MARK
PATTISON
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ARTES
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MEMOIRS

28249
MEMOIRS
BY
MARK PATTISON
=
LATE RECTOR OF LINCOLN COLLEGE,
OXFORD
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1885
1
JVE
© /^-4-38 VA.
Recat.
PREFACE.
THESE Memoirs were originally entitled by the
writer Recollections of my Life, but when he
gave his last directions concerning them he
directed that they should be called Memoirs.
He was asked whether they were dedicated to
an old and valued friend of his early life, and
replied, "They are not dedicated to any one;
you will see for yourself, when you come to
read them, that they are not fit to be dedicated
to any one." A provisional dedication, there-
fore, which was found in the MS., has been
withdrawn by the same authority as that where-
by the title has been changed. One or two
paragraphs at the beginning, which he con-
sidered of "too egotistical a character," have
also been cancelled by his express directions
and indications.
vi
PREFACE.
As regards the rest of the MS. the writer
expressly forbade the alteration of a word,
especially in reference to his estimates of per-
sons, which he thought the editor might be
tempted to soften. "If you are attacked on
this score," he added, "you must shelter your-
self by saying you are bound to fulfil the wishes
of the dead. As to the rest," he went on, “I
give you full editorial powers."
On these indications the editor of this volume
has scrupulously acted. Not a line, not a word
of the MS. has been changed or destroyed.
The exercise of the editorial powers, which the
writer conferred, has been strictly limited to the
incorporation of certain dictated matter at points
clearly indicated, and to the omission from the
present edition of a few passages, the publication
of which would have been likely to wound the
feelings of the living. Whenever such an
omission has been made the fact has been care-
fully indicated by asterisks in the text.
CHAPTER I.
As life may not be granted me to write out all
I can remember, I shall begin with my coming
up to Oxford in the year 1832, leaving my
boyish years for a later book of reminiscences.
For I have really no history but a mental
history. When I read other persons' autobio-
graphies I feel that they were justified in
writing them by the variety of experiences
they have gone through, and the number of
interesting persons they have known. Harriet
Martineau, e.g., or Leigh Hunt, were in the
way of seeing historic names, and can tell one
much about them. I have seen no one, known
none of the celebrities of my own time inti-
mately, or at all, and have only an inaccurate
memory for what I hear. All my energy was
directed upon one end-to improve myself, to
form my own mind, to sound things thoroughly,
B
2
СНАР.
MARK PATTISON.
to free myself from the bondage of unreason,
and the traditional prejudices which, when I
began first to think, constituted the whole of
my intellectual fabric. I have nothing beyond
trivial personalities to tell in the way of inci-
dent. If there is anything of interest in my
story, it is as a story of mental development.
Mozley, in the Reminiscences, says, "People
may perhaps remember what they saw and
heard forty years ago, but they cannot so easily
remember what they were themselves" (ii. 270).
But if I cannot remember of myself the hide-
bound and contracted intellect, with which I
entered upon life, and something of the steps.
by which I emerged from that frozen condition,
I have nothing else worth recording to write.
A reviewer says of George Sand that "no part
of her Memoirs is more interesting than her
description of the development of her own
genius. To remember the dreams and con-
fusions of childhood, never to lose the recollec-
tion of the curiosity and simplicity of that age,
is one of the gifts of the poetic character"
(Quart. Rev., Ap. 1877).
I.
3
MEMOIRS.
My father was one of those who are recep-
tive of very vivid impressions from outward
events, though not exact in the reproduction of
their impressions. The imagination is too power-
ful, and infuses itself into the fact. Sister Dora
had his habit of embroidering and glorifying.
My father used to tell many occurrences of his
school- life with great force and picturesque
effect; but of all his early life, nothing had
taken so much hold of his memory and imag-
ination as his three years at the University.
He had been a commoner of B. N. C., taking.
his degree of B.A. in 1809. His tutor was
Frodsham Hodson. I will only set down one
of his many anecdotes of this college celebrity,
for whom my father had a high respect. Re-
turning to college, after one Long Vacation,
Hodson drove the last stage into Oxford, with
post-horses. The reason he gave for this piece
of ostentation was,
"That it should not be said
that the first tutor of the first college of the
first university of the world entered it with a
pair." This was perhaps only a common-room
story, made to fit the character somewhat
4
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
yaûpos of Hodson. The story is symbolical
of the high place B. N. C. held in the Univer-
sity at the time, in which, however, intellectual
eminence entered far less than the fact that it
numbered among its members many gentlemen
commoners of wealthy and noble families.
Among these was Lord George Gordon, after-
wards known as concerned in the Greek War
of Independence.
*
*
*
In those days, and especially in such a
society, scholars-at B. N. C. they mostly
came from Manchester-were looked down
upon as an inferior caste. Ashhurst T. Gilbert,
who was a first class in 1808, and became
Principal of the College in 1822, and in 1842
was made Bishop of Chichester by Sir Robert
Peel, who had been in the same class with him,
was always spoken of by my father with disdain,
as associating with a low set, and having him-
self low tastes. * * * My father was too
proud to be a tuft-hunter, but he liked, and
appreciated the advantages of "worshipful com-
pany." But his "set" at college was not that
of the gentlemen commoners, nor that of the
I.
5
MEMOIRS.
reading men. I
suppose he was excluded from
the first by want of means, and from the latter
by his want of literary cultivation. For some
reading men there certainly were in the college
in 1805, when my father went into residence,
seeing that the two Hebers, Reginald and
Richard, had only recently passed through, and
could not have been isolated exceptions in the
college. The famous "Palestine" breakfast in
B. N. C. had only taken place in May 1803.
This historical breakfast is on "record" in
Lockhart's Life of Scott (ii. 122), when Heber's
prize poem was read to Scott, who made the
happy suggestion which led to the insertion of
the lines: "No hammer fell, no ponderous axes
rung," etc. But of any such society, if such
there were in B. N. C., my father had nothing
to tell.
His friends were men of moderate means
and quiet habits, who read too, but were with-
out that decided intellectual bias which would
have admitted them into the best and most
cultivated circle, such as that in which the
Hebers moved. My father was not acquainted
6
СНАР.
MARK PATTISON.
with Tyler, Whately, Peel, Conybeare, Baden
Powell, Rolleston, Valpy, all of whom were
about cotemporary with him. True, they were
in different colleges, which, I suppose, consti-
tuted a greater barrier to acquaintance than it
does now.
All
My father's friends, of whom he continued
to speak with regard twenty years afterwards,
were John Le Mesurier, afterwards chaplain to
the forces in Malta, and Archdeacon John
Blackburne; John Ford; Wheatley, afterwards
a Chancery barrister; Thomas Farrer.
these (except Wheatley), as well as my father
himself, achieved second classes in Litt. Hum.,
which, we should now say, was respectable for
commoners, when every one at all capable of
getting a first is provided with a scholarship.
And I should gather, from what I can remem-
ber of my father's talk, that none of the party
had greater abilities than himself. In those
days a second class required only four books
of Aristotle's Ethics, and neither Rhetoric nor
Politics. My father never professed any under-
standing of Aristotle, and had a very faint idea
I.
7
MEMOIRS.
of Logic, as I discovered when he tried to read
Aldrich with me. His favourite book was
Aristophanes. He was one night caught by
Hodson on the back of Cain and Abel, and being
asked what he did there, replied, “'Aeрoßатw κaì
Αεροβατῶ
πeрioрov тòv йov." "Oh!" cried Hodson, "it's
περιφρονῶ τὸν
only Aristophanic Pattison."
*
* *
Many more of my father's stories occur to
me, but these I give as showing how he loved
to recur to his college days, and how I was
made familiar with college life from as early
a time as I can remember. Nor was only the
social and undergraduate side of the University
brought before me. My father, though not a
well-read man, had, after leaving Oxford and
settling in his curacy, taken some pains to ex-
tend his knowledge, and had read some of the
best books of English literature. I remember
a C. P. B., in which were notes on several
plays of Shakespeare. He was fond of English
history, and made me read Hume through;
also constitutional law, Blackstone; the history
of the last century, Pitt and Fox; all in a desul-
tory way, but with a lively political interest.
8
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
Though more political than literary, he had a
veneration for intellectual eminence. In parti-
cular, he looked upon Copleston as the repre-
sentative man of university culture, and had
begun to perceive in a dim way that the light
had departed from B. N. C., and that Oriel
was now the centre of intelligence.
There never was any question as to my
destination. It was assumed from the cradle
upwards that I was to go to Oxford, and to
be a Fellow of a college. From about 1825
onwards a Fellowship of Oriel was held up to
me as the ideal prize to which I was to aspire.
I was never diverted or distracted from this
goal of ambition by any alternative career
being proposed to me. I was to go to Oriel,
of course, as a commoner, there were no
scholars in those days, and then it would
depend upon what talents I might give proof
of whether a fellowship of Oriel were within
my reach or not.
In 1830, when I was not quite seventeen, my
father and mother went up to London.
It was
only the second time since their marriage that
I.
9
MEMOIRS.
they had left Yorkshire.
It was a great under-
taking, and a costly one. Two hundred and
twenty miles of posting had to be done, and
you had to sleep two nights at some of the
great hotels on the north road. We had an
old open barouche of our own. The competition
of the posting-houses was such, that pairs of
horses and ready-mounted postillions were at
the door as you drove up, and in less than
five minutes you were off again. Leaving
Hauxwell very early we arrived at Camp Hill,
near Doncaster, to a late lunch with Lane Fox
and Lady Charlotte, daughter of the Duke of
Leeds, who were temporarily living there.
We went out of the way to see Cambridge,
and I think it was only on the fourth day after
leaving home that we entered London by gas-
light. Many years after, when I came to
those lines in Locksley Hall-
“Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his father's
field,
And at night along the dusky highway near and nearer
drawn,
Sees in heaven the light of London flaring like a dreary
dawn,"
ΙΟ
СНАР.
MARK PATTISON.
I started to find one of my own unconsciously
received impressions thus objectively brought
before me. I was too ignorant to learn what
I might have done from this journey, nor was
I helped by my parents, who themselves saw
nothing of London but what country cousins
see. They knew no one but a few methodistical
clergymen, and their chief curiosity was about
some preachings, where the "Gospel" was to
be heard-one Wilkinson, at one of the city
churches; and I think they took me to hear
at the Scotch Presbyterian Chapel;
but it made no impression on me. I was a
mere raw schoolboy.
I
One thing was done for me which was of
great service to me then and afterwards.
had complained all the winter of worry and
irritation about the eyes. This was not malin-
gering to get off books, for I was passionately
fond of reading, and should have regarded it
as the direst calamity if the eye-affection had
been of a nature to interfere with the future
career of academic life which I dreamed of for
myself. But there was no doubt for the
I.
ΙΙ
MEMOIRS.
moment that the irritation was a serious mis-
chief of some sort, and that it was aggravated
by reading; riding, especially fast riding,
brought it on. I was devoted to hunting, and
had a black mare on which I used, when I
had a holiday, to go to the meets. One morn-
ing early, riding to join Mr. Claridge's pack,
which would begin at 6 A.M., the wind meeting
me was so painful to my eyes that I was com-
pelled to turn back and forego my favourite.
sport. I gave up reading by candle-light, and
learned to net, as occupation for my hands,
while the evening reading was going on. My
father, who read well, and liked doing so, read
to us that winter Paradise Lost, and it is a
measure of my undeveloped intelligence that
it made slight impression on me. Miss Mar-
tineau at seven was more advanced than I at
seventeen, for she got hold of Paradise Lost,
and was so profoundly moved by it, that “ my
mental destiny was fixed for the next seven
years" (Autob., i. 42).
This eye-affection was an important element
in arranging my future, and the placing me
I 2
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
under an oculist had been among the motives
which prompted the London expedition. As
there was one of the most celebrated oculists
in the kingdom at that time practising in
Leeds, only fifty miles off, it was not absolutely
necessary to have taken me to London. But
the London journey being desired on other
accounts, the consultation of the oculist contri-
buted to the sum of motive, and to justify the
outlay, which was heavy. I was taken to
Alexander in Cork Street, who was then at
the head of the profession. It was a critical
moment for me, for I felt, stupid as I was, that
my whole future destination was at stake.
father must have cared for me then, * * *
for when Alexander, having examined me, turned
to him and said, "There is nothing the matter
with this boy's eyes!" he burst into tears of
excitement. The case was one of lid-inflam-
mation, with which I have had much trouble
since on two different occasions; in 1854, when
I consulted Lawrence, and again in 1867, when
I was almost compelled to abstain from books
for some months, and when neither Critchett
My
I.
13
MEMOIRS.
nor Liebreich could succeed in getting rid of
the trouble. What Alexander meant was that
the disease was not in the eye, or the optic
nerve, but in the lid. It was really what I
now call "gout," non-assimilation of food, the
superfluous humour flying to any susceptible
or tried part-and the tried part with me was
certainly the eye. I read too much, especially
at night, and all the Christmas had sate in a
close room-my father's "book-room" we called
it-looking into a blazing fire in an open grate.
Alexander prescribed leeches, bathing in hot
water, and an application which he furnished
to the lid, much the same as that which
Liebreich afterwards put in. He allowed
moderate use of the eyes in reading, but pro-
hibited, for the present, candle-light. There
was no reason, he said, why I should not go
to the University.
The next thought, therefore, was to get my
name entered as a candidate for admission at
some college. As we were now within sixty
miles-seven hours it was then-of Oxford, it
was determined that my father should
father should go down
14
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
to inquire about a college. He was not loth
to get an opportunity of revisiting his loved
haunts the spot which occupied so large a
space in his imagination. It was May, and
Oxford, not then overbuilt and slummy, looked
-as Oxford can look still in May-charming.
I was intoxicated with delight, and my father
was as pleased as a child. His constant recur-
rence to his reminiscences of the place had so
riveted it in my mind that I had, by aid of an
old guide book I found at Hauxwell, mastered
the topography by anticipation, and was proud,
as we walked about the streets, to show that
I knew where to find the colleges. In all
other respects I was an ignorant country
bumpkin, and incapable of learning from what
I now saw for the first time. My father, of
course, took me "on the water"-his own
favourite amusement. We were sculled down
to Iffley, and he enjoyed paying the over-
charge, eighteenpence each gentleman as
went in the boat, and two shillings the man ;"
being overcharged made him feel that he was
in Oxford, and the dialect, unheard for five-
I.
15
MEMOIRS.
and-twenty years, impressed the same fact
through another sense.
But the first thing next morning was to
enter my name at some college, and the ques-
tion was, Which? The retired life which,
partly from pride, partly from laziness, it was
my father's choice to live, had left him without
friends of any consequence or consideration.
A few like-minded evangelical clergy of the
neighbourhood in Yorkshire were of no use in
the University. Even when they were Oxford
men, having taken their degree years ago,
they were as much strangers to the Oxford of
1830 as my father himself; rather, they knew
even less about it than he did, as a diligent
study of the Oxford Calendar had kept him
au courant of the changes in the personnel of
the colleges, so far as the names went. The
calendar could not teach him the value of each
personality.
Of residents in the University, two only
offered themselves as possible helps when my
father began to look round for friends who
might give him information about colleges, or
16
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
introduction to the head of any one. At this
day all information is more widely diffused, or
accessible; but even at this day a country
squire or rector, on landing with his cub under
his wing in Oxford, finds himself much at sea
as to the respective advantages or demerits of
the various colleges, and has but a very dim
notion of those distinctions which are elemen-
tary knowledge to ourselves. Where the boy
has been at a public school, the father is con-
tent to be guided by the advice of the school-
master, who, through his connections with his
university, which every master is careful to
cultivate, keeps himself informed as to the
internal condition of each college. Yet, with
all his means of information, a master does not
always succeed in following the changes in
tone, discipline, teaching, vigour, which are
incessantly going on within the walls of a
college. So rapid are these, that three years
are often enough to revolutionise a college in
some important characteristic. Everything
depends on the moral or ascendency of a
single tutor; he quits college, and what he
I.
17
MEMOIRS.
has held together falls to pieces, without the
public-the public of parents and schoolmasters
-becoming aware that anything has occurred.
The most permanent stamp of college reputa-
tion is the social stamp. This measure of
worth often remains stationary under every
variety of moral and intellectual change. To
what stratum of society the undergraduates of
any college belong, what degree of connection
they have with the upper ten, what social
status they maintain-this is the most patent
fact about any college, and one which will
never cease to be influential upon the choice
of parents in this country, where the vulgar
estimate of people by income and position is
the universal and only standard of merit. As
we judge of families in our neighbourhood, so,
when we are placing a boy at the University,
do we judge of colleges.
I have said there were only two persons
among the residents at all known to my father,
to whom he could apply to guide his judgment
in making choice of a college for me.
was a senior Fellow of Magdalen, Dr. Ellerton ;
C
One
18
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
he was a native of Swaledale, being a brother
of Ellerton, the principal mercer in the borough
of Richmond. His father, I think, was a farmer
at Downholme, and there being no school at
Downholme, the boy used to ride over to Haux-
well School to get his first lessons in writing and
ciphering. He held a Yorkshire fellowship at
Magdalen, and was supposed to have saved a
sum of money out of his fellowship and college
offices. He had been Proctor, and had rather
offended my father on one occasion. Being
down at Richmond one Long Vacation, and
meeting my father in the street, he took him to
task for the colour of his greatcoat-proctorised
him, my father said. However, to him we
went, and I was enchanted with the look of
bachelor comfort about his room in the "new
building" at Magdalen, and more than ever
confirmed in my ambition to become a Fellow
of a college. I don't recollect that Ellerton,
though his reception of us was gracious enough,
gave any counsel or assistance of any conse-
quence. Having taken his B.A. in 1792 he
was now sixty or thereabouts; and living in
I.
19
MEMOIRS.
the seclusion of Magdalen Common-room-
such was the dissociated condition of Oxford
at that time he probably knew nothing of the
internal efficiency of the various colleges. My
father must have known William Glaister, who
was then Fellow of University College and
tutor. Why we did not call upon him I do
not remember. He was kind enough to call
upon me when I came into residence, and to
ask me to breakfast.
The other friend to whom my father applied
for help proved far more useful, and his advice
did, in fact, determine my destiny. Lord
Conyers Osborne, second son of the Duke of
Leeds, had lately gone up to Christ Church,
with his private tutor, and was now in resid-
ence. My father was chaplain to the Duke,
had been at one time very much in his con-
fidence, and went in Hornby Castle by the
name of "the Chancellor," as I shall relate
when I come to write the earlier part of these
memoirs. I had been
Conyers when he came
the holidays; he called
playmate of Lord
down from Eton in
me. Mark," and I
((
20
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
humbly waited on his will. When we went
to stay at the Castle I always had a bedroom
which opened into his. Lord Conyers was a
lively, bright, well-mannered, and gracious
young man, of popular manners, and the hope
of the house; his elder brother, the marquis,
being like his father, selfish, egotistical, and
reserved. In my ignorant eyes Lord Conyers
was a marvel of accomplishments; he could do
everything I could do, only ten times better,
and write Latin verses fast without a false
quantity.
His private tutor, who resided in lodgings
in S. Aldate's, was Mr. Thomas Paddon, a
senior Fellow of Caius, Cambridge. In 1822
Mr. Paddon had vacated his fellowship on
accepting the college living of Mattishall,
Norfolk; but he continued to live in the Duke's
household as tutor, and, it was understood,
would remain with Lord Conyers till he left
Christ Church. Lord Conyers' capacity and
attainments were such, that his tutor had at
one time indulged a hope of his reading suc-
cessfully for honours. But any such hope was
I.
21
MEMOIRS.
early dissipated by the demoralising atmos-
phere of Christ Church; and at the time we
arrived in Oxford I found Lord Conyers
entirely possessed by the opinion of his set,
that it was unworthy of a man of his position
to "sap.
Mr. Paddon sorrowfully resigned
himself to see his pupil follow the ordinary
course of a “nobleman" at the University, ¿.e.
misspend his time, and acquire nothing.
Mr. Paddon was undoubtedly a superior
man, and of great judgment. Indeed, no one
could have lived with the (then) Duke of
Leeds without being, or becoming, wary and
discreet in his walk and talk. To Mr. Paddon
we went, and we could not have gone to a
better counsellor, though, as a Cambridge
man, he probably did not know all that an
indigenous M.A. would have known about the
foul linen of the various colleges. We received
every attention from Lord Conyers, and were
invited to spend that evening in his rooms
in Canterbury quad, he giving up a party to
stay at home to play draughts with an awkward
rustic booby as I was. Instead of sulking he
22
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
did it with a grace and obligingness, as if it had
been what he most liked doing. Mr. Paddon
and my father discussed apart what was to be
done with me.
He
He
My father's views for me, which were to
guide his choice of college, were twofold.
really wanted me to learn; to get a good edu-
cation, not so much with the idea of my making
my way in the world, as from the value which
he had learned to set upon intellect. Himself
a man of vigorous powers, but totally undis-
ciplined, he regretted his own want of thorough
education, and in his unselfish hours wished to
secure for me what he had missed himself.
was fond of repeating the sentence in the Eton
Latin grammar.
grammar-" Concessi Cantabrigiam ad
capiendum ingenii cultum. . .
... This was the
proverb which presided over my whole college
life. Though often dimmed, it was never lost
sight of, and however much occasion I may have
had to hate the grammar on other accounts, I
think no other sentence of any book has had so
large a share in moulding my mind and character
as that one. It was then essential to my father's
})
I.
23
MEMOIRS.
plans for me that the college to be selected
for me should be one where the instruction
given was reputed to be good. This require-
ment negatived his own college, to which he
might naturally have turned in the first in-
stance. Brasenose had the reputation of being
rowdy and drinking; and though the tutors,
Hall, Churton, and Richard Harington, were
first class men, yet the tuition was not esteemed
good. Hall was getting old and weary of it;
Tommy Churton I afterwards came to know
as a "stick"; and Harington was a fine
gentleman, who sailed his own pinnace on the
river, and dined out much. In the matter of
tuition there were two colleges whose repute
stood higher than that of any-viz. Oriel and
Balliol. "We call those," said Lord Conyers
privately to me, from his undergraduate point
of view," the two prison-houses." I was eager
to doom myself to either of the prisons. And
it was clear that the choice was restricted to
these two.
But there was in my father's mind another
sentiment, less creditable to him, than the wish
24
MARK PATTISON.
CHAP.
to give me the best education to be had. I
mean those social aspirations which he con-
tinued to nourish, though by his removal to
the remote situation of Hauxwell, and conse-
quent detachment from the Castle, he was no
longer able to gratify them. He had the
instinct of good society, and liked to live with
gentlemen, and to know what was going on
in the upper world. His acquaintance with
the peerage was accurate; he must have read
Debrett at that time more than the Bible.
Hence, in estimating colleges he was led to
take the footman's view, and to prefer one
which was frequented by the sons of gentle-
men. Now Exeter was genteel, but unintel-
lectual. Our friend David Horndon - now
(1883) living, and Squire, etc., of Pencrebar,
near Callington-had but recently taken his
degree from Exeter; and we knew enough
about it from him to set down the tuition of
Falconer and Richards as the merest pass
Schlendrian." William Sewell, who, though
never a good tutor, did so much soon after-
wards to raise the intellectual tone of the
I.
25
MEMOIRS.
college, had been only just elected from
Merton. As between Oriel and Balliol there
could be no doubt that the "gentility" all
belonged to Oriel. The decision, therefore,
was for Oriel, by Mr. Paddon's advice, and
with his approval. Oriel-i.e. Oriel's repute
as it stood in the eyes of the outside world—
satisfied both of my father's requirements; both
his desire to get me the best education, where
his disinterested paternal affection showed itself,
as well as his ambition to be able to say that
his son was at a fashionable college, the resort
of gentlemen of old family, in which he gratified
his personal vanity.
So far as the class list was any test of the
instruction given in a college, it does not
appear that there was at this period so much
difference between the two colleges, Oriel and
Balliol. Taking the lists for the six years
preceding 1830 I find that Balliol has six firsts
in classics, while Oriel has only three; for the
same period, Balliol has nineteen second classes,
and Oriel twenty-one. The total number of
students in each of the two colleges must at
26
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
this date have been nearly equal. Second
classes were, in those days, better evidence of
efficient tuition than first. The manufacture
of firsts was not then understood as it is now.
The men who got firsts would have done so
equally at any college, and under any disad-
vantages of college instruction. That was the
day of private tutors; it was the "coach," and
not the college tutor, who worked a man up
for his first. The standard of lecturing in the
college classroom was far below the level of
the examinations for honours.
The class lists then were not a decisive test
of the intellectual calibre of a college: the first
class not at all, and the second class in a slight
measure, and indirectly—that is, the prepara-
tion for the honours' examination was not con-
ducted by the official tutors, but by the private
tutors. Every one who aimed at honours had
his coach, to whom he went three days a week
for a fee of £10. The college tutor might in
the first year lead up in the way of general
scholarship to the special preparation, but his
influence in producing a crop of classmen was
J.
27
MEMOIRS.
far more in the indirect impulse he gave to
intellectual ambition, and the stir of mind he
might excite within the walls of his college.
Both of these men
In 1830, the time of which I am now writ-
ing, there could be no question as to which
of the two colleges, Oriel or Balliol, had most
intellectual life within its walls. I shall come
back to this point by and by. At present I
wish only to say that, had my father's choice
of college had to be decided by intellectual
eminence, it would have been rightly deter-
mined in favour of Oriel. The Balliol tutors
were Ogilvie and Round.
had carried off the highest honours, but both
belonged to the genus "dry stick." They were
before all things clergymen, with all the pre-
possessions of orthodox clergymen, and incap-
able of employing classical antiquity as an
instrument of mental culture. At most, they
saw in Greek and Latin a medium for establish-
ing "the truth of Christianity." Chapman was
also tutor of Balliol; he had the reputation of
high scholarship. It was of him that the fable
circulated in my time, that when examiner for
28
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
the "Ireland" he would do the papers himself,
and place himself second, or third, or fourth, as
the case might be.
The Oriel tutors were Newman, Wilberforce,
and Froude (R. H.). I need not make any
mention of Dornford, as he belonged to the
order of Dons, and had a parochial cure-I
think Nuneham Courtney. These three men
were of inferior academic lustre to the Balliol
tutors; but they were men in whom "heart and
mind were in a continual ferment of emotion
and speculation," stirring up all who came in
contact with them to think and reason out from
first principles. The true revolutionary spirit
was already there, though it had not yet taken
the precise direction which it afterwards did.
They were, however, young men; Newman, the
oldest of the three, was thirty, and little known.
Neither my father nor his adviser could have
any knowledge of the stimulating power which
was latent in the Oriel tutors of 1830.
Not, then, for the sake of this triumvirate
of tutors,—Newman, Wilberforce, and Froude,
-but on the general reputation of the college
I.
29
MEMOIRS.
for two things not always combined, intelli-
gence and gentle blood, was it decided that I
was to go to Oriel.
The next thing was to get in. In 1830 the
Laudian statute which compelled every student
to keep his residence within college walls-
"ne quis in domibus privatis victitet aut hos-
pitetur" was in force. Consequently, in the´
the‍
colleges upon which there was a run, a candi-
date for admission might wait years before he
could succeed to a vacant room. We were
told that at Oriel you must have your name
down two or even three
years before you could
come into residence. This was formidable; I
was in my seventeenth year, and it might have
been deterrent. Though the modern competi-
tive examinations for rooms were not known,
there was also a qualifying entrance examina-
tion. But we were placed at ease as to this
by being assured that it was very elementary.
It was a new thing. If the Quarterly Review
is right, it had only been started in 1827, and
at Oriel and Balliol only. We had recourse
to interest; my father was good at making
30
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
interest, which I have never been able to do.
I cannot remember who were called in to work
upon the Provost; Manuel Echalaz, a Fellow
of Trinity, and an ally of Mr. Paddon, was to
work upon Henry Jenkyns, a brother of the
Master of Balliol, who in his turn was to
intercede with his brother head. However,
we called on the Provost, Dr. Hawkins, who
entered my name in his book, but could hold
out no hopes of rooms for more than two
years; he was full up to October 1832, but
would give the offer of any chance vacancy.
That was all we could get from him; and with
this were compelled to be content and to return
to London, leaving Oxford in innocent ignor-
ance of all that was brewing beneath the sur-
face-never having so much as heard the name
of Keble, or the Christian Year.
And from London I went back to Haux-
well, to get over the interval of two years-
infinite space it looked-till I should be free,
independent, launched upon the world which I
knew nothing of, but which seemed from the
glimpse I had of it to be full of promise and
}
I.
31
MEMOIRS.
charm. A boy's, a child's world, as I pictured
it, but my ignorance and inexperience gave a
zest to my expectation, like the appetite of a
savage. We came home at the end of May,
when spring was in its first green on our hill-
side. The freshness of it after the dust and
glare of the streets! Then there were the
country delights. I was this season first
allowed a gun, and joined the farmers in their
sport of rook-shooting in the Hall rookery.
There were long days of trout-fishing in Garris-
ton Beck-first essays of fishing, with clumsy
tackle, and finding out the art for myself, not
having any one at hand to give me the most
elementary advice. I bought an Angler's Guide
in London, and tried to practise its cockney
"instruction for roach-fishers "
for roach-fishers" upon trout.
Worm-fishing, of course; the mystery of fly-
fishing seemed a craft unattainable. The very
element of bottom-fishing I had to rediscover
-that the hook must be wholly hidden by the
bait, that the angler must not be seen by the
fish; these things I found out, was not told,
and the gratification of finding them out was
32
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
more than compensation for the many days of
disaster and disappointment before they were
sufficiently apprehended and exactly practised.
It was many seasons before the utility of the
"landing-net❞ dawned on me; I was content
to pull them up the bank by main force, losing
half the fish in the process.
I attribute my
after skill in fly-fishing to my having been self-
taught over worm-fishing in the little bush-
grown beck which bounded our parish on the
south.
But even above my passion for the sports
of the country was that which took possession
of me this summer of 1830 for natural history.
This, again, was felt by me in its most childish
form. The idea of natural science was far
beyond me. I only thought of collecting, first
birds, then insects. Lepidoptera I could collect,
and learnt from books ways of preserving them.
Birds, as I could not find space in my little bed-
room for my specimens, I was led to observe.
In this way the mere boy's collecting fancy led
on to observation. When I had noted a new
species I used to come home so excited that
I.
33
MEMOIRS.
I
my mind refused to attend to anything else.
fell in with Gilbert White's History of Selborne,
and was riveted by the book. I read it over
and over, and knew it by heart. My father,
who looked upon my naturalist tastes with
small favour, as drawing off my attention from
Herodotus and Thucydides, yet bowed before
the name of Gilbert White, when he found that
he had been "Fellow of Oriel," though he could
not get through ten pages of the History of
Selborne. He would sit hours reading the
"obituaries" in an old volume of the Gentle-
man's Magazine. Selby's Ornithology, Mon-
tagu's Dictionary, were soon added to my
stock. No book, however, took more hold on
my interest than three volumes by Rennie on
Insects-this revealed to me the world of
wonders which lay all around me, quite close,
and yet I had not known it. It was not only
the curiosity of the insect products in them-
selves—their architecture, as Rennie called it—
but the disclosure of a new world of fact, which
existed unsuspected beneath my feet, which
kindled my imagination. Wandering over the
D
34
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
moor whole days, haunting the skirts of the
woods at night, on the look-out for birds and
moths, the sense of the country, a delight in
rural objects, grew within me, and passed in-
sensibly into the more abstract poetic emotion.
I don't think that it was before two or
three years after 1830 that this transition from
natural history to poetry proper began to take
place in my mind. My removal to college
diverted me from the pursuit of natural know-
ledge; my instinctive tastes were never devel-
oped into a science. The love of birds, moths,
butterflies, led on to the love of landscape;
and altogether, in the course of the next six
or seven years, grew and merged into a con-
scious and declared poetical sentiment, and a
devoted reading of the poets. I don't suppose
the temperament was more inclined to æsthetic
emotion in me than in other youths; but I was
highly nervous and delicate, and having never
been at school had not had sentiment and
delicacy crushed out of me; also, living on
the borderland of oak woods, with green lanes
before me, and an expanse of wild heather
I.
35
MEMOIRS.
extending into Northumberland behind, I was
favourably placed for imbibing a knowledge
by contrast of the physical features of England.
My eye was formed to take in at a glance, and
to receive delight from contemplating, as a
whole, a hill and valley formation. Geology
did not come in till ten years later to complete
the cycle of thought, and to give that intel-
lectual foundation which is required to make
the testimony of the eye, roaming over an
undulating surface, fruitful and satisfying.
When I came in after years to read The
Prelude I recognised, as if it were my own
history which was being told, the steps by
which the love of the country boy for his hills
and moors grew into poetical susceptibility, for
all imaginative presentations of beauty in every
direction.
I see I am in danger of conveying an idea
of myself as more advanced in intelligence, or
power of perceiving beauty, than I was. I
hasten to say that in these first years of the
'30's there was nothing in me that could be
called intelligence, nor any manifestation of
36
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
sensibility of feeling. I remember a vague con-
sciousness of being wronged because I had more
affection for my sisters than they had for me;
a feeling which grew upon me. But
*
as my affection was manifested partly in a general
rudeness of behaviour towards them, partly in
acts of absolute selfishness, I can now only
wonder that one of them remained (and remains)
devoted to me still. There was latent in my
nature a vast possibility of fine qualities, but they
did not manifest themselves in manners, or
behaviour, or words.
If I preferred
being at Hauxwell to being anywhere else, and
always came back, as long as I could, to spend
my long vacations there, it was the exterior
life, and the studious quiet of my room, which
attracted me, though not unmixed with a
genuine love of my sisters, as I have said.
* * * But I was not spoiled, as a boy is
who has been brutalised by a school; I was
only rude, unfledged, in a state of nature.
In intellectual matters things were no better
with me.
I have before me a small paper book
containing a "Diary" for parts of the years
ア
​I.
37
MEMOIRS.
1830, 1831, 1832. Its childishness is astonish-
ing. I had read much more than most boys
of my age, but I did not seem to understand
anything. This was the want of companion-
ship; I had no one except the sons of the village
cottagers to play with. We had a man-servant
indoors, and a farming-man out of doors; I
was much with them, and learnt much from
them; but there was nothing to replace the
collision of wit with wit, which takes place
between boys. One of these men was a dales-
man, native of Hawes, and from him I had
stories of the old wild life of the dales, mixed
largely with the supernatural, which germinated
afterwards into a strong turn for county his-
tory, and walks of exploration. I read enor-
mously. Constable's Miscellany, Murray's
Family Library, the publications of the Useful
Knowledge Society, were coming out at that
time; we took them all, and I read them. I
read ten times as much as I remembered;
what is more odd, I read far more than I ever
took in the sense of as I read it. I think the
mechanical act of perusal must have given me
38
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
a sort of pleasure. Books, as books, irrespec-
tive of their contents, were my delight. The
arrival of a new book in the house was the
event of the week. I took in the Magazine
of Natural History; the anticipation of the
first of the month, and the reception of the
parcel from the Richmond bookseller, were an
excitement that I can remember to this day.
I walked up and down in the lane waiting for
the butcher's cart, which acted as carrier for
the village, to come, snatched up Bell's parcel,
and rushed in with it. I was already marked
out for the life of a student, yet little that was
in the books I read seemed to find its way
into my mind. There was no mind there!
My outdoor life, long solitary days' fishing,
and long rides across country,-in 1831 I had
a pony and went hunting,-rambles over the
moor, were doing more for my education than
my incessant reading.
A long illness of my mother-bronchitis-
in the winter of 1830-31 became the solicitude
and occupation of the house. The summer of
1831 proved much as that of 1830 had done.
I.
39
MEMOIRS.
Something was done by way of preparing me
for college by getting me a Cambridge man,
Bainbridge of Catherine Hall, to read mathe-
matics with me. I must have had some capa-
city, as he told my father when he left at the
end of two months that if I were to go to
Cambridge I should be certain to be a wrangler.
But he was most likely a bad judge, as he did
not himself get more than a Junior Optime.
I
In the early part of 1832 we began to get
impatient at not hearing from the Provost.
was eighteen on 10th October 1831, and much
longer delay was impossible. Even my father,
who was very blind to the fact that I was
wasting my time at home, must have felt that
something must be done with me. He was
eager about my going to college, and yet
allowed me to waste, or nearly so, those two
precious years in loafing about at home, in
order that he might be able to say that he
had sent me up to college wholly from his own
tuition. One Saturday evening, 31st March,
the farming-man, having been
mond, brought home a letter.
over to Rich-
How it got to
40
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
Richmond I cannot tell, for our post-town was
Bedale. It was from the Provost, desiring me
to proceed to Oxford on Monday to be matri-
culated. Here was an upset in a parsonage
on the Yorkshire moors. All was joy and
astonishment and perturbation. I remember
that I was in a remote corner of the garden,
where I cultivated a special plot called my
garden. It was dusk.
the distance, agitated with delight, holding up
the letter, which had just been put into his
hands with the Oxford postmark, before he
opened it.
My father appeared in
To proceed to Oxford on Monday, and it
was Saturday night when the letter was de-
livered! Surely the Provost must have known
that it was three days' journey from Richmond
to Oxford. It was very thoughtless of him.
However, on Monday morning my father and
I were off; arrived, by the "Telegraph" coach,
at Leeds at five; dined there, and at eight on to
Sheffield by the night mail. Slept a few hours,
and on to Birmingham, where we again dined,
and left by the "Rocket" at nine for Oxford, a
I.
4I
MEMOIRS.
fast coach, which did the distance in seven
hours. We were put down at the "Angel" at
4 A. M. on Wednesday morning. I can recall
now the state of excitement in which I was
all the way from Woodstock, and the exulta-
tion of spirits in which I hailed the lights in St.
