Part II
.
‘It was of course impossible but that the quantity and variety of censure, which was elicited by the publication of the former part of these _Remains_, should be felt by the Editors as a call for much calm and patient consideration, before proceeding, in further fulfilment of their trust, to offer these additional volumes to the world. One thing has at least become evident, which was at first very uncertain: that it was a publication of some importance for good or for evil. The notice which it has attracted, favourable or otherwise, is at least a token that the Editors were not mistaken, as partial friends are so apt to be, in their estimate of the force and originality of [Mr. Froude’s] character, or of the keen, courageous, searching precision, with which he had, though it were but incidentally, put forth his ecclesiastical and theological opinions, and applied them to things as they are.
‘But in such measure as all doubt on the importance of the publication is removed, the responsibility of it is doubtless enhanced; and it seems right to preface it with something like a fair and full statement of the reasons why the Editors have judged it, on the whole, their duty to persist in this step: not wilfully slighting any man’s scruples or remonstrances, but still thinking that the cause of the Church, which is paramount to everything else, leaves them not at liberty either to withdraw any important portion of what has been already made public, or to suppress what remains. And what will be alleged for perseverance now, will be found, perhaps in a good measure, to justify the original publication; taken, as it must be, in aid and in enforcement of the considerations offered in the Preface to the first volume.
‘And first, if there be any persons, as undoubtedly there are not a few, who think, more or less explicitly, that the mere circumstance of a book’s raising an outcry constitutes a strong objection to it, they are requested to put themselves for a single moment so far in the position of the Editors, as to imagine the case of [Mr. Froude’s] views being mainly and substantially true; and then to consider how such outcry could have been avoided. For if it be found that uneasiness, discontent, clamour, nay, if you will, permanent unpopularity, are the necessary results of a certain statement, supposing it to be true, then the actual prevalence of such feelings, however undesirable in itself, is no objection to the truth of the statement, but rather an argument in its favour, as far as it goes.
‘Suppose, for example, that the common opinions of the Protestant world concerning the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist were indeed verging as near to a profane rationalism, as these _Remains_ in several passages assume: would not the charge of superstition, mysticism, and Popery be echoed all around, against both Author and Editors, much in the same way as it has been heard for the last few months? Suppose it again true, that there is some secret but real and fatal connection between the aforesaid faithless rationalism, and those views regarding the great doctrines of Christianity and their application to individual Christians, which have of late arrogated to themselves exclusively the name of vital religion: is it not certain that the disregard (for it is rather that than actual opposition) which those views constantly meet with, at the hand of this Author, would unite against him the champions of those apparently opposite schemes, just in the manner in which we see them actually united? If it should so be that there is a large portion of Churchmen whom the circumstances of these or of former times have led to form an exaggerated opinion of the necessity and sacredness of the alliance of Church and State; to sacrifice more or less of the very being of the Church, in order, as they think, to secure its well-being: could it fail to happen that such as these would be alarmed and disgusted at the fearless uncompromising tone in which the inviolability of the Church is here asserted, and the past and present tyranny of the State, in every part of Christendom, denounced? Lastly, should there be any considerable number of decent religionists in the land, who would themselves make no scruple of professing that hatred of “asceticism” is a main ingredient in their notion of Christianity, it were little trouble to point out the pages, in this work, at which they are likeliest to be startled and disgusted: and yet it might be true, all the while, that the writer’s views are Scriptural and Catholic, and those which they have glided into, discountenanced by the Bible and the Church.
‘So far, then, as the unfavourable criticism, with which these _Remains_ have been visited, may be set to the account of any or all of the four classes now mentioned, it was of course to be expected, nor is any particular deference due to it; and the bitterer and louder it is, and the longer it lasts, the more reason may it, perhaps, give, to a considerate person, for suspecting that the words which provoked it were not altogether unseasonable. But there seems to be a fear entertained, among persons worthy of all respect, of no less an evil than encouragement given to irreverence and lightness on sacred subjects, partly by certain opinions of [Mr. Froude], which would lead Englishmen (it is feared) to disparagement of their Church as it is;
## partly by something, in his tone and manner of writing, which many
find startling, and can hardly reconcile to themselves. To these persons, and these feelings, a more particular explanation seems due: and such will, therefore, be now attempted, though in no sanguine expectation of satisfying them to any extent; yet not altogether without hope that in some instances they may be led to suspect their own misgivings, as arising from impulse and habit, rather than from sound and true views of sacred things.
‘The best way, perhaps, will be to commence by calmly recalling a few plain facts. It is no long time ago, and yet the career of events has been so rapid, that it seems far removed from us: but let us endeavour to realise for a moment the posture of mind in which sincere Churchmen found themselves, in 1832 and 1833, when the Constitution of the country had been changed by threats of violence, and the cry of Church Reform was being raised with a view to a similar process, and no person knew how much strength it might gather, or by what unscrupulous means it might be enforced. The Liturgy, in particular, seemed to be an object of attack; and the authority of Bishops was so slighted, both in and out of Parliament, as to make men apprehend that in no long time the whole functions of the Church would be usurped by the State. At that crisis, the writer of these _Remains_ felt in common with not a few others, but with a vividness and keenness of perception almost peculiarly his own, that a call was given, and a time come, for asserting in their simplicity the principles of the only Primitive and True Church: those essential rights and duties which seemed in danger of being surrendered, in mere ignorance, to preserve certain external trappings. He surrendered himself to this feeling, without reserve: he spoke, and wrote, and acted from it continually; he devoted to it what remained of life and health; and it seems to have been this, more than anything else (excepting, perhaps, an unaffected mistrust concerning the sincerity and depth of his own repentance), which caused the sort of anxiety to recover, many times traceable in his correspondence. To use the words which Walton has reported of Hooker, “he could have wished to live longer, to do the Church more service.”
‘This being so, it cannot but be interesting and useful, now that Providence has brought us a stage or two further on in the warfare which he was among the foremost to commence, to have the means of consulting such a record as the present volumes supply, of the wishes, counsels, and anticipations of a mind so rare as his, concerning the conduct and probable course of the struggle. Those who have been sharers or approving witnesses of the several gatherings (so to call them) which the events of the last six years have occasioned, tending more or less to the revival of old Church principles, will here find many a sentiment which animated them half-unconsciously at the time, not only expressed in a way to sink into men’s hearts, but brought out in its full bearings and pursued to its legitimate consequences: it was wild inarticulate music before, but now we have the words and the meaning. And conversely, events have been continually happening, which have tended in a remarkable manner to illustrate [Mr. Froude’s] remarks and confirm his prognostications: so that, already, many things which sounded paradoxical and over-bold when he first uttered them, may be ventured on with hope of a reasonable degree of acceptance. His sagacity, it begins to be found, did but anticipate the lessons of our experience. If he loved to dwell on the noble act of Convocation in censuring Hoadly, and to forebode the rising of the sun which set so brightly, the great majority of the University of Oxford has since judged a like warning, however painful on personal grounds, yet most necessary, in regard of certain opinions not very unlike Hoadly’s. If he speaks what some would call bitterly concerning any party in the State, on account of an hostility to the Church, whether conscious or instinctive, which he thought he discerned in them, it seems now to be generally acknowledged that the subsequent proceedings of that party have been such as to justify a Churchman’s aversion. If he had what were then esteemed exaggerated feelings about Parliamentary suppression of Bishoprics, we have since seen the sense of the Church so strongly expressed on that subject, as to force from the Legislature the restoration of a See which had been actually extinguished, as far as any act of theirs could extinguish it. If he deprecated the current notions about the necessity of clerical endowments, good connections, and the like, as the most effectual bar to all projects for true Church Extension; is not the Church in our Colonies, even now, applying for Bishops without endowment? and are not new Churches being everywhere consecrated, at home, with only bare nominal endowment? If he had learned of other times to regard each Bishopric as a divinely instituted monarchy, and therefore to condemn all intrusion on episcopal authority, by Parliaments or otherwise, as not only disorderly, but profane, are not the clergy of England even now, in the case of the Church Discipline Bill, asserting that same principle against the authority which, personally, they would most revere? If he had brought himself habitually to contemplate the separation of Church and State as not necessarily a fatal alternative, there have been recent declarations, lay and ecclesiastical, to the same effect, in quarters which cannot be suspected. The Church has been congratulated on having “recovered herself” so far as “to feel her own strength and look to her own resources”; on having “become sensible that however desirous to act in unison with the State, she can boast of an independent origin, and can, as she has done before, exist in a state of independence.”[382] And (to go no further in enumeration at present), if the writer of these _Remains_ thought very seriously of the importance of those arrangements in Divine Service which tend most to remind the worshipper that God’s house is a house of prayer and spiritual sacrifice, not of mere instruction, we have but to look around us on the new Churches, and new internal fittings-up of Churches, which are in progress in most parts of the country, to be convinced that on this point, also, men sympathise with him to a much greater extent than they did.
