drawn thither to hear Irnerius expound the subtleties of the Roman law. The sort of instruction given in both places seems to us somewhat remote from practical life. But it is quite a mistake to think that it did not in those days help the student to climb the ladder of ambition. It was the only learning of that time, and then as now the educated man came to the front. The statesmen, the diplomatists, the chancellors and secretaries who managed the affairs of the kings or great feudal lords were ecclesiastics or lawyers-frequently both. Men like Becket or Edmund Rich won in the schools of Oxford and Paris a reputation for learning and ability which carried them forward to the position of Archbishop of Canterbury-then a dignitary hardly second to the king. 2. The second stage in the evolution of universities was reached when the separate teachers grouped themselves together to form a guild or corporation. Before a student can be admitted to the rank of doctor or master he must be examined by the guild. This recognition of his fitness to become a teacher does not entitle him to set up in any university except his own. If he goes to another school the guild of doctors will examine him again. 3. The third stage is when the admission to the rank of a master in one university gives the student the right to teach there or elsewhere. The doctor of Bologna or Padua may go to Paris or Oxford and his rank as a teacher receives due recognition. This last stage is generally marked by the university getting a bull from the Pope or the Emperor, declaring that her doctors shall be recognised everywhere. Any graduate-any student who satisfied the guild-might, if he chose, begin to lecture on his own account. The term 66 professor" meant merely a doctor or master. To us the word "university" suggests great buildings, fixed salaries, not proportionally great, and an army of painfully permanent professors. In the 12th century there were no buildings, still worse no salaries, and the professors were often mere birds of passage. The doctor or professor who expounded Aristotle or the Pandects hired or borrowed a room where he pleased. He had no salary, but depended on the fees which his students could pay. Even the amount per head was quite unfixed. At the beginning of the session the custom was for the professor to engage two students to negotiate with the rest of the class as to the sum they were willing to pay. If times were hard with the students the fees might sink below a living wage. If the professor ceased to charm and his class disappeared, there would be no fees at all. In such a case he might fold his manuscript and steal away to another city to try his fortune again. If we were exposed to the same rude tests professors would still be as migratory as swallows. Partly from this want of fixity of tenure, and partly from the feuds and jealousies which are known to rend the most academic breasts, migrations of professors and students were common. Many of the most famous universities originated in such migrations. Like some of the lower organisms, the universities multiplied by scission. It is very probable that Oxford is an illustration. Her most recent historian thinks it almost certain that the university was due to a migration of professors and students from Paris about the year 1167. The causes which determined the choice of Oxford as the site of the first English University were, probably, the strong position of the city and the facility of access to it. It was a walled city, had a strong castle, the ruins of which still remain, and it lay on a peninsula formed by two rivers-the Thames and the Cherwell. Water carriage up the Thames from London made transport easy at a time when travelling by road was both difficult and dangerous. It may be freely admitted that the Thames at Oxford is a river somewhat smaller than the St. Lawrence. But notwithstanding, it might serve to check an advancing enemy, or carry a barge of wheat. Successive generations of students have blessed the choice of the early founders. The simple clerks who had sought only for a safe and sheltered place for the study of Aristotle, had found, all unwittingly, an admirable river for rowing. Unwittingly also they had established their university in a district which nowadays is one of singular_beauty. No doubt to the eye of the mind the fields which we saw in our youth are greener, the skies bluer, the rivers and woods more fascinating than any we have come across in later life. But with all allowance for the law that "the past will always win a glory from its being far," it is not merely this illusion which makes me regard Oxfordshire as a pleasant and delightful land. It is full of streams and woods, of gentle hills and waving corn-fields, of ancient churches and manor houses, and of quaint little market towns and villages which have remained for centuries almost unchanged. The student life of the middle ages was wild and disorderly enough. Drinking, dicing and debauchery of every kind were but slightly restrained. Some of the students did not shrink even from burglary, highway robbery and assassination. Readers of the works of that fine poet, but double-dyed rascal, François Villon, know the atrocious lives led by some of the students at Paris. The city of Oxford was so much smaller than Paris that a gang of desperadoes such as Villon and his friends could hardly have escaped detection. And the institution of the College system at Oxford greatly helped to bring about a stricter discipline. With all this, there was a vast amount of rioting and violence. Many of the scholars were extremely poor and begged their way to and from the University. An Act of Parliament was passed providing that no scholar should beg for alms unless he had a certificate from the Chancellor that his was a deserving case. As late as 1461 there is a record of two scholars who had certificates of this kind. Upon slight provocation the scholars and the townsmen engaged in pitched battles. These "town and gown rows," as they were called at a later day, had sometimes important consequences. The great University of Cambridge owes, in all likelihood, its origin to one of them. In 1209 an Oxford student killed a woman in a quarrel, and the mayor and burgesses made a raid upon the hostel of the offender. King John consented to the execution of two scholars who had been seized. The excitement became so great that the masters and the scholars dispersed and the University was practically suspended for five years. It is said that three thousand |