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PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 


Our  men  scarce  seem  in  earnest  now. 
Distinguished  names ; — but  'tis,  somehow 
As  if  they  played  at  being  names 
Still  more  distinguished,  like  the  games 
Of  children.     Turn  our  sport  to  earnest 
With  a  visage  of  the  sternest! 
Bring  the  real  times  back,  confessed 
Still  better  than  our  verv  best. 


PRE-TRACTARIAN 
OXFORD 

A  REMINISCENCE  OF  THE  ORIEL 
"NOETICS" 


BY 

THE  REV.  W.  TUCKWELL,  M.A. 

LATE  FELLOW  OF  NEW  COLLEGE 

AUTHOR  OF  "THE  REMINISCENCES  OF  OXFORD,"  ETC. 


WITH  NINE  ILLUSTRATIONS 


LONDON 

SMITH,  ELDER,  &  CO.,  15  WATERLOO  PLACE 

1909 

[All  rights  reserved] 


-  I 


i 


Printed  by  BALLANTYNE,  HANSON  &*  Co. 
At  the  Ballantyne  Press,  Edinburgh 


PREFACE 

I  HAVE  called  this  book  a  Reminiscence  ;  for  with 
the  exception  of  Eveleigh,  who  died  before 
I  was  born,  I  remember  all  the  characters 
sketched ;  and  from  the  surviving  near  rela- 
tions of  several  amongst  them  I  have  been 
favoured  with  further  personal  recollections. 

I  have  to  acknowledge  gratefully  the  kind  help 
in  this  respect  of  Mrs.  W.  Arnold,  who  sub- 
mitted the  Whately  chapter  to  her  mother,  the 
Archbishop's  daughter  :  to  Mrs.  Baden-Powell, 
who  has  furnished  me  with  valuable  personalia 
in  her  husband's  life,  and  has  allowed  Mr. 
Hollyer  to  copy  a  family  portrait  :  to  Miss 
Powell,  for  not  less  interesting  recollections  of 
her  father  in  her  childhood  :  to  the  Provost  and 
Fellows  of  Oriel,  who  permitted  the  remaining 
portraits  to  be  photographed  by  the  same  able 
Artist  from  paintings  and  drawings  in  their  Hall 
and  Common  Room. 

January  1909. 


263131 


CONTENTS 


PACK 

I.    EVELEIGH I 

II.    COPLESTON I/ 

III.    WHATELY 51 

IV.    ARNOLD 95 

V.    HAMPDEN 128 

VI.    HAWKINS I5O 

VII.    BADEN    POWELL 165 

VIII.    BLANCO    WHITE 226 

POSTSCRIPTUM 258 

INDEX                                       ....  26l 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


THE  HALL  OF  ORIEL  COLLEGE  Frontispiece 

PROVOST    EVELEIGH  .  .  .      To  face  p.     12 

From  the  Oriel  portrait  by  John  Hoppner 

PROVOST    COPLESTON  .  .  .  „  24 

From  the  Oriel  portrait  by  Thomas  Phillips, 
R.A. 

RICHARD    WHATELY  „  60 

From  the  Oriel  portrait  (artist  unknown) 

THOMAS    ARNOLD  „  104 

From  the  Oriel  portrait  by  Thomas  Phillips, 
R.A. 

RENN    DICKSON    HAMPDEN  .  .  „  136 

From  the  Oriel  portrait  by  Sir  Daniel  Macnee 

PROVOST    HAWKINS  ....,,  162 

From  the  Oriel  portrait  by  Sir  Francis  Grant, 
R.A. 

PROFESSOR    BADEN    POWELL         .  .  „  l8o 

From  a  portrait  by  Eddis,  in  the  possession  of 
Mrs.  Baden-Powell 

BLANCO    WHITE  „  244 

From  the  Oriel  portrait  by  F.  C.  Lewis 

(The  illustrations  are  all  from  photographs  made  by  Mr.  F.  HOLLYER) 


THE   NOETICS 


Eveleigh 
Copleston 

Whately 
Arnold 
Hampden 
Hawkins 
Baden  Powell 
Blanco  White 


Provost,  1781-1814. 

Fellow,  1789-1814. 
Provost,  1814-1828. 
Bishop,  1828-1849. 

Fellow,  1811-1831. 
Archbishop,  1831-1863. 

Fellow,  1814-1819. 
Rugby,  1828-1842. 

Fellow,  1814-1817. 
Bishop,  1837-1868. 

Fellow,  1813-1828. 
Provost,  1828-1874. 

Degree,  1817. 
Died,  1860. 

Fellow,  1826. 
Died,  1841. 


PRE-TRACTARIAN    OXFORD 

CHAPTER    I 
EVELEIGH 

Vixere  fortes  ante  Agamemnona 
Multi. 

MAZZINI'S  warning  to  historians  that  they  must 
not  confound  the  beginnings  with  the  ends 
of  epochs  is  an  echo  of  Horace's  Ode.  The 
Trojan  War,  the  poet  says,  was  not,  as  its 
chroniclers  seem  to  think,  coincident  with  the 
world's  creation.  Its  scenes  and  its  personages 
had  been  anticipated,  its  Helens  had  seduced, 
its  Hectors  fought,  its  Agamemnons  commanded, 
in  a  remoter  past.  The  French  Revolution,  so 
Mazzini  would  remind  us  were  he  here  to-day, 
was  not  Carlyle's  first  parent  of  a  regenerated 
society,  but  the  conclusion  of  an  older  era.  In 
the  same  way  the  so-called  "  Oxford  Movement  " 
did  not  begin  with  Newman's  return  from 
Sicily  or  Keble's  Assize  Sermon  :  for  Keble  had 
been  pupil  to  Copleston,  Newman  a  disciple  of 

A 


2          PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

Whately  :  Tractarianism,  in  its  revolt  and  its 
developments,  its  reaction  and  its  rivalry,  is 
to  be  traced  to  an  older  "  Movement "  ;  its 
founders  linked  with  names  earlier  and  not  less 
notable,  yet  lacking  the  vaticinatio  sacra  shed 
profusely  on  their  successors,  and  so  compara- 
tively forgotten.  Of  these  older  men  associated 
popularly  in  their  own  day  as  the  Oriel  or  Noetic 
school,  I  propose  to  revive  the  memory.1 

The  decadence  of  Oxford  towards  the  close 
of  the  eighteenth  century  has  been  assailed  by 
many  pens.  The  Colleges  had  become  lazy 
comfortable  clubs ;  the  University  degrees  were 
conferred  with  or  without  a  merely  nominal 
examination,  and  were  no  test  of  even  moderate 
proficiency.  Lord  Eldon  has  left  on  record  his 
own  experience  of  this  outrageous  farce.  He 
offered  Hebrew  and  History ;  was  asked  two 
questions,  "  What  is  the  Hebrew  for  a  skull  ?  " 
and  "  Who  founded  University  College  ?  " 
His  answers,  "  Golgotha  "  and  "  King  Alfred," 
satisfied  the  Examiners.  In  1781  JOHN  EVELEIGH 
became  Provost  of  Oriel,  and  directed  himself  to 

1  Noetic  is  Greek,  and  means  "  Intellectual."  Who  first 
applied  it  to  the  Oriel  men  even  Tom  Mozley  could  not  tell ; 
but  it  was  current  from  a  very  early  period. 


EVELEIGH 


what  seemed,  to  all  except  himself,  the  impossible 
task  of  radical  reform.  He  persuaded  his  College 
to  bestow  its  Fellowships  on  literary  acquirement 
rather  than  on  clubbable  geniality ;  and  he 
forced  upon  the  University  a  system  of  public 
Examinations  for  the  B.A.  degree,  which,  while 
exacting  from  all  candidates  a  certain  evidence 
of  efficiency,  distinguished  superior  men  by 
certificates  of  especial  merit.  There  is  no  record 
of  the  mode  by  which  he  brought  a  majority  of 
his  Oriel  colleagues  to  take  a  view  of  duty  so 
entirely  beyond  the  range  of  prescriptive  Oxford 
morality  ;  but  by  the  opening  of  the  century 
he  had  stamped  his  College  with  a  uniformity  of 
excellence  among  the  Fellows  far  higher  than 
was  exhibited  by  any  contemporary  Common 
Room.  His  proposal  for  a  new  University 
Examination  Statute  was  met  both  by  Doctors 
and  Masters  with  vehement  opposition  ;  but  he 
pressed  his  scheme  with  persistency,  enthusiasm, 
tact,  offering  from  his  own  purse  a  very  large 
benefaction  towards  the  expenses  which  it  was 
alleged  that  a  stricter  system  might  involve. 
The  Statute  was  carried,  in  a  permissive  form 
originally,  to  be  made  compulsory  not  till  five 
years  later  ;  six  Oriel  Fellows,  of  whom  Copleston 
was  one,  offered  themselves  to  conduct  gratui- 


4          PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

tously  the  first  Examination  ;  and  at  Easter 
1802  was  published  a  list  of  candidates,  two  in 
number,  who  had  especially  (maxime)  com- 
mended themselves  to  the  Examiners.  As  eldest 
born  of  the  Oxford  Class  List,  their  names  seem 
to  be  worth  recording  :  they  were  Abel  Hendy 
of  Oriel,  and  John  Marriott  of  Christchurch. 
Marriott  was  the  friend  of  Walter  Scott,  to 
whom  was  dedicated  the  Second  Canto  of 
Marmion — 

Marriott,  thy  harp,  on  Isis  strung, 
To  many  a  Border  theme  has  rung. 

He  came  to  Oxford  from  Rugby  in  1798,  left  it 
to  become  Rector  of  Church  Lawford  in  War- 
wickshire, holding  the  Living  till  his  death.  He 
wrote  many  poems  :  one,  called  "  The  Devon- 
shire Lane,"  was  much  admired.  His  son, 
Charles  Marriott,  was  well  known  to  the  Oriel 
and  Oxford  of  a  later  date  :  he  figures  in  the 
Uniomachia  as  (ptXaiTaro?  'QpeuiXtov.  Hendy  ob- 
tained the  English  Essay  in  1804,  died  in  1808. 
These  two  appear  in  the  Oxford  Calendar,  alone, 
as  the  honour  B.A.s  of  1802.  But  it  is  known 
that  at  the  same  time  two  other  candidates, 
whose  names  do  not  appear  in  the  Class  List, 
offered  themselves,  and  passed  with  highest 


EVELEIGH 


commendation.  They  were  Wheeler,  who  be- 
came an  Indian  judge,  and  Daniel  Wilson,  after- 
wards the  well-known  Bishop  of  Calcutta,  both 
of  St.  Edmund  Hall.  Both  were  B.A.  of  more 
than  a  year's  standing ;  Wilson  was  married  and 
ordained  :  how  came  they  to  enter  themselves 
for  the  B.A.  degree  ?  Old  Dr.  Macbride  used 
to  say  that  the  Statute,  as  at  first  passed,  included 
an  Examination,  afterwards  abandoned,  for  the 
M.A.  degree  ;  but  for  this  they  were  not  nearly 
old  enough ;  nor,  as  we  have  seen,  does  the 
Calendar  insert  their  names.  They  took  up 
Herodotus,  Thucydides,  Sophocles,  Longinus ;  the 
whole  Hebrew  Bible  ;  Optics ;  and,  in  Latin, 
"  omnes  optimae  aetatis  auctores."  The  ordeal 
was  entirely  oral ;  prolonged,  and  very  severe  ; 
at  its  close  the  Senior  Examiner  "  announced  in 
a  loud  voice  that  Messrs.  Wilson  and  Wheeler 
had  done  themselves  the  greatest  credit  and 
obtained  the  highest  honours."  Their  trophies 
remained  officially  unrecorded  ;  but  the  story 
was  often  told  by  Wilson,  and  was  preserved  in 
my  own  time  by  the  later  Vice-Principal  of  the 
Hall,  John  Hill.  Wheeler  passed  away  from 
Oxford  ;  Wilson  remained,  to  become  one  of  the 
most  notable  scholars  who  adorned  the  early 
Oxford  Renascence.  He  claims  commemoration 


6          PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

here,  as  exhibiting,  independently  of  the  Oriel 
School,  the  rise  of  a  New  Intelligence  in  the 
University  ;  and,  further,  as  typifying  in  himself 
a  struggle,  not  often  so  acute  or  so  suggestive, 
between  the  intellectual  and  spiritual  faculties 
in  a  nature  at  once  highly  endowed  and  excep- 
tionally devout. 

Born  in  1778,  the  son  of  a  silk  manufacturer 
in  Spitalfields,  he  was  placed  in  business  at 
fourteen  years  old,  heartily  disliked  the  work, 
persuaded  his  parents  to  send  him  to  Oxford  in 
preparation  for  the  ministry.  His  emergence 
from  a  "  state  of  sin,"  with  the  date  and  the 
degrees  of  his  conversion,  is  told  fully  in  his 
diaries  and  letters,  and  in  no  way  differs  from 
recorded  experience  in  many  similar  cases,  pale 
copies  for  the  most  part  from  Bunyan's  Grace 
Abounding.  Such  self-revelations  are  uncon- 
sciously mimetic  ;  the  patient  traces  his  spiritual 
abandonment  and  recovery  on  the  lines  which 
other  godly  convalescents  have  laid  down,  and 
finds,  as  do  they  all,  a  pleasure  in  exaggerating 
the  profundity  of  the  abyss  from  which  he 
conceives  himself  to  have  been  delivered.  When 
we  find  Wilson  in  a  letter  from  Oxford  to  his 
mother  tearfully  asking  the  forgiveness  of  the 
Almighty  for  two  "  sins  not  easily  retrieved," 


EVELEIGH  7 

failures,  namely,  to  deal  faithfully  with  a  back- 
sliding fellow  collegian,  and  to  introduce  spiri- 
tual discourse  at  a  tea-party,  we  feel  unfeigned 
compassion  for  his  associates,  but  discount  the 
severity  of  his  self-reproach. 

In  1798  he  entered  at  St.  Edmund  Hall.  Of 
the  two  theological  systems  which  divided  and 
still  divide  the  English  Church,  the  sacramen- 
tarian  and  the  emotional,  the  latter,  under 
the  name  of  Evangelical,  was  at  that  time  pro- 
minent :  Whately,  who  matriculated  in  1805, 
had  not  yet  risen  to  stamp  it  scornfully  as  the 
self-sufficient  Stoicism  of  the  Roman  Poet,  nor 
Newman  mercilessly  to  dissect  the  "  Peculiars," 
as  he  called  them,  amongst  whom  he  had  himself 
been  brought  up.  It  engrossed  the  fashionable 
pulpits,  leavened  religious  society  ;  and  its  head- 
quarters in  Oxford  were  at  St.  Edmund  Hall. 
That  foundation  boasted  an  ancient  and  honour- 
able history,  dated  its  commencement  from  the 
early  thirteenth  century,  and  could  point  to 
many  notable  alumni ;  but  its  numbers  were 
small,  its  buildings  undistinguished,  and  the 
name  of  its  archiepiscopal  founder,  canonised  as 
Saint  Edmund  by  Pope  Innocent  III.,  had  been 
comminuted  into  "  Teddy "  by  an  irreverent 
posterity.  Its  decided  religious  bias  at  the  time 


8          PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

of  which  we  speak,  was  due  to  an  earlier  Principal, 
Dr.  George  Dixon,  appointed  in  1760.  He  was 
an  intimate  friend  of  Lord  Dartmouth,  one  of 
the  few  men  of  rank  and  fashion  converted  and 
influenced  by  the  overflow  of  Wesley's  move- 
ment ;  the  only  nobleman  in  England,  Cowper 
admiringly  tells  us,  who  was  believed  habitually 
to  say  his  prayers.  It  was  not  safe  in  the  mid- 
century  to  profess  openly  the  new  religionism  ; 
in  1768  six  students  were  expelled  from  Oxford 
for  no  other  crime  than  that  of  avowing  "  Metho- 
dism "  ;  but  Dixon  seems  quietly  to  have  filled 
his  Hall  with  young  men  like-minded  to  him- 
self ;  and  when  as  years  went  on  the  offending 
title  came  to  be  softened  into  Evangelical,  St. 
Edmund  Hall  stood  forth  as  its  acknowledged 
centre  in  the  University.  In  1783  Dixon  nomi- 
nated as  Vice-Principal  and  Tutor  a  certain 
Dr.  Isaac  Crouch,  who  continued  to  hold  the 
post  under  three  successive  Heads.  He  im- 
pressed upon  the  Hall — the  Principals  taking 
no  part  in  the  education — a  novel  character  for 
erudition  no  less  than  seriousness.  He  lectured 
in  Hebrew,  Greek,  Latin,  Mathematics,  French, 
Natural  Philosophy  :  a  man  quiet,  undemonstra- 
tive, solid,  widely  learned,  absolutely  thorough  ; 
and  his  teaching  was  eagerly  absorbed  by  Wilson, 


EVELEIGH  9 

who  followed  up  his  honours  in  the  Schools  by 
winning  in  1803  the  English  Essay  Prize,  its 
subject  "  Common  Sense."  His  performance 
was  revised  and  corrected  by  Public  Orator 
Crowe  ;  and  after  a  "  splendid  oration  "  by  the 
Professor  of  Poetry,  Copleston,  was  recited  in 
the  Theatre ;  amongst  his  auditors  being  Walter 
Scott.  Leaving  the  rostrum,  he  made  way  for 
a  Brasenose  undergraduate,  who  followed  him 
as  winner  of  the  Newdigate.  It  was  Reginald 
Heber,  his  predecessor  in  the  Calcutta  See ; 
and  the  poem  was  "  Palestine." 

He  left  Oxford  for  a  Curacy,  returning  soon 
to  become  Tutor  at  St.  Edmund  Hall.  For 
three  years  he  taught  under  Crouch ;  then 
became  sole  Tutor  and  Vice-Principal.  He 
threw  himself  into  the  work  with  energy  ;  his 
"  main  object  of  imbuing  his  pupils'  minds  with 
true  piety  "  was  consistent,  it  appeared,  with  a 
vigorous  instilment  of  secular  knowledge.  He 
prepared  his  men  for  both  Classical  and  Mathe- 
matical Honours,  with  an  elaborate  weekly  lecture 
on  the  Greek  Testament,  in  which  every  one 
was  expected  to  translate  the  Greek  vivd  voce 
into  Latin.  His  attempt  at  social  intercourse 
with  them  was  less  successful ;  they  found  him 
stiff  and  donnish  ;  his  insistence  on  their  wearing 


io        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

in  his  drawing-room  the  bands  at  that  time 
beginning  to  disappear  from  academic  uniform 
gained  him  the  sobriquet  of  "  Bands  Wilson," 
nor  were  there,  as  in  the  case  of  his  successor  Hill, 
any  agreeable  daughters  to  enliven  the  serious- 
ness of  the  function.  Yet  he  won  from  his 
pupils  affectionate  regard :  the  "  Teddyites  " 
took  high  places  in  the  Schools  ;  amid  the  tradi- 
tional College  laziness  which  Oriel  was  only  just 
beginning  to  break  up,  the  Hall  and  its  virtual 
Head — for  Principal  Thompson,  like  his  pre- 
decessors, took  no  part  in  the  tuition — began  to 
rank  extraordinarily  high.  But  with  enlarging 
usefulness,  success,  repute,  increased  also  Wilson's 
interior  misgivings.  "  Divine  things  lose  their 
savour  ;  "  sin  comes  deceitfully  arrayed  in  the 
garb  of  secularity,  literature,  distinction  ;  self- 
examination  leaves  him  woebegone,  his  spiritual 
consciousness  is  dimmed.  "  My  time  at  Oxford," 
he  wrote  long  afterwards,  "  was  entirely  without 
profit  to  my  soul."  This  was  too  unqualified  a 
statement ;  for,  side  by  side  with  his  College 
work,  on  Sundays  and  during  vacations,  he 
ministered  in  two  little  Worton  villages  near 
Oxford.  They  had  been  neglected  by  a  suc- 
cession of  sporting  parsons  ;  in  judgments  much 
less  strict  than  his  must  have  been  pronounced 


EVELEIGH  1 1 

godless.  He  won  all  hearts  at  once  ;  such  a 
preacher  they  had  never  heard.  Crowds  filled 
the  little  synagogues,  surrounded  the  windows, 
extended  half-way  down  the  churchyard ;  his 
powerful  voice  reached  all.  Sixty  years  after 
his  departure  old  men  and  women  lovingly 
described  his  presence  and  repeated  portions  of 
his  sermons  ;  a  marble  tablet  over  the  entrance 
to  Upper  Worton  Church  stands  to  this  day 
as  a  memorial  that  he  once  was  there. 

