North-American Review and Miscellaneous Journal

ART. I.-Prælectiones Academica Oxonii habitæ, ab Edvardo Copleston S. T. R. Collegii Orielensis Socio, et Poetica publico prælectore,nunc Ecclesia Cathedralis Londinensis Præbendario. Oxonii, 1813. 8vo, pp. 466.

THIS work, as our readers perceive from the title page, has been before the public too long to be called a novelty. We do not remember, however, to have seen a notice of it in the contemporary literary journals; and our condition this side of the water is not unlike that of the Danish subjects in Greenland, to whom the annual ship from Copenhagen brought a year's supply of newspapers, which, being judiciously dealt out by the governor one by one, furnished the coffee-house politicians of the polar circle, with as regular a succession of news as is enjoyed at Lloyd's, with the trifling abatement, that it was all a year old. We have no reason to doubt that Dr. Copleston's prælections are new to most of our readers, nor that they will thank us for making them cease to be so.He is already known to most of them, as having been the champion of his University, on occasion of the animated controversy, which arose from some severe animadversions in the Edinburgh Review, on the course of study and system of education pursued at Oxford. Dr. Copleston replied to these animadversions in a pamphlet, entitled The Calumnics of New Series, No. 5.

the Edinburgh Review against Oxford, refuted,' which was in its turn the subject of a very lively retort, in the Edinburgh Review. To this Dr. Copleston rejoined in a pamphlet, of which several long extracts were reprinted in the Boston Anthology, and here, if we are not misinformed, the controversy rested. It is no part of our present purpose to revive it; the rather, as its essential merits are sometimes waved by the warmest friends of Oxford. It is not unusual to hear such friends concede that the English Universities are by no means to be considered merely as places of education, whither young men are to resort to acquire knowledge. There are, on the contrary, two other points of view in which these establishments are entitled to respect. The first is, as affording an eligible residence for young men of rank and fortune, between the periods of youth and manhood; subjecting them to some restraints, and calling on them for some efforts, which if they make, it is well, and if they do not, it is better than to have been at the centre of dissipation, in the capital. The other principal light, in which the English Universities are viewed, is that of a nursery for the established church; not exactly as a place to acquire the knowledge requisite for assuming its dignities; but as a middle state of preferment, from which the candidate is translated, when his hour cometh.

Now, with regard to any judgment we might ourselves be disposed to form and express, we severely reprobate that levity, with which travellers or foreigners are wont, on the score of some hasty observations made in a three days' visit, to condemn institutions, which have a deep foundation in the character of a people, and are therefore likely to be what that character requires. We think it most indecent, with that partial insight into things, which is caught in the post-chaise, at the inn, or even at the dinner table, to which a letter of introduction gives you access, to pronounce bold opinions on the morals and principles, that prevail at the firesides of a nation ; on political controversies, of which we just know the catch words; and on establishments, upon which the wise and good have laboured for ages. And if it is thought an incontestible mark of a base and vulgar mind in private life, to decide intrusively and peremptorily on personal affairs, which do not concern us, and which we do not understand, we see not what can apologize for that ferocious spirit of censure, which sweeps through a great, populous, respectable, intelligent community; takes

« Προηγούμενη Συνέχεια »

Βιβλία

North-American Review and Miscellaneous Journal, Τόμος 12