by Samuel Gower.
Originally published in Hood's Magazine (Henry Hurst) vol.6 #6 (Dec 1846).
Oars are plied, as well as tandems driven, at Oxford; but reminiscences of gay days at Oxford, unlike reminiscences of such days at Cambridge, would rather, perhaps, be recollections of horses than of boats. The neophyte from the country comes already indoctrinated into more or less knowledge of horse-flesh. The young cockney fresh from the metropolis, who knows no more of a horse than a horse knows of him, soon acquires such knowledge; and it is much if he is not also to be seen, after no long period, in full cry, with the hounds. And then there are, at his service, the horse jockey, and the usurer; and there is, too often, the premature catastrophe of high-spirited youths, like the past and the present year's potatoes, ruined before they are raised. Certainly, of the two Universities Oxford is the more dangerous to the inexperienced and youthful alumnus. But there are causes for this which are distinctly appreciable and avoidable. Much depends upon the choice of the College to which the young hopeful is sent; much upon the reasons, worldly speaking, for which he is sent to College at all.
If a high-spirited boy be sent, with an allowance of £200. or £300. a-year, to a College, in which the average expenditure of the undergraduates shall be £400. or £500. a-year, the common and natural result is embarrassment—and, what is worse than this, an acquired habit of regarding such a state of disordered finances as a matter of course, or of necessity. But if embarrassment thus ensue, what ensues from a yet greater difference between the allowed and the accustomed average expenditure? Utter ruin; and this, not of a pecuniary kind only: the mind itself becomes a wreck. It is obvious that the only alternative, to a youth so situated, is either a wilful isolation of himself from the men of his own college, or his giving himself the chance of being virtually sent to Coventry. It is cruel so to situate a youth. Man is, and ought to be, a social animal: he is never more so, and this almost by a direct necessity of nature, than in the days of his generous and uncalculating youth. For such misplacings, neither the youth himself, nor the University, but the parent or guardian, is mainly to blame. Young men should not be sent, by parents and guardians, to a college, the majority of whose men live at a higher rate than the income his friends can allow him will permit him to live at. They should not leave this point, which is ascertainable, unascertained. A youth may be sent with any views and any reasonable allowance of income, to some of the larger colleges, whose undergraduates present every variety of difference as to worldly fortunes and prospects. But there are other colleges to which men of fortune especially betake themselves. We shall not think it right to specify these; but, as before said, we assert that these matters are easily to be ascertained.
Again, the purpose for which a youth is sent to college has to be considered. Many go, merely to complete the usual education of a gentleman. There is nothing per se immoral in a man's driving a tandem. It is not desirable, especially to the man of fortune, that he should, as has been the case with some, ruin his constitution, or muddle his brain for life, by hard reading for honours. But, if a man go there with a view to raising or to bettering his fortunes by obtaining honours, there is no option for him. Constitution or no constitution, he must work. If instead of working he take to driving tandems, the consequences are obvious. Now and then a rara avis may be met with who will lead a gay life, "keeping it up" till two or three o'clock in the morning, and then shutting himself up in his room, who will read hard, with wet towels to his head, and astonish every one by taking high honours. But such a man must possess a most happily endowed physical constitution. Hard reading may, to a certain degree, be safely and wisely alternated with gymnastic recreations; but, at one and the same time, to tax severely both mind and body, outwears both. As a late eminent scholar has observed, "It is not only burning the candle at both ends, but putting a red-hot poker to the middle." I had once the honour of acquaintance with a gentleman, who, possessed of unequalled talent and energy, universally beloved and respected, universally regretted, sacrificed his life, in the very dawn of a splendid and brilliant career, to the pertinacity with which he persisted in devoting what Shakspeare calls, "the sweet of the night" to social enjoyments, and in (none the less for this) punctually making his appearance, at an early hour of the morning; in his lecture room. I know another learned professor who has, during different years, made the tour of Switzerland, and of Scotland, mostly on foot, and frequently at the rate of thirty miles a day, in the vacation seasons; but who finds a walk of two or three miles a laborious addition to, rather than a relief from, the mental fatigue undergone by him during what may be called term time.
