pp. 304, 307, in which he says: “The only thing I can put my hand on
as an acquisition [at Rome] is having become acquainted with a man of
some influence at Rome, Monsignor [Wiseman], the head of the [English]
College, who has enlightened [Newman] and me on the subject of our
relations to the Church of Rome. We got introduced to him to find out
whether they would take us in on any terms to which we could twist our
consciences, and we found, to our dismay, that not one step could be
gained without swallowing the Council of Trent as a whole.” Mr.
Newman, in editing this passage, in Froude’s _Remains_, represents it
as merely “a jesting way of stating to a friend what was really the
fact: viz., that he and another availed themselves of the opportunity
of meeting a learned Romanist to ascertain the ultimate points at
issue between the Churches.” Cardinal Newman insists upon it that this
is the true version of the affair. I merely ask the reader to compare
the two statements: that of Froude, made at the time, and distinctly,
and that of Newman, made some years after, to explain it. I ask
whether the explanation is not throughout inconsistent with the
statement, whether it is not a plain attempt to explain away the
statement of Froude, whether Froude’s is not evidently the true
version? No doubt Newman thought such explanation quite within his
province as Editor. This little piece of _finesse_ merits no grave
animadversion, and I trust that I have so explained the point … as to
relieve me from the imputation of accusing of dishonesty an old friend
so much honoured for virtue and honour.’
[From the Narrative.]
‘I had not been very intimately acquainted with Mr. Newman and Mr.
Froude, and was scarcely known to Mr. Keble, or Mr. Perceval, when our
deep sense of the wrongs sustained by the Church in the suppression of
Bishoprics, and our feeling of the necessity of doing whatever was in
our power to arrest the tide of evil, brought us together in the
summer of 1833. It was at the beginning of Long Vacation when, Mr.
Froude being almost the only occupant of Oriel College, we frequently
met in the Common Room, that the resolution to unite and associate in
defence of the Church, of her violated liberties and neglected
principles, arose. This resolution was immediately acted on; and while
I corresponded with Mr. Rose, Mr. Froude communicated our design to
Mr. Keble. Mr. Newman soon took part in our deliberations, on his
return from the Continent. The particular course which we were to
adopt became the subject of much and anxious thought; and as it was
deemed advisable to confer with Mr. Rose on so important a subject,
Mr. Froude and myself, after some correspondence, visited him at
Hadleigh, in July; where I also had the pleasure of becoming
personally acquainted with Mr. Perceval, who had been invited to take
part in our deliberations…. On our return to Oxford, frequent
conferences took place at Oriel College, between Mr. Froude, Mr.
Newman, Mr. Keble, and the writer, in which various plans were
discussed…. I prepared a draft of the third formulary printed by Mr.
Perceval, which was revised and improved by a friend, and was finally
adopted as a basis of our further proceedings.[322] The formulary thus
agreed on was printed and was privately and extensively circulated
amongst our friends in all parts of England, in the autumn of 1833.
Our intention was not to form a society merely at Oxford, but to
extend it throughout all England, or rather, to form similar societies
in every part of England. But finding that jealousy was expressed in
several high quarters at the formation of any associations, and the
notion being also unacceptable to Froude and others (Newman), at
Oxford, we ceased, after a time, from circulating these papers, or
advising the formation of societies. Some permanent effects, however,
were produced….
‘The publication of the _Tracts_ commenced and was continued by
several of our friends,[323] each writer printing whatever appeared to
him advisable or useful, without the formality of previous
consultation with others…. I confess that I was rather surprised at
the rapidity with which they were composed and published, without any
previous revision or consultation; nor did it seem to me that any
caution was exercised in avoiding language calculated to give needless
offence…. The respect and regard due to the authors of the _Tracts_
rendered me anxious to place the most favourable construction on
everything which they wrote, and to hope that my apprehensions might
be ill-founded. In the course, however, of the extensive
correspondence of the autumn and winter of 1833 which has been
mentioned, so many objections were raised by the clergy against parts
of the _Tracts_, and so many indiscretions were pointed out, that I
became convinced of the necessity of making some attempt to arrest the
evil. With this object, I made application in a direction (Newman)
where much influence in the management of the _Tracts_ was exercised,
and very earnestly urged the necessity of putting an end to their
publication, or at least of suspending them for a time. On one
occasion, I thought I had been successful in the former object, and
stated the fact to several correspondents; but the sequel proved that
I was mistaken.[324] … Certainly, I had, in private conversation with
Mr. Froude, and one or two others, felt that there were material
differences between our views, on several important points. I allude
more particularly to the question of the union of Church and State,
and of the character of the English and the foreign Reformers. Mr.
Froude occasionally expressed sentiments on the latter subject which
seemed extremely unjust to the Reformers, and injurious to the Church;
but as his conversation generally was of a very startling and
paradoxical character, and his sentiments were evidently only in the
course of formation, I trusted that more knowledge and thought would
bring him to juster views….
* * * * *
‘I will not say that the writers of the _Tracts_ have not been in any
degree instrumental in drawing forth this spirit;[325] I will not
inquire how far it is traceable to the publication of Froude’s
_Remains_, and to the defence of his views contained in the Preface to
the second series of the _Remains_; nor will I examine how far it may
be a reaction against ultra-Protestantism: it is unnecessary now to
enter on this painful and complicated question, on which different
opinions may be entertained.’
From ‘OXFORD HIGH ANGLICANISM AND ITS CHIEF LEADERS,’ by the Rev.
JAMES H. RIGG, D.D. London: Charles H. Kelly, 1899.
[By the kind permission of the Rev. James H. Rigg, D.D., and of Mr.
Charles H. Kelly.]
‘Newman’s principles as the active leader of the Oxford Movement were
imbibed from his intercourse with Keble and
Hurrell Froude. Newman himself says expressly and emphatically that
Keble was the real father of the Oxford Movement, and it was the
influence of Froude which brought together Keble and Newman. It was
Froude who effected that blending and focussing of the sympathies and
aims of Keble, Newman, and himself which furnished the first
inspiration and impulse of the Oxford Neo-Anglican Movement. Newman,
that is to say, though afterwards the leader, was first the disciple
of Keble and even of Froude, and Keble and Froude derived their
Anglican indoctrination and inspiration not assuredly from the
Evangelical Revival, which they were brought up to hate, and did,
both, sincerely hate through life, but from the High Church school of
the early years of the eighteenth century, of which Dr. Routh was a
living representative at Oxford for many years after Keble obtained
his Fellowship at Oriel…. Keble was the tutor and the loving and
sympathetic friend of the bitter and contemptuous Froude, who “hated
the Reformation,” and reserved his utmost scorn and antipathy for
“irreverent Dissenters.” … His personal opinions were extreme, so
extreme as to lead him to admire the character of Froude, in spite of
his immodesty, his intolerance, and his puerile asceticism, because
there was in the young man such heartiness, such good fellowship, such
zeal, such talent; and all consecrated to the cause of “Catholic”
restoration and Christian progress, as he understood it.
‘… The characters of [Newman and Keble] were not likely to blend,
except under the influence of some common solvent, some medium of
overpoweringly strong affinity with both, through which characters so
sharply contrasted might be combined in sympathy and united in
counsel…. Nor could a fitter instrument have been found for bringing
about the union on this basis than Hurrell Froude. He was himself, in
several respects, as great a contrast to Keble in character as even
Newman. But then he had been Keble’s pupil, and he remained his
devoted and admiring friend…. Moreover, though Newman in his
_Apologia_ speaks of Froude as “speculative,” he was not
metaphysically sceptical, and his speculations appear to have been
confined within theologically safe regions. Froude, in fact, stood in
fear of Newman’s speculative tendency; and in one place, whilst
expressing his delight in his companionship, expresses his doubt
whether he is not more or less of a “heretic.”[326] In no sense was
Hurrell Froude doctrinally or metaphysically speculative. He had
seemingly, from the first, bound himself to tradition. His affections
went after antiquity, but, in particular, he doted upon the Mediæval
Church. His “speculations” never led him towards the verge of
unbelief. Whilst his zeal was hot, and his mind active, his intellect
seemed to make good its safety by servility to traditional dogma. If
he mocked at the Reformers, he held fast by the “Saints.” Furthermore,
although such a zealot for traditional Church authority, and so bold
and hot against all Protestants and Puritans, he was to his friends
gentle, tender, playful, pleasant, and most open-hearted. It is easy
to see by what ties such a man would be attached to Keble and to
Newman. The former regarded him somewhat as a mother regards a
high-spirited, spoilt, but frank, true-spoken and affectionate son.
She is proud of him, while she disapproves of some of his proceedings.
She reproves him, but gently, lovingly: too gently by far. She views
all his conduct with a partial eye; his very faults seem to her but
the exuberances of a noble spirit. It must be remembered also that
Froude’s animosities correspond to Keble’s dislikes, and that his
enthusiastic and passionate admiration was bestowed in accordance with
Keble’s preferences. The tempers of the teacher and pupil were very
different, but their tastes and opinions were well agreed; and, in
fact, those of Froude had been formed by Keble. What Keble instilled
by gentle influence became in Froude a potent and heady spirit. Keble,
accordingly, forgave the violence of his pupil, in part for the sake
of his orthodoxy, and in part because of his dutifulness and affection
to him personally. His excesses were but the excesses of a fine young
nature on behalf of what was good and right. “E’en his failings leaned
to virtue’s side.” While such were the ties which attached Keble to
Froude, Newman was drawn to him both by agreement in theological and
ecclesiastical opinions and tendencies, and also by a strong natural
affinity of disposition. No one can read Newman’s description of
Froude and himself in the _Apologia_ without feeling that he and such
a man as Froude must have been most congenial companions. Both were,
intellectually, what he describes Froude as being: “critical and
logical,” “speculative and bold.” Newman, no less than Froude,
“delighted in the notion of an hierarchical system of sacerdotal
power, and of full ecclesiastical liberty.” “Hatred of the Reformers,”
“scorn” of Protestantism, are noted by Newman as characteristics of
Froude. And, as to himself, “I became fierce,” “I was indignant,” “I
despised every rival system,” “I had a thorough contempt for the
Evangelicals,”――such expressions as these abound in his delineation of
his own character at this period of his life. It is no wonder,
therefore, that Froude and Newman clave to each other…. Froude was the
energetic and wilful partner of Newman in the new enterprise: Froude,
who with far less genius, far less personal tact and persuasiveness,
and no gift of public or pulpit suasion, such as Newman possessed in a
wonderful degree, was a man of intense and resolute character, of
great logical daring, of unsparing pugnacity, of far-reaching ideas,
whom Newman, and, as we have seen, Keble also, greatly admired and
even loved, though he was loved by few besides. These two men, Newman
and Froude, were mutually complementary: together they planned the
first lines of the Tractarian Movement…. For his characteristic work
at Oxford, Newman had been prepared by the influence of Keble and
Froude. To quote Dean Church, “Keble had given the inspiration, Froude
had given the impetus; then Newman took up the work.” If Froude had
lived a few years longer, it cannot be doubted that he would have gone
over the imaginary line of division, and would have found himself
consciously and professedly at Rome. Keble had neither logic nor
courage to take him across the line…. Newman, alone of the three,
slowly and reluctantly, but by force of sincere and overmastering
convictions, followed his principles out to the complete end.
‘… To the Movement, as a Movement, Keble seems to have actively
contributed no momentum whatever, although his reputation (like
Pusey’s later on) lent it a powerful sanction. To Newman belongs all
the merit or demerit of the Tractarian line of policy and action.
Without him, the Movement would never have taken form or gathered way.