Giles'. Could I have anticipated that Oxford
was to be my home for fifty years? We
called on the Provost. I was handed to W. J.
Copleston to be examined at eight in the even-
ing; wrote a piece of (very bad) Latin prose;
construed some Greek and Latin viva voce, was
passed, and next morning matriculated com-
moner of Oriel, in bands and a white choker.
On Saturday evening, seven o'clock, we were
home again. I have the dates, and even hours,
of the whole journey noted in that paper book
above mentioned.
So there was a month at home of pause to
think over the sudden change which was before
me, for leave-takings, for preparation of clothes
and books, and the other requisites for launch-
ing me into the world. In my feeling there
was no room for regret of what I was leaving,
42
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
so absorbed was I by anticipation of what was
before me. On the evening of Thursday, 4th
May, I was set down by the Birmingham coach
at the Angel Inn in the High Street-the
Examination Schools now stand on the site of
the “famous inn"—and went off with a porter
and my trunks to Oriel. I possess still my
earliest book of accounts, and I find that the
journey from Hauxwell to Oxford-a journey
of three days, sleeping two nights on the road
-cost me £4:12s. In after years I was
pleased at discovering that Gilbert White of
Selborne, of whose Natural History I was a
devotee, had kept a similar exact account of
his expenditure. We have it still, and extracts
from it are given in Bell's edition of the book.
My first item of Oxford expenditure is an entry
of 2s. to "porter for carrying my boxes across
the quad," an entry in which lurks indignation
at the extortion, and the only expression I
dared to give to it, as, if he had demanded
5s., I should not have had courage to resist.
I must have cut a laughably boorish figure
that Thursday evening, marching up the High
I.
43
MEMOIRS.
Street in an old brown greatcoat of my father's
—that identical snuffy brown for wearing which
in Richmond market-place Dr. Ellerton had
pulled him up, and which had been reduced by
a Richmond slop-tailor to fit me. Very service-
able to me on this journey up the ipaτidápiov
was, as it had rained a steady spring rain all the
way from Sheffield to Birmingham, and I was
outside, proud to be on the box with a friendly
coachman, but thinking what a fine fishing-day
was going to waste. Had it rained twice as
heavily the solid broadcloth of the old coat
was impenetrable. There was no one in the
street to see; the colleges did not meet till
Saturday the 6th, Easter being very late that
year-viz. 22d April. I had come up a day
earlier than was necessary, in order to get into
rooms. On introducing myself to the porter of
the college, I was told that there were no rooms
ready for me, but that he would put me up
for the night in one of the "scholars'" rooms.
The porter's saying "scholars"
"scholars" was the first
of the many puzzles which offered themselves
to me in these first days, as I knew that Oriel
44
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
at that time had no scholars; and I have never
been able to make out how the porter came to
use the term of a fellow, for it was a fellow's
room, that of John Frederic Christie, into
which I found myself inducted. I daresay it
was like all college rooms at that time, dirty
and shabby enough, but it seemed to me a
fairy palace; and the thought of becoming a
fellow myself, and living in such luxury, was a
vision too remote and too dazzlingly bright to
be contemplated.
Next day I had to turn out and to go into
lodgings for a fortnight, before a room was
vacated for me. Oriel at that time was full
to crowding; I, being the junior freshman, had
the bell-tower room, immediately under the
college bell, which at that time rung for every
service a full quarter of an hour. There was
just room for four chairs, and barely for four
men to sit.
There were some four or five other freshmen
beginning residence in this same term, and with
these I was at first thrown, being in the same
classes, and sitting together in hall. But I
I.
45
MEMOIRS.
soon found them uncongenial, and after the
first week or two we hardly spoke, though one
of them, Porter by name, used to pay me a
visit on Sunday evening, for the purpose of
copying my sermon notes. Once only the
theft was detected by the theological censor,
who, without inquiring which was the thief,
imposed us both. I think the imposition was
to analyse a printed sermon of Bishop Butler.
Etiquette forbade me to explain, but I expected
Porter to do so, and it was a shock to my
moral sense that he did not. I withdrew, pre-
pared to do my imposition. Porter, however,
on reflection, saw what he ought to have done,
and went and confessed, on which my penance
was remitted.
I should never have done, were I to write
down all I can recall about the young men
among whom I now found myself, transported
from a desert moor where were no inhabitants
but Highland "stots."
stots." I may sum up shortly
the general impression which this first contact
with my species made upon me. Comradeship
was the thing I had most longed for, and what,
46
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
next to help in my reading, I had most missed
in my Hauxwell life. Now, when I seemed
in the midst of abundance, I found myself
repelled. I found, what I had not been pre-
pared for, that the differences between myself
on the one side, and all the rest on the other,
were greater than the resemblances; the points
of antipathy more numerous than the points of
sympathy. Large as was the part which the
bodily appetites filled in my nature, in these
youths they were still more rampant and im-
perious. If I was lazy, selfish, greedy, and
rapacious, these youths were so to a degree
which disgusted me. I wanted associates con-
genial with the better part of me, not with
whom I could indulge the baser propensities.
* * * I had no taste for drinking. My
father had great difficulty in getting me to drink
a single glass on the occasions when he opened
a bottle of his choice port. I was over forty
before I even began to like wine, and it
was later still in life before it became a daily
beverage. In 1832 I had not begun to smoke,
and did not desire to.
*
*
*
*
I.
47
MEMOIRS.
I was not all at once made aware of this
want of conformity between myself and others
of my age; I arrived at the apprehension of it
slowly, after many vain experiments and succes-
sive failures to establish a good understanding
with one after another. At first I ascribed my
ill success to something in the individual whom
I was trying to cultivate, which prevented
rapprochement, but at last I was compelled to
conclude that the impediment to intimacy was
a something common to the genus. What was
it? Had I been of a stronger character, or had
the ordinary experience of a boy of eighteen,
I should have asserted my own right to be
what I was; I should have condemned the
ways of the others, and been content to say I
didn't like them. As it was, my weakness of
character was such that I came to the conclu-
sion in the end that the fault or defect, what-
ever it might be, was in me. They could not be
all wrong, and they seemed to have no diffi-
culty in getting on with each other. My boyish
inexperience was such, that I could not under-
stand how it could be that the others, many
48
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
of whom were below me in attainments, were
before me in manliness of character; that they
dared to assert themselves as they were, while
I was deficient in character, and hid, instead
of standing by, the small amount I possessed.
This inability to apprehend the reason of
my social ill success had a discouraging conse-
quence upon the growth of my character. I
was so convinced that the fault was in me, and
not in the others, that I lost anything like firm
footing, and succumbed to or imitated any type,
or set, with which I was brought in contact,
esteeming it better than my own, of which I
was too ashamed to stand by it and assert
it. Any rough, rude, self-confident fellow, who
spoke out what he thought and felt, cowed
me, and I yielded to him, and even assented
to him, not with that yielding which gives way
for peace sake, secretly thinking itself right,
but with a surrender of the conscience and con-
victions to his mode of thinking, as being better
than my own, more like men, more like the
world. My unlikeness to others alarmed me;
I wanted to be rid of it, and tried to be so by
I.
49
MEMOIRS.
conformity to whatever came close to me from
time to time. All force impressed and moved
me, and having no criterion of good and bad
in style and manner, I was ready to adopt any
that had success and fashion in its favour.
Surely no boy ever reached eighteen so un-
formed and characterless as I was!
The consequences to me of this relation to
others did not end with mutability and chame-
leon-like readiness to take any shade of colour.
The sense of weakness being thus daily and
hourly pressed upon me grew internally painful.
I felt humiliated and buffeted, and as if I were
destined to be the sport and football of my
companions. Out of this consciousness grew a
general self-consciousness, which gained ground
rapidly upon me, and became a canker in my
character for years afterwards. I, who had
come up to Oxford a mere child of nature,
totally devoid of self-consciousness, to such a
degree that I had never thought of myself as
a subject of observation, developed a self-con-
sciousness so sensitive and watchful, that it
came between me and everything I said or did.
E
50
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
It became physical nervousness.
I thought
every one was watching me; I blushed and
trembled in company when I spoke or moved,
and dared not raise a glass to my lips for fear
it should be seen how my hand trembled.
Before I said anything I had to think what
would So-and-so think of me for saying it. A
morbid self-consciousness was in a fair way to
darken my life, and to paralyse my intellect.
But here I have rather anticipated what grew
up in a later time. I return to my first term's
experiences.
As I had no acquaintance to begin with, my
father begged my tutor to introduce me. Ac-
cordingly, I was breakfasted by Copleston, and
presented to a senior commoner, by name John
Belfield, a Devonshire man, and a neighbour
of the Coplestons in the country. Belfield
godfathered me, introduced me into his set,
took me under his wing, and was of infinite
use to me, in those ways in which a well-estab-
lished senior in a college can aid a raw—in this
case an incredibly raw-freshman. Belfield's
special chum was William Froude, the engineer,
I.
51
MEMOIRS.
brother of Anthony and of Richard Hurrell
Froude, at that time Fellow of the College.
The opening thus made for me through William
Froude to Richard Hurrell's acquaintance
might have been of inestimable use to me
had I been capable of profiting by it. But I
was too childish and ignorant even to appre-
hend what it was that was thus placed within
my reach.
I spent one evening in Richard
Hurrell's rooms without appreciating him my-
self, or appearing to him to be worth taking up.
Through Belfield I came to know his set,
comprising, besides Froude, William Charles
Buller, Arthur Entwistle, Arthur Sheppard,
William Phelps, and others. But all the while
it was with these only the intimacy of play-
fellows.1 We were together more or less every
day, skiffing, walking, teaing; but I never had
1 Compare Quinet's experience of first leaving home for
college in 1815:—“Loin que mes compagnons de captivité
fussent une consolation pour moi, j'eus presque autant de peine
à m'accoutumer à eux qu'aux choses mêmes.
avions si peu d'idées communes entre nous !
Nous
Com-
bien cette première rencontre avec la société réglée me fut diffi-
cile, (et sans doute par ma faute) !" (Hist. de mes Idées, p. 194).
52
СНАР.
MARK PATTISON.
with any of these that communion of mind with
mind, and soul with soul, for which I was all
the while inwardly pining; pining unconsciously,
for I did not know exactly what it was that was
wanting; pining guiltily almost, for I felt that
this vague unsatisfied longing within me must
be wrong, since the others gave no sign of
feeling anything like it. Had I disclosed this
inward dissatisfaction to John Belfield he would
have quizzed me unmercifully, told me I was a
little fool (as he did often enough), and fisti-
cuffed me round the room for my pains, and I
should have believed that he was right. This
set with which I lived in my first three terms
were well-behaved young men, morally far
higher than the horsey and drinking set of the
Philpotts and Crawleys, but with no souls, all
in their ambition and public aims; some, as
was William Froude, of superior intelligence,
but, having no inner life, no capacity of being
moved by poetry, by natural beauty, who are
never haunted by the ideal, or baffled by philo-
sophical perplexities.
Another contrast which staggered me be-
I.
53
MEMOIRS.
tween myself and others was their attitude to
the studies of the place. I had come up all
eagerness to learn. Having had next to no
teaching at home, I exaggerated in imagination
what a teacher could do for me. I thought
that now at last I should be in the company of
an ardent band of fellow-students, only desirous
of rivalling each other in the initiation which
the tutors were to lead into the mysteries of
scholarship, of composition, of rhetoric, logic,
and all the arts of literature. Philosophy did
not come within my purview. I did not know
there was such a thing.
I found lectuers
I was soon disillusioned.
regarded as a joke or a bore, contemned by
the more advanced, shirked by the backward;
Latin and Greek regarded as useless, except for
the purpose of getting a degree; and as for
modern literature, the very idea of its existence
had never dawned upon these youths, none of
whom knew any language but English. Such
was my simplicity that I had believed that no
one went to college but those who were quali-
fied, and anxious, to study. Nor was the
54
СНАР.
MARK PATTISON.
difference between the passman and the honour-
man a sufficient clearing up of the paradox, for
such it seemed to me, that men should flock to
a university not to study. It fairly puzzled me
to find that even William Froude, whom his
elder brother was compelling to read for classi-
cal honours, "hated Sophocles "-so he once
told me--and regarded the whole job as a
disgusting grind. Here again my fatal weak-
ness betrayed me. I adopted his way of think-
ing—such a knowing man as William Froude
must be right-adopted it with my lips, and in
my way of talking, though here I think I made
a secret reserve. I was trying with all my
might to become like the men with whom I
lived, and affected their phrases before I could
honestly use them as being the expression of
my own real thoughts. I was trying to sup-
press that which was, all the time, my real self,
and to put on the new man—the type by which
I was surrounded. The assimilating process,
which was not wholly bad, was carried to a
certain point, and there arrested, as I shall try
to tell in the sequel; and that is the history of
I.
55
MEMOIRS.
my life, and its only interest, so far as it may
have any.
in me.
It was indeed quite necessary for the com-
mon conduct of myself that I should become
more like others, and take on something of the
current fashion, and something of the ordinary
motive. I stood sorely in need of this disci-
pline. At the same time the process, necessary
as I see it was, had a baneful influence upon
character. I was making a constant effort to
appear to be, and thus a habit of acting a part,
and considering how I looked in it, grew up
It was bad enough that I was always
surrendering, or crushing out, my natural judg-
ment in favour of other men's judgment, but it
was worse that I was trying to pass myself off
for something I was not. For it was of course
that my endeavour, from being an endeavour
to seem something I was not, should slide into
an endeavour to seem something better than
what I was. This gave my whole behaviour
an insincerity and affectation which, when
discovered, extremely displeased myself, but
which I found it impossible to shake off, as it
56
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
was bound up with the attempt to do and think
as others do—an attempt which at that time
was indispensable to my existence as a member
of society. I could not continue the wild boy
of Hanover such as I had been sent up to
Oxford. This constant personation, and con-
sidering how I looked in others' eyes, clung
about me till very late in life. Had I been
thrown more into an active profession I should
have rubbed it off sooner, but living a student's
life, and only emerging into the sunlight at in-
tervals, this nervous self-consciousness adhered
to me long. When at last got rid of, it gave
way, not to the ordinary social friction, but to
the substantial development of the real self,
which had been all the while dormant within
me, as I shall relate.
Meanwhile, and at my début, this sheepish-
ness, and wondering what others were thinking
of me, was a source of unspeakable misery to
me. I did not know where to put my hands,
how to look, how to carry myself. I tried in
vain to find out by what secret other men
moved about so unembarrassed. I remember
I.
57
MEMOIRS.
as if it were yesterday the first time I met the
Provost in the street. When I became aware
that he was coming I was seized with such a
tremor, that in the thought of how I ought to
perform my first act of "capping," I omitted
the ceremony altogether, and passed him in
blank confusion. I saw he knew me and
smiled, and I tortured myself with conjecture
as to what the smile meant-contempt or com-
passion. A few days afterwards I met him and
Mrs. Hawkins again in the back lane; he
knew me he knew us all by sight—and good-
naturedly supposing that on the previous occa-
sion I had not recognised him, he advanced
towards me, holding out his hand, "Good
morning, Mr. Pattison." I was again in a state
of nervous collapse, but having prepared myself
in imagination for the terrible ordeal, I executed
according to the rules "ad justum intervallum
caput aperiendo," but took no notice of the out-
stretched and ungloved hand proffered me. I
remember now the grunt of dissatisfaction
which escaped from the Provost as I tore past,
discovering my blunder when it was too late to
58
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
repair it. I think the Provost's aversion for
me dated from this gross exhibition of mal-
adresse; and I am not at all surprised at it.
He, however, included me in his freshman's
dinner-party the very first term. I went like
a victim, and sate the allotted two hours in
misery. At ringing of chapel-bell we were dis-
missed, and this time I managed to execute the
nunc dimittis handshake; rushed to my room,
tore off my white choker and my blue swallow-
tail coat, with gilt flat buttons, and felt myself
again. Since I became a Don I have never
been surprised or alienated from one of our
men by any gaucherie they may have com-
mitted in my presence, remembering that they
probably came from less gentle homes than my
own, and simply didn't know what they ought
to do. But I have gone on the plan of leaving
a freshman alone, as far as civilities go, the
two or three first terms, till he has rubbed off
some of his boorishness. I find what indis-
poses me to cultivate a pupil is never mauvaise
honte, for which I have nothing but pity. "Il
faut savoir vaincre la pudeur, et jamais la
I.
59
MEMOIRS.
perdre," says some one; what sets you against
a man is more bad manners than none at all.
A fellow from a low school, who is confirmed
in vulgar ways, can never be got out of them.
If a youth, on being presented to his superior
in age or station, or to a lady, offers to shake
hands, I have little hope of him.
An ungainly and clownish carriage was not
the only disadvantage which I laboured under.
I had been turned out upon the world without
the most elementary knowledge of the rules of
etiquette. I don't think I knew that I ought
to take off my hat in the street to a lady, but
I didn't know any ladies in Oxford. I didn't
know I ought to leave a card after hospitality;
I doubt if I had any visiting cards to begin
with. Mr. Glaister of University civilly left a
card for me, as son of a neighbour, soon after
my arrival, and asked me to breakfast on a
Sunday morning. I did not know that a note
of invitation required an answer, and supposed
a college tutor, though in another college, was
a superior being a schoolmaster whose invites
were commands. I went without answering,
60
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
This was soon pro-
and found no breakfast.
vided; but after I left I never called, and
wondered I was not asked again. After the
Provost's dinner above-mentioned I never
dropt a card, as I have no doubt all the horsey
and smoking set did.
I suffered humiliation from want of such
simple training in the bienséances. But this
source of annoyance was as nothing in compari-
son with the yoke of moral tyranny which I
fastened round my neck, by the growing anxiety
as to what others were thinking of what I said
and did. I cannot dwell enough on this, as it
became the governing law of my words and
actions. How I struggled and prayed against
my weakness, but in vain! I cannot help
thinking, in looking back, that this dressing
the window for the customers was partly an
inherited failing. My father had many stories
of his own experience to tell, and told them
with great dramatic power; but the tendency
of all of them was to set himself off. He was
not a little glorieux, and when once set off did
not adhere to fact on this theme. My sister
I.
61
MEMOIRS.
* *
in another way.
Dorothy took after him in this respect, but
with a far more vivid imagination than her
father; she spent a faculty of invention, which
would have placed her in the first rank as a
novelist, in embellishing the everyday occur-
rences of her own life. A very faint reflection
of Dorothy's powers of self-glorification is pre-
served in Miss Lonsdale's romance, Sister Dora.
Again, *
shows the same tendency
She is always personating,
with a desire to present herself in a little more
favourable light than the circumstances warrant.
But having no imagination, and being scrupu-
lously truthful as to the most minute details,
* * * does not colour; she tries to produce
the heightening effect by suppression of the less
flattering tones. Hence the unreality we all
feel and regret in our intercourse with a per-
son whom we otherwise have so much occasion
to esteem and love.
To return to the studies and instruction of
the college. My unlikeness to other boys was
no less marked in respect of learning than it
was in character and deportment. Gibbon says
62
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
of himself that he "arrived at Oxford with a
stock of erudition that might have puzzled a
doctor, and a degree of ignorance of which a
schoolboy would have been ashamed.”
I at
eighteen had nothing to compare with the
historical reading which Gibbon could show at
fifteen. As, however, to mere Greek and
Latin, I had covered a surface vastly more
extensive than even the best of the ordinary
sixth form boy. I had read Sallust through,
about a dozen speeches of Cicero, twenty books
of Livy, Vergil through, Horace through,
Juvenal through, Persius through, Cæsar
through, Terence through; in Greek, the
Gospels and Acts, Xenophon's Anabasis, Hero-
dotus, Thucydides, some six or seven Orations
of Demosthenes, Homer's Iliad, Pindar, Sopho-
cles, Æschylus, Porson's four plays of Euripides,
seven plays of Aristophanes-all these not in
scraps, but through. They had not been well
read; I had merely translated them viva voce,
by aid of the Lexicon (Scapula), my father cor-
recting me by aid of the crib, without which
he was lost. None of the niceties of scholar-
I.
63
MEMOIRS.
I was
ship had ever been whispered to me.
not well grounded even in the Greek grammar;
as to accentuation and metrical law I had
everything to learn. But the worst of all was
that I had not been shown how to read, and
that the general mystery of exact language was
hidden from me. The book which had taken
most hold of my mind was Thucydides; I had
written out translations of all the speeches.
The political pregnancy of certain words in
these had excited my interest, and served after-
wards as a kind of introduction to the study of
philosophical terms. But I had no apprehen-
sion of the refined beauties of poetical expression,
the exquisitely clean-cut wording of Sophocles,
and no doubt preferred Horace to Vergil. All
that my extensive reading had given me was a
mere empirical familiarity with the languages,
an enlarged vocabulary, and an idea of various
and contrasted styles. I had been practised a
good deal in translating back from an English
Cicero, and had a general sense of Ciceronian
Latin as a type to work to, but was very far from
being able easily to compose a Latin theme.
64
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
I had a very insufficient consciousness of my
defects in Greek and Latin, and no conception
at all of the immensity of the knowable in this
direction. But in my ignorance of what other
boys were like, I went into my first lecture with
fear and trembling, expecting to find myself
very far behind the rest. A college lecture in
those days meant the class construing, in turns,
some twenty lines of a classical text to the
tutor, who corrected you when you were wrong.
Of the value as intellectual gymnastic of this
exercise there can be no question; the failure as
education lay in the circumstance, that this one
exercise was about the whole of what our
teachers ever attempted to do for us. I had
been inscribed in the lecture list which was sus-
pended in the gateway, in Cicero's Catilinarians
with Copleston, the Alcestis with Denison, and
Euclid I. with Dornford. With the reading I
had brought with me, it did not seem promo-
tion to be put into the Catilinarians and the
Alcestis. However, it was a new play, and
G. A. Denison had a reputation as a scholar.
I got Monk's edition, and prepared with great
I.
65
MEMOIRS.
care a couple of hundred lines, which did not
take me long. I was delighted with Monk's
notes, which were new to me. I had had no
one to tell me of any of the newer school-
books, and had hammered on with Viger, and
Matthiæ's Greek Grammar.
When we went in to Denison, some one
or two members of the class (a large one) did
their piece well; to my flat amazement most
of them stumbled over the easiest lines. When
we came to the first lyrics, Φοιβ᾽ ἀδικεῖς αὖ τιμὰς
évépwv, etc., the tutor put the question, "What
metre is this?" It went the round, no one had
any idea; it came to me, and I remember the
trembling excitement with which I answered,
"Anapæstic dimeter." So much information
was not far to fetch, for Monk had a note on
the metre of the passage, and most of the class
had Monk, but they had not read the Latin
note. Denison gave me a look as much as to
say, "Who the devil are you?" He had evi-
dently not been accustomed in his class to meet
with such profound learning. I do not remem-
ber in the whole course of the term that Denison
F
66
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
made a single remark on the two plays, Alcestis
and Hippolytus, that did not come from Monk's
notes.
In less than a week I was entirely disillu-
sioned as to what I was to learn in an Oxford
lecture room. Copleston was still
still worse.
Denison was a scholar according to the mea-
sure of those days, knew his Greek plays, and
could let fall a clever thing. Copleston was a
veritable dunce, who could teach you nothing.
He was the butt of the college, and we used to
wonder how he ever became Fellow of Oriel.
The explanation was probably in the name. I
suppose it was a job of his uncle's; for though
Edward Copleston had ceased to be Provost
at the date of W. J. Copleston's election, his
influence must have been still powerful with
the electors.
I have before said that when I came up to
enter my name in 1830 Oriel still held its place
as the first college in the University in academi-
cal repute.
When I came into residence in
1832, though the outside public, either the Uni-
versity public or the wider English public, were
I.
67
MEMOIRS.
not aware of any change in this respect, yet the
tide had just turned, and the causes which led
to the decline and fall of Oriel had already
begun to operate.
as a college rises
It must be observed, that
into repute and prestige
slowly, so it loses what it may have once
acquired by equally slow steps. The prestige
of a school is like the credit of a firm; it lives
on for some time after its capital has been lost.
It is not often in the history of a college that
it is possible to assign a date at which the
decline commences so closely as we can in the
history of Oriel. That date is 1830-32.
The distinction of a college in the opinion
of the public is made up of three elements-
the intellectual calibre of the Head and Fellows;
the efficiency of the tuition; and the social rank
and behaviour of the students. Any one of
these three constituents of eminence may be
possessed by a college without the other two;
as Christ Church at the present day (1883) is,
and always must be, the resort of the aristoc-
racy, while the two other qualifications for
йyeμovía are conspicuously wanting. (The pre-
68
MARK PATTISON.
CHAP.
sent dean, whose name is immortalised in the
annals of English scholarship by his Lexicon, is
the same age as myself, and belongs to the past
age.) For about the first thirty years of this
century Oriel fulfilled all the three conditions
of renown. It contained all there was of ori-
ginal intellect at the time in the University; it
was usually tutored by energetic and well-
qualified (according to the narrow standard of
qualification then known) tutors; and an en-
trance examination sifted the commoners. An
examination did not directly bring in youths
from good families; but as soon as it is under-
stood that a college chooses to be "select,"
good families are anxious to get their sons
into it. And as Oriel could only lodge some
sixty men, it very soon became matter of favour
and showing cause of preference to get a son
in. There was a goodly array of silk gowns
-gentlemen-commoners they were invidiously
called at the high table. These being better
born, or wealthier than the commoners, kept up
a style of living such as is usual in large country
houses. Molesworth, Monsell, Hawley, Sykes,
Ι
69
MEMOIRS.
Domvile, Cadogan, these lingered on into my
time, and were much looked up to by us, as
giving the tone, and taking the lead, when
there had ceased to be any combination of
talent in the society to balance rank.
So much for the undergraduate portion of
the college during the earlier years of the cen-
tury. The distinction here was less one of
intelligence than of quality, enhanced by that
prestige which any set can acquire which tries
to be select. Oriel was under Copleston emi-
nently a gentlemanly college.
When we turn from the commoners, gentle-
men or other, to the Collegium, or corporation
itself, then it is that we see the true source of
the distinction of Oriel, and of the great name
it had in the country at large. It must be
remembered in abatement of this renown that
Oxford was, at the time I write of, de facto,
though not de jure, a close clerical corporation,
and that therefore talent was much scarcer here
than it now is, since the secularisation of the
University. A very little literature, and a
modicum of classical reading, went a long way.
!
70
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
Sermons were almost the only public appear-
ance to which the teachers of all the arts and
sciences ever committed themselves. Any one
then who ventured upon the broad ocean of
general literature, and could speak to the intel-
ligence of England so as to be attended to,
was a more conspicuous person in the place
than he would now be. But even after this.
deduction made, Copleston remains a very con-
siderable figure in the literary history of the
day. He had been the champion of the Uni-
versity against the attacks of the new scientific
interest which had grown up outside, and of
which the Edinburgh Review made itself the
mouthpiece. He was a regular contributor to
the Quarterly Review, and he had selected
as his specialty currency and finance, topics
of great general interest in those years when
the resumption of cash payments was under
public discussion. His pamphlets on these
questions not only attracted attention as able
popular statements, but penetrated to the
circle of experts; they were quoted in the
House, and their author invited to inter-
I.
71
MEMOIRS.
views with Mr. Peel, Sir A. Baring, and Mr.
Huskisson.
Within the University he enjoyed an assured
ascendency. This was the more surprising, as
in politics he espoused the unpopular, i.e. the
Liberal side. But though in a minority on
political questions, his personal influence as the
man of most power and tact in the place was
undisputed by any rival; and it was quite
understood that the election of Lord Grenville
to the Chancellorship (in spite of the Court and
the corrupt Tory borough-mongering system,
and with all Lord Eldon's popularity against)
had been greatly owing to him. Within his
own college he was, of course, all-powerful, a
proof of which was given on the vacancy of
the Headship in December 1814, when the post
of Provost was tendered to him in an address
signed by all the fellows. He administered the
affairs of the college with the skill and decision
of a practical man of business. Estates were
not in those days the trouble, anxiety, and
source of expense they have become lately.
(1883); but Oriel was the first college which,
72
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
under Copleston's management, adopted the
plan, since universally approved and followed,
of running out leases by not renewing the fines,
and borrowing money to make good the divi-
dend. Mozley, who entered the college in
1822, knew Copleston as "the most substantial
and majestic, and if I may say so, richly-
coloured character within my knowledge" (Re-
miniscences, i. 80).
It is evident that with a man of this stamina
at its head Oriel must have come to the front
in the rivalry of colleges. But Copleston's
imposing personality was, in fact, but one, and
by no means the chief, ingredient in the eminent
position which Oriel at this date held in public
estimation. "A great age makes a great man,"
said Macaulay; but whether this or the con-
verse be true, we certainly expect some relation
between any man of special prominence and his
environment. Copleston did not stand alone
in his college.
Oriel tradition carries back the rise of the
college from vulgar mediocrity to the thirty
years' provostship of John Eveleigh, 1781-1814.
I.
MEMOIRS.
.
73
Of Eveleigh personally I know nothing; he
died in the year after I was born.
But Cople-
ston's funeral oration or address, which is printed
in his life, ascribes to his efforts the reformed
scheme of examination for degrees. This
system of honours and pass which has, in the
course of the century, grown into the one
absorbing business of the University, began in
a timid and unpretending form in 1802. Eve-
leigh was the chief promoter of this reform.
Like all reforms which have ever been carried
in our University, this change was stoutly
resisted by the majority, and all sorts of pos-
sible mischief anticipated as its consequence.
It was not till Eveleigh offered out of his own
pocket a benefaction for the purpose of provid-
ing rewards for meritorious candidates, that the
opposition was overcome. At first the examina-
tion was a voluntary one-i.e. the candidates
for the B.A. degree must pass the ordinary
farcical examination, pro forma, which was held
every term, but those candidates who chose to
seek distinction might offer themselves for the
new examination. The new scheme, once set
74
СНАР.
MARK PATTISON.
L
on foot, recommended itself in a very short
time to the sense of the University, so that
as early as 1807 its voluntary character was
abrogated, and the examination was made com-
pulsory on all candidates for the B.A. degree
members of New College excepted.
The efficiency of the instrument which
Eveleigh had thus introduced into the Univer-
sity, he had previously tested in the case of his
own college.
The co-optation of fellows into the society,
or corporation, of a college was, in the last
century, done under conditions which left no
place for any qualification of learning, even if
learning had existed at all in the University.
The fellow to be chosen must have been born
in a particular district, to which the vacancy
was appropriated; he must be in orders, or
proceed to take orders as soon as elected; he
must be, and remain, unmarried. When the
possible candidates had been restricted by these
conditions, the choice out of the number was
made by vote. Each fellow had a vote, and
gave it irresponsibly.
Like chose like.
A
1.
75
MEMOIRS.
drinking society chose a boon companion.
Even those societies which had preserved self-
respect enough not to sink into the condition
of sots and topers preferred a "companion-
able" man to any acquirements or talents.
The public opinion of the University approved
this principle of selection, and had come to
regard a college as a club, into which you
should get only clubbable men. Then they dis-
pensed each other from the obligation to study
for seven years, and from the performance of
those exercises which had been the guarantee
of study, so that the original object of the
foundation, the promotion of learning, was
wholly abrogated. The Visitors of the colleges,
mostly bishops, did not interfere to check this
abuse, so that the only resource to compel the
performance of the trust was to call in the in-
tervention of the sovereign power, the State,
which was done at last in 1854.
In breaking through this standing abuse, and
in making literary acquirement a qualification
for the enjoyment of the benefaction, Oriel was
taking the first step towards bringing back the
76
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
college to the intention of the original founda-
tion. Of this first step Provost Eveleigh was
the author and prime mover. But there is no
record of the mode in which he brought round
a majority of his colleagues to take a view of
duty so beyond the range of Oxford morality at
the time.
The implied censure upon them-
selves was vigorously resented by the cosy
family parties in the other common-rooms, and
Oriel men were exposed, as T. Mozley could
remember (Reminiscences, i. 117), to much banter
on the score of their pretensions to superiority
pretensions which we may easily believe
tended among the younger members to gener-
ate not a little presumption and conceit. How-
ever, by the beginning of the century, Provost
Eveleigh had succeeded in making Oriel a
home for a class of Fellows selected from the
University at large, on the ground of intellectual
qualification alone. Such a body of men were
sure to desire to perpetuate their type, and
“like chooses like " became a principle of elec-
tion as useful here as it had been mischievous
in the sociable and toping colleges.
I.
77
MEMOIRS.
One thing only was still wanting to give the
final crown of distinction to this select society.
A majority once obtained, who should agree to
award Fellowships to intellectual merit, was it
possible to carry the agreement farther so as to
adopt a uniform standard of merit? Could a
body of men, equal and voting irresponsibly, be
brought to adopt a test of intellect-a "Scrut-
inium ingeniorum" which should be one true,
and founded on real distinctions, and not one
governed by the fashion or market-value of the
day—a test which should set the solid above
the showy, which should be a test of mind and
not of knowledge and accomplishments? The
fortune of Oriel, rising as it were with the
occasion, did not deny this last and rarest
favour. For nearly thirty years the examina-
tions for Oriel Fellowships were conducted upon
the principle of ascertaining, not what a man
had read, but what he was like. The prizes or
classes which a candidate might bring with him
to the competition were wholly disregarded by
the electors, who looked at his papers unbiassed
by opinion outside. The verdict of the Uni-
;
78
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
versity Examiners was not only often set aside,
but even outraged. If Keble, Hawkins, and
Jenkyns were double-firsts, Whately, T. Mozley,
Newman, and Hurrell Froude were all men
of low classes, and taken against candidates of
greater prima facie claims. Perhaps the word
which best expresses what was looked for in
the papers of the candidates for an Oriel Fellow-
ship is originality.
There was doubtless a serious defect in this
system. The men thus picked out as men of
original minds were apt to have too little respect
for the past because they were ignorant of it.
A man who does not know what has been
thought by those who have gone before him is
sure to set an undue value upon his own ideas
-ideas which have perhaps been tried and
found wanting. As accumulated learning stifles
the mental powers, so original thinking has been
known to bring about a puffy, unsubstantial
mental condition. It was only in the then
condition of the University, hidebound in the
traditions of narrow clerical prejudice, that the
new Oriel school of the Noetics, as they came
I.
79
MEMOIRS.
to be called, could be welcomed as a wholesome
invasion of a scurfy pond, stagnant with same-
ness and custom. The Noetics knew nothing
of the philosophical movement which was taking
place on the continent; they were imbued
neither with Kant nor with Rousseau, yet this
knot of Oriel men was distinctly the product
of the French Revolution. They called every-
thing in question; they appealed to first prin-
ciples, and disallowed authority as a judge in
intellectual matters. There was a wholesome
intellectual ferment constantly maintained in the
Oriel common-room, of that kind which was so
dreaded by the authorities of the German States
in the days of the Terror (1851).
"Wer auf der Strasse raisonnirt
Wird unverzüglich füsilirt;
Das Raisonniren durch Gebärden
Soll gleichfalls hart bestrafet werden."
HEINE, Werke, iii. 139 (ed. Tiel).
The mental activity prevailing in the German
universities was especially irritating to Dr. Pusey,
who complains (Evidence on the Recommenda-
tions, p. 24) of their "theories which pull to
pieces what has been received for thousands of
80
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
years." It was the men in whom this disposi-
tion reigned in Oriel' that gave the college its
celebrity in the country. The most known
names were, besides Provost Copleston, Whately,
Arnold, Hampden, Baden Powell. Blanco
White, though only an honorary member of
the college, lived much in the common-room.
This little germ of premature "free enquiry,"
though ultimately destined to grow into a
flourishing tree, was at its first appearance too
violently in contrast with the established ways
of thinking of the whole University not to pro-
voke a reaction. The reaction came, as was to
have been expected, within the same college
within which the provocation had been given.
1 So the Noetics appeared to William Palmer, who has
written a history of the Tractarian revival. "A school arose
whose conceit led them to imagine that their wisdom was
sufficient to correct and amend the whole world. The Church
itself produced some such vain reasoners, who, with boundless
freedom, began to investigate all institutions, to search into
the basis of religious doctrines, and to put forth each his wild
theory or irreverential remark. All was pretended to be for
the benefit of free discussion, which was substituted for the
claims of truth. This school came from Oriel College." (Nar-
rative of Events, p. 20).
I.
81
MEMOIRS.
But it came with a violence and éclat which
were so out of all proportion to the scale on
which the challenge had been given, that it has
well-nigh obliterated the historical relations be-
tween the movement and the counter-movement.
The Tractarian movement has become
historical, and has had more than one historian.
As the starting-point of a great church revival,
which is still in vogue, Tractarianism has
attracted to itself the attention of the public, as
though it were an independent phenomenon
which could be known and apprehended with-
out its genealogy being traced; whereas it was
only one phase-the indispensable, reactionary,
and complementary phase-in the movement of
thought which belongs to the nineteenth century.
I shall resume what I have to say on Trac-
tarianism when I come to the year-about 1838
-when I myself began to be drawn into its
vortex. At present I am writing of the year
1832, in which I came up to Oriel, and what
has been above said has been intended to
describe the condition of the college as a place
of the higher education.
G
CHAPTER II.
WHEN I went up in 1830 to enter, I said, Oriel
still stood at the head of the colleges in all the
signs of life and vigour. In point of tutorial
efficiency it had greatly the advantage, so it
seemed, of the only college which could be
considered to compete with it for the ἡγεμονία,
viz. Balliol. The age of the Noetics proper
was gone by; the whole personnel of the college
was changed-Copleston and Whately and
Tyler had been taken away by church prefer-
ment. The college was officered by new men,
but by men whose energy and talent had already
attracted the eyes of the University towards
them.
The new Provost (1827) was not, indeed,
the equal of Keble, either in nobility of char-
acter or in literary power. But Hawkins was
CHAP. II.
83
MEMOIRS.
superior to Keble in some of those more super-
ficial qualities which recommend a man as a
head of a college-in ready tact, in aptitude
for the small details of administration, and strict
attention to the enforcement of college rules.
Hawkins was, I suppose, generally the more
practical man of the two. His mind, says Dr.
Burgon, was "essentially legal in its texture
(Quart. Rev., Oct. 1883), and his own desire
had been to go to the bar. But having got a
fellowship he naturally took orders, and preached
sermons of an indisputably judicious character.
His edition of Todd's Milton (1824) was a work
undertaken for the bookseller, and did not add
to his reputation. His own notes are signed
E. I have not examined these to see what
extent of classical allusion was at Hawkins'
command. But if he ever, in his early days,
went beyond the very narrow range of an
Oxford first-classman's reading in classics he
very soon abandoned them for theology, and
was drawn into the arena of "church" contro-
versy. "You don't know Hawkins as well as
I do," wrote an old Oriel fellow to Newman
84
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
"'1
after the election; "he will be sure to disappoint
you. What is certain is, that within five years
of Hawkins' election, Oriel showed symptoms
of having begun to decline. But in 1827, on
the promotion of Copleston to the bishopric of
Llandaff, university opinion pronounced that
the headship lay between Keble and Hawkins ;
and when Hawkins, by Newman's support,
obtained the prize, it was not denied that the
college had made a proper choice. Up to 1830
there were no visible symptoms of dissatisfac-
tion in the college, though every one must have
1 It is common among those who have written of this
election to express surprise that Newman should, on this
occasion, have supported Hawkins against Keble. They think
because Keble was afterwards a partner with Newman in the
Tractarian movement that Newman must have been always a
personal friend of Keble. This was not so. In 1827 New-
man did not know Keble who, though a Fellow of the College,
was non-resident, and only came up occasionally to attend
important meetings. On the other hand Newman had acted
with Hawkins, whose good qualities he appreciated, and whose
sentiments were not, in 1827, materially different from his
Hawkins was in those days an effective preacher; in
any one of his sermons there was matter enough for two, and
his manner in the pulpit was peculiarly impressive. This
would be a great point with Newman.
own.
II.
85
MEMOIRS.
felt the thinness and superficiality of the new
Provost's character by contrast with the sterling
force and richness of that of his predecessors.
((
The tutors of the college in 1830 were
Newman, Hurrell Froude, Robert Wilberforce
-all of them considered to be among the most
rising men in the University. They were
bestowing on their pupils as much time and
trouble as is usually only expected from very
good private tutors" (Mozley, Rem. i. 229), and
in return the tutors were rewarded by the
enthusiastic following of no inconsiderable band
of admiring disciples.
This was apparently the condition of the
college when my name was entered on its books
in 1830. When I came up to reside in May
1832 the scene was totally changed. The
Provost had got rid of the three energetic and
successful tutors, and had supplied their places
with three inefficients-W. J. Copleston, G. A.
Denison, and Dornford (continued on). How
this came about might have been explained by
the principal agent in the revolution, Provost
Hawkins himself. Dr. Burgon tells us (Quart.
86
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
Rev., Oct. 1883) that he regularly kept a diary
a record of the writer's state of mind and
the employment of his time. It were much
to be wished that this diary could be preserved
in the permanent form of type; but Dr. Burgon
assures us it will never be printed, and so this,
like so many more precious documents of our
university history, will be sacrificed to the petty
susceptibilities of relations. Conington's diary
was thus destroyed in my time by the timidity
of his executors. The account of the trans-
action given by T. Mozley is, that the three
tutors insisted upon a novel and extensive re-
organisation of the course of instruction; that
Hawkins received their proposal with dismay,
suspecting it aimed at his monopoly of college
power. The tutors, he thought, would, under
the new scheme, get the tuition, and so the
conduct of the college, entirely into their own
hands, and thus the Provost would find himself
left out of the current of college thought and
feeling--would lose touch, as we say now. A
minor displacement which may have occurred
to him was, that he would be unable to take a
II.
87
MEMOIRS.
share in the terminal examinations called "Col-
lections." But Mozley has omitted the material
point of the attitude taken up by Newman.
Newman insisted upon regarding his relation
to his pupils as a pastoral one. Unless he could
exercise the function of tutor on this basis he
did not think that he, being a priest, could be
tutor at all. For this purpose it was necessary
that a portion of the undergraduates-a third
or a fourth-should be entered under him,
and the remainder likewise distributed among
the other two- or three-tutors. But the
Provost's proposal that all undergraduates
should be entered under one common name,
and no longer under respective tutors, interfered
with Newman's doctrine of the pastoral relation.
This was the point which Newman would not
give up, and for which he resigned, or rather
was turned out. It is clear that, under the
system for which Newman contended, a college
must have become a mere priestly seminary and
not an agent of a university. If it happened
as T. Mozley relates, we must infer that a
narrow collegiate jealousy on the part of the
88
СНАР.
MARK PATTISON.
Head prevailed with him to sacrifice what he
saw to be the interest of the college to the
maintenance of his own authority. He would
not do this consciously; he would be impressed
with the view that, the welfare of the college
being dependent on the Head, the Head must,
before all things, be supreme in all that regards
the tuition.
This year, 1831, was the turning-point in
the fortunes of Oriel. From this date the col-
lege began to go downhill, both in the calibre
of the men who obtained fellowships and in the
style and tone of the undergraduates. In the
race for university honours Balliol rapidly shot
ahead, and still (1883) maintains the first place
among the colleges. In the distinction of its
fellows no college has succeeded to the place of
the Oriel of Eveleigh and Copleston, as no
college has had the skill to choose its members
on the same principle-propter spem and not
propter rem. Since the reform of 1854 what
superior talent there has been in Oxford has
been pretty equally distributed among the col-
leges, as elections have been made at haphazard,
II.
89
MEMOIRS.
on no principle, and left to the chances of a
vote. The eccentricities of this casual co-option
were exhibited in a ludicrous light at the Oriel
election of 1846, when J. W. Burgon was taken
over the head of Goldwin Smith. Some col-
leges are (1883) more corroded than others by
the canker of ecclesiasticism (e.g. Christ Church
and S. John's) which excludes all intelligent
interests. In no common-room, so far as I
know, is there now maintained a level of serious
discussion, occupying itself with the great prob-
lems of speculation, or with the science or the
literature of the day. Young M.A.'s of talent
abound, but they are all taken up with the con-
duct of some wheel in the complex machinery
of cram, which grinds down all specific tenden-
cies and tastes into one uniform mediocrity.
The men of middle age seem, after they reach
thirty-five or forty, to be struck with an intel-
lectual palsy, and betake themselves, no longer
to port, but to the frippery work of attending
boards and negotiating some phantom of legisla-
tion, with all the importance of a cabinet council
-belli simulacra cientes. Then they give
90
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
each other dinners, where they assemble again
with the comfortable assurance that they have
earned their evening relaxation by the fatigues
of the morning's committee. These are the
leading men of our university, and who give
the tone to it—a tone as of a lively municipal
borough; all the objects of science and learning,
for which a university exists, being put out of
sight by the consideration of the material means
of endowing them.
There is no difficulty, as has been said
already, in fixing as a date the epoch at which
the decline of Oriel commenced. It was co-
incident with the accession of Hawkins to the
headship. But was the cause of that decline
merely the change of Provost, the substitution
of Hawkins for Copleston, and the determina-
tion of Hawkins to retain supremacy, even at
the cost of dismissing three most zealous and
active tutors, and filling their place with
dummies? It has been often repeated that it
was the circumstance of Newman's being turned
out of the tutorship that made him into an
ecclesiastical agitator; that a college disappoint-
II.
91
MEMOIRS.
ment gave birth to the "Tracts." This is
laughable, and may be compared to George
III.'s belief that there would have been no
Wesleyan secession if ministers would have
made Wesley a bishop. Those who have
known anything of Newman, either in himself
or his writings, will understand the flimsiness of
this view. And those who do not know any-
thing of the man may satisfy themselves, by a
comparison of dates, that Newman's bent had
been decided towards theology even before
Hawkins became Provost. Newman-a theo-
logian first, a political leader afterwards-was
made a leader, not by loss of college preferment,
but by the pressure of public events upon his
church sentiments. It was the same, in an
unequal measure, with all the three tutors whom
Hawkins put out; they were all three clergy-
men; they all held, or had held, curacies in the
city or neighbourhood of Oxford; they took
pains with their sermons—were, in short, steeped
in parochialism. Not that they were of the
modern, fussy, curate genus, incapable of thought
or study; these men were also students. But
92
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
New-
the aim of all their studies was " divinity"; and
they took "divinity" seriously, as men trained
in the old Oriel school could not but do.
Theology was not a mere professional outfit; it
was to supply the aim and rule of life.
man and Froude took to church history; New-
man wrote an article on Apollonius of Tyana
for the Encyclopædia Metropolitana, and medi-
tated his History of the Arians. In 1826
Froude goes back to Oxford (Remains, i. 204)
with "a determination to set to at Hebrew and
the early fathers." What they were interested
in themselves they were ready to give out to
their pupils, and enthusiasm is contagious. At
least they had nothing else to give, for their
knowledge of the classics was extremely limited.
H. Froude has taste in style, and can read Greek
sufficiently to admire the slighter dialogues of
Plato (Ibid. p. 248), Gorgias, Apology, Crito,
Phado, but confesses his inability to grapple
with the high problems of the Timaus or the
Parmenides. Yet he will try; spends two or
three mornings in the attempt, and renounces
it as beyond him. "I have cut Timæus, which
II.
93
MEMOIRS.
gets duller and duller, and harder and harder"
(Letters to friends, Aug. 1831).
Hawkins had no higher idea of what was
required of a tutor. He offered (1835) a tutor-
ship to Thos. Mozley, who had the moral
courage to refuse it with all its emoluments
and distinction, on the ground that he did not
feel himself equal to it. The college standard
of what was required of a tutor did not demand
such an act of self-denial on Mozley's part.
His own estimate of tutorial fitness is just that
which prevailed in Oriel at the time. "I could
certainly keep ahead of my pupils, which was
all that many tutors ever did. I could come
round my class by questions they were not
prepared for. I was sure always to hear mis-
takes which it would be easy to correct. In
matter of fact a tutor often did no more than
half of the class could have done quite as well.
Though the method of instruction was very
effectual, yet it was easy sailing" (Reminisc. i.
237). The Provost was willing to have taken
Mozley on if he would have done no more than
this; but Mozley was too honest to scamp the
4
94
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
work. He thinks the method of instruction.
was effectual, so crude was the conception
which an Oriel fellow, and one of the ablest,
had formed of what it is to teach the classics.
If there were any one in the whole of Oxford
who could be supposed capable of attaining to
a complete conception of what instruction ought
to be, it was the author of Discourses on the
Scope, etc., of University Education. Newman
knew that "ideas are the life of institutions—
social, political, literary"; and the idea which
he would place as the basis of a university is
the master-idea-" Imagine a science of sciences,
and you have attained the true notion of the
scope of a university. . A science is not mere
knowledge; it is knowledge which has under-
gone a process of intellectual digestion. . .
We consider that all things mount up to a
whole; that there is an order and precedence
and harmony in the branches of knowledge one
with another, and that to destroy that structure
is unphilosophical in a course of education'
(pp. 142-4). Nothing can be grander than the
development of the idea which follows in the same
""
II.
95
MEMOIRS.
volume (p. 153). 'All knowledge whatever is
taken into account in a university, as being the
special seat of that large philosophy which
embraces and locates truth of every kind, and
every method of attaining it." Thus thought
Newman in 1852. Are we to suppose that this
magnificent ideal of a national institute, embrac-
ing and representing all knowledge, and making
this knowledge its own end, was the wisdom of
riper years—a vision which grew up in New-
man's mind in the course of the twenty or more
years which elapsed between the Oriel tutorship
and the Dublin presidency? Perhaps so; it
required much time and mental enlargement for
any of us, who were brought up under the old
eight-book system of an Oxford college of
1830, to rise to the idea of a university in which
every science should have its
proper and
appointed place. Newman may have been no
exception. At any rate, during the time of his
Oriel tutorship, there is no sign that he had
any loftier conception of the duties of a tutor
than his friends H. Froude and Mozley. New-
man was then in Anglican orders; he had the
$
ļ
96
MARK PATTISON.
CHAP.
charge of a parish-first S. Clement's, then S.
Mary's; he spent much time upon the prepara-
tion of those weighty sermons by which he first
became famous, and which were the foundation
of his influence with young men. When he
studied, it was church history-the Fathers of
the fourth century; Athanasius was his hero ;
he was inspired by the triumph of the church
organisation over the wisdom and philosophy of
the Hellenic world; that triumph which, to the
Humanist, is the saddest moment in history
-the ruin of the painfully constructed fabric of
civilisation to the profit of the church. Religion
was evidently to Newman, in 1830, not only the
first but the sole object of all teachings. There
was no thought then of ἐν κύκλῳ παιδεία, a
genealogical chart of all the sciences; there
was not even the lesser conception of education
by the classics, as containing the essential
elements of humanism. These teachers of the
classics had sided with the enemies of humanism.
Greek was useful as enabling you to read the
Greek Testament and the Fathers. All know-
ledge was to be subservient to the interests of
II.
97
MEMOIRS.
religion, for which vague idea was afterwards
substituted the definite and concrete idea of the
Visible Church. Of the world of wisdom and
sentiment of poetry and philosophy, of social
and political experience, contained in the Latin
and Greek classics, and of the true relation of
the degenerate and semi-barbarous Christian
writers of the fourth century to that world—
Oxford, in 1830, had never dreamt. It is too
much to require that the three Oriel tutors
should have understood what no one about them
understood. But their greater seriousness of
purpose their disinterested devotion to the
cause of religion as they understood it—made
them more dangerous than the pococurante
plausibilities who displaced them. In the hands
of the three tutors, all of them priests, narrow
and desperate devotees of the clerical interest,
the college must have become a seminary in
which the pupils should be trained for church
ends, and broken in, like the students of a Jesuit
college, to regard the dictates of the confessor
and the interests of the clergy as the supreme
law of life. Religion is a good servant but a
H
98
СНАР.
MARK PATTISON.
ا
bad master.
In the same volume in which
Newman, in 1852, expounds the idea of an
all-embracing university organisation, with a
breadth and boldness which is not to be found
elsewhere, I find the following notion on History,
which he speaks of as a science :-" Revealed
religion furnishes facts to other sciences, which
those sciences, left to themselves, would never
reach. . . . Thus, in the science of history, the
preservation of our race in Noah's ark is an
historical fact, which history never would arrive
at without revelation” (p. 105).
By 1830 Newman had enlarged his views
upon the college beyond the circle of his pupils.
He now aimed at a moulding of the college of
fellows-there were at this date eighteen fellow-
ships-on a medieval system; at reviving the
college of Adam de Brome and Laud, and
mounting it as a reactionary machine to resist
the formidable progress of "Liberalism" and the
modern spirit. The elections were to be so
manipulated that a body of like-minded fellows
should be obtained, who should all reside and
study the Fathers, not necessarily occupying
II.
99
MEMOIRS.
themselves with tuition. They would form a
nucleus of learned controversialists, destined to
fight against the vicious tendencies of an un-
believing age. The elections to fellowships for
the ten years, from about 1830, were struggles
between Newman endeavouring to fill the
college with men likely to carry out his ideas,
and the Provost endeavouring, upon no prin-
ciple, merely to resist Newman's lead. New-
man did not lose sight of the old Oriel principle
of electing for promise rather than for perform-
ance; only, instead of looking for promise of
originality, he now looked for promise of con-
geniality. Anyhow, in these contests, the old
character of the Oriel fellowship was obliterated,
and many inferior elections were made.
It may
be that the blame of the worst elections lay with
the Provost's party, which was not so homo-
geneous as the opposing party, and possessed no
one with the keen instinct, which Newman
alone had, for recognising, through an examina-
tion paper, the kind of merit and character
which he wanted. The capital blunder which
was patent to the whole university, when
100
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
Burgon was taken over the head of Goldwin
Smith, must have been made, I think, after
Newman had done with the college.
It has often occurred to me to compare what
took place at this period, in the fortunes of a
small college, with the course of things in the
great movement of the sixteenth century.
About 1500 it seemed as if Europe was about
to cast off at one effort the slough of feudal
barbarism, and to step at once into the fair
inheritance of the wisdom and culture of the
ancient world. The Church led the van, and
smiled on free inquiry and the new learning.
About the third decennium of the century the
resistance of the obscurantists was organised,
the Catholic reaction set in, and nascent
humanism was submerged beneath the rising
tide of theological passion and the fatal and
fruitless controversies of Lutheran, Calvinist,
and Catholic, to the rival cries of the Bible and
the Church. The "sacrificio d'intelletto" of
Loyola took the place of the free and rational-
ising spirit with which Erasmus had looked out
upon the world of men. It was soon after 1830
II.
ΙΟΙ
MEMOIRS.
that the "Tracts" desolated Oxford life, and
suspended, for an indefinite period, all science,
humane letters, and the first strivings of intel-
lectual freedom which had moved in the bosom
of Oriel.
CHAPTER III.
THIS is what I see, looking back after fifty
years, to have been the state of Oriel when I
entered it in 1832. It must not be supposed
that I, the freshman, had the least glimmering
of all this which I have now been expounding
in these last pages. There was no one to tell
me these things, nor should I have understood
them if I had been told. I had not so much as
made clear to myself what a college or what a
university was, nor did I do this for many years.
after 1832. I suppose I had the same hazy
notion of a college-as a school for young men
who had outgrown school-which the public still
entertains. I have often since wondered at the
satisfied ignorance, on all points touching the
government and constitution of the University,
in which most students pass their time here.
CHAP. III.
103
MEMOIRS.
They are members of a college three or four
years; they take two degrees; they keep their
names on its books, and never ask themselves
the question-How came there to be colleges,
and what is the University as distinct from the
aggregate of the colleges?
Certainly in 1832 I had never thought of
asking any such question. The "college" to
me was, as it was to my scout, the building at
the end of the lane. We were all, I believe,
proud of our college. I remember a friend of
mine at that time, R. G. Young, confessing to
me that he always felt a secret complacency,
when he stepped out of the gate into the street,
in the thought that he would be recognised as
an Oriel man. This was doubtless chiefly the
flunkey's estimate-respectability measured by
income and position-but I think it contained
also an element of hero-worship. We all
thought a Fellow of Oriel a person of miraculous
intellect only because he was one; though I
cannot tell how we arranged such exceptional
phenomena as W. J. Copleston, J. F. Christie,
and another, whom we could not help seeing to
104
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
be below Oriel par, not only as tutors but as
men. Still less could any suspicion enter my
mind that I had been wrongly placed at Oriel
if the deficiencies in my education were to be
made good. Yet when the end of term came I
was vaguely conscious of disillusion in two direc-
tions. I had built much upon lectures. I had
thought now, at last, I shall be put in the right
track, having had no guidance so far. But I
was not guided; I was not put in any track; I
was not shown the method of learning. I had
made, as far as books went, no progress.
I don't suppose I was much concerned about
this. Time seems infinite to a freshman in his
first term. The neglect of a term could be
repaired next time. Besides I had had so much
else to learn, not derived from books, which
boys from a public school bring with them to
college, but which I had to pick up at college.
I had been brought up much like Caspar
Hausser in the Bavarian wilds, and had, at
eighteen, made my first essay of companions of
my own age. Here was my second disillusion.
This first contact with my species, though it
III.
105
MEMOIRS.
had brought along with it much necessary to
be known, had been disappointment. I had
launched out into comradeship with eagerness,
because I had been debarred from it, but I had
found no sympathy for the better and aspiring
part of my nature. I had supposed I was
coming into an honourable company of rivalry
in the pursuit of knowledge. I wanted not
merely to get up my classics, but to penetrate to
the secrets and mysteries which I vaguely under-
stood to be somehow wrapt up in books, though
they had not, as yet, been revealed to me. I
was disconcerted to find that none of my new
acquaintance had any share of this yearning
curiosity. But though I felt a certain blank,
I don't suppose the disappointment was very
grievous to me, being overborne and lost in the
amusements and novelties which surrounded
me during these two months of May and
June.¹
1 Compare Lord Lytton's (Mr. Bulwer's) experience of
Trinity, Cambridge. "The first term I spent at Cambridge.
was melancholy enough. My brothers had given me introduc-
tions to men of their own standing, older than myself, but
106
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
MARK
Commemoration was very late in 1832, and
at that time you could not keep your term if you
left before noon on commemoration day. You
might suppose I should be desirous of witness-
ing the prize recitations and other pageantry of
my first commemoration. Not so. My frantic
impulse was to get back to Hauxwell at the
earliest possible moment, and to pour the story
of my adventures and experiences into thirsty
The new world I had been exploring had
been very captivating, but the charm of the old
parsonage, under the beeches, exerted at this
moment a stronger attraction. On Wednesday
morning, 4th July, having paid every shilling I
owed in Oxford, I turned my back on the
Sheldonian and took the road for Birmingham.
On the Friday, at mid-day, I found my father
waiting for me, with our carriage, at "The Salu-
tation" in Leeming Lane.
ears.
not reading men. Quiet and gentlemanlike they were, but we
had no attraction for each other. I found amongst them no
companion. I made no companion for myself. Surrounded
by so many hundred youths of my own years, I was alone "
(Autobiography, i. 228). Also Edgar Quinet, already quoted.
See above, note on p. 51.
III.
107
MEMOIRS.
It may convey some idea of the spell which
the home and the family circle was able to
exercise over me, if I give here some extracts
from my father's letters to me during my
first term. I have all his letters from the
first. *
*
*
"HAUXWELL, 8th May 1832.
"MY VERY, VERY DEAR Boy-Your account has
gladdened our hearts; after many and various
perusals I cannot perceive one thing omitted
that we should have desired to know. This
minute and satisfactory despatch has been sub-
mitted to the same process, only with elder
agents, that a letter from London once experi-
enced in the hands of your sisters-we have
nearly learned it by heart. Most cordially do
I congratulate you on the commencement of
your academical career, the whole of which, I
trust, will be honourable and comfortable to
yourself, satisfactory to your friends, and sub-
servient to the glory of God. What assistance
a parent can render, with these objects in view,
you may freely command. I have been con-
108
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
soled for the loss of your society, and my wonted
occupation at this table, solely by the reflection
that I have done everything in my power to
secure your present enviable position. The
little rub about the rooms only enhances the
pleasure; for, having succeeded so well in
mastering all your other difficulties, as they
appeared by this fireside, you may well make
your account for that. You will no doubt read
this in your own rooms. And though, I dare
to say, when you opened it you anticipated
something of the admonitory complexion, let
me relieve you from that apprehension by the
assurance that I consider that duty to have been
already discharged in this room.
Your way is
now open before you. My earnest prayers on
your behalf are, that our God will direct and
prosper you in it. That you like Oxford already
I have not the least doubt-you do not belong
to me if you do not; and ere this you have
surveyed it well; gentlemen 'what's fresh'
generally do. Among your visits 'Parker's'
has been foremost. Let your Euripides be of
the valuable sort, such as, in future years, may
III.
109
MEMOIRS.
call forth from a future freshman the admiration
you have bestowed on Mr. Christie's library.
You call him a scholar. So he must be in the
true sense of that word, for my Vade mecum
(the Oxford Calendar) enrolls him among the
fellows. The library of a Fellow of Oriel should
be the best in the universe. Even a commoner
of that distinguished society should be sur-
rounded by no mean materials for study; and
when your rooms are ready, and you wish for a
supply, the Stockton steamer shall be put in
requisition.
Those that now surround me can-
not be more usefully and honourably employed
than in enriching and storing a mind, the culti-
vation of which has been the nearest object of
I have procured
We have no tidings
my heart for eighteen years.
Tate's Horace for you. . . .
that are new for you; no change of any kind
except, like the Vicar of Wakefield's, 'from the
blue to the brown.' I have removed my shaving
apparatus into your room in order to keep up
the remembrance of my friend in Oriel. May
Heaven's best blessings rest upon him! Write
to us frequently at first, and communicate with
IIO
MARK PATTISON.
CHAP.
me freely in any little difficulties that present
themselves in your path.
((
Always, I trust, your affectionate Governor,
(C
M. J. PATTISON."
This, my first Long Vacation, was spent wholly
at Hauxwell. It was very enjoyable, but, as
far as mental improvement was concerned, quite
unprofitable. I began to read review articles,
which I had never done before. I revived
my
natural history studies, and turned over many
books on ornithology. I read, but with little
profit, six books of Tacitus' Annals. What was
really of most use to me this vacation was the
free air of the fields and moors, and the long
solitary rambles during whole days, in which
Nature insensibly penetrated the recesses of the
soul, without my having yet become, as I after-
wards became, passionate for the poetry of
Wordsworth and of country life. At Hauxwell
we saw no one except the Squire's family at the
Hall, uneducated and uncongenial; we visited
with no one, so that there was for four months
no break in the bucolic "secura quies et nescia
III.
MEMOIRS.
III
fallere vita.” As far as manners or conduct
among equals went, I must, at the end of this
period, have lapsed again pretty much into the
fashion of the ploughboy, out of which, for two
months, I had been struggling to emerge.
I had, during this "Long," my first mis-
understanding with my father. This was partly
about money matters, partly about my reading.
In both instances it was I who was to blame, as
I easily saw afterwards. He was liberal to me
to the extent of his means; wished me to have
all the books I wanted, and in the best editions ;
encouraged me in an occasional ride, and in
subscribing to Hall's Boat-Club. In this respect
I had nothing to complain of, and I met his
liberality by a prudence and economy, the
habit of which I established in this my first
term, and from which, in fifty years, I have never
deviated. I see, in looking at the old account-
book, that my total expenses for the term were
£78. This included my first establishment in
furniture, crockery, etc., £2: 10s. subscription
to the boats, and, alas! £2 they extracted from
me for some memorial-I know not what-to
I 12
MARK PATTISON.
СНАР.
the Duke of Wellington. This was weakness;
but how was a freshman to say no when a
B.A., a first class much looked up to in college,
brought the paper round, and pointed out the
names of all the other men in his list?
After I had been at home some time my
father expressed a wish to have my bills put
into his hands to look over. I ought to have
been not only willing but glad to have the
opportunity of showing how honest my little
expenditure had been. I had not left a sixpence
unpaid in Oxford, and what I had laid out,
together with the journeys up and down,
balanced exactly his remittances. There was
not in the bills a single item of which I need
have been ashamed. But I had set my heart
upon having a fixed allowance, and withheld the
bills in the hope that my father's curiosity to see
them would drive him into acquiescence upon
this point. This was my first fault. The other
fault related to a college essay, which I had
brought home and exhibited with pride because
it had been selected for reading out in Hall!
It was the custom then, in all the colleges, to
III.
113
MEMOIRS.
set, each week, a theme or essay; that which
was adjudged the best was read before the
assembled college on the following Saturday.
My father took a great deal of pains over this
essay; corrected and even re-wrote parts of it.
Mine was no doubt poor stuff, and his was easily
so much better that, instead of being thankful
to him for his pains, I showed humour at the
pitiful figure my scrubby performance cut by
the side of his. Besides this instance of bad
taste and bad temper I was restive over the
Tacitus readings. My father expected me at a
fixed hour every morning to read the Annals
with him. It was true he could not be of any
use to me, as he knew little of the language and
nothing at all of the history. But it was the
only thing he required of me, and I ought to
have complied with a good grace, instead of
coming unwillingly and finding excuses for
shirking altogether.
I returned to Oxford in October with a large
stock of good resolutions, both about my read-
ing and about the company I would keep. I
was aware now that I should have to look to
I
114
MARK PATTISON.
CHAP.
myself for guidance, as there was none to be
had from my official instructors. My desire of
improving myself in all directions was not at all
abated. I worked blindly and helplessly at
some Latin and Greek books without finding
the satisfaction I was struggling for—of gaining
ground either with language or with literary
purpose. But I launched out in other direc-
tions besides classics. I engaged a German
master at 5s. an hour out of my pocket-money,
and thus first entered on the despairing task of
contending with the German declensions. I
think I had twelve lessons, or 3 worth, and
there my German rested for more than ten
years, when I had about as many more from
another and very inefficient teacher. That was
all the instruction in German I ever had. By
persevering reading of books, however, on the
subjects on which I was interested from time to
time, I came to read the literary style without
great difficulty. But colloquial German did not
become familiar to me till I went to reside in
Berlin in 1858.
I also entered my name as an attendant at
III.
115
MEMOIRS.
the evening lectures of the Professor of Chemis-
try, Dr. Daubeny. These lectures were so
elementary, so devoted to popular experiments,
which generally miscarried, and so rambling,
that I did not learn much from them. I had
brought up with me a fair knowledge of the
chemistry of that day, and had worked over one
of the current manuals-Griffin's-as far as a
very humble apparatus of blow-pipe and crucible,
in a corner of my mother's store-room, per-
mitted. I had also read in, but not mastered,
the two thick volumes of Henry's Chemistry, in
which the subject was presented in a
scientific form.
Lastly, in this term I began first to wake up
to the attractions of poetry. I picked up at an
auction an imperfect copy of Byron's Works, in
four volumes. This had the charm of forbidden
fruit, for Byron had been in the Hauxwell
"index"; and at a later date, when I introduced
a copy of Murray's complete edition, in one
volume, I did so as one who smuggles cigars
for his "own consumption."
I was amused
when my father hastened to borrow it for his
}
116
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
"private reading." This was later.
In 1832
I learned by heart much of the lighter pieces-
Siege of Corinth, Bride of Abydos, etc. My
mind was still so childish that I could not, at
first, rise to Childe Harold. I also had Pope
much in my hand, and was specially delighted
with his pictures of the society of his time, and
his epigrams on the "femmes galantes." This
may seem a paradox; that a rude clown, who
had hardly seen the inside of a drawing-room,
and was guilelessly ignorant of women, should
be fascinated by the most artificial interiors ever
painted. Here broke out the native instinct
which has led me, in later years, to spend so much
time upon the Pope-Addison-Swift circle.
I returned to Hauxwell to spend the Christ-
mas vacation This was a repetition of the
Long Vacation-with its lazy acquiescence in the
home circle-to which all intelligent interests
were unknown, only that skating on the New-
found England pond¹ took the place of rambles
over the woods and fields.
1 New-found England was the name of a farm reclaimed
from the moor, which had near it a pond on which he used to
skate.-ED.
III.
117
MEMOIRS.
I can score nothing to my credit for Lent
term 1833. I was not exactly idle; to this day
I never could be; I was always reading some-
thing; but at this time I was certainly not
making progress. That I returned to Haux-
well to spend the short Easter vacation, instead
of staying in college as I might have done,
shows that the cosy and patriarchal life we led
at the Rectory, where I never saw any one but
my father and sisters, was more pleasant to me
than the society of my equals.
In the summer term of 1833 I moved into
better and more expensive rooms; the furniture
I found there was valued at £60, which my
father paid without a remark. These rooms
were on the same staircase as, and directly
opposite to, Newman's. I had no idea at the
time what this neighbourhood was to bring with
it in the future. Newman had not, in May,
returned from abroad, and he had asserted his
statutable right to shut up his rooms and keep
them empty, against the Provost and the tutors,
who wanted to quarter an undergraduate in
them. So that my neighbour was a vacant
118
MARK PATTISON.
CHAP.
room, and I barely knew that one of the fellows,
by name Newman, was expected soon to occupy
it. In this term I had a visit from our old
family friend, David Horndon, now of Pen-
crebar, Callington, who came and spent a week
with me.
These visits of friends were then, as
they are now, fatal to study. Those who know
what the summer term is to an undergraduate
in Oxford, know that to study to any purpose
during it requires one of three things-trained
habit, determined will, or absorbing interest in
the study itself, of none of which I was pos-
sessed at this time. I cannot trace any advance
or acquisition to the summer of 1833, though I
remember that I luxuriated in the spaciousness
and comfort of my new rooms. I completed,
however, the first stage of the University cur-
riculum, by passing "Responsions" at the end
of June, the earliest date at which I could then
go up for them. I was examined in two plays
of Sophocles, Juvenal, Euclid I. and II., and
Latin writing. The examination was one I
could as well have passed the first day I set foot
in Oxford. The college had thus spent a year
III.
119
MEMOIRS.
and two months upon me in preparing me to
do what I was ready to do before I entered it.
Yet, in the face of a system like this, Dr. Burgon
can assert that "so long as the trustees of
property are faithfully discharging the provi-
sions of a beneficial trust, the State has no right
whatever, legal or moral, to interfere” (Quart.
Rev., Oct. 1883).
Having thus got rid of Responsions I felt
that I had turned a corner, and that I must
seriously think of my degree examination.
Here again, for want of guidance, I was wholly
at sea. The University prescribed eight books,
and you might, by favour of an examiner, get
hold of some old papers-those of 1832 were
printed, but none had been published since-
but no other help was to be had in Oriel. What
I had no power of conceiving was, how the
books were to be studied so as to acquire the
power of answering the questions upon them.
As soon as I found myself settled at Hauxwell,
with a box of books, I laid out for myself a plan
of reading. I have this scheme before me now,
for in July 1833 I began a student's diary on
120
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
the same plan as I have kept up, with intervals,
to the present date (December 1883). This
diary only exceptionally mentions what I do, or
see, or hear, it deals with what I read or write.
It is strictly the student's journal, being, in
this respect, the counterpart of Casaubon's
Ephemerides, of which I had not then heard.
My plan of study, allowing for a tone of
pedantry which cannot be avoided when such
things are written down, is not in itself a bad
one. But looking at it as the road to Oxford
honours, it has the fatal defect of requiring too
much time. It is a scheme of self-education,
rather than of the hand-to-mouth requirements
of an examination. My scheme required years
for its realisation; I may say that I have been
all
my life
life occupied in carrying out and develop-
ing the ideal that I conceived in July 1833,
more than fifty years ago. I may place, in this
Long Vacation of 1833, the first stirrings of any-
thing like intellectual life within me. Hitherto
I had had no mind, properly so called, merely a
boy's intelligence, receptive of anything I read
or heard. I now awoke to the new idea of
III.
I2I
MEMOIRS.
finding the reason of things; I began to suspect
I might have much to unlearn as well as to learn,
and that I must clear my mind of much current
opinion which had lodged there. Not that I
saw this with the clearness, or thought of carry-
ing it out with the thoroughness, of a Descartes;
but the principle of rationalism was born in me,
and once born it was sure to grow, and to
become the master-idea of the whole process of
self-education, on which I was from this time
forward embarked.
** * had preceded me to Hauxwell
and spent the summer with us. As he was
so completely one of the family, and confined
within the same narrow circle of ideas as the
rest of us, his presence made no difference in
our way of life. In one respect he caused me
serious inconvenience. I used to retire every
morning to my own little bedroom, where I
had established my books, and which was the
only corner of the house I could use as a study.
Solitude was necessary to me; I had not—I
have never had-the power of commanding my
attention properly in the presence of another
122
СНАР.
MARK PATTISON.
*
human being, and at this date the power of the
will over the attention was remarkably feeble.
* sociable even in his reading hours,
would come in occasionally with his book, and
at last established himself there to keep me
company. Good-natured creature as he was,
and some years older than me, I did not know
how to tell him that he put me out. Being then
totally destitute of tact, I tried to effect my end
by being morose and disagreeable. I succeeded
at last, and he retired to his own room, which,
as the stranger's bedroom, was a much better
one than mine. I had gained my point, but, as
so often since, with the uncomfortable conscious-
ness of having done so in a wrong way. I
mention this trifling incident because it is typical
of my way of doing things all my life.
A walking tour round the Lakes, in company
with * * * this summer, was of great use
to me in several ways. It enlarged my
knowledge of the country, which had hitherto
been confined pretty well within the radius of
the two packs of hounds by which our district
was hunted. This circle I had traversed in
III.
123
MEMOIRS.
every direction, and knew minutely, but of all
beyond I was girlishly ignorant. The tour also
first awoke in me a passion for scenery and
landscape. It was impossible to have lived in
Wensleydale without some sense of this, but
so far it had been a latent sentiment. Once
awoke, this sensitiveness to the aspects of Nature
became soon a powerful element of the poetic
enthusiasm by which I was by and by to be
possessed. On this occasion, too, were sown
the seeds of that passion for rambling and
exploring which has since carried me over so
many hundred miles on foot, and to which I
owe some of the happiest times of early man-
hood.
The total of reading performed in these
three months makes a poor show, as it is
summed up in the Diary. The blame of this
lay not in the Lake excursion-which was almost
the only absence from work that I allowed my-
self, and only took a fortnight—but in the slow-
ness of my method of working. Neither then
nor at any time since have I been able to read
in an hour the same number of pages that other
124
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
men can.
But at that time my power of atten-
tion was almost none. I fretted much over this
defect, as it seemed serious enough to incapaci-
tate me from study. The greater the effort I
made to attend, the more my brain seemed to
recoil from what I was offering it. Also the
new principle I was enforcing on myself—that
of never allowing myself to be the passive
recipient of any one's thoughts or opinions, but
to think out for myself every statement, and to
stop upon it until I had found if it ranged with
what I had already accepted, necessarily cost
me much time.
