OXFORD AND GREEK 655 



as for a great school, particularly if room be limited ; but how 

 are you to bid a wretched student "either learn or go" if you 

 never allow him to come. 



The Head Master of Shrewsbury has already spoken out in 

 this sense. 1 " Is not the obvious solution that the university 

 should leave the individual colleges to make their own terms for 

 the admission of their own members ? There can be no question 

 that the standard would be safe in their hands and they would 

 thus be enabled to secure the type of man who would most 

 benefit by the education which they felt themselves best fitted to 

 give." It is true that he is not so much concerned for Greekless 

 scientists as for science-less Grecians: "I cannot believe that 

 some college would not be found bold enough to exempt its 

 classical and historical scholars from the thraldom of algebra 

 and geometry." But his argument cuts both ways. His own 

 dislike of "algebra" is the exact counterpart of a mathematician's 

 dislike of " Greek " : and both dislikes come from unacquaintance 

 with the reality. Though he is mistaken in supposing that the 

 university can permit, much less compel, on the main issue he 

 may well be on the right lines. It is, in fact, the colleges, as I 

 hope I have shown, which began by making Responsions do duty 

 as their entrance examination ; it is notorious that the stronger 

 colleges have in effect discarded it already for higher " matricu- 

 lations " of their own. On the other hand, the weaker colleges 

 and their stalking-horse the " poor man " are already revealed as 

 an obstacle to its reform, because a very small rise in the 

 standard would force them to empty their rooms or revert to 

 the ancient custom of letting men come up and stay up who had 

 not passed Smalls. 



It would be a pleasing demonstration of college autonomy — 

 which is a fashionable doctrine in Oxford of late — if colleges 

 would really vary their requirements a little in this way. Corpus, 

 as a Renaissance college, might redeem its early Greeklessness 

 by demanding " real Greek," to the standard, let us say, of 

 Honour Moderations, before admitting to residence. Worcester 

 might revert to a picturesque phase in its history and resume 

 its mission of spreading Western culture among the modern 

 Hellenes ; an oral examination in Romaic would be the very 

 thing ; perhaps Dr. Rouse would oblige. Another college, dis- 

 carding Greek, might substitute Welsh or Irish, " with special 



1 Times, December 29, 1910. 



