Academic Oxford of the eighteenth century has been thrown on to the screen in different lights and from different sides. The Don, for the most part inert in his elbow chair, puffing at his glazed pipe, with many bottles and tankards at his elbow in the common room or the coffee-house; turning up his nose at the impudence of any man who wanted to work; too lazy, and in many cases too ignorant, to put skilful questions in the examinations; abusing his trust as an examiner by receiving bribes, in the same manner that he set the Undergraduates a lead in vice of all kinds outside the schools; earnest and eager in political strife of the Vicar of Bray type; keen on nothing but his own personal aggrandisement, either socially or financially--in all these lights he has passed through the picture. We have seen also the Undergraduate in all his class divisions--the humble servitor receiving sixpence a week from each of his gentleman patrons, doing the dirty work and odd jobs, keeping soul and body together on the scraps that fell from the rich men’s table, writing out their impositions and scraping an education in the meanwhile, God knows how; the gentleman commoner and the Smart, swaggering it abroad in the glory of their purple and fine linen, sneering at the dull regulars, cutting lectures and chapels, doing no work, incurring enormous expenses “upon tick,” following the example set by the Dons in drunkenness and wenching. We have seen them amusing themselves, free from any kind of restriction, in taverns, town and gown rows, on the river, in the cock-pit and the prize ring, and dallying with the beauties under Merton Wall. Looking at all these things and to the general loose living which was the keynote of the eighteenth century, we are apt to feel with Malmesbury that it is a matter of surprise how so many of the Undergraduates made their way so well and so creditably in the world. It has already been remarked that the worth of Oxford lies not in the quality of the degree taken, but in the education which environment and the association with better men undoubtedly gives. The mere cramming of book knowledge would be useless were it not accompanied by the far more important expansion of mind, the broadening of outlook, and the formation of character brought about by the social life of the university. This is palpably so in the case of the eighteenth-century Undergraduate, since work was practically non-existent, and a degree merely a matter of so much ready money. He could not do anything else but take on the colour of the surroundings of vice and intemperance which then reigned supreme.