fourteen or fifteen years, has come immediately from
Oxford, and likewise some of the Jacobitism, Popish
and Jacobite nonsense, and little or nothing else,
having been taught at Oxford for about that number
of years. But whence did the pedants get the
Popish nonsense with which they have corrupted youth?
Why, from the same quarter from which they got the
Jacobite nonsense with which they have inoculated
those lads who were not inoculated with it before—
Scott’s novels. Jacobitism and Laudism,
a kind of half Popery, had at one time been very prevalent
at Oxford, but both had been long consigned to oblivion
there, and people at Oxford cared as little about
Laud as they did about the Pretender. Both were
dead and buried there, as everywhere else, till Scott
called them out of their graves, when the pedants
of Oxford hailed both—ay, and the Pope,
too, as soon as Scott had made the old fellow fascinating,
through particular novels, more especially the “Monastery”
and “Abbot.” Then the quiet, respectable,
honourable Church of England would no longer do for
the pedants of Oxford; they must belong to a more
genteel church—they were ashamed at first
to be downright Romans—so they would be
Lauds. The pale-looking, but exceedingly genteel
non-juring clergyman in Waverley was a Laud; but they
soon became tired of being Lauds, for Laud’s
Church, gew-gawish and idolatrous as it was, was not
sufficiently tinselly and idolatrous for them, so
they must be Popes, but in a sneaking way, still calling
themselves Church-of-England men, in order to batten
on the bounty of the church which they were betraying,
and likewise have opportunities of corrupting such
lads as might still resort to Oxford with principles
uncontaminated.
So the respectable people, whose opinions are still
sound, are, to a certain extent, right when they say
that the tide of Popery, which has flowed over the
land, has come from Oxford. It did come immediately
from Oxford, but how did it get to Oxford? Why,
from Scott’s novels. Oh! that sermon which
was the first manifestation of Oxford feeling, preached
at Oxford some time in the year ’38 by a divine
of a weak and confused intellect, in which Popery was
mixed up with Jacobitism! The present writer
remembers perfectly well, on reading some extracts
from it at the time in a newspaper, on the top of
a coach, exclaiming—“Why, the simpleton
has been pilfering from Walter Scott’s novels!”
O Oxford pedants! Oxford pedants! ye whose politics
and religion are both derived from Scott’s novels!
what a pity it is that some lad of honest parents,
whose mind ye are endeavouring to stultify with your
nonsense about “Complines and Claverse,”
has not the spirit to start up and cry, “Confound
your gibberish! I’ll have none of it.
Hurrah for the Church, and the principles of my father!”
CHAPTER VII
Same Subject continued.