# Literary Landmarks of Oxford/Balliol

BALLIOL
Balliok is one of the very oldest of the Colleges of Oxford; and long is the list of distinguished Men of Letters whom it has educated, and who are associated with it.
It dates back to the last half of the Thirteenth Century; and it is said to owe its birth to an act of penance. John de Balliol, its Founder, for some political offence was sentenced to be publicly whipped, at the doors of Durham Cathedral; but he compromised matters by instituting a college at Oxford, for the benefit of needy scholars of Durham; thereby doing a good deed and perpetuating his own name for many generations. Dying, in exile, before the work was completed, his widow, Dame Devorguilla de Balliol, carried out his promises; and she shares with him the honor of the foundation.
If John Wycliffe, one of the earliest of the Balliol Worthies, was, as has been asserted, a member of the ancient family of that name and ilk whom Scott celebrated in "Marmion," he possessed some sort of a collateral connection with these Balliols of Barnard Castle, who are ​supposed to have been near neighbors of his forefathers.
Naturally, as the College has been so often and so thoroughly altered and "done-over" since its foundation, but few traces of the buildings, as Wycliffe knew them, more than six hundred years ago, now remain. The experts believe that the oldest part still existing is the present Reading-Room of the Library, on the left hand side of the Front Quadrangle; but that edifice dates back no farther than to the first quarter of the Fifteenth Century.
Wycliffe became Master of Balliol some time in the middle of the Fourteenth Century, but he remained there only one year.
Whether he came directly from Merton, or whether he had been previously a Fellow of Balliol, is a question which the authorities have never been able to determine; and it is equally uncertain as to whether or not on his return to Oxford he resided at Queen's, at an annual rental of twenty shillings, in the coin of the realm; a statement questioned by Reginald L. Poole, M.A., historian of Balliol, who thinks that there were two John Wycliffes in Oxford at that time. Dr. John Fell, in his lodgings at Christ Church, told Anthony Wood, once, that he considered Wycliffe to have been a great dissembler, a man ​of little conscience; and that what he had as to religion was more out of vainglory, and to obtain unto himself a name, than out of honesty.
How Dean Fell came to this opinion, at the end of so many years, Mr. Wood does not explain.
John Evelyn entered Balliol in 1637, and he left college in 1640, without taking a degree. His three years there were spent chiefly in the study of music, in the Vaulting-school, in dancing; and in quarrelling, studiously, with the authorities, upon all sorts of subjects. It may be added that he declared, later, that his "being at the University, except in regard to these avocations, was of very small benefit" to him.
Evelyn went more than once back to Oxford. In 1654 (July 6th to 11th) he tells how he, and his wife, supped at Wadham, heard sermons at St. Mary's, went to a musical party at All Souls, and how, at Balliol, where he had once been a Student and Fellow Commoner, they made "him extraordinarily welcome." At Wadham he met "that prodigious young scholar, Mr. Christopher Wren," who presented to him "a piece of white marble, which he had stained with a lively red, very deep, as beautiful as if it had been natural."
A "Commoner" at Oxford is a student who is not dependent upon the Foundation. He dines at the Common Table; but he pays his board. A ​"Fellow Commoner" in Evelyn's day was a somewhat superior sort of Commoner, who was allowed to pay his board at the Common Table of the Fellows.
Evelyn was the recipient of an Honorary Degree, on the occasion of the opening of The Sheldonian Theatre in 1699, and he describes fully the event. "The assembly now returned to the Theatre," he says, "where the Terræ Filius [The University Buffoon] entertained the auditory with a tedious, abusive, sarcastical rhapsody, most unbecoming the gravity of the University, and that so grossly that, unless it be suppressed, it will be of ill-consequence . . . The old facetious way of rallying upon the questions was left out, falling wholly upon persons, so that it was rather licen- tious, lying railing, than genuine and noble wit. In my life I was never witness of so shameful an entertainment." From this it may be inferred, perhaps, that Evelyn was the subject of some of the abusive, sarcastical, personal, rhapsody in question!