Froude was, very early, a powerful and energetic colleague: indeed,
without him, Newman would not have been what he was, nor done what he
did…. The chief interest attaching to Froude is that being what he
was, he so powerfully influenced Newman, who said of him in his
_Lectures on Anglicanism_,[327] that “he, if any, is the author of the
Movement altogether”: a saying hardly, however, consistent with the
statement already quoted from the _Apologia_ as to Keble’s relation to
the Movement. Froude was a man of much force of will, and superior
natural gifts; he was handsome and attractive, a bright and lively
companion, a warm and affectionate friend, a “good fellow,” but very
free indeed of his tongue. He was ignorant, self-conscious, and
audacious; as intense a hater as he was a warm friend; a bitter bigot,
a reckless revolutionist; one who delighted to speak evil of
dignitaries, and of departed worthies and heroes reverenced by
Protestant Christians at home and abroad. Church, who did not know
him, but took his estimate of him mainly from Newman, makes a
conspicuous figure of him, giving much more space to him than to
Pusey,[328] more even than to Keble. That this should be so, shows how
deeply Church had drunk into the spirit that prompted and inspired the
Tractarians. Even his friendly hand, however, cannot omit from his
picture certain features which, to an outsider who is not fascinated
by the _camaraderie_ of the Tractarian clique … will be almost
sufficient, without further evidence, to warrant the phrase, “a
flippant railer,” in which Julius Hare (himself, assuredly, no
Evangelical bigot or narrow sectary) describes the man whose _Remains_
were edited and published by his two great friends, that Anglican
Churchmen might be led to admire the zeal and devotion, and to drink
into the spirit, of this young hero of the new party. According to
their view, his early death in the odour of sanctity (although of true
Christian saintliness in temper or spirit he seems to have had as
little tincture as any persecuting Spanish saint), left an aureole of
glory upon his memory.
‘Such was Froude’s hatred of Puritanism that, as may be learnt from
Dean Church, he was “blind to the grandeur of Milton’s poetry.” Church
speaks, himself, of his “fiery impetuosity, and the frank daring of
his disrespectful vocabulary.” He quotes James Mozley as saying: “I
would not set down anything that Froude says for his deliberate
opinion, for he really hates the present state of things so
excessively that any change would be a relief to him.” He says that
“Froude was made for conflict, not to win disciples.” He admits his
ignorance. “He was,” he tells us, “a man strong in abstract thought
and imagination, who wanted adequate knowledge.” He quotes from the
_Apologia_ Newman’s admission of two noticeable deficiencies in
Froude: “he had no turn for theology”; “his power of entering into the
minds of others was not equal to his other gifts.” Such a power, we
may note, is very unlikely to belong to men of fierce and hasty
arrogance and self-confidence. It finds its natural home in company
with “the wisdom from above,” which is not only “pure,” but “gentle
and easy to be entreated,” the characteristics of a saintliness of
another sort than that of Froude. Dean Church admits that the
_Remains_ contain phrases and sentiments and epithets surprisingly at
variance with conventional and popular estimates: “as, for example, we
may explain, when Froude speaks of the illustrious Bishop Jewel, whom
Hooker calls ‘the worthiest divine that Christendom hath bred for the
space of some hundreds of years,’ as ‘an irreverent Dissenter,’ Church
adds that ‘friends were pained and disturbed,’ while ‘foes exulted,’
at such a disclosure of the spirit of the Movement.” The apology he
offers is that “if the off-hand sayings of any man of force and wit
and strong convictions were made known to the world, they would, by
themselves, have much the same look of flippancy, injustice,
impertinence, to those who disagreed with the speaker or writer…. 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 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.” To which the reply
is obvious: if the Editors (who were no other than Newman and Keble)
had disapproved of the tone and style of these _Remains_, as it is
evident that Dean Church himself, notwithstanding his strong friendly
bias, could not help disapproving of them, they would either not have
published them, or would at least have suggested some such apology as
that suggested by Dean Church. But, in fact, they published them
without any such apology, and it cannot be seriously doubted that they
rather rejoiced in than condemned such gross improprieties. Further,
if this sort of writing is common in the intimate correspondence of
responsible clergymen, how is it that it is so hard, if it is at all
possible, to match the flippancy and insolence of these _Remains_ in
any other correspondence or remains of men of Christian culture and
character, known to modern literature? Dean Church, indeed, cannot but
admit that “Froude was often intemperate and unjust,” and that “his
strong language gave needless exasperation.” He endeavours, however,
to make one point in favour of the Movement, from the publication of
the _Remains_. Whether it was wise or not, he argues that “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; it was the mistake of
men confident in their own straightforwardness.” I have no wish to
revive against the first leaders of the Movement, as represented by
Froude and the admirable Editors of his _Remains_, the charge of being
conspirators, though, as I have already stated, Froude himself was the
first to describe the Tractarian Movement as a “conspiracy.” Certainly
Froude, in the earlier stage of the Movement, like Ward in its later
stages, had little in him of the conspirator’s subtlety or craft,
whatever may be said as to Newman. But an unbiassed historian would
hardly describe the act of publication as Dean Church does: he would
rather say that it was the act of men whose honesty may be admitted,
but who were sanguine partisans, men strongly biassed by their
sectarian temper, by their over-weening self-confidence….
‘But it was a strange little world, that world of Oxford, in which
Froude was regarded as a bright and leading character, sixty years
ago. It seems, as we look back upon it, to be very much farther away
than half a century, and to belong almost to a different planetary
sphere…. It was, in fact, a young and ignorant, as well as bigoted
circle, in which the idea of the Oxford Movement first germinated…. It
was a school-boyish sort of clique, and in wildness, enthusiasm,
ignorance of the actual forces and the gathering movements of the
world outside, their projects and dreams remind us of schoolboy plans
and projects for moving the world and achieving fame and greatness….
‘Schoolboys’ friendships are often intense and romantic. Those of
Newman and his circle were passionately deep and warm, more like those
of boys, in some respects, than of men; perhaps still more like those
of women who live aloof from the world in the seclusion of mutual
intimacy: intimacy suffused with the fascinating but hectic brightness
of a sort of celibate consecration to each other, apart from any
thought of stronger or more authoritative human ties that might some
time interfere with their sacrament of friendship. This _morbidezza_
of moral complexion and temperament, this more or less unnatural and
unhealthy intensity of friendship, was a marked feature in Newman’s
relations with those around him. There is no doubt a touching side to
this feature in the Tractarian Society of Oxford. Dean Church speaks
of “the affection which was characteristic of those days.” … Of the
mutually feminine attachment which bound Newman and Froude together,
there is no need to say more…. The _Apologia_ sets it forth all the
more fully because Froude was no longer living…. Newman’s was a
characteristically feminine nature: it was feminine in the quickness
and subtlety of his instincts, in affection and the caprices of
affection, in diplomatic tact and adroitness, and in a gift of
statement and grace of phrase which find their analogies in the
conversation, in the public addresses, and not seldom in the written
style, of gifted women…. Hurrell Froude, his chosen and most congenial
friend, was more feminine still than Newman, feminine in his faults as
well as in his gifts and his defects. For sympathy and mutual
intelligence the two were wonderfully well assorted…. It was a saying
of Charles Kingsley … that all the Tractarian leaders were wanting in
virility: _i.e._, not so much effeminate as naturally more woman-like
than masculine.’
From ‘HISTORICAL NOTES ON THE TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT, A.D. 1833-1845,’
by FREDERICK OAKELEY, M.A., Oxon., Priest of the Archdiocese of
Westminster. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1865.
[By the kind permission of Sir Charles W. A. Oakeley, Bart., and of
Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co.]
‘The only one of these remarkable men who has passed into the region
of history[329] is he who, though the youngest of the whole number in
years, deserves to be commemorated as the first who took a
comprehensive view of the bearings and character of the Movement. Mr.
Froude was a College contemporary of my own, and I enjoyed at one time
the privilege of constant intercourse and familiar acquaintance with
him. Those who have formed their impression of him from his published
_Remains_ will scarcely, perhaps, be prepared to hear how little there
appeared, in his external deportment, while he was at Oxford, of that
remarkable austerity of life which he is now known to have habitually
practised, even then. To a form of singular elegance, and a
countenance of that peculiar and highest kind of beauty which flows
from purity of heart and mind, he added manners the most refined and
engaging. That air of sunny cheerfulness which is best expressed by
the French word _riant_, never forsook him (at the time when I knew
him best), and diffused itself, as is its wont, over every circle in
which he moved. I have seen him in spheres so different as the
Common-Rooms of Oxford, and the after-dinner company of the high
aristocratic society of the West of England; and I well remember how
he mingled even with the last in a way so easy, yet so dignified, as
at once to conciliate its sympathies and direct its tone. He was one
of those who seemed to have extracted real good out of an English
Public School education, while unaffected by its manifold vices.
Popular among his companions for his skill in all athletic exercises,
as well as for his humility, forbearance, and indomitable good temper,
he had the rare gift of changing the course of dangerous conversation
without uncouth abruptness or unbecoming dictation; and he almost
seemed, as is recorded of St. Bernardine of Sienna, to check, by his
mere presence, the profane jibe, or unseemly _équivoque_. To his great
intellectual powers his published _Remains_ bear abundant witness; nor
do we, in fact, need any other proof of them than the deference
yielded to his opinions by such men as those who have acknowledged him
for their example and their guide. Let it not be supposed that this
high panegyric is prompted by the partiality of friendship. Although I
enjoyed constant opportunities of intercourse with Mr. Froude, and
made his character a study, yet I have no claim whatever to be
considered his intimate friend. We were not, indeed, at that time, in
anything like complete religious accord; and I remember his once
saying to me, in words which subsequent events made me regard as
prophetic: “My dear O., I believe you will come right some day; but
you are a long time about it.” Poor Hurrell Froude! May it be allowed
to one who was your competitor in more than one academical contest,
and your inferior in everything (save in his happy possession of those
religious privileges which you were cut off too early to allow of your
attaining), to pay you, after many years, this feeble tribute of
gratitude and admiration! Never again will Anglicanism produce such a
disciple; never, till she is Catholic, will Oxford boast of such a son.
‘“_Ostendent terris hunc tantum fata, neque ultra_
_Esse sinent. Nimium vobis Romana propago_
_Visa potens, superi, propria hæc si dona fuissent_ …
_Nec puer Iliaca quisquam de gente Latinos_
_In tantum spe tollet avos: nec Romula quondam_
_Ullo se tantum tellus jactabit alumno._”
As I have begun this quotation, I may as well go on with it:
‘“_Heu, pietas! heu, prisca fides! invictaque bello_
_Dextera! non illi se quisquam impune tulisset_
_Obvius armato_ …
… _Manibus date lilia plenis_:
_Purpureos spargam flores, animamque [sodalis]_
_His saltem accumulem donis, et fungar inani_
_Munere._”
To adjust such a character with Catholic facts and Catholic principles
is no part of my present object. The reader who takes an interest in
this question will find it discussed in Dr. Newman’s _Lectures on
Anglican Difficulties_. For me it will be sufficient to take leave of
this gifted person in the well-known words: _Cum talis sis, utinam
noster esses!_
* * * * *
‘The estimate taken [of the Reformers and] of their work by Mr.
Froude, Mr. Keble, and Mr. Newman became sufficiently manifest on the
publication of Mr. Froude’s _Remains_, with the remarks prefixed to
them by the friends just mentioned. Mr. Froude had described the
English Reformers in general, as “a set with whom he wished to have
less and less to do.” He declared his opinion that Bishop Jewel was no
better than “an irreverent Dissenter,” and expressed himself as
sceptical whether Latimer (of whom, as a “Martyr,” he did not wish to
speak disrespectfully) were not “something in the Bulteel line.” Dr.
Pusey was too humble and forbearing to enter any kind of public
protest against statements and views so different from his own. But he
was generally believed not to go along with the tenour of these
expressions, nor to approve, otherwise than by passive acquiescence,
of the publication of those parts of the work in which they were
contained…. [Living,] Mr. Froude’s frankness and attractive personal
qualities gained from the rising generation of Oxford a favourable
hearing for the (to them) original views, which he so ably and
dashingly inculcated…. No one can read Mr. Froude’s _Remains_ …
without seeing that with him and with those with whom he corresponded,
the ethical system of Oxford had exercised no small influence in the
formation of mental habits. Those who, like myself, were personally
acquainted with Mr. Froude, will remember how constantly he used to
appeal to [the] great moral teacher of antiquity, “Old ‘Stotle,” as he
used playfully to call him, against the shallow principles of the day.
There is a sense, I am convinced, in which the literature of
heathenism is often more religious than that of Protestantism. Thus,
then, it was that the philosophical studies of Oxford tended to form
certain great minds on a semi-Catholic type.
* * * * *
‘Towards the close of his mortal career, his opinions appear to have
undergone some change which was perceptible to many of his friends
even in his outward demeanour. He associated less than formerly with
the old High Church party of the Establishment, as he became convinced
that the ills of the Church must be cured by sterner and more
unworldly methods of discipline than that party was prepared to
accept. An air of gravity, and a tone of severity, even in general
society (so far as he mixed with it), had replaced that bright and
sunny cheerfulness which was characteristic of his earlier days; and
this change of exterior was greater than could be explained by his
declining health, against which he bore up with exemplary fortitude.
Together with a more anxious view of the state and prospects of the
Establishment, he had apparently taken up a less favourable opinion of
the Catholic Church, at least in its actual manifestation. A visit to
the Continent had operated (from whatever cause) unfavourably upon his
judgment of Catholics, whom he now first stigmatised as “Tridentines”:
a strange commentary, certainly, on the view put forth later by Mr.
Newman, to the effect that the prevalent Catholic system was erroneous
in that it had deviated from the Tridentine rule, not in that it
represented that rule! This and similar dicta, some of a still more
painful import, have led such of Mr. Froude’s friends as have clung to
the Established Church to believe that, had he lived, he would have
remained on their side. Such a question will naturally be determined,
to a great extent, according to the personal views and wishes of those
who speculate upon it. Certain at any rate it is, that had he come to
us, the Church would have secured the humble obedience and faithful
service of a rarely gifted intellect; while, had he stayed behind, he
would have added one more to the number of those whose absence is the
theme of our lamentation, and whose conversion, the object of our
prayers. It is part, however, of the historian’s office to investigate
such questions according to the evidence at his disposal; and in the
instance before us, that evidence is far more accessible and far more
satisfactory than is usually the case in posthumous inquiries. Mr.
Froude’s Letters to Friends, published in his _Remains_, give an
insight into his character and feelings, with all their various
developments and vicissitudes, such as is commonly the privilege of
intimate personal acquaintance, and of that alone. His bosom friends
could hardly have known him better than the careful student of these
Letters may know him, if he desire it: indeed, it is to such friends
that he discloses himself in those Letters with almost the
plain-spokenness of the Confessional.
‘Now, it must be admitted that these Letters leave the question as to
the probability of his conversion very much in that evenly-balanced
state in which, as I have just said, the wishes of friends or
partisans come in to determine it on either side. His Letters contain,
on the one hand, many passages from which, if they stood alone, it
might be concluded that he was, at certain times, almost ripe for
conversion. They also contain others apparently of an opposite tenour.
In the former class must be reckoned those indications of antipathy,
continually deriving fresh fuel from new researches, to the English
Reformation and Reformers.[330] Mr. Froude’s theological sentiments
had long passed the mark of the Laudian era, and settled at the point
of the Nonjurors.[331] He thinks one might take for an example Francis
de Sales, whom, by the way, he classes with “Jansenist Saints.”[332]
Again, he was most deeply sensitive to the shortcomings and anomalies
of his communion: he calls it an “incubus” on the country, and
ascribes to it the blighting properties of the “upas-tree.” It is
evident that he was in advance both of Mr. Keble and Mr. Newman: he
twits the former, in friendly expostulation, with the Protestantism of
his phraseology in parts of _The Christian Year_, and laments the
backwardness of the latter on some questions of the day. On the other
hand, and in the same direction of thought, he expresses admiration of
Cardinal Pole; he scruples about speaking against the Catholic system,
even its “seemingly indifferent practices”;[333] he can understand, on
the principle of reverence, the Communion under one species,[334]
perhaps the greatest of all practical difficulties to many Anglican
minds. Moreover, when at Rome, he evidently opened the subject of
reconciliation to a distinguished prelate whom he met there.[335] _Per
contra_, we have painful sayings against supposed practical abuses in
the Church. “He really thought,” as he tells us, that “certain
practices which he witnessed abroad are idolatrous”; he charges
priests with irreverence, ecclesiastical authorities with laxity,
etc.[336] Yet even these opinions he partially qualifies, and is
disposed to attribute to defective information.[337] He shrinks from
speaking against Rome _as a Church_.[338]
‘Unwilling as I am to hazard conjectures on the subject, especially
against the judgement of any among his more intimate friends, I do not
think it unreasonable to conclude, from a comparison of these
passages, that Mr. Froude’s objections were chiefly directed against
imaginary abuses, or possible relaxations of discipline, which time
and reflection would have shown him to be entirely independent of the
real merits of the controversy. I find it also difficult to believe
that, as the principle of the English Reformation received these
illustrations in the Established Church which we have lived long
enough to see,――as her constituted tribunals were found to give up, in
succession, the grace of the Sacraments, the authority of the Church,
and even the inspiration of Holy Scripture itself, as necessary
truths,――his clear and honest mind would not have accepted some or all
of these tokens of apostasy as a summons to enter the True Fold.
Assuredly, too, we have known no instance of a mind equally candid,
intelligent, and instructed, whose advances in the direction of the
Truth (especially when assisted by extraordinary acuteness of
conscience and purity of life) have stopped short, as time has gone
on, of the logical conclusions, except in cases where the progress of
such a mind has been arrested by conflicting tendencies of deeply
ingrained Protestant or national prepossession: such as in his case
were singularly absent.
‘There is, however, one phase of Mr. Froude’s mind with which it is
far more difficult to reconcile the belief of his probable conversion
than any other. This phase, indeed, seems to have been a
characteristic of himself as compared with nearly all of those who
took a leading part in the Movement, including even Mr. Keble, who was
the nearest to Mr. Froude in general character. The peculiarity to
which I refer is that of an extraordinary leaning to the side of
religious dread, and a correspondent suppression of the sentiments of
love and joy. Mr. Froude’s religion, as far as it can be gathered from
his published Journal, seems to have been (if the expression be not
too strong) more like that of a humble and pious Jew under the Old
Dispensation, than that of a Christian living in the full sunshine of
Gospel privileges. The apology for this feature in his religious
character, and for any portion of it which appears in those of other
excellent men of the same period,[339] is to be found in the
ungraceful and often irreverent form in which the warmer side of the
Christian temper was exhibited in the party called Evangelical: whose
language, based as it often was upon grievous errors of doctrine, had
a tendency to react, in religious minds, on the side of severity and
reserve. Such a form of religious spirit, however, where exhibited in
the somewhat unusual proportions which it assumes in Mr. Froude, must
undergo almost a complete revolution before it can be naturally
susceptible of the impression which Catholic devotion has a tendency
to produce, or even tolerant of the language which pervades our
approved Manuals. It is certainly difficult to find in the Mr. Froude
of the _Remains_, a compartment for devotion to Our Blessed Lady,[340]
for instance, or even to the Sacred Humanity of Our Lord, in all its
attractive and endearing fulness. Yet, taking the phenomena of his
case as a whole, and duly estimating the respective powers of the two
conflicting forces, I cannot help thinking that the Church would more
easily have conquered his prejudices than the Establishment have
retained his allegiance.’
From ‘THE BRITISH CRITIC,’ JAN., 1838, VOL. XXIII., PP. 200 _ET
SEQ._, BY FREDERIC ROGERS, Esq., M.A., afterwards Lord
BLACHFORD.[341]
‘… The first volume of this book, to which the following observations
will be confined, presents an unusually perfect history of as
remarkable a mind as it is often our lot to fall in with. It is
remarkable, not merely for its talent, energy, and depth of religious
feeling, but because the character in which these qualities issue, is
one almost new to the eyes of this generation; and with this unusual
tone of thought and feeling, is joined a deep reality and consistency
which forces attention, and perhaps deference, even when the author’s
views least coincide with our own settled prejudices….
‘… There is a wide intermediate range of character among those who
neither neglect nor rest in their fellow-men. With some, those
feelings of reverence and admiration, which seem like the voice of God
assigning to every man his province, are more deeply touched by the
quiet holiness of domestic life, its little delicate self-sacrifices,
its affectionate attentions and glad confidence. The idol of their
hearts is one whom men love even when he is most severe, or, if they
love him not they dare not avow it, knowing that the world would hold
them self-condemned; whose enjoyment it is to confer enjoyment, who
moves about with a heart and sympathies open to all he meets,
expecting no evil; and, when encountered by vice, rebukes it with a
mixture of horror, pity, and simplicity, which, if they fail to
convince, at least never irritate or harden. Not that such an one need
be wanting in the expression of just indignation, but he shows no
intention to punish, no assumption of superiority. He speaks either by
way of affectionate remonstrance, or to disburden his own conscience;
and those who are too bad to be affected by mere goodness, only say of
him “that he is as kind-hearted a man as can be; pity he should let
his fancies run away with him.”
‘It need hardly be said that this is Christian love, but not its only
form. Minds more bitterly alive to the unsatisfying nature of earthly
things, will thirst after some more immediate form of self-devotion to
God: and the same feelings which render their brethren less adequate
representatives of their Heavenly Father in their hearts, imply
capacities which render them less necessary. They will press as close
to God as He will let them, anxious, if it were possible, to
anticipate His purposes concerning them, watching for permission to
throw away earthly comforts in His service, if He will give them the
signal to take to themselves that honour; laborious, by meditation and
mortification of the flesh, to root out from their hearts every idle
desire that interferes with His presence there, and to bend to His
direct service every high taste and faculty which He has given them:
who would sing songs to His glory though there were none to hear them,
and would adorn holy places though there were none to see them;
anxious for no result, but for the mere happiness of devoting heart,
head, and hand to His honour, if they have but an instinct or a word
of His to tell them that He will be pleased with their little
offering. These men will no more forget their brethren than the others
will forget God; they will have their words of encouragement for the
penitent, of courtesy for the stranger, of deep affection for their
friends. But they do not go about, overflowing with kindness and
confidence to all men. Perhaps circumstances have thrown upon them one
of those great works which ever lie about the world unappropriated,
and they are “straitened till it be accomplished.” Perhaps the work of
their own salvation lies heavier on their spirits than on theirs who
live and die in happy, quiet, uniform thankfulness. Perhaps their own
renunciation of the lesser pleasures of life makes them less
understand the value which others set on them. At any rate, their
constant endeavour to realise within themselves their own high
aspirations, tends to unfit them for sympathising with buoyant earthly
merriment, or sanguine earthly wishes, except it be with the passing
interest which we give to the careless gaiety of a child.
‘Again, the stern examination by which they purge their own hearts,
that they may be worthy of God, opens to them the secrets of others.
It shows them what is their own meanness in the sight of God, and what
it may be in the sight of their fellow-men; but it lays upon them the
painful power of seeing through profession and self-deceit, and it
teaches them how, by word and eye, to silence and chastise as well as
protest.
