HURRELL FROUDE (continued 2)

* * * * *

‘I had the misfortune of giving [Keble] pain, not only by differing from him on the subject [of the Remains], but, owing to misinformation, or misapprehension, on my part, by what turned out to be a fruitless and ill-timed interference to prevent the publication. I need not now explain how this arose; but I must confess that my opinion remains unchanged. It is a deeply interesting book; not only perfectly harmless now, but capable of instructing and improving those who will read it calmly and considerately. Still, I think that it was calculated, at the time, to throw unnecessary difficulties in the way of the Movement; that it tended to prevent a fair consideration of what the “movers” were attempting, to excite passion, and to encourage a scoffing spirit against them. Some part of the anger and bitterness with which the Ninetieth Tract was afterwards received, may fairly be traced to the feeling created, unjustly indeed, but not unnaturally, by the publication of the Remains. The one seemed to be the result of the other, and the sequence of the two was held to show a deliberate hostility to the Anglican, and an undue preference of the Roman Church.’

From ‘Essays Historical and Theological,’ by J. B. Mozley, D.D. Rivingtons, 1878. [From the Essay on Dr. Arnold.]

[By the kind permission of Messrs. J. R. & H. W. Mozley.]

‘The Church of England had, after a century of growing laxity, just come to the point at which she must either retrace her steps into a stricter state, or go forward into a formal latitudinarianism. Arnold was for the latter course; the writers of the Tracts for the Times for the former. The two schools met at these cross-roads, as it were, and a remarkable contrast indeed they presented. The foremost characters in the Church Movement (if they will excuse us 279 looking at them so historically) were undoubtedly phenomena in their way, as Arnold was in his. Of one of these we can speak: the death that robs us of so much, gives us, at any rate, this privilege. Singular it is that antagonist systems should so suit themselves with champions; but if the world had been picked for the most fair, adequate, and expressive specimens of German-religionism and Catholicism (specimens that each side would have acknowledged), it could not well have produced better ones for the purpose than Dr. Arnold and Mr. Froude. Arnold, gushing with the richness of domestic life, the darling of Nature, and overflowing receptacle and enjoyer, with strong healthy gusto, of all her endearments and sweets,—Arnold, the representative of high joyous Lutheranism, is describable: Mr. Froude, hardly. His intercourse with earth and Nature seemed to cut through them like uncongenial steel, rather than mix and mingle with them. Yet the polished blade smiled as it went through. The grace and spirit with which he adorned this outward world (and seemed, to an undiscerning eye, to love it), were but something analogous in him to the easy tone of men in high life, whose good-nature to inferiors is the result either of their disinterested benevolence, or sublime unconcern. In him, the severe sweetness of the life divine not so much rejected as disarmed those potent glows and attractions of the life natural: a high good temper civilly evaded and disowned them. The monk by nature, the born aristocrat of the Christian sphere, passed them clean by with inimitable ease, marked his line, and shot clear beyond them into the serene ether, toward the far-off Light, toward that needle’s point on which ten thousand angels and all Heaven move…. The Catholic system, as it advanced from the worlds beyond the grave, came with some of the colour and circumstance of its origin. It contrasted strangely with the light, hearty, and glowing form of earth that came from wood and mountain, sunshine and green fields, to meet [it]. And the unearthly, supernatural, dogmatic Church opposed a ghostly dignity to the Church of Nature and the religion of the heart….

* * * * *

‘The notion of the Church being an independent body, and able to keep her own succession going on, apart from the 280 State, is [to Arnold] “all essentially anarchical and schismatic,” and he is only defending, he says, “the common peace and order of the Church, against a new outbreak of Puritanism, to oppose it.” It appears a curious objection at first sight, from a man like Arnold, to urge against a particular religion the claim that it would have been considered treasonable in the days of Queen Elizabeth. But this … is the period of English History to which he always goes for his ecclesiastical principles. Another point of accusation, more of a moral one, does not come with peculiar grace from Arnold, viz., the charge of immodesty and impudence in personally daring to go so counter to received opinions in their views of things and persons. “I have read Froude’s volume,” he says, “and I think that its predominant character is extraordinary impudence. I never saw a more remarkable instance of that qualification than the way in which he, a young man, and a clergyman of the Church of England, reviles all those persons whom the accordant voice of that Church, without distinction of party, has agreed to honour, even perhaps with an excess of admiration.”[317] Now, let it be ever so true that “the accordant voice of the Church of England” has taken one view of Cranmer and the Reformers, whereas Mr. Froude took another, Arnold was not precisely the person to found a charge of impudence upon such a fact. A man who without a vestige of internal scruple or misgiving, unchristianised the whole development of the Church from the days of the Apostles; who made the very disciples, friends and successors of the Apostles teachers of corruption; who made the priesthood an Antichrist, and had just himself shocked the whole Church of England by the promulgation of a religious theory repugnant to the feeling and ideas of almost all her members to a man,—was certainly not a person to be tender in requiring compliance with received views from another, or quick to call impudence in another what in himself was the necessary adjunct of philosophy.’

281 From ‘Memoir of Joshua Watson,’ edited by Edw. Churton, Archdeacon of Cleveland. 2 vols. Oxford: J. H. Parker, 1861.

[By the kind permission of Messrs. J. Parker & Co.]

‘… The first clear indication of this new principle [a theory of Catholic union, to which all other considerations were to bow] was seen in the publication of the Remains of R. H. Froude, a young man of great promise, Fellow of Oriel College, who died at the early age of thirty-two, and of whose stray papers, letters, and remnants of conversation, a full collection was published by J. H. Newman, then a Fellow of the same College, now for some years past a member of the Society of the Oratory in the Church of Rome. The first two volumes of these Remains were published early in 1838. The work never obtained a wide circulation; but enough was done to give deep offence to many minds, and to unsettle the principles of many more.

‘Those who know Richard Froude best knew that he was in the habit of expressing himself, both by writing and in conversation, in strong, pungent sentences, such as are not altogether uncommon with young men of brilliant minds and vivacious temperament, and are often used by them as much with the design of provoking answer and contradiction, as that of conveying the speaker’s real sentiments. But when the Editor, in his Preface to an unlimited and indiscriminate accumulation of such winged words, claimed for them the consideration due to the deliberate opinions of a matured reason, it was a mode of treatment which stamped them with an importance not properly their own, and justified the censure of those who without concerning themselves much for the reputation of the dead, or making allowance for what was with too little decorum brought before the public, saw the publication announcing itself as an expansion of the principles of the Tracts. And this claim was made, although poor Froude again and again declared himself, in the pages of these volumes, as one whose mind was in a state of progress and puzzle, sympathising at one time with Roman, at another with Puritan, till, in a lengthened illness, and absence in foreign lands, it 282 fed upon its own solitary musings, with that morbid dissatisfaction at all things which sometimes accompanies the decay of vital power. However, the appearance of such an unreserved exposition of distracted fancies was a great discouragement to the hopes which had for a while found their centre at Oxford; and the disease of Richard Froude’s mind seemed to have communicated itself to his more distinguished Editor.’

From ‘William George Ward and the Oxford Movement,’ by Wilfrid Ward. London: Macmillan & Co., 1889.

[By the kind permission of Wilfrid Ward, Esq., and of Messrs. Macmillan & Co.]

‘… The scheme which Newman proposed, to restore to the Anglican Church in some measure the discipline and doctrine of the Fathers, was bold and captivating to [Mr. Ward’s] imagination; but it seemed to [him] to be bolder and more drastic in the change it must in consistency require, than its authors were aware. It was plain to him that nothing short of an explicit avowal that the principles of the Reformation were to be disowned, and its work undone, could meet the logical requirements of the situation. And the leaders hesitated to go thus far…. On the appearance of the first part of Froude’s Remains early in 1838, in which the Reformation was avowedly condemned, and its condemnation tacitly[318] adopted by the two Editors, Newman and Keble, Mr. Ward acknowledged to himself the direction which his views were taking. “From that time,” he wrote to Dr. Pusey, “began my inclination to see Truth where I trust it is.” The final influence which determined his conversion was the series of lectures by Newman on The Scripture Proof of the Doctrines of the Church, published afterwards as Tract 85. Newman, in these lectures, dealt with the philosophical basis of latitudinarianism on the one hand, and of the Anglo-Catholic view of the Church on the other, with a power which did not 283 fail to give satisfaction to his new disciple, and to justify, on intellectual grounds, the position which was now invested, in Ward’s mind, with all the charm of Froude’s romantic conception of Catholic sanctity, the fire of his reforming genius, the unhesitating completeness of his programme of action…. Dean Scott (the late Dean of Rochester), who saw Mr. Ward daily in the Common Room at Balliol, notes some points of interest as to the impression produced on his friends by the change which Froude’s Remains wrought in his attitude:—“I can speak with perfect assurance of their purport [the purport of Mr. Ward’s remarks on the volumes published in 1838]. They were substantially these: ‘This is what I have been looking for. Here is a man who knows what he means, and says it. This is the man for me! He speaks out.’ But though we were amused, and gave him credit for having achieved the feat which the pseudo-scholastic doctor ascribes to the angels, of passing from one extreme to the other without passing through the middle, I do not really think that those words indicated the actual turning-point. As I look back on them, they seem to me to imply that the turn had taken place, but that he was looking for a pledge, on the part of those to whom he was attaching himself, that they were in earnest, and knew what they meant.” The appearance of Froude’s Remains was indeed an epoch in Mr. Ward’s life. “The thing that was utterly abhorrent with him,” writes Lord Blachford, “was to stop short”; and this was precisely what the via media, with all its attractiveness, had hitherto appeared to do. All this was changed when Froude’s outspoken views were adopted by the leaders. “Out came Froude,” writes Mr. Ward to Dr. Pusey, “of which it is little to say that it delighted me more than any book of the kind I ever read.” “He found in Froude’s Remains,” continues Lord Blachford, “a good deal of his own Radicalism (though nothing at all of his own Utilitarianism or Liberalism), and it seemed literally to make him jump for joy.”