Another famous Diarist, Samuel Pepys, visited Oxford several times. His minutes of June 9th, 1666, read like an extract from a journal of to-day: "We came to Oxford, a very sweet place." He wrote, "Paid our guide one pound two and sixpence; barber two and six; boy that showed me ​the colleges before dinner, one shilling. To dinner, and then out with my wife, and people, and landlord; and to him that showed us the School and Library ten shillings . . . Go to see Christ Church with my wife, I seeing several others, very fine, alone, and did give the boy that went with me one shilling. Strawberries one and twopence; dinner and servants, one pound and sixpence. After coming home from the schools, I out with the landlord to Brasenose College; to the butteries. Butler two shillings. Then with coach and people to see the Physic Gardens [Botanical Gardens], one shilling. So to Friar Bacon's Study; I up and saw it; and gave the man one shilling. Bottle of sack for the landlord one shilling. Oxford mighty fine place, and well seated, and cheap entertainment."
Unfortunately there is no record of the name of the landlord's hotel, where, as elsewhere, the entertainment seems to have been anything but cheap. The guides must have enjoyed Pepys as much as Pepys enjoyed Oxford; and they must have looked upon him as the delightful fore-runner of the prodigal American, of two centuries later, who pays with both hands. Entertainment, at Oxford, is cheap enough now—as such things go. And Oxford is still "a very sweet place," and " mighty fine."
​The Study of Friar Bacon, which Master Pepys "up and saw" was contained in a hexagonal tower on Folly Bridge; but it was taken down in 1779, more's the pity, a century and a decade after Pepys's famous and expensive visit. Why, oh why, should Improvement, in its march, march over, and wipe out, Friar Bacon's Study, which we all, now, would so much like to "up and see"?
Roger Bacon is believed to have gone first to Oxford about 1233; but the exact date, and the length of his stay then, and later, are very uncertain. He lived, for a time, in the Monastery of the Franciscans, "under the City Wall, in the suburb, south of St. Ebbe's Church," and he is said to have died there and to have been buried in its chapel. But that is uncertain too! No stone of Monastery or Chapel is now left.
Anthony Wood tells a story of Bacon, in Oxford, which is probably the parent of many similar stories, told of many other Men of Mind. It seems, according to the gossipy Annalist, that when certain scholars of Cambridge went to play a game of brains and learning with the Oxford students, the latter sent out Bacon, disguised as a thatcher, to meet them, and to paralyze them, on the road, with a display of that knowledge of the Dead Languages, which was supposed to be possessed then, even by the hedgers and ditchers of the ​University Town on the banks of the Thames. When the counterfeit thatcher capped Latin verses with the challenging team, they fled before him, according to Wood, and hurried back to the shores of the Cam, without venturing to enter the gates of Oxford at all.
This is a very pretty and instructive tale. But, probably, it is not true.
John Kyrle, Pope's "Man of Ross," may squeeze himself into fame, perhaps, as a Literary Landmark, upon the reputation given him by the author of "The Moral Essays." He entered Balliol in 1654, but he left Oxford without a degree. Even Pope does not tell us whether or not he began to go about doing good in his college days. Nevertheless, he seems to have done a good deal of good to his fellow-men, during the rest of his long life. He planted trees; he made blades of grass to grow where none had grown before; he built, and he re-built, churches; he fed the poor; he was a general mediator in cases of domestic and local quarrels; and, as he was himself constantly involved in litigation, not being able to heal himself of quarrelling, he fed even the poor attorneys of his country-side. He was, above all, temperate in his living; he smoked but two pipes a day; and he died, a bachelor, at the age of eighty-eight.
   "But all our praises, why should lords engross?
   Rise, Honest Muse, and sing the Man of Ross.
   Who taught that Heaven directed spire to rise?
   'The Man of Ross,' each lisping babe replies.
   Behold the Market-place, with poor o'erspread,
   The Man of Ross divides the weekly bread.
   Is any sick? The Man of Ross relieves,
   Prescribes, attends, the med'cine makes and gives.
   Is there a variance? Enter but his door,
   Balked are the courts; and contest is no more."
That there are, to-day, such Men of Ross and Men of Elsewhere, in certain colleges and college towns, is known full well. And Somewhere there is a University—Infinite, Eternal, and Unchangeable—which will grant them their degrees!
What strikes one curiously, in the study of the Literary Landmarks of Oxford, is the fact that in that town have figured, as young men or as old, so many authors of half forgotten, or of quite forgotten, books; books which are well known by name to our own generation, books which are freely quoted, wittingly or unwittingly, generally through Mr. Bartlett's Collection of such Familiar Things; but books which are never read. How many students of to-day have gone, from frontispiece to end, through "The Ship of Fools"; through "The Anatomy of Melancholy"; through "The Book of Martyrs"; through "The Whole ​Duty of Man"; through "The Principles of Human Knowledge"; through " Meditations Among the Tombs"; through "Night Thoughts"; through "Sandford and Merton"; through "The Confessions of an Opium Eater," or through "The Wealth of Nations"? And yet what gentleman would consider his library as being fully equipped without them all?
