Part II

., by T. MOZLEY) 398

From ‘LYRA APOSTOLICA,’ edited by H. C. BEECHING, WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY H. S. HOLLAND 402

From ‘NEWMAN,’ by WILLIAM BARRY 405

EXCERPTS FROM ‘MEMOIRS,’ by MARK PATTISON; the ‘LIFE OF SAMUEL WILBERFORCE,’ by his SON; the ‘LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF THE LATE ROBERT SOUTHEY,’ by his SON; ‘A KEY TO THE POPERY OF OXFORD,’ by PETER MAURICE; ‘JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, LETTERS AND CORRESPONDENCES,’ edited by ANNE MOZLEY; and ‘CATHOLICISM, ROMAN AND ANGLICAN,’ by A. M. FAIRBAIRN 406-408

HURRELL FROUDE

II

SOME REPRINTED COMMENTS ON HIM AND ON HIS RELATION TO THE OXFORD MOVEMENT

From ‘THE OXFORD MOVEMENT: TWELVE YEARS, 1833-1845,’ BY R. W. CHURCH, M.A., D.C.L., sometime Dean of St. Paul’s, and Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. London: Macmillan & Co., 1891.

[By the kind permission of Miss Church and of Messrs. Macmillan & Co.]

* * * * *

‘What was it that turned [Keble] by degrees into so prominent and so influential a person? It was the result of the action of his convictions and ideas, and still more of his character, on the energetic and fearless mind of a pupil and disciple, Richard Hurrell Froude. Froude was Keble’s pupil at Oriel, and when Keble left Oriel for his curacy at the beginning of the Long Vacation of 1823, he took Froude with him to read for his degree. He took with him ultimately two other pupils, Robert Wilberforce and Isaac Williams of Trinity. One of them, Isaac Williams, has left some reminiscences of the time, and of the terms on which the young men were with their tutor, then one of the most famous men at Oxford. They were terms of the utmost freedom. “Master is the greatest boy of them all,” was the judgment of the rustic who was gardener, groom, and parish clerk to Mr. Keble. Froude’s was a keen logical mind, not easily satisfied, contemptuous of compromises and evasions, and disposed on occasion to be mischievous and aggressive; and with Keble, as with anybody else, he was ready to dispute and try every form of dialectical experiment. But he was open to higher influences than those of logic, and in Keble he saw what subdued and won him to boundless veneration and affection. Keble won the love of the whole little society; but in Froude he had gained a disciple who was to be the mouthpiece and champion of his ideas, and who was to react on himself and carry him forward to larger enterprises and bolder resolutions than by himself he would have thought of. Froude took in from Keble all he had to communicate: principles, convictions, moral rules and standards of life, hopes, fears, antipathies. And his keenly-tempered intellect, and his determination and high courage, gave a point and an impulse of their own to Keble’s views and purposes. As things came to look darker, and dangers seemed more serious to the Church, its faith or its rights, the interchange of thought between master and disciple, in talk and in letter, pointed more and more to the coming necessity of action; and Froude at least had no objections to the business of an agitator. But all this was very gradual; things did not yet go beyond discussion; ideas, views, arguments were examined and compared; and Froude, with all his dash, felt as Keble felt, that he had much to learn about himself, as well as about books and things. In his respect for antiquity, in his dislike of the novelties which were invading Church rules and sentiments, as well as its Creeds, in his jealousy of the State, as well as in his seriousness of self-discipline, he accepted Keble’s guidance and influence more and more; and from Keble he had more than one lesson of self-distrust, more than one warning against the temptations of intellect. “Froude told me many years after,” writes one of his friends, “that Keble once, before parting with him, seemed to have something on his mind which he wished to say, but shrank from saying, while waiting, I think, for a coach. At last he said, just before parting, ‘Froude, you thought Law’s _Serious Call_ was a clever book; it seemed to me as if you had said the Day of Judgement will be a pretty sight.’ This speech, Froude told me, had a great effect on his after life.”[294]

‘At Easter, 1826, Froude was elected Fellow of Oriel. He came back to Oxford, charged with Keble’s thoughts and feelings, and from his more eager and impatient temper, more on the look-out for ways of giving them effect. The next year he became Tutor, and he held the tutorship till 1830. But he found at Oriel a colleague, a little his senior in age and standing, of whom Froude and his friends as yet knew little except that he was a man of great ability, that he had been a favourite of Whately’s, and that in a loose and rough way he was counted among the few Liberals and Evangelicals in Oxford. This was Mr. Newman. Keble had been shy of him, and Froude would at first judge him by Keble’s standard. But Newman was just at this time “moving,” as he expresses it, “out of the shadow of Liberalism.” Living not apart like Keble, but in the same College, and meeting every day, Froude and Newman could not but be either strongly and permanently repelled, or strongly attracted. They were attracted: attracted with a force which at last united them in the deepest and most unreserved friendship. Of the steps of this great change in the mind and fortunes of each of them we have no record: intimacies of this kind grow in College out of unnoticed and unremembered talks, agreeing or differing, out of unconscious disclosures of temper and purpose, out of walks and rides and quiet breakfasts and Common-Room arguments, out of admirations and dislikes, out of letters and criticisms and questions; and nobody can tell afterwards how they have come about. The change was gradual and deliberate. Froude’s friends in Gloucestershire, the Keble family, had their misgivings about Newman’s supposed Liberalism; they did not much want to have to do with him. His subtle and speculative temper did not always square with Froude’s theology. “N. is a fellow that I like more, the more I think of him,” Froude wrote in 1828; “only I would give a few odd pence if he were not a heretic.”[295] But Froude, who saw him every day, and was soon associated with him in the tutorship, found a spirit more akin to his own in depth and freedom and daring, than he had yet encountered. And Froude found Newman just in that maturing state of religious opinion in which a powerful mind like Froude’s would be likely to act decisively. Each acted on the other. Froude represented Keble’s ideas, Keble’s enthusiasm. Newman gave shape, foundation, consistency, elevation to the Anglican theology, when he accepted it, which Froude had learned from Keble. “I knew him first,” we read in the _Apologia_, “in 1826, and was in the closest and most affectionate friendship with him from about 1829 till his death in 1836.”[296] But this was not all. Through Froude, Newman came to know and to be intimate with Keble; and a sort of _camaraderie_ arose of very independent and outspoken people, who acknowledged Keble as their master and counsellor.

‘“The true and primary author of it” (the Tractarian Movement), we read in the _Apologia_, “as is usual with great motive powers, was out of sight…. Need I say that I am speaking of John Keble?” The statement is strictly true. Froude never would have been the man he was but for his daily and hourly intercourse with Keble; and Froude brought to bear upon Newman’s mind, at a critical period of its development, Keble’s ideas and feelings about religion and the Church, Keble’s reality of thought and purpose, Keble’s transparent and saintly simplicity. And Froude, as we know from a well-known saying of his,[297] brought Keble and Newman to understand one another, when the elder man was shy and suspicious of the younger, and the younger, though full of veneration for the elder, was hardly yet in full sympathy with what was most characteristic and most cherished in the elder’s religious convictions. Keble attracted and moulded Froude: he impressed Froude with his strong Churchmanship, his severity and reality of life, his poetry, and high standard of scholarly excellence. Froude learned from him to be anti-Erastian, anti-Methodistical, anti-sentimental, and as strong in his hatred of the world, as contemptuous of popular approval, as any Methodist. Yet all this might merely have made a strong impression, or formed one more marked school of doctrine, without the fierce energy which received it and which it inspired. But Froude, in accepting Keble’s ideas, resolved to make them active, public, aggressive; and he found in Newman a colleague whose bold originality responded to his own. Together they worked as Tutors; together they worked when their tutorships came to an end; together they worked when thrown into companionship in their Mediterranean voyage, in the winter of 1832 and the spring of 1833. They came back full of aspirations and anxieties which spurred them on; their thoughts had broken out in papers sent home from time to time to Rose’s _British Magazine_ (“Home Thoughts Abroad”) and the _Lyra Apostolica_. Then came the meeting at Hadleigh, and the beginning of the Tracts. Keble had given the inspiration, Froude had given the impulse; then Newman took up the work, and the impulse henceforward, and the direction, were his.

‘Doubtless, many thought and felt like them about the perils which beset the Church and religion. Loyalty to the Church, belief in her divine mission, allegiance to her authority, readiness to do battle for her claims, were anything but extinct in her ministers and laity. The elements were all about of sound and devoted Churchmanship. Higher ideas of the Church than the popular and political notion of it, higher conceptions of Christian doctrine than those of the ordinary Evangelical theology――echoes of the meditations of a remarkable Irishman, Mr. Alexander Knox――had in many quarters attracted attention in the works and sermons of his disciple, Bishop Jebb, though it was not till the Movement had taken shape that their full significance was realised. Others besides Keble and Froude and Newman were seriously considering what could best be done to arrest the current which was running strong against the Church, and discussing schemes of resistance and defence. Others were stirring up themselves and their brethren to meet the new emergencies, to respond to the new call. Some of these were in communication with the Oriel men, and ultimately took part with them in organising vigorous measures. But it was not till Mr. Newman made up his mind to force on the public mind, in a way which could not be evaded, the great article of the Creed, “I believe one Catholic and Apostolic Church,” that the Movement began. And for the first part of its course, it was concentrated at Oxford. It was the direct result of the searchings of heart and the communings for seven years, from 1826 to 1833, of the three men who have been the subject of this chapter.

