PART II.――COMMENTS

PAGE

From ‘THE OXFORD MOVEMENT,’ 1833-1845, BY R. W. CHURCH 235

From ‘APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA,’ by JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 259

From ‘THE CHERWELL WATER-LILY AND OTHER POEMS,’ by FREDERICK

WILLIAM FABER 263

From ‘ESSAYS IN ECCLESIASTICAL BIOGRAPHY,’ by the Right Hon.

Sir JAMES STEPHEN 263

From ‘A MEMOIR OF THE REV. JOHN KEBLE,’ by the Right Hon.

Sir J. T. COLERIDGE 276

From ‘ESSAYS HISTORICAL AND THEOLOGICAL,’ by J. B. MOZLEY 278

From ‘MEMOIR OF JOSHUA WATSON,’ edited by EDWARD CHURTON 281

From ‘WILLIAM GEORGE WARD AND THE OXFORD MOVEMENT,’ by

WILFRID WARD 282

From ‘A NARRATIVE OF EVENTS CONNECTED WITH THE PUBLICATION

OF THE TRACTS FOR THE TIMES,’ by WILLIAM PALMER [OF

WORCESTER COLL.] 287

From ‘OXFORD HIGH ANGLICANISM AND ITS CHIEF LEADERS,’ by

J. H. RIGG 291

From ‘HISTORICAL NOTES ON THE TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT,’ by

FREDERICK OAKELEY 299

From ‘THE BRITISH CRITIC’ for Jan., 1838. (A review of

the _Remains_, Part I., by FREDERIC ROGERS.) 306

From ‘THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ISAAC WILLIAMS,’ edited by

GEORGE PREVOST 320

From ‘THOUGHTS IN PAST YEARS,’ by ISAAC WILLIAMS 326

From ‘CARDINAL NEWMAN,’ by RICHARD H. HUTTON 329

From ‘THE ANGLICAN REVIVAL,’ by J. H. OVERTON 334

From ‘ESSAYS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS,’ by NICHOLAS WISEMAN 338

From ‘THE ANGLICAN CAREER OF CARDINAL NEWMAN,’ by EDWIN

A. ABBOTT 344

From ‘ORIEL COLLEGE,’ by DAVID WATSON RANNIE 356

From ‘SHORT STUDIES ON GREAT SUBJECTS,’ BY JAMES ANTHONY

FROUDE 358

CONTROVERSY from ‘THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW’ and ‘THE

NINETEENTH CENTURY’ BETWEEN E. A. FREEMAN AND J. A. FROUDE 363

From ‘THE REMAINS OF RICHARD HURRELL FROUDE’ [edited by

JOHN KEBLE and JOHN HENRY NEWMAN], 1838 367

_Idem_, 1839 374

From ‘REMINISCENCES CHIEFLY OF ORIEL COLLEGE AND THE OXFORD

MOVEMENT,’ BY T. MOZLEY 391

From ‘THE BRITISH CRITIC’ for April 1840. (A review of the

_Remains_, Part II., by T. MOZLEY) 398

From ‘LYRA APOSTOLICA,’ edited by H. C. BEECHING, WITH AN

INTRODUCTION BY H. S. HOLLAND 402

From ‘NEWMAN,’ by WILLIAM BARRY 405

EXCERPTS FROM ‘MEMOIRS,’ by MARK PATTISON; the ‘LIFE OF SAMUEL

WILBERFORCE,’ by his SON; the ‘LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF

THE LATE ROBERT SOUTHEY,’ by his SON; ‘A KEY TO THE POPERY

OF OXFORD,’ by PETER MAURICE; ‘JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, LETTERS

AND CORRESPONDENCES,’ edited by ANNE MOZLEY; and

‘CATHOLICISM, ROMAN AND ANGLICAN,’ by A. M. FAIRBAIRN 406-408

HURRELL FROUDE

II

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

MOVEMENT

From ‘THE OXFORD MOVEMENT: TWELVE YEARS, 1833-1845,’ BY R. W.

CHURCH, M.A., D.C.L., sometime Dean of St. Paul’s, and Fellow of

Oriel College, Oxford. London: Macmillan & Co., 1891.

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

* * * * *

‘What was it that turned [Keble] by degrees into so prominent and so

influential a person? It was the result of the action of his

convictions and ideas, and still more of his character, on the

energetic and fearless mind of a pupil and disciple, Richard Hurrell

Froude. Froude was Keble’s pupil at Oriel, and when Keble left Oriel

for his curacy at the beginning of the Long Vacation of 1823, he took

Froude with him to read for his degree. He took with him ultimately

two other pupils, Robert Wilberforce and Isaac Williams of Trinity.

One of them, Isaac Williams, has left some reminiscences of the time,

and of the terms on which the young men were with their tutor, then

one of the most famous men at Oxford. They were terms of the utmost

freedom. “Master is the greatest boy of them all,” was the judgment of

the rustic who was gardener, groom, and parish clerk to Mr. Keble.

Froude’s was a keen logical mind, not easily satisfied, contemptuous

of compromises and evasions, and disposed on occasion to be

mischievous and aggressive; and with Keble, as with anybody else, he

was ready to dispute and try every form of dialectical experiment. But

he was open to higher influences than those of logic, and in Keble he

saw what subdued and won him to boundless veneration and affection.

Keble won the love of the whole little society; but in Froude he had

gained a disciple who was to be the mouthpiece and champion of his

ideas, and who was to react on himself and carry him forward to larger

enterprises and bolder resolutions than by himself he would have

thought of. Froude took in from Keble all he had to communicate:

principles, convictions, moral rules and standards of life, hopes,

fears, antipathies. And his keenly-tempered intellect, and his

determination and high courage, gave a point and an impulse of their

own to Keble’s views and purposes. As things came to look darker, and

dangers seemed more serious to the Church, its faith or its rights,

the interchange of thought between master and disciple, in talk and in

letter, pointed more and more to the coming necessity of action; and

Froude at least had no objections to the business of an agitator. But

all this was very gradual; things did not yet go beyond discussion;

ideas, views, arguments were examined and compared; and Froude, with

all his dash, felt as Keble felt, that he had much to learn about

himself, as well as about books and things. In his respect for

antiquity, in his dislike of the novelties which were invading Church

rules and sentiments, as well as its Creeds, in his jealousy of the

State, as well as in his seriousness of self-discipline, he accepted

Keble’s guidance and influence more and more; and from Keble he had

more than one lesson of self-distrust, more than one warning against

the temptations of intellect. “Froude told me many years after,”

writes one of his friends, “that Keble once, before parting with him,

seemed to have something on his mind which he wished to say, but

shrank from saying, while waiting, I think, for a coach. At last he

said, just before parting, ‘Froude, you thought Law’s _Serious Call_

was a clever book; it seemed to me as if you had said the Day of

Judgement will be a pretty sight.’ This speech, Froude told me, had a

great effect on his after life.”[294]

‘At Easter, 1826, Froude was elected Fellow of Oriel. He came back to

Oxford, charged with Keble’s thoughts and feelings, and from his more

eager and impatient temper, more on the look-out for ways of giving

them effect. The next year he became Tutor, and he held the tutorship

till 1830. But he found at Oriel a colleague, a little his senior in

age and standing, of whom Froude and his friends as yet knew little

except that he was a man of great ability, that he had been a

favourite of Whately’s, and that in a loose and rough way he was

counted among the few Liberals and Evangelicals in Oxford. This was

Mr. Newman. Keble had been shy of him, and Froude would at first judge

him by Keble’s standard. But Newman was just at this time “moving,” as

he expresses it, “out of the shadow of Liberalism.” Living not apart

like Keble, but in the same College, and meeting every day, Froude and

Newman could not but be either strongly and permanently repelled, or

strongly attracted. They were attracted: attracted with a force which

at last united them in the deepest and most unreserved friendship. Of

the steps of this great change in the mind and fortunes of each of

them we have no record: intimacies of this kind grow in College out of

unnoticed and unremembered talks, agreeing or differing, out of

unconscious disclosures of temper and purpose, out of walks and rides

and quiet breakfasts and Common-Room arguments, out of admirations and

dislikes, out of letters and criticisms and questions; and nobody can

tell afterwards how they have come about. The change was gradual and

deliberate. Froude’s friends in Gloucestershire, the Keble family, had

their misgivings about Newman’s supposed Liberalism; they did not much

want to have to do with him. His subtle and speculative temper did not

always square with Froude’s theology. “N. is a fellow that I like

more, the more I think of him,” Froude wrote in 1828; “only I would

give a few odd pence if he were not a heretic.”[295] But Froude, who

saw him every day, and was soon associated with him in the tutorship,

found a spirit more akin to his own in depth and freedom and daring,

than he had yet encountered. And Froude found Newman just in that

maturing state of religious opinion in which a powerful mind like

Froude’s would be likely to act decisively. Each acted on the other.

Froude represented Keble’s ideas, Keble’s enthusiasm. Newman gave

shape, foundation, consistency, elevation to the Anglican theology,

when he accepted it, which Froude had learned from Keble. “I knew him

first,” we read in the _Apologia_, “in 1826, and was in the closest

and most affectionate friendship with him from about 1829 till his

death in 1836.”[296] But this was not all. Through Froude, Newman came

to know and to be intimate with Keble; and a sort of _camaraderie_

arose of very independent and outspoken people, who acknowledged Keble

as their master and counsellor.

‘“The true and primary author of it” (the Tractarian Movement), we

read in the _Apologia_, “as is usual with great motive powers, was out

of sight…. Need I say that I am speaking of John Keble?” The statement

is strictly true. Froude never would have been the man he was but for

his daily and hourly intercourse with Keble; and Froude brought to

bear upon Newman’s mind, at a critical period of its development,

Keble’s ideas and feelings about religion and the Church, Keble’s

reality of thought and purpose, Keble’s transparent and saintly

simplicity. And Froude, as we know from a well-known saying of

his,[297] brought Keble and Newman to understand one another, when the

elder man was shy and suspicious of the younger, and the younger,

though full of veneration for the elder, was hardly yet in full

sympathy with what was most characteristic and most cherished in the

elder’s religious convictions. Keble attracted and moulded Froude: he

impressed Froude with his strong Churchmanship, his severity and

reality of life, his poetry, and high standard of scholarly

excellence. Froude learned from him to be anti-Erastian,

anti-Methodistical, anti-sentimental, and as strong in his hatred of

the world, as contemptuous of popular approval, as any Methodist. Yet

all this might merely have made a strong impression, or formed one

more marked school of doctrine, without the fierce energy which

received it and which it inspired. But Froude, in accepting Keble’s

ideas, resolved to make them active, public, aggressive; and he found

in Newman a colleague whose bold originality responded to his own.

Together they worked as Tutors; together they worked when their

tutorships came to an end; together they worked when thrown into

companionship in their Mediterranean voyage, in the winter of 1832 and

the spring of 1833. They came back full of aspirations and anxieties

which spurred them on; their thoughts had broken out in papers sent

home from time to time to Rose’s _British Magazine_ (“Home Thoughts

Abroad”) and the _Lyra Apostolica_. Then came the meeting at Hadleigh,

and the beginning of the Tracts. Keble had given the inspiration,

Froude had given the impulse; then Newman took up the work, and the

impulse henceforward, and the direction, were his.

‘Doubtless, many thought and felt like them about the perils which

beset the Church and religion. Loyalty to the Church, belief in her

divine mission, allegiance to her authority, readiness to do battle

for her claims, were anything but extinct in her ministers and laity.

The elements were all about of sound and devoted Churchmanship. Higher

ideas of the Church than the popular and political notion of it,

higher conceptions of Christian doctrine than those of the ordinary

Evangelical theology――echoes of the meditations of a remarkable

Irishman, Mr. Alexander Knox――had in many quarters attracted attention

in the works and sermons of his disciple, Bishop Jebb, though it was

not till the Movement had taken shape that their full significance was

realised. Others besides Keble and Froude and Newman were seriously

considering what could best be done to arrest the current which was

running strong against the Church, and discussing schemes of

resistance and defence. Others were stirring up themselves and their

brethren to meet the new emergencies, to respond to the new call. Some

of these were in communication with the Oriel men, and ultimately took

part with them in organising vigorous measures. But it was not till

Mr. Newman made up his mind to force on the public mind, in a way

which could not be evaded, the great article of the Creed, “I believe

one Catholic and Apostolic Church,” that the Movement began. And for

the first part of its course, it was concentrated at Oxford. It was

the direct result of the searchings of heart and the communings for

seven years, from 1826 to 1833, of the three men who have been the

subject of this chapter.

