had not read the books he "coated." It is certain that Dean Aldrich
(and here again we recognise the eternal criticism of modern Oxford)
held a poor opinion of Humphrey Prideaux. Aldrich said Prideaux was
"incorrect," "muddy-headed," "he would do little or nothing besides
heaping up notes"; "as for MSS. he would not trouble himself about
any, but rest wholly upon what had been done to his hands by former
editors." This habit of carping, this trick of collecting notes,
this inability to put a work through, this dawdling erudition, this
horror of manuscripts, every Oxford man knows them, and feels those
temptations which seem to be in the air. Oxford is a discouraging
place. College drudgery absorbs the hours of students in proportion
to their conscientiousness. They have only the waste odds-and-ends
of time for their own labours. They live in an atmosphere of
criticism. They collect notes, they wait, they dream; their youth
goes by, and the night comes when no man can work. The more praise
to the tutors and lecturers who decipher the records of Assyria, or
patiently collate the manuscripts of the Iliad, who not only teach
what is already known, but add to the stock of knowledge, and advance
the boundaries of scholarship and science.

One lesson may be learned from Prideaux's cynical letters, which is
still worth the attention of every young Oxford student who is
conscious of ambition, of power, and of real interest in letters. He
can best serve his University by coming out of her, by declining
college work, and by devoting himself to original study in some less
exhausted air, in some less critical society.

Among the aversions of Humphrey Prideaux were the "gentlemen of All
Souls." They certainly showed extraordinary impudence when they
secretly employed the University Press to print off copies of Marc