‘Other instances might be mentioned, in which his judgement, both of persons and things, has been remarkably verified, even in so short a time; but these may be sufficient to explain in some measure why his Editors should have been more than usually scrupulous in suppressing any of his deliberate opinions or forebodings, however lightly he might have chosen to express them. Long experience had taught them how much meaning and truth lay hid even in his most casual observations on such subjects; and how probable it was that those who were at first startled by them, would, on mature consideration, find them reasonable and right. And whereas it has been truly observed, both in friendly and unfriendly quarters, that the development of old principles, which now seems to be advancing, is not such as to be accounted for by the efforts of any particular individuals (it is something in the air, something going on in all places at once, and in spite of all precautions); it seemed a circumstance worth remarking, that it should have been thus anticipated and rehearsed in a single mind: a mind of itself inclined to rationalism, but checked first in that process, and finally won from it, by resolute and implicit submission to the lessons and rules of the Church in England, and rewarded (if we may humbly judge) for such submission, by a more than ordinary insight into the true claims of the Universal Church, and the means of improving to the utmost our high privilege of being yet in her Communion.
‘One who knew and appreciated him well (whatever subordinate differences might exist between them), and whose honoured name it is now more than ever a satisfaction to join with his,――the late lamented Mr. Rose,――used to say of him, that he was “not afraid of inferences”: meaning, as it would seem, that he was gifted with a remarkable fearlessness in regard of conclusions, when once his premisses were thoroughly made good. To see his way rapidly and acutely, was common to [Mr. Froude] with many: but to venture along it with uncompromising faith, was, in a degree, peculiar to himself. Perhaps it was this quality, humanly speaking, which kept him always somewhat in advance of his time, and of those with whom he most cordially acted. However, since it was in him consistent, bearing fruit in action as well as in speculation, and causing him to deny himself as unsparingly as he contradicted popular opinions, it does seem to give all views of his a peculiar claim to consideration, on the part of those who agree with him in first principles. There will always be a fair presumption, previous to inquiry, that his conclusions are the legitimate result of propositions which we admit in common with him, but which we have not as yet the courage to follow up as he did: not to dwell on the moral nobleness of such fearless and devout adherence to the Truth. It is the very description of Faith “to obey and go out, not knowing whither it goes”; and a character of which that is the principal mark, is surely not ill-fitted to exemplify what the whole Church may soon be called on to practise. So far, in his papers and life we seem to have, as it were, embodied a type of the kind of resistance due to the spirit of this age on the part of the Catholic Church, and of all her dutiful children. Could it be right, merely through dread of censure incurred, or disturbance given, to suppress such a document, providentially coming into our hands?
‘Now when the great principle of Catholicism, _Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus_, had once rooted itself in the mind of a person thus determined not to flinch from results; when he had once come to be convinced that the only safe way for the Church is to go back to the times of universal consent, so far as that is possible, inasmuch as such universal consent is no doubtful indication of His Will, in Whom we are all one Body,――would he not naturally go on and say to himself: “If I lay down this rule on one question, I shall not be dealing fairly with myself, honestly with my opponents, reverently with Him to Whom I am virtually appealing, except I carry the same mode of reasoning into all other questions also, wherein it is applicable? Accepting the Church’s interpretation of Scripture as to the necessity of real outward Baptism, I must accept it, also, as to the connection of the Gift of Regeneration exclusively with Baptism; accepting her view of the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, I must not decline her doctrine of the accompanying Sacrifice, gathered from the same Liturgies and the same interpretation of Holy Scripture; believing her concerning the genuineness of the Bible, I must believe her also concerning a transmitted Priesthood; taking it on trust from her Creeds that such and such is the only true account of the doctrines of the Bible, I may not doubt her consistent and perpetual witness that such and such are the right rules for interpreting the same holy Book; I believe, because she assures me, that Bishops only have the right to ordain; must I not believe her equally positive assurance that Excommunication is also theirs by exclusive and indefeasible right, and that it is no true Eucharist which is not consecrated by hands which they have authorised?” These are instances of the manner in which the Author of these papers reasoned; and certainly, at first sight, there seems to be much force in his mode of reasoning; the _onus probandi_ seems cast on those who demur to it. It seems, if it were not for its practical consequences, more satisfactory than the summary ways of dealing with such matters, which we find not seldom adopted; fairer and more ingenuous than the saying: “Times are altered; it might be all right then, but it does not follow that it is so now”; more reverential than the other saying: “The Fathers were good sort of men, but no number of fallible beings can make an infallible Church”; more in harmony with Scripture and with God’s general Providence, than to dismiss such portions of the ancient system as we think proper, with the aphorism: “It may be, and has been abused, and therefore is best let alone.” And having all these advantages, it seemed to him part of Faith to suppose that, in the end, it would prove also the best and most effective way of maintaining the Truth of God against superstition and idolatry, as well as against scepticism and profane exaltation of reason.
‘But further: such a mind as is here supposed, thoroughly uncompromising in its Catholicity, would feel deeply that as ancient consent binds the person admitting it alike to all doctrines, interpretations, and usages, for which it can be truly alleged; so there is something less tangible and definite, though not less real than any of these, which no less demands his dutiful veneration, and to which he is bound to conform himself in practice: that is to say, the cast of thought and tone of character of the Primitive Church, its way of judging, behaving, expressing itself, on practical matters, great and small, as they occur. For what, in fact, is this character, but what an Apostle once called it: “the mind of Jesus Christ” Himself, by the secret inspiration of His Spirit communicated to His whole mystical Body, informing, guiding, moving it, as He will? A sacred and awful truth: of which whoever is seriously aware will surely be very backward to question or discuss the propriety of any sentiment allowed to be general in Christian antiquity, how remote soever from present views and usages; much more, to treat it with anything like contempt or bitterness.
