he was, he delighted in the sights, the sounds, the air of the country.
He never left it for his annual migration to London without regret,
partly because it was so troublesome to move the mass of books without
which he could not bear to leave home, but still more because the bustle
and dust of London annoyed him; and in the midst of congenial society,
and the enjoyment of music and pictures, his thoughts reverted with
longing regret to his trees, his flowers, and his domestic pets. He had
begun his social relations with dogs and cats in Yorkshire, and an
amusing story is told of the way in which the preparations for his
formal reception when he came home after accepting the bishopric of S.
David’s, were completely disconcerted by the riotous welcome of his
dogs, who jumped on his shoulders and excluded all human attentions[65].
At Abergwili he extended his affections to birds, and kept peacocks,
pheasants, canaries, swans, and tame geese, which he regularly fed every
morning, no matter what the weather might be. They treated him with easy
familiarity, for they used to seize his coattails with their beaks to
show their welcome. His flowers had to yield to the tastes of his
four-footed friends. One day his gardener complained, ‘What am I to do,
my Lord? The hares have eaten your carnations.’ ‘Plant more carnations,’
was his only reply. Fine summer weather would draw him out of ‘Chaos’
into the field or garden; and one of his letters gives a delicious
picture of his enjoyment of a certain June, sitting on the grass while
the haymakers were at work in the field beyond, reading _The Earthly
Paradise_, and watching the movements of ‘a dear horse’ who paced up and
down with a ‘system of hay rakes behind him to toss it about and
accelerate its maturity[66].’
It must not, however, be supposed that Bishop Thirlwall lived the life
of an indolent man of letters. No bishop ever performed the duties of
his position more thoroughly, or with greater sacrifice of personal ease
and comfort. His first care was to learn Welsh, and in a little more
than a year he could read prayers and preach in that language. In his
large and little-known diocese locomotion was not easy, and
accommodation was often hard to obtain. Yet he visited every part of it,
personally inspected the condition of the schools and churches
(deplorable enough in 1840), and regularly performed the duties of
confirmation, preaching, and visitation. In the charge of 1866 he
reviewed the improvements which had been accomplished up to that time,
and could mention 183 churches to the restoration of which the Church
Building Society had made grants, and more than thirty parishes in which
either new or restored churches were in progress. Besides these, there
were some which had been restored by private munificence; others,
including the cathedral, by public subscription; many parsonages had
been built, livings had been augmented, and education had been largely
increased[67]. To all these excellent objects he had himself been a
munificent contributor, and we believe that between the beginning and
the end of his episcopate he had spent nearly £40,000 in charities of
various kinds[68]. Yet with all these claims on the gratitude of the
clergy we are sorry to have to admit that he was not personally popular.
It would have been more wonderful perhaps had he been so. The Welsh
clergy forty years ago were a rough and uncultivated body of men,
narrow-minded and prejudiced, and with habits hardly more civilized than
those of the labourers around them. They were ill at ease with an
English man of letters. He was to them an object of curiosity, possibly
of dread. The new Bishop intimated his wish that the clergy should come
to his house without restraint, and when there should be treated as
gentlemen and equals. This was of itself an innovation. In his
predecessor’s time when a clergyman called at Abergwili he entered by
the back door, and if he stayed to dinner he took that meal in the
housekeeper’s room with the upper servants. Thirlwall abolished these
customs, and entertained the clergy at his own table. This was excellent
in intention, but impossible in practice. The difference in tastes,
feelings, manners, between the entertainer and the entertained made
social intercourse equally disagreeable to both parties; and the Bishop
felt obliged to substitute correspondence for visits, so far as he
could, reserving personal intercourse for the archdeacons, or those
clergymen whose education enabled them to appreciate his friendship[69].
