" The personal attacks were those of a
disappointed man; the criticisms, one-sided as they were, were
certainly not unjustified.
A university should certainly exist to promote learning, and Mark
Pattison, with all his unfairness, certainly helped its cause in
Oxford. But a university exists also for the promotion of friendships
among young men, and for the development of their social life. Of
this duty, Oxford has never been unmindful, and perhaps it is in
small colleges like Lincoln that the flowers of friendship best
flourish. It is needless to make comparisons, for they flourish
everywhere; but it is appropriate to quote, when writing of one of
the smaller Oxford colleges, the verses on this subject of a recent
Lincoln poet (now dead); they will come home to every Oxford man:
"City of my loves and dreams,
Lady throned by limpid streams;
'Neath the shadow of thy towers,
Numbered I my happiest hours.
Here the youth became a man;
Thought and reason here began.
Ah! my friends, I thought you then
Perfect types of perfect men:
Glamour fades, I know not how,
Ye have all your failings now,"
But Oxford friendships outlast the discovery that friends have
"failings"; as Lord Morley, who went to Lincoln in 1856, writes:
"Companionship (at Oxford) was more than lectures"; a friend's
failure later (he refers to his contemporary, Cotter Morison's
/Service of Man/) "could not impair the captivating comradeship of
his prime.
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