JOHNSON AND WHITEFIELD.

359

his labours at Newbury Port in New England, Sept. 30, 1770, aged fifty-five. He usually described himself as A.B., late of Pembroke College, Oxford.' Meeting his old tutor at Bristol in 1748 he told him that his judgment (as he trusted) was a little more ripened than it was some years ago.'

Whitefield's stature was above the middle height. He was slender, but well proportioned, his features regular, his complexion fair, his eyes small, lively, and of a dark blue colour, but one of them oblique -the result of measles in his childhood. When he began to speak this defect was forgotten-how few sermons could carry conviction against a squint!' His manner was graceful and natural, his voice unusual both in strength and melody. Graves describes him at home as having an episcopal appearance in a purple night-gown and velvet cap.

NOTE A.

JOHNSON AND WHITEFIELD.

JOHNSON, as we have seen, said he knew Whitefield at Pembroke, though it is not easy to explain this. Though himself, as Boswell remarks, ' in a dignified manner a methodist,' and believing in 'the whole discipline of regulated piety,' as also in the powerful influences on the heart of the Holy Spirit, and though he praised the sincerity of a man who would travel 900 miles in a month and preach twelve times a week, Johnson disparaged the Gospel of Assurance and the Inward Light. He would allow no merit to Whitefield's oratory, which David Hume said was worth travelling a score of miles to hear. His popularity, Sir, is chiefly owing to the peculiarity of his manner. He would be followed by crowds were he to wear a nightcap in the pulpit or were he to preach from a tree.' Boswell tells us: 'Of his fellow-collegian, the celebrated Mr. George Whitefield, he said, "Whitefield never drew as much attention as a mountebank does.... I never treated his ministry with contempt; I believe he did good. He had devoted himself to the lower classes of mankind, and among them he was of use. But when familiarity and noise claim the praise due to knowledge, art, and elegance, we must beat down such pretensions." He placed him in one of the four classes of Egotists. Johnson approved of the expulsion of the six methodist undergraduates from Edmund Hall; they had come to Oxford, he said, to be taught religion, not to teach it.

1 Graves records: 'He has preached to twenty thousand people at a time... they would have plucked out their eyes and have given them to him.' (Spiritual Quixote, i. 81.)

WHITEFIELD, Mr. Overton remarks, had 'exchanged the drawer's apron for the degrading badge of a servitor.' 'After two or three years' experience in this scarcely less menial capacity than he had filled at home, he found himself at the age of twenty-two with hardly any intellectual or moral discipline, without having acquired any taste for study, without having had the benefit of associating on anything like terms of equality with men of refinement, suddenly elevated to a degree of notoriety which few have attained.' Again, 'Whitefield's training at Oxford, no less than at Gloucester, was all calculated to foster a habit of servility.' It would appear to follow from this kind of reasoning that there should be no servants, or that one who, like Whitefield, has been born in a menial position should be given no facilities for obtaining a higher education1. But for his servitorship he would have ended his days among the pewter pots, serving boors, or become a mere ranting preacher in an obscure conventicle. Had these exhibitions been of more value and attended by no conditions of service, either Whitefield would not have obtained one, or he must have gone from the provincial beer-house to associate as an equal with dandies and gentlemen wits, the victim of worse humiliations than any he could experience in carrying about the alejack in the College hall. The truth is that servitorships and other graduations of rank at the University belong to an older and less sophisticated constitution of society. The mediæval University drew the studious and aspiring of all ranks of life, in vast numbers, into its embracing commonwealth, each student retaining there the social condition which was his at home. There was no more degradation in service inside the University than outside it, nor at one time were menial offices considered to disgrace even youths of noble degree, who often acted as pages. The servitors of a college corresponded to the lay brethren of a monastery. They were not poor gentlemen, but came from the plough and the shop. Such a system was already beginning in the eighteenth century to be 'not convenient.' The Universities were no longer great pandocheia nurturing all conditions and sorts of youth. It had come to be not unusual for a servitor-as was the case with Jago, Shenstone's friend to be, if not gentle-born, at any rate the son of a country curate. Johnson wished the institution abolished. It lasted in ill odour till comparatively recent times, a clear anachronism. Since its abolition none come to College but generosorum filii, or those who, from a humbler

1 Graves, speaking of servitors of this College, makes Wildgoose say sensibly: 'I don't see why a man should be ashamed to have appeared in a situation which was agreeable to his circumstances. There is nothing ridiculous in a small fortune or even a low birth. But there is in the discovery that we are too anxious to conceal them, and even give the lye to them by our dress and appearance.' (Spiritual Quixote, i. 336.)

condition, will dress, talk, and deport themselves like the public-school men around them. There are still servants attached to the Colleges, but they are not admitted to lecture room or chapel, and they leave Oxford what they were intellectually when they came to it. The conception of equal comradeship among students is an attractive one, and any other is now impossible. But it has necessitated the discommuning of the 'poor clerk' and the loss of a great ideal. Half a century earlier Wesley's father had footed it to Oxford with forty-five shillings in his purse, and been admitted as a servitor of Exeter: during five years' residence he received but a crown from his family. Dr. John Prideaux, Bishop of Worcester, who also had trudged to Oxford, served the spit in Exeter kitchen. He was chosen Fellow, and thence advanced to a mitre. Robinson, Bishop of London and Ambassador to the King of Sweden, went to Brasenose from the furrow. Bishop Jeremy Taylor left the barber's block for a sizar's place at Caius. A poor Pembroke student, John Moore, starting with a small exhibition ascended the throne of St. Augustine and became the first non-royal subject of the Crown. Whitefield himself, when at the end of his College career he found the priesthood within his grasp, boasted: 'For my quality I was a poor mean drawer; but by the distinguishing grace of God am now intended for the ministry. As for my estate I am a servitor.' Pembroke to him had been no harsh stepmother. 'I left,' he writes at parting, ' my sweet retirement at Oxford.'

