Magdalen in the eighteenth century has an unenviable reputation, owing to the memoirs of its most famous historian, Edward Gibbon, who matriculated, in 1752, and who describes the fourteen months which elapsed before he was expelled for becoming a Roman Catholic, “as the most idle and unprofitable of my whole life.”  The “Monks of Magdalen,” as he calls the fellows, “decent, easy men,” “supinely enjoyed the gifts of the founder.”  It should be added that Gibbon was not quite fifteen when he entered the College, and that his picture of it is no doubt coloured by personal bitterness.  But its substantial justice is admitted.  Certainly, nothing could be feebler than the Vindication of Magdalen College, published by a fellow James Hurdis, the Professor of Poetry; his intellectual calibre may perhaps be gauged from the exquisite silliness of his poem, “The Village Curate,” of which the following lines, addressed to the Oxford heads of houses, are a fair specimen: 

                              “Ye profound
    And serious heads, who guard the twin retreats
    Of British learning, give the studious boy
    His due indulgence.  Let him range the field,
    Frequent the public walk, and freely pull
    The yielding oar.  But mark the truant well,
    And if he turn aside to vice or folly,
    Show him the rod, and let him feel you prize
    The parent’s happiness, the public good.”

Magdalen might fairly claim that a place so beautiful as it is, justifies itself by simply existing, and the perfection of its buildings and the beauty of its music must appeal, even to our own utilitarian age.  But it has many other justifications besides its beauty; its great wealth is being continually applied to assist the University by the endowment of new professorships, especially for the Natural Sciences, and to aid real students, whether those who have made, or those who are likely to make, a reputation as researchers.  It is needless to mention names:  every Oxford man and every lover of British learning knows them.

 [Plate XIV.  Magdalen College :  The Open-Air Pulpit]

For the world in general, which cares not for research, the success of the College under its present President, Sir Herbert Warren, himself at once a poet and an Oxford Professor of Poetry, will be evidenced by its increase in numbers and by its athletic successes.  They will judge as our King judged when he chose Magdalen for the academic home of the Prince of Wales.  The Prince, unlike other royal persons at Magdalen and elsewhere, lived (1912-14) not in the lodgings of the President, or among dons and professors, but in his own set of rooms, like any ordinary undergraduate.  He showed, in Oxford, that power of self-adaptation which has since won him golden opinions in the great Dominion and the greater Republic of the West.

BRASENOSE COLLEGE