* * * * *

‘Hurrell Froude[298] soon passed away before the brunt of the fighting

came. His name is associated with Mr. Newman and Mr. Keble, but it is

little more than a name to those who now talk of the origin of the

Movement. Yet all who remember him agree in assigning to him an

importance as great as that of any, in that little knot of men whose

thoughts and whose courage gave birth to it…. He was early cut off

from direct and personal action on the course which things took. But

it would be a great mistake to suppose that his influence on the line

taken, and on the minds of others, was inconsiderable. It would be

more true to say that, with one exception, no one was more responsible

for the impulse which led to the Movement; no one had more to do with

shaping its distinct aims and its moral spirit and character, in its

first stage; no one was more daring and more clear, as far as he saw,

in what he was prepared for. There was no one to whom his friends so

much looked up with admiration and enthusiasm. There was no “wasted

shade”[299] in Hurrell Froude’s disabled, prematurely shortened life.

‘Like Henry Martyn, he was made by strong and even merciless

self-discipline over a strong and for a long time refractory nature.

He was a man of great gifts, with much that was most attractive and

noble; but joined with this there was originally in his character a

vein of perversity and mischief, always in danger of breaking out, and

with which he kept up a long and painful struggle. His inmost thought

and knowledge of himself have been laid bare in the papers which his

friends published after his death. He was in the habit of probing his

motives to the bottom, and of recording without mercy what he thought

his self-deceits and affectations. The religious world of the day made

merry over his methods of self-discipline; but whatever may be said of

them, (and such things are not easy to judge of), one thing is

manifest, that they were true and sincere efforts to conquer what he

thought evil in himself, to keep himself in order, to bring his inmost

self into subjection to the Law and Will of God. The self-chastening

which his private papers show, is no passion or value for asceticism,

but a purely moral effort after self-command and honesty of character;

and what makes the struggle so touching is its perfect reality and

truth. He “turned his thoughts on that desolate wilderness, his own

conscience, and said what he saw there.”[300] A man who has had a good

deal to conquer in himself, and has gone a good way to conquer it, is

not apt to be indulgent to self-deceit or indolence, or even weakness.

The basis of Froude’s character was a demand which would not be put

off for what was real and thorough; an implacable scorn and hatred for

what he counted shams and pretences. “His highest ambition,” he used

to say, “was to be a humdrum.”[301] The intellectual and the moral

parts of his character were of a piece. The tricks and flimsinesses of

a bad argument provoked him as much as the imposture and “flash” of

insincere sentiment and fine talking; he might be conscious of “flash”

in himself and his friends, and he would admit it unequivocally; but

it was as unbearable to him to pretend not to see a fallacy as soon as

it was detected, as it would have been to him to arrive at the right

answer of a sum or a problem by tampering with the processes. Such a

man, with strong affections and keen perception of all forms of

beauty, and with the deepest desire to be reverent towards all that

had a right to reverence, would find himself in the most irritating

state of opposition and impatience with much that passed as religion

round him. Principles not attempted to be understood and carried into

practice; smooth self-complacency among those who looked down on a

blind and unspiritual world; the continual provocation of worthless

reasoning and ignorant platitudes; the dull unconscious stupidity of

people who could not see that the times were critical, that Truth had

to be defended, and that it was no easy or light-hearted business to

defend it;――threw him into an habitual attitude of defiance, and

half-amused, half-earnest contradiction, which made him feared by

loose reasoners and pretentious talkers, and even by quiet easy-going

friends, who unexpectedly found themselves led on blindfold, with the

utmost gravity, into traps and absurdities, by the wiles of his

mischievous dialectic. This was the outside look of his relentless

earnestness. People who did not like him or his views, and who,

perhaps, had winced under his irony, naturally put down his strong

language, which on occasion could certainly be unceremonious, to

flippancy and arrogance. But within the circle of those whom he

trusted, or of those who needed at any time his help, another side

disclosed itself: a side of the most genuine warmth of affection; an

awful reality of devoutness, which it was his great and habitual

effort to keep hidden; a high simplicity of unworldliness and

generosity; and, in spite of his daring mockeries of what was

commonplace or showy, the most sincere and deeply felt humility with

himself. Dangerous as he was often thought to be in conversation, one

of the features of his character which has impressed itself on the

memory of one who knew him well, was his “patient, winning

considerateness in discussion, which, with other qualities, endeared

him to those to whom he opened his heart.”[302] “It is impossible,”

writes James Mozley in 1833, with a mixture of amusement, speaking of

the views about celibacy which were beginning to be current, “to talk

with Froude without committing one’s self on such subjects as these;

so that by and by I expect the tergiversants will be a considerable

party.” His letters, with their affectionately playful addresses,

δαιμόνιε, αἰνότατε, πέπον, _Carissime_, “_Sir, my dear friend_,” or

“Ἀργείων ὄχ’ ἄριστε, have you not been a spoon?” are full of the most

delightful ease and verve and sympathy.

‘With a keen sense of English faults he was, as Cardinal Newman has

said, “an Englishman to the backbone”; and he was, further, a

fastidious, high-tempered English gentleman, in spite of his

declaiming about “pampered aristocrats” and the “gentleman heresy.”

His friends thought of him as of the “young Achilles,” with his high

courage, and noble form, and “eagle eye,” made for such great things,

but appointed so soon to die. “Who can refrain from tears at the

thought of that bright and beautiful Froude?” is the expression of one

of them[303] shortly before his death, and when it was quite certain

that the doom which had so long hung over him was at hand. He had the

love of doing for the mere sake of doing what was difficult or even

dangerous to do, which is the mainspring of characteristic English

sports and games. He loved the sea; he liked to sail his own boat, and

enjoyed rough weather, and took interest in the niceties of seamanship

and shipcraft. He was a bold rider across country. With a powerful

grasp on mathematical truths and principles, he entered with

wholehearted zest into inviting problems, or into practical details of

mechanical or hydrostatic or astronomical science. His letters are

full of such observations, put in a way which he thought would

interest his friends, and marked by his strong habit of getting into

touch with what was real and of the substance of questions. He applied

his thoughts to architecture with a power and originality which at the

time were not common. No one who only cared for this world could be

more attracted and interested than he was by the wonder and beauty of

its facts and appearances. With the deepest allegiance to his home,

and reverence for its ties and authority, (a home of the old-fashioned

ecclesiastical sort, sober, manly, religious, orderly,) he carried

into his wider life the feelings with which he had been brought up;

bold as he was, his reason and his character craved for authority, but

authority which morally and reasonably he could respect. Mr. Keble’s

goodness and purity subdued him, and disposed him to accept, without

reserve, his master’s teaching: and towards Mr. Keble, along with an

outside show of playful criticism and privileged impertinence, there

was a reverence which governed Froude’s whole nature. In the wild and

rough heyday of reform, he was a Tory of the Tories. But when

authority failed him, from cowardice or stupidity or self-interest, he

could not easily pardon it; and he was ready to startle his friends by

proclaiming himself a Radical, prepared for the sake of the highest

and greatest interests to sacrifice all second-rate and subordinate

ones.

‘When his friends, after his death, published selections from his

journals and letters, the world was shocked by what seemed his amazing

audacity, both of thought and expression, about a number of things and

persons which it was customary to regard as almost beyond the reach of

criticism. The _Remains_ lent themselves admirably to the

controversial process of culling choice phrases and sentences and

epithets surprisingly at variance with conventional and popular

estimates. Friends were pained and disturbed; foes, naturally enough,

could not hold in their overflowing exultation at such a disclosure of

the spirit of the Movement. Sermons and newspapers drew attention to

Froude’s extravagances, with horror and disgust. The truth is, that if

the off-hand sayings in conversation or letters of any man of force

and wit and strong convictions about the things and persons that he

condemns, were made known to the world, they would by themselves have

much the same look of flippancy, injustice, impertinence, to those who

disagreed in opinion with the speaker or writer; they are allowed for,

or they are not allowed for by others, according to what is known of

his general character. The friends who published Froude’s _Remains_

knew what he was; they knew the place and proportion of the fierce and

scornful passages; they knew that they really did not go beyond the

liberty and the frank speaking which most people give themselves in

the _abandon_ and understood exaggeration of intimate correspondence

and talk. But they miscalculated the effect on those who did not know

him, or whose interest it was to make the most of the advantage given

them. They seem to have expected that the picture which they presented

of their friend’s transparent sincerity and singleness of aim,

manifested amid so much pain and self-abasement, would have touched

readers more. They miscalculated in supposing that the proofs of so

much reality of religious earnestness would carry off the offence of

vehement language, which without these proofs might naturally be

thought to show mere random violence. At any rate the result was much

natural and genuine irritation, which they were hardly prepared for.

Whether on general grounds they were wise in startling and vexing

friends, and putting fresh weapons into the hands of opponents by

their frank disclosure of so unconventional a character, is a question

which may have more than one answer: but one thing is certain, they

were not wise, if they only desired to forward the immediate interests

of their party or cause. It was not the act of cunning conspirators:

it was the act of men who were ready to show their hands, and take the

consequences. Undoubtedly, they warned off many who had so far gone

along with the Movement, and who now drew back. But if the publication

was a mistake, it was the mistake of men confident in their own

straightforwardness.

‘There is a natural Nemesis to all over-strong and exaggerated

language. The weight of Froude’s judgments was lessened by the

disclosure of his strong words, and his dashing fashion of

condemnation and dislike gave a precedent for the violence of

shallower men. But to those who look back on them now, though there

can be no wonder that at the time they excited such an outcry, their

outspoken boldness hardly excites surprise. Much of it might naturally

be put down to the force of first impressions; much of it is the

vehemence of an Englishman who claims the liberty of criticising and

finding fault at home; much of it was the inevitable vehemence of a

reformer. Much of it seems clear foresight of what has since come to

be recognised. His judgments on the Reformers, startling as they were

at the time, are not so very different, as to the facts of the case,

from what most people on all sides now agree in; and as to their

temper and theology, from what most Churchmen would now agree in.

Whatever allowances may be made for the difficulties of their time,

(and these allowances ought to be very great), and however well they

may have done parts of their work, such as the translations and

adaptations of the Prayer-Book, it is safe to say that the divines of

the Reformation never can be again, with their confessed Calvinism,

with their shifting opinions, their extravagant deference to the

foreign oracles of Geneva and Zurich, their subservience to bad men in

power, the heroes and saints of Churchmen. But when all this is said,

it still remains true that Froude was often intemperate and unjust. In

the hands of the most self-restrained and considerate of its leaders,

the Movement must anyhow have provoked strong opposition, and given

great offence. The surprise and the general ignorance were too great;

the assault was too rude and unexpected. But Froude’s strong language

gave it a needless exasperation.

‘Froude was a man strong in abstract thought and imagination, who

wanted adequate knowledge. His canons of judgment were not enlarged,

corrected, and strengthened by any reading or experience commensurate

with his original powers of reasoning or invention. He was quite

conscious of it, and did his best to fill up the gap in his

intellectual equipment. He showed what he might have done under more

favouring circumstances in a very interesting volume on Becket’s

history and letters. But circumstances were hopelessly against him: he

had not time, he had not health and strength, for the learning which

he so needed, which he so longed for. But wherever he could, he

learned. He was quite ready to submit his prepossessions to the test

and limitation of facts. Eager and quick-sighted, he was often apt to

be hasty in conclusions from imperfect or insufficient premises; but

even about what he saw most clearly he was willing to hold himself in

suspense, when he found that there was something more to know.

Cardinal Newman has noted two deficiencies which, in his opinion, were

noticeable in Froude. “He had no turn for theology as such”; and,

further, he goes on: “I should say that his power of entering into the

minds of others was not equal to his other gifts”: a remark which he

illustrates by saying that Froude could not believe that “I really

held the Roman Church to be anti-Christian.” The want of this

power――in which he stood in such sharp contrast to his friend――might

be either a strength or a weakness: a strength, if his business was

only to fight; a weakness, if it was to attract and persuade. But

Froude was made for conflict, not to win disciples. Some wild solemn

poetry, marked by deep feeling and direct expression, is scattered

through his letters, kindled always by things and thoughts of the

highest significance, and breaking forth with force and fire. But

probably the judgment passed on him by a clever friend,[304] from the

examination of his handwriting, was a true one: “This fellow has a

great deal of imagination, but not the imagination of a poet.” He felt

that even beyond poetry there are higher things than anything that

imagination can work upon. It was a feeling which made him blind to

the grandeur of Milton’s poetry. He saw in it only an intrusion into

the most sacred of sanctities….

