‘With this passage we close Mr. Froude’s _Remains_. Peace be to him!

is our parting salutation. The hope which an Ambrose expressed for a

Valentinian,[370] who died yet a Catechumen, we willingly will hold of

him. His ardent desires were with the Truth; his heart was not a

stranger to its love. He was one, we firmly believe, whom no sordid

views, or fear of men’s tongues, would have deterred from avowing his

full convictions, and embracing their consequences, had time and

opportunity been vouchsafed him for a longer and closer search. He is

another instance of the same mysterious Providence which guided a

Grotius and a Leibnitz to the threshold of Truth, but allowed them not

the time to step within it, into the hallowed precincts of God’s

Visible Church.’[371]

From ‘THE ANGLICAN CAREER OF CARDINAL NEWMAN,’ BY EDWIN A. ABBOTT.

London: Macmillan & Co., 1892.

[By the kind permission of Dr. Abbott and of Messrs. Macmillan & Co.]

‘Newman was now [1826] on the point of making a new friend who would

do more than any other human being, perhaps more than any other single

external influence, to direct his course, or to determine its final

direction. “Bye-the-bye,” says Newman to his mother, telling her of

the election to the Oriel Fellowship, March 31, 1826, “I have not told

you the name of the other successful candidate: Froude of Oriel. We

were in grave deliberation till near two this morning…. Froude is one

of the acutest and clearest and deepest men in the memory of man.”

Clearly, Froude had had, not only Newman’s vote, but also his

strenuous advocacy in that prolonged deliberation. And it was no bad

preparation for the reception of Froude’s influence into Newman’s

heart, that the latter should thus have favoured and befriended him….

What took Newman, in Froude, was his originality and suggestiveness,

his hatred of shams, his downright and aggressive earnestness, and

perhaps, too, some glimpse of what was afterwards revealed in him: an

anxious, ascetic, and almost superstitious aspiration after a mediæval

type of holiness…. There were walks that Froude tells us of, in which

the two talked a good deal together. Froude complains that he allowed

himself to say to Newman more than he intended, revealed too much,

suffered himself to be drawn into argument, and was puzzled … but if

the older beat the younger in argument, that would rather help than

hinder the influence of the latter. Expert in logical fence, Newman

could not help gaining victories which he disdained as soon as won;

but Froude was effective in protests, and all the more with one who,

most vulnerable when victorious, had just achieved a dialectical

triumph.

* * * * *

‘… To get at Newman, a friend had to appeal to him through the

imagination; … indeed, one of the friends whom we shall have before

us, did actually, though indirectly, influence Newman’s action at so

many points in his career that if we omitted a sketch of him here, we

should have to be constantly digressing for explanations afterwards.

The three friends are: Edward Bouverie Pusey, John Keble, and, as a

climax in respect of influence, Richard Hurrell Froude…. Froude’s

opinions, [Newman] says, arrested him, even when they did not gain his

consent…. In all these beliefs [enumerated in the _Apologia_] Froude

certainly preceded, and evidence will hereafter clearly prove that he

also led, the friend who had been gradually disengaging himself from

the Evangelical School. Even in other matters where, at first, Newman

and he differed, Newman, in the end, came round to him. Froude was

“powerfully drawn to the Mediæval Church,” Newman to the Primitive;

but the Mediæval finally triumphed. He set no great store on

theological detail, nor on the writings of the Fathers, but “took an

eager courageous view of things as a whole.”[372] Omit “courageous,”

perhaps also the “eager,” and the sentence will describe the nature of

Newman’s final decision. He, too, took “things as a whole”: it was the

personified majesty of the vision of Rome that ultimately took him

captive. Recognising the difficulty of enumerating all the additions

to his creed which Newman derived from a friend to whom he owed so

much, the _Apologia_ selects four: admiration for Rome, dislike of the

Reformation, devotion to the Blessed Virgin, belief in the Real

Presence. But there is perhaps not one in the long list of Froude’s

other opinions [on sacerdotal power, ecclesiastical liberty,

acceptance of tradition, the intrinsic excellence of virginity,

miraculous interferences, delight in the Saints, and the principle of

penance and mortification: see the passage in the _Apologia_] in which

his influence on Newman is not perceptible. If not first planted, some

of them were at all events “fixed deep,” and firmly rooted, by the

friend who had previously received them. If, therefore, we would

understand Newman’s development, we should spare no trouble in

attempting to understand that one of all his friends who is shown by

evidence, direct and indirect, to have contributed most to it. For

this purpose all the more pains are needed, because the very friends

who loved him best dealt somewhat hardly with his reputation. In his

literary _Remains_, they gave to the world the most secret records of

his private life, in which, besides hinting at deeper “vilenesses,” he

sets down in detail, with unflinching severity, if not with

exaggeration, the very smallest infirmities of will and deed. The

_Apologia_ speaks of “the gentleness and tenderness of nature, the

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

and the patient winning considerateness in discussion which endeared

him to those to whom he opened his heart”; and other testimony enables

us to believe that in the small circle of those who knew him well, he

was really such as he is there described; but if we are to judge from

his _Remains_, it is a question whether this gentleness and

considerateness reached far beyond the close company of those who were

struggling for the religious cause which he had at heart.

‘… The Journal begins in the year 1826, when he was elected to the

Oriel Fellowship. The second line is as follows: “Feb. 1, Oxford. All

my associations here are bad, and I can hardly shake them off.” He

determines to wrestle with his conceit, affectation, wandering of

mind, lassitude…. Then follows an allusion which Newman, devoted by a

kind of inward vow to celibacy since the age of sixteen, would well

understand: “The consciousness of having capacities for happiness,

with no objects to gratify them, seems to grow upon me. Lord, have

mercy upon me.” This is the mood which he elsewhere describes to

Newman as “sawney”: natural at times to those who are under a kind of

vow to serve a cause, without domestic distractions or encumbrances.

‘The problem exhibited in these pages … is the old but never

antiquated one: “How to keep the human machine in order.” Roughly

speaking, we may say that there are two solutions. Men can be

delivered from the beast within them by love, or by fear. The second

may be called no deliverance at all by those who have a keen

appreciation of the first, but it is deliverance, of a sort; and

Froude’s Journal shows us a man of immense strength of will: of acute

intellect, and of high imaginations; restless and masterful almost to

the extent of tyrannical malignity, in his youth; conscious of

grievous lapses in the past and of something (he hardly knew what)

terribly wanting in his present moral condition; now at last goaded by

bitter remorse, and urged by the pressure of new responsibilities, to

reform his corrupt nature, and attempting to work out his salvation

through an asceticism dictated, at first, by something like terror….

In 1826, Froude had sent a letter to Keble, curiously tingeing with

his own gloom the language of the Psalmist, who prays to be hidden

under the “shadow of the wings” of the divine Protection: he speaks of

God as a Being whose presence is mainly manifested by control, and by

a holy “terror”:

‘“Lord of the World, Almighty King!

Thy shadow resteth over all,

Or where the Saints thy terrors sing,

Or where the waves obey Thy call.”

‘… Froude’s religion, then, so far as it depended upon his conception

of God, was a religion of almost unmixed fear. So far as it was of

something better, it was purified, first, by a love and admiration for

“the holy men of old,” such as the founders of the Oxford Colleges, in

whose steps, after his election to his Fellowship, he aspired to

tread; secondly, by his affection for Keble, for whom, in the prayer

written at the same time, he thanks God, as one who had convinced him

of the error of his ways, and in whose presence he tasted happiness;

but above all, by his devotion to his mother, in whose recollection he

found a consciousness of that blessedness which he had been taught to

look for in the presence of Saints and Angels. These were feelings

which were better than his religion, and which, if they could have

developed and grown with the latter, might have delivered it from

fears, and have converted it into a source of peace as well as of

activity: but whether from the irremediable taint of the past, or

owing to influence that proved too strong for Keble’s, this growth did

not go on.

‘Newman … taught at an early period that self-knowledge is the basis

of all religious knowledge. Whether Froude adopted or originated this

doctrine, it must have stimulated his fears: for it was a proverb with

him that “everyone may know worse of himself than he possibly can of

Charles the Second.” In less than six months after the thanksgiving

recorded above, we find him protesting (January 10, 1827) that he

dares not now utter the prayers of wise and holy men, and that God has

affrighted him with hideous dreams, and disquieted him with perpetual

mortifications…. It is to Keble that he owes his release, for how long

he knows not, from the misery in which he has been recently bound. At

the same time Keble advises him to give up his ascetic self-denial,

and Froude acquiesces. Though it had the colour of humility, it now

appears to him to have been in reality the food of pride:

self-imposed, it seems to him “quite different from imposed by the

Church.” What sort of self-denials they were, and what Froude’s

self-introspection implied, the reader ought to be informed for two

reasons: first, because they show the fierce determination and almost

bitter self-hatred with which the young man turned against himself, in

his resolution to suppress his own egotism and conceit; and secondly,

because Newman and Keble (or perhaps Keble instigated by Newman),

thought it worth while to record the minutest of these details, and

spoke of the Journal as a most valuable contribution to Tractarian

literature. Froude sets down, for example, (and they print!) that he

was ashamed, on one occasion, to have it known that he had no gloves;

that he was ashamed, on another, that he had muddy trousers (although

he would not go to the length of concealing them); that he was

pleased, on another, when there was no Evening Prayer; that he felt an

impulse of pleasure on finding that W. was not at Chapel one morning;

that he ostentatiously hinted to S. that he got up at six o’clock;

that he read affectedly in evening Chapel; that he felt an inclination

to make remarks with a view to showing how much he had thought upon

serious subjects; and that once, after accidentally breaking one of

W.’s windows, he felt a disposition to “sneak away.” … He seriously

argues the pros and cons (“bothering” himself about it for three

days), concerning the purchase of a great-coat. On the one side, there

is the fact that he “wants,” _i.e._, needs it, which one would have

thought would have been conclusive; but against this he sets the fact

that he “wishes” it; and therefore it will be well to deny himself the

satisfaction…. By his own confession, he occasionally made himself

stupid and sleepy through his ascetic habits. But to the last he

retained his admiration for them, at all events when they were imposed

by external authority….

‘Why did the Editors of Froude’s _Remains_ give to the world these

extraordinary confessions?… If, indeed, Froude had taken Keble’s

advice, they could not thus have made his secrets the property of

posterity; for he had advised his pupil not only to give up his

self-imposed asceticisms, but also to burn his confessions. But this

advice was given in 1826; whereas the _Remains_ were published in

1838. Are we wrong in inferring that during this interval, Keble may

have been pushed forward by Newman his Co-editor, who taught that all

religious knowledge must be based on self-knowledge? From the Letters,

this seems probable…. It follows, at once, that there is very little

thankfulness in Froude’s form of Christianity. The visible world

seemed so full of delusion, mockery, and temptation, that a hostile or

ironical attitude towards it was the only one possible. “This irony,”

says James Mozley, “arose from that peculiar mode in which Froude

viewed all earthly things, himself and all that was dear to him not

excepted.” What was this peculiar mode? To define it briefly would be

difficult. It must have recognised something of reality and goodness

in those friends and allies towards whom his heart went out, and with

whom he was ready to labour, to the end, for what he considered the

“Truth,” freely placing his fortune, his faculties, and his last

breath, at their disposal. But still, it was not the “mode” of St.

Paul, nor of Keble; it was more like, though not quite like, that of

Newman. It was certainly not the “mode” of the author who wrote that

“God giveth us all things richly to enjoy.” Indeed, “irony” is perhaps

hardly the right word to use of the superficial self-mockery, but more

profound self-hatred and self-contempt, approaching sometimes to

despair, with which, in some of his self-introspective moods, Froude

smites and rends himself, and his faults; yes, and his resolves to

correct his faults, sometimes even pouring scorn upon himself for

writing down his own good resolutions, and for thinking well of

himself, in the act of doing it. “The chief reason,” he says, “for my

being interested in any object, is the fact that I happen to be

pursuing it,” “nor can I look with serious feeling on the miseries of

anyone but my own. The blight of God is on me for my selfish life.” …

Is “irony” a term quite strong enough to denote this savage, sarcastic

self-laceration, which, if persisted in, would result in moral and

spiritual suicide? So far, it would seem that the two friends

resembled each other in almost every one of their principles of

religious thought. A religion of fear; a profound sense of an awful

Holiness; an absence of general loving-kindness and human-heartedness;

a vast and almost servile respect for power as power; an inclination

to asceticism, in the older of the two as a test of sincerity, but in

the younger, rather as a means of suppressing the passions; a dread of

wilfulness, and a rooted suspicion of self,――these feelings appear to

have been, in both, so powerful and original, that whatever influence

either might exert upon the other would result, not in changing, but

in confirming and hardening; or at most, in suggesting some new

application of the theories common to both.