‘… There was a good deal in Froude’s open speech and direct intellect which resembled Mr. Ward’s own characteristics, different as the two men were, in many respects. Newman describes him as “brimful and overflowing with ideas and 284 views”; as having “an intellect as critical and logical as it was speculative and bold”; as “professing openly his admiration for Rome, and his hatred of the Reformers”; as “delighting to think of the Saints,” “having a vivid appreciation of the idea of sanctity, its possibilities and its heights”; “embracing the principle of penance and mortification”; “being powerfully drawn to the Mediæval Church, but not to the Primitive.” All this might be said, with great truth, of Mr. Ward himself. The boldness and completeness, the uncompromising tone of the Remains, took hold of Mr. Ward’s imagination. A clear, explicit rule of faith was thus substituted for perplexing and harassing speculation. There was no temporising, or stopping short. Mr. Ward’s dislike of the current system was echoed in the plain statement which he was for ever quoting. “At length, under Henry VIII., the Church of England fell. Will she ever rise again?”[319] Froude’s writing, then, recommended itself to Mr. Ward as having the attribute of Lord Strafford’s Irish policy: it was thorough. And in opposition to this, Arnold’s system stopped short at every turn. Froude’s picture of the Mediæval Church was that of an absolute, independent, spiritual authority, direct, uncompromising, explicit in its decrees, in contrast with the uncertain voice of the English Church, with its hundred shades of opinions differing from, and even opposed to, each other. Instead of groping with the feeble light of human reason amid texts of uncertain signification, he interpreted Scripture by the aid of constant tradition, and of the Church’s divine illumination. The stand for moral goodness against vice and worldliness was witnessed in the highest and most ideal types of sanctity in Church history. The personal struggle of the ordinary Christian against his evil inclinations was systematised and brought to perfection in Catholic ascetic works. The doctrine of a supernatural world and supernatural influences was not minimised, as though one feared to tax human powers of belief: it was put forth in the fullest and most fearless manner. Angels and Saints, as ministers of supernatural help, were recognised; and 285 their various offices in aiding and protecting us, and listening to our prayers on all occasions, forced on the attention constantly in the Catholic system. There was no mistiness, or haze, or hesitation. All was clear, complete, definite, carried out to its logical consequences….

* * * * *

‘Ward himself speaks in no doubtful terms of union with Rome as the ideal vision which inspired him. “Restoration of active communion with the Roman Church”, he writes to a friend in 1841, “is the most enchanting earthly prospect on which my imagination can dwell.” His remarks, too, on Froude’s book (in a letter written in the same year to Dr. Pusey) indicate the same line of sympathies. “The especial charm in it to me,” he wrote, “was … his hatred of our present system and of the Reformers, and his sympathy with the rest of Christendom.” The love of Rome and of an united Christendom, which marked the new school, was not purely a love for ecclesiastical authority. This was indeed one element, but there was another yet more influential in many minds: admiration for the Saints of the Roman Church, and for the saintly ideal, as realised especially in the monastic life. We have already seen how this element operated in Mr. Ward’s own history. Froude had struck the note of sanctity as well as the note of authority. He had raised an inspiring ideal on both heads; and behold, with however much of practical corruption and superstition mixed up with their practical exhibitions, these ideals were actually reverenced, attempted, often realised! in the existing Roman Church. The worthies of the English Church, even when sharing the tender piety of George Herbert or Bishop Ken, fell short of the heroic aims, the martial sanctity, gained by warfare unceasing against world, flesh, and devil, which they found exhibited in Roman hagiology. The glorying in the Cross of Christ, which is the keynote to such lives as those of St. Ignatius of Loyola, and St. Francis Xavier, while it recalled much in the life of St. Paul, had no counterpart in post-Reformation Anglicanism.[320] The state of things which 286 made this directly Romeward movement tolerable to any considerable section of the English Church was, however, sufficiently remarkable. The Anglicanism of the party must have receded very considerably from the views of the early Tracts before such a thing could be possible. Perhaps two events were especially instrumental to such a preparation: the first was the language used with respect to the English Reformers by Newman and Keble, in the Preface to the second part of Froude’s Remains, early in 1839. However guarded and measured the expressions were, such language expressed a definite view, with far-reaching consequences; and the extraordinary weight attaching to Newman’s lightest utterances gave the words additional significance. “The Editors,” one passage ran, “by publishing [Mr. Froude’s] sentiments … so unreservedly … indicated their own general acquiescence in the opinion that the persons chiefly instrumental in [the Reformation], were not, as a party, to be trusted on ecclesiastical and theological questions, nor yet to be imitated in their practical handling of the unspeakably awful matters with which they were concerned.” Again, the differences between the Reformers and the Fathers, both in doctrine and in moral sentiment, were insisted on by the Editors. “You must choose between the two lines,” they wrote; “they are not only diverging, but contrary.” And certain questions as to the practical Christian ideal are specified as instances: “Compare the sayings and manner of the two schools on the subjects of fasting, celibacy, religious vows, voluntary retirement and contemplation, the memory of the Saints, rites and ceremonies recommended by antiquity.” The conclusion which, though unspoken here, was undeniable once it was suggested, the conclusion “in these matters Rome has preserved what England has lost; in these matters we may take Rome for our model if we would return to antiquity,”—could not but gain a footing in the minds of Newman’s disciples.’

287 From ‘A Narrative of Events connected with the Publication of The Tracts for the Times,’ by William Palmer, Author of Origines Liturgicæ, etc. Rivingtons, 1883. [From the Introduction.]

‘The publication of this work [Origines Liturgicæ] had the effect of introducing the author to the acquaintance of some of the leading spirits who afterwards exercised a decisive influence on the foundation of the Oxford Movement of 1833, usually called “Tractarian.” He had, in this work, vindicated the Church of England on what are sometimes called High Church principles, affirming the divine institution of the Church, and its essential independence, in creed and jurisdiction, of merely temporal powers. He had also argued against the Nonjurors, and sustained the harmony of Church and State. He had vindicated the Reformation. He had defended the Catholicity and continuity of the Church in England, and had opposed the pretensions of the See of Rome. No one could mistake his principles, and these principles were felt by the great mass of Churchmen to be in harmony with their own. In forming the acquaintance of Newman and Froude, then very distinguished Fellows of Oriel, and amongst rising men in the University, the author knew that his principles, at least, were fully known to, and approved by, these eminent men….

‘… The autumn and winter of 1832 passed away, but early in 1833 Froude returned to Oxford in better health, and I had once more a friend with whom I could work with entire sympathy in Church questions. For never did I meet with a more cordial response to all that I felt upon these matters, or a fuller sympathy. The only point on which I could not concur with him was the manner in which he spoke of the union of Church and State, which he esteemed unlawful per se, while I only objected to its abuses. His language as to the Reformation, too, I could not concur in, having considered with some attention the point as urged in Nonjuring works, and arrived at the conclusion that the Reformation did not merit the unfavourable judgment pronounced. After some months, in July we were joined by Newman, who had been detained by illness in France; and this greatly strengthened our hands.

288 ‘In an article in the Contemporary Review[321] on the Oxford Movement, I have ventured on the remark that I was not aware of an incident mentioned in Froude’s Remains, illustrative at once of the absence of elementary knowledge of the Roman Catholic system, and of the disposition to frame ingenious hypotheses upon the most important practical subjects. The incident referred to I described thus: “Froude had, with Newman, been anxious to ascertain the terms upon which they could be admitted to communion by the Roman Church, supposing that some dispensation might be granted which would enable them to communicate with Rome without violation of conscience”; and I elsewhere remarked on Newman [that] “those who conversed with him did not know that while in Italy he had sought, in company with Froude, to ascertain the terms on which they might be admitted to communion with Rome, and had been surprised on learning that an acceptance of the decrees of Trent was a necessary preliminary”; and I added: “had I been aware of these circumstances, I do not know whether I should have been able to co-operate cordially with him.” Nay, if I had supposed him to be willing to forsake the Church of England, I should have said that I could, in that case, have held no communion with him. As to his knowledge of the Roman Catholic system at that time, it was not grounded on the critical examination of Roman Catholic works of controversy. It was, I think, superficial, at that time and long after….