* * * * *

‘Froude’s first letter to Mr. Newman is in August, 1828. It is the

letter of a friendly and sympathising colleague in College work, glad

to be free from the “images of impudent undergraduates”; he inserts

some lines of verse, talks about Dollond and telescopes, and relates

how he and a friend got up at half-past two in the morning, and walked

half a mile to see Mercury rise; he writes about his mathematical

studies and reading for Orders, and how a friend had “read half

through Prideaux and yet accuses himself of idleness”; but there is no

interchange of intimate thought. Mr. Newman was at this time, as he

has told us, drifting away from under the shadow of Liberalism; and in

Froude he found a man who, without being a Liberal, was as

quick-sighted, as courageous, and as alive to great thoughts and new

hopes as himself. Very different in many ways, they were in this

alike, that the commonplace notions of religion and the Church were

utterly unsatisfactory to them, and that each had the capacity for

affectionate and whole-hearted friendship. The friendship began and

lasted on, growing stronger and deeper to the end. And this was not

all. Froude’s friendship with Mr. Newman overcame Mr. Keble’s

hesitations about Mr. Newman’s supposed Liberalism. Mr. Newman has put

on record what he thought and felt about Froude: no one, probably, of

the many whom Cardinal Newman’s long life has brought round him, ever

occupied Froude’s place in his heart.[305] The correspondence shows in

part the way in which Froude’s spirit rose, under the sense of having

such a friend to work with, in the cause which, day by day, grew

greater and more sacred in the eyes of both. Towards Mr. Keble Froude

felt like a son to a father; towards Mr. Newman like a soldier to his

comrade, and him the most splendid and boldest of warriors. Each mind

caught fire from the other, till the high enthusiasm of the one was

quenched in an early death.

‘Shortly after this friendship began, the course of events also began

which finally gave birth to the Oxford Movement. The break-up of

parties caused by the Roman Catholic Emancipation was followed by the

French and Belgian revolutions of 1830, and these changes gave a fresh

stimulus to all the reforming parties in England: Whigs, Radicals, and

Liberal religionists. Froude’s letters mark the influence of these

changes on his mind. They stirred in him the fiercest disgust and

indignation, and as soon as the necessity of battle became evident to

save the Church (and such a necessity was evident) he threw himself

into it with all his heart, and his attitude was henceforth that of a

determined and uncompromising combatant. “Froude is growing stronger

and stronger in his sentiments every day,” writes James Mozley, in

1832, “and cuts about him on all sides. It is extremely fine to hear

him talk. The aristocracy of the country, at present, are the chief

objects of his vituperation, and he decidedly sets himself against the

modern character of the gentleman, and thinks that the Church will

eventually depend for its support, as it always did in its most

influential times, on the very poorest classes.” “I would not set down

anything that Froude says for his deliberate opinion,” writes James

Mozley a year later, “for he really hates the present state of things

so excessively that any change would be a relief to him.” … “Froude is

staying up, and I see a great deal of him.” … “Froude is most

enthusiastic in his plans, and says, ‘What fun it is living in such

times as these! how could one now go back to the times of old Tory

humbug?’” From henceforth his position among his friends was that of

the most impatient and aggressive of reformers, the one who most urged

on his fellows to outspoken language and a bold line of action. They

were not men to hang back and be afraid, but they were cautious and

considerate of popular alarms and prejudices, compared with Froude’s

fearlessness. Other minds were indeed moving, minds as strong as his;

indeed, it may be, deeper, more complex, more amply furnished, with a

wider range of vision and a greater command of the field. But while he

lived, he appears as the one who spurs on and incites, where others

hesitate. He is the one by whom are visibly most felt the _gaudia

certaminis_, and the confidence of victory, and the most profound

contempt for the men and the ideas of the boastful and short-sighted

present.

‘In this unsparing and absorbing warfare, what did Froude aim at――what

was the object he sought to bring about, what were the obstacles he

sought to overthrow?

‘He was accused, as was most natural, of Romanising: of wishing to

bring back Popery. It is perfectly certain that this was not what he

meant, though he did not care for the imputation of it. He was,

perhaps, the first Englishman who attempted to do justice to Rome, and

to use friendly language of it, without the intention of joining it.

But what he fought for was not Rome, not even a restoration of Unity,

but a Church of England such as it was conceived of by the Caroline

divines and the Nonjurors. The great break-up of 1830 had forced on

men the anxious question: “What is the Church, as spoken of in

England? Is it the Church of Christ?” and the answers were various.

Hooker had said it was “the nation”; and in entirely altered

circumstances, with some qualifications, Dr. Arnold said the same. It

was “the Establishment,” according to the lawyers and politicians,

both Whig and Tory. It was an invisible and mystical body, said the

Evangelicals. It was the aggregate of separate congregations, said the

Nonconformists. It was the Parliamentary creation of the Reformation,

said the Erastians. The true Church was the communion of the Pope, the

pretended Church was a legalised schism, said the Roman Catholics. All

these ideas were floating about, loose and vague, among people who

talked much about the Church. Whately, with his clear sense, had laid

down that it was a divine religious society, distinct in its origin

and existence, distinct in its attributes from any other. But this

idea had fallen dead, till Froude and his friends put new life into

it. Froude accepted Whately’s idea that the Church of England was the

one historic uninterrupted Church, than which there could be no other,

locally, in England; but into this Froude read a great deal that never

was and never could be in Whately’s thoughts. Whately had gone very

far in viewing the Church, from without, as a great and sacred

corporate body. Casting aside the Erastian theory, he had claimed its

right to exist, and if necessary, govern itself, separate from the

State. He had recognised excommunication as its natural and

indefeasible instrument of government. But what the internal life of

the Church was, what should be its teaching and organic system, and

what was the standard and proof of these, Whately had left unsaid. And

this outline Froude filled up. For this he went the way to which the

Prayer-Book, with its Offices, its Liturgy, its Ordination services,

pointed him. With the divines who had specially valued the

Prayer-Book, and taught in its spirit, Bishop Wilson, William Law,

Hammond, Ken, Laud, Andrewes, he went back to the times and the

sources from which the Prayer-Book came to us, the early Church, the

Reforming Church (for such, with all its faults, it was), of the

eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, before the hopelessly

corrupt and fatal times of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,

which led to the break-up of the sixteenth. Thus, to the great

question, What is the Church? he gave without hesitation, and gave to

the end, the same answer that Anglicans gave and are giving still. But

he added two points which were then very new to the ears of English

Churchmen: (1) that there were great and to most people unsuspected

faults and shortcomings in the English Church, for some of which the

Reformation was gravely responsible; (2) that the Roman Church was

more right than we had been taught to think, in many parts both of

principle and practice, and that our quarrel with it on these points

arose from our own ignorance and prejudices. To people who had taken

for granted all their lives that the Church was thoroughly

“Protestant” and thoroughly right in its Protestantism, and that Rome

was Antichrist, these confident statements came with a shock. He did

not enter much into dogmatic questions. As far as can be judged from

his _Remains_, the one point of doctrine on which he laid stress, as

being inadequately recognised and taught in the then condition of the

English Church, was the Primitive doctrine of the Eucharist. His other

criticisms pointed to practical and moral matters: the spirit of

Erastianism, the low standard of life and purpose and self-discipline

in the clergy, the low tone of the current religious teaching. The

Evangelical teaching seemed to him a system of unreal words. The

opposite school was too self-complacent, too comfortable, too secure

in its social and political alliances; and he was bent on shaming

people into severer notions. “We will have a _vocabularium

apostolicum_, and I will start it with four words: ‘pampered

aristocrats,’ ‘resident gentlemen,’ ‘smug parsons,’ and ‘_pauperes

Christi_.’ I shall use the first on all occasions; it seems to me just

to hit the thing.” “I think of putting the view forward (about new

monasteries), under the title of a ‘Project for Reviving Religion in

Great Towns.’ Certainly colleges of unmarried priests (who might, of

course, retire to a living, when they could and liked) would be the

cheapest possible way of providing effectively for the spiritual wants

of a large population.” And his great quarrel with the existing state

of things was that the spiritual objects of the Church were overlaid

and lost sight of in the anxiety not to lose its political position.

In this direction he was, as he proclaims himself, an out-and-out

Radical, and he was prepared at once to go very far. “If a National

Church means a Church without discipline, my argument for discipline

is an argument against a National Church; and the best thing we can do

is to unnationalise ours as soon as possible”; “let us tell the truth

and shame the devil: let us give up a _National_ Church and have a

_real_ one.”[306] His criticism did not diminish in severity, or his

proposals become less daring, as he felt that his time was growing

short and the hand of death was upon him. But to the end, the

elevation and improvement of the English Church remained his great

purpose. To his friend, as we know, the Roman Church was either the

Truth or Antichrist. To Froude it was neither the whole Truth nor

Antichrist; but like the English Church itself, a great and defective

Church, whose defects were the opposite to ours, and which we should

do wisely to learn from, rather than abuse. But, to the last, his

allegiance never wavered to the English Church.

‘It is very striking to come from Froude’s boisterous freedom in his

letters, to his sermons and the papers he prepared for publication. In

his sermons his manner of writing is severe and restrained even to

dryness. If they startle, it is by the force and searching point of an

idea, not by any strength of words. The style is chastened, simple,

calm, with the most careful avoidance of over-statement or anything

rhetorical. And so in his papers, his mode of argument, forcible and

cogent as it is, avoids all appearance of exaggeration or even

illustrative expansion: it is all muscle and sinew; it is modelled on

the argumentative style of Bishop Butler, and still more, of William

Law. No one could suppose from these papers Froude’s fiery

impetuosity, or the frank daring of his disrespectful vocabulary.

Those who can read between the lines can trace the grave irony which

clung everywhere to his deep earnestness.

‘There was yet another side of Froude’s character which was little

thought of by his critics, or recognised by all his friends. With all

his keenness of judgment and all his readiness for conflict, some who

knew him best were impressed by the melancholy which hung over his

life, and which, though he ignored it, they could detect. It is

remembered still by Cardinal Newman. “I thought,” wrote Mr. Isaac

Williams, “that knowing him, I better understood Hamlet, a person most

natural, but so original as to be unlike any one else, hiding depth of

delicate thought in apparent extravagances. _Hamlet_, and the

_Georgics_ of Virgil, he used to say, he should have bound together.”

“Isaac Williams,” wrote Mr. Copeland, “mentioned to me a remark made

on Froude by S. Wilberforce in his early days: ‘They talk of Froude’s

fun, but somehow I cannot be in a room with him alone for ten minutes

without feeling so intensely melancholy, that I do not know what to do

with myself. At Brighstone, in my Eden days, he was with me, and I was

overwhelmed with the deep sense which possessed him of yearning which

nothing could satisfy, and of the unsatisfying nature of all

things.’”[307]

‘Froude often reminds us of Pascal. Both had that peculiarly bright,

brilliant, sharp-cutting intellect which passes with ease through the

coverings and disguises which veil realities from men. Both had

mathematical powers of unusual originality and clearness; both had the

same imaginative faculty; both had the same keen interest in practical

problems of science; both felt and followed the attraction of deeper

and more awful interests. Both had the same love of beauty; both

suppressed it. Both had the same want of wide or deep learning; they

made skilful use of what books came to their hand, and used their

reading as few readers are able to use it; but their real instrument

of work was their own quick and strong insight, and power of close and

vigorous reasoning. Both had the greatest contempt for fashionable and

hollow “shadows of religion.” Both had the same definite, unflinching

judgment. Both used the same clear and direct language. Both had a

certain grim delight in the irony with which they pursued their

opponents. In both it is probable that their unmeasured and unsparing

criticism recoiled on the cause which they had at heart. But in the

case of both of them it was not the temper of the satirist, it was no

mere love of attacking what was vulnerable, and indulgence in the

cruel pleasure of stinging and putting to shame, which inspired them.

Their souls were moved by the dishonour done to religion, by public

evils and public dangers. Both of them died young, before their work

was done. They placed before themselves the loftiest and most

unselfish objects, the restoration of truth and goodness in the

Church: and to that they gave their life and all that they had. And

what they called on others to be they were themselves. They were alike

in the sternness, the reality, the perseverance, almost unintelligible

in its methods to ordinary men, of their moral and spiritual

self-discipline.’