* * * * *

‘Hurrell Froude[298] soon passed away before the brunt of the fighting came. His name is associated with Mr. Newman and Mr. Keble, but it is little more than a name to those who now talk of the origin of the Movement. Yet all who remember him agree in assigning to him an importance as great as that of any, in that little knot of men whose thoughts and whose courage gave birth to it…. He was early cut off from direct and personal action on the course which things took. But it would be a great mistake to suppose that his influence on the line taken, and on the minds of others, was inconsiderable. It would be more true to say that, with one exception, no one was more responsible for the impulse which led to the Movement; no one had more to do with shaping its distinct aims and its moral spirit and character, in its first stage; no one was more daring and more clear, as far as he saw, in what he was prepared for. There was no one to whom his friends so much looked up with admiration and enthusiasm. There was no “wasted shade”[299] in Hurrell Froude’s disabled, prematurely shortened life.

‘Like Henry Martyn, he was made by strong and even merciless self-discipline over a strong and for a long time refractory nature. He was a man of great gifts, with much that was most attractive and noble; but joined with this there was originally in his character a vein of perversity and mischief, always in danger of breaking out, and with which he kept up a long and painful struggle. His inmost thought and knowledge of himself have been laid bare in the papers which his friends published after his death. He was in the habit of probing his motives to the bottom, and of recording without mercy what he thought his self-deceits and affectations. The religious world of the day made merry over his methods of self-discipline; but whatever may be said of them, (and such things are not easy to judge of), one thing is manifest, that they were true and sincere efforts to conquer what he thought evil in himself, to keep himself in order, to bring his inmost self into subjection to the Law and Will of God. The self-chastening which his private papers show, is no passion or value for asceticism, but a purely moral effort after self-command and honesty of character; and what makes the struggle so touching is its perfect reality and truth. He “turned his thoughts on that desolate wilderness, his own conscience, and said what he saw there.”[300] A man who has had a good deal to conquer in himself, and has gone a good way to conquer it, is not apt to be indulgent to self-deceit or indolence, or even weakness. The basis of Froude’s character was a demand which would not be put off for what was real and thorough; an implacable scorn and hatred for what he counted shams and pretences. “His highest ambition,” he used to say, “was to be a humdrum.”[301] The intellectual and the moral parts of his character were of a piece. The tricks and flimsinesses of a bad argument provoked him as much as the imposture and “flash” of insincere sentiment and fine talking; he might be conscious of “flash” in himself and his friends, and he would admit it unequivocally; but it was as unbearable to him to pretend not to see a fallacy as soon as it was detected, as it would have been to him to arrive at the right answer of a sum or a problem by tampering with the processes. Such a man, with strong affections and keen perception of all forms of beauty, and with the deepest desire to be reverent towards all that had a right to reverence, would find himself in the most irritating state of opposition and impatience with much that passed as religion round him. Principles not attempted to be understood and carried into practice; smooth self-complacency among those who looked down on a blind and unspiritual world; the continual provocation of worthless reasoning and ignorant platitudes; the dull unconscious stupidity of people who could not see that the times were critical, that Truth had to be defended, and that it was no easy or light-hearted business to defend it;――threw him into an habitual attitude of defiance, and half-amused, half-earnest contradiction, which made him feared by loose reasoners and pretentious talkers, and even by quiet easy-going friends, who unexpectedly found themselves led on blindfold, with the utmost gravity, into traps and absurdities, by the wiles of his mischievous dialectic. This was the outside look of his relentless earnestness. People who did not like him or his views, and who, perhaps, had winced under his irony, naturally put down his strong language, which on occasion could certainly be unceremonious, to flippancy and arrogance. But within the circle of those whom he trusted, or of those who needed at any time his help, another side disclosed itself: a side of the most genuine warmth of affection; an awful reality of devoutness, which it was his great and habitual effort to keep hidden; a high simplicity of unworldliness and generosity; and, in spite of his daring mockeries of what was commonplace or showy, the most sincere and deeply felt humility with himself. Dangerous as he was often thought to be in conversation, one of the features of his character which has impressed itself on the memory of one who knew him well, was his “patient, winning considerateness in discussion, which, with other qualities, endeared him to those to whom he opened his heart.”[302] “It is impossible,” writes James Mozley in 1833, with a mixture of amusement, speaking of the views about celibacy which were beginning to be current, “to talk with Froude without committing one’s self on such subjects as these; so that by and by I expect the tergiversants will be a considerable party.” His letters, with their affectionately playful addresses, δαιμόνιε, αἰνότατε, πέπον, _Carissime_, “_Sir, my dear friend_,” or “Ἀργείων ὄχ’ ἄριστε, have you not been a spoon?” are full of the most delightful ease and verve and sympathy.

‘With a keen sense of English faults he was, as Cardinal Newman has said, “an Englishman to the backbone”; and he was, further, a fastidious, high-tempered English gentleman, in spite of his declaiming about “pampered aristocrats” and the “gentleman heresy.” His friends thought of him as of the “young Achilles,” with his high courage, and noble form, and “eagle eye,” made for such great things, but appointed so soon to die. “Who can refrain from tears at the thought of that bright and beautiful Froude?” is the expression of one of them[303] shortly before his death, and when it was quite certain that the doom which had so long hung over him was at hand. He had the love of doing for the mere sake of doing what was difficult or even dangerous to do, which is the mainspring of characteristic English sports and games. He loved the sea; he liked to sail his own boat, and enjoyed rough weather, and took interest in the niceties of seamanship and shipcraft. He was a bold rider across country. With a powerful grasp on mathematical truths and principles, he entered with wholehearted zest into inviting problems, or into practical details of mechanical or hydrostatic or astronomical science. His letters are full of such observations, put in a way which he thought would interest his friends, and marked by his strong habit of getting into touch with what was real and of the substance of questions. He applied his thoughts to architecture with a power and originality which at the time were not common. No one who only cared for this world could be more attracted and interested than he was by the wonder and beauty of its facts and appearances. With the deepest allegiance to his home, and reverence for its ties and authority, (a home of the old-fashioned ecclesiastical sort, sober, manly, religious, orderly,) he carried into his wider life the feelings with which he had been brought up; bold as he was, his reason and his character craved for authority, but authority which morally and reasonably he could respect. Mr. Keble’s goodness and purity subdued him, and disposed him to accept, without reserve, his master’s teaching: and towards Mr. Keble, along with an outside show of playful criticism and privileged impertinence, there was a reverence which governed Froude’s whole nature. In the wild and rough heyday of reform, he was a Tory of the Tories. But when authority failed him, from cowardice or stupidity or self-interest, he could not easily pardon it; and he was ready to startle his friends by proclaiming himself a Radical, prepared for the sake of the highest and greatest interests to sacrifice all second-rate and subordinate ones.

‘When his friends, after his death, published selections from his journals and letters, the world was shocked by what seemed his amazing audacity, both of thought and expression, about a number of things and persons which it was customary to regard as almost beyond the reach of criticism. The _Remains_ lent themselves admirably to the controversial process of culling choice phrases and sentences and epithets surprisingly at variance with conventional and popular estimates. Friends were pained and disturbed; foes, naturally enough, could not hold in their overflowing exultation at such a disclosure of the spirit of the Movement. Sermons and newspapers drew attention to Froude’s extravagances, with horror and disgust. The truth is, that if the off-hand sayings in conversation or letters of any man of force and wit and strong convictions about the things and persons that he condemns, were made known to the world, they would by themselves have much the same look of flippancy, injustice, impertinence, to those who disagreed in opinion with the speaker or writer; they are allowed for, or they are not allowed for by others, according to what is known of his general character. The friends who published Froude’s _Remains_ knew what he was; they knew the place and proportion of the fierce and scornful passages; they knew that they really 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. But they miscalculated the effect on those who did not know him, or whose interest it was to make the most of the advantage given them. They seem to have expected that the picture which they presented of their friend’s transparent sincerity and singleness of aim, manifested amid so much pain and self-abasement, would have touched readers more. They miscalculated in supposing that the proofs of so much reality of religious earnestness would carry off the offence of vehement language, which without these proofs might naturally be thought to show mere random violence. At any rate the result was much natural and genuine irritation, which they were hardly prepared for. Whether on general grounds they were wise in startling and vexing friends, and putting fresh weapons into the hands of opponents by their frank disclosure of so unconventional a character, is a question which may have more than one answer: but one thing is certain, they were not wise, if they only desired to forward the immediate interests of their party or cause. 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. Undoubtedly, they warned off many who had so far gone along with the Movement, and who now drew back. But if the publication was a mistake, it was the mistake of men confident in their own straightforwardness.

‘There is a natural Nemesis to all over-strong and exaggerated language. The weight of Froude’s judgments was lessened by the disclosure of his strong words, and his dashing fashion of condemnation and dislike gave a precedent for the violence of shallower men. But to those who look back on them now, though there can be no wonder that at the time they excited such an outcry, their outspoken boldness hardly excites surprise. Much of it might naturally be put down to the force of first impressions; much of it is the vehemence of an Englishman who claims the liberty of criticising and finding fault at home; much of it was the inevitable vehemence of a reformer. Much of it seems clear foresight of what has since come to be recognised. His judgments on the Reformers, startling as they were at the time, are not so very different, as to the facts of the case, from what most people on all sides now agree in; and as to their temper and theology, from what most Churchmen would now agree in. Whatever allowances may be made for the difficulties of their time, (and these allowances ought to be very great), and however well they may have done parts of their work, such as the translations and adaptations of the Prayer-Book, it is safe to say that the divines of the Reformation never can be again, with their confessed Calvinism, with their shifting opinions, their extravagant deference to the foreign oracles of Geneva and Zurich, their subservience to bad men in power, the heroes and saints of Churchmen. But when all this is said, it still remains true that Froude was often intemperate and unjust. In the hands of the most self-restrained and considerate of its leaders, the Movement must anyhow have provoked strong opposition, and given great offence. The surprise and the general ignorance were too great; the assault was too rude and unexpected. But Froude’s strong language gave it a needless exasperation.

