with), you would at once have Ward at you, asking you your opinions
on every possible subject of this kind you can enumerate; beginning
with Covent Garden and Macready, and certainly not ending till you
got to the question of the moral sense and deontology. I don’t quite
like hearing so much of these matters as I do, but I suppose if one
can only keep steadily to one’s work (which I wish I did), and quite
resolve to forget all the words one has heard, and to theorise only for
amusement, there is no harm in it. Hawkins, Provost of Oriel, in a very
good University Sermon last Sunday, on the _Duty_ of Private Judgment
as opposed to the Right, seemed to say that undergraduates were to mind
their Latin and Greek and nothing else; or nearly so. And many people
here speak of the Union as an institution of very doubtful usefulness.
_To the same._
Oxford: 1838.
We have been up here just a month and a day, enjoying for the last week
of it most glorious weather, greatly to the increase of hunting and
boating, and to the decrease of reading. Among other incidents I have
had the pleasure of twice meeting the heresiarch αὐτότατος, namely,
John Henry Newman, once at a dinner party, and once at a small and
select breakfast. I was introduced, and had the honour of drinking wine
with him; on the strength of all which of course, as is one’s bounden
duty, I must turn Newmanist. As a first step in which process, I should
rebuke you for the heresy of your last letter, dated (more shame to
me) Nov. 22. I hoped very much you would come here after your degree
was done, but if you continue to rest on Milton’s Christian Doctrines
for one leg, and Calvin’s Institutes for the other, I recommend you
to walk away on them as fast as you can from this seat and citadel
of orthodoxy. It is difficult here even to obtain assent to Milton’s
greatness as a poet; quite impossible, I should think, if you are
unable to say that you ‘do not know anything about his prose writings.’
Also you must be ready to give up that ‘irreverent’ third book. Were
it not for the happy notion that a man’s poetry is not at all affected
by his opinions, or indeed character and mind altogether, I fear the
‘Paradise Lost’ would be utterly unsaleable, except for waste paper, in
the University.
Concerning the Newmanitish phantasm, as some people term the Church,
I do not know very much; but perhaps you may be enlightened a little,
and even softened, by the knowledge that Newman (I believe, decidedly
in words, and certainly his real notion is such) holds the supremacy
of the αυτη καθ ἁυτην ειλικρινης διανοια, but says that submission to
a divinely-appointed body of teachers and governors, to wit, bishops
and presbyters and deacons, is the course that is pointed out to us
by the aforesaid ειλικρινης διανοια: inasmuch as it is evident to the
reason from the circumstances of the case, &c., that the preponderance
of probabilities is for this view, viz. that Christian privileges and
covenanted salvation have been attached to the use of certain forms
and sacraments whose only qualified administrators are the Apostles’
successors, the clergy; and that these gifts and graces cannot be
obtained except through the medium of these divinely-appointed priests.
All persons, therefore, who wilfully refuse to receive God’s blessings
through this channel are guilty of very great sin, and put out of the
covenanted privileges of Christians. ‘Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers
of Damascus, better than all the rivers of Judah? may I not wash in
them and be clean?’ Such is, I believe, the doctrine which, they say,
is but a proper carrying out of the argument of Butler’s Analogy. I
think its proper answer must be in the lives of good men out of the
influence of any such ordinances, though when any one speaks of such
they at once cry ‘name,’ which it is perhaps difficult to do. As for
Milton, he is rejected altogether because of his divorce notions and
his neglect of devotions, as stated in Johnson’s life of him. Doddridge
is often mentioned, but I believe there is some charge against him
also. This disquisition, counting the Greek, must, I think, make this
letter a due member of the proportion proposed in your last--viz.:--
As your letter : a repartee :: this : something digestible.
_To the same._
Oxford: April 18, 1839.
I found that at Rugby I had been quite set down among theological
gossips as a Newmanist, but the impression was pretty well removed by
the time I came away. P----, as usual, flowed with a continuous stream
of German divinity and Biblical philology.
Whit-Sunday, May 30.
June 12th is Commemoration Day; I hope we shall have one Rugby prize
between the five attempts made by Stanley, Lake, and myself; and indeed
I believe Congreve and Arnold have also made one apiece; but the
English poems are this year fifty in number, and better than usual in
quality, according to Keble, and as mine was rather worse than usual I
have but little hope of proving a prize gooseberry; indeed I am afraid
I possess none of the necessary qualifications you enumerate.
