76 A. D. GODLEY 



eighteenth century is an unpopular period — 

 even now, when the nineteenth, which was 

 always cavilling at it, is itself falling into some 

 disrepute — and one does not readily associate 

 beneficent changes with it, least of all in the 

 University of Oxford, which has been sup- 

 posed to represent the eighteenth century at its 

 worst and blackest. Nevertheless, this 

 maligned period was the parent of many re- 

 forms, or changes, for which the nineteenth 

 century afterwards got the credit; and one 

 of these was certainly a great change in the 

 condition of universities. Educationally and 

 socially, Oxford was profoundly modified ; and 

 it was the coincidence of the educational with 

 the social alternative which brought about the 

 state of things with which one is familiar, — 

 the idea of the classics being a necessary part 

 of the education of a gentleman. The middle 

 of the century found Oxford, one may say, 

 with no university curriculum of any profitable 

 kind. There were exercises for a degree; but 

 they consisted mainly in the repetition of stock 

 formulae, founded on the logic of the mediaeval 

 schoolmen. Practically, so far as the univer- 