‘Should it appear to him, for example, that the Ancient Church took in their literal and obvious meaning those expressions of Our Saviour and of St. Paul, which recommend celibacy as the more excellent way, so as to give honour to those who voluntarily so abode, that they might wait on the Lord; and in particular, to assume that the clergy should rather, of the two, be unmarried than married:――he will not permit the prejudices of a later time to hinder him from honouring those whom his Lord so delighted to honour; he will consider that the same cast of thought which leads men to scorn religious celibacy, will certainly prevent marriage also, which they profess to honour, from being strictly religious. Should he find that the records of the Fathers bear witness in every page to their literal observance of the duty of fasting, and the high importance which they attached to it, it is not the titles of Jewish, Pharisaical, self-righteous, nor yet that of ascetic (more widely dreaded than all!) which will deter him from obeying his conscience in that particular. Should he perceive that the counsels and demeanour of the holy men of old towards heretics and other sinners, correspond much more truly with the Apostolic rule, “Put away from among yourselves that wicked person,” than with the liberal and unscrupulous intercourse which respectable persons now practise, for peace, and quietness, and good-nature’s sake; it is a conviction which cannot but widely influence both his judgment of other times, and his conduct towards his contemporaries. It will lead to many a sentence that will sound harsh, and many a step that will be counted austere; it will cause him often to shock those by whom he would greatly wish to be approved; and yet, thus he must judge and act, if he will be true to his own principle, and conform himself throughout to that Will of God which the consent of those purer ages indicates.
‘Another very distinguishable circumstance in the tone and manner of the early Church is its reverential reserve with regard to holy things: of all its characteristics apparently the most unaccountable to the spirit of the present age. This also we may expect to discover in a true, courageous, consistent follower of the ancients: not so much by any conscious endeavour of his, as because it will come to him instinctively, as some birds are said to contrive ways for enticing observers away from their nests. And because it is reserve, we may expect now and then to be startled at the very form of it. The nature of the thing excludes conventional expressions, and drives people, often, on such as are rather paradoxical; deep reverence will occasionally veil itself, as it were, for a moment, even under the mask of its opposite, as earnest affection is sometimes known to do. Any expedient, almost, will be adopted by a person who enters with all his heart into this portion of the ancient character, rather than he will contradict that character altogether by a bare, unscrupulous, flaunting display of sacred things or good thoughts.
‘Once more: he who makes up his mind really to take Antiquity for his guide, will feel that he must be continually realising the presence of a wonder-working God; his mind must be awake to the possibility of special providences, miraculous interferences, supernatural warnings, and tokens of the divine Purpose, and also to indications of other unseen agency, both good and bad, relating to himself and others: subjects of this sort, if a man be consistent, must fill up a larger portion of his thoughts and affections, and influence his conduct far more materially, than the customs and opinions of this age would readily permit.
‘Other particulars might be mentioned; but these which have been enumerated are surely sufficient to teach persons a little caution how they apply the readily occurring words, “overstrained, fanatical, ascetic, bigoted,” to notions and practices such as have been now alluded to. Previous to examination, they cannot be sure that any such notion or practice is not a development of the character which Our Lord from the beginning willed should be impressed on His Church. If we have not the boldness to take it on ourselves, and follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth, at least let us not throw stumbling-blocks in the way of those who are more courageously disposed! When a thing is fairly proved superstitious, uncharitable, ascetic in a bad sense, unwarranted by Scripture and Antiquity, then let it be blamed and rejected, not before; lest we incur such a rebuke as he did, who, with more zeal than knowledge, would have prevented Our Lord Himself, as these would the least of His brethren and members, from taking up and bearing the Cross. It was in love to Christ that he remonstrated; yet what was Christ’s reproof? “Get thee behind Me, Satan; thou art an offence unto Me; for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men….”
* * * * *
‘We should not, perhaps, be duly thankful for so much of the Apostolical Ritual, preserved to us by a gracious Providence, if we were not sometimes called on to take notice how narrowly we have escaped losing the whole: neither, again, can our escape be rightly appreciated, without taking into the account the tendency of the school to which our Reformers had joined themselves, and the little dependence that could be placed on their love of Antiquity, as a safeguard against that evil tendency. All this, of course, implies that whatever praise and admiration may be due to individuals, both some of the principles of the movement which is called the Reformation, in the several countries of Europe, and in parts also, the tone of character which it encouraged, were materially opposed to those of the Early Church. At the risk of prolonging these remarks, already much longer than is desirable in a Preface, a few heads shall be mentioned, to which [Mr. Froude] would probably have referred, as mainly accounting for his feelings on this matter.
‘First of all, he would have complained of their tone with regard to the Apostolical Succession; not this or that writer only, but the general body who favoured that cause, treating it as no better than a politic invention to secure the influence of Church governors, in the absence of true doctrine and visible spiritual gifts. Nor would he probably have thought this charge answered by any number of quotations from their writings, apparently tending the contrary way: because, where opposite sets of quotations may be adduced from the same writer, and from compositions of the same date, either his opinions are so far neutralised, or we must ascertain by his conduct, his connections, the cast of his sentiments generally, and such other evidence as we can get, in which of the two statements he was overruled, and in which left to the free expression of his own mind. By the same mode of inquiry, he would come to judge unfavourably of their tenets about Sacramental Grace, especially in the Holy Eucharist; about the Power of the Keys, and the sacredness of the ancient Discipline; and about State interference in matters spiritual; although in this latter point, especially, their conduct spoke out for them too plainly to admit of any construction but one. Anyone who pleases, may verify or contradict the impressions of [Mr. Froude] on these and similar points, by simply examining the remains of the principal Reformers, with such cautions as are above indicated. Until he has done so, and satisfied himself that those impressions were not merely erroneous, but such as no student of tolerable fairness could adopt, it may be questioned whether he has much right broadly and positively to condemn [Mr. Froude], for wishing “to have nothing to do with such a set.”
‘And this more especially, if he take into consideration, likewise, certain less palpable but not less substantial differences in the way of thinking and moral sentiment, which separate the Reformers from the Fathers, more widely, perhaps, than any definite statements of doctrine. 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, and involving any sort of self-denial, and especially on the great point of giving men divine knowledge, and introducing holy associations, not indiscriminately, but as men are able to bear it: there can be little doubt that, generally speaking, the tone of the fourth century is so unlike that of the sixteenth, on each and all of these topics, that it is absolutely impossible for the same mind to sympathise with both. You must choose between the two lines: they are not only diverging, but contrary.