[Supplementary Chapter, written by LORD BLACHFORD

(FREDERIC ROGERS).[308]]

‘Hurrell Froude was, when I, as an undergraduate, first knew him, in

1828, tall and very thin, with something of a stoop, with a large

skull and forehead, but not a large face, delicate features, and

penetrating grey eyes, not exactly piercing, but bright with internal

conceptions, and ready to assume an expression of amusement, careful

attention, inquiry, or stern disgust, but with a basis of softness.

His manner was cordial and familiar, and assured you, as you knew him

well, of his affectionate feeling, which encouraged you to speak your

mind (within certain limits), subject to the consideration that if you

said anything absurd it would not be allowed to fall to the ground. He

had more of the undergraduate in him than any “don” whom I ever knew:

absolutely unlike Newman in being always ready to skate, sail, or ride

with his friends, and, if in a scrape, not pharisaical as to his means

of getting out of it. I remember, _e.g._, climbing Merton gate with

him in my undergraduate days, when we had been out too late boating or

skating. And unless authority or substantial decorum was really

threatened he was very lenient: or, rather, had an amused sympathy

with the irregularities that are mere matters of mischief or high

spirits. In lecture it was, _mutatis mutandis_, the same man. Seeing,

from his _Remains_, the “high view of his own capacities of which he

could not divest himself,” and his determination not to exhibit or be

puffed up by it, and looking back on his tutorial manner (I was in his

lectures, both in classics and mathematics), it was strange how he

disguised, not only his sense of superiority, but the appearance of

it, so that his pupils felt him more as a fellow-student than as the

refined scholar or mathematician which he was. This was partly owing

to his carelessness of those formulæ, the familiarity with which gives

even second-rate lectures a position of superiority which is less

visible in those who, like their pupils, are themselves always

struggling with principles; and partly to an effort, perhaps sometimes

overdone, not to put himself above the level of others. In a lecture

on the _Supplices_ of Æschylus, I have heard him say _tout bonnement_:

“I can’t construe that: what do you make of it, A. B.?” turning to the

supposed best scholar in the lecture; or, when an objection was

started to his mode of getting through a difficulty: “Ah! I had not

thought of that; perhaps your way is the best.” And this mode of

dealing with himself and the undergraduates whom he liked, made them

like him, but also made them really undervalue his talent, which, as

we now see, was what he meant they should do. At the same time, though

watchful over his own vanity, he was keen and prompt in snubs in

playful and challenging retort, to those he liked, but in the nature

of scornful exposure, when he had to do with coarseness or coxcombry,

or shallow display of sentiment. It was a paradoxical consequence of

his suppression of egotism that he was more solicitous to show that

you were wrong than that he was right. He also wanted, like Socrates

or Bishop Butler, to make others, if possible, think for themselves.

‘However, it is not to be inferred that his conversation was made of

controversy. To a certain extent it turned that way, because he was

fond of paradox. (His brother William used to say that he, William,

never felt he had really mastered a principle till he had thrown it

into a paradox.) And paradox, of course, invites contradiction, and so

controversy. On subjects upon which he considered himself more or less

an apostle, he liked to stir people’s minds by what startled them,

waking them up, or giving them “nuts to crack.” An almost solemn

gravity, with amusement twinkling behind it (not invisible, and ready

to burst forth into a bright low laugh when gravity had been played

out), was a very frequent posture with him. But he was thoroughly

ready to amuse and instruct, or to be amused and instructed, as an

eager and earnest speaker or listener on most matters of interest. I

do not remember that he had any great turn for beauty of colour; he

had none, I think, or next to none, for music, nor do I remember in

him any great love of humour; but for beauty of physical form, for

mechanics, for mathematics, for poetry which had a root in true

feeling, for wit (including that perception of a quasi-logical

absurdity of position), for history, for domestic incidents, his

sympathy was always lively, and he would throw himself naturally and

warmly into them. From his general demeanour (I need scarcely say) the

“odour of sanctity” was wholly absent.

‘I am not sure that his height and depth of aim and lively versatility

of talent did not leave his compassionate sympathies rather

undeveloped; certainly to himself, and, I suspect, largely in the case

of others, he would view suffering not as a thing to be cockered up or

made much of, though of course to be alleviated if possible, but to be

viewed calmly as a Providential discipline for those who can mitigate,

or have to endure it. J. H. N. was once reading me a letter just

received from him in which (in answer to J. H. N.’s account of his

work and the possibility of his breaking down), he said in substance:

“I daresay you have more to do than your health will bear, but I would

not have you give up anything except perhaps the Deanery” (of Oriel).

And then J. H. N. paused, with a kind of inner exultant chuckle, and

said: “Ah! there’s a Basil for you”; as if the friendship which

sacrificed its friend, as it would sacrifice itself, to a cause, was

the friendship which was really worth having.

‘As I came to know him in a more manly way, as a brother Fellow,

friend, and collaborateur, the character of “ecclesiastical agitator”

was of course added to this. In this capacity his great pleasure was

taking bulls by their horns. Like the “gueux” of the Low Countries, he

would have met half-way any opprobrious nickname, and I believe coined

the epithet “Apostolical” for his party because it was connected with

everything in Spain which was most obnoxious to the British public. I

remember one day his grievously shocking Palmer of Worcester, a man of

an opposite texture, when a council in J. H. N.’s rooms had been

called to consider some memorial or other to which Palmer wanted to

collect the signatures of many, and particularly of dignified persons,

but in which Froude wished to express the determined opinions of a

few. Froude stretched out his long length on Newman’s sofa, broke in

upon one of Palmer’s judicious harangues about Bishops and Archdeacons

and such like, with the ejaculation: “I don’t see why we should

disguise from ourselves that our object is to dictate to the clergy of

this country; and I, for one, do not want anyone else to get on the

box!” He thought that true Churchmen must be few before they were

many: that the sin of the clergy in all ages was that they tried to

make out that Christians were many when they were only few, and

sacrificed to this object the force derivable from downright and

unmistakable enforcement of truth in speech or action.

‘As simplicity in thought, word, and deed formed no small part of his

ideal, his tastes in architecture, painting, sculpture, rhetoric, or

poetry were severe. He had no patience with what was artistically

dissolute, luscious, or decorated more than in proportion to its

animating idea, wishy-washy, or sentimental. The ornamental parts of

his own rooms (in which I lived in his absence) were a slab of marble

to wash upon, a print of Rubens’s “Deposition,” and a head (life-size)

of the Apollo Belvedere. And I remember still the tall scorn, with

something of surprise, with which, on entering my undergraduate room,

he looked down on some Venuses, Cupids, and Hebes, which,

freshman-like, I had bought from an Italian.

‘He was not very easy even under conventional vulgarity, still less

under the vulgarity of egotism; but, being essentially a partisan, he

could put up with both in a man who was really in earnest and on the

right side. Nothing, however, I think, would have induced him to

tolerate false sentiment, and he would, I think, if he had lived, have

exerted himself very trenchantly to prevent his cause being

adulterated by it. He was, I should say, sometimes misled by a theory

that genius cut through a subject by logic or intuition, without

looking to the right or left, while common sense was always testing

every step by consideration of surroundings (I have not got his terse

mode of statement), and that genius was right, or at least had only to

be corrected, here and there, by common sense. This, I take it, would

hardly have answered if his trenchancy had not been in practice

corrected by J. H. N.’s wider political circumspection. He submitted,

I suppose, to J. H. N.’s axiom, that if the Movement was to do

anything it must become “respectable”; but it was against his nature.

‘He would (as we see in the _Remains_) have wished Ken to have the

“courage of his convictions” by excommunicating the Jurors in William

III.’s time, and setting up a little Catholic Church, like the

Jansenists in Holland. He was not (as has been observed) a theologian,

but he was as jealous for orthodoxy as if he were. He spoke

slightingly of Heber as having ignorantly or carelessly communicated

with Monophysites. But he probably knew no more about that and other

heresies than a man of active and penetrating mind would derive from

text-books. And I think it likely enough, not that his reverence for

the Eucharist, but that his special attention to the details of

Eucharistic doctrine, was due to the consideration that it was the

foundation of ecclesiastical discipline and authority: matters on

which his mind fastened itself with enthusiasm.’

From ‘APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA,’ BY JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, D.D., of the

Oratory of St. Philip Neri. London: Longmans, Green, Reader &

Dyer, 1873.

[By the kind permission of the Rev. W. P. Neville of the Oratory,

and of Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co.]

‘… Hurrell Froude was a pupil of Keble’s, formed by him, and in turn

reacting upon him. I knew him first in 1826, and was in the closest

and most affectionate friendship with him from about 1829 until his

death in 1836. He was a man of the highest gifts: so truly many-sided,

that it would be presumptuous in me to attempt to describe him, except

under those aspects in which he came before me. Nor have I here to

speak of the gentleness and tenderness of nature, the playfulness, the

free elastic force and graceful versatility of mind, and the patient

winning considerateness in discussion, which endeared him to those to

whom he opened his heart; for I am all along engaged upon matters of

belief and opinion, and am introducing others into my narrative, not

for their own sake, or because I love them and have loved them, so

much as because, and so far as, they have influenced my theological

views. In this respect, then, I speak of Hurrell Froude, in his

intellectual aspect: as a man of high genius, brimful and overflowing

with ideas and views, in him original, which were too many and strong

even for his bodily strength, and which crowded and jostled against

each other, in their effort after distinct shape and expression. And

he had an intellect as critical and logical as it was speculative and

bold. Dying prematurely, as he did, and in the conflict and

transition-state of opinion, his religious views never reached their

ultimate conclusion, by the very reason of their multitude and their

depth. His opinions arrested and influenced me even when they did not

gain my assent. He professed openly his admiration of the Church of

Rome, and his hatred of the Reformers. He delighted in the notion of

an hierarchical system, of sacerdotal power, and of full

ecclesiastical liberty. He felt scorn of the maxim, “The Bible and the

Bible only is the religion of Protestants,” and he gloried in

accepting Tradition as a main instrument of religious teaching. He had

a high severe idea of the intrinsic excellence of Virginity, and he

considered the Blessed Virgin its great Pattern. He delighted in

thinking of the Saints; he had a vivid appreciation of the idea of

sanctity, its possibility and its heights; and he was more than

inclined to believe a large amount of miraculous interference as

occurring in the early and middle ages. He embraced the principle of

penance and mortification. He had a deep devotion to the Real

Presence, in which he had a firm faith. He was powerfully drawn to the

Mediæval Church, but not to the Primitive.

‘He had a keen insight into abstract truth; but he was an Englishman

to the backbone in his severe adherence to the real and the concrete.

He had a most classical taste, and a genius for philosophy and art;

and he was fond of historical inquiry, and the politics of religion.

He had no turn for theology as such. He set no sufficient value on the

writings of the Fathers, on the detail or development of doctrine, on

the definite traditions of the Church viewed in their matter, on the

teaching of the Ecumenical Councils, or on the controversies out of

which they arose. He took an eager courageous view of things, on the

whole. I should say that his power of entering into the minds of

others did not equal his other gifts: he could not believe, for

instance, that I really held the Roman Church to be anti-Christian. On

many points, he would not believe but that I agreed with him, when I

did not: he seemed not to understand my difficulties. His were of a

different kind: the contrariety between theory and fact. He was a High

Tory of the Cavalier stamp, and was disgusted with the Toryism of the

opponents of the Reform Bill. He was smitten with the love of the

Theocratic Church: he went abroad, and was shocked by the degeneracy

which he thought he saw in the Catholics of Italy.

‘It is difficult to enumerate the precise additions to my theological

creed which I derived from a friend to whom I owe so much. He taught

me to look with admiration towards the Church of Rome, and, in the

same degree, to dislike the Reformation. He fixed deep in me the idea

of devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and he led me gradually to believe

in the Real Presence.

* * * * *

‘There were other reasons, besides Mr. Rose’s state of health, which

hindered those who so much admired him from availing themselves of his

close co-operation in the coming fight. United as both he and they

were in the general scope of the Movement, they were in discordance

with each other, from the first, in their estimate of the means to be

adopted for attaining it. Mr. Rose had a position in the Church, a

name, and serious responsibilities; he had direct ecclesiastical

superiors; he had intimate relations with his own University, and a

large clerical connection through the country. Froude and I were

nobodies, with no characters to lose, and no antecedents to fetter us.