In  1809  came  a  call  to  St.  John's  Chapel  in 
Bedford  Row.  He  placed  the  Hall  temporarily 
—a  curious  arrangement — under  the  care  of  Hill, 
then  an  undergraduate  ;  and  so  soon  as  that  young 
gentleman  had  taken  his  degree  and  Orders, 
resigned  it  entirely  into  his  hands.  To  Bedford 
Row,  to  Islington,  to  Calcutta,  we  need  not 
follow  him ;  to  us  only  his  Oxford  career  is 
interesting.  Disentangled  from  the  Gileadite 
shibboleths,  which  make  the  self-revelations  of 
religious  experience  repulsive  to  mere  men  of 
Ephraim,  his  Oxford  life  records  a  fight  between 
the  intellectual  and  spiritual  constituents  in  a 
temperament  capable  at  once  of  literary  en- 
thusiasm and  of  passionate  emotional  ardour ; 
and  bids  us  ask  how  far  the  pursuit  of  humanistic 
attainment  is  compatible  with  what  may  not 


12        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

improperly  be  called  the  higher  life.     That  God 
is  the  ideal  human  self  ;    "  the  God  within  us 
striving  for  communication  with  God,"  was  the 
alphabet    of    T.    H.    Green's    metaphysical    or 
theological  teaching  :  the  desire  to  become  better 
is  at  once  the  evidence  of  an  absolute  best,  a 
Summum  Pulchrum,  and  the  growing  identifica- 
tion with  it  of  ourselves.     It  is  natural  that  a 
Soul  which  has   grasped   this   as   a   fact,   which 
finds  or  thinks  it  finds  itself,  like  the  Glendoveer 
in    Southey's    poem,    ascending   ever    nearer    to 
the  primal  source  of  consciousness,  should  shut 
out  as  impeding  and  distracting  all  other  claims — 
of  sense,  of  intellect,  of  philanthropy.     But  his 
first  glimpse  of  the  primal  light  he  sought  hurled 
Ereenya    to    the    mountain's    base ;     nature    re- 
volts against  Manichsean  isolation  ;  the  slighted 
faculties   avenge    themselves.     Religious    ecstasy, 
like  love  passion  or  battle  ardour,  is  either  inter- 
mittent, and  then  resourceless  in  its  lapses,  or 
strains  itself  to  breaking  point — to  madness,  as  in 
poor  Cowper's  case  ;    to  heartlessness,  as  in  the 
terrible    Swedish    drama  ;     to   the    malignity   of 
the    persecutor,    to    the    self-exaltation    of    the 
Pharisee.     And   it   is   observable   that   all   these 
religious  obscurantists  of  the  higher  sort — Wilson, 
Keble,  Newman — who  have  professed  to  discard 


PROVOST   EVELEIGH 
(From  the  Oriel  portrait  by  John  Hoppner] 


EVELEIGH  13 

and  decry  as  "  of  the  world  "  all  purely  intel- 
lectual proficiency,  had  already  reaped  its  fruits. 
The  man  who,  like  John  Newton,  bid  his  followers 
read  the  Bible  and  the  Bible  only,  had  trained 
himself  by  wide  secular  study  to  understand 
the  Bible  ;  and  we  may  be  sure  that  Wilson's 
pulpiteering  was  the  better,  not  the  worse,  for 
the  midnight  oil  of  St.  Edmund  Hall.  Even  to 
ignorant  Worton  rustics,  much  more  to  com- 
paratively cultured  London  and  Anglo-Indian 
hearers,  the  honey  dropped  by  his  persuasive 
tongue  had  been  already  hived  and  housed  from 
the  flower  plots  of  many  lands.  Body,  brain 
power,  love  of  kind,  are  copartners  with  "  Spirit  " 
in  our  human  structure ;  must  we  not  infer 
that  the  combination,  balance,  harmony  of  all, 
are  necessary  to  the  building  of  the  perfect 
man. 

I  have  seen  higher,  holier,  things  than  these, 
And  therefore  must  to  these  refuse  my  heart, 

Yet  am  I  panting  for  a  little  ease ; 
I'll  take,  and  so  depart. 

Ah  !  hold  !  the  heart  is  prone  to  fall  away, 
Her  high  and  cherished  visions  to  forget ; 

And,  if  thou  takest,  how  wilt  thou  repay 
So  vast,  so  dread,  a  debt  ? 


i4        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

How  will  the  heart  which  now  thou  trustest,  then 
Corrupt,  yet  in  corruption  mindful  yet, 

Turn  with  sharp  stings  upon  itself?     Again 
Bethink  thee  of  the  debt. 

The  Summum  Pulchrum  rests  in  heaven  above  ; 

Do  thou,  as  best  thou  mayest,  thy  duty  do  ; 
Amid  the  things  allowed  thee  live  and  love  ; 

Some  day  thou  shalt  It  view. 


With  such  firstfruits  of  his  reforming  energy 
as  Marriott  and  Wilson  Provost  Eveleigh  may 
well  have  been  satisfied,  but  it  was  some  time 
before  they  awakened  corresponding  tutorial  and 
undergraduate  energy.  During  four  years  follow- 
ing only  eleven  men  "  Examinatoribus  se  maxime 
commendaverunt."  Five  of  these  were  from 
Christchurch,  a  sixth  was  a  Bible  clerk  of  All 
Souls ;  one  alone,  we  are  surprised  to  learn, 
came  from  Oriel.  In  1807  the  Honour  men  were 
arranged  in  First  and  Second  Classes ;  a  Third 
Class  was  added  in  1825  ;  and  in  1830  the  present 
Four  Class  arrangement  was  adopted,  a  proposal 
to  print  the  names  of  Pass-men  being  after  a 
prolonged  and  animated  controversy  rejected. 
Within  five  years  from  the  acceptance  of  the  1807 
Statute  the  First  Classes  contained  the  names  of 
Sir  William  Hamilton,  the  first  Chief  Justice 


EVELEIGH  15 

Coleridge,  Dean  Milman,  J.  G.  Lockhart,  Nassau 
Senior,  Lord  Cardwell ;  six  candidates,  Sir  Robert 
Peel,  Vowler  Short,   Keble,   Cramer,   Dr.    Bull, 
Hampden,    Provost    Hawkins,    coming    out    as 
Double  Firsts.    But  the  effects  of  the  new  regime 
went   far   beyond   the   production   or    discovery 
of  brilliant   individuals.      The    dry  bones   were 
stirred  :     bold   invasion    of    venerable    torpidity 
generated    a    new    temper    in    the    University. 
There  arose,   said  Pusey  sadly  long  afterwards, 
looking   back   upon   the   earlier   decades   of   the 
century,  a  spirit  of  free  inquiry  :  old  institutions, 
accepted  principles  and  beliefs,  were  rudely  and 
fearlessly  investigated,  and  called  upon  to  justify 
themselves    at    the    bar    of    utility    and    reason. 
Authority,  sole  judge  hitherto  in  questions  intel- 
lectual, was  disallowed — French  Encyclopaedists, 
German    Rationalists,    no    longer    banned    with 
undiscriminating  antipathy,  were  summoned  as 
accomplices  and  witnesses  in  the  newborn  search 
for  Truth.      It  was  a  memorable  uprising,  sus- 
tained by  some  of  the  greatest  names  in  Oxford 
history ;    destined  after  a   period  of  eclipse   to 
permeate  English  thought ;   for  the  Oriel  School 
in  the  Twenties  was  parent  to  the  Essays  and 
Reviews   of   forty   years   later   on.     But   it   was 
premature  ;   in  contrast  too  startling  with  long- 


1 6        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

established  University  thought  :  it  was  almost 
confined  to  Oriel ;  and  from  Oriel  by-and-by 
came  the  reaction  which  was  its  inevitable  com- 
plement. By  Eveleigh  himself,  so  far  as  we 
know,  its  philosophical  audacities  were  not  shared, 
and  might  not  have  been  adopted :  but  his  revo- 
lutionary hand  created  the  atmosphere  in  which 
they  throve  ;  and  without  a  tribute  to  his  large 
and  previsional  intelligence  no  chronicle  of  the 
Pre-Tractarian  Movement  would  be  complete. 


CHAPTER    II 

COPLESTON 

imperium  Jovis, 
Clari  giganteo  triumpho, 
Cuncta  supercilio  moventis. 

'  THE  history  carries  us  to  Oxford  ;  and  I  think 
of  the  clerical  and  respectable  Oxford  of  those 
times,  the  Oxford  of  Copleston  and  the  Kebles 
and  Hawkins  and  a  hundred  more,  with  the 
relief  Keble  declares  himself  to  have  experienced 
from  Izaak  Walton — 

When,  wearied  with  the  tale  thy  times  disclose, 
The  eye  first  finds  thee  out  in  thy  secure  repose." 

Thus  wrote  Matthew  Arnold  in  his  Essay  on 
Shelley,  recalling  the  glories  of  his  famous  College. 
They  were  somewhat  on  the  wane  when  he  was 
elected  Fellow  ;  but  still  their  memory  remained  ; 
still  Oriel  spoke  to  all  England  of  Keble's  poetry, 
Whately's  logic,  Hampden's  philosophy,  Davison's 
prophetic  exegesis ;  still  many  men  survived  who 
could  recall  the  majestic  figure  of  EDWARD  COPLE- 
STON, monarch  in  his  day  alike  of  Oriel  and  of 
Oxford,  dethroner  of  uncreating  Chaos,  supreme 
for  twenty  years  over  the  new  sceclorum  ordo. 

17  B 


1 8        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

May    I    here    explain    why,    citing    Davison 
amongst    the   magnanimi  heroes  of  the    opening 
century,    I   have    not   given   him   a    chapter   to 
himself.     He  stood  aloof  from  both  the  earlier 
and    the    later    Oriel    movements ;    his    mental 
constitution  parting    him   from   Copleston   and 
Whately    on    the    one    side,    from    Keble    and 
Pusey  on  the  other.     He  was  all  along  personally 
fascinated     by     Copleston  :      Hampden,     whose 
Bampton   Lectures   he   admired   and   approved, 
wrote  of  him  as  "  one  whose  memory  I  am  not 
single  in  loving  and  reverencing  :    I  find  myself 
constantly   recurring    in    thought   to   him   as   a 
master,  and  asking  myself  what  he  would  have 
thought    on   this    or  that    question."     Yet    the 
Tractarians  claimed  him  as  an  ally,  and  eagerly 
awaited  a  Commentary  on  the  Scriptures  which 
he  was  known  to  be  preparing.     But  his  character 
was  that  of  a  man  timid,  hesitating,  easily  em- 
barrassed ;    he    wrote    and    rewrote ;    postponed 
public  avowal  of  his  opinions ;  on  his  death-bed 
instructed  his  wife  to  destroy  all  his  manuscripts. 
He  left  a  treatise  on  the  "  Structure,  Use,  and 
Inspiration  of  Prophecy,"  which  passed  through 
several  editions  and  has  preserved  his  name ;   but 
he  never  fell  into  line  with  or  took  part  in  the 
influence  exercised  by  the  Noetic  School.     Lord 


COPLESTON  19 

Dudley,  in  one  of  his  published  letters  to  Cople- 
ston,  expresses  astonishment  that  with  such  an 
understanding  and  such  acquirements,  Davison's 
manners  should  be  "  so  entirely  odious  and  de- 
testable. How  you  could  live  with  him  without 
hating  him  I  do  not  understand :  clever  as  he  is, 
there  must  be  some  great  defect  in  his  mind,  or  he 
would  try  to  make  himself  a  little  more  sufferable." 
The  passage,  published  and  therefore  we  must 
suppose  endorsed  by  Copleston,  throws  a  curious 
light  on  Oriel  manners  at  the  time,  as  they  appeared 
to  a  well-bred  and  fastidious  outsider.  We  can 
imagine  that  the  fierce  dialectical  cut  and  thrust 
of  men  brought  together  by  intellectual  force, 
rather  than  by  social  amenity,  might  shock  persons 
accustomed  to  the  courtly  and  forbearing  de- 
meanour of  what  is  called  "  good  society." 
Some  twelve  years  later,  Samuel  Wilberforce, 
dining  in  the  Common  Room,  comments  with 
unpleasant  and  somewhat  pragmatical  candour 
on  his  hosts  :  "  the  cantankerous  conceit  of 
— ,  the  pettishness  of ,  the  vulgar  priggish- 
ness  of 's  jokes,  the  loud  ungentlemanliness 

of  -    — ,  —  -'s  cut-lip  arguments,  the  disinterred 

liveliness  of  ,  and  the  silence  of  Newman, 

were  all  surprenant,  nay  epourantable"    These  men 
were  destitute,  we  see,  of  Wilberforce's  immense 


20        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

social  advantages  ;    their  manners  had  not  that 
repose  which  stamps  the  caste  of  Vere  de  Vere. 

Provost  Eveleigh  died  in  1814 :  the  event 
was  announced  to  the  College  "  in  a  forcible  and 
felicitous  allocution  "  by  the  Dean,  Copleston. 
Immediately  afterwards,  in  pursuance  of  a  requi- 
sition signed  by  all  the  Fellows,  he  was  elected 
in  Eveleigh's  place.  A  suffrage  thus  voluntary 
and  unanimous  was  at  that  time  probably  un- 
precedented ;  but  no  other  choice  could  have 
been  possible  :  both  in  his  own  College  and  in 
the  University  Copleston  held  the  highest  place. 
Born  in  1770,  and  educated  at  home  by  his 
father,  a  country  clergyman,  he  had  at  fifteen 
years  old  gained  a  Corpus  scholarship,  at  seventeen 
the  Latin  Verse  Prize,  "  Marius  in  the  Ruins  of 
Carthage."  Two  years  later,  the  Provost  and 
Fellows  of  Oriel,  having  rejected  as  incompetent 
all  the  candidates  for  one  of  their  close  Fellow- 
ships, invited  him  to  be  nominated  for  election  ; 
and  the  unusual  step,  which  must  have  been 
prompted  by  the  high  reputation  he  had  already 
gained,  was  justified  by  his  obtaining  the  English 
Essay  Prize  in  the  following  year.  Its  subject 
was  "  Agriculture  "  ;  and  he  handled  it  with  sc 
much  taste  and  knowledge  as  to  receive  a  specia.' 


COPLESTON  21 

vote  of  thanks  from  the  Agricultural  Society. 
It  is  related  that,  as  he  left  the  Hall  after  his 
election  to  Oriel,  he  was  accosted  by  one  of 
the  Fellows,  known  afterwards  as  Archdeacon 
Williams,  who  besought  him  to  recollect  always 
that  he  owed  his  preferment  to  merit  alone,  and 
never  to  forget  the  principle  on  which  his  Fellow- 
ship was  won.  The  charge  was  in  accordance 
with  his  own  feeling  ;  in  exercise  of  patronage 
both  at  Oxford  and  LlandafT  his  invariable  motto 
was  detur  digniori  ;  but  the  reminder  was  novel 
and  necessary  in  days  when  in  every  other  College 
elections  were  determined  on  personal  and  social 
grounds.  Down  to  my  own  time  the  custom 
was  not  quite  obsolete  :  I  have  told  of  a 
Senior  Fellow  of  Merton,  when  at  a  Fellowship 
election  the  opinion  of  the  Examiners  was  pressed 
upon  him,  answering  in  outraged  tones — "  Sir, 
I  came  up  to  vote  for  the  son  of  my  old  friend 
— ,  and  vote  for  him  I  shall,  whatever  the 
Examiners  may  say."  But  already  at  Oriel  a 
system  was  in  course  of  establishment,  to  become 
under  Copleston  the  rule  ;  a  system  which  not 
only  banished  from  the  elections  all  claims  of 
nepotism  and  friendship,  but  refused  deference 
to  academical  distinction  already  gained,  or  even 
to  technical  scholarly  attainments  as  shown  in 


22        PRE-TRACTARIAN    OXFORD 

the  Examination  papers :  admission  was  accorded 
only  to  evidence  of  power  and  originality  ;  not 
to  what  a  man  had  read,  but  to  what  he  was 
like.  Neither  Whately,  Newman,  T.  Mozley, 
or  Hurrell  Froude,  had  gained  a  First  Class :  they 
were  taken,  as  was  Plumer,  as  at  a  still  later 
period  was  Clough,  against  candidates  of  stronger 
prima  facie  claims. 

In  1797  Copleston  became  Tutor,  and  at  the 
same  time  Captain  in  a  regiment  of  Volunteers 
formed  as  expectant  of  a  French  invasion.  In 
both  capacities  he  made  immediate  mark. 
J.  Hughes  of  Oriel,  father  to  the  author  of 
"  Tom  Brown,"  used  to  recall  him  as  the  ablest 
officer  and  "  tightest  drill "  in  the  University 
Corps :  to  keep  pace  with  his  exactions  required  no 
small  equipment  of  wind  and  muscle.  For  he  en- 
joyed through  life  at  once  the  mens  Integra  and 
the  validum  corpus  for  which  Horace  besought 
Latona's  son  :  possessed  of  great  bodily  strength, 
he  was  known  as  a  daring  rider  and  a  tireless 
pedestrian.  We  hear  of  his  walking  from  Oxford 
to  Marlborough  in  one  day  ;  and  he  frequently 
performed  on  foot  the  journey  from  Oxford  to 
London.  Such  an  exploit  had  in  those  days 
perils  of  its  own  :  I  well  remember  how,  in  my 
childhood,  when  my  father  undertook  a  long 


COPLESTON  23 

professional  journey  from  Oxford,  he  carried 
a  loaded  pistol  in  his  post-chaise  ;  and  on  one 
occasion  Copleston,  walking  to  London  with  his 
friend  Mant,  afterwards  the  well  known  Com- 
mentator bishop,  was  met  near  Uxbridge  by 
mounted  highwaymen,  who  robbed  the  pair  of 
their  valuables. 

In  accepting  the  office  of  Tutor  he  was  con- 
fronted by  a  perplexing  difficulty.  He  was  ex- 
pected to  lecture  on  Logic.  That  Science  had 
not,  except  in  the  meagre  compendium  of  Dean 
Aldrich,  been  taught  to  him  at  Corpus ;  had  in 
fact  for  many  years  been  almost  entirely  laid 
aside  at  Oxford,  along  with  Astrology  and 
Alchemy,  as  a  system  of  barren  and  useless 
subtleties.  He  set  himself  to  collect  and  read 
all  books  professing  to  treat  of  it ;  and  from  this 
chaos  he  evolved  a  coherent  and  intelligible 
syllabus  for  his  own  use.  When,  years  after- 
wards, Whately  came  to  compose  his  "  Ele- 
ments of  Logic,"  he  found  great  part  of  his 
work  to  have  been  already  perfected  by  his 
friend,  and  received  from  him  assistance  of  the 
highest  value  in  the  remainder.  He  was  never 
tired  of  proclaiming  that  whatever  merit  belonged 
to  his  very  popular  book  should  be  credited  in 
at  least  equal  proportion  to  his  old  Provost. 


24        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

He  had  many  private  pupils ;  amongst  them 
Mr.  Ward,  afterwards  Lord  Dudley  and  Ward, 
whose  letters  to  himself  he  edited  after  his 
friend's  death.  Several  of  these  disciples  have 
left  on  record  their  impression  of  Copleston  as  a 
teacher  ;  his  demand  on  their  sustained  attention 
and  his  enforcement  of  thorough  knowledge. 
Multum,  non  Multa  was  his  maxim ;  quality 
rather  than  quantity ;  to  exercise  the  mind 
rather  than  to  pour  in  knowledge.  "  Few  people 
nowadays  read  the  same  book  twice,"  he  was 
wont  to  complain.  His  horror  of  things  made 
easy,  of  methods  devised  to  save  the  learner 
trouble,  dictated  a  malicious  but  diverting  jeu 
£  esprit  entitled  "  The  Examiner  Examined." 
Kett  of  Trinity — "  Horse "  Kett,  as  he  was 
called  :  I  have  given  elsewhere  the  history  of  his 
-prcenomen — had  published  a  book  called  "  Logic 
Made  Easy,"  a  dialogue  between  a  father  and  his 
motherless  Emily,  in  which  the  Ars  Logica  was 
brought  down  to  nursery  level.  The  book  was 
wholly  superficial,  and  filled  with  grotesque 
blunders ;  while  the  author  had  puffed  himself  in 
the  title  page  as  a  "  Public  Examiner  for  Oxford 
Degrees,"  advancing  his  own  sciolism  beneath  the 
shield  of  the  University  name.  Copleston's 
pamphlet,  "  The  Examiner  Examined,"  criticised 


PROVOST   COPLESTON 
(From  the  Oriel  portrait  by  Thomas  Phillips,  R.A.} 


COPLESTON  25 

the  production  with  justifiable  severity  :  the 
heading,  Equo  ne  credite^  Teucri,  though  an 
amusing  piece  of  personal  impertinence,  might 
perhaps  have  better  been  omitted. 

He  was  soon  to  find  foemen  more  worthy  of 
his  steel  than  harmless,  amiable,  much-derided 
Kett.  The  "  Scotch  Reviewers,"  satirised  by 
Byron  in  1808,  ruled  with  magisterial  arro- 
gance the  world  of  letters.  Anonymous,  irre- 
sponsible, masters  of  a  brilliantly  attractive  style, 
the  plural  "  we  "  giving  to  each  contributor  the 
weight  not  of  an  individual  but  of  a  tribunal, 
their  verdicts  were  accepted  as  oracular  by  the 
entire  reading  public.  Their  weapons  were  alter- 
nately self-sufficiency  and  buffoonery  ;  Whately 
saw  in  them  a  combination  of  the  old-fashioned 
mountebank  and  his  merry  andrew,  the  one  full 
of  puffing  pretension,  the  other  relieving  his 
master's  gravity  from  time  to  time  by  sallies  of 
ribald  song  arid  monkey  tricks.  Now  and  then 
they  deserved  gratitude  for  demolishing  an  im- 
postor ;  but  very  many  of  their  judgments  have 
been  reversed,  while  their  articles  were  marked 
by  habitual  and  inexcusable  unfairness.  They 
were  not,  however,  impervious  to  ridicule  ;  and 
a  joint  in  their  armour  was  pierced  by  a  Satire 
from  Copleston's  pen  called  "  Advice  to  a  Young 


26        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

Reviewer."  Occasioned  actually  by  an  Article 
on  Mant's  poems  in  the  British  Critic,  it  was 
universally  understood  to  be  directed  against  the 
Edinburgh  Review.  With  grave  irony  it  exalts 
the  position  of  a  Reviewer,  and  his  beneficent 
influence  on  Society  as  guiding  its  tastes  and 
opinions  rightly.  The  maintenance  of  this  useful 
power  must  be,  on  public  grounds,  his  constant 
aim,  and  to  this  end  he  must  write  always  what 
will  sell,  disregarding  all  scruples  born  of  a 
contracted  education,  and  mindful  that  the  good 
arising  from  the  continuance  of  this  authority 
with  the  public  must  far  exceed  any  advantages 
which  could  arise  from  strict  adherence  to 
morality.  Shallow  thinkers  have  compared  a 
critic  to  a  judge,  compelled  in  conscience  to 
be  unbiassed,  cautious,  patient  :  but  a  judge  is 
independent  and  irremovable,  a  critic  has  to  win 
and  hold  an  audience,  and  so  his  attitude  is  that 
of  an  advocate  rather  than  of  a  judge.  Therefore 
in  his  pleadings  let  him  remember  that  censure 
is  more  popular  than  praise,  that  ill-natured  wit 
is  read  by  those  to  whom  selective  and  judicious 
eulogy  is  tedious.  The  art  of  unkind  and 
malignant  criticism  is  easily  learned  :  an  author's 
metaphors  may  be  made  ridiculous  by  detach- 
ment from  their  context,  a  fine  passage  can  be 


COPLESTON  27 

paraphrased  into  flatness,  a  dull  passage  quoted 
as  "  a  favourable  specimen  of  the  author's 
manner."  If  a  work  excels  in  any  one  quality, 
it  may  be  blamed  for  not  excelling  in  another  ; 
if  anecdotic,  for  not  being  reflective,  if  analytic, 
for  its  want  of  lively  colouring.  Factitious 
knowledge  of  a  deep  and  thoughtful  work  may 
be  gleaned  from  an  author's  preface,  words  used 
by  him  in  modest  self-depreciation  can  be  easily 
expanded  as  the  reviewer's  own  ;  for  were  time 
to  be  lavished  on  mastering  a  closely  reasoned 
work,  reviewing  would  not  pay,  and  the  public 
must  thereby  suffer. 

But  unmixed  precept  becomes  tedious  :  a 
specimen  shall  be  offered  of  a  review  constructed 
on  the  lines  laid  down.  So  Copleston  selects  and 
proceeds  to  criticise  a  piece  universally  accepted 
as  one  of  the  daintiest  lyric  poems  in  our  lan- 
guage. He  supposes  to  have  newly  issued  from 
the  Press  U  Allegro,  a  Poem,  by  John  Milton,  no 
Printer's  name,  and  proceeds,  Scottice,  to  attack 
it.  It  is  dissected  piece  by  piece  ;  its  graceful 
allegories  are  made  literal  and  stigmatised  as 
immoral  :  the  fantastic  pensioners  of  Euphrosyne 
are  dismissed  as  "  skipping  cranks  "  ;  the  rural 
images  are  grotesquely  misconceived.  In  the  fire- 
side tales  our  reviewer  sees  the  coarseness  of  a 


28        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

village  wake  ;  in  the  classical  or  chivalrous  actors 
a  set  of  sombre  gentry  chilling  to  mirth  and 
gaiety;  the  closing  couplet  is  in  true  Sternhold 
and  Hopkins  style.  "  Upon  the  whole,  Mr. 
Milton  seems  to  be  possessed  of  some  fancy,  and 
talent  for  rhyming ;  two  most  dangerous  en- 
dowments, which  often  unfit  men  for  acting  a 
useful  part  in  life,  without  qualifying  them 
for  that  which  is  great  and  brilliant.  If  it  be 
true,  as  we  have  heard,  that  he  has  declined 
advantageous  prospects  in  business  for  the  sake  of 
indulging  his  poetical  humour,  we  hope  it  is  not 
yet  too  late  to  prevail  upon  him  to  retract  his 
resolution.  With  the  help  of  Cocker  and  common 
industry  he  may  become  a  respectable  scrivener  ; 
but  it  is  not  all  the  Zephyrs  and  Auroras  and 
Corydons  and  Thyrsises,  aye,  nor  his  junketing 
Queen  Mab  and  drudging  goblins,  that  will  ever 
make  him  a  Poet."  If  any  one  cares  to  read  the 
early  numbers  of  the  Edinburgh  Review,  he  will 
see  how  pungently  they  are  parodied  by  Cople- 
ston's  lampoon.  The  Swift-like  satire  of  the 
young  Oxford  Lucilius  was  widely  read  and 
applauded,  just  as  170  years  before  all  Europe 
had  laughed  approval  when  the  conquering 
Jesuits  were  ridiculed  by  Blaise  Pascal.  And  the 
castigation  was  laid  to  heart  :  during  many  years 


COPLESTON  29 

after  the  controversy  had  closed,  it  was  remarked 
that  Articles  with  reference  to  Oxford  were 
written  with  more  caution  and  in  better  taste  ; 
nor  are  we  surprised  to  learn  that  Gifford  at  once 
took  notice  of  the  pamphlet,  and  enrolled  its 
author  as  a  contributor  to  the  Quarterly  Review. 

Lucilius  was  soon  to  encounter  his  opponents l 
personally,  as  Ivanhoe  challenged  the  Templar, 
with  the  sharp,  not  the  blunt  end  of  the  spear  : 
his  playful  castigation  of  the  lordly  Blue  and 
Yellow  was  followed  by  a  more  serious  encounter. 
In  1 808-10  the  Review  began  a  vehement  attack 
on  Oxford  studies  ;  on  the  retention  of  Aristotle 
as  essential  to  a  Degree  in  honours,  on  classical 
teaching  generally.  It  was  met  by  Copleston  in 
three  successive  pamphlets  called  "  Replies  to  the 
Calumnies  of  the  Edinburgh  Review"  the  first  so 
forcibly  written,  and  with  imputations  so  well 
sustained  and  merciless  of  ignorance  and  bad 
Latinity  on  the  part  of  the  Reviewers,  that  the 

1  The  following  were  the  champions  with  whom  Copleston 
had  to  deal : — 

1.  John  Playfair.  La  Place's  Mecanique  Celeste.  January  1808. 

2.  Payne  Knight.     Oxford  Edition  of  Sir abo.     July  1809. 

3.  Sydney   Smith.     Edgcworth  on  Professional  Education. 
October  1809. 

4.  Playfair,  Sydney  Smith,  Payne  Knight.    Joint  "  Rejoinder 
to  a  Reply?  Qr>c.     April  1810. 

5.  D.  K.  Landford.  Mitchell s  Aristophanes.  November  1820. 


30        PRE-TRACTARIAN    OXFORD 

Edinburgh,  which  had  never  before  condescended 
to  answer  attacks,  put  forth  a  "  Rejoinder  to  the 
Reply  "  evincing  anger  and  alarm,  and  occasion- 
ing two  subsequent  "  Replies."  In  these  Cople- 
ston  maintained  the  educational  cogency  of 
Aristotelean  study,  citing  the  Organon  and  the 
Rhetoric  as  especially  valuable  in  respect  of  their 
illuminating  fulness  and  their  eloquence ;  and 
defended  the  syllogism  as  no  mere  weapon  for 
verbal  and  intellectual  fence,  but  as  an  instru- 
ment for  the  discovery  of  truth.  Distinguishing 
the  knowledge  acquired  for  its  own  sake  from 
that  which  goes  to  train  the  faculties,  Copleston 
further  proclaimed,  what  the  Reviewers  had  most 
confidently  impugned,  the  utility  of  classical 
learning.  While  mechanical  productiveness,  with 
its  division  of  labour  and  so  its  individual  con- 
centration, is  good  for  the  Art,  limiting  for  the 
Worker,  Literature,  he  urged,  and  classical  litera- 
ture as  its  most  finished  representative,  is  emi- 
nently useful  to  the  individual,  and  through  him 
to  the  community.  He  deals  with  the  rival 
claims  of  Science,  and  with  the  relative  value 
of  tutorial  and  professorial  lectures ;  sums  up 
his  defence  with  a  plea  for  cultivation  of  the 
mind  as  in  itself  a  good,  even  though  it  be 
destitute  of  practical  value.  The  brochure  is  of 


COPLESTON  31 

interest  to-day,  when  the  assault  on  classical 
education  has  become  popularised ;  it  must, 
however,  be  noted  that  when  Copleston  wrote 
Science  was  in  its  infancy,  and  that  very  few 
classical  lectures  were  at  that  time  equal  to 
those  given  in  Oriel. 

In  the  Will  of  a  recent  millionaire  a  substantial 
bequest  to  Oriel  was  coupled  with  a  contemptuous 
allusion  to  the  commercial  incompetence  of 
College  Dons.  Had  he  known  Copleston  Mr. 
Rhodes  might  have  modified  his  criticism.  Ap- 
pointed Bursar  of  his  College,  he  found  its 
system  of  finance,  as  was  the  case  with  all  corporate 
bodies  of  that  date,  mischievously  inefficient, 
the  estates  being  let  on  beneficial  leases  with 
renewal  fines,  which  were  divided  amongst  the 
Fellows  as  they  fell.  From  the  time  of  his 
election  no  more  leases  were  renewed  ;  the  rents 
were  raised,  money  being  borrowed  to  meet 
immediate  loss  :  and  on  laying  down  his  office 
after  six  years,  he  could  boast  that  the  income  of 
the  College  had  been  trebled,  all  its  debts  liqui- 
dated, and  the  estates  better  managed  than 
under  the  old  system.  He  was  noted  as  Bursar, 
and  afterwards  as  Provost,  for  his  power  of  rapid 
visual  calculation.  It  was  customary  to  add  up 
weekly  in  the  Common  Room  the  battels  or 


32        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

accounts  of  the  men  as  entered  in  the  buttery 
books,  forming  long  rows  of  £  s.  d.  in  the  large 
ledger.  Copleston  would  pass  his  finger  rapidly 
up  the  central  column  once,  and  declare  the 
total,  which  was  invariably  correct. 

During  these  years  he  had  held  the  Professor- 
ship of  Poetry.  Its  lectures,  delivered  in  Latin, 
commanded  fit  audience  though  few,  and  were 
published  at  the  conclusion  of  the  Course,  to  rest 
for  the  most  part  unread  in  College  Libraries 
or  to  form  appropriate  School  Prizes.1  It  was 
said  that  no  man  in  Oxford  so  valued  and  studied 
Copleston's  Lectures  as  did  Newman.  He  read 
them  with  his  favourite  pupils,  pointing  out 
their  originality  of  thought  and  their  felicity  of 
expression,  as  indicating  a  breadth  of  culture  not 
always  united  with  exact  and  elegant  scholarship, 
distinguishing  their  Latin,  however,  as  more 
Coplestonian  than  Ciceronian.  The  volume 
appeared  in  1813,  with  a  dedication  to  Lord 
Grenville,  Chancellor  of  the  University.  This 
nobleman  had  been  elected  after  a  sharp  contest 
on  the  death  of  the  Duke  of  Portland  in  1809. 
His  opponent  was  Lord  Eldon,  who,  a  Tory  of 

1  The  writer  possesses  a  handsomely  bound  copy  of  Keble's 
Praelections,  with  their  singularly  beautiful  dedication  to 
Wordsworth,  awarded  to  him  as  a  Winchester  School  Prize 
in  1848. 


COPLESTON  33 

Tories,  was  supported  by  academic  prepossession 
and  by  official  influence.  Grenville,  though  out 
of  favour  at  Court  and  excluded  from  the  Cabinet, 
was  also  a  Tory,  a  friend  and  ally  of  Pitt ;  but 
he  was  at  issue  with  the  Government  on  two 
important  points,  Roman  Catholic  Emancipation 
and  the  Currency.  Copleston,  who  agreed  with 
Grenville  on  both  these  burning  questions, 
being,  like  him,  a  Tory  of  the  Pitt  and  Canning 
school,  exercised  all  his  energy  in  that  nobleman's 
behalf,  putting  out  a  judicious  address  in  his 
favour.  The  new  Chancellor,  elected  by  a 
majority  of  only  thirteen  votes,  attributed  his 
success  to  Copleston's  advocacy,  and  they  became 
fast  friends.  To  a  bitter  attack  on  him  by 
Croker  for  his  share  in  the  contest  Copleston 
replied  by  a  vigorous  pamphlet  in  1810. 

In  1814  Provost  Eveleigh  died,  and  Copleston 
was  unanimously  elected  in  his  place.  The 
University  approved  the  choice  by  the  unusual 
step  of  conferring  on  him  by  diploma  the  D.D. 
degree.  The  twelve  years  of  his  rule  at  Oriel 
are  almost  unnoticed  by  his  biographers.  His 
right  hand  man  in  College  government  is  said 
to  have  been  James  Endell  Tyler.  Tyler  was  a 
scholar  of  the  old-fashioned  type,  knowing  his 
books  by  heart  :  a  slang  phrase  of  the  day  declared 

c 


34        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

that  he  could  construe  Thucydides  "  through  a 
deal  board."  He  was  popular  with  the  under- 
graduates, especially  with  the  gentlemen  com- 
moners. He  discerned  at  once  the  marvellous 
genius  of  Hartley  Coleridge  ;  warmly  supported 
his  election  to  a  Fellowship ;  was  deeply  grieved 
when  Hartley's  wayward  weakness  and  eccen- 
tricity made  it  inevitable  that  after  a  year  of 
probation  his  election  should  be  annulled.  S.  T. 
Coleridge,  much  distressed  by  his  son's  rejection, 
came  down  to  expostulate  with  the  Provost.  He 
demanded  that  a  distinction  should  be  drawn 
between  drunkenness  and  intoxication  :  there 
were,  he  argued,  four  kinds  of  intoxication,  and 
the  variety  which  Hartley  had  patronised  was 
neither  injurious  nor  disgraceful.  We  recall  the 
Baron  of  Bradwardine's  discrimination  between 
ebriosus,  ebrius,  ebriolus.  A  sermon  preached  by 
Tyler  in  a  London  church  had  Lord  Liverpool 
amongst  its  auditors.  The  Prime  Minister  was 
so  much  impressed  by  the  preacher  that  he 
presented  him  to  the  Living  of  St.  Giles'  in  the 
Fields,  where  he  lived  into  old  age  useful  and 
beloved ;  better  suited  possibly  to  a  parish  than  a 
College:  since  Newman  long  afterwards  beingasked 
what  he  remembered  of  Tyler,  answered  "that  he 
was  a  person  wholly  inconsiderable  in  any  way." 


COPLESTON  35 

In  1819  Copleston  published  his  two  Letters 
to  Sir  Robert  Peel  on  the  Currency  and  the 
Poor  Laws.  They  were  highly  complimented 
in  both  Houses  of  Parliament  ;  and  he  was  con- 
sulted on  these  subjects  personally  by  Peel, 
Baring,  Huskisson,  Tierney,  and  Sir  James 
Mackintosh.  About  the  same  time  we  find  his 
curiously  versatile  and  active  mind  working  to 
produce  a  volume  on  "  Necessity  and  Predesti- 
nation," which  passed  rapidly  through  two 
editions,  and  drew  from  one  of  his  Edinburgh 
Review  opponents,  D.  K.  Sandford,  a  touchingly 
worded  tribute  of  personal  and  repentant  grati- 
tude. In  1824  he  was  appointed  by  Lord  Liver- 
pool to  the  Deanery  of  Chester,  which  he  held 
with  his  Provostship  during  three  years,  resigning 
both  on  his  promotion  to  the  bishopric  of 
Llandaff  and  Deanery  of  St.  Paul's. 

It  is  amongst  the  disadvantages  belonging  to  a 
wealthy  Church  Establishment  that  its  bishoprics, 
instead  of  being  treated  as  offices  requiring  more 
special  qualifications  than  those  which  attach 
themselves  to  the  mere  title  of  Reverend,  should 
be  viewed  in  the  light  of  prizes,  and  bestowed  as 
rewards  on  men  meritorious  and  distinguished  in 
quite  alien  lines.  We  see  Schoolmasters,  Pro- 
fessors, Heads  of  Colleges,  translated  from  posts 


36        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

filled  with  admirable  fitness  to  an  episcopal 
elevation  for  which  they  are  entirely  untrained. 
Of  all  men  then  resident  in  Oxford  Copleston 
could  worst  be  spared  :  not  a  few,  his  inferiors  in 
capacity,  but  with  experience  more  ministrant 
to  prelatical  functions,  would  have  made  equally 
good  bishops.  Add  that  the  unusually  exacting 
duties  of  a  neglected  Welsh  See  were  further 
hampered  by  the  necessity  of  periodical  residence 
at  St.  Paul's  and  of  attendance  in  the  House  of 
Lords.  To  the  duties,  however,  of  his  new  post 
he  brought  the  whole  force  of  his  practised 
judgment,  resolute  will,  mental  and  bodily 
activity.  We  find  him  riding  on  horseback  into 
every  corner  of  his  diocese,  holding  Confirmations 
in  villages  where  no  bishop  had  ever  been  seen, 
extorting  by  appeal  to  their  sense  of  justice  or  of 
shame  large  sums  from  rich  ironmasters  for  the 
populations  which  they  had  drawn  into  the  South 
Wales  mining  villages.  He  exercised  patronage 
with  conscientious  care,  promoted  churches, 
schools,  glebe  houses  with  large  assistance  from  his 
private  purse,  enforced  clerical  residence,  insisted 
on  Welsh-speaking  clergy  where  not  thwarted 
by  patronage  rights,  increased  Curates'  salaries, 
evinced  a  paternal  spirit  towards  the  Separatists 
who  formed  the  great  majority  of  the  population. 


COPLESTON  37 

To  complete  this  personal  record  it  will  be  well 
to  make  some  notice  of  his  expressed  opinions 
and  his  public  acts,  as  illustrating  the  attitude 
maintained  by  the  ablest  Oxford  thinkers  of  the 
time  towards  academical,  political,  ecclesiastical 
questions.  His  aspirations  for  Collegiate  reform 
anticipated  in  many  points  the  changes  intro- 
duced by  the  Act  of  1853  ;  and  he  invited  im- 
mediate Parliamentary  interference  to  remove 
the  statutable  obstructions  which  made  internal 
voluntary  reform  impossible.  He  justified  inter- 
ference with  Founders'  Wills,  where  these  were 
seen  to  have  wrought  mischief  to  the  community, 
and  desired  to  abolish  all  preference  of  Founders' 
kin,  all  restriction  of  Fellowships  and  Scholarships 
to  particular  schools  and  counties.  He  feared, 
however,  lest  "  Time  Fellowships  "  should  destroy 
the  feeling  of  security  which  was  the  chief  charm 
of  a  Lifelong  Fellowship  :  most  men,  he  said, 
would  prefer  a  permanent  Fellowship  of  ^200  to  a 
limited  Fellowship  of  twice  that  value.  He  urged 
strenuously  but  unavailingly  that  the  names  of 
Passmen,  not  of  Classmen  only,  should  be  printed 
in  the  published  Lists.  This  was  denounced  as 
cruel,  branding  Passmen  with  inefficiency  ;  since 
the  standard  for  the  ordinary  degree  was  known 
to  be  so  low,  that  to  pass  was  only  less  discreditable 


38        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

than  to  be  plucked.  The  cruelty,  he  answered, 
lay  in  admitting  to  the  University  men  thus  ill 
equipped ;  and  he  proposed  a  public  Examination 
of  a  not  too  lenient  kind,  without  passing  which 
no  man  should  be  permitted  to  matriculate. 

In  Politics  he  was  independent  of  Party.  His 
opposition  to  Peel's  Currency  measures  was  said 
to  have  long  retarded  his  promotion  ;  and  he 
supported  Roman  Catholic  Emancipation,  though 
opposing  a  Maynooth  Grant.  In  the  famous 
Lords  division  of  1831  he  voted  against  the 
second  reading  of  the  Reform  Bill  :  this  made 
him  for  the  time  unpopular  in  his  diocese  :  he 
provided  himself  with  a  round  hat  and  brown 
coat  as  a  disguise  in  case  the  mob  should  attack 
his  palace  ;  and,  in  common  with  nearly  all  his 
brother  bishops,  he  avoided  public  recognition 
by  leaving  off  his  wig.  Later  on  he  spoke  and 
voted  against  the  Jew  Bill,  not  from  any  fear  of 
"  unchristianising  the  legislature,"  but  because  he 
thought  that  any  measure  of  the  kind,  to  be  con- 
sistent, ought  to  abolish  all  religious  disqualifica- 
tions of  whatsoever  kind.  With  regard  to  Ireland 
he  urged  drastic  measures,  limiting  the  power  of 
landlords  to  an  extent  which  no  one  had  at  that 
time  ventured  to  propose.  Marriage  with  a 
deceased  wife's  sister,  already  beginning  to  be 


COPLESTON  39 

pressed  in  Parliament,  he  judged  on  social,  not 
religious  grounds ;  setting  aside  as  inapplicable 
all  reference  to  Mosaic  law  or  Christian  custom, 
distinguishing  between  the  impropriety  of  such 
alliances,  of  which  every  one  must  judge  for  him- 
self, and  the  unwisdom  of  their  legal  prohibition 
without  clear  evidence,  hitherto  not  obtained, 
that  such  unions  would  be  disastrous  to  the 
community. 