* * * * *
‘But some say: “Whether right or wrong in his views, [Mr. Froude] ought not to have spoken so rudely of these subjects”: and this brings us to the second head of offence, his way of expressing his sentiments on grave matters, generally. Such censurers appear to forget that his feelings are conveyed to us in familiar Letters, and of course, as his other _Remains_ prove, in a different tone and manner from that which he would have adopted had he been preparing to give the expression of them to the world: not, however, more unsuited to the occasion than the epistolary tone and manner of very many imaginative persons, on points concerning which, nevertheless, they feel the deepest and most serious interest. This however, it may be thought, is only shifting the blame from him on his Editors. But it will be found that his phrases, however sportive, or even flippant, in their sound, had each their own distinct meaning, embodied his views, and the reasons of them, often in a wonderfully brief space, and could not be omitted without much loss of instruction, and frequent risk of missing their point and meaning. Like proverbial modes of speech, they were, of course, not always to be taken literally, though the principle they contained might be true in its fullest extent. Thus he once told a friend that he was “with the Romanists in religion, and against them in politics.” Again he says, in a letter to a friend: “When I come home, I mean to read and write all sorts of things; for now that one is a Radical, there is no use in being nice!” In another: “We will have a _vocabularium apostolicum_, and I will start it with four words: ‘pampered aristocrats,’ ‘resident gentlemen,’ ‘smug parsons,’ ‘_pauperes Christi_.’ I shall use the first on all occasions; it seems to me just to hit the thing. How is it we are so much in advance of our generation?”[383]
‘Next, the reader is requested to consider whether a good deal of what has startled him in that way may not be accounted for by the nature of εἰρωνεία: not mere ludicrous irony, according to the popular English sense of that word, but a kind of Socratic reserve, an instinctive dissembling of his own high feelings and notions, partly through fear of deceiving himself and others, partly (though it may sound paradoxical) out of very reverence, giving up at once all notion of doing justice to sacred subjects, and shrinking from nothing so much as the disparagement of them by any kind of affectation. This whole topic admits of forcible illustration from different persons’ ways of reading sacred compositions. There is an apparently unconcerned mode of enunciation, which in fact arises from people’s realising, or at least trying to realise, their own utter incompetency to speak such words aright. Again, of all the serious persons in the world, it is probable that no two could be found who would thoroughly enter into each other’s tones and expression. We must have a little faith in our neighbour’s earnestness, in order not to think his reading affected. A little consideration will perhaps show that most of what some might be tempted to call harsh, or coarse, or irreverent in this work, may be accounted for in the manner here indicated: _e.g._, [Mr. Froude’s] playful custom of speaking of his own and his friends’ proceedings in the language which an enemy would adopt: calling himself and his friends “ecclesiastical agitators,” their plans for doing good “a conspiracy,” and the effect of them “poisoning people’s minds”: and his use of cant schoolboy words, which no doubt has disgusted many, may be referred to the same head.
‘Often, indeed, he seemed instinctively to put his own or his friends’ views and characters in the most objectionable light in which they could be represented, as if to show that he was fully aware of the popular view which would be taken of what he approved, or the arguments against it which would seem plausible to the many; and that he was not in the least moved by it. Thus he somewhere utters a wish that “the ‘march of mind’ in France might yet prove a bloody one.” Elsewhere he regrets “that anything should be done to avert what seems our only chance:[384] a spoliation on a large scale!” Thus he habitually forced his mind to face the worst consequences or the most unfavourable aspect of his own wish or opinion, the most obnoxious associations with which it could be connected: and therefore used terms expressive of those consequences or associations. It was one form of his horror of self-deceit. Put these things together: add also the fertility of his mind, his humour, his pointed mode of expression, his consciousness of fearless integrity, his hatred of half-truths and cowardly veils, his confidence in his friends’ understanding him and allowing for him: and it will be found that they go far towards explaining the manner, just as the principle of adhering to Antiquity accounts for the matter, of what he says. But if after due allowance made for all these things, there should still remain more than we can easily reconcile ourselves to, in the way either of severity, or of seeming rudeness of speech; coldness where we expected fervour, and criticism where we looked for sympathy; we shall do well to remember, that the fault, if there be a fault, is not necessarily all on [Mr. Froude’s] side: it may be right to suspend our judgment, till we have ascertained whether these things be not in fact due to the character of Christian Antiquity, which he might be unconsciously realising in greater perfection than his age could yet bear.
‘Does there yet remain something that troubles us, something that we cannot at all explain? We must not forget (it is a deep and high allusion, but not, it is humbly trusted, altogether irrelevant to this case), that, as all other manifestations of Our Lord, so those which He has vouchsafed to make of Himself in His Saints, have ever been more or less mysterious and unaccountable. Which of the great Scripture characters is there, whose conduct, even that part of it which the Holy Spirit seems to mention approvingly, is not, in some respect or another, a riddle and a paradox to us, with our modern views? Are there not things recorded of the Ancient Church which we know not how to enter into, yet must needs venerate because she gave them her sanction? Nay, and is it not very conceivable that every one of those approved in God’s sight would be in like manner, were his history fully disclosed, “a monster” (as the Psalmist phrases it) to every other? that Faith is necessary, in a degree, for our holding by Christ in any one of His members, as it is the great requisite whereby we keep hold of Him our Head? These remarks are, of course, hypothetical: nothing is asserted of peculiar sanctity in any one: only it seemed advisable to remind men, that where there are appearances in one part of a character of holiness and self-denial in a remarkable degree, there we may expect, by a kind of law of God’s Providence, to find, in other matters, something very much beside our expectations, and unlike our own moral taste.
‘At the same time, it should not be forgotten that there are persons in the world to whom this very disposition to irony and playfulness, and what we may perhaps call a certain youthfulness of expression, serves to recommend [Mr. Froude’s] views, and attract them to him. That seeming lightness, which was natural to him, is natural also to some others, perhaps not a few: and it is useful that they should have the means of knowing that it is not inconsistent with high and earnest thoughts of things invisible, and strict rules of Christian obedience.
* * * * *
‘After all, it is not to anything that we see, or that the world is likely to see, that we look for the effect of these _Remains_. If there be any who brood over them in secret, who have found them implant a sort of sting in their bosoms, who feel that it would have been a privilege to know their author, and watch his ways of discipline and obedience; and if they had known him, to remember him afterwards, and say silently, _Heu, quanto minus est cum reliquis versari, quam tui meminisse!_ if there be any, who have an eye for all that is exquisite and beautiful in Nature and art, yet gladly turn away from all to admire any plain downright specimen of self-denial and obedience in the little ones of Jesus Christ; if any person dwell with regretful love on parents, kindred, home, friends, humbling himself all along with remembrance of past unworthiness, and disparagement of them, yet more willing, as he values them more, to part with them for the Church’s sake:――that is the sort of reader to whose judgement, if to any human, the Editors of these _Remains_ would appeal, from the prejudices, religious and political, of the day. But who they are that will so read, and how much they will be profited, may not be known in this world.’
From ‘REMINISCENCES CHIEFLY OF ORIEL COLLEGE AND THE OXFORD MOVEMENT,’ by the Rev. T. MOZLEY, M.A. 2 vols. Longmans, Green & Co., 1882.[385]
[By the kind permission of Mrs. T. Mozley, and of Messrs. Longmans & Co.]
‘If there ever could be any question as to the master spirit of this Movement, which now would be a very speculative question indeed, it lies between John Henry Newman and Richard Hurrell Froude. Froude was a man, such as there are now and then, of whom it is impossible for those that have known him to speak without exceeding the bounds of common admiration and affection. He was elder brother of William, the distinguished engineer, who died lately, after rendering, and while still rendering, most important services to the Admiralty, and of Anthony, the well-known historian, the sons of Archdeacon Froude, a scholar and no mean artist. Richard came to Oriel from Eton, a school which does not make every boy a scholar, if it even tries to do so, but which somehow implants in every nature a generous ambition of one kind or other.
‘As an undergraduate, he waged a ruthless war against sophistry and loud talk, and he gibbeted one or two victims, labelling their sophisms with their names. Elected to a Fellowship, and now the companion of Newman and Pusey, not to speak of elders and juniors, he had to wield his weapons more reverentially and warily. But he had no wish to do otherwise…. Froude’s voice combined the gravity and authority of age with all the charms of youth, for he might be at once reasoning with a senate, and amusing a circle of children…. He was a bold rider. He would take a good leap when he had the chance, and would urge his friends to follow him, mostly in vain…. Froude delighted in taking his friends for a gallop in Blenheim Park, to the no small peril of indifferent riders, for the horses became wild, and went straight under the low hanging branches of the wide-spreading oaks.