‘We now pass to the only principle in which the two seem first to have

differed, but ultimately to have agreed. This principle (if it may be

so called) is that of tact or management, especially in the diffusion,

colouring, and sometimes in the reservation or suppression, of

religious doctrine, with a view to surmounting prejudice and

instilling truth. To this, Newman (though not the first to use the

word in this sense) gave the name of “economy.” There are many reasons

for concluding that in this one respect Froude was passive, a simple

recipient from Newman…. Froude anticipated, and endeavoured to develop

precipitately, the logical results, both of the principles which they

held in common, and of those which he instilled into his friend, and

also of this particular principle which alone his friend seems to have

instilled into him. Such a development may be often noticed, when a

strong-willed man who sees only one side of a question, takes up a

plan invented by another who sees many. The inventor may be moderate;

the adopter carries the invention to excess. Froude was at that time

(1834) dragging Newman onwards towards Roman doctrine; but he may have

submitted to learn from Newman the best method of diffusing it. He did

not like the method, and therefore he called it by bad names, such as

“undermining,” “poisoning,” and the like….

‘Newman’s formal usual doctrine [was] that as we cannot be sure about

our own salvation, so neither can we about that of others; that we

have enough to do with thinking and fearing about our own eternal

concerns; that, as before God, no man can help another, for we must

not only die alone but live alone, nor can there be any spiritual

contact between soul and soul, in this life. Yet at least on one

occasion his feelings were too strong for his dogma. When Froude drew

near to death, Newman refused to fear for his sake. With him in his

mind, he would not use his favourite metaphor of “grovelling worms,”

to describe the relation between the human and the divine. Casting

away all reserve, all doubts, and all terrors, he shoots up to a

Miltonic height, in the confidence that God cannot waste this immortal

soul which He has made. Thus he writes to Froude himself:

‘“It made me think how many posts there are in His kingdom, how many

offices, Who says to one Do this, and he doeth it. It is quite

impossible that, some way or other, you are not destined to be the

instrument of God’s purposes. Though I saw the earth cleave and you

fall in, or Heaven open and a chariot appear, I should say just the

same. God has ten thousand posts of service. You might be of use in

the central elemental fire; you might be of use in the depths of the

sea.”[373]

‘The same passionate conviction, based not upon Authority or upon

Scripture, but upon his own sense of what must be right, finds

expression also in a sermon written about the same time.[374]

‘“They are taken away for some purpose, surely; their gifts are not

lost to us: their soaring minds, the fire of their contemplations, the

sanctity of their desires, the vigour of their faith, the sweetness

and gentleness of their affections, were not given without an object.

Yea, doubtless they are keeping up the perpetual chant in the Shrine

above, praying and praising God day and night in His Temple like Moses

upon the mount, while Joshua and his host fight with Amalek.”

‘… Deprived of Froude, and now of his mother, with one sister married,

and the other to be married a few months afterwards, Newman must have

felt alone indeed. How much this feeling of communion with the

departed had been growing in Newman may be seen from the only two

poems of 1835[375] (the last until we come to the Roman period), both

of which bring before us the intercession of the dead for the living.

There can be no doubt whose voice Newman was henceforth to hear most

distinctly amid all the earthly din and uproar of the conflict of the

_Tracts_: it was that of the man whose Breviary (assigned to him by a

chance utterance of some friend, which he accepted as a message from

Heaven) lay always on his study table, destined to lie there for half

a century; to the possession of which he attached such importance,

that besides minutely describing the incident in the _Apologia_, he

records it in the _Letters_, along with his mother’s death, as one of

nine important events of this critical year: “My knowing and using the

Breviary.”[376]

‘Froude (not Froude’s opinions, but Froude himself, or his

personality, Froude first, living, and then, as a posthumous

influence, still more powerful after death), did more than any other

external thing to make Newman what he became, and to shape, through

Newman, the Tractarian Movement. Some of Newman’s most important steps

dated from the year of their intimacy. It was in 1829 that the two

became close friends: Newman the non-political, and Froude the High

Tory…. _A priori_, we ought to be prepared to believe that Froude

pushed Newman on. Froude was a High Churchman from the first, with an

inclination towards the Mediæval Church, and from this he never

swerved: Newman was an Evangelical, extricating himself from

Evangelicalism. The former had no doubts; the latter was at that time

perpetually doubting. How could it be otherwise than natural that the

former should take the lead of the latter?

‘… Froude is not quite fairly, or at least fully, represented in the

_Remains_. The Journal, and even the Letters, fail, perhaps, to

express some latent feeling which might have softened apparent

harshness. To those who knew him well, his words were interpreted by

his personality, which all concur in describing as bright, graceful,

and even “beautiful.” … It was this brilliant and graceful embodiment,

in one so earnest, so ascetically strict, so clear-headed, and so

confident, [one] of definite consistent imaginations about spiritual

things (which imaginations Newman describes as “intellectual

principles”) that first arrested, and ultimately captivated the older

friend, who was at first disposed to smile at, even while admiring,

the erratic, “sillyish,” “red-hot” High Churchman….

‘… Fundamentally agreeing with Froude, from the first, in the

principles of religious fear, obedience, and self-distrust, Newman

differed from him only in the expression and application of them; and

on these points Froude’s mind was settled while Newman’s was still in

flux. No wonder that, by degrees, Newman lost confidence in any

utterance of his own unless Froude first stamped it with his approval.

Did not Froude always take the lead, experimenting, as it were, on

himself? And had not Newman repeatedly to confess that Froude was

right, and he himself wrong? One reason for this was, that Froude,

being of an æsthetic bent, instinctively turned from the Primitive

Church, which was, to him, an affair of books, and of which he knew

very little, to the Mediæval Church, with which he was in complete

harmony, or to the Anglican Nonjurors, about whom he had some

sympathetic knowledge. This gave to his notions a naturalness and a

practicableness in which Newman’s were deficient. For this, and for

other reasons, Froude seemed to be a seer in regions where Newman was

only a groper; and so, in time, the latter came naturally not only to

depend on the former, but also to avow his dependence so far as to

declare his unwillingness to commit himself to anything definite till

the man who could see had given it his imprimatur. Still, the brighter

and more pleasing side of Froude’s character must not allow us to

forget that his search after holiness implied not only something

bordering on abjectness towards God, but also strife on earth, and the

appearance of ill-will towards a great multitude of men. These

qualities explain in part the secret of his power over Newman, who

would not have allowed himself to be influenced by any but a detached

soul holding aloof from all the world, and especially, perhaps, from

the rabble, that “knoweth not the law.” But Froude was by far the more

combative of the two, and appears to have acted on Newman, as on

Keble, in the way of an inciting cause, or, to use his own metaphor, a

“poker.”

‘We find here depicted [in the _Remains_] a Christian in whose most

secret records, self-examinations and prayers, there appears scarcely

any mention of Christ as a Person, and very little trace of any love

of Christ (who hardly appears at all in them except in some reference

to the sacramental Body and Blood); yet one who with all his heart and

soul is seeking after that salvation which he supposes to be derivable

from Christ’s Church; a man who obstinately detested, first in

himself, then in others, the least vestige of affectation, cant, and

hypocrisy: who spoke what he meant, as he meant it, and would always

have gone, if his friends had allowed him, by the straightest of ways

towards what he deemed the best of objects; a man, therefore, of an

essentially truth-loving disposition, searching for Truth in all

sincerity, but restricted by a “system” to a search within certain

limits and through certain methods; shut out from the great world of

men, and shut into the comparatively small world――not indeed, as

Newman was, of books, but――of ecclesiastical traditions and

imaginations; by nature, without any deep feeling of human-hearted

sociality, without love of man as a fellow-man; by ecclesiasticism led

rather to hate than to love; loving indeed a few, but only as a

Spartan might love his companions-in-arms, loving those select spirits

by whose side he could battle for the interests of “the Church.”

‘Such a picture, though “instructive,” is not pleasing. Yet those who

feel inclined to ridicule, or to give way to disgust, as they peruse

records of one whom they may be disposed to call the Minute

Ascetic,――telling us of his shame at feeling ashamed that he had muddy

trousers, or no gloves, or of his remorse for talking “flash,” or for

not finding it easy to keep awake during a sermon, or for wanting to

win sixpences at cards, will, if they read a little further, generally

find other entries of a different character, as, for example, touching

a certain offertory: “Intended £2: 10s., but thought I should be

observed, so vowed £5 to the ―――― Mendicity Society.” We cannot smile

at the man who, beneath under-statements conveyed half in slang, half

in the language of Tractarian reserve, concealed a resolution not only

to deny himself, but even, so far as he could, to suppress himself;

who so hated his own individuality, and was so alarmed at the least

touch of the self-will of genius within him, that he made it his

“great ambition to become a humdrum.” Doomed to an early lingering

death, and to leave others to continue the religious conflict in which

he, of all the combatants, took the keenest and most passionate

pleasure, he drops no word of self-commiseration and repining; and in

the last month of his life, having contributed the proceeds of his

Fellowship to the cause, he asks Newman to use it at his pleasure, and

to make people infer that the money was being contributed by a large

number of subscribers. “Spend away, my boy, and make a great fuss, as

if your money came from a variety of sources.” If this was “economy,”

it cannot, at all events, be scoffed at. Nothing is here for contempt,

least of all from commonplace, compromising, half-way-halting

semi-Christians or quasi-Christians. Manifestly, we have here a man:

no mere word-bag or lump of sensations, but a being with a will, and

with a controlling purpose; one who knew his own mind, and therefore

had a right to lead those who did not know theirs; a fine specimen of

the ecclesiastic militant, essentially a champion of holiness, though

essentially, if charity be essential, not a Christian. Such was

Richard Hurrell Froude, who, while living, influenced Newman much, and

after his death, more; “re-touching the faith,” and “deepening every

line,” not as Newman’s poem suggested, of himself, but of the poet,

his survivor, his second self. When [Froude] died, a book of his, by

what most people would call an accident, passed into Newman’s

possession. Newman deemed it more than an accident. From that time

forward it lay on his study table; and by it, though dead, his friend

continued to speak to and to guide him: always in one direction.

Rightly does Newman record as one among nine important events of the

“cardinal” spring of 1836, “my knowing and using the Breviary.”’

‘ORIEL COLLEGE,’ by DAVID WATSON RANNIE, M.A. London: F. E. Robinson

& Co., 1900.

[By kind permission of D. W. Rannie, Esq., M.A., and of Messrs.

Robinson & Co.]

‘The chief aim of the Fellowship [at Oriel] was to test dialectical

power; a chief occupation of the Common Room was to practise it….

Newman himself, who did more than any other man to divert the College

from criticism to submission, has left a vivid picture … of his own

argumentative _brusquerie_ in the congenial atmosphere of the Oriel

Common Room. And it is noticeable, both in his case and that of

Richard Hurrell Froude, his chief coadjutor in sowing the seed of the

coming Tractarianism in College, that their method was essentially

dialectic and modern, even though its effect, on themselves and

others, was to lead them into “fierce thoughts” against the modern

spirit and the modern trend of things. Pusey might bury himself in

theology, and Keble might be the singer and sweet saint of a revived

devotion; but Newman and Froude, even when the gates of authority

seemed about to close on them for ever, were questioners and

controversialists and gladiators, striving to rationalise reason out

of its own supremacy.

