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that the old Common Law recognised perpetual copyright. By six to five they were of opinion that the statute of Queen Anne had destroyed this right. The House of Lords adopted the opinion of the majority, reversed the decree of the Court below, and thus Thomson's Seasons became your Seasons, my Seasons, anybody's Seasons. But by how slender a majority! To make it even more exciting, it was notorious that the most eminent judge on the Bench (Lord Mansfield) agreed with the minority; but owing to the combined circumstances of his having already, in a case practically between the same parties and relating to the same matter, expressed his opinion, and of his being not merely a judge but a peer, he was prevented (by etiquette) from taking any part, either as a judge or as a peer, in the proceedings. Had he not been prevented (by etiquette), who can say what the result might not have been?

Here ends the story of how authors and their assignees were disinherited by mistake, and forced to content themselves with such beggarly terms of enjoyment as a hostile legislature doles out to them.

As the law now stands, they may enjoy their own during the period of the author's life, plus seven years, or the period of forty-two years, whichever may chance to prove the longer.

So strangely and so quickly does the Law colour men's notions of what is inherently decent, that even authors have forgotten how fearfully they have been abused and how cruelly robbed. Their thoughts are turned in quite other directions. I do not suppose they will care for these old-world memories. Their great minds are

tossing on the ocean which pants dumbly-passionate with dreams of royalties. If they could only shame the English-reading population of the United States to pay for their literature, all would be well. Whether they ever will, depends upon themselves. If English authors will publish their books cheap, Brother Sam may, and probably will, pay them a penny a copy, or some such sum. they will not, he will go on stealing. It is wrong, but he will do it. "He says," observes an American writer, "that he was born of poor but honest parents. I say, Bah!"

AUGUSTINE BIRRELL.

If

105

SOCIAL OXFORD.1

WHY is it so difficult to write a book on life at the Universities? Apparently because the writer will in each case be describing some one portion only of that which is essentially diverse and many-sided. The reader, if he be a University man, instinctively dissents from the author, probably because another aspect of the common life is brought before him, quite different from that which he knew so well. One who, like the present writer, has returned after some years absence to the Oxford which once was so familiar, feels a certain strangeness, not only in the contemporary phases of its existence, but also in the books which are written to describe them. There have lately appeared two works on the life of the University city. One of these is written by a gentleman who knows the cricketfield perhaps better than any other arena of academic fame: the second is a collection of essays published under the editorship of a Mr. Stedman. Both of these are in the highest degree disappointing. Dr. Pycroft seems to err through a certain failure of the critical faculty: he is what the literary cant of the day calls a Realist, which means only that he has not the sense of proportion, that he does not know what to tell and what to conceal. His book is a marvellous compendium of stories, containing little that is new and much which may fervently be hoped never to have been true, a hope which casts no slur on the writer's good faith, for truth and

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poetry have a sad knack of getting confounded in the mists of memory. Mr. Stedman's book is of another type. He has gathered together in a single. volume the contributions of men, the majority of whom have only just ceased to be undergraduates, and who therefore naturally attempt to paint Oxford from the standpoint of the undergraduate The scheme is large and comprehensive, but the execution much. less so. There are some chapters which to a resident in Oxford are doubtless interesting, such as that of Mr. Gent on the religious life, or of Mr. Wells on the Final Classical School. But the book is full of small inaccuracies: the table of requirements at the various colleges is not always up to date, nor is it even consistent in different parts of the work: some of the essays are in deplorably bad taste; while that on the social condition of Oxford, written by the editor, is one of the most astounding productions which has ever yet served to travesty the life it professes to delineate.

But it would be waste of space and time to pursue the lucubrations of Mr. Stedman. His aim, despite his high-sounding title, is in reality a very limited one. It is to give a passing picture of some of the phases of the young barbarian life, without any regard for, or knowledge of, that general social life from which proceed some of the most striking characteristics of contemporary Oxford.

