I am convinced that the Higher Critics of a later age, collating the Wilkinsonian tradition with such fragments as remain of Father Vaughan's discourses, will come to the conclusion that "Wilkinson" never existed (except in Wordsworth's ode to the Spade), but was a kind of heroic figure conceived by a much later generation, which had quivered under the rhetoric of a real person or persons called Vaughan; and the opinion of the learned will be sharply divided on such questions as whether Vaughan was one or many; if one, whether he was a Priest, a Cardinal, a Head Master, or an Independent Minister; or whether he was all four at different stages of his career. XII OXFORD "Once, my dear--but the world was young then-- Magdalen elms and Trinity limes,-- Lissom the oars and backs that swung then, Eight good men in the good old times-- Careless we and the chorus flung then. Under St. Mary's chimes! "Still on her spire the pigeons hover; Still by her gateway flits the gown; Ah, but her secret? You, young lover, Drumming her old ones forth from town, Know you the secret none discover? Tell it--when _you_ go down." What Matthew Arnold did for the interpretation of Oxford through the medium of prose, that Mr. Quiller-Couch has done through the medium of verse. In the poem from which I have just quoted two stanzas he conveys, as no one else has ever conveyed it in poetry, the tender and elusive charm of that incomparable place. "Know you her secret none can utter-- Hers of the Book, the tripled Crown?" It is a hard question, and susceptible of some very prosaic and therefore inappropriate answers. The true answer can, I think, only be given by those for whom Oxford lies, half hid, in the enchanted past: "Tell it--when _you_ go down." Some parts of the spell which Oxford exercises on those who are subjected to her influence are in no sense secret. We perceive them from the day when we first set foot within her precincts, and the sense of them abides with us for ever. "If less insensible than sodden clay In a sea-river's bed at ebb of tide," all sons of Oxford must realize her material beauty, her historical pre-eminence, her contribution to thought and culture, her influence on the religious life of England. "Ah, but her secret? You, young lover." There is nothing secret about all this; it is palpable and manifest; and yet it does not exhaust the spell. Something there is that remains undiscovered, or at best half-discovered--felt and guessed at, but not clearly apprehended--until we have passed away from the "dreaming spires"--the cloisters and the gardens and the river--to that sterner life for which these mysterious enchantments have been preparing us. "Know you the secret none discover?"