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whole body of the burgesses were sentenced to visit the churches of the town with bare feet and shoulders, the scourge of humiliation in their hands, and to seek absolution from the parish priest.

Bitter as the humiliation was, the yearly renewal of this oath was only the first which Oxford was destined to undergo. Difficulties of less apparent moment, but destined to bring about a yet harder servitude, lay in the homely questions of food and lodging. The

sudden influx of three or four thousand boys into the midst of a quiet country town would necessarily raise at once the scale of prices, as the licence of the new comers would tax severely the resources of the town police. To a scholar of the thirteenth century the rise of prices seemed extortion, and the intervention of the police sacrilege. New claims of immunity from civil jurisdiction, new tariffs of the price of lodgings and food, forged slowly but steadily a yoke of bondage for Oxford such as no other English town was to know. During the first half of the thirteenth century the process of aggression met with little or no resistance from the townsmen. In their penance for the murder of the clerks they had sworn to assess lodgings and victual at fair and reasonable rates. But the control of their markets, of their police, was soon taken quietly out of their hands. The rental of every lodging-house was assessed by University authorities, and by a gigantic stretch of power it was ruled that a house once used for lodging students could never be resumed into private uses. The jurisdiction of the Chancellor gradually superseded that of the Mayor in all cases where a student was concerned. It all but annihilated it when the privileges of the University were extended to the whole

mob

of retainers, servants, scriveners, who hung upon the skirts of the academic body. Spasmodic struggles of resistance only bound the yoke of bondage closer on the town. The sympathies both of Church and State were naturally rather with the learned University which already rivalled the stories of

Paris, than with the obscure tradesmen who clung to the freedom of their fathers. Grosseteste, a name illustrious in the annals of national liberty, is famous in those of Oxford for the interdict with which he avenged a quarrel with the scholars. The indignation with which the townsmen met the outbreaks of the new students who in the midst of the century came flocking over from France, brought down on their heads the censure of the Crown. But the courage of the burghers was unbroken by the thunders of either Church or State. A nominal submission satisfied the Bishop. The royal precepts were evaded or despised. A spirit of more active resistance was slowly aroused, and Oxford girded herself to the long, desperate struggle in which, through half a century, she strove to fling off the yoke of her new masters.

We can hardly err in tracing the sterner resolve of the townsmen to the new spirit of liberty which pow pervaded the nation at large. The success of the Barons against Henry the Third, the victories of De Montfort, were followed in London, as in other towns, by revolutions which overthrew the aristocratic power of the wealthier burghers, and established a democratic government under the name of the "commune." In Oxford the result of the national struggle was to nerve the citizens to the recovery of their older freedom. The privileges of the University were roughly set aside. The control of its police, its houses, its markets, was again assumed by the magistrates of the town. A large number of the scholars retired in dudgeon to Northampton, but the se cession failed in breaking the spirit of the burghers. Their adhesion to the popular side was rewarded by the friendship of the Barons into whose hands the power of the Crown had for a time passed. Royal precepts forced the Chancellor to revoke the excommu

and

nication with which he had visited the arrest of a scholar by the bailiffs; the town showed its gratitude to De Montfort by closing its gates against

Edward on his march to join the forces of the King. The closing of the gates gave the signal for the first of a series of murderous struggles which lasted for a century. The rough verse of Robert of Gloucester tells the tale of this earliest "Town and Gown." The favourite playground of the scholars lay in the wide fields of Beaumont to the north, and a band of them, anxious for their sports, answered a rude rebuff from the bailiff in charge of the gate by hewing it down. The boys rushed out to their games with a mocking song of "subvenite sancti," the psalm that men sung at the burial of the dead; and the bailiff was forced to content himself with arresting some stragglers and plunging them into gaol. Both sides were now bitterly irritated and eager for a decisive conflict. The burgesses, mustering behind their banner in the fields without the gate, marched into the town, but the head of the column had hardly appeared in the High Street when the bell of St. Mary's swung out its alarm peal. It was the dinner hour, but the students flung down their meat, and, rushing to the fray, forced the citizens after a stout resistance to flight. A general pillage followed the victory: the scholars plundered the bowyers' shops, and, providing themselves with weapons, sacked Spicery and Vintnery, and house after house throughout the town. The townsmen fell back on the protection of the Crown, and the decision of the King, now again in the power of the Barons, went against the scholars. They were expelled from Oxford, and for a year the town was its own master.

Perilous, however, as the presence of the University might be, it was profitable to the townsmen, and it was at the request of the burgesses that the scholars a year after were recalled. They returned on the distinct pledge that mediators should be appointed on either side, and all things brought to a perfect peace. But peace was as far off as ever. The claims of the University remained as oppressive as before, and they were met by the same steady opposition. Robert Welles, the new head of the

townsmen, seems to have goaded the scholars to despair. The University prevailed on the Crown to remove him from his office as steward of the manor of Beaumont without the gates, and its Masters vowed that, were he again invested with authority, all lectures should cease till he were again removed. Nine years later, in 1297, the weary struggle broke out anew into open conflict, the one mediæval "Town and Gown" of which we possess an account from each of the combatants. This time, however, fresh actors appeared on the scene. Though the bell of St. Martin's was rung and ox-horns sounded through the streets to summon citizens round their Mayor, the townsmen now felt themselves too weak for an encounter with the mob of students whose arrows and sling-stones cleared the High. A body of rustics from the country were summoned to their rescue, and suddenly rushed with wild outcries through the streets. The scholars fled in disorder, inns were plundered, books trodden in the mire. Again the Royal Council

intervened.

But the tendencies of Edward the First were everywhere aristocratic, and the liberties of the town found this time little favour. The Crown returned to its old support of the scholars; thirteen of the citizens were expelled, the bailiffs turned out of office, and the town forced to renew its oath of submission to the claims of the University.

From any real submission, however, it was as far off as ever. The troubles of Edward the Second's reign enabled the townsmen to evade with security the repeated precepts of the Royal Council, and to retain steadily their own control of justice and trade. At no time was the attitude of English boroughs more independent, or their resistance to the combination of the royal power with the aristocratic reaction within their walls more independent. It was at this moment that Bristol, driven to rebellion by the oppression of the Castellan and the Berkeleys, held out for four years against successive armies, and made pursuivant after pursuivant eat the royal mandates which he brought. A yet

more terrible agitation was rousing to life the inert masses of the rural population-a resentment against feudal tyranny which broke out at last in the communism of the Lollards, in the servile insurrections of Wat Tyler and Jack Cade. Already in the riot of 1297 the union of the two spirits of discontent had been partially announced; but half a century passed before the new alliance showed itself in all its terrors. The conflict of 1354 was not merely the last and fiercest encounter of the two rivals; it was the direct predecessor of that outburst of national anarchy under Ball and Tyler which shook England to its base. A tavern quarrel ended in the usual scenes of disorder. On the morning of St. Scholastica's day the townsmen gathered with targets at their church, while the scholars seized two of the town gates in the hope of intercepting the dreaded aid from without. At vespers, however, two thousand rustics entered the town from the west, a black flag was borne at the head of this column, and cries of 66 Slay, slay let none escape-smite fast; give good knocks," spread panic through the ranks of the scholars. They fled to their inns, listening through the night to the shouts of "Havock, havock," from the crowd which filled the streets, while the Chancellor hurried to the King at Woodstock. Pillage began at dawn. Fourteen inns were forced open; some clerks and chaplains who stood on their defence were killed and their bodies flung on dunghills, while the bulk of the students fled into the country. Already the bitter hatred and scorn of the clergy which was to give strength to Lollardry made its appearance in the outrages of this Oxford mob. It was in vain that the Host was carried in procession; the crosses of the Friars were flung into the gutter; the crowns of the chaplains who fell were flayed off "in scorn of their clergy." It was doubtless this feature of the outbreak that told most heavily against the citizens in the proceedings before the royal commission which was immediately issued. Both bodies resigned all charters and rights

The

into the King's hand, and the final decision of Edward the Third was a deathblow to the liberties of the town. King's Charter not only confirmed but enlarged the privileges of the University, it even stripped the citizens of the share which had as yet been left to them in the control of their trade or the retainers of the scholars. The Church contented itself with a galling penance. Each year the Mayor and chief burgesses were bound to appear at St. Mary's on the anniversary of the riot, and celebrate mass for the souls of the slain.

