Chapter XVI: Part II: ――comments (5)

‘There you see some trace of the influence of Froude’s high ascetic nature speaking in the heart of a devotee of music, but a devotee of music of the most exalted kind. Hurrell Froude, in a letter home, mentions that the commander of the steamer in which they sailed sang several songs, accompanying himself on the Spanish guitar, and it must have been these songs which suggested to Newman “The Isles of the Sirens.” When the friends reach Ithaca, Newman seems to forget “the man of many woes” altogether; he is musing on the difficulty of keeping himself “unspotted from the world”: which is the last thing, I suppose, that Homer’s Ulysses ever thought about; while Byron, in the same scenes, thought only of how he could spot himself most effectually…. Newman’s nostalgia was more in sympathy with that of Moses than with that of Ulysses: the home he longed for was a home he had never yet gained. There is something very strange in the connection between these classical scenes and the thoughts they excited in the travellers, for I cannot help thinking that most of these poems must have owed their origin almost as much to Froude’s suggestion as to Newman’s pen. The lines, for instance, on England,[359] in which Newman calls her “Tyre of the West,” and accuses her of trusting in such poor defences as the fortified rock of Gibraltar, and such poor resources as her rich commerce supplied, look as if they had owed a good deal of their inspiration to Froude’s cavalier contempt for the wealth earned by trade, as well as his scorn for any ostentatious display of power not rooted in a devout theocratic Faith…. There is, to me, something very striking in the contrast between the class of thoughts which the old Greek and Roman localities suggest to a Whig poet like Byron, with a broad dash of licence in his Whiggery; to classical scholars like Clough, imbued with what is now called “the modern spirit” (as well its moral earnestness as its intellectual scepticism), and to grave spirits like Newman’s and Hurrell Froude’s, dominated not only by a religious, but by a strongly-marked ecclesiastical bias…. As regards the influence of this journey on Newman’s future career, it appears that while, in many respects, it diminished his horror of Romanism, in consequence especially of the influence of Hurrell Froude, it had a contrary effect on Hurrell Froude’s own mind, and later (again, through him, to some extent, I suppose) on Newman’s. Hurrell Froude writes from Naples[360] on February 17, 1833: “I remember you told me that I should come back a better Englishman than I went away: better satisfied not only that our Church is nearest in theory right, but also that practically, in spite of its abuses, it works better; and to own the truth, your prophecy is already nearly realised. Certainly, I have as yet only seen the surface of things, but what I have seen does not come up to my notions of propriety. These Catholic countries seem, in an especial manner, κατέχειν τῆν ἀλήθειαν ἐν ἀδικία, and the priesthood are themselves so sensible of the hollow basis on which their power rests, that they dare not resist the most atrocious encroachments of the State upon their privileges.” And after detailing the abuses of the Roman Catholic system in Sicily, he goes on: “The Church of England has fallen low, and will probably be worse before it is better; but let the Whigs do their worst, they cannot sink us so deep as these people have allowed themselves to fall, while retaining all the superficials of a religious country.” When it is considered that this was the impression of Roman Catholicism, judged by its fruits, which that one of the two friends who was by far the more inclined to the Roman system brought away from his life in a Roman Catholic country, we cannot wonder that Newman should have remained for eight more years a zealous Anglican, before he even began to foresee clearly whither he was tending.’

From ‘THE ANGLICAN REVIVAL,’ by J. H. OVERTON, D.D., Rector of
Epworth and Canon of Lincoln. London: Blackie & Son, 1897.

[By the kind permission of Messrs. Blackie & Son.]