The Diary in July had opened with the
following entry :-"The principal objects which
I propose to myself to effect during this vaca-
tion are: 1. To read over a few of my heavier
books, such as Livy, Herodotus, Pindar, for the
final examination. 2. To prepare myself by
reading history, and by practising composition,
for standing for a scholarship at Balliol in
November. 3. To write a Latin dialogue
between Cicero, Pompey, and Cato, "de statu
reipublicæ " for a prize of books proposed by the
III.
125
MEMOIRS.
college. 4. To improve and enlarge my mind
by every means.
I had discovered one of the many things
about Oxford which was hidden from my father,
in spite of the close attention he gave to the
subject, viz. That if you wanted to get honours
you must first get a scholar's gown, and prefer-
ably at Balliol. In 1808, it seems, the position
of a scholar had been quite different from what
it had become in 1833. In my father's time the
"scholars" were not regarded as gentlemen.
They did not associate with the commoners,
but lived among themselves, or with the bible-
clerks. They were nicknamed "charity boys."
In twenty-five years this had quite changed.
The scholar's gown, from being the badge of
an inferior order, had become a coveted distinc-
tion. It became my ambition to get a scholar-
ship anywhere, where I should have a chance of
some help from the tutors. Unfortunately I
In October this year I
was getting over age.
was twenty, which alone excluded me at
Balliol. But, had this not been the case, I had
as much chance of getting a Balliol scholarship
126
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
1
against the public schoolmen as of a commission
in the household brigade. I could only stand
at by-places. I went in for the "Lusby" at
Magdalen Hall, then a new foundation, with the
tempting prize of £50.¹ But I withdrew before
the examination was closed, in deference to my
father's prejudices, who could not understand
my migrating from Oriel to a Hall even for
£50 a year.
The scholarship was obtained by
J. E. Giles, against whom I should not have
had any chance. On two subsequent occasions
I was a candidate at Worcester, where there
were scholarships limited to the sons of clergy-
men. I suppose I did very badly, producing
little in three hours; on the second occasion the
scholarships were carried off by a nimble Irish-
man, J. D. Collis, who afterwards became head-
master of Bromsgrove School, and by a schoolboy
of the name of Landon, not in any way dis-
tinguished. These attempts and failures were
1 The MS. gives £100, but this appears to be an error of
the writer's memory. The Lusby scholarships, three in
number, were and are of the value of £50 each, and tenable
for three years.—ED.
III.
127
MEMOIRS.
at a later date. I return to the Long Vacation
of 1833, which the Diary thus speaks of in retro-
spect:-"That time, which in prospect appeared
infinite, is now past, 'Thrown down the gulf of
time; as far from thee As it had ne'er been thine'
(Young's Night Thoughts, p. 91, ed. 1853), and
how miserably ill have I used it; yet it was better
employed than any time before. I might have
done three times as much with ease. Such
uninterrupted quiet, and regular habits as we had
at home, are advantages which I have not got
here (in Oxford). And when I look forward
and see how fast I am getting on towards my
examination, and how little I have done to pre-
pare for it, I cannot help despairing of myself."
I had read the first decade of Livy, Horace's
Satires, two books of Herodotus, Pindar's
Olympics, and two plays of Aristophanes.
My chief effort had been directed upon Cicero,
whom I had worked backwards and forwards
solely for style, learning passages by heart,
translating and re-translating, primarily with a
view to composing a dialogue for a prize of
books offered by the college, but also with a
128
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
view to the general improvement of my Latin
style, a point held of much more importance in
those days than it now is. I took great pains
with this dialogue, writing and re-writing it, and
thus laid the foundation of a Latin style, which
in time attained no little ease and elegance.
This accomplishment is certainly in itself of little
use, but it adds greatly to the charm of reading
classical Latin, which has ever been one of my
greatest delights to be got from books.
Being now in the Michaelmas term of 1833
I felt that it was urgent that I should take up
seriously the philosophical part of the work for
the schools. I was now twenty, and I cannot
carry back the dawn of intellect in me beyond
this Long Vacation. I do not think my curiosity
to know what philosophy was about was suffi-
ciently strong to have carried me through much
hard reading at that time; the urgency of the
examination was here of great use in setting me
and keeping me at work. I began at the begin-
ning, and read Hinds' Logic, Whately's Logic,
Reid's Enquiry into the Human Mind on the
Principles of Common Sense. But the book
III.
129
MEMOIRS.
which was of most use to me on these subjects
was Stewart's Elements. I found an odd volume
of this in my father's study at Hauxwell. It
attracted me; I read and re-read it with increas-
ing satisfaction. To Dugald Stewart, an author
now obsolete, I owe the first infusion of a taste
for philosophical inquiry. He also grounded
me in the principle of strictly applying the
Baconian induction in psychology, a principle
which has saved me from being led away by
the gratuitous hypotheses and a priori construc-
tions of Kant and the other German schools.
Another book read this term seized upon my
interest in an exceptional way, this was Gibbon's
Autobiography. The minute history of a self-
education, conducted on so superb a scale, was
just what I wanted. I had long before got hold
of a few extracts from this, which had found
their way into Lord Sheffield's Memoir of the
author, prefixed to an edition of the Decline
and Fall which we had at home. Those ex-
tracts had fixed themselves in my memory. I
now procured the whole work and devoured it,
reading it again and again till I could repeat
K
130
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
whole paragraphs. Gibbon, in fact, supplied
the place of a college tutor; he not only found
me advice, but secretly inspired me with the
enthusiasm to follow it.
The Diary of studies is continued through
this term, and so little now did college lectures
count for, in the scheme of my day, that the
Diary makes no mention of them. I think it
was in this term I was first put into Aristotle's
Rhetoric; but such a lecture!-the tutor incap-
able of explaining any difficulty, and barely able
to translate the Greek, even with the aid of a
crib. As the previous Michaelmas had been
my first introduction to Pope, so this Michael-
mas I find myself dwelling upon Milton's Comus
and minor poems with evident gusto. Many
years before, my father had read aloud-he read
magnificently—the whole of Paradise Lost,
book by book, in the winter evenings. It failed
in affecting me, so that I must infer, as I have
already noted, that at fifteen I was less advanced
than Miss Martineau at seven, at which age she
accidentally got hold of Paradise Lost, and
"my mental destiny was fixed for the next
III.
131
MEMOIRS.
seven years" (Mart. Autob., i. 42). I must not
omit to mention that the prize for the Ciceronian
dialogue was awarded to me. So my college
had for once been of use to me in stimulating
me to take pains about Latin composition, and
this at a very cheap rate, as the prize was only
£5 in books. They were, however, ashamed
themselves of the meanness of the prize, and
allowed me to get books at Parker's in excess
of that value. What I thought myself of my
performance the Diary thus records: "Its
faults are a vapid declamatory style, without
solidity or originality in the matter; it might
have been compressed into much less room
without loss to the argument. There is not
enough of the history of the times introduced;
it is confined to general observations.'
})
—
The Christmas vacation 1833-34, spent again
at Hauxwell, is noted in the Diary as very un-
satisfactory, passed either in hunting or in idle-
ness. However, I made an elaborate analysis.
of Whately's Rhetoric, another obsolete book,
which was of real assistance to me. I was con-
scious of great difficulty in composing in English,
1
132
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
I
and I laboured hard to surmount it. James
Mill's article "Education," in the Encyclopædia
Britannica, fell in my way during this vacation,
and was read by me with profound interest.
may mention also Lardner's "Hydrostatics," a
science which exercised, I know not why, a
specific attraction over me at all times. I was
also incessantly reading Cicero's Orations to
keep up my Latin style. There were other
things, but I mention only those books which I
consider to have been factors in my education.
The next Lent term is briefly entered in the
Diary as being the idlest term I had yet spent
in Oxford. I was unable, amid all the social
distractions to which a youth lodged in college
rooms is liable, to keep myself steady to work.
Perhaps I was weaker than others, but the chief
cause was that my mind was not really engaged
in what I was trying to learn.
Norris¹ says,
However strong and universal is the desire of
knowledge, men are generally more in love with
the fame and reputation of it than with the thing
1 Norris (John), Reflections upon the Conduct of Human
Life, etc., p. 9, 2d ed. London, 1691.-Ed.
III.
133
MEMOIRS.
itself." I had strongly the desire of knowledge,
but not at all the desire of that particular know-
ledge which the examination test prescribes.
I read much, but did not concentrate myself
upon the legal curriculum, flitting about among
any books that took my fancy, e.g. I was capti-
vated by the Greek of Lysias and Taylor's
masterly notes upon him, reading many of his
speeches, and some of those of Demosthenes-
things which didn't pay for the examination, as
they were not among the books which I was to
take up.
I was this term put into a lecture
with Denison on Aristotle's Politics. As the
first step in reading the Politics is to be able to
translate the Greek, and Denison could do this
tolerably, this was the first college lecture I had
been in which was of some slight use to me.
The Easter vacation of 1834 I remained in
college, only going down to Cheltenham for a
week's visit to my uncle Seward. Outside the
coach were Philpotts and Crawley; we sat next
each other, but, not being in the same set, never
spoke a word to each other the whole way.
Philpotts had a lighted cigar in his mouth when
134
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
he got upon the coach, and kept one there till
we got off it at the "Plough "—about five hours
-lighting a fresh one from the stump of the one
he had finished.
The summer term of 1834 was frittered away
over an increasing variety of objects. We set
up a book-club among ourselves, and I felt so
painfully my want of general information that
I gave much time to new books-Bulwer's
England and the English, Inglis' Spain, Silvio
Pellico, and others. All this only aggravated
the infirmity of mental dissipation against which
I was desirous of contending. In this term I
also read for the first time Butler's Analogy.
This book had been recently placed upon the
list of books to be taken up for the examination,
on the suggestion of Dr. Hampden, it was said.
This was then considered a great improvement,
as breaking in upon the monopoly possessed by
Aristotle. I worked at this book closely and
minutely, but had not yet intellect enough to
apprehend its general bearing, or to appreciate
the solid structure of logical argument in which
it surpasses any other book that I know in the
III.
MEMOIRS.
135
English language. But it is not a book adapted
for an educational instrument, as it diverts the
mind from the great outlines of scientific and
philosophical thought, and fastens it upon petty
considerations, being, in this respect, the con-
verse of Bacon's Novum Organum. Twenty
years later a liberal board of examiners, myself
among them, succeeded in removing Butler
from the list of books to be taken up. To the
time I myself devoted to the book in 1834 I
may trace the interest I afterwards took in
eighteenth century speculation, witness my con-
tribution to Essays and Reviews and my edition
of Pope's Essay on Man.
CHAPTER IV.
THE 23d June I went down to Hauxwell again
for the Long Vacation. Much the same account
may be given of this vacation as of that of
1833.
There was more industry, more work
done, but as mistakenly laid out. I gave much
time to mental philosophy, read Dugald Stewart
and Lant Carpenter over again. Of my classi-
cal texts only small portions of Herodotus,
Thucydides, and Livy, some Pindar and the
Georgics. I wasted time over outlying classics,
which did not form part of the degree list. I
read with perseverance and regularity-going
up to my room for certain portions of each day
-but slowly and languidly; my mind did not
seem to be awake. It was becoming clearer
to me that I could not hope to get my neces-
sary books ready within the time, at the pace I
CHAP. IV.
137
MEMOIRS.
was then getting over the ground. Especially
damaging to my prospects was the neglect of
Aristotle and of logic. I find no mention in the
Diary of the Ethics, which, being at that time
the principal stock in trade of the examiners, I
ought to have had in hand every day. I knew
the rational logic of Whately and Hinds, but I
had never touched the catch questions in figure
logic, familiarity with which was then indis-
pensable. As far as general improvement went
the Diary becoming richer and fuller is evidence
that this vacation had been more profitable than
either of the two former, and this notwithstand-
ing some serious interruptions and calls upon
my time.
*
"Oxford, 19th October.
*
*
The conclusion
is, and must
of a Long Vacation
always be with me, a very melancholy time.
The reflection upon the leisure, tranquillity,
and comfort, which I have enjoyed for at
least three months out of the four of which
the vacation has consisted, and the circum-
stance that these are advantages I may never
have again, lead me sorrowfully to consider
138
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
how they have been used. It is nothing
to say that I have not profited by them in
their utmost extent; but how much better
might I not easily have used them! I do not
wish to conceal from myself any improvement
I may have made; I think I may say I feel
it more sensibly than after any former period
of equal length, but I might, with the same
trouble, have made much more."
I have no record of the Michaelmas term
* **
1834.
I went down to York in the
Christmas vacation, and it was settled that I
should spend my vacation in York. * * * I
can find no diary for either Lent or Easter
term 1835. Nor can I remember in what term
I first put on a coach. The other reading
men in college, whom I have named, did so,
and it was necessary at that time for any
one who aspired to high honours. In this
step I made two mistakes. First, I took
a coach, because I had no other help, and
because my father urged it, but before I was
ready for one. Before you went to a coach
you ought to have gone over thoroughly the
IV.
139
MEMOIRS.
elementary ground in philosophy-especially
to have mastered the text of the Ethics-and
rhetoric. I acted here in the stupidity of
ignorance, as I mostly did, and when I came
to my
coach found that I could not translate the
Ethics. A coach is a finisher and not an ele-
mentary teacher; I ought to have been ready
to take him my difficulties, well prepared for his
solutions.
The other error I committed was in the
choice of my coach. I went to C. P. Eden, a
Fellow of my own college, and of high reputa-
tion for ability and for knowledge of his books.
What I really wanted was one of those routine
professionals, who just supply your memory
with the received solutions of the patent diffi-
culties of philosophy, as current in the schools
at the time, and who would rapidly catechise
you backwards and forwards in the facts you
professed to know. Such were, at that time,
Richard Michell, Hayward Cox, and Henry
Wall. Instead of that, I found in Eden a man
who wanted to reconstruct my education funda-
mentally, from the bottom upwards; who was
140
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
always ready to discuss with me any theological
philosophical problem, and sought to convert
me to his own speculative views. These were
not very profound in him, but they were really
handled, and interested me much. We had
heavy controversies over Butler's doctrine of
conscience, which my Dugald Stewart training
would by no means allow me to accept.
Thus
we beat about the bush hour after hour; I
went to him six days in the week for a fee of
£17 10s., nearly as much as the college tuition
fee, £21, which I was also paying and getting
nothing in return. All this might have been
very profitable towards my general education;
perhaps was so. But as the terms went on, I
stuck to Eden for, I think, three terms, it
was a frightful waste of time, when I expected
to be going up for examination in November
1835. I think, too, anything Eden might have
contributed to my general building up was
counterbalanced by his method, which confirmed
me in my slow and dawdling mental habits. I
refused to make a single step upon trust; I
must think every point out for myself, and
IV.
141
MEMOIRS.
required an alarming amount of time in order
to do this. The habit that it would have been
of most use to me to form at this time, is that
exquisitely described by Rousseau in the follow-
ing passage:"Je m'aperçus bientôt que tous
ces auteurs étaient entre eux en contradiction
presque perpétuelle, et je formai le chimérique
projet de les accorder, qui me fatigua beaucoup,
et me fit perdre bien du temps. Je me brouil-
lais la tête, et je n'avançais point. Enfin, renon-
çant encore à cette méthode, j'en pris une infini-
ment meilleure, et à laquelle j'attribue tout le
progrès que je puis avoir fait, malgré mon défaut
de capacité: car il est certain, que j'en eus tou-
jours fort peu pour l'étude.
En lisant chaque
auteur, je me fis une loi d'adopter et suivre
toutes ses idées sans y mêler les miennes, ni
celles d'un autre, et sans jamais disputer avec
lui. Je me dis: Commençons par me faire un
magasin d'idées, vraies ou fausses mais nettes,
en attendant que ma tête en soit assez fournie
pour pouvoir les comparer et choisir. . . . Au
bout de quelques années passées à ne penser
exactement que d'après autrui,
je me suis
}
142
СНАР.
MARK PATTISON.
trouvé un assez grands fonds d'acquis pour me
suffire à moi même" (Confessions, liv. vi. p.
350).
In the summer term I changed from Eden
to Hyman of Wadham-from a science coach
to a scholarship coach; this was partly with a
view to my standing at Worcester. Hyman did
me real good, though I only went to him altern-
ate days-10 worth-reading Aristophanes
with me, correcting Latin prose and verse, but,
above all, offering me in his talk a type of high
scholarship which I had never been in contact
with before. It was Hyman who gave me a
taste for the works and commentaries of the
generation of scholars from Bentley down to
Porson, which I have retained to the present
day.
I may now turn back a little, as this was my
last term in college rooms, to say something of
the associates with whom I had come to live.
The acquaintances I made in my freshman's
term-acquaintances due to accident, not choice
-early disappeared from the scene. I never
can forget my first wine-party. A freshman
IV.
143
MEMOIRS.
was not expected to give parties; he was enter-
tained. But when I returned to college after
the Long of 1832 I had to make a beginning.
I was well supplied by my father with £20
worth of Smurthwaite's port and sherry—other
wines were not in fashion-and I am sure that
my port and sherry were as good as any in the
college, though I should not have known it if
they had not been. I had not been brought up
upon wine; and my father had great difficulty
in coaxing me downstairs to help him and a
neighbour with a bottle of port. However, it
belonged to the dignity of a commoner of Oriel
to invite his friends to drink wine with him. I
accordingly asked some of those who had asked
me in the summer. I made as good a selection
as I could, with a view to the suitability of the
guests to each other. A handsome dessert was
ordered from Sadler's; the port and sherry
decanted. The guests were formally received
by me in a cold sweat, so nervous that the few
ideas I had fled, and left my brain a blank. I
was at all times deficient in that mental activity
and quickness of social sympathy to which
144
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
James Burn, the beggar-boy, in his curious
Autobiography, ascribes his success in life, in
spite of grave defects in regard of the solid
parts of character. Oh, the icy coldness, the
dreary Egyptian blankness of that "wine"; the
guests slipped away one by one under pretext
of engagements, and I was left alone with an
almost untouched dessert, to be carried off as
perquisite by the college scout. It was long
before I summoned courage to give a repetition
of the entertainment. I thought I was ostra-
cised, black-balled, expelled from society; I
reflected hopelessly on the causes of the break-
down, ascribing it to every cause except the
simple one-clownishness and want of the usage
du monde.
As my first set of acquaintances faded away
they had to be replaced by new ones, I did
not want, in course of time, for number; one
made this way, another that. Standing had
probably more to do with making friends than
choice. But in 1835 I certainly knew all the
men best worth knowing in college. It would
be useless to enumerate a string of names un-
IV.
145
MEMOIRS.
known to fame. The list would have comprised
the names of all who were reading for honours
-I think four, besides myself, out of more than
sixty. This fact alone speaks volumes as to
the state of Oriel. Of the four men reading for
honours we looked up to Edward Woollcombe
as facile princeps. But, as fellow and tutor of
Balliol afterwards, he turned out a total failure,
giving another disproof of undergraduate esti-
mate. J. S. Utterton obtained a first class,
and became afterwards suffragan bishop of
Guildford; a wholly prosaic and practical mind,
fettered by a narrow type of evangelicalism.
Hatsell, though weak in character, had more
good stuff in him. He obtained a second class,
and immediately after died by his own hand.
Among these, my most intimate friends were
William Lonsdale, since a chancery - barrister,
and James Mozley, afterwards Regius Professor
of Divinity. Several out-college men mixed
with us on intimate terms, such as Arthur
Kensington, who had gone from Oriel to a
scholarship at Trinity. All these were men
above the average in ability. Woollcombe,
L
146
CHAP,
MARK PATTISON.
Utterton, Kensington, obtained the highest
honours, yet our interests were incredibly
narrow; we knew nothing of what was going
on in the world of science, literature, and art.
Arthur Kensington, who gained two first
classes, a Latin poem, and the Eldon scholarship,
seemed to have retained the mind of a boy of
fifteen. Lonsdale, I think, was the best in-
formed of us all, spending his time in the Union
reading reviews, but he got the best mathe-
matical first of his year. I remember his rush-
ing to my room in the dusk of a December
afternoon, when the mathematical class list had
just been put out, and throwing his cap on the
table, with the words "myself and Highton "1
there were only two in the first class that time.
I remember the thrill of pleasure I felt-pure
pleasure, derived wholly from a friend's success.
How fleeting are college friendships! I think
in forty-five years I have seen Lonsdale three
66
1 This is an error, for in Michaelmas term 1837 there were
only two mathematical firsts; these were Childe, George F.,
Ch. Ch.," and "Lonsdale, William, Oriel." "Highton, Henry,
Queen's," appears in the second class.—ED.
IV.
147
MEMOIRS.
times since he left Oxford, yet he has been in
London all that time.
Yet with all these, and with many more I
cannot now specify, I felt something wanting.
I had not yet met with a single man who realised
the idea I had formed of a university student.
My secret aspirations went for an intellectual
sympathy, for a cultivated literary circle, and I
could not find my way to either. I wanted a
set into the bosom of which I could pour my
crude notions about poetry, about morals, about
all that was working in one's own inner con-
sciousness, and I had found not only no set,
but not even a responsive individual. Were
there no sets in all Oxford at that day such as
Leonard Montefiore relates his falling into at
his very first luncheon party?
"I think of the first luncheon party to which
I was asked in Oxford. H. who gave it was
himself a freshman, and all of us who were there
were freshmen. He had ingenuously told every
one much of the rest, and every one was deter-
mined to talk his best. And talk we did,
with terrible earnestness.
How had the
148
CHAP. IV.
MARK PATTISON.
ancients described landscape? were Shake-
speare's sonnets personal or imaginary? what
should children be taught earliest? should
women be allowed to vote? and twenty other
subjects, till my head ached, and lo! we had sat
from one till five talking always" (Remains of
L. A. M., p. 308).
I remember one coach drive from Sheffield
to Birmingham; I was outside in the front
seat, where there were two men, one a Queen's
undergraduate, the other a Birmingham (I think)
solicitor. They conversed the whole way over
the things which I was yearning to learn and
to know; things which are now common pro-
perty, through the Athenæum, the Academy,
and a hundred channels, but which then could
only be picked up in a well-informed London
circle. I tried once or twice to put in my oar,
but it was a failure; I was too far below their
level of knowledge; I relapsed into enchanted
listening. I thought to myself, "there exists
then such a world, but I am shut out of it, not
by the accidents of college but by my own un-
fitness to enter."
CHAPTER V.
THE diary of studies recommences in July 1835,
and from that date to April 1836 I know what
I was reading every day. As I began the Long
in the belief that I was going in for my degree
in November, I can only look with amazement
at the fatuity of my arrangements and the snail-
like progress with which I seemed to be satis-
fied. In those days we were expected to know
something of the contents of the Old Testament,
and I spent an hour every day in reading
through the Prophets, great and small, with the
notes in Mant's Bible. Of course a cheap
manual of divinity would have given me all I
wanted in a nutshell, but I was incapable of
getting up from manuals-I could not remem-
ber them. Then, instead of vigorously attacking
the Rhetoric, Ethics, and Politics, and taking up
150
СНАР.
MARK PATTISON.
into the memory a general résumé of what I
knew already of these books, I dribbled away
at bits of them, trying to reconcile them with
my Scotch philosophy, and so advancing at the
rate of some half-dozen pages of Aristotle per
day. It was soon evident that at this pace I
could never get through the three science books,
and I threw the Rhetoric overboard. This was
the first, and in those days very serious, damage
to the value of the ship's cargo. The Politics
are, in themselves, of as great or greater weight
than the Rhetoric; but in those days the ex-
aminers knew the Rhetoric and did not know
the Politics. Consequently the questions set
on the Politics were less well-chosen, and less
weight attached to your answer. I again frit-
tered away time over outlying books-Lysias,
Cicero de Legibus, Terence, and other feather-
weights, which counted for nothing in the
schools, but with which I had the whim to load
my list.
Then there was the early history of Rome.
I was taking up two decades of Livy, and set
to work to read over the text of both. This,
V.
MEMOIRS.
151
within a few months of the examination, was,
Eden said, like trying to gallop over a ploughed
field in a wet season. Then the text of Livy
alone did not quite fit one out for answering
their questions on the early history of Rome.
One was expected at that time to know some-
thing of Niebuhr's views; I set out to discover
these for myself, not in an epitome, as I ought
to have done there were such things—but by
reading for myself the two volumes of Thirl-
wall's translation. A ploughed field was nothing
to this. It was a quagmire, a Serbonic gulf,
in which I was swallowed up.
When I got into Thucydides for the final
review, I find that I did not progress at a
quicker rate than some twenty or thirty chapters
a day. There must have been idleness to boot,
but it is difficult to draw the line between idle-
ness and dawdling over work. I dawdled from
a mixture of mental infirmity, bad habit, and
the necessity of thoroughness if I was to under-
stand and not merely remember. Whereas the
whole of this vacation ought to have been
devoted to rapid surveys of what I already
152
СНАР.
MARK PATTISON.
1
knew, here I was, trying to acquire new know-
ledge in as leisurely a way as I had done when
I was three
years off my degree.
By September 1835 it became too evident
that I could not, with any hope, go in for
honours in November. I was under no com-
pulsion to do so; November was the earliest
time at which I could offer myself, and few
went in as early as they could. I easily got
leave from college to postpone till Easter 1836;
my father agreeing on condition that I remained
over the Michaelmas term at Hauxwell, where
I could live free of expense.
I don't think I did much good towards my
degree in the Michaelmas term and the Christ-
mas vacation which followed it. I repeated and
perpetuated all the faults of the summer; re-read
Sophocles, but at the lazy rate of 150 lines a
day, instead of going over the difficult places
only, which might have been done in a week.
I had a handsome black mare on which I rode
out most days, and occasionally went hunting.
The unbroken leisure and solitude, and the
healthy life, formed together the period most
V.
153
MEMOIRS.
favourable to study that I have ever enjoyed.
Yet I don't seem to have made anything of it.
At the end of the Diary the list of books read
amounts to five Greek plays and some fifty-six
books, but many of these are very slight things.
Among the books of recreation I see Johnson's
Lives of the Poets. This I took in slowly, page
by page, as if by an instinct that here was a
congenial subject to which, when free, I would
return, and where I would set up my habitation.
I returned to Oxford in February 1836. I
had still four months before the ordeal, which
now began to press seriously. I do not know
if these four months would have sufficed to
retrieve the lost ground, even if I had had
conduct enough to lay them out judiciously—
if, e.g., I had gone at once to Wall and told
him that he must get me a first class in June.
But I did not lay them out judiciously; I went
on on the old plan, pottering over Aristotle
in the light of my own ideas, and sauntering
through Sophocles at the same snail's pace. I
am sure it was not indifference as to what class
I got; there were urgent motives enough—such
154
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
as vanity, and the desire to please my father-
but none was so urgent as my desire to settle
in Oxford, and my sense that without a first
my chances of a fellowship were small. Though
I had studied the examination papers I had still
but a vague idea how far the stock I was taking
into the schools would meet their requirements.
When it came within a fortnight of the day I
was seized with a panic, lost all idea of a first,
and began to fear I should not save my second.
I rushed off to Wall and besought him to cram
me for the fortnight; he was quite full, and told
me it was wasting money; when I persisted he
agreed, if I would come to him at eight o'clock
in the morning, to give me twelve doses of
cram. The first thing he did was to examine
me over the Ethics, and to shake his head at
the result; the next, to give me six questions of
moral philosophy to answer on paper. After
looking at the answers he said, "Yours is simply
a case of neglect; had you come to me six
months ago you might have made your first
certain; could you not put off to November ?”
I could easily have done so; but just about
V.
155
MEMOIRS.
this time I received a disagreeable epistle from
my father, which seemed to impute it to me as
a serious fault that I had not taken my degree
at the earliest time I could. I rushed into the
schools and just saved my second-only just, I
believe, for on the logic day, which, I think,
was the first day, my head refused to work, and
I must have sent in an almost blank paper. I
suppose I was saved by my translations and
Latin composition.
When the class list came
out I was thankful that matters were no worse,
though I saw I must give up my darling dream
of getting a fellowship and living a life of study
in a college. The same reckless despair drove
me to engage myself to a Long Vacation tutor-
ship-the first that offered-of which the con-
ditions were very inferior, but which I thought
good enough for me, now that I was disgraced
by a second.
I was to go down to my friends for a fort-
night, before entering on Mr. Snow's tutorship,
in Dorsetshire. Passing through London on
my way I saw advertised, "Steam to Hull for
5s.," and immediately went on board; 5s. were
156
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
as much as a wretched second class ought to
pay for his fare to Yorkshire. There were
more than one hundred people on board a crazy
Humber boat; berths were out of the question,
or even room to lie; you had to sit upon deck.
Off the coast of Lincolnshire there came on a
terrific storm; every creature sick *** what
could a steward and his boy do among over a
hundred passengers? One poor girl went off her
head in the midst of all. They got a mattress on
deck, and the men took it in turns to hold her
down. Her yells and screams audible between
the claps of thunder, the scene illuminated by
the forked lightning, which we seemed to be
entering, made the situation a more frightful
one than I can ever remember to have been in.
When I got to Hauxwell I was entirely dis-
ordered by the strain against sickness, following
upon the hard work of the past two months.
My father took the generous line of consoling
me for my class, with which, he said, he was
quite content; tried to persuade me it was not
so bad after all, and that it did not make my
attaining a fellowship impossible. He pointed
V.
157
MEMOIRS.
out that Oriel, in particular, was noted for cor-
recting the inequalities of the class list, and
enumerated the second and third classes who
were or had been Fellows there. He gradually
soothed my irritation, persuaded me to repudi-
ate the engagement with Snow, and to spend
the summer at Hauxwell in reading for a fellow-
ship. In April 1838, a long way off, there were
to be two vacancies at Oriel, but there might
be chances in other colleges earlier.
I was
nothing loth; repudiated Snow on the score of
ill-health. Hauxwell was very dear to me then
with its freedoms and its solitude; the retire-
ment was especially welcome after the rush and
anxiety of the summer term. I was also very
fond of my sisters, and one of them—the second,
Eleanor,-now Mrs. Mann-gave promise of
soon being able to share my thoughts or
studies.
I had always intended, had I got a first, to
become a candidate at Oriel; I had flattered
myself that, from the turn of my mind towards
moral speculation, my chances would be better
in the fellowship than they would be in the
158
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
schools. Oriel did not exact verse composition,
or ask questions of philology, in both which I
was weak; they employed only the two simple
tests of scholarship-translation into Latin and
translation from Latin and Greek. Their style
of philosophical question and essay was a
peculiar one, and I had made a special study of
it already. Instead of the eclectic, incoherent
ten questions, ranging over the surface of
philosophy, and papers by which knowledge
rather than original power is tested, their paper
had a uniform colour, as if the work of a single
examiner. It proposed the simple but ever-
lasting problems of morals and logic in such a
way that a candidate, who had thought more
than he had read, was inevitably impelled to
pour out his very self upon it. Nothing could
have been more in harmony with my habits of
thought than the Oriel question paper, nor any
line of study more congenial to me than that
peculiar form of moral and logical science which
was encouraged by the college. So I sat down
deliberately at Hauxwell to read for a fellow-
ship, and in particular for the Oriel. Not that
V.
159
MEMOIRS.
much reading was demanded; a very few books,
well-selected and meditated upon, were, I knew,
the best preparation. There was a story current
that H. H. Vaughan, elected in 1835 (a very
good election), had read nothing all the Long
before he stood except Bacon's Advancement of
Learning, while Shepheard, elected in 1836 (a
very bad election), told me that he had been
greatly indebted to the writings of Isaac Taylor.
These books I looked at with some curiosity,
but I relied much more upon the method which
I had invented for myself.
At the end of the Long I went back to
Oxford to take my B.A.; as the pursuit of
fellowships was but a precarious one it was
necessary to choose a profession. My father
rather seemed to want me to go to the bar, for
which I had myself a great aversion; I acqui-
esced, however, on the understanding that I
was to remain for a year in Oxford and try to
get on the foundation of some college. In
December there were two fellowships at Uni-
versity; one of them confined to Yorkshire.
But it was quite understood that W. F. Donkin
160
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
was to have one of them; it would have been a
scandal if he had not, for no one more fitted by
science and accomplishments to be a fellow of
a college existed at that time in the University.
So there was really only one fellowship to be
competed for. For this I went in; F. W.
Faber, one of those who followed Newman to
Rome and became a Father of the Oratory,
was elected. I don't suppose that my per-
formances in the examination influenced the
election in any way. Faber belonged to the
college, in which he was a great favourite, was
a dashing talker, though like myself only a
second class. There could have been no reason
why they should have passed over their own
man in order to take me. In April 1837 I had
a fall occasioning a severe sprain, which confined
me to the sofa for many weeks, and had well-
nigh cost me my leg, from the mismanagement
of an ignorant apothecary. Fortunately my
health remained good, and I got through a
considerable amount of reading, especially on
the history of the Oriental nations.
I began
Gibbon, but only got to the end of the first
V.
161
MEMOIRS.
volume.
went down to Hauxwell, where I laid out for
myself one of those ambitious schemes of read-
ing which many people have formed, and hardly
any one, except Gibbon, carried out.
I now
first found out Dugald Stewart's Preliminary
Dissertation, and was enchanted with it, read,
re-read, and abstracted it. The Diary has now
put on a new tone.
Instead of the old com-
plaints of inattention, mental sluggishness, and
sauntering over books without reading them,
I am now thoroughly interested in what I am
doing. I conceive this summer's study to have
been one of the most useful periods of my youth.
In November 1837 I returned to Oxford.
no longer occupied the elegant and comfortable
apartment in the old house opposite Merton
College in which Blanco White had lived, but
very tiny rooms at the back of Oriel at fourteen
shillings a week. This, I thought, was enough
for a man to pay who had only got a second;
besides that I wished to save my father, who
was maintaining me in Oxford while I was
doing nothing," as they say.
As soon as fit to travel by coach I
66
M
I
162
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
This winter I worked pretty hard. I wrote
for the Latin essay, which was got by William
Dickinson, scholar of Trinity, but my chief
efforts were directed towards preparation for
the supreme ordeal of the Oriel Fellowship
which came on in April, 1838. The conduct
of their examination was unusual. Instead of
two papers a day, three hours morning, and
three afternoon, you went in at ten, and you
might stay till dusk, but no lights were allowed.
Lunch was supplied at one o'clock, and when
the second paper was brought you, the first
was not taken away, so that you might have
seven hours to elaborate your English essay
in. This was much in favour of my slow and
hesitating method of writing. The examination
was very simple. English essay; Latin essay;
Latin composition; philosophical
philosophical questions ;
translation from Greek and Latin. What
minimised my chances was that there were two
Oriel men in besides myself, both of them first-
class men; and I thought it hardly possible but
that one of the two would be taken. But it
was not so. The successful candidates were
V.
163
MEMOIRS.
Church of Wadham, now Dean of St. Paul's,
and James Cowles Prichard of Trinity, son of
Dr. Prichard of Bristol. I presume that Church
was Newman's candidate, though so accom-
plished a scholar as the Dean need not have
required any party push. I have always
looked upon Church as the type of the Oriel
fellow; Richard Michell said, at the time of the
election: "There was such a moral beauty
about Church, that they could not help taking
him."
I conjecture that the anti-Newman party had
endeavoured to elect one of the two Oriel first
classes, most probably Woollcombe, and that
Newman reasonably enough resisting Wooll-
combe, parties had compromised upon Prichard,
a very clever scholar of the superficial sort. I
cannot say that I was disappointed myself, as
the odds had lain so heavy against me. Yet
I felt sure, from what I knew of some of the
others, that my philosophical work was of a
style and weight which must have produced an
impression. But I was scarcely prepared to
receive the message which Newman sent me
164
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
on the day of the election that there were some
who thought "that I had done the best."
It will appear strange that I could have
satisfied Newman on the questions of morals
and logic when I have spoken of myself as
having been reared on the strict lines of the
inductive philosophy, and being a disciple of
Bacon, Locke, and Dugald Stewart. But before
this, I had either been seduced from my prin-
ciples, or from want of clear-headedness, had
endeavoured to accommodate them to ideas with
which they really could not amalgamate. Early
in 1837 I had fallen under the influence of
Coleridge. I got all of his books that I could;
they had not then been reprinted, and were
difficult to procure. The Aids to Reflection
especially dominated me. The vague mysti-
cism in which he loves to veil himself had a
peculiar charm for me. Led on by Coleridge
I had read Augustus Schlegel, and I certainly
had fallen away from Baconian principles, and
passed under the first influences of a realistic
philosophy. It so happened that I could not
have handled the Oriel philosophy paper in a
V.
165
MEMOIRS.
way to meet the views of the examiners, but
for this strong infusion of Coleridgian meta-
physics.
I have elsewhere (Mind, vol. i.) sketched
the fortunes of philosophy in the present century
in Oxford. In the present contribution to
University history I may draw attention to a
fact which did not fall within the lines of my
former survey. Ever since 1830, at least, there
has been among us an ebb and flow; one while
of nominalistic, another while of a priori logic.
Logic appears to a superficial observer to be
merely used in the Oxford schools as material
upon which questions may be framed.
In spite
of this appearance there is always a prevailing
or accepted logic asserting itself as true over
the opposite system, which it denounces as false.
But what is the curious part of the history is,
that these oscillations coincide with the strength
for the time being of the clerical party. In the
'30's, when the revolutionary enthusiasm rose
to a height, which for a few years enabled the
Government to defy the Church, to suppress her
bishoprics, and plunder the cathedrals-in these
166
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
years Whately's Logic, or some form of nomi-
nalism, predominated in the schools. When
Tractarianism had made the clergy aware of
their own strength, and high sacerdotal doc-
trines were openly proclaimed, we fell off from
Whately, and vague, indefinite, realistic views
under the influence of Coleridge and Sir
William Hamilton slowly occupied the schools.
They established themselves there in a more
explicit form when Mansel, a Tory leader and
arch-jobber, became the logical legislator of the
school, and first introduced Kant into Oxford.
