Fond tradition would compel us to accept the so-called School of Pythagoras as the fons et origo of the medieval University. However, the legend does not go for very much, and we may suppose that, until the foundation of several colleges brought about the necessity of a common centre, education was carried on in the numerous monastic houses or by private teachers at their own lodgings. The present schools, within the limits of the University Library, are probably in part of the fourteenth century, but, for the most part, belong to the latter half of the next century. They are not very conspicuous, and probably ninety-nine out of a hundred Cambridge men have never been inside them, as the majority of public examinations are held in the Senate House and the various large halls of which the[278] town is full. They are, moreover, so incorporated in the Library as to form part of the building, and have no very distinctive mark.
 

The architectural history of the Library is singularly complex. It occupies two quadrangles north of and running parallel with King’s Chapel. The first of these is the quadrangle of the schools, and is entered from the open space between the Senate House and King’s; the second occupies the site of the original quadrangle of King’s, and is entered from the opposite side. Mr G. G. Scott has restored the old gateway with some success, and it forms a good contrast to the opposite gateway at Clare. Round these courts are grouped the very various Library buildings. The Library itself is entered from the eastern side, to which it presents a very stiff classical front. Somewhere between 1470 and 1480, the great prelate, Thomas Rotherham, then fellow of King’s and Bishop of Lincoln, built a Perpendicular fa?ade on this side; and this was the beginning of the buildings. Hitherto the few books which the Library contained, mostly bequeathed by Dr Richard Holme in 1424,[281] had been placed in the present south gallery on the first floor of the quadrangle. The opposite gallery was then the Senate House. The western gallery, above the school of Canon Law, overlooked the Court of King’s. Rotherham thus completed the first quadrangle, and, until the eighteenth century, the Library was contained in the eastern, southern and western rooms. Mr Clark, in his picturesque notes on Cambridge, assures us that it must have been hopelessly neglected. The days of building prelates were long past when, in 1715, George I., for some unknown reason, purchased the library of Dr John Moore, Bishop in succession of Norwich and Ely, and presented it to the University. Just about the same time, he had sent a regiment to enforce loyalty on Oxford. The epigrams which passed between the Tory and Whig Universities on this occasion have been so often quoted as to need no repetition. The Oxford epigram takes the palm for neatness, but the Cambridge retort was the last word on the subject.

However, although King George’s gift cannot be valued too highly as a benefaction to[282] Cambridge, and was also an incentive to wit of a very felicitous order, it was in one way rather unfortunate. The books were many; accommodation was small. It was proposed to place the addition in what was then the Senate House, and to build a new meeting-place for the University. Mr Burrough of Caius submitted a plan for the new Senate House, of which we can see the result to-day. The quadrangle was thus entirely given over to the Library. It must have formed one of the most beautiful in Cambridge; to-day the western room, running between the two courts, has one of the best interiors in any library. But the age was hostile to medieval buildings. With architects like Burrough and Gibbs—excellent architects, both of them—carrying out their classical designs on either side, the Library was not suffered to remain unmolested. The University decided to harmonise it with these structures. In 1754 Rotherham’s front was destroyed, and the present Georgian fa?ade was put up, which, after all, harmonises very badly with the Senate House. Rotherham’s gateway was bought by the owner of Madingley Hall, and is now the[283] entrance to the stables there. It is much to be regretted, for the present aspect of the Library is singularly ignoble. The interior, however, offers a better contrast. From the classical east room, which, with all its plastered ugliness, is certainly stately and not inappropriate, we pass into the Catalogue Room, once the Senate House. Somebody adorned this room with a plaster ceiling in the last century, but the old timber roof is being restored. In the west room, which contains some valuable woodwork, we go back further into antiquity, and, when we have completed the circuit of the Library, we shall have seen a series of buildings which, in their diversity, are thoroughly characteristic of Cambridge.

The present century has added enormously to the Library. King’s transferred itself finally to the other side of the chapel when Wilkins finished his range of buildings—that is, approximately in 1830. Soon after this the important annexe which now constitutes the whole north side of the Library was added. Its architect was Mr C. R. Cockerell. It is a colossal building, and its external ugliness may be fully[284] appreciated from the old King’s quadrangle, where all the buildings in front of it have been cleared away. Its interior, almost entirely devoted to theology, is as fine and imposing as its exterior is hideous, and is, moreover, a very agreeable room for students. Here the more remarkable manuscripts are exhibited, among which the famous Codex Bezae has the place of honour. Theodore Béza, whose name is in the first rank of Biblical critics, saved it from the sack of the monastery of St Irénée at Lyons in 1562, and presented it to the University—a gift worthy of the academy in which Erasmus had laid the foundations of Scriptural study. At the west end of the same building are the statues of George I. (by Rysbrack) and George II. (by Wilton) which used to stand in the Senate House. Cockerell’s work finds its antithesis in the opposite side of the court, which was rebuilt by Sir Gilbert Scott on a thoroughly medieval plan. Scott also added a second storey to this side, which, like Cockerell’s building, was continued into the eastern court. He also entirely refaced the front opposite King’s Chapel. The effect is uniform,[285] but gloomy. His son completed the existing Library by restoring the western fa?ade. The rooms on the ground floor are also appropriated to books, principally modern and lighter literature, but contain nothing worth seeing. Cockerell’s building is an exception, for its ground floor is occupied by the Woodwardian Museum of Geology.

In spite of the misfortunes which it brought about, the Senate House is one of those buildings which gave Cambridge its greatest dignity. One may hesitate to compare it with the Radcliffe Library at Oxford, which was finished about twenty-five years later, but it is largely due to the same architect and is certainly an addition to his credit. Gibbs had, however, only a small share in the work, for Burrough is its real designer. It is an oblong building, with entrances on the east and on the middle of the south sides. It has a double range of windows throughout, save on the west side, where they are blank. Those in the upper storey are round-headed, those in the lower are square-headed and are surmounted by plain architraves, alternately round and pointed. The[286] whole building is surrounded by an order of composite pilasters, cut square save near the doors, where they are round and fluted. Above the cornice is a balustrade, broken judiciously by the pediments of the entrances, which give the building its distinctive feature. The whole is one of the best specimens of early Georgian architecture in England, and the interior is perfectly consonant with the simple grandeur of the outside. The oak galleries suit the building admirably. At the east end, near the door, are the statues of the Duke of Somerset, Chancellor at the Revolution, and of William Pitt: the first by Rysbrack, the second by Nollekens.

After the Senate House............