With this famous St. Scholastica's day the struggle virtually ended. The town was left prostrate at its adversary's feet. While the rest of the boroughs of England had been winning privilege after privilege from baron or king, Oxford had been reduced from a free city to the powerless vassal of its University. Its ruin had in great measure been wrought by the claims and the thunders of the Church, but the fall of the Church at the Reformation, while it released every abbey town from its bondage, left that of Oxford unbroken. It was in vain that its citizens refused for years their oath to the Vice-Chancellor, and appealed for the restitution of their rights to the justice of Elizabeth. Even the triumph of the Long Parliament, though the grammar-school of Alderman Nixon recalls the sympathy of the citizens with the Puritans, did nothing for Oxford. It has been reserved for our own day to see it raised again to its old rank among the free cities of England, and restored to the control of its own markets and its own police. The exemption of students from the common justice of the realm remains unaltered in spite of the example of the Scotch universities and the concessions of Cambridge. But it is likely that this last relic of a great struggle will soon pass away. What cannot pass away is the dependence on the mere traffic of the University, to which in the suppression of commercial life the town has been reduced, and the stamp of clericalism which the contest has impressed upon the University itself.

41

THE HISTORY OF A SUPPOSED CLASSICAL FRAGMENT.

BY ROBINSON ELLIS, M.A.

To signalize the detection of falsehood is a duty in literature as in science: it is on this account that these pages are written. They profess to be little more than an abstract of a brochure by M. Quicherat, which every scholar would do well to read, "Sur le prétendu Fragment d'une Satire du poète Turnus," Paris, 1869.

In a work called "Les Entretiens," by Jean Louis Guez Balzac, published posthumously in 1657, and subsequently (my copy is dated 1659, and was printed at Rouen), the following lines, taken, as Balzac professes, from a parchment in many places decayed and half eaten away by age, are quoted as an ancient fragment, written by an author of the age of Nero :

"Ergo famem miseram, aut epulis infusa venena,

Et populum exanguem, pinguesque in funus amicos,

Et molle imperii senium sub nomine pacis, Et quodcumque illis nunc aurea dicitur ætas, Marmoreæque canent lacrymosa incendia Romæ,

Vt formosum aliquid nigræ & solatia Noctis? Ergo re benè gesta, & leto Matris ovantem, Maternisque canent cupidum concurrere Diris,

Et Diras alias opponere, & anguibus angues, Atque novos gladios peiusque ostendere letum ?

Sæva canent, obscoena canent fœdosque hymenæos

Vxoris pueri, Veneris monumenta nefandæ.

Nil Musas cecinisse pudet, nec nominis olim Virginei, famæque iuuat meminisse prioris. Ah! pudor extinctus, doctæque infamia turbæ,

Sub titulo prostant; & queis genus ab Iove summo,

Res hominu supra evectæ & nullius egentes, Asse merent vili, ac sancto se corpore foedant. Scilicet aut Menæ faciles parere superbo, Aut nutu Polycleti, & parca laude beatæ, Usque adeo maculas ardent in fronte recentes,

Hesternique Getæ vincla & vestigia flagri. Quin etiam patrem oblitæ & cognata Deorum

Numina, & antiquum castæ pietatis honorem Proh! Furias & Monstra colunt, impuraque Turpis

Fata vocant Titii mandata, & quicquid Olympi est

Transcripsere Erebo. Iamque impia ponere Templa,

Sacrilegasque audent Aras, Coloque repulsos Quondam Terrigenas, superis imponere regnis,

Qua licet, & stolido verbis illuditur Orbi.”

Entretiens iv. chap. iv. pp. 54-56 (ed. Rouen, 1659).

The two parts of this fragment, which 13-30, are separated by Balzac, who I have distinguished by a space, 1—12, prefixes to each a commentary.

After the lapse of a century, the supposed fragment was included by Peter Burmann the younger in his "Anthologia Latina," vol. ii. p. 645; he was followed by Wernsdorf, who ascribed them to Turnus, a satirist mentioned by Martial, xi. 10. 1, vii. 97. 8, and classed by Rutilius Numatianus and Joannes Lydus with Juvenal. Two undoubted lines by Turnus have been preserved by a scholiast on Juvenal i. 71, unfortunately too corrupt to allow us to judge of his style. Boissonade, in an article in the Journal de l'Empire, 11 Janvier, 1813, accepted, with some reserve, the opinion of Wernsdorf; Ruperti (Pref. to Juvenal, lxxi.) and Meyer (Anthol. ii. p. 83), say nothing against it; Bähr, in his history of Roman literature, thought it genuine; even Bernhardy, in 1857, though believing it to be the work of Balzac, speaks doubtfully (Geschichte der Röm. Literatur, p. 564). The discovery of the truth seems to date from 1837, when an anonymous writer stated the facts in a pamphlet entitled "Lettres suivies de Notes sur des Riens philologiques," and the forgery has been recently admitted by O. Iahn, Teuffel, and Riese.