In  matters  ecclesiastical  his  temper  towards 
the  framework  of  an  Establishment  was,  on  the 
whole,  conservative.  He  thought  it  had  never 
been  so  free  of  abuses  as  in  his  time,  yet  con- 
demned its  system  of  patronage ;  and  would 
abolish  all  freehold  rights  of  paid  officials.  He 
was  a  maintainer  of  Church  rates,  objected  to 
suffragan  bishops,  longed  to  see  Convocation  con- 
verted into  a  representative  and  legislative  govern- 
ing body  of  the  Church.  A  devoted  admirer  of 
the  Reformation,  he  subscribed  liberally  to  the 
Martyrs  Memorial,  now  a  mere  graceful  addition 
to  the  beauty  of  St.  Giles',  then  looked  upon  as 
a  test  of  sympathy  with  the  Reformers ;  he 
published  forcible  anti-papal  sermons,  and  carried 
in  the  House  of  Lords  an  amendment  against  the 
measure  for  diplomatic  relations  with  the  Vatican. 
He  zealously  vindicated  and  impressed  upon  his 


40        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

clergy  the  claims  of  the  English  Church,  not  of 
the  Papist  seceders  from  it,  to  the  title  of 
"  Catholic  "  :  "  ours  is  the  old  faith,  corrupted 
formerly,  since  restored  by  Protestants."  To- 
wards the  Tract  Movement  his  attitude  was  at 
first  contemptuous  ;  it  was,  he  thought,  a  passing 
folly.  In  1835  we  find  him  sending  a  cordial 
message  to  Newman  :  eight  years  later  he  de- 
plores the  distraction  to  science  and  literature 
caused  in  Oxford  by  the  "  mystical  divinity  "  of 
the  Tract  writers  ;  and  recalling  in  a  letter  to 
Provost  Hawkins  the  great  promise  of  Newman's 
early  days,  quotes  sadly  the  lines  from  the 
Agamemnon  — 


K.T.\. 

So  once  a  lion  cub  as  foster  child  one  reared, 
Tame,  by  the  children  loved,  and  fondled  by  the  old. 
But,  when  full  grown,  it  showed  the  nature  of  its  sires  ; 
For  it,  unbidden,  made  a  feast,  in  recompense 
Of  fostering  care,  a  banquet  of  slain  sheep. 

Through  God's  decree  a  priest  of  Ate  thus 

Was  reared,  and  grew  within  the  man's  own  home. 

He  condemned,  as  ultimately  dangerous,  the 
Tractarian  reservation  of  selected  truths,  to  be 
imparted  esoterically  to  a  few  ;  its  exalting 
Tradition  to  a  level  with  the  Bible  ;  its  conferring 
a  hieratic  character  on  the  Christian  Ministry  ; 


COPLESTON  41 

its  imparting  a  sacramental  agency  to  Ordina- 
tion. "  Nettle  roots  sting  not,"  he  was  wont  to 
quote  from  Bacon  :  the  first  entrance  of  any 
false  principle  or  usurped  power  is  usually  in 
reference  to  something  harmless  and  unimpor- 
tant :  having  once  taken  possession  of  the  soil, 
it  sends  up  shoots  poisonous  and  strong. 

A  precisian  in  language,  he  was  severe  on  the 
employment,  in  composition  or  in  talk,  of  popular 
but  false  terminology.  He  would  quote  as  an 
instance  of  verbal  misemployment  Milton's  use 
of  the  word  certain  in  "  Paradise  Lost,"  iii.  118 — 

Foreknowledge  hath  no  influence  on  their  fault, 
Which  had  no  less  proved  certain^  unforeknown. 

The  word  "  certain  "  is  subjective  to  the  mind  ; 
and  expresses  conviction  in  those  who  use  it :  it 
cannot  be  made  also  to  express  the  object  of  our 
thought,  whose  nature  is  in  no  way  influenced 
by  our  conviction.  So  also  he  condemned  the 
popular  confusion  of  "  Truth  "  with  "  Fact." 
"  Truth  "  implies  a  report  of  something  that  is ; 
"  Fact  "  the  existence  of  a  thing,  whether  reported 
or  not.  An  Article  in  the  Creed  is  or  is  not  true  ; 
the  thing  which  it  reports  is  or  is  not  a  fact.  So 
reason  is  confounded  with  cause  ;  infallible  with 
inevitable  ;  impossible  with  inconceivable.  That 


42        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

nothing  is  impossible  was  a  favourite  dictum 
with  him,  as  long  afterwards  with  Huxley  :  our 
acceptance  or  non-acceptance  of  an  allegation 
depends  on  no  a  'priori  assumption,  but  on  the 
evidence  offered  in  support  of  it.  The  word  can 
be  fairly  used  only  in  a  logical  sense,  as  implying 
a  contradiction  in  terms  ;  not  in  a  physical  sense, 
as  contrary  to  the  uniform  course  of  Nature, 
because  Nature  may  at  any  time  surprise  us  by 
a  breach  in  its  apparent  uniformity.  He  con- 
structs an  entertaining  list  of  the  falsities  which 
are  common  in  Language,  as  conforming  not  to 
the  realities  but  to  the  appearances  of  things. 
Phrases,  such  as  "  the  sun  sets,"  "  Time  destroys," 
"  Cold  freezes  water  ;  " — words,  such  as  "  latitude 
or  longitude,"  "  solstice,"  "  eclipse,"  "  artery," 
are  all  incorrect,  and  if  used  with  literal  intention 
would  prove  ignorance  :  we  may  fairly  employ 
them  as  a  convenient  medium,  where  strictly 
correct  language  would  be  unintelligible  to  the 
majority  of  our  fellows.  His  perpetual  incursions 
into  etymology  are  interesting  as  illustrations  of 
a  subtle  mind  ;  but  speculations  bearing  on  this 
subject  a  century  ago  are  hardly  in  themselves 
worth  recording.  Comparative  Philology,  nascent 
in  Germany,  had  not  crossed  the  sea  :  Home 
Tooke,  more  ingenious  than  erudite,  was  at  that 


COPLESTON  43 

time  its  only  pioneer  in  England ;  yet  we  feel  in 
reading  that  the  mere  conjectures  of  a  mind  so 
powerful  as  Copleston's  bear  an  interest  and 
value  of  their  own. 

Some  twelve  or  fourteen  of  his  Sermons  are 
preserved.  They  exhibit  correct  style,  strong 
sense,  logical  reasoning,  evidential  argument, 
convincing  in  an  age  when  biblical  criticism  was 
unknown  :  in  eloquence  and  pathos,  spiritual 
experience,  emotional  fervour,  they  are  wanting. 
Two  of  them  contain  a  defence  of  Warburton's 
thesis,  much  controverted  in  its  day,  that  eternal 
blessings  are  an  exclusive  privilege  of  the  Mosaic 
and  the  Christian  covenants.  Another  on  Job 
xix.  25,  "I  know  that  my  Redeemer  liveth," 
ignores  the  metaphor  attaching  to  the  word 
Goel,  giving  to  the  passage  a  sense  which  Handel's 
music  and  our  Burial  Service  have  made  classical, 
but  which  the  original  will  not  bear.  Yet 
another  combats  the  idea  of  a  national  Jewish 
restoration.  The  parable  of  the  Unjust  Steward, 
which  has  exercised  the  pens  of  three  great 
preachers  in  later  times,  suggest  to  him  only  the 
removal  of  difficulties  such  as  no  thoughtful  man 
can  have  seriously  felt.  There  are  sensible  and 
practical  sermons  on  judging  our  neighbours,  on 
religious  impatience,  on  unlawful  curiosity  ;  with 


44        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

an  elaborate  defence  of  Christ's  miracles  against 
the  symbolical  explanation  of  the  Hutchinsonian 
school.  There  remain  two  "  Bosworth  Lectures," 
known  to  undergraduates  as  "  Bozzies,"  delivered 
in  Oriel  Chapel  under  the  will  of  a  College  bene- 
factor. One  of  these,  on  "  the  Christian  Church," 
contains  the  "  high  "  theological  creed  of  pre- 
Tractarian  days.  It  sees  in  the  Church  a  divinely 
appointed  society,  externally  visible  and  universal, 
of  strictly  spiritual,  not  temporal,  authority,  hold- 
ing its  charter  and  its  polity  from  the  written 
word  of  Scripture,  governed  by  officers  tracing 
descent  from  the  Apostles  in  a  long  chain  of 
historical  succession,  with  no  sacramental  char- 
acter or  sacrificial  prerogative,  no  transmission  of 
virtue  from  one  person  to  another.  This  last 
assumption,  forming  the  keynote  of  the  later 
Tracts,  he  carefully  repudiates.  The  other 
Lecture  is  on  the  Church  of  England,  which  he 
maintains  to  be  apostolic  and  continuous  from  its 
beginning,  defensible  against  the  claims  of  Rome 
and  the  objections  of  Protestant  Sectarians. 

Like  his  pupils,  Whately  and  Baden  Powell,  he 
was  a  fervid  anti-Sabbatarian  :  the  belief  that  the 
Apostles  had  transferred  the  obligation  of  the 
Fourth  Commandment  from  the  seventh  day  to 
the  first  he  styled,  with  Calvin,  an  "  Anglican 


, 

nem 


COPLESTON  45 


gment,"  unknown  during  fifteen  centuries. 
The  only  rational  and  safe  alternative  is,  either  to 
observe  the  Fourth  Commandment  exactly  as  it 
was  given,  or  to  acknowledge  that  this,  with  the 
rest  of  the  ceremonial  law,  is  in  no  way  binding 
on  Christians.  Minor  questions,  of  rubrical  and 
ritual  observance,  he  decided  by  a  masculine  com- 
mon sense  which  bore  weight  with  all  his  clergy. 
Of  his  personal  friendships  not  much  is  to  be 
told.  With  Whately  he  maintained  unbroken 
relation,  on  both  sides  affectionate  and  admiring. 
Their  minds  were  cast  in  the  same  mould  and 
trained  by  the  same  discipline.  While  Copleston 
lived,  the  two  corresponded  habitually ;  the  sur- 
vivor, Whately,  embalmed  his  friend  in  a  brief  but 
perspicuous  memoir.  Of  Arnold  he  was  not  a 
great  admirer,  regarding  many  of  his  views  as  rash 
and  dangerous.  His  closest  intimate  in  the  dio- 
cese was  Bruce  Knight,  chancellor  and  examining 
chaplain,  and  afterwards  Dean  of  Llandaff  :  "  dear 
and  noble-minded  "  he  calls  him  ;  this  colleague's 
death  was  the  saddest  event  of  his  episcopate. 
Two  other  valued  friends  were  the  Duncan 
brothers,  of  Bath  and  Oxford,  rich,  munificent, 
highly  cultured.  The  younger,  Philip,  had  been 
his  rival  for  academical  honours  in  youthful  days, 
his  fellow-traveller  on  the  Continent,  his  close 


46         PRE-TRACTARIAN    OXFORD 

associate  through  life.  They  co-operated  in 
philanthropic  schemes  for  Oxford  ;  in  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  Savings  Bank  and  an  anti-mendicity 
society,  the  erection  of  public  baths,  the  im- 
provement of  the  Ashmolean  Museum.  Phil. 
Duncan,  as  he  was  always  called,  lived  to  a  great 
age,  keeping  rooms  at  New  College,  where  I  was 
often  his  guest  :  archaic  in  dress  and  manner,  his 
colloquial  charm  of  epigram,  anecdote,  apt  quo- 
tation, recalled  the  ancient  days  when  conversa- 
tion in  Oxford  was  a  fine  art.  In  this  Copleston 
too  excelled  :  I  have  heard  his  talk  described  by 
one  who  often  heard  it  :  the  comprehensive 
memory  and  terse  expression,  tinged  now  and 
then  with  irritation  if  his  quickness  of  thought 
or  felicity  of  allusion  were  not  at  once  followed 
by  his  hearers.  He  was  at  times  capable  of 
momentary  rudeness  :  when  Newman  soon  after 
his  election  was  about  to  help  a  dish  set  before 
him  at  the  high  table,  he  records  his  mortification 
at  the  Provost's  sarcastic  interpolation :  "  Mr. 
Newman,  we  do  not  carve  sweetbread  with  a 
spoon  ;  Manciple,  bring  a  blunt  knife  :  "  and 
his  tribute  to  one  of  the  Fellows  was  long  remem- 
bered— "  I  say  it  deliberately  ;  Mr.  P—  -  is  the 
most  ungentlemanlike  person  I  ever  met  in  the 
whole  course  of  my  life."  His  interest  in  all 


mode 


COPLESTON  47 


ern  discovery  was  intense  :  his  first  experi- 
ence of  the  railroad  filled  him  with  an  astonish- 
ment bordering  on  awe  ;  and  the  invention  of 
the  electric  telegraph  so  stirred  him  as  for  some 
nights  to  banish  sleep. 

In  society  his  presence  was  eagerly  sought, 
and  his  brief  diary  records  a  great  variety  of 
illustrious  acquaintance.  He  had  known  Sir 
Walter  Scott  both  in  his  best  days  and  in  his 
decay  ;  once  proposing  to  him  Owen  Glendower 
as  the  subject  of  a  novel.  He  notes  a  dinner  at 
Sir  Francis  Burdett's,  where  were  Peel,  Lynd- 
hurst,  Theodore  Hook,  Croker  :  elsewhere  he 
meets  Lord  Stowell,  who  tells  him  how  in  old 
days  at  "  The  Club  "  Johnson  disliked  the 
presence  of  Gibbon,  and  often  snapped  at 
Reynolds  with  asperity.  He  encounters  Sir 
Charles  Wetherell,  just  escaped  from  Bristol 
"  in  the  disguise  of  a  clean  shirt  "  ;  is  introduced 
to  Canning  at  the  great  statesman's  particular 
request ;  dines  with  young  Lord  J.  Russell  to  meet 
Heber,  Sydney  Smith,  Southey.  He  breakfasts 
of  course  with  Rogers,  whom  he  describes  as 
possessing  in  perfection  the  molle  atque  face- 
turn^  and  conceives  the  warmest  admiration  for 
Brougham.  He  is  presented  to  King  William, 
who  chatters  for  ten  minutes  about  his  attach- 


48        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

ment  to  the  Established  Church  ;  is  entertained 
at  Cambridge,  expatiating  on  the  unrivalled 
view  from  King's  Bridge.  In  the  delightful 
"  Family  Letters  "  of  Emma  Darwin,  unkindly 
limited  to  private  circulation,  we  hear  of  a 
"  grand  dinner "  at  Hensleigh  Wedgwood's, 
Bishop  Copleston  the  lion.  There  were,  how- 
ever, other  lions  in  the  same  cage  ;  Lalor  Sheil, 
Lord  Denman,  Lord  Nugent,  biographer  of 
Hampden.  In  the  evening  by  a  great  stroke  of 
luck  and  daring  Sir  James  Mackintosh  brings 
together  Wordsworth  and  Jeffrey.  The  poet 
refused  to  be  introduced ;  "  we  are  fire  and 
water,  we  shall  only  hiss  " — but  Mackintosh  takes 
him  by  the  shoulders — fancy  taking  Wordsworth 
by  the  shoulders  ! — turns  him  round,  steers  him 
up  to  little  Jeffrey,  and  names  them  to  each  other. 
At  once  they  fraternise,  and  remain  till  one 
o'clock  talking  of  poets,  orators,  novelists,  while 
Lockhart  and  Empson  listen  with  perhaps  sardonic 
amusement.  We  find  him  a  frequent  guest  at 
Althorp,  and  at  Lord  Grenville's  :  entertaining 
in  his  Welsh  home,  at  one  time  the  navigator 
Franklin,  at  another  the  German  scholar  A.  W. 
Schlegel.  He  visits  Bishop  Barrington  and  Mr. 
Thomas  Grenville,  stored  both  at  ninety  years 
of  age  with  lifelong  accumulation  of  illuminating 


COPLESTON  49 

experience.  And  he  approvingly  compares  the 
conversation  of  a  well-selected  Lambeth  dinner 
to  that  of  the  party  in  which  Caesar  supped 
with  Cicero  ; — "  (nrovScuov  ov$lv,  <pi\o\oya  multa  " 
— much  literature,  not  a  word  of  shop. 

Of  august  and  commanding  presence,  with  the 
air  and  polish  suggesting  a  man  of  fashion  rather 
than  a  University  Don,  he  contrasted  curiously 
with  his  friend  Whately's  boisterous  negligence 
in  appearance,  manner,  dress.  Tom  Mozley 
calls  him  not  only  the  ablest  and  most  agreeable 
man  in  the  University,  but  "  the  most  sub- 
stantial, and  majestic,  and,  if  I  may  say  so,  richly 
coloured  character  in  my  knowledge  of  Oxford." 
The  power  and  melody  of  his  sonorous  voice  were 
admiringly  quoted  by  his  contemporaries,  his 
reading  of  the  Communion  Service  in  chapel 
was  long  an  Oriel  tradition.  To  imitate  this 
magnificent  organ  was  a  favourite  undergraduate 
amusement.  Coming  out  of  Tyler's  room  after 
a  lecture,  Froude  one  day  went  back,  tapped  at 
the  Tutor's  door,  said  in  the  Copleston  tones — 
"  Mr.  Tyler,  will  you  please  step  out  a  moment  ?  " 
Out  rushed  Tyler  with  a  "  my  dear  Mr.  Provost," 
to  see  only  the  last  of  his  class  descending  the 
staircase.  Long  after  he  had  passed  away,  his 
counterfeit  presentment  walked  the  streets  in 

D 


50        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

old  Mr.  Joseph  Parker  the  bookseller,  who  in 
mien,  gait,  voice,  full  suit  of  black,  gold  seals 
and  shirt  frill  had  educated  himself  to  resemble 
closely  his  friend  and  patron. 

Old  age  came  upon  him  not  till  past  three 
score  and  ten.  We  find  him  discontinuing  his 
rides,  confessing  to  bodily  fatigue  at  the  end  of 
an  exhausting  day,  citing  Paley's  maxim  that 
there  is  enjoyment  in  the  senile  dozing-chair  no 
less  than  in  the  alacrity  of  youth.  He  suffered 
latterly  from  bilious  depression  which  somewhat 
clouded  his  intellect.  After  several  weeks  of 
suffering  and  exhaustion  he  died  in  1849,  and 
was  laid  in  the  ruined  precincts  of  Llandaff 
Cathedral,  since  nobly  restored  by  the  munificence 
of  a  successor. 


CHAPTER    III 
WHATELY 

O  well  for  him  whose  will  is  strong  ! 

He  suffers,  but  he  will  not  suffer  long  ; 

He  suffers,  but  he  cannot  suffer  wrong. 

For  him  nor  moves  the  loud  world's  random  mock, 

Nor  all  Calamity's  hugest  waves  confound, 

Who  seems  a  promontory  of  rock, 

That,  compassed  round  with  turbulent  sound, 

In  middle  ocean  meets  the  surging  shock, 

Tempest-buffeted,  citadel-crowned. 

