'I only wish my critics had to write

A High-class Paper!'

Anon.

The business of those who teach in the Universities is to criticise mistakes, and criticism of style has two results for the master and the scholar. It may produce that straining after correctness in small matters which the cold world calls pedantry; and in the case of those who are not content only to observe, but are afflicted with a desire to produce, criticism of style takes the form of parody or imitation; for a good parody or a good imitation of an author's manner is an object-lesson in criticism. Hence it is that that same intolerance of error which makes members of a University slow in the production of really great works stimulates the genesis of ephemeral and mostly imitative literature. The more Oxford concerns herself with literary style, the more she is likely in her less serious moods to ape the manner of contemporary literature. It all comes, in the first instance, of being taught to copy Sophocles and travesty Virgil. Ephemeral literature, then, at the Universities has always been essentially imitative. In the last century, when it was the fashion to be classical--and when as in the earlier poems of Mr. Barry Lyndon, 'Sol bedecked the verdant mead, or pallid Luna shed her ray'--Oxonian minor poets imitated the London wits and sang the charms of the local belles under the sobriquets of Chloe and Delia, and academic essayists copied the manner of the 'Spectator,' and hit off the weaknesses of their friends, Androtion and Clearchus; and now that the world has come to be ruled by newspapers, it is only natural that the style and the methods of the daily and weekly press should in some degree affect the lighter literature of Universities, and that not only undergraduates, who are naturally imitative, but even dons, who might be supposed to know better, should find themselves contributing to and redacting publications which are conducted more or less on the lines of the 'new journalism.'

Oxford has been slow to develop in this particular direction, and the reasons are not far to seek. The conditions just now are exceptionally favourable--that is, a cacoËthes scribendi has coincided with abundance of matter to write about, but the organs of the great external world naturally provide a model for the writer. But it is only recently that these causes have been all together present and operative, and the absence of one or more of them has at different times been as effectual as the absence of all. In the early part of the present century there can have been no lack of matter: University reform was at least in the air, athletics were developing, the examination system was already in full swing. But for some reason the tendency of the University was not in the direction of the production of ephemeral or at least frivolous literature. The pompous Toryism of University authorities seventy years ago did not encourage any intellectual activity unconnected with the regular curriculum of the student, and when intellectual activity began to develop, it was rather on the lines of theological discussion--the subjects were hardly fitted for the columns of a newspaper. At an earlier date the Vice-Chancellor was interviewed by the delegate of an aspiring clique of undergraduates, who wished to form a literary club and to obtain the sanction of authority for its formation. He refused to grant the society any formal recognition, on the ground that while it was true that the statutes did not absolutely forbid such things, they certainly did not specifically mention them; and the members of the club--when it was eventually founded independent of the Vice-Chancellarial auspices--were known among their friends as the 'Lunatics.' Such was the somewhat obscurantist temper of the University about the year 1820; and we can imagine that the Vice-Chancellor, who could find nothing in the statutes encouraging a debating society, would not have looked with enthusiastic approbation on a newspaper designed to discuss University matters without respect for authority. Even if he had, it would have been hard to appeal to all sections of the community; though there was certainly more general activity in the University than formerly, the gaudia and discursus of undergraduates were matters of comparatively small importance to their friends, and of none at all to their pastors and masters.

In the earlier part of the eighteenth century the conditions were exactly reversed. To judge from the specimens that have survived to the present day (and how much of our own lighter literature will be in evidence 170 years hence?) there must have been plenty of 'available talent.' It was an age of essayists. Addison and Steele set the fashion for the metropolis: and as has been said before, Oxford satirists followed at some distance in the wake of these giants. The form of 'Terrae Filius' is that of the 'Tatler' and 'Spectator,' and the 'Oxford Magazine' of that day is largely composed of essays on men, women, and manners; many are still quite readable, and most have been recognised as remarkably smart in their day. Nor is it only in professed and formal satire that the talent of the time displays itself. Thomas Hearne of the Bodleian was careful to keep a voluminous note-book, chronicling not only the 'plums' extracted by his daily researches from the dark recesses of the library, but also various anecdotes, scandalous or respectable, of his contemporaries; and one is tempted to regret that so admirable a talent for bepraising his friends and libelling his enemies should be comparatively perdu among extracts from 'Schoppius de Arte Critica,' copies of church brasses, and such-like antiquarian lumber--the whole forming a 'Collection' only recently published for the world's edification by the Oxford Historical Society. His 'appreciations' would have made the fortune of any paper relying for its main interest on personalities, after the fashion which we are learning from the Americans. 'Descriptions of his friends and enemies, such as 'An extravagant, haughty, loose man,' 'a Dull, Stupid, whiggish Companion,' are frequent and free; and anecdotes of obscure college scandal abound. We read how the 'Snivelling, conceited, and ignorant, as well as Fanatical Vice-Principal of St. Edmund Hall .... sconc'd two gentlemen, which is a Plain Indication of his Furious Temper;' and how 'Mr. ---- of Christ Church last Easter-day, under pretence of being ill, desired one of the other chaplains to read Prayers for him: which accordingly was done. Yet such was the impudence of the man that he appeared in the Hall at dinner!'

