The Cornhill Magazine (vol. XLI, no. 244 new series, October 1916)Various
General
The Cornhill Magazine (vol. XLI, no. 244 new series, October 1916)
Various
England -- Periodicals; English literature -- Periodicals; Short stories, English -- Periodicals
greater success.
If, as some people fondly imagine and like to insist, there is a
difference between the Oxford and Cambridge type of man and cast of mind,
Hughes and Llewelyn Davies may be taken as excellent representatives of
their respective Universities. Oxford gave to the Working Men’s College
the more emotional Hughes, with his all-round views and interests.
Davies contributed the thoroughness and accuracy of Cambridge thought
and methods. On the other hand, Charles Kingsley, another Cambridge man,
would certainly be classed with Tom Hughes rather than with Llewelyn
Davies. The author of ‘Westward Ho!’ might well have written ‘Tom Brown’s
Schooldays,’ or vice versa; but it is impossible to picture Llewelyn
Davies as the author of ‘Tom Brown,’ or Hughes as the translator of
Plato’s ‘Republic.’ In a later generation at the College, the counterpart
of Hughes, with less genius but greater practical ability, was again a
Cambridge man, the dearly loved Alfred Lyttelton, to whom I have already
referred. The Working Men’s College was largely, perhaps mainly, the
product of Oxford and Cambridge, in the sense that most of its founders
and first teachers had belonged to one or other of the two Universities,
and their object was to impart to others the College spirit as they
had felt and known it and realised its value; to give to poor men, to
manual workers, something, if it were ever so little, of the atmosphere
which had brightened and broadened and sweetened their own lives. The
College, accordingly, has always taken Oxford and Cambridge for its
models. Year after year Oxford and Cambridge have welcomed parties
of Working Men’s College students; and year after year, without any
intermission, a constant stream of new teachers has flowed in from the
two Universities—sometimes in greater volume from the one, sometimes
from the other. It would be impossible to decide to which University we
owe the greater debt. Maurice himself can be claimed by both, though
Cambridge has the prior and, I think, the stronger claim to him. Of
four past Principals, Maurice is in the balance, Lord Avebury belonged
to neither University, and the other two, Tom Hughes, and Professor
Dicey most admirable and effective of Principals, must be credited to
Oxford. On the whole, perhaps, I must, as an Oxford man, reluctantly but
gratefully acknowledge that Trinity College, Cambridge, stands out in our
annals as having been from first to last our greatest benefactor. The two
latest survivors of the founders, Westlake and Llewelyn Davies, had both
been Fellows of Trinity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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