‘His figure and manner were such as to command the confidence and affection of those about him. Tall, erect, very thin, never resting or sparing himself, investigating and explaining with unwearied energy, incisive in his language, and with a certain fiery force of look and tone, he seemed a sort of angelic presence to weaker natures. He slashed at the shams, phrases, and disguises in which the lazy or the pretentious veil their real ignorance or folly. His features readily expressed every varying mood of playfulness, sadness, and awe. There were those about him who would rather writhe under his most cutting sarcasms than miss their part in the workings of his sympathy and genius.
‘Froude was a Tory, with that transcendental idea of the English gentleman which forms the basis of Toryism. He was a High Churchman of the uncompromising school, very early taking part with Anselm, Becket, Laud, and the Nonjurors. Woe to anyone who dropped in his hearing such phrases as the Dark Ages, superstition, bigotry, right of private judgement, enlightenment, march of mind, or progress. When a stray man of science fell back on “law,” or a “subtle medium,” or any other device for making matter its own lord and master, it was as if a fox had broken cover: there ensued a chase and no mercy. Luxury, show, and even comfort he despised and denounced. He very consistently urged that the expenses of Eton should be kept down so low as to enable every ordinary incumbent to send his sons there to be trained for the ministry. All his ideas of College life were frugal and ascetic. Having need of a press for his increasing papers and books, he had one made of plain deal. It must have been Woodgate who came in one day, and finding some red chalk, ornamented the press with grotesque figures, which long were there. Froude and Newman induced several of the Fellows to discontinue wine in the Common Room. As they had already had a glass or two at the high table, they did not require more. There was only one objection to the discontinuance, but it was fatal at last; and that was its inconvenience when strangers were present. This preference of tea to wine was no great innovation in Oriel. When I came up at Easter, 1825, one of the first standing jokes against the College, all over the University, was the “Oriel teapot,” supposed to be always ready, the centre of the Oriel circle, and its special inspiration. How there ever came to be such an idea I cannot guess, but wherever I went, when I passed the wine, I was asked whether I would not prefer some tea, much to the amusement of the table.
‘Self-renunciation in every form [Froude] could believe in; most of all in a gentleman, particularly one of a good Devonshire family. His acquaintance with country gentlemen had been special, perhaps fortunate. He had not been in the north[386] of England, in the eastern counties, or in the midlands. It was therefore in perfect simplicity that, upon hearing one day the description of a new member in the Reformed Parliament, he exclaimed: “Fancy a gentleman not knowing Greek!” I chanced one day to drop, most inconsiderately, that all were born alike, and that they were made what they are by circumstances and education. Never did I hear the end of that. No retraction or qualification would avail….
‘… In July, 1832, the _History of the Arians_ was ready for the press, and as Newman was now relieved of his College duties, he was more a man of leisure than he had ever been, and was also in more need of rest. Hurrell Froude (as Richard was always called, though there was another Hurrell in the family) had now to submit to be ruled by his anxious relatives. He must spend the winter on the Mediterranean and its shores, … and Newman was easily persuaded to go with him. In these days, it requires little persuasion to induce ordinary people who happen to be free from pressing engagements, to accept the offer of a Continental trip, especially southward, in the winter. But this did rather take Newman’s friends by surprise: the only reason they could suppose was his great anxiety for Hurrell Froude…. He never made a tour for pleasure’s sake, for health’s sake, or for change’s sake. He did move about a good deal, but it was to the country parsonages to which so many of his friends were early relegated….
‘… It must have been soon after Froude’s return from the Mediterranean that I had with him one of our old talks about architecture. He was as devoted to science and as loyal to it as any materialist could be. But architecture and science are very apt to be at variance, and Froude was always disposed to side with the latter. As for Greek architecture, there is no science in it except the mystery of proportion and a certain preternatural and overpowering conception of beauty. The Temple of Egesta, which won the hearts of our travellers, has no more science in its construction than Stonehenge. But Roman architecture was for all the world, for its gods as well as for its mortals. The arch, and still more the vault, were mighty bounds into the time to come.
‘Always leaning on tradition where possible, Froude wished to believe the pointed arch the natural suggestion of a row of round arches seen in perspective. Of course, a deep round arch in a thick wall only shows its roundness when you stand directly before it, but seems pointed from any other direction. I remember ventilating this idea to Sir Richard Westmacott and Turner, the great painter, at the former’s table, and I remember also the great contempt with which the latter dismissed such mechanical ideas from the realm of the picturesque. But it was the dome that chiefly exercised Froude’s mind. It was a positive pain to him that so grand a building as the Parthenon should have been constructed, as he believed, in such ignorance of science. His notion was that if Agrippa had known the qualities of the catenary curve he would have used it, instead of the semi-circular curve: that is, in this instance, the spherical vault…. Had any common utilitarian made such a suggestion I should not have thought it worth notice. I only mention it as showing the scientific character of Froude’s tastes. The objections are obvious and overwhelming. In the first place, beauty must lead in architecture, and construction must obey…. Spherical domes are the crux and the pitfall of architecture. They involve false construction and positive deception…. Froude had a soul for beauty; but he did not like shams. He did not like a thing to seem what it was not. Few buildings are prepared to stand such a test. Amiens Cathedral, for example, the first love of the English tourist, is nothing more than an iron cage filled in with stone…. Robert Wilberforce had been much impressed with Cologne Cathedral and with the galleries of early art at Munich. It is an illustration of the turning of the tide, and of the many smaller causes contributing to the Movement, that in 1829, German agents (one of them with a special introduction to Robert Wilberforce) filled Oxford with very beautiful and interesting tinted lithographs of mediæval paintings, which have probably, long ere this, found their way to a thousand parsonages: a good many to Brompton Oratory!… About the same time, there came an agent from Cologne with very large and beautiful reproductions of the original design for the Cathedral, which it was proposed to set to work on, with a faint hope of completing it before the end of the century. Froude gave thirty guineas for a set of the drawings, went wild over them, and infected not a few of his friends with mediæval architecture. As an instance of the way in which religious sentiment was now beginning to be disassociated from practical bearings and necessities, Froude would frequently mention the exquisitely finished details at York Minster and other Churches, in situations where no eye but the eye of Heaven could possibly reach them…. He was most deeply interested in architecture, but it is plain that he was more penetrated and inspired by St. Peter’s[387] than even by Cologne Cathedral. After spending three days with me in taking measurements, tracings, mouldings, and sketches of St. Giles at Oxford, one of the purest specimens of Early English, he devoted a good deal of time at Barbados to designing some homely Tuscan addition to Codrington College….
‘It was now [1833] deep in Long Vacation, but no period in the annals of Oxford was ever more pregnant with consequences than the next two months. The returning travellers had lost time. The world had got the start of them, and they had to make up for it. Froude’s imagination teemed with new ideas, new projects, topics likely to tell or worth trying; to be tried, indeed, and found variously successful. They came from him like a shower of meteors, bursting out of a single spot in a clear sky, for they had been pent up. Every post had brought the travellers some account of fresh “atrocities.” _The Examiner_ was the only paper that talked sense. Conservative Churchism Froude now utterly abhorred. In passing through France, he had listened with hopefulness to the dream that a deeper descent into republicanism than that represented by Louis Philippe, would land that country in High Churchism. How could the Church of England now be saved? By working out the oath of canonical obedience? By a lay synod, pending the apostasy of Parliament? By a race of clergy living less like country gentlemen? By dealing in some way or other with the appointment of Bishops? By a systematic revival of religion in large towns; in
## particular, by colleges of unmarried priests? By Excommunication? By
working upon the _pauperes Christi_? By writing up the early Puritans, who had so much to say for themselves against the tyranny of Elizabeth? By preaching Apostolic Succession? By the high sacramental doctrine? By attacking State interference in matters spiritual? By an apostolic vocabulary giving everything its right name? By recalling the memory of the Gregorian age?