ACUTE  in  mind,  resolute  in  temper,  robust  of 
body,  in  society  genial  often  to  the  point  of 
boisterousness,  RICHARD  WHATELY  began  existence 
in  1787  as  a  puny  sickly  child.  When  weighed 
against  a  turkey  soon  after  his  birth,  the  advantage 
was  much  upon  the  side  of  the  fowl  :  in  childhood 
timid,  shy,  retiring,  he  shrank  both  from  grown- 
up company  and  from  nursery  playfellows,  leading 
always  a  solitary,  self-absorbed,  and  meditative 
life.  Despised  by  his  brothers  as  a  kind  of 
changeling,  he  met  with  uniform  kindness  from  an 
elder  sister,  who  in  after  days  recalled  his  childish 
greed  for  books  and  love  of  Nature.  At  five 
years  old  he  developed  an  extraordinary  passion 


52        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

for  mental  arithmetic.  His  father's  friend,  Dr. 
Parkhurst,  lexicographer  and  divine,  announcing 
in  his  presence  once  that  he  was  on  that  day 
sixty-three  years  old,  the  boy  after  a  brief  con- 
sideration told  him  the  number  of  minutes  that 
he  had  spent  on  earth ;  and  the  calculation, 
when  tested,  was  found  to  be  correct.  He  records 
in  his  commonplace  book,  as  unaccountable  to 
himself  in  looking  back,  that  he  was  able  to  work 
out  in  his  head  the  longest  and  most  difficult 
sums  by  processes  which  he  could  not  explain, 
but  which  were  never  found  to  be  in  error.  His 
father  tried  in  vain  to  transfer  his  power  to 
written  figures ;  and  when  at  about  nine  years 
old  the  strange  faculty  died  as  abruptly  as  it 
came,  he  was  found  at  school  to  be  a  dunce  in 
cyphering.  Nor  was  he  ever  in  after  life  dis- 
tinguished as  a  mathematician,  though  flashes  of 
the  old  capacity  sometimes  suddenly  returned 
to  him,  and  he  would  baffle  first-class  experts 
by  solving  in  a  fashion  of  his  own  some  curious 
arithmetical  puzzle  or  problem.  But  his  infan- 
tine broodings  were  not  solely  mathematical ;  he 
possessed  an  extraordinary  passion  for  what  he 
called  "  castle  building  "  ;  speculation  that  is  on 
abstract  subjects ;  Utopian  schemes  for  amelio- 
rating the  world,  or  theories  of  improved  govern- 


WHATELY  53 

ment.  This  habit  did  not  leave  him  like  the 
other  :  it  ministered  to  the  self-education  which 
made  him  one  of  the  most  acute  and  fertile 
reasoners  of  his  time.  For  from  the  first  he  was 
emphatically  a  thinker  :  had  always  some  subject 
mentally  in  hand.  Any  topic  which  presented 
itself  as  suggesting  possible  results  of  intellectual 
or  practical  value  would  be  seized  upon  to  the 
exclusion  of  all  other  ideas,  followed  out  in  all 
its  manifestations,  tested  by  rules  of  logic,  shorn 
of  immaterial  or  weakening  accessories,  until  it 
stood  out  for  use  in  his  brain  complete  and 
unassailable.  While  to  this  habit  of  intense 
concentration,  instinctive  and  improved,  he  felt 
himself  to  have  owed  everything  in  life,  he  was 
conscious  of  the  defects  which  attended  it ;  alarm 
and  irritation  at  being  disturbed  while  engaged 
upon  a  train  of  thought,  unreadiness  to  turn 
from  any  one  topic  to  another,  an  absence  of 
mind  which  involved  him  often  in  absurdity  or 
inconvenience.  And  akin  to  this  absorption  was 
his  deficiency  in  the  minor  curiosity  which  feeds 
domestic  and  local  gossip  ;  he  had  Wordsworth's 
strong  distaste  for  "  personal  talk  "  ;  taking  no 
interest  in  the  comings  and  goings  of  acquaint- 
ance, he  could  never  meet  ordinary  persons  upon 
equal  terms,  remained  ignorant  of  matters  which 


54        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

form  the  substance  of  casual  conversation.  "  It 
gives  me  no  pleasure  to  be  told  who  is  dead, 
who  married,  what  wages  my  neighbour  gives  his 
servants.  I  am  frequently  forced  to  evade  ques- 
tions awkwardly,  from  not  daring  to  own,  nor 
indeed  being  able  to  convince  any  one,  of  my  own 
incredible  ignorance.  If  I  had  had  no  uncle  or 
aunt,  I  should  probably  have  been  unacquainted 
with  my  mother's  maiden  name." 

Thus  constituted  as  a  boy  he  could  hardly  be 
companionable,  and  though  speaking  always  with 
affectionate  respect  of  Mr.  Phillips,  master  of 
the  private  school  near  Bristol  where  he  was 
educated,  and  though  forming  a  close  intimacy 
with  one  schoolfellow,  Samuel  Hinds,  afterwards 
a  tried  friend  and  colleague,  he  looked  back  to  his 
school  life  with  little  pleasure.  But  when  in 
1805  he  entered  Oriel  College,  he  found  a  new 
spring  of  life  in  the  teaching  and  converse  of 
Copleston.  The  tutor  was  first  attracted  to 
Whately  by  his  close  attention  in  lecture.  To 
the  sneers  of  his  companions,  who  found  all 
lectures  tedious,  he  answered  :  "  If  I  paid  a  shoe- 
maker for  a  pair  of  shoes,  I  should  not  think  it 
desirable  to  avoid  wearing  them  ;  and  I  would 
limp  upstairs  upon  one  leg  to  attend  a  lecture 
of  Copleston."  The  mutual  attachment  was 


WHATELY  55 

lifelong ;  the  influence  of  the  pair  upon  each 
other  equal.  Copleston,  mentally  superior  to 
ordinary  forms  and  prejudices,  yet  always  ham- 
pered by  a  certain  professional  caution,  recog- 
nised with  delight  and  in  some  measure  imitated 
his  friend's  boldness,  defiance  of  prepossession, 
independence  of  party  ;  while  Whately  found  in 
his  tutor  for  the  first  time  a  man  who  could 
understand  his  mental  constitution,  appreciate 
his  hitherto  unimparted  broodings,  enter  into 
his  aspirations,  and  draw  out  the  powers  of  his 
mind. 

Neither  at  Oxford  nor  afterwards  was  he  a 
great  reader  :  his  favourite  books  were  Aristotle, 
Thucydides,  Bacon,  Bishop  Butler,  Warburton, 
Adam  Smith.  In  later  life  he  greedily  read 
Miss  Austen  :  reviewing  "  Persuasion  "  in  the 
Quarterly,  he  pronounced  it  to  be  "  one  of  the 
most  elegant  fictions  of  common  life  we  ever 
remember  to  have  read."  He  greatly  enjoyed  the 
Waverley  Novels,  not  so  much  for  their  character- 
painting,  as  for  their  incomparable  powers  of 
description.  He  was  also  fond  of  Crabbe  ;  and 
his  lately  surviving  daughter  recalled  his  read- 
ing aloud  from  Shakespeare  and  Scott  to  herself 
and  the  rest  when  quite  young  children.  But 
he  lacked  as  a  rule  feeling  for  either  classical  or 


56        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

modern  literature  :  never  mastered  German, 
understood  French  imperfectly ;  read  nothing 
at  Oxford  except  the  books  necessary  for  his 
degree.  J.  S.  Mill  used  to  speak  of  him  as  the 
least  equipped  with  books  amongst  all  the  fertile 
thinkers  of  his  time  ;  and  it  followed  that  his 
own  writings  often  reproduced  as  original  what 
were,  unknown  to  him,  the  commonplaces  of 
other  authors.  For  the  Schools  he  read  despe- 
rately hard,  commencing  always  at  5  A.M.,  but 
obtaining  a  Double  Second  only ;  the  blame  is 
laid  by  his  biographers  on  the  Examiners — a 
familiar  allegation,  probably  true  in  his  case  as 
in  that  of  Clough  thirty  years  later.  Dean 
Gaisford,  who  hated  class-lists,  used  to  maintain 
the  paradox  that  a  Double  Second  is  higher 
evidence  of  power  than  a  Double  First  :  but 
Whately  was  bitterly  disappointed.  Writing  long 
afterwards  to  Stanley,  who  was  seeking  a  Tutor 
for  his  boys,  he  points  out  that  while  a  First  Class 
man  may  be  quicker  in  learning  than  a  Second 
Class,  the  last  will  be  better  in  teaching.  "  I 
myself,  being  more  of  a  hone  than  a  razor, 
should  at  this  day  be  justly  placed  in  an  Examina- 
tion a  class  below  some  other  men  in  point  of 
knowledge,  whom  I  should  surpass  in  power  of 
imparting  it."  He  was  somewhat  consoled  in 


WHATELY  57 

the  following  year  by  gaining  the  English  Essay, 
"  The  Arts  in  the  Cultivation  of  which  the 
Ancients  were  less  Successful  than  the  Moderns ;  " 
and  he  looked  back  always  to  the  attainment  of 
an  Oriel  Fellowship  in  1811  as  the  great  triumph 
of  his  life. 

For  ten  years  he  resided  as  private  and  as 
College  Tutor.  Of  these  years  we  learn  nothing 
from  himself,  for  he  kept  no  journal  :  "  If  I  were 
forced  to  undertake  a  lifelong  diary  I  should  wish 
myself  dead  :  "  but  several  of  his  pupils  have  left 
reminiscences  of  their  intercourse.  One  of  them 
recalls  his  costume  in  1813 — pea-green  coat, 
white  waistcoat,  stone-coloured  shorts,  flesh- 
coloured  stockings,  powdered  hair.  We  hear  of 
him  as  lecturing  at  full  length  upon  a  large  sofa, 
smoking  a  pipe  incessantly,  while  pouring  out  a 
stream  of  luminous  talk.  We  are  told  of  his 
long  vacation  reading  parties  at  which  only 
Latin  was  spoken.  His  College  friend  Ingham, 
visiting  Coniston  in  the  year  after  Whately  and 
his  pupils  had  been  there,  was  told  by  the  land- 
lord of  the  inn  that  they  did  nothing  but  blow  a 
horn  upon  the  lake  and  clatter  over  the  pave- 
ments in  clogs.  Sherlock  Willes,  one  of  the  four 
Coniston  pupils,  used  to  relate  that  when  the 
works  of  the  Tent  Lodge  blue  stocking,  Elizabeth 


58        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

Smith,  in  four  volumes,  were  lent  to  them  by 
her  proud  mother,  Whately  ordained  that  each 
should  master  a  single  one  of  the  volumes,  and 
that  when  Mrs.  Smith,  according  to  her  wont, 
forced  on  them  discussion  of  the  book,  the  guest 
whose  special  volume  was  in  question  should 
support  by  his  partial  erudition  the  credit  of  the 
whole  party.  Specially  remembered  by  all  were 
the  Oxford  morning  walks  from  five  to  eight  with 
one  or  two  favourites,  a  scramble  along  cross 
country  roads,  through  hedges,  swamps,  ditches, 
brooks — avia  loca  nullius  ante  trita  solo — beguiled 
by  his  brilliant  talk  on  philosophy,  religion, 
literature,  with  occasional  disquisition  of  a  prac- 
tised naturalist  on  the  plants  and  animals  which 
they  encountered.  Equally  unforgotten  was  the 
frolic  which  he  would  throw  into  the  young 
men's  chess  club  supper  parties,  his  charades  and 
jokes,  the  witty  songs  which  he  composed  for 
those  who,  like  the  Fool  in  Twelfth  Night  and 
unlike  himself,  had  sweet  breaths  to  sing.  Com- 
memorated lastly  were  the  evenings  in  his  rooms, 
when  he  would  retail  the  Common  Room  talk  but 
now  concluded,  those  discussions  which  he  and 
his  brother  Fellows  looked  upon  not  as  modes  of 
convivial  relaxation,  but  as  argumentative  com- 
bats vitalising  and  strengthening  mental  readi- 


WHATELY  59 

ness.  "  Tommy "  Short  used  to  report  that 
Davison  and  Whately  crammed  habitually  for 
post-prandial  talk ;  and  unfortunate  outlanders 
whose  digestion  of  the  dinner  and  relish  of  the 
port  wine  were  spoiled  by  these  animated  dialec- 
tics, went  away  complaining  that  Oriel  Common 
Room  stunk  of  Logic.  A  rural  clergyman  on  one 
occasion,  after  listening  to  Whately  throughout 
the  evening,  thanked  his  host  formally  for  the 
pains  he  had  taken  to  instruct  him.  "  Oh  no," 
said  Whately,  with  no  sarcasm  but  in  all  sincerity, 
"  I  did  not  mean  to  be  didactic,  but  one  some- 
times likes  having  an  anvil  on  which  to  beat  out 
one's  thoughts." 

As  a  Teacher  he  was  no  monologist ;  his  delight 
was  not  in  communicating  knowledge,  but  in 
drawing  out  the  learner's  mind  and  forcing  him  to 
think  for  himself  ;  encouraging  diffidence,  crush- 
ing self-conceit,  combating  retentive  memory, 
which  he  ever  looked  upon  as  a  deadly  foe  to 
thought ;  demanding  that  answers  should  be 
given  in  a  pupil's  own  words,  not  by  rote  from  a 
text-book.  Even  in  later  life,  when  young  people 
were  gathered  round  him,  he  loved  to  stimulate 
them  with  logical  puzzles,  propounding  some 
fallacy  to  be  detected,  some  analogy  to  be  tested, 
or  some  inconclusive  argument  to  be  exposed. 


60        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

His  intimate  friends  among  the  older  men  in 
these  College  days  were  Baden  Powell,  Hinds, 
Boultbee,  Newman,  his  brother-in-law  Pope, 
Woodgate,  Nassau  Senior.  This  last  had  been 
his  Pupil.  Examined  in  the  Schools,  where  every 
one  expected  for  him  the  highest  honours,  Senior 
showed  slackness  in  the  Divinity  viva  voce, 
translating  vTroKpirdt  unconventionally  by  "  Play 
Actors,"  answering  questions  wrong,  with  a  certain 
contemptuous  recognition  of  his  inscience.  The 
Examiner  became  annoyed,  and,  on  his  breaking 
down  in  Article  XXVI.,  put  to  him  verbatim  the 
third  question  in  the  Catechism.  Obtaining  no 
reply,  he  said  angrily,  "  I  could  have  answered 
that  at  eight  years  old."  "  So  could  I,"  was  the 
answer,  and  the  candidate  was  plucked  then  and 
there.  He  wrote  home  :  "  Dear  father,  I  am 
plucked  for  my  degree — I  will  get  a  First  another 
time."  A  common  friend  introduced  him  to 
Whately,  and  he  gained  his  First  in  the  next 
Examination.  These  men  formed  between  1812 
and  1820  Whately 's  set,  or  following  :  to  them  his 
attitude  was  almost  feminine  in  its  tenderness ; 
"  all  his  geese  were  swans,"  says  Newman  in  the 
Apologia,  going  on  to  recall  him  as  the  gentle 
and  affectionate  instructor,  through  whose  en- 
couragement he  himself  exchanged  timidity  for 


RICHARD  WHATELY 
(From  the  Oriel  portrait,  artist  unknown] 


WHATELY  6 1 

assurance,  from  whose  lips  he  learned  to  use  his 
reason.  From  him  too  he  tells  us  that  he  gained 
his  first  conception  of  the  Church  as  a  corporate 
substantive  body,  and  his  deep  loathing  for 
Erastianism  ;  parting  from  his  old  instructor  at 
last  on  no  theological  difference,  but  on  the 
re-election  of  Mr.  Peel  as  Member  for  the 
University.  "  By  this  time  also,"  he  says  na'fvely 
in  his  record  of  the  breach,  "  I  was  under  the 
influence  of  Keble  and  Froude."  Dearly  loved 
by  the  few,  Whately  was  by  no  means  generally 
popular.  He  lacked  the  subtle  sympathy  and 
intuitive  discernment  essential  to  wide  personal 
influence.  His  opinions  also  clashed  with  those 
prevalent  in  the  lower  but  broader  strata  of 
academical  society;  his  presence,  says  a  con- 
temporary, inspired  terror  amongst  all  who  desired 
immobility  and  dreaded  change.  He  was  supposed 
too  to  feel  disdain  for  the  malignum  vulgus,  the 
common  Oxford  herd  ;  while  his  roughness  of 
manner  scared  the  timid  and  revolted  the  fas- 
tidious. Untouched  by  historical  antiquity,  a 
stranger  to  the  spiritual  influences  of  Nature, 
devoid  of  taste  for  music,  painting,  architecture, 
he  lacked  those  associative  resources  which  draw 
men  easily  together  from  a  sense  of  aesthetic  kin- 
ship or  by  collision  of  instructive  disagreement. 


62        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

In  the  commencement  of  his  University  life  he  had 
been  painfully  shy,  and  the  effort  to  conquer  the 
defect  carried  him  into  the  opposite  extreme. 
So  now  his  overpowering  roll  of  voice,  Johnsonian 
impact  of  rapid  speech,  tumultuous  gestures, 
careless  dress,  alarmed  sensitive  persons.  Clad 
in  a  long  white  coat,  white  beaver  hat,  and  wield- 
ing a  formidable  stick,  he  was  known  at  Oxford 
within  my  memory  as  the  "  White  Bear " ;  the 
"  Black  Bear  "  being  his  constant  associate  Hinds, 
who  affected,  like  Hamlet,  a  long  and  inky  cloak. 
It  is  noticeable,  however,  that  both  at  Oxford 
and  in  Dublin  children  always  took  to  him,  their 
swift  correct  intuition  penetrating  through  the 
rough  rind  to  the  warm  heart  beneath.  "  I  see 
little  lambs,"  he  would  cry,  if  he  noticed  a 
friend's  children  approaching  ;  they  would  run 
to  him,  and  contend  to  be  gathered  in  his  arms 
or  set  upon  his  shoulder.  Walking  up  Loughrigg 
with  the  Arnold  family,  he  encountered  a  little 
girl  of  eight  years  old  carrying  a  heavy  jug  of 
milk,  her  daily  task,  a  distance  of  two  miles.  He 
was  shocked,  took  her  in  his  arms  and  carried  her 
to  Fox  How,  the  others  bearing  her  load  ;  and 
all  walked  with  her  to  her  home.  Mrs.  Simpson 
in  her  charming  "  Memories  "  records  how  he 
was  wont  to  hold  her  at  arms'  length  above  his 


WHATELY  63 

head,  crawl  on  all  fours  and  frighten  her  by 
growling,  pretend  to  have  beneath  his  large 
handkerchief  a  little  pig  running  and  squealing, 
cut  cardboard  boomerangs  and  teach  her  how  to 
discharge  them.  She  remembered  too  his  sloven- 
liness ;  spying  a  hole  in  his  black  silk  archi- 
episcopal  stocking,  he  would  fix  on  his  leg  beneath 
a  piece  of  sticking-plaster  to  conceal  it.  Like 
many  men  of  powerful  frame  and  active  brain, 
he  was  a  great  eater.  When  Principal  of  Alban 
Hall  he  often  came  to  dine  at  Oriel.  On  such 
occasions  the  cook  would  prepare  for  him  some 
specially  succulent  dish.  College  tradition  records 
that  if  the  Fellow  before  whom  this  dish  was 
placed  happened  not  to  be  sufficiently  liberal  in 
helping  it,  the  servant  would  whisper,  "  It  is  for 
the  Principal,  Sir,"  and  a  Benjamin's  mess  was 
sent.  At  breakfast  he  would  scatter  tea-leaves 
over  the  table  while  he  talked,  and  make  rings  on 
the  tablecloth  with  the  wet  bottom  of  his  tea-cup  : 
no  one,  except  Dr.  Johnson,  De  Quincey,  and 
Dean  Stanley,  ever  drank  so  much  tea.  Sitting 
on  his  chair,  he  would  twist  his  legs  into  a  knot, 
balancing  himself  with  muscular  struggles  on  the 
seat.  I  have  related  elsewhere  l  how  while  in  his 
relative  Mrs.  Baden-Powell's  drawing-room  he 

1  Reminiscences  of  Oxford,  p.  18,  Second  Edition. 


64        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

swung,  plunged,  shifted  on  a  slenderly  fashioned 
chair  ;  a  crack  was  heard,  a  leg  gave  way,  he 
tossed  it  on  to  a  sofa  without  interrupting  his  talk. 
I  daresay  the  kind  hostess  forgave  him,  for  women, 
like  children,  take  a  lenient  view  of  strong  mascu- 
line eccentricities.  It  is  true  that  a  lady  who 
knew  him  later  declared  that  the  Archbishop's 
fashion  of  putting  Mrs.  Whately  into  a  carriage 
made  her  feel  that  she  could  never  have  become 
his  wife  ;  but  then  she  had  never  had  the  chance  ; 
and  others  may  have  felt,  like  a  certain  admirer 
of  Dean  Swift,  that  they  would  have  taken  his 
brutality  in  order  to  have  his  tenderness.  At  all 
events,  in  1820  he  wooed  and  won  the  lady  who 
became  the  companion  of  his  life,  to  whose  grace 
of  character,  delicacy  of  mind,  high  power  of 
intellect,  her  husband  and  her  many  intimates 
have  left  ardent  witness. 

He  brought  his  wife  to  Oxford  for  a  time, 
preaching  in  1822  his  characteristic  Bampton 
Lectures  on  the  "  Evils  and  Dangers  of  Party 
Spirit,"  intended  to  define  a  via  media  between 
indifference  and  intolerance.  Presented  to  a 
Living  by  a  relation,  he  had  spent  three  energetic 
years  in  parochial  work,  until  in  1825  he  was 
recalled  to  Oxford  as  Principal  of  Alban  Hall. 
He  came  back  to  show  that  neither  clerical  nor 


WHATELY  65 

matrimonial  custom  had  staled  his  infinite 
variety.  The  Heads  were  daily  scandalised  by 
the  spectacle  of  a  D.D.  not  only  wearing  beaver 
in  Christchurch  meadow  and  the  Parks,  a  costume 
in  those  days  flagrantly  illicit,  but  attracting  a 
crowd  by  the  antics  of  his  dog  Sailor,  whom  he 
had  taught  to  climb  the  trees,  and  to  drop  from 
their  overhanging  branches  into  the  Cherwell. 
Copleston,  every  inch  a  Don,  sadly  remarked  one 
day — "  Whately  really  forgot  himself  during  our 
walk  this  afternoon  ;  he  actually,  while  in  sight 
of  other  passengers,  picked  up  a  stone  and  threw 
it  at  a  bird."  Sometimes  he  might  be  met,  with 
several  young  men  in  tow,  returning  from  the 
Hincksey  fields,  all  carrying  pocket-handkerchiefs 
filled  with  Miller's  Thumbs,  the  "  Tom  Cull " 
of  Winchester  boys,  the  Coitus  gobio  of  Natu- 
ralists, which  he  had  ladled  out  of  the  brooks, 
holding  an  unaccountable  theory  as  to  their 
culinary  value.  Alban  Hall  had  under  Dr. 
Elmsley's  management  become  a  still  removed 
retreat  for  men  dismissed  from  or  refused  by 
other  Colleges  :  first  with  Newman,  then  with 
Hinds  as  his  Vice-Principals,  he  soon  regenerated 
the  Society,  lecturing  himself  and  restoring 
stricter  rule  :  in  a  short  time  his  men  showed 
well  in  character  and  scholarship,  and  additional 

E 


66        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

rooms  were  built  for  the  reception  of  increasing 
numbers.  As  a  member  of  the  Hebdomadal 
Board,  he  took  a  strenuous  part  in  University 
legislation,  advocating  earnestly  but  unsuccess- 
fully, as  Copleston  had  done  before  him,  the 
establishment  of  a  public  Entrance  Examina- 
tion, without  passing  which  no  man  should  be 
permitted  to  matriculate  at  any  College  ;  and  the 
publication  of  a  Fifth  Class  in  the  B.A.  Examina- 
tions containing  the  names  of  Passmen.  During 
these  years  his  pen  was  busy  ;  he  wrote  many 
Articles  in  the  Encyclopedia  Metropolitan^  and 
brought  out  a  volume  of  controversial  theology 
which  went  through  several  editions.  His  earliest 
publication  had  been  the  delightful  Irony  known 
as  "  Historic  Doubts,"  a  burlesque  of  Hume's 
"  Essay  on  Miracles,"  proving  by  Hume's  argu- 
ments that  the  life  and  actions  of  Napoleon 
Bonaparte  were  incredible  and  mythic.  He  lived 
to  see  Louis  Napoleon  on  his  uncle's  throne,  and 
to  wield  in  a  late  edition  this  alleged  "  fact  "  as 
additionally  proving  the  unveracity  of  the  whole 
story.  Of  course  the  clever  skit  proved  nothing, 
as  Baden  Powell  long  afterwards  pointed  out, 
except  that  the  Bible  narrative  is  no  more 
properly  miraculous  than  were  the  marvellous 
exploits  of  Napoleon.  He  produced  about  the 


WHATELY  67 

same  time  a  remarkable  work,  called  "  Letters 
on  the  Church,  by  an  Episcopalian,"  which  he 
neither  owned  nor  disclaimed,  but  which  nobody 
doubted  to  be  his.  Newman  speaks  of  its  gradual 
but  deep  effect  upon  his  own  mind.  It  main- 
tained, in  contradiction  to  Arnold's  view,  that 
Church  and  State  should  be  mutually  indepen- 
dent, the  Church  never  interfering  in  temporal, 
nor  the  State  in  spiritual  affairs  ;  and,  while  ad- 
vocating Disestablishment,  vehemently  resisted 
the  corollary  of  Disendowment. 