‘Froude was a man strong in abstract thought and imagination, who wanted adequate knowledge. His canons of judgment were not enlarged, corrected, and strengthened by any reading or experience commensurate with his original powers of reasoning or invention. He was quite conscious of it, and did his best to fill up the gap in his intellectual equipment. He showed what he might have done under more favouring circumstances in a very interesting volume on Becket’s history and letters. But circumstances were hopelessly against him: he had not time, he had not health and strength, for the learning which he so needed, which he so longed for. But wherever he could, he learned. He was quite ready to submit his prepossessions to the test and limitation of facts. Eager and quick-sighted, he was often apt to be hasty in conclusions from imperfect or insufficient premises; but even about what he saw most clearly he was willing to hold himself in suspense, when he found that there was something more to know. Cardinal Newman has noted two deficiencies which, in his opinion, were noticeable in Froude. “He had no turn for theology as such”; and, further, he goes on: “I should say that his power of entering into the minds of others was not equal to his other gifts”: a remark which he illustrates by saying that Froude could not believe that “I really held the Roman Church to be anti-Christian.” The want of this power――in which he stood in such sharp contrast to his friend――might be either a strength or a weakness: a strength, if his business was only to fight; a weakness, if it was to attract and persuade. But Froude was made for conflict, not to win disciples. Some wild solemn poetry, marked by deep feeling and direct expression, is scattered through his letters, kindled always by things and thoughts of the highest significance, and breaking forth with force and fire. But probably the judgment passed on him by a clever friend,[304] from the examination of his handwriting, was a true one: “This fellow has a great deal of imagination, but not the imagination of a poet.” He felt that even beyond poetry there are higher things than anything that imagination can work upon. It was a feeling which made him blind to the grandeur of Milton’s poetry. He saw in it only an intrusion into the most sacred of sanctities….

* * * * *

‘Froude’s first letter to Mr. Newman is in August, 1828. It is the letter of a friendly and sympathising colleague in College work, glad to be free from the “images of impudent undergraduates”; he inserts some lines of verse, talks about Dollond and telescopes, and relates how he and a friend got up at half-past two in the morning, and walked half a mile to see Mercury rise; he writes about his mathematical studies and reading for Orders, and how a friend had “read half through Prideaux and yet accuses himself of idleness”; but there is no interchange of intimate thought. Mr. Newman was at this time, as he has told us, drifting away from under the shadow of Liberalism; and in Froude he found a man who, without being a Liberal, was as quick-sighted, as courageous, and as alive to great thoughts and new hopes as himself. Very different in many ways, they were in this alike, that the commonplace notions of religion and the Church were utterly unsatisfactory to them, and that each had the capacity for affectionate and whole-hearted friendship. The friendship began and lasted on, growing stronger and deeper to the end. And this was not all. Froude’s friendship with Mr. Newman overcame Mr. Keble’s hesitations about Mr. Newman’s supposed Liberalism. Mr. Newman has put on record what he thought and felt about Froude: no one, probably, of the many whom Cardinal Newman’s long life has brought round him, ever occupied Froude’s place in his heart.[305] The correspondence shows in part the way in which Froude’s spirit rose, under the sense of having such a friend to work with, in the cause which, day by day, grew greater and more sacred in the eyes of both. Towards Mr. Keble Froude felt like a son to a father; towards Mr. Newman like a soldier to his comrade, and him the most splendid and boldest of warriors. Each mind caught fire from the other, till the high enthusiasm of the one was quenched in an early death.

‘Shortly after this friendship began, the course of events also began which finally gave birth to the Oxford Movement. The break-up of

## parties caused by the Roman Catholic Emancipation was followed by the

French and Belgian revolutions of 1830, and these changes gave a fresh stimulus to all the reforming parties in England: Whigs, Radicals, and Liberal religionists. Froude’s letters mark the influence of these changes on his mind. They stirred in him the fiercest disgust and indignation, and as soon as the necessity of battle became evident to save the Church (and such a necessity was evident) he threw himself into it with all his heart, and his attitude was henceforth that of a determined and uncompromising combatant. “Froude is growing stronger and stronger in his sentiments every day,” writes James Mozley, in 1832, “and cuts about him on all sides. It is extremely fine to hear him talk. The aristocracy of the country, at present, are the chief objects of his vituperation, and he decidedly sets himself against the modern character of the gentleman, and thinks that the Church will eventually depend for its support, as it always did in its most influential times, on the very poorest classes.” “I would not set down anything that Froude says for his deliberate opinion,” writes James Mozley a year later, “for he really hates the present state of things so excessively that any change would be a relief to him.” … “Froude is staying up, and I see a great deal of him.” … “Froude is most enthusiastic in his plans, and says, ‘What fun it is living in such times as these! how could one now go back to the times of old Tory humbug?’” From henceforth his position among his friends was that of the most impatient and aggressive of reformers, the one who most urged on his fellows to outspoken language and a bold line of action. They were not men to hang back and be afraid, but they were cautious and considerate of popular alarms and prejudices, compared with Froude’s fearlessness. Other minds were indeed moving, minds as strong as his; indeed, it may be, deeper, more complex, more amply furnished, with a wider range of vision and a greater command of the field. But while he lived, he appears as the one who spurs on and incites, where others hesitate. He is the one by whom are visibly most felt the _gaudia certaminis_, and the confidence of victory, and the most profound contempt for the men and the ideas of the boastful and short-sighted present.

‘In this unsparing and absorbing warfare, what did Froude aim at――what was the object he sought to bring about, what were the obstacles he sought to overthrow?

‘He was accused, as was most natural, of Romanising: of wishing to bring back Popery. It is perfectly certain that this was not what he meant, though he did not care for the imputation of it. He was, perhaps, the first Englishman who attempted to do justice to Rome, and to use friendly language of it, without the intention of joining it. But what he fought for was not Rome, not even a restoration of Unity, but a Church of England such as it was conceived of by the Caroline divines and the Nonjurors. The great break-up of 1830 had forced on men the anxious question: “What is the Church, as spoken of in England? Is it the Church of Christ?” and the answers were various. Hooker had said it was “the nation”; and in entirely altered circumstances, with some qualifications, Dr. Arnold said the same. It was “the Establishment,” according to the lawyers and politicians, both Whig and Tory. It was an invisible and mystical body, said the Evangelicals. It was the aggregate of separate congregations, said the Nonconformists. It was the Parliamentary creation of the Reformation, said the Erastians. The true Church was the communion of the Pope, the pretended Church was a legalised schism, said the Roman Catholics. All these ideas were floating about, loose and vague, among people who talked much about the Church. Whately, with his clear sense, had laid down that it was a divine religious society, distinct in its origin and existence, distinct in its attributes from any other. But this idea had fallen dead, till Froude and his friends put new life into it. Froude accepted Whately’s idea that the Church of England was the one historic uninterrupted Church, than which there could be no other, locally, in England; but into this Froude read a great deal that never was and never could be in Whately’s thoughts. Whately had gone very far in viewing the Church, from without, as a great and sacred corporate body. Casting aside the Erastian theory, he had claimed its right to exist, and if necessary, govern itself, separate from the State. He had recognised excommunication as its natural and indefeasible instrument of government. But what the internal life of the Church was, what should be its teaching and organic system, and what was the standard and proof of these, Whately had left unsaid. And this outline Froude filled up. For this he went the way to which the Prayer-Book, with its Offices, its Liturgy, its Ordination services, pointed him. With the divines who had specially valued the Prayer-Book, and taught in its spirit, Bishop Wilson, William Law, Hammond, Ken, Laud, Andrewes, he went back to the times and the sources from which the Prayer-Book came to us, the early Church, the Reforming Church (for such, with all its faults, it was), of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, before the hopelessly corrupt and fatal times of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which led to the break-up of the sixteenth. Thus, to the great question, What is the Church? he gave without hesitation, and gave to the end, the same answer that Anglicans gave and are giving still. But he added two points which were then very new to the ears of English Churchmen: (1) that there were great and to most people unsuspected faults and shortcomings in the English Church, for some of which the Reformation was gravely responsible; (2) that the Roman Church was more right than we had been taught to think, in many parts both of principle and practice, and that our quarrel with it on these points arose from our own ignorance and prejudices. To people who had taken for granted all their lives that the Church was thoroughly “Protestant” and thoroughly right in its Protestantism, and that Rome was Antichrist, these confident statements came with a shock. He did not enter much into dogmatic questions. As far as can be judged from his _Remains_, the one point of doctrine on which he laid stress, as being inadequately recognised and taught in the then condition of the English Church, was the Primitive doctrine of the Eucharist. His other criticisms pointed to practical and moral matters: the spirit of Erastianism, the low standard of life and purpose and self-discipline in the clergy, the low tone of the current religious teaching. The Evangelical teaching seemed to him a system of unreal words. The opposite school was too self-complacent, too comfortable, too secure in its social and political alliances; and he was bent on shaming people into severer notions. “We will have a _vocabularium apostolicum_, and I will start it with four words: ‘pampered aristocrats,’ ‘resident gentlemen,’ ‘smug parsons,’ and ‘_pauperes Christi_.’ I shall use the first on all occasions; it seems to me just to hit the thing.” “I think of putting the view forward (about new monasteries), under the title of a ‘Project for Reviving Religion in Great Towns.’ Certainly colleges of unmarried priests (who might, of course, retire to a living, when they could and liked) would be the cheapest possible way of providing effectively for the spiritual wants of a large population.” And his great quarrel with the existing state of things was that the spiritual objects of the Church were overlaid and lost sight of in the anxiety not to lose its political position. In this direction he was, as he proclaims himself, an out-and-out Radical, and he was prepared at once to go very far. “If a National Church means a Church without discipline, my argument for discipline is an argument against a National Church; and the best thing we can do is to unnationalise ours as soon as possible”; “let us tell the truth and shame the devil: let us give up a _National_ Church and have a _real_ one.”[306] His criticism did not diminish in severity, or his proposals become less daring, as he felt that his time was growing short and the hand of death was upon him. But to the end, the elevation and improvement of the English Church remained his great purpose. To his friend, as we know, the Roman Church was either the Truth or Antichrist. To Froude it was neither the whole Truth nor Antichrist; but like the English Church itself, a great and defective Church, whose defects were the opposite to ours, and which we should do wisely to learn from, rather than abuse. But, to the last, his allegiance never wavered to the English Church.