But the High Church party received in New-
man's secession a blow which for the moment
seemed fatal to their cause. Coincident with
this, was the appearance of Mill's great work,
and Oxford repudiated at once sacerdotal prin-
ciples and Kantian logic. There was, in the
language of the clerical platform, an outbreak
of infidelity. For more than a quarter of this
century Mill and nominalistic views reigned in
the schools. But gradually the clerical party
rallied their forces, and since the Franco-German
war have been advancing upon us with rapid
V.
MEMOIRS.
167
strides. This fresh invasion of sacerdotalism
has been accompanied by a renewed attempt
to accredit an a priori logic, though in a less
cumbrous form than the Kantian, bristling as
that does with postulates and assumptions-ideas
of the reason, ideas of the understanding, the
two Anschauungsformen, and all the other
Begriffsdichtungen with which the Kantian
loves to decorate his imaginative chamber.
What is curious is that this new a priori meta-
physic, whoever gave it shape in Germany, was
imported into Oxford by a staunch Liberal, the
late Professor Green. This anomaly can only
be accounted for by a certain puzzle-headedness
on the part of the Professor, who was removed
from the scene before he had time to see how
eagerly the Tories began to carry off his honey
to their hive.
IT
CHAPTER VI.
It may be thought that Newman had tried to
carry me as a man fit for his ecclesiastical pur-
poses. This was not at all so; and I think I
have now come to the point where I ought to
relate how and when my connection with New-
man grew up, and became the influencing fact
of several years of my life.
I have said that my third set of rooms was
exactly opposite Newman's. He returned from
the continent in the summer of 1833; but this
contiguity had no consequences. Newman,
however, became dean about 1834, and the
business of the dean was to look over the
weekly themes. Whereas former deans had
contented themselves with writing their initials
in lead-pencil at the bottom of your (unread)
essay, with the words good, bad, or indifferent,
CHAP. VI.
169
MEMOIRS.
Newman took this office au sérieux, sent for
you, made you aware where you had gone off
the point into sophistry, or where you had left
out the main feature of your case.
Once my
English essay was selected by him as the best
of the week for being read out in hall. But
before it could be read, it had to undergo
various alterations, which he pointed out. I
patched at it as well as I could, but it is not
easy to run a theme in another man's groove
without rewriting. I was probably too lazy
to rewrite, and took and read it before the
assembled college with such botches as I could
make of it. Denison certainly would not have
heard, and I counted upon Newman's not
hearing or not attending. Nothing of the sort.
Newman was in high indignation at having put
his imprimatur upon matter which he disap-
proved, and which he characterised by some
strong epithets. I retired crestfallen, and had
learnt to fear both the watchfulness and the
sternness of the new dean. This was in 1834,
and our acquaintance made no further progress
till I became a B.A. at the end of 1836. As a
170
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
B.A. residing for purposes of study, Newman.
sent me occasional invitations through the year
1837 to his common-room evenings. He was
very hospitable to all the college, and invited
any one he thought would like to come. But
previous to 1838, when we stood for the fellow-
ship, he had not only no reason for considering
me a proselyte, but some reason to set me down
as most unlikely to become so. He must have
known, for he had his eyes everywhere, that
I openly and ostentatiously took the side of
Hampden in the matter of the Regius Professor
of Divinity. The fact was, I was delighted
with the Bampton lectures. Their tone of
omniscience imposed upon me, and as I had
not yet abandoned my nominalist foundations,
the dissolving power of nominalist logic applied
to the Christian dogmas was wholly to my mind.
On a later occasion, I well remember a personal
incident on one of those evenings which must
have wounded my vanity deeply. The con-
versation turned on some point of philosophy,
no matter what, and I, who must always be
pushing myself forward when something I did
VI.
171
MEMOIRS.
not understand was going on, offered some
flippant remark, such as young B.A.'s are apt
even now to deal in. Newman turned round
and deposited upon me one of those ponderous
and icy "very likelies"; after which you were
expected to sit down in a corner, and think over
amending your conduct. I am sure that up
to April, 1838, the only sentiment Newman
can have entertained towards me was one of
antipathy.
Such
Under the influence of solitary study and
much meditation on philosophical themes I
was relapsing into that habit of self-conscious-
ness out of which I had struggled in my first
years. The world was fast becoming a sphere
which moved round myself as a centre.
a rebuke as that of Newman's was exactly what
I wanted to warn me against the dangers of
conceit and egotism. But I do not mention it
for its own sake, but only as evidence that
Newman, in praising my examination, could not
have been influenced by party favouritism.
Now as to the steps by which I was finally
drawn into the whirlpool of Tractarianism.
I
172
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
am enabled to trace them minutely by the aid
of a very full student's diary for 1838. This
diary shows that I did not begin by catching
the infection of the party spirit which was lying
about on all sides like contagious matter in
cholera time. I began from within; I had been
brought up as a boy in sentiments of profound,
I may say abject, piety. Undergraduate life had
rubbed this off the surface, and I find my father
remonstrating with me because when at Haux-
well I was slack in attending church, and seldom
put in an appearance at the morning exercise,
having been out in the fields probably since six
o'clock. But this was all on the surface. The
fonds de piétisme lay too deep to have been so
quickly lost. The Diary of 1838 is evidence
that this piétisme was slowly recovering its
ascendency over me. I was an instance of the
phenomenon which is recorded by William
Palmer in his dreary Narrative.
He says:
"The complete organisation of the party, and
the amount of truth which underlay their
system, produced great and permanent results
in society. One of its benefits was the interest
VI.
173
MEMOIRS.
which it excited in the young in all religious
practices and exercises,
it
promoted religious exercises and seriousness
of character, and a keen interest on many
religious questions which had been matters of
indifference" (p. 60).
This was the side I was first taken by. I
am astonished to see what hours I wasted over
religious books at a time when I ought to have
been devoting every moment to preparation for
the Oriel examination. Nearly all these books
were of an evangelical colour; indeed, while I
was at Hauxwell, no others were accessible to
me.
Scott's Force of Truth, his Refutation of
Tomline, Gregory's Letters, Mammon, and a
quantity of second-rate stuff of a similar kind,
are carefully read and digested. It is true I
combined with these books a passion for study-
ing the Fathers; a passion which was more
caught from Gibbon than from Tractarianism,
and was an integral part of my plan for a life
of study in college rooms. I also find of the
same date an elaborate statement of the Anglican
via media, so correctly drawn that the driest
174
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
Anglican, William Palmer himself, must have
been well satisfied with it.
In spite, however, of occasional depressing
fits of conscientious superstition, there is a
healthy secular tone carried through a great
part of the Diary of 1838. But I am gradually
being warped round, for I find myself on the
19th of August in that year beginning to sus-
pect Hampden's Bamptons of "unsoundness."
However, they interested me sufficiently to
make me spend six pages on an analysis, not
a disapproving one, of some of Hampden's
leading views.
}}
After Oriel, I offered myself at two other
colleges. First at University, for Mr. Glaister's
fellowship, vacated by his acceptance of a college
living. This was in June 1838. There was
at this time no formidable in-college candidate ;
the others were seconds and thirds, and other-
wise undistinguished like myself. I had by
practice got such a mastery over examinations
that I had now no difficulty in turning off any
number of pages of foolscap in three hours. I
accordingly went into the hall at University
VI.
175
MEMOIRS.
Of
with better hopes of success than ever before.
I sat down to the table, and after reading over
the questions, raised my eyes to scan the candi-
dates. What was my amazement to see among
them the well-known figure of A. P. Stanley.
It was impossible-Stanley was not eligible by
the statutes. The fellowship was confined by
the founder to the "parts nearest Durham."
As Durham was always interpreted of the
bishopric, not of the city, and as Hornby, my
birthplace, was within six miles of the bishop-
ric, my county claim was a close one.
course Stanley, not being statutably eligible,
could not have come in unless he had been
invited to do so; if invited, he must have
received private assurance that he would be
elected, as he was at that time the most bril-
liant figure in the University. What then was
the purpose of submitting five or six men, backed
by a county claim, to a three days' examination,
when the fellowship was already settled? Did
the electors mean to cover their breach of the
statute by pronouncing the rest of us unfit in
point of letters to hold a fellowship in a college
176
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
like University, generally filled with common-
place men? I could put no other interpretation
upon the situation in which I found myself. Of
course Stanley was elected. I was advised to
appeal to the Visitor; but the Visitor being the
Lord Chancellor was sure to find some loophole
for confirming the election. I refused to appeal,
and to put my father to what might have been
a considerable expense.
It became evident that the conscience of
Travers Twiss, who, I suppose, managed the
plot, was not easy at what he had done. It
was obligatory to write a circular Latin letter
to the fellows of University, announcing your
candidature. This Latin letter ought to have
been purely formal; but I could not help intro-
ducing into mine a quotation from a speech of
Livy, which seemed to me pat for the occasion.
It was an étourderie to do it such as I was too
often committing; but the quotation in itself
was as innocent as a lamb. Twiss came over
to the Provost in a rage, and tried to make this
bit of quotation a ground for rejecting me as
I had written an impertinent letter. Travers
VI.
177
MEMOIRS.
Twiss' subsequent performances before the
world have been of a nature which, I think,
justified me in thinking that the whole indigna-
tion was simulated by that astute lawyer. The
Provost, who hated me as a suspected proselyte
of Newman's, instead of throwing his fatherly
shield over me, and laughing Twiss out of the
room, pretended to be duped, sent for me and
remonstrated.
Great was the indignation in Durham and
the North Riding at what had been done. It
got about in the county that I had written ever
so furious an indignation letter to the Master
of University, and I got highly applauded for
my spirit in not putting up quietly with a wrong
done to county claims; so that an innocent bit
of Latin was turned as a serious pretence against
me, while a letter which I had never written,
was highly commended by the clergy and other
fathers, who might be looking forward to placing
their sons at University to take advantage of
their birth.
Once more I went in for a fellowship in
November 1838, but it was an act of despair,
N
178
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
not of hope.
There were four fellowships at
Balliol, and the unusual number drew the whole
University. The general opinion was that one
out-college man would be taken, and the other
three filled up from the Balliol scholars; each
out-college man thought he might be the lucky
candidate. Public expectation was fulfilled, they
took one out - college man, and three Balliol
scholars, two of whom have since amply justi-
fied their choice. The out-college man taken
was Woollcombe, and as this selection turned
out afterwards to be a very great mistake, one
can hardly help thinking that the act was done
in order to show Oriel what they ought to have
done in April. In other respects the Balliol
examination was vastly inferior to the system
pursued at Oriel. Odds and ends of literary
lore, collected up and down commentators and
handbooks; there was neither unity nor char-
acter about the papers. I can hardly think that
the election was influenced by the examination,
but that Balliol acted on the principle, not a
bad one, of selecting those three of their scholars
of whom they had otherwise reason to think
VI.
179
MEMOIRS.
well. The two colleges did for a long time
pursue opposite paths; Oriel was noted for
being "noverca suorum," while at Balliol their
geese are always swans.
With this adventure closed my fellowship
campaign; the colleges seemed resolutely to
have closed their doors against me, my darling
hope of leading a life of study as a Fellow com-
pletely blocked. Which way should I turn?
I had long given up all thought of the Bar,
though my father pretended to carry on the
scheme longer. With my increasing religiosity,
it was natural that I should think of Orders.
Being a clergyman's son I knew well the
routine of a country clergyman's life. In my
present frame of mind the idea of pastoral duty
was agreeable to me; but I was not without
a side-glance at the many learned clergymen
whom the annals of the Church of England can
show as having led a life of study and obscurity
in the by-ways of England. My father wrote
me one of his disagreeable letters, overflowing
with pious resignation and moroseness.
"The hearts of electors are not exempt from
180
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
the common dispensation, which places them
in His hands, who turneth them whithersoever
He will. And if He seeth good for you, I
sincerely hope you will have it, because I am
persuaded your future happiness is involved in
it. I have lived long enough to have seen
men, after ten or fifteen years' miserable enjoy-
ment of a fellowship, ten thousand times more
anxious to get rid of than you can be to pro-
cure one. I burnt but the other day an old
letter of Mr. Page's, in which he says, 'Mesech
and the tents of Kedar were a mere joke to
what I am now enduring;' i.e. while an Em-
manuel living was slowly passing down the list of
Fellows, and might possibly come down to him."
Accordingly I turned my attention towards
Orders in the winter of 1838-39. Meantime I
was glad to close as a temporary expedient,
with an offer made me by Newman. Pusey
had taken an empty house in St. Aldate's, with
a view of filling it with the young B.A.'s, whom
he would employ upon some of his many pro-
jects, the Library of the Fathers or other. We
were to live in common, rent free, and pay a
VI.
181
MEMOIRS.
I
very small sum a week for our frugal diet.
did some odd jobs for Pusey, collated MS. of
Cyprian in the Bodleian: when Newman pro-
jected a translation of Thomas Aquinas' Catena
Aurea on the Gospels, I undertook Matthew
and Mark, but afterwards contented myself with
Matthew, passing on Mark to another hand.
Even Matthew took me nearly the whole of
1839. The translation is often incorrect, and
wants revision; it was extremely useful to me
in one way; it brought me acquainted with the
whole range of patristic bibliography. Aquinas
never gives chapter and verse for his citations;
only the name of the Father, sometimes also of
the particular work. I hunted up the where-
abouts of all the quotations in each case in the
best edition of the Fathers; I spent hours and
days over the work in the Bodleian, and would
not be beat. By the end of 1839 or 1840 I had
established quite a Bodleian reputation for find-
ing my way about among the writings of the
Fathers, genuine and supposititious. Even
Jacobson would come and ask me for a
suggestion.
!
182
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
All this while I was rushing into the whirl-
pool of Tractarianism; was very much noticed
by Newman, who thought I translated better
than most,—in fact fanaticism was laying its
deadly grip around me. In October 1839,
being discontented with one or two of the
inmates of the "house," I seceded and took
again a private lodging. This was a most
fortunate accident, for on 4th November James
Mozley and Ashworth of Brasenose came
running at 8.30 to my lodgings, to say, didn't
I know that there was a Yorkshire Fellowship
at Lincoln, for which the names were to be
handed in that very day; several candidates,
but none thought formidable. Of course I gave
in my name. The misfortune was that for more
than a year, while I had been occupied upon
the Catena, I had not touched the Classics, had
not written a line of Latin prose, had left philo-
sophy on one side, and of course forgotten all
my secular history. I was in the situation of a
man suddenly called upon to row in a race after
being twelve months out of training.
Lincoln
was noted at that time for being, with Magdalen
VI.
183
MEMOIRS.
and one or two others, a rigid anti-Puseyite
college. Of course old fellows did not in those
days know much about the character or senti-
ments of the rising generation. I am sure if
Calcott, Thompson, and Kay had really known
how deeply I was tarred with the Puseyite brush
they would have taken anybody sooner than me.
Especially, what was the lucky point was that
a few weeks before I had seceded from Pusey's
house, and was found at that moment in a
private lodging. They did elect me, and oh,
the joy of relief! No moment in all my life has
ever been so sweet as that Friday morning,
8th November, when Radford's servant came
in to announce my election, and to claim his
five shillings for doing so. I had seen with the
despair of an excluded Peri all the gates of all
the colleges shut against me, and here, in the
most unlikely quarter of Oxford, I had really
got the thing I had so eagerly desired. I was
quite off my head for two or three days, and
must have exhibited myself as a jeune étourdi
in the eyes of the Rector and Fellows of Lincoln.
The joy at Hauxwell equalled my own. My
184
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
father penned quite an enthusiastic letter,
thought that fellowships were excellent things,
and talked of bringing up two of my sisters
to pay me a visit in the following summer. I
poured out thanksgivings in the pages of my
Diary to Almighty God, to whose sole agency I
ascribed my election. And really a concurrence
of fortunate accidents had to converge on a
single moment, or the thing could not have
been done.
Done it was, and I began to lay out my life
on new lines.
There was no study so vast and
arduous that I would not attack it, nothing that
I did not feel capable of conquering. But there
was one temper which was now let loose with-
out restraint, my high church fanaticism. When
that came in the way, nothing could stand
before it; I became a declared Puseyite, then
an ultra-Puseyite; I saw a great deal of men
like Jack Morris, whose whole conversation was
turning the Church of England into ridicule,
and who adopted as their motto, "Tendimus in
Latium." Jack Morris, however, took me also
by my student's side. He passed his whole
VI.
185
MEMOIRS.
day up the tower of Exeter College reading
the Fathers, and cutting jokes upon our step-
mother, the Church of England. My reason
seemed entirely in abeyance in the years 1840,
1841, 1842; I moved entirely with the party,
was loudly prominent in all their demonstrations,
and judged of good or bad, according as any
event or person was docile or otherwise in
Newman's tactics.
To what extent this fury of zeal would have
run I cannot tell. I must have been enveloped
in the catastrophe of 1845, as were so many of
those with whom I lived, but for one or two
saving circumstances. One of these was my
devotion to study. It must not be supposed
that I passed the whole of my day in these
years in haunting conciliabules, and reading fiery
articles in the English Churchman, and British
Critic; I carried on a tolerably steady line of
reading, though chiefly theological. Especially
church history fascinated me; but I formed
stupendous plans for works I would write on
the history of the Middle Ages; the history
of monastic establishments with several other
186
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
things, each of them a task for a life. Of
course what I was to write was all to tend to
the glorification of the Catholic Church, but
still, schemes which require method and long
preparation have a sobering effect upon a
heated brain. In the winter of 1839 I wrote
again for the Latin essay, and unsuccessfully,
Stanley carrying it off. In 1841 and 1842 I
was twice successful for the Denyer prize. I
carried through the press my translation of the
Catena Aurea on Matthew; I wrote an elabor-
ate article in the British Critic on "Earliest
English Poetry," for which I spent months of
study, and got to know all that was then known
on the subject. I wrote two Lives of the Saints
in Newman's Series, upon which I spent an
amount of research, of which no English his-
torian at that time had set the example.
All these were the acts of a sane man, how-
ever wild and warped my public conduct and
talk may have been.
have been. In 1843 another circum-
stance occurred, which contributed powerfully
Radford offered me a tutorship of
to save me.
the college. Already in 1839 my classics had
VI.
187
MEMOIRS.
got sadly rusty, and as I had never touched
them since, it may be supposed I was not in a
fit condition to work a tutorship even of pass
men. But I was not daunted. I immediately
set resolutely to work and made good my lost
ground. By confining my first lectures to those
books I had known best I gained time, and in
two years' time I was at least a fairly efficient
pass lecturer. This cost some very hard steady
work, and gave me a serious object in life,
beyond holding up one of the banners of the
Puseyite party. I think it was chiefly owing
to this that when the crash came in 1845 I
did not follow Newman. Not that my belief
in the necessity of finding and joining the
Catholic Church was as yet shaken, but I
would take time and examine my conscience a
little further.
I
In the Diary which begins 1845 there is
a much larger infusion of secular matter.
find myself deep in the literary history of the
eighteenth century, reading Gray's Correspond-
ence, Prior's Life of Goldsmith, Hume's Life
and Correspondence; and as all this was when
188
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
Newman was preparing his going over,
have been looking on with equanimity.
Then I saw that I must soon be called upon
to share the Honours lecturing in the college
with William Kay, and I was making all the
efforts I was capable of to get a mastery of
Aristotle, and the principles of logic. These
things excluded those gloomy thoughts, which
weighed down so many of my contemporaries.
There was not room for the question—if I died
outside the pale of the Catholic Church, what
would become of me? It put itself aside rather
than answered itself; for I do not see that I
had begun to doubt the efficacy of the only
saving Church in 1845. Not only had I not
begun to doubt, but I find breaking out in the
Diary in these years evidence of abject prostra-
tion of mind before some unseen power of
which it is not clear whether it is God or the
Church.
in
Indeed I have great difficulty with the Diary
my hand in making intelligible the exact state
my mind and opinions in the whole of the
four years from 1843-47. I do not see a
of
VI.
189
MEMOIRS.
single page in the Diary which savours of
rationalism, I mean the application of the
common reason to religion. I see a great deal
of degrading superstition, of fasting and attend-
ing endless religious services. I adopted the
plan which many others did, of reciting the
Hours of the Roman Breviary, and seemed
to please myself for some time in this time-
wasting and mind-drowning occupation. I once,
and only once, got so low by fostering a morbid
state of conscience as to go to confession to
Dr. Pusey. Years afterwards it came to my
knowledge that Pusey had told a fact about
myself, which he got from me on that occasion,
to a friend of his, who employed it to annoy me.
Perhaps the best way of exhibiting my state
of mind in this period is to give some extracts
from the Diary, kept during a stay of a fort-
night with Newman in his Littlemore retreat.
Newman had bought some land at Littlemore,
and turned a row of single-roomed cottages into
cells connected by a sort of cloister; had built
a library for his very considerable collection of
patristic literature, and got some of his young
190
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
disciples to join him in a kind of semi-monastic
life. The place came to be called popularly in
Oxford The Monastery." The warden of
Wadham of those days, B. P. Symons, a
flourishing Evangelical, who poked his nose
into everything, one day knocked at the door.
Instead of a servant, the door was opened by
Newman himself. Symons asked if he might
see the monastery.
"We have no monasteries
here," was the answer, and the door was
slammed in his face. On Saturday, 30th
September 1843, I went by invitation on a
short visit. The Diary is as follows :—
"Newman kinder, but not perfectly so.
Vespers at eight. Compline at nine. How
low, mean, selfish, my mind has been to-day ;
all my good seeds vanished; grovelling, sensual,
animalish; I am not indeed worthy to come
under this roof.
"Sunday, October 1.-St. John called me at
5.30, and at 6 went to Matins, which with
Lauds and Prime take about an hour and a half;
afterwards returned to my room and prayed,
with some effect, I think. Tierce at 9, and
VI.
191
MEMOIRS.
at II to church,-communion. More attentive
and devout than I have been for some time;
hope I am coming into a better frame; 37 com-
municants. Returned and had * * * break-
fast. Had some discomfort at waiting for food
so long, which I have not done since I have
been unwell this summer, but struggled against
it, and in some degree threw it off. Walked up
and down with St. John in the garden; New-
man afterwards joined us. Newman stated to
Rivington the possibility that an outcry might
be made against things in the Lives of the
Saints, which might oblige Rivington to drop
it; this, therefore, provided for in the agreement
by which the title goes to Newman, not to
Rivington. Newman thinks Rivington very
well disposed; took up the Oxford Tracts just
about the time that the P. C. K. Society was
taken from him. Edward Churton mentioned
for (editor of) the British Critic, but Newman
has no idea who it will be. Odd enough that
W. Palmer should have been thought of, who
is, at this very time, engaged in writing a pam-
phlet against the British Critic. At 3 to
192
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
church; then Nones; walked in the garden till
dinner,-interesting talk; sat till 7.30. Some
unknown benefactor sent a goose.
Newman
had not heard till to-day of Litton's marriage,
that is to be, to a relation of H. Shepheard.
When ill abroad Newman had choice of being
bled in his arm or his foot; chose the latter as
safest; only took two ounces of blood from him
with a round lancet with three heads. Pseudo-
Dionysius, certainly in Newman's judgment a
late writer; monophysite and much neoplaton-
ism in him. The sermons of St. Methodius
also given up.
When Dionysius is quoted by
the Council of Trent, or by a pope, this only
sanctions the piece quoted St. Paul quoting
Menander. Talk of some Rosminian nuns
coming to England; though an order, and
under the three vows, they do not renounce
possessions in the world; yet they live together.
They evade the Mortmain Act by vesting pro-
perty legally in the name of a member, while
really it is at the disposal of the general. They
aim to embrace the whole Church. The Pope
is their head. The Jesuits always and every-
VI.
193
MEMOIRS.
where opposed and despised; St. Ignatius
prayed for this. Wiseman opposed the Jesuits
at Rome, and does so here: proof of his
sincerity. "Father" is usually applied to a
regular, but not so in Ireland.
Father Mat-
thew provincial of the Capuchins. Vespers
at 8, Compline at 9: the clocks here very
backward. Very sleepy and went to bed at
IO.
66
}
Monday, 3d October.—I shall not note any
more the regular proceedings of each day.
Unwell and very sleepy; could not read or
pray as I wished. Silence not literally observed,
gives way to necessity. Began Mohrer On
Unity, French translation. Read Wharton's
Preface to Anglia Sacra, vol. ii. St. Remi-
gius transferred to-day. Mrs. Seager lodging
here in Newman's old lodging. Newman rents
some college land, and has planted a belt round
the church. Walked alone in the fields, towards
Garsington, between afternoon prayers and
dinner. Lockhart's mother much distressed.
Probably at the separation more than at the
conversion, which she must have expected some
O
194
СНАР.
MARK PATTISON.
time. His friends say that Sibthorpe will
not stay where he is, but change again before
long. I asked Newman how to take religious
language when used by the poor. The dilemma
is, if you don't check it, they think they can
impose upon you by it; for nine times out of
ten they use it hypocritically; if you do check
it, you seem to banish religion out of conversa-
tion, almost out of all your intercourse with
them. N. said England was almost in the con-
dition of a heathen country, and he supposed
the Early Christians did not use Christians'
language when they went among the heathen;
quoted our Lord's replies to the man who said,
'Good Master,' etc. . . . The air of Little-
more quite different from Oxford air, so that
invalids are sent out of Oxford to Littlemore,
which is upon sand.
.
"4th October.-Very poorly this morning,
but more calm and composed in my mind.
N. mentioned to me having just received the
account of a lady who, having in conversation
declared that she thought the Church of Rome
the true Church, had been refused the com-
VI.
195
MEMOIRS.
munion by her minister, he thus telling her in
so many words to go to Rome.
(6
5th October.-Awoke poorly this morning,
but got gradually better, yet did not make a
thoroughly good use of my time. Coffin came
to-day to stay; says the college at Chichester
in great want of discipline. The principal does
not live with them, and Lowe has not much
authority. Men to be found in the billiard-
rooms, and set up a tandem; many come only
to cram for the Bishop's Examination.
How uncomfortable have I made myself all
this evening by a childish fancy that once
got into my head-I could not get out of it—
a weak jealousy of N.'s good opinion.
Oh, my
God! take from me this petty pride; set me
free from this idle slavery to opinion; fix my
affections on things eternal. . . . Coffin more
subdued and less thoughtless than usual.
"6th October.-Much better this morning,
but not thankful to God for it; my mind still
disturbed by the bad feelings of yesterday.
Bloxam walked up to church yesterday after-
noon, and brought confirmed account of Sib-
196
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
thorpe's apostasy.
He has received the com-
munion in our church at St. Helen's I. O. W.,
but to what communion he will attach himself
is not so clear. Says Rome is Babylon, etc.,
and the strange thing is all that he alleges as
the ground of his change are the trite objections
about idolatry, etc., which he must have heard
and got over often enough before his conversion.
When the Bishop of London visited B.
Smith he went over the church, and made no
remarks; the rowing came in a letter next day.
As he was leaving the house, Smith asked him
for his blessing, and was about to kneel down
for the purpose; the Bishop abruptly turned
away with 'Good morning; I'll write to you
to-morrow.'
"6th October.—St. Faith in Salisbury brevi-
ary.
More comfortable in mind to-day. Walk
with N. and Coffin to Sandford. Much talk
about the English saints. The Carthusians have
no miracles. The Bollandists talk of legends of
St. David as 'Fabulosa.' A well in one of
Wilberforce's parishes called St. John's Well,
was from St. John, Beverly. The Paduan
VI.
197
MEMOIRS.
edition of St. Athanasius has many additions to
the Benedictine. N. thinks the fourth oration
a patchwork of different pieces. He had over-
looked Mansi's chronology, and given the
received chron., but thinks now that Mansi's
is the right. The MS. of Athanasius in Bodl.
is of the fifteenth cent. Mr. Goode's quotations
about #apádoσis taken unacknowledged from
Suicer. Dr. Bull's nickname, when a young
man, Jemmy Jessamy; his houses both in Ox-
ford and Exeter in most trim order now.
Bowles pressed me so to preach, in his quiet
gentle way, that I thought it would be unkind
to refuse any longer, and I consented, though I
do not know what to do for a sermon.
7th October.-Newman showed me a speci-
men of the Lives of the Saints come down
to-day. Compared number of words with
Lardner's Cyclopædia. The Lives has one line
more in the page and one word more in the
line, that is about forty-five words more in the
page than the Cyclopædia; but something to be
deducted on the score of Herschell's long words.
Talk at dinner about St. Bernard. The Cis-
198
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
tercians objected to decorations in churches.
Not all the papal bulls are in the Bullarium
magnum-not, e.g., those relating to particular
orders. Mr. Valentine, brought up by a
Catholic priest, said to M. Lammaire, a French
apostate to our church, that he hoped he might
live to repent of what he had done. M. L.
gave French lessons in Chichester; now gone
back to France, and a professor in a Protestant
seminary. After dinner we went with N. into
the library; he went round showing us the
books, giving us their history, etc. A book of
prints, Shores of the Mediterranean, led him to
speak of his illness in Sicily. Caught a fever
by sleeping in some out-of-the-way place, and
laid up in consequence three weeks at Castro
Juan (Giovanni), the ancient Enna; had a
Neapolitan servant with him, who since came
to England, and is servant to Lord Carrington.
Priest came once to see him, but he not in a
state to have any conversation; people dying
all around and bells going continually for them;
people of the house thought the heretic couldn't
bear the bells; was given over for a week.
VI.
199
MEMOIRS.
First place he went to, on getting better, the
cathedral-old Norman; might have fancied
himself in England. Left C. G. so weak he
could not walk; when got to Palermo people
considered him dying; sea-air restored him.
Used to walk up and down at Palermo till the
vessel could sail; was a fortnight on the voyage
from Palermo to Marseilles, a whole week be-
calmed. Then at Lyons fell ill again; legs and
ankles swollen; thought to be erysipelas. All
this time his friends in England heard nothing
of him. Six weeks in anxiety. Sicilian almost
unintelligible. N. could speak a little Italian,
but it went from him while he was ill. Corre-
sponded afterwards with his landlord in Latin.
Suspected the priest wrote the letter. . . . The
two things I have to guard against most at
present are, I think, acting to be seen of others
and going through religious duties, services,
etc., in a formal legal way. Oh that I may go
to communion to-morrow with more devout and
abstract meditation, more true thankfulness of
heart for this great benefit!
"8th October.-Communion at 7, breakfast
200
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
(
at 8. N. detailed the history of his taking the
British Critic. Campbell, late secretary of the
S. P. G., was once editor, under Boone; while
C. was editor, Whately had the Review turned
out of Oriel C. R. for an article on Croly's
book on the Revelations. Whately had a
correspondence with C. on the subject, and
against one passage in the Oriel copy, to the
purport that Balaam's ass was a type of Mr.
Croly,' is written in Whately's handwriting,
'Mr. C. assures me that this was written by a
gentleman and a Christian.' It was on the
point of being given up under Boone when Mr.
Watson persuaded Rivington to have another
number. Then N. stepped in, and agreed to
furnish four sheets a number gratis in order to
keep it afloat. When B.
gave it up Maitland
took it; very unfit, as not knowing anything of
men or parties; wrapt up in his books. N.
continued to contribute, M. getting shyer and
shyer, but not liking, or not able, to do without
him. Then M. appointed archbishop's chaplain,
at which time Pusey wrote his review of the
Eccles. Com., which blew them out of the
VI.
201
MEMOIRS.
water. N., wishing to bring things to a crisis,
and not any longer to be a thorn in M.'s
side, offered Pusey's art. as the contribution for
the quarter, almost expecting that it would be
refused and they sent adrift. It was inserted,
but Maitland resigned, and N. took it, never
intending to keep it long. Boone, by the way
was turned off by Rivington for his laxity, par-
ticularly for some things he said in favour of
Bp. Stanley. . . . Connection between the
University and the Vicar of St. Mary's formerly
much closer; e.g. if a preacher did not come for
his turn it would have been usual to ask the
vicar to take it. The parish sermon has not
been customary for more than twenty years.
The Bishop began it. Morning daily prayers
began the day after St. Peter's Day, 1834. The
image of the Virgin in the spire a famous one.
The Pope asked some Oxford men who were
presented to him what had become of St. Mary
of Oxford. . . . We sat till Vespers, and had
a long and interesting conversation about the
state of the Univ. I stated my impression of
the restless emulation which the classes and
202
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
He
open scholarships produce among the under-
grads., and of the ambition and preferment-
hunting among the M.A.'s. N. took a more
cheerful view; defended the class system as
having done so much to rouse the Univ.
thought that the tutor who aimed at leading
and forming his pupil's mind, even supposing
him to have at the time less weight than the
successful cram-coach, might succeed in making
an impression which would gradually gain upon
the pupil as he got older, took his degree,
got out of the influence of the schools, and
began to see things in a truer light. Talking
of Lord Ashley's memorial, N. said it did not
answer for Heads to turn out their tutors in
a body; they put themselves entirely in the
power of the succeeding tutors, it being a
measure they could never repeat. Instance at
Oriel, when Hawkins turned out three of his
tutors,—if Wilberforce had gone down to his
brothers one Sunday during term there was a
regular sitting upon it as a grave offence.
Well, Denison came in in his place, and took
a curacy, to which he went out every Saturday,
VI.
203
MEMOIRS.
and oftener, and the Provost could do nothing.
About 1770 the worst time in the Univ.; a head
of Oriel then, who was continually obliged to
be assisted to bed by his butler. Gaudies a
scene of wild license. The object of men at
that time seems to have been to get over time.
At Ch. Ch. they dined at 3, and sat regularly
till chapel at 9.
Same divisions and party
spirit going on in N.'s younger days, only on
different subjects. Jealousy between Oriel and
Ch. Ch., Whately and Lloyd. Lloyd said
that W. had σapýveia, and nothing more.
Copleston always in a state of irritation at
something; thought he ought to have been
promoted before. His plans for extending
Oriel; asked the Dean to give him up
Mary Hall, and complained of his unreason-
ableness in refusing, though he offered him the
best lodgings in High St.,' on which Copleston
headed one of his chapters-Orielensibus in-
genio exundantibus barbare denegatur aula
B. V. M. Lord Ripon, Copleston's patron St.
D. K. Sandford, stood at Oriel and rejected;
wrote furious arts. in the Ed. Rev.
St.
204
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
'9th October.-The Oriel Bible clerk used to
wait to dine after the high table, so that he said
grace twice before he began to dine. Tyler,
when Dean, sent away four men for coming to
high table too late. . . . Another interesting
talk with N. alone, on the present prospects of
the Ch. in England; he thought persons in
lay communion, and thus not bound by the
arts. and p. book, remaining in the Eng. Ch.
and advocating Catholic views, would be irre-
sistible. Has as little hope as possible himself,
but thinks it wrong to be without hope; H.
Wilberforce most sanguine; said persons were
being drawn in daily; the non-jurors not a
parallel case; they made a schism; bad bishops
quarrelled among themselves on trifling points,
and yet made no difficulty at being severed from
the Catholic Church. But Laud's influence has
been permanent, e.g. the sacramental doctrine
rescued by him, and, so to say, restored to the
E. Ch. What persons in authority want is to
get quickly rid of the Tractarians; he is afraid
men may be impatient, and yield to the force of
opinion and to temptation, and go to Rome.
VI.
205
MEMOIRS.
How to understand the fact that the recent
converts have been mostly weak persons, e.g.
Mr. Spencer? Thought me too gloomy about
influence in Oxford; when a man can be set
down as a Puseyite he loses influence with one
class of persons, but not with others, and those
the most worthy. But even with the opposite
party, however they may talk, there are times
when they are, in spite of themselves, obliged
to pay deference to conscientious men-they
mistrust their own principles.
"10th October.-Thirty years old to-day;
ripe and mature in age, but only beginning,
if, indeed, I am beginning, Christian life. A
child in knowledge and judgment. When I
ought to be able to teach, guide, and influence
others I am still only a learner. Spent nearly
two hours this morning in devotion and self-
examination; with some fervency and, by God's
grace, I trust, profit, at least I have felt more
peace and calm through the day than I have
known for some time past. Ogilvie read
Herbert's Country Parson with his class, and
as the practical comment on it, asked them
•
206
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
to dinner on Friday. Copleston, when Pro-
vost, used to torment probationers; his saying
to Newman, 'We don't help sweetbread with
a spoon; butler, bring a blunt knife'; and
reproving him for not taking wine with the
company; very much irritated at the Ch. Ch.
hunters being exercised outside his windows;
his horror of going to bed. . . . Talk at dinner
about ancient meal-times and wonderful absti-
nences; the Jesuit rule wisely adapted to our
enfeebled condition. The Cistercians never
had their minds in vigour; could hardly ever
be said to be thoroughly awake. St. Macarius
turned out of an Egyptian monastery from envy
of the monks of his superior powers of endur-
Stood upright in his cell for a week
without eating anything, but chewed a palm-
leaf out of humility. St. Goderick stood all
night in the river up to his neck, and frozen.
ance.
(6
On a review of the whole time I am
thankful for much, much happiness. I felt
lifted more into the world of spirit than ever
before; thought I had more faith, but how
VI.
207
MEMOIRS.
much evil was mixed up with this in my heart;
thought so much of little mortifications, yet
talked as if they were familiar to me; felt so
anxious for N.'s good opinion, and suffered my
mind to wander miserably in prayers."
This fairly exhibits the state of my mind in
1843. I see no trace of change of feeling in
the Diary for several years from this time; but
I do observe that the fanatical instincts did not
gain ground, as I presume they usually do
when indulged; mine remained at a dead level.