In  1826  and  1828  he  published  his  magna 
opera,  on  Logic  and  on  Rhetoric.  Logic,  once  a 
prime  factor  in  Oxford  teaching, — the  ancient 
and  unaltered  Logic  Lane  still  commemorates 
the  time  when  Nominalists  and  Realists  fought, 
with  fists  and  clubs  as  well  as  tongues,  over  the 
separate  entity  of  general  ideas, — had  fallen  into 
discredit ;  was  maintained  only  by  the  technical 
rules  of  Dean  Aldrich's  Compendium  :  Whately 
set  himself  to  resuscitate  it.  In  this  task  he  had 
not  to  work  alone  ;  that  quite  half  of  his  achieve- 
ment was  due  to  Copleston  he  was  never  tired  of 
asseverating  ;  but  as  Copleston's  name  did  not 
appear,  the  whole  credit  fell  to  himself.  The 
book  replaced  Logic  teaching  in  the  University  on 
a  proper  basis,  and  for  twenty  years,  until  super- 


68        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

seded  by  J.  S.  Mill,  remained  the  standing  text- 
book for  Honours.  Its  later  critics  were  of 
opinion  that  while  its  analysis  and  classification 
of  fallacies  was  unsurpassable,  it  was  weak  on  the 
historical  side,  ignoring  Plato,  and  treating  the 
Schoolmen  as  mere  logomachists.  In  fact,  his 
passionate  love  of  Aristotle  was  accompanied  by 
an  indifference  to,  if  not  a  positive  dislike  of, 
Plato.  The  Rhetoric,  also  based  on  Aristotle, 
was  a  series  of  lessons  in  the  art  of  Composition, 
and  as  such  retains  its  value  still.  These  years 
were  perhaps  the  happiest  in  his  life.  His  un- 
popularity failed  to  wound  him,  actively  disliked 
as  he  was  only  by  men  to  whose  sluggishness  his 
energy  was  a  reproach,  and  whose  applause  he 
would  have  regarded  as  a  discredit  :  the  theo- 
logical developments  which  later  gave  him  pain 
and  severed  him  from  old  friends  and  colleagues 
had  not  as  yet  been  born.  His  children  were 
growing  up  around  him,  educated  on  a  system 
of  his  own,  which  forbade  committal  to  memory 
by  a  child  of  anything  which  it  did  not  under- 
stand :  "  To  teach  by  rote  mechanically  in  hope 
that  children  will  afterwards  find  out  the  mean- 
ing of  what  they  have  learned,  is  to  make  them 
swallow  their  food  first,  and  chew  it  afterwards." 
He  felt  his  power  both  in  the  College  and  the 


WHATELY  69 

Hebdomadal  Board  :  his  Hall  was  growing  under 
his  hands  :  with  Arnold,  married  about  the  same 
time  as  himself,  he  had  delightful  family  inter- 
course and  frequent  correspondence  :  Keble, 
visiting  him  at  Oxford,  read  to  him  the  un- 
published poems  of  the  "  Christian  Year " ; 
Nassau  Senior,  as  Political  Economy  Professor, 
was  often  resident.  He  was  amongst  the  few 
Heads,  another  being  his  friend  Shuttleworth, 
who  supported  the  re-election  of  Peel.  He  had 
always  advocated  Roman  Catholic  Emancipation, 
holding  that  no  man  ought  to  be  excluded  from 
any  public  office  in  consequence  of  his  religious 
belief.  Such  restrictions,  he  thought,  either 
ostracised  persons  suitable  for  the  public  service, 
or  tempted  the  unscrupulous  to  profess  a  faith 
which  they  did  not  hold  :  the  question  of  indi- 
vidual fitness  seemed  to  him  a  matter  for  the 
consideration  of  the  electors  only.  In  1829  he 
succeeded  Senior  in  the  Political  Economy  Chair, 
and  was  setting  himself  to  popularise  the  Science 
and  to  clear  it  of  the  fallacies  which  seemed  to 
him  to  have  encumbered  it,  when  the  work  was 
suddenly  arrested,  and  his  Oxford  career  termi- 
nated, by  his  appointment  to  the  Archbishopric 
of  Dublin. 

"  It  was  an  evil  hour,"  wrote  Arnold,  "  which 


70        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

took  Whately  from  Oxford,  where  he  was  doing 
great  and  certain  good,  to  exhaust  his  powers 
in  what  is  but  an  attempt  to  raise  corn  out  of 
the  sea-sand."  Lord  Grey  had  declared  himself 
actuated  by  a  desire  "  to  preserve  the  Church  of 
Ireland  from  the  dangers  with  which  it  was 
surrounded."  The  Irish  Establishment  was  in 
no  ecclesiastical  sense  "  the  Church  of  Ireland  "  : 
it  had  pillaged  a  subject  nation  to  decorate  a 
handful  of  dominant  settlers  with  a  lordly  lazy 
hierarchy ;  it  was  a  solecism  and  a  blunder  from 
its  foundation  under  one  Queen  to  its  suppression 
under  another.  Numerically  it  represented  an 
almost  negligible  minority  :  "  In  large  districts  of 
Ireland,"  wrote  Whately,  "  the  English  Church 
possesses  no  place  of  worship,  no  congregation  ;  " 
politically,  J;he  sustentation  of  a  foreign  garrison 
by  revenues  confiscated  from  the  older  clergy 
threw  the  Catholic  priests'  maintenance  upon 
their  flocks,  and  welded  both  together  in  for- 
midable opposition  to  English  rule,  secular  and 
religious.  And  at  this  moment  the  Establishment 
stood  in  peril  such  as  had  never  visited  it  before  : 
the  whole  force  of  Irish  democracy,  flushed  with 
its  triumph  in  Catholic  Emancipation,  led  by  a 
determined  orator  and  statesman,  was  focussed 


WHATELY  71 

against  the  Protestant  Church  :  Whately  himself 
saw  in  the  appointment  "  a  call  to  the  helm  of  a 
crazy  ship  in  a  storm,"  which  could  be  saved  only 
by  cutting  away  the  masts  and  throwing  much  of 
the  cargo  overboard.  And  apart  from  its  special 
difficulties,  the  mere  details  of  the  work  to  which 
he  was  called  were  peculiarly  distasteful  to  his 
temperament  and  habits.  Trained  to  concen- 
trate his  mind  upon  some  single  point,  he  would 
be  called  upon  every  day  to  diffuse  it  over  a 
hundred.  Abhorring  the  conventional  side  of 
life,  detesting  even  a  formal  English  dinner  party, 
he  must  exchange  his  free  and  almost  Bohemian 
habits  for  the  dress,  demeanour,  ceremonies,  of 
an  archiepiscopal  palace  and  a  Viceregal  Court  : 
on  the  shores  of  the  Liffey  the  pranks  of  Christ- 
church  meadow  could  find  no  place.  Jowett 
used  to  relate  with  a  chuckle  that  when  some  one 
condoled  with  Archbishop  Tait  on  the  anxieties 
of  his  high  position,  the  canny  answer  was 
returned — "Yes,  but  there  are  compensations." 
To  Whately  these  compensations ;  money,  rank, 
state,  pomp,  precedence,  badges, — the  TIM  KOL 
yepas  of  Aristotle, — were  additional  plagues  and 
burdens.  Add  to  all  this  that  his  elevation,  far 
from  being  greeted  with  applause,  was  met  with  a 
howl  of  disapproval.  He  was  at  open  war  with 


72        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

both  parties  in  the  Church,  alike  with  the  dog- 
matic and  the  sentimental  schools.  The  Sabba- 
tarians were  dismayed  at  his  appointment,  for  he 
held  with  Copleston,  Arnold,  Baden  Powell,  that 
the  Fourth  Commandment  had  no  binding  force 
on  Christians ;  either  the  Commandment  is  abro- 
gated, or  we  are  bound  to  observe  it  without  any 
change  of  day  or  relaxation  of  rigidity.  He  had 
reminded  readers  of  his  "  Logic  "  that  the  word 
"  Person  "  means  not  an  individual  but  a  "  char- 
acter "  ;  and  the  heresy-hunters,  with  Henry 
of  Exeter  at  their  head,  denounced  him  as  a 
Sabellian  :  the  "  Blatant  Beast,"  which  assailed 
Sir  Artegal  on  his  return  from  Ireland  to  England, 
followed  Whately  with  its  vituperation  on  his 
entrance  into  Dublin.  Lamenting,  for  his  own 
sake,  for  the  sake  of  Oxford,  for  the  sake  of 
England,  the  "  evil  hour  "  which  banished  him 
to  Hibernian  exile,  we  yet  recognise  that  in 
accepting  a  life  anxious,  toiling,  misapprehended, 
often  fruitless,  he  was  influenced,  as  his  friend 
Copleston  proclaimed  with  generous  emphasis, 
purely  by  public  spirit  and  a  sense  of  duty  : 
nor  through  all  the  wearying  years  to  come,  of 
suspicion,  failure,  obloquy,  does  he  seem  ever  to 
have  repented  his  concession  to  these  principles. 
He  left  Oxford  in  October  1831,  escaped  from 


WHATELY  73 

a  Reform  Bill  mob  at  Birmingham  through 
having  as  yet  no  mitre  on  his  coach,  and  was 
enthroned  in  St.  Patrick's  Cathedral. 

By  the  Irish  clergy  and  laity  he  was  received 
with  outspoken  hostility.  Hardly  any  one,  he 
could  write  after  three  years'  experience,  ever 
entered  on  an  office  with  more  violent  prejudice 
to  encounter  ;  and  the  slander  which  assailed 
himself  overflowed  on  to  the  heads  of  his  chap- 
lains and  diocesan  colleagues.  Dublin  University 
resented  the  appointment  of  an  Oxonian  ;  Pro- 
testant Ireland  thought,  and  justly  thought,  that 
an  Irishman  should  have  filled  the  See  :  poli- 
ticians recognised  that  he  had  been  nominated 
by  a  Whig  Minister,  sponsor  to  the  dreaded 
Reform  Bill :  rumours  as  to  his  theological 
opinions  had  preceded  him  :  he  was  a  sceptic,  a 
Socinian,  a  papist.  The  higher  class  indeed  of 
his  constituents,  the  nobility  and  gentry  of  the 
capital,  lavished  on  their  new  Archbishop  warmth 
and  cordiality  of  reception  ;  yet  their  kindness 
added  to  his  burdens  :  for  general  Society  he  had 
neither  leisure  nor  inclination  ;  it  became  clear 
that  the  pressure  of  life  in  Dublin  would  be 
more  than  he  could  bear  ;  a  country  house  was 
engaged  four  miles  from  the  capital,  and  there  he 
made  his  home,  transacting  business  in  Dublin 


74        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

every  morning,  finding  leisure  at  Redesdale  for 
reading,  writing,  thinking,  and  for  what  now  was 
his  only  recreation,  gardening.  His  botanical 
knowledge  indeed  was  considerable :  he  experi- 
mented, in  concert  with  Mr.  Baines,  Curator  of 
the  Trinity  College  Garden,  adding  to  it  seeds 
and  cuttings  sent  to  him  from  all  parts  of  the 
world,  and  corresponding  on  these  subjects  with 
his  old  friend  Dr.  Daubeny  of  Oxford.  For  a 
time  he  enjoyed  the  friendship  and  assistance  of 
Hinds,  who  came  with  htm  from  Oxford  as  his 
chaplain.  Hinds,  not  an  Oriel  man,  had  been 
his  private  pupil.  "  Shall  I  cram  you  for  a  First, 
or  form  your  mind  ?  "  he  is  said  to  have  asked  of 
him.  Hinds  chose  the  last,  and  got  a  Second 
Class  only,  but  the  pair  became  lifelong  friends. 
Great  aptitude  for  business,  power  of  penetrat- 
ing character  and  motive,  strikingly  fascinating 
manner — all  in  fact  that  Whately  lacked,  his 
chaplain  possessed  and  exercised.  Returning  to 
England  in  ill  health  after  two  years  of  office,  he 
was  made,  through  Whately's  influence,  Bishop 
of  Norwich.  When  his  elevation  was  announced, 
he  received  a  letter  from  the  leading  Tractarians, 
their  signatures  headed  by  Keble,  asking  him  to 
define  his  religious  opinions.  He  answered  that 
he  held  the  doctrines  of  the  Church  of  England  : 


WHATELY  75 

further  to  specify  his  views  would  be  to  acknow- 
ledge the  inquisitorial  authority  of  a  self-consti- 
tuted tribunal.  He  resigned  his  bishopric  after 
a  time,  and  retired  into  private  life.  His  leaving 
Dublin  was  a  great  blow  to  Whately,  who,  how- 
ever, found  an  admirable  successor  to  his  friend 
in  Dr.  Dickinson,  afterwards  Bishop  of  Meath  ; 
while  Blanco  White,  following  him  from  Oxford, 
lived  with  him  as  tutor  to  his  children. 

Into  his  episcopal  duties  he  threw  himself  with 
energy.  Confirmations,  which,  as  we  learn  with 
amazement,  had  long  been  discontinued  in  the 
diocese,  he  revived,  and  maintained  with  im- 
pressive solemnity.  He  took  upon  himself  the 
final  examination  of  such  candidates  for  Ordina- 
tion as  had  been  previously  passed  by  his  chap- 
lains. An  Irish  clergyman  recently  ordained  by 
him  narrated  to  me  once  his  experience  of  these 
interviews.  To  the  candidates,  seated  solemnly 
in  the  Palace  dining-room,  entered  the  Arch- 
bishop ;  strode  through  the  room,  and  flung 
himself  into  a  chair.  "  Now,  gentlemen,  I'm 
an  infidel ;  how  will  you  deal  with  me  ?  "  One 
after  another  essay  at  conversion  was  cut  short 
by  his  strong  "  No,  no  "  ;  until  with  a  shout  of 
satisfaction  he  hailed  the  answer  of  a  quiet- 
looking  man,  who  said,  "  Faith,  I'd  ask  ye  to 


76        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

prove  it."  His  weekly  levees,  to  which  all  his 
clergy  were  made  welcome,  were  an  occasion  for 
propounding  questions  and  discussing  difficulties 
in  which  his  practised  power  shone  forth.  Dr. 
Hinds  used  to  recall  at  one  of  these,  an  argu- 
ment on  points  of  controversy  between  the  two 
Churches.  Many  having  spoken,  the  Archbishop 
said — "  Now  let  me  be  a  Roman  Catholic,  and 
argue  with  me."  One  after  another  attack  was 
made  ;  he  foiled  them  all  triumphantly.  Dinner 
ended  the  conflict,  which  had  left  so  much  dis- 
quiet in  the  guests'  minds  that  they  approached 
him  with  a  request  that  he  would  amend  the 
flaws  in  their  several  arguments,  which  he  did  at 
once  convincingly.  In  thus  removing  theological 
belief  from  the  domain  of  authority  and  faith 
to  the  region  of  well-instructed  reasoning,  the 
Archbishop  probably  impressed  the  lesson  which 
he  desired. 

The  public  questions  in  which'he  played  a  part 
are  for  the  most  part  long  forgotten,  and  may 
be  so  far  only  noticed  as  they  assist  our  judgment 
on  his  mental  character  and  opinions. 

I.  As  regards  matters  of  purely  Irish  interest, 
his  great  work  was  the  establishment  of  a  Mixed 
Education  Board  for  Roman  Catholic  and  Pro- 
testant schools.  It  admitted  extracts  from  Scrip- 


WHATELY  77 

ture,  and  an  admirable  text-book,  called  "  Easy 
Lessons  on  Christian  Evidences,"  drawn  up  by 
himself,  and  cordially  accepted  by  the  Roman 
Catholic  Archbishop,  Dr.  Murray,  a  prelate 
large-minded,  generous,  and  statesmanlike ;  and 
it  worked  well  during  many  years.  Under  Dr. 
Murray's  successor  the  book  was  struck  off  the 
curriculum,  and  Whately  withdrew  from  the 
Education  Board.  He  used  to  relate  that  in  the 
English  History  which  was  one  of  the  books  re- 
placing the  "  Lessons,"  children  were  taught 
that  Philip  II.  was  one  of  the  best  and  wisest 
kings  of  his  time  ;  that  Mary  of  Scots  was  not 
only  innocent  but  holy ;  that  James  II.  was 
truthful,  generous,  affectionate,  the  idol  of  his 
people  ;  that  William  III.  was  the  inventor  of 
blood  money,  and  the  patron  of  Jonathan  Wild. 
He  advocated  the  payment  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
clergy,  and  supported  the  suppression  of  Anglo- 
Irish  bishoprics  under  the  Church  Temporalities 
Act.  In  his  absence  things  inevitably  went 
wrong  :  he  obtained  from  the  Crown  a  Royal 
Charter  for  the  establishment  of  a  Divinity 
College  in  Dublin  ;  but  while  he  was  on  the 
Continent  a  newly  appointed  Lord  Lieutenant, 
Lord  Ebrington,  was  persuaded  by  the  opponents 
of  the  measure  to  cancel  it.  He  vehementlv 


78        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

denounced  the  contemplated  introduction  of 
the  English  Poor  Law,  both  as  itself  wrong  in 
principle,  and  as  unsuited  to  the  requirements  of 
Ireland.  He  insisted,  wherever  possible,  on  his 
clergy's  familiarity  with  the  native  language.  He 
urged  the  compulsory  inspection  of  Convents, 
on  the  ground  that  every  public  institution, 
whether  school,  hospital,  or  asylum,  ought  to  be 
open  to  official  investigation  :  in  no  other  way 
he  felt  could  the  abuse  of  power  be  prevented, 
and  the  subjects  of  a  free  country  be  protected 
from  tyranny.  He  opposed  the  Repeal  of  the 
Union  on  the  plea  that  "  while  the  English 
Parliament  governed  Ireland  abominably,  an 
Irish  Parliament  would  govern  it  much  worse  "  : 
but  he  desired  to  see  the  Viceroyalty  abolished, 
and  the  Sovereign's  visits  to  Ireland  more  fre- 
quent and  prolonged. 