Again, the peculiar tone of his mind must be remembered. He was nothing
if not critical; and, further, as one of his oldest friends once said in
our hearing, ‘he was the most thoroughly veracious man I ever knew.’ He
could not listen to a hasty, ill-considered, remark without taking it to
pieces, and demonstrating, by successive questions, put in a slow,
deliberate tone of voice, the fallacy of the separate parts of the
proposition, and, by consequence, of the whole. Hence he was feared and
respected rather than beloved; and those who ought to have been proud of
having such a man among them wreaked their small spite against him by
accusing him of being inhospitable, of walking out attended by a dog
trained to know and bite a curate, and the like. These slanders, of
which we hope he was unconscious, he could not answer; those who
attacked him in public he could and did crush with an accuracy of
exposition, and a power of sarcasm, for which it would be hard to find a
parallel. We need only refer to his answers to Sir Benjamin Hall, M.P.
for Marylebone, on the general question of the condition of the churches
in his diocese, appended to his charge for 1851, and on the special case
of the Collegiate Church of Brecon, in two letters to the Archbishop of
Canterbury; or to the _Letter to the Rev. Rowland Williams_, published
in 1860. Mr Williams had published some sermons, entitled _Rational
Godliness_, the supposed heterodoxy of which had alarmed the clergy of
his diocese, seventy of whom had signed a memorial to the Bishop,
praying him to take some notice of the book; in other words, to remove
the author from the college at Lampeter, of which he was vice-principal.
The Bishop had declined to interfere, and in his charge of 1857 had
discussed the question at length, considering it, as was his manner,
from all points of view, and, while he found much to blame, defending
the author’s intentions, on the ground of the high opinion of his
personal character which he himself held. This, however, did not satisfy
Mr Williams. We cannot help suspecting that he was longing for a
martyr’s crown; and, indignant at not having obtained one, he addressed
the Bishop at great length in what he called _An Earnestly Respectful
Letter on the Difficulty of bringing Theological Questions to an Issue_.
He described the charge as ‘a miracle of cleverness,’ but deplored its
indefiniteness; he drew a picture of ‘a preacher in our wild mountains’
who came to seek counsel from his bishop and got only evasive
answers—‘in all helps for our guidance Abergwili may equal Delphi in
wisdom, but also in ambiguity[70]’—and entreated the Bishop to declare
plainly his own opinion on the questions raised. For once Bishop
Thirlwall’s serenity was fairly ruffled. Stung by the ingratitude of a
man whom he had steadily befriended, and whose aim was, as he thought,
to draw him into admissions damaging to himself, he struck with all his
might and main, and, as was said at the time, ‘you may hear every bone
in his adversary’s body cracking.’ One specimen of the remarkable power
of his reply must suffice. On the comparison of himself to the Delphic
oracle he remarked:
‘Even if I had laid claim to oracular wisdom I should have thought this
complaint rather unreasonable; for the oracle at Delphi, though it
pretended to divine infallibility, was used to wait for a question
before it gave a response. But I wish above all things to be sure as to
the person with whom I have to do. I remember to have read of one who
went to the oracle at Delphi, “ex industriâ factus ad imitationem
stultitiæ”; and I cannot help suspecting that I have before me one who
has put on a similar disguise. The voice does not sound to me like that
of a “mountain clergyman”; while I look at the roll I seem to recognize
a very different and well-known hand. The “difficulties” are very unlike
the expression of an embarrassment which has been really felt, but might
have been invented in the hope of creating one. They are quite worthy of
the mastery which you have attained in the art of putting questions, so
as most effectually to prevent the possibility of an answer[71].’
But if Thirlwall’s great merits were not fully appreciated in his own
diocese, there was no lack of recognition of them in the Church at
large. His seclusion at Abergwili largely increased his influence. It
was known that he thought out questions for himself, without consulting
his episcopal brethren or his friends, and without being influenced in
any way, as even the most conscientious men must be, in despite of
themselves, by the opinions which they hear expressed in society. Hence
his utterances came to be accepted as the decisions of a judge; of one
who, standing on an eminence, could take ‘an oversight of the whole
field of ecclesiastical events[72],’ and from that commanding position
could distinguish what was of permanent importance from that which
possessed a merely controversial interest as a vexed question of the
day. We have spoken of the advantages which he derived from his secluded
life; it must be admitted that it had also certain disadvantages. The
freshness and originality of his opinions, the judicial tone of his
independent decisions, gave them a permanent value; but his want of
knowledge of the opinions of those from whom he could not wholly
dissociate himself, and, we may add, his indifference to them, caused
him to be not unfrequently misunderstood, and to be charged with holding
views not far removed from heresy. ‘I will not call him an unbeliever,
but a misbeliever,’ said a very orthodox bishop, whose love of epigram
occasionally got the better of his charity. His brother bishops, like
the Welsh clergy, feared him more than they loved him; they knew his
value as an ally, but they knew also that he would never, under any
circumstances, become a partisan, or adopt a view which he could not
wholly approve, merely because it seemed good to his Order to exhibit
unanimity. It was probably for this reason, as much as for his eloquence
and power, that he had the ear of the House of Lords on the rare
occasions when he addressed it. The Peers knew that they were listening
to a man who had the fullest sense of the responsibilities of the
episcopate, but who would neither defend nor oppose a measure because
‘the proprieties’ indicated the side on which a bishop would be expected
to vote. Two only of his speeches are republished in the collection
before us—on the Civil Disabilities of the Jews (1848), and on the
Disestablishment of the Irish Church (1869). We should like to have had
added to these that on the grant to the Roman Catholic College of
Maynooth (1845), which seems to us to be equally worth preserving. On
these occasions Bishop Thirlwall took the unpopular side at periods of
great excitement; his arguments were listened to with the utmost
attention; and in the case of the Irish Church it has been stated that
no speech had a greater effect in favour of the measure than his.