Rose could not go ahead across country, as Froude had no scruples in

doing. Froude was a bold rider: as on horseback, so also in his

speculations. After a long conversation with him on the logical

bearing of his principles, Mr. Rose said of him, with quiet humour,

that “he did not seem to be afraid of inferences.” It was simply the

truth. Froude had that strong hold of first principles, and that keen

perception of their value, that he was comparatively indifferent to

the revolutionary action which would attend on their application to a

given state of things; whereas, in the thoughts of Rose, as a

practical man, existing facts had the precedence of every other idea,

and the chief test of the soundness of a line of policy lay in the

consideration whether it would work. This was one of the first

questions which, as it seemed to me, on every occasion occurred to his

mind. With Froude, Erastianism, that is, the union (so he viewed it)

of Church and State, was the parent, or if not the parent, the

serviceable and sufficient tool of Liberalism. Till that union was

snapped, Christian doctrine never could be safe; and while he well

knew how high and unselfish was the temper of Mr. Rose, yet he used to

apply to him an epithet, reproachful in his mouth: Rose was “a

conservative.” By bad luck, I brought out this word to Mr. Rose in a

letter of my own, which I wrote to him in criticism of something he

had inserted in his Magazine: I got a vehement rebuke for my pains;

for though Rose pursued a conservative line, he had as high a disdain

as Froude could have of a worldly ambition, and an extreme

sensitiveness of such an imputation. But there was another reason

still, and a more elementary one, which severed Mr. Rose from the

Oxford Movement. Living movements do not come of committees, nor are

great ideas worked out through the post, even though it had been the

penny post. This principle deeply penetrated both Froude and myself

from the first, and recommended to us the course which things soon

took spontaneously, and without set purpose of our own.

* * * * *

‘It was an apparent accident which introduced me to [the Roman

Breviary], that most wonderful and most attractive monument of the

devotion of Saints. On Hurrell Froude’s death, in 1836, I was asked to

select one of his books as a keepsake. I selected Butler’s _Analogy_;

finding that it had been already chosen, I looked with some perplexity

along the shelves, as they stood before me, when an intimate friend at

my elbow said: “Take that.” It was the Breviary which Hurrell had had

with him at Barbados. Accordingly, I took it, studied it, wrote my

Tract from it, and have it on my table in constant use till this

day.[309] That dear and familiar companion,[310] who thus put the

Breviary into my hands, is still in the Anglican Church. So, too, is

that early-venerated long-loved friend,[311] together with whom I

edited a work which, more perhaps than any other, caused disturbance

and annoyance in the Anglican world, Froude’s _Remains_; yet, however

judgments might run as to the prudence of publishing it, I never heard

any one impute to Mr. Keble the very shadow of dishonesty or treachery

towards his Church in so acting.’

From ‘THE CHERWELL WATER-LILY AND OTHER POEMS,’ BY THE REV.

FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER, M.A., Fellow of University College,

Oxford. London: Rivingtons; and Oxford, Parker, 1840.

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

Oratory.]

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

‘The languid heart that hath been ever nursed

By strains of drowsy sweetness, ill can brook

The rude rough music that at times doth burst

From him whose thoughts are treasured in this book.

It was his lot to live in days uncouth

That shrink from aught so hard and stern as Truth.

I know my generous friend too well to fear

This holy gift will be unsafe with thee:

Thou never yet hast had the heart to sneer

At the eccentric feats of chivalry;

And well I know there are cold men who deem

This saintly Cause a weak knight-errant’s dream.

When thou hast marked him well, thine eye will trace

Lines deep and steadfast; features grave and bold;

Beauty austere and masculine; a face

And stalwart form wrought in the antique mould;

And if some shades too broad and coarse are thrown,

’Tis where the Age hath marred the block of stone.’

From ‘THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION,’ IN ‘ESSAYS IN ECCLESIASTICAL

BIOGRAPHY,’ by the Right Honourable Sir JAMES STEPHEN, K.C.B.

London: Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, 1849.[313]

[By the kind permission of Herbert Stephen, Esq., and of Messrs.

Longmans, Green & Co.]

‘… In obedience to the general law of human affairs, arrived the day

of reaction. A new race of students had grown up at Oxford. They were

men of unsullied, and even severe virtue; animated by a devotion

which, if not very fervent, was at least genuine and grave; conversant

with classical literature, and not without pretensions, more or less

considerable, to an acquaintance with Christian antiquity. As they

paced thoughtfully along those tall avenues, to which, a hundred years

before, Whitfield and the Wesleys had been accustomed to retire for

meditation, they recoiled, with a mixture of aversion and contempt,

from the image of the crowded assemblages, and the dramatic exercises,

in which the successors of those great men in the Church of England

were performing so conspicuous a part. They revolved, not without

indignation, the intellectual barrenness with which that Church had

been stricken, from the time when her most popular teachers had not

merely been satisfied to tread the narrow circle of the “Evangelical”

theology, but had exulted in that bondage as indicating their

possession of a purer light than had visited the other ministers of

the Gospel. They invoked, with an occasional sigh, but not without

many a bitter smile, the reappearance amongst us of a piety more

profound and masculine, more meek and contemplative. They believed

that such a change in the religious character of their age and country

was a divine command, and that a commission had been given to

themselves to carry it into effect.

* * * * *

‘… It came to pass, in the Oxonian as in other leagues, that the head

moved forward by the impulse of the tail. Step by step in their

progress, “the Church,” whom they worshipped, changed her attitude and

her aspect. She soon disclaimed her Elizabethan or statutory origin,

and then made vehement efforts to escape from her Elizabethan or

statutory ceremonial. She assumed the title, and laid claim to the

character, of the Primitive Church, or the Church of the Fathers, and

at length arrogated to herself the prerogatives of that Catholic or

universal Church, which “lifts her mitred front in courts and

palaces,” whether at Rome, at Moscow, or at Lambeth, but whose

presence is never vouchsafed to any who cannot trace back from

Apostolic hands an Episcopal succession.

‘At this stage of the history of the Oxonian league, its progress was

quickened and animated by the panic which exhibited itself from one

end to the other of the hostile camp. The disciples of Whitfield and

of Wesley, united to those of Newton and Scott, of Milner and of Venn,

and, reinforced by the whole strength of the Nonconformists, began to

throw up, along the whole field of controversy, entrenchments for

their own defence, and batteries for the annoyance of their

assailants. Amongst the literary missiles cast by the contending hosts

against each other, there are few better worth the study of those who

wish to estimate the probable result of the conflict, than the _Life_

of Richard Hurrell Froude. It was launched from a catapult under the

immediate direction of Messrs. Keble and Newman themselves, and,

though it is a book of no great inherent value, it has a considerable

interest as the only biography which the world possesses of a

confessor of Oxford Catholicism. It contains a vivid picture of the

discipline, the studies, the opinions, and the mental habits of his

fraternity, and is published by the two great fathers of that school,

with the avowal of their “own general coincidence” in the opinions and

feelings of their disciple. We have thus a delineation, at full

length, of one of those divines who are to effect the conquest which

was attempted in vain by the Bellarmines and the Bossuets of former

times. If it teaches us nothing else, this biography will at least

teach us what is the real extent and urgency of the danger which has

so much disturbed the tranquillity of the guardians of the Protestant

faith of England.

‘Richard Hurrell Froude was born, as we read, on the “Feast of the

Annunciation,” in the year 1803, and died in 1836. He was an Etonian,

a Fellow of Oriel College, a priest in Holy Orders of the Church of

England, the writer of unsuccessful prize essays, and of journals,

letters, and sermons; an occasional contributor to the periodical

literature of his theological associates; and, during the last four

years of his life, an invalid in search of health, either in the south

of Europe or in the West Indies. Such are all the incidents of a life

to the commemoration of which two octavo volumes have been dedicated.

A more intractable story, if regarded merely as a narrative, was never

undertaken. But Mr. Froude left behind him a great collection of

papers, which affection would have committed to the fire, though party

spirit has given them to the press. The most unscrupulous publisher of

diaries and private correspondence never offered for sale a

self-analysis more frank or less prepossessing. But the world is

invited to gaze on this suicidal portraiture, on account of “the

extreme importance of the views, to the development of which the whole

is meant to be subservient,” and in order that they may not lose “the

instruction derivable from a full exhibition of his character as a

witness to those views.” Heavy as are the penalties which the Editors

of these volumes have incurred for their disclosure of the infirmities

of their friend, the world will probably absolve them if they will

publish more of the letters which he appears to have received from his

mother, and to have transmitted to them. One such letter which they

have rescued from oblivion, is worth far more than all which they have

published of her son’s. Though both the parent and the child have long

since been withdrawn from the reach of this world’s judgment, it yet

seems almost an impiety to transcribe her estimate of his early

character, and to add that the less favourable anticipations which she

drew from her study of him in youth, were but too distinctly verified

in his riper years. She read his heart with a mother’s sagacity, and

thus revealed it to himself with a mother’s tenderness and truth.

‘“From his very birth his temper had been peculiar; pleasing,

intelligent, and attaching, when his mind was undisturbed, and he was

in the company of people who treated him reasonably and kindly; but

exceedingly impatient under vexatious circumstances; very much

disposed to find his own amusement in teasing and vexing others; and

almost entirely incorrigible when it was necessary to reprove him. I

never could find a successful mode of treating him. Harshness made him

obstinate and gloomy; calm and long displeasure made him stupid and

sullen; and kind patience had not sufficient power over his feelings

to force him to govern himself. After a statement of such great

faults, it may seem an inconsistency to say that he nevertheless still

bore about him strong marks of a promising character. In all points of

substantial principle his feelings were just and high. He had (for his

age) an unusually deep feeling of admiration for everything which was

good and noble; his relish was lively, and his taste good, for all the

pleasures of the imagination; and he was also quite conscious of his

own faults, and (_untempted_) had a just dislike to them.”’

‘Exercising a stern and absolute dominion over all the baser passions,

with a keen perception of the beautiful in nature and in art, and a

deep homage for the sublime in morals; imbued with the spirit of the

classical authors, and delighting in the exercise of talents which,

though they fell far short of excellence, rose as far above

mediocrity, Mr. Froude might have seemed to want no promise of an

honourable rank in literature, or of distinction in his sacred office.

His career was intercepted by a premature death; but enough is

recorded to show that his aspirations, however noble, must have been

defeated by the pride and moroseness which his mother’s wisdom

detected, and which her love disclosed to him; united as they were to

a constitutional distrust of his own powers, and a weak reliance on

other minds for guidance and support. A spirit at once haughty, and

unsustained by genuine self-confidence; subdued by the stronger will

or intellect of other men, and glorying in that subjection; regarding

the opponents of his masters with an intolerance exceeding their own;

and, in the midst of all his animosity towards others, turning with no

infrequent indignation on itself,――might form the basis of a good

dramatic sketch, of which Mr. Froude might not unworthily sustain the

burden. But a “dialogue of the dead,” in which George Whitfield and

Richard Froude should be the interlocutors, would be a more

appropriate channel for illustrating the practical uses of “the Second

Reformation,” and of the “Catholic Restoration,” which it is the

object of their respective biographies to illustrate. Rhadamanthus

having dismissed them from his tribunal, they would compare together

their juvenile admiration of the drama, their ascetic discipline at

Oxford, their early dependence on stronger or more resolute minds,

their propensity to self-observation and to self-portraiture, their

contemptuous opinions of the negro race, and the surprise with which

they witnessed the worship of the Church of Rome in lands where it is

still triumphant. So far all is peace, and the _concordes animæ_

exchange such greetings as pass between disembodied spirits. But when

the tidings brought by the new denizen of the Elysian fields to the

reformer of the eighteenth century, reach his affrighted shade, the

regions of the blessed are disturbed by an unwonted discord; and the

fiery soul of Whitfield blazes with intense desire to resume his

wanderings through the earth, and to lift up his voice against the new

apostasy.

‘It was with no unmanly dread of the probe, but from want of skill or

leisure to employ it, that the self-scrutiny of Whitfield seldom or

never penetrated much below the surface. Preach he must; and when no

audience could be brought together, he seized a pen and preached to

himself. The uppermost feeling, be it what it may, is put down in his

journal honestly, vigorously, and devoutly. Satan is menaced and

upbraided. Intimations from Heaven are recorded, without one painful

doubt of their origin. He prays and exults, anticipates the future

with delight, looks back to the past with thankfulness, blames himself

simply because he thinks himself to blame, despairs of nothing, fears

nothing, and has not a moment’s ill-will to any human being. Mr.