‘It is very striking to come from Froude’s boisterous freedom in his letters, to his sermons and the papers he prepared for publication. In his sermons his manner of writing is severe and restrained even to dryness. If they startle, it is by the force and searching point of an idea, not by any strength of words. The style is chastened, simple, calm, with the most careful avoidance of over-statement or anything rhetorical. And so in his papers, his mode of argument, forcible and cogent as it is, avoids all appearance of exaggeration or even illustrative expansion: it is all muscle and sinew; it is modelled on the argumentative style of Bishop Butler, and still more, of William Law. No one could suppose from these papers Froude’s fiery impetuosity, or the frank daring of his disrespectful vocabulary. Those who can read between the lines can trace the grave irony which clung everywhere to his deep earnestness.

‘There was yet another side of Froude’s character which was little thought of by his critics, or recognised by all his friends. With all his keenness of judgment and all his readiness for conflict, some who knew him best were impressed by the melancholy which hung over his life, and which, though he ignored it, they could detect. It is remembered still by Cardinal Newman. “I thought,” wrote Mr. Isaac Williams, “that knowing him, I better understood Hamlet, a person most natural, but so original as to be unlike any one else, hiding depth of delicate thought in apparent extravagances. _Hamlet_, and the _Georgics_ of Virgil, he used to say, he should have bound together.” “Isaac Williams,” wrote Mr. Copeland, “mentioned to me a remark made on Froude by S. Wilberforce in his early days: ‘They talk of Froude’s fun, but somehow I cannot be in a room with him alone for ten minutes without feeling so intensely melancholy, that I do not know what to do with myself. At Brighstone, in my Eden days, he was with me, and I was overwhelmed with the deep sense which possessed him of yearning which nothing could satisfy, and of the unsatisfying nature of all things.’”[307]

‘Froude often reminds us of Pascal. Both had that peculiarly bright, brilliant, sharp-cutting intellect which passes with ease through the coverings and disguises which veil realities from men. Both had mathematical powers of unusual originality and clearness; both had the same imaginative faculty; both had the same keen interest in practical problems of science; both felt and followed the attraction of deeper and more awful interests. Both had the same love of beauty; both suppressed it. Both had the same want of wide or deep learning; they made skilful use of what books came to their hand, and used their reading as few readers are able to use it; but their real instrument of work was their own quick and strong insight, and power of close and vigorous reasoning. Both had the greatest contempt for fashionable and hollow “shadows of religion.” Both had the same definite, unflinching judgment. Both used the same clear and direct language. Both had a certain grim delight in the irony with which they pursued their opponents. In both it is probable that their unmeasured and unsparing criticism recoiled on the cause which they had at heart. But in the case of both of them it was not the temper of the satirist, it was no mere love of attacking what was vulnerable, and indulgence in the cruel pleasure of stinging and putting to shame, which inspired them. Their souls were moved by the dishonour done to religion, by public evils and public dangers. Both of them died young, before their work was done. They placed before themselves the loftiest and most unselfish objects, the restoration of truth and goodness in the Church: and to that they gave their life and all that they had. And what they called on others to be they were themselves. They were alike in the sternness, the reality, the perseverance, almost unintelligible in its methods to ordinary men, of their moral and spiritual self-discipline.’

[Supplementary Chapter, written by LORD BLACHFORD (FREDERIC ROGERS).[308]]

‘Hurrell Froude was, when I, as an undergraduate, first knew him, in 1828, tall and very thin, with something of a stoop, with a large skull and forehead, but not a large face, delicate features, and penetrating grey eyes, not exactly piercing, but bright with internal conceptions, and ready to assume an expression of amusement, careful attention, inquiry, or stern disgust, but with a basis of softness. His manner was cordial and familiar, and assured you, as you knew him well, of his affectionate feeling, which encouraged you to speak your mind (within certain limits), subject to the consideration that if you said anything absurd it would not be allowed to fall to the ground. He had more of the undergraduate in him than any “don” whom I ever knew: absolutely unlike Newman in being always ready to skate, sail, or ride with his friends, and, if in a scrape, not pharisaical as to his means of getting out of it. I remember, _e.g._, climbing Merton gate with him in my undergraduate days, when we had been out too late boating or skating. And unless authority or substantial decorum was really threatened he was very lenient: or, rather, had an amused sympathy with the irregularities that are mere matters of mischief or high spirits. In lecture it was, _mutatis mutandis_, the same man. Seeing, from his _Remains_, the “high view of his own capacities of which he could not divest himself,” and his determination not to exhibit or be puffed up by it, and looking back on his tutorial manner (I was in his lectures, both in classics and mathematics), it was strange how he disguised, not only his sense of superiority, but the appearance of it, so that his pupils felt him more as a fellow-student than as the refined scholar or mathematician which he was. This was partly owing to his carelessness of those formulæ, the familiarity with which gives even second-rate lectures a position of superiority which is less visible in those who, like their pupils, are themselves always struggling with principles; and partly to an effort, perhaps sometimes overdone, not to put himself above the level of others. In a lecture on the _Supplices_ of Æschylus, I have heard him say _tout bonnement_: “I can’t construe that: what do you make of it, A. B.?” turning to the supposed best scholar in the lecture; or, when an objection was started to his mode of getting through a difficulty: “Ah! I had not thought of that; perhaps your way is the best.” And this mode of dealing with himself and the undergraduates whom he liked, made them like him, but also made them really undervalue his talent, which, as we now see, was what he meant they should do. At the same time, though watchful over his own vanity, he was keen and prompt in snubs in playful and challenging retort, to those he liked, but in the nature of scornful exposure, when he had to do with coarseness or coxcombry, or shallow display of sentiment. It was a paradoxical consequence of his suppression of egotism that he was more solicitous to show that you were wrong than that he was right. He also wanted, like Socrates or Bishop Butler, to make others, if possible, think for themselves.

‘However, it is not to be inferred that his conversation was made of controversy. To a certain extent it turned that way, because he was fond of paradox. (His brother William used to say that he, William, never felt he had really mastered a principle till he had thrown it into a paradox.) And paradox, of course, invites contradiction, and so controversy. On subjects upon which he considered himself more or less an apostle, he liked to stir people’s minds by what startled them, waking them up, or giving them “nuts to crack.” An almost solemn gravity, with amusement twinkling behind it (not invisible, and ready to burst forth into a bright low laugh when gravity had been played out), was a very frequent posture with him. But he was thoroughly ready to amuse and instruct, or to be amused and instructed, as an eager and earnest speaker or listener on most matters of interest. I do not remember that he had any great turn for beauty of colour; he had none, I think, or next to none, for music, nor do I remember in him any great love of humour; but for beauty of physical form, for mechanics, for mathematics, for poetry which had a root in true feeling, for wit (including that perception of a quasi-logical absurdity of position), for history, for domestic incidents, his sympathy was always lively, and he would throw himself naturally and warmly into them. From his general demeanour (I need scarcely say) the “odour of sanctity” was wholly absent.

‘I am not sure that his height and depth of aim and lively versatility of talent did not leave his compassionate sympathies rather undeveloped; certainly to himself, and, I suspect, largely in the case of others, he would view suffering not as a thing to be cockered up or made much of, though of course to be alleviated if possible, but to be viewed calmly as a Providential discipline for those who can mitigate, or have to endure it. J. H. N. was once reading me a letter just received from him in which (in answer to J. H. N.’s account of his work and the possibility of his breaking down), he said in substance: “I daresay you have more to do than your health will bear, but I would not have you give up anything except perhaps the Deanery” (of Oriel). And then J. H. N. paused, with a kind of inner exultant chuckle, and said: “Ah! there’s a Basil for you”; as if the friendship which sacrificed its friend, as it would sacrifice itself, to a cause, was the friendship which was really worth having.

‘As I came to know him in a more manly way, as a brother Fellow, friend, and collaborateur, the character of “ecclesiastical agitator” was of course added to this. In this capacity his great pleasure was taking bulls by their horns. Like the “gueux” of the Low Countries, he would have met half-way any opprobrious nickname, and I believe coined the epithet “Apostolical” for his party because it was connected with everything in Spain which was most obnoxious to the British public. I remember one day his grievously shocking Palmer of Worcester, a man of an opposite texture, when a council in J. H. N.’s rooms had been called to consider some memorial or other to which Palmer wanted to collect the signatures of many, and particularly of dignified persons, but in which Froude wished to express the determined opinions of a few. Froude stretched out his long length on Newman’s sofa, broke in upon one of Palmer’s judicious harangues about Bishops and Archdeacons and such like, with the ejaculation: “I don’t see why we should disguise from ourselves that our object is to dictate to the clergy of this country; and I, for one, do not want anyone else to get on the box!” He thought that true Churchmen must be few before they were many: that the sin of the clergy in all ages was that they tried to make out that Christians were many when they were only few, and sacrificed to this object the force derivable from downright and unmistakable enforcement of truth in speech or action.

