FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68  
69   70   71   72   73   >>  
illustrated by the picturesque and curious dial, still in the centre of his College Quad, which was constructed by one of them in the reign of Elizabeth. It is well shown in our picture, as are also Foxe's charming low buildings, almost unaltered since the time of their Founder. But it has been on the humanistic, rather than on the scientific, side that Corpus men have specially distinguished themselves. The first century of the College existence produced the two great Elizabethan champions of Anglicanism. Bishop Jewel, whose "Apology" was for a long period the great bulwark of the English Church against Jesuit attacks, had laid the foundations of his great learning in the Corpus Library, still--after that of Merton--the most picturesque in Oxford; he often spent whole days there, beginning an hour before Early Mass, i.e. at 4 a.m., and continuing his reading till 10 p.m. "There were giants on the earth in those days." Even more famous is the "judicious Hooker," who resided in the college for sixteen years, and only left it when, by the wiles of a woman, he, "like a true Nathanael who feared no guile" (as his biographer, Isaac Walton, writes), was entrapped into a marriage which "brought him neither beauty nor fortune." The first editor of his great work, /The Ecclesiastical Polity/, was a Corpus man, and it was only fitting that the Anglican Revival of the nineteenth century should receive its first impulse from the famous Assize Sermon (in 1833) of another Corpus scholar, John Keble. Corpus has been singularly fortunate in its history, no doubt because its Presidents have been so frequently men of mark for learning and for character. Even in the dark period of the eighteenth century it recovered sooner than the rest of the University, and one of its sons records complacently that "scarcely a day passed without my having added to my stock of knowledge some new fact or idea." A charming picture of the life of the scholars of Corpus at the beginning of the last century is given in Stanley's /Life of Arnold/; for the famous reformer of the English public-school system was at the College immediately after John Keble, whom he followed as fellow to Oriel, on the other side of the road. It need hardly be added that in those days an Oriel Fellowship was the crown of intellectual distinction in Oxford. Bishop Foxe had set up his college as a "ladder" by which, "with one side of it virtue and the other knowledge," men mi
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68  
69   70   71   72   73   >>  



Top keywords:

Corpus

 
century
 

famous

 
College
 

English

 

learning

 
period
 

Bishop

 

knowledge

 

beginning


Oxford

 
college
 

picturesque

 

picture

 

charming

 

frequently

 

Presidents

 
history
 

character

 

recovered


records

 

complacently

 

University

 

eighteenth

 

fortunate

 
sooner
 
fitting
 

Anglican

 
Revival
 

nineteenth


Polity
 

fortune

 

editor

 

Ecclesiastical

 
receive
 

scholar

 

constructed

 

scarcely

 
Sermon
 

impulse


Assize

 
singularly
 

illustrated

 

fellow

 

school

 
system
 

immediately

 
Fellowship
 

ladder

 

virtue