Froude conducts his written soliloquies in a different spirit. His

introverted gaze analyses with elaborate minuteness the various

motives at the confluence of which his active powers receive their

impulse, and, with perverted sagacity, pursues the self-examination,

until, bewildered in the dark labyrinth of his own nature, he escapes

to the cheerful light of day by locking up his journal. A friend

(whose real name is as distinctly intimated under its initial letter,

as if it were written at length) advises burning confessions. “I

cannot make up my mind to that,” observes the penitent; “but I think I

can see many points in which it will be likely to do me good to be cut

off for some time from these records.” On such a subject the author of

_The Christian Year_ was entitled to greater deference. That bright

ornament of the College _de Propagandâ_ at Oxford had also gazed on

his own heart through the mental microscope, till he had learnt the

danger of the excessive use of it. While admonishing men to approach

their Creator not as isolated beings, but as members of the Universal

Church, and while aiding the inmates of her hallowed courts to worship

in strains so pure, so reverent, and so meek, as to answer not

unworthily to the voice of hope and reconciliation in which she is

addressed by her Divine Head, this “sweet singer” had so brooded over

the evanescent processes of his own spiritual nature, as not seldom to

render his real meaning imperceptible to his readers, and probably to

himself. With how sound a judgment he counselled Mr. Froude to burn

his books, may be judged from the following entries in them:

‘“I have been talking a great deal to P.[314] about religion to-day.

He seems to take such straightforward practical views of it that, when

I am talking to him, I wonder what I have been bothering myself with

all the summer, and almost doubt how far it is right to allow myself

to indulge in speculations on a subject where all that is necessary is

so plain and obvious.”――“Yesterday, when I went out shooting, I

fancied I did not care whether I hit or not; but when it came to the

point, I found myself anxious, and, after having killed, was not

unwilling to let myself be considered a better shot than I described

myself. I had an impulse, too, to let it be thought that I had only

three shots when I really had had four. It was slight, to be sure, but

I felt it.”――“I have read my journal, though I can hardly identify

myself with the person it describes. It seems like having someone

under one’s guardianship who was an intolerable fool, and exposed

himself to my contempt, every moment, for the most ridiculous and

trifling motives; and while I was thinking all this, I went into L.’s

room to seek a pair of shoes, and on hearing him coming, got away as

silently as possible. Why did I do this? Did I think I was doing what

L. did not like? or was it the relic of a sneaking habit? I will ask

myself these questions again.”――“I have a sort of vanity which aims at

my own good opinion, and I look for anything to prove to myself that I

am more anxious to mind myself than other people. I was very hungry,

but because I thought the charge unreasonable, I tried to shirk the

waiter: sneaking!”――“Yesterday I was much put out by an old fellow

chewing tobacco and spitting across me; also bad thoughts of various

kinds kept presenting themselves to my mind when it was vacant.”――“I

talked sillily to-day, as I used to do last Term, but took no pleasure

in it, so I am not ashamed. Although I don’t recollect any harm of

myself, yet I don’t feel that I have made a clean breast of it.”――“I

forgot to mention that I had been looking round my rooms, and thinking

that they looked comfortable and nice, and that I said in my heart,

‘Ah, ah! I am warm.’”――“It always suggests itself to me that a wise

thought is wasted when it is kept to myself, against which, as it is

my most bothering temptation, I will set down some arguments to be

called to mind in time of trouble.”――“Now I am proud of this, and

think that the knowledge it shows of myself implies a greatness of

mind.”――“These records are no guide to me to show the state of my mind

afterwards; they are so far from being exercises of humility, that

they lessen the shame of what I record, just as professions [of]

goodwill to other people reconcile us to our neglect of them.”

* * * * *

‘As it is not by these nice self-observers that the creeds of hoar

antiquity, and the habits of centuries are to be shaken; so neither is

such high emprise reserved for ascetics who can pause to enumerate the

slices of bread and butter from which they have abstained. When

Whitfield would mortify his body, he set about it like a man. The

paroxysm was short indeed, but terrible. While it lasted, his diseased

imagination brought soul and body into deadly conflict, the fierce

spirit spurning, trampling, and well-nigh destroying the peccant

carcase. Not so the fastidious and refined “witness to the views” of

the restorers of the Catholic Church. The strife between his spiritual

and animal nature is recorded in his journal in such terms as these:

“Looked with greediness to see if there was goose on the table for

dinner.”――“Meant to have kept a fast and did abstain from dinner, but

at tea eat buttered toast.”――“Tasted nothing to-day till tea-time, and

then only one cup and dry bread.”――“I have kept my fast strictly,

having taken nothing till near nine this evening, and then only a cup

of tea and a little bread without butter, but it has not been as easy

as it was last.”――“I made rather a more hearty tea than usual, quite

giving up the notion of a fast in W.’s rooms, and by this weakness

have occasioned another slip.” Whatever may be thought of the

propriety of disclosing such passages as these, they will provoke a

contemptuous smile from no one who knows much of his own heart. But

they may relieve the anxiety of the alarmists. Luther and Zwingle,

Cranmer and Latimer, may still rest in their honoured graves. “Take

courage, brother Ridley, we shall light up such a flame in England as

shall not soon be put out!” is a prophecy which will not be defeated

by the successors of the Oxonian divines who listened to it, so long

as they shall be [able?][315] to record, and to publish, contrite

reminiscences of a desire for roasted goose, and of an undue

indulgence in buttered toast.

‘Yet the will to subvert the doctrines and discipline of the

Reformation is not wanting, and is not concealed. Mr. Froude himself,

were he still living, might, indeed, object to be judged by his

careless and familiar Letters. No such objection can, however, be made

by the eminent persons who have deliberately given them to the world

on account “of the truth and extreme importance of the views to which

the whole is meant to be subservient,” and in which they record their

“own general concurrence.” Of these weighty truths take the following

examples: “You will be shocked at my avowal that I am every day

becoming a less and less loyal son of the Reformation. It appears to

me plain that in all matters which seem to us indifferent, or even

doubtful, we should conform our practices to those of the Church which

has preserved its traditionary practices unbroken. We cannot know

about any seemingly indifferent practice of the Church of Rome that it

is not a development of the Apostolic ἦθος, and it is to no purpose to

say that we can find no proof of it in the writings of the first six

centuries: they must find a disproof if they would do anything.”――“I

think people are injudicious who talk against the Roman Catholics for

worshipping Saints and honouring the Virgin and images, etc. These

things may perhaps be idolatrous: I cannot make up my mind about

it.”――“P. called us the Papal Protestant Church, in which he proved a

double ignorance, as we are Catholics without the Popery, and Church

of England men without the Protestantism.”――“The more I think over

that view of yours about regarding our present Communion Service,

etc., as a judgement on the Church, and taking it as the crumbs from

the Apostles’ table, the more I am struck with its fitness to be dwelt

upon as tending to check the intrusion of irreverent thoughts, without

in any way interfering with one’s just indignation.”――“Your trumpery

principle about Scripture being the sole rule of faith in fundamentals

(I nauseate the word), is but a mutilated edition, without the breadth

and axiomatic character, of the original.”――“Really I hate the

Reformation and the Reformers more and more, and have almost made up

my mind that the Rationalist spirit they set afloat is the

ψευδοπροφήτης of the Revelations.”――“Why do you praise Ridley? Do you

know sufficient good about him to counterbalance the fact that he was

the associate of Cranmer, Peter Martyr, and Bucer?”――“I wish you could

get to know something of S. and W.” (Southey and Wordsworth), “and

un-Protestantise, un-Miltonise them.”――“_How is it_ WE _are so much in

advance of our generation?_” Spirit of George Whitfield! how would thy

voice, rolled from “the secret place of thunders,” have overwhelmed

these puny protests against the truths which it was the one business

of thy life to proclaim from the rising to the setting sun!

* * * * *

‘Penetrating the design and seizing the spirit of the Gospels, the

Reformers inculcated the faith in which the sentient and the spiritual

in man’s compound nature had each its appropriate office: the one

directed to the Redeemer in His palpable form, the other to the Divine

Paraclete in His hidden agency; while, united with these, they

exhibited to a sinful, but penitent, race the parental character of

the omnipresent Deity. Such is not the teaching of the restored

theology. The most eminent of its professors have thrown open the

doors of Mr. Froude’s oratory, and have invited all passers-by to

notice in his prayers and meditations “the absence of any distinct

mention of our Lord and Saviour.” They are exhorted not to doubt that

there was a real though silent “allusion to Christ” under the titles

in which the Supreme Being is addressed; and are told that “this

circumstance may be a comfort to those who cannot bring themselves to

assume the tone of many popular writers of this day, who yet are

discouraged by the peremptoriness with which it is exacted of them.

The truth is, that a mind alive to its own real state often shrinks to

utter what it most dwells upon; and is too full of awe and fear to do

more than silently hope what it most wishes.”

‘It would indeed be presumptuous to pass a censure, or to hazard an

opinion, on the private devotions of any man; but there is no such

risk in rejecting the apology which the publishers of those secret

exercises have advanced for Mr. Froude’s departure from the habits of

his fellow-Christians. Feeble, indeed, and emasculate must be the

system, which, in its delicate distaste for the “popular writers of

the day,” would bury in silence the Name in which every tongue and

language has been summoned to worship and to rejoice. Well may “awe

and fear” become all who assume and all who invoke it. But an “awe”

which “shrinks to utter”[316] the Name of Him Who was born at

Bethlehem, and yet does not fear to use the Name which is ineffable; a

“fear” which can make mention of the Father, but may not speak of the

Brother, of all;――is a feeling which fairly baffles comprehension.

There is a much more simple though a less imposing theory. Mr. Froude

permitted himself, and was encouraged by his correspondents, to

indulge in the language of antipathy and scorn towards a large body of

his fellow-Christians. It tinges his Letters, his Journals, and is not

without its influence even on his devotions. Those despised men too

often celebrated the events of their Redeemer’s life, and the benefits

of His Passion, in language of offensive familiarity, and invoked Him

with fond and feeble epithets. Therefore, a good Oxford Catholic must

envelope in mystic terms all allusion to Him round Whom, as its

centre, the whole Christian system revolves. The line of demarcation

between themselves and these coarse sentimentalists must be broad and

deep, even though it should exclude those by whom it is drawn, from

all the peculiar and distinctive ground on which the standard of the

reformed Churches has been erected…. The martyrs of disgust and the

heroes of revolutions are composed of entirely opposite materials, and

are cast in quite different moulds. Nothing truly great or formidable

was ever yet accomplished, in thought or action, by men whose love for

truth was not strong enough to triumph over their dislike of the

offensive objects with which truth may chance to be associated.

‘Mr. Froude was the helpless victim of such associations. Nothing

escapes his abhorrence which has been regarded with favour by his

political or religious antagonists. The Bill for the Abolition of

Slavery was recommended to Parliament by an Administration more than

suspected of Liberalism in matters ecclesiastical. The “witness to

Catholic views,” “in whose sentiments, as a whole,” his Editors

concur, visits the West Indies, and they are not afraid to publish the

following report of his feelings: “I have felt it a kind of duty to

maintain in my mind an habitual hostility to the niggers, and to

chuckle over the failures of the new system, as if these poor wretches

concentrated in themselves all the Whiggery, dissent, cant, and

abomination that have been ranged on their side.” Lest this should

pass for a pleasant extravagance, the Editors enjoin the reader not to

“confound the author’s view of the negro cause and of the _abstract

negro_ with his feelings towards any he should actually meet”; and

Professor Thöluck is summoned from Germany to explain how the

“originators of error” may lawfully be the objects of a good man’s

hate, and how it may innocently overflow upon all their clients,

kindred, and connections. Mr. Froude’s feelings towards the “abstract

negro” would have satisfied the learned Professor in his most

malevolent mood. “I am ashamed,” he says, “I cannot get over my

prejudices against the niggers.”――“Every one I meet seems to me like

an incarnation of the whole Anti-Slavery Society, and Fowell Buxton at

their head.”――“The thing that strikes me as most remarkable in the cut

of these niggers is excessive immodesty, a forward stupid familiarity

intended for civility, which prejudices me against them worse even

than Buxton’s cant did. It is getting to be the fashion with

everybody, even the planters, to praise the emancipation and Mr.