An interesting essay might perhaps be written with the title of "Oxford at half-past seven in the evening." The fashionable hour for dinner transports us to the inner side of the life of that married tutor whom Mr. Stedman suffers with such contemptuous condescension. No phrase is more common

in our day than that Oxford is in a transitional stage. Used in the majority of instances of the intellectual life of the University, it is no less true of the social life. The Fellows of colleges who meet round their social board in the college halls cannot, even in their moments of relaxation, shake themselves entirely free of the interests of their morning's work. Nor yet can the dinner-parties, which are so plentiful during term time, keep themselves unspotted from some of the colours and hues of the academic life from which they spring. Still, Oxford is making great struggles in this respect, and though the result is sometimes incongruous, the intention is clearly to transport itself into an atmosphere more worldly, more cosmopolitan, more urbane. Thus if the intellectual life be represented as traversing a transitional stage from the older classical and theological studies to the newer interests of science and literature, so too the social life may be represented as passing from the old academic provincialism to the tone and manners of a fashionable metropolitan existence. Naturally then the Oxford dinner-party will represent nearly every phase between the two extremes. If, for instance, one were to visit the Parks at half-past seven, one might easily find a small diuner-party of eight or ten, consisting mainly of tutors and their wives. The subjects of conversation would be, in the case of the males, the success of their pupils in examinations, or the last measures of Convocation: in the case of the females, it would be an interesting discussion of the faults and failings of their servants. But let our imaginary visitor pass from the suburbs more to the interior. He might then find himself partaking of a banquet of many courses, graced with the presence of some more or less distinguished strangers, who are famous, or said to be famous, in their comparatively unknown lines.

If the conversation tends here and there to be academic, the author of such guilty provincialism feels that he

has made a social blunder. He should talk rather of the latest production of the London theatre, or of the picture galleries, neither of which he has probably visited, and the last thing that he should reveal to the lady to whom he has given his arm is the fact that he is a Don and a teacher of undergraduates. graduates. Or possibly our visitor may find his way to some fashionable dinner table, where he sits between a very worldly lady of the metropolis, and a titled fledgling who has recently come up to the University. His eye will wander round costumes which bear the marks of Parisian manufacture, and he will see but rarely those appalling vestments which represent the æsthetic yearnings of the Parks. There is every grade in this era of social transition. Now our visitor will feel that the Thames between its London bridges has poured its turbid waters into the primitive and archaic simplicity of the Isis: anon he will be reminded of the fact that it is only within recent years that a sudden plague of married tutors has rendered the evening parties so constant and so irritating a tax on strictly limited incomes.

The married Fellow is not only an important factor of Oxford society, but in a sense he actually dominates it and indeed gives the reason for its existence. Before his appearance, there was here and there a professorial household, or the domestic hearth of some College Head. But such elements were kept strictly in academic subordination, and wore an apologetic air, as though they knew they were out of place. There might be, for instance, sitting in state in a sparely-furnished drawing-room, an old gentleman with two elderly sisters and some chance visitor, whose united conversation was limited to a visit which they had once paid in long distant ages to Yorkshire. Such was the type of old University society. It has now had to yield to roof-trees and olive branches innumerable northward of St. Giles, so that the Parks,

in which their perambulators roam in the morning hours, are converted into one gigantic nursery. And other families have in consequence migrated into Oxford, drawn thither by the schools which the married Fellow has rendered inevitable families belonging to retired civilians or officers of the Army, loosely connected with the barracks on Bullingdon : families in which the father, having no settled occupation, is forced to busy himself with city-politics or with sighing after an honorary degree: families barely tolerated by the stricter academicians, and, in retaliation, courting the county families who despise the dinner-tables of the tutor.

The agent in all this social change has also had a notable influence on the life of the colleges. The married tutor has broken up much of the conviviality of Common-room; for where some ten or fifteen used to meet together, there now can be seen, gloomily hurrying over their daily dishes, a miserable handful of deserted bachelors. He has rendered the discipline of the colleges a somewhat perfunctory affair, there being so few officers left within the gates. Above all, he has transformed the conception of tutorial and collegiate work. It used to be more or less of a personal intercourse with pupils; the tutor living amongst those whom he had to teach, always at hand to be consulted, if necessary, or to punish, should that prove to be his duty. Doubtless there used to be some shirking of these possibly disagreeable tasks; still, such was the conception universally entertained, and the ideal set before men's eyes. It was inevitable, when tutors went to live in the Parks, that such a notion of their responsibilities should be discarded. Their work is now a business; and they go down to it in the morning, just as city men go down to theirs, returning to their homes as the evening shadows begin to gather (or sooner), after the fashion of their metropolitan prototypes. The mode of conveyance is indeed different, for instead

of hansoms and omnibuses, they use their own legs, or even, in a few cases, the shameless tricycle. But the spirit is the same. As one meets them in the morning, somewhere about nine o'clock, hurrying beneath the mutilated elms which now fail to hide the erubescent horror of Keble, one might interrogate them on their mission, and be told that they were going down to "their office."