* * * * *
‘These men, it need scarcely be said, are not talked of as
“kind-hearted fellows”; they are felt to be partisans, and are
reverenced or hated accordingly. Their presence, when it does not
deepen the interest of conversation, is apt to impose a check on its
freedom. Men are afraid of being frivolous and unreal in their
presence; doubtful what will offend them; or what degree of
forbearance they may reckon on; suspicious of their motives, as of men
who do not speak freely, unless they speak with authority, of what
they most deeply mean; and cautious in accepting their friendship, for
it is only firmly given to similarity of religious aim. But the
loftiness of sentiment which confines, deepens also the flow of their
sympathies; their power of severity gives meaning to their affection,
and their singleness of aim a high harmony to their thoughts and
tastes. Those who will take their hand and walk with them will find
the fruit of their friendship rich according to its noble origin and
tenure.
‘Now of these two characters it would perhaps be overbold to say which
is holiest; at any rate, the loveliness of one is very different from
the majesty of the other: different, not indeed in essentials, but in
the hopes, fears, tastes, and sentiments, which it forces uppermost….
The later Church of England character is very decidedly of the former
cast. Ours is the Church of Walton and Herbert, not of Athanasius and
Ambrose. And truly we have been born into a beautiful inheritance. Our
fathers have bequeathed to us the appreciation of a kindly and a holy
spirit; a spirit of affectionate unobtrusive meekness, of considerate
friendliness, of calm cheerfulness. And these are in their measure not
only appreciated but realised amongst us: the domestic and social
virtues of our clergy are in the mouths of every panegyrist of the
Church of England, and are hardly denied by her enemies…. And it is
true, that there are passages of Scripture which address themselves to
a very different class of minds: passages which ὁ δυνάμενος χωρεῖν,
χωρείτω, which “all men cannot receive, but they to whom it is given.”
There are a whole class of expressions in the New Testament, which
though surely they do not condemn the English Church, yet seem somehow
not to have received their natural development in it.[342] “If thou
wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast … and come, follow Me.”
“Blessed are ye when men shall hate you.” “Woe unto you that laugh
now, for ye shall mourn and weep.” “Κάλον ἀνθρώπῳ γύναικος μὴ
ἅπτεσθαι.” “Every one that hath forsaken brethren or sisters, or
father or mother, or wife or children, for My Name’s sake, shall
receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.” We seem
afraid of these.
* * * * *
‘Within our own Church, we are over-careful to soothe enthusiasm, and
somewhat helpless in directing it. In judging foreign Churches, or
other ages, we talk of a “misguided zeal for what they consider the
glory of God,” “the fantastic rigours by which men render themselves
callous to the sufferings of others,” “the extinction of the domestic
affections to aggrandise one ambitious Church,” words which may be
true or not, as they are applied, but which, as commonly used, are
rather rashly bandied about, considering all the hints and
recommendations that Scripture contains.[343] We can be warm enough in
our censures of those who would call down fire from Heaven, or sit at
the right hand of Christ, but have perhaps too much fellow-feeling
with him who went away sorrowful when he found he must not only obey
the law, but sell his property. The book now before us is, most
unquestionably, not of the peculiar Church of England character, but
of that cast which we are somewhat apt to depreciate, or to look on as
a romantic unreality….
‘In his Private Journal, which was written chiefly in 1826, when he
was about twenty-four, the feeling round which all others seem to
group themselves, is a craving after an ideal happiness, real and
attainable, though not yet, of which all our refined perceptions of
beauty, nobility, and holiness are but indications and foretastes, and
in which, as our character becomes equal to our capacities, they must
eventually converge. With this is joined, as perhaps its necessary
condition, a sensitive and pure taste for all that is beautiful or
lofty to sight or mind; high, though unpractised, poetical powers; and
an earnest appreciation of the reverence due to holy things, even to
our own higher thoughts and deeper emotions.
‘This itself explains why these powers and feelings, lying, it seems,
deepest, were unknown, almost unsuspected, by more than two or three
of his nearest friends. His acquaintance more readily perceived and
appreciated an unusually deep and true mode of dealing with
mathematical questions; a subtlety, boldness and ingenuity of
reasoning; a frank and accurate apprehension of the full force of an
adverse argument; and a definiteness of conception and expression
which seemed to cut through an intricate question, throwing off,
rather than grappling with objections, with a clearness which one
could hardly believe not to be sophistry.
‘But this book derives its commanding interest from the stern
self-chastisement of body and mind, from which both reason and
imagination receive their tone and substance. With this the Journal
acquaints us; and there is something which really cows an ordinary
reader, in the unsparing steadiness with which faults are sought for,
the bitter self-abasement with which they are felt, and the
unrelenting determination with which they are punished; all being
recorded, except when addressed to God, with a plain and sometimes
contemptuous homeliness of expression, which seems as if the author
wished to do dishonour to himself and his thoughts, or held that a
feeling which claimed to be deep and true, should not disdain to buy,
by humiliation, the privilege of utterance….
‘… In 1825, in which year he took his degree, passages in his letters
show the existence of those romantic views of religion which occupy so
prominent a place in his character from that time forward. Of part of
the intervening time, he speaks often in his Journal with very deep
contrition: but anyone who observes the deep humiliation with which he
confesses faults of which ordinary persons would think but little,
(common indeed to all who have really high views of Christian
excellence,) will be very cautious in inferring much as to the facts
themselves, from this most bitter recollection of them. The Journal
itself may perhaps be best introduced by some letters, giving an
account of the first part of the time which it records.’
[To the Rev. JOHN KEBLE, but not sent.]
Sept. 28, 1826.
‘“I have been meaning to write to you every day for a long time, and I
do not suppose you would wish me to be influenced in putting off
longer by the sad thing we have just heard.[344] At least, if I may
judge from myself, there is so little difference between what are
called real afflictions and imaginary ones, that it seems just as
rational to go on in the common way when under the former as the
latter. With me, this last summer, both at the time, and looking back
on it, seems to have gone very strangely; and I do not see any ground
why my reason should contradict my feelings, because the things which
affect me are either, in their nature, confined to the person who
feels them, or are thought trifles by people in general. I have been
trying almost all the Long [Vacation] to discover a sort of
common-sense romance: I am convinced there must be such a thing, and
that Nature did not give us such a high capacity for pleasure without
making some other qualification for it besides delusion. But the
speculation has got much more serious, and runs out into many more
ramifications than I expected at first; and it seems to me as if I
might make it the main object of a long course of reading, the first
step of which would be to follow your advice in learning Hebrew and
reading the early Fathers. This I have determined upon doing
immediately upon my return to Oxford; and the intervening space I
shall pass away as I can, with I. and P.,[345] among the mountains and
waterfalls. Since I wrote this in the morning, I have been walking
with P., whose quietness of mind makes me quite ashamed of my
speculations, and I hardly like sending you this letter; however, if I
have been making myself a fool all the summer, it is better I should
not go on brooding on it by myself; for letting somebody know the
state of my thoughts is the only way of keeping them straight; and I
know no one but you who would make sufficient allowance for me to
venture on such things with. Perhaps you may think it very odd, but
this is the first time I have had resolution to ask for the papers
which they found of my mother’s after her death.”
‘The writer seems to have shrunk from allowing this letter to reach
his friend. In its stead, the following was sent:
‘“I have made three attempts to write, but all of them ran off into
something wild, which, upon reflection, I thought would be better kept
to myself. The fact is, that I have been in a strange way all the
summer, and having had no one to talk to about the things which have
bothered me, I have been every now and then getting into fits of
enthusiasm or despondency. But the result has been in some respects a
good one, and I have got to take very great pleasure in what you
recommended me when we were together at F.,[346] the evening before I
left you, our first summer, _i.e._ good books; and I feel [I]
understand places in the Psalms in a way I never used to. I go back to
Oxford with a determination to set to at Hebrew and the early Fathers,
and to keep myself in as strict order as I can: a thing which I have
been making ineffectual attempts at for some time, but which never
once entered my head for a long time of my life….
‘“And now I must drop back to myself. I wish you would say anything to
me that you think would do me good, however severe it may be. You must
have observed many things very contemptible in me, but I know worse of
myself, and shall be prepared for anything. I cannot help being afraid
that I am still deceiving myself about my motives and feelings, and
shall be glad of anything on which to steady myself.”
‘It is exceedingly interesting to trace in the Journal the actual
working day by day of the feelings to which these letters refer. The
following extract is, in effect, its opening:
‘“_July 1, 1826._――I think it will be a better way to keep a Journal
for a bit, as I find I want keeping in order about more things than
reading. I am in a most conceited way, besides very ill-tempered and
irritable. My thoughts wander very much at my prayers, and I feel
hungry for some ideal thing of which I have no definite idea. I
sometimes fancy that the odd bothering feeling which gets possession
of me is affectation, and that I appropriate it because I think it a
sign of genius: but it lasts too long, and is too disagreeable to be
unreal.”
‘“_July 5._――I do not know how it is, but it seems to me as if the
consciousness of having capacities for happiness, with no objects to
gratify them, seems to grow upon me, and puts me in a dreary way.
Lord, have mercy upon me!”
‘These feelings continue occasionally to appear, assuming, more and
more, a distinct and practical shape, till his return to Oxford in
October, 1826 (the period when the Letters before quoted were
written), when they gave rise to the following resolutions:
‘“I have been coming to a resolution, that as soon as I am out of the
reach of observation, I will begin a sort of monastic austere life,
and do my best to chastise myself before the Lord; that I will attend
Chapel regularly; eat little and plainly, drink as little wine as I
can, consistently with the forms of society; keep the fasts of the
Church, as much as I can, without ostentation; continue to get up at
six in the winter; abstain from all unnecessary expenses, in
everything; give all the money I can save in charity, or for the
adorning of religion. That I will submit myself to the wishes of the
[Provost?] as to one set over me by the Lord, but never give in to the
will or opinion of anyone from idleness, or false shame, or want of
spirit. That I will avoid society as much as I can, except those I can
do good to, or from whom I may expect real advantage; and I will, in
all my actions, endeavour to justify that high notion of my
capabilities of which I cannot divest myself. That I will avoid all
conversation on serious subjects, except with those whose opinions I
revere, and content myself with exercising dominion over my own mind,
without trying to influence others. The studies which I have
prescribed to myself are Hebrew and Ante-Nicene Fathers….”
‘We extract the following philosophical reflections, taken from the
Occasional Thoughts of about the same date, as similarly
characteristic of the author’s steady and systematic procedure:
‘“_Dec. 1, 7_, and _17_.――It is the object of our lives, by patient
perseverance in a course of action prescribed to us, so to shape and
discipline our desires that they may, through habit, be excited to the
same degree by the objects which are presented to our understanding,
as they would by nature, if we had senses to relish them; that is,
that the degree of our appetites for these objects should so far
exceed that which we feel for sensible objects, as the known value of
the former exceeds that of the latter. The former field of existence
is what I think St. Paul had in his mind when he spoke (Heb., vi. 19)
of ‘that which is within the veil,’ into which Jesus Christ had gone
before us: the veil signifying our unconsciousness, in spite of which,
‘by two immutable things, in which it was impossible that God should
lie, we might have strong consolation who have fled to lay hold of the
hope set before us.’ All this seems the real meaning of faith, as
insisted on so much in the New Testament.