I have been reading five books of Plato’s Republic, and wish to examine
you in return as to whether you be a Platonist. 1st. Do you believe
that πᾶσα μάθησις ἀνάμνησίς ἐστι? 2ndly. Do you agree to dividing
human nature into τὸ φιλόσοφον, τὸ ἐπιθυμοειδές, and τὸ ἐπιθυμητικόν?
3rdly. Do you believe that all wickedness is ἀκούσιον and [Greek: δι’
ἀγνοίαν]? 4thly. Do you agree to this assertion, ‘That the world will
never be happy till philosophers are kings, or kings philosophers’?
5thly. Do you think it would be advisable to turn H.M.’s colony of Van
Diemen’s Land into a Platonic Republic? the φύλακες whereof should be
educated at ---- College ----? (the blanks you must fill up yourself;
Queen’s College, Vandiemensville, is what I conjecture).
If you have not hitherto studied this wondrous book I recommend you to
cast aside those heterodox and heretical authors, Calvin and Milton,
and immediately commence upon it. Plato, not being a Christian, is
quite orthodox; in fact, Sewell says that his Republic is realised in,
and indeed is a sort of prophecy of, the Catholic Church; Coleridge
meanwhile declaring it the most wonderful anticipation of Protestant
Christianity. You must really come to Oxford, overcoming circumstances
and cacoëthes and everything else; as otherwise I have no prospect
whatever of seeing you. It is also advisable that you should see the
Arch-Oxford-Tractator before you leave this part of the world, that
you may not be ignorant on a topic doubtless interesting even to the
remote barbarians in Van Diemen’s Land. It is said that Romanists are
increasing, Newmanists increasing, Socinians also, and Rationalists
increasing, but all other kinds of men rapidly decreasing; so that
on your return to England perhaps you will find Newman Archbishop of
Canterbury and Father Confessor to the Queen; Lord Melbourne (if
not burnt) excommunicated, and philosophers in the persons of the
Apostles’ apostolically ordained successors fairly and Platonically
established as kings. The seeds of which contingent revolutions it is
requisite that you should come and contemplate in Oxford. You will also
have the opportunity of seeing Conybeare Pater issuing fulminatory
condemnations of the Fathers at the heads of astonished Newmanists from
St. Mary’s pulpit; himself in shape, conformation, and gestures most
like one of his own ichthyosauri, and his voice evidently proceeding
from lungs of a fossil character. Again, you will see Chevalier
Bunsen, Poet Wordsworth, and Astronomer Herschel metamorphosed into
doctors of civil law; a sight worthy, especially in the second case,
of all contemplation. Furthermore, there will be boat-races, with much
shouting and beer-drinking; a psychological study of great interest.
Cum multis aliis, quæ nunc describere longum est. Nil mihi rescribas,
attamen ipse veni.
May 2, 1839.
I hope you will carry out with you, or send home for, a good Germanised
Cambridge scholar or historian, as that (next to Paley’s ‘Horæ
Paulinæ’ and ‘Rationalistic Divinity’) is the great bulwark against
Newmanism. And I have to tell you that Bishop Broughton, your diocesan
to be, has lately been sending to Oxford to beg for contributions of
spare books, μάλιστα μέν new, but if not, old, to set up a clerical
library in Australia. Such opportunities of disseminating Patristical
and Ecclesiastical views are never missed by the ardent Newmanistic
spirits, old and young, specially the latter. Whereby, unless the
convict Clerisy be slower than their convict parishioners in their
intellectual development, Newmanism is not improbably already founded
in the far East on the foundation of Kerr and Bramhall, St. Ignatius,
St. Basil, and the Oxford tracts.
Pray come; and write and let me know. I said in my last--Nil mihi
rescribas, attamen ipse veni. But Latin is of course to be taken
rhetorically and figuratively, and ‘nil mihi rescribas’ means
only--Come, if you can, before your letter.
_To J. N. Simpkinson, Esq._
Oxford: Die Celeberrimi Laurentii Sheriffii, 1839.
I wish you would recommend me some book to give Gell before he goes
to Tasmania. I should not like to give him anything ephemeral, which
is a fault attaching itself, I suppose, even to ‘Carlyle’s Essays,’
which are just published though I admire him extremely in general, and
these essays even more than the ‘Revolution.’ Has he got a ‘Boswell’s
Johnson’? I suppose so. Carlyle says Johnson is the last of the English
Tories; all since him have been but Toryish men. He has got an article
on Boswell which is extremely beautiful; likewise on Burns, which is
so too. He is certainly, however, somewhat heathenish; but that, it
seems to me, is the case with all literature, old and new, English and
foreign, worth calling literature, which comes in one’s way.
