It is not an unknown thing for a present-day Undergraduate paper, which is supposedly conducted _by_ Undergraduates _for_ Undergraduates to be owned and financed by a local tradesman. He, being thus in supreme command, maintains a private blue pencil, and, obsessed by the idea that because he sells pens and inks he is therefore a man of parts and literary consideration, rules the poor devil of an Undergraduate editor with a rod of iron. What is the result? It is that the average ’varsity paper is composed of childish leaders edited by the financier; a series of vastly foolish and unentertaining remarks which may or may not have been heard in the Broad; pages of notes which are half-frightened comments on the week’s doings written invariably by critics who have not sufficient pluck to say that they consider the person or thing under criticism to be either thoroughly bad or supremely excellent; a mawkish account of the speeches delivered in the Union Society’s Debates, written with the condescending patronage of the old stager, by some self-satisfied ex-official, himself a thoroughly bad speaker and so totally unqualified to criticise; a collection of dramatic criticisms of the bi-weekly pieces at the New Theatre, scribbled by some musical comedy enthusiast who, in addition to a total ignorance of the drama, has been warned by the financier of the paper to say nice things however bad the play or the acting in order to secure free seats from the theatre; and, lastly, a fulsome and objectionably personal article which purports to be a biography of a well-known Oxford man. Perhaps under these Gilbertian conditions it is no wonder that the literary efforts of Georgian times put those of the present to shame. In the eighteenth century university journals were at least independent. They looked for no pecuniary assistance from local ironmongers or haberdashers. The consequence is that although the contributors were beginners whose efforts were the result of the itch for writing brought on by that indefinable element which was in the atmosphere of Oxford then as now, their work was unhampered by any outside considerations. The literary standard was not of the highest order. How could it be when the writers were lads varying from eighteen to twenty years of age? It was, however, higher than that of to-day. On turning over the various ’varsity papers of two centuries ago, an uncomfortable sensation of that most unusual emotion--humility--inevitably results, because there is undoubtedly found in them much that is witty, fearless, original, vivid, and entertaining.