‘“Of the objects which we pursue or avoid, some we immediately
perceive to be either present or absent; some we only believe to be so
through the intervention of the understanding. The various
dispositions of our fellow-creatures towards us are of the latter
sort. We have no faculties for perceiving love or admiration; but
being conscious of the feeling ourselves, and recognising in others
the effects which we know to proceed from them, we believe their
presence upon evidence, and are affected therewith. Of being in
society we cannot be conscious, if by society we mean not that of
certain shapes doing certain things, but of beings which feel in some
respects as we do. The existence of such beings we only believe on
evidence, having observed effects like those which proceed from our
own feelings, in so many instances as to make it appear that the
causes are likewise similar. The same sort of evidence we have of the
existence of other beings, in some respects like, and in others
different from ourselves. That a Being exists endued with power and
wisdom, the limits of which we cannot reach to, is, I think, more
certain than that we have fellow-creatures.[347] All men, whether they
know it or not, act as if they believed in a Being endued with
intelligence and power and will, superior to any interference. They
count on the course of Nature continuing as it is, because they know
that what they have long continued to do they go on with; and rely
without any doubt on its skill and ability for perfecting their
undertaking, where their own skill and ability fall short. That this
Being has any other attributes, we have not the same evidence. These
are the ‘things within the veil’; they are κυρίως, the objects of
faith. But consideration will show that the difference is not in kind
but in degree, and that among what we call the things visible, motives
are proposed to us to be acted on, approaching to it by degrees
imperceptible.”
‘“Isa. xxv. 7, 9. ‘And He will destroy in this mountain the face of
the covering cast over all people, and the veil that is spread over
all nations…. And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God;
we have waited for Him, and He will save us; this is the Lord; we have
waited for Him: we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation….’
‘“The business of our life seems to be, to acquire the habit of acting
in such a manner as we should do, if we were conscious of all we know;
and in this respect no action of our lives can be indifferent, but
must either tend to form this habit or a contrary one: so that those
whose attempt to act right does not commence with their power of
acting at all, have much to undo, as well as to do. The craving, and
blankness of feeling, which attends the early stages of this habit
(‘show some token upon me for good’), makes anything acceptable which
can even in fancy fill it; and it is delightful to see things turn out
well, whose case seems, in some sort, to represent to us our
indistinct conceptions of our own. Animals fainting under the effect
of exercise, and then again recovering their strength, which that very
exercise has contributed to increase; the slow and uncertain degrees
in which this exercise is effected, and yet the certainty that it is
effected;――the growth of trees sometimes tossed by winds and checked
by frosts, yet, by the evil effects of these winds directed in what
quarter to strike their roots, so as to secure themselves for the
future, and by these frosts hardened and fitted for a new progress the
next summer:――in things of this sort I am [altered in the MS. from ‘we
are’] so constituted, as to see brethren in affliction evidently
making progress towards release….”
* * * * *
‘The impression left on the mind after a first perusal of the Journal
is doubtless a depressing one, both from the unhappiness which it
records, and (it may be) from a fear that if we would exercise the
same strict vigilance over our own hearts, or would aim at the same
high mark, we might find cause for disquiet too. It is a real
satisfaction to find, both at the end of the Journal that the author
considers himself to have passed into a happier state, and in his
Letters, that he gradually ceases to speak of his own despondency,
either openly to his nearest friend, or in those half-jesting hints of
which his other friends must only now feel the meaning. His external
demeanour, both from natural disposition and from his contempt for any
display of feeling, seems always to have been so full of life and
energy, that from it alone, perhaps, no change in this respect could
have been inferred. This despondency we have not attempted to show in
the extracts, though it does slightly appear there; but rather his
high desires to “enter within the veil,” to be “hidden in the presence
of the Lord,” and the mode which he took to realise them. This forms a
remarkable contrast with the self-confidence and unreality which too
frequently springs from the consciousness of high views. It is,
unfortunately, not often that we see men of bold and independent
minds, subtle and comprehensive powers of reasoning, and romantic
desires, giving up, till they shall be fit for it, all notion of
“influencing others”; checking, without throwing aside, their own high
feelings; subduing, with a systematic humility, their impulses to
express them, and submitting to learn their duty by the slow and
common-sense process of “following great examples,” “studying Hebrew
and the Ante-Nicene Fathers,” and in the meantime obeying scrupulously
the voices of those whom they feel to be better than themselves….
‘The volume before us touches the magic keys with a bold hand; and
though some of the notes which come forth are rather startling, and
may be untruly struck, yet there is a meaning in them which deserves
to be analysed by those defenders of the English Church who are
looking about for weapons to wield, and ground to stand on. Two
principal wants, then, the author seems to have felt in the English
Church: authority, and richness; and that not in the spirit of a
dreaming philosopher, but of one who knew that we were here not to
think only, but to act; that evil was given us that we might strive
against it; Truth, that we might uphold or restore it; Revelation and
moral instincts, that we might know both one and the other; Talent and
energy, that we might form projects, recommend, and execute them. Nor
would the restraints he set on his impulses to influence others, till
circumstances and a conscious fitness should call him to it, make him
likely to shrink from his task when he felt it given him. He seems
early to have thought that his powers would enable him to serve the
Church more effectually as a reader and writer than as a parochial
clergyman: by acting on those minds which are to guide the masses,
[rather] than on the masses themselves. To this his position as
College Fellow seemed also to invite him; and the following extracts
illustrate part of the spirit in which he devoted himself to this
task, and the tastes he sacrificed to it.
‘“_July 27, 1827._――
‘What is home, you silly, silly wight,
That it seems to you to shine so bright?
What is home?――’Tis a place so gay,
Where the birds are singing all the day;
Where a wood is close by, and a river dear,
And the banks they sleep in the water clear;
Where the roses are red and the lilies pale;
And the little brooks run along every vale.
Is it nowhere but home, you silly-billee,
That the thrushes sing in each shady tree?
That the woods are deep, and the rivers too,
And the roses and lilies laugh at you?
O there are thousands of places as well!
So be quiet, I pray, and no nonsense tell.
Oh yes, but faces of kindness are there,
Which brighten the flowers and freshen the air;
Sweetly at morn our eyes do rest
On those whom waking thoughts have blest,
And guarded in sleep by a magic spell,
O’er which “Good-nights” are sentinel.
Is kindness, then, so dainty a flower,
That it grows alone in one chosen bower?
Hast thou not many a brother dear,
With thee to hope, and with thee to fear,
Owning a common Father’s aid,
Resting alike in a common shade?
Yes, friends may be kind, and vales may be green,
And brooks may sparkle along between;
But it is not Friendship’s kindest look,
Nor loveliest vale, nor clearest brook,
That can tell the tale which is written for me
On each old face and well-known tree.’”
‘“_July 28._――This stagnant effusion was enough for one day, and I
must not put off any longer,” etc.
‘“_Sept. 9, 1832._――Also I am getting to be a sawney, and not to like
the dreary prospects which you[348] and I have proposed to ourselves.
But this is only a feeling; depend upon it, I will not shrink, if I
buy my constancy at the expense of a permanent separation from home.”
‘“_Sept. 27._――As to my sawney feelings, I own that home does make me
a sawney, and that the first _Eclogue_ runs in my head absurdly; but
there is more in the prospect of becoming an ecclesiastical agitator
than in――_At nos hinc, alii_,” etc.
‘And this introduces us to a side of his character on which we have as
yet scarcely touched: the fertility, buoyancy, boldness, and
versatility of his mind. It has been left unnoticed, partly because no
one who was ever so little acquainted with the author, or who would
read ever so cursorily the book before us, could well overlook it,
partly because the peculiarities on which we have dwelt seem to have
exercised a far deeper influence in making him what he was. Both the
Journal and the Occasional Thoughts, though principally interesting as
showing the processes by which his character and opinions formed
themselves, and the depth of thought and determination of purpose on
which they were based, cannot but in part show those too; but in the
Letters we are flooded with the pointed suggestions, the bold
historical views of a keen-sighted politician, the vigorous statements
and earnest queries of one who was seeking and contending for divine
Truth, and the ingenious hints, on questions of taste or science, of a
man of genius who thought nothing unworthy to employ his powers which
could be pressed into the service of religion….
‘From what has been already said, some general notion may be gained of
the author’s formal opinions. It may be added, that he was one of
those who, feeling strongly the inadequacy of their own intellects to
guide them to religious Truth, are prepared to throw themselves
unreservedly on Revelation wherever found, in Scripture or Antiquity.
Any more definite account it would be difficult to give without
unfairness either to the author or to the reader: to the reader, if we
omitted his more startling views; to the author, if we stated them
detached and unsupported. His Letters seem to show that his opinions
ran somewhat in advance of those to whom he was most closely bound.
Still less should we venture to pledge ourselves to every statement
and suggestion contained in the two volumes; yet we cannot but express
our hope that they will be very generally read and weighed, as likely
to suggest thoughts on doctrine, on Church policy, and on individual
conduct, most true, and most necessary for these times.’
From ‘THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ISAAC WILLIAMS, B.D.’ Edited by his
Brother-in-Law, the Ven. Sir GEORGE PREVOST. London: Longmans,
Green & Co., 1892.
[By the kind permission of the Rev. G. A. Williams, and of Messrs
Longmans, Green & Co.]
‘Keble took us into his house,[349] where I formed a most valued
friendship with Froude. He was an Eton man, and at Oriel of a little
older standing than myself. [We found] religion a reality, and a man
wholly made up of love…. Here were many of us, taught with much pains
and care by one till then a stranger, and altogether gratuitously….
Each of us was always delighted to walk with him, Wilberforce,[350] to
gather instruction for the Schools, and the rest of us for love’s
sake…. I spent all this vacation [1823] at Southrop, and, I think, all
my subsequent ones. It was, I think, on this occasion that John Keble
said: “Since you have shown me your Latin poems, I shall be vain
enough to show you my English ones,” and he then lent me to read what
has since been called _The Christian Year_. It was carefully written
out in small red books. I read it a great deal, but did not much enter
into it. No more did Froude, when he saw it; and, I think, even long
after he was averse to the publication of it. Among other things he
said: “People will take Keble for a Methodist!” At that time I told
Keble my favourite poet was Collins: he said there was not enough
thought in him to please himself. Froude was always maintaining some
argument with Keble, occasionally some monstrous paradox. He was
considered a very odd fellow at College, but clever and original;
Keble alone was able to appreciate and value him. If he had not at
this time fallen into such hands, his speculations might have taken a
very dangerous turn; but as his father, the Archdeacon, told me, from
this time it was much otherwise: he continued to throw out strong
paradoxes, but always for good.
‘On returning to Oxford, Froude had now taken the place of my former
companions, Keble being a great bond between us. I think he took more
to me than I did to him, because I had been used to more of worldly
refinement and sentiment, whereas he was unworldly, and real. But
still, we were much united, and became more and more so…. Froude told
me, many years after, that Keble once, before parting from him, seemed
to have something on his mind which he wished to say, but shrunk from
saying. At last, while waiting, I think, for a coach, he said to him
before parting: “Froude, you said one day that Law’s _Serious Call_
was a clever” (or “pretty,” I forgot which) “book: it seemed to me as
if you had said the Day of Judgement would be a pretty sight.” This
speech, Froude told me, had a great effect on his after-life; and I
observed that in the published Letters in Froude’s _Remains_, he twice
alludes to it…. Henry Ryder (like Wilberforce) had been brought up in
a strict Evangelical school of the better kind; and on one occasion
got up and left a College party in consequence of something that
Froude had said that seemed to him to be of a light kind. But when he
afterwards came to know the deep self-humiliation and depth of
devotion there was in Froude’s character, which was engaged in the
discipline of the heart, he became so shocked with himself and his own
opinions, that he adopted the opposite course….