‘The passage on which my remarks were based was in Froude’s Remains, pp. 304, 307, in which he says: “The only thing I can put my hand on as an acquisition [at Rome] is having become acquainted with a man of some influence at Rome, Monsignor [Wiseman], the head of the [English] College, who has enlightened [Newman] and me on the subject of our relations to the Church of Rome. We got introduced to him to find out whether they would take us in on any terms to which we could twist our consciences, and we found, to our dismay, that not one step could be gained without swallowing the Council of Trent as a whole.” Mr. Newman, in editing this passage, in Froude’s Remains, represents it as merely “a jesting way of stating to a friend what was really the fact: viz., 289 that he and another availed themselves of the opportunity of meeting a learned Romanist to ascertain the ultimate points at issue between the Churches.” Cardinal Newman insists upon it that this is the true version of the affair. I merely ask the reader to compare the two statements: that of Froude, made at the time, and distinctly, and that of Newman, made some years after, to explain it. I ask whether the explanation is not throughout inconsistent with the statement, whether it is not a plain attempt to explain away the statement of Froude, whether Froude’s is not evidently the true version? No doubt Newman thought such explanation quite within his province as Editor. This little piece of finesse merits no grave animadversion, and I trust that I have so explained the point … as to relieve me from the imputation of accusing of dishonesty an old friend so much honoured for virtue and honour.’

[From the Narrative.]

‘I had not been very intimately acquainted with Mr. Newman and Mr. Froude, and was scarcely known to Mr. Keble, or Mr. Perceval, when our deep sense of the wrongs sustained by the Church in the suppression of Bishoprics, and our feeling of the necessity of doing whatever was in our power to arrest the tide of evil, brought us together in the summer of 1833. It was at the beginning of Long Vacation when, Mr. Froude being almost the only occupant of Oriel College, we frequently met in the Common Room, that the resolution to unite and associate in defence of the Church, of her violated liberties and neglected principles, arose. This resolution was immediately acted on; and while I corresponded with Mr. Rose, Mr. Froude communicated our design to Mr. Keble. Mr. Newman soon took part in our deliberations, on his return from the Continent. The particular course which we were to adopt became the subject of much and anxious thought; and as it was deemed advisable to confer with Mr. Rose on so important a subject, Mr. Froude and myself, after some correspondence, visited him at Hadleigh, in July; where I also had the pleasure of becoming personally acquainted with Mr. Perceval, who had been invited to take part in our deliberations…. On our return to Oxford, frequent conferences took place 290 at Oriel College, between Mr. Froude, Mr. Newman, Mr. Keble, and the writer, in which various plans were discussed…. I prepared a draft of the third formulary printed by Mr. Perceval, which was revised and improved by a friend, and was finally adopted as a basis of our further proceedings.[322] The formulary thus agreed on was printed and was privately and extensively circulated amongst our friends in all parts of England, in the autumn of 1833. Our intention was not to form a society merely at Oxford, but to extend it throughout all England, or rather, to form similar societies in every part of England. But finding that jealousy was expressed in several high quarters at the formation of any associations, and the notion being also unacceptable to Froude and others (Newman), at Oxford, we ceased, after a time, from circulating these papers, or advising the formation of societies. Some permanent effects, however, were produced….

‘The publication of the Tracts commenced and was continued by several of our friends,[323] each writer printing whatever appeared to him advisable or useful, without the formality of previous consultation with others…. I confess that I was rather surprised at the rapidity with which they were composed and published, without any previous revision or consultation; nor did it seem to me that any caution was exercised in avoiding language calculated to give needless offence…. The respect and regard due to the authors of the Tracts rendered me anxious to place the most favourable construction on everything which they wrote, and to hope that my apprehensions might be ill-founded. In the course, however, of the extensive correspondence of the autumn and winter of 1833 which has been mentioned, so many objections were raised by the clergy against parts of the Tracts, and so many indiscretions were pointed out, that I became convinced of the necessity of making some attempt to arrest the evil. With this object, I made 291 application in a direction (Newman) where much influence in the management of the Tracts was exercised, and very earnestly urged the necessity of putting an end to their publication, or at least of suspending them for a time. On one occasion, I thought I had been successful in the former object, and stated the fact to several correspondents; but the sequel proved that I was mistaken.[324] … Certainly, I had, in private conversation with Mr. Froude, and one or two others, felt that there were material differences between our views, on several important points. I allude more particularly to the question of the union of Church and State, and of the character of the English and the foreign Reformers. Mr. Froude occasionally expressed sentiments on the latter subject which seemed extremely unjust to the Reformers, and injurious to the Church; but as his conversation generally was of a very startling and paradoxical character, and his sentiments were evidently only in the course of formation, I trusted that more knowledge and thought would bring him to juster views….

* * * * *

‘I will not say that the writers of the Tracts have not been in any degree instrumental in drawing forth this spirit;[325] I will not inquire how far it is traceable to the publication of Froude’s Remains, and to the defence of his views contained in the Preface to the second series of the Remains; nor will I examine how far it may be a reaction against ultra-Protestantism: it is unnecessary now to enter on this painful and complicated question, on which different opinions may be entertained.’

From ‘Oxford High Anglicanism and its chief Leaders,’ by the Rev. James H. Rigg, D.D. London: Charles H. Kelly, 1899.

[By the kind permission of the Rev. James H. Rigg, D.D., and of Mr. Charles H. Kelly.]

‘Newman’s principles as the active leader of the Oxford Movement were imbibed from his intercourse with Keble and 292 Hurrell Froude. Newman himself says expressly and emphatically that Keble was the real father of the Oxford Movement, and it was the influence of Froude which brought together Keble and Newman. It was Froude who effected that blending and focussing of the sympathies and aims of Keble, Newman, and himself which furnished the first inspiration and impulse of the Oxford Neo-Anglican Movement. Newman, that is to say, though afterwards the leader, was first the disciple of Keble and even of Froude, and Keble and Froude derived their Anglican indoctrination and inspiration not assuredly from the Evangelical Revival, which they were brought up to hate, and did, both, sincerely hate through life, but from the High Church school of the early years of the eighteenth century, of which Dr. Routh was a living representative at Oxford for many years after Keble obtained his Fellowship at Oriel…. Keble was the tutor and the loving and sympathetic friend of the bitter and contemptuous Froude, who “hated the Reformation,” and reserved his utmost scorn and antipathy for “irreverent Dissenters.” … His personal opinions were extreme, so extreme as to lead him to admire the character of Froude, in spite of his immodesty, his intolerance, and his puerile asceticism, because there was in the young man such heartiness, such good fellowship, such zeal, such talent; and all consecrated to the cause of “Catholic” restoration and Christian progress, as he understood it.

‘… The characters of [Newman and Keble] were not likely to blend, except under the influence of some common solvent, some medium of overpoweringly strong affinity with both, through which characters so sharply contrasted might be combined in sympathy and united in counsel…. Nor could a fitter instrument have been found for bringing about the union on this basis than Hurrell Froude. He was himself, in several respects, as great a contrast to Keble in character as even Newman. But then he had been Keble’s pupil, and he remained his devoted and admiring friend…. Moreover, though Newman in his Apologia speaks of Froude as “speculative,” he was not metaphysically sceptical, and his speculations appear to have been confined within theologically safe regions. Froude, in fact, stood in fear of Newman’s speculative tendency; 293 and in one place, whilst expressing his delight in his companionship, expresses his doubt whether he is not more or less of a “heretic.”[326] In no sense was Hurrell Froude doctrinally or metaphysically speculative. He had seemingly, from the first, bound himself to tradition. His affections went after antiquity, but, in particular, he doted upon the Mediæval Church. His “speculations” never led him towards the verge of unbelief. Whilst his zeal was hot, and his mind active, his intellect seemed to make good its safety by servility to traditional dogma. If he mocked at the Reformers, he held fast by the “Saints.” Furthermore, although such a zealot for traditional Church authority, and so bold and hot against all Protestants and Puritans, he was to his friends gentle, tender, playful, pleasant, and most open-hearted. It is easy to see by what ties such a man would be attached to Keble and to Newman. The former regarded him somewhat as a mother regards a high-spirited, spoilt, but frank, true-spoken and affectionate son. She is proud of him, while she disapproves of some of his proceedings. She reproves him, but gently, lovingly: too gently by far. She views all his conduct with a partial eye; his very faults seem to her but the exuberances of a noble spirit. It must be remembered also that Froude’s animosities correspond to Keble’s dislikes, and that his enthusiastic and passionate admiration was bestowed in accordance with Keble’s preferences. The tempers of the teacher and pupil were very different, but their tastes and opinions were well agreed; and, in fact, those of Froude had been formed by Keble. What Keble instilled by gentle influence became in Froude a potent and heady spirit. Keble, accordingly, forgave the violence of his pupil, in part for the sake of his orthodoxy, and in part because of his dutifulness and affection to him personally. His excesses were but the excesses of a fine young nature on behalf of what was good and right. “E’en his failings leaned to virtue’s side.” While such were the ties which attached Keble to Froude, Newman was drawn to him both by agreement in theological and ecclesiastical opinions and tendencies, and also by a strong natural affinity of disposition. No one 294 can read Newman’s description of Froude and himself in the Apologia without feeling that he and such a man as Froude must have been most congenial companions. Both were, intellectually, what he describes Froude as being: “critical and logical,” “speculative and bold.” Newman, no less than Froude, “delighted in the notion of an hierarchical system of sacerdotal power, and of full ecclesiastical liberty.” “Hatred of the Reformers,” “scorn” of Protestantism, are noted by Newman as characteristics of Froude. And, as to himself, “I became fierce,” “I was indignant,” “I despised every rival system,” “I had a thorough contempt for the Evangelicals,”—such expressions as these abound in his delineation of his own character at this period of his life. It is no wonder, therefore, that Froude and Newman clave to each other…. Froude was the energetic and wilful partner of Newman in the new enterprise: Froude, who with far less genius, far less personal tact and persuasiveness, and no gift of public or pulpit suasion, such as Newman possessed in a wonderful degree, was a man of intense and resolute character, of great logical daring, of unsparing pugnacity, of far-reaching ideas, whom Newman, and, as we have seen, Keble also, greatly admired and even loved, though he was loved by few besides. These two men, Newman and Froude, were mutually complementary: together they planned the first lines of the Tractarian Movement…. For his characteristic work at Oxford, Newman had been prepared by the influence of Keble and Froude. To quote Dean Church, “Keble had given the inspiration, Froude had given the impetus; then Newman took up the work.” If Froude had lived a few years longer, it cannot be doubted that he would have gone over the imaginary line of division, and would have found himself consciously and professedly at Rome. Keble had neither logic nor courage to take him across the line…. Newman, alone of the three, slowly and reluctantly, but by force of sincere and overmastering convictions, followed his principles out to the complete end.

