ABSTRACT

The universities of Oxford and Cambridge were neither energetic nor high-powered as centres of learning in the eighteenth century. Many of the Fellows of the Colleges were content to live a life of ease, tutoring their pupils in a pleasant but desultory manner, and with little concern to further the frontiers of knowledge. Professors were often reluctant to lecture in their subjects and ‘research’ was not yet seen as the main function of the university academic. The undergraduates could survive with a minimum of intellectual effort and though before graduating they had to take part in ‘disputations’ on medieval lines, these were not very rigorous.