My thoughts were much occupied during term
time with my college work, which I saw would
necessarily grow indefinitely as I threw myself
into it. And in vacation I had abundance of
literary work, besides the Lives of the Saints
mentioned above. I was a good deal employed
by the editor of the Christian Remembrancer,
which had succeeded the British Critic as the
organ of the High Church party, but much more
moderate in tone. These articles were literary,
not theological, and it was a novel delight to me
to find that I could turn out a literary article of
208
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
a superior finish, without a trace of the church
bigot about it.
This seems like literary vanity; there was,
no doubt, much of that, but that was by no
means all. The truth was that I was now
turned of thirty; my brain had consolidated
itself, and the forces of the reason were slowly
beginning to assert themselves against the
masses of imported superstition or native tend-
ency to pietism, which had hitherto had it all
their own way.
This power of reason did not
come into direct conflict with the blind beliefs
to which I was so devoted. I never questioned
for a long time any of the things I had hitherto
believed and taught; there was no internal
debate. But as I had been drawn into Tract-
arianism, not by the contagion of a sequacious
zeal, but by the inner force of an inherited
pietism of an evangelical type; so I was gradu-
ally drawn out of it, not by any arguments or
controversy against Puseyism, but by the slow
process of innutrition of the religious brain and
development of the rational faculties.
I may appear in the above extract from my
VI.
209
MEMOIRS.
Diary to have been closer to Newman than I
really was; I always felt there was some secret
barrier between him and myself which did not
exist between him and the other young neo-
phytes of my own standing. These also I
will not say kept aloof from me—we were most
friendly-but they certainly suspected me of
being in some point not like themselves. Was
it possible that Newman's insight into character
was keen enough to detect already a rational-
ising element, of which I can myself see no
trace in anything I wrote for a long time after?
H. O. Coxe told me many years afterwards
that Newman should have said of me, "Ce
garçon ira loin,” or some equivalent phrase in
English. Now I, on my part, had a great and
growing dissatisfaction with the greater part of
the men into whose society I was thrown by
my opinions. I have mentioned that I left the
Pusey house because I was discontented with
some of its inmates, and I could not but feel
that the young apostles I was amongst in these
years (1843-45) were not intellectually equal
companions. Indeed it was a general wonder
P
210
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
how Newman himself could be content with a
society of men like Bowles, Coffin, Dalgairns,
St. John, Lockhart, and others. I venerated
Newman himself as having been so much to
me in so many ways; and I had too little
knowledge to see how limited his philosophical
acquirements were. The force of his dialectic,
and the beauty of his rhetorical exposition were
such that one's eye and ear were charmed, and
one never thought of inquiring on how narrow
a basis of philosophical culture his great gifts
were expended. A. P. Stanley once said to
me, "How different the fortunes of the Church
of England might have been if Newman had
been able to read German." That puts the
matter in a nut-shell; Newman assumed and
adorned the narrow basis on which Laud had
stood 200 years before. All the grand develop-
ment of human reason, from Aristotle down to
Hegel, was a sealed book to him. There lay
a unity, a unity of all thought, which far
transcended the mere mechanical association
of the unthinking members of the Catholic
Church; a great spiritual unity, by the side
VI.
2II
MEMOIRS.
of which all sects and denominations shrink
into vanity.
I had gone abroad for the first time in the
summer of 1843. I took Catholic introductions,
as I had a notion that foreign Catholics, not
being converts, might be of a better mental
stamp than these neo-Catholics that I had to do
with at home. In a very few weeks I was un-
deceived. I saw Kenelm Digby, the author of
the Mores Catholici fine monument of learning
and industry. But I found there was no mind
underneath; it was all accumulation in support
of Catholic dogma, I found also rife in Parisian
Catholic circles a spirit of credulity so vulgar
that it could not have existed had it ever been
brought into the light of day. The religious
people lived among themselves; they believed
every miraculous story which was brought in,
and simply because it was miraculous; their
mental habit had become so inexact that the
idea of truth seemed to have perished from
among them.
The question was, Does this
alleged fact redound to the glory of the
Church? If it does it is not to be questioned;
212
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
if it is against the Church it is a fiction of the
Voltairians.
Something of the same kind I observed
during my visits to Littlemore; there was a
lurking fondness for stories of miracles. One
I find recorded in the Diary-"C. mentioned
case of a fellow in Leicestershire who was
blaspheming in a public-house, and using the
common oath, Strike me blind! was struck
blind by a flash of lightning on the instant.
C. added that he had become a Cistercian, and
that on his first reception of the sacrament had
recovered his sight."
On the 9th October 1845 it was known that
Newman had resigned his fellowship. On
10th October, Church showed me a note from
Newman to him, announcing his approaching
reconciliation to the Catholic Church by Father
Dominic. It is impossible to describe the enor-
mous effect produced in the academical and
clerical world, I may say throughout England,
by one man's changing his religion. But it
was not consternation; it was a lull-a sense
that the past agitation of twelve years was
VI.
213
MEMOIRS.
extinguished by this simple act; and perhaps a
lull of expectation to see how many he would
draw with him. Instead of a ferocious howl,
Newman's proceeding was received in respectful
silence, no one blaming. But as there must be
always an advocatus diaboli, this part was sus-
tained on this occasion by the Vicar of St.
Thomas! who went about inveighing against
Newman's honesty in putting out the theory
contained in his last sermon; "He didn't be-
lieve it when he wrote it."
Of course the neophytes were also scattered
like chaff; Ward and Oakley had gone before,
but there still remained a small band of us
more stable, to keep each other in countenance
and meet at Manuel Johnson's for our Sunday
dinner-Church, Marriott, Copeland, myself,
and others. M. Johnson jocularly proposed
to write the history of Absquatulation.
called upon Marriott to provide a theory to
cover us. Marriott, who could not see a joke,
answered seriously, "We are in a state of
appeal-appeal to a general council." When
this was repeated to Lewis, who was strong in
He
214
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
canon law, he said, "Didn't Marriott know that
an appeal must be lodged within thirty days?"
The tone of the Diary for the years 1846-47
seems to me distinctly more trivial than that
for the two preceding years. In the first
place, the principal figure round whom so
much interest was gathered has disappeared
from the scene; the sense of suspense, which
had quite a dramatic effect in giving unity to
the day-by-day entries, is lost. Secondly, I
myself am evidently in a very depressed state,
both of body and mind. Friends used to think
that this depression was due to the painful
severance which had taken place from Newman
and others. Others, again, would ascribe it to
an intellectual conflict going on within me
similar to that of which so harrowing a detail
is given in the life of Blanco White. Both
of these were wrong. I was neither so close
to Newman personally as to miss him as a
friend, nor had his perversion, so long looked
for, and therefore mentally discounted, at all
fallen upon me like a blow. Up to nearly the
end of 1847 I see no trace in the Diary of any-
VI.
215
MEMOIRS.
thing like internal struggle. On 14th October
1847 I find this entry which negatives the idea
of anything like what they call scepticism hav-
ing consciously arisen within me :-
"(
Went up to Froude, who engaged in writ-
ing a novel to expound his views; had long
talk with him, with something of confidence on
both sides, though no satisfactory result-a
sincere desire on my part to sympathise with
his scepticism for the purpose of helping him
through it."
J. A. Froude had made much shorter work
with it than I could possibly do, not having had
in early youth that profound pietistic impres-
sion which lay like lead upon my understanding
for so many years of my life. I remember, too,
though it would hardly be gathered from the
Diary, that in these years, 1846-47, I was making
very strenuous efforts to make my share of the
college tuition real and influential.
I may take
this opportunity of explaining what my position
in college as tutor was at this time. At that
time there was no subdivision of labour such
as is now established in the form of combined
216
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
lectures. The tutors of each college taught
everything that was taught in the college to
all its students. Under this monstrous abuse,
of which I have written the history several
times in other places, a zealous tutor was
entirely baffled as to what course to take; if
he wanted to make a good lecture on any one
classical book, say Herodotus, he must devote
an amount of time to his preparation for it
which was quite inconsistent with his also doing
well the other lectures he had to give-looking
over Latin writing, teaching English composi-
tion, seeing that men know their divinity, and
the vague but heavy duties of personal inspec-
tion and advice. I never could let routine be
routine, or do anything with any comfort to
myself, unless I tried to do it as well as I could.
It so happened that among other lectures Hero-
dotus fell to me. I took vast pains with this;
read up everything I could, and after some
terms' apprenticeship and much bungling, be-
came able to give what was for those times a
really good lecture. But then to do this it was
impossible to keep up equally well with Livy
VI.
217
MEMOIRS.
and Sophocles and the Greek Testament, and
perhaps another book or two. I had the morti-
fication of sitting there and hearing men trans-
late Sophocles to me unprofitably, as knowing
I could not teach them the niceties of Greek
erratic idiom. Here I was but struggling with
the fetters of an impossible system, though it
was not till years after that I came to conceive
where it was that the fault lay. I was honestly
labouring to make the best I could of my
Sparta. But I had other college difficulties to
contend with in my colleagues.
Lincoln had been let drop very low in the
rank of colleges during the tutorship of Rose
and Radford. Rose was gone long since;
Radford had become Head in 1834. Richard
Michell had come in as tutor and had immedi-
ately raised, by force of character and a singular
knack of teaching, the tone of the tuition.
Every Lincoln man felt this.
We were all
genial, jovial
proud of Michell, who, by his
sociability, represented Lincoln before the
world. The other fellows were a bad lot, the
tradition of 1750 surviving into the nineteenth
218
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
century. Queen's and Magdalen, Jesus and
St. John's, were bad enough, but none of them
could show such fossil specimens of the genus
Fellow as our Kay senior, Thompson, Calcott,
Meredith. The juniors, Green, Kay junior,
Perry, and myself, formed an opposition con-
tending for discipline, decency, order, and
religion (outward). We were always honour-
ably supported by Michell, though he cared
for none of these things. But we were always
outvoted by the seniors, with the Rector and
his casting-vote. They besides could fetch up
from no great distance-Northampton-another
wretched crétin of the name of Gibbs, who was
always glad to come and booze at the college
port a week or two when his vote was wanted in
support of old abuses. In spite of a majority,
we had managed to turn the corner, and get
a moral reform initiated. At the end of 1847
I could not but look with some complacency
at the great change which had been effected
in the discipline and tone of the college in
seven years. Not that this was all my doing,
Michell, as I have said, was loyal
far from it.
VI.
219
MEMOIRS.
to us with his vote, but having a low type of
intellect and moral, was not helpful in some of
the main points.
My other colleague, William Kay junior, on
the other hand, was a man of most vigorous in-
tellect and sternly disciplined moral. In religion
of strong evangelical sentiments and passion-
ately anti-Puseyite *** he had distinguished
himself at the local Grammar School (Knares-
borough), and been sent to college by the assist-
ance of friends, who justly judged that such a
genius would make his way if he got the chance.
He justified their prevision, getting a first class in
classics and a second in mathematics at the same
time, and was immediately elected Fellow of
Lincoln about a year after me. *** I could
not but admit to myself the superior intellectual
force of this young Hercules. I was still only
a shy abstract student, unready and unequal to
a dialectical conflict. I resisted, but was always
over-crowed. If I had been less unequal to the
contest, the fight-for it was a constant warfare
-might have given me nerve; as it was, it only
contributed in these years to the other causes of
220
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
depression already enumerated. In the end I am
sure I received great benefit from what was at the
time most fatiguing. I had never before been
at such close quarters with so robust and aggres-
sive an intellect. Not that William Kay was
of a speculative or sceptical turn of mind quite
the reverse.
He remained for a long time the
narrow Puritan he had been brought up.
Though emerging afterwards into orthodox
Anglicanism, he had no philosophical interest
to carry him on, and remains, I suppose, to this
day intellectually where he was when he was
thirty. What so vigorous an understanding
has been able to satisfy itself with I know not.
He went out to India as Principal of the College
at Calcutta ****
The Diary in these years is a good deal taken
up with these college squabbles-the joint re-
sistance of us juniors to the voting majority of
the Rector and seniors, and my personal alter-
cations with Kay to be allowed to do anything
that I wished. Kay, with his superabundant
energy, was extremely useful in the college,
made as good a bursar as I had made a bad
VI.
221
MEMOIRS.
one, knocked the men about with his horns of
iron, waking them up and rebuking their vices.
Vice there was enough among the students,
even after all our reforms-drinking, gambling,
the old tradition of the college, were by no
means extirpated. In dealing with the students
I soon became aware that I was the possessor
of a magnetic influence, which soon, not per-
haps at this early date, gave me a moral ascend-
ency in the college, to which at last everybody,
the Rector even, the students, the very servants,
even at last Kay himself, succumbed. In this
fact, which was very slowly making itself felt
in the years of which I am now writing, lies
the true secret of my not having followed
Newman. Not that I should by any means
have gone when he did in 1845; I was not
ready; I was always more deliberate; but I
think in 1847 I might have dropped off in
some moment of mental and physical depres-
sion, or under the pressure of some arguing
convert-for the converts never left you any
peace; they were always at you like Christian's
conscience in the Pilgrim's Progress, urging
222
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
you to flee from the wrath to come.
The
question, What would become of me if I died
outside the pale of the Church? long had its
terrors for me. I give as a specimen a letter
written to me from St. Chad's, Birmingham,
in the year 1846, from my old crony, Jack
Morris :-
MY DEAR PATTISON-I hope you will
excuse my earnestly pressing upon you the
duty of facing your grounds for remaining a
Protestant, and of going by the greater prob-
ability as to which is the Church. You seemed
to me to be getting quite towards scepticism
last time I had a talk with you, and that is one
reason why I urge you not to delay. Depend
upon it that you cannot expect more than
probability out of the Catholic Church, and
that you really ought to act on that, whether
you feel inclined to do so or not.
"People say that converts are 'cocky,' but
that impression arises in part from the fact that
they who have it have no more than doubtful
evidence for what Catholics have certain proof.
VI.
MEMOIRS.
223
This is not a conviction arising from my own.
case, but from all I see and hear around me.
It would be 'cocky' in me to say so, but I
don't care what it is, so as I may urge you not
to be slow about the 'unum necessarium' of
caring for your own soul.
"I hope Faber's pamphlet will come out,
and push on you that stay in darkness, which
I am sure you hate as much as I do. I was
too long by a good deal.-Ever yours truly,
"J. B. MORRIS."
I have hitherto abstained from mentioning
one of the most important factors in my general
education from a very early date, which then
grew into an influence driving me into my
frantic Puseyism, and which, at the date I am
now at, was a powerful weight in the scale of
going over to Rome.
I had a female cousin, three years older than
myself, living with her mother, a widow, in
great seclusion in the country not many miles
from Hauxwell. This girl early developed a
masculine understanding. It was as dominant
224
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
and urgent an element in her constitution as I
have described William Kay's. But she pos-
sessed what was wanting in Kay-a speculative
activity which urged her, would she or would
she not, through all the abysses of philosophic
thought. Her perseverance in learning equalled
her powers; after the governess age, in which
she learnt French, the globes, etc., she began
to educate herself. She taught herself Latin,
Greek (which seems incredible), Italian, German,
mathematics-not, I suppose, very far. She had
a command over the range of history, ancient
and modern, that I have never known in any
one since; and her memory was such that if
you called upon her suddenly for aid about
some out-of-the-way person, lived he under
Charlemagne or was he a member of the John-
sonian circle, it was strange if she could not
tell you something. I have known some of
the wittiest, the ablest, and the best read men
of my time, but I do not exaggerate when I
say that this woman at about thirty-five was a
match in power and extent of knowledge for
any of them.
Of course one great field of
VI.
225
MEMOIRS.
learning, i.e. the classical lore which an Oxford
scholar possesses, she did not possess; but this
only because she did not choose to follow it
up and become a Madame Dacier. She was
wisely content with using Latin and Greek as
instruments for making her acquainted with
the body, soul, and spirit of ancient literature.
This she knew as literature-I can vouch for
it-in the year 1847, more extensively than I
did.
I may as well say at once that there never
was between us any sentiment of a more tender
kind than that of companionship, or any ap-
proach thereto, though inobservant relations,
who could not explain our fondness for each
other's company otherwise, may have fancied
that there was. We corresponded upon books,
upon everything we thought or read, from as
early a period as I remember, she taking the
lead and I following. As long as I lived at
Hauxwell I was constantly riding over to
Enderby to pass two or three days. During
my undergraduate time at Oriel I dropt fear-
fully behind her, so that the interval between
Q
226
СНАР.
MARK PATTISON.
us had become very wide indeed. After 1836,
and during the two or three profitable years
which followed it, I, with greater advantages of
books and external stimulus, made up some
leeway, and we were beginning to resume our
philosophical speculations together when the
rising tide of Puseyism carried us both off-me
first, and her through me; for up to 1836 we
had both been Liberal. And as whatever she
was she was it passionately, she was, I think,
before taking up with Tractarianism, an extreme
Liberal *** When her Tractarianism grew
to white heat it took the shape, not of a devo-
tion to the tenets promulgated in the Tracts,
but of exaggerated antipathy to everything
that savoured of Anglicanism. Her mother,
a good and sensible woman, became alarmed,
and thought to stop the mischief by removing
from Yorkshire to some place where Anglican
privileges could be enjoyed in their plenitude.
No place could surely surpass Hursley in this
respect; and to Hursley they went. But it
was too late. The daughter had got the
Roman fever in her veins; everything about
VI.
227
MEMOIRS.
the services at Hursley was contemptible, dis-
gusting, odious, and Keble himself, so far from
being a saint, was discovered to be an addle-
headed old hypocrite. Of course there was
nothing for it after this; my cousin was received
into the Church of Rome, and compelled her
mother, who lived but for her daughter, to go
in with her. I think, but am not sure, that
their perversion preceded that of Newman
some time in 1845. I think they settled first
at Bath, but they soon removed to Paris, where
the ministrations of the Church could be had
more completely.
I suppose I had persuaded myself so far, out
of antagonism, as to profess to believe that our
Church was no branch of the Catholic Church,
but I had never gone the length of exasperation
against everything belonging to it which my
cousin ran.
Still there is no doubt that the
parting with one with whom I had been for so
many years in close friendship gave me an
additional shake, and was something to be got
over. Not that our friendship was at all inter-
rupted. As long as they continued to live in
228
CHAP. VI.
MARK PATTISON.
Paris I went over to visit them twice a year, or
oftener, and was always most affectionately re-
ceived by my aunt. But all intellectual inter-
course between myself and cousin was at an
end. Her conversation had come to be a pas-
sionate invective in monologue against Protest-
antism, Anglicanism, and everything except
what was Roman. They lived about a great
deal in Italy, etc., afterwards, and had every
opportunity of seeing the seamy side of practical
Catholicism; but my cousin saw it not * * *
Can such a wreck of a noble intellect by re-
ligious fanaticism be paralleled?
}
CHAPTER VII.
THE year 1847 was the zero of my moral and
physical depression, partly from injudicious.
fasting, partly from the moral causes above
enumerated. I began to be troubled with
palpitation of the heart and sleepless nights.
I was in Paris in June with my aunt and
cousin, and after my return I tried in Septem-
ber the air of Wales, but I had to come back
to London to take the advice of Dr. Williams,
or Dr. Latham, I forget which; he sent me to
Brighton for a month. I had just a month
before term began, and was obliged to go back
to college to take up my work in an extremely
languid state. All through Michaelmas term
1847 I dragged on in feeble and complaining
discomfort. For the proctorial year 1847 I had
acted as pro-proctor to Green, the other pro
230
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
being Kay; and in the spring of 1848 Green
did me the essential service of nominating me
examiner in the School of Lit. Hum.
It was
wonderful that he ventured to do so; a public
examiner in those days was a much more im-
portant person than he now is, there being then
only four of them, whereas now there are ten
or twelve times as many. A proctor was quite
free to nominate any friend of his own, as far
as the statute went. But he was really subject
to a very stringent public opinion-to select
only a person who had sufficient scholastic dis-
tinction to command the respect of the tutors
and their pupils. I certainly at that time
could show no such claims. Entangled as I
had been by my church connections, and still
hardly cool from the Tractarian frenzy, I was
only known, so far as I was known at all in
the University, as a violent partisan and con-
troversialist. And at that time, if you were
able to describe a man as a Puseyite, he became,
ipso facto, unfit for any public appointment.
The little that could be set on the other side
were my articles in the Christian Remembrancer,
VII.
231
MEMOIRS.
read but by few.
Those articles, too, were
In
literary, and no proof of classical acquirements,
and my industry as tutor within my own college
was hardly as yet distinguishable from what was
done by the other tutors. As for my wretched
second class, and that more than ten years be-
fore, it must have reckoned, if anything, against
me, when there were so many first class men
about, all longing for the appointment.
spite of everything, Green ventured to put me
in. Of course whatever was said was kept from
me; but from various indications I gathered that
there was a good deal of disapprobation felt
among the tutors of the best colleges. I did
not mix in the strictly tutorial circles, from
which examiners had to be taken, but I looked
with humble reverence to all first class men
as necessarily my superiors. My first essay
was in May 1848, when I found myself the
colleague of three first class men-Muckleston,
tutor of Worcester; Bode, former censor of
Christ Church; and Landon, who had formerly
carried a scholarship at Worcester against me,
and was now Fellow of Magdalen. Oh, my
up
232
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
terrors and qualms and timidities! I felt I was
on my trial; the other three were taken for
granted, but I was the weak place in the board.
This was my first chance of showing if I had
any good stuff in me, ¿.e. for what they call
university work, and I knew if I failed it would
be my last; nobody would ever give me an-
other appointment. I dreaded also the discredit
I might bring upon my good patron, Green.
I must say I was amazed myself at the dis-
covery I made with what a slender outfit of
knowledge all the other three men set about,
light-heartedly and easily, going through their
routine duty. Muckleston was a fair Latin
scholar, and knew his books, as the slang went,
memoriter, that is the six or seven books in
which he gave lectures in college, but knew
nothing of any classics outside this cycle. Bode
was also a good general Latin scholar, accord-
ing to the measure of those days, and knew
one book—namely, Horace's Odes. Landon,
who, I think, came up from a parish in the
country, had neglected his books, and, I ven-
tured to think, was hardly at par in what we
VII.
233
MEMOIRS.
then called Greek scholarship.
Before the ex-
amination was over the tables were certainly
turned completely round; my Greek scholarship
was, I should say, distinctly feeble, but it was
quite as good or better than that of any of the
other three. Of Latin I had made a special
study, and was become by this time a good
judge of Latin composition. My "books" I
knew as well as Muckleston, with this differ-
ence, that what he knew mechanically and
memorially I understood in its formation and
its relations. And as far as the strictly philo-
sophical portion of the work went (there was
then no division of labour) I soon found that I
had it all my own way. The others I don't
know if any of them are living now-were very
generous, and admitted me at once on a com-
fortable footing with them. My triumph was
complete, and all adverse tongues were silenced
for good by the handsome report which my
colleagues made of me. The real discovery
which I had made was not so much that my
classical acquirements were worth something.
If I did not know it then, I soon came to know
234
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
how childish and elementary they were; what
I had discovered was how slender was the out-
fit of those men whose names carried scholastic
weight in the University.
My ambition was fairly roused by this in-
cident of the examinership. I began to see
that I might aspire to something in the Uni-
versity as well as others, but I did not relax
my industry. My commonplace book of this
year (1848) astonishes myself by the vast range
and variety of general information its pages
exhibit. How I found time, with the work of
the college and the schools, to look into so
many books, and select so much solid matter
from them, I cannot tell. For I remember
what the commonplace book takes no notice of,
that I was making strenuous efforts to acquire
a profound and philosophic hold upon Aristotle,
having become aware that my knowledge
hitherto was unreal and merely textual.
A partial explanation of the work I got
through is that I was in much better health in
1848 and 1849 than I had been for several
years past; this was in some degree attributable
MOU
VII.
235
MEMOIRS.
The
to my having taken to riding. I bought a horse
by an agent in Yorkshire, and had him brought
up by an old Yorkshire groom of ours.
fellow was highly delighted to find himself in
Oxford, of which he had heard so much, and
in half an hour after his arrival he was dead
drunk, and remained in that condition till his
departure early next morning. All this winter
I rode regularly, and often went to look at the
hounds.
I have spoken of the sudden lull which fell
upon Oxford, and, indeed, upon all clerical
circles throughout England, the moment the
secessions to Rome were announced. The
sensation to us was as of a sudden end of all
things, and without a new beginning. We felt
that old things had passed away, but by no
means that all things had become new. Com-
mon conversation seemed to have collapsed, to
have died out for want of topic. The railway
mania of 1847 and King Hudson was the first
material that rushed in to fill up the vacuum. G.
V. Cox says, "Instead of High, Low, and Broad
Church, they talked of high embankments,
236
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
Brunel
the broad gauge, and low dividends.
and Stephenson were in men's mouths instead
of Dr. Pusey or Mr. Golightly; and speculative
theology gave way to speculation in railway
shares" (Recollections, p. 238). Then came the
railway crash, a new and still greater interest,
as many fellows of colleges lost their savings
in it. Finally, in 1848, the universal outburst
of revolution in every part of the continent. It
seemed incredible, in the presence of such an
upheaval, that we had been spending years in
debating any matter so flimsy as whether Eng-
land was in a state of schism or no.
This was the view which Newman's con-
version presented at the time to a man who
saw all things only from their outside. The
truth is that this moment, which swept the
leader of the Tractarians, with most of his fol-
lowers, out of the place, was an epoch in the
history of the University. It was a deliverance
from the nightmare which had oppressed Ox-
ford for fifteen years. For so long we had
been given over to discussions unprofitable in
themselves, and which had entirely diverted
VII.
237
MEMOIRS.
our thoughts from the true business of the
place. Probably there was no period of our
history during which, I do not say science and
learning, but the ordinary study of the classics
was so profitless or at so low an ebb as during
the period of the Tractarian controversy. By
the secessions of 1845 this was extinguished in
a moment, and from that moment dates the
regeneration of the University. Our thoughts
reverted to their proper channel, that of the
work we had to do. As soon as we set about
doing it in earnest we became aware how in-
competent we were for it, and how narrow and
inadequate was the character of the instruction
with which we had been hitherto satisfied.
were startled when we came to reflect that the
vast domain of physical science had been hitherto
wholly excluded from our programme. The
great discoveries of the last half century in
chemistry, physiology, etc., were not even
known by report to any of us.
Science was
We
placed under a ban by the theologians, who
instinctively felt that it was fatal to their specu-
lations. Newman had laid it down that re-
238
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
vealed truth was absolute, while all other truth
was relative—a proposition which will not stand
analysis, but which sufficiently conveys the feel-
ing of the theologians towards science. More
than this, the abject deference fostered by theo-
logical discussion for authority, whether of the
Fathers, or the Church, or the Primitive Ages,
was incompatible with the free play of intellect
which enlarges knowledge, creates science, and
makes progress possible. In a word, the period
of Tractarianism had been a period of obscur-
antism, which had cut us off from the general
movement; an eclipse which had shut out the
light of the sun in heaven. Whereas other
reactions accomplished themselves by imper-
ceptible degrees, in 1845 the darkness was
dissipated, and the light was let in in an instant,
as by the opening of the shutters in the chamber
of a sick man who has slept till mid-day. Hence
the flood of reform, which broke over Oxford
in the next few years following 1845, which
did not spend itself till it had produced two
Government commissions, until we had our-
selves enlarged and remodelled all our institu-
>
VII.
239
MEMOIRS.
tions. In these years every Oxford man was
a Liberal, even those whom nature had palpably
destined for obstructives. There still survive
many of this generation, who, having been
caught up by the spirit of their day, and hav-
ing then committed themselves to the Liberal
colours too definitely to withdraw, are uncom-
fortable in their position, and present the laugh-
able spectacle of remaining Liberal in spite of
nature and constitution.
In any case a Liberal reaction must have
come. But had it come by the ordinary slow
steps it would not have done its work so
thoroughly as it did. The clerical virus would
have lingered in the system, and interfered
with the complete recovery of the patient.
Purged off and got rid of as it was, all at once
the new generation had a clear field, entered, as
it were, upon a new phase of life. It were no
wonder if, in the first rush of intellectual freedom,
we were carried beyond all bounds, sought to
change everything, questioned everything, and
were impatient to throw the whole cargo of
tradition overboard. It is not to be denied
240
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
し
​that the reforming movement was pushed into
extravagance in more than one direction. In
the much needed reform of our studies the love
of examination has been carried to a mischievous
extreme, from which we are now suffering. The
sudden withdrawal of all reverence for the past
has generated a type of intellect which is not
only offensive to taste but is unsound as training.
The young Oxford, which our present system
tends to turn out, is a mental form which
cannot be regarded with complacency by any
one who judges an education, not by its pro-
gramme, but by its élèves. Our young men
are not trained; they are only filled with pro-
positions, of which they have never learned
the inductive basis. From showy lectures,
from manuals, from attractive periodicals, the
youth is put in possession of ready-made
opinions on every conceivable subject; a
crude mass of matter, which he is taught to
regard as real knowledge. Swollen with this
puffy and unwholesome diet, he goes forth into
the world regarding himself, like the infant in
the nursery, as the centre of all things, the
VII.
241
MEMOIRS.
measure of the universe. He thinks he can
evince his superiority by freely distributing
sneers and scoffs upon all that does not agree
with the set of opinions which he happens to have
adopted from imitation, from fashion, or from
chance. Having no root in itself, such a type
of character is liable to become an easy prey to
any popular charlatanism or current fanaticism.
There is a letter of Kant, written in 1790,
in which he answers a correspondent who had
consulted him as to the means of checking the
Schwärmerei, which seemed to be over-running
Germany like an infectious complaint.
"This
mental disease," replies Kant, "arises from the
growth in the nation of a class which has not
thorough science, and yet is not totally ignorant.
It has caught up notions on current literature,
which make it think itself on the same level of
knowledge with those who have laboriously
studied the sciences. I see," he says, “no
other means of checking the mischief than that
the schools should reform their method, and
restore thorough teaching instead of that teach-
ing of many things which has usurped its place.
R
242
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
}
I would not have the desire of reading ex-
tinguished, but directed to a purpose" (Kant,
Werke, v. vi. p. 72, ed. 1867).
Our élève resembles that gamin of Paris of
whom Renan says, “Écarté par une plaisanterie
des croyances dont la raison d'un Pascal ne
réussit pas à se dégager," and which it took
Renan himself six years of laborious study to
work his way out of.
It is therefore quite in the order of nature
that after thirty years of freedom we are now
(1884) threatened with a clerical reaction in
the domain of fact, and with a philosophical
reaction in the region of thought. The feeble
fabric of opinion in young Oxford, run up
without labour and held without conviction,
must give way before the steady pressure of
the vast ecclesiastical organisation, which, after
having spread itself over the face of England,
is now laying siege to our University as the
stronghold of freedom of thought and disen-
gagement from the fetters of traditional dogma.
The assault from without is aided by the reap-
pearance within of an a priori philosophy, which,
VII.
243
MEMOIRS.
under various disguises, aims at exempting Man
from the order of nature, and erecting him into
a unique being whose organism is not to be
subject to the uniform laws which govern all
other Being that is known to us.
A reactionary wave, such as now seems im-
minent, may not improbably have a salutary
effect upon our University. As a chastisement
for the egoism and the ignorant adoption of
fashionable freethinking, which now charac-
terises young Oxford, it may do good service
if it merely restore to us the lost virtues of
humility, reverence, and recognition of a power
beyond ourselves. The galvanised Kantism,
which seems to be coming into esteem, will
lead to a re-examination of the old problem of
thought, and thus a reasoned conviction may
arise to take the place of a lazy and thoughtless
acquiescence in the opinions of the fashionable
periodicals. Whenever such an examination
takes place the history of philosophy from A.D.
1400 shows us unmistakably what the result
must be. Science, periodically baffled and
checked by Catholic reaction or the inter-
244
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
ferences of Government, has ever reasserted
itself.
If any Oxford man had gone to sleep in
1846 and had woke up again in 1850 he would
have found himself in a totally new world. In
1846 we were in Old Tory Oxford; not som-
nolent because it was as fiercely debating, as
in the days of Henry IV., its eternal Church
question. There were Tory majorities in all
the colleges; there was the unquestioning satis-
faction in the tutorial system, i.e. one man
teaching everybody everything; the same belief
that all knowledge was shut up between the
covers of four Greek and four Latin books;
the same humdrum questions asked in the ex-
amination; and the same arts of evasive reply.
In 1850 all this was suddenly changed as if by
the wand of a magician. The dead majorities
of head and seniors, which had sat like lead
upon the energies of young tutors, had melted
away. Theology was totally banished from
Common Room, and even from private conver-
sation. Very free opinions on all subjects were
rife; there was a prevailing dissatisfaction with
VII.
245
MEMOIRS.
our boasted tutorial system. A restless fever
of change had spread through the colleges-the
wonder-working phrase, University reform, had
been uttered, and that in the House of Commons.
The sounds seemed to breathe new life into us.
We against reform! Why, it was the very thing
we had been so long sighing for; we were ready
to reform a great deal-everything—only show
us how to set about it and give us the necessary
powers.
Among the shipwrecks of this yeasty time
one of the most memorable was that of Professor
Conington. I pause upon this because the
dexterous friendship of his biographer has,
without misrepresenting the facts, contrived to
conceal from his readers the true history. John
Conington was at this date not only the most
distinguished scholar whom the University had
turned out, but was, much more than a scholar,
a man whose words and opinions came with
weight as from a full and powerful mind.
haps verbal memory at all times existed in him
in disproportion to other mental faculties, and
he never shared that tendency to the exercise
Per-
246
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
of the speculative intellect which was at that
time so pronounced in Oxford. He had, how-
ever, very decided opinions upon the questions
then agitated, and, up to the year 1854, belonged
to the small section of advanced Liberals. So
prominent a place did he fill in this left wing of
the reforming party, that I remember Arthur
Haddan, who was one of the best representa-
tives of the enlightened Tory and Anglican
section, saying to me "If we were only rid of
Halford Vaughan, Goldwin Smith, and Coning-
ton, the University would go on very well."
Conington's partisanship was more political than
theological, and more academical than either.
His antipathies were most strong in regard to
the reigning authorities and the occupants of
the higher posts in the University. He would
declaim with great bitterness against the Pro-
fessor of Greek, as not doing what he considered
professorial work. One of his earliest appear-
ances in print, was a review of William Sewell's
translation of Vergil's Georgics, in the Ed. Rev.,
the bitterness of which was out of all proportion
to the demerits of the book. Sewell's version
VII.
247
MEMOIRS.
had obvious faults, but it was evident on the
face of the review, that there was a motive of
antipathy behind. Conington seized an oppor-
tunity of venting his spleen against one who
was at the time (1846) one of the men of highest
worth in the University, and also belonged to
the opposite camp. The Nemesis which awaited
this transgression was that in after years Con-
ington himself translated Vergil, and with far
less success than his victim. The editors of
Conington's Remains prudently omitted this re-
view when they collected Conington's papers in
two volumes in 1872. His temper was naturally
very irritable, and his eagerness for University
reform was mixed with much personal animosity
from this cause. Of his irritability on small
occasions I myself became aware accidentally.
It was at a very early period of his career, and
before our acquaintance began, at a time when
he did not even know me by sight. It was in
the year 1847 at the Encænia when I as pro-
proctor had to keep one of the doors of the
theatre. Conington had the Latin prize poem
for the year, and came up with his prompter to
248
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
make his way to the rostrum or pulpit from
which it was to be recited. His chaperon asked
me for the Latin rostrum; I was perhaps not
very au fait at my new duties, and may have
hesitated as to pointing out the right entrance,
on which Conington turned to me, and with a
face distorted by passion, and a voice trembling
with rage, thundered out "the Latin Rostrum."
This irritability grew upon him and constituted
a large part of his reforming animus. Combined
with a large share of vanity, growing out of his
sense of his high accomplishments as a scholar,
it became in time a personal discontent at not
getting a professor's chair. His sarcasms
against the Greek professor, and his complaints
that Latin scholarship was not represented at
all in the University, too obviously meant that
he himself was wronged in not being appointed
to a Latin or Greek chair. He thought himself
equally qualified for either.
In 1854 the Corpus Latin professorship was
founded, and to the great joy of Conington's
friends he was chosen by the electors to fill it.
Latin was being neglected among us, and we
VII.
249
MEMOIRS.
anticipated great things from the general vigour
and high reputation of the new professor. His
principal performance, so far, had been in Greek
-an edition of the Agamemnon full of original-
ity and promise for the future. I might have
remembered the instances, not many but still
some, e.g. Ruhnken, who were equally eminent
in the two languages, and never doubted that
the power Conington possessed could be given
in new directions.
When we came back after the Long Vacation
of 1854 we became aware that something had
happened. It gradually oozed out that Coning-
ton had been "converted," and not by the seduc-
tion of piety, but by the terrors of hell. He
attended chapel assiduously, refused to read
anything but religious books on Sunday, or to
dine out or visit on that day. He took an
opportunity of giving publicity to his revulsion
of sentiment by going to vote against opening
the Union on Sunday, while all other M.A.'s
thought it wiser to leave the point to be settled
by the public opinion of the undergraduates.
But it soon appeared that the change in Con-
250
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
ington extended farther than to theological view.
He began to broach Conservative sentiments, as
well in politics as in University affairs, and very
soon ranged himself with the followers of Dr.
Pusey, who at that period commanded a majority
in congregation. During this period such was
the tyranny of the High Church party that
church views were made the test of eligibility
to all office or place. Every one was excluded
who did not belong to the party; they would
not allow me even to be a curator of the
Bodleian. Conington championed their acts,
and spoke for them in congregation. Every-
thing in him was changed but his temper. He
was more irritable than ever. He could not
endure the smallest opposition to his new
opinions, and could not control the expression
of his irritation even in public debate. This
provoked irritation on the other and weaker
side. I never remember any single academic
of
my time against whom there existed such a
bitter feeling, as was felt towards Conington by
the Liberals at that date. From this time for-
ward Professor Conington never roused himself
VII.