‘… To the Movement, as a Movement, Keble seems to have actively contributed no momentum whatever, although his reputation (like Pusey’s later on) lent it a powerful sanction. To Newman belongs all the merit or demerit of the Tractarian 295 line of policy and action. Without him, the Movement would never have taken form or gathered way. Froude was, very early, a powerful and energetic colleague: indeed, without him, Newman would not have been what he was, nor done what he did…. The chief interest attaching to Froude is that being what he was, he so powerfully influenced Newman, who said of him in his Lectures on Anglicanism,[327] that “he, if any, is the author of the Movement altogether”: a saying hardly, however, consistent with the statement already quoted from the Apologia as to Keble’s relation to the Movement. Froude was a man of much force of will, and superior natural gifts; he was handsome and attractive, a bright and lively companion, a warm and affectionate friend, a “good fellow,” but very free indeed of his tongue. He was ignorant, self-conscious, and audacious; as intense a hater as he was a warm friend; a bitter bigot, a reckless revolutionist; one who delighted to speak evil of dignitaries, and of departed worthies and heroes reverenced by Protestant Christians at home and abroad. Church, who did not know him, but took his estimate of him mainly from Newman, makes a conspicuous figure of him, giving much more space to him than to Pusey,[328] more even than to Keble. That this should be so, shows how deeply Church had drunk into the spirit that prompted and inspired the Tractarians. Even his friendly hand, however, cannot omit from his picture certain features which, to an outsider who is not fascinated by the camaraderie of the Tractarian clique … will be almost sufficient, without further evidence, to warrant the phrase, “a flippant railer,” in which Julius Hare (himself, assuredly, no Evangelical bigot or narrow sectary) describes the man whose Remains were edited and published by his two great friends, that Anglican Churchmen might be led to admire the zeal and devotion, and to drink into the spirit, of this young hero of the new party. According to their view, his early 296 death in the odour of sanctity (although of true Christian saintliness in temper or spirit he seems to have had as little tincture as any persecuting Spanish saint), left an aureole of glory upon his memory.

‘Such was Froude’s hatred of Puritanism that, as may be learnt from Dean Church, he was “blind to the grandeur of Milton’s poetry.” Church speaks, himself, of his “fiery impetuosity, and the frank daring of his disrespectful vocabulary.” He quotes James Mozley as saying: “I would not set down anything that Froude says for his deliberate opinion, for he really hates the present state of things so excessively that any change would be a relief to him.” He says that “Froude was made for conflict, not to win disciples.” He admits his ignorance. “He was,” he tells us, “a man strong in abstract thought and imagination, who wanted adequate knowledge.” He quotes from the Apologia Newman’s admission of two noticeable deficiencies in Froude: “he had no turn for theology”; “his power of entering into the minds of others was not equal to his other gifts.” Such a power, we may note, is very unlikely to belong to men of fierce and hasty arrogance and self-confidence. It finds its natural home in company with “the wisdom from above,” which is not only “pure,” but “gentle and easy to be entreated,” the characteristics of a saintliness of another sort than that of Froude. Dean Church admits that the Remains contain phrases and sentiments and epithets surprisingly at variance with conventional and popular estimates: “as, for example, we may explain, when Froude speaks of the illustrious Bishop Jewel, whom Hooker calls ‘the worthiest divine that Christendom hath bred for the space of some hundreds of years,’ as ‘an irreverent Dissenter,’ Church adds that ‘friends were pained and disturbed,’ while ‘foes exulted,’ at such a disclosure of the spirit of the Movement.” The apology he offers is that “if the off-hand sayings of any man of force and wit and strong convictions were made known to the world, they would, by themselves, have much the same look of flippancy, injustice, impertinence, to those who disagreed with the speaker or writer…. The friends who published Froude’s Remains knew what he was; they knew the place and proportion of the fierce and scornful passages; 297 they knew that they did not go beyond the liberty and the frank speaking, which most people give themselves in the abandon and understood exaggeration of intimate correspondence and talk.” To which the reply is obvious: if the Editors (who were no other than Newman and Keble) had disapproved of the tone and style of these Remains, as it is evident that Dean Church himself, notwithstanding his strong friendly bias, could not help disapproving of them, they would either not have published them, or would at least have suggested some such apology as that suggested by Dean Church. But, in fact, they published them without any such apology, and it cannot be seriously doubted that they rather rejoiced in than condemned such gross improprieties. Further, if this sort of writing is common in the intimate correspondence of responsible clergymen, how is it that it is so hard, if it is at all possible, to match the flippancy and insolence of these Remains in any other correspondence or remains of men of Christian culture and character, known to modern literature? Dean Church, indeed, cannot but admit that “Froude was often intemperate and unjust,” and that “his strong language gave needless exasperation.” He endeavours, however, to make one point in favour of the Movement, from the publication of the Remains. Whether it was wise or not, he argues that “it was not the act of cunning conspirators: it was the act of men who were ready to show their hands and take the consequences; it was the mistake of men confident in their own straightforwardness.” I have no wish to revive against the first leaders of the Movement, as represented by Froude and the admirable Editors of his Remains, the charge of being conspirators, though, as I have already stated, Froude himself was the first to describe the Tractarian Movement as a “conspiracy.” Certainly Froude, in the earlier stage of the Movement, like Ward in its later stages, had little in him of the conspirator’s subtlety or craft, whatever may be said as to Newman. But an unbiassed historian would hardly describe the act of publication as Dean Church does: he would rather say that it was the act of men whose honesty may be admitted, but who were sanguine partisans, men strongly biassed by their sectarian temper, by their over-weening self-confidence….

298 ‘But it was a strange little world, that world of Oxford, in which Froude was regarded as a bright and leading character, sixty years ago. It seems, as we look back upon it, to be very much farther away than half a century, and to belong almost to a different planetary sphere…. It was, in fact, a young and ignorant, as well as bigoted circle, in which the idea of the Oxford Movement first germinated…. It was a school-boyish sort of clique, and in wildness, enthusiasm, ignorance of the actual forces and the gathering movements of the world outside, their projects and dreams remind us of schoolboy plans and projects for moving the world and achieving fame and greatness….

‘Schoolboys’ friendships are often intense and romantic. Those of Newman and his circle were passionately deep and warm, more like those of boys, in some respects, than of men; perhaps still more like those of women who live aloof from the world in the seclusion of mutual intimacy: intimacy suffused with the fascinating but hectic brightness of a sort of celibate consecration to each other, apart from any thought of stronger or more authoritative human ties that might some time interfere with their sacrament of friendship. This morbidezza of moral complexion and temperament, this more or less unnatural and unhealthy intensity of friendship, was a marked feature in Newman’s relations with those around him. There is no doubt a touching side to this feature in the Tractarian Society of Oxford. Dean Church speaks of “the affection which was characteristic of those days.” … Of the mutually feminine attachment which bound Newman and Froude together, there is no need to say more…. The Apologia sets it forth all the more fully because Froude was no longer living…. Newman’s was a characteristically feminine nature: it was feminine in the quickness and subtlety of his instincts, in affection and the caprices of affection, in diplomatic tact and adroitness, and in a gift of statement and grace of phrase which find their analogies in the conversation, in the public addresses, and not seldom in the written style, of gifted women…. Hurrell Froude, his chosen and most congenial friend, was more feminine still than Newman, feminine 299 in his faults as well as in his gifts and his defects. For sympathy and mutual intelligence the two were wonderfully well assorted…. It was a saying of Charles Kingsley … that all the Tractarian leaders were wanting in virility: i.e., not so much effeminate as naturally more woman-like than masculine.’