"My dear, what's the name of that Scotsman?" asked, not long ago, the wife of a certain contemporary American writer, the children of whose brain are born, generally, to be at once forgotten, and who is never quoted at all;—"My dear, what's the name of that Scotsman?" "Which Scotsman?" "Why, the Scotsman who wrote the book?" She had, somehow, overlooked, for the moment, the fact that more than one Scotsman had written a book! Further inquiry led to the discovery that the book was "The Wealth of Nations," and that, naturally, the name of the Scotsman was Adam Smith!
Smith, in 1740, obtained what is called an "Exhibition" to Balliol; and he rode on horseback all the way from his Northern Country to accept it; remaining in Oxford continuously for four years.
He asserted, in later life, that he owed but little to the official system of tuition. He read industriously in the College Library, however, on his ​own account; devoting himself to the study of Greek, and particularly to an unusually wide range of English Literature.
He wrote, once, to his mother, that he was suffering from "an inveterate scurvy, and shaking of the head;" but that he was curing himself, he thought, by liberal doses of tar-water. Like all other Scotsmen in the middle of the Eighteenth Century, Smith was not very popular in Oxford. There were not many of his countrymen about him with whom he cared to consort; and no doubt what he called "a violent fit of laziness," which confined him to his elbow-chair for three months, was a severe attack of loneliness and homesickness, with complications of too much tar-water, and a little overwork.
An " Exhibition " is defined as "A benefaction settled for the maintenance of Students in English Universities, independent of the Foundation." In Smith's native Scotland, it would have been called a "Bursary," and Smith's "Exhibition" at Balliol made him passing rich on forty pounds a year; the total cost of his first quarter's residence being, we are told, seven pounds five shillings, or thirty-six dollars, a sum which, unfortunately, does not go quite so far in the Oxford of to-day.
Robert Southey entered Balliol, as a Commoner, in 1792. It is recorded, by himself, that he wore ​his own hair "curly and long"; that he pronounced the authorities "men remarkable for great wigs and little wisdom"; that he confessed that he learned nothing at Oxford, but a little rowing and a little swimming; that he went up, from Westminster, in a perilous state, with a heart full of poetry and feeling; that while he was in Oxford he carried "Epictetus" in his pocket, until his very heart was ingrained with it, as a pig's bones become red by feeding him upon madder; and that one of his tutors said to him once: " Mr. Southey, you won't learn anything by my lectures, sir. So, if you have any studies of your own, you'd better pursue them."
When our tutors begin to talk that way to our freshmen, who make "Epictetus" a steady diet, we may congratulate ourselves that we have a Southey among us.
Southey goes on to say that he never dreamed at Oxford;—a sure proof, to him, of how little it had entered into his moral being.
While the present writer was at Oxford, gathering, into his note-books, all these things about Oxford and about its Men of Letters, he dreamed every night, and it seemed to him all night, about Oxford and about his work there. Which shows how much, in six weeks, Oxford entered into the moral being of an individual who went to Oxford ​to study nothing but Oxford, and only a particular side of Oxford; who never thought of "Epictetus," and who wore his hair short and straight. His work was delightful work. And no nightmare galloped in his dreams. They were as delightful as was his work.
Southey had chambers, his biographers tell us, in Rat Castle—since departed—near the head of Balliol Grove; and to these chambers was brought to him one day, in 1794, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with whom he began, then and there, an intimacy the great influence of which was to color and to shape his whole life. The first meeting-place of these two men, if it still existed, would be one of the most interesting of all the local Literary Landmarks of the town.
John Gibson Lockhart was nominated to "an Exhibition" in Balliol, which he entered in 1809. He cared nothing for out-of-door sports then, or later, but at college he made great sport, and in an in-door way, of his friends, his tutors, and even of the authorities, by decorating his walls with original caricatures, which ridiculed everybody he knew there, including himself. He was a good scholar, and a close student, for all that. He wrote excellent Latin, in prose and in verse; he read easily and eagerly and intelligently French, Spanish, and Italian; and, in 1813, he took a ​First Class in Classics; a good deed, which should atone for a multitude of those sins of irreverence which he committed with a pencil, on the clean whitewash which bounded the four sides of his study table.