‘As simplicity in thought, word, and deed formed no small part of his ideal, his tastes in architecture, painting, sculpture, rhetoric, or poetry were severe. He had no patience with what was artistically dissolute, luscious, or decorated more than in proportion to its animating idea, wishy-washy, or sentimental. The ornamental parts of his own rooms (in which I lived in his absence) were a slab of marble to wash upon, a print of Rubens’s “Deposition,” and a head (life-size) of the Apollo Belvedere. And I remember still the tall scorn, with something of surprise, with which, on entering my undergraduate room, he looked down on some Venuses, Cupids, and Hebes, which, freshman-like, I had bought from an Italian.

‘He was not very easy even under conventional vulgarity, still less under the vulgarity of egotism; but, being essentially a partisan, he could put up with both in a man who was really in earnest and on the right side. Nothing, however, I think, would have induced him to tolerate false sentiment, and he would, I think, if he had lived, have exerted himself very trenchantly to prevent his cause being adulterated by it. He was, I should say, sometimes misled by a theory that genius cut through a subject by logic or intuition, without looking to the right or left, while common sense was always testing every step by consideration of surroundings (I have not got his terse mode of statement), and that genius was right, or at least had only to be corrected, here and there, by common sense. This, I take it, would hardly have answered if his trenchancy had not been in practice corrected by J. H. N.’s wider political circumspection. He submitted, I suppose, to J. H. N.’s axiom, that if the Movement was to do anything it must become “respectable”; but it was against his nature.

‘He would (as we see in the _Remains_) have wished Ken to have the “courage of his convictions” by excommunicating the Jurors in William III.’s time, and setting up a little Catholic Church, like the Jansenists in Holland. He was not (as has been observed) a theologian, but he was as jealous for orthodoxy as if he were. He spoke slightingly of Heber as having ignorantly or carelessly communicated with Monophysites. But he probably knew no more about that and other heresies than a man of active and penetrating mind would derive from text-books. And I think it likely enough, not that his reverence for the Eucharist, but that his special attention to the details of Eucharistic doctrine, was due to the consideration that it was the foundation of ecclesiastical discipline and authority: matters on which his mind fastened itself with enthusiasm.’

From ‘APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA,’ BY JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, D.D., of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri. London: Longmans, Green, Reader & Dyer, 1873.

[By the kind permission of the Rev. W. P. Neville of the Oratory, and of Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co.]

‘… Hurrell Froude was a pupil of Keble’s, formed by him, and in turn reacting upon him. I knew him first in 1826, and was in the closest and most affectionate friendship with him from about 1829 until his death in 1836. He was a man of the highest gifts: so truly many-sided, that it would be presumptuous in me to attempt to describe him, except under those aspects in which he came before me. Nor have I here to speak of the gentleness and tenderness of nature, the playfulness, the free elastic force and graceful versatility of mind, and the patient winning considerateness in discussion, which endeared him to those to whom he opened his heart; for I am all along engaged upon matters of belief and opinion, and am introducing others into my narrative, not for their own sake, or because I love them and have loved them, so much as because, and so far as, they have influenced my theological views. In this respect, then, I speak of Hurrell Froude, in his intellectual aspect: as a man of high genius, brimful and overflowing with ideas and views, in him original, which were too many and strong even for his bodily strength, and which crowded and jostled against each other, in their effort after distinct shape and expression. And he had an intellect as critical and logical as it was speculative and bold. Dying prematurely, as he did, and in the conflict and transition-state of opinion, his religious views never reached their ultimate conclusion, by the very reason of their multitude and their depth. His opinions arrested and influenced me even when they did not gain my assent. He professed openly his admiration of the Church of Rome, and his hatred of the Reformers. He delighted in the notion of an hierarchical system, of sacerdotal power, and of full ecclesiastical liberty. He felt scorn of the maxim, “The Bible and the Bible only is the religion of Protestants,” and he gloried in accepting Tradition as a main instrument of religious teaching. He had a high severe idea of the intrinsic excellence of Virginity, and he considered the Blessed Virgin its great Pattern. He delighted in thinking of the Saints; he had a vivid appreciation of the idea of sanctity, its possibility and its heights; and he was more than inclined to believe a large amount of miraculous interference as occurring in the early and middle ages. He embraced the principle of penance and mortification. He had a deep devotion to the Real Presence, in which he had a firm faith. He was powerfully drawn to the Mediæval Church, but not to the Primitive.

‘He had a keen insight into abstract truth; but he was an Englishman to the backbone in his severe adherence to the real and the concrete. He had a most classical taste, and a genius for philosophy and art; and he was fond of historical inquiry, and the politics of religion. He had no turn for theology as such. He set no sufficient value on the writings of the Fathers, on the detail or development of doctrine, on the definite traditions of the Church viewed in their matter, on the teaching of the Ecumenical Councils, or on the controversies out of which they arose. He took an eager courageous view of things, on the whole. I should say that his power of entering into the minds of others did not equal his other gifts: he could not believe, for instance, that I really held the Roman Church to be anti-Christian. On many points, he would not believe but that I agreed with him, when I did not: he seemed not to understand my difficulties. His were of a different kind: the contrariety between theory and fact. He was a High Tory of the Cavalier stamp, and was disgusted with the Toryism of the opponents of the Reform Bill. He was smitten with the love of the Theocratic Church: he went abroad, and was shocked by the degeneracy which he thought he saw in the Catholics of Italy.

‘It is difficult to enumerate the precise additions to my theological creed which I derived from a friend to whom I owe so much. He taught me to look with admiration towards the Church of Rome, and, in the same degree, to dislike the Reformation. He fixed deep in me the idea of devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and he led me gradually to believe in the Real Presence.

* * * * *

‘There were other reasons, besides Mr. Rose’s state of health, which hindered those who so much admired him from availing themselves of his close co-operation in the coming fight. United as both he and they were in the general scope of the Movement, they were in discordance with each other, from the first, in their estimate of the means to be adopted for attaining it. Mr. Rose had a position in the Church, a name, and serious responsibilities; he had direct ecclesiastical superiors; he had intimate relations with his own University, and a large clerical connection through the country. Froude and I were nobodies, with no characters to lose, and no antecedents to fetter us. Rose could not go ahead across country, as Froude had no scruples in doing. Froude was a bold rider: as on horseback, so also in his speculations. After a long conversation with him on the logical bearing of his principles, Mr. Rose said of him, with quiet humour, that “he did not seem to be afraid of inferences.” It was simply the truth. Froude had that strong hold of first principles, and that keen perception of their value, that he was comparatively indifferent to the revolutionary action which would attend on their application to a given state of things; whereas, in the thoughts of Rose, as a practical man, existing facts had the precedence of every other idea, and the chief test of the soundness of a line of policy lay in the consideration whether it would work. This was one of the first questions which, as it seemed to me, on every occasion occurred to his mind. With Froude, Erastianism, that is, the union (so he viewed it) of Church and State, was the parent, or if not the parent, the serviceable and sufficient tool of Liberalism. Till that union was snapped, Christian doctrine never could be safe; and while he well knew how high and unselfish was the temper of Mr. Rose, yet he used to apply to him an epithet, reproachful in his mouth: Rose was “a conservative.” By bad luck, I brought out this word to Mr. Rose in a letter of my own, which I wrote to him in criticism of something he had inserted in his Magazine: I got a vehement rebuke for my pains; for though Rose pursued a conservative line, he had as high a disdain as Froude could have of a worldly ambition, and an extreme sensitiveness of such an imputation. But there was another reason still, and a more elementary one, which severed Mr. Rose from the Oxford Movement. Living movements do not come of committees, nor are great ideas worked out through the post, even though it had been the penny post. This principle deeply penetrated both Froude and myself from the first, and recommended to us the course which things soon took spontaneously, and without set purpose of our own.

* * * * *

‘It was an apparent accident which introduced me to [the Roman Breviary], that most wonderful and most attractive monument of the devotion of Saints. On Hurrell Froude’s death, in 1836, I was asked to select one of his books as a keepsake. I selected Butler’s _Analogy_; finding that it had been already chosen, I looked with some perplexity along the shelves, as they stood before me, when an intimate friend at my elbow said: “Take that.” It was the Breviary which Hurrell had had with him at Barbados. Accordingly, I took it, studied it, wrote my Tract from it, and have it on my table in constant use till this day.[309] That dear and familiar companion,[310] who thus put the Breviary into my hands, is still in the Anglican Church. So, too, is that early-venerated long-loved friend,[311] together with whom I edited a work which, more perhaps than any other, caused disturbance and annoyance in the Anglican world, Froude’s _Remains_; yet, however judgments might run as to the prudence of publishing it, I never heard any one impute to Mr. Keble the very shadow of dishonesty or treachery towards his Church in so acting.’

From ‘THE CHERWELL WATER-LILY AND OTHER POEMS,’ BY THE REV. FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER, M.A., Fellow of University College, Oxford. London: Rivingtons; and Oxford, Parker, 1840.

[By the kind permission of the Rev. Charles Bowden of the London Oratory.]

Verses sent to a Friend with a copy of Froude’s _Remains_.[312]

‘The languid heart that hath been ever nursed By strains of drowsy sweetness, ill can brook The rude rough music that at times doth burst From him whose thoughts are treasured in this book. It was his lot to live in days uncouth That shrink from aught so hard and stern as Truth.

I know my generous friend too well to fear This holy gift will be unsafe with thee: Thou never yet hast had the heart to sneer At the eccentric feats of chivalry; And well I know there are cold men who deem This saintly Cause a weak knight-errant’s dream.

When thou hast marked him well, thine eye will trace Lines deep and steadfast; features grave and bold; Beauty austere and masculine; a face And stalwart form wrought in the antique mould; And if some shades too broad and coarse are thrown, ’Tis where the Age hath marred the block of stone.’

From ‘THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION,’ IN ‘ESSAYS IN ECCLESIASTICAL BIOGRAPHY,’ by the Right Honourable Sir JAMES STEPHEN, K.C.B. London: Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, 1849.[313]

[By the kind permission of Herbert Stephen, Esq., and of Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co.]

‘… In obedience to the general law of human affairs, arrived the day of reaction. A new race of students had grown up at Oxford. They were men of unsullied, and even severe virtue; animated by a devotion which, if not very fervent, was at least genuine and grave; conversant with classical literature, and not without pretensions, more or less considerable, to an acquaintance with Christian antiquity. As they paced thoughtfully along those tall avenues, to which, a hundred years before, Whitfield and the Wesleys had been accustomed to retire for meditation, they recoiled, with a mixture of aversion and contempt, from the image of the crowded assemblages, and the dramatic exercises, in which the successors of those great men in the Church of England were performing so conspicuous a part. They revolved, not without indignation, the intellectual barrenness with which that Church had been stricken, from the time when her most popular teachers had not merely been satisfied to tread the narrow circle of the “Evangelical” theology, but had exulted in that bondage as indicating their possession of a purer light than had visited the other ministers of the Gospel. They invoked, with an occasional sigh, but not without many a bitter smile, the reappearance amongst us of a piety more profound and masculine, more meek and contemplative. They believed that such a change in the religious character of their age and country was a divine command, and that a commission had been given to themselves to carry it into effect.

* * * * *

‘… It came to pass, in the Oxonian as in other leagues, that the head moved forward by the impulse of the tail. Step by step in their progress, “the Church,” whom they worshipped, changed her attitude and her aspect. She soon disclaimed her Elizabethan or statutory origin, and then made vehement efforts to escape from her Elizabethan or statutory ceremonial. She assumed the title, and laid claim to the character, of the Primitive Church, or the Church of the Fathers, and at length arrogated to herself the prerogatives of that Catholic or universal Church, which “lifts her mitred front in courts and palaces,” whether at Rome, at Moscow, or at Lambeth, but whose presence is never vouchsafed to any who cannot trace back from Apostolic hands an Episcopal succession.

‘At this stage of the history of the Oxonian league, its progress was quickened and animated by the panic which exhibited itself from one end to the other of the hostile camp. The disciples of Whitfield and of Wesley, united to those of Newton and Scott, of Milner and of Venn, and, reinforced by the whole strength of the Nonconformists, began to throw up, along the whole field of controversy, entrenchments for their own defence, and batteries for the annoyance of their assailants. Amongst the literary missiles cast by the contending hosts against each other, there are few better worth the study of those who wish to estimate the probable result of the conflict, than the _Life_ of Richard Hurrell Froude. It was launched from a catapult under the immediate direction of Messrs. Keble and Newman themselves, and, though it is a book of no great inherent value, it has a considerable interest as the only biography which the world possesses of a confessor of Oxford Catholicism. It contains a vivid picture of the discipline, the studies, the opinions, and the mental habits of his fraternity, and is published by the two great fathers of that school, with the avowal of their “own general coincidence” in the opinions and feelings of their disciple. We have thus a delineation, at full length, of one of those divines who are to effect the conquest which was attempted in vain by the Bellarmines and the Bossuets of former times. If it teaches us nothing else, this biography will at least teach us what is the real extent and urgency of the danger which has so much disturbed the tranquillity of the guardians of the Protestant faith of England.

‘Richard Hurrell Froude was born, as we read, on the “Feast of the Annunciation,” in the year 1803, and died in 1836. He was an Etonian, a Fellow of Oriel College, a priest in Holy Orders of the Church of England, the writer of unsuccessful prize essays, and of journals, letters, and sermons; an occasional contributor to the periodical literature of his theological associates; and, during the last four years of his life, an invalid in search of health, either in the south of Europe or in the West Indies. Such are all the incidents of a life to the commemoration of which two octavo volumes have been dedicated. A more intractable story, if regarded merely as a narrative, was never undertaken. But Mr. Froude left behind him a great collection of papers, which affection would have committed to the fire, though party spirit has given them to the press. The most unscrupulous publisher of diaries and private correspondence never offered for sale a self-analysis more frank or less prepossessing. But the world is invited to gaze on this suicidal portraiture, on account of “the extreme importance of the views, to the development of which the whole is meant to be subservient,” and in order that they may not lose “the instruction derivable from a full exhibition of his character as a witness to those views.” Heavy as are the penalties which the Editors of these volumes have incurred for their disclosure of the infirmities of their friend, the world will probably absolve them if they will publish more of the letters which he appears to have received from his mother, and to have transmitted to them. One such letter which they have rescued from oblivion, is worth far more than all which they have published of her son’s. Though both the parent and the child have long since been withdrawn from the reach of this world’s judgment, it yet seems almost an impiety to transcribe her estimate of his early character, and to add that the less favourable anticipations which she drew from her study of him in youth, were but too distinctly verified in his riper years. She read his heart with a mother’s sagacity, and thus revealed it to himself with a mother’s tenderness and truth.

‘“From his very birth his temper had been peculiar; pleasing, intelligent, and attaching, when his mind was undisturbed, and he was in the company of people who treated him reasonably and kindly; but exceedingly impatient under vexatious circumstances; very much disposed to find his own amusement in teasing and vexing others; and almost entirely incorrigible when it was necessary to reprove him. I never could find a successful mode of treating him. Harshness made him obstinate and gloomy; calm and long displeasure made him stupid and sullen; and kind patience had not sufficient power over his feelings to force him to govern himself. After a statement of such great faults, it may seem an inconsistency to say that he nevertheless still bore about him strong marks of a promising character. In all points of substantial principle his feelings were just and high. He had (for his age) an unusually deep feeling of admiration for everything which was good and noble; his relish was lively, and his taste good, for all the pleasures of the imagination; and he was also quite conscious of his own faults, and (_untempted_) had a just dislike to them.”’

‘Exercising a stern and absolute dominion over all the baser passions, with a keen perception of the beautiful in nature and in art, and a deep homage for the sublime in morals; imbued with the spirit of the classical authors, and delighting in the exercise of talents which, though they fell far short of excellence, rose as far above mediocrity, Mr. Froude might have seemed to want no promise of an honourable rank in literature, or of distinction in his sacred office. His career was intercepted by a premature death; but enough is recorded to show that his aspirations, however noble, must have been defeated by the pride and moroseness which his mother’s wisdom detected, and which her love disclosed to him; united as they were to a constitutional distrust of his own powers, and a weak reliance on other minds for guidance and support. A spirit at once haughty, and unsustained by genuine self-confidence; subdued by the stronger will or intellect of other men, and glorying in that subjection; regarding the opponents of his masters with an intolerance exceeding their own; and, in the midst of all his animosity towards others, turning with no infrequent indignation on itself,――might form the basis of a good dramatic sketch, of which Mr. Froude might not unworthily sustain the burden. But a “dialogue of the dead,” in which George Whitfield and Richard Froude should be the interlocutors, would be a more appropriate channel for illustrating the practical uses of “the Second Reformation,” and of the “Catholic Restoration,” which it is the object of their respective biographies to illustrate. Rhadamanthus having dismissed them from his tribunal, they would compare together their juvenile admiration of the drama, their ascetic discipline at Oxford, their early dependence on stronger or more resolute minds, their propensity to self-observation and to self-portraiture, their contemptuous opinions of the negro race, and the surprise with which they witnessed the worship of the Church of Rome in lands where it is still triumphant. So far all is peace, and the _concordes animæ_ exchange such greetings as pass between disembodied spirits. But when the tidings brought by the new denizen of the Elysian fields to the reformer of the eighteenth century, reach his affrighted shade, the regions of the blessed are disturbed by an unwonted discord; and the fiery soul of Whitfield blazes with intense desire to resume his wanderings through the earth, and to lift up his voice against the new apostasy.