From ‘Historical Notes on the Tractarian Movement, A.D. 1833-1845,’ by Frederick Oakeley, M.A., Oxon., Priest of the Archdiocese of Westminster. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1865.

[By the kind permission of Sir Charles W. A. Oakeley, Bart., and of Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co.]

‘The only one of these remarkable men who has passed into the region of history[329] is he who, though the youngest of the whole number in years, deserves to be commemorated as the first who took a comprehensive view of the bearings and character of the Movement. Mr. Froude was a College contemporary of my own, and I enjoyed at one time the privilege of constant intercourse and familiar acquaintance with him. Those who have formed their impression of him from his published Remains will scarcely, perhaps, be prepared to hear how little there appeared, in his external deportment, while he was at Oxford, of that remarkable austerity of life which he is now known to have habitually practised, even then. To a form of singular elegance, and a countenance of that peculiar and highest kind of beauty which flows from purity of heart and mind, he added manners the most refined and engaging. That air of sunny cheerfulness which is best expressed by the French word riant, never forsook him (at the time when I knew him best), and diffused itself, as is its wont, over every circle in which he moved. I have seen him in spheres so different as the Common-Rooms of Oxford, and the after-dinner company of the high aristocratic 300 society of the West of England; and I well remember how he mingled even with the last in a way so easy, yet so dignified, as at once to conciliate its sympathies and direct its tone. He was one of those who seemed to have extracted real good out of an English Public School education, while unaffected by its manifold vices. Popular among his companions for his skill in all athletic exercises, as well as for his humility, forbearance, and indomitable good temper, he had the rare gift of changing the course of dangerous conversation without uncouth abruptness or unbecoming dictation; and he almost seemed, as is recorded of St. Bernardine of Sienna, to check, by his mere presence, the profane jibe, or unseemly équivoque. To his great intellectual powers his published Remains bear abundant witness; nor do we, in fact, need any other proof of them than the deference yielded to his opinions by such men as those who have acknowledged him for their example and their guide. Let it not be supposed that this high panegyric is prompted by the partiality of friendship. Although I enjoyed constant opportunities of intercourse with Mr. Froude, and made his character a study, yet I have no claim whatever to be considered his intimate friend. We were not, indeed, at that time, in anything like complete religious accord; and I remember his once saying to me, in words which subsequent events made me regard as prophetic: “My dear O., I believe you will come right some day; but you are a long time about it.” Poor Hurrell Froude! May it be allowed to one who was your competitor in more than one academical contest, and your inferior in everything (save in his happy possession of those religious privileges which you were cut off too early to allow of your attaining), to pay you, after many years, this feeble tribute of gratitude and admiration! Never again will Anglicanism produce such a disciple; never, till she is Catholic, will Oxford boast of such a son.

301 As I have begun this quotation, I may as well go on with it:

To adjust such a character with Catholic facts and Catholic principles is no part of my present object. The reader who takes an interest in this question will find it discussed in Dr. Newman’s Lectures on Anglican Difficulties. For me it will be sufficient to take leave of this gifted person in the well-known words: Cum talis sis, utinam noster esses!

* * * * *

‘The estimate taken [of the Reformers and] of their work by Mr. Froude, Mr. Keble, and Mr. Newman became sufficiently manifest on the publication of Mr. Froude’s Remains, with the remarks prefixed to them by the friends just mentioned. Mr. Froude had described the English Reformers in general, as “a set with whom he wished to have less and less to do.” He declared his opinion that Bishop Jewel was no better than “an irreverent Dissenter,” and expressed himself as sceptical whether Latimer (of whom, as a “Martyr,” he did not wish to speak disrespectfully) were not “something in the Bulteel line.” Dr. Pusey was too humble and forbearing to enter any kind of public protest against statements and views so different from his own. But he was generally believed not to go along with the tenour of these expressions, nor to approve, otherwise than by passive acquiescence, of the publication of those parts of the work in which they were contained…. [Living,] Mr. Froude’s frankness and attractive personal qualities gained from the rising generation of Oxford a favourable hearing for the (to them) original views, which he so ably and dashingly inculcated…. No one can read Mr. Froude’s Remains … without seeing that with him and with those with whom he corresponded, the ethical system of Oxford had exercised no small influence in the formation of mental habits. Those who, like myself, were personally acquainted with Mr. 302 Froude, will remember how constantly he used to appeal to [the] great moral teacher of antiquity, “Old ‘Stotle,” as he used playfully to call him, against the shallow principles of the day. There is a sense, I am convinced, in which the literature of heathenism is often more religious than that of Protestantism. Thus, then, it was that the philosophical studies of Oxford tended to form certain great minds on a semi-Catholic type.

* * * * *

‘Towards the close of his mortal career, his opinions appear to have undergone some change which was perceptible to many of his friends even in his outward demeanour. He associated less than formerly with the old High Church party of the Establishment, as he became convinced that the ills of the Church must be cured by sterner and more unworldly methods of discipline than that party was prepared to accept. An air of gravity, and a tone of severity, even in general society (so far as he mixed with it), had replaced that bright and sunny cheerfulness which was characteristic of his earlier days; and this change of exterior was greater than could be explained by his declining health, against which he bore up with exemplary fortitude. Together with a more anxious view of the state and prospects of the Establishment, he had apparently taken up a less favourable opinion of the Catholic Church, at least in its actual manifestation. A visit to the Continent had operated (from whatever cause) unfavourably upon his judgment of Catholics, whom he now first stigmatised as “Tridentines”: a strange commentary, certainly, on the view put forth later by Mr. Newman, to the effect that the prevalent Catholic system was erroneous in that it had deviated from the Tridentine rule, not in that it represented that rule! This and similar dicta, some of a still more painful import, have led such of Mr. Froude’s friends as have clung to the Established Church to believe that, had he lived, he would have remained on their side. Such a question will naturally be determined, to a great extent, according to the personal views and wishes of those who speculate upon it. Certain at any rate it is, that had he come to us, the Church would have secured the humble obedience and faithful service of a rarely gifted intellect; while, had he stayed behind, he would have added one more to the 303 number of those whose absence is the theme of our lamentation, and whose conversion, the object of our prayers. It is part, however, of the historian’s office to investigate such questions according to the evidence at his disposal; and in the instance before us, that evidence is far more accessible and far more satisfactory than is usually the case in posthumous inquiries. Mr. Froude’s Letters to Friends, published in his Remains, give an insight into his character and feelings, with all their various developments and vicissitudes, such as is commonly the privilege of intimate personal acquaintance, and of that alone. His bosom friends could hardly have known him better than the careful student of these Letters may know him, if he desire it: indeed, it is to such friends that he discloses himself in those Letters with almost the plain-spokenness of the Confessional.

‘Now, it must be admitted that these Letters leave the question as to the probability of his conversion very much in that evenly-balanced state in which, as I have just said, the wishes of friends or partisans come in to determine it on either side. His Letters contain, on the one hand, many passages from which, if they stood alone, it might be concluded that he was, at certain times, almost ripe for conversion. They also contain others apparently of an opposite tenour. In the former class must be reckoned those indications of antipathy, continually deriving fresh fuel from new researches, to the English Reformation and Reformers.[330] Mr. Froude’s theological sentiments had long passed the mark of the Laudian era, and settled at the point of the Nonjurors.[331] He thinks one might take for an example Francis de Sales, whom, by the way, he classes with “Jansenist Saints.”[332] Again, he was most deeply sensitive to the shortcomings and anomalies of his communion: he calls it an “incubus” on the country, and ascribes to it the blighting properties of the “upas-tree.” It is evident that he was in advance both of Mr. Keble and Mr. Newman: he twits the former, in friendly expostulation, with the Protestantism of his phraseology in parts of The Christian Year, and laments the backwardness of the latter on some questions of the day. On 304 the other hand, and in the same direction of thought, he expresses admiration of Cardinal Pole; he scruples about speaking against the Catholic system, even its “seemingly indifferent practices”;[333] he can understand, on the principle of reverence, the Communion under one species,[334] perhaps the greatest of all practical difficulties to many Anglican minds. Moreover, when at Rome, he evidently opened the subject of reconciliation to a distinguished prelate whom he met there.[335] Per contra, we have painful sayings against supposed practical abuses in the Church. “He really thought,” as he tells us, that “certain practices which he witnessed abroad are idolatrous”; he charges priests with irreverence, ecclesiastical authorities with laxity, etc.[336] Yet even these opinions he partially qualifies, and is disposed to attribute to defective information.[337] He shrinks from speaking against Rome as a Church.[338]

‘Unwilling as I am to hazard conjectures on the subject, especially against the judgement of any among his more intimate friends, I do not think it unreasonable to conclude, from a comparison of these passages, that Mr. Froude’s objections were chiefly directed against imaginary abuses, or possible relaxations of discipline, which time and reflection would have shown him to be entirely independent of the real merits of the controversy. I find it also difficult to believe that, as the principle of the English Reformation received these illustrations in the Established Church which we have lived long enough to see,—as her constituted tribunals were found to give up, in succession, the grace of the Sacraments, the authority of the Church, and even the inspiration of Holy Scripture itself, as necessary truths,—his clear and honest mind would not have accepted some or all of these tokens of apostasy as a summons to enter the True Fold. Assuredly, too, we have known no instance of a mind equally candid, intelligent, and instructed, whose advances in the direction of the Truth (especially when assisted by extraordinary acuteness of conscience and purity of life) 305 have stopped short, as time has gone on, of the logical conclusions, except in cases where the progress of such a mind has been arrested by conflicting tendencies of deeply ingrained Protestant or national prepossession: such as in his case were singularly absent.