251
MEMOIRS.
1
to any intellectual exertion worthy of him. He
revised undergraduates' Latin verses; he wrote
one or two articles in reviews on liturgical sub-
jects, and perhaps a short paper or two in his
own proper person in the Journal of Philology.
Otherwise he abandoned himself to the laziest
of all occupation with the classics that, namely,
of translating them into English; he translated
Horace, I daresay no worse and no better than
the scores who have translated it before him; he
translated Vergil, I think, more than once through,
and it is remarkable that he who, as a young critic,
found no expressions sufficiently depreciatory for
William Sewell's Georgics, produced, on the
whole, a translation of much less merit. Yet all
this while Latin philology on the continent was
rapidly growing to those vast dimensions which
we see it to have now attained; a growth with
which our Latin Professor made no attempt to
keep pace.
But, though Conington had sunk
from the high promise of his youth into an
ordinary theological partisan when, on our return
from the Long Vacation of 1869 it was an-
1 He also edited, with notes, Vergil and Persius.—ED.
252
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
nounced that he was dying, not one of us but
felt a shock, and what a luminary of the Univer-
sity was suddenly extinguished!-An insignificant
ailment, a pimple on the lip, was fatal to him.
((
• Οσσιχόν ἐστι τὸ τύμμα καὶ ἁλίκον ἄνδρα δαμάσδει.”
THEOCR. iv. 55.
One MS. Professor Conington left behind
him which would have been of surpassing
interest even beyond the circle of those who
had known him. This was a daily journal to
which he committed without restraint the whole
current of his thoughts and feelings; the ex-
ecutors in the discharge of their duty considered
themselves called upon to destroy it. The loss
of this document to University history, and as
a genuine psychological study of a remarkable
mind, can hardly be overrated.
In my own college the transformation worked
in 1850 was probably more thorough than in
any other. Two of the old Fellows, Thomson
and Meredith, had gone off on college livings,
Michell was removed to the Vice-Principalship
of Magdalen Hall, William Kay junior had
out to Bishop's College, Calcutta. I was there-
gone
VII.
253
MEMOIRS.
fore senior tutor, with two juniors assisting me,
both docile and amenable men. The old Rector
retired into his study or lived out at Coombe,
and left the college entirely to me. For about
three years
I was much more absolute master
in Lincoln than I ever was after I became Head.
In 1850 Lincoln could have been cited, and
was so, as one of the best managed colleges in
the University. It must not be supposed be-
cause I was a Tractarian that I was ever a
Tory at any time. I used to afficher Tory
principles as a part of the lot.
But I never
could bring myself to sympathise with Charles
the Martyr, or do other than wish success to
William III. I have said that I sympathised
with Hampden in 1836; in 1846, when Paterson
carried round for signature an address to the
Bishops deploring the nomination of Hampden
to the see of Hereford, I obstinately refused to
sign; my example was followed by the rest,
and I triumphed in knowing that Lincoln had
been drawn blank. Whether or no I might at
times have hoisted Tory colours, in vote or
conversation, there never was any one to whom
254
MARK PATTISON.
CHAP.
it was more impossible not to be a Liberal than
it was to me. I had from youth up a restless
desire to be always improving myself, other
people, all things, all received ways of doing
anything. This was a mental instinct which
lay far below any adopted opinions in politics,
and has been a cause of no little trouble to me.
It is impossible for me to see anything done
without an immediate suggestion of how it
might be better done. I cannot travel by rail-
way without working out in my mind a better
time-table than that in use. On the other hand,
this restlessness of the critical faculty has done
me good service when turned upon myself. I
have never enjoyed any self-satisfaction in any-
thing I have ever done, for I have inevitably
made a mental comparison with how it might
have been better done. The motto of one of
my diaries, "Quicquid hic operis fiat pœnitet,"
may be said to be the motto of my life. The
same is true of anything I may have written.
I write, rewrite, revise, and then with difficulty
let it go to press, seeing how much better
another review would make it.
VII.
255
MEMOIRS.
So in 1850-51 the University was alive
with projects of reform.
In August 1850 the
promised Commission was actually issued; it
was a Royal Commission of Enquiry. Jeune
and Liddell and Tait were on it; A. P. Stanley
was its secretary. It was embraced with en-
thusiasm by the younger section of us, and
received with sulky terror and bitter mortifica-
tion by the Tories, who banded together for
one last desperate stand. At Trinity, e.g., there
still remained a body of seniors, who, having
outlived many generations of juniors, had still
been able to keep the then set of juniors at
bay. The Heads of Houses, who knew their
authority threatened, took the trouble to take
counsel's opinion as to the legality of the Com-
mission, and of course got the decision they
wished. They got by it a quasi sanction for
withholding documents, and for other mutinous
conduct, which was only vexatious, as the Com-
mission had no difficulty in obtaining in other
ways all the information they required.
We, on our part, were roused into a new
activity, of which there had hitherto been, in
256
MARK PATTISON.
CHAP.
my experience, no example in Oxford. Every
tutor had his scheme; we went about compar-
ing them; discussing them point by point;
endeavouring to mature our views, which were,
for the most part, crude enough. Jeune, one
of the Commissioners, confessed to Lake that
his mind was still quite a chaos on the subject.
My
For my part, I was familiar with Sir William
Hamilton's articles on Oxford; but they had
not opened my eyes, as they might naturally
have done, to the true function of a university.
I still wore the college blinkers. I was so
proud of the success which had attended my
own exertions as tutor that I could not as yet
see beyond that narrow point of view.
imagination was wholly preoccupied with the
beneficial relation which the college system
establishes between tutor and pupil. We had
this, and I could not bring myself to contemplate
its being broken up. As usual with me at that
time of my life, I could only see one side of a
question, but saw that in intense vision. I
spent much pains and time in drawing up my
evidence. I made very many radical proposals;
VII.
257
MEMOIRS.
among other things I urged the abolition of
residence within college walls as a condition of
keeping term. This was an innovation which
was at that time pronounced by the most com-
petent authorities to be subversive of morality,
but which has since become a part of the Uni-
versity system without evil consequences of
any kind. I could not help turning aside to
twit the Hebdomadal Council with their un-
wisdom in keeping the G. W. R. out at Didcot,
an arrangement which added ten miles to our
distance from London, without being the smallest
hindrance to what they professed to have
feared-viz. undergraduates running up to
London for the day.
But the weight of my evidence centred in
an elaborate vindication of the tutorial as op-
posed to the professorial system. I charged
in this direction with all the force of which I
was capable. The case I made for the college
system is as good a case as I have ever seen in
print, and a much better one than Pusey's long
rambling invective against professors printed
in another volume (Report and Evidence on the
S
258
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
Recommendations of the Oxford Univ. Comm.).
Now as the superiority of the professorial to the
tutorial system was a prime article of the Liberal
creed, and as every other young reformer, whose
evidence was included in the volume, had some-
thing to say in favour of professors, my evidence
acquired a peculiar importance and notoriety,
as being the solitary defence of the status quo
coming from the Liberal side.
In after years I became one of the most
strenuous advocates for the endowment of pro-
fessors. It was easy to suppose that I had
simply changed my mind and gone round to the
other side, because it was the popular Liberal
creed. Like other things in which change has
been imputed to me, this was not an instance of
shifting of opinion, but of development.
never ceased to prize as highly as I did at that
time the personal influence of mind upon mind,
-the mind of the fully instructed upon the
young mind it seeks to form. But I gradually
came to see that it was impossible to base a
whole academical system upon this single means
of influence. Teachers, it was plain, must
I have
VII.
259
MEMOIRS.
know something of what they profess to teach ;
and my own limited experience had shown me
that a tutor could thoroughly master only a
single branch of classical learning even; and
then there was the whole field of knowledge
outside classics to be furnished with teachers
who could only be professors of the University.
It was only very slowly, and after long study
of universities, both in theory and in history,
that I gradually rose to the full conception
which I drew out in my Academical Organ-
isation in 1868. It required many experiences
both at home and abroad, and years of reading
and reflection, before I arrived at the results
exhibited in that book. When that volume
was published its recommendations seemed so
startling and paradoxical that very few dared
to declare themselves in their favour. Within
less than twenty years the colleges and the
University have been arranged by a Commission
in conformity with the spirit, if not the letter,
of my proposals.
I have spoken of the pride with which I
was able to look on the internal condition, tone,
!
260
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
and discipline of the college. This was so at
those times when I could take a general retro-
spect; but the Diary of these years (1850-51)
shows by what efforts, through what vexations
and defeats, this general result was attained.
The Diary at this time has entirely ceased to
be a diary of studies-there was no study but
desultory reading-and has become one of
college management, showing how my thoughts
were engrossed by administration. Entries of
the following kind occur constantly :-
"25th January 1850.-Never felt more heavy
and reluctant to work; no satisfaction in con-
templating the term or the Lecture list; all my
zest for any mental exertion gone."
"12th May 1851.-Sadly heavy work last
week setting the engine in motion; seemed as
if I had forgotten everything."
"14th June 1851.-Very great dissatisfaction
with lectures and college work altogether."
But these fits of depression only marked the
ups and downs of the struggle; they are indeed
often only indications of physical and mental
exhaustion. I was attempting much more than
VII.
261
MEMOIRS.
I had strength for. One term I had four suc-
cessive hours' lecturing every day; one of these
classes was in the Ethics. In this class I was
not living on my old provision, but was reducing
Aristotle's doctrines, which used to be delivered
to us as mere formulæ, into the substance of
real truths, which could be assimilated with such
ideas on morals and psychology as the student
could be supposed to possess. I believe that
my mode of teaching the Ethics was at that
time quite unknown in Oxford. This lecture,
simple as it became to me in later time, cost
me vast efforts to inaugurate in these years in
which I was inventing it.
I had also established a custom of addressing
the students assembled in chapel twice in each
term. I say addressing, because I tried to make
what I had to say as unlike a sermon as possible.
I had no text or formalities, but stood up after
prayers in my place and went straight to the
two or three pieces of advice I wished to give.
But these addresses were not extempore, and
the preparing them, both as to style and thought,
cost me as much labour as anything I ever did.
262
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
One of the students being accidentally drowned,
I endeavoured to enforce the solemn reflections
which such an event in a college gives rise to,
and I remember I had to sit up the whole night
to be ready with it.
Nor did I spare myself in vacation. I adopted
a plan of taking four favourite pupils, one year
to Bowness, and another set the next year to
Inverary, for a month each time. I thought
the living together might enable me to make
more impression upon them than mere college
relations allowed of. I did not coach them in
their books, but tried to get them interested in
poetry and literature, having found that even
our best were very narrow and schoolboy-like in
their reading. In this respect the plan did not
answer my expectation; but I can never regret
an experiment which left me as its residuum
two of the most valued friendships I have en-
joyed since that of R. C. Christie and William
Stebbing.
All this exhausting effort carried with it one
consequence which was soon to tell with dis-
astrous effect on my rising fortunes. It was
VII.
263
MEMOIRS.
impossible to do what I was trying to do and
yet live the life of easy sociability to which
tutors of colleges were then accustomed, and
which had been traditional in Lincoln. The
college dinner hour was five, and at eight I
began work again, and inspected men singly
from eight to ten. This withdrawal from the
common-room, notwithstanding that its reason
was well known, gave offence. It was not so
difficult when we were alone, but when, as
usually happened, there were guests dining you
had the appearance of breaking up the party,
and were obliged peremptorily to decline a hand
at whist. It also made it impossible to accept
invitations to dinner out of college, as you could
not leave a C. R., where you were being enter-
tained, at eight. I have no doubt, too, that the
lassitude and depletion of spirits, occasioned
by overwork and absorption in my occupa-
tion, made me a less congenial companion
than I might have been. I incurred much
unpopularity in consequence, and was gradu-
ally set down as unsociable, ungenial, and
morose.
I had little notion how dear my
264
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
devotion to the work of tuition was soon to
cost me.
This not having time to mix with other men
in the practical life of the place carried with it
other disadvantages. I have said that when I
was younger I was always blundering into some
étourderie from want of the average amount of
usage du monde. I was now thirty-eight, and
much as I had advanced in knowledge, I had
not equally advanced in knowing how to deal
with men-men my equals, I mean, for the
treatment of young men was then my speciality.
But I was deficient in the ordinary tact which
every man of the world has acquired long before
he arrives at thirty-eight. I was conscious of
this defect, and conscious also that in the life I
was leading it was impossible for me to get
over it.
On one occasion I gave a signal in-
stance of this want of discretion and ready wit.
There had grown up a kind of standing feud
between Michell and myself. The Fellowship
which Michell vacated by marriage was confined
by the statute to the diocese of Wells. When
it had to be filled up, his brother, Rowland
VII.
265
MEMOIRS.
>
>
Michell, presented himself as a candidate.
Rowland was a wooden dunce, a reproduction
of all his brother's Tory prejudices without his
abilities. I supported another candidate, viz.,
G. G. Perry, against Rowland Michell, and
Perry was elected. This Michell never for-
gave.
When
But there were other causes of Michell's
strongly pronounced antipathy to me.
he gave up the tutorship, on being promoted to
Magdalen Hall, he naturally expected that the
college of which he had been so long the main-
stay would collapse. So far from this being
the case, he had to see it every year rising both
in reputation and numbers in the hands of junior
men, whose politics and principles were the
antipodes of his own. Michell was now in the
mortifying position which is sometimes called a
disappointed man, i.e. he had lingered on till
late in life without attaining any preferment to
which his academical reputation might have
justly entitled him. He had tried for many
things and not got them; and found himself
shelved as Vice-Principal of Magdalen Hall, and
266
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
could not but see that the sun of his reputation
was gradually sinking. All this was certainly
very hard to be borne-would have been so in
any walk in life; but when it is considered
what a University is how rife with personal
jealousies and emulations-and what hotbeds
of party cabal common-rooms are, it will be
understood how intense the feelings of envy,
hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness can be-
come.
Nor could he conceal his animosity;
he never lost an opportunity, private or public,
of running me down. It was, I think, at the
Gaudy of 1850 that in an after-dinner speech
Michell excelled in after-dinner oratory-he
thought proper to insult me so grossly that it
was impossible for me to let pass what was said
in the face of the assembled college. In what
he said he had laid himself so open to retort
that a dexterous nimble-witted man would have
laid him on his back with ease, and carried the
company with him. I was not such a man;
and being naturally in a state of boiling indig-
nation, I went at the enemy in a blind fury,
hardly knowing what I was saying, and of
VII.
267
MEMOIRS.
course placed all the company on the side of
the assailant. Five minutes afterwards I was
bitterly repenting the folly of my tongue; but
I little thought at the time what use was to be
afterwards made of it against me.
There were other minor slips of conduct, all of
which were carefully hoarded by Michell against
the time that he might want them. But, as if
I was determined to be my own worst enemy,
I committed about this time another blunder
which had very serious consequences for me.
The old statutes of Rotherham, by which we
were then governed, enacted that every Fellow,
when he should have completed eight years from
the conclusion of his necessary regency, should
proceed to the degree of B.D.; and further,
that after six years from the B.D. he should
take the D.D. The penalty for neglect of this
regulation was the ipso facto forfeiture of the
Fellowship. A majority of the society had the
power, if they saw fit, of dispensing the Fellow
from proceeding to the higher degree, but the
same power of dispensation was not allowed in
the case of the B.D. Being quite ignorant
268
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
what was meant by "completing his necessary
regency," I had applied to Dr. Bliss for an
explanation. Dr. Bliss, the Registrar, was "so
exact and methodical in the arrangement of his
papers, so full of information, as well as so
ready to give it, that other persons had become
careless of acquiring a knowledge of University
matters, being quite sure of getting from him
full and prompt information. Ask Dr. Bliss, was
the answer to all inquiries; he knows" (Cox's
Recollections, p. 344). All this was strictly true;
yet oddly enough, on two occasions where I
was personally concerned, Dr. Bliss made mis-
takes. The first of these was one of the two
years in which I wrote for the Latin essay. I
sent in my composition conformably to the
regulations, placing my name in a sealed en-
velope, on which my motto was inscribed, and
inscribing the same motto on the cover which
contained the essay. The Registrar, when he
came to sort the compositions, tore off my cover
and threw it away without looking at it, and
then noted on the outside of the essay, "This
essay was sent in without motto or sealed
VII.
269
MEMOIRS.
envelope." That was mistake No. 1, but I
don't suppose I should have got the essay had
it not occurred.
The second occasion on which he misled me
was more serious. In answer to my question,
"When did I complete my necessary regency ?"
he furnished me with a memorandum of the
date in his own handwriting on one of his well-
known slips of paper. I put the memorandum
carefully up in my pocket-book and relied upon
it in blind confidence. He had dated the com-
pletion of the regency, and consequently the
time at which I was due for my B.D. degree,
a whole year too late. I well remember the
time and manner in which the awful discovery
burst upon me that I had ipso facto ceased to
be Fellow of Lincoln. The old Rector, who,
as a rule, never came near me, came in a white
rage to my rooms, and informed me bluntly
that I was no more Fellow of the college than
the porter. One would have thought that he
would have had compassion upon my con-
dition, slaving away as I was day and night for
the college and never thinking of myself, and
270
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
would have tried to find some method of helping
me out of the scrape. Far from this, he treated
me as a malefactor, who had broken the funda-
mental laws of the college, and so placed myself
outside the pale of humanity. It was now in
the power of the Fellows to have turned me
out of college, by which each of my juniors
would have gained a step. Such harshness
occurred to none of them. They did the best
they could for me; a college meeting was held,
at which pro forma my Fellowship was declared
to be ipso facto vacant; at the same time a
unanimous petition, the Rector joining, was
sent in to the Visitor, explaining to him that I
had acted, not in contempt or fraud, but in
error, and humbly praying him to exercise his
visitatorial power and restore me to my place.
He did so on condition that I should proceed
at once to take the degree of B.D. This I did,
and the incident was considered by all in college
as closed.
But there was a watchful enemy outside,
who made a note of the fact, and let it be
known that he intended to use it against me if
VII.
271
MEMOIRS.
ever an important election should be deter-
mined by my vote. For he denied that the
Visitor had the power of dispensation in the
case of the B.D. degree, or the power of re-
storing to his Fellowship a Fellow who had
forfeited it under an express statute.
I cannot remember that I did anything more
just then than calculate the damage to myself ;
therefore fortune took it in hand, and began to
declare against me. On the 16th July 1851
the junior fellow, Richard J. Ogle, died suddenly,
or after a very short illness. He had been a
pupil of mine, and was the first Lincoln man I
had had the satisfaction of placing in a first
class. He was a staunch friend, and could be
counted on as a true and sure supporter.
felt in his death that I had somehow received
a fatal wound.
I
I have said that ambition, a motive quite
unknown to me before, was first roused in 1848.
This was so only in a quite vague and general
way. In these years 1848-51 my absorption in
the college was total, and excluded all other
thoughts. When, therefore, in the spring of
272
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
1851, Symonds began to say that the Rector
(Radford) could not possibly live more than
three months I had no other feeling than that
of alarm, lest under some new Head I should
lose the almost absolute authority I was then
wielding, the possession of which I knew was
necessary to work the college machine as it
was being worked. When, then, one of the
junior Fellows, G. G. Perry, first hinted to me
that in case of a vacancy the juniors wanted to
have me for the Head, I was struck with surprise
and amazement. The Heads in those days, as
they alone constituted the governing body of
the University, were placed on an elevation,
from which they have since had to descend. I
could hardly believe that such a sudden exalta-
tion could be within my reach. With a manner
which I believe suggested conceit, I had really
a very low estimate of myself as compared with
others. I could echo what Bishop Stanley
writes of himself in his journal: "My greatest
obstacle to success in life has been a want of
confidence in myself, under a doubt whether I
really was possessed of talents on a par with
VII.
273
MEMOIRS.
those around me. This painful doubt has of
late certainly increased,"-this in his sixty-first
year. (Stanley's Life of Stanley, p. 89.)
Radford's funeral took place on the 29th
October. All the Fellows who were in Eng-
land were present at it. William Kay junior
and Bousfield were abroad. The 13th of Nov-
ember was fixed for the election, at which there
would be nine electors, therefore five votes.
would be required to elect. The three junior
Fellows, Perry, Andrew, Espin, voluntarily and
heartily supported me, so with my own I had
already four votes. My three supporters were
all regular residents, and it was our four votes
which had succeeded, in spite of the resistance
of the old régime, in introducing all the reforms
and improvements which had been established
in the college and in totally changing its tone.
The other five votes were Calcott and Gibbs,
the rump of the old Lincoln of the days of
degradation; Metcalfe, whom we had taken
without knowing enough about him from
Cambridge, and who had gradually gravitated
towards the old set; finally, Washbourne West,
T
274
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
who, though only recently elected, was old in
age and attached to the traditions of the bad
time. I had strenuously opposed West's elec-
tion, and had urged his being declared non
habilis upon the examination. He had there-
fore, not unnaturally, a grudge against me and
an injury to revenge. I may observe here how
very little one can judge at the time of electing
how a Fellow will turn out. I was keen to get
Metcalfe elected * ** I was equally keen
to keep out West, the Fellow to whose financial
genius the college owes more than to any one
since Dr. Hutchins.
These four would therefore certainly go
against me; and it followed that the deter-
mination of the Headship lay entirely in the
hands of the ninth Fellow, J. L. R. Kettle.
On the evening of the funeral we all dined in
C. R. After dinner Kettle called me out, and
held in my own room a long and friendly con-
versation with me. The substance of it was
that he, being resolved that none of the "old
set" should come in, being determined not to
vote for Kay senior or Thompson, saw that
VII.
275
MEMOIRS.
William Kay junior, Principal of Bishop's
College, and myself were the only persons, in
his opinion, qualified. He concluded, with a
heartiness and frankness not natural to him,
and which might have roused my suspicions
had I not been so absurdly ignorant of the
world, by promising me his vote. Espin hap-
pening to come up at the time, he repeated the
pledge in his presence. I said, “Well, Kettle,
you know I have four votes already, so you
understand that yours gives me the Rectorship."
Upon that we shook hands and parted. From
that time my friends in college considered the
question settled, but I never told out of college,
even to my own family, that I was in actual
possession of a majority. Something unfore-
seen might happen, e.g. Bousfield, with whose
views I was unacquainted, might return from
abroad within the time. And though I knew
I could rely on the other three, I did not some-
how feel the same towards Kettle, in whose
manner there was something sinister which I
could not interpret. My thought, however, did
not amount to suspicion. It did not go beyond
276
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
contemplating the possibility of failures.
My
caution in not speaking of the promises I had
received was owing to doubts as to my own
adequacy for the office-doubts which forced
themselves the more strongly on me in propor-
tion as I found myself brought near the position,
and saw the great opportunity of usefulness it
opened.
Kettle's promise was given to me on the
29th October, and from that time till the 7th
November I did not suspect that anything
was wrong.
But I learnt afterwards that
immediately after the funeral Michell had
gone up to London and had taken Bethel's
(Lord Westbury) opinion as to whether he
could not be elected himself. As Wells Fellow
he was expressly excluded from the Headship
by the Statutes, and he knew that he must be
displaced on appeal. But he wished to be
elected, though with the certainty of being
removed, because it "would do him good in
the University." In order to induce Thomp-
son's friends to vote for Michell it was repre-
sented to them that the time consumed in the
VII.
277
MEMOIRS.
appeal would allow for Bousfield's return from
the continent, who, they assumed, would sup-
port Thompson. This scheme was dropped
on Bethel's pointing out that if a disqualified
person were to be elected by a majority and
set aside by appeal, the consequence would
be, not a fresh election, but that the person
who had the next largest number of votes
would be declared Rector by the Visitor. Thus,
unable to do anything for himself, the only line
remaining to Michell was to keep me out. It
might have seemed a hopeless game, with
Kettle's promise already passed to me, but
Michell's adroit diplomacy was equal to the
occasion. He began with attempts to shake
Kettle's vote by undermining his opinion of
me. Kettle, though opposed to Michell in
general politics, being a professed Liberal,
yet had always viewed all college matters with
Michell's eyes.
He not only sapped Kettle
directly by suggesting everything he could to
my disadvantage, but caused statements to my
prejudice to be conveyed to him by other in-
direct channels. Kettle (letter to me of 9th
278
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
November) informed me afterwards that the
representations were "many," and that they
were made for the purpose of showing that
my election as Rector would not be desirable
on my own account or on that of the college.
That it would not have been desirable in the
interests of the college was so notoriously un-
true that that allegation was afterwards with-
drawn; and in the final wording of the ground
of objection it is laid upon "the personal feeling
which exists" ("I am sure you would have been
elected but for the personal feeling which exists
-Kettle, printed Letter, p. 22). I may say on
this that there was but one of the Fellows of
whom it could be said with any truth that there
was a personal feeling against me. This was
Metcalfe. With Calcott, Gibbs, and West I
was on perfectly good, though not intimate,
terms personally. They wished to have a
Rector out of the old set, naturally enough,
but bore me no ill-will, except so far as West
might resent my opposition to his election.
When Kettle intimated that he had been
attacked by statements to my disadvantage,
VII.
279
MEMOIRS.
and my friends began to fear that Kettle was
shaken, they endeavoured to meet them by
counter-representations on the points of pro-
fessed attack. I myself was at first quite
unsuspicious, and believed what Kettle wrote,
viz. that he was sincerely concerned at what
he heard against me. I wrote privately to
A. P. Stanley, and asked him to speak to
Kettle on my behalf. He replied that he had
seen Kettle, but he feared with little effect; his
knowledge of the points attacked was so slight
that he felt himself "both unauthorised and
incompetent to defend them." He concluded
by saying, "I have, however, done what I could
-I hope not too much." It would be idle now
to repeat or to refute allegations against me of
so old a date-allegations which were not made
in sincerity or even believed by those who
brought them. Kettle, after the election,
raked together all he could get of this kind
and printed it in a pamphlet designed to cover
or excuse his desertion of his friends. I dare-
say copies of the pamphlet can be consulted
by the curious in college libraries. It may be
280
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
placed by the side of the odious picture of me
which * * * once drew in a sermon from
the University pulpit; or with
cature of me
*
*
* *
*'s cari-
At what period Kettle was gained over I
am unable to say. He not only relinquished
me and my friends, but went over to the support
of the old set, for whom he had repeatedly
declared he never would vote. They now dis-
tinctly put forward as their candidate William
Kay senior, who dated from very far back times,
and had for many years retired upon a York-
shire living. When Kettle had, on the grounds
alleged, changed his opinion of my eligibility,
I conceived the least he could have done should
have been to have stated to me his objections,
to have given me a hearing, and if I was unable
to satisfy him, to have then called on me to
release him from his pledge, which I must have
immediately done. This would have been
straightforward conduct. Instead of this the
line he took was to keep us in the dark as to
his desertion of his party, and alternately to
amuse and alarm us by writing (to Perry)
VII.
281
MEMOIRS.
letters hinting doubts as to me, but always
ending by leaving us to conclude that he in-
tended after all to vote for me. The impression
made on my mind by these missives was that
they were only intended to enhance his own
importance as the holder of the fifth vote, be-
tween four on either side, but that he must
end by voting for me. A letter I received
from him, on the very morning of the day
preceding the election, reasserted his intention
of voting for me, but with the following saving
clause, "unless a person of equal claims could
be brought forward and supported." As W.
Kay senior was the only person at this time
thought of, we read this letter as decisive of
Kettle's intentions in my favour. For it never
occurred to us that after Kettle's often declared
opinion of the old set, and of Kay in particular,
he could thus turn round and say that he thought
him as eligible as myself. It was not till late
in the evening before the election that I had
a definite notice from Kettle that he had gone
over to the old set and to Kay. This was on
the evening of November the 12th.
1
282
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
It was not till afterwards that I learnt that
as early as the 7th of November Kettle came
down from London, collected the opponents of
college reform at the Mitre, and endeavoured
to bring them to unite on Kay. On the 10th
of November Michell went up to town, and
there finally pledged Kettle to support Kay.
It was necessary for him to keep his treachery
to his party secret till the last moment, as
otherwise it would have been defeated. We
should have looked out for a third man in
whose favour we could have detached one of
the old set. Kettle's attempt against me could
only succeed by being carried on under false
colours and in my own camp.
The great difficulty under which the enemy's
party laboured was to unite the five votes upon
Kay; to unite Kettle, pledged to university
and college reform, with Calcott and Gibbs
upon Kay, a thorough Conservative and anti-
reformer. So desperate, indeed, did the enter-
prise seem that Michell, hopeless of obtaining
five, said to them, "Give me only four votes for
Kay against five for Pattison, and I undertake
VII.
283
MEMOIRS.
to work it." N.B.-He intended to make use
of my having been too late in taking my B.D.
degree. I suppose this was thought too risky,
as I had a Visitatorial order restoring me, which
order might be confirmed by a higher court
if appealed against. What had to be done,
then, was to combine Calcott, Gibbs, and West,
generally opposed to all reforms and novelties,
in the same boat with Kettle, an eager Liberal,
who now felt the indecorum of abandoning, in
the election of a Rector, the principles he had
hitherto upheld in the election of Fellows. The
chief practical point of repulsion was probably
the local restrictions on fellowships which Kettle,
in common with myself, was desirous of abolish-
ing, but which Calcott, Gibbs, and West as
sternly maintained. The expedient which was
had recourse to in this dilemma was one worthy
of Michell's astute diplomacy. He had by this
time acquired such an ascendency over Kettle
that he could play with him as a child. He
succeeded in making Kettle believe that in the
retirement of his Yorkshire parsonage Kay
senior had become a convert to university
284
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
reform; that he now regretted the part he
had consistently taken while resident, and was
now prepared to enter on a new career with
new principles. Kay wrote, at Michell's direc-
tion, a letter to Kettle which was to satisfy him
on this point. This change in Kay's politics.
had to be kept a close secret from his supporters,
Calcott, Gibbs, and West, who thought that in
voting for him they were erecting an effectual
barrier against the innovating tendencies they
so much dreaded in myself. To give them full
security on this point Kay was directed by his
manager to write another letter to Calcott,
asserting in firm though general terms his
continued adherence to his old principles, and
his repudiation of the Liberalism now in fashion
in the college. This letter had to be kept a
secret from Kettle. On the evening of Nov-
ember the 10th Michell felt so secure of having
effected his purpose that, at a party at Richard
Greswell's, he boasted publicly "by three words
I can determine the election at Lincoln." He
meant, I presume, that by showing the Tory
letter to Kettle, or the Liberal letter to Gibbs
VII.'
285-
MEMOIRS.
and West, he could at once break up the com-
bination.
All these arrangements were unknown till
afterwards to myself and friends.
We were
relying in security on Kettle's still unretracted
pledge to me, and on the impossibility, as we
conceived it, of his ever being brought round
to support a relic of the old times, brought back
from the country in which he had vegetated for
some years. It was not till the night before
the election that Kettle informed Perry that
he recalled his promise to me, and had, under
cover of it, secured the return of another man.
We were quite unable to understand how this
result had been brought about. All that we
saw was, that at a late hour on the evening of
Wednesday, the evening before the election, we
were betrayed by one of our own friends. We
saw, of course, that as far as I was concerned
the game was up, and the only question was,
whether anything could be done to save us
in our extremity from being delivered over,
bound hand and foot, to the old set, from
whom it had cost us so much labour to deliver
286
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
the college. Our first attempt was on Calcott,
the senior Fellow; he was a gentleman, and a
man of some education-Kay was neither of
these but thirty years of the Lincoln C. R.,
such as it was, had reduced him to a torpor
almost childish. Espin and Perry called him
out of bed at midnight and tendered him the
Rectorship if he would vote for himself. They
argued that a pledge to vote for another man is
never held good against yourself, should it turn
out that you could be brought in. Calcott after-
wards said that Espin's casuistry on this occasion
was worthy of any of the greatest canon lawyers.
But here we were baffled; Calcott's feelings of
honour would not allow him to do what nine
men out of ten would have thought permissible
to them. During the attempt to negotiate with
Calcott I sat in Perry's room smoking, and en-
deavouring to reconcile myself as well as I could
to the thought of having "old Kay" over me.
When Perry came back and announced that
Calcott was immovably fixed you would have
thought that all was up. Not so Espin and
Andrew. West had repeatedly been heard to
VII.
287
MEMOIRS.
say that he was for " Thompson to the last
gasp." Would he consider the pledge he had
given to Kay as conditional only on Thompson's
having no chance? They knocked him up at
3 A.M. and negotiated this. West thought that
his pledge to Kay might be regarded as always
subject to a prior and perpetual pledge to
Thompson. Espin and Andrew came back to
Perry and myself, who were in ignorance of
this last move, and hinted at the possibility of
Thompson. It had never occurred to me, as
Thompson was the very last man I should have
wished to see elected. Yet I could not but also
see the deliverance which it held out to us from
the meshes of the net which had been so indus-
triously woven round us. Thompson had at
least this qualification that he blocked out
Michell for ever, that he came in as our friend,
owed his election to us, and, what we probably
felt most of all in our desperation, thwarted a
plot, the near success of which had roused in
us a transport of indignation.
Kettle published an angry and indiscreet
pamphlet in vindication of his conduct. He
288
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
could make no defence for the violation of his
pledge to me and of his secretly working against
me while pretending to be one of my supporters.
To make a case at all he had to vilify me by
every insinuation that he could gather together,
for in defence of his own candidate it was
impossible for him to say anything. Espin
published a defence of Thompson—calm, tem-
perate, and forcibly reasoned; but it was no
less impossible to say anything in defence of
Thompson, who was a mere ruffian. It was,
however, true that this ruffian was the only
member of the college at that time who was
acquainted with the college estates and with
college business. The real defence was that
we had been driven by Michell to choose
between two totally unfit men, and had pre-
ferred that one of the two whom we could bring
in ourselves to the other, who was being carried,
as it were, in triumph over our dead bodies.
I also wrote a statement in justification of
my own conduct and handed it about in MS.
among my friends; I never printed it, as the
fiasco was so terrible that I did not feel it worth
VII.
289
MEMOIRS.
What
while trying to keep up appearances.
the Oxford public thought about the election
was of very small consequence by the side of
my own sense of the overwhelming nature of
the catastrophe. Kettle never understood the
extent of the damage he had done, because he
had never known what the college had become
under my management. The proverb says,
"One fool can destroy in an hour what ten
wise men cannot build up in a generation."
To gratify his vanity he had burnt down the
Temple of Ephesus. But he never knew the
value of the building he had sacrificed.
The
For myself, what I have called my nascent
ambition was dashed to the ground.
greatest prize in the college had been placed
by fortune within my grasp only to be snatched
from it again, and that under circumstances
which seemed to close my academical career.
But I can truly say that the personal disappoint-
ment was a minor ingredient in the total of
mental suffering I had now to go through.
My whole heart and pride had in the last few
years been invested in the success of the college.
U
$
!
290
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
It belonged to my narrowness at that time to
be only able to care for one thing at a time :
this was the thing on which I had set my affec-
tions. In a single night the college was extin-
guished for all the purposes for which I had
laboured. My Satan had triumphed, and had
turned my little Paradise into a howling wilder-
ness. It was the return to the reign of the
satyrs and wild beasts-Thompson was nothing
better than a satyr. The stone I had rolled to
the top of the hill with so much pains had rolled
back upon me in a moment. I had had disap-
pointments before-a great one, e.g. in my
class; but I was then twenty-one, with life
before me to retrieve the disaster. I was now
thirty-eight, and no other path than the one in
which I had embarked all my hopes and energies
appeared open. My mental forces were para-
lysed by the shock; a blank, dumb despair
filled me; a chronic heartache took possession
of me, perceptible even through sleep.
consciousness gradually returned in the morn-
ing, it was only to bring with it a livelier sense
of the cruelty of the situation into which I had
As
VII.
291
MEMOIRS.
been brought. For many years I had not been
in bed as late as 10 A.M. I now lay commonly
till that hour, in the hope of prolonging the semi-
oblivion of sleep. I could set about no work.
If I read, it was without any object beyond
self-forgetfulness. Friends were very kind,
and did what they could in the way of con-
solation and sympathy. I can never forget
four who especially stood by me to cheer me
at this trying moment-J. M. Wilson (after-
wards President of C. C. C.); Manuel Johnson
of the Radcliffe Observatory; W. C. Lake (now
Dean of Durham); R. W. Church (now Dean
of St. Paul's).
For many days the question what I should
do did not occur to me. I was benumbed and
stupefied—too stupefied to calculate the future.
For the moment, too, it was not necessary to
decide, for of course there was an appeal to the
Visitor against the election, and that would
take time to hear. It might be months before
Thompson could be installed and confirmed.
dragged on a weary routine of tuition for the
rest of the Michaelmas term and the Lent term
I
292
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
of 1852; went through the forms of lecturing,
but the life and spirit were gone. I now loathed
teaching as much as I had delighted in it. My
tutor's back was broken; I knew that, whatever
might happen about the appeal, I could never
take up again college work with any spirit or
hope of success.
Early in 1852 the Visitor pronounced against
the appeal and confirmed the election; he had
no choice but to do so, as we had proceeded
throughout with statutable regularity. Baffled
here, my Satan proceeded to wreak his ven-
He set about the attempt
geance upon me.
to oust me from my fellowship on the ground
that the Visitor, in restoring me, had exceeded
visitatorial power.
Here was a new abyss
opened beneath my feet! I supposed I had
fallen as low as I could in being deprived of
my dear occupation and my position in college.