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE CHAPEL.

FOR more than a century after its foundation Pembroke had no separate Chapel, but continued to use Docklinton's aisle. The Charles I panelling of the Master's pew is now in Stanton St. John's church. But in 1728, the year of Johnson's matriculation (who attended St. Aldate's for daily prayers, while Whitefield worshipped there for two months only, afterwards attending the new Chapel), the College, encouraged by a benefaction of £210 from Bartholomew Tipping, of Oxford', and a legacy of £100 from Dr. Charles Sloper, sometime Fellow (Proctor 1697), Chancellor of Bristol, resolved to build itself a place for worship. Among contributors were the Earl of Arran, then Visitor (£100), the Earl of Pembroke (£50), the Rev. James Phipps (£105), Dr. Panting, the Master (£21 10s.), Archdeacon Robert Cooper (£100), Dr. Samuel Baker, Canon and Chancellor of York (£50), the Rev. John Haines (£50). The College found £375 14s. 4d. Mr. Adams, the manciple, had left in his will £20 for the purpose. This and Dr. Sloper's legacy seems to show that the project had been in the air for some time 2. Chapels had been built for Hart Hall in 1716 and at Queen's in 1719. The building was not finished till 1732. Mr. Tipping, who is described in Oxonia Depicta of the next year as 'inter munificos Benefactores primus,' and whose arms are on the screen, had canvassed all his friends for funds, and the foundation-stone was laid by him. On July 10, 1732, the

1 An earlier BARTHOLOMEW TIPPING entered, with his elder brother JOHN, May 8, 1635. Their father was Bartholomew Tippinge, of Chequers, Stokenchurch, Oxon (ob. 1656), son of Bartholomew, of Woolley Park, Chaddleworth, Berks. The eldest brother of the latter, Sir George, of Whitfield and Draycott, Oxon, was father of Eternity Tipping,' and great-grandfather of Sir Thomas, who sate for Oxon and for Wallingford at the close of the century. The mansion house at Chaddleworth was built by Bartholomew, the Pembroke benefactor, in 1690. The last of this line, Mr. Bartholomew Tipping, died there in 1798.

2 The College 'hath now full power to receive benefactions and neede of helpe for necessaryes for Chappell, Library, Hall . . . Thomas Clayton, Maister' (in 1624).

Chapel was consecrated by Dr. John Potter 1, Bishop of Oxford, afterwards Primate. A sermon from Gen. xxviii. 20-22, on religious vows and dedications, was preached by the Master. Sir Jemmet Raymond afterwards gave £50 to improve the approaches to the Chapel.

'This edifice,' writes Dr. Ingram, is small but elegant; being ornamented with Ionic pilasters between the windows and surmounted by a panelled parapet which judiciously conceals the roof. The interior is very neat.' We need not smile at the adjectives of a bygone taste. Elegance and judiciousness are good and somewhat rare qualities, and they are displayed by the early Georgian fane which was described in recent guide-books as 'a neat Ionic structure.' The interior is admirably proportioned, an excellent screen divides the chapel from the ante-chapel, the oak panelling and seating is sufficiently good, and there is a pleasing marble altarpiece, in which is framed a graceful copy by Cranke of our Lord's figure in the picture executed by Rubens for the Petits Carmes-St. Theresa pleading at the feet of the risen Saviour for the souls in Purgatory 2. It was given, about 1786, by a Fellow-Commoner, Mr. Joseph Plymley (from 1804 Corbett), afterwards archdeacon of Salop. He presented, in 1824, the picture of Shenstone. The floor of the Chapel is of black and white marble squares. On the screen are these arms :—

In base

East side: A Dove holding in its beak an Olive Branch. two Serpents embowed. Crest, a Dove treading on a Serpent. For Sloper of Woodhay, Berks.

West side: Or, on a bend engrailed, vert, three Pheons of the field. Crest, out of a ducal coronet, or, an Antelope's head, vert, attired and maned of the first.

Motto, Vive ut Vivas. For Tipping.

1 Hearne in earlier days had the very poorest opinion of Dr. Potter as a Whiggish divine. He is 'our sneaking,' 'our spruce,' 'our White Liver'd' Regius Professor. The inaugural lecture, on May 7, 1708, of 'Ye famous Low-Church Man' was 'a very flat immethodical & poor leaden Discourse.' 'How he can be said to be a modest Man I cannot see, having declin'd nothing yt has been offer'd him.... It looks rather yt he is an ambitious, conceited, proud Man. But let us not judge.' There was little merit in Potter's Clement of Alexandria, or in his 'riff-raff notes upon Lycophron.'

I could not look on it without emotion'; Mrs. Jameson (Legends of the Monastic Orders, pp. 423, 424).

Ob. 1830; father of PANTON (see above p. 348), of UVEDALE (a judge), and of JOSEPH (rector of Holgate), all of Pembroke. The last-named presented to the Library in 1837 the Syriac Scriptures and other books. The Corbets of Longnor, Salop, were Johnson's friends. They were for generations knights of the shire. Edward was one of the Parliamentary Visitors. Sir John, second baronet, was a Rumper and on the commission to try Charles I. Sir Vincent fought for the King.