An account of the proceedings at the celebration of the five hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of the College, June 22, 1898.

Gonville and Caius College

Date:: 1898

Credit: An account of the proceedings at the celebration of the five hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of the College, June 22, 1898. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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$can realise them, as figures of flesh and blood, as our own highest authority reminds us\ First comes the good physician, Dr BUTTS, as good as he was great, described by a contemporary as “the refuge of all students, and chief ornament of the University.” Then comes GRESHAM, the princely merchant and statesman, and with him that remarkable clerical group, SnAXTON, Skip and their com- panions, who, if they did not reach the glories of martyrdom, dared greater dangers than our gentler age conceives. But far above them all, in picturesqueness and many sided attraction, stands the Second Founder, Dr John Caius. We think of him in his early days of noble ambition and stedfast purpose, noting at Padua that beautiful inscription which he was afterwards to quote in his prayer of dedication here®. We think of him at the end of his career, in those darkening days, troubled not so much by the differences with his colleagues as by the decay of discipline and study. In the last page of his book on the Antiquity of Cambridge, the bitterness of his soul bursts forth in the mention of the breach between the young and the old. And yet there is no petulant girding at the young men’s bents and purposes. If only young and old would combine! Senes enim mvenum mentes stmt, iuvenes senum mantis^' a saying which anticipates by just two hundred years the French writer’s si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait! What infinite pathos there is in that sombre figure of the great physician, prematurely aged by study, harassed by petty squabbles, experiencing the Nemesis which awaits the ^ “ Further back than 400 years we cannot go with much confidence, for then the outlines begin to crumble away; in place of the words and deeds of living men, we are left in possession of nothing beyond a few names and dates.” [Venn, Address in Caius Chapel, 1893.] ® So conjectured by Mr J. W. Clark, “Short Sketch” (1890) p. 237. The inscription at the entrance of the University of Padua is as follows; ^^Sic ingredere ut te ipso quotidti doctior, sic egredere ut indies patriae Chrisiianaeque reipubltcae uhlior evadas.” [‘So enter that thou mayest become daily more learned than thou hast been; so leave that day by day thou mayest become more useful to thy country and Christendom.’] 3—2$