I truly hope to escape the vortex of philosophism and discussion
(whereof Ward is the centre), as it is the most exhausting exercise in
the world; and I assure you I quite makarise you at Cambridge for your
liberty from it.
_To the same._
Tuesday, December 21, 1839.
Q----‘s Newmanistic tendencies are, I am afraid, as certain if not as
strong as you represent. He is so determined on having a conscious
system that these tendencies are, I think, not unnatural. I hope you
do not think me much perverted. The resistance, when there is occasion
for it, against proselytisers is of the most vague unsystematic kind,
resting in the most unstable way on intuitions, idealities, &c. &c.,
but I am not conscious of being in any wise leavened by them.
What do you think I have been bestowing the firstfruits of Christmas
idleness upon? The first part of ‘Die Leiden des jungen Werthers,’
and really with more satisfaction and admiration than I expected; or
rather, I have found all the power and little of the extravagance
I looked for. I have read, too, with great pleasure, Schiller’s
‘Votiv-Tafeln’; at least, about half of them. Here is one--
_Hast_ du etwas? so theile mir’s mit, und ich zahle was recht ist.
_Bist_ du etwas? o dann tauschen die Seelen wir aus.
Again--
Allen gehört was du denkst, dein Eigen ist nur was du fühlest;
Soll er dein Eigenthum seyn, fühle den Gott den du denkst.
I have but little appetite for work, mathematical or classical; and
there is as little compulsion to it, and as much enticement from it, as
is possible in our ways of life at Oxford.
November 24, 1839.
Whence comest thou, shady lane? and why and how?
Thou, where with idle heart, ten years ago,
I wandered, and with childhood’s paces slow
So long unthought of, and remembered now!
Again in vision clear thy pathwayed side
I tread, and view thy orchard plots again
With yellow fruitage hung,--and glimmering grain
Standing or shocked through the thick hedge espied.
This hot still noon of August brings the sight;
This quelling silence as of eve or night,
Wherein Earth (feeling as a mother may
After her travail’s latest bitterest throes)
Looks up, so seemeth it, one half repose,
One half in effort, straining, suffering still.
This I wrote in some cornfields near Liverpool, on one of our few fine
days.
_To J. P. Gell, Esq._
New Year’s Day, 1840 (To Hobart Town, V. D. L.)
Liverpool: January 16, 1840.
Of the three principal theological appearances spoken of for this
past autumn, two have appeared--‘Arnold on Prophecy,’ as you know,
I suppose, and two fresh volumes of ‘Froude’s Remains’; the third,
‘Julius Hare’s Sermons,’ are still only in preparation. Oxford is,
as usual, replete with Newmanism and Newmanistic gossip, from which
it is one blessing for you that you are preserved. I saw a letter
from Arnold, dated Fox How, January, in which he said that not the
schoolhouse only but the school would be, he believed, full next
half-year.
_To J. N. Simpkinson, Esq._
26 Castle Street, Liverpool: August 27, 1840.
The English verse disappointment, as you suppose, was no heavy burden
to bear, and if Burbidge has sent you the specimen line he threatened
to do, you will say that it should have been no disappointment at all.
I have been since the vacation three weeks at Grasmere with Ward, not
very far from Thorney How; the rest of the time here studying the
ethics, &c., for November. I shall go for a day or two to Rugby at
the beginning of October, and then to Oxford about a fortnight before
term commences, to effect the removal I must undergo from College to
lodgings; indeed, I should go earlier for the sake of better reading,
but my two brothers are going out to America together (the younger for
the first time), and will hardly be off sooner than October.
That I have been a good deal unsettled in mind at times at Oxford,
and that I have done a number of foolish things, is true enough, and
I dare say the change from Rugby life to its luxury and apparent
irresponsibility has had a good deal of ill effect upon me.
_To the same._
Oxford: Feb. 16, 1841.
I should like much to have heard Carlyle’s complaint against Coleridge.
I keep wavering between admiration of his exceedingly great perceptive
and analytical power, and other wonderful points, and inclination to
turn away altogether from a man who has so great a lack of all reality
and actuality. By the bye, there is a new and very striking portrait of
him just published by Holloway, which I have seen in our Coleridge’s
rooms, and which, he says, is said by those who knew him to be the best
by far there exists.