* * * * *

‘In hurrying on the birth of the new issue, both at Oriel and beyond

it, the influence of Richard Hurrell Froude was very great. We have

seen that he was elected a Fellow of Oriel in 1826. He was an Oriel

man throughout, and had taken a double second in 1824. He was the

eldest son of the Archdeacon of Totnes, and the eldest of three

eminent brothers, all Oriel men: William, the engineer, born in 1810,

and James Anthony, the historian, born in 1818. Hurrell was born in

1803. Always delicate, he fell into consumption early in the Thirties,

and died in 1836. But though his career was short and enfeebled, and

though there is little of him in print but what the affectionate

appreciation of his friends put there, it is certain that Hurrell

Froude had in his College an influence both intense and peculiar,

which radiated widely, and was answerable for some of the most marked

phenomena of Tractarianism. Froude was perhaps the most convinced, the

most outspoken, the most throughgoing Mediævalist among the young men

who thought the Church of England in an unsatisfactory condition; and

he had the incommunicable and inexplicable gift of great personal

influence, which, in his case, took the most irresistible of all its

forms: that of impressing others with his equal pre-eminence in

intellect and character. While the other Tractarian propagandists of

the immediate future were recoiling in fear and anxiety from the

advance of the Liberal and Erastian tide, Froude was ardently

counselling reaction, loudly and scornfully proclaiming the loveliness

and rightness of at least a large number of Roman opinions and

practices, and laying a zealous axe at the root of the Protestantism

of the Church of England.

* * * * *

‘In fact, one can plainly see that the religious revival which was

coming to the English Church was the real cause of the tutorial

quarrel at Oriel in 1830. The Tutors had the new wine of it in their

veins; they were the subjects of an enthusiasm which they were

impelled to communicate, and which was intolerant of restraint; whilst

the Provost [Hawkins] was, and was to remain, outside the range of the

new ideas. In such a situation compromise was impracticable…. This

change had certain important and well-marked results on the College.

In the first place, it riveted the authority of Provost Hawkins, and

made him for the rest of his life the dominant force in Oriel. In the

second place, as the deprived Tutors remained Fellows and attached

members of the College, it did nothing to reduce the spread of their

influence in Common Room, and indirectly, in College generally, but

rather tended to increase it, by opposition. Lastly, and most

important of all, it dealt a blow to the intellectual prestige of the

College, from which it never recovered during Hawkins’s long reign.’

From ‘THE OXFORD COUNTER-REFORMATION’ IN ‘SHORT STUDIES ON GREAT

SUBJECTS.’ Series IV. By JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. London: Longmans,

Green & Co., 1883.

[By the kind permission of Miss Froude and of Messrs. Longmans.]

‘… The last forty or fifty years will be memorable hereafter in the

history of English opinion. The number of those who recollect the

beginnings of the Oxford Revival is shrinking fast; and such of us as

survive may usefully note down their personal recollections as a

contribution, so far as it goes, to the general narrative. It is

pleasant, too, to recall the figures of those who played the chief

parts in the drama. If they had not been men of ability, they could

not have produced the revolution that was brought about by them. Their

personal characters were singularly interesting. Two of them were

distinctly men of real genius. My own brother was, at starting, the

foremost of the party; the flame, therefore, naturally burnt hot in my

own immediate environment. The phrases and formulas of Anglo-Catholicism

had become household words in our family, before I understood

coherently what the stir and tumult was about.

‘We fancy that we are free agents. We are conscious of what we do; we

are not conscious of the causes which make us do it; and therefore we

imagine that the cause is in ourselves. The Oxford leaders believed

that they were fighting against the spirit of the age. They were

themselves most completely the creatures of their age. It was one of

those periods when conservative England had been seized with a passion

for reform. Parliament was to be reformed; the municipal institutions

were to be reformed; there was to be an end of monopolies and

privileges. The Constitution was to be cut in pieces and boiled in the

Benthamite caldron, from which it was to emerge in immortal youth. In

a reformed State there needed a reformed Church. My brother and his

friends abhorred Bentham and all his works. The Establishment, in its

existing state, was too weak to do battle with the new enemy.

Protestantism was the chrysalis of Liberalism. The Church, therefore,

was to be unprotestantised. The Reformation, my brother said, “was a

bad setting of a broken limb.” The limb needed breaking a second time,

and then it would be equal to its business.

‘My brother exaggerated the danger, and underestimated the strength,

which existing institutions and customs possess, so long as they are

left undisturbed. Before he and his friends undertook the process of

reconstruction, the Church was perhaps in the healthiest condition

which it had ever known…. The average English incumbent of fifty years

ago was a man of private fortune, the younger brother of the landlord

perhaps, and holding the family living; or it might be the landlord

himself, his advowson being part of the estate. His professional

duties were his services on Sunday, funerals and weddings on

week-days, and visits, when needed, among the sick. In other respects

he lived like his neighbours, distinguished from them only by a black

coat and white neckcloth, and greater watchfulness over his words and

actions. He farmed his own glebe; he kept horses; he shot and hunted

moderately, and mixed in general society. He was generally a

magistrate; he attended public meetings, and his education enabled him

to take a leading part in county business. His wife and daughters

looked after the poor, taught in the Sunday school, and managed the

penny clubs and clothing clubs. He himself was spoken of in the parish

as “the master,” the person who was responsible for keeping order

there, and who knew how to keep it. The labourers and the farmers

looked up to him. The family in the “great house” could not look down

upon him. If he was poor, it was still his pride to bring up his sons

as gentlemen; and economies were cheerfully submitted to at home to

give them a start in life at the University, or in the Army or Navy.

‘Our own household was a fair representative of the order. My father

was Rector of the parish. He was Archdeacon, he was Justice of the

Peace. He had a moderate fortune of his own, consisting chiefly in

land, and he belonged, therefore, to the “landed interest.” Most of

the magistrates’ work of the neighbourhood passed through his hands.

If anything was amiss, it was his advice which was most sought after;

and I remember his being called upon to lay a troublesome ghost. In

his younger days, he had been a hard rider across country. His

children knew him as a continually busy, useful man of the world, a

learned and cultivated antiquary, and an accomplished artist. My

brothers and I were excellently educated, and were sent to School and

College. Our spiritual lessons did not go beyond the Catechism. We

were told that our business in life was to work, and to make an

honourable position for ourselves. About doctrine, Evangelical or

Catholic, I do not think that in my early boyhood I ever heard a

single word, in Church or out of it. The institution had drifted into

the condition of what I should call moral health. It did not instruct

us in mysteries, it did not teach us to make religion a special object

of our thoughts; it taught us to use religion as a light by which to

see our way along the road of duty. Without the sun, our eyes would be

of no use to us; but if we look _at_ the sun we are simply dazzled,

and can see neither it nor anything else. It is precisely the same

with theological speculations. If the beacon lamp is shining, a man of

healthy mind will not discuss the composition of the flame. Enough if

it shows him how to steer, and keep clear of shoals and breakers. To

this conception of the thing we had practically arrived. Doctrinal

controversies were sleeping. People went to Church because they liked

it, because they knew that they ought to go, and because it was the

custom. They had received the Creeds from their fathers, and doubts

about them had never crossed their minds. Christianity had wrought

itself into the constitution of their natures. It was a necessary part

of the existing order of the universe, as little to be debated about

as the movements of the planets or the changes of the seasons.

‘Such the Church of England was, in the country districts, before the

Tractarian Movement. It was not perfect, but it was doing its work

satisfactorily. It is easier to alter than to improve, and the

beginning of change, like the beginning of strife, is like the letting

out of water. Jupiter, in Lessing’s fable, was invited to mend a fault

in human nature. The fault was not denied, but Jupiter said that man

was a piece of complicated machinery, and if he touched a part he

might probably spoil the whole.

‘But a new era was upon us. The miraculous nineteenth century was

coming of age, and all the world was to be remade…. History was

reconstructed for us. I had learned, like other Protestant children,

that the Pope was Antichrist, and that Gregory VII. HAD BEEN A SPECIAL

REVELATION OF THAT BEING. I WAS NOW TAUGHT THAT GREGORY VII. was a

Saint. I had been told to honour the Reformers. The Reformation became

the Great Schism, Cranmer a traitor, and Latimer a vulgar ranter.

Milton was a name of horror, and Charles I. was canonised and spoken

of as the holy and blessed Martyr St. Charles. I asked once whether

the Church of England was able properly to create a Saint? St. Charles

was immediately pointed out to me. Similarly, we were to admire the

Nonjurors, to speak of James III. instead of The Pretender; to look

for Antichrist, not in the Pope, but in Whigs and revolutionists and

all their works. Henry of Exeter,[377] so famous in those days,

announced once, in my hearing, that the Court of Rome had regretted

the Emancipation Act as a victory of Latitudinarianism. I suppose he

believed what he was saying….

* * * * *

‘These were the views which we used to hear in our home-circle, when

the Tracts were first beginning. We had been bred, all of us, Tories

of the old school. This was Toryism in ecclesiastical costume. My

brother was young, gifted, brilliant, and enthusiastic. No man is ever

good for much who has not been carried off his feet by enthusiasm,

between twenty and thirty; but it needs to be bridled and bitted; and

my brother did not live to be taught the difference between fact and

speculation. Taught it he would have been, if time had been allowed

him. No one ever recognised facts more loyally than he, when once he

saw them. This I am sure of, that when the intricacies of the

situation pressed upon him, when it became clear to him that if his

conception of the Church, and of its rights and position, was true at

all, it was not true of the Church of England in which he was born,

and that he must renounce his theory as visionary or join another

Communion, he would not have “minimised” the Roman doctrines that they

might be more easy for him to swallow, or have explained away plain

propositions till they meant anything or nothing. Whether he would

have swallowed them, or not, I cannot say; I was not eighteen when he

died, and I do not so much as form an opinion about it; but his

course, whatever it was, would have been direct and straightforward;

he was a man far more than a theologian: and if he had gone, he would

have gone with his whole heart and conscience, unassisted by

subtleties and nice distinctions. It is, however, at least equally

possible that he would not have gone at all….

* * * * *

‘The terminus, however, towards which he and his friends were moving,

had not come in sight in my brother’s lifetime. He went forward,

hesitating at nothing, taking the fences as they came, passing lightly

over them all, and sweeping his friends along with him. He had the

contempt of an intellectual aristocrat for private judgement and the

rights of a man. In common things, a person was a fool who preferred

his own judgement to that of an expert. Why, he asked, should it be

wiser to follow private judgement in religion? As to rights, the right

of wisdom was to rule, and the right of ignorance was to be ruled. But

he belonged himself to the class whose business was to order rather

than obey. If his own Bishop had interfered with him, his theory of

episcopal authority would have been found inapplicable in that

particular instance.

* * * * *

‘… The triumvirs who became a national force, and gave its real

character to the Oxford Movement, were Keble, Pusey, and John Henry

Newman. Newman himself was the moving power; the two others were

powers also, but of inferior mental strength. Without the third, they

would have been known as men of genius and learning; but their

personal influence would have been limited to and have ended with

themselves. Of Pusey I knew but little, and need not do more than

mention him. Of Keble I can only venture to say a few words…. The

inability to appreciate the force of arguments which he did not like

saved him from Rome, but did not save him from Roman doctrine. It

would, perhaps, have been better if he had left the Church of England,

instead of remaining there to shelter behind his high authority a

revolution in its teaching. The Mass has crept back among us, with

which we thought we had done for ever, and the honourable name of

Protestant, once our proudest distinction, has been made over to the

Church of Scotland and the Dissenters.

‘Far different from Keble, from my brother, from Dr. Pusey, from all

the rest, was the true chief of the Catholic revival――John Henry

Newman. Compared with him, they were all but as ciphers, and he the

indicating number.’

Controversy from ‘THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW’ AND ‘THE NINETEENTH

CENTURY’ between Prof. E. A. FREEMAN AND MR. JAMES ANTHONY

FROUDE.