‘The fact is that [in 1833] Rose, Palmer, and perhaps Perceval on the one hand, Froude, Keble, and Newman on the other, represented, not exactly two different parties, but two different classes of mind. The former group were essentially conservative: they did not share the dissatisfaction with the Church as it was, which was so strongly felt by Keble, Newman, and Froude; they only desired to see it freed from what they regarded as the oppression of the State. They were very different types of men, Rose representing the brilliant and fascinating, Palmer the learned, and Perceval the aristocratic or territorial element. But none of them was prepared to follow what Newman calls the “go-ahead” course, for which he and Froude were ready, and from which Keble was not at all averse…. As a matter of fact, the Movement was carried on by the latter, not by the former group.

‘… Pusey’s adherence was an instance of the right man coming in just at the right time. The public had now [1835] been fairly aroused; they had had sufficiently impressed upon them the duty of maintaining Church principles; they had now a right to demand that those principles should be fully and definitely explained to them in detail. The time for short, stirring appeals was over; the time for solid, sober treatises on divinity had arrived…. [Pusey’s] mild and conciliatory spirit introduced a healing element into the Movement which was certainly needed. The “fierceness” (to use his own expression) of Newman, and especially of Newman when “kept up to the mark by Froude,”[361] had the very natural effect of raising opposition; and even in Keble, the gentle, humble Keble, there was a strong spice, if not exactly of fierceness, yet of a tendency to give vent to the most unpopular sentiments in the most uncompromising way, without the slightest attempt to tone them down. Pusey, again, was far more apt to recognise two sides of a question than was Keble, Newman, or Froude…. The Movement gained Pusey, and lost Hurrell Froude, almost at the same time. When Pusey joined the party, Froude was practically a dying man; and in February 28, 1836, to the infinite regret of his many friends, he died at his native Dartington. With Froude passed away the most daring and “go-ahead” spirit connected with the whole Movement. Newman was enthusiastic, but Froude was far more so; Newman waged war against the complacency which was so characteristic of the old Church party, but Froude was still more exasperated against it; Newman was not over-cautious in his invectives against the fallacies and prejudices of the age, but Froude was ten times less so. With an intense earnestness and thoroughness of conviction, with a fiery energy which would ride over anything, with a courage which sometimes amounted to audacity, and with an irresistibly attractive personality, there is no saying what would have happened if his short life had been prolonged! But it is not a very profitable speculation to conjecture what might have been. Suffice it to say that in one respect the influence of Froude was likely to have had exactly the opposite effect to that of Pusey. The one seemed, of all men, the most calculated to trouble the waters, the other, to pour oil upon them; and the fact that Froude dropped out just when Pusey began to make his influence felt, seemed to promise that henceforth the Movement would create less hostility. After events, however, proved that this was not to be the case; and the causes are not far to seek….

‘One of the most startling … events was the appearance, in 1838, of the first series of Froude’s _Remains_, edited by Keble and Newman jointly. It is not surprising that this publication raised a violent outcry: it gave to the world the off-hand utterances of a young enthusiast whose opinions would probably have toned down with age, but were here expressed with all the recklessness of inexperience, and were only intended, in the first instance, to be read by sympathetic friends.

‘His views on the English Reformation and Reformers were sufficiently startling. “The present Church system is an incubus upon the country”; “the Reformation was a limb badly set: it must be broken again in order to be righted”; the English Reformers generally were “a set of men with whom [I wish] to have less and less to do”; Jewel, in particular, was “an irreverent Dissenter”; Latimer, “a Martyr somewhat in the Bulteel line.” One can conceive the horror with which such sentiments would be read by men with whom “our happy Establishment in Church and State,” “our glorious Reformation,” and “our martyred Reformers” were almost articles of faith!

‘It has been thought that the Editors miscalculated the effect which the book would produce; but the theory is not very complimentary to their judgement. Surely must they have known that the glamour of Froude’s personality would not affect the general, still less the hostile, reader (and his name was legion), who would greedily seize upon any handle which could be turned, as Froude could so easily be, against the Movement. Moreover, how does it agree with the fact that when they found out their mistake, they nevertheless published in the following year, 1839, a second series as _outré_ as the first? And this they introduced with a Preface pointing out how Froude’s sagacity had anticipated all the improvements that had taken place, and representing him, not as a disturber of the people, but as a prophet indeed. This Preface is said to have been chiefly the work of Keble, and it is highly characteristic of the man, though not of the popular conception of him: for Keble was always for the bold course.