We had a two days’ visit from Arnold just before the half-year began. I
thought he was not in _very_ good spirits; but he was certainly not out
of heart.
Oxford is now in full enjoyment of the Carnival. You have no idea how
fast things are going here Romewards. The more need, therefore, for
Hare’s defence of Luther, who is in terrible ill-odour here. Is it ever
to appear? I have some idea of going to London at Easter, to get some
lectures of Lowe, my tutor of Easter Term, who is now established there.
I heard the other day that Walrond was to come up to try for our
scholarship. Burbidge has spoken a good deal of his coming here instead
of to Cambridge. I told him that I thought your discipline infinitely
superior in the way of instruction; and so, I feel sure, it must be,
though I am willing we should be thought superior in other points.
_To his Sister._
[After failing to obtain a first-class in the schools.]
Oxford: Sunday, June 6, 1841.
You must not trouble yourself about my class. I do not care a straw
for it myself, and was much more glad to get it over than I was
disappointed at hearing of its result. I suppose a good many, whom I
ought to wish to gratify, are disappointed a good deal, and it will
perhaps leave me without an adequate supply of pupils this summer; but
I have already an offer of one for a month, and do not despair of two
or three more before term ends. Otherwise it does not matter, I think,
at all; and I can assure you it has not lessened my own opinion of
my ability, for I did my papers not a quarter as well as my reading
would naturally have enabled me to do; and if I got a second with my
little finger, it would not have taken two hands to get a double first
(there’s for you!) Neither must you think that it is about my class
that I have been bothered during the last year, and that I _must_
therefore be disappointed. I can assure you that it was principally
about other things altogether, though you need not read or say this
to my father or mother, unless you think it will do any good, which I
suppose it won’t.
I did not like going up last October, though I dare say I should have
done better then, because I had not read what I ought; but after having
so read, I had so much less care about it than I ought to have had,
that I mismanaged everything in every way I could.
Besides, you know the object of honours is to make men read and not to
make them distinguished; and if I have read, it is all the same whether
I am distinguished or not, and, so far as I am concerned, perhaps
better. The disappointment has been general; two or three certain
firsts, besides myself, are in the second, and two or three hopeful
ones in the third. Balliol has, however, got two of the four prizes. So
we are getting up again in the world.
I only wish I might go home, but if I don’t stay here every day to eat
bread and butter out of the College buttery till Wednesday fortnight I
shall lose 60_l._ Wherefore you and I must both be patient.
Commemoration is to be a week earlier, as Prince Albert and the Duke
are to be here at that time.
I had a delightful walk to Braunston and Rugby, and still more so
back here--about fifty miles, and mostly through fields and green
lanes--quite a new way, and far pleasanter than the old one.
Oxford: June 1841.
I am glad my explanations have relieved your disappointment, though
I hope you will not blab my bravado any further. However, it is not
perhaps so great as you may think, for I do not doubt there are many in
every examination who are capable of as much and fail much in the same
way as I, only nobody knows. I am not sorry to lose reputation, for it
is often a troublesome companion. Did I tell you that my friend Ward
has been turned out of his tutorship for Ultra-Newmanism?
_To J. N. Simpkinson, Esq._
Oxford: July 11, 1841.
... And now to thank you for the kindness of your letter. You will have
seen that I am inclined rather to care too little than too much about
it. My papers, I am quite sure, deserved no more than a second, and so
I was, too, at the time; there can be no question as to the fairness of
the decision. At the same time, knowing as I do how far my papers were
from representing my acquirement and my usual ability of writing upon
that acquirement, I can measure more than any one else how much was in
my average grasp. As for the causes of this mismanagement, I do not
feel very guilty about them, though it does not therefore follow that
I ought not so to feel. The only real loss that I care about is that
of pupils whom I should have been glad to have had this summer for the
money’s sake, and now I hardly expect to get any.
_To Rev. J. P. Gell._
Liverpool: October 8, 1843.