‘There is, however, one phase of Mr. Froude’s mind with which it is far more difficult to reconcile the belief of his probable conversion than any other. This phase, indeed, seems to have been a characteristic of himself as compared with nearly all of those who took a leading part in the Movement, including even Mr. Keble, who was the nearest to Mr. Froude in general character. The peculiarity to which I refer is that of an extraordinary leaning to the side of religious dread, and a correspondent suppression of the sentiments of love and joy. Mr. Froude’s religion, as far as it can be gathered from his published Journal, seems to have been (if the expression be not too strong) more like that of a humble and pious Jew under the Old Dispensation, than that of a Christian living in the full sunshine of Gospel privileges. The apology for this feature in his religious character, and for any portion of it which appears in those of other excellent men of the same period,[339] is to be found in the ungraceful and often irreverent form in which the warmer side of the Christian temper was exhibited in the party called Evangelical: whose language, based as it often was upon grievous errors of doctrine, had a tendency to react, in religious minds, on the side of severity and reserve. Such a form of religious spirit, however, where exhibited in the somewhat unusual proportions which it assumes in Mr. Froude, must undergo almost a complete revolution before it can be naturally susceptible of the impression which Catholic devotion has a tendency to produce, or even tolerant of the language which pervades our approved Manuals. It is certainly difficult to find in the Mr. Froude of the Remains, a compartment for devotion to Our 306 Blessed Lady,[340] for instance, or even to the Sacred Humanity of Our Lord, in all its attractive and endearing fulness. Yet, taking the phenomena of his case as a whole, and duly estimating the respective powers of the two conflicting forces, I cannot help thinking that the Church would more easily have conquered his prejudices than the Establishment have retained his allegiance.’

From ‘The British Critic,’ Jan., 1838, Vol. xxiii., pp. 200 et seq., by Frederic Rogers, Esq., M.A., afterwards Lord Blachford.[341]

‘… The first volume of this book, to which the following observations will be confined, presents an unusually perfect history of as remarkable a mind as it is often our lot to fall in with. It is remarkable, not merely for its talent, energy, and depth of religious feeling, but because the character in which these qualities issue, is one almost new to the eyes of this generation; and with this unusual tone of thought and feeling, is joined a deep reality and consistency which forces attention, and perhaps deference, even when the author’s views least coincide with our own settled prejudices….

‘… There is a wide intermediate range of character among those who neither neglect nor rest in their fellow-men. With some, those feelings of reverence and admiration, which seem like the voice of God assigning to every man his province, are more deeply touched by the quiet holiness of domestic life, its little delicate self-sacrifices, its affectionate attentions and glad confidence. The idol of their hearts is one whom men love even when he is most severe, or, if they love him not they dare not avow it, knowing that the world would hold them self-condemned; whose enjoyment it is to confer enjoyment, who moves about with a heart and sympathies open to all he meets, expecting no evil; and, when encountered by vice, 307 rebukes it with a mixture of horror, pity, and simplicity, which, if they fail to convince, at least never irritate or harden. Not that such an one need be wanting in the expression of just indignation, but he shows no intention to punish, no assumption of superiority. He speaks either by way of affectionate remonstrance, or to disburden his own conscience; and those who are too bad to be affected by mere goodness, only say of him “that he is as kind-hearted a man as can be; pity he should let his fancies run away with him.”

‘It need hardly be said that this is Christian love, but not its only form. Minds more bitterly alive to the unsatisfying nature of earthly things, will thirst after some more immediate form of self-devotion to God: and the same feelings which render their brethren less adequate representatives of their Heavenly Father in their hearts, imply capacities which render them less necessary. They will press as close to God as He will let them, anxious, if it were possible, to anticipate His purposes concerning them, watching for permission to throw away earthly comforts in His service, if He will give them the signal to take to themselves that honour; laborious, by meditation and mortification of the flesh, to root out from their hearts every idle desire that interferes with His presence there, and to bend to His direct service every high taste and faculty which He has given them: who would sing songs to His glory though there were none to hear them, and would adorn holy places though there were none to see them; anxious for no result, but for the mere happiness of devoting heart, head, and hand to His honour, if they have but an instinct or a word of His to tell them that He will be pleased with their little offering. These men will no more forget their brethren than the others will forget God; they will have their words of encouragement for the penitent, of courtesy for the stranger, of deep affection for their friends. But they do not go about, overflowing with kindness and confidence to all men. Perhaps circumstances have thrown upon them one of those great works which ever lie about the world unappropriated, and they are “straitened till it be accomplished.” Perhaps the work of their own salvation lies heavier on their spirits than on theirs who live and die in happy, quiet, uniform thankfulness. 308 Perhaps their own renunciation of the lesser pleasures of life makes them less understand the value which others set on them. At any rate, their constant endeavour to realise within themselves their own high aspirations, tends to unfit them for sympathising with buoyant earthly merriment, or sanguine earthly wishes, except it be with the passing interest which we give to the careless gaiety of a child.

‘Again, the stern examination by which they purge their own hearts, that they may be worthy of God, opens to them the secrets of others. It shows them what is their own meanness in the sight of God, and what it may be in the sight of their fellow-men; but it lays upon them the painful power of seeing through profession and self-deceit, and it teaches them how, by word and eye, to silence and chastise as well as protest.

* * * * *

‘These men, it need scarcely be said, are not talked of as “kind-hearted fellows”; they are felt to be partisans, and are reverenced or hated accordingly. Their presence, when it does not deepen the interest of conversation, is apt to impose a check on its freedom. Men are afraid of being frivolous and unreal in their presence; doubtful what will offend them; or what degree of forbearance they may reckon on; suspicious of their motives, as of men who do not speak freely, unless they speak with authority, of what they most deeply mean; and cautious in accepting their friendship, for it is only firmly given to similarity of religious aim. But the loftiness of sentiment which confines, deepens also the flow of their sympathies; their power of severity gives meaning to their affection, and their singleness of aim a high harmony to their thoughts and tastes. Those who will take their hand and walk with them will find the fruit of their friendship rich according to its noble origin and tenure.

‘Now of these two characters it would perhaps be overbold to say which is holiest; at any rate, the loveliness of one is very different from the majesty of the other: different, not indeed in essentials, but in the hopes, fears, tastes, and sentiments, which it forces uppermost…. The later Church of England character is very decidedly of the former cast. Ours is the Church of Walton and Herbert, not of Athanasius and 309 Ambrose. And truly we have been born into a beautiful inheritance. Our fathers have bequeathed to us the appreciation of a kindly and a holy spirit; a spirit of affectionate unobtrusive meekness, of considerate friendliness, of calm cheerfulness. And these are in their measure not only appreciated but realised amongst us: the domestic and social virtues of our clergy are in the mouths of every panegyrist of the Church of England, and are hardly denied by her enemies…. And it is true, that there are passages of Scripture which address themselves to a very different class of minds: passages which ὁ δυνάμενος χωρεῖν, χωρείτω, which “all men cannot receive, but they to whom it is given.” There are a whole class of expressions in the New Testament, which though surely they do not condemn the English Church, yet seem somehow not to have received their natural development in it.[342] “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast … and come, follow Me.” “Blessed are ye when men shall hate you.” “Woe unto you that laugh now, for ye shall mourn and weep.” “Κάλον ἀνθρώπῳ γύναικος μὴ ἅπτεσθαι.” “Every one that hath forsaken brethren or sisters, or father or mother, or wife or children, for My Name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.” We seem afraid of these.

* * * * *

‘Within our own Church, we are over-careful to soothe enthusiasm, and somewhat helpless in directing it. In judging foreign Churches, or other ages, we talk of a “misguided zeal for what they consider the glory of God,” “the fantastic rigours by which men render themselves callous to the sufferings of others,” “the extinction of the domestic affections to aggrandise one ambitious Church,” words which may be true or not, as they are applied, but which, as commonly used, are rather rashly bandied about, considering all the hints and recommendations that Scripture contains.[343] We can be warm enough in 310 our censures of those who would call down fire from Heaven, or sit at the right hand of Christ, but have perhaps too much fellow-feeling with him who went away sorrowful when he found he must not only obey the law, but sell his property. The book now before us is, most unquestionably, not of the peculiar Church of England character, but of that cast which we are somewhat apt to depreciate, or to look on as a romantic unreality….

