1798

VOLUNTEER CORPS.

33

All this led very naturally to the enrolment of a Volunteer Corps, or 'Armed Association,' both in the University and City. The City Corps was not very strong in numbers, not more, I believe, than 250 men, commanded by Sir Digby Macworth, Bart., then resident in Oxford. The University Corps was much stronger, i. e. about 500, commanded by Mr. Coker, of Bicester, formerly Fellow of New College. Such indeed were the zeal and spirit called forth in those stirring times by the threat of invasion, that even clerical members did not hesitate to join the ranks, put on the blue coat for the black one, submit to the discipline of drill, and practise target-shooting. First and foremost of this class was the Rev. Mr. (afterwards Dr.) Barnes, whose active services as Major of the Corps were said to have gained him his Canonry1 at Christ Church. The Rev. Lee Cooke, Fellow of Magdalen, was the acting Adjutant. Some also of the most respectable College servants were enrolled with their masters, and, if actual hostilities had ensued, would have accompanied them, as the Helots did the Spartans, ready to join them in the battle and to assist them at the camp-fire. The dress or uniform was of a very heavy character, but also very imposing: a blue coat (rather short, but somewhat more than a jacket) faced with white; white duck pantaloons, with a black leathern strap or garter below the

1 Local wit was, of course, busy on the occasion, on the difference between a Major and a Minor Canon, with the usual play on words; e. g.

6

'Twixt Cannons and Canons the diff'rence is small,

They can both make a noise, can you say which is louder ?

The one fires away from his pulpit and stall,

Quite as much as the other with shot and with powder.'

Reply.

'I laugh, my good sir, at your late very silly taunt ;

"Great Guns" are well plac'd in a Church which is “militant."

D

knee; and short black cloth gaiters. The head-dress was also heavy; a beaver round-headed hat, surmounted by a formidable roll of bear-skin or fur of some kind!

July 7. A grand ceremony took place in Christ Church Meadow, of the presentation of colours to the University Corps. A sermon, or rather a stirring discourse, was addressed to the Volunteers, sub dio, by the Rev. C. Blackstone, of New College. Colonel Coker, who was a fine old man (old, that is, to my young eyes, certainly not a young man), made a speech to his men, drawn up in a square. Indeed, he was rather fond of so addressing them; and, under the influence of patriotic zeal and excited feelings, he generally talked till his tears choked his utterance. *Os φάτο δακρυχέων has been said of more than one brave warrior.

A. D. 1799.

[Regent-Masters at the Act, 112.]

This year, as well as the two or three preceding years, brought up a good many Undergraduates to pass the examination1 for the B. A. degree, under the old system. This

1 Lord Eldon's account of his own examination in 1770 (quoted in the Report of the University Commissioners at p. 59) is amusing, but, me judice, struck off in a merry mood for a post prandium joke. It is this: 'I was examined in Hebrew and in History. "What is the Hebrew for the place of a skull?" I replied, “Golgotha.” Who founded University College?" I stated (though, by the way, the point is sometimes doubted) "that King Alfred founded it." Very well, Sir," said the Examiner," you are competent for your degree."'

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The above is followed (in the Report) by a long extract (in reference to the same period) from Dr. Knox's 77th Essay, in which it is said 'that the greatest dunce usually gets his testimonium signed with as much ease and credit as the finest genius. . . . . The poor young man (to be examined in the sciences) often knows no more of them than his bed

1799

EXAMINATIONS IN OMNI SCIBILI.'

35

examination had dwindled into a formal repetition of threadbare Questions and Answers' (in Divinity, Logic, Gram

....

