phrases the old-time Undergraduate can be compared with his modern brothers. In his dealings with the river-side barmaids, the local tradesmen, and the proctors he pursued much the same ingenuous methods which are used with equal success to-day. Just as we become members of unlimited numbers of year clubs and settle the affairs of the entire human species at the nightly meetings with ease and eloquence, they, too, formed societies and took themselves with a similar seriousness. They contributed literary morsels to the Undergraduate papers which satirised existing institutions in the same youthful manner in which we satirise them. They conducted “rags” with a thoroughness and disregard of results which ended in the same speedy rustication of the ringleaders which inevitably overtakes the men who are still unwise enough to be found out.

In a word, my object has been not to compare the ethics of the university to-day with those of yesterday, but rather to set forth an analogy between Dons and Undergraduates of that period and this, and the business of their daily life, from the point of view of one upon whom the influence of Alma Mater has not yet been mellowed into an analytical remembrance by long contact with the world which lies beyond her spires.

Whether I have succeeded in proving my case remains to be seen. At least I venture to hope that the results of my work may form a frame for Rowlandson’s pictures which are here reproduced for the first time from Rowlandson’s original water-colour drawings.

Of these pictures many were engraved at the time in aquatint, but the engraver was as a rule so obsessed with the Georgian ideas of the beautiful in architecture that he practically reconstructed the majority of the buildings represented, in accordance with that idea, so that some of the most beautiful and characteristic buildings in Oxford and Cambridge, so delicately portrayed by Rowlandson’s pencil, are turned into rectangular monstrosities, the like of which was never seen in either university town.

The superiority of hand-engraving over modern processes is evident enough, when the engraving itself was made by the artist; but when the original drawing is so hopelessly misrepresented as is the case with many of the aquatints of Rowlandson’s drawings, the modern facsimile processes have their obvious advantages.

It is therefore claimed that Rowlandson’s drawings of Oxford are here reproduced for the first time, and it is believed that they will be a revelation to many who have hitherto looked upon Rowlandson merely as a somewhat gross caricaturist. The caricaturist, it is true, is still here depicting in the foregrounds characteristic scenes in the university life of the time, but here is also another Rowlandson with an appreciation of the beauties of Oxford rare indeed in his age, and one who is able to delineate them with accuracy and delicacy which have seldom been equalled in the portrayal of such subjects.

The author desires to express his gratitude to the Rev. Christopher Wordsworth for having very kindly granted him permission to make quotations from “Social Life in the English Universities”; and to Messrs Macmillan & Co., publishers of J. R. Green’s “Oxford Studies,” for allowing him to make two quotations from that book; and also to Mr R. S. Rait of the Oxford Historical Society for having permitted him to quote from Miss L. Quiller-Couch’s “Reminiscences of Oxford,” published by that society.

ROWLANDSON’S OXFORD

CHAPTER I

THE UNDERGRADUATE THEN AND NOW

How few of us there are to-day who ever devote even the slack hour between tea and “hotters” and Hall to finding out something at least about the Undergraduates who had our rooms two centuries ago. Yet to every man the word Oxford conjures up vast vague shadows from the past which make him as a freshman tread softly and with reverence through the quads and gardens, High Streets and by-streets of the City of Spires. Great names rise up into our minds and fill us with wonder, but the scout knocks at our door with half-cold food and our dreams dissolve into irritated reality. There may come a moment, perhaps, when, with feet at rest upon the mantel-shelf and a straight-grained pipe bubbling in quiet response between our teeth, we are deafening our ears to the call of bed, the slow-flowing conversation drifts by chance to a casual query as to what our predecessors did at the same hour two hundred years ago. Beyond a few more or less unimaginative surmises we remain in ignorance, blissful and uncaring, believing them to be strange-clothed beings of stilted language and curious habits, and at once the talk turns to present and more pleasant topics. We little think that to all intents and purposes we are almost exactly the same as our old-time-brethren.

To-day we row, play cricket, football, tennis, golf; we cut our lectures when we safely can and “binge” at every opportunity. Schools do occupy us, it is true, but as a mere secondary item in the university scheme of things—and rightly so. A degree, however good, does not, by itself, make men of us and teach us how to live. It is the social life of the university which is the real education and which sends us out into the world ready to face anything and everything. By developing our bodies we develop our minds, and in this programme of athletics and sociability we are a replica of our eighteenth-century brethren. They rose about nine, breakfasted at ten, and dallied away the morning with a flute or the latest French comedy. By way of strenuous exercise, necessitated by a climate which was just as evil then as now, they walked, rode, rowed, or skated, and in the evening figured at the Mitre or Tuns where they made merry into the small hours with beer, claret, or punch.

To them schools were much less a source of worry than they are to us, for, beyond attending occasional disputations and an odd lecture or so, when a Don could be persuaded to give one, they obtained their degree by the simple but expensive process of drinking the examiner—usually a hardened toper—under the table overnight. He was then led, in the morning, while still pleasantly fuddled, to the schools, and there, in consideration of a respectable douceur, he signed away the necessary papers with a beaming and self-satisfied smile. They knew nothing of the humours of white ties, dark suits, and a week’s terrible strain to get a First in Honour Mods—before the Finals are even thought of. The shivering crowds waiting in the Hall to be led to the slaughter did not exist in those days. A Trinity man named Skinner, who matriculated in 1790, flung himself at the subject in satirical verse:—

“Enter we next the Public Schools
Where now a death-like stillness rules;
Yet these still walls in days of yore
Back to the streets returned the roar of hundreds....
But since their champion Aristotle
Has been deserted for the bottle
The benches stand like Prebends’ stalls
Lone and deserted ’gainst the walls.”