This supposed fragment of a Neronian

poet was in truth part of a Latin poem by Balzac. In 1650 Ménage published Balzac's Latin verses in three books, followed by some letters of the same author, also in Latin. The last part of the third book is called "Ficta pro antiquis," a short series of poems in hexameters or elegiacs, mostly on subjects connected with the Roman emperors. Of these the fifth is entitled "Indignatio in poetas Neronianorum temporum. Ad nobilissimum Sammauranum Montoserii Marchionem. Maioris operis fragmentum." It begins in a fragmentary way with the last five feet of a hexameter. Then follow eleven more; then our fragment as far as "Noctis;" then four verses not in the fragment, followed by 66 Ergo Deum torpore et fato matris ovantem

Maternisque paratum ultro concurrere Diris Atque alios angues, peiusque ostendere letum, Horrendasque canent, sancta ut connubia, Tædas?"

which appear in the fragment as

66 Ergo re benè gesta, & leto Matris ovantem, Maternisque canent cupidum concurrere Diris,

Et Diras alias opponere, & anguibus angues, Atque novos gladios peiusque ostendere letum?"

an improvement which greatly affects the impression of the whole. The two lines beginning "Sæva canent" and "Vxoris pueri" are omitted in the "Carmina," and the concluding line of the fragment,

66

Qua licet, & stolido verbis illuditur Orbi," is followed by thirty more.

Balzac is a very careless quoter, as may be seen in other passages. In this chapter he quotes Petronius very loosely, but with the reservation, "si ma mémoire ne me trompe"; in Entretien xxvii., an epigram given by Meyer (1072) and Riese (877) as follows: "Cæsaris ad valvas sedeo sto nocte dieque,

Nec datur ingressus quo mea fata loquar. Ite deæ faciles et nostro nomine saltem Dicite divini Cæsaris (præsidis, Riese) ante pedes:

Si nequeo placidas affari Cæsaris aures,

Saltem aliquis veniat, qui mihi dicat, abi." is quoted by him with the following variations:-1. "vigilans sto;" 2. "facta;"

1 Duc de Montausier.

3. "Ite bonæ Charites et vestro numine tecta Ferte hæc verba pii Principis ante pedes," variations mostly of his own, though for some he had the support of previous editors. But carelessness will not account for the story of the supposed fragment, though it is probable that Balzac affected a general carelessness to veil his intentional deceit. Intentional deceit, I say, confidently; only so can we account for the ambiguous manner in which he launches the fragment into notice. "Le fragment qui est après l'épigramme, a esté tiré d'un parchemin pourry en plusieurs endroits, & demy mangé de vieillesse;" words which might easily suggest to any but a careful reader that the fragment, like the epigram on Xerxes (Riese, 239), of which Balzac had just before spoken (Entret. iv. c. 3), but of which he is careful to present only the two last lines, thus making detection more difficult, was part of the same manuscript. As a fact, this was the conclusion at which Burmann arrived. Burmann knew (Anthol. Lat., vol. ii. p. 645) not only the "Entretiens," but the "Carmina" and "Epistolæ," of Balzac. Now, in one of these Epistolæ, written to J. Costard, Balzac says, p. 459, "Sed en tibi promissa epigrammata, quæ debemus codici Salmasiano," and he there quotes the five hexameters on roses, "Venerunt aliquando rosa," ascribed to Florus in the famous Codex Salmasianus, now 10318 of the Imperial Library at Paris, from which they have recently been again edited by Riese (Anthol. Lat., i. p. 101); and the epigram on Xerxes of eight lines, "Xerxes magnus adest," of which he cites the last two lines in the "Entretiens." To this same epigram on roses he seems to allude again in the first chapter of Entretien iv., which would appear to have been written to the same Costard; and, if we may believe the

1 This is nearly certain from Entretien v., au mesme, in which Balzac dilates on roses in the same manner and with the same allusions, as in the Latin letter to Costard. Cf. especially, "Je dis seulement que la Rose est mon inclination. Cui non dicta rosa est?" &c. (p. 84); and "Que dites-vous, Monsieur, de la vision des Arabes qui ont osté la Rose

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