‘The other Editor, Newman, writing to his friend Frederic Rogers in July, 1837, gives six reasons why Froude’s private letters should be published; and to his Co-editor he writes at the same time: “We have often said the Movement must be enthusiastic. Now here is a man fitted above all others to kindle enthusiasm.” May it not have been that both Editors put forth the _Remains_ with their eyes perfectly wide open as to what the result would be? that they were not unwilling the _enfant terrible_ of the Movement should say his say, and startle the public? The public was startled: it took in all seriousness the audacious dicta of Froude as if they were stamped with the approval of the whole party, which it denounced with increased vigour, accordingly.

‘It is impossible to help connecting with the publication of Froude’s _Remains_ the starting of that project which gave to Oxford one of the most beautiful of its many beautiful monuments, the “Martyrs’ Memorial,” opposite Balliol College, on the spot on which Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer had been burnt.[362] The greatest offence of Froude was that he had spoken disparagingly of the English Reformers generally, and of these men in particular. The project of the Memorial originated in a small meeting held towards the close of 1838, at Oriel, in the rooms of Mr. Golightly, who, having begun as a friend of the Movement, had soon become its bitterest and most persistent foe. Everybody seems to have connected the Memorial with the _Remains_; but there was some division of opinion as to the course which should be pursued. Keble and Newman were from the first opposed to the project, and so were moderate men like Palmer and Benjamin Harrison. But Hook and S. Wilberforce were in favour, and so, strange to say, was Pusey, to a certain extent, at first, until he was persuaded otherwise by Keble and Newman…. Keble writes to Pusey … “I am not at all prepared to express a public dissent from Froude in his opinion of the Reformers as a party.” On the other hand, S. Wilberforce writes to Hook, regretting that “our good Oxford friends run down Reformers, and will not subscribe to the Martyrs’ Memorial.” It was said of the Memorial, “it will be a good cut against Newman”: but it was not a cut which made him smart.’

From ‘ESSAYS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS,’ BY NICHOLAS CARDINAL WISEMAN.
London: Dolman, 1853, 3 vols.[363]

[By kind permission of the Executors of His Eminence Cardinal
Vaughan.]

‘It is not often that the leaders of opinions let the public into a view of their secret counsels and feelings; but when they do, we think it does credit to the uprightness and sincerity of their intentions…. Nay, the more unreservedly the human weaknesses of the individuals are revealed, and the more the feeling is expressed that with their exposure, or in spite of it, their cause will succeed, the more highly we shall estimate their confidence in the correctness of their views, and the disinterestedness of their zeal in propagating them. These reflections have been suggested to us by the perusal of Mr. Froude’s _Remains_. He was, while living, one of the most enthusiastic members of the theological school from which the _Tracts for the Times_ have emanated. He died in 1836, having attained only the age of thirty-three;[364] and was thus prevented from arriving at that full maturity of religious ideas which was evidently preparing in his mind, and bearing him onwards towards the perception of Catholic truths.

