' In Buckle's "History of Civilization.''



II.] WESLEY AT OXFORD. if

These testimonies are, it may be said, attacks from
an enemy. Let us hear the admissions of a friend.
To find one, however, we must descend from the rank"
of permanently memorable names to that more
numerous throng where a past notoriety affords, and
a present oblivion needs, a word of biographical
notice in connection with any quotation or mention.
Dr. Vicesimus KnOx (1752 — 1821), head-master of
Tunbridge School, and a once popular writer in that
school of which Addison is the model, wrote in 1781
a treatise on Liberal Education which went through
many editions. A desire to represent the University
in its most pleasing aspect is evident in every line.
Yet in the passage in which Dr. Knox evidently
desires to combat the impression that Scotland or
Germany might rival England in her Universities,
he enumerates her advantages in the following terms :
' I believe Europe cannot produce parallels to Oxford
and Cambridge in opulence, buildings, libraries, pro-
fessorships, scholarships, and all the external dignity
and mechanical apparatus of learning. If there is
an inferiority, it is in the personSy not in the places
or their constitution. And here I cannot help con-
fessing that a desire to please the great, and bring
them to the Universities, causes a cornpliance with
fashionable manners, a relaxation of discipline, and a
connivance at ignorance and folly,' which errors he
confesses occasioned 'the English Universities to be
in less repute than they were formerly.' The fashion
of sending young men thither was even in some
degree abated among that class who at the present
day would be the most reluctant to omit it — the
nobility. The useless and frivolous exercises re-



28 JOHN WESLEY. [chap.