‘It was in August, 1825, that I first went with Froude into
Devonshire. We went by a steamer from Cowes to Plymouth, as described
in a letter in Froude’s _Remains_ (Part i., Vol. i., p. 181). From
Totnes, we walked up the Dart by Dartington House to the Parsonage:
that place which ever since has been to me dearer than my native
vales, of which I always say:
‘_Ille terrarum mihi præter omnes Angulus ridet._
‘The Froudes were eight in family, and the Archdeacon became a great
friend. But the people after my own heart were at Dartington
House.[351] … With the Archdeacon and Hurrell we rode along the coast,
being very hospitably entertained at different houses; and at last,
from the Holdsworths’ house at Dartmouth we came up the river Dart by
boat…. Prevost, [the] summer of 1826, came to Cwm,[352] and was
engaged to my sister; and afterwards Froude came there too, and gives
an account of his stay there in his published Journal, where I am
mentioned under the letter I., and Prevost under that of P. All this
time I was very unwell, and preying on my own mind. I went to Oxford
to reside my Bachelor’s term, and lived with Sir Charles Anderson, and
saw much of Froude, who was very kind to me. I went to Dartington,
with the Archdeacon, from Oxford, and spent the Easter there…. When I
went to reside in Oxford, in October, [1831], as College Tutor, I felt
what a great change had come on my mind since residing there before,
on account of the influence of Bisley[353] and Windrush,[354] and I
found this the more on returning to the society of Froude, for I was
become so much more soft and practical, and he more theoretical and
speculative…. Yet this change that had been going on, from difference
of circumstances, in no way lessened my friendship and intimacy with
Froude, but rather increased it; for though naturally inclined to
speculation, he was himself entirely of the Keble school, which in
opposition to the Oriel or Whatelian, set ἦθος above intellect….
Living at that time so much with Froude, I was now, in consequence,
for the first time, brought into intercourse with Newman; we almost
daily walked and dined together. Newman and Froude were just then
turned out of their tutorships at Oriel, together with Robert
Wilberforce, who left Oxford for his living of East Farleigh. Their
course had, as yet, been chiefly academical, but now, released from
College affairs, their thoughts were more open to the state of the
Church…. I was greatly charmed and delighted with Newman, who was
extremely kind to me; but [I] did not altogether trust his opinions.
Although Froude was in the habit of stating things in an extreme and
paradoxical manner, yet one always felt conscious of a thorough
foundation of truth and principle in him, a ground of entire
confidence and agreement; but this was not so with Newman, even
although one appeared more in unison with his more moderate
statements.[355] … At this time he was coming to look to Keble
altogether, as he received him second-hand through Froude…. But I
always thought Froude an unfair exponent of Keble’s opinions: they
were stated by him in a manner so much his own, so startling and
original, and put in so extreme a light, that I could hardly recognise
them as the same, so different was his from Keble’s manner of
expressing himself. [_Note._――Froude used to defend his startling way
of putting facts and arguments on the ground that it was the only way
to rouse people, and get their attention; and he said that when you
had once done this, you might modify your statements. There is, of
course, some truth in this, but it always seemed, and still seems to
me, a dangerous line. John Keble could not do so: his great humility
and diffidence would prevent it, and that strict conscientiousness
which hindered him from even willingly overstating any fact, or
pressing any argument, beyond what he said it really did prove….]
‘… The circumstance which I most remember about that time[356] was a
conversation with Froude which was the first commencement of the
_Tracts for the Times_. He returned full of energy and of a prospect
of doing something for the Church; and we walked in the Trinity
College gardens, and discussed the subject. He said, in his manner:
“Isaac, we must make a row in the world! Why should we not? Only
consider what the Peculiars” (_i.e._ the Evangelicals) “have done with
a few half-truths to work upon! And with our principles, if we set
resolutely to work, we can do the same.” I said: “I have no doubt we
can make a noise, and may get people to join us; but shall we make
them really better Christians? If they take up our principles in a
hollow way, as the Peculiars” (this was a name Froude had given the
Low Church party) “have done theirs, what good shall we do?” To this
Froude said: “Church principles, forced on people’s notice, must work
for good. However, we must try; and Newman and I are determined to set
to work as soon as he returns, and you must join with us. We must have
short tracts, and letters in _The British Magazine_, and verses (and
these you can do for us), and get people to preach sermons on the
Apostolical Succession and the like. And let us come and see old
Palmer” (_i.e._ the author of the _Origines Liturgicæ_) “and get him
to do something.” We then called on Palmer, who was one of the very
few in Oxford (indeed, the only one at that time) who sympathised with
us; and although he did not altogether understand Froude, or our ways
and views (the less so as he was not himself an Oxford, but a Dublin
man), yet he was extremely hearty in the cause, looking more to
external visible union and strength than we did, for we only had at
heart certain principles. We, _i.e._, Froude, Keble, and myself,
immediately began to send some verses to _The British Magazine_, since
published [in] the _Lyra Apostolica_….
‘… From this time forth, after Newman’s return, I was thrown more and
more entirely into his society for about seven years, Froude waning
more and more away, and disappearing from Oxford….
‘… I much regretted not being with poor Froude at or nearly before his
death…. Poor Froude! he was peculiarly _vir paucorum hominum_: I
thought that knowing him, I better understood Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Froude was a person most natural, but so original as to be unlike
anyone else, hiding depth of delicate thought in apparent
extravagances. _Hamlet_ and the _Georgics_ of Virgil, he used to say,
he should have bound together. Many have imagined, and Newman
endeavoured to persuade himself, that if Froude had lived he would
have joined the Church of Rome, as well as himself. But this I do not
at all think. There was a seriousness and steadfastness, at the
bottom, in Froude, so that I had always confidence in him:[357] Newman
told me once, half-seriously, that the publication of Froude’s
_Remains_ was owing to me, as I had said to him, if persons could have
so much brought before them that they could thoroughly understand
Froude’s character, then they might enter into his sayings; but unless
they knew him as we did, they could not understand them. For, indeed,
one constantly trembled for him in mixed society, both in Common Rooms
and in other places, feeling that he would not be understood…. On the
day of the book coming out, I went into Parker the bookseller’s with
Copeland; and there we were startled at seeing one who then was the
chief opponent of the Church principles of Newman and ourselves. It
was Ward of Balliol, author of the _Ideal_. He sat down with the book
in his hands, evidently much affected; and then we afterwards heard,
to our astonishment, that he had been very much taken by the book, had
bought a copy for himself and another to give away, and was, in fact,
quite converted.’
From ‘ORIGIN OF THE TRACTS FOR THE TIMES,’ A POEM IN THE 1852
EDITION OF ‘THOUGHTS IN PAST YEARS,’ by ISAAC WILLIAMS.[358]
‘It was before the summer holidays,
A noon I well remember, as we sat
Conversing in my College rooms, my thoughts
Mingling unconscious with the trembling leaves
Of poplars from the window; and meanwhile,
In converse still unbroken, thence we passed
Into the stately garden-walks, and there
Paced to and fro beside the aged yews
Which once like living guardians of the lawn
Had marshalled all the place with verdant walls:
Now, mere memorials of their former sway.
’Twas a dark vapoury noon, while ruddy gleams
Were mingling with the sun, and fell athwart
The cloistral lime-tree avenue beyond;
And like a curtain, the moist atmosphere
Hung heavily around us, yet withal
Glowing and warm, not adverse to my friend
(Lately returned from genial Italy,
Death in his frame and cheek), and to his eye
Lent more than its own brightness. He was one
I loved: ah, would that I had loved him more!
For he was worthy of a good man’s love.
“Yes,” said he, with my name, as he was wont,
Sportfully playing, “we must make a noise
In the large world; why should we not? How they
Of Low Church views, Peculiar, through the land
Make themselves felt and heard; and ring aloud
With a few truths, half-truths! and shall not we
With the whole Truth forgotten for our theme,
The pillar and the ground of all our hopes,
Or, rather, say the Faith entire and one
In all its due proportions, and the Church
Our witness of old time,――why should we not
Lift up, as like a trumpet through the land,
With no uncertain sound, our warning voice?”
My answer I remember: “Noise abroad
I doubt not we can make as well as they.
And then to be as hollow partisans,
Supporters,――this were easy, and the Church
To be familiar in men’s mouths; but then
Will they beneath all this be better men,
More humble?”
“They will be so,” he replied.
“For the great Truths themselves, depend on it,
Will work, and work for good; but hollow men
There will be, and needs must.”
Yet, to and fro,
I urged the adverse part: “I fear the weight
On spirits unprepared, undisciplined;
Of others and ourselves I am afraid.
Could men be fuller leavened with the thought
Of Judgement and Hereafter, could we lay
Foundations deep in honesty, ’twere well;
But else, mere superstructure on the sand!
Fashion, religious fashion, and the tide
Of popular feelings,――I can never wish
To have them with us. We must walk in doubt
And fear, and do our parts, come what come may.”
“Yes,” said he, pausing, “very true”: with look
Half-loving and half-pitying. “My friend,
You now must creep no more; for all too long
You have in country hamlets shady grown.
For part of this our duty, ere we die,
Is to be up and stirring; we must rise
Or be for ever fallen: God will help.
Else all that’s good and holy in the land,
Beneath the blasting influence of the State
Will wither and dry up and droop and die,
As neath the upas-tree. We must be up,
And moving, now, at once; and when our friend
Shall have returned from ancient Sicily,”
(He spake of one whom he had left behind
Bound for the classic shores of Syracuse),
“Tracts we must have, and, by what means we can,
Launch them abroad, short Tracts; we must begin,
And you, too, you must aid, and with your verse.
Come, see what you have ready for our hand.
The _Monthly_, as you know, _The British_ named,
Is open for our letters, prose, and rhyme.
But deeper the foundations must be laid
In these our Tracts; subsidial aid we need,
Full many: to get friends (if here and there
One may be found, or two) to bring to aid
Their pulpits, and proclaim there is a Church
Planted by Christ’s own hand within our isle.――
And let us now to Worcester.” Then of one
He spake, well-honoured for good service done
Linking our Liturgies unto the past.
“Hearty he is, and earnest; though not meet
Throughout to understand and sympathise,
Yet in his line will lend us his good aid,
Though looking for external front, and powers,
More than on principles which we are bent
To scatter broad and deep. Let’s now to him.”
And thus, full-sailed in academic garb,
Through the Collegiate gates, archway, and porch
We passed in conversation, bent to raise
The Signal: ’twas the day of little things.
That friend with whom I thus in council walked,
Associate of my earlier years, long since
Is in his peaceful grave; nor did he live
To see our sorrows. There was that in him
Wherein one might cast anchor. Often wont
To talk in paradox, it was his mood
Of playfulness, as one that inly smiled
Mocking at the conceptions which the tongue
Is weak to utter; venting heart-felt truths
In startling shape preposterous; with a smile
At incongruity of our poor thoughts
To match our endless weight of destiny;
Yea, at himself, to see intention yoked
So strangely with performance, which still paced
Unequally, and limped or dragged behind.
His intellect was keen-edged as the sword
Of Saladin, well-matched with battle-axe
Of Cœur de Lion; while in poetry
And arts, his judgement was the sculptor’s nail;
But, like the royal Dane of Shakespeare wrought,
One by himself, not of a class or kind:
Like to himself alone and no one else.
There was within him such repose on Truth,
Absence of self, such heart-controlling fear,
I feel that, had he lived, he had not been
The sport of his own sails, or popular winds
That he had courted for our object’s sake.
Men hurry to and fro; but he the while
Hath found the Haven where he fain would be.’
From ‘CARDINAL NEWMAN,’ by RICHARD H. HUTTON. London: Methuen & Co.,
1891. [English Leaders of Religion.]
[By the kind permission of the executors of Mr. Hutton, and of
Messrs. Methuen & Co.]