‘A preface of twenty-two pages betrays the Editors’ anxiety to repel a twofold charge: one against themselves, the other against their deceased friend…. When one whose noble and public proofs of great virtue far outweigh the errors of youth, or whose public reputation makes his example, when evil, a warning; and when repentant, a reparation and an encouragement,――when one, in short, like St. Augustine, boldly but humbly reveals to the eyes of the Church the wretchedness of his early sinful life, we admire, in awe, the strange manifestation of a sublime spirit of Christian virtue, and we bless the Divine Wisdom that hath caused it to be vouchsafed to us. But the struggles of one who has not compensated his weaknesses by any noble results, who withdraws from our sight a combatant, and not a victor; who only presents us the spectacle of a frail nature, such as we all may have, wrestling with daily and anxious trials, and not overcoming them; (these, too, not spontaneously exhibited, but transferred from the closet to the public arena)――have neither the grandeur nor the instruction of the other lesson. Still, there may be reasons unknown to us who are not in the secrets of the party, to justify, certainly in their own eyes, this sacrifice of private feeling to a sense of public utility…. [The Editors] would have materially strengthened their reasoning by the following passage in [Mr. Froude’s] Letters to Friends: “There was a passage in a letter I have just received from my father, which made me feel so infinitely dismal that I must write to you about it. He says you have written to him to learn something about me, and to ask what to do with my money. It really made me feel as if I was dead, and you were sweeping up my remains: and by the by, if I were dead, why should I be cut off from the privilege of helping on the Good Cause? I don’t know what money I have left,――little enough, I suspect; but whatever it was, I am superstitious enough to think that any good it could do _in honorem Dei et sacrosanctæ matris ecclesiæ_, would have done something, too, _in salutem animæ meæ_.” From these words, it appears that the author did contemplate his power of doing good to the cause wherein he was so ardently engaged, even after his death.

‘The censure of their friend which the Editors foresee, is that which forms their bugbear in all their theological researches: that of approaching too near the Catholic, or, as they call it, Romanist doctrines. But we must express our conviction that the Editors have not done much credit to their friend by the manner in which they have thought it right to shield his memory from the charge. It consists in a careful collection of some of the most hasty, unhandsome, and decidedly unreasonable judgements and opinions of the author, respecting chiefly what he saw in his travels…. We think we are justified in saying that proof of Mr. Froude’s disinclination to Catholicity must have been very scarce, to have led the Editors to bring together these superficial observations made during a brief residence in a Catholic city[365] not generally reputed the most edifying in its conduct! These, however, will not bear comparison with the growing and expanding tendency of his mind towards everything Catholic….

‘… The extracts from [his] Journal present us a picture at once pleasing and distressing, of a mind yearning after interior perfection, yet at a loss about the means of attaining it; embarked on an ocean of good desires, but without stars or compass by which to steer its course. The minute scrutiny into the motives of his actions, the distress occasioned by discovering his relapses into faults which most would overlook, show a sensitiveness of conscience in the youthful writer, far more honourable to him, and far more interesting to us, than abilities of a much higher order than what he really possessed could ever have appeared…. How far it may be advisable to commit to paper, even for personal benefit, these investigations of our most secret tribunal, we have considerable doubt; and instructive as is their record in the case before us, in nothing is it more so than in the proof it gives us of the necessity of guidance for the conscience and heart such as the institutions of the Catholic Church alone provide. In the account which he gives of his own infirmities, of his almost fruitless attempts to subdue them, and of the pain and anxiety produced by his solitary struggles, he presents a picture familiar to the experienced eye of any spiritual director in our Church, and a state fully described and prescribed for by the numerous writers whom we possess upon the inward life and the direction of consciences. Many are they who are tossed in the same billows of secret tribulation, many are they who are bewildered in the same mazes of mental perplexity; but they have not at least the additional horrors of darkness and night. Ere they can sink, a hand is stretched out, if they will only grasp it. The troubles and trials which haunt minds constituted as Mr. Froude’s, many a skilful guide would have shown him to be mere illusive phantoms that only serve to turn the attention away from serious dangers, or from solid good: snares cast by a restlessness of spirit upon the path, to entangle the feet that tread it…. The consequence of all his irregular and undirected austerity, into which, with youthful eagerness, he rushed, was, that instead of deriving thence vigour of thought, and closer intimacy with some spiritual feelings, his spirit, on the contrary, flagged and at length grew weary, and so fell into that despondency which failure will produce in sensitive minds. This discouragement is visible in many parts of his Journal…. In fact, Mr. Froude discovered that most important principle, that obedience to the ordinances of authority gives the great merit to the first degrees of penitential works, those which belong to ordinary Christians: such, that is, as have not reached the perfection of ascetic life…. While he seems so taken up, through his Journals, with examination of his fasts and austerities, we miss from his pages those cheerful views of religion which result from confidence and love, from the consciousness of a strong will to do [God] service, and an humble reliance on His mercy which will measure that, rather than our success. What snatches there are of prayer, bear more the character of one sinking under the fatigue of foiled attempts, and troubled with anxiety from hopelessness of success, than of a young and trusting mind that presses forward to a work it deems glorious: the work of God and His religion….

‘We certainly think that his ardent way, more perhaps of expressing himself than of feeling, leads him often to a harsh and reckless manner of speaking of others, that must give an unfavourable impression regarding his character, which we have every reason to believe was amiable and gentle. Still, there are so many fine points about him: so much distrust of himself, blended with no inconsiderable powers of genius; so much independence of thought, coupled with deference to the sentiments of others, those he esteemed more learned or more virtuous than himself; so much lightness of spirit, united to such seriousness of mind upon religious truths;――in fine, so earnest and sincere a desire to improve and perfect himself, that our feelings lead us to pass lightly over his faults, and dwell with pleasure upon his finer qualities. If we have dilated somewhat upon the former, it has been that we considered them the result of the system to which he was by education attached, and which is alone accountable for them.

‘As, however, he increased in years, his mind began to open to the defects and wants of that system, and boldly to conceive the necessity of correcting them. In this he ran manifestly before his fellows, and seems only to have been prevented by his premature death from reaching the goal of Catholic Unity…. First, as to the Blessed Eucharist, we find him early desirous of going beyond the timid phraseology of his party, and attributing to the priesthood such power as the Catholic Church alone claims…. In 1835, he condemns what he calls the Protestant doctrine of the Eucharist in strong terms. These are his words: “I am more and more indignant at the Protestant doctrine on the subject of the Eucharist, and think that the principle on which it is founded is as proud, irreverent, and foolish as that of any heresy, even Socinianism.”[366] Still more, writing to the author of _The Christian Year_, he blames him for denying that Christ is in the hands of the priest or the receiver, as well as in his heart.[367] These passages show how far prepared he was to outstrip his friends in approximation to Catholic doctrines and Catholic expressions…. The state of celibacy, and with it the monastic life, seems also to have been an object of his admiration…. The last fragment published of his attests how anxiously, how candidly, and how powerfully his mind was at work with the great subject [of Church authority], the hinge on which the differences between us and these new divines may be justly said to turn. This piece[368] is a letter dated Jan. 27, 1836, a month before his death; and as his last illness was of some weeks’ duration, this document may be considered as his theological will and testament, the last declaration of his yet unbroken mind…. After this, what more can we desire in proof of what we asserted at the beginning of this article, that these _Remains_ prove Mr. Froude’s mind to have been gradually discovering more extensive and more accurate views of religious truths and the principles of Faith, with such steady and constant growth as gives us every reason to believe that longer life alone was wanting, to see him take the salutary resolve to embrace the conclusions of his theories to their fullest legitimate extent? While the writings of the new divines seem to represent their theories as perfectly formed, and their views quite fixed, the extracts we have just made show them to be but the shifting and unsettled opinions of men who are yet discovering errors in what they have formerly believed, and seeking further evidence of what they shall henceforth hold. Our concluding extract shall give fuller evidence of this fact: it is a letter to Mr. Newman, dated All Saints’ Day, 1835. “Before I finish this, I must enter another protest against your cursing and swearing at the end of the [Via Media] as you do. What good can it do? And I call it uncharitable to an excess. How mistaken we may ourselves be, on many points that are only gradually opening on us! Surely, you should reserve ‘blasphemous,’ ‘impious,’ etc., for denial of the articles of Faith.”[369]

‘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.]