‘It was perhaps a happy diversion of his thoughts that he had so much to say on other topics, such as architecture, and the construction of ships and dock-gates. It was now plain that he had brought home with him not only his own fervid temperament, but some of the heat of sunny climes, where indeed he had not taken proper care of his health, or any care at all. Like most other Englishmen, he would not be indoors by sunset, or put on warmer clothing when the thermometer dropped 20 or 30°. It happened to be an exceptionally cold winter in the Mediterranean. As far as regards health, the experiment had been a failure.
‘One thing, however, is quite clear from his Letters and other remains; and, as he was all this time somewhat in advance of Newman, it has a bearing on his mental history. Froude came home even more utterly set against Roman Catholics than he had been before. His conclusion was that they held the Truth in unrighteousness; that they were “wretched Tridentines everywhere,” and of course, ever since the Reformation; that the conduct and behaviour of the clergy was such that it was impossible they could believe what they professed, that they were idolaters in the sense of substituting easy and good-natured divinities for the God of Truth and Holiness.
‘Froude stayed in England just long enough to take a present part in the great Movement, and to contribute to it, and then, as he sorrowfully said of himself, “like the man who ‘fled full soon, on the first of June, but bade the rest keep fighting,’” he found himself compelled by his friends to leave England for the West Indies.
‘All these vivid expressions, delivered with the sincerity of a noble child or a newly-converted savage, chimed in with Newman’s state of feeling, and struck deep into his very being, to bring forth fruit. Yet in neither Froude nor Newman could now be discovered the least suspicion of what these outbursts might lead to, for at every point they found Rome irreconcilable and impossible.
* * * * *
‘Froude, who had now bidden farewell to Toryism, much in the same key as he had written of old Tyre and the Cities of the Plain, was contributing to the _Tracts_, from Barbados, and also freely criticising them when they seemed to him to temporise, or to fall into modern conventionalisms. In fact he was keeping Newman, nothing loth, up to the mark.
‘In May, 1835, he returned from Barbados. On landing, he found a letter from Newman calling him to Oxford, where there were several friends soon to part for the Long Vacation. His brother Anthony was summoned from his private tutor, Mr. Hubert Cornish. Froude came, full of energy and fire, sunburnt, but a shadow. The tale of his health was soon told. He had a “button in his throat” which he could not get rid of, but he talked incessantly. With a positive hunger for intellectual difficulties, he had been studying Babbage’s calculating machine, and he explained, at a pace which seemed to accelerate itself, its construction, its performances, its failures, and its certain limits. Few, if any, could follow him, still less could they find an opening for aught they had to say, or to beg a minute’s law. He never could realise the laggard pace of duller intelligences. I have not the least doubt he did his best to explain Babbage’s machine to his black Euclid class at Codrington College, and that without ever ascertaining the result in their minds….
‘… Froude was brimful of irony, and always ready to surprise and even shock men of a slower temperament, when he could by a smile smooth or disarm them. As he talked, so he wrote in his letters. The Editors of his _Remains_ were under a temptation, which they construed into a necessity, to reproduce him as he really had been, to the very words and the life, and let his words take their chance. Upon the whole, they were right; for no one ever charged, or could now charge, on Froude, that his expressions had brought anyone to Rome, or could doubt that Froude himself was Anglican to the last….
‘… There had never been seen at Oxford, indeed seldom anywhere, so large and noble a sacrifice of the most precious gifts and powers to a sacred cause. The men who were devoting themselves to it were not bred for the work, or from one school. They were not literary toilers or adventurers glad of a chance, or veterans ready to take to one task as lightly as to another, equally zealous to do their duty, and equally indifferent to the form. They were not men of the common rank, casting a die for promotion. They were not levies or conscripts, but in every sense volunteers. Pusey, Keble, and Newman had each an individuality capable of a development, and a part beyond that of any former scholar, poet, or theologian in the Church of England. Each lost quite as much as he gained by the joint action of the three. It is hard to say what Froude might have been, or might not have been, had he lived but a few more years, and been content to cast in his lot with common mortals bound by conditions of place and time.’
From ‘THE BRITISH CRITIC AND QUARTERLY THEOLOGICAL REVIEW,’ April, 1840. [By the Rev. T. MOZLEY.][388]
‘Mr. Froude’s Editors have now taken another step in what they consider their sacred duty to their friend who is not dead, but sleepeth, and to the Church, by presenting the Catholic reader with the second instalment of his _Remains_. The contents of the present collection are, like those of the first, very miscellaneous, and rather fragments and sketches than complete compositions. This, of course, might be expected in the work of a man whose days were few, and interrupted by illness, if indeed that may be called an interruption which, at least all the period in which the pages before us were written, was every day sensibly drawing him to his grave. In Mr. Froude’s case, however, we cannot set down much of this incompleteness to the score of illness. The strength of his religious impressions, the boldness and clearness of his views, his long habits of self-denial, and his unconquerable energy of mind, triumphed over weakness and decay, till men with all their health and strength about them might gaze upon his attenuated form, struck with a certain awe of wonderment at the brightness of his wit, the intensenesss of his mental vision, and the iron strength of his argument. It will perhaps be giving a truer account of the state in which these papers appear, to say something of the sort of intention with which we conceive they were written. If it is permitted so to apply the words, they were the outpourings of a soul consumed with zeal for the house of God. The author had that in him which he could not suppress, which of itself struggled for utterance; he also was conscious that the night was fast approaching in which no man can work. Yet the good work which he believed had been prepared for him to do was somewhat in advance of his own day; and he felt no temptation to square, or round, and soften and disguise the awful themes that glowed within him, till they should be perfectly within the taste and compass of the men and times he lived to see…. With no anxiety, then, for present effect, and no embarrassing reference to any particular set of readers, he let his spirit take its own free course. He only desired to spare no labour of thought that was necessary for a thorough elucidation of his views, to detect the lurking fallacy both in his own and in others’ minds, and set the whole matter in the clearness of noonday. He wrote as he thought and felt.
‘… We will venture a remark or two with regard to that ironical turn which certainly does appear in various shapes in the first Part of these _Remains_. Unpleasant as irony may sometimes be, there need not go with it, and in this instance there did not go with it, the smallest real asperity of temper. Who that remembers the inexpressible sweetness of his smile, or the deep and melancholy pity with which he would speak of those whom he felt to be the victims of modern delusion, would not be forward to contradict such a suspicion? Such expressions, we will venture to say, and not harshness, or anger, or gloom, animate the features of that countenance which will never cease to haunt the memory of those who knew him. His irony arose from that peculiar mode in which he viewed all earthly things, himself and all that was dear to him not excepted. It was his poetry. Irony is, indeed, the natural way in which men of high views and keen intellect view the world: they cannot find middle terms of controversy with men of ordinary views; they feel a gulf between them and the world; they cannot descend to the level of lower views, or raise others from that level to their own. As, therefore, there is no common ground which they can seriously or really assume with inferior and worldly minds, they fall into a way of pretending to assume common notions, and reasoning on them with unreal seriousness, in order to expose them. They cannot suppress a smile at the false assumptions and pretensions and hopes of this perishing world. The same temper leads them to assume, for the purpose of mirth, or argument, or self-discipline (which you please), the very worst that the world can possibly think of themselves, their own views and designs. Irony, in fact, seems only an ethical expression of the logical _reductio ad absurdum_, as applied to matters of taste, morality, and religion. Great examples have shown it to be compatible with real humility and wide benevolence; though, like many other peculiarities of style, such as depth of reflection, subtlety of reasoning, great affectionateness, poetry, or humour, it may only be understood by those who have something corresponding in themselves.