‘It was with no unmanly dread of the probe, but from want of skill or leisure to employ it, that the self-scrutiny of Whitfield seldom or never penetrated much below the surface. Preach he must; and when no audience could be brought together, he seized a pen and preached to himself. The uppermost feeling, be it what it may, is put down in his journal honestly, vigorously, and devoutly. Satan is menaced and upbraided. Intimations from Heaven are recorded, without one painful doubt of their origin. He prays and exults, anticipates the future with delight, looks back to the past with thankfulness, blames himself simply because he thinks himself to blame, despairs of nothing, fears nothing, and has not a moment’s ill-will to any human being. Mr. Froude conducts his written soliloquies in a different spirit. His introverted gaze analyses with elaborate minuteness the various motives at the confluence of which his active powers receive their impulse, and, with perverted sagacity, pursues the self-examination, until, bewildered in the dark labyrinth of his own nature, he escapes to the cheerful light of day by locking up his journal. A friend (whose real name is as distinctly intimated under its initial letter, as if it were written at length) advises burning confessions. “I cannot make up my mind to that,” observes the penitent; “but I think I can see many points in which it will be likely to do me good to be cut off for some time from these records.” On such a subject the author of _The Christian Year_ was entitled to greater deference. That bright ornament of the College _de Propagandâ_ at Oxford had also gazed on his own heart through the mental microscope, till he had learnt the danger of the excessive use of it. While admonishing men to approach their Creator not as isolated beings, but as members of the Universal Church, and while aiding the inmates of her hallowed courts to worship in strains so pure, so reverent, and so meek, as to answer not unworthily to the voice of hope and reconciliation in which she is addressed by her Divine Head, this “sweet singer” had so brooded over the evanescent processes of his own spiritual nature, as not seldom to render his real meaning imperceptible to his readers, and probably to himself. With how sound a judgment he counselled Mr. Froude to burn his books, may be judged from the following entries in them:

‘“I have been talking a great deal to P.[314] about religion to-day. He seems to take such straightforward practical views of it that, when I am talking to him, I wonder what I have been bothering myself with all the summer, and almost doubt how far it is right to allow myself to indulge in speculations on a subject where all that is necessary is so plain and obvious.”――“Yesterday, when I went out shooting, I fancied I did not care whether I hit or not; but when it came to the point, I found myself anxious, and, after having killed, was not unwilling to let myself be considered a better shot than I described myself. I had an impulse, too, to let it be thought that I had only three shots when I really had had four. It was slight, to be sure, but I felt it.”――“I have read my journal, though I can hardly identify myself with the person it describes. It seems like having someone under one’s guardianship who was an intolerable fool, and exposed himself to my contempt, every moment, for the most ridiculous and trifling motives; and while I was thinking all this, I went into L.’s room to seek a pair of shoes, and on hearing him coming, got away as silently as possible. Why did I do this? Did I think I was doing what L. did not like? or was it the relic of a sneaking habit? I will ask myself these questions again.”――“I have a sort of vanity which aims at my own good opinion, and I look for anything to prove to myself that I am more anxious to mind myself than other people. I was very hungry, but because I thought the charge unreasonable, I tried to shirk the waiter: sneaking!”――“Yesterday I was much put out by an old fellow chewing tobacco and spitting across me; also bad thoughts of various kinds kept presenting themselves to my mind when it was vacant.”――“I talked sillily to-day, as I used to do last Term, but took no pleasure in it, so I am not ashamed. Although I don’t recollect any harm of myself, yet I don’t feel that I have made a clean breast of it.”――“I forgot to mention that I had been looking round my rooms, and thinking that they looked comfortable and nice, and that I said in my heart, ‘Ah, ah! I am warm.’”――“It always suggests itself to me that a wise thought is wasted when it is kept to myself, against which, as it is my most bothering temptation, I will set down some arguments to be called to mind in time of trouble.”――“Now I am proud of this, and think that the knowledge it shows of myself implies a greatness of mind.”――“These records are no guide to me to show the state of my mind afterwards; they are so far from being exercises of humility, that they lessen the shame of what I record, just as professions [of] goodwill to other people reconcile us to our neglect of them.”

* * * * *

‘As it is not by these nice self-observers that the creeds of hoar antiquity, and the habits of centuries are to be shaken; so neither is such high emprise reserved for ascetics who can pause to enumerate the slices of bread and butter from which they have abstained. When Whitfield would mortify his body, he set about it like a man. The paroxysm was short indeed, but terrible. While it lasted, his diseased imagination brought soul and body into deadly conflict, the fierce spirit spurning, trampling, and well-nigh destroying the peccant carcase. Not so the fastidious and refined “witness to the views” of the restorers of the Catholic Church. The strife between his spiritual and animal nature is recorded in his journal in such terms as these: “Looked with greediness to see if there was goose on the table for dinner.”――“Meant to have kept a fast and did abstain from dinner, but at tea eat buttered toast.”――“Tasted nothing to-day till tea-time, and then only one cup and dry bread.”――“I have kept my fast strictly, having taken nothing till near nine this evening, and then only a cup of tea and a little bread without butter, but it has not been as easy as it was last.”――“I made rather a more hearty tea than usual, quite giving up the notion of a fast in W.’s rooms, and by this weakness have occasioned another slip.” Whatever may be thought of the propriety of disclosing such passages as these, they will provoke a contemptuous smile from no one who knows much of his own heart. But they may relieve the anxiety of the alarmists. Luther and Zwingle, Cranmer and Latimer, may still rest in their honoured graves. “Take courage, brother Ridley, we shall light up such a flame in England as shall not soon be put out!” is a prophecy which will not be defeated by the successors of the Oxonian divines who listened to it, so long as they shall be [able?][315] to record, and to publish, contrite reminiscences of a desire for roasted goose, and of an undue indulgence in buttered toast.

‘Yet the will to subvert the doctrines and discipline of the Reformation is not wanting, and is not concealed. Mr. Froude himself, were he still living, might, indeed, object to be judged by his careless and familiar Letters. No such objection can, however, be made by the eminent persons who have deliberately given them to the world on account “of the truth and extreme importance of the views to which the whole is meant to be subservient,” and in which they record their “own general concurrence.” Of these weighty truths take the following examples: “You will be shocked at my avowal that I am every day becoming a less and less loyal son of the Reformation. It appears to me plain that in all matters which seem to us indifferent, or even doubtful, we should conform our practices to those of the Church which has preserved its traditionary practices unbroken. We cannot know about any seemingly indifferent practice of the Church of Rome that it is not a development of the Apostolic ἦθος, and it is to no purpose to say that we can find no proof of it in the writings of the first six centuries: they must find a disproof if they would do anything.”――“I think people are injudicious who talk against the Roman Catholics for worshipping Saints and honouring the Virgin and images, etc. These things may perhaps be idolatrous: I cannot make up my mind about it.”――“P. called us the Papal Protestant Church, in which he proved a double ignorance, as we are Catholics without the Popery, and Church of England men without the Protestantism.”――“The more I think over that view of yours about regarding our present Communion Service, etc., as a judgement on the Church, and taking it as the crumbs from the Apostles’ table, the more I am struck with its fitness to be dwelt upon as tending to check the intrusion of irreverent thoughts, without in any way interfering with one’s just indignation.”――“Your trumpery principle about Scripture being the sole rule of faith in fundamentals (I nauseate the word), is but a mutilated edition, without the breadth and axiomatic character, of the original.”――“Really I hate the Reformation and the Reformers more and more, and have almost made up my mind that the Rationalist spirit they set afloat is the ψευδοπροφήτης of the Revelations.”――“Why do you praise Ridley? Do you know sufficient good about him to counterbalance the fact that he was the associate of Cranmer, Peter Martyr, and Bucer?”――“I wish you could get to know something of S. and W.” (Southey and Wordsworth), “and un-Protestantise, un-Miltonise them.”――“_How is it_ WE _are so much in advance of our generation?_” Spirit of George Whitfield! how would thy voice, rolled from “the secret place of thunders,” have overwhelmed these puny protests against the truths which it was the one business of thy life to proclaim from the rising to the setting sun!

* * * * *

‘Penetrating the design and seizing the spirit of the Gospels, the Reformers inculcated the faith in which the sentient and the spiritual in man’s compound nature had each its appropriate office: the one directed to the Redeemer in His palpable form, the other to the Divine Paraclete in His hidden agency; while, united with these, they exhibited to a sinful, but penitent, race the parental character of the omnipresent Deity. Such is not the teaching of the restored theology. The most eminent of its professors have thrown open the doors of Mr. Froude’s oratory, and have invited all passers-by to notice in his prayers and meditations “the absence of any distinct mention of our Lord and Saviour.” They are exhorted not to doubt that there was a real though silent “allusion to Christ” under the titles in which the Supreme Being is addressed; and are told that “this circumstance may be a comfort to those who cannot bring themselves to assume the tone of many popular writers of this day, who yet are discouraged by the peremptoriness with which it is exacted of them. The truth is, that a mind alive to its own real state often shrinks to utter what it most dwells upon; and is too full of awe and fear to do more than silently hope what it most wishes.”

‘It would indeed be presumptuous to pass a censure, or to hazard an opinion, on the private devotions of any man; but there is no such risk in rejecting the apology which the publishers of those secret exercises have advanced for Mr. Froude’s departure from the habits of his fellow-Christians. Feeble, indeed, and emasculate must be the system, which, in its delicate distaste for the “popular writers of the day,” would bury in silence the Name in which every tongue and language has been summoned to worship and to rejoice. Well may “awe and fear” become all who assume and all who invoke it. But an “awe” which “shrinks to utter”[316] the Name of Him Who was born at Bethlehem, and yet does not fear to use the Name which is ineffable; a “fear” which can make mention of the Father, but may not speak of the Brother, of all;――is a feeling which fairly baffles comprehension. There is a much more simple though a less imposing theory. Mr. Froude permitted himself, and was encouraged by his correspondents, to indulge in the language of antipathy and scorn towards a large body of his fellow-Christians. It tinges his Letters, his Journals, and is not without its influence even on his devotions. Those despised men too often celebrated the events of their Redeemer’s life, and the benefits of His Passion, in language of offensive familiarity, and invoked Him with fond and feeble epithets. Therefore, a good Oxford Catholic must envelope in mystic terms all allusion to Him round Whom, as its centre, the whole Christian system revolves. The line of demarcation between themselves and these coarse sentimentalists must be broad and deep, even though it should exclude those by whom it is drawn, from all the peculiar and distinctive ground on which the standard of the reformed Churches has been erected…. The martyrs of disgust and the heroes of revolutions are composed of entirely opposite materials, and are cast in quite different moulds. Nothing truly great or formidable was ever yet accomplished, in thought or action, by men whose love for truth was not strong enough to triumph over their dislike of the offensive objects with which truth may chance to be associated.

