"Ye mossy piles of old munificence,
At once the pride of learning and defence."
J. WARTON, /Triumph of Isis/
The east side of the University buildings proper was shown in the last picture (Plate III); in the following (Plate IV), the north side of the same block is seen. The old University "schools" lay just inside the city wall, and Broad Street, which is there represented, occupies the site of the ditch, which ran on the north of the wall. This picture is a fitting supplement to the last, for the Sheldonian Theatre on the right of it and the Clarendon Building in the background may claim rank even with the Bodleian and the Radcliffe as the University's special buildings.
The Sheldonian celebrated its two hundred and fiftieth anniversary only last year (1919), when the music which had been performed at its opening was performed once more. It is a building interesting from many points of view. Architecturally it marks the first complete flowering of the genius of Sir Christopher Wren. He was only thirty- seven when it was completed, and had been previously known rather as a man of science than as an architect; he was Oxford's Professor of Astronomy; but Archbishop Sheldon chose him to build a worthy meeting place for his University, even as at the same time he was being called by the king to prepare plans for rebuilding London after the Great Fire.
The very existence of the Sheldonian marks the development of University ideas. The simple piety - or was it the worldliness? - of Pre-Reformation Oxford had seen nothing unsuitable in the ceremonies of graduate Oxford and the ribaldries of undergraduate Oxford taking place in the consecrated building of St. Mary's; but the more sober genius of Anglicanism was shocked at these secular intrusions, and Sheldon provided his University with a worthy home, where its great functions have been performed ever since.
The building is a triumph of construction; it is doubtful if so large an unsupported roof can be found elsewhere; but Wren is not to be held responsible for the outside ugly flat roof, which was put on 100 years ago, because it was said, quite falsely, that Wren's roof was unsafe. That architect had set himself the problem of getting the greatest number of people into the space at his disposal, and he managed to fit in a building that will hold 1,500. It was also intended for the Printing Press of the University, but was only used in that way for a short time, as in 1713 Sir John Vanbrugh put up the Clarendon Building, to house this department of University activity. The "heaviness" of Vanbrugh's buildings was a jest even in his own time; someone wrote as an epitaph for him
"Lie heavy on him. Earth, for he
Laid many a heavy load on thee."
Blenheim Palace, his greatest work, is indeed a "heavy load." But the same criticism can hardly be brought against the columned portico, which forms a fine ending for the Broad Street. Vanbrugh's building was superseded in its turn, when the increasing business of the Oxford Printing Press was moved to the present building in 1830.
Since then, all kinds of University business have been carried on in the old Printing Press. The University Registrar and the University Treasurer (his style is "Secretary of the University Chest") have their offices there; the Proctors exercise discipline from there; the various University delegacies and committees meet there. And another side of Oxford life, not yet (in January 1920) fully recognized as belonging to the University, has found a home there; the top floor has been for twenty years past the centre of women's education in Oxford, a position elevated indeed, for it is up more than fifty stairs, but commodious and dignified when reached at last.
Perhaps the Clarendon Building has gained in lightness of effect by being contrasted with the clumsy mass of the Indian Institute, which forms the background of our picture. The nineteenth century proudly criticized the taste of the eighteenth; but it may well be doubted if any building in Oxford of the earlier and much-abused century is more inartistic and inappropriate than "Jumbo's Joss House," which used to rouse the scorn and anger of the late Professor of History, Edward A. Freeman.
No Oxford colleges are in this picture, though a small part of Exeter, one of Sir Gilbert Scott's least happy erections in Oxford, appears on the right, and a little piece of Trinity on the left; the last-named is the college of Professor Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, better known as "Q," one of the most delightful of Oxford's minor poets. The opening lines of his poem, "Alma Mater,"
"Know ye her secret none can utter,
Hers of the book, the tripled crown?
Still on the spire the pigeons flutter,
Still by the gateway flits the gown,
Still in the street from corbel and gutter
Faces of stone look down,"
may well have been inspired by this very scene in the Broad, for the grim faces of stone that surround the Sheldonian are one of the features and the puzzles of Oxford. Are they the Roman Emperors, or the Greek Philosophers, or neither? It does not matter, for they are unlike anything in heaven or in earth, and yet they are loved by all true Oxford men for their uncompromising ugliness, which has been familiar to so many generations.
BALLIOL COLLEGE
"For the house of Balliol is builded ever
By all the labours of all her sons,
And the great deed wrought and the grand endeavour
Will be hers as long as the Isis runs."