‘In his Private Journal, which was written chiefly in 1826, when he was about twenty-four, the feeling round which all others seem to group themselves, is a craving after an ideal happiness, real and attainable, though not yet, of which all our refined perceptions of beauty, nobility, and holiness are but indications and foretastes, and in which, as our character becomes equal to our capacities, they must eventually converge. With this is joined, as perhaps its necessary condition, a sensitive and pure taste for all that is beautiful or lofty to sight or mind; high, though unpractised, poetical powers; and an earnest appreciation of the reverence due to holy things, even to our own higher thoughts and deeper emotions.

‘This itself explains why these powers and feelings, lying, it seems, deepest, were unknown, almost unsuspected, by more than two or three of his nearest friends. His acquaintance more readily perceived and appreciated an unusually deep and true mode of dealing with mathematical questions; a subtlety, boldness and ingenuity of reasoning; a frank and accurate apprehension of the full force of an adverse argument; and a definiteness of conception and expression which seemed to cut through an intricate question, throwing off, rather than grappling with objections, with a clearness which one could hardly believe not to be sophistry.

311 ‘But this book derives its commanding interest from the stern self-chastisement of body and mind, from which both reason and imagination receive their tone and substance. With this the Journal acquaints us; and there is something which really cows an ordinary reader, in the unsparing steadiness with which faults are sought for, the bitter self-abasement with which they are felt, and the unrelenting determination with which they are punished; all being recorded, except when addressed to God, with a plain and sometimes contemptuous homeliness of expression, which seems as if the author wished to do dishonour to himself and his thoughts, or held that a feeling which claimed to be deep and true, should not disdain to buy, by humiliation, the privilege of utterance….

‘… In 1825, in which year he took his degree, passages in his letters show the existence of those romantic views of religion which occupy so prominent a place in his character from that time forward. Of part of the intervening time, he speaks often in his Journal with very deep contrition: but anyone who observes the deep humiliation with which he confesses faults of which ordinary persons would think but little, (common indeed to all who have really high views of Christian excellence,) will be very cautious in inferring much as to the facts themselves, from this most bitter recollection of them. The Journal itself may perhaps be best introduced by some letters, giving an account of the first part of the time which it records.’

[To the Rev. John Keble, but not sent.]

Sept. 28, 1826.

‘“I have been meaning to write to you every day for a long time, and I do not suppose you would wish me to be influenced in putting off longer by the sad thing we have just heard.[344] At least, if I may judge from myself, there is so little difference between what are called real afflictions and imaginary ones, that it seems just as rational to go on in the common way when under the former as the latter. With me, this last summer, both at the time, and looking back on it, 312 seems to have gone very strangely; and I do not see any ground why my reason should contradict my feelings, because the things which affect me are either, in their nature, confined to the person who feels them, or are thought trifles by people in general. I have been trying almost all the Long [Vacation] to discover a sort of common-sense romance: I am convinced there must be such a thing, and that Nature did not give us such a high capacity for pleasure without making some other qualification for it besides delusion. But the speculation has got much more serious, and runs out into many more ramifications than I expected at first; and it seems to me as if I might make it the main object of a long course of reading, the first step of which would be to follow your advice in learning Hebrew and reading the early Fathers. This I have determined upon doing immediately upon my return to Oxford; and the intervening space I shall pass away as I can, with I. and P.,[345] among the mountains and waterfalls. Since I wrote this in the morning, I have been walking with P., whose quietness of mind makes me quite ashamed of my speculations, and I hardly like sending you this letter; however, if I have been making myself a fool all the summer, it is better I should not go on brooding on it by myself; for letting somebody know the state of my thoughts is the only way of keeping them straight; and I know no one but you who would make sufficient allowance for me to venture on such things with. Perhaps you may think it very odd, but this is the first time I have had resolution to ask for the papers which they found of my mother’s after her death.”

‘The writer seems to have shrunk from allowing this letter to reach his friend. In its stead, the following was sent:

‘“I have made three attempts to write, but all of them ran off into something wild, which, upon reflection, I thought would be better kept to myself. The fact is, that I have been in a strange way all the summer, and having had no one to talk to about the things which have bothered me, I have been every now and then getting into fits of enthusiasm or despondency. But the result has been in some respects a good 313 one, and I have got to take very great pleasure in what you recommended me when we were together at F.,[346] the evening before I left you, our first summer, i.e. good books; and I feel [I] understand places in the Psalms in a way I never used to. I go back to Oxford with a determination to set to at Hebrew and the early Fathers, and to keep myself in as strict order as I can: a thing which I have been making ineffectual attempts at for some time, but which never once entered my head for a long time of my life….

‘“And now I must drop back to myself. I wish you would say anything to me that you think would do me good, however severe it may be. You must have observed many things very contemptible in me, but I know worse of myself, and shall be prepared for anything. I cannot help being afraid that I am still deceiving myself about my motives and feelings, and shall be glad of anything on which to steady myself.”

‘It is exceedingly interesting to trace in the Journal the actual working day by day of the feelings to which these letters refer. The following extract is, in effect, its opening:

‘“July 1, 1826.—I think it will be a better way to keep a Journal for a bit, as I find I want keeping in order about more things than reading. I am in a most conceited way, besides very ill-tempered and irritable. My thoughts wander very much at my prayers, and I feel hungry for some ideal thing of which I have no definite idea. I sometimes fancy that the odd bothering feeling which gets possession of me is affectation, and that I appropriate it because I think it a sign of genius: but it lasts too long, and is too disagreeable to be unreal.”

‘“July 5.—I do not know how it is, but it seems to me as if the consciousness of having capacities for happiness, with no objects to gratify them, seems to grow upon me, and puts me in a dreary way. Lord, have mercy upon me!”

‘These feelings continue occasionally to appear, assuming, more and more, a distinct and practical shape, till his return to Oxford in October, 1826 (the period when the Letters before quoted were written), when they gave rise to the following resolutions:

‘“I have been coming to a resolution, that as soon as I am 314 out of the reach of observation, I will begin a sort of monastic austere life, and do my best to chastise myself before the Lord; that I will attend Chapel regularly; eat little and plainly, drink as little wine as I can, consistently with the forms of society; keep the fasts of the Church, as much as I can, without ostentation; continue to get up at six in the winter; abstain from all unnecessary expenses, in everything; give all the money I can save in charity, or for the adorning of religion. That I will submit myself to the wishes of the [Provost?] as to one set over me by the Lord, but never give in to the will or opinion of anyone from idleness, or false shame, or want of spirit. That I will avoid society as much as I can, except those I can do good to, or from whom I may expect real advantage; and I will, in all my actions, endeavour to justify that high notion of my capabilities of which I cannot divest myself. That I will avoid all conversation on serious subjects, except with those whose opinions I revere, and content myself with exercising dominion over my own mind, without trying to influence others. The studies which I have prescribed to myself are Hebrew and Ante-Nicene Fathers….”

‘We extract the following philosophical reflections, taken from the Occasional Thoughts of about the same date, as similarly characteristic of the author’s steady and systematic procedure:

‘“Dec. 1, 7, and 17.—It is the object of our lives, by patient perseverance in a course of action prescribed to us, so to shape and discipline our desires that they may, through habit, be excited to the same degree by the objects which are presented to our understanding, as they would by nature, if we had senses to relish them; that is, that the degree of our appetites for these objects should so far exceed that which we feel for sensible objects, as the known value of the former exceeds that of the latter. The former field of existence is what I think St. Paul had in his mind when he spoke (Heb., vi. 19) of ‘that which is within the veil,’ into which Jesus Christ had gone before us: the veil signifying our unconsciousness, in spite of which, ‘by two immutable things, in which it was impossible that God should lie, we might have 315 strong consolation who have fled to lay hold of the hope set before us.’ All this seems the real meaning of faith, as insisted on so much in the New Testament.

‘“Of the objects which we pursue or avoid, some we immediately perceive to be either present or absent; some we only believe to be so through the intervention of the understanding. The various dispositions of our fellow-creatures towards us are of the latter sort. We have no faculties for perceiving love or admiration; but being conscious of the feeling ourselves, and recognising in others the effects which we know to proceed from them, we believe their presence upon evidence, and are affected therewith. Of being in society we cannot be conscious, if by society we mean not that of certain shapes doing certain things, but of beings which feel in some respects as we do. The existence of such beings we only believe on evidence, having observed effects like those which proceed from our own feelings, in so many instances as to make it appear that the causes are likewise similar. The same sort of evidence we have of the existence of other beings, in some respects like, and in others different from ourselves. That a Being exists endued with power and wisdom, the limits of which we cannot reach to, is, I think, more certain than that we have fellow-creatures.[347] All men, whether they know it or not, act as if they believed in a Being endued with intelligence and power and will, superior to any interference. They count on the course of Nature continuing as it is, because they know that what they have long continued to do they go on with; and rely without any doubt on its skill and ability for perfecting their undertaking, where their own skill and ability fall short. That this Being has any other attributes, we have not the same evidence. These are the ‘things within the veil’; they are κυρίως, the objects of faith. But consideration will show that the difference is not in kind but in degree, and that among what we call the things visible, motives are proposed to us to be acted on, approaching to it by degrees imperceptible.”

