Oxford Bigotry and Oxford Studies. 79 



neither can be said to form any portion of the University system of 

 instruction. The professor has become " the shadow of his former 

 self:" the chair, no longer the teacher's seat, has been turned 

 into an otium cum dignitate to be enjoyed by men of moderate learn- 

 ing and good interest : and the titles, * schola Grammatices,' schola 

 Musica,' &c., above the school doors surprise and mislead the visitor, 

 while they only excite the ridicule of the members and point retro- 

 spectively to the brighter days of the University. 



The college tutor has taken the place of the professor ; and the 

 wretched college lectures are substituted for the effective instruction 

 of the public schools. This tutor is chosen from among the fellows : 

 and owing to the. constitutions of most of the colleges, whose fellow- 

 ships are very closely tied up, it may so happen that not a single fel- 

 low is competent to perform the duties of a tutor : nay, it is not 

 always that the most competent man among the fellows is appointed 

 to the office, for owing to the lucrativeness of the situation it not 

 unfrequently happens, that the oldest and most influential keeps it in 

 his own hands. As the Edinburgh reviewer justly remarks, " merit 

 is in general the accident not the principle of their appointment; and 

 we might always expect on the common doctrine of probabilities, that 

 among the multitude of college tutors there should be a few known 

 to the world for ability and erudition.' The college tutors amount to 

 between forty and fifty; and certain are we that out of this large 

 list we could not select six names known to the learned world of our 

 country for ability and erudition. And with respect to the style in 

 which the college instruction is given, what Oxford man will ven- 

 ture to assert that it is otherwise than quite discreditable to the whole 

 body of tutors? That some of the tutors in Baliol, Exeter, and Oriel 

 colleges display an honourable zeal in their vocations, we doubt not ; 

 but these are only the exceptions, which prove the truth of our asser- 

 tion. How unsatisfactory is the way in which during a short hour 

 one hundred two hundred nay, sometimes three hundred lines of 

 a Greek play are skimmed over by a tutor with his class; and how 

 utterly insufficient for the purposes of the ordinary non-reading un- 

 dergraduate are these slovenly lectures ! To this practice, indeed, 

 may be traced the general character of Oxford scholarship as elegant, 

 diffuse, and unsound. The college tutor urges the student on through 

 a vast quantity of work in a short time, and the public examiner ren- 

 ders superficial reading obligatory by the requirement of a great 

 number of books from the candidates for honourable distinction. The 

 lectures, besides, are not given with a view to the University exami- 

 nation ; and so well is this understood, that it is not unusual for the 

 tutors to allow the men for a term before responsions, and a term, 

 sometimes two, before the examination exemption from the duty of 

 attending their lectures. In fact, these lectures, in a large propor- 

 tion of cases, are considered, and justly considered by reading men 

 as a tax and a misemploymentof time. Their chief use seems to be 

 to give a certain employment to those undergraduates who would 

 not work at all without some sort of surveillance. 



The University examination in ordinary cases is passed by men, 

 whose attainments are inferior (except in Divinity) to fifth-form boys 