As it was, however, those very collections which exhibit Hearne's peculiar genius show us at the same time how impossible, even granting the supposition to be not altogether anachronistic, a regular University 'News-letter' would have been. We talk now in a vague and, perhaps, rather unintelligible fashion of 'University politics,' and in some way contrive to identify Gladstonianism with a susceptibility to the claims of a school of English literature, or whatever is the latest phrase of progress--mixing up internal legislation with the external politics of the great world. But in Hearne's time there were no University politics to discuss. 'Their toasts,' says Gibbon of the Fellows of Magdalen College, 'were not expressive of the most lively loyalty to the House of Hanover,' and Hearne's interest in politics has nothing to do with the Hebdomadal Council. When he speaks of 'our white-liver'd Professor, Dr. ----,' or describes the highest official in the University as 'old Smooth-boots, the Vice-Chancellor,' it is generally for the very sufficient reason that the person in question is what Dr. Johnson called a 'vile Whig.' But Tory politics and common-room scandal and jobbery apart, the University would appear to have slept the sleep of the unjust. 'Terrae Filius' grumbles at the corrupt method of 'examination,' and 'The Student' is lively and satirical on the peccadilloes and escapades of various members of society. But your prose essayist is apt to be intermittent, and the publication that relies mainly on him leans on a breaking reed; so that we can hardly be surprised that the last-named periodical should eke out its pages with imitations of Tibullus, to the first of which the Editor appends the encouraging note, 'If this is approved by the publick, the Author will occasionally oblige us with more Elegies in the same style and manner.'

Now that every one is anxious to see his own name and his friend's name in print, and that the general public takes, or pretends to take, a keen interest in the details of every cricket-match and boat-race, a paper chronicling University matters cannot complain of the smallness of its clientÈle. Every one wants news. The undergraduate who has made a speech at the Union, or a century for his college second eleven, wants a printed certificate of his glorious achievements. Dons, and undergraduates too, for that matter, are anxious to read about the last hint of a possible Commission or the newest thing in University Extension. Men who have gone down but a short time ago are still interested in the doings of the (of course degenerate) remnant who are left; and even the non-academic Oxford residents, a large and increasing class, are on the watch for some glimpse of University doings, and some distant echo of common-room gossip. Modern journalism appeals more or less to all these classes; it cannot complain of the want of an audience, nor, on the whole, of a want of news to satisfy it, and certainly an Oxford organ cannot lack models for imitation, or awful examples to avoid. It is, in fact, the very multiplicity of contemporary periodicals that is the source of difficulty. A paper conducted in the provinces by amateurs--that is, by persons who have also other things to do--is always on its probation. The fierce light of the opinion of a limited public is continually beating on it. Its contributors should do everything a little better than the hirelings of the merely professional organs of the unlearned metropolis; its leaders must be more judicious than those of the 'Times,' its occasional notes a little more spicy than Mr. Labouchere's, and its reviews a little more learned than those of the 'Journal of Philology.' Should it fall short of perfection in any of these branches, it 'has no reason for existence,' and is in fact described as 'probably moribund.' Yet another terror is added to the life of an Oxford editor: he must be at least often 'funny;' he must endeavour in some sort to carry out the great traditions of the 'Oxford Spectator' and the 'Shotover Papers;' and as the English public is generally best amused by personalities, he must be careful to observe the almost invisible line which separates the justifiable skit from the offensive attack. Now, the undergraduate contributor to the press is seldom successful as a humourist. He is occasionally violent and he is often--more especially after the festive season of Christmas--addicted to sentimental verse; but for mere frivolity and 'lightness of touch' it is safer to apply to his tutor.

It is a rather remarkable fact that almost all University papers--certainly all that have succeeded under the trying conditions of the game--have been managed and for the most part written, not by the exuberant vitality of undergraduate youth, but by the less interesting prudence of graduate maturity. It is remarkable, but not surprising. Undergraduate talent is occasionally brilliant, but is naturally transient. Generations succeed each other with such rapidity that the most capable editorial staff is vanishing into thin air just at the moment when a journal has reached the highest pitch of popularity. Moreover, amateur talent is always hard to deal with, as organizers of private theatricals know to their cost; and there is no member of society more capable of disappointing his friends at a critical moment than the amateur contributor to the press. Should the spirit move him, he will send four columns when the editor wants one; but if he is not in the vein, or happens to have something else to do, there is no promise so sacred and no threat so terrible as to persuade him to put pen to paper. If these are statements of general application, they are doubly true of undergraduates, who are always distracted by a too great diversity of occupations: Jones, whose power of intermittent satire has made him the terror of his Dons, has unaccountably taken to reading for the Schools; the poet, Smith, has gone into training for the Torpids; and Brown, whose 'Voces Populi in a Ladies' College' were to have been something quite too excruciatingly funny, has fallen in love in the vacation and will write nothing but bad poetry. Such are the trials of the editor who drives an undergraduate team; and hence it comes about that the steady-going periodicals for which the public can pay a yearly subscription in advance, with the prospect of seeing at any rate half the value of its money, are principally controlled by graduates. No doubt they sometimes preserve a certain appearance of youthful vigour by worshipping undergraduate talent, and using the word 'Donnish' as often and as contemptuously as possible.

Nevertheless, there appear from time to time various ephemeral and meteoric publications, edited by junior members of the University. They waste the editor's valuable time, no doubt; and yet he is learning a lesson which may, perhaps, be useful to him in after-life; for it is said that until he is undeceived by hard experience, every man is born with the conviction that he can do three things--drive a dog-cart, sail a boat, and edit a paper.