316 ‘“Isa. xxv. 7, 9. ‘And He will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the veil that is spread over all nations…. And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us; this is the Lord; we have waited for Him: we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation….’

‘“The business of our life seems to be, to acquire the habit of acting in such a manner as we should do, if we were conscious of all we know; and in this respect no action of our lives can be indifferent, but must either tend to form this habit or a contrary one: so that those whose attempt to act right does not commence with their power of acting at all, have much to undo, as well as to do. The craving, and blankness of feeling, which attends the early stages of this habit (‘show some token upon me for good’), makes anything acceptable which can even in fancy fill it; and it is delightful to see things turn out well, whose case seems, in some sort, to represent to us our indistinct conceptions of our own. Animals fainting under the effect of exercise, and then again recovering their strength, which that very exercise has contributed to increase; the slow and uncertain degrees in which this exercise is effected, and yet the certainty that it is effected;—the growth of trees sometimes tossed by winds and checked by frosts, yet, by the evil effects of these winds directed in what quarter to strike their roots, so as to secure themselves for the future, and by these frosts hardened and fitted for a new progress the next summer:—in things of this sort I am [altered in the MS. from ‘we are’] so constituted, as to see brethren in affliction evidently making progress towards release….”

* * * * *

‘The impression left on the mind after a first perusal of the Journal is doubtless a depressing one, both from the unhappiness which it records, and (it may be) from a fear that if we would exercise the same strict vigilance over our own hearts, or would aim at the same high mark, we might find cause for disquiet too. It is a real satisfaction to find, both at the end of the Journal that the author considers himself to have passed into a happier state, and in his Letters, that he gradually ceases to speak of his own despondency, either 317 openly to his nearest friend, or in those half-jesting hints of which his other friends must only now feel the meaning. His external demeanour, both from natural disposition and from his contempt for any display of feeling, seems always to have been so full of life and energy, that from it alone, perhaps, no change in this respect could have been inferred. This despondency we have not attempted to show in the extracts, though it does slightly appear there; but rather his high desires to “enter within the veil,” to be “hidden in the presence of the Lord,” and the mode which he took to realise them. This forms a remarkable contrast with the self-confidence and unreality which too frequently springs from the consciousness of high views. It is, unfortunately, not often that we see men of bold and independent minds, subtle and comprehensive powers of reasoning, and romantic desires, giving up, till they shall be fit for it, all notion of “influencing others”; checking, without throwing aside, their own high feelings; subduing, with a systematic humility, their impulses to express them, and submitting to learn their duty by the slow and common-sense process of “following great examples,” “studying Hebrew and the Ante-Nicene Fathers,” and in the meantime obeying scrupulously the voices of those whom they feel to be better than themselves….

‘The volume before us touches the magic keys with a bold hand; and though some of the notes which come forth are rather startling, and may be untruly struck, yet there is a meaning in them which deserves to be analysed by those defenders of the English Church who are looking about for weapons to wield, and ground to stand on. Two principal wants, then, the author seems to have felt in the English Church: authority, and richness; and that not in the spirit of a dreaming philosopher, but of one who knew that we were here not to think only, but to act; that evil was given us that we might strive against it; Truth, that we might uphold or restore it; Revelation and moral instincts, that we might know both one and the other; Talent and energy, that we might form projects, recommend, and execute them. Nor would the restraints he set on his impulses to influence others, till circumstances and a conscious fitness should call him to it, make him 318 likely to shrink from his task when he felt it given him. He seems early to have thought that his powers would enable him to serve the Church more effectually as a reader and writer than as a parochial clergyman: by acting on those minds which are to guide the masses, [rather] than on the masses themselves. To this his position as College Fellow seemed also to invite him; and the following extracts illustrate part of the spirit in which he devoted himself to this task, and the tastes he sacrificed to it.

‘“July 27, 1827.—

319 ‘“July 28.—This stagnant effusion was enough for one day, and I must not put off any longer,” etc.

‘“Sept. 9, 1832.—Also I am getting to be a sawney, and not to like the dreary prospects which you[348] and I have proposed to ourselves. But this is only a feeling; depend upon it, I will not shrink, if I buy my constancy at the expense of a permanent separation from home.”

‘“Sept. 27.—As to my sawney feelings, I own that home does make me a sawney, and that the first Eclogue runs in my head absurdly; but there is more in the prospect of becoming an ecclesiastical agitator than in—At nos hinc, alii,” etc.

‘And this introduces us to a side of his character on which we have as yet scarcely touched: the fertility, buoyancy, boldness, and versatility of his mind. It has been left unnoticed, partly because no one who was ever so little acquainted with the author, or who would read ever so cursorily the book before us, could well overlook it, partly because the peculiarities on which we have dwelt seem to have exercised a far deeper influence in making him what he was. Both the Journal and the Occasional Thoughts, though principally interesting as showing the processes by which his character and opinions formed themselves, and the depth of thought and determination of purpose on which they were based, cannot but in part show those too; but in the Letters we are flooded with the pointed suggestions, the bold historical views of a keen-sighted politician, the vigorous statements and earnest queries of one who was seeking and contending for divine Truth, and the ingenious hints, on questions of taste or science, of a man of genius who thought nothing unworthy to employ his powers which could be pressed into the service of religion….

‘From what has been already said, some general notion may be gained of the author’s formal opinions. It may be added, that he was one of those who, feeling strongly the inadequacy of their own intellects to guide them to religious 320 Truth, are prepared to throw themselves unreservedly on Revelation wherever found, in Scripture or Antiquity. Any more definite account it would be difficult to give without unfairness either to the author or to the reader: to the reader, if we omitted his more startling views; to the author, if we stated them detached and unsupported. His Letters seem to show that his opinions ran somewhat in advance of those to whom he was most closely bound. Still less should we venture to pledge ourselves to every statement and suggestion contained in the two volumes; yet we cannot but express our hope that they will be very generally read and weighed, as likely to suggest thoughts on doctrine, on Church policy, and on individual conduct, most true, and most necessary for these times.’

From ‘The Autobiography of Isaac Williams, B.D.’ Edited by his Brother-in-Law, the Ven. Sir George Prevost. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1892.

[By the kind permission of the Rev. G. A. Williams, and of Messrs Longmans, Green & Co.]

‘Keble took us into his house,[349] where I formed a most valued friendship with Froude. He was an Eton man, and at Oriel of a little older standing than myself. [We found] religion a reality, and a man wholly made up of love…. Here were many of us, taught with much pains and care by one till then a stranger, and altogether gratuitously…. Each of us was always delighted to walk with him, Wilberforce,[350] to gather instruction for the Schools, and the rest of us for love’s sake…. I spent all this vacation [1823] at Southrop, and, I think, all my subsequent ones. It was, I think, on this occasion that John Keble said: “Since you have shown me your Latin poems, I shall be vain enough to show you my English ones,” and he then lent me to read what has since been called The Christian Year. It was carefully written out in small red books. I read it a great deal, but did not much enter into it. No more did Froude, when he saw it; and, I 321 think, even long after he was averse to the publication of it. Among other things he said: “People will take Keble for a Methodist!” At that time I told Keble my favourite poet was Collins: he said there was not enough thought in him to please himself. Froude was always maintaining some argument with Keble, occasionally some monstrous paradox. He was considered a very odd fellow at College, but clever and original; Keble alone was able to appreciate and value him. If he had not at this time fallen into such hands, his speculations might have taken a very dangerous turn; but as his father, the Archdeacon, told me, from this time it was much otherwise: he continued to throw out strong paradoxes, but always for good.

‘On returning to Oxford, Froude had now taken the place of my former companions, Keble being a great bond between us. I think he took more to me than I did to him, because I had been used to more of worldly refinement and sentiment, whereas he was unworldly, and real. But still, we were much united, and became more and more so…. Froude told me, many years after, that Keble once, before parting from him, seemed to have something on his mind which he wished to say, but shrunk from saying. At last, while waiting, I think, for a coach, he said to him before parting: “Froude, you said one day that Law’s Serious Call was a clever” (or “pretty,” I forgot which) “book: it seemed to me as if you had said the Day of Judgement would be a pretty sight.” This speech, Froude told me, had a great effect on his after-life; and I observed that in the published Letters in Froude’s Remains, he twice alludes to it…. Henry Ryder (like Wilberforce) had been brought up in a strict Evangelical school of the better kind; and on one occasion got up and left a College party in consequence of something that Froude had said that seemed to him to be of a light kind. But when he afterwards came to know the deep self-humiliation and depth of devotion there was in Froude’s character, which was engaged in the discipline of the heart, he became so shocked with himself and his own opinions, that he adopted the opposite course….