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OXFORD IN THE VACATION
Casting a preparatory glance at the
bottom of this article -- as the wary connoisseur in prints, with
cursory eye (which, while it reads, seems as though it read not,)
never fails to consult the quis sculpsit in the corner, before
he pronounces some rare piece to be a Vivares, or a Woollet --
methinks I hear you exclaim, Reader, Who is Elia?
Because in my last I
tried to divert thee with some half-forgotten humours of some
old clerks defunct, in an old house of business, long since gone
to decay, doubtless you have already set me down in your mind
as one of the self-same college -- a votary of the desk -- a notched
and cropt scrivener -- one that sucks his sustenance, as certain
sick people are said to do, through a quill.
Well, I do agnize something
of the sort. I confess that it is my humour, my fancy -- in the
forest of the day, when the mind of your man of letters requires
some relaxation -- (and none better than such as at first sight
seems most abhorrent from his beloved studies) -- to while away
some good hours of my time in the contemplation of indigos, cottons,
raw silk, piece-goods, flowered or otherwise. In the first place
* * * * * * and then it sends you home with such increased appetite
to your books * * * * * not to say, that your outside sheets,
and waste wrappers of foolscap, do receive into them, most kindly
and naturally, the impression of sonnets, epigrams, essays --
so that the very parings of a counting-house are, in some sort,
the settings up of an author. The enfranchised quill, that has
plodded all the morning among the cart-rucks of figures and cyphers,
frisks and curvets so at its ease over the flowery carpet-ground
of a midnight dissertation. -- It feels its promotion. * * * *
* * * So that you see, upon the whole, the literary dignity of
Elia is very little, if at all, compromised in the condescension.
Not that, in my anxious
detail of the many commodities incidental to the life of a public
office, I would be thought blind to certain flaws, which a cunning
carper might be able to pick in this Joseph's vest. And here I
must have leave, in the fulness of my soul, to regret the abolition,
and doing-away-with altogether, of those consolatory interstices,
and sprinklings of freedom, through the four seasons, -- the red-letter
days, now become, to all intents and purposes, dead-letter days.
There was Paul, and Stephen, and Barnabas -
"Andrew and John, men famous in
old times "
we were used to keep all their days
holy, as long back as I was at school at Christ's. I remember
their effigies, by the same token, in the old Baskett Prayer Book.
There hung Peter in his uneasy posture -- holy Bartlemy in the
troublesome act of flaying, after the famous Marsyas by Spagnoletti.
I honoured them all, and could almost have wept the defalcation
of Iscariot -- so much did we love to keep holy memories sacred
-- only methought I a little grudged at the coalition of the better
Jude with Simon -- clubbing (as it were) their sanctities together,
to make up one poor gaudy-day between them -- as an economy unworthy
of the dispensation.
These were bright visitations
in a scholar's and a clerk's life -- "far off their coming
shone." -- I was as good as an almanac in those days. I could
have told you such a saint's-day falls out next week, or the week
after. Peradventure the Epiphany, by some periodical infelicity
would, once in six years, merge in a Sabbath. Now am I little
better than one of the profane. Let me not be thought to arraign
the wisdom of my civil superiors, who have judged the further
observation of these holy tides to be papistical, superstitious.
Only in a custom of such long standing, methinks, if their Holinesses
the Bishops had, in decency, been first sounded -- but I am wading
out of my depths. I am not the man to decide the limits of civil
and ecclesiastical authority -- I am plain Elia -- no Selden,
nor Archbishop Usher -- though at present in the thick of their
books, here in the heart of learning, under the shadow of the
mighty Bodley.
I can here play the
gentleman, enact the student. To such a one as myself, who has
been defrauded in his young years of the sweet food of academic
institution, nowhere is so pleasant, to while away a few idle
weeks at, as one or other of the Universities. Their vacation,
too, at this time of the year, falls in so pat with ours. Here
I can take my walks unmolested, and fancy myself of what degree
or standing I please. I seem admitted ad eundem. I fetch up past
opportunities. I can rise at the chapel-bell, and dream that it
rings for me. In moods of humility I can be a Sizar, or a Servitor.
When the peacock vein rises, I strut a Gentleman Commoner. In
graver moments, I proceed Master of Arts. Indeed I do not think
I am much unlike that respectable character. I have seen your
dim-eyed vergers, and bed-makers in spectacles, drop a bow or
curtsy, as I pass, wisely mistaking me for something of the sort.
I go about in black, which favours the notion. Only in Christ
Church reverend quadrangle, I can be content to pass for nothing
short of a Seraphic Doctor.
The walks at these times
are so much one's own -- the tall trees of Christ's, the groves
of Magdalen! The halls deserted, and with open doors, inviting
one to slip in unperceived, and pay a devoir to some Founder,
or noble or royal Benefactress (that should have been ours) whose
portrait seems to smile upon their over-looked beadsman, and to
adopt me for their own. Then, to take a peep in by the way at
the butteries, and sculleries, redolent of antique hospitality:
the immense caves of kitchens, kitchen fire-places, cordial recesses;
ovens whose first pies were baked four centuries ago; and spits
which have cooked for Chaucer! Not the meanest minister among
the dishes but is hallowed to me through his imagination, and
the Cook goes forth a Manciple.
