78 A. D. GODLEY 



When Gibbon, in the rather grudging 

 palinodia in which he takes back some part of 

 his attack on the university ( founded, it should 

 be remembered, on some very juvenile impres- 

 sions of a short residence at Magdalen), 

 when Gibbon says that learning has become "a 

 duty, a pleasure, and even a fashion," it is 

 noticeable that the foundation to which he 

 is especially referring is Christ Church, then, 

 as afterwards, the special training-ground for 

 sprigs of nobility, and those who wish to culti- 

 vate the society of "the great." Such were the 

 early days of classical scholarship at Oxford; 

 and this kind of revival was fixed and stereo- 

 typed when the university, at the beginning of 

 the nineteenth century, established its first 

 honor examination. Classical scholarship 

 was duly recognized from the earliest begin- 

 ning of a Litterae Humaniores examination; 

 though some critics considered that the Aris- 

 totelian logic should have been ousted alto- 

 gether instead of being left as a partner to 

 literature. Anyhow, such knowledge of Greek 

 and Latin as sufficed for the gaining of a class 

 at Oxford was now endowed with additional 