[From _The Contemporary Review_ for March, 1878, xxxi., 822 _et

seq._ By E. A. Freeman.][378]

‘… Mr. Froude, in his present attempt to paint the picture of the

great men of the twelfth century, puts on the outward garb of one who

has read and tested his materials, and has come to a critical

judgement on what he has read and tested. But he happily leaves a

little cranny open which enables us to look within. The very first

words of Mr. Froude’s _Life and Times of Thomas Becket_ are enough to

show us that the seeming historical inquiry is really designed as a

manifesto against a theological party which once numbered its author

among its members. To those who know the whole literature of the

subject, it has a look more unpleasant still. Those whose study of

twelfth-century history goes back to times when those who are now in

their second half-century were young, will not fail to remember a time

when the name of Froude reminded them of another, an earlier, and (I

have no hesitation in saying) a worthier treatment of the same

subject. And some of those who go back so far may be tempted to think

that natural kindliness, if no other feeling, might have kept back the

fiercest of partisans from ignoring the honest work of a long-deceased

brother, and from dealing stabs in the dark at a brother’s almost

forgotten fame…. [Mr. Froude] is controversial, something more than

controversial, from the beginning. He undertakes the study, not to

throw fresh light on the history of the twelfth century, but to deal a

blow at a party in the nineteenth. His first words are: “Among the

earliest efforts of the modern sacerdotal party in the Church of

England was an attempt to re-establish the memory of the Martyr of

Canterbury.” It is not everybody who reads this who will fully take in

what is here meant. The first attempt made, within the memory of our

own generation, to examine and compare the materials for the great

controversy between King and Primate, was made by Richard Hurrell

Froude of Oriel College: the Froude of the once famous _Remains_, the

elder brother of the man who makes this somewhat unbrotherly

reference. The elder Froude doubtless belonged to what the younger

calls “the sacerdotal party.” His wish undoubtedly was “to

re-establish the memory of the Martyr of Canterbury.” To those with

whom historic truth comes foremost, and who have no special

fanaticism, sacerdotal or anti-sacerdotal, the effort of a “sacerdotal

party” to re-establish the memory of Thomas of Canterbury may seem at

least as worthy an object as to re-establish the memory of Flogging

Fitzgerald, or of King Harry himself. To re-establish the memory of

Thomas is, at the worst, a question of words and names, and of a

certain law: it does not, like the other two re-establishments, imply

the defence of any matter of wrong, or wicked lewdness. And the elder

Froude’s history of controversy, if undertaken with a purpose of

theological partisanship, was still a piece of creditable historical

work. Done forty years or so ago, it was, of course, not up to the

level of modern criticism on the subject. But it was the beginning of

modern criticism on the subject. The elder Froude is entitled, at the

hands of everyone who writes or reads the story of Thomas, to that

measure of respectful thanks which belongs to a pioneer on any

subject. As for his spirit of partisanship, those who stand outside

the arena of all such partisanship might say that when the elder

Froude wrote, it was time that the other side should be heard, in its

turn. The name of Thomas à Becket had been so long the object of

vulgar and ignorant scorn; his character and objects had been treated

with such marked unfairness, even by historians of real merit, that

fair play might welcome a vindication, even if it went too far the

other way. Such a vindication was the object of the elder Froude: in

the course of it, he got rid of several prevalent errors, and made

ready the way for more impartial and critical examination at the hands

of others. The elder Froude did something to put one who, whatever

were his objects, whatever were his errors, was still a great and

heroic Englishman, in a historic place more worthy of him. At all

events, he deserves better than to have his work thus sneeringly

spoken of by his own younger brother: “And while Churchmen are raising

up Becket as a brazen serpent on which the world is to look to be

healed of its incredulities, the incredulous world may look with

advantage at him from its own point of view; and if unconvinced that

he was a Saint, may still find instruction in a study of his actions

and his fate.” This way of speaking may seem startling to those who

know the relation between the long-deceased champion of the one side,

and the living champion of the other…. The point of view of those

whose sole object is historic truth may well be different either from

the point of view of “Churchmen,” or from that of the “incredulous

world.” At all events, historic truth has nothing to do with the point

of view of either.’

From _The Nineteenth Century_ for April, 1878, iii., 621. ‘A Few

Words on Mr. Freeman,’ by J. A. Froude.

‘Mr. Freeman commences with a sentence which is grossly impertinent.

“Natural kindliness,” he says, “if no other feeling, might have kept

back the fiercest of partisans from ignoring the work of a

long-forgotten brother.” How can Mr. Freeman know my motive for not

speaking of my brother in connection with Becket, that he should

venture upon ground so sensitive? I mentioned no modern writers,

except, once, Dean Stanley. Natural kindliness would have been more

violated if I had specified my brother as a person with whose opinions

on the subject I was compelled to differ. I spoke of rehabilitation of

Becket as among the first efforts of the High Church school. My

brother’s _Remains_ were brought out by the leaders of that school

after his death, as a party manifesto; and, for my own part, I

consider the publication of the _Remains_ the greatest injury that was

ever done to my brother’s memory. But this is venial, compared with

what follows. He goes on: “And from dealing stabs in the dark at a

brother’s almost forgotten fame.” “Stabs in the dark?” Can Mr. Freeman

have measured the meaning of the words which he is using? If I had

written anonymous articles attacking my brother’s work, “stabs in the

dark” would have been a correct expression; and Mr. Freeman has

correctly measured the estimate likely to be formed of a person who

could have been guilty of doing anything so discreditable.

Irrespective of “natural kindliness,” I look back upon my brother as,

on the whole, the most remarkable man I have ever met in my life. I

have never seen any person,――not one! in whom, as I now think of him,

the excellences of intellect and character were combined in fuller

measure. Of my personal feeling towards him I cannot speak. I am

ashamed to have been compelled, by what I can describe only as an

inexcusable insult, to say what I have said.’

From _The Contemporary Review_, May, 1879, xxxv., 218 _et seq._

‘Last Words on Mr. Froude,’ by E. A. Freeman.

‘… With regard to Mr. Froude’s treatment of his brother’s writings, I

see that what I have said has pained Mr. Froude. I am so far sorry for

it; but I do not admit that I said anything beyond fair criticism. I

know that the friends of Mr. R. H. Froude were deeply pained by what

Mr. J. A. Froude wrote in his _Life and Times of Thomas Becket_. I

cannot say that I was pained, because I never knew Mr. R. H. Froude.

He was, to me, neither a friend nor a kinsman, nor a man in whom I had

any personal or party interest. But as a student of twelfth-century

history, I do owe him a certain measure of thanks as a pioneer in one

of my subjects of study. Therefore, if not pained, like his personal

friends, I was indignant: because I thought that he was unworthily

treated, and that the treatment was the more unworthy because it came

from the hands of his own brother. When I spoke of “stabs in the

dark,” I meant that the victim (I must use the word) was in the dark.

Very few of Mr. Froude’s readers would know that it was his own

brother of whom Mr. Froude was speaking, in a way which, brother or no

brother, I hold to be wholly undeserved.

‘But if any impartial judge thinks that I ought not to have mentioned

the fact of the kindred between the two writers, I regret having done

so.’

From ‘THE REMAINS OF THE REV. RICHARD HURRELL FROUDE, M.A., Fellow

of Oriel’ [edited by the Rev. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN and the Rev.

JOHN KEBLE]. London: Rivingtons, 1838. 2 vols.

‘[Richard Hurrell Froude] was the eldest son of the Venerable Robert

H[urrell] Froude, Archdeacon of Totnes, and was born, and died, in the

Parsonage House of Dartington, in the county of Devon. He was born in

1803, on the Feast of the Annunciation; and he died of consumption, on

the 28th of February, 1836, when he was nearly thirty-three, after an

illness of four years and a half. He was educated at Eton and Oxford,

having previously had the great advantage, while at Ottery Free

School, of living in the family of the Rev. George Coleridge. He went

to Eton in 1816, and came into residence as a Commoner of Oriel

College in the spring of 1821. In 1824 he took the degree of Bachelor

of Arts, after having obtained, on his examination, high, though not

the highest honours, both in the _Literæ Humaniores_ and the

_Disciplinæ Mathematicæ et Physicæ_. At Easter, 1826, he was elected

Fellow of his College, and, in 1827, was admitted to his M.A. degree.

The same year he accepted the office of Tutor, which he held till

1830. In December, 1828, he received Deacon’s Orders, and the year

after, Priest’s, from the last and present Bishops of Oxford.[379] The

disorder which terminated his life first showed itself in the summer

of 1831; the winter of 1832, and the following spring, he passed in

the south of Europe; and the two next winters, and the year between

them (1834), in the West Indies. The illness which immediately

preceded his death lasted but a few weeks.

‘He left behind him a considerable collection of writings, none

prepared for publication: of which the following two volumes form a

part. The Journal, with which the first commences, and which is

continued in the Appendix, reaches from the beginning of 1826, when he

was nearly twenty-three, to the spring of 1828. The Occasional

Thoughts are carried on to 1829. The Essay on Fiction was written when

he was twenty-three; the Sermons, from 1829 to 1833, when he was

between twenty-five and thirty.[380] His Letters begin in 1823, when

he was twenty, and are carried down to within a month of his death.

‘Those on whom the task has fallen of preparing these various writings

for publication, have found it matter of great anxiety to acquit

themselves so as to satisfy the claims of duty, which they felt

pressing on them in distinct, and, sometimes, apparently opposite

directions.

‘Some apology may seem requisite, in the first place, for the very

magnitude of the collection: as though authority were being claimed,

in a preposterous way, for the opinions of one undistinguished either

by station or by known literary eminence.

‘That apology, it is believed, will be found in the truth, and extreme

importance, of the views to the development of which the whole is

meant to be subservient; and also in the instruction derivable from a

full exhibition of the author’s character as a witness to those views.

This is the plea which it is desired to bring prominently forward;

nothing short of this, it is felt, would justify such ample and

unreserved disclosures: neither originality of thought, nor engaging

imagery, nor captivating touches of character and turns of expression.

‘Still more is this apology needed, on the more serious grounds of

friendship and duty. The publication of a private Journal and private

Letters is a serious thing. Too often it has been ventured on, in a

kind of reckless way, with an eye singly to the good expected to be

accomplished, no regard being had to the author himself, and his

wishes. It is in itself painful, nay, revolting, to expose to the

common gaze papers only intended for a single correspondent; and it

seems little less than sacrilege to bring out the solitary memoranda

of one endeavouring to feel, and to be, as much as possible alone with

his God: secretly training himself, as in His presence, in that

discipline which shuns the light of this world. To such a publication,

it were objection enough that it would seem to harmonise but too well

with the restless unsparing curiosity which now prevails.

‘No common motive, then, it may be well believed, was required to

overcome the strong reluctance which even strangers of ordinary

delicacy, much more kinsmen and intimate friends, must feel on the

first suggestion of such a proceeding. It may be frankly allowed that

gentle and good minds will naturally be prejudiced, in the outset,

against any collection of the sort. But the present is a peculiar

case, a case in which, if the survivors do not greatly deceive

themselves, they are best consulting the wishes of the departed by

publication, hazardous as that step commonly is. Let the reader,

before he condemns, imagine to himself a case like the following.

‘Let him suppose a person in the prime of manhood (with what talents

and acquirements is not now the question) devoting himself, ardently

yet soberly, to the promotion of one great cause; writing, speaking,

thinking on it for years, as exclusively as the needs and infirmities

of human life would allow; but dying before he could bring to

perfection any of the plans which had suggested themselves to him for

its advancement. Let it be certainly known to his friends that he was

firmly resolved never to shrink from anything, not morally wrong,

which he had good grounds to believe would really forward that cause:

and that it was real pain and disquiet to him if he saw his friends in

any way postponing it to his supposed feelings or interests. Suppose,

further, that having been for weeks and months in the full

consciousness of what was soon likely to befall him, he departs,

leaving such papers as make up the present collection in the hands of

those next to him in blood, without any express direction as to the

disposal of them; and that they, taking counsel with the friends on

whom he was known chiefly to rely, unanimously and decidedly judged

publication most desirable for that end which was the guide of his

life, and which they too esteemed paramount to all others; imagine the

papers appearing to them so valuable, that they feel as if they had no

right to withhold such aid from the cause to which he was pledged:

would it, or would it not, be their duty, as faithful trustees, in

such case to overcome their own scruples? would they, or would they

not, be justified in believing that they had, virtually, his own

sanction for publishing such parts even of his personal and devotional

memoranda, much more, of his letters to his friends, as they

deliberately judged likely to aid in the general good effect?

‘This case of a person sacrificing himself altogether to one great

object, is not of everyday occurrence: it is not like the too frequent

instances of papers being ransacked and brought to light, because the

writer was a little more distinguished, or accounted a little wiser,

or better, than his neighbours: it cannot be fairly drawn into a

precedent, except in circumstances equally uncommon.

‘On the whole, supposing what in this Preface must be supposed, the

nobleness, and rectitude, and pressing nature of the end which [Mr.

Froude] had in view, the principle of posthumous publication surely

must, in this instance, be conceded? The only question remaining will

be whether the selection has been judicious. On this, also, it may be

well to anticipate certain objections not unlikely to occur to sundry

classes of readers. If there be any who are startled at the strong

expressions of self-condemnation occurring so frequently, both in the

Journal and in the more serious parts of the Correspondence, he will

please to consider that the better anyone knows, the more severely

will he judge himself; and since this writer sometimes thought it his

duty to be very plain-spoken in his censure of others, in fairness to

him it seemed right to show that he did not fail to look at home; that

he tried to be more rigid to himself than to anyone else.

* * * * *

‘Censure may be expected … [on] what will be called the intolerance of

certain passages: the keen sense which the author expresses of the

guilt men incur by setting themselves against the Church. In fact,

both this and the alleged tendency to Romanism,[381] are objections,

not to the present publication, but to the view which it is designed

to support, and do not therefore quite properly come within the scope

of this Preface. To defend the severe expressions alluded to would be

in a great measure to defend the old Catholic writers for the tone in

which they have spoken of unbelievers and corrupters of the Faith. The

same portions of Holy Scripture would be appealed to in both cases;

those, namely, which teach or exemplify the duty of austere reserve

towards wilful heretics, and earnest zeal against heresiarchs. Perhaps

it may be found that [Mr. Froude’s] demeanour and language on such

subjects is a tolerably striking and consistent illustration of that

sentiment of the Psalmist: “Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate

Thee?” He hated them in their collective character, as God’s enemies,

as the antichristian party; but to all who came in his way

individually, he was, as many of his acquaintance can testify, full of

unaffected, open-hearted kindness; entering into their feelings, and

making allowance for their difficulties, not the less scrupulously

because he sometimes found himself compelled to separate from them, or

declare himself against them.

‘To judge adequately of this point, we must, further, take into

account a certain strong jealousy which he entertained of his own

honesty of mind. He was naturally, or on principle, a downright

speaker, avoiding those words of course and of compliment, which

often, it may be feared, serve to keep up a false peace at the expense

of true Christian charity. His words, therefore (playfulness and

occasional irony apart), may in general be taken more literally than

those of most men. It is easy to see that this would make his

criticisms, whether literary or moral, sound more pointed and

unsparing than those in which a writer of less frankness would indulge

himself. And this introduces another point, not unlikely to be

animadverted on as blameable, in the present selection. Many,

recoiling from his sentences, so direct, fearless, and pungent,

concerning all sorts of men and things, will be fain to account them

speeches uttered at random, more for present point and effect, than to

declare the speaker’s real opinion; and, so judging, will of course

disapprove of the collecting and publishing such sayings, especially

on high and solemn subjects, as at best incautious, and perhaps

irreverent. But they who judge thus must be met by a denial of the

fact. The expressions in question were not uttered at random: he was

not in the habit of speaking at random on such matters. This is

remarkably evinced by the fact that to various friends, at various

times, conversing or writing on the same subjects, he was constantly

employing the same illustrations and arguments, very often the same

words: as they found by comparison afterwards, and still go on to

find. Now maxims and reasonings of which this may be truly affirmed,

whatever else may be alleged against them, cannot fairly be thrown by

as mere chance sayings. Right or wrong, they were deliberate opinions,

and cannot be left out of consideration, in a complete estimate of a

writer’s character and principles. The off-hand unpremeditated way in

which they seemed to dart out of him, like sparks from a luminous

body, proved only a mind entirely possessed with the subject; glowing,

as it were, through and through.

‘Still, some will say, more selection might have been used, and many

statements at least omitted, which, however well considered by

himself, coming now, suddenly, as they do, on the reader, appear

unnecessarily startling and paradoxical. But, really, there was little

option of that kind, if justice were to be done either to him or to

the reader. His opinions had a wonderful degree of consistency and

mutual bearing; they depended on each other as one whole: who was to

take the responsibility of separating them? Who durst attempt it,

considering especially his hatred of concealment and artifice? Again:

it was due to the reader to show him fairly how far the opinions

recommended would carry him. There is no wish to disguise their

tendencies, nor to withdraw them from such examination as will prove

them erroneous, if they are so. Any homage which it is desired to

render to his memory would indeed be sadly tarnished, were he to be

spoken or written of in any spirit but that of an unshrinking openness

like his own. Such also is the tone of the Catholic Fathers, and (if

it may be urged without irreverence), of the Sacred Writers

themselves. Nothing, as far as we can find, is kept back by them,

merely because it would prove startling: openness, not disguise, is

their manner. This should not be forgotten in a compilation professing

simply to recommend their principles. Nothing, therefore, is here kept

back, but what it was judged would be fairly and naturally

misunderstood: the insertion of which, therefore, would have been,

virtually, so much untruth.

‘Lastly, it may perhaps be thought of the Correspondence in

particular, that it is eked out with unimportant details, according to

the usual mistake of partial friends. The compilers, however, can most

truly affirm that they have had the risk of such an error continually

before their eyes, and have not, to the best of their judgement,

inserted anything, which did not tell, indirectly perhaps but really,

towards filling up that outline of his mind and character, which

seemed requisite to complete the idea of him as a witness to Catholic

views. It can hardly be necessary for them to add, what the name of

Editor implies, that while they, of course, concur in his sentiments

as a whole, they are not to be understood as rendering themselves

responsible for every shade of opinion or expression.

‘It remains only to commend these fragments, if it may be done without

presumption, to the same good Providence which seemed to bless the

example and instructions of the writer while yet with us, to the

benefit of many who knew him: that “being dead,” he may “yet speak,”

as he constantly desired to do, a word in season for the Church of

God: may still have the privilege of awakening some of her members to

truer and more awful thoughts than they now have, of their own high

endowments and deep responsibility.’

‘REMAINS OF THE REV. RICHARD HURRELL FROUDE, M.A., FELLOW OF ORIEL’

[EDITED BY THE REV. J. H. NEWMAN and the Rev. JOHN KEBLE].

London: Rivingtons, 1839. Part II.

‘It was of course impossible but that the quantity and variety of

censure, which was elicited by the publication of the former part of

these _Remains_, should be felt by the Editors as a call for much calm

and patient consideration, before proceeding, in further fulfilment of

their trust, to offer these additional volumes to the world. One thing

has at least become evident, which was at first very uncertain: that

it was a publication of some importance for good or for evil. The

notice which it has attracted, favourable or otherwise, is at least a

token that the Editors were not mistaken, as partial friends are so

apt to be, in their estimate of the force and originality of [Mr.

Froude’s] character, or of the keen, courageous, searching precision,

with which he had, though it were but incidentally, put forth his

ecclesiastical and theological opinions, and applied them to things as

they are.

‘But in such measure as all doubt on the importance of the publication

is removed, the responsibility of it is doubtless enhanced; and it

seems right to preface it with something like a fair and full

statement of the reasons why the Editors have judged it, on the whole,

their duty to persist in this step: not wilfully slighting any man’s

scruples or remonstrances, but still thinking that the cause of the

Church, which is paramount to everything else, leaves them not at

liberty either to withdraw any important portion of what has been

already made public, or to suppress what remains. And what will be

alleged for perseverance now, will be found, perhaps in a good

measure, to justify the original publication; taken, as it must be, in

aid and in enforcement of the considerations offered in the Preface to

the first volume.

‘And first, if there be any persons, as undoubtedly there are not a

few, who think, more or less explicitly, that the mere circumstance of

a book’s raising an outcry constitutes a strong objection to it, they

are requested to put themselves for a single moment so far in the

position of the Editors, as to imagine the case of [Mr. Froude’s]

views being mainly and substantially true; and then to consider how

such outcry could have been avoided. For if it be found that

uneasiness, discontent, clamour, nay, if you will, permanent

unpopularity, are the necessary results of a certain statement,

supposing it to be true, then the actual prevalence of such feelings,

however undesirable in itself, is no objection to the truth of the

statement, but rather an argument in its favour, as far as it goes.

‘Suppose, for example, that the common opinions of the Protestant

world concerning the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist were indeed

verging as near to a profane rationalism, as these _Remains_ in

several passages assume: would not the charge of superstition,

mysticism, and Popery be echoed all around, against both Author and

Editors, much in the same way as it has been heard for the last few

months? Suppose it again true, that there is some secret but real and

fatal connection between the aforesaid faithless rationalism, and

those views regarding the great doctrines of Christianity and their

application to individual Christians, which have of late arrogated to

themselves exclusively the name of vital religion: is it not certain

that the disregard (for it is rather that than actual opposition)

which those views constantly meet with, at the hand of this Author,

would unite against him the champions of those apparently opposite

schemes, just in the manner in which we see them actually united? If

it should so be that there is a large portion of Churchmen whom the

circumstances of these or of former times have led to form an

exaggerated opinion of the necessity and sacredness of the alliance of

Church and State; to sacrifice more or less of the very being of the

Church, in order, as they think, to secure its well-being: could it

fail to happen that such as these would be alarmed and disgusted at

the fearless uncompromising tone in which the inviolability of the

Church is here asserted, and the past and present tyranny of the

State, in every part of Christendom, denounced? Lastly, should there

be any considerable number of decent religionists in the land, who

would themselves make no scruple of professing that hatred of

“asceticism” is a main ingredient in their notion of Christianity, it

were little trouble to point out the pages, in this work, at which

they are likeliest to be startled and disgusted: and yet it might be

true, all the while, that the writer’s views are Scriptural and

Catholic, and those which they have glided into, discountenanced by

the Bible and the Church.

‘So far, then, as the unfavourable criticism, with which these

_Remains_ have been visited, may be set to the account of any or all

of the four classes now mentioned, it was of course to be expected,

nor is any particular deference due to it; and the bitterer and louder

it is, and the longer it lasts, the more reason may it, perhaps, give,

to a considerate person, for suspecting that the words which provoked

it were not altogether unseasonable. But there seems to be a fear

entertained, among persons worthy of all respect, of no less an evil

than encouragement given to irreverence and lightness on sacred

subjects, partly by certain opinions of [Mr. Froude], which would lead

Englishmen (it is feared) to disparagement of their Church as it is;

partly by something, in his tone and manner of writing, which many

find startling, and can hardly reconcile to themselves. To these

persons, and these feelings, a more particular explanation seems due:

and such will, therefore, be now attempted, though in no sanguine

expectation of satisfying them to any extent; yet not altogether

without hope that in some instances they may be led to suspect their

own misgivings, as arising from impulse and habit, rather than from

sound and true views of sacred things.

‘The best way, perhaps, will be to commence by calmly recalling a few

plain facts. It is no long time ago, and yet the career of events has

been so rapid, that it seems far removed from us: but let us endeavour

to realise for a moment the posture of mind in which sincere Churchmen

found themselves, in 1832 and 1833, when the Constitution of the

country had been changed by threats of violence, and the cry of Church

Reform was being raised with a view to a similar process, and no

person knew how much strength it might gather, or by what unscrupulous

means it might be enforced. The Liturgy, in particular, seemed to be

an object of attack; and the authority of Bishops was so slighted,

both in and out of Parliament, as to make men apprehend that in no

long time the whole functions of the Church would be usurped by the

State. At that crisis, the writer of these _Remains_ felt in common

with not a few others, but with a vividness and keenness of perception

almost peculiarly his own, that a call was given, and a time come, for

asserting in their simplicity the principles of the only Primitive and

True Church: those essential rights and duties which seemed in danger

of being surrendered, in mere ignorance, to preserve certain external

trappings. He surrendered himself to this feeling, without reserve: he

spoke, and wrote, and acted from it continually; he devoted to it what

remained of life and health; and it seems to have been this, more than

anything else (excepting, perhaps, an unaffected mistrust concerning

the sincerity and depth of his own repentance), which caused the sort

of anxiety to recover, many times traceable in his correspondence. To

use the words which Walton has reported of Hooker, “he could have

wished to live longer, to do the Church more service.”

‘This being so, it cannot but be interesting and useful, now that

Providence has brought us a stage or two further on in the warfare

which he was among the foremost to commence, to have the means of

consulting such a record as the present volumes supply, of the wishes,

counsels, and anticipations of a mind so rare as his, concerning the

conduct and probable course of the struggle. Those who have been

sharers or approving witnesses of the several gatherings (so to call

them) which the events of the last six years have occasioned, tending

more or less to the revival of old Church principles, will here find

many a sentiment which animated them half-unconsciously at the time,

not only expressed in a way to sink into men’s hearts, but brought out

in its full bearings and pursued to its legitimate consequences: it

was wild inarticulate music before, but now we have the words and the

meaning. And conversely, events have been continually happening, which

have tended in a remarkable manner to illustrate [Mr. Froude’s]

remarks and confirm his prognostications: so that, already, many

things which sounded paradoxical and over-bold when he first uttered

them, may be ventured on with hope of a reasonable degree of

acceptance. His sagacity, it begins to be found, did but anticipate

the lessons of our experience. If he loved to dwell on the noble act

of Convocation in censuring Hoadly, and to forebode the rising of the

sun which set so brightly, the great majority of the University of

Oxford has since judged a like warning, however painful on personal

grounds, yet most necessary, in regard of certain opinions not very

unlike Hoadly’s. If he speaks what some would call bitterly concerning

any party in the State, on account of an hostility to the Church,

whether conscious or instinctive, which he thought he discerned in

them, it seems now to be generally acknowledged that the subsequent

proceedings of that party have been such as to justify a Churchman’s

aversion. If he had what were then esteemed exaggerated feelings about

Parliamentary suppression of Bishoprics, we have since seen the sense

of the Church so strongly expressed on that subject, as to force from

the Legislature the restoration of a See which had been actually

extinguished, as far as any act of theirs could extinguish it. If he

deprecated the current notions about the necessity of clerical

endowments, good connections, and the like, as the most effectual bar

to all projects for true Church Extension; is not the Church in our

Colonies, even now, applying for Bishops without endowment? and are

not new Churches being everywhere consecrated, at home, with only bare

nominal endowment? If he had learned of other times to regard each

Bishopric as a divinely instituted monarchy, and therefore to condemn

all intrusion on episcopal authority, by Parliaments or otherwise, as

not only disorderly, but profane, are not the clergy of England even

now, in the case of the Church Discipline Bill, asserting that same

principle against the authority which, personally, they would most

revere? If he had brought himself habitually to contemplate the

separation of Church and State as not necessarily a fatal alternative,

there have been recent declarations, lay and ecclesiastical, to the

same effect, in quarters which cannot be suspected. The Church has

been congratulated on having “recovered herself” so far as “to feel

her own strength and look to her own resources”; on having “become

sensible that however desirous to act in unison with the State, she

can boast of an independent origin, and can, as she has done before,

exist in a state of independence.”[382] And (to go no further in

enumeration at present), if the writer of these _Remains_ thought very

seriously of the importance of those arrangements in Divine Service

which tend most to remind the worshipper that God’s house is a house

of prayer and spiritual sacrifice, not of mere instruction, we have

but to look around us on the new Churches, and new internal

fittings-up of Churches, which are in progress in most parts of the

country, to be convinced that on this point, also, men sympathise with

him to a much greater extent than they did.

‘Other instances might be mentioned, in which his judgement, both of

persons and things, has been remarkably verified, even in so short a

time; but these may be sufficient to explain in some measure why his

Editors should have been more than usually scrupulous in suppressing

any of his deliberate opinions or forebodings, however lightly he

might have chosen to express them. Long experience had taught them how

much meaning and truth lay hid even in his most casual observations on

such subjects; and how probable it was that those who were at first

startled by them, would, on mature consideration, find them reasonable

and right. And whereas it has been truly observed, both in friendly

and unfriendly quarters, that the development of old principles, which

now seems to be advancing, is not such as to be accounted for by the

efforts of any particular individuals (it is something in the air,

something going on in all places at once, and in spite of all

precautions); it seemed a circumstance worth remarking, that it should

have been thus anticipated and rehearsed in a single mind: a mind of

itself inclined to rationalism, but checked first in that process, and

finally won from it, by resolute and implicit submission to the

lessons and rules of the Church in England, and rewarded (if we may

humbly judge) for such submission, by a more than ordinary insight

into the true claims of the Universal Church, and the means of

improving to the utmost our high privilege of being yet in her

Communion.

‘One who knew and appreciated him well (whatever subordinate

differences might exist between them), and whose honoured name it is

now more than ever a satisfaction to join with his,――the late lamented

Mr. Rose,――used to say of him, that he was “not afraid of inferences”:

meaning, as it would seem, that he was gifted with a remarkable

fearlessness in regard of conclusions, when once his premisses were

thoroughly made good. To see his way rapidly and acutely, was common

to [Mr. Froude] with many: but to venture along it with uncompromising

faith, was, in a degree, peculiar to himself. Perhaps it was this

quality, humanly speaking, which kept him always somewhat in advance

of his time, and of those with whom he most cordially acted. However,

since it was in him consistent, bearing fruit in action as well as in

speculation, and causing him to deny himself as unsparingly as he

contradicted popular opinions, it does seem to give all views of his a

peculiar claim to consideration, on the part of those who agree with

him in first principles. There will always be a fair presumption,

previous to inquiry, that his conclusions are the legitimate result of

propositions which we admit in common with him, but which we have not

as yet the courage to follow up as he did: not to dwell on the moral

nobleness of such fearless and devout adherence to the Truth. It is

the very description of Faith “to obey and go out, not knowing whither

it goes”; and a character of which that is the principal mark, is

surely not ill-fitted to exemplify what the whole Church may soon be

called on to practise. So far, in his papers and life we seem to have,

as it were, embodied a type of the kind of resistance due to the

spirit of this age on the part of the Catholic Church, and of all her

dutiful children. Could it be right, merely through dread of censure

incurred, or disturbance given, to suppress such a document,

providentially coming into our hands?

‘Now when the great principle of Catholicism, _Quod semper, quod

ubique, quod ab omnibus_, had once rooted itself in the mind of a

person thus determined not to flinch from results; when he had once

come to be convinced that the only safe way for the Church is to go

back to the times of universal consent, so far as that is possible,

inasmuch as such universal consent is no doubtful indication of His

Will, in Whom we are all one Body,――would he not naturally go on and

say to himself: “If I lay down this rule on one question, I shall not

be dealing fairly with myself, honestly with my opponents, reverently

with Him to Whom I am virtually appealing, except I carry the same

mode of reasoning into all other questions also, wherein it is

applicable? Accepting the Church’s interpretation of Scripture as to

the necessity of real outward Baptism, I must accept it, also, as to

the connection of the Gift of Regeneration exclusively with Baptism;

accepting her view of the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, I must not

decline her doctrine of the accompanying Sacrifice, gathered from the

same Liturgies and the same interpretation of Holy Scripture;

believing her concerning the genuineness of the Bible, I must believe

her also concerning a transmitted Priesthood; taking it on trust from

her Creeds that such and such is the only true account of the

doctrines of the Bible, I may not doubt her consistent and perpetual

witness that such and such are the right rules for interpreting the

same holy Book; I believe, because she assures me, that Bishops only

have the right to ordain; must I not believe her equally positive

assurance that Excommunication is also theirs by exclusive and

indefeasible right, and that it is no true Eucharist which is not

consecrated by hands which they have authorised?” These are instances

of the manner in which the Author of these papers reasoned; and

certainly, at first sight, there seems to be much force in his mode of

reasoning; the _onus probandi_ seems cast on those who demur to it. It

seems, if it were not for its practical consequences, more

satisfactory than the summary ways of dealing with such matters, which

we find not seldom adopted; fairer and more ingenuous than the saying:

“Times are altered; it might be all right then, but it does not follow

that it is so now”; more reverential than the other saying: “The

Fathers were good sort of men, but no number of fallible beings can

make an infallible Church”; more in harmony with Scripture and with

God’s general Providence, than to dismiss such portions of the ancient

system as we think proper, with the aphorism: “It may be, and has been

abused, and therefore is best let alone.” And having all these

advantages, it seemed to him part of Faith to suppose that, in the

end, it would prove also the best and most effective way of

maintaining the Truth of God against superstition and idolatry, as

well as against scepticism and profane exaltation of reason.

‘But further: such a mind as is here supposed, thoroughly

uncompromising in its Catholicity, would feel deeply that as ancient

consent binds the person admitting it alike to all doctrines,

interpretations, and usages, for which it can be truly alleged; so

there is something less tangible and definite, though not less real

than any of these, which no less demands his dutiful veneration, and

to which he is bound to conform himself in practice: that is to say,

the cast of thought and tone of character of the Primitive Church, its

way of judging, behaving, expressing itself, on practical matters,

great and small, as they occur. For what, in fact, is this character,

but what an Apostle once called it: “the mind of Jesus Christ”

Himself, by the secret inspiration of His Spirit communicated to His

whole mystical Body, informing, guiding, moving it, as He will? A

sacred and awful truth: of which whoever is seriously aware will

surely be very backward to question or discuss the propriety of any

sentiment allowed to be general in Christian antiquity, how remote

soever from present views and usages; much more, to treat it with

anything like contempt or bitterness.

‘Should it appear to him, for example, that the Ancient Church took in

their literal and obvious meaning those expressions of Our Saviour and

of St. Paul, which recommend celibacy as the more excellent way, so as

to give honour to those who voluntarily so abode, that they might wait

on the Lord; and in particular, to assume that the clergy should

rather, of the two, be unmarried than married:――he will not permit the

prejudices of a later time to hinder him from honouring those whom his

Lord so delighted to honour; he will consider that the same cast of

thought which leads men to scorn religious celibacy, will certainly

prevent marriage also, which they profess to honour, from being

strictly religious. Should he find that the records of the Fathers

bear witness in every page to their literal observance of the duty of

fasting, and the high importance which they attached to it, it is not

the titles of Jewish, Pharisaical, self-righteous, nor yet that of

ascetic (more widely dreaded than all!) which will deter him from

obeying his conscience in that particular. Should he perceive that the

counsels and demeanour of the holy men of old towards heretics and

other sinners, correspond much more truly with the Apostolic rule,

“Put away from among yourselves that wicked person,” than with the

liberal and unscrupulous intercourse which respectable persons now

practise, for peace, and quietness, and good-nature’s sake; it is a

conviction which cannot but widely influence both his judgment of

other times, and his conduct towards his contemporaries. It will lead

to many a sentence that will sound harsh, and many a step that will be

counted austere; it will cause him often to shock those by whom he

would greatly wish to be approved; and yet, thus he must judge and

act, if he will be true to his own principle, and conform himself

throughout to that Will of God which the consent of those purer ages

indicates.

‘Another very distinguishable circumstance in the tone and manner of

the early Church is its reverential reserve with regard to holy

things: of all its characteristics apparently the most unaccountable

to the spirit of the present age. This also we may expect to discover

in a true, courageous, consistent follower of the ancients: not so

much by any conscious endeavour of his, as because it will come to him

instinctively, as some birds are said to contrive ways for enticing

observers away from their nests. And because it is reserve, we may

expect now and then to be startled at the very form of it. The nature

of the thing excludes conventional expressions, and drives people,

often, on such as are rather paradoxical; deep reverence will

occasionally veil itself, as it were, for a moment, even under the

mask of its opposite, as earnest affection is sometimes known to do.

Any expedient, almost, will be adopted by a person who enters with all

his heart into this portion of the ancient character, rather than he

will contradict that character altogether by a bare, unscrupulous,

flaunting display of sacred things or good thoughts.

‘Once more: he who makes up his mind really to take Antiquity for his

guide, will feel that he must be continually realising the presence of

a wonder-working God; his mind must be awake to the possibility of

special providences, miraculous interferences, supernatural warnings,

and tokens of the divine Purpose, and also to indications of other

unseen agency, both good and bad, relating to himself and others:

subjects of this sort, if a man be consistent, must fill up a larger

portion of his thoughts and affections, and influence his conduct far

more materially, than the customs and opinions of this age would

readily permit.

‘Other particulars might be mentioned; but these which have been

enumerated are surely sufficient to teach persons a little caution how

they apply the readily occurring words, “overstrained, fanatical,

ascetic, bigoted,” to notions and practices such as have been now

alluded to. Previous to examination, they cannot be sure that any such

notion or practice is not a development of the character which Our

Lord from the beginning willed should be impressed on His Church. If

we have not the boldness to take it on ourselves, and follow the Lamb

whithersoever He goeth, at least let us not throw stumbling-blocks in

the way of those who are more courageously disposed! When a thing is

fairly proved superstitious, uncharitable, ascetic in a bad sense,

unwarranted by Scripture and Antiquity, then let it be blamed and

rejected, not before; lest we incur such a rebuke as he did, who, with

more zeal than knowledge, would have prevented Our Lord Himself, as

these would the least of His brethren and members, from taking up and

bearing the Cross. It was in love to Christ that he remonstrated; yet

what was Christ’s reproof? “Get thee behind Me, Satan; thou art an

offence unto Me; for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but

the things that be of men….”

* * * * *

‘We should not, perhaps, be duly thankful for so much of the

Apostolical Ritual, preserved to us by a gracious Providence, if we

were not sometimes called on to take notice how narrowly we have

escaped losing the whole: neither, again, can our escape be rightly

appreciated, without taking into the account the tendency of the

school to which our Reformers had joined themselves, and the little

dependence that could be placed on their love of Antiquity, as a

safeguard against that evil tendency. All this, of course, implies

that whatever praise and admiration may be due to individuals, both

some of the principles of the movement which is called the

Reformation, in the several countries of Europe, and in parts also,

the tone of character which it encouraged, were materially opposed to

those of the Early Church. At the risk of prolonging these remarks,

already much longer than is desirable in a Preface, a few heads shall

be mentioned, to which [Mr. Froude] would probably have referred, as

mainly accounting for his feelings on this matter.

‘First of all, he would have complained of their tone with regard to

the Apostolical Succession; not this or that writer only, but the

general body who favoured that cause, treating it as no better than a

politic invention to secure the influence of Church governors, in the

absence of true doctrine and visible spiritual gifts. Nor would he

probably have thought this charge answered by any number of quotations

from their writings, apparently tending the contrary way: because,

where opposite sets of quotations may be adduced from the same writer,

and from compositions of the same date, either his opinions are so far

neutralised, or we must ascertain by his conduct, his connections, the

cast of his sentiments generally, and such other evidence as we can

get, in which of the two statements he was overruled, and in which

left to the free expression of his own mind. By the same mode of

inquiry, he would come to judge unfavourably of their tenets about

Sacramental Grace, especially in the Holy Eucharist; about the Power

of the Keys, and the sacredness of the ancient Discipline; and about

State interference in matters spiritual; although in this latter

point, especially, their conduct spoke out for them too plainly to

admit of any construction but one. Anyone who pleases, may verify or

contradict the impressions of [Mr. Froude] on these and similar

points, by simply examining the remains of the principal Reformers,

with such cautions as are above indicated. Until he has done so, and

satisfied himself that those impressions were not merely erroneous,

but such as no student of tolerable fairness could adopt, it may be

questioned whether he has much right broadly and positively to condemn

[Mr. Froude], for wishing “to have nothing to do with such a set.”

‘And this more especially, if he take into consideration, likewise,

certain less palpable but not less substantial differences in the way

of thinking and moral sentiment, which separate the Reformers from the

Fathers, more widely, perhaps, than any definite statements of

doctrine. Compare the sayings and manner of the two schools on the

subjects of fasting, celibacy, religious vows, voluntary retirement

and contemplation, the memory of the Saints, rites and ceremonies

recommended by Antiquity, and involving any sort of self-denial, and

especially on the great point of giving men divine knowledge, and

introducing holy associations, not indiscriminately, but as men are

able to bear it: there can be little doubt that, generally speaking,

the tone of the fourth century is so unlike that of the sixteenth, on

each and all of these topics, that it is absolutely impossible for the

same mind to sympathise with both. You must choose between the two

lines: they are not only diverging, but contrary.

* * * * *

‘But some say: “Whether right or wrong in his views, [Mr. Froude]

ought not to have spoken so rudely of these subjects”: and this brings

us to the second head of offence, his way of expressing his sentiments

on grave matters, generally. Such censurers appear to forget that his

feelings are conveyed to us in familiar Letters, and of course, as his

other _Remains_ prove, in a different tone and manner from that which

he would have adopted had he been preparing to give the expression of

them to the world: not, however, more unsuited to the occasion than

the epistolary tone and manner of very many imaginative persons, on

points concerning which, nevertheless, they feel the deepest and most

serious interest. This however, it may be thought, is only shifting

the blame from him on his Editors. But it will be found that his

phrases, however sportive, or even flippant, in their sound, had each

their own distinct meaning, embodied his views, and the reasons of

them, often in a wonderfully brief space, and could not be omitted

without much loss of instruction, and frequent risk of missing their

point and meaning. Like proverbial modes of speech, they were, of

course, not always to be taken literally, though the principle they

contained might be true in its fullest extent. Thus he once told a

friend that he was “with the Romanists in religion, and against them

in politics.” Again he says, in a letter to a friend: “When I come

home, I mean to read and write all sorts of things; for now that one

is a Radical, there is no use in being nice!” In another: “We will

have a _vocabularium apostolicum_, and I will start it with four

words: ‘pampered aristocrats,’ ‘resident gentlemen,’ ‘smug parsons,’

‘_pauperes Christi_.’ I shall use the first on all occasions; it seems

to me just to hit the thing. How is it we are so much in advance of

our generation?”[383]

‘Next, the reader is requested to consider whether a good deal of what

has startled him in that way may not be accounted for by the nature of

εἰρωνεία: not mere ludicrous irony, according to the popular English

sense of that word, but a kind of Socratic reserve, an instinctive

dissembling of his own high feelings and notions, partly through fear

of deceiving himself and others, partly (though it may sound

paradoxical) out of very reverence, giving up at once all notion of

doing justice to sacred subjects, and shrinking from nothing so much

as the disparagement of them by any kind of affectation. This whole

topic admits of forcible illustration from different persons’ ways of

reading sacred compositions. There is an apparently unconcerned mode

of enunciation, which in fact arises from people’s realising, or at

least trying to realise, their own utter incompetency to speak such

words aright. Again, of all the serious persons in the world, it is

probable that no two could be found who would thoroughly enter into

each other’s tones and expression. We must have a little faith in our

neighbour’s earnestness, in order not to think his reading affected. A

little consideration will perhaps show that most of what some might be

tempted to call harsh, or coarse, or irreverent in this work, may be

accounted for in the manner here indicated: _e.g._, [Mr. Froude’s]

playful custom of speaking of his own and his friends’ proceedings in

the language which an enemy would adopt: calling himself and his

friends “ecclesiastical agitators,” their plans for doing good “a

conspiracy,” and the effect of them “poisoning people’s minds”: and

his use of cant schoolboy words, which no doubt has disgusted many,

may be referred to the same head.

‘Often, indeed, he seemed instinctively to put his own or his friends’

views and characters in the most objectionable light in which they

could be represented, as if to show that he was fully aware of the

popular view which would be taken of what he approved, or the

arguments against it which would seem plausible to the many; and that

he was not in the least moved by it. Thus he somewhere utters a wish

that “the ‘march of mind’ in France might yet prove a bloody one.”

Elsewhere he regrets “that anything should be done to avert what seems

our only chance:[384] a spoliation on a large scale!” Thus he

habitually forced his mind to face the worst consequences or the most

unfavourable aspect of his own wish or opinion, the most obnoxious

associations with which it could be connected: and therefore used

terms expressive of those consequences or associations. It was one

form of his horror of self-deceit. Put these things together: add also

the fertility of his mind, his humour, his pointed mode of expression,

his consciousness of fearless integrity, his hatred of half-truths and

cowardly veils, his confidence in his friends’ understanding him and

allowing for him: and it will be found that they go far towards

explaining the manner, just as the principle of adhering to Antiquity

accounts for the matter, of what he says. But if after due allowance

made for all these things, there should still remain more than we can

easily reconcile ourselves to, in the way either of severity, or of

seeming rudeness of speech; coldness where we expected fervour, and

criticism where we looked for sympathy; we shall do well to remember,

that the fault, if there be a fault, is not necessarily all on [Mr.

Froude’s] side: it may be right to suspend our judgment, till we have

ascertained whether these things be not in fact due to the character

of Christian Antiquity, which he might be unconsciously realising in

greater perfection than his age could yet bear.

‘Does there yet remain something that troubles us, something that we

cannot at all explain? We must not forget (it is a deep and high

allusion, but not, it is humbly trusted, altogether irrelevant to this

case), that, as all other manifestations of Our Lord, so those which

He has vouchsafed to make of Himself in His Saints, have ever been

more or less mysterious and unaccountable. Which of the great

Scripture characters is there, whose conduct, even that part of it

which the Holy Spirit seems to mention approvingly, is not, in some

respect or another, a riddle and a paradox to us, with our modern

views? Are there not things recorded of the Ancient Church which we

know not how to enter into, yet must needs venerate because she gave

them her sanction? Nay, and is it not very conceivable that every one

of those approved in God’s sight would be in like manner, were his

history fully disclosed, “a monster” (as the Psalmist phrases it) to

every other? that Faith is necessary, in a degree, for our holding by

Christ in any one of His members, as it is the great requisite whereby

we keep hold of Him our Head? These remarks are, of course,

hypothetical: nothing is asserted of peculiar sanctity in any one:

only it seemed advisable to remind men, that where there are

appearances in one part of a character of holiness and self-denial in

a remarkable degree, there we may expect, by a kind of law of God’s

Providence, to find, in other matters, something very much beside our

expectations, and unlike our own moral taste.

‘At the same time, it should not be forgotten that there are persons

in the world to whom this very disposition to irony and playfulness,

and what we may perhaps call a certain youthfulness of expression,

serves to recommend [Mr. Froude’s] views, and attract them to him.

That seeming lightness, which was natural to him, is natural also to

some others, perhaps not a few: and it is useful that they should have

the means of knowing that it is not inconsistent with high and earnest

thoughts of things invisible, and strict rules of Christian obedience.

* * * * *

‘After all, it is not to anything that we see, or that the world is

likely to see, that we look for the effect of these _Remains_. If

there be any who brood over them in secret, who have found them

implant a sort of sting in their bosoms, who feel that it would have

been a privilege to know their author, and watch his ways of

discipline and obedience; and if they had known him, to remember him

afterwards, and say silently, _Heu, quanto minus est cum reliquis

versari, quam tui meminisse!_ if there be any, who have an eye for all

that is exquisite and beautiful in Nature and art, yet gladly turn

away from all to admire any plain downright specimen of self-denial

and obedience in the little ones of Jesus Christ; if any person dwell

with regretful love on parents, kindred, home, friends, humbling

himself all along with remembrance of past unworthiness, and

disparagement of them, yet more willing, as he values them more, to

part with them for the Church’s sake:――that is the sort of reader to

whose judgement, if to any human, the Editors of these _Remains_ would

appeal, from the prejudices, religious and political, of the day. But

who they are that will so read, and how much they will be profited,

may not be known in this world.’

From ‘REMINISCENCES CHIEFLY OF ORIEL COLLEGE AND THE OXFORD

MOVEMENT,’ by the Rev. T. MOZLEY, M.A. 2 vols. Longmans, Green &

Co., 1882.[385]

[By the kind permission of Mrs. T. Mozley, and of Messrs. Longmans &

Co.]

‘If there ever could be any question as to the master spirit of this

Movement, which now would be a very speculative question indeed, it

lies between John Henry Newman and Richard Hurrell Froude. Froude was

a man, such as there are now and then, of whom it is impossible for

those that have known him to speak without exceeding the bounds of

common admiration and affection. He was elder brother of William, the

distinguished engineer, who died lately, after rendering, and while

still rendering, most important services to the Admiralty, and of

Anthony, the well-known historian, the sons of Archdeacon Froude, a

scholar and no mean artist. Richard came to Oriel from Eton, a school

which does not make every boy a scholar, if it even tries to do so,

but which somehow implants in every nature a generous ambition of one

kind or other.

‘As an undergraduate, he waged a ruthless war against sophistry and

loud talk, and he gibbeted one or two victims, labelling their

sophisms with their names. Elected to a Fellowship, and now the

companion of Newman and Pusey, not to speak of elders and juniors, he

had to wield his weapons more reverentially and warily. But he had no

wish to do otherwise…. Froude’s voice combined the gravity and

authority of age with all the charms of youth, for he might be at once

reasoning with a senate, and amusing a circle of children…. He was a

bold rider. He would take a good leap when he had the chance, and

would urge his friends to follow him, mostly in vain…. Froude

delighted in taking his friends for a gallop in Blenheim Park, to the

no small peril of indifferent riders, for the horses became wild, and

went straight under the low hanging branches of the wide-spreading

oaks.

‘His figure and manner were such as to command the confidence and

affection of those about him. Tall, erect, very thin, never resting or

sparing himself, investigating and explaining with unwearied energy,

incisive in his language, and with a certain fiery force of look and

tone, he seemed a sort of angelic presence to weaker natures. He

slashed at the shams, phrases, and disguises in which the lazy or the

pretentious veil their real ignorance or folly. His features readily

expressed every varying mood of playfulness, sadness, and awe. There

were those about him who would rather writhe under his most cutting

sarcasms than miss their part in the workings of his sympathy and

genius.

‘Froude was a Tory, with that transcendental idea of the English

gentleman which forms the basis of Toryism. He was a High Churchman of

the uncompromising school, very early taking part with Anselm, Becket,

Laud, and the Nonjurors. Woe to anyone who dropped in his hearing such

phrases as the Dark Ages, superstition, bigotry, right of private

judgement, enlightenment, march of mind, or progress. When a stray man

of science fell back on “law,” or a “subtle medium,” or any other

device for making matter its own lord and master, it was as if a fox

had broken cover: there ensued a chase and no mercy. Luxury, show, and

even comfort he despised and denounced. He very consistently urged

that the expenses of Eton should be kept down so low as to enable

every ordinary incumbent to send his sons there to be trained for the

ministry. All his ideas of College life were frugal and ascetic.

Having need of a press for his increasing papers and books, he had one

made of plain deal. It must have been Woodgate who came in one day,

and finding some red chalk, ornamented the press with grotesque

figures, which long were there. Froude and Newman induced several of

the Fellows to discontinue wine in the Common Room. As they had

already had a glass or two at the high table, they did not require

more. There was only one objection to the discontinuance, but it was

fatal at last; and that was its inconvenience when strangers were

present. This preference of tea to wine was no great innovation in

Oriel. When I came up at Easter, 1825, one of the first standing jokes

against the College, all over the University, was the “Oriel teapot,”

supposed to be always ready, the centre of the Oriel circle, and its

special inspiration. How there ever came to be such an idea I cannot

guess, but wherever I went, when I passed the wine, I was asked

whether I would not prefer some tea, much to the amusement of the

table.

‘Self-renunciation in every form [Froude] could believe in; most of

all in a gentleman, particularly one of a good Devonshire family. His

acquaintance with country gentlemen had been special, perhaps

fortunate. He had not been in the north[386] of England, in the

eastern counties, or in the midlands. It was therefore in perfect

simplicity that, upon hearing one day the description of a new member

in the Reformed Parliament, he exclaimed: “Fancy a gentleman not

knowing Greek!” I chanced one day to drop, most inconsiderately, that

all were born alike, and that they were made what they are by

circumstances and education. Never did I hear the end of that. No

retraction or qualification would avail….

‘… In July, 1832, the _History of the Arians_ was ready for the press,

and as Newman was now relieved of his College duties, he was more a

man of leisure than he had ever been, and was also in more need of

rest. Hurrell Froude (as Richard was always called, though there was

another Hurrell in the family) had now to submit to be ruled by his

anxious relatives. He must spend the winter on the Mediterranean and

its shores, … and Newman was easily persuaded to go with him. In these

days, it requires little persuasion to induce ordinary people who

happen to be free from pressing engagements, to accept the offer of a

Continental trip, especially southward, in the winter. But this did

rather take Newman’s friends by surprise: the only reason they could

suppose was his great anxiety for Hurrell Froude…. He never made a

tour for pleasure’s sake, for health’s sake, or for change’s sake. He

did move about a good deal, but it was to the country parsonages to

which so many of his friends were early relegated….

‘… It must have been soon after Froude’s return from the Mediterranean

that I had with him one of our old talks about architecture. He was as

devoted to science and as loyal to it as any materialist could be. But

architecture and science are very apt to be at variance, and Froude

was always disposed to side with the latter. As for Greek

architecture, there is no science in it except the mystery of

proportion and a certain preternatural and overpowering conception of

beauty. The Temple of Egesta, which won the hearts of our travellers,

has no more science in its construction than Stonehenge. But Roman

architecture was for all the world, for its gods as well as for its

mortals. The arch, and still more the vault, were mighty bounds into

the time to come.

‘Always leaning on tradition where possible, Froude wished to believe

the pointed arch the natural suggestion of a row of round arches seen

in perspective. Of course, a deep round arch in a thick wall only

shows its roundness when you stand directly before it, but seems

pointed from any other direction. I remember ventilating this idea to

Sir Richard Westmacott and Turner, the great painter, at the former’s

table, and I remember also the great contempt with which the latter

dismissed such mechanical ideas from the realm of the picturesque. But

it was the dome that chiefly exercised Froude’s mind. It was a

positive pain to him that so grand a building as the Parthenon should

have been constructed, as he believed, in such ignorance of science.

His notion was that if Agrippa had known the qualities of the catenary

curve he would have used it, instead of the semi-circular curve: that

is, in this instance, the spherical vault…. Had any common utilitarian

made such a suggestion I should not have thought it worth notice. I

only mention it as showing the scientific character of Froude’s

tastes. The objections are obvious and overwhelming. In the first

place, beauty must lead in architecture, and construction must obey….

Spherical domes are the crux and the pitfall of architecture. They

involve false construction and positive deception…. Froude had a soul

for beauty; but he did not like shams. He did not like a thing to seem

what it was not. Few buildings are prepared to stand such a test.

Amiens Cathedral, for example, the first love of the English tourist,

is nothing more than an iron cage filled in with stone…. Robert

Wilberforce had been much impressed with Cologne Cathedral and with

the galleries of early art at Munich. It is an illustration of the

turning of the tide, and of the many smaller causes contributing to

the Movement, that in 1829, German agents (one of them with a special

introduction to Robert Wilberforce) filled Oxford with very beautiful

and interesting tinted lithographs of mediæval paintings, which have

probably, long ere this, found their way to a thousand parsonages: a

good many to Brompton Oratory!… About the same time, there came an

agent from Cologne with very large and beautiful reproductions of the

original design for the Cathedral, which it was proposed to set to

work on, with a faint hope of completing it before the end of the

century. Froude gave thirty guineas for a set of the drawings, went

wild over them, and infected not a few of his friends with mediæval

architecture. As an instance of the way in which religious sentiment

was now beginning to be disassociated from practical bearings and

necessities, Froude would frequently mention the exquisitely finished

details at York Minster and other Churches, in situations where no eye

but the eye of Heaven could possibly reach them…. He was most deeply

interested in architecture, but it is plain that he was more

penetrated and inspired by St. Peter’s[387] than even by Cologne

Cathedral. After spending three days with me in taking measurements,

tracings, mouldings, and sketches of St. Giles at Oxford, one of the

purest specimens of Early English, he devoted a good deal of time at

Barbados to designing some homely Tuscan addition to Codrington

College….

‘It was now [1833] deep in Long Vacation, but no period in the annals

of Oxford was ever more pregnant with consequences than the next two

months. The returning travellers had lost time. The world had got the

start of them, and they had to make up for it. Froude’s imagination

teemed with new ideas, new projects, topics likely to tell or worth

trying; to be tried, indeed, and found variously successful. They came

from him like a shower of meteors, bursting out of a single spot in a

clear sky, for they had been pent up. Every post had brought the

travellers some account of fresh “atrocities.” _The Examiner_ was the

only paper that talked sense. Conservative Churchism Froude now

utterly abhorred. In passing through France, he had listened with

hopefulness to the dream that a deeper descent into republicanism than

that represented by Louis Philippe, would land that country in High

Churchism. How could the Church of England now be saved? By working

out the oath of canonical obedience? By a lay synod, pending the

apostasy of Parliament? By a race of clergy living less like country

gentlemen? By dealing in some way or other with the appointment of

Bishops? By a systematic revival of religion in large towns; in

particular, by colleges of unmarried priests? By Excommunication? By

working upon the _pauperes Christi_? By writing up the early Puritans,

who had so much to say for themselves against the tyranny of

Elizabeth? By preaching Apostolic Succession? By the high sacramental

doctrine? By attacking State interference in matters spiritual? By an

apostolic vocabulary giving everything its right name? By recalling

the memory of the Gregorian age?

‘It was perhaps a happy diversion of his thoughts that he had so much

to say on other topics, such as architecture, and the construction of

ships and dock-gates. It was now plain that he had brought home with

him not only his own fervid temperament, but some of the heat of sunny

climes, where indeed he had not taken proper care of his health, or

any care at all. Like most other Englishmen, he would not be indoors

by sunset, or put on warmer clothing when the thermometer dropped 20

or 30°. It happened to be an exceptionally cold winter in the

Mediterranean. As far as regards health, the experiment had been a

failure.

‘One thing, however, is quite clear from his Letters and other

remains; and, as he was all this time somewhat in advance of Newman,

it has a bearing on his mental history. Froude came home even more

utterly set against Roman Catholics than he had been before. His

conclusion was that they held the Truth in unrighteousness; that they

were “wretched Tridentines everywhere,” and of course, ever since the

Reformation; that the conduct and behaviour of the clergy was such

that it was impossible they could believe what they professed, that

they were idolaters in the sense of substituting easy and good-natured

divinities for the God of Truth and Holiness.

‘Froude stayed in England just long enough to take a present part in

the great Movement, and to contribute to it, and then, as he

sorrowfully said of himself, “like the man who ‘fled full soon, on the

first of June, but bade the rest keep fighting,’” he found himself

compelled by his friends to leave England for the West Indies.

‘All these vivid expressions, delivered with the sincerity of a noble

child or a newly-converted savage, chimed in with Newman’s state of

feeling, and struck deep into his very being, to bring forth fruit.

Yet in neither Froude nor Newman could now be discovered the least

suspicion of what these outbursts might lead to, for at every point

they found Rome irreconcilable and impossible.

* * * * *

‘Froude, who had now bidden farewell to Toryism, much in the same key

as he had written of old Tyre and the Cities of the Plain, was

contributing to the _Tracts_, from Barbados, and also freely

criticising them when they seemed to him to temporise, or to fall into

modern conventionalisms. In fact he was keeping Newman, nothing loth,

up to the mark.

‘In May, 1835, he returned from Barbados. On landing, he found a

letter from Newman calling him to Oxford, where there were several

friends soon to part for the Long Vacation. His brother Anthony was

summoned from his private tutor, Mr. Hubert Cornish. Froude came, full

of energy and fire, sunburnt, but a shadow. The tale of his health was

soon told. He had a “button in his throat” which he could not get rid

of, but he talked incessantly. With a positive hunger for intellectual

difficulties, he had been studying Babbage’s calculating machine, and

he explained, at a pace which seemed to accelerate itself, its

construction, its performances, its failures, and its certain limits.

Few, if any, could follow him, still less could they find an opening

for aught they had to say, or to beg a minute’s law. He never could

realise the laggard pace of duller intelligences. I have not the least

doubt he did his best to explain Babbage’s machine to his black Euclid

class at Codrington College, and that without ever ascertaining the

result in their minds….