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university for which he had toiled with such incessant devotion was less forgiving. For some incautious remarks in the first edition of the Athenæ,' reflecting on the character of Lord Clarendon, the volumes of that work were publicly burnt, and its author expelled from the academic groves which he loved. Another Oxford antiquary, 'poor in fortune and poor in un'derstanding,' to use the words of the fastidious Gibbon, began soon after the death of Wood to follow in his prejudices and virtues. Without any aid but the subscriptions which importunity could draw from the pockets of the wealthy or studious, Thomas Hearne for many years passed through the press the works of many of our earliest historians. In his own manner he accomplished in his generation the work which the nation itself undertook in this age at the instigation of the late Master of the Rolls. In 1701 he obtained an inferior post at the Bodleian, with the magnificent salary of ten pounds a year, and was forced to eke out his income by showing, with a keen eye for the fee, the Anatomy Camera. It was at Bodley' that he found his pastime and his happiness, and he laboured with constant care to promote its usefulness. Hearne, however, was of the strictest sect of the Nonjurors, whose principles forbade the taking of oaths of allegiance to any but the son, of the exiled king, and at the end of 1715 he was debarred from entering the library. The keys remained in his possession to the last, but, to avoid the possibility of his entering the building clandestinely, its canny curators caused the locks to be altered. Fifty years ago Hearne's editions of the monkish historians fetched fabulous sums at book auctions, but the value of many of them has since been impaired by the reprints of more critical students. His name is best known now through the extracts from his diaries which were published in 1857 by an inheritor of his love of learning and of Oxford. They are preserved in 145 small volumes, one of which was ever with him, and to them he confided the secrets of his heart and the gleanings of his researches. With Hearne honesty was the peculiar property of the Jacobites, and every follower of the King over the water enjoyed every virtue under heaven.' George I. was always styled the Duke of Brunswick,' and on his birthday the bells were wont to be 'jambled' by some of the whiggish fanatical 'crew.' With what intensity a political Nonjuror could hate may be judged from Hearne's mention of White Kennett's usual inaccuracy, pride, injudiciousness, and knavery.' His credulity may be realised by the statement that the Dissenters having collected a great quantity of bricks to erect a chapel,

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'a destroying angel came by night and spoyled them all, and confounded their Babel.' In criticising books Hearne did not always allow his prejudices to get the better of his judgment. Everyone who knew the weak side of his nature would have suspected that the ponderous folio of John Walker, a fellow of Exeter, on the sufferings of the clergy ejected under the Commonwealth, would have been grateful to the foibles of the old Jacobite; it is, however, dismissed as a ' very injudicious mean performance,' though the compiler is praised as a worthy and honest man.'

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In the day's of Hearne the members of the Oxford colleges busied themselves chiefly in legal quarrels and in politics. Learning was comparatively neglected, and the candidates for ordination could not acquire even the moderate degree of efficiency which was demanded of them. The fellows of Exeter found abundant employment both in politics and law. Their votes were considered the perquisites of the Whig candidates, the members of Merton, Wadham, Exeter, Jesus, and Christ Church being staunch supporters of Whig principles. Still, at the general election of 1721-22, when the notorious Dr. King, the head of the Jacobite faction in the university, persisted in contesting the representation-chiefly against the re-election of Dr. Clerke, who had shown an inclination to Whiggism-every voter at Exeter gave at least one vote for King, while four plumped for him. In 1716 one Nichols, a young commoner at the college, was tried and found guilty of drinking the healths of Ormond and Bolingbroke, and of shouting in the streets An Ormond for ever!' At the election to three fellowships in 1719, six of the candidates obtained an equal share in the voting, and it fell to the ViceChancellor, Dr. Shippen, a brother of the Jacobite orator, to select the three fortunate youths. The subsequent career of his nominees did little credit to his choice. Two were rejected, at the end of the year of probation, for disaffection and for drinking the Pretender's health; the third committed suicide to escape from his creditors. The county election for 1755 provoked a fierce outburst of party passion. The pollingbooths were erected in Broad Street, and early in the morning the Tory roughs blockaded the approaches and prevented their opponents from voting. The Whig voters were thereupon smuggled through Exeter College, and were polled before a sufficient number of the enemy could be collected to prevent them. After the election the Jacobite vice-chancellor denounced the infamous behaviour' of the college, and the divisions in the university were widened by a series of pam

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phlets, now seldom disturbed from their concealment among Gough's additions at Bodley.

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Exeter College was singularly unfortunate in its rectors, from Conant to Conybeare; the weakness of Dr. Hole, who held the post from 1715 to 1730, involved the fellows in a legal contest with Dr. Newton, Principal of Hart Hall. Hole's character formed the subject of many jokes from academic wits about 1720, and his peculiarities are pointedly referred to in a Latin squib-printed in that delightful repository of forgotten lore, Notes and Queries -on the reception given by the university to a Norwegian owl, the gift of Sir Hans Sloane. In one of his unguarded moments this hapless rector permitted Dr. Newton, whose ambition to elevate Hart Hall into a separate college caused him to be designated as foundermad, to consult the college muniments for evidence as to the connexion of Hart Hall with Exeter. The college resisted in the law courts Newton's attempt to obtain a charter of incorporation for his Hall, whereupon the irascible doctor, under the belief that the action of the college was prompted by Conybeare, assailed him furiously in a printed letter addressed to the vice-chancellor; this, in its turn, provoked Conybeare into publishing a true narrative of the differences between the two bodies, and the strife grew loud and long.