2.  His  views  on  Imperial  questions  are  inte- 
resting at  the  present  moment.  When  in  1834 tne 
conflict  between  Lords  and  Commons  was  no  less 
acute  than  has  been  the  case  to-day,  he  proposed 
to  relieve  the  tension,  not  by  reforming  the 
Constitution,  but  by  restricting  the  privilege  of 
the  Peers.  Let  it,  he  said,  be  incumbent  on  the 
Upper  House,  after  throwing  out  a  measure  sent 
to  it  by  the  Commons,  to  transmit  a  written 


WHATELY  79 

statement  of  their  reasons  for  its  rejection. 
If,  after  considering  this,  the  Commons  in  the 
next  succeeding  Session  reintroduce  the  rejected 
measure,  and  pass  it  by  a  majority  of  the  whole 
House,  let  it  become  law  without  formal  accept- 
ance by  the  Lords.  His  theory  of  the  right 
relation  between  Church  and  State  was  much 
misunderstood,  owing,  as  he  complained,  to  a 
false  assumption  that  by  Church  he  meant  the 
clergy,  by  State  the  laity.  He  held  with  the 
Reformers,  that  in  a  professedly  Christian  nation 
Church  and  State  are  a  single  and  co-extensive 
Society  :  that  the  Sovereign  is  Head  of  both  : 
that  as  in  civil  affairs  he  delegates  his  power  to 
Ministers  in  Parliament,  so  in  affairs  ecclesiastical 
he  should  delegate  his  power  to  persons  duly 
chosen  as  representing  the  community  on  its 
religious  side  :  and  that  to  this  body  should 
belong  the  power  of  final  legislation  on  all  eccle- 
siastical questions.  It  seemed  to  him  that  the 
two  authorities  should  be  kept  entirely  distinct, 
herein  differing  from  Arnold,  who  would  have 
the  civil  power  supreme  over  both  State  and 
Church,  "  extending  the  fold,"  as  Whately  put 
it,  "  so  as  to  include  all  the  sheep."  He  all 
along  predicted  failure  to  the  Reform  Bill  as  a 
final  measure  :  he  would  have  preferred  man- 


8o        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

hood  suffrage,  with  plural  voting,  and  security 
against  canvassing  and  intimidation.  He  mini- 
mised the  "  Papal  Aggression  "  of  1849,  dreading 
secret  propaganda  rather  than  open  arrogance. 
Finally,  he  advocated  an  admission  of  Dissenters 
to  the  Universities,  by  restoring  to  Masters  of 
Arts  their  ancient  privilege  of  opening  private 
Halls  :  and,  as  regards  the  Government  of  the 
University,  he  wished  to  see  the  ruling  body, 
then  formed  by  Heads  of  Houses  only,  converted, 
as  has  long  since  been  done,  into  an  elective 
chamber. 

His  hostility  to  the  "  Tractites,"  as  he  always 
called  them,  was  uncompromising.  He  saw  from 
the  first  their  inevitable  Romanising  tendency, 
deplored  their  diversion  of  the  University  from 
its  legitimate  studies  into  the  mazes  of  theological 
controversy,  was  shocked  by  the  disingenuousness 
of  the  Hampden  prosecution — "  the  first  out- 
break of  Tractism,  and  its  success  the  first  great 
strengthener  of  the  party  " — viewed  as  immoral 
and  dangerous  the  doctrine  of  "  Reserve,"  the 
assumption  by  the  clergy  of  priestly  power,  the 
investment  of  absolution  and  benediction  with 
sacramental  force.  A  man  on  meeting  him  in 
the  street  knelt  and  asked  his  blessing.  He 
pronounced  it,  and  turning  to  his  companion, 


WHATELY  8 1 

said,  "  Answer  a  fool  according  to  his  folly." 
Archbishop  Sumner  under  the  same  circumstances 
once  explained  to  the  solicitant  that  he  had  no 
power  to  give  what  was  sought ;  implying  appa- 
rently that  while  any  ordinary  man  might  say 
"  God  bless  you  "  to  his  fellows,  the  ejaculation 
was  forbidden  to  an  Archbishop.  It  is  right 
to  add  that  the  story  is  treated  as  mythical  by 
Whately's  surviving  grandchildren  ;  but  it  was 
commonly  current  when  I  was  in  Ireland  during 
his  lifetime,  and  is  too  characteristic  to  be 
omitted.  His  high  view  of  the  Apostolical  Suc- 
cession which  had  attracted  Newman  in  the 
Letters  of  an  Episcopalian  is  not  borne  out,  nay, 
is  discountenanced,  in  his  later  writings,  which 
reprobate  Sacerdotalism  equally  with  Rationalism 
and  Calvinism.  On  the  other  hand  he  compared 
the  attitude  of  Newman's  friends  towards  bishops 
with  the  asseveration  of  Addison's  Tory  Free- 
holder, who  said,  "  I  am  for  passive  obedience  and 
non-resistance,  and  I  will  oppose  any  Ministry 
or  any  King  that  will  not  maintain  this  doctrine." 
So,  he  said,  the  Tractites  postulate  excessive  sub- 
mission to  our  "  Fathers  in  God,"  treat  with  inso- 
lence and  contumely  such  bishops  as  do  not  agree 
with  them.  And  thus  the  severance  was  complete 
between  himself  and  the  old  Oriel  friends  who 

F 


82        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

had  enlisted  in  Newman's  camp.  With  Keble 
he  seems  to  have  had  no  intercourse  in  later 
years ;  one  letter  only  to  Pusey  is  preserved, 
challenging  the  tendency  of  himself  and  his  party 
to  allocate  as  "  judgments  "  the  falling  towers  of 
Siloam  :  and  an  amusing  interview  between  them 
is  recorded,  in  which  he  made  Pusey  laugh 
heartily  at  the  proved  absurdity  of  some  argu- 
ment he  had  advanced.  To  Newman  he  wrote 
in  1834,  in  consequence  of  a  report  current  in 
Oxford,  that  during  Whately's  recent  visit  to 
Oriel,  Newman  had  absented  himself  from  Chapel, 
in  order  to  avoid  receiving  the  Communion  with 
his  old  friend.  This  Newman  denies,  but  goes 
on  to  harp  upon  the  "  removal  of  candlesticks," 
the  suppression  that  is  of  Irish  bishoprics,  and 
the  union  of  Catholics  with  Protestants  in  Irish 
schools ;  tracing  these  acts  or  connivances  to 
"  'principles,  difficult  to  describe  in  a  few  words, 
with  which  your  reputation  is  associated."  The 
statement,  at  once  vague  and  unfriendly,  gave 
Whately  pain  :  he  rejoins  with  pathetic  remon- 
strance against  condemning  a  valued  and  once 
trusted  friend  on  mere  popular  rumour  as  to  his 
"  principles."  The  whole  letter,  dignified  and 
noble,  can  hardly  have  been  read  by  Newman 
without  a  pang  of  self-reproach  ;  he  does  not 


WHATELY  83 

seem  to  have  answered  it.  The  Archbishop's 
occasional  visits  to  Oxford  were  saddened  by 
these  estrangements,  and  not  by  them  alone. 
From  the  house  of  his  kinsman  Baden  Powell  in 
1838,  he  laments  not  only  the  disunion  which 
controversy  had  generated  amongst  former  allies, 
but  the  blight  which  had  fallen  on  the  literary 
reputation  of  his  College.  "  I  feel  as  if  I 
were  beholding,  not  only  the  dead  face  of  an 
old  friend,  but  his  mouldering  and  decaying 
corpse."  With  Provost  Hawkins,  however,  he 
maintained  friendly  relations  to  the  end  ;  of  his 
visits  to  the  Lodge  tradition  has  preserved  an 
anecdote.  Hawkins  had  a  horror  of  tobacco. 
Going  upstairs  late  one  night,  his  nostrils  were 
assailed  by  scent  of  the  pernicious  weed.  He 
hastened  from  room  to  room ;  at  last  discovered 
his  guest  enjoying  a  cigar  upon  the  leads. 

Other  friends  were  severed  from  him  by  death. 
The  loss  of  Arnold  he  felt  keenly  both  on  public 
and  on  private  grounds,  followed  as  it  was  in 
a  few  weeks  by  that  of  his  faithful  follower  and 
colleague,  Bishop  Dickinson.  Both  were  men 
who,  in  his  own  words,  "  made  it  their  business 
to  bring  religion  into  their  daily  life  and  char- 
acter," and  it  was  felt  by  those  who  watched 
him  closely  that  he  was  never  again  quite  what 


84        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

he  had  been  before.  His  intercourse  with  Arnold, 
personally  and  by  letter,  had  been  continuous  : 
unfortunately  Dr.  Arnold  was  not  in  the  habit 
of  preserving  correspondence.  He  made  haste 
to  visit  the  bereaved  household.  They  never 
forgot  the  comfort  which  his  presence  brought 
to  them;  his  natural  roughness  sunk  in  tender- 
ness to  the  widow  and  her  children,  and  in 
passionate  recapitulation  of  his  dead  friend's 
merits.  He  co-operated  in  the  editing  of  Arnold's 
MSS.,  overruling  in  some  cases  objections  urged 
by  Stanley.  In  an  advisory  letter  to  Mrs. 
Arnold  he  deals  with  the  wish  of  Stanley  and 
herself  to  suppress  certain  Sermons  on  the  plea 
that  they  might  "  give  pain  to  humble-minded 
persons."  "  It  would,"  he  wrote,  "  be  a  sorry 
sermon  which  does  not.  Humble-minded  men 
are  especially  to  be  guarded  against ;  the  word 
means  what  used  to  be  called  arrogant  and  in- 
solent." He  seems  to  have  felt  some  alarm  as 
to  the  soundness  of  Stanley's  judgment ;  but 
when  the  book  came  out,  he  wrote  expressing 
his  appreciation,  eulogising  especially  the  good 
taste  with  which  the  biographer  had  kept  himself 
out  of  sight.  He  gave  advice  on  the  subject  of 
proposed  monuments,  epitaphs,  memorials ;  in- 
sisting, with  happy  adaptation  of  a  fine  passage 


WHATELY  85 


rom  the  De  Corona,  that  subscriptions  towards 
any  of  these  should  not  be  received  from  persons 
who,  having  stoned  him  through  his  life,  now 
wished  to  build  his  sepulchre.  To  Stanley's 
Life  when  it  appeared  he  gave  warm  but  dis- 
criminating approbation.  Other  remaining  old 
friends  clung  to  him  ;  in  long  letters  to  Copleston, 
Senior,  the  good  Duncans,  Hinds,  Lady  Osborne, 
Mrs.  Hill,  are  revealed  not  only  his  mind,  temper, 
sentiments,  but  the  brilliant  humour  which 
habitually  illustrated  and  enforced  his  assertions 
of  opinion  and  principle.  These  formed  no  less 
the  ornament  of  his  talk,  of  whose  force  and 
fluency  Guizot  has  left  on  record  a  special  note 
of  admiration.  When  publicly  reported  it  often 
happened  that  the  witticisms  were  repeated 
while  the  arguments  sustained  by  them  were 
forgotten  ;  and  to  his  genuine  aphorisms,  taken 
from  their  context,  and  so  mutilated,  were  added 
a  host  of  apocryphal  anecdotes,  or  of  puns,  which 
he  looked  upon  as  intolerable.  His  thoughts 
habitually  clothed  themselves  in  metaphor.  Of 
those  who  are  for  ever  postponing  political  action 
he  said  :  "  When  the  bed  of  a  torrent  is  dry,  they 
think  that  a  bridge  is  not  wanted  :  when  the 
stream  comes  down,  that  the  bridge  cannot  be 
built."  Some  one  commented  on  the  spite, 


86        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

folly,  cruelty,  and  baseness  displayed  in  a  certain 
controversy  by  men  from  whom  such  conduct 
could  not  have  been  expected.  He  explained 
that  when  a  pond  seems  clear,  there  is  no  know- 
ing, until  you  stir  it  up,  how  much  mud  may  be 
at  the  bottom.  It  was  remarked  that  "  Uncle 
Tom's  Cabin  "  was  more  popular  than  Shake- 
speare. He  answered :  "  Some  light  wines  are 
pleasant,  and  we  may  prefer  them  to  hock  ;  but 
they  will  not  keep  like  hock."  At  the  Lord 
Lieutenant's  table  Lord  Plunket  asked  him  if 
the  Government  was  justified  in  what  its 
opponents  called  "  truckling  to  O'Connell."  "  I 
would  make  use  of  Satan,"  he  said,  "  if  I  could 
make  good  use  of  him  ;  but  I  would  not  pay 
him  his  price."  He  advised  a  young  clergyman 
to  begin  by  addressing  the  best-informed  and 
best-disposed  in  his  congregation  ;  they  would 
help  to  reform  the  ignorant  and  reprobate.  "  If 
you  had  to  kindle  a  promiscuous  pile  of  wood, 
where  would  you  apply  your  light  :  to  the  green 

sticks,  or  to  the  dry  ?  "     "  So and have 

discovered  that  Arnold  was  a  most  estimable 
man,  who  did  not  really  at  bottom  differ  from 
them  !  I  dare  say  the  same  discovery  will  be 
made  of  me  after  I  am  gone  :  the  bees  will 
come  and  build  combs  in  the  lion's  carcase  ;  but 


WHATELY  87 

not  while  the  lion  is  alive."  "  Contradictory 
statements  in  Scripture  are  meant  to  modify  and 
check  each  other.  The  hedge  on  the  right  hand 
of  the  road  is  not  the  road,  nor  will  it  guard 
against  a  precipice  on  the  left ;  the  same  may 
be  said  of  the  hedge  on  the  left  :  we  must 
pursue  our  course  between  them."  He  pro- 
nounced the  men  who  garbled  and  distorted 
Hampden's  Bampton  Lectures,  with  the  design  of 
holding  him  up  to  the  hatred  and  persecution  of 
unthinking  prejudice,  to  be  genuine  descendants  of 
those  Roman  Emperors,  who  dressed  up  Chris- 
tians in  the  skins  of  beasts,  and  then  set  dogs  to 
worry  them  to  death.  At  an  S.P.G.  meeting, 
speeches  were  made  by  Bishop  Selwyn  and  by 
Samuel  Wilberforce.  To  a  lady  wishing  him  to 
compare  them  he  said  :  "  When  the  moon  shines 
bright,  we  say,  '  How  beautiful  is  the  moon ; ' 
when  the  sun  shines,  '  How  beautiful  are  the 
hills,  fields,  trees,  which  it  illuminates,5  of  the 
sun  itself  we  do  not  speak.  So  the  really  best 
orator  shines  like  the  sun,  you  think  of  the 
things  he  advocates  ;  the  second  best  is  like  the 
moon,  you  think  only  of  him."  "  Pity  that  the 
horrors  of  war  cannot  be  truly  represented ; 
the  details,  for  instance,  of  the  capture  of  a 
single  city.  The  brilliant  showy  parts  are 


88        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

painted  ;  skill  and  valour,  enterprise  and  excite- 
ment, all  that  can  render  war  attractive.  We 
have  a  full  display  of  the  beautiful  head  and 
bosom  of  Milton's  Sin  ;  while  a  veil  is  thrown 
over  the  monsters  that  spring  from  her  waist." 
"  People  who  think  it  easy  to  govern  Ireland 
because  it  is  poor,  half-civilised,  full  of  ignorance, 
are  like  the  young  medical  student  who  imagined 
that  he  had  learned  enough  of  medicine  to 
doctor  very  little  children."  He  was  fond  of 
denouncing  false  maxims.  Hypocrisy  is  said  to 
be  the  homage  which  Vice  pays  to  Virtue  :  "  No, 
to  opinion,  not  to  virtue."  Inconsistency  is  called 
a  crime.  "  No,  it  may  spring  from  change  of 
circumstances ;  then  it  is  usually  a  proof  of 
wisdom  :  from  change  of  opinion  ;  then  it  must 
often  be  right :  from  co-existence  in  the  mind 
of  contrary  irreconcilable  opinions ;  that  implies  a 
mental  not  a  moral  defect."  "  We  are  told  never 
to  put  off  till  to-morrow  what  may  be  done 
to-day.  The  converse  is  almost  always  true. 
The  morrow  usually  shows  that  had  you  de- 
layed you  would  have  done  differently."  (This 
was  also  a  favourite  saying,  in  its  converse 
form,  of  Lord  Melbourne,  due  in  his  case  pro- 
bably to  laziness  rather  than  to  philosophy.) 
"Habit,"  Whately  would  say,  so  often  pro- 


WHATELY  89 

verbially  quoted,  is  as  often  confounded  with 
"  custom."  The  frequent  repetition  of  any  act 
is  a  custom ;  the  state  of  mind  or  body  thereby 
produced  is  a  habit.  "  Duty,"  again,  cannot  be 
defined  ;  all  such  attempts  are  mere  tautology. 
Duty  is  to  do  what  is  right,  what  is  due ;  what 
we  ought  or  are  bound  to  do  ;  in  short,  to  do 
our  duty. 

One  of  his  personal  idiosyncrasies  was  hatred 
of  foreign  travel ;  it  interfered  with  his  regular 
habits,  and  the  petty  details  which  it  involved 
were  intolerable  to  him.  He  had  cultivated  no 
taste  for  antiquities  or  architecture  ;  the  finest 
scenery  did  not  to  him  repay  the  labour  of  seek- 
ing it ;  and,  like  Arthur  Stanley,  he  cared  for 
pictures  only  as  illustrating  some  great  historical 
event.  He  would  turn  away  incurious  from  the 
masterpieces  of  Art,  Italian,  Dutch,  Spanish  : 
the  only  picture  which  ever  arrested  him  and 
lingered  in  his  memory  was  a  painting  of  John 
Huss  before  the  Council  of  Constance.  Outside 
Ireland,  he  more  than  once  presided  over  the 
Economic  Section  at  Meetings  of  the  British 
Association.  His  not  frequent  speeches  in  the 
House  of  Lords  were  heard  with  marked  atten- 
tion, though  he  once  astonished  both  friends  and 
foes  by  a  pungent  attack  upon  "  Essays  and 


90        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

Reviews,"  amongst  whose  authors  was  his  old 
friend  and  relative  Baden  Powell.  He  made 
time  to  annotate  Bacon's  Essays,  and  Paley's  two 
greatest  works ;  and  he  laid  before  the  Com- 
missioners of  the  Great  Exhibition  in  1851  a 
project  for  a  Universal  Currency  which  excited 
much  attention.  Though  crippled  latterly  by 
rheumatic  gout,  he  worked  on  bravely  to  the 
end.  In  1861  Sir  Richard  Jebb  records—"  The 
Archbishop  preached  :  the  old  man  shook  with 
paralysis,  while  he  was  speaking  with  the  clear 
calm  force  and  the  indescribable  self-possession 
that  never  fails  a  real  master  of  argument  :  it 
seemed  as  if  his  Mind  had  come  down  by 
train  to  preach,  without  noticing  that  it  had 
not  put  on  its  best  Body."  The  high  appre- 
ciation of  so  competent  a  critic  is  valuable  in 
face  of  the  fact,  that  his  preaching,  chaste, 
clear-cut,  and  unimpassioned,  was  not  universally 
admired. 

The  unpopularity  which  attended  his  episco- 
pate and  pursued  him  to  its  close  was  inseparable 
from  his  character  and  circumstances.  To  in- 
terpose balanced  reason  and  impartial  fairness 
between  two  factions  equally  bigoted  and  bitterly 
hostile  is  to  incur  the  hatred  of  both  :  Protes- 
tants were  indignant  at  his  concessions,  Romanists 


WHATELY  91 


accused  him  of  proselytism.  And  the  current 
belief  in  his  occasional  unfairness  was  not 
always  devoid  of  justification.  Truthful  and 
without  guile  himself,  he  made  scant  allowance 
for  the  unveracity  which  was  a  blemish  in  the 
Irish  character  as  it  was  the  bane  of  Irish  public 
life.  He  sometimes  trusted  those  who  saw  with 
partisan  vision,  believed  as  literal  statements 
coloured  by  Celtic  exaggeration  ;  while  his  per- 
sistent admiration  and  affection  for  those  who 
had  once  gained  his  heart — "  all  Whately's  geese 
were  swans,"  was  Newman's  saying — induced  a 
confidence  in  their  judgment  which  sometimes 
warped  his  own ;  so  that,  as  his  warmest 
admirers  were  compelled  to  admit,  he  occasion- 
ally erred  in  burning  questions  of  his  day.  By 
Catholics,  so  long  as  Archbishop  Murray  lived, 
he  was  perhaps  better  appreciated  than  by 
Protestants ;  but  Murray's  successor  was  hostile, 
and  embittered  the  attitude  of  his  followers.  It 
is,  I  learn  from  those  who  know  them,  dutifully 
believed  by  Roman  Catholics  to  the  present  day, 
that  he  and  his  family  attempted  systematic  con- 
version of  the  poor  by  means  of  bribery  under 
the  guise  of  charity.  No  evidence  of  this  has 
ever  been  offered,  beyond  the  fact  that  he  fed 
the  starved  adults  and  children  attending  the 


92        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

Ragged  Schools  of  the  Irish  Church  Mission, 
finding  them  too  hungry  to  absorb  instruction 
until,  like  the  disheartened  prophet  of  the  Old 
Testament,  they  were  fortified  with  a  cake  baken 
on  the  coals.  This  was  given  indiscriminately 
to  votaries  of  both  religions  ;  the  same  bene- 
factions being  very  properly  conferred  by  the 
Roman  Catholics  in  their  own  schools.  He  would 
also  give  alms,  with  no  sentiment  but  that  of  kind- 
ness, amongst  the  poor  "  basket-women  "  per- 
mitted by  usage  immemorial  to  vend  their  wares, 
including  rosaries  and  Patrick's  crosses,  around 
the  Palace  steps  in  Stephen's  Green.  None  the 
less  he  showed  paternal  care  for  voluntary 
seceders  from  Romanism,  at  one  time  so  nume- 
rous that  it  was  necessary  to  license  a  special 
building  for  their  worship. 

His  charities  were  immense  ;  often  anonymous, 
always  unostentatious.  He  held  that  the  emolu- 
ments which  he  received  ought  not  to  descend 
to  his  heirs,  but  should  be  expended  in  Ireland 
during  his  lifetime.  That  the  Dublin  poor,  in 
spite  of  adverse  priestly  influence,  appreciated 
his  munificence  and  loved  his  person,  was  shown 
by  the  crowds  who  attended  his  funeral,  as  well 
as  that  of  a  daughter,  the  only  member  of  his 
family  who  died  in  Ireland. 