Antiquity! thou wondrous
charm, what art thou? that, being nothing, art every thing! When
thou wert, thou wert not antiquity -- then thou wert nothing,
but hadst a remoter antiquity, as thou called'st it, to look back
to with blind veneration; thou thyself being to thyself flat,
jejune, modern! What mystery lurks in this retroversion? or what
half Januses * are we, that cannot look forward with the same
idolatry with which we for ever revert! The mighty future is as
nothing, being every thing! the past is every thing, being nothing!
[Footnote] * Januses of one face. -- Sir Thomas Browne.
What were thy dark ages?
Surely the sun rose as brightly then as now, and man got him to
his work in the morning. Why is it that we can never hear mention
of them without an accompanying feeling, as though a palpable
obscure had dimmed the face of things, and that our ancestors
wandered to and fro groping!
Above all thy rarities,
old Oxenford, what do most arride and solace me, are thy repositories
of mouldering learning, thy shelves -
What a place to be in
is an old library! It seems as though all the souls of all the
writers, that have bequeathed their labours to these Bodleians,
were reposing here, as in some dormitory, or middle state. I do
not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets.
I could as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking
amid their foliage; and the odour of their old moth-scented coverings
is fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential apples which
grew amid the happy orchard.
Still less have I curiosity
to disturb the elder repose of MSS. Those variae lectiones, so
tempting to the more erudite palates, do but disturb and unsettle
my faith. I am no Herculanean raker. The credit of the three witnesses
might have slept unimpeached for me. I leave these curiosities
to Porson, and to G. D. -- whom, by the way, I found busy as a
moth over some rotten archive, rummaged out of some seldom-explored
press, in a nook at Oriel. With long poring, he is grown almost
into a book. He stood as passive as one by the side of the old
shelves. I longed to new-coat him in Russia, and assign him his
place. He might have mustered for a tall Scapula.
D. is assiduous in his
visits to these seats of learning. No inconsiderable portion of
his moderate fortune, I apprehend, is consumed in journeys between
them and Clifford's-inn -- where, like a dove on the asp's nest,
he has long taken up his unconscious abode, amid an incongruous
assembly of attorneys, attorneys' clerks, apparitors, promoters,
vermin of the law, among whom he sits, "in calm and sinless
peace." The fangs of the law pierce him not -- the winds
of litigation blow over his humble chambers -- the hard sheriff's
officer moves his hat as he passes -- legal nor illegal discourtesy
touches him -- none thinks of offering violence or injustice to
him you would as soon "strike an abstract idea."
D. has been engaged,
he tells me, through a course of laborious years, in an investigation
into all curious matter connected with the two Universities; and
has lately lit upon a MS. collection of charters, relative to
C--, by which he hopes to settle some disputed point --particularly
that long controversy between them as to priority of foundation.
The ardor with which he engages in these liberal pursuits, I am
afraid, has not met with all the encouragement it deserved, either
here, or at C--. Your caputs, and heads of colleges, care less
than any body else about these questions. -- Contented to suck
the milky fountains of their Alma Maters, without inquiring into
the venerable gentlewomen's years, they rather hold such curiosities
to be impertinent -- unreverend. they have their good glebe lands
in manu, and care not much to rake into the title-deeds. I gather
at least so much from other sources, for D. is not a man to complain.
D. started like an unbroke
heifer, when I interrupted him. A priori it was not very probable
that we should have met in Oriel. But D. would have done the same,
had I accosted him on the sudden in his own walks in Clifford's-inn,
or in the Temple. In addition to a provoking short-sightedness
(the effect of late studies and watchings at the midnight oil)
D. is the most absent of men. He made a call the other morning
at our friend M.'s in Bedford-square; and, finding nobody at home,
was ushered into the hall, where, asking for pen and ink, with
great exactitude of purpose he enters me his name in the book
-- which ordinarily lies about in such places, to record the failures
of the untimely or unfortunate visitor -- and takes his leave
with many ceremonies, and professions of regret. Some two or three
hours after, his walking destinies returned him into the same
neighbourhood again, and again the quiet image of the fire-side
circle at M.'s -- Mrs. M. presiding at it like a Queen Lar, with
pretty A. S. at her side -- striking irresistibly on his fancy,
he makes another call (forgetting that they were "certainly
not to return from the country before that day week") and
disappointed a second time, inquires for pen and paper as before:
again the book is brought, and in the line just above that in
which he is about to print his second name (his re-script) his
first name (scarce dry) looks out upon him like another Sosia,
or as if a man should suddenly encounter his own duplicate ! --
The effect may be conceived. D. made many a good resolution against
any such lapses in future. I hope he will not keep them too rigorously
For with G. D. -- to be absent from the body, is sometimes (not
to speak it profanely) to be present with the Lord. At the very
time when, personally encountering thee, he passes on with no
recognition or, being stopped, starts like a thing surprised --
at that moment, reader, he is on Mount Tabor -- or Parnassus --
or co-sphered with Plato -- or, with Harrington, framing "immortal
commonwealths" -- devising some plan of amelioration to thy
country, or thy species -- peradventure meditating some individual
kindness or courtesy, to be done to thee thyself, the returning
consciousness of which made him to start so guiltily at thy obtruded
personal presence.
D. is delightful any
where, but he is at the best in such places as these. He cares
not much for Bath. He is out of his element at Buxton, at Scarborough,
or Harrowgate. The Cam and the Isis are to him "better than
all the waters of Damascus. -- On the Muses' hill he is happy,
and good, as one of the Shepherds on the Delectable Mountains;
and when he goes about with you to show you the halls and colleges,
you think you have with you the Interpreter at the House Beautiful.
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