‘… As to the author now immediately before us … while we expect certainly a great effect upon the religion of the day from a mind so singularly gifted as his, we certainly do not expect, and never have expected, a sudden and perceptible effect. Views so bold, so original, so uncompromising as his, seem to float upon the surface of the current notions of the age as oil upon the waters; they seem to have no affinity to things as they are, and to be without a medium of
## acting upon them. We do not, then, look for any great extension of Mr.
Froude’s works or name for a long time; we are prepared to think that when talked of, it will be but objectively, as it may be called, as a phenomenon too far removed from the speakers to interest them or affect them; as what they have just heard of, or hardly seen. But all the while a secret influence may be extending itself: persons may adopt his views who are better able and willing to dilute and temper them to the feelings of the many; the tone of religious opinion and the standard of recognised principles may gradually be rising; popular errors or assumptions may be silently dropped; and numbers talk “Froudism,” as it is called, who neither know the source of their own views, nor will credit it when taxed with it. We are able to point at this very time to two remarkable instances of deep thinkers, with one of whom we have no, and with the other but faint sympathy, Bentham and Coleridge, but whom we must still allow to be unusual minds, the chief philosophers of their day, who yet in their lifetime were not understood, or appreciated, and have at length grown into celebrity, and are receiving the suitable reward of their intellectual powers, by means of what may be called the atmosphere of congenial thought which they have at length formed around them. They have created the medium in which their voices would sound, and then have been heard far and near. A like result, in the cause of Truth, not of worldly philosophy, we hope awaits the author of these volumes.’[389]
From ‘LYRA APOSTOLICA,’ edited by H. C. BEECHING, M.A., Professor of Pastoral Theology at King’s College, with an Introduction by H. S. HOLLAND, M.A., Canon and Precentor of S. Paul’s. London: Methuen & Co. [The Library of Devotion.]
[By the kind permission of the Rev. H. C. Beeching, the Rev. H. S. Holland, and Messrs Methuen & Co.].
[I. _From Canon Scott Holland’s Introduction._]
‘“It was at Rome that we began the _Lyra Apostolica_. The motto shows the feeling of both Froude and myself at the time. We borrowed from M. Bunsen a _Homer_, and Froude chose the words in which Achilles, on returning to the battle, says: ‘You shall know the difference, now that I am back again.’”[390] So wrote Dr. Newman in the _Apologia_, and the words give exactly the note of the temper with which the book still tingles from cover to cover. It sprang out of a critical hour in which the force of an historical movement first found speech. It was an hour of high passion that had been gathering for some onset dimly foreseen, and had now, at last, won free vent, and had flung itself out in articulate defiance…. With the defiance, goes also a strong note of confidence. The men who write, however dark their outlook seems to be, speak as those who see their way, and have made their choice, and have found their speech, and have no doubt at all about the issue. There was a certain rapture of recklessness about them at the time, such as belongs to young souls who have let themselves go, under the inspiration of a high adventure. They have burned their boats. There is no going back. Forward all hearts are set. The opportunity is come. It is now or never. Hurrell Froude was the embodiment to them of this spirit of confidence, with its tinge of audacity. He had the glow and the fascination of a man consecrated to a cause. He wrote very little of the book, but his touch is on it everywhere. And in a poem like “The Watchman,” with its splendid swing and radiant courage, we can see how the subtler brain of Newman was swept by the fire and force of the man who was to him like an inspiration.
‘“Faint not, and fret not for threatened woe, Watchman on Truth’s grey height! Few tho’ the faithful and fierce tho’ the foe, Weakness is aye Heaven’s might.
Infidel Ammon and niggard Tyre, (Ill-attuned pair!) unite; Some work for love, and some work for hire; But weakness shall be Heaven’s might.
* * * * *
Quail not, and quake not, thou Warder bold, Be there no friend in sight: Turn thee to question the days of old, When weakness was aye Heaven’s might.
* * * * *
Time’s years are many, Eternity, one; And One is the Infinite. The chosen are few, few the deeds well done: For scantness is still Heaven’s might.”
‘And with Froude, too, is to be associated much of the stress laid on personal discipline which so deeply marks the poems, and which was so congenial to both Newman and Keble…. All the heart of the men comes out in this cry for control, for austerity. It expressed their revolt against the glib and shallow tolerance of the popular religion, and the loose and boneless sentimentality of the prevailing Evangelicalism. They were determined to show that religion was a school of character, keen, serious, and real, which claimed not merely the feeling or the reason, but rather the entire manhood, so that every element and capacity were to be brought into subjection under the law of Christ, and to be governed in subordination to the supreme purpose of the Redemptive Will. No labour could be too minute or too precise, which was needful to bend the complete body of energies under the yoke of this dedicated service. Hurrell Froude’s diary, edited by Newman and Keble, startled the easy-going world of the Thirties by its exhibition of the thoroughness and the rigour and the precision with which this self-discipline had been carried out. Such a temper of mind was, of course, capable of becoming morbid, strained, unnatural. And in the hands of smaller men, it would rapidly show traces of this. But here, in the _Lyra_, it is still fresh and clean; and the men themselves who are under its austere fascination are so abounding in vitality, and so rich in personal distinction, and so abhorrent of anything pedantic or conventional, that the record of it cannot but brace us into wholesome alarm.’
[II. _From the Rev. H. C. Beeching’s Critical Note._]
‘Of the one hundred and seventy-nine pieces in the collected volume [_Lyra Apostolica_] (and all but two of those published in _The British Magazine_ were reprinted), Newman wrote one hundred and nine, Keble forty-six, Isaac Williams nine, Hurrell Froude eight, J. W. Bowden six, and R. I. Wilberforce one. To speak of the lesser contributions first. Robert Wilberforce’s single contribution is not
## particularly happy…. Mr. Bowden’s poems are not so infelicitous in
substance, but they leave much to desire in other ways…. The contributions of Isaac Williams consist of a few translations and critical sonnets. Altogether of a higher stamp are the poems by Hurrell Froude. No one could accuse that fiery spirit of being commonplace; and perhaps because verse composition in English was not a constant exercise with him, the few poems he wrote for the _Lyra_ have a free grace, as well as a lyric intensity that removes them from the rank of the ordinary imitations of Keble. In XXXVI. [“Weakness of Nature”] he strikes a note that recalls Blake:
‘“Sackcloth is a girdle good: O bind it round thee still! Fasting, it is Angels’ food; And Jesus loved the night-air chill.”
‘In the “Dialogue between the Old and New Self” (LXXIX.), he is an apt pupil of Andrew Marvell.
‘“NEW SELF.
Why sittest thou on that sea-girt rock, With downward look and sadly-dreaming eye? Playest thou beneath with Proteus’ flock, Or with the far-bound sea-bird wouldst thou fly?
OLD SELF.
I list the splash, so clear and chill, Of yon old fisher’s solitary oar; I watch the waves, that rippling still, Chase one another o’er the marble shore.”
‘He uses his fisher again, to give effect, in the poem on Tyre (CXXIX.):
‘“Now on that shore, a lonely quest, Some dripping fisherman may rest, Watching on rock or naked stone His dark net spread before the sun; Unconscious of the dooming lay.”