Two of the members of Exeter at this epoch rose to eminence. Dr. Rundle, whose reputation for heresy forced him to put up with an Irish instead of an English bishopric, and Secker, who, from a humble position in dissent, became the Primate of England, were both graduates of Exeter, and both remembered their old friends within its precincts in the distribution of their preferments. During his short tenure of the rectorship of Exeter, Conybeare laboured strenuously to restore discipline to the college, and to establish an efficient staff of resident tutors and lecturers. The success of his efforts secured for him the patronage of 'Codex' Gibson and promotion to the deanery of Christ Church.

The general tone of college life in the last century need not detain us long. The gloomy picture has been painted by several of the most illustrious English writers in history, theology, criticism, and politics. Widely as they differed in their

* One of the Exeter fellows, when deprived of his benefice in his native city, went to Ireland for a living. This gentleman's talents are the subject of warm praise in a poem in Dodsley's collection. The reader is perhaps anxious to know the reason for this eulogy. Know, then, that he was 'the most astonishing mimic of his time."

principles, they have all with one consent arrived at the same conclusion as to the defective state of learning at both Oxford and Cambridge. There were professorships for nearly every branch of knowledge, but most of the professors neglected to discharge the duties for which they were paid. Many of the college tutors were inferior in erudition to the undergraduates whom they were supposed to instruct, and the keen-witted lads, after a brief experience of their deficiencies, quietly withdrew from the lectures, or obtained formal permission to prosecute their studies in their own manner. The chronological list of classical authors edited by members of the English universities in the eighteenth century, which is printed by Mr. Christopher Wordsworth in the appendix to his 'Schola Academicæ,' supplies convincing proofs of the threadbare learning and the sloth of the college dons. Very rarely indeed does the number of classical books produced from both Oxford and Cambridge in a single year exceed the insignificant number of twelve. În at least two years (1765 and 1787) the sum total of their lettered ease amounted to precisely a third of that mystic number, and this result is only obtained by including Buckler's Stemmata Chicheleiana,' and Relhan's Heads ' of Botanical Lectures.' A few fellows of Exeter rose above the deadening level of the age. They extricated themselves from legal strife and from the turmoil of politics, and found in study a charm which the political discussions of their companions in the common room could not supply. In the first rank of these must be placed the name of the Rev. James Upton. His father, after obtaining a fellowship at King's, had abandoned the sister university for school life at Taunton. In the seclusion of Somerset his energies found congenial occupation in editing a brace of classical authors, and in rescuing the Schoolmaster' of Roger Ascham from the neglect of more than a century. The son followed in the footsteps of the father. His classical knowledge was shown in an edition of Arrian's Epictetus.' The bent of his studies in English literature may be discerned in his edition of the Faerie Queen,' and in his observations on Shakespeare. His acuteness may be realised by the fact that

* The damage inflicted on the universities by such abuses was felt by no one more keenly than by George III. In authorising an appointment to a professorship at Oxford in 1772, he wrote: 'I am thoroughly resolved that these employments . . . shall be faithfully administered, not held as sinecures; therefore the gentleman must be acquainted that 'he will be required to read such a number of lectures as the Heads of 'Houses may think necessary.'

his views on Spenser's historical allusions have lived to be quoted in Dean Church's memoir of the great allegorical poet of Queen Elizabeth's reign.

At the end of the last century several of the Exeter fellows were men of eminence in the scientific world. John Stackhouse, the son of an opulent Cornish rector, held his fellowship for three years, until he succeeded to the estates of the Pendarves family in Cornwall. A passionate student of marine botany, he built on the east side of Mount's Bay a castellated house, in which he might with greater ease study the fuci and alge which were washed to its shores by the tempestuous waves of the English Channel. His days passed pleasantly away in discharging the duties of his position, and in printing his notes on the flowers of the sea. To the advantage of an Exeter fellowship another man of science owed his future fame. Shortly after his election the young student was appointed one of Dr. Radcliffe's travelling physicians. Whilst staying at Rome he had the good fortune to be summoned to the bedside of the Duke of Gloucester. This fortunate circumstance proved the stepping-stone to the highest honours in the profession. The young physician, Francis Milman, was ultimately advanced to the presidency of the College of Physicians, and rewarded with the dignity of a baronetcy. His youngest son will be remembered as the learned and accomplished Dean of St. Paul's; his grandson abandoned a living placed amid the loveliest scenery on the Thames for the harassing anxieties which attend the metropolitan bishopric in India.

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Two of the greatest masters of Oriental literature that the country has ever produced will be found on the roll of Exeter fellows in the latter half of the last century. The college may boast with reason that the list of its worthies includes the illustrious names of Kennicott and Weston. Kennicott was the son of the parish clerk at Totnes, and his early life was passed in superintending the charity school of his native town. A poem which he composed on the recovery a Devonshire lady attracted the attention of her family, and pointed him out as a fit person for a superior education at Oxford. Contributions for that object were obtained from the gentry of Cornwall and Devon, and from other natives of the West-such as Ralph Allen and Dr. Oliver, who had themselves climbed from comparative obscurity into positions of dignity and wealth. With this assistance Kennicott was enabled to matriculate at Wadham in 1744. Dull as was the age, and little as the graduates at the university seemed to interest themselves in promoting research, it should never be forgotten