We have now arrived at a period in the history of Oxford which is
confused and unhappy, but for us full of interest, and perhaps of
instruction. The hundred years that passed by between the age of
Chaucer and the age of Erasmus were, in Southern Europe, years of the
most eager life. We hear very often--too often, perhaps--of what is
called the Renaissance. The energy of delight with which Italy
welcomed the new birth of art, of literature, of human freedom, has
been made familiar to every reader. It is not with Italy, but with
England and with Oxford, that we are concerned. How did the
University and the colleges prosper in that strenuous time when the
world ran after loveliness of form and colour, as, in other ages, it
has run after warlike renown, or the far-off rewards of the saintly
life? What was Oxford doing when Florence, Venice, and Rome were
striving towards no meaner goal than perfection?

It must be said that "the spring came slowly up this way." The
University merely reflected the very practical character of the
people. In contemplating the events of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, in their influence on English civilisation, we are
reminded once more of the futility of certain modern aspirations. No
amount of University Commissions, nor of well-meant reforms, will
change the nature of Englishmen. It is impossible, by distributions
of University prizes and professorships, to attract into the career
of letters that proportion of industry and ingenuity which, in
Germany for example, is devoted to the scholastic life. Politics,
trade, law, sport, religion, will claim their own in England, just as
they did at the Revival of Letters. The illustrious century which
Italy employed in unburying, appropriating, and enjoying the
treasures of Greek literature and art, our fathers gave, in England,
to dynastic and constitutional squabbles, and to religious broils.