The same author adds: ’This to me seems the great business of _determination_: to pay money and get drunk.’
Vicesimus Knox, who took his B.A. degree in 1775, is at pains to represent the whole process of so-called examination as an elaborate farce. ’Every candidate,’ he says, ’is obliged to be examined in the whole circle of the sciences by three masters of arts, of his own choice.’ Naturally, the temptation is too much for poor humanity. ’It is reckoned good management to get acquainted with two or three jolly young masters and supply them well with port previously to the examination.’ _Viva voce_ once put on this convivial footing, it is not surprising that ’the examiners and the candidate often converse on the last drinking bout, or on horses, or read the newspapers, or a novel, or divert themselves as well as they can till the clock strikes eleven, when all parties descend, and the _testimonium_ is signed by the masters.’ Under such circumstances it is obvious that the provisions of Archbishop Laud might be shorn of half their terrors. Even at an earlier period other methods of evasion were not wanting. As early as 1656, orders were made ’abolishing’ the custom of candidates standing treat to examiners. In the statute which still prescribes the duties of the _clericus universitatis_, there is a clause threatening him with severe penalties--to the extent of paying a fine of ten shillings--should he so far misuse his especial charge, the University clock, as to ’retard and presently precipitate the course’ of that venerable time-piece, ’in such a manner that the hours appointed for public exercises be unjustly shortened, to the harm and prejudice of the studious.’ Moreover, we read in Wood that notice of examination was given by ’tickets stuck up on certaine public corners, which would be suddenly after taken downe’ by the candidate’s friends. To such straits and to such unworthy shifts could disputants be reduced by mere inability to find matter.
It has been said that attendance at professorial lectures was theoretically obligatory; but it is hardly necessary to point out that even serious students have occasionally dispensed with the duty of attending lectures; and it is more than whispered there have been occasions in recent centuries when it was not an audience only that was wanting. There are, of course, instances of both extremes. Rumour tells of a certain professor of anatomy, who, lacking a quorum, bade his servant ’bring out the skeleton, in order that I may be able to address you as "gentle*men*;"’ but all professors have not been so conscientious. Gibbon goes so far as to assert that ’in the University of Oxford, the greater part of the public professors have for these many years given up altogether the pretence of teaching,’ and the Reverend James Hurdie does not much improve the matter, when he prepares to refute the historian’s charge in his ’Vindication of Magdalen College.’ So far as the College is concerned, the reverend gentleman has something of a case; but his defence of the University is not altogether satisfying. Some of the professors, no doubt, do lecture in a statutable manner. But ’the late noble but unfortunate Professor of Civil Law began his office with reading lectures, and only desisted for want of an audience’ (a plausible excuse, were it not that some lecturers seem to have entertained peculiar ideas as to the constitution of an audience). ’Terrae Filius’ has a story of a Professor of Divinity who came to his lecture-room, found to his surprise and displeasure, a band of intending hearers, and dismissed them straightway with the summary remark: ’Domini, vos non estis idonei auditores!’ ’The present Professor, newly appointed (the author has heard it from the highest authority), means to read.’ Moreover, ’the late Professor of Botany at one time _did_ read.’ In fact, as the ’Oxford Spy’ observes in 1818:--