I do not think I am particularly inclined to become a Puseyite, though
it is very likely my Puseyite position may prevent my becoming anything
else; and I am ruminating, in the hope of escaping these terrible
alternatives, a precipitate flight from Oxford, that is, as soon as my
exhibition expires, for I cannot think of sacrificing 60_l._ on any
consideration. Also, I have a very large amount of objection, or rather
repugnance, to sign ‘ex animo’ the thirty-nine Articles, which it would
be singular and unnatural not to do if I stayed in Oxford, as without
one’s M.A. degree one of course stands quite still, and has no resource
for employment except private pupils and private reading. It is not
so much from any definite objection to this or that point, as general
dislike to subscription, and strong feeling of its being a bondage and
a very heavy one, and one that may cramp and cripple one for life.
What to do, if I don’t stay at Oxford, is a very different question. I
do not dislike the tutor’s work at Oriel, but without taking an M.A. I
cannot go on with it; and if, as I supposed, I give up both this and
residence, where to go and what to do will be a perplexity. However,
I shall do nothing ὥστε ἀνηκεστόον τι παθεῑν before this time year;
though, as to the tutorship, I shall probably have to decide before
this reaches you.
I have employed this Midsummer vacation half in going abroad, and half
with pupils at Grasmere. I left England, July 1, with Walrond; went
to Havre, Paris, Lyons, Marseilles, Genoa, Leghorn, where Burbidge
joined us; with him we went to Pisa and Florence, and from Florence
made excursions to the monasteries of Vallombrosa, Camaldoli, and
Laverna. I was then ill for about a week at Florence; left Walrond
and Burbidge, and started for England. I went by Bologna, Parma, and
Piacenza, to Milan; saw the Cathedral, the most beautiful building I
ever beheld, as also the Leonardo da Vinci, which is, I think, the most
beautiful painting. Then I crossed the Simplon, went up the Rhone,
over the Grimsel Pass, and one or two others in the Bernese Oberland,
and so to Thun and Berne, and thence by Basle and the Rhine home. I
liked Switzerland much better than Italy myself, principally, perhaps,
because it was so exceedingly hot, and so impossible to enjoy exercise,
in the latter; perhaps, also, in some degree, from being continually
lionised about galleries and the like, which is far less agreeable than
walking through the beauty of a country.
I went off directly after my return to Grasmere, where I had a party of
pupils waiting for me, and there passed six weeks of a very pleasant
mixture of work and walking about. Stanley was at Fox How for the last
three weeks, working at the memoir.
We have all been reading a grand new philosophy-book, ‘Mill on Logic’;
very well written at any rate, and ‘stringent if not sound.’
_To Rev. T. Burbidge._
Oxford: June, 1844.
I have just received your letter with a rejoinder to my
anti-non-interference philippic. Of course I do not mean that if a
labourer has at present his proper proportion for twelve hours’ work,
he should have the same sum for ten. But I do believe that he has not
his proper proportion, that capital tyrannises over labour, and that
Government is bound to interfere to prevent such bullying; and I do
believe, too, that in some way or other the problem now solved by
universal competition or the devil-take-the-hindmost may receive a more
satisfactory solution. It is manifestly absurd that, to allow me to get
my stockings a halfpenny a pair cheaper, the operative stocking-weaver
should be forced to go barefoot. It is, surely, not wholly Utopian to
look for some system which will apportion the due reward to the various
sets of workmen, and evade this perpetual struggle for securing (each
man to the exclusion of his neighbour) the whole market.
I have got two beautiful white water-lilies floating in a green dessert
dish beside me. Enviest thou not, O Sicilian Shepherd? or hast thou
thyself also such treasures?
_To Rev. J. P. Gell._
Liverpool: July 13, 1844.
I believe my last letter was written at the end of last long vacation.
I remember I was at that time in doubt about signing the Articles;
I did, however, sign them, though reluctantly enough, and I am not
quite sure whether or not in a justifiable sense. However, I have for
the present laid by that perplexity, though it may perhaps recur some
time or other, and in general I do not feel perfectly satisfied about
staying in my tutor capacity at Oxford.
I suppose Stanley’s memoir will somehow or other have reached you. I
found the letters more interesting even than I had expected, and the
biographical part as good, though I think in some parts it is wanting.
It is very judicious in keeping the right mean between reserve and
exposure.
I have in the last ten days also seen the monument, which is placed at
a considerable height, so as to rise above any one’s head in the pew,
in the north division of the east wall, looking down the chapel. I
think I should have preferred it on one side; the figure, also, though
from the recumbent position it is of less matter, is sadly devoid of
likeness; the design in other respects is good, and I liked Bunsen’s
epitaph better than I thought I should have done.