In all Church matters he was a thorough Liberal. His view of the Church
of England cannot be better stated than by quoting a passage from one of
his _Letters to a Friend_. He had been reading Mr Robertson’s sermons;
and after saying that their author was specially recommended to him by
the hostility of the _Record_, ‘which I consider as a proof of some
excellence in every one who is its object,’ he thus proceeds:
‘He was certainly not orthodox after the _Record_ standard, but might
very well be so after another. For our Church has the advantage—such I
deem it—of more than one type of orthodoxy: that of the High Church,
grounded on one aspect of its formularies; that of the Low Church,
grounded on another aspect; and that of the Broad Church, striving to
take in both, but in its own way. Each has a right to a standing-place,
none to exclusive possession of the field. Of course this is very
unsatisfactory to the bigots of each party—at the two extremes. Some
would be glad to cast the others out; and some yearn after a Living
Source of Orthodoxy, of course on the condition that it sanctions their
own views. To have escaped that worst of evils ought, I think, to
console every rational Churchman for whatever he finds amiss at
home.’[73]
Had the Bishop added that he wished each of these parties to have fair
play, but that none should be exalted at the expense of the others, we
should have had a summary of the principles which regulated his public
life. Let it not, however, be supposed that he was an indifferent
looker-on. He held that truth had many sides; that it might be viewed in
different ways by persons standing in different positions; but still it
was to him clear, and definite, and based upon a rock which no human
assailant could shake. This, we think, is the keynote which is struck in
every one of those eleven most remarkable Charges which are now for the
first time collected together. We would earnestly commend them to the
study of all who are interested in the history of the Church of England
during the period which they cover. Every controversy which agitated
her, every measure which affected her welfare, is discussed by a master;
the real question at issue is carefully pointed out; the trivial is
distinguished from the important; moderation and charity are insisted
upon; angry passions are allayed; and, while the liberty of the
individual is perpetually asserted, the duty of maintaining her
doctrines is strenuously inculcated. As illustrations of some of these
characteristics we would contrast his exhaustive analysis of the
Tractarian movement or the Gorham controversy, with his conduct
respecting _Essays and Reviews_. In the former cases he hesitated to
condemn; he preferred to allay the terror with which his clergy were
evidently inspired. In the latter, though always ‘decidedly opposed to
any attempt to narrow the freedom which the law allows to every
clergyman of the Church of England in the expression of his opinion on
theological subjects,’ he joined his brother bishops in signing the
famous ‘Encyclical,’ which we now know was the composition of Bishop
Wilberforce, because he thought that in this case the principles
advocated led to a negation of Christianity.
Thirlwall’s position towards theological questions has been called
‘indefinable[74].’ In a certain sense this statement is no doubt true.
It was quite impossible to label him as of this or that party or
faction; or to predict with any approach to certainty what he would do
or say on any particular occasion. He had no enthusiasm (in the ordinary
sense of the word) and no sentiment, and therefore, when a question was
submitted to him, he did not decide it in the light of previous
prejudices, or welcome it as a point gained towards some cherished end.