‘Froude’s sonnets are some of the best in the book: the one entitled “Sight against Faith” (CXXXVI.), supposed to be addressed to Lot by his sons-in-law, being an especially vivid piece of imagination.’
‘NEWMAN,’ by WILLIAM BARRY. (Literary Lives.) London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1904.
[By the kind permission of the Rev. Dr. Barry, and of Messrs. Hodder & Stoughton.]
‘Keble was an elegant scholar, from whose rarely-opened lips pearls and diamonds of wisdom dropped, when listeners were congenial; he could not brook, as he did not understand, variety of opinions; and charming as he proved to all who would not contradict him, none was constitutionally less fitted to be at the head of a great party. His genius had in it no elements deserving the name of original thought. Rather did he serve Newman as the living embodiment of institutions now deemed Apostolic, and, so to speak, himself a present antiquity. He possessed none of those gifts which strike and subdue the unconverted. Hurrell Froude, the “bright and beautiful,” cut off in the midst of his days, was another sort of man. “He went forward,” says his brother Anthony, “taking the fences as they came, passing lightly over them all, and sweeping his friends along with them. He had the contempt of an intellectual aristocrat for private judgment.” This, which sounds like a bull, but is only a paradox, was equally applicable to Newman, despite his infinite consideration for persons as they came before him. The Many could be neither wise nor right, except when they listened to the Few who were both. It was Froude that made Newman and Keble really known to each other: he boasted of it as the one good thing he had ever done. It was certainly the most important. “You and Keble are the philosophers, and I the rhetorician,” wrote the Vicar of St. Mary’s to him in 1836. There was so much of a foundation in the contrast that Newman did always look to Froude as a standard, a test, and a light by which to judge of his own utterances…. But [Froude] disclaimed being original as other men have prided themselves upon it. Thoughts and speculations, nevertheless, were his daily bread…. Alone among Newman’s correspondents, he writes as his born equal, criticising freely, breaking out into the genial humour, so fresh and unconstrained, which lights up this all too serious intercourse of country parsons, London dignitaries, and unfledged Oxford dons.
* * * * *
‘When preaching on the Greatness and Littleness of Human Life, [Newman] refers secretly to this lofty spirit as among the men who, “by such passing flashes, like rays of the sun, and the darting lightning, give tokens of their immortality, … that they are but angels in disguise.”’[391]
From ‘THE LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF THE LATE ROBERT SOUTHEY.’ Edited by his SON. London, 1850.
ROBERT SOUTHEY to the Rev. JOHN MILLER, July 21, 1838.
‘The publication of Froude’s _Remains_ is likely to do more harm than ――――[392] is capable of doing. “The Oxford School” has acted most unwisely in giving its sanction to such a deplorable example of mistaken zeal. Of the two extremes, the too little and the too much, the too little is that which is likely to produce the worst consequence to the individual, but the too much is more hurtful to the community; for it spreads, and rages, too, like a contagion.’
From ‘A KEY TO THE POPERY OF OXFORD,’ BY PETER MAURICE, B.D. London: Baisler, 1838.
‘The volumes themselves [the _Remains_] are highly valuable to every practical student of the human character, because they exhibit an individual in his true colours, and afford evidences of what the human mind (even with all the advantages of natural talent and education) may be brought to, when not guided by the Light which is from above. They cannot but fill the heart of every true Christian with horror, and his eye with tears, when the reflection crosses the mind that views like these are held up as a religion of a meek and lowly Saviour, and that an influence such as that exerted over the wretched object of these memoirs should be permitted to draw away any poor sinner from that open Fountain of purity and holiness which is filled with joy, peace, and love, for all that humbly visit it. There are from time to time a few gleams of light faintly discernible amidst the dark confusion of the moral wilderness; but they are transient and unsatisfactory.’
From ‘MEMOIRS,’ by MARK PATTISON, late Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford. London: Macmillan & Co., 1885.
‘John Belfield, a Devonshire man … god-fathered me. Belfield’s special chum [1831] was William Froude, the engineer, brother of Anthony, and of Richard Hurrell Froude at that time Fellow of the College. The opening thus made for me through William Froude to Richard Hurrell’s acquaintance might have been of inestimable use to me, had I been capable of profiting by it. But I was too childish and ignorant even to apprehend what it was that was thus placed within my reach. I spent one evening in Richard Hurrell’s rooms, without appreciating him myself, or appearing to him to be worth taking up.’
From ‘THE LIFE OF SAMUEL WILBERFORCE, Bishop of Oxford and Winchester.’ By his Son REGINALD WILBERFORCE. London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1888.
[From his Diary, March 17, 1838.]
‘_Evening._――Read a little of Froude’s “Journals.” They are most instructive to me; will exceedingly discredit Church principles, and show an amazing want of Christianity, so far. They are Henry Martyn un-Christianised.’
From ‘LETTERS AND CORRESPONDENCE OF JOHN HENRY NEWMAN,’ edited by ANNE MOZLEY. London: Longmans, 1890.
‘Hurrell Froude passed away so early in the work of the Movement, and could work so little for it, that his actual share in it needs to be sought out through contemporary records. Little as his pen did, short as his life was, those who can recall the time feel the influence of his mere presence to have been essential to the original impulse which set all going. They cannot imagine the start without his forwarding, impelling look and voice. His presence impressed persons as a spiritual, though living, influence. He stands distinct, apart, in the memory of those who can recall it, the more that years[393] do not dim the brightness and fire which became him so well in his office as inspirer.’
From ‘CATHOLICISM, ROMAN AND ANGLICAN,’ BY A. M. FAIRBAIRN, Principal of Mansfield College, Oxford. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1899.
‘The Romanticist tendency … was the positive factor in Anglo-Catholicism…. This gave the creative impulse; it was the spirit that quickened. The men in whom it took shape and found speech were three: Keble, Newman, Pusey. Perhaps we ought to name a fourth, Hurrell Froude: but he lives in Newman. He was the swiftest, most daring spirit of them all; his thought is hot, as it were, with the fever that shortened his days; his words are suffused as with a hectic flush; and we must judge him rather as one who moved men to achieve than by his own actual achievements.’
[294] [Isaac Williams’s MS. Memoir.]
[295] [_Remains_, i., 232, 233.]
[296] [_Apologia_, p. 84.]
[297] [_Remains_, i., 438; _Apol._, p. 77.]
[298] [I ought to say that I was not personally acquainted with Mr. Froude. I have subjoined to this chapter some recollections of him by Lord Blachford, who was his pupil and an intimate friend.]
From the _Life and Letters of Dean Church_, edited by his daughter Mary C. Church. Macmillan and Co., 1895, p. 315.
‘ST. PAUL’S, _Sept. 12, 1884_. ‘MY DEAR BLACHFORD,――… Sometime or other I shall have to ask you for a little help; that is, if I go on with my notion of having my say about the old Oxford days. One thing that I should try to do is to bring out Froude. Of course his time was cut short. But it seems to me that so memorable a person ought to be duly had in remembrance; and people now hardly recognise how much he had to do with the first stir. But of course all my knowledge of him is second-hand, or gathered from his books. He reminds me of Pascal: his unflinchingness, his humour, his hatred of humbug, his mathematical genius (architecture, and the French-_révolutionnaire_), his imagination, his merciless self-discipline. I should like to bring all this out, if, as I suppose, it is true. I don’t suppose Pascal would have loved the sea! He would have been “_seek_.”’
[299] [‘In this mortal journeying, wasted shade Is worse than wasted sunshine.’ Henry Taylor, _Sicilian Summer_, v., 3.]
[300] [_Remains_,