Charles James Fox--Earl of Malmesbury--William Eden--Cards and claret--Midnight oil--Oxford friendships remembered afterwards--Edward Gibbon--Delicate bookworm--Antagonism towards Oxford--Becomes a Roman Catholic--Subsequent apostasy--John Wesley--Resists taking orders--Germs of ambition--America the golden opportunity--Oxford responsible for Methodism 184-198 CHAPTER XIX CELEBRITIES AS OXFORD MEN--(_continued_) William Collins--Joins the Smarts--Forgets how to work-- Oxford kills his will-power--Loses his reason--Samuel Johnson at Pembroke--A lonely freshman--Translates Pope’s _Messiah_--Suffers horribly from poverty--Dr Adam, his tutor--Readiness and physical pluck--Love of showing off--His love of Pembroke 199-210 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FRONT VIEW OF CHRIST CHURCH _Frontispiece_ VIEW OF ST MARY’S CHURCH AND RADCLIFFE LIBRARY _To face page_ 9 COLLEGE SERVICE " 15 A VIEW OF THE THEATRE, PRINTING HOUSE, ETC., AT OXFORD " 19 BUCKS OF THE FIRST HEAD " 30 MERTON COLLEGE AND CHAPEL, FROM THE QUADRANGLE " 40 A ’VARSITY TRICK--SMUGGLING IN " 45 VIEW OF QUEEN’S COLLEGE " 53 NORTH VIEW OF FRIAR BACON’S STUDY AT OXFORD " 59 A DUCK HUNT " 66 A WESTERN VIEW OF ALL SOULS’ COLLEGE " 74 THE ORIGINAL ENTRANCE TO THE CLOISTERS AT MAGDALEN " 92 OFF TO A BADGER-BAITING " 133 A SOUTH VIEW OF THE OBSERVATORY AT OXFORD " 160 MERTON COLLEGE " 177 STAIRCASE, CHRIST CHURCH " 193 FOREWORD The task of writing a book on Oxford University is by no means an easy one. If it be a novel there are countless pitfalls to entrap the author--points small and inconsequent to the reader who cannot proudly claim the City of Spires as his Alma Mater, but irritating beyond description to the man who knows and loves Oxford. But if modern Oxford dealt with from the romantic and sentimental point of view as the background of a story contains such a network of difficulties, the Oxford of two hundred years ago, Rowlandson’s Oxford, contains them multiplied a hundred times, because it now becomes a question not of reproducing the vivid pictures of the hour and moment, but of recreating the atmosphere of a time that is silent in death.