Stanley.”

‘Mr. Froude, or rather his Editors, appear to have fallen into the

error of supposing that their profession gives them not merely the

right to admonish, but the privilege to scold. Lord Stanley and Mr.

Buxton have, however, the consolation of being railed at in good

company. Hampden is “hated” with much zeal, though, it is admitted,

with imperfect knowledge. Louis Philippe, and his associates of the

Three Days, receive the following humane benediction: “I sincerely

hope ‘the march of mind’ in France may yet prove a bloody one.”――“The

election of the wretched B. for ――――, and that base fellow H. for

――――, in spite of the exposure,” etc. Again, the Editors protest

against our supposing that this is a playful exercise in the art of

exaggeration. “It should be observed,” they say, “as in other parts of

this volume, that the author used these words on principle, not as

abuse, but as expressing matters of fact, as a way of bringing before

his own mind things as they are.”

‘Milton, however, is the special object of Mr. Froude’s virtuous

abhorrence. He is “a detestable author.” Mr. Froude rejoices to learn

something of the Puritans, because, as he says, “it gives me a better

right to hate Milton, and accounts for many of the things which most

disgusted me in his (not-in-my-sense-of-the-word) poetry!”――“A lady

told me yesterday that you wrote the article on Sacred Poetry, etc. I

thought it did not come up to what I thought your standard of aversion

to Milton.” … There are much better things in Mr. Froude’s book than

the preceding quotations might appear to promise. If given as

specimens of his powers, they would do injustice to one whom we

willingly would believe to have been a good and able man, a ripe

scholar, and a devout Christian; though as illustrations of the temper

and opinions of those who now sit in Wycliffe’s seat, they are neither

unfair nor unimportant. But they may convince all whom it concerns,

that hitherto, at least, Oxford has not given birth to a new race of

giants, by whom the Evangelical founders and missionaries of the

Church of England are about to be expelled from their ancient

authority, or the Protestant world excluded from the light of day and

the free breath of Heaven.’

From ‘A MEMOIR OF THE REV. JOHN KEBLE, M.A., Late Vicar of Hursley,’

by the Right Hon. Sir J. T. COLERIDGE, D.C.L. Oxford. London:

James Parker & Co., 1870. [3rd ed.]

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

‘Of Hurrell Froude Dr. Newman has written: “He was a pupil of Keble’s,

formed by him, and in turn reacting upon him.” This sentence is

followed by a short and striking account of this extraordinary man, to

which it would be unwise in me to attempt any addition, except as it

may bear on the object of this memoir. I knew [Hurrell Froude] from a

child, and I trace in the somewhat singular composition of his

character, what he inherited both from his father, and his highly

gifted mother: his father, whom Keble after his first visit to

Dartington Parsonage playfully described to me as “very amiable, but

provokingly intelligent, one quite uncomfortable to think of, making

one ashamed of going gawking as one is wont to do about the world,

without understanding anything one sees”; his mother very beautiful in

person and delicate in constitution, with a highly expressive

countenance, and gifted in intellect with the genius and imagination

which his father failed in. Like the one, he was clever, knowing,

quick, and handy; like the other, he was sensitive, intellectual,

imaginative. He came to Keble full of respect for his character; he

was naturally soon won by his affectionateness and simplicity, and, in

turn, he was just the young man in whom Keble would at once take an

interest and delight, as pupil; and so in fact it was. I find him

again and again in Keble’s letters spoken of in the most loving

language, yet often not without some degree of anxiety as to his

future course: he saw the elements of danger in him, how liable he

might be to take a wrong course, or be misunderstood even when taking

a right one. Yet his hopes largely prevailed; and especially I

remember his rejoicing at his [Froude’s] being elected Fellow of

Oriel, thinking that the new society and associations, with the

responsibilities of College employment, would tend to keep him safe.

That Keble acted on him (I would rather use that term than “formed”)

is certain; and even when, in the later years of his short life,

symptoms of coming differences in opinion may be traced in his

letters, there is no abatement of personal love and reverence, nor,

indeed, in a certain sense, of his feeling the weight of Keble’s

influence; and though I gather from these that there was more entire

agreement with Dr. Newman as to action, yet it seems to me that there

still remained a closer intimacy and more filial feeling with regard

to Keble….

‘… That Hurrell Froude “re-acted on Keble” is true also, I have no

doubt, in a certain sense; it could scarcely be otherwise where there

was so much ability and affectionate playfulness, with so much

originality on one side; so much humility on the other; and so much

love on both. It would be idle to speculate on what might have been,

when the hour of trial came which none of those specially engaged

probably then foresaw. Before it arrived, Hurrell Froude had sunk

under the constitutional malady against which he struggled for four

years. What he would have been, and what he would have done, had his

life been prolonged, no one can say; it would be unfair to judge him

by what he left behind, except as rich grounds of promise. This I

believe I may confidently say, that those who knew him best loved him

the most dearly, and expected the most from him.

‘… My readers will have observed how Keble writes respecting Hurrell

Froude and his _Remains_. His death was a heavy blow to him, and no

wonder: those who knew him but were not on terms of intimacy, could

not but regard mournfully the end of one so accomplished, so gifted,

so good and so pure; a man of such remarkable promise, worn out in the

very prime of life by slow, and wasting, and long-hopeless disease.

But it was much more than this with Keble: they were more like elder

and younger brothers. Reverence in some sort sanctified Froude’s love

for Keble, and moderated the sallies of his somewhat too quick and

defiant temper, and imparted a special diffidence to his opposition,

in their occasional controversies with each other; while a sort of

paternal fondness in Keble gave unusual tenderness to his friendship

for Froude, and exaggerated, perhaps, his admiration for his undoubted

gifts of head and heart. And these were greater than mere

acquaintances would be aware of: for he did not present the best

aspects of himself to common observation….

* * * * *

‘I had the misfortune of giving [Keble] pain, not only by differing

from him on the subject [of the _Remains_], but, owing to

misinformation, or misapprehension, on my part, by what turned out to

be a fruitless and ill-timed interference to prevent the publication.

I need not now explain how this arose; but I must confess that my

opinion remains unchanged. It is a deeply interesting book; not only

perfectly harmless now, but capable of instructing and improving those

who will read it calmly and considerately. Still, I think that it was

calculated, at the time, to throw unnecessary difficulties in the way

of the Movement; that it tended to prevent a fair consideration of

what the “movers” were attempting, to excite passion, and to encourage

a scoffing spirit against them. Some part of the anger and bitterness

with which the Ninetieth Tract was afterwards received, may fairly be

traced to the feeling created, unjustly indeed, but not unnaturally,

by the publication of the _Remains_. The one seemed to be the result

of the other, and the sequence of the two was held to show a

deliberate hostility to the Anglican, and an undue preference of the

Roman Church.’

From ‘ESSAYS HISTORICAL AND THEOLOGICAL,’ BY J. B. MOZLEY, D.D.

Rivingtons, 1878. [From the Essay on Dr. Arnold.]

[By the kind permission of Messrs. J. R. & H. W. Mozley.]

‘The Church of England had, after a century of growing laxity, just

come to the point at which she must either retrace her steps into a

stricter state, or go forward into a formal latitudinarianism. Arnold

was for the latter course; the writers of the _Tracts for the Times_

for the former. The two schools met at these cross-roads, as it were,

and a remarkable contrast indeed they presented. The foremost

characters in the Church Movement (if they will excuse us looking at

them so historically) were undoubtedly phenomena in their way, as

Arnold was in his. Of one of these we can speak: the death that robs

us of so much, gives us, at any rate, this privilege. Singular it is

that antagonist systems should so suit themselves with champions; but

if the world had been picked for the most fair, adequate, and

expressive specimens of German-religionism and Catholicism (specimens

that each side would have acknowledged), it could not well have

produced better ones for the purpose than Dr. Arnold and Mr. Froude.

Arnold, gushing with the richness of domestic life, the darling of

Nature, and overflowing receptacle and enjoyer, with strong healthy

gusto, of all her endearments and sweets,――Arnold, the representative

of high joyous Lutheranism, is describable: Mr. Froude, hardly. His

intercourse with earth and Nature seemed to cut through them like

uncongenial steel, rather than mix and mingle with them. Yet the

polished blade smiled as it went through. The grace and spirit with

which he adorned this outward world (and seemed, to an undiscerning

eye, to love it), were but something analogous in him to the easy tone

of men in high life, whose good-nature to inferiors is the result

either of their disinterested benevolence, or sublime unconcern. In

him, the severe sweetness of the life divine not so much rejected as

disarmed those potent glows and attractions of the life natural: a

high good temper civilly evaded and disowned them. The monk by nature,

the born aristocrat of the Christian sphere, passed them clean by with

inimitable ease, marked his line, and shot clear beyond them into the

serene ether, toward the far-off Light, toward that needle’s point on

which ten thousand angels and all Heaven move…. The Catholic system,

as it advanced from the worlds beyond the grave, came with some of the

colour and circumstance of its origin. It contrasted strangely with

the light, hearty, and glowing form of earth that came from wood and

mountain, sunshine and green fields, to meet [it]. And the unearthly,

supernatural, dogmatic Church opposed a ghostly dignity to the Church

of Nature and the religion of the heart….

* * * * *

‘The notion of the Church being an independent body, and able to keep

her own succession going on, apart from the State, is [to Arnold] “all

essentially anarchical and schismatic,” and he is only defending, he

says, “the common peace and order of the Church, against a new

outbreak of Puritanism, to oppose it.” It appears a curious objection

at first sight, from a man like Arnold, to urge against a particular

religion the claim that it would have been considered treasonable in

the days of Queen Elizabeth. But this … is the period of English

History to which he always goes for his ecclesiastical principles.

Another point of accusation, more of a moral one, does not come with

peculiar grace from Arnold, viz., the charge of immodesty and

impudence in personally daring to go so counter to received opinions

in their views of things and persons. “I have read Froude’s volume,”

he says, “and I think that its predominant character is extraordinary

impudence. I never saw a more remarkable instance of that

qualification than the way in which he, a young man, and a clergyman

of the Church of England, reviles all those persons whom the accordant

voice of that Church, without distinction of party, has agreed to

honour, even perhaps with an excess of admiration.”[317] Now, let it

be ever so true that “the accordant voice of the Church of England”

has taken one view of Cranmer and the Reformers, whereas Mr. Froude

took another, Arnold was not precisely the person to found a charge of

impudence upon such a fact. A man who without a vestige of internal

scruple or misgiving, unchristianised the whole development of the

Church from the days of the Apostles; who made the very disciples,

friends and successors of the Apostles teachers of corruption; who

made the priesthood an Antichrist, and had just himself shocked the

whole Church of England by the promulgation of a religious theory

repugnant to the feeling and ideas of almost all her members to a

man,――was certainly not a person to be tender in requiring compliance

with received views from another, or quick to call impudence in

another what in himself was the necessary adjunct of philosophy.’

From ‘MEMOIR OF JOSHUA WATSON,’ EDITED BY EDW. CHURTON, Archdeacon

of Cleveland. 2 vols. Oxford: J. H. Parker, 1861.

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

‘… The first clear indication of this new principle [a theory of

Catholic union, to which all other considerations were to bow] was

seen in the publication of the _Remains of R. H. Froude_, a young man

of great promise, Fellow of Oriel College, who died at the early age

of thirty-two, and of whose stray papers, letters, and remnants of

conversation, a full collection was published by J. H. Newman, then a

Fellow of the same College, now for some years past a member of the

Society of the Oratory in the Church of Rome. The first two volumes of

these _Remains_ were published early in 1838. The work never obtained

a wide circulation; but enough was done to give deep offence to many

minds, and to unsettle the principles of many more.

‘Those who know Richard Froude best knew that he was in the habit of

expressing himself, both by writing and in conversation, in strong,

pungent sentences, such as are not altogether uncommon with young men

of brilliant minds and vivacious temperament, and are often used by

them as much with the design of provoking answer and contradiction, as

that of conveying the speaker’s real sentiments. But when the Editor,

in his Preface to an unlimited and indiscriminate accumulation of such

winged words, claimed for them the consideration due to the deliberate

opinions of a matured reason, it was a mode of treatment which stamped

them with an importance not properly their own, and justified the

censure of those who without concerning themselves much for the

reputation of the dead, or making allowance for what was with too

little decorum brought before the public, saw the publication

announcing itself as an expansion of the principles of the _Tracts_.

And this claim was made, although poor Froude again and again declared

himself, in the pages of these volumes, as one whose mind was in a

state of progress and puzzle, sympathising at one time with Roman, at

another with Puritan, till, in a lengthened illness, and absence in

foreign lands, it fed upon its own solitary musings, with that morbid

dissatisfaction at all things which sometimes accompanies the decay of

vital power. However, the appearance of such an unreserved exposition

of distracted fancies was a great discouragement to the hopes which

had for a while found their centre at Oxford; and the disease of

Richard Froude’s mind seemed to have communicated itself to his more

distinguished Editor.’

From ‘WILLIAM GEORGE WARD AND THE OXFORD MOVEMENT,’ BY WILFRID WARD.

London: Macmillan & Co., 1889.

[By the kind permission of Wilfrid Ward, Esq., and of Messrs.

Macmillan & Co.]

‘… The scheme which Newman proposed, to restore to the Anglican Church

in some measure the discipline and doctrine of the Fathers, was bold

and captivating to [Mr. Ward’s] imagination; but it seemed to [him] to

be bolder and more drastic in the change it must in consistency

require, than its authors were aware. It was plain to him that nothing

short of an explicit avowal that the principles of the Reformation

were to be disowned, and its work undone, could meet the logical

requirements of the situation. And the leaders hesitated to go thus

far…. On the appearance of the first part of Froude’s _Remains_ early

in 1838, in which the Reformation was avowedly condemned, and its

condemnation tacitly[318] adopted by the two Editors, Newman and

Keble, Mr. Ward acknowledged to himself the direction which his views

were taking. “From that time,” he wrote to Dr. Pusey, “began my

inclination to see Truth where I trust it is.” The final influence

which determined his conversion was the series of lectures by Newman

on The Scripture Proof of the Doctrines of the Church, published

afterwards as Tract 85. Newman, in these lectures, dealt with the

philosophical basis of latitudinarianism on the one hand, and of the

Anglo-Catholic view of the Church on the other, with a power which did

not fail to give satisfaction to his new disciple, and to justify, on

intellectual grounds, the position which was now invested, in Ward’s

mind, with all the charm of Froude’s romantic conception of Catholic

sanctity, the fire of his reforming genius, the unhesitating

completeness of his programme of action…. Dean Scott (the late Dean of

Rochester), who saw Mr. Ward daily in the Common Room at Balliol,

notes some points of interest as to the impression produced on his

friends by the change which Froude’s _Remains_ wrought in his

attitude:――“I can speak with perfect assurance of their purport [the

purport of Mr. Ward’s remarks on the volumes published in 1838]. They

were substantially these: ‘This is what I have been looking for. Here

is a man who knows what he means, and says it. This is the man for me!

He speaks out.’ But though we were amused, and gave him credit for

having achieved the feat which the pseudo-scholastic doctor ascribes

to the angels, of passing from one extreme to the other without

passing through the middle, I do not really think that those words

indicated the actual turning-point. As I look back on them, they seem

to me to imply that the turn had taken place, but that he was looking

for a pledge, on the part of those to whom he was attaching himself,

that they were in earnest, and knew what they meant.” The appearance

of Froude’s _Remains_ was indeed an epoch in Mr. Ward’s life. “The

thing that was utterly abhorrent with him,” writes Lord Blachford,

“was to stop short”; and this was precisely what the _via media_, with

all its attractiveness, had hitherto appeared to do. All this was

changed when Froude’s outspoken views were adopted by the leaders.

“Out came _Froude_,” writes Mr. Ward to Dr. Pusey, “of which it is

little to say that it delighted me more than any book of the kind I

ever read.” “He found in Froude’s _Remains_,” continues Lord

Blachford, “a good deal of his own Radicalism (though nothing at all

of his own Utilitarianism or Liberalism), and it seemed literally to

make him jump for joy.”

‘… There was a good deal in Froude’s open speech and direct intellect

which resembled Mr. Ward’s own characteristics, different as the two

men were, in many respects. Newman describes him as “brimful and

overflowing with ideas and views”; as having “an intellect as critical

and logical as it was speculative and bold”; as “professing openly his

admiration for Rome, and his hatred of the Reformers”; as “delighting

to think of the Saints,” “having a vivid appreciation of the idea of

sanctity, its possibilities and its heights”; “embracing the principle

of penance and mortification”; “being powerfully drawn to the Mediæval

Church, but not to the Primitive.” All this might be said, with great

truth, of Mr. Ward himself. The boldness and completeness, the

uncompromising tone of the _Remains_, took hold of Mr. Ward’s

imagination. A clear, explicit rule of faith was thus substituted for

perplexing and harassing speculation. There was no temporising, or

stopping short. Mr. Ward’s dislike of the current system was echoed in

the plain statement which he was for ever quoting. “At length, under

Henry VIII., the Church of England fell. Will she ever rise

again?”[319] Froude’s writing, then, recommended itself to Mr. Ward as

having the attribute of Lord Strafford’s Irish policy: it was

thorough. And in opposition to this, Arnold’s system stopped short at

every turn. Froude’s picture of the Mediæval Church was that of an

absolute, independent, spiritual authority, direct, uncompromising,

explicit in its decrees, in contrast with the uncertain voice of the

English Church, with its hundred shades of opinions differing from,

and even opposed to, each other. Instead of groping with the feeble

light of human reason amid texts of uncertain signification, he

interpreted Scripture by the aid of constant tradition, and of the

Church’s divine illumination. The stand for moral goodness against

vice and worldliness was witnessed in the highest and most ideal types

of sanctity in Church history. The personal struggle of the ordinary

Christian against his evil inclinations was systematised and brought

to perfection in Catholic ascetic works. The doctrine of a

supernatural world and supernatural influences was not minimised, as

though one feared to tax human powers of belief: it was put forth in

the fullest and most fearless manner. Angels and Saints, as ministers

of supernatural help, were recognised; and their various offices in

aiding and protecting us, and listening to our prayers on all

occasions, forced on the attention constantly in the Catholic system.

There was no mistiness, or haze, or hesitation. All was clear,

complete, definite, carried out to its logical consequences….

* * * * *

‘Ward himself speaks in no doubtful terms of union with Rome as the

ideal vision which inspired him. “Restoration of active communion with

the Roman Church”, he writes to a friend in 1841, “is the most

enchanting earthly prospect on which my imagination can dwell.” His

remarks, too, on Froude’s book (in a letter written in the same year

to Dr. Pusey) indicate the same line of sympathies. “The especial

charm in it to me,” he wrote, “was … his hatred of our present system

and of the Reformers, and his sympathy with the rest of Christendom.”

The love of Rome and of an united Christendom, which marked the new

school, was not purely a love for ecclesiastical authority. This was

indeed one element, but there was another yet more influential in many

minds: admiration for the Saints of the Roman Church, and for the

saintly ideal, as realised especially in the monastic life. We have

already seen how this element operated in Mr. Ward’s own history.

Froude had struck the note of sanctity as well as the note of

authority. He had raised an inspiring ideal on both heads; and behold,

with however much of practical corruption and superstition mixed up

with their practical exhibitions, these ideals were actually

reverenced, attempted, often realised! in the existing Roman Church.

The worthies of the English Church, even when sharing the tender piety

of George Herbert or Bishop Ken, fell short of the heroic aims, the

martial sanctity, gained by warfare unceasing against world, flesh,

and devil, which they found exhibited in Roman hagiology. The glorying

in the Cross of Christ, which is the keynote to such lives as those of

St. Ignatius of Loyola, and St. Francis Xavier, while it recalled much

in the life of St. Paul, had no counterpart in post-Reformation

Anglicanism.[320] The state of things which made this directly

Romeward movement tolerable to any considerable section of the English

Church was, however, sufficiently remarkable. The Anglicanism of the

party must have receded very considerably from the views of the early

_Tracts_ before such a thing could be possible. Perhaps two events

were especially instrumental to such a preparation: the first was the

language used with respect to the English Reformers by Newman and

Keble, in the Preface to the second part of Froude’s _Remains_, early

in 1839. However guarded and measured the expressions were, such

language expressed a definite view, with far-reaching consequences;

and the extraordinary weight attaching to Newman’s lightest utterances

gave the words additional significance. “The Editors,” one passage

ran, “by publishing [Mr. Froude’s] sentiments … so unreservedly …

indicated their own general acquiescence in the opinion that the

persons chiefly instrumental in [the Reformation], were not, as a

party, to be trusted on ecclesiastical and theological questions, nor

yet to be imitated in their practical handling of the unspeakably

awful matters with which they were concerned.” Again, the differences

between the Reformers and the Fathers, both in doctrine and in moral

sentiment, were insisted on by the Editors. “You must choose between

the two lines,” they wrote; “they are not only diverging, but

contrary.” And certain questions as to the practical Christian ideal

are specified as instances: “Compare the sayings and manner of the two

schools on the subjects of fasting, celibacy, religious vows,

voluntary retirement and contemplation, the memory of the Saints,

rites and ceremonies recommended by antiquity.” The conclusion which,

though unspoken here, was undeniable once it was suggested, the

conclusion “in these matters Rome has preserved what England has lost;

in these matters we may take Rome for our model if we would return to

antiquity,”――could not but gain a footing in the minds of Newman’s

disciples.’

From ‘A NARRATIVE OF EVENTS CONNECTED WITH THE PUBLICATION OF THE

TRACTS FOR THE TIMES,’ by WILLIAM PALMER, Author of _Origines

Liturgicæ_, etc. Rivingtons, 1883. [From the Introduction.]

‘The publication of this work [_Origines Liturgicæ_] had the effect of

introducing the author to the acquaintance of some of the leading

spirits who afterwards exercised a decisive influence on the

foundation of the Oxford Movement of 1833, usually called

“Tractarian.” He had, in this work, vindicated the Church of England

on what are sometimes called High Church principles, affirming the

divine institution of the Church, and its essential independence, in

creed and jurisdiction, of merely temporal powers. He had also argued

against the Nonjurors, and sustained the harmony of Church and State.

He had vindicated the Reformation. He had defended the Catholicity and

continuity of the Church in England, and had opposed the pretensions

of the See of Rome. No one could mistake his principles, and these

principles were felt by the great mass of Churchmen to be in harmony

with their own. In forming the acquaintance of Newman and Froude, then

very distinguished Fellows of Oriel, and amongst rising men in the

University, the author knew that his principles, at least, were fully

known to, and approved by, these eminent men….

‘… The autumn and winter of 1832 passed away, but early in 1833 Froude

returned to Oxford in better health, and I had once more a friend with

whom I could work with entire sympathy in Church questions. For never

did I meet with a more cordial response to all that I felt upon these

matters, or a fuller sympathy. The only point on which I could not

concur with him was the manner in which he spoke of the union of

Church and State, which he esteemed unlawful _per se_, while I only

objected to its abuses. His language as to the Reformation, too, I

could not concur in, having considered with some attention the point

as urged in Nonjuring works, and arrived at the conclusion that the

Reformation did not merit the unfavourable judgment pronounced. After

some months, in July we were joined by Newman, who had been detained

by illness in France; and this greatly strengthened our hands.

‘In an article in the _Contemporary Review_[321] on the Oxford

Movement, I have ventured on the remark that I was not aware of an

incident mentioned in Froude’s _Remains_, illustrative at once of the

absence of elementary knowledge of the Roman Catholic system, and of

the disposition to frame ingenious hypotheses upon the most important

practical subjects. The incident referred to I described thus: “Froude

had, with Newman, been anxious to ascertain the terms upon which they

could be admitted to communion by the Roman Church, supposing that

some dispensation might be granted which would enable them to

communicate with Rome without violation of conscience”; and I

elsewhere remarked on Newman [that] “those who conversed with him did

not know that while in Italy he had sought, in company with Froude, to

ascertain the terms on which they might be admitted to communion with

Rome, and had been surprised on learning that an acceptance of the

decrees of Trent was a necessary preliminary”; and I added: “had I

been aware of these circumstances, I do not know whether I should have

been able to co-operate cordially with him.” Nay, if I had supposed

him to be willing to forsake the Church of England, I should have said

that I could, in that case, have held no communion with him. As to his

knowledge of the Roman Catholic system at that time, it was not

grounded on the critical examination of Roman Catholic works of

controversy. It was, I think, superficial, at that time and long

after….