Wolsey's Tower, splendid as it was, was not without deep mortification to the great man. Men who understood not his design abused it, and reports of his extravagance were set afloat. When mentioned to the bursar, they only excited his contempt; for Wolsey well knew that he honored his college by not robbing her of funds left for the encouragement of learned men, and whilst he expended so much in raising a monument to his own magnificence, he did not misapply one single angel to that work which was legally and justly devoted to other purposes. The fact was, that as the Tower was near its completion, and was seen to be so fair an ornament to the University, he received from other colleges pecuniary assistance, and never burthened his own with the expense. His mind was greatly diverted by the interest he took in the accomplishment of this undertaking; and if any one was impoverished by it, it was Wolsey himself, who expended his utmost farthing in its completion. Yet, however diverted, he was not insensible to the carpings of some, and the inadequacy of his private finances. So that when the work was done, the scaffolding taken down, and it stood exposed in all its elegance, like every other great performance of man's hand and mind, it gave not its author the satisfaction he anticipated, but occasioned him much annoyance. Few men live to see their own works admired, and it is well perhaps they do not, for if their only pleasure in them is the thought of man's admiration, and not the employment of their time and talents from a high sense of duty, which alone gives pleasure, they would be elevated and depressed by critical declamations to an unreasonable extent. Soon after Wolsey had built his Tower, he left the University to go and reside upon the living of Lymington, which the Marquis of Dorset had bestowed upon him for the care and attention he had paid to the education of his sons. His fame had been by this time pretty well disseminated among all the nobility and gentry who valued literature. The Boy Bachelor had become the great Oxford man; and Magdalen Tower had given him a name for taste and elegance which, in those days of internal disruption between the Houses of York and Lancaster, had been almost forgotten. When Wolsey left Oxford he seemed to break off from the accustomed restraint of scholastic discipline, which he had acquired during his situation as tutor and schoolmaster. Men were surprised to find the staid and learned priest the free and joyous companion in the country, the life and soul of the great houses throughout the counties of Somerset, Dorset, and Hants.