‘The friendship between Newman and Mr. Hurrell Froude, the elder
brother of the historian, which commenced in 1826, and became intimate
in 1829, lasting thence to Mr. Froude’s death from consumption in
1836, was certainly one of the most important influences which acted
on Newman’s career at the most critical period of his life. Newman’s
was one of the minds which mature slowly; and it was not till he was
twenty-six years of age that it became clear whether he would be, in
the main, a religious leader, or one of the pillars of the Whately
party; that is, the party who threw their influence into the scale of
minimising the spiritual aspect and spiritual significance of
Revelation, rather than of maximising it. Newman himself mentions that
for two or three years before 1827, he was “beginning to prefer
intellectual excellence to moral,” or, in other words, “drifting in
the direction of Liberalism.” “I was rudely awakened from my dream, at
the end of 1827, by two great blows, illness and bereavement.” And
then, in 1829, came fuller intimacy with Hurrell Froude, which seems
to have fully determined, if anything were then needed to determine,
the direction in which his mind would proceed. Mr. Hurrell Froude was,
as Newman describes him, a man of the highest gifts, gentle, tender,
playful, versatile and “of the most winning patience and
considerateness in discussion.” … I feel little doubt that Dr.
Newman’s wrath against “Liberalism” (as for many years afterwards he
always called it, identifying, as he did, Liberalism with
Latitudinarianism) was, to a very considerable extent, a moral
contagion caught from Hurrell Froude.
‘There are a few singularly beautiful lines, added by Newman after
Hurrell Froude’s death, to the exquisite poem called “Separation of
Friends,” written in 1833; and these sufficiently prove the tenderness
of Newman’s friendship for Hurrell Froude, and the intimacy of the
relation between them. The poem, as it was first written, on the
separation of friends caused by death, ran thus:
‘“Do not their souls, who neath the altar wait
Until their second birth,
The gift of patience need, as separate
From their first friends of earth?
Not that earth’s blessings are not all outshone
By Eden’s angel flame,
But that earth knows not that the dead has won
That crown which was his aim.
For when he left it, ’twas a twilight scene
About his silent bier,
A breathless struggle Faith and Sight between,
And Hope and sacred Fear.
Fear startled at his pains and dreary end,
Hope raised her chalice high;
And the twin-sisters still his shade attend,
Viewed in the mourner’s eye.
So, day by day, for him, from earth ascends
As dew in summer even,
The speechless intercession of his friends,
Towards the azure heaven.”
‘This was an abrupt close. Nearly three years later, it appeared that
the true close had but been reserved till the friend with whom, in his
illness, Newman had been travelling, had left him alone here to offer
this “speechless intercession” on behalf of him who had departed.
Then, after Froude’s death on February 28, 1836, Newman added the
final lines:
‘“Ah, dearest! with a word he could dispel
All questioning, and raise
Our hearts to rapture, whispering all was well,
And turning prayer to praise.
And other secrets, too, he could declare,
By patterns all divine,
His earthly creed retouching here and there,
And deepening every line.
Dearest! he longs to speak, as I to know,
And yet we both refrain.
It were not good: a little doubt, below,
And all will soon be plain.”
‘Such was Newman’s feeling for the friend (already suffering from the
commencement of the consumption of which he died three years later)
with whom he visited the Mediterranean between December, 1832, and
April, 1833, when they separated at Rome…. They visited Ithaca, but in
his poems written “off Ithaca” Newman never mentions the name of
Ulysses, though in passing Lisbon he had recalled that strong pagan
figure, in the lines which he headed “The Isles of the Sirens”:
‘“Cease, stranger, cease those piercing notes,
The craft of siren choirs;
Hush the seductive voice that floats
Upon the languid wires.
Music’s ethereal fire was given
Not to dissolve our clay,
But draw Promethean beams from heaven,
And purge the dross away.
Weak self, with thee the mischief lies!
Those throbs a tale disclose:
Nor age nor trial has made wise
The man of many woes.”
‘There you see some trace of the influence of Froude’s high ascetic
nature speaking in the heart of a devotee of music, but a devotee of
music of the most exalted kind. Hurrell Froude, in a letter home,
mentions that the commander of the steamer in which they sailed sang
several songs, accompanying himself on the Spanish guitar, and it must
have been these songs which suggested to Newman “The Isles of the
Sirens.” When the friends reach Ithaca, Newman seems to forget “the
man of many woes” altogether; he is musing on the difficulty of
keeping himself “unspotted from the world”: which is the last thing, I
suppose, that Homer’s Ulysses ever thought about; while Byron, in the
same scenes, thought only of how he could spot himself most
effectually…. Newman’s nostalgia was more in sympathy with that of
Moses than with that of Ulysses: the home he longed for was a home he
had never yet gained. There is something very strange in the
connection between these classical scenes and the thoughts they
excited in the travellers, for I cannot help thinking that most of
these poems must have owed their origin almost as much to Froude’s
suggestion as to Newman’s pen. The lines, for instance, on
England,[359] in which Newman calls her “Tyre of the West,” and
accuses her of trusting in such poor defences as the fortified rock of
Gibraltar, and such poor resources as her rich commerce supplied, look
as if they had owed a good deal of their inspiration to Froude’s
cavalier contempt for the wealth earned by trade, as well as his scorn
for any ostentatious display of power not rooted in a devout
theocratic Faith…. There is, to me, something very striking in the
contrast between the class of thoughts which the old Greek and Roman
localities suggest to a Whig poet like Byron, with a broad dash of
licence in his Whiggery; to classical scholars like Clough, imbued
with what is now called “the modern spirit” (as well its moral
earnestness as its intellectual scepticism), and to grave spirits like
Newman’s and Hurrell Froude’s, dominated not only by a religious, but
by a strongly-marked ecclesiastical bias…. As regards the influence of
this journey on Newman’s future career, it appears that while, in many
respects, it diminished his horror of Romanism, in consequence
especially of the influence of Hurrell Froude, it had a contrary
effect on Hurrell Froude’s own mind, and later (again, through him, to
some extent, I suppose) on Newman’s. Hurrell Froude writes from
Naples[360] on February 17, 1833: “I remember you told me that I
should come back a better Englishman than I went away: better
satisfied not only that our Church is nearest in theory right, but
also that practically, in spite of its abuses, it works better; and to
own the truth, your prophecy is already nearly realised. Certainly, I
have as yet only seen the surface of things, but what I have seen does
not come up to my notions of propriety. These Catholic countries seem,
in an especial manner, κατέχειν τῆν ἀλήθειαν ἐν ἀδικία, and the
priesthood are themselves so sensible of the hollow basis on which
their power rests, that they dare not resist the most atrocious
encroachments of the State upon their privileges.” And after detailing
the abuses of the Roman Catholic system in Sicily, he goes on: “The
Church of England has fallen low, and will probably be worse before it
is better; but let the Whigs do their worst, they cannot sink us so
deep as these people have allowed themselves to fall, while retaining
all the superficials of a religious country.” When it is considered
that this was the impression of Roman Catholicism, judged by its
fruits, which that one of the two friends who was by far the more
inclined to the Roman system brought away from his life in a Roman
Catholic country, we cannot wonder that Newman should have remained
for eight more years a zealous Anglican, before he even began to
foresee clearly whither he was tending.’
From ‘THE ANGLICAN REVIVAL,’ by J. H. OVERTON, D.D., Rector of
Epworth and Canon of Lincoln. London: Blackie & Son, 1897.
[By the kind permission of Messrs. Blackie & Son.]
‘The fact is that [in 1833] Rose, Palmer, and perhaps Perceval on the
one hand, Froude, Keble, and Newman on the other, represented, not
exactly two different parties, but two different classes of mind. The
former group were essentially conservative: they did not share the
dissatisfaction with the Church as it was, which was so strongly felt
by Keble, Newman, and Froude; they only desired to see it freed from
what they regarded as the oppression of the State. They were very
different types of men, Rose representing the brilliant and
fascinating, Palmer the learned, and Perceval the aristocratic or
territorial element. But none of them was prepared to follow what
Newman calls the “go-ahead” course, for which he and Froude were
ready, and from which Keble was not at all averse…. As a matter of
fact, the Movement was carried on by the latter, not by the former
group.
‘… Pusey’s adherence was an instance of the right man coming in just
at the right time. The public had now [1835] been fairly aroused; they
had had sufficiently impressed upon them the duty of maintaining
Church principles; they had now a right to demand that those
principles should be fully and definitely explained to them in detail.
The time for short, stirring appeals was over; the time for solid,
sober treatises on divinity had arrived…. [Pusey’s] mild and
conciliatory spirit introduced a healing element into the Movement
which was certainly needed. The “fierceness” (to use his own
expression) of Newman, and especially of Newman when “kept up to the
mark by Froude,”[361] had the very natural effect of raising
opposition; and even in Keble, the gentle, humble Keble, there was a
strong spice, if not exactly of fierceness, yet of a tendency to give
vent to the most unpopular sentiments in the most uncompromising way,
without the slightest attempt to tone them down. Pusey, again, was far
more apt to recognise two sides of a question than was Keble, Newman,
or Froude…. The Movement gained Pusey, and lost Hurrell Froude, almost
at the same time. When Pusey joined the party, Froude was practically
a dying man; and in February 28, 1836, to the infinite regret of his
many friends, he died at his native Dartington. With Froude passed
away the most daring and “go-ahead” spirit connected with the whole
Movement. Newman was enthusiastic, but Froude was far more so; Newman
waged war against the complacency which was so characteristic of the
old Church party, but Froude was still more exasperated against it;
Newman was not over-cautious in his invectives against the fallacies
and prejudices of the age, but Froude was ten times less so. With an
intense earnestness and thoroughness of conviction, with a fiery
energy which would ride over anything, with a courage which sometimes
amounted to audacity, and with an irresistibly attractive personality,
there is no saying what would have happened if his short life had been
prolonged! But it is not a very profitable speculation to conjecture
what might have been. Suffice it to say that in one respect the
influence of Froude was likely to have had exactly the opposite effect
to that of Pusey. The one seemed, of all men, the most calculated to
trouble the waters, the other, to pour oil upon them; and the fact
that Froude dropped out just when Pusey began to make his influence
felt, seemed to promise that henceforth the Movement would create less
hostility. After events, however, proved that this was not to be the
case; and the causes are not far to seek….
‘One of the most startling … events was the appearance, in 1838, of
the first series of Froude’s _Remains_, edited by Keble and Newman
jointly. It is not surprising that this publication raised a violent
outcry: it gave to the world the off-hand utterances of a young
enthusiast whose opinions would probably have toned down with age, but
were here expressed with all the recklessness of inexperience, and
were only intended, in the first instance, to be read by sympathetic
friends.
‘His views on the English Reformation and Reformers were sufficiently
startling. “The present Church system is an incubus upon the country”;
“the Reformation was a limb badly set: it must be broken again in
order to be righted”; the English Reformers generally were “a set of
men with whom [I wish] to have less and less to do”; Jewel, in
particular, was “an irreverent Dissenter”; Latimer, “a Martyr somewhat
in the Bulteel line.” One can conceive the horror with which such
sentiments would be read by men with whom “our happy Establishment in
Church and State,” “our glorious Reformation,” and “our martyred
Reformers” were almost articles of faith!
‘It has been thought that the Editors miscalculated the effect which
the book would produce; but the theory is not very complimentary to
their judgement. Surely must they have known that the glamour of
Froude’s personality would not affect the general, still less the
hostile, reader (and his name was legion), who would greedily seize
upon any handle which could be turned, as Froude could so easily be,
against the Movement. Moreover, how does it agree with the fact that
when they found out their mistake, they nevertheless published in the
following year, 1839, a second series as _outré_ as the first? And
this they introduced with a Preface pointing out how Froude’s sagacity
had anticipated all the improvements that had taken place, and
representing him, not as a disturber of the people, but as a prophet
indeed. This Preface is said to have been chiefly the work of Keble,
and it is highly characteristic of the man, though not of the popular
conception of him: for Keble was always for the bold course.