maker; and the Masters who examine are sometimes equally unacquainted with such mysteries. But Schemes (as they are called) or little books, containing forty or fifty questions in each science, are handed down, from age to age, from one to another. . . . I have known questions on this occasion to consist of an inquiry into the pedigree of a race-horse!' The author of Terrae Filius' (Nicholas Amhurst) gives this account of Examinations, &c., in 1726: As the Public Lectures are laid aside; as very few Tutors take care to instruct their pupils in anything but a little bumdrum Logick; and as very few young fellows are disposed to study more than they are obliged to do, they have found out a new method of performing this public exercise with great decency, and very little pains. . . . . . As they have ready-made strings of syllogisms for Disputations, so for Examination they have the skeletons of all the arts and sciences, . . . . containing all the questions in each of them which are usually asked upon this occasion, and the common answers that are given to them; which in a week or fortnight they may get at their tongue's end. . . . . Many a school-boy has done more than this for his breaking-up task!... It is well known to be the custom for the candidates either to present their Examiners with a piece of gold, or to give them a handsome entertainment. Some further particulars are added which, from the pen of such a writer, were probably exaggerations. It is no wonder that Amhurst was expelled from the University. In connection with the subject of Exercises for Degrees, I may be allowed to append an extract from The Autobiography of Dr. Alexander Carlyle,' p. 363: We arrived at Oxford [i. e. he and Dr. Robertson, John Home, and James Adam] before dinner [this was in 1758], and put up at the Angel... John Douglas, who knew we were coming, was passing trials [i. e. doing Exercises] for his degree of D.D., and that very day was in the act of one of his wall-lectures, as they are called, for there is no audience. At that University, it seems, the trial is strict when one takes a Master's or Bachelor's, but slack when you come to the Doctor's Degree: and vice versâ at Cambridge. However that be, we found Douglas sitting in a pulpit, in one of their chapels [i. e. the Divinity School], with not a soul to hear him but three old beggar-women, who came to try if they might get some charity. On seeing us four enter the chapel, he talked to us and wished us away, otherwise he would be obliged to

mar, 'et in omni scibili') which had been transmitted in manuscript from man to man, and were unblushingly admitted, if not adopted, even by the Masters of the Schools.' These were Regent-Masters of the year, whose duty it was, by virtue of their Regency, to go through this ceremony, for a mere ceremony it had become. The more scrupulous, joining in the increasing cry for a new Examination-Statute, hung back from the farce; but each year was sure to produce a few Masters who did not object even to dine with the examined1 after the fatigues of the morning!

lecture. We would not go away, we answered, as we wished a specimen of Oxford learning; on which he read two or three verses out of the Greek Testament, and began to expound it in Latin. We listened for five minutes, and then, telling where we were to dine, we left him, to walk about.'

As an appendix to this subject, I may add a personal contribution to the state of Divinity Exercises in my undergraduate days; I was asked by a B.D. (who often lent, perhaps sold, his services as a Respondent, himself furnishing the arguments) to supply him with a Latin Epigram (sometimes introduced as a finishing-stroke), to fit on to his old 'strings' on the question, An lectio S. Scripturae sit Laicis concedenda.' I gave him the following lines, which more than once had the honour of being recited in the Divinity School :

'Dicis in his Scriptis leges mihi inesse salutis:

Duc, quaeso, ad fontes,-hinc avido ore bibam.
"Impie," tu vocitas, "resta! procul esto, profane!
Pollue ne fontem,-ecce canalis ego!"
Dum jacui in cunis, animum corpusque tenellus,
Alterius curâ vivere tunc libuit;

Nunc meus esse licet,-poenas, palmasve merebor;

Quae monstrent cursum, lumina neu renuas.'

1 Scene-the room of an Undergraduate just examined. Dinner on the table for two-the Examiner and the Examined.

Examinatus Examinatori:

'Now, good Regent-Master, the tables are turn'd,

Many thanks for your friendly Testamur;

1799

STATE OF STAGNATION.

37

Well might such a state of things expire with the expiring century! The New Examination-Statute' was already on the anvil and being worked into shape; Dean Cyril Jackson, Dr. Eveleigh, and Dr. Parsons were labouring hard for the revival of scholarship and the credit of our Alma Mater.

'His informatum manibus, jam parte politâ,

Fulmen erat.'

In short, nothing else (nothing at least of University interest) was thought or talked of but the forthcoming Statute and its probable provisions.

One proof of the stagnation in which the University was at that time involved was the unusual dulness of the Commemoration-week. There was indeed the uninteresting promenade in the Broad Walk on the Sunday evening, and the equally dull Radcliffe sermon' on the Tuesday; but there were no pic-nics at Nuneham, no drives to Blenheim; there were no Masonic balls and festivities, no horticultural show, no procession of boats1; there were not even any concerts, at least on a large scale; and (greatest proof of all) there was not a single Honorary D.C.L. degree, and

After such a day's work we our dinner have earn'd,
And what honest fellow need say more?

Examinator Examinato (by way of grace):

Say no more, my young friend, we've complied with the "Norma Loquendi, quaerendi and eke respondendi ;"

I'd no reason to sing out "Non stabit pro forma,"

So now we will stand on no forma edendi.'

Non stabit pro forma' was the old form of plucking at Oxford. In some College Exercises at Cambridge it was 'Descendas,' i. e. from the recitation-desk, the word being sometimes made to sound very like two English words.

1 Indeed there was as yet no College boat on the Isis.