EARLY FRIENDS AT OXFORD
I was still very young when I came to settle at Oxford, only
twenty-four in fact; and, though occasionally honoured by invitations
from Heads of Houses and Professors, I naturally lived chiefly with
undergraduates and junior Fellows, such as Grant, Sellar, Palgrave,
Morier, and others. Grant, afterwards Sir Alexander Grant and
Principal of the University of Edinburgh, was a delightful companion.
He had always something new in his mind, and discussed with many
flashes of wit and satire. He possessed an aristocratic contempt for
anything commonplace, or self-evident, so that one had to be careful
in conversing with him. But he was generous, and his laugh reconciled
one to some of his sharp sallies. How little one anticipates the
future greatness of one’s friends. They all seem to us no better than
ourselves, when suddenly they emerge. Grant had shown what he could do
by his edition of Aristotle’s _Ethics_. He became one of the
Professors at the new University at Bombay and contributed much to the
first starting of that University, so warmly patronized by Sir Charles
Trevelyan. On returning to this country he was chosen to fill the
distinguished place of Principal of the Edinburgh University. More was
expected of him when he enjoyed this _otium cum dignitate_, but his
health seemed to have suffered in the enervating climate of India,
and, though he enjoyed his return to his friends most fully and
spending his life as a friend among friends, he died comparatively
young, and perhaps without fulfilling all the hopes that were
entertained of him. But he was a thoroughly genial man, and his
handshake and the twinkle of his eye when meeting an old friend will
not easily be forgotten.
Sellar was another Scotchman whom I knew as an undergraduate at
Balliol. When I first came to know him he was full of anxieties about
his health, and greatly occupied with the usual doubts about religion,
particularly the presence of evil or of anything imperfect in this
world. He was an honest fellow, warmly attached to his friends; and no
one could wish to have a better friend to stand up for him on all
occasions and against all odds. He afterwards became happily married
and a useful Professor of Latin at Edinburgh. I stayed with him later
in life in Scotland and found him always the same, really enjoying his
friends’ society and a talk over old days. He had begun to ail when I
saw him last, but the old boy was always there, even when he was
miserable about his chiefly imaginary miseries. Soon after I had left
him I received his last message and farewell from his deathbed. We
are told that all this is very natural and what we must be prepared
for—but what cold gaps it leaves. My thoughts often return to him, as
if he were still among the living, and then one feels one’s own
loneliness and friendlessness again and again.
Palgrave roused great expectations among undergraduates at Oxford, but
he kept us waiting for some time. He took early to office life in the
Educational Department, and this seems to have ground him down and
unfitted him for other work. He had a wonderful gift of admiring, his
great hero being Tennyson, and he was more than disappointed if others
did not join in his unqualified panegyrics of the great poet. At last,
somewhat late in life, he was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford,
and gave some most learned and instructive lectures. His knowledge of
English Literature, particularly poetry, was quite astounding. I
certainly never went to him to ask him a question that he did not
answer at once and with exhaustive fullness. Some of his friends
complained of his great command of language, and even Tennyson, I am
told, found it sometimes too much. All I can say is that to me it was
a pleasure to listen to him. I owe him particular thanks for having,
in the kindest manner, revised my first English compositions. He was
always ready and indefatigable, and I certainly owed a good deal to
his corrections and his unstinted advice. His _Golden Treasury_ has
become a national possession, and certainly speaks well both for his
extensive knowledge and for his good taste.
Lastly there was Morier, of whom certainly no one expected when he was
at Balliol that he would rise to be British Ambassador at St.
Petersburg. His early education had been somewhat neglected, but when
he came to Balliol he worked hard to pass a creditable examination. He
was a giant in size, very good-looking, and his manners, when he
liked, most charming and attractive. Being the son of a diplomatist
there was something both English and foreign in his manner, and he
certainly was a general favourite at Oxford. His great desire was to
enter the diplomatic service, but when that was impossible, he found
employment for a time in the Education Office. But society in London
was too much for him, he was made for society, and society was
delighted to receive him. But it was difficult for him at the same
time to fulfil his duties at the Education Office, and the result was
that he had to give up his place. Things began to look serious, when
fortunately Lord Aberdeen, a great friend of his father, found him
some diplomatic employment; and that once found, Morier was in his
element. He was often almost reckless; but while several of his
friends came altogether to grief, he managed always to fall on his
feet and keep afloat while others went down. As an undergraduate he
came to me to read Greek with me, and I confess that with such
mistakes in his Greek papers as οἱ πἁθοι instead of τἀ πἁθη, I
trembled for his examinations. However, he did well in the schools,
knowing how to hide his weak points and how to make the best of his
strong ones. I travelled with him in Germany, and when the
Schleswig-Holstein question arose, he wrote a pamphlet which certainly
might have cost him his diplomatic career. He asked me to allow it to
be understood that the pamphlet, which did full justice to the claims
of Holstein and of Germany, had been written by me. I received many
compliments, which I tried to parry as well as I could. Fortunately
Lord John Russell stood by Morier, and his prophecies did certainly
turn out true. “Don’t let the Germans awake from their slumbers and
find a work ready made for them on which they all agree.” But the
signatories of the treaty of London did the very thing against which
Morier had raised his warning voice, as the friend of Germany as it
was, though perhaps not of the Germany that was to be. Schleswig-Holstein
_meer-umschlungen_ became the match, (the Schwefel-hölzchen), that was
to light the fire of German unity, a unity which for a time may not
have been exactly what England could have wished for, but which in the
future will become, we hope, the safety of Europe and the support of
England.