Sir William Hamilton, the Metaphysician, like Smith and Lockhart, went to Balliol on the strength of an "Exhibition"; but, in 1807, two years before Lockhart was introduced. Despite the slight difference in their ages, they were, as men and as students, in college and throughout life, the warmest of friends and the closest of companions.
Hamilton's account of the freshman's daily life and habits at Balliol in 1807, are worth quoting: "No boots are allowed to be worn here," he wrote, "or trousers or pantaloons," which last sounds a little startling. "But," he continued, "in the morning we wear white cotton stockings, and before dinner regularly dress in silk stockings."
These, no doubt, were prettier to look at than blazers and sweaters, no matter of what their color; and they were even more attractive than caps and gowns. They dined at half past three, in those days; attended chapel at seven A.M., and breakfasted at nine. In the afternoons, they "went to one another's rooms and drank some wine." More chapel was required at half past five; and ​then a walk or a boat. He confessed that while at college he was so plagued by these foolish lectures of the college tutors that he had little time to do anything else; but later he spoke most affectionately of the University, and acknowledged that he "carried from it, into life, a taste for those studies which contributed the most interesting of his subsequent pursuits."
Edward Henry Manning went up to Balliol in 1827, taking with him a remarkable reputation for athletics and sportsmanship. He was a bold rider, a skilful oarsman, an excellent cricketer, a good shot; but he had no great name as a scholar. A certain dictatorial air of authority led to his being called "The General" by his fellow-students, some of whom declared, in after times, that he was then given to dogmatic disputations upon subjects of which he knew little or nothing. Nevertheless, he ended by hard reading; and he made his mark in his College, in the Union, and in the University.
Robert Scott, a graduate of Christ Church, known to the students of American colleges chiefly as Scott of the firm of Liddell and Scott, became a Fellow of Balliol in 1835, acting as Tutor until 1840. In 1854 he was elected Master of Balliol, defeating Jowett, who succeeded him in 1870. Owing to Scott's zealous devotion to its interests and to scholarship generally, Balliol, during his ​Mastership, began to take that leading position in the University-system of Oxford which it still maintains.
Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, the familiar "Arthur" of "Tom Brown's School Days," and the famous Dean of Westminster, gained, while at Rugby, a Scholarship at Balliol, which College he entered in 1834. In 1837 he won the Newdigate Prize; he was elected a Fellow of University College in 1839; in 1841 he became Regius Professor of Modern History. In 1845 he was appointed Select Preacher at Oxford; in 1851 he resigned the Fellowship of University College to accept the Canonry of Canterbury Cathedral; in 1857 he began his lectures in Oxford as Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History, lodging at 115 High Street, in the rooms formerly occupied by Dr. Arnold when he was Fellow at Oriel. Concerning the appointment of Matthew Arnold as Professor of Poetry in 1857, Stanley wrote to Mrs. Arnold: " Matt's election was an unmixed pleasure, and will be so to him. You heard, I dare say, that he spent two days with me in my lodgings at Wyatt's, I occupying the very rooms which you knew so well." Stanley might safely call Arnold "Matt"; but not many men would have attempted the familiarity, in later years.
In 1860 Stanley was appointed to a Canonry at ​Christ Church; and that year he wrote to Mrs. Arnold: "At the coming Commemoration I expect T. Hughes and his wife. Have you seen him of late? I hardly knew him before 'Tom Brown' appeared"! This comes as a surprise to those of us who have long supposed Hughes and Stanley to have been as intimate, at Rugby, as were Arthur and Tom Brown.
Stanley thus describes his first lodgings, as a freshman, at Balliol: "My sitting-room is about twice as large as my Father's little room; square, with two windows looking out on a street and a church-yard, which is the worst part of them, owing to the noise of carts and the tolling of bells." His biographer tells us that these rooms were on the west side of Balliol, looking out towards the Church of St. Mary Magdalen; but in a part of the college which has since been reconstructed.
Matthew Arnold won at Rugby, in 1840, an Open Fellowship to Balliol, which college he entered in 1841; but Mr. George Saintsbury, his biographer, declares that there is no record of his life there as a student, and that not one letter of his, written in his undergraduate days, is now known to exist.
In its Obituary notice of Arnold The London "Times," for April 17, 1888, says that his first ​rooms at Balliol were on the second floor of the Corner Staircase of the Inner Quadrangle. His brother, Thomas Arnold, places him at the top of the Second Staircase, at the corner of the Second Quadrangle. "His perfect self-possession," the "Times" adds, "the sallies of his ready wit, the humorous turn he could give to every subject he handled; his gayety, exuberance, versatility, audacity, and unfailing command of words, made him one of the most popular and successful undergraduates that Oxford has ever known."