Now my bare livelihood, for I had nothing
except my fellowship to live upon, was threat-
ened; it seemed not unlikely that I should be
turned into the streets to starve. Visitatorial
law, what it might contain! It loomed before
VII.
293
MEMOIRS.
me like an Indian jungle out of which might
issue venomous reptiles, man-eating tigers for
my destruction. I was told that the limits of
the jurisdiction between the Queen's Bench and
a Visitor was a moot point of law as to which
there were conflicting cases. By the Master
of Pembroke's (Jeune) advice I went down to
Riseholme and saw the Bishop (Kaye) my-
self. He was polite, but shook his head and
said it was quite true; in restoring me to my
fellowship he had done an act which exceeded
his powers, and which was therefore now in-
valid. The truth was, the Bishop was a weak,
timid man, as afraid of the lawyers as I was;
he had been quite cowed by the mere name of
Bethel, out of whom Michell and Kettle had
got some sort of an opinion that a mandamus
from the Queen's Bench might issue, compel-
ling the Visitor to order the college to fill up
my fellowship.
I was now fairly at my wits' end, when
a deliverer suddenly arose in an unexpected
quarter. Roundell Palmer (Lord Selborne)
was spending his Christmas at his father's
!
294
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
parsonage at Mixbury, some twenty miles from
Oxford. He sent me a message to come over to
see him, which I did, and put him in possession
of the facts. He told me that I need not go
through the form of approaching him through
an attorney, but that in a day or two he would
send me an opinion. It was one of his masterly
arguments, searching every corner of the case,
and couched in a tone of decision and authority
which, it seemed to me, nothing could stand
before. The poor Bishop, who had had skir-
mishes with Roundell Palmer before, was almost
more afraid of him than he was of Bethel.
Armed with this opinion I went up to town
and put it into the hands of the solicitor,
William Ford. Ford, after many delays and
frights given me as to my precarious position,
got together a consultation-Sir Fitzroy Kelly
and Phillimore. We drew up a petition: the
Humble Petition of Mark Pattison, praying the
Visitor to confirm the sentence of restoration
which he had formerly issued, and informing
him that these three luminaries of the law,
Roundell Palmer, Kelly, and Phillimore, were
VII.
295
MEMOIRS.
of opinion that it was within his power to do
So. I am not certain that this petition was
ever presented, nor can I find any document
.which should have issued from the Visitor on
the occasion; the college register is silent. I
paid the lawyer's bill; Roundell Palmer took
no fee for his opinion, and I heard no more of
the matter.
I had now my fellowship to rely upon:
£200 a year-a fellowship of Lincoln was not
more in those days-which sufficed for my
personal expenditure in the economical style
in which we lived at that time in college. I
was therefore free to consider my plan of life,
and I took time to do so. As on a former
occasion, I would do nothing precipitately; I
would carry on the college tutorship for a term
or two, though I now hated the work as much
as I had delighted in it; and I would consider
whether anything that could be called prospects
could be saved from the wreck. If Thompson
behaved well to me, perhaps in time I might
recover tone and begin tutorial work again as
before. If he behaved ill I would throw up the
296
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
college tutorship and take private pupils for a
term or two.
In this gloomy, almost desperate, frame of
mind I dragged through the year 1852. The
Diary abounds in entries such as the following:
((
Dull, insensible wretchedness." Again,
23d April: "Returned to-night to college for
the first time for many years that I have done
so without any pleasure."
Again, about the same date:-"The miserable
depression of these days is not to be forgotten.
From supreme power to have come down to
be the least among my Lord's servants is little ;
but to see everything, small and great, going
the wrong way (then I enumerate many small
points of discipline) In a fortnight has
been undone all the work of my sub-rectorship.
May God give me patience in time; but I
cannot sit by and with equanimity look on at
the retrograde course of things. I try to fix
my thoughts on the subjects I am now propos-
ing to myself, but I do not succeed in getting
anything like absorption in them."
"19th September.-Read prayers at Launton
VII.
297
MEMOIRS.
and preached twice, being the first time I have
done any duty since my illness; was indifferent
and uninterested in preaching; my unhappiness.
comes between me and everything; good con-
gregation and attentive, but I could not give
my mind to what I was saying.”
"28th September.—Reading Socrates (? Iso-
crates) all yesterday and to-day; not more happy
but less disquieted days; mind more taken up
by what I was reading. Read an article in
Westminster Review on Sir Robert Peel, which
did me good, and for half an hour made me
resolve to work and redeem my misfortune, but
soon went off when I recollect my friendless
and helpless condition."
On 1st November 1852, the first Gaudy after
the catastrophe, I went up to London to be out
of the way: "to escape the bitter heartache of
being in college; did in some measure deaden
the bitter pain, but that was all."
(6
13th November.-Hunc diem satis misere,
ut semper, transegi."
((
4th December. My unhappiness not
abating.
298
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
'Aut ego profecto ingenio egregie ad miseriam
Natus sum; aut illud falsum est quod vulgo audio
Dici diem adimere ægritudinem hominibus.'"
TER., Haut., iii. 1-11.
"18th December.-Began to read Carlyle's
Life of Schiller. Very weary and wretched
both yesterday and to-day; all the savour of
life is departed."
"26th December.-Very wretched all yester-
day and to-day; dull, gloomy, blank.
itself is turned to sorrow."
((
Sleep
19th May 1853.-Sympathising visit from
Sanderson, who has been among the under-
graduates, and reported their wretched and
deteriorated condition."
"9th August.-A depressing feeling of melan-
choly came over me in the evening at the
thought of the summer term having now come
to an end. I have nothing to which I look
forward with any satisfaction; no prospects;
my life seems to have come to an end, my
strength gone, my energies paralysed, and all
my hopes dispersed."
Of course Thompson behaved badly to me-
VII.
299
MEMOIRS.
any one with any knowledge of the world would
have known that he would; he treated me as
Hawkins treated Newman. He wanted to get
me out as an unconformable element in the
mechanical system of government which was
now substituted for the human and personal
relations into which I had entered with each
undergraduate individually.
He offered me
such hard terms as to the tutorship that I
indignantly threw it up, and, to earn some
income for the moment, fell back on private
tuition. My credit in the University as a philo-
sophical tutor was now such that I had no
difficulty in getting some of the best men who
were going to read with me. Jowett sent me
men from Balliol; and J. M. Wilson, who
seemed to have the power of making every-
body do what he wanted, compelled an un-
friendly vice-chancellor to nominate me. a
second time examiner in the honour schools.
All these things, however, did not restore
my equilibrium or repair my unstrung nerves.
What was in the end more useful to me than
any honours and employments were long fishing
300
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
excursions which I got into the habit of making
in the north of England and Scotland. Since
my boyish days I had dropped out of fishing-
forgotten its charms; and, during the fever of
Tractarianism, had not felt the want of its gently
soothing properties. Fortunately a year or two
back the fly-rod had accidentally come into my
hands; it was now precisely the resource of
which my wounded nature stood in need. I
arranged the classes of private pupils for Lent
and Michaelmas terms only, keeping the summer
term free. About the middle of April, after long
and anxious preparation of rods and tackle, with
a well-selected box of books and large store of
tobacco, I set out for the north. My first stage
was Hauxwell, from which I fished the Ure or
Swale; then passed on to the Eden; then up
the Border, fishing everywhere, where I could
get leave—trout only, I would have nothing to
do with salmon-all the way to the Bridge of
Tummel in Perthshire. This humble inn, kept
by simple and friendly people, became my home
for many weeks at a time. I made lengthened
excursions from it into the far north, Ross-shire,
VII.
301
MEMOIRS.
the Isle of Skye, etc., and returned again to the
Bridge. So it was not till July, at the earliest,
that I became sufficiently tired of idleness, or
satiated with solitude, to begin to think of re-
turning home. My habit in these years was to
seek Oxford for a few weeks in the middle of
the Long Vacation, to renew acquaintance with
my books and review my literary plans, and
then, about the middle of September, to go off
for a ramble in Germany. In this way I visited
on foot large tracts of central and southern Ger-
many, delighting in discovering nooks and
corners unknown to guide - books. After I
gave up private tuition, as I soon did, I pro-
longed those German tours into November,
settling at some university; e.g. in 1856 I
passed some weeks at Heidelberg, attending
as a guest the course of Dr. Richard Rothe,
who was then at the height of his celebrity as
pioneer of a new school which was to unite the
utmost liberty of philosophical thought with
Christian dogma. Then I would return to
my rooms in college, and live there among
my books till April and the "March Browns"
302
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
came round again. I lived these months in
the college which I had governed as a stranger,
knowing nothing of college affairs, averting my
eyes from a misrule of which I would know
nothing, and only noticed by the authorities
when I was summoned to a college meeting
to make a quorum. Two or three seasons of
this régime went some way towards restoring
my mental equilibrium, and giving me back
something of my old energy.
The Diary of these years bears traces of
mental and moral deterioration; it has quite
ceased to be a diary of studies, and records
scarce anything but the names of the men I
met in the course of the day, and the subjects,
but not the detail, of our conversations. These
ran at this time largely upon two subjects:
1. The reform of the examination system; 2.
University reform. I appear to have taken a
great interest and no little share in both changes.
The aim of the new modelling of the examina-
tion statutes was to take off the strain of the
final schools; the requirement of the poets and
scholarship, along with philosophy and history,
VII.
303
MEMOIRS.
having been found too heavy. When we had
created a new examination, moderations, and
detached the scholarship portion of the exam-
ination, assigning it to the students' second
year, we congratulated ourselves on having
notably alleviated the burden of preparation.
Little did we foresee that we were only giving
another turn to the examination screw, which
has been turned several times since, till it has
become an instrument of mere torture which
has made education impossible and crushed the
very desire of learning.
The other and greater question of university
reform consumed a still larger amount of time
and thought. As it invariably happens when
you have to frame a scheme, the great outlines
disappear under a multitude of details, and these
assume at the time an importance in your eyes
which, on a retrospect, is ridiculous enough.
However, life is made up of details; one cannot
be always chewing the cud of great principles;
so far the Diary faithfully represents my broken
life in those years of defeat and despair. It
was probably well for me that I was able to
304
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
take so deep an interest even in these profitless
discussions.
I do not underrate the value of what was
done by the Executive Commission of 1854.
The abolition of the close fellowships opened
the colleges to an amount of talent and energy
hitherto unknown in them. They had hitherto
been peopled by a class of inferior men-
clergymen waiting for college livings, and
going through a feeble routine, which was
dignified by the name of tuition, to fill up
the time till a living dropped in. This was
the rotten and indefensible system which the
Tories fought for to the last gasp, and which
the Quarterly Review would gladly see restored.
It seems it is necessary, in the interests of the
Church, that the college endowments should be
reserved for men of capacities and energies
below the average. But this sweeping away
of local claims was nearly all the good that
the Commission of 1854 effected. After all the
contention about the professoriate, what the
Commission did in this direction was without
method-crude, sporadic. Meantime an influ-
VII.
305
MEMOIRS.
ence had been growing up among us-an influ-
ence which the Commission did but little to help
or further—one of which we said little, and that
little not approvingly, but which was destined
to work a revolution in the scope and functions.
of Oxford life far greater than has been effected
by two successive Commissions. This was the
Museum, and through the Museum the intro-
duction of the thin end of physical science. It
is to the silent permeative genius of science that
the growth of a large and comprehensive view
of the function of the University and the desire
to discharge it has spread among us. I have
said that, immersed in the details of our exam-
ination statute and our suggestions to the Com-
missioners, we spoke little of this pregnant
germ of the scientific spirit which was silently
diffusing itself among us. I say we, as I do
not mean the obstructionists, who were still in
a large majority; but the minority of liberal-
minded men with whom I now lived paid little
attention to this fact, and scarce knew whether
they approved of it or no. I remember on one
occasion, when a grant of £10,000 for Museum
X
306
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
purposes was before Convocation, that our
party was divided as to whether we should
support it or no. But even more astonishing
than our reluctance to give money was the
blindness in which we still lived as to the
claims of science in the realm of knowledge,
and our naive assumption that classical learn-
ing was a complete equipment for a great
university.
These, then, were the desultory and unsat-
isfying occupations of these years of famine,
during which the mind seemed to be suffering
rather than growing, and in which a dispropor-
tionate time had to be allotted to that fresh air
and solitude which seemed required to repair
the moral nature after the humiliation which
had paralysed it. All the spring and summer
I wandered like Bellerophon about the Aleian
fields, shunning the encounter of men my equals.
This retired life developed in me a kind of re-
serve or aloofness from other men, or rather it
reopened that cleft which seemed to separate
me from my species, under which I complained
at my first entrance into college life.
I was
VII.
307
MEMOIRS.
་
growing brooding, melancholy, taciturn, and
finally pessimist.
But though neither sun nor moon nor stars
appeared for many days, the vessel was not
entirely without a compass. I have said that
my earliest aspiration was to get a fellowship,
that I might devote myself to study.
This
was from very early days my ideal of life. I
had the vaguest notions of what I would study.
My curiosity was sufficiently awake when a boy
in various directions; but it was not the satisfac-
tion of my curiosity that I sought, but a studious
life-the Bíos OewpηTikòs-for its own sake. I
daresay the special pursuit to be favoured varied
from year to year. As early as 1830 my cousin
*** and I used to take in, she the Literary
Gazette, I the Athenæum, and we kept up a lively
correspondence in comparing notes over what
we read.
This desultory reading was inter-
rupted by my trying for classical honours at
Oriel. For a short time after my B.A. degree
I returned to the old love, and read voraciously
whatever came in my way, but all slight and
without a purpose. Then the flood of Tract-
308
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
arian infatuation broke over me and gave an
object to this plan of a studious existence; I
would devote myself to the reading of the
Fathers and of Church history from the point of
view of the Catholic Church. This phase took
some eight years out of my life; and before I
had quite cooled down in 1846 I found myself
engaged, without choice of my own, in a new
and absorbing occupation—that of teaching and
forming the young mind.
mind. This engrossed all
my energies till the catastrophe of November
1851, when this occupation was abruptly with-
drawn from me. Slowly the old original ideal
of life, which had been thrust aside by the force
of circumstance but never obliterated, began to
resume its place. Here again there was no act
of will or choice on my part. I lived for two
or more years in a state of passive wretched-
ness; as tone and energy returned, the idea of
devoting myself to literature strengthened and
developed. I never at any precise moment
made a formal devotion of myself as Goethe
did, who, on entering his thirtieth year, "re-
solved to deal with life no longer by halves,
VII.
309
MEMOIRS.
but to work it out in its totality and beauty—
Vom Halben zu entwöhnen, Und im Ganzen
Guten Schönen Resolut zu leben. (Goethe,
Gesellige Lieder, Generalbeichte.)
With me,
on the other hand, there was no intervention
of the will; I was moved by a power beyond
myself, and by imperceptible steps, to approve
and deliberately adopt that course of life which
old instinct, like a fate, had chalked out for me.
I began to form many ambitious schemes of
books to be written, any one of which might
have occupied my lifetime. My interests were
too diversified, and my mind suffered accord-
ingly. I am astonished, when I look over my
C. P. B. of this period, to see how omnivorous
was my appetite for both facts and ideas. I
was also still, at least as late as 1857, very far
from having formed the pure and unselfish con-
ception of the life of the true student, which
dawned upon me afterwards, and which Goethe,
it seems, already possessed at thirty. My ideal
at this time was polluted and disfigured by lite-
rary ambition. I had in short essays proved to
myself that I could write that which attracted
310
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
men's attention.
I wanted to be doing more
of this sort to be before the world, in fact, as
a writer. I shared the vulgar fallacy that a
literary life meant a life devoted to the making
of books, and that not to be always coming be-
fore the public was to be idle. It cost me years
more of extrication of thought before I rose to
the conception that the highest life is the art to
live, and that both men, women, and books are
equally essential ingredients of such a life.
This last suggestion belongs to a later period.
At the epoch of which I am now writing-about
1856-57-what was necessary for me? The
thing of first necessity for me was a definite
direction to reading; so that reading might
become serious study, study might become
research, and, if it might be, literature might
become learning. One subject I seem to have
already appropriated as my own, i.e. the history
and organisation of universities. This topic was
indeed only a subordinate branch of a larger
form of investigation which constituted the
framework within which my thoughts habitu-
ally moved-viz. the laws of the progress of
VII.
MEMOIRS.
311
thought in modern Europe. At first I attempted
to work this out through the filiation of succes-
sive systems of philosophy. I soon found that
this was a task beyond me, and besides it had
been already attempted with various success by
many others. Buckle's History of Civilisation
appeared and took the reading world by storm.
I was carried away by Buckle's vast reading
and the appearance of wide induction which his
pages bore, a quality which I had now come to
require in any book. I gave much time to the
study of Buckle; I not only wrote a review of
it for the Westminster—a review which I have
since found from Buckle's Life was the only
one which he considered to have touched the
merits of the book-but I brought all the atten-
tion of which I was capable to meditate upon
his main thesis-viz. that the actions of man-
kind, at any point whatever of their history,
are determined by their knowledge. I found
myself compelled not only to reject this
theory, but came to see the impossibility of re-
ducing the theory of progress to any single law.
I therefore dropped the pursuit of any such
312
MARK PATTISON.
CHAP.
comprehensive idea as progress or civilisation,
and tried to confine myself to some one manage-
able section of the subject. The readiest at hand
was the history and function of the universities;
and as through the '50's the topic of university
reform was a leading topic both at Oxford and
Cambridge, in following out the bent of my
own studies I had by accident got hold of a
popular topic. I returned again and again to
it in essays, articles, addresses; and when, in
1867, I thought I had exhausted all I had to
say upon the subject in my book on Academical
Organisation, there suddenly sprung up a new
development in the question of the endowment
of research. I would willingly have left this
new outgrowth to be looked after by others;
but I was compelled, partly by Dr. Appleton's
importunity, partly by thinking it cowardly to
shrink from standing by an unpopular cause,
to take a much larger part in that movement
than I wished to do.
But the history of universities was but one
of many rivals in my intellectual interests. The
movement of theological sentiment in modern
.VII.
313
MEMOIRS.
Europe had long had a peculiar charm for me.
It was a subject, too, that had never been
touched by any English writer, with the ex-
ception of one Unitarian sketch by J. J. Tayler
-Retrospect of the Religious Life of England-
a volume not known beyond Unitarian circles.
I saw the impossibility of attempting, as Tayler
had done, to survey the whole course of religious
thought in England, and I therefore selected a
special period which had peculiarly definite limits.
It had always struck me as a surprising fact that
Deism, which had been the prevailing form of
thought among the educated classes in England
during the first half of the eighteenth century,
should have abruptly disappeared somewhere
about 1760, giving place to a revived Puritanism
in the form of Methodism and Evangelicalism.
I saw clearly that the usual solution offered by
the orthodox, viz. that Deism had been triumph-
antly refuted in argument, did not explain the
fact. I attempted an original inquiry, of a kind
new in this country, into the philosophic causes
of the sudden rise and as sudden extinction
of Deism in the last century. I inserted this
314
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
essay in the volume of Essays and Reviews.
So wholly extinct is scientific theology in the
Church of England that the English public
could not recognise such a thing as a neutral
and philosophic inquiry into the causes of the
form of thought existing at any period. Our
clergy knew only of pamphlets which must be
either for or against one of the parties in the
Church.
The study of the sources and the collection
of the materials occupied me for nearly two
years. The essay as it stands was hastily
written and crudely and awkwardly composed.
But the dominant idea which governed the
writer was, as I have said, that of a scientific
history of the self-development of opinion.
This attempt to present the English public
with a philosophical monograph on one special
phase of religious thought was singularly unsuc-
cessful. To judge from the reviews, it never
occurred to any of our public instructors that
such a conception was possible. Clerical or
anti-clerical, from the Westminster Review to
the Guardian, they were all busily occupied in
VII.
315
MEMOIRS.
finding or making contradictions between the
writer's words and the thirty-nine articles.
It is possible that the fault was partly charge-
able on the essay itself, which, hastily written,
may not always have maintained the tone of
historical investigation; yet to foreigners it
seemed to do so. The Protestant historian-
Dorner-going over the same ground a few
years afterwards,' accepted the essay for what
it was intended to be a history, and not
a party manifesto. Dorner's chapter, "Der
streitende und siegende Deismus," makes much
use and ample acknowledgment of my essay.
Another exception to the chorus of blatant and
ignorant howling, with which my poor venture
was received, I will record. Soon after the
publication of Essays and Reviews, happening
to come down from town in the train with
Father, since Cardinal, Newman, whom I had
not seen for a long time, I was in terror as to
how he would regard me in consequence of
In his Geschichte der Protestantischen Theologie besonders
in Deutschland, pp. 497 seq., München, 1867. See also
English Edition, 1871, v. ii., p. 496.—ED.
316
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
what I had written. My fears were quickly
relieved. He blamed severely the throwing of
such speculations broadcast upon the general
public. It was, he said, unsettling their faith
without offering them anything else to rest
upon. But he had no word of censure for the
latitude of theological speculation assumed by
the essay, provided it had been addressed ad
clerum, or put out, not as a public appeal, but
as a scholastic dissertation addressed to learned
theologians. He assured me that this could be
done in the Roman communion, and that much
greater latitude of speculation on theological
topics was allowed in this form in the Catholic
Church than in Protestant communities.
Whatever may be the case in the Catholic
Church, I do not see how an English writer is
to confine theological discussion to a class of
professional theologians, even supposing there
existed such a class. If he writes in Latin he
might as well not write at all—he will remain
unread; and if he publishes an English disserta-
tion any one who can buy the book may read
it. No topic excites the English world more
VII.
317
MEMOIRS.
than a religious topic, yet there is no public in
this country for a scientific treatment of theo-
logy. This absence of a professional public,
and not the restraints of our formularies, seems
to me the true reason why a real theology
cannot exist in England. Every clerical writer
feels himself bound to decide every question of
criticism or interpretation in favour of the ortho-
dox view. It is demanded of him by public
opinion that he shall be an advocate and not
a critic. Science or knowledge cannot exist
under such a system; it requires for its growth
the air of free discussion and contradiction.
For myself, I refused to attempt any defence
or to enter into controversy with my critics.
We were at cross purposes, and there was an
end. But I resolved to wash my hands of
theology and even of Church history, seeing
that there existed in England no proper public
for either. So, as philosophy was too difficult
for me, or its interest was exhausted, I fell back
upon another special portion of the great story
of progressive civilisation, which had attracted
me from a very early time. I have mentioned
318
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
under the year 1835 the fascination exerted over
me by my tutor Hyman's style of annotation
on Aristophanes, and the first introduction I
got through him to the personality of Bentley,
Brunck, Porson, etc. This first suggestion
fructified in my mind, and from time to time,
among other miscellaneous reading, I dipped
into the Latin commentators, Ernesti, Ruhnken,
Valckenaer, without going farther back than the
eighteenth century. In 1851 the Clarendon Press
printed the Ephemerides of Isaac Casaubon.
This curious book immediately riveted my at-
tention. I saw what a mine of inquiry was
opened into the progress of classical learning,
from the Renaissance down to Niebuhr. I
began also to see how full of biographical in-
terest and local colour were the lives of the
great philologians of the sixteenth century. I
immediately acted on Dr. Priestley's advice to
a man who asked him how he might get to know
something of a subject he named, "Oh sit down
and write a book upon it." I sat down and
wrote an article on Casaubon, and sent it up
to the Edinburgh Review. My article was
VII.
319
MEMOIRS.
immediately returned by Empson with the mes-
sage that Casaubon's Ephemerides had been
placed in the hands of an old contributor. Here
was my usual luck; nothing that I attempted
was to succeed. However, I tried the Quarterly.
It so happened that the Quarterly was then, for
a too brief period, in the hands of a man with
the genuine tastes of a scholar. It was inserted
in the next number, and the editor was not
sparing in praise. I must always feel grateful
to Mr. Elwin for thus giving me the first en-
couraging impulse to a path of research, then
new and untrodden, which has been my main
occupation for the thirty years that have elapsed
since that article was written.
My first scheme, now that I had discovered
a subject to which I could thoroughly devote
myself, was to write the history of learning from
the Renaissance downwards. One's ambition
is always in the inverse proportion of one's
knowledge. I soon discovered how much I
I contracted my
had miscalculated my powers.
views to a history of one only of the schools of
philology. It should be the French chool, be-
320
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
ginning with Budæus, and coming down at least
to Huet and the Delphin editions. It was not
long before I found that even on this reduced
scale, I could not hope to execute a thorough
piece of work. There had not been enough.
preparatory investigation of single points by
others. There was an outline, Geschichte der
Philologie, by Fr. Creuzer very slight, appar-
ently notes for a course of lectures.
chapters on classical learning in Hallam might
furnish a skeleton. But Hallam did not pretend
to appreciate the scholars as he did the littéra-
teurs from his own reading; he only transcribed
the judgments of the ana, or the vague éloges of
prefaces and dedications.
The
Of the ambitious plan I had first conceived
I have only executed fragments; one ex-
haustive monograph on Isaac Casaubon, and
some slighter sketches, first draughts, as it were,
for the lives of Henri Estienne, Salmasius,
Huet, and F. A. Wolf. What was to have
been my most elaborate study was that of J. J.
Scaliger. To this I devoted myself in a dif-
ferent spirit. In the case of Casaubon I had
VII.
321
MEMOIRS.
been animated to my work, less by interest in
the personality than by the biographer's grati-
fication of finding in London, Paris, and Geneva,
a mass of unpublished material, which I was
the first to bring into a connected story.
No literary vanity or ambition mingled itself
with the pure enthusiasm which animated me in
the study of J. J. Scaliger. Posterity," writes
C. Neate, owes to those who have effectually
worked for its benefit the debt of a grateful
curiosity; that debt it is, in matters of learning,
our part to pay. It is a debt we can repay at
little cost, or rather we shall grow richer by the
repayment.
In this way only can we
keep up that glorious continuity of the human
mind which gives,
even to the new-born
thoughts that are here engendered, the nobility
of many generations and the hope of an endur-
ing succession" (Legal and other Studies at the
University, p. 10). I soon came to view in
Scaliger something more than the first scholar
of the modern age. The hint was given me in
a conversation I had with Chevalier Bunsen at
Charlottenburg in 1856. Speaking of Bernays'
Y
322
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
masterly monograph on Scaliger, just pub-
lished, he pointed out that Bernays' creed had
interfered with his seeing in Scaliger the Pro-
testant hero. He showed me that Scaliger
was the central figure of his time, and that the
whole literary effort of the Catholic reaction
for a quarter of a century had been directed to
beating down his fame by an organised system
of detraction and vilification such as has never
been played off against any other man who
was not a political leader. He suggested
to me not to translate Bernays' volume, but
to rewrite the life in connection with the re-
ligious history of the time from which Bernays
had detached it. I imposed it on myself as a
solemn duty to rescue the memory of Scaliger
from the load of falsehood and infamy under
which the unscrupulous Jesuit faction had con-
trived to bury it. So elaborately planned had
been their campaign that they had even trained
a double-a kind of mock sun-or harlequin
Scaliger in the person of Dionysius Petavius,
whose burlesque was to make the real Scaliger
forgotten. The French literati of the next
VII.
323
MEMOIRS.
generation, indifferent to truth and the slaves
of epigram, lazily copied the Scaliger as depicted
by the Jesuits. And as one French biographer
copies the one before him without examination,
the Scaliger hypobolimæus has become the per-
manent Scaliger of their dictionaries and books
of reference. I have been nearly thirty years
getting together the materials for my vindicia.
In the autumn of 1883 I returned from the
Tyrol with the full purpose of devoting the
next twelve months to complete the composi-
tion of the Life, of which many portions were
already written out in their definitive form, when
I was struck down by the malady which has
cut off all hope of my ever being able to exe-
cute this or any other literary scheme.
With the year 1860 I close for the present
this brief memoir. Of the three-and-twenty
years of life which have been granted me since,
what little account there is to be given must
be reserved for another time, which may never
come. The fortunate possessor, by my election
to the headship of my college, of unrivalled
324
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
academic leisure, there is even still less to say
about these twenty-three years than there has
been about those which preceded them. I do
not flatter myself that the outline of my mental
development which I have drawn can have
interest for many beyond the circle of my own
acquaintance. In looking back on the course
which self-formation has taken with me, two
points seem to me chiefly noteworthy.
1. The minuteness of the germ out of which a
wide and full intellectual life has been evolved. A
writer in the Spectator says, speaking of Anthony
Trollope, "There exists in some men a mental
husk or shell out of which they grow, as they
grow out of physical weakness or uncouthness.
It is not that they conceal their powers or neg-
lect their powers, but that the powers are not
there. The germ must exist, but it may for
effective purposes be so crushed as to be tem-
porarily dead. Such men's minds do not simply
grow, they break through also. What it is that
happens in such cases no one can say; but it
does happen, and more frequently to women
than men; and there is, as is evident from the
VII.
325
MEMOIRS.
analogy of sleep, no reason why it should not
happen. Why should not the explanation of
Anthony Trollope's boyhood be that he, the
clear-sighted novelist, able man of business,
and successful public servant, actually was, till
he was twenty-five, a disagreeable dullard?”
This is nearly my mental experience; my first
consciousness is that of stupidity. A very feeble
germ of intellect was struggling with a crushing
mass of facts, ideas which it could not master,
and with the tyrannical force of more powerful
intelligence in the persons around me. Instead
of starting, as I saw other young men do, with
a buoyant sense of mental vigour and delight
in the masterful exercise of the intellectual
weapons, I was wearily nursing a feeble spark
of mind, painfully conscious of its inability to
cope with its environment. At twenty-one I
seemed ten years in the rear of my contem-
poraries.
Slowly, and not without laborious effort, I
began to emerge, to conquer, as it were, in the
realm of ideas. It was all growth, develop-
ment, and I have never ceased to grow, to
326
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
develop, to discover, up to the very last. While
my contemporaries, who started so far ahead of
me, fixed their mental horizon before they were
thirty-five, mine has been ever enlarging and
expanding. I experienced what Marcus Aure-
lius reckoned among the favours of the gods,
μὴ πρὸ ὥρας ἀνδρωθῆναι, ἀλλ᾽ ἔτι καὶ ἐπιλαβεῖν τοῦ
Xpóvov (i. 17), and the growth of anything that
could be called mind in me was equally back-
ward. But slow as the steps were, they have
been all forward. I seemed to my friends to
have changed, to have gone over from High
Anglicanism to Latitudinarianism, or Rational-
ism, or Unbelief, or whatever the term may be.
This is not so; what took place with me was
simple expansion of knowledge and ideas. To
my home Puritan religion, almost narrowed to
two points-fear of God's wrath and faith in
the doctrine of the atonement—the idea of the
Church was a widening of the horizon which
stirred up the spirit and filled it with enthusiasm.
The notion of the Church soon expanded itself
beyond the limits of the Anglican communion
and became the wider idea of the Catholic
VII.
327
MEMOIRS.
Church. Then Anglicanism fell off from me,
like an old garment, as Puritanism had done
before.
Now the idea of the Catholic Church is only
a mode of conceiving the dealings of divine
Providence with the whole race of mankind.
Reflection on the history and condition of
humanity, taken as a whole, gradually con-
vinced me that this theory of the relation of
all living beings to the Supreme Being was
too narrow and inadequate. It makes an equal
Providence, the Father of all, care only for a
mere handful of the species, leaving the rest
(such is the theory) to the chances of eternal
misery. If God interferes at all to procure the
happiness of mankind it must be on a far more.
comprehensive scale than by providing for them
a church of which far the majority of them will
never hear. It was on this line of thought, the
details of which I need not pursue, that I passed
out of the Catholic phase, but slowly, and in
many years, to that highest development when
all religions appear in their historical light, as
328
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
efforts of the human spirit to come to an under-
standing with that Unseen Power whose pressure
it feels, but whose motives are a riddle. Thus
Catholicism dropped off me as another husk
which I had outgrown. There was no con-
version or change of view; I could no more
have helped what took place within me than
I could have helped becoming ten years older.
Das Werk wächst concrescirt allmälig und
langsam, wie das Kind im Mutterleibe ich
weiss nicht was zuerst und was zuletzt ent-
standen ist. Ich werde ein Glied, ein Gefäss,
einen Theil nach dem anderen gewahr, d. h.
ich schreibe auf, unbekümmert, wie es zum
Ganzen passen wird
wird; denn ich weiss, es ist
Alles aus einem Grund entsprungen. So ent-
steht ein organisches Ganzes und nur ein
solches kann leben.
The same evolution which thus worked out
my conception of the supreme law of the uni-
verse prevailed in all the subordinate branches
of investigation through which my studies led
I never began, as I believe many men
me.
VII.
329
MEMOIRS.
It
do, with the highest generalisation, and then
gradually narrowed it down as I got to know
more facts. An ovum was deposited in the
nidus of my mind, blind, formless, with no
quality but life. Incubation warmed it; it
differentiated itself into logical members, then
threw out tentacles, which grasped with avidity
all matter which they could assimilate from their
environment, till the whole conception presented
itself organically complete and articulate.
was thus, e.g., that I arrived at last at the idea
of a University. I began with the most rudi-
mentary notion, the personal relation between
teacher and taught, and obstinately refused to
admit any other consideration into my mind
along with it. This indeed historically was
the origin of universities;-as when Abelard
attracted his five thousand pupils to St. Gene-
viève, it was the personality of the man in
which the magnetic influence resided.
In the second place, I cannot help observing
the remarkable force with which the Unconscious
-das Unbewusste—vindicated its power. The
330
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
weight of this element in human affairs is so
unmistakable that whole theologies have been
founded upon the observation of the work-
ing of this single power, e.g. Calvinism and
Mahometanism. By whatever name you call
it, the Unconscious is found controlling each
man's destiny without, or in defiance of, his will.
The unconscious instinct of a studious life,
having its origin in the days of early boyhood,
reasserted itself again and again against un-
toward external events, until it had compelled
me into the career which alone my reason
approved, and to which I have been faithful
for the last thirty years. Once or twice only
in this period have I for a brief moment deserted
literature. In 1858 I went out to Berlin for
three months as Times correspondent.
But in
this case the attraction to me resided not in the
political reports I had to transmit to my paper,
but in the opportunity afforded me of making
acquaintance with men and things, of the sort
that touched my special interests, in a new
sphere. Again, in 1859, I went over North
VII.
331
MEMOIRS.
Germany as commissioner, to inquire into Ger-
man elementary schools.
Besides these two occasions, I was once or
twice nearly thrown off my balance by the
practical urgencies of a life led in the Uni-
versity. When the new Hebdomadal Council
was first instituted in 1854 I fancied, or friends
persuaded me, that I should like to be elected
into it. I tried to be so on two occasions; for-
tunately for me I was left in a minority each
time, or I might have wasted years in the idle
and thankless pursuit which they call doing
university business. When the Vice-Chancel-
lorship came to me in 1878 I had the moral
courage to refuse it; and I am fairly entitled
to say that, since the year 1851, I have lived
wholly for study. There can be no vanity in
making this confession, for, strange to say, in a
university ostensibly endowed for the cultiva-
tion of science and letters, such a life is hardly
regarded as a creditable one.
Thus the catastrophe of 1851, after all the
agony that I suffered in consequence of it,
332
CHAP.
MARK PATTISON.
turned out to be a substantial blessing. In
writing my Life of Milton I could not but be
forcibly reminded of my own experience when
I had to describe the poet, after the crash of
1660, returning to thoughts of poetry and the
composition of Paradise Lost, which he had
forsaken for more than twenty years for a noisy
pamphlet brawl and the unworthy drudgery of
Secretary to the Council Board. Surely Milton,
who was at one time so carried away by the
passion of a party whose aims he idealised
that he boasted of having lost his eyesight in
bombarding Salmasius with foul epithets, must,
amid the inspiration which poured forth Paradise
Lost, have come round again to the opinion of
Goethe that "a purely poetical subject is as
superior to a political one as the pure everlast-
ing truth of Nature is to party spirit."
myself, I can truly say that daily converse with
the poetry and literature of all times, ancient
and modern, has been to me its own sufficient
reward; the classics have lost for me nothing
of their charm; on this very day-New Year's
For
VII.
333
MEMOIRS.
Eve, 1884—I can read Sophocles with greater
delight than I ever did.
"J'ai profité des jours, des années qui m'ont
été données pour vivre dans la familiarité des
grands esprits de tous les temps.
"Ces bons génies qui ont illustré le monde
ne m'ont point dédaigné. Sans me demander
mes titres, qui j'étais, d'où je venais, ils m'ont
admis dans leur compagnie. Ils m'ont ouvert
leurs volumes; ils m'ont laissé lire dans leurs
pensées, dans leur secrets; ils m'ont laissé
m'abreuver de leur douce science; j'ai oublié
dans cette occupation les mauvais jours qui
s'étendaient sur moi.
". . . J'ai osé moi aussi vivre de leur vie,
de cette vie ailée, magnifique, toute puissante par
laquelle ils disposent en souverains de la réalité.
Comme eux j'ai osé faire profession de penser.
J'ai joui de l'intimité des choses. J'ai conversé
avec les idées, embrassé le possible; car dans
ces moments, je m'oubliais moi même, et en
suivant le beau cortège des intelligences qui
m'ont précédé, j'ai joui comme elles de l'uni-
334
!
MARK PATTISON.
CHAP. VII.
vers moral dont elles m'avaient ouvert l'entrée."
(Quinet, Hist. de mes Idées, p. 95.)
There seems to have fulfilled itself for me
that adage of Goethe which, when I first came
upon it, appeared a mere paradox-
"Was man in der Jugend wünsche,
Hat man im Alter die Fülle."
Of that which a man desires in youth, of that he shall have
in age as much as he will.
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