F. S. BOAS
The story is told of the old Greek admirals, after their victory at Salamis over the Persian king, that, when invited to name the two most deserving commanders, they each put their own name first, and then one and all put the Athenian Themistocles second. If a vote, on these principles, were taken in Oxford as to which was the best college, there is little doubt that Balliol would secure most of the second votes.
It is one of the three oldest colleges, and actually has been in occupation of its present site longer than any other of our Oxford foundations - for more than six centuries and a half. Yet its greatness is but a thing of yesterday compared to the antiquity of Oxford, and it is fitting that a college which has come to the front in the nineteenth century should be mainly housed in nineteenth century buildings.
Balliol has indeed ceased to be the "most satisfactory pile and range of old lowered and gabled edifices," which Nathaniel Hawthorne saw in the "fifties" of the last century. The painful imitation of a French chateau, the work of Sir Alfred Waterhouse, which forms the main part of our picture, was put up about 1868 (mainly by the munificence of Miss Hannah Brackenbury), and only the old hall and the library, which lie behind, remain of Pre-Reformation Balliol.
In the background of our picture (Plate V) can be seen the Fisher Building, known to all Balliol men for the still existing inscription, "Verbum non amplius Fisher," which tradition says was put up at the dying request of the eighteenth-century benefactor.
While it is true that the pre-eminence of Balliol is a growth of the nineteenth century, yet the college can count among its worthies one of the greatest names in English mediaeval history, that of John Wycliffe. He was probably a scholar of Balliol, and certainly Master for some years about 1360. But he left the college for a country living, and his time at Balliol is not associated with either of his most important works - his translation of the Bible or his order of "Poor Preachers." While at Balliol, he was rather "the last of the Schoolmen" than "the first of the Reformers."
The modern greatness of Balliol is due to the fact that the college awoke more rapidly from the sleep of the eighteenth century than most of Oxford, and as early as 1828 threw open its scholarships to free competition. Hence even as early as the time of Dr. Arnold at Rugby, a "Balliol scholarship" had become "the blue riband of public-school education." It has now passed into popular phraseology to such an extent that lady novelists, unversed in academic niceties, confer a "Balliol scholarship" on their heroes, even when entering Cambridge.
Balliol has known how to take full advantage of its opportunity. Governed by a series of eminent masters, especially Dr. Scott of Greek dictionary fame, and Professor Jowett, the translator of Plato and the hero of more Oxford stories than any other man, it has been ready to adapt itself to every new movement. While the governing bodies of other colleges in the middle of the last century were too often looking only to raising their own fellowships to the highest possible point, the Balliol dons were denying their own pockets to enrich and strengthen their college.
Hence, undoubtedly, Balliol for a long time past has had a lion's share of Oxford's great men; two Archbishops of Canterbury, Tait and Temple, the present Archbishop of York, Cardinal Manning, a Prime Minister in Mr. Asquith, a Speaker in Lord. Peel, two Viceroys of India in Lord Lansdowne and Lord Curzon, poets like Clough, Matthew Arnold and Swinburne, these are only some of the more outstanding names. It is this which makes Balliol Hall so particularly interesting to the ordinary man; knowledge of present-day affairs, not of history, is all that is needed to appreciate its array of portraits.
Nor has Balliol been unmindful of the social movements of our time. It is the chosen home of the Workers' Educational Association in Oxford, and in Arnold Toynbee it produced one of the pioneers and martyrs of modern social progress. Truly Balliol has much more to show to the visitor than its ultra-modern front on the Broad would promise.
The street, on which Balliol looks out, is associated with the most famous scene of Oxford history; the stone with a cross in the middle of the road marks the traditional site of the burning of the bishops, Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, although their memorial has been erected 200 yards further north in St. Giles', and though antiquarians argue (probably correctly) that the actual pyre was a little further south, in fact, behind the present row of Broad Street houses.
But it is the living activity of the college, not the sad memories of the street in front, that gives the interest to the picture. The intellectual life of the Balliol men has been well described by Professor J. C. Shairp, whose verses on "Balliol Scholars" are likely to be remembered by Oxford in long days to come for their associations, if not for their poetic merits. He describes what a privilege it is "to have passed," with men who became famous afterwards,
"The threshold of young life,
Where the man meets, not yet absorbs, the boy,
And ere descending to the dusky strife,
Gazed from clear heights of intellectual joy
That an undying image left enshrined."
This will come home to many, as they think on their happy Oxford days when they had life all before them, even though their contemporaries have not become archbishops like Temple or poets like Matthew Arnold.