Wood, "being a mere scholar," could, of course, expect nothing but
disrespect in a place like Oxford. His younger contemporary,
Humphrey Prideaux, was, in the Oxford manner, a man of the world. He
was the son of a Cornish squire, was educated at Westminster under
Busby (that awful pedagogue, whose birch seems so near a memory), got
a studentship at Christ Church in 1668, and took his B.A. degree in
1672. Here it may be observed that men went up quite as late in life
then as they do now, for Prideaux was twenty-four years old when he
took his degree. Fell was Dean of Christ Church, and was showing
laudable zeal in working the University Press. What a pity it is
that the University Press of to-day has become a trading concern, a
shop for twopenny manuals and penny primers! It is scarcely proper
that the University should at once organise examinations and sell the
manuals which contain the answers to the questions most likely to be
set. To return to Fell; he made Prideaux edit Lucius Florus, and
publish the Marmora Oxoniensia, which came out 1676. We must not
suppose, however, that Prideaux was an enthusiastic archaeologist.
He did the Marmora because the Dean commanded it, and because
educated people were at that period not uninterested in Greek art.
At the present hour one may live a lifetime in Oxford and only learn,
by the accident of examining passmen in the Arundel Room, that the
University possesses any marbles. In the walls of the Arundel Room
(on the ground-floor in the Schools' quadrangle) these touching
remains of Hellas are interred. There are the funereal stelae, with
their quiet expression of sorrow, of hope, of resignation. The young
man, on his tombstone, is represented in the act of rising and taking
the hand of a friend. He is bound on his latest journey.