The task of writing a book on Oxford University is by no means an easy one. If it be a novel there are countless pitfalls to entrap the author—points small and inconsequent to the reader who cannot proudly claim the City of Spires as his Alma Mater, but irritating beyond description to the man who knows and loves Oxford.

But if modern Oxford dealt with from the romantic and sentimental point of view as the background of a story contains such a network of difficulties, the Oxford of two hundred years ago, Rowlandson’s Oxford, contains them multiplied a hundred times, because it now becomes a question not of reproducing the vivid pictures of the hour and moment, but of recreating the atmosphere of a time that is silent in death.

It is, therefore, with great diffidence that I have attempted to resuscitate the life and moods of Oxford of the eighteenth century. Barely two years have elapsed since the days when I looked out from my windows into the quad of my college. All the work and play, the alarums and excursions which go to form the life of the average Undergraduate have not yet had time to fade into dim, half forgotten memories. Alma Mater still grasps me in her warm hand. So vivid indeed are all the impressions which I received from the friendly gargoyles and the peace-touched lawns, the beautiful colleges with their silent cloisters, the full-blooded twenty-firsters and bump-suppers, and the thousand and one everyday happenings, that I might be merely awaiting the passing of vacation to go up once more.

With all the Undergraduate interests still so strongly at heart, I think that it is natural that I should have studied the Rowlandson period with the mind of the Undergraduate and have carried out my task from the Undergraduate point of view. It is difficult to give any idea of the quaintness, delight, and amusement caused by going back two hundred years to a University so like and so unlike—like, in that the men, although so different outwardly, had practically the same ideas as we have and carried them out in the same colleges, even in the same rooms, in a precisely similar manner; unlike in that the Dons were a breed of men differing in every respect from those who look after us to-day.

Working, then, on the hypothesis that Oxford men in Rowlandson’s time were identical with ourselves, I have drawn analogies between every step in the lives of both. I have endeavoured to show that from the beginning of their fresherdom, when they felt self-conscious, gauche, and timid, down to the days when they took their degrees and knew Oxford blindfold in all her moods and tenses, they possessed the same outlook, had the same aspirations and ambitions, and were filled with the same admiration and love of Alma Mater as the men of to-day. For instance, as a freshman the Georgian Undergraduate curiously watched the seniors who were responsible for the tone of their college. Gradually he sloughed both his nervousness and his un-Oxford wardrobe and began to assert his own individuality. Little by little he discovered new sides of Oxford life, new haunts in which he began to feel at home. Daily he made new acquaintances who, as time went by, ripened into friends. Eventually, by the end of his first year, he had so absorbed Oxford into his personality that he in turn was able to condescend to the next year’s arrivals. During this time his attitude towards the Dons, the statutes, the schools—to everything, in short, outside the immediate Undergraduate side of life—varied with the terms. At the beginning they were subjects only to be broached with awe and deliberation. But the more he came into contact with an ever increasing circle of friends, the sooner his respect changed into ridicule, disgust, and finally, when a senior, into amused toleration.

In prÉcis form such was the development of the eighteenth-century Undergraduate. His metamorphosis into a “blood,” with all its amusing accompaniments and accomplishments—the former consisting of the latest fashions in clothes and the entrÉe to the innermost recesses of the Maudlin Groves in the company of the most celebrated Oxford damsel; the latter of a facility for dashing off a well thought out extempore series of oaths, being the handiest man at a tea-table, drinking more than any other buck of his acquaintance before finally succumbing, to follow in the natural sequence of events according to the temperament of the freshman. Had he a leaning towards becoming a “blood” not only was there nothing to stop him, but, on the contrary, all the existing conditions were such as to facilitate the execution of his desires.

In all these phrases the old-time Undergraduate can be compared with his modern brothers. In his dealings with the river-side barmaids, the local tradesmen, and the proctors he pursued much the same ingenuous methods which are used with equal success to-day. Just as we become members of unlimited numbers of year clubs and settle the affairs of the entire human species at the nightly meetings with ease and eloquence, they, too, formed societies and took themselves with a similar seriousness. They contributed literary morsels to the Undergraduate papers which satirised existing institutions in the same youthful manner in which we satirise them. They conducted “rags” with a thoroughness and disregard of results which ended in the same speedy rustication of the ringleaders which inevitably overtakes the men who are still unwise enough to be found out.

In a word, my object has been not to compare the ethics of the university to-day with those of yesterday, but rather to set forth an analogy between Dons and Undergraduates of that period and this, and the business of their daily life, from the point of view of one upon whom the influence of Alma Mater has not yet been mellowed into an analytical remembrance by long contact with the world which lies beyond her spires.

Whether I have succeeded in proving my case remains to be seen. At least I venture to hope that the results of my work may form a frame for Rowlandson’s pictures which are here reproduced for the first time from Rowlandson’s original water-colour drawings.

Of these pictures many were engraved at the time in aquatint, but the engraver was as a rule so obsessed with the Georgian ideas of the beautiful in architecture that he practically reconstructed the majority of the buildings represented, in accordance with that idea, so that some of the most beautiful and characteristic buildings in Oxford and Cambridge, so delicately portrayed by Rowlandson’s pencil, are turned into rectangular monstrosities, the like of which was never seen in either university town.

The superiority of hand-engraving over modern processes is evident enough, when the engraving itself was made by the artist; but when the original drawing is so hopelessly misrepresented as is the case with many of the aquatints of Rowlandson’s drawings, the modern facsimile processes have their obvious advantages.

It is therefore claimed that Rowlandson’s drawings of Oxford are here reproduced for the first time, and it is believed that they will be a revelation to many who have hitherto looked upon Rowlandson merely as a somewhat gross caricaturist. The caricaturist, it is true, is still here depicting in the foregrounds characteristic scenes in the university life of the time, but here is also another Rowlandson with an appreciation of the beauties of Oxford rare indeed in his age, and one who is able to delineate them with accuracy and delicacy which have seldom been equalled in the portrayal of such subjects.

The author desires to express his gratitude to the Rev. Christopher Wordsworth for having very kindly granted him permission to make quotations from “Social Life in the English Universities”; and to Messrs Macmillan & Co., publishers of J. R. Green’s “Oxford Studies,” for allowing him to make two quotations from that book; and also to Mr R. S. Rait of the Oxford Historical Society for having permitted him to quote from Miss L. Quiller-Couch’s “Reminiscences of Oxford,” published by that society.

ROWLANDSON’S OXFORD