Page:Oxford men and their colleges.djvu/428

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543


PEMBROKE COLLEGE.


544


have received more than a bare name. In his honour the Chancellor was always to be, and is still, the Visitor of the College. It bears his arms, three rampant lions argent on a field azure and gules, with the royal rose and thistle on a chief argent and or.

Tesdale's brass in Glympton Church, put up a few years after his death, represents him as "liberally beneficial to Balliol Colledge. " Balliol however was put into Chancery for the restitution of the £300, which finally was handsomely paid by Archbishop Abbot. Savage, Master of Balliol, complains with pardonable resentment of the conduct of "this re- jeton " as he calls the new foundation, which was inaugurated with considerable ceremony on August 5, 1624, the students of Broadgates becoming members of Pembroke. Great and wide interest seems to have been taken in this the youngest of the Colleges, and further benefactions came to it, a principal donor being Sir John Benet, Lord Ossulstone. King Charles I. gave up the patronage of S. Aldate's to it, and founded a fellowship, as also at Jesus College and Exeter, to be held by a native of Guernsey or Jersey, with a view to raising the state of ecclesiastical learning in the Channel Islands. Bishop Morley, in the next reign, founded five exhibitions for Channel Islanders. In 1 7 14 Queen Anne annexed a Gloucester prebend to the Mastership. Other considerable benefactions have been made since, especially by Francis Wight- wick, Esq., Mrs. Sophia Sheppard and the Rev. Chris- topher Cleoburey, and though this College has smaller corporate revenues than any, it is very well off for Scholarships.

Buildings. — The only part of Broadgates (which Hutten calls " that venerable piece of antiquity ") still remaining is the Dining Hall, since 1848 the Library. The present Old Quadrangle was built between 1624 and 1694, but lost much of its pleasing and quaint character in 1829 when the exterior front was re- modelled and a storey added to the tower. The Master's Lodging, once a five-gabled late 17th cen- tury building, was also Gothicized and sub- sequently raised one storey. The present New Quadrangle, consisting of Dining Hall and Fellows' and Undergraduates' rooms, was built during the mastership of Dr. Jeune in 1844, taking the place of the picturesque old gabled ' ' Back lodgings " (figured in Ingram's Memorials). The large grass plat was formerly three ancient gardens divided by walls, that furthest to the west belonging to the Fellows, the centre one to the Master, and the strip on the east being a common garden. Here were a bowling alley, a ball-court, shady bowers, dipt walks, arbours, and a curious dial. When the Chapel was built in 1728, the year of Johnson's admission, the common garden was converted into gravel. In spite of the destruction of its former old-world charm, this quadrangle, hardly suspected to exist by the casual passer-by, is, with its irregular buildings covered with creepers, extremely pleasing. The Hall is an unusually good example of the Gothic Revival, and within the last few years the plain Ionic Chapel has been splendidly decorated, at a cost of ,£3,000, from the designs of Mr. C. E. Kempe, M. A., a member of the College, the windows in the Renaissance manner being unequalled specimens of modern glass- painting. The " Wolsey Almshouse " was acquired from Christ Church in 1888 for £11,000.

Past Days. — Except for the transverse addition at one end, built in 1620 by Principal Clayton, the irregularly shaped room which is now the Library


is scarcely changed since the days of Bonner and Beaumont and Pym and Camden and Browne. Here George Whitefield carried about in leathern jacks — as he had done in his mother's alehouse at Gloucester — the liquor, or "coll," which Johnson abused as muddy and uninspiring to Latin themes : —

" Carmina vis nostri scribant meliora poetae? Ingenium jubeas purior haustus alat."

Here on a Powder-Plot day Johnson made his first declamation, as Madam Piozzi relates. Here the juniors " went round the fire " on gaudy days. Here they attended lectures. "Sir, you have sconced me twopence for a lecture not worth a penny," Johnson told his tutor Jorden one day when he had been sliding in Christ Church meadows. In later years he said, "Whenever a young man becomes Jorden's pupil he becomes his son." His own rudeness and boisterousness were but on the surface. He was often to be seen lounging in the College gate with a circle of young men round him whom he was entertaining with wit and keeping from their studies, if not spirit- ing them up, says Bishop Percy, to rebellion against the College discipline, which in after life he so vigorously extolled. Dr. Adams told Boswell that while at Pembroke Johnson was caressed and loved by all about him, was a gay and frolicsome fellow, and passed there the happiest part of his life. Johnson hearing this from Boswell said, "Ah, sir, I was mad and violent. It was bitterness which they mistook for frolick. I was miserably poor and I thought to fight my way by my literature and my wit ; so I disregarded all power and all authority." When some kind hand placed a pair of new shoes at his door, Johnson, as soon as he discovered them, flung them passionately away. His room, practically unal- tered, is a very small one in the second storey over the common gate. He was not, however — pace Carlyle and Mr. Leslie Stephen — a servitor Johnson ceased to reside in December 1729, taking no degree ; but, we are told, "he had contracted a love and regard for Pembroke College which he retained to the last." He loved it none the less that it was reputed a Jacobitical place. In the height of his fame he was never happier than in re-visiting his old College, where his life-long friend Dr. Adams was Master, gallanting it about in academic gown with Hannah More, and pointing out to her the rooms of the Pembroke poets, — "We were a nest of singing birds," he said. "Here we walked; there we played at cricket," — conversing with old servants whom he remembered, shewing Warton where he had tried at the classical lecture to sit out of earshot of Meeke's construing, or taking Boswell into the old summer common-room on the city-wall and telling him "Ay, here I used to play at draughts with Phil Jones and Fludyer. Jones loved beer and did not get very forward in the Church. Fludyer turned out a scoun- drel, a Whig, and said he was ashamed of having been bred at Oxford." People flocked to Pembroke Chapel to gaze at the great despot of letters, that tender-hearted humble Christian worshipper. Just before his death he paid the familiar scenes a last fond visit. His deeply pathetic " Prayers and Meditations " with some of his College exercises are in the Library, where are also the little deal desk on which he wrote the Dictionary, and his bust by Bacon. In the Common Room are his teapot, holding two quarts, and a splendid portrait by Reynolds.

Pembroke produced an unusual number of eminent sons in the early part of the 18th century. Its