He considered it as if it were the only question in the world at that
moment, and as if he had never heard of it, or anything like it, before;
he looked all round it, and balanced the arguments for and against it
with the accuracy of a man of science in a laboratory. As a result of
this process he frequently came to no resolution at all, and frankly
told his correspondent that he would leave the matter referred to him to
the decision of others. But, if what he held to be truth was assailed,
or the conduct of an individual unjustly called in question, Thirlwall’s
hesitation vanished. We have already mentioned his conduct in the House
of Lords; but it should never be forgotten that he was one of the four
Bishops who dissented from the resolution to inhibit Bishop Colenso from
preaching in the various dioceses of England; and that he stood alone in
withholding his signature from the address requesting him to resign his
see. Again, when Mr J. S. Mill was a candidate for Westminster in 1865,
and his opponents circulated on a placard some lines from his
_Examination of Sir W. Hamilton’s Philosophy_ intended to shock the
minds of the electors as irreverent if not blasphemous,—a proceeding
which was eagerly followed up by the _Record_ and the _Morning
Advertiser_ in leading articles—Thirlwall at once wrote to the
_Spectator_, maintaining that this passage contained “the utterance of a
conviction in harmony with ‘the purest spirit of Christian morality’;
that nothing but ‘an intellectual and moral incapacity worthy of the
‘Record’ and its satellite could have failed to recognise its truth’;
and that it ‘thrilled’ him ‘with a sense of the ethical sublime’[75].”
There were many other duties besides the care of the diocese of S.
David’s to which the Bishop devoted himself, but these we must dismiss
with a passing notice. We allude to his work as a member of the Ritual
Commission, as chairman of the Old Testament Revision Company, and in
Convocation. Gradually, however, as years advanced, his physical powers
began to fail, and he resolved to resign his bishopric. This resolution
was carried into effect in 1874. He retired to Bath, where he was still
able to continue many of his old pursuits, and, by the help of his
nephew and his family, notwithstanding blindness and deafness, to
maintain his old interests. He died rather suddenly, July 27, 1875, and
was buried in Westminster Abbey, where, by a singularly felicitous
arrangement, his remains were laid in the same grave as those of George
Grote.
Regret has been often expressed that Bishop Thirlwall did not write
more. We do not share this feeling. Had he written more he would have
thought less, studied less, possessed in a less perfect degree that
‘_cor sapiens et intelligens ad discernendum judicium_[76]’ which was
never weary of trying to impart to others a portion of its own serenity.
At seventy-six years of age, just before his resignation, he could say,
‘I should hesitate to say that whatever is is best; but I have strong
faith that it is _for_ the best, and that the general stream of tendency
is toward good’; and in the last sentence of his last charge he bade his
clergy remark that even controversies were ‘a sign of the love of truth
which, if often passionate and one-sided, is always infinitely
preferable to the quiet of apathy and indifference.’
-----
Footnote 1:
1. _William Whewell, D.D., Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. An
Account of his Writings, with Selections from his Literary and
Scientific Correspondence._ By I. TODHUNTER, M.A., F.R.S., Honorary
Fellow of S. John’s College. 2 vols., 8vo. (London, 1876.)
2. _The Life and Selections from the Correspondence of William
Whewell, D.D., late Master of Trinity College, Cambridge._ By Mrs
STAIR DOUGLAS. 8vo. (London, 1881.)
Footnote 2:
In the fifteen years from 1800-1814 inclusive the average was 205;
from 1815-1829 it was 402; and from 1830-1844 it was 433; from
1845-1859 it was 444; from 1859-1874 it was 545.
Footnote 3:
Todhunter’s _Life_, ii. 91.
Footnote 4:
_Life and Letters of Sir C. Lyell_, ii. 38. In the same letter he
expresses his astonishment at finding that Whewell, while writing one
of his papers on the Tides, was passing through the press _four other
works_.
Footnote 5:
The inscription runs: munificentia · fultus · Alex. J. B. Hope,
generosi · hisce · ædibus · antiquam · speciem · restituit. W.
Whewell. Mag. Collegii. A. D. MDCCCXLIII. Mr Hope gave £1000, and the
Master himself £250; but the liberality of the College, which spent
some £4000 before the work was finished, is unrecorded. It was on this
occasion that somebody wrote a parody on _The House that Jack Built_,
beginning:
This is the House that Hope built.
This is the Master, rude and rough,
Who lives in the House that Hope built.
These are the Seniors, greedy and gruff,
Who toady the Master, rude and rough,
Who lives in the House that Hope built.
Footnote 6:
The _Times_, February 25 and 26, 1847. Mrs Stair Douglas, p. 285,
prints a letter from Archdeacon Hare, who had been disturbed by
reports of the Vice-Chancellor’s vehemence.
