The real revival of Balliol College began after the election of John Parsons as Master in 1798. He succeeded to the Vice-Chancellorship in 1807 unexpectedly, on the death of Dr. Richards, Rector of Exeter, after a single year of office. “He was a good scholar,” says Bedel Cox, “and an impressive preacher, though he did not preach often; above all, he was thoroughly conversant with University matters, having been for several years the leading, or rather the working, man in the Hebdomadal Board. Indeed, he had the great merit of elaborating the details of the Public Examination Statute at the end of the last century. His subsequent promotion” to the Bishopric of Peterborough “was considered as the well-earned reward of that his great work. Dr. Parsons had also the credit of laying the foundation of that collegiate and tutorial system which Dr. Jenkyns afterwards so successfully carried out.”[113] Those who may think the establishment of the examination system a questionable benefit may be comforted by knowing that for many years it was conducted entirely vivâ voce, while the requirements for degrees in the time preceding the change were so notoriously perfunctory that the old method could not possibly be maintained. In the Colleges too the tutorial system, in its principle—as still at Cambridge—a disciplinary system, had long outlived its vitality; and Dr. Parsons deserves credit not merely for invigorating it, but for setting on a firm foundation an organization for teaching undergraduates as well as for keeping them in order.
But it was not to be expected that these reforms should bear full fruit for many years. Sir William Hamilton, who was at Balliol from 1807 to 1810, describes himself as “so plagued by these foolish lectures of the College tutors that I have little time to do anything else—Aristotle to-day, ditto to-morrow; and I believe that if the ideas furnished by Aristotle to these numbskulls were taken away, it would be doubtful whether there remained a single notion. I am quite tired of such uniformity of study.”[114] He was however unfortunately placed under an eccentric tutor named Powell, who lived furtively in rooms over the College gate and was never seen out except at dusk. “For a short time Hamilton and his tutor kept up the formality of an hour’s lecture. This however soon ceased, and for the last three years of his College life Hamilton was left to follow his own inclinations.”[115] But, as Dr. Parsons said, “he is one of those, and they are rare, who are best left to themselves. He will turn out a great scholar, and we shall get the credit of making him so, though in point of fact we shall have done nothing for him whatever.”[116] Yet in later years the philosopher speaks of the “College in which I spent the happiest of the happy years of youth, which is never recollected but with affection, and from which, as I gratefully acknowledge, I carried into life a taste for those studies which have contributed the most interesting of my subsequent pursuits.”[117]
Hamilton’s freshman’s account of the daily life and manners of the College deserves quotation: its date is 13 May, 1807. “No boots are allowed to be worn here, or trousers or pantaloons. In the morning we wear white cotton stockings, and before dinner regularly dress in silk stockings, &c. After dinner we go to one another’s rooms and drink some wine, then go to chapel at half-past five, and walk, or sail on the river, after that. In the morning we go to chapel at seven, breakfast at nine, fag all the forenoon, and dine at half-past three.”[118]
Under Dr. Parsons as Master, and Mr. Jenkyns as Tutor and then Vice-Master on the Head’s elevation to the see of Peterborough, the College continued steadily to improve. Mr. Jenkyns succeeded to the Mastership on the Bishop’s death in 1819. But there were still two points in the constitution of the College which were felt to be out of keeping with the spirit of modern education. One was the direct nomination of each Scholar, except those on the Blundell Foundation, by a particular Fellow in turn; and the other, the obligation under which all the Fellows lay of taking Priest’s orders. The former arrangement was revised by a new Statute sanctioned by the Visitor in 1834, which placed all the Scholarships, with the exception named, in the appointment of the Master and Fellows after examination. At the same time the College yielded to the tendency of the time which brought undergraduates to the University older than formerly, and raised the age below which candidates were admissible to scholarships from eighteen to nineteen.[119] The other question was settled by a decision in 1838 that the obligation of Fellows to take holy orders did not debar candidates from election who had no such purpose in mind, provided of course that their tenure of Fellowships terminated at the date by which according to the Statutes they were bound to be ordained.[120]
In the same year that this decision was given Mr. Benjamin Jowett, afterwards Regius Professor of Greek and since 1870 Master of the College, was elected to a Fellowship. He has committed to writing in a most interesting letter to the son of William George Ward, famous for his share in the Oxford Movement and for his degradation by Convocation in 1845, his recollections of the Fellows as they were when he was elected to their membership; but we have only room here for a short extract from his account of Master Jenkyns, “who was very different from any of the Fellows, and was held in considerable awe by them. He was a gentleman of the old school, in whom were represented old manners, old traditions, old prejudices, a Tory and a Churchman, high and dry, without much literature, but having a good deal of character. He filled a great space in the eyes of the undergraduates. ‘His young men,’ as he termed them, speaking in an accent which we all remember, were never tired of mimicking his voice, drawing his portrait, and inventing stories about what he said and did. … He was a considerable actor, and would put on severe looks to terrify Freshmen, but he was really kind-hearted and indulgent to them. He was in a natural state of war with the Fellows and Scholars on the Close Foundation; and many ludicrous stories were told of his behaviour to them, of his dislike to smoking, and of his enmity to dogs. … He was much respected, and his great services to the College have always been acknowledged.”[121]
When we consider the progress made by Balliol College during the years between 1813, when Jenkyns became Vice-Master, and 1854, when he died, we may perhaps venture to question whether the balance between “old manners, old traditions, old prejudices,” and new manners, new traditions, new prejudices, does not hang very evenly. But into this we are not called upon to enter. The Statutes made by the University Commission of 1850 made fewer changes in the condition of Balliol than of most Colleges, because the most inevitable reforms had been carried into effect already. The Close Fellowships were opened, and the majority of the Fellowships were released from clerical obligations. The moment which witnessed the promulgation of the new Statutes witnessed also the death of Dean Jenkyns and the succession of Robert Scott. But here we may well conclude the story of the Balliol of the past. To carry it down further would require much more space than the limits of this chapter permit; and besides, the Balliol of the present is a new College in a different sense from perhaps any other College in Oxford. No other College has so distinctly parted company with its traditions beyond the lifetime of men now living. The commemoration of founders and benefactors on St. Luke’s Day has long been given up, and the Latin grace in hall has not been heard for many years. The College buildings are for the greater part the work of the present reign. In the new hall the portraits which strike the eye behind the high table are all those of men who were alive when the hall was opened in 1877. Bishop Parsons and Dean Jenkyns are seen above them, while in the obscurity of the roof may be discerned the pictures—unhistorical, as in other Colleges, it need not be said—of John Balliol and Dervorguilla his wife. A visitor from the last century would see little that he could recognize; but when he entered the common room after dinner he would notice one highly conservative custom revived. In 1773 it had been the lament of older men, that
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