Morier’s later advance in his diplomatic career was certainly most
successful. He possessed the very important art of gaining the
confidence of the crowned heads and ministers he had to deal with.
Bismarck, it is true, could not bear him, and tried several times to
trip him up. Even while Morier was at Berlin, as a Secretary of
Legation, Bismarck asked for his removal, but Lord Granville simply
declined to remove a young diplomatist who gave him information on all
parties in Germany, and to do so had to mix with people whom Bismarck
did not approve of. Besides, Morier was always a _persona grata_ with
the Crown Prince and the Crown Princess, and that was enough to make
Bismarck dislike him. Later in life Bismarck accused him of having
conveyed private information of the military position of the Germans
to the French Guards, such information being derived from the English
Court. The charge was ridiculous. Morier was throughout the war a
sympathizer with Germany as against France. The English Court had no
military information to convey or to communicate to Morier, and Morier
was too much of a diplomatist and a gentleman, if by accident he had
possessed any such information, to betray such a secret to an enemy in
the field. Bismarck was completely routed, though his son seemed
inclined to fasten a duel on the English diplomatist. Morier rose
higher and higher, and at last became Ambassador at St. Petersburg.
When I laughed and congratulated him he said, “He must be a great fool
who does not reach the top of the diplomatic tree.” That was too much
modesty, and yet modesty was not exactly his fault; but he agreed
with me as to _quam parva sapientia regitur mundus_.
Nothing could seem more prosperous than my friend Morier’s career; but
few people knew how utterly miserable he really was. He had one son,
in many respects the very image of his father, a giant in stature,
very handsome, and most attractive. In spite of all we said to him he
would not send his son to a public school in England, but kept him
with him at the different embassies, where his only companions were
the young attachés and secretaries. He had a private tutor, and when
that tutor declared that young Morier was fit for the University, his
father managed to get him into Balliol, recommending him to the
special care of the Master. He actually lived in the Master’s house
for a time, but enjoyed the greatest liberty that an undergraduate at
Oxford may enjoy. His father was wrapped up in his boy, but at the
same time tried to frighten him into hard work, or at least into
getting through the examinations. All was in vain; young Morier was so
nervous that he could never pass an examination. What might be
expected followed, and the father had at last to remove him to begin
work as an honorary attaché at his own embassy. I liked the young man
very much, but my own impression is that his nervousness quite
unfitted him for serious work. The end was beyond description sad. He
went to South Africa in the police force, distinguished himself very
much, came back to England, and then on his second voyage to the Cape
died suddenly on board the steamer. I have seldom seen such utter
misery as his father’s. He loved his son and the son loved his father
passionately, but the father expected more than it was physically and
mentally possible for the son to do. Hence arose misunderstandings,
and yet beneath the surface there was this passionate love, like the
love of lovers. When I saw my old friend last, he cried and sobbed
like a child: his heart was really broken. He went on for a few years
more, suffering much from ill health, but really killed at last by his
utter misery. I knew him in the bright morning of his life, at the
meridian of his great success, and last in the dark night when light
and life seems gone, when the moon and all the stars are extinguished,
and nothing remains but patient suffering and the hope of a brighter
morn to come.
How little one dreamt of all this when we were young, and when an
ambassador, nay, even a professor, seemed to us far beyond the reach
of our ambition. I could go on mentioning many more names of men with
whom I lived at Oxford in the most delightful intimacy, and who
afterwards turned up as bishops, archbishops, judges, ministers, and
all the rest. True, it is quite natural that it should be so with a
man who, as I did, began his English life almost as an undergraduate
among undergraduates. Nearly all Englishmen who receive a liberal
education must pass either through Oxford or through Cambridge, and I
was no doubt lucky in making thus early the acquaintance of a number
of men who later in life became deservedly eminent. The only drawback
was that, knowing my friends very intimately, I did not perhaps later
preserve on all occasions that deference which the dignity of an
ambassador or of an archbishop has a right to demand.
Thomson was a dear friend of mine when he was still a fellow of
Queen’s College. We worked together, as may be seen by my
contributions to his _Laws of Thought_, and the translation of a Vedic
hymn which he helped me to make. I think he had a kind of anticipation
of what was in store for him. Though for a time he had to be
satisfied, even when he was married, with a very small London living,
he soon rose in the Church, at a time when clergymen of a liberal way
of thinking had not much chance of Crown preferment. But having gone
at the head of a deputation to Lord Palmerston, to inform him that
Gladstone’s next election as member for Oxford was becoming doubtful,
owing to all the bishoprics being given to the Low Church party—the
party of Lord Shaftesbury—Palmerston remembered his stately and
courteous bearing, and when the see of Gloucester fell vacant, gave
him that bishopric to silence Gladstone’s supporters. This was a very
unexpected preferment at Oxford, but Thomson made such good use of his
opportunity that, when the Archbishopric of York became vacant, and
Palmerston found it difficult to make his own or Lord Shaftesbury’s
nominee acceptable to the Queen, he suggested that any one of the
lately elected bishops approved of by the Crown might go to York, and
some one else fill the see thus vacated. It so happened that Thomson’s
name was the first to be mentioned, and he was made Archbishop,
probably one of the youngest Archbishops England has ever known. He
certainly fulfilled all expectations and proved himself the people’s
Archbishop, for he was himself the son of a small tradesman, a fact of
which he was never ashamed, though his enemies did not fail to cast it
in his teeth. I confess I felt at first a little awkward with my old
friend who formerly had discussed every possible religious and
philosophical problem quite freely with me, and was now His Grace the
Lord Archbishop, with a palace to inhabit and an income of about
£10,000 a year. However, though as a German and as a friend of Bunsen
I was looked upon as a kind of heretic, I never made the Archbishop
blush for his old friend, and I always found him the same to the end
of his life, kind, courteous, and ready to help, though it is but fair
to remember that an Archbishop of York is one of the first subjects of
the Queen, and cannot do or say everything that he might like to do or
to say. When I had to ask him to do something for a friend of mine,
who as a clergyman had given great offence by his very liberal
opinions, he did all he could do, though he might have incurred great
obloquy by so doing.
But when I think of these men, friends and acquaintances of mine, whom
I remember as young men, very able and hard working no doubt, yet not
so entirely different from others who through life remained unknown,
it is as if I had slept through a number of years and dreamt, and had
then suddenly awoke to a new life. Some of my friends, I am glad to
say, I always found the same, whether in ermine or in lawn sleeves;
others, however, I am sorry to say, had _become_ something, the old
boy in them had vanished, and nothing was to be seen except the
bishop, the judge, or the minister.
It was not for me to remind them of their former self, and to make
them doubt their own identity, but I often felt the truth of Matthew
Arnold’s speeches, who, in social position, never rose beyond that of
inspector of schools, and who often laughed when at great dinners he
found himself surrounded by their Graces, their Excellencies, and my
Lords, recognizing faces that sat below him at school and whose names
in the class lists did not occupy so high a place as his own. Not that
Matthew Arnold was dissatisfied; he knew his worth, but, as he himself
asked for nothing, it is strange that his friends should never have
asked for something for him, which would have shown to the world at
large that he had not been left behind in the race. It strikes one
that while he was at Oxford, few people only detected in Arnold the
poet or the man of remarkable genius. I had many letters from him, but
I never kept them, and I often blame myself now that in his, as in
other cases, I should have thrown away letters as of no importance.
Then suddenly came the time when he returned to Oxford as the poet, as
the Professor of poetry, nay, afterwards as the philosopher also,
placed high by public opinion among the living worthies of England.
What was sometimes against him was his want of seriousness. A laugh
from his hearers or readers seemed to be more valued by him than their
serious opposition, or their convinced assent. He trusted, like
others, to _persiflage_, and the result was that when he tried to be
serious, people could not forget that he might at any time turn round
and smile, and decline to be taken _au grand sérieux_. People do not
know what a dangerous game this French _persiflage_ is, particularly
in England, and how difficult it becomes to exchange it afterwards for
real seriousness.
Those early Oxford days were bright days for me, and now, when those
young and old faces, whether undergraduates or archbishops, rise up
again before me, I being almost the only one left of that happy
company, I ask again, “Did they also belong to a mere dreamland, they
who gave life to my life, and made England my real home?” When I first
saw them at Oxford, I was really an undergraduate, though I had taken
my Doctor’s degree at Leipzig. I lived, in fact, my happy university
life over again, and it would be difficult to say which academical
years I enjoyed more, those at Leipzig and Berlin, or those at Oxford.
There were intermediate years in Paris, but during my stay there I saw
but little of students and student life. I was too much oppressed with
cares and anxieties about my present and future to think much of
society and enjoyment. At Oxford, these cares had become far less, and
I could by hard work earn as much money as I wanted, and cared to
spend. In Paris, I was already something of a scholar and writer; at
Oxford I became once more the undergraduate.
This young society into which I was received was certainly most
attractive, though that it contained the germs of future greatness
never struck me at the time. What struck me was the general tone of
the conversation. Of course, as Lord Palmerston said of himself when
he was no longer very young, “boys will be boys,” but there never was
anything rude or vulgar in their conversation, and I hardly ever heard
an offensive remark among them. Most of my friends came from Balliol,
and were serious-minded men, many of them occupied and troubled by
religious, philosophical, and social problems.
What puzzled me most was the entire absence of duels. Occasionally
there were squabbles and high words, which among German students could
have had one result only—a duel. But at Oxford, either a man
apologized at once or the next morning, and the matter was forgotten,
or, if a man proved himself a cad or a snob, he was simply dropped. I
do not mean to condemn the students’ duels in Germany altogether.
Considering how mixed the society of German universities is, and the
perfect equality that reigns among them—they all called each other
“thou” in my time—the son of a gentleman required some kind of
protection against the son of a butcher or of a day-labourer. Boxing
and fisticuffs were entirely forbidden among students, so that there
remained nothing to a young student who wanted to escape from the
insults of a young ruffian, but to call him out. As soon as a
challenge was given, all abuse ceased at once, and such was the power
of public opinion at the universities that not another word of insult
would be uttered. In this way much mischief is prevented. Besides,
every precaution is taken to guard against fatal accident, and I
believe there are fewer serious accidents on the _mensura_ than in the
hunting-field in England. When I was at Leipzig, where we had at least
four hundred duels during the year, only two fatal accidents happened,
and they were, indeed, accidents, such as will happen even at
football. Of course duels can never be defended, but for keeping up
good manners, also for bringing out a man’s character, these academic
duels seem useful. However small the danger is, it frightens the
coward and restrains the poltroon. For all that, what has taken place
in England may in time take place in Germany also, and men will cease
to think that it is impossible to defend their honour without a piece
of steel or a pistol. The last thing that a German student desires to
do in a duel is to kill his adversary. Hence pistol duels, which are
generally preferred by theological students, because they cannot
easily get a living if their face is scarred all over, are generally
the most harmless, except perhaps for the seconds.
Before closing this chapter, I should like to say a few words on the
impressions which the theological atmosphere of Oxford in 1848
produced on me, and which even now fills me with wonder and amazement.
When I came to Oxford, I was strongly recommended to Stanley on one
side, and to Manuel Johnson on the other,—a curious mixture. Johnson,
the Observer, was extremely kind and hospitable to me. He was a genial
man, full of love, possibly a little weak, but thoroughly honest, nay,
transparently so. I met at his house nearly all the leaders of the
High Church movement, though I never met Newman himself, who had then
already gone to reside at his retreat at Littlemore. On the other
hand, Stanley received me with open arms as a friend of Bunsen,
Frederick Maurice, and Julius Hare, and as I came straight from the
February revolution in 1848, he was full of interest and curiosity to
know from me what I had seen in Paris.
At first I knew nothing, and understood nothing of the movement, call
it ecclesiastical or theological, that was going on at Oxford at that
time. I dined almost every Sunday at Johnson’s house, and at his
dinners and Sunday afternoon garden parties I met men such as Church,
Mozley, Buckle, Palgrave, Pollen, Rigaud, Burgon, and Chrétian, who
inspired me with great respect, both for their learning and for what I
could catch of their character. Stanley, on the other hand, Froude,
and Jowett, proved themselves true friends to me in making me feel at
home, and initiating me into the secrets of the place. There was,
however, a curious reticence on both sides, and it was by sudden
glimpses only that I came to understand that these two sets were quite
divided, nay, opposed, and had very different ideals before them.
I had been at a German university, and the historical study of
Christianity was to me as familiar as the study of Roman history.
Professors whom I had looked up to as great authorities, implicitly to
be trusted, such as Lotze and Weisse at Leipzig, Schelling and
Michelet at Berlin, had, after causing in me a certain surprise at
first, left me with the firm conviction that the Old and New Testament
were historical books, and to be treated according to the same
critical principles as any other ancient book, particularly the sacred
books of the East of which so little was then known, and of which I
too knew very little as yet; enough, however, to see that they
contained nothing but what under the circumstances they could
contain, traditions of extreme antiquity collected by men who gathered
all they thought would be useful for the education of the people.
Anything like revelation in the old sense of the word, a belief that
these books had been verbally communicated by the Deity, or that what
seemed miraculous in them was to be accepted as historically real,
simply because it was recorded in these sacred books, was to me a
standpoint long left behind. To me the questions that occupied my
thoughts were to what date these books, such as we have them, could be
assigned, what portions of them were of importance to us, what were
the simple truths they contained, and what had been added to them by
later collectors. Well do I remember when, before going to Oxford, I
spoke to Bunsen of the preface to my Rig-veda, and used the
expression, “the great revelations of the world,” he, perfectly
understanding what I meant, warned me in his loud and warm voice,
“Don’t say that at Oxford.” I could see no harm, nor Bunsen either,
nor his son who was an Oxford man and a clergyman of the Church of
England; but I was told that I should be misunderstood. I knew far too
little to imagine that I had a right to speak of what was fermenting
and growing within me. During my stay at Leipzig and Berlin, and
afterwards in my intercourse with Renan and Burnouf, the principles of
the historical school had become quite familiar to me, but the
application of these principles to the early history of religion was
a different matter. How far the Old and the New Testament would stand
the critical tests enunciated by Niebuhr was a frequent subject of
controversy, during the time I spent at Paris, between young Renan and
myself. Though I did not go with him in his reconstruction of the
history of the Jews and the Jewish religion, and of the early
Christians and the Christian religion, I agreed with him in principle,
objecting only to his too free and too idyllic reconstruction of these
great religious movements. Besides, before all things, I was at that
time given to philosophical studies, chiefly to an inquiry into the
limits of our knowledge in the Kantian sense of the word, the origin
of thought and language, the first faltering and half-mythological
steps of language in the search for causes or divine agents. All this
occupied me far more than the age of the Fourth Gospel and its
position by the side of the Synoptic Gospels. I had talked with
Schelling and Schopenhauer, and little as I appreciated or understood
all their teachings, there were certain aspirations left in my mind
which led me far away beyond the historical foundations of
Christianity. What can we know? was the question which I often opposed
to Renan at the very beginning of our conversations and controversies.
That there were great truths in the teaching and preaching of Christ,
Renan was always ready to admit, but while it interested me how the
truths proclaimed by Christ could have sprung up in His mind and at
that time in the history of the human race, Renan’s eyes were always
directed to the evidence, and to what we could still know of the early
history of Christianity and its Founder. I could not deny that,
historically speaking, we knew very little of the life, the work, and
the teachings of Christ; but for that very reason I doubted our being
justified in giving our interpretation and reconstruction to the
fragments left to us of the real history of the life and teaching of
Christ. To this opinion I remained true through life. I claimed for
each man the liberty of believing in his own Christ, but I objected to
Renan’s idyllic Christ as I objected to Niebuhr’s filling the canvas
of ancient Roman history with the figures of his own imagination.
Naturally, when I came to Oxford, I thought these things were familiar
to all, however much they might admit of careful correction. Nor have
I any doubt that to some of my friends who were great theologians,
they were better known than to a young Oriental scholar like myself.
But unless engaged in conversation on these subjects, and this was
chiefly the case with my friends of the Stanley party, I did not feel
called upon to preach what, as I thought, every serious student knew
quite as well and probably much better than myself, though he might
for some reason or other prefer to keep silence thereon.
What was my surprise when I found that most of these excellent and
really learned men were much more deeply interested in purely
ecclesiastical questions, in the validity of Anglican orders, in the
wearing of either gowns or surplices in the pulpit, in the question of
candlesticks and genuflections. “What has all this to do with true
religion?” I once said to dear Johnson. He laughed with his genial
laugh, and blowing the smoke of his cigar away, said, “Oh, you don’t
understand!” But I did understand, and a great deal more than he
expected. Truly religious men, I thought, might please themselves with
incense and candlesticks, provided they gave no offence to their
neighbours. It seemed to me quite natural also that men like Johnson,
with a taste for art, should prefer the Roman ritual to the simple and
sometimes rather bare service of the Anglican Church, but that things
such as incense and censers, surplice and gown, should be taken as
they are, as paraphernalia, the work of human beings, the outcome of
personal and local influences, as church-service, no doubt, but not as
service of God. God has to be served by very different things, and
there is the danger of the formal prevailing over the essential, the
danger of idolatry of symbols as realities, whenever too much
importance is attributed to the external forms of worship and divine
service.
The validity of Anglican orders was often discussed at the
Observatory, and I no doubt gave great offence by openly declaring in
my imperfect English that I considered Luther a better channel for
the transmission of the Holy Ghost than a Caesar Borgia or even a
Wolsey. Anyhow I could not bring myself to see the importance of such
questions, if only the heart was right and if the whole of our life
was in fact a real and constant life with God and in God. That is what
I called a truly religious and truly Christian life. What struck me
particularly, both on the Newman side, and among those whom I met at
Jowett’s and Froude’s, was a curious want of openness and manliness in
discussing these simple questions, simple, if not complicated by
ecclesiastical theories. When Newman at Iffley was spoken of, it was
in hushed tones, and when rumours of his going over to Rome reached
his friends at Oxford, their consternation seemed to be like that of
people watching the deathbed of a friend. I am sorry I saw nothing of
Newman at that time; when I sat with him afterwards in his study at
Birmingham, he was evidently tired of controversy, and unwilling to
reopen questions which to him were settled once for all, or if not
settled, at all events closed and relinquished. I could never form a
clear idea of the man, much as I admired his sermons; his brother and
his own friends gave such different accounts of him. That even at
Littlemore he was still faithful to his own national Church, anxious
only to bring it nearer to its ancient possibly Roman type, can hardly
be doubted. When he wrote from Littlemore to his friend De Lisle, he
had no reason to economize the truth. De Lisle hoped that Newman would
soon openly join the Church of Rome, but Newman answered: “You must
allow me to be honest with you in adding one thing. A distressing
feeling arises in my mind that such marks of kindness as these on your
part are caused by a belief that I am ever likely to join your
communion ... I must assure you then with great sincerity that I have
not the shadow of an internal movement known to myself towards such a
step. While God is with me where I am, I will not seek Him elsewhere.
I might almost say in the words of Scripture, ‘We have found the
Messias!’...”
How true this is, and yet the same Newman went over to the unreformed
Church, because the Archbishop of Canterbury had sanctioned Bunsen’s
proposal of an Anglo-German bishopric of Jerusalem, quite forgetful of
the fact that Synesius also had been bishop of Ptolemais. Again I say,
What have such matters to do with true religion, such as we read of in
the New Testament, as an ideal to be realized in our life on earth?
And it so happened that at the same time I knew of families rendered
miserable through Newman’s influence, of young girls, daughters of
narrow-minded Anglicans, hurried over to Rome, of young men at Oxford
with their troubled consciences which under Newman’s direct or
indirect guidance could end only in Rome. Newman’s influence must have
been extraordinary; the tone in which people who wished to free
themselves from him, who had actually left him, spoke of him, seemed
tremulous with awe. I would give anything to have known him at that
time, when I knew him through his disciples only. They were caught in
various ways. I know of one, a brilliant writer, who had been
entrusted by Newman with writing some of the _Lives of the Saints_. He
did it with great industry, but in the course of his researches he
arrived at the conviction that there was hardly anything truly
historical about his Saints and that the miracles ascribed to them
were insipid, and might be the inventions of their friends; such
legends, he felt, would take no root on English soil, at all events
not in the present generation. In consequence he informed Newman that
he could not keep his promise, or that, if he did so, he must speak
the truth, tell people what they might believe about these Saints, and
what was purely fanciful in the accounts of their lives. And what was
Newman’s answer? He did not respect the young man’s scruples, but
encouraged him to go on, because, as he said, people would never
believe more than half of these Lives, and that therefore some of
these unsupported legends also might prove useful, if only as a kind
of ballast.
“I rejoice to hear of your success,” he writes, August 21, 1843. “As
to St. Grimball, of course we must expect such deficiencies; where
matter is found, it is all gain, and there are plenty of Lives to put
together, as you will see, when you see the whole list.
“I am rather for _inserting_ (of course discreetly and in way of
selection) the miracles for which you have not good evidence. (1) They
are beautiful, you say, and will tell in the narrative. (2) Next you
can say that the evidence is weak, and this will be bringing credit
for the others where you say the evidence is strong. People will never
go _so far_ as your narrative. Cut it down to what is true, and they
will disbelieve a part of _it_; put in these legends and they will
compound for the true at the sacrifice of what may be true, but is not
well attested.”
I confess I cannot quite follow. If a man like Newman believed in
these saints and their miracles, his pleading would become
intelligible, but it seems from this very letter that he did not, and
yet he tried to persuade his young friend to go on and not to gather
the tares, “lest haply he might root up the wheat with them. Let both
grow together until the harvest.” I do not like to judge, but I doubt
whether this kind of teaching could have strengthened the healthy
moral fibre of a man’s conscience and have led him to depend entirely
on his sense of truth. And yet this was the man who at one time was
supposed to draw the best spirits of Oxford with him to Rome. This was
the man to whom some of the best spirits at Oxford confessed all they
had to confess, and that could have been very little, and of whom
they spoke with a subdued whisper as the apostle who would restore all
faith, and bring back the Anglican sheep to the Roman fold.
I saw and heard all that was going on, the hopes deferred, the secret
visits to Littlemore, the rumours and more than rumours of Newman’s
defection. Such was the devotion of some of these disciples that they
expected day by day a great catastrophe or a great victory, for after
the publication of so many letters written at the time by Wiseman,
Manning, De Lisle, and others, there can be little doubt that a great
conversion or perversion of England to the Romish Church was fully
expected. De Lisle writes: “England is now in full career of a great
Religious Revolution, this time back to Catholicism and to the Roman
See as its true centre ... the best friends of Rome in the Anglican
Church are obliged still to be guarded.” Such words admit of one
meaning only, and if Newman had been followed by a large number of his
Oxford friends, the results for England might really have been most
terrible. But here, no doubt, the English national feeling came in.
What England had suffered under Roman ecclesiastical rule had not yet
been entirely forgotten, and the idea that a foreign potentate and a
foreign priesthood should interfere with the highest interests of the
nation, was fortunately as distasteful as ever, not only to a large
party of the clergy, but to a still larger party of the laity also.
It seemed to me very curious that so many of Newman’s followers did
not see the unpatriotic character of their agitation. Either
subjection to Rome or civil war at home was the inevitable outcome of
what they discussed very innocently at the Observatory, and little as
I understood their schemes for the future, I often felt surprised at
what sounded to me like very unpatriotic utterances.
Another thing that struck me as utterly un-English and has often been
dwelt on by the historians of this movement, was the curiously secret
character of the agitation. What has an Englishman to fear when he
openly protests against what he disapproves of in Church or State? But
Newman’s friends at Oxford behaved really, as has been often said,
like so many naughty schoolboys, or like conspirators, yet they were
neither. A very similar charge, however, was brought against the
liberal party. They also seemed to think that they were out of bounds,
and were doing in secret what they did not dare to do openly. It is
well known that one friend of Newman’s, who afterwards became a Roman
Catholic, had a small chapel set up in his bedroom in college, with
pictures and candles and instruments of flagellation. No one was
allowed to see this room, till one evening when the flagellant had
retired after dinner and fallen asleep, the servants found him lying
before the altar. Nothing remained to him then but to exchange his
comfortable college rooms for the less comfortable cell of a Roman
monastery, and little was done by his new friends to make the evening
of his life serene and free from anxiety. These things were known and
talked about in Oxford, and generally with anything but the
seriousness that the subject seemed to me to require. Again at the
Observatory a point was made of having games in the garden such as
boccia on a Sunday afternoon, thus evading the strict observance of
the Sabbath, without openly trying to restore to it the character
which it had in Roman Catholic countries.
German theology was talked about as a kind of forbidden fruit, as if
it was not right for them to look at it, to taste it, or to examine
it. Even years later people were afraid to meet Professor Ewald,
Bishop Colenso, and other so-called heretics at my house. They even
fell on poor Ewald at an evening party. Ewald was staying with me and
working hard at some Hebrew MSS. at the Bodleian. He was then already
an old man, but in his appearance a powerful and venerable champion.
He is the only man I remember who, after copying Hebrew MSS. for
twelve hours at the Bodleian with nothing but a sandwich to sustain
him, complained of the short time allowed there for work. He came home
for dinner very tired, and when the conversation or rather the
disputation began between him and some of our young liberal
theologians, he spoke in short pithy sentences only. He considered
himself perfectly orthodox, nay, one of the pillars of religion in
Germany, and laid down the law with unhesitating conviction. As far as
I can remember, he was answering a number of questions about St. Paul,
and what he thought of Christ, of the Kingdom of Christ, and the Life
to come, and being pestered and driven into a corner by his various
questioners, and asked at last how he knew St. Paul’s secret thoughts,
he not knowing how to express himself in fluent English, exclaimed in
a loud voice, “I know it by the Holy Ghost.” Here the conversation
naturally stopped, and poor Ewald was allowed to finish his dinner in
peace. He had been Professor at Bonn, when Pusey came there as a young
man to study Hebrew after he had been appointed Canon of Christ Church
and Professor of Hebrew, and he expressed to me a wish to see Dr.
Pusey. I told him it would not be easy to arrange a meeting,
considering how strongly opposed Dr. Pusey was to Ewald’s opinions.
Personally I always found Pusey tolerant, and his kindness to me was a
surprise to all my young friends. But the fact was, we moved on
different planes, and though he knew my religious opinions well, they
only excited a smile, and he often said with a sigh, “I know you are a
German.” His own idea was that he was placed at Oxford in order to
save the younger generation from seeing the abyss into which he
himself had looked with terror. He had read more heresy, he used to
say, than anybody, and he wished no one to pass through the trials
and agonies through which he had passed, chiefly, I should think,
during his stay at a German university. The historical element was
wanting in him, nay, like Hegel, he sometimes seemed to lay stress on
the unhistorical character of Christianity. My idea, on the contrary,
was that Christianity was a true historical event, prepared by many
events that had gone before and alone made it possible and real. Even
the abyss, if there were such an abyss, was, as it seemed to me, meant
to be there on our passage through life, and was to be faced with a
brave heart.
But to return to my first experiences of the theological atmosphere of
Oxford, I confess I felt puzzled to see men, whose learning and
character I sincerely admired, absorbed in subjects which to my mind
seemed simply childish. I expected I should hear from them some new
views on the date of the gospels, the meaning of revelation, the
historical value of revelation, or the early history of the Church.
No, of all this not a word. Nothing but discussions on vestments, on
private confession, on candles on the altar, whether they were wanted
or not, on the altar being made of stone or of wood, of consecrated
wine being mixed with water, of the priest turning his back on the
congregation, &c. I could not understand how these men, so high above
the ordinary level of men in all other respects, could put aside the
fundamental questions of Christianity and give their whole mind to
what seemed to me rightly called in the newspapers “mere millinery.”
I sought information from Stanley, but he shrugged his shoulders and
advised me to keep aloof and say nothing. This I was most willing to
do; I cared for none of these things. My mind was occupied with far
more serious problems, such as I had heard explained by men of
profound learning and honest purpose in the great universities of
Germany; these troubles arose from questions which seemed to me to
have no connexion with true religion at all. Even the differences
between the reformed and unreformed churches were to me mere questions
of history, mere questions of human expediency. I did not consider
Roman Catholics as heretics—I had known too many of them of
unblemished character in Germany. I might have regretted the abuses
which called for reform, the excrescences which had disfigured
Christianity like many other religions, but which might be tolerated
as long as they did not lead to toleration for intolerance. Luther
might no longer appear to me in the light of a perfect saint, but that
he was right in suppressing the time-honoured abuses of the Roman
Church admitted with me of no doubt whatsoever. Large numbers always
had that effect on me, and when I saw how many good and excellent men
were satisfied with the unreformed teaching of the Roman Church, I
felt convinced that they must attach a different meaning to certain
doctrines and ecclesiastical practices from what we did. I had
learned to discover what was good and true in all religions, and I
could fully agree with Macaulay when he said, “If people had lived in
a country where very sensible people worshipped the cow, they would
not fall out with people who worship saints.”
I know that many of my friends on both sides looked upon me as a
latitudinarian, but my conviction has always been that we could not be
broad enough. They looked upon me as wishing to keep on good terms
with high and low and broad, and I made no secret of it, that I
thought I could understand Pusey as well as Stanley, and assign to
each his proper place. Stanley was of course more after my own heart
than Pusey, but Pusey too was a man who interested me very much. I saw
that he might become a great power whether for good or for evil in
England. He was, in fact, a historical character, and these were
always the men who interested me. He was fully aware of his importance
in England, and the great influence which his name exercised. That
influence was not always exercised in the right way, so at least it
seemed to me, particularly when it was directed against such friends
of mine as Kingsley, Froude, or Jowett. Once, I remember, when he had
come to my house, I ventured to tell him that he could not have meant
what he had said in declaring that the God worshipped by Frederic
Maurice was not the same as his God. Curious to say, he relented, and
admitted that he had used too strong language. To me everything that
was said of God seemed imperfect, and never to apply to God Himself
but only to the idea which the human mind had formed of Him. To me
even the Hindu, if he spoke of Brahman or Krishna, seemed to have
aimed at the true God, in spite of the idolatrous epithets which he
used; then how could a man like Frederic Maurice be said to have
worshipped a different God, considering that we all can but feel after
Him in the dark, not being able to do more than exclude all that seems
to us unworthy of Deity?
A very important element in the ecclesiastical views of some of my
friends was, no doubt, the artistic. If Johnson leant towards Rome, it
was the more ornate and beautiful service that touched and attracted
him. I sat near to him in St. Giles’ Church; he told me what to do and
what not to do during service. In spite of the Prayer-book, it is by
no means so easy as people imagine to do exactly the right thing in
church, and I had of course to learn a number of prayers and responses
by heart. To me the service, as it was in my parish church, seemed
already too ornate, accustomed as I had been to the somewhat bare and
cold service in the Lutheran Church at Dessau. But Johnson constantly
complained about the monotonous and mechanical performances of the
clergy. He had a strong feeling for all that was beautiful and
impressive in art, and he wanted to see the service of God in church
full both of reverence and beauty.
Johnson’s private collection of artistic treasures was very
considerable, and I learnt much from the Italian engravings and Dutch
etchings which he possessed and delighted in showing. I often spent
happy hours with him examining his portfolios, and wondered how he
could afford to buy such treasures. But he knew when and where to buy,
and I believe when his collection was sold after his death, it brought
a good deal more than it had cost him. Another collection of art was
that of Dr. Wellesley, the Principal of New Inn Hall, who was a friend
of Johnson’s and had collected most valuable antiquities during his
long stay in Italy. He was the son of the Marquis of Wellesley, a
handsome man, with all the refinement and courtesy of the old English
gentleman. Though not perhaps very useful in the work of the
University, he was most pleasant to live with, and full of information
in his own line of study, the history of art, chiefly of Italian art.
The beautiful services of the Roman Church abroad, and particularly at
Rome, certainly exercised a kind of magic attraction on many of the
friends of Wiseman and Newman, though one wonders that the sunny
grandeur of St. Peter’s at Rome should ever have seemed more
impressive than the sombre sublimity and serene magnificence of
Westminster Abbey. Unfortunately, the introduction of a more ornate
service, even of harmless candlesticks and the often very useful
incense, had always a secret meaning. They were used as symbols of
something of which the people had no conception, whereas in the early
Church they had been really natural and useful.
In the midst of all this commotion, and chiefly secret commotion, I
felt a perfect stranger; I saw the bright and dark sides, but I
confess I saw little of what I called religion. Though my own
religious struggles lay behind me, still there were many questions
which pressed for a solution, but for which my friends at Oxford
seemed either indifferent or unprepared. My practical religion was
what I had learnt from my mother; that remained unshaken in all
storms, and in its extreme simplicity and childishness answered all
the purposes for which religion is meant. Then followed, in the
Universities of Leipzig and Berlin, the purely historical and
scientific treatment of religion, which, while it explained many
things and destroyed many things, never interfered with my early ideas
of right and wrong, never disturbed my life with God and in God, and
seemed to satisfy all my religious wants. I never was frightened or
shaken by the critical writings of Strauss or Ewald, of Renan or
Colenso. If what they said had an honest ring, I was delighted, for I
felt quite certain that they could never deprive me of the little I
really wanted. That little could never be little enough; it was like a
stronghold with no fortifications, no trenches, and no walls around
it. Suppose it was proved to me that, on geological evidence, the
earth or the world could not have been created in six days, what was
that to me? Suppose it was proved to me that Christ could never have
given leave to the unclean spirits to enter into the swine, what was
that to me? Let Colenso and Bishop Wilberforce, let Huxley and
Gladstone fight about such matters; their turbulent waves could never
disturb me, could never even reach me in my safe harbour. I had little
to carry, no learned impedimenta to safeguard my faith. If a man
possesses this one pearl of great price, he may save himself and his
treasure, but neither the tinselled vestments of a Cardinal, nor the
triple tiara that crowns the Head of the Church, will serve as
life-belts in the gales of doubt and controversy. My friends at Oxford
did not know that, though with my one jewel I seemed outwardly poor, I
was really richer and safer than many a Cardinal and many a Doctor of
Divinity. A confession of faith, like a prayer, may be very long, but
the prayer of the Publican may have been more efficient than that of
the Pharisee.
After a time I made an even more painful discovery: I found men, who
were considered quite orthodox, but who really were without any
belief. They spoke to me very freely, because they imagined that as a
German I would think as they did, and that I should not be surprised
if they looked on me as not quite sincere. It was not only honest
doubt that disturbed them. They had done with honest doubt, and they
were satisfied with a kind of Voltairian philosophy, which at last
ended in pure agnosticism. But even that, even professed agnosticism,
I could understand, because it often meant no more than a confession
of ignorance with regard to God, which we all confess, and need not
necessarily amount to the denial of the existence of Deity. But that
Voltairian levity which scoffs at everything connected with religion
was certainly something I did not expect to meet with at Oxford, and
which even now perplexes me. Of course, I should never think of
mentioning names, but it seemed to me necessary to mention the fact,
to complete the curious mosaic of theological and religious thought
that existed at Oxford at the time of my arrival.