The
result on the High Street is--to put it gently--not altogether happy;
but perhaps time may soften the lines of Mr. Champney's somewhat
uninspired front, though it is not likely to quicken interest in the
statues of the obscure provosts which adorn it.
QUEEN'S COLLEGE
"The building, parent of my young essays,
Asks in return a tributary praise;
Pillars sublime bear up the learned weight,
And antique sages tread the pompous height."
TICKELL.
Queens's is one of the six oldest colleges in Oxford, and is far on
to celebrating its sexcentenary, but it has purged itself of the
Gothic leaven in its buildings more completely than any other Oxford
foundation. It does not even occupy its own old site, for the
building originally lay well back from the High Street. It was only
the "civilities and kindnesses" of Provost Lancaster which induced
the Mayor and Corporation of Oxford, in 1709, to grant to Queen's
College "for 1,000 years," "so much ground on the High Street as
shall be requisite for making their intended new building straight
and uniform." And so the most important of "the streamlike windings
of the glorious street" was in part determined by a corrupt bargain
between "a vile Whig" (as Hearne calls this hated Provost) and a
complaisant mayor.
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