Professor Max Miiller, who remembered him as an undergraduate at Balliol, also remembered that "he was beautiful as a young man, strong and manly, full of dreams and schemes. His Olympian manners began even at Oxford; there was no harm in them; they were natural, not put on. The sound of his voice and the wave of his arm were Jovelike."
Later the author of "Old Lang Syne" wrote: "Arnold was most brilliant as Professor of Poetry at Oxford, from 1857 to 1867. He took great pains in writing and delivering his lectures . . . some of which were masterpieces." Many of the best of these lectures were published among his "Essays," and they are recommended here as being very good reading.
Arthur H. Clough was a favorite pupil of Dr. ​Arnold at Rugby, a favorite fellow-student of Matthew Arnold, of Jowett, of Arthur Stanley, and of men of that stamp at Oxford, and, throughout his life, a favorite friend of most of the men of his own profession, who were fortunate enough to know him well. His nature, like much of his work, seems to have been peculiarly lovable and sweet; and he even won the good will of Thomas Carlyle, who declared that Clough was "a diamond sifted out of the general rubbish-heap."
This was the general rubbish-heap of London, in the second quarter of the Nineteenth Century. There are supposed to be no rubbish-heaps, general or individual, in Oxford! Clough gained the Rugby Balliol Scholarship, and went to Oxford in 1837, a few years before Arnold. In 1842 he won a Fellowship at Oriel, then considered a great distinction.
While Charles Calverley was at Harrow, he wrote certain clever Latin verses (it is said without effort), on the strength of which he was admitted to Balliol in the autumn of 1850. The next year he won the Chancellor's Prize for another Latin poem. But he was, although in a comparatively harmless way, too wild and too reckless to suit the dons of the institution, and his name was taken off the books in 1852. He went later to Christ's College at Cambridge, where he was better behaved, and ​where he succeeded in making himself known and felt, as a man of brilliant parts.
At both colleges he was constitutionally indolent; given to good times and to bright society, rather than to serious work; and he accomplished little in the last respect, except when his bright companions, in good times, dragged him out of bed to do his work, and kept him locked in his room until his work was done.
One of the most familiar and one of the most distinguished figures in Oxford, of late years, and for many years, was that of Benjamin Jowett. He was Student, Fellow, Tutor, Professor, and Master, of Balliol. Entering with a scholarship from St. Paul's in 1836, he was intimately associated with Oxford until he died in 1893. And, in St. Sepulchre's Cemetery, in Oxford, now he rests.
His fellow-students, his pupils, and his co-workers, were his devoted friends, and what they have said of him, always lovingly, there is not time or space to begin to repeat here. "He had a genius for friendship," wrote one. "He was the best man I have ever known," wrote another. His College and the University still miss him.
Those who remember him, as the Master, will be amused at the pictures of him, as a Freshman, which his biographers preserve. He entered Balliol in a round jacket, and with a turned down ​collar, we are told. His appearance was juvenile in the extreme; and Hobhouse alluded to his pretty, girlish looks, his quiet voice, and his gentle, shy manner. Even in later life he was spoken of as "a middle-aged cherub "and as "a little downy owl." But there was a good deal that was manly, and very manly, behind it all.
Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, who was two years ahead of him, and who was attached to him from the beginning, pronounced him a most disputatious youth.
It does not seem to be possible to discover, now, where, as a disputatious youth, as a shy Tutor, as a quiet-voiced Fellow, as a middle-aged, cherubic Professor, Jowett roomed at Balliol; but from 1870, for over twenty years, he naturally occupied, and, naturally, he ornamented, the Master's Lodge.
Many are the stories told of Jowett in Oxford, to this day, the generality of them being amusing and apocryphal. One of the most popular, and no doubt the most apocryphal, of these stories, is to this effect: A certain irreverent and waggish undergraduate not probably of Balliol showing to a group of visiting friends Jowett's College, thus spoke: "There is the Library; there the Chapel; there is the Buttery; there is the Master's Lodge; and there" throwing a stone ​through the window of the Lodge, at which the surprised, and not overpleased, Jovvett at once appeared—"And there is the Master himself!" It is pleasant, even to those of us who did not know him in the flesh, to go out of Balliol with Jowett, "the little downy owl," who had "a genius for friendship!"