‘Mr. Froude was the helpless victim of such associations. Nothing escapes his abhorrence which has been regarded with favour by his political or religious antagonists. The Bill for the Abolition of Slavery was recommended to Parliament by an Administration more than suspected of Liberalism in matters ecclesiastical. The “witness to Catholic views,” “in whose sentiments, as a whole,” his Editors concur, visits the West Indies, and they are not afraid to publish the following report of his feelings: “I have felt it a kind of duty to maintain in my mind an habitual hostility to the niggers, and to chuckle over the failures of the new system, as if these poor wretches concentrated in themselves all the Whiggery, dissent, cant, and abomination that have been ranged on their side.” Lest this should pass for a pleasant extravagance, the Editors enjoin the reader not to “confound the author’s view of the negro cause and of the _abstract negro_ with his feelings towards any he should actually meet”; and Professor Thöluck is summoned from Germany to explain how the “originators of error” may lawfully be the objects of a good man’s hate, and how it may innocently overflow upon all their clients, kindred, and connections. Mr. Froude’s feelings towards the “abstract negro” would have satisfied the learned Professor in his most malevolent mood. “I am ashamed,” he says, “I cannot get over my prejudices against the niggers.”――“Every one I meet seems to me like an incarnation of the whole Anti-Slavery Society, and Fowell Buxton at their head.”――“The thing that strikes me as most remarkable in the cut of these niggers is excessive immodesty, a forward stupid familiarity intended for civility, which prejudices me against them worse even than Buxton’s cant did. It is getting to be the fashion with everybody, even the planters, to praise the emancipation and Mr. Stanley.”

‘Mr. Froude, or rather his Editors, appear to have fallen into the error of supposing that their profession gives them not merely the right to admonish, but the privilege to scold. Lord Stanley and Mr. Buxton have, however, the consolation of being railed at in good company. Hampden is “hated” with much zeal, though, it is admitted, with imperfect knowledge. Louis Philippe, and his associates of the Three Days, receive the following humane benediction: “I sincerely hope ‘the march of mind’ in France may yet prove a bloody one.”――“The election of the wretched B. for ――――, and that base fellow H. for ――――, in spite of the exposure,” etc. Again, the Editors protest against our supposing that this is a playful exercise in the art of exaggeration. “It should be observed,” they say, “as in other parts of this volume, that the author used these words on principle, not as abuse, but as expressing matters of fact, as a way of bringing before his own mind things as they are.”

‘Milton, however, is the special object of Mr. Froude’s virtuous abhorrence. He is “a detestable author.” Mr. Froude rejoices to learn something of the Puritans, because, as he says, “it gives me a better right to hate Milton, and accounts for many of the things which most disgusted me in his (not-in-my-sense-of-the-word) poetry!”――“A lady told me yesterday that you wrote the article on Sacred Poetry, etc. I thought it did not come up to what I thought your standard of aversion to Milton.” … There are much better things in Mr. Froude’s book than the preceding quotations might appear to promise. If given as specimens of his powers, they would do injustice to one whom we willingly would believe to have been a good and able man, a ripe scholar, and a devout Christian; though as illustrations of the temper and opinions of those who now sit in Wycliffe’s seat, they are neither unfair nor unimportant. But they may convince all whom it concerns, that hitherto, at least, Oxford has not given birth to a new race of giants, by whom the Evangelical founders and missionaries of the Church of England are about to be expelled from their ancient authority, or the Protestant world excluded from the light of day and the free breath of Heaven.’

From ‘A MEMOIR OF THE REV. JOHN KEBLE, M.A., Late Vicar of Hursley,’ by the Right Hon. Sir J. T. COLERIDGE, D.C.L. Oxford. London: James Parker & Co., 1870. [3rd ed.]

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

‘Of Hurrell Froude Dr. Newman has written: “He was a pupil of Keble’s, formed by him, and in turn reacting upon him.” This sentence is followed by a short and striking account of this extraordinary man, to which it would be unwise in me to attempt any addition, except as it may bear on the object of this memoir. I knew [Hurrell Froude] from a child, and I trace in the somewhat singular composition of his character, what he inherited both from his father, and his highly gifted mother: his father, whom Keble after his first visit to Dartington Parsonage playfully described to me as “very amiable, but provokingly intelligent, one quite uncomfortable to think of, making one ashamed of going gawking as one is wont to do about the world, without understanding anything one sees”; his mother very beautiful in person and delicate in constitution, with a highly expressive countenance, and gifted in intellect with the genius and imagination which his father failed in. Like the one, he was clever, knowing, quick, and handy; like the other, he was sensitive, intellectual, imaginative. He came to Keble full of respect for his character; he was naturally soon won by his affectionateness and simplicity, and, in turn, he was just the young man in whom Keble would at once take an interest and delight, as pupil; and so in fact it was. I find him again and again in Keble’s letters spoken of in the most loving language, yet often not without some degree of anxiety as to his future course: he saw the elements of danger in him, how liable he might be to take a wrong course, or be misunderstood even when taking a right one. Yet his hopes largely prevailed; and especially I remember his rejoicing at his [Froude’s] being elected Fellow of Oriel, thinking that the new society and associations, with the responsibilities of College employment, would tend to keep him safe. That Keble acted on him (I would rather use that term than “formed”) is certain; and even when, in the later years of his short life, symptoms of coming differences in opinion may be traced in his letters, there is no abatement of personal love and reverence, nor, indeed, in a certain sense, of his feeling the weight of Keble’s influence; and though I gather from these that there was more entire agreement with Dr. Newman as to action, yet it seems to me that there still remained a closer intimacy and more filial feeling with regard to Keble….

‘… That Hurrell Froude “re-acted on Keble” is true also, I have no doubt, in a certain sense; it could scarcely be otherwise where there was so much ability and affectionate playfulness, with so much originality on one side; so much humility on the other; and so much love on both. It would be idle to speculate on what might have been, when the hour of trial came which none of those specially engaged probably then foresaw. Before it arrived, Hurrell Froude had sunk under the constitutional malady against which he struggled for four years. What he would have been, and what he would have done, had his life been prolonged, no one can say; it would be unfair to judge him by what he left behind, except as rich grounds of promise. This I believe I may confidently say, that those who knew him best loved him the most dearly, and expected the most from him.

‘… My readers will have observed how Keble writes respecting Hurrell Froude and his _Remains_. His death was a heavy blow to him, and no wonder: those who knew him but were not on terms of intimacy, could not but regard mournfully the end of one so accomplished, so gifted, so good and so pure; a man of such remarkable promise, worn out in the very prime of life by slow, and wasting, and long-hopeless disease. But it was much more than this with Keble: they were more like elder and younger brothers. Reverence in some sort sanctified Froude’s love for Keble, and moderated the sallies of his somewhat too quick and defiant temper, and imparted a special diffidence to his opposition, in their occasional controversies with each other; while a sort of paternal fondness in Keble gave unusual tenderness to his friendship for Froude, and exaggerated, perhaps, his admiration for his undoubted gifts of head and heart. And these were greater than mere acquaintances would be aware of: for he did not present the best aspects of himself to common observation….

* * * * *

‘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 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 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.’

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 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 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 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 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 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.’

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.

‘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., 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 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 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

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; 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 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 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 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; 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….

‘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 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 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.

‘“_Ostendent terris hunc tantum fata, neque ultra_ _Esse sinent. Nimium vobis Romana propago_ _Visa potens, superi, propria hæc si dona fuissent_ … _Nec puer Iliaca quisquam de gente Latinos_ _In tantum spe tollet avos: nec Romula quondam_ _Ullo se tantum tellus jactabit alumno._”

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

‘“_Heu, pietas! heu, prisca fides! invictaque bello_ _Dextera! non illi se quisquam impune tulisset_ _Obvius armato_ … … _Manibus date lilia plenis_: _Purpureos spargam flores, animamque [sodalis]_ _His saltem accumulem donis, et fungar inani_ _Munere._”

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. 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 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 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) 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 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, 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. 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 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 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.

‘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, 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 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 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 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.”

‘“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 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 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._――

‘What is home, you silly, silly wight, That it seems to you to shine so bright? What is home?――’Tis a place so gay, Where the birds are singing all the day; Where a wood is close by, and a river dear, And the banks they sleep in the water clear; Where the roses are red and the lilies pale; And the little brooks run along every vale.

Is it nowhere but home, you silly-billee, That the thrushes sing in each shady tree? That the woods are deep, and the rivers too, And the roses and lilies laugh at you? O there are thousands of places as well! So be quiet, I pray, and no nonsense tell.

Oh yes, but faces of kindness are there, Which brighten the flowers and freshen the air; Sweetly at morn our eyes do rest On those whom waking thoughts have blest, And guarded in sleep by a magic spell, O’er which “Good-nights” are sentinel.

Is kindness, then, so dainty a flower, That it grows alone in one chosen bower? Hast thou not many a brother dear, With thee to hope, and with thee to fear, Owning a common Father’s aid, Resting alike in a common shade?

Yes, friends may be kind, and vales may be green, And brooks may sparkle along between; But it is not Friendship’s kindest look, Nor loveliest vale, nor clearest brook, That can tell the tale which is written for me On each old face and well-known tree.’”

‘“_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 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 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….

‘It was in August, 1825, that I first went with Froude into Devonshire. We went by a steamer from Cowes to Plymouth, as described in a letter in Froude’s _Remains_ (