‘The other Editor, Newman, writing to his friend Frederic Rogers in
July, 1837, gives six reasons why Froude’s private letters should be
published; and to his Co-editor he writes at the same time: “We have
often said the Movement must be enthusiastic. Now here is a man fitted
above all others to kindle enthusiasm.” May it not have been that both
Editors put forth the _Remains_ with their eyes perfectly wide open as
to what the result would be? that they were not unwilling the _enfant
terrible_ of the Movement should say his say, and startle the public?
The public was startled: it took in all seriousness the audacious
dicta of Froude as if they were stamped with the approval of the whole
party, which it denounced with increased vigour, accordingly.
‘It is impossible to help connecting with the publication of Froude’s
_Remains_ the starting of that project which gave to Oxford one of the
most beautiful of its many beautiful monuments, the “Martyrs’
Memorial,” opposite Balliol College, on the spot on which Cranmer,
Ridley, and Latimer had been burnt.[362] The greatest offence of
Froude was that he had spoken disparagingly of the English Reformers
generally, and of these men in particular. The project of the Memorial
originated in a small meeting held towards the close of 1838, at
Oriel, in the rooms of Mr. Golightly, who, having begun as a friend of
the Movement, had soon become its bitterest and most persistent foe.
Everybody seems to have connected the Memorial with the _Remains_; but
there was some division of opinion as to the course which should be
pursued. Keble and Newman were from the first opposed to the project,
and so were moderate men like Palmer and Benjamin Harrison. But Hook
and S. Wilberforce were in favour, and so, strange to say, was Pusey,
to a certain extent, at first, until he was persuaded otherwise by
Keble and Newman…. Keble writes to Pusey … “I am not at all prepared
to express a public dissent from Froude in his opinion of the
Reformers as a party.” On the other hand, S. Wilberforce writes to
Hook, regretting that “our good Oxford friends run down Reformers, and
will not subscribe to the Martyrs’ Memorial.” It was said of the
Memorial, “it will be a good cut against Newman”: but it was not a cut
which made him smart.’
From ‘ESSAYS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS,’ BY NICHOLAS CARDINAL WISEMAN.
London: Dolman, 1853, 3 vols.[363]
[By kind permission of the Executors of His Eminence Cardinal
Vaughan.]
‘It is not often that the leaders of opinions let the public into a
view of their secret counsels and feelings; but when they do, we think
it does credit to the uprightness and sincerity of their intentions….
Nay, the more unreservedly the human weaknesses of the individuals are
revealed, and the more the feeling is expressed that with their
exposure, or in spite of it, their cause will succeed, the more highly
we shall estimate their confidence in the correctness of their views,
and the disinterestedness of their zeal in propagating them. These
reflections have been suggested to us by the perusal of Mr. Froude’s
_Remains_. He was, while living, one of the most enthusiastic members
of the theological school from which the _Tracts for the Times_ have
emanated. He died in 1836, having attained only the age of
thirty-three;[364] and was thus prevented from arriving at that full
maturity of religious ideas which was evidently preparing in his mind,
and bearing him onwards towards the perception of Catholic truths.
‘A preface of twenty-two pages betrays the Editors’ anxiety to repel a
twofold charge: one against themselves, the other against their
deceased friend…. When one whose noble and public proofs of great
virtue far outweigh the errors of youth, or whose public reputation
makes his example, when evil, a warning; and when repentant, a
reparation and an encouragement,――when one, in short, like St.
Augustine, boldly but humbly reveals to the eyes of the Church the
wretchedness of his early sinful life, we admire, in awe, the strange
manifestation of a sublime spirit of Christian virtue, and we bless
the Divine Wisdom that hath caused it to be vouchsafed to us. But the
struggles of one who has not compensated his weaknesses by any noble
results, who withdraws from our sight a combatant, and not a victor;
who only presents us the spectacle of a frail nature, such as we all
may have, wrestling with daily and anxious trials, and not overcoming
them; (these, too, not spontaneously exhibited, but transferred from
the closet to the public arena)――have neither the grandeur nor the
instruction of the other lesson. Still, there may be reasons unknown
to us who are not in the secrets of the party, to justify, certainly
in their own eyes, this sacrifice of private feeling to a sense of
public utility…. [The Editors] would have materially strengthened
their reasoning by the following passage in [Mr. Froude’s] Letters to
Friends: “There was a passage in a letter I have just received from my
father, which made me feel so infinitely dismal that I must write to
you about it. He says you have written to him to learn something about
me, and to ask what to do with my money. It really made me feel as if
I was dead, and you were sweeping up my remains: and by the by, if I
were dead, why should I be cut off from the privilege of helping on
the Good Cause? I don’t know what money I have left,――little enough, I
suspect; but whatever it was, I am superstitious enough to think that
any good it could do _in honorem Dei et sacrosanctæ matris ecclesiæ_,
would have done something, too, _in salutem animæ meæ_.” From these
words, it appears that the author did contemplate his power of doing
good to the cause wherein he was so ardently engaged, even after his
death.
‘The censure of their friend which the Editors foresee, is that which
forms their bugbear in all their theological researches: that of
approaching too near the Catholic, or, as they call it, Romanist
doctrines. But we must express our conviction that the Editors have
not done much credit to their friend by the manner in which they have
thought it right to shield his memory from the charge. It consists in
a careful collection of some of the most hasty, unhandsome, and
decidedly unreasonable judgements and opinions of the author,
respecting chiefly what he saw in his travels…. We think we are
justified in saying that proof of Mr. Froude’s disinclination to
Catholicity must have been very scarce, to have led the Editors to
bring together these superficial observations made during a brief
residence in a Catholic city[365] not generally reputed the most
edifying in its conduct! These, however, will not bear comparison with
the growing and expanding tendency of his mind towards everything
Catholic….
‘… The extracts from [his] Journal present us a picture at once
pleasing and distressing, of a mind yearning after interior
perfection, yet at a loss about the means of attaining it; embarked on
an ocean of good desires, but without stars or compass by which to
steer its course. The minute scrutiny into the motives of his actions,
the distress occasioned by discovering his relapses into faults which
most would overlook, show a sensitiveness of conscience in the
youthful writer, far more honourable to him, and far more interesting
to us, than abilities of a much higher order than what he really
possessed could ever have appeared…. How far it may be advisable to
commit to paper, even for personal benefit, these investigations of
our most secret tribunal, we have considerable doubt; and instructive
as is their record in the case before us, in nothing is it more so
than in the proof it gives us of the necessity of guidance for the
conscience and heart such as the institutions of the Catholic Church
alone provide. In the account which he gives of his own infirmities,
of his almost fruitless attempts to subdue them, and of the pain and
anxiety produced by his solitary struggles, he presents a picture
familiar to the experienced eye of any spiritual director in our
Church, and a state fully described and prescribed for by the numerous
writers whom we possess upon the inward life and the direction of
consciences. Many are they who are tossed in the same billows of
secret tribulation, many are they who are bewildered in the same mazes
of mental perplexity; but they have not at least the additional
horrors of darkness and night. Ere they can sink, a hand is stretched
out, if they will only grasp it. The troubles and trials which haunt
minds constituted as Mr. Froude’s, many a skilful guide would have
shown him to be mere illusive phantoms that only serve to turn the
attention away from serious dangers, or from solid good: snares cast
by a restlessness of spirit upon the path, to entangle the feet that
tread it…. The consequence of all his irregular and undirected
austerity, into which, with youthful eagerness, he rushed, was, that
instead of deriving thence vigour of thought, and closer intimacy with
some spiritual feelings, his spirit, on the contrary, flagged and at
length grew weary, and so fell into that despondency which failure
will produce in sensitive minds. This discouragement is visible in
many parts of his Journal…. In fact, Mr. Froude discovered that most
important principle, that obedience to the ordinances of authority
gives the great merit to the first degrees of penitential works, those
which belong to ordinary Christians: such, that is, as have not
reached the perfection of ascetic life…. While he seems so taken up,
through his Journals, with examination of his fasts and austerities,
we miss from his pages those cheerful views of religion which result
from confidence and love, from the consciousness of a strong will to
do [God] service, and an humble reliance on His mercy which will
measure that, rather than our success. What snatches there are of
prayer, bear more the character of one sinking under the fatigue of
foiled attempts, and troubled with anxiety from hopelessness of
success, than of a young and trusting mind that presses forward to a
work it deems glorious: the work of God and His religion….
‘We certainly think that his ardent way, more perhaps of expressing
himself than of feeling, leads him often to a harsh and reckless
manner of speaking of others, that must give an unfavourable
impression regarding his character, which we have every reason to
believe was amiable and gentle. Still, there are so many fine points
about him: so much distrust of himself, blended with no inconsiderable
powers of genius; so much independence of thought, coupled with
deference to the sentiments of others, those he esteemed more learned
or more virtuous than himself; so much lightness of spirit, united to
such seriousness of mind upon religious truths;――in fine, so earnest
and sincere a desire to improve and perfect himself, that our feelings
lead us to pass lightly over his faults, and dwell with pleasure upon
his finer qualities. If we have dilated somewhat upon the former, it
has been that we considered them the result of the system to which he
was by education attached, and which is alone accountable for them.
‘As, however, he increased in years, his mind began to open to the
defects and wants of that system, and boldly to conceive the necessity
of correcting them. In this he ran manifestly before his fellows, and
seems only to have been prevented by his premature death from reaching
the goal of Catholic Unity…. First, as to the Blessed Eucharist, we
find him early desirous of going beyond the timid phraseology of his
party, and attributing to the priesthood such power as the Catholic
Church alone claims…. In 1835, he condemns what he calls the
Protestant doctrine of the Eucharist in strong terms. These are his
words: “I am more and more indignant at the Protestant doctrine on the
subject of the Eucharist, and think that the principle on which it is
founded is as proud, irreverent, and foolish as that of any heresy,
even Socinianism.”[366] Still more, writing to the author of _The
Christian Year_, he blames him for denying that Christ is in the hands
of the priest or the receiver, as well as in his heart.[367] These
passages show how far prepared he was to outstrip his friends in
approximation to Catholic doctrines and Catholic expressions…. The
state of celibacy, and with it the monastic life, seems also to have
been an object of his admiration…. The last fragment published of his
attests how anxiously, how candidly, and how powerfully his mind was
at work with the great subject [of Church authority], the hinge on
which the differences between us and these new divines may be justly
said to turn. This piece[368] is a letter dated Jan. 27, 1836, a month
before his death; and as his last illness was of some weeks’ duration,
this document may be considered as his theological will and testament,
the last declaration of his yet unbroken mind…. After this, what more
can we desire in proof of what we asserted at the beginning of this
article, that these _Remains_ prove Mr. Froude’s mind to have been
gradually discovering more extensive and more accurate views of
religious truths and the principles of Faith, with such steady and
constant growth as gives us every reason to believe that longer life
alone was wanting, to see him take the salutary resolve to embrace the
conclusions of his theories to their fullest legitimate extent? While
the writings of the new divines seem to represent their theories as
perfectly formed, and their views quite fixed, the extracts we have
just made show them to be but the shifting and unsettled opinions of
men who are yet discovering errors in what they have formerly
believed, and seeking further evidence of what they shall henceforth
hold. Our concluding extract shall give fuller evidence of this fact:
it is a letter to Mr. Newman, dated All Saints’ Day, 1835. “Before I
finish this, I must enter another protest against your cursing and
swearing at the end of the [Via Media] as you do. What good can it do?
And I call it uncharitable to an excess. How mistaken we may ourselves
be, on many points that are only gradually opening on us! Surely, you
should reserve ‘blasphemous,’ ‘impious,’ etc., for denial of the
articles of Faith.”[369]