HISTORY, &c. INTRODUCTION; GIVING AN ACCOUNT OF WHAT HAS BEEN DONE BY OTHERS, AND WHAT IS ATTEMPTED IN THE FOL LOWING PAGES, TOWARDS A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE. THOUGH not confident enough to believe I shall answer the expectations of all readers, I am not ignorant what many readers will expect in a History of the University, and Colleges, of Cambridge. The Introduction, then, must be considered as the points of sight of a complete History, but only incidentally of mine. Readers often, and reasonably, require what they will not see performed; and authors, like improvers of rural scenery, may even see further themselves, than they can execute, either to the satisfaction of their readers, or conformably to their own designs. What inquisitive and more rigid inquirers might demand in such a history, might be, first, Information on the Charters and particular Statutes of the Institutions. These are, indeed, the very instruments which give them being and form, with all their privileges and rights; and, though through distance of time, or accidents of place, they are perceived only in a general way, or may even become obsolete, still like the bases and buttresses of a building, these charters and statutes are the support on which the foundations severally rise, and by which they should be rightly examined. Some account, then, of charters of foundation, and statutes, necessarily involving too, as they must, many points of history and antiquity, will be looked for by some as a leading article in a work of this kind; and antiquaries at least would deem that a meagre work, which should keep the Archives of the Institutions, of which it treats, wholly out of sight. What next becomes the natural subject for inquiry in a seat of learning, is, without dispute, the philosophy of the place. This, like the operations of mind in general, is a work of progress, neither to be made, nor exhibited, all at once. Some may ask, perhaps, in the pride of modern literature-what was the philosophy of those times, when monasteries and colleges were first erected? And others, as forward to reply-The philosophy of the dark ages. True: but the darkness of those ages was their light, as in a future age, our light will, on various subjects, be considered as our darkness. Whatever the philosophy or religion of our ancestors might be, they were the philosophy and religion of their age, a trembling light in a misty sky, yet the characteristic feature of an existing people, as much as a sun could be in all its glory; and, what forms the character of a nation cannot but be a prominent feature in their history. True it is, these times were the periods so bustling, and military, and full of events: private feuds and public insurrections left but little room for the calm studies of literature; wars and devastations, massacres, rebellions and revolutions, were the ordinary occurrences, diversified indeed, and, it may be, somewhat embellished, by feats of chivalry, and tales of romance. It was the age of refined savagery. Philosophy was not to be found in the halls of princes, nor in the castles of their nobles: their ambition was in the field, and their profession was only arms. But they had moments of pause and reflection: then they founded religious houses and colleges— thither, as to a focus, all their scattered rays of knowledge were drawn; and all we can know of their philosophy and literature we must be content to gather amidst dreams of monks, and impostures of the priesthood. Yes! it is through those rustic and close avenues, that we walk to the more ample, airy space of modern science: and there even our self-esteem may unite with our love of truth, to exact liberal description and circumstantial detail: so that the philosophy of the place, in its progress from something very confused to something more clear and perfect, becomes a consideration, with which readers, of any learning themselves, can never disperse. In connection with this, men of genius and taste will expect to find some allusions to the state of the arts. Not that our Universities were ever academies, in the sense of the word as now used in modern Europe, for academies of the fine arts; or that our colleges display that exhibition of excellent paintings which are found as well in the colleges, as palaces, of Italy: when colleges were first built, painting had not been much subjected to the rules of an art; it was all grotesqueness; it savoured only of the cloyster; it had advanced but little beyond the daubing of a saint, and a founder of a college, or of the gaudiness and glitter of a Romish missal. Yet, what then? what there was of art among our ancestors was to be found principally in those houses, where abbots were architects, and monks and nuns were limners; and in our |