Footnote 7:
The visit of Queen Victoria to the University in 1843.
Footnote 8:
_A Letter to the Rev. W. Whewell, B.D., Master of Trinity College,
etc. By an Undergraduate._ 8vo. London, 1843.
Footnote 9:
_The Victory of Faith, and other Sermons._ By J. C. Hare, M. A. 8vo.
Cambridge, 1840, p. x.
Footnote 10:
Mrs Stair Douglas, p. 216.
Footnote 11:
Dr Lightfoot’s Sermon, preached in the College Chapel on Sunday, March
18, 1866.
Footnote 12:
They appeared in _Punch_ for March 17, 1866.
Footnote 13:
The letter is dated 30 October, 1857.
Footnote 14:
Mrs Stair Douglas, p. 208.
Footnote 15:
Memoir by Sir John Herschel, _Proceedings of Royal Society_, XVI., p.
lvi.
Footnote 16:
Bishop Goodwin’s article in _Macmillan’s Magazine_ for December, 1881,
p. 140.
Footnote 17:
We are not sure that he ever allowed the _Origin of Species_ to be
admitted into the College Library. It was certainly refused more than
once, being probably dismissed with the expression which he was fond
of using when, as Chairman of the Seniority, he read the list of books
proposed—‘a worthless publication.’
Footnote 18:
1. _Remains, Literary and Theological, of Connop Thirlwall, late Lord
Bishop of S. David’s._ Edited by J. J. STEWART PEROWNE, D.D. Vol. 1:
Charges delivered between the years 1842 and 1860. Vol. 2: Charges
delivered between the years 1863 and 1872. 8vo. (London, 1877.)
2. _Essays, Speeches, and Sermons._ By CONNOP THIRLWALL, D.D., late
Lord Bishop of S. David’s. Edited by J. J. STEWART PEROWNE, D.D. 8vo.
(London, 1880.)
3. _Letters to a Friend._ By CONNOP THIRLWALL, late Lord Bishop of S.
David’s. Edited by the Very Rev. ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D.D. 8vo.
(London, 1881.)
4. _Letters, Literary and Theological, of Connop Thirlwall, late Lord
Bishop of S. David’s._ Edited by the Very Rev. J. J. STEWART PEROWNE,
D.D., Dean of Peterborough, and the Rev. LOUIS STOKES, B.A. Corpus
Christi College, Cambridge. With Annotations and Preliminary Memoirs
by the Rev. LOUIS STOKES. 8vo. (London, 1881.)
5. _Letters to a Friend._ New Edition. (London, 1882.)
Footnote 19:
Dr Perowne’s Preface to _Letters_, &c., p. vi.
Footnote 20:
_Letters_, &c., p. 177.
Footnote 21:
_Primitiæ_, p. 52. The essay is endorsed: ‘Composed 1st January, 1806.
Eight years old.’
Footnote 22:
_Primitiæ_, p. 224. The piece is dated October 28, 1808.
Footnote 23:
_Letters to a Friend_, p. 155. As a matter of fact the Bishop did buy
and destroy all the copies that he could.
Footnote 24:
Dean Perowne mentions (Preface, p. viii.) that ‘at school he did not
care to enter into the games and amusements of the other boys, but was
to be seen at play-hour withdrawing himself into some corner with a
pile of books under his arm.’
Footnote 25:
Candler was seven years older than Thirlwall. He was junior assistant
in a draper’s shop at Ipswich, and afterwards set up in business on
his own account at Chelmsford, where he became a leading member of the
Society of Friends. He died, nearly eighty years of age, in 1872. We
have not been able to ascertain how he became acquainted with
Thirlwall.
Footnote 26:
_Letters_, &c., p. 7.
Footnote 27:
_Letters_, &c., p. 17.
Footnote 28:
_Ibid._ p. 8.
Footnote 29:
_Letters to a Friend_, p. 225.
Footnote 30:
_Letters_, &c., p. 21. The letter is dated December, 1813, when the
writer was sixteen years old.
Footnote 31:
Professor Monk, who had examined Thirlwall on one of these occasions,
was so much struck with the vigour and accuracy of his translations
that he remarked to a friend, who had also had experience of his worth
as a scholar, ‘Had I been sitting in my library, with unlimited access
to books, I could not have done better.’ ‘Nor so well,’ was the reply.
Footnote 32: