To the Oxford of Elizabeth’s reign, then, the founders and architects of her successor added, chiefly, the Schools’ quadrangle, with the great gate of the five orders, a building beautiful, as it were, in its own despite. They added a smaller curiosity of the same sort, at Merton; they added Wadham, perhaps their most successful achievement. Their taste was a medley of new and old: they made a not uninteresting effort to combine the exquisiteness of Gothic decoration with the proportions of Greek architecture. The tower of the five orders reminds the spectator, in a manner, of the style of Milton. It is rich and overloaded, yet its natural beauty is not abated by the relics out of the great treasures of Greece and Rome, which are built into the mass. The Ionic and Corinthian pillars are like the Latinisms of Milton, the double-gilding which once covered the figures and emblems of the upper part of the tower gave them the splendour of Miltonic ornament. ‘When King James came from Woodstock to see this quadrangular pile, he commanded the gilt figures to be whitened over,’ because they were so dazzling, or, as Wood expresses it, ‘so glorious and splendid that none, especially when the sun shone, could behold them.’ How characteristic of James is this anecdote! He was by no means _le roi soleil_, as courtiers called Louis XIV., as divines called the pedantic Stuart. It is easy to fancy the King issuing from the Library of Bodley, where he has been turning over books of theology, prosing, and displaying his learning for hours. The rheumy, blinking eyes are dazzled in the sunlight, and he peevishly commands the gold work to be ‘whitened over.’ Certainly the translators of the Bible were but ill-advised when they compared his Majesty to the rising sun in all his glory.