examine—­Oxford and Cambridge, while conserving almost intact their medieval frame of government, with a hundred other survivals which Time but makes, through endurance, more endearing, have, insensibly as it were, and across (it must be confessed) intervals of sloth and gross dereliction of duty, added a new function to the cultivation of learning—­that of furnishing out of youth a succession of men capable of fulfilling high offices in Church and State.

Some may regret this.  I think many of us must regret that a deeper tincture of learning is not required of the average pass-man, or injected into him perforce.  But speaking roughly about fact, I should say that while we elders up here are required—­ nay, presumed to know certain things, we aim that our young men shall be of a certain kind; and I see no cause to disown a sentence in the very first lecture I had the honour of reading before you—­’The man we are proud to send forth from our Schools will be remarkable less for something he can take out of his wallet and exhibit for knowledge, than for being something, and that something recognisable for a man of unmistakable intellectual breeding, whose trained judgment we can trust to choose the better and reject the worse.’

The reasons which have led our older Universities to deflect their functions (whether for good or ill) so far from their first purpose are complicated if not many.  Once admit young men in large numbers, and youth (I call any Dean or Tutor to witness) must be compromised with; will construe the laws of its seniors in its own way, now and then breaking them; and will inevitably end, by getting something of its own way..  The growth of gymnastic, the insensible gravitation of the elderly towards Fenner’s—­there to snatch a fearful joy and explain that the walk was good for them; the Union and other debating societies; College rivalries; the festivities of May Week; the invasion of women students:  all these may have helped.  But I must dwell discreetly on one compelling and obvious cause—­the increased and increasing unwieldiness of Knowledge.  And that is the main trouble, as I guess.

VII

Let us look it fair in the face:  because it is the main practical difficulty with which I propose that, in succeeding lectures, we grapple.  Against Knowledge I have, as the light cynic observed of a certain lady’s past, only one serious objection—­that there is so much of it.  There is indeed so much of it that if with the best will in the world you devoted yourself to it as a mere scholar, you could not possibly digest its accumulated and still accumulating stores.  As Sir Thomas Elyot wrote in the 16th century (using, you will observe, the very word of Mr Hamerton’s energetic but fed-up tradesman), ’Inconveniences always doe happen by ingurgitation and excessive feedings.’  An old schoolmaster and a poet—­Mr James Rhoades, late of Sherborne—­ comments in words which I will quote, being unable to better them: