he secured the triumph of his views on religious doctrine and order.  Of these, it is not the place to speak here, nor yet of Laud’s services to Oxford as the restorer of discipline, the endower and encourager of learning, the organizer of academic life, whose statutes were to govern Oxford for more than two centuries; but it is indisputable that Laud takes one of the highest places on the roll of benefactors, both to the University as a whole and to his own college.

It was fitting that one who did so much for St. John’s should leave his mark on its buildings; the inner quadrangle was largely built by him, and it owes to him its most characteristic features, the two classic colonnades on its east and west sides, and the lovely garden front, one of the three most beautiful things in Oxford:  the north-east corner of this is shown in Plate XXI.

Laud’s building work was done between 1631 and 1635, and in 1636 Charles I and his Queen visited Oxford and were entertained in the newly-finished college.  Much bad verse was written on this event, two lines of which as a specimen may be quoted from the quaintly-named poem, “Parnassus Biceps”: 

    “Was I not blessed with Charles and Mary’s name,
     Names wherein dwells all music?  ’Tis the same.”

The part of the entertainment to royalty on which the Archbishop specially prided himself was the play of The Hospital of Lovers, which was performed entirely by St. John’s men, without “borrowing any one actor.”  Laud goes on to observe that, when the Queen borrowed the dresses and the scenery, and had it played over again by her players at Hampton Court, it was universally acknowledged that the professionals did not come up to the amateurs—­a truly surprising and somewhat incredible verdict.  St. John’s, however, was always strong in dramatic ability; Shirley, the last great representative of the Elizabethan tradition, was a student there, and the library has the rare distinction of having possessed longest the same copy of the works of Shakespeare; it still has the second folio, presented in 1638, by one of the fellows.  St. John’s connection with the lighter side of literature has lasted to our own day; the most famous of Oxford parodies is still the Oxford Spectator, which has not been surpassed by any of its many imitators in the last half century.

Other colleges, however, might challenge the supremacy of St. John’s in the humours of literature..  In the richness and beauty of its garden it stands unrivalled, whether quantity or quality be the basis of comparison.  It is not only that before the east front, seen in Plate XXI, stretches the largest garden in Oxford; thanks to the skill and the care of the present garden-master, the Rev. H. J. Bidder, this shows from month to month, as the pageant of summer goes on, what wealth of colour and variety of bloom the English climate can produce.  It may be said to be laid out on Bacon’s rule:  “There ought to be gardens for all months in the year, in which severally things of beauty may be then in season”; only for “year” we naturally must read “academic year.”  If Bacon is right, that a garden is the “purest of human pleasures,” then, indeed, St. John’s should be the Oxford paradise.