Meanwhile the married tutor is undoubtedly living in a sort of fool's paradise. What is eventually to become of him, no one knows or thinks it worth while to reflect. As he surveys his increasing progeny, does he never count the grey hairs which are showing themselves on his temples, and wonder what will be done with him when he is past his work? Or does he console himself with the chance of getting a professorship, or even the headship of a house, spectatus satis et donatus jam rude? But the problem is even more formidable for the colleges; for the success of a college is largely dependent on the possibility of constant replenishment by new blood, and the married tutor must inevitably block the way. Either with Spartan severity the college must bid him resign, or else weakly comply with his appeal to be left alone for this year also. The colleges are indeed trying to establish retiring pensions; but such things do not grow rapidly, and if a sudden edict were now to compel all married Fellows to retire, too many of them would have to face the interesting question of how to support their families on some fifteen twenty pounds a year.

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The advantages which are supposed to compensate for all drawbacks in the married tutors' scheme are generally reckoned under two heads. In the old state of things, clever young men drifted away to London after obtaining their Fellowships, because it was not worth their while to remain under conditions which were monastic, and therefore celibate. By allowing Fellows to marry a direct

encouragement is given to the desire to remain in the University, to do work for the college to which a man may be attached, and to have, in short, the prospect of a career. Unfortunately a career is exactly that which is not given by the scheme, for it is of no use to encourage a man to marry unless the hope is held out to him of a steady increase of income. But the married Fellow will earn no more at fifty years of age than he does at twenty-five; while the chances are that the expenses of his household will be exactly doubled during the interval, and his Fellowship, owing to agricultural depression, be probably represented by a steadily diminishing quantity. The other advantage remains, although it is one of which it is difficult to estimate the precise value. It is, of course, the social value of the tutorial household, the value of feminine culture, both to bachelor Fellows and to undergraduates. Bachelor Fellows, however, do not appear to estimate such adornments of their collegiate existence so highly as they doubtless should at all events, bachelor Fellows are just those whom one most rarely meets at dinner-parties, unless they good-naturedly consent to fill a vacant chair at the last moment. The advantage to undergraduates is probably greater; but then it requires nothing less than genius on the part of the lady of the house to entertain them well. The young men themselves do not always look happy at an evening party, for indeed it is no light matter to stand in a crowd, to balance a tea-cup, and to make one's self agreeable to a lady in a chair some feet below the level of one's face. Some undergraduates are fond of feminine attentions, over a cup of tea or after dinner; but the majority seem to prefer masculine society, either at their clubs, at the Union, or in their own rooms. The person to be admired and praised on such occasions is the hostess, and there are one or two in Oxford who shine in the apparently simple

but really difficult task of putting their guests at their ease. The task is just as difficult when the hostess has to welcome youthful Fellows of Colleges, for the young Don sometimes has a supreme contempt for the wives of his married colleagues. Hardest of all perhaps to deal with are the young ladies who come from the Somerville and Lady Margaret Halls. Oxford is now getting accustomed to these damsels of the higher education, for they are to be found alike in the lecture-room and the drawing-room. And very charming doubtless they are; still, a bachelor may perhaps be pardoned if he finds them somewhat irrepressible, and, if possible, more socially difficult than the average undergraduate.

And what of the undergraduate himself? Has he changed from the more ancient type? Has he degenerated, or has he improved? If any tradesman in Oxford were asked these questions, there can be no doubt about his reply. He would be eager to tell his interlocutor that the present race of students are not by any means the same sort of "gentlemen " as they used to be ten or fifteen years ago. But the feeling of the tradesman has reference rather to the scarcity of money than to any essential change in feelings or habits. These are the days of ready money and its prices, where used to be the days of long credit and extravagant charges. The shopkeeper has to content himself with quick returns, and knows that his customer will be sure to ask him for a discount for cash. It is a commonplace to assert that every age appears degenerate to its contemporaries: the halo of the golden era crowns only the memories of the past. In all probability the young academician of the present day is quite as good as his predecessor. Yet certainly there has been some change in external characteristics. Time was when from Merton College and University College, and the Canterbury gate of Christchurch, there issued a stream of zealous Nim

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