The man who goes to college for honours, and for whatever may be consequent on such honours, must work, blind to much, if not to all, that surrounds him—to everything, at least, that tends to the distraction of his attention from his one object. He must not see, or if seen, must not in the least heed, the tandem-driver, who passes by him—the reading man—the man of books, not of pleasure—with the same carelessness with which he would pass an apple stall. For, let years pass by, and of the position of the demoralised roué become poor, and that of the distinguished, even although still poor, scholar, which is preferable? It is seldom that a man who is of an otherwise than servile mind advantages himself by associating at college with persons of superior fortune to his own. But the man already distinguished at college, whose situation resembles that of the military adventurer of the middle ages, who had nothing but his sword to depend upon, finds honourable access, in the capacity of tutor, to the mansions of the great, where his vocation is held in becoming honour, and he obtains no advancement that may be consequent on such introduction, by means at which he has cause to blush. He cannot teach his pupils those evil mysteries of the turf and the gaming table, in which he took care not to be himself initiated. If they learn these, they will have to learn them elsewhere than from him. But he can teach them, besides science and languages, those high and self-denying principles which he has himself practised, and those enlarged views of men and things, which will render them superior to petty temptations. Enlarged! Yes. The man who is a pedant, was never any thing else than a pedant, ready made. Books never yet made a pedant of any man—they supply but the materials. Can it be thought that a man is not the better, not only circumstantially, not as a tutor only, but essentially, for having become intimate with the writings of the master spirits of past times and all ages! The effect of the study of what the Scotch quaintly, but not inappositely, term the humanities, is, after all, no fable. Besides that the subjection of the mind to discipline, while learning, must leave it permanently better regulated, it cannot well fail to partake of the quality of "what it feeds on."
I may have spoken somewhat, but I believe not much, too strongly, of the ruin attendant on an undergraduate's emulating, beyond his means, the expenses of men of superior fortunes. There have been lamentable instances of such ruin, (and why should not such be set forth for the benefit of all parties concerned?) wherein the virtuous struggles of a whole lifetime have scarcely availed to the recovery of the ground originally lost. As to utter ruin, indeed, there is no such thing in nature, even in relation to this world only, so long as life remains, and manly resolution endures. Si non errasset fecerat ille minus, sometimes proves as true, in the course of a man's worldly career, as in the religious sense in which it has been often quoted and employed. But, from some wrecks, nothing valuable is rescued. One thing is certain, that a young man whose fortunes depend in any degree upon his career at college; must face up to hard work, and eschew tandem-driving, billiard-playing, et hoc genus omne. Nothing but the pressure and influence of the brief present could blind a man to a perception of the transiency of the glories of a gay life at Oxford, and the intransiency of well-earned distinctions.
It is to be remembered, too, that at the two leading Universities, honours are ever so justly conferred, that the equity of their awards is past all suspicion. Not the most mean even among the unsuccessful ever dream iFcalling them in question. There may be men of brilliant abilities who fail to acquire honours; but, as to absolute learning, each man finds his level, and knows that he does. There are no mistakes made on this point, nor can be. The humblest Undergraduate may, there, commence a career, Which shall terniinate in his obtaining the highest honours and most lucrative emoluments. It is there that the perpetuation of learning itself is secured. The sciences may subsist and flourish elsewhere, but there, Learning, of no less importance than the sciences, in so far as it may be said to subsist separately from them, has her seat.
There are many topics connected with the subject which I do not touch upon here, because of their being such as would lead to profitless controversy. The plain and practical purport of this paper is, to warn, both their parents and the youths designed for College, of certain rocks and quicksands to be avoided, and to instruct them on some important points as to the right course to be pursued. These attended to, all else must be left to time and God's good providence. Should the candidate for distinction take high honours, they will have been honours honburably gained, and on the attainment of which he may safely and fairly congratulate himself as the direct results of adequate exertion. On the other hand, should his success fall short of his or his friends' expectations, it may, with equal truth, be called to mind, for his encouragement in his after course, that a college examination is, after all, less a test of a man's general abilities than of the goodness of his memory. Of his powers of application, and of the compass of his understanding, it affords no unerring criterion. Some men's minds shoot speedily up into a fitting state for display, while others are built up, more slowly but surely, into eventual and more abiding greatness. Till we behold the edifice completed, it looks shapeless and disjointed, giving little promise of its final beauty and grandéur. "A man, as Herbert says, "can but do his best;" and if self-reproach do not embitter the cup of disappointment, the latter may have a salutary rather than an injurious tendency. Those who have much to retrieve, and and who have ever cause for self-reproach, have still a world before them, in which many have ultimately distinguished themselves who had failed to obtain collegiate distinction; while of those who have succeeded, not a few have considered the vintage over, and thrown off their studious habits never to resume them more. Such are but as flowers which never mature into seed, or as swordsmen, who fare well with foils, but are destitute of courage for the field.