WHATELY  93 

The  sermon  recorded  by  Jebb  must  have  been 
nearly,  if  not  quite,  his  last  appearance  in  public. 
His  wife  had  been  taken  from  him  two  years 
before  ;  and  in  1863,  at  tne  age  °^  seventy-six, 
he  died.  In  his  last  hours  of  suffering  conscious- 
ness a  chaplain  watching  beside  his  bed  read  the 
words  of  St.  Paul,  "Who  shall  change  our  vile 
body,"  &c.  "Read  the  right  words,"  said  the 
dying  man.  The  surprised  attendant  read  again 
from  the  English  Bible.  "  Read  his  own  words," 
was  repeated  ;  and  the  chaplain,  turning  to  the 
Greek  Testament,  read — "  shall  change  our  body 
of  humiliation."  "  Right,"  said  the  Archbishop  ; 
"  nothing  that  God  has  made  is  vile."  A 
characteristic  ending  —  the  scholar,  humanist, 
Christian,  strong  in  him  to  the  moment  of 
dissolution. 

No  martyr  he  o'er  fire  and  sword  victorious, 
No  saint  in  silent  rapture  kneeling  on, 

No  mighty  orator  with  voice  so  glorious, 

That  thousands  sigh  when  that  sweet  sound  is 
gone. 

Yet  in  Heaven's  great  cathedral,  peradventure, 
There  are  crowns  rich  above  the  rest  with  green, 

Places  of  joy  peculiar,  where  they  enter, 

Whose  fires  and  swords  no  eye  hath  ever  seen. 


94        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

They  who  have  known  the  truth,  the  truth  have  spoken, 
With  few  to  understand  and  few  to  praise, 

Casting  their  bread  on  waters,  half  heart-broken, 
For  men  to  find  it  after  many  days. 

The  rugged  gentleness,  the  wit,  whose  glory 
Flashed  like  a  sword  because  its  edge  was  keen, 

The  fine  antithesis,  the  flowing  story, 

Beneath  such  things  the  sainthood  is  not  seen  ; 

Till  from  the  pillow  of  the  thinker,  lying 

In  weakness,  comes  the  teaching  then  best  taught, 

That  the  true  crown  for  any  soul  in  dying 

Is  Christ,  not  genius,  and  is  faith,  not  thought. 

Rest  then,  O  martyr,  passed  through  anguish  mortal, 
Rest  then,  O  saint,  sublimely  free  from  doubt, 

Rest  then,  O  patient  thinker,  o'er  the  portal 

Where  there  is  peace  for  brave  hearts  wearied  out. 

O  long  unrecognised,  thy  love  too  loving, 

Too  wise  thy  wisdom,  and  thy  truth  too  free, 

As  on  the  teachers  after  truth  are  moving, 

They  may  look  backward  with  deep  thanks  to  thee. 


CHAPTER   IV 
ARNOLD 

oXXd  (ftpovtovra  irtp 


ONE  only  of  our  Public  Schools  possesses  both  an 
Epic  and  a  Biography.  The  School  is  Rugby  ; 
the  Epic  is  Tom  Brown  ;  the  Biography  is 
Stanley's  Life  of  Arnold.  This  last  is  one  of  the 
seven  great  biographies  in  the  English  language,1 
depicting  with  exhaustive  condensation  and 
abiding  literary  persuasiveness  the  creator  of  a 
great  ideal.  It  gives  us  also,  incidentally  for  our 
present  purpose,  the  traits  which  link  Arnold  to 
the  Noetic  impulse  and  enrol  him  in  the  Oriel 
school,  as  in  close  sympathy  with  Copleston, 
Whately,  Hampden  ;  as  hostile  to  the  rival 
theories  by  which  these  thinkers  were  antago- 
nised, succeeded,  and  supplanted. 

Born  at  Cowes  in  1795,  the  local  association  of 
his  childhood  forming  in  him  that  keen  interest 

1  I  enumerate,  with  all  deference,  my  six  others  :  Boswell's 
Life  of  Johnson,  Lockhart's  Life  of  Scott,  Southey's  Life  of 
Nelson,  Lewes'  Life  of  Goethe,  Carlyle's  Life  of  Sterling, 
Trevelyan's  Life  of  Macaulay. 

95 


96        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

in  matters  naval  and  military  which  continued 
through  his  life  and  illuminated  his  historical 
studies,  Arnold  was  educated  at  Winchester, 
gaining  thence  a  scholarship  at  Corpus  in  1811. 
It  was  a  College  small  in  numbers  but  intel- 
lectually distinguished.  Its  President  was  John 
Cooke  ;  its  Vice-President  and  virtual  head  was 
his  nephew  Dr.  Williams,  medical  Fellow  of  the 
College  and  Sherardian  Professor  of  Botany, 
whom  I  can  just  remember  as  inhabiting  the 
high-walled  house  in  Rose  Lane  which  overlooks 
the  Physic  Garden.  His  contemporaries  and 
friends  were  Keble,  Tucker,  J.  T.  Coleridge, 
Trevenen  Penrose,  Ellison,  and  Pellew,  afterwards 
Dean  of  Norwich.  The  shy  stiffness  which  he 
had  brought  from  school  soon  wore  off  in  this 
animated  congenial  company :  by  those  who 
afterwards  recorded  their  recollections  of  him  at 
this  time  he  was  remembered  as  vehement  in 
argument,  fearless  in  maintenance  of  opinions 
which  would  later  have  been  called  "  radical,"  a 
frequent  but  embarrassed  speaker  in  the  debates 
of  the  "  Attic  Society,"  which  afterwards  became 
the  "  Union." 

As  a  student,  he  was  a  worshipper  of  Aristotle, 
Herodotus,  Thucydides ;  reading  also  serious 
books  such  as  Barrow,  Hooker,  Taylor  ;  while 


ARNOLD  97 

in  his  case  as  in  many  more,  the  imaginative 
and  spiritualising  faculty,  dormant  hitherto, 
was  awakened  and  sustained  by  Wordsworth's 
earlier  Poems.  He  obtained  a  First  Class  in  1814, 
and  in  the  following  year  became  one  of  the 
Fellows  of  Oriel.  He  owed  this  distinction,  as 
he  owed  much  besides,  to  Whately.  His  English 
Essay  produced  an  unfavourable  effect  upon  the 
Examiners ;  Whately  took  it  in  hand,  and  showed 
the  great  capacities  for  growth  discoverable  in 
the  boyish  effort.  And  he  was  elected  accord- 
ingly. In  that  brilliant  Society  his  especial 
friends  were  Whately,  Hawkins,  Keble ;  he 
formed  also  intimacies  with  F.  C.  Blackstone 
of  New  College,  W.  W.  Hull,  James  Randall, 
Augustus  Hare,  and  Hare's  Cambridge  brother 
Tulius.  During  four  years  he  read  strenuously  in 
the  Oxford  Libraries,  gaining  as  they  passed  the 
Chancellor's  Prizes  for  the  Latin  and  the  English 
Essays.  In  1818  he  was  ordained;  married  not 
long  afterwards  Mary  Penrose,  the  sister  of  his 
College  friend  Trevenen  Penrose,  and  in  part- 
nership with  his  brother-in-law  Mr.  Buckland 
settled  down  to  private  tuition  at  Laleham,  his 
mother,  aunt,  and  sister  inhabiting  a  house  close 
by  his  own.  Laleham,  not  much  changed  to- 
day, is  a  picturesque  little  village,  amid  bowering 


9  8        PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

orchards,  reedy  islands,  swans,  and  houseboats,  on 
a  reach  of  the  Thames  between  Shepperton  and 
Staines.  It  has  a  quaint  Georgian  church,  with 
a  somewhat  appalling  altar-piece,  and  an  able 
amateur  organist  drawing  many  Sunday  wor- 
shippers. A  path  deeply  trodden  in  the  church- 
yard grass  shows  that  few  visitors  fail  in  a  pil- 
grimage to  the  Arnold  graves.  There  lie  his 
mother,  his  sister  Susanna,  and  an  infant  whom 
he  buried  in  1834;  there  too  in  an  enclosure  by 
themselves  are  the  tombs  of  Matthew  Arnold 
and  his  family.  The  schoolhouse,  ruled  now  by 
Mr.  Buckland's  grandson,  stands  on  the  village 
road,  with  spacious  playing-fields  behind  :  on  the 
site  of  the  separate  house  where  Arnold  lived  is 
a  newly  built  Rectory,  but  the  retired  garden  in 
which  he  was  wont  to  work  and  play  remains, 
with  its  "  Campus  Martius,"  and  its  wilderness 
of  trees,  the  scene  of  many  a  sportive  game  and 
many  a  serious  conversation. 

His  eight  years  at  Laleham  were  to  himself  the 
most  important  in  his  life.  Their  peacefulness 
gave  time  for  thought  to  do  her  part,  for  his 
nature  to  become  purposeful,  his  principles  fixed, 
his  religion  vital.  The  doubts  which  had  de- 
pressed him  in  earlier  years  fell  entirely  away, 
giving  place  to  a  vivid  consciousness  of  the 


ARNOLD  99 

Unseen.  He  became  possessed  with  a  feeling, 
passionate  and  abiding,  of  adoration  towards 
Christ  as  a  living  Friend  and  Master  :  the  details 
of  Christ's  life  as  given  in  the  Gospels  were  to 
him  more  exciting  than  any  recent  events ;  His 
presence  as  real  and  close  as  that  of  a  commander 
to  his  soldiers  in  the  field.  He  felt,  as  did  a 
later  religious  philosopher,  with  whom  he  had 
much  in  common,  R.  H.  Hutton,  a  difficulty  in 
realising  God  under  any  of  the  attributes  ascribed 
to  Him  by  Christian  terminology  :  the  revela- 
tion of  "  The  Father  "  he  believed  to  be  the 
promise  of  another  life  rather  than  the  support 
of  this.  His  God  was  Christ,  at  once  divinely 
excellent  and  humanly  affectionate  :  his  inces- 
sant anxiety  that  history,  that  literature,  that 
government,  that,  above  all,  education,  should  be 
"  Christian,"  was  an  application  of  this  intense 
conception  :  "  Not  truth,  not  justice,  not  bene- 
volence, not  Christ's  mother,  not  His  holiest 
servants,  not  His  blessed  sacraments,  nor  His  very 
mystical  body  the  Church,  but  Himself  only, 
who  died  for  us  and  rose  again,  Jesus  Christ  both 
God  and  Man."  Subject  to  this  discernment, 
his  schemes  of  life  now  shaped  themselves.  He 
had  undertaken  private  tuition  not  as  an  imple- 
ment for  money-making  nor  as  the  stepping- 


ioo      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

stone  to  something  else,  but  as  the  vocation  of 
his  career.  Naturally  ambitious,  wont  to  say 
that  the  three  great  objects  deserving  of  human 
effort  were  the  premiership  of  a  great  kingdom, 
the  government  of  a  great  empire,  the  author- 
ship of  a  great  book,  to  these  his  present  employ- 
ment may  perhaps  have  suggested  the  addition 
of  a  fourth,  the  mastership  of  a  great  school. 

Affectionate  reminiscences  of  the  Laleham  life 
have  been  preserved  by  various  old  pupils,  re- 
corded by  none  more  graphically  than  by  the 
most  distinguished  among  them  in  after-life,  the 
late  Professor  Bonamy  Price.  They  recall  his 
passionate  optimistic  happiness  in  life,  his  exu- 
berant contentment  with  his  own  world,  the 
joy  with  which  he  flung  himself  alike  into  work 
and  play.  "  Arnold,"  says  James  Mozley,  "  gush- 
ing with  the  richness  of  domestic  life,  the  dar- 
ling of  Nature,  the  overflowing  receptacle  and 
enjoyer,  with  strong  healthy  gusto,  of  all  her 
endearments  and  sweets."  They  paint  Laleham 
as  being  on  a  small  scale  a  rehearsal  of  his  Rugby 
career  ;  there  was  the  same  respect  for  work  as 
a  means  towards  self-perfecting  and  as  a  privileged 
co-partnership  with  the  Almighty  in  His  bene- 
ficent government  of  the  world ;  the  same  pre- 
ference of  diligence  over  brilliancy ;  the  same 


ARNOLD  101 

prompt  dismissal  of  any  boy  who  in  principles 
and  practice  was  clearly  mischievous  to  his 
fellows.  The  labour  seems  to  have  been  very 
hard  :  until  the  evening  he  was  always  occupied 
with  his  boys ;  his  many  letters  were  written, 
his  literary  work  pursued,  only  after  9  P.M.  And 
to  his  teaching  he  added  parochial  work  ;  visiting 
amongst  the  poor,  and  preaching  once  a  fort- 
night in  the  church.  History,  always  his  favourite 
subject,  filled  his  slender  leisure  :  he  began  upon 
his  edition  of  Thucydides,  and  wrote  articles 
on  various  Roman  epochs  for  the  Encyclopedia 
Metropolitan**.  And  in  1825  his  historical  ardour 
was  further  stimulated  and  his  historical  ideal 
revolutionised  by  his  first  acquaintance  with 
Niebuhr,  to  read  whose  books  he  learned  German, 
as  well  as  by  his  introduction  to  Niebuhr's  friend 
and  disciple,  Bunsen.  It  was,  lastly,  during  these 
ripening  years  that  he  matured  the  intensity  of 
character  which  became  one  of  his  most  notable 
traits ;  which  flung  the  whole  force  of  his  moral 
nature  on  to  the  interest  of  the  moment,  whether 
of  play  or  work  ;  on  the  pursuit  of  the  hour  or 
the  prolonged  and  lasting  enterprise,  the  attack 
on  evil  or  the  support  of  righteousness,  the  de- 
fence of  friends  or,  it  must  be  owned,  the  savage 
mangling  of  opponents.  It  used  to  be  said  laugh- 


102      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

ingly  that  he  had  invented  the  word  "  earnest," 
and  certainly  from  his  lips  and  pen  it  both 
acquired  and  bequeathed  a  new  force  and  a  more 
frequent  application.  But  his  years  of  appren- 
ticeship in  life  and  teaching  were  drawing  to  a 
close  :  in  1827  he  was  persuaded  by  his  friends 
to  offer  himself  for  the  vacant  Headmastership  of 
Rugby  :  there  were  many  notable  candidates  : 
on  learning  their  names,  Arnold  withdrew  his 
own,  persuaded  that  he  could  not  make  head 
against  the  powerful  influence  engaged  on  behalf 
of  some  amongst  them.  Whately  persuaded  him, 
at  the  last  moment,  to  come  forward  again,  and 
wrote  strongly  to  Sir  H.  Halford,  one  of  the 
Trustees,  urging  that  interest  should  in  the 
election  be  altogether  disregarded.  Halford  im- 
pressed this  successfully  on  his  colleagues ;  who, 
when  they  came  to  Arnold's  name,  the  last  on 
the  list,  found  that  though  the  testimonials  of 
others  owned  more  imposing  signatures,  and  were 
couched  in  more  flattering  language,  none  urged 
so  pointedly  as  his  the  qualities  essential  to  a 
great  Schoolmaster's  career.  They  are  said  to 
have  been  particularly  impressed  by  a  testimonial 
from  Provost  Hawkins,  predicting  that  Arnold, 
if  chosen,  would  change  the  face  of  Public  School 
education  throughout  England.  He  was  unani- 


ARNOLD  103 

mously  elected,  and  in  1828  took  up  his  residence 
at  Rugby. 

That  English  Public  Schools  in  the  opening  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  though  superior  to  con- 
tinental schools  of  the  same  class,  were  heathenish 
at  the  best,  at  the  worst  nurseries  of  vice,  has 
become  a  commonplace.  A  famous  headmaster 
of  those  days  indignantly  answered  a  parental 
question  as  to  the  Christian  character  of  his  boys 
by  pointing  out  that  he  was  there  in  order  to 
teach  Greek,  not  morals.  "  C'est  le  meilleur  que 
j'ai  jamais  vu,  et  c'est  abominable,"  said  Talley- 
rand on  being  shown  over  Eton.  The  scathing 
attack  of  Cowper's  "  Tirocinium,"  launched  not 
long  before,  was  echoed  by  such  men  as  Wilber- 
force  and  Bowdler  ;  and  the  practice  of  educating 
their  sons  at  home,  with  all  its  manifest  disad- 
vantages, was  spreading  amongst  serious-minded 
parents.  Into  this  welter  of  inefficiency  or  mis- 
chief came  Arnold  in  the  spirit  of  a  Spenserian 
Knight,  with  the  firm  belief  that  it  might  be 
redeemed  by  application  of  Christian  principle, 
with  equally  full  resolve  that  his  life  and  powers 
should  be  devoted  to  the  experiment.  He  found 
a  school,  probably  no  worse,  certainly  no  better, 
than  its  contemporaries ;  Mr.  Albert  Pell,  who 
entered  in  1832,  has  recorded  in  his  entertaining 


io4      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

Reminiscences  the  coarse  vulgarities,  the  drink- 
ing, smoking,  frequenting  of  low  public-houses 
into  which  he  was  introduced.  Such  as  it  was, 
Arnold  would  redeem  it.  He  came  to  it  as  an 
autocrat,  insisting  on  a  free  hand  in  all  points 
of  discipline  and  teaching  :  the  School  Governors, 
Warwickshire  country  gentlemen,  might  dismiss 
him  if  they  pleased,  they  should  not  interfere 
with  him. 

His  reform  began  with  the  Masters.  He 
raised  their  salaries,  forbade  them  to  take  outside 
clerical  duty,  placed  the  boarding-houses  under 
their  charge,  established  a  system  of  private 
tuition  which  assigned  to  each  Master  the  per- 
sonal and  pastoral  care  of  certain  boys ;  held 
weekly  councils  for  discussion  of  and  common 
agreement  in  all  School  matters,  impressed  upon 
them  that  without  their  co-operation  he  was 
powerless.  But  the  influence  of  the  masters  in 
an  English  Public  School  goes  comparatively  little 
way.  Left  almost  entirely  to  themselves,  the 
boys  form  an  independent  society  of  their  own, 
ruled  by  a  public  opinion  of  irresistible  influence 
and  force,  which  in  a  bad  School — and  at  that 
time  all  Schools  were  bad — is  uniformly  low  and 
vicious.  To  raise  the  tone  of  this  society,  to 
Christianise  this  public  opinion,  was  the  task 


THOMAS  ARNOLD. 
(From  the  Oriel  portrait  by  Thomas  Phillips,  R.A. 


ARNOLD  105 

Arnold  had  to  face,  and  there  were  times  when 
it  filled  him  with  despair.  He  met  it  first  of  all 
by  improving  the  machinery  of  the  Sixth  Form, 
that  is  of  the  thirty  senior  boys;  increasing 
their  power  over  the  Juniors,  permitting  and 
encouraging  them  to  enforce  that  power  by  the 
free  use  of  personal  chastisement.  If  tyrants 
there  must  be  in  every  School,  at  Rugby  at  any 
rate  the  tyrant  should  be  not  the  biggest  and 
strongest,  but  the  oldest,  cleverest,  most  reput- 
able amongst  the  boys.  On  these  picked  few  he 
lavished  special  confidence,  regard,  and  favour  ; 
taught  them  to  look  upon  themselves  as  joint 
conservators  with  him  of  the  School  character  ; 
as  able  even  at  times  to  reach  evils  which  no 
Master  could  penetrate  or  control.  And  further, 
lest  the  bad  element  in  the  School  should  success- 
fully defy  the  Sixth,  he  introduced  a  wholesale 
system  of  dismissal  :  the  leaders  in  any  such 
revolt  were  quietly  sent  away  :  "  Till  a  man 
learns  that  the  first,  second,  third  duty  of  a 
schoolmaster  is  to  get  rid  of  unpromising  sub- 
jects, a  great  Public  School  will  never  be  what  it 
ought  to  be."  There  were  in  these  cases  no 
public  expulsions ;  they  were  reserved,  as  before, 
for  offences  of  the  grossest  kind  :  the  boy  quietly 
disappeared,  sometimes  not  till  the  end  of  the 


106      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

half  year.  Of  course  these  measures  provoked, 
as  he  expected  them  to  do,  vehement  opposition 
from  without.  I  well  remember  how  amongst 
the  boys  in  my  own  School  buzzing  talk  went 
round,  repeated  from  the  elders  at  home,  of  Dr. 
Arnold's  tyranny  and  harshness  :  angry  letters  in 
the  newspapers  described  cruel  tundings  by  the 
Seniors,  compassionated  the  bruised  backs  of 
Juniors,  stigmatised  all  personal  chastisement  as 
degrading.  Still  greater  indignation  was  caused 
by  the  compulsory  withdrawal  of  boys  against 
whom  no  overt  act  of  flagrant  immorality  or 
disobedience  was  alleged.  A  boy  once  entered 
at  a  School  had  a  right,  it  was  contended,  to 
remain  there,  so  long  as  he  should  steer  clear  of 
criminal  offences.  Arnold  quietly  went  on  his 
way  ;  the  Governors  to  their  credit  refused  even 
privately  to  interpose  ;  and  parents  not  a  few 
came  through  later  experience  to  admit  that  the 
removal  of  their  sons  from  School  to  the  care 
of  private  Tutors  had  helped,  not  retarded,  their 
future  weal. 

The  spirit  of  his  teaching  in  School  was  as 
novel  as  were  his  disciplinary  methods.  For 
mere  cleverness  in  a  boy,  divested  of  moral  worth, 
he  had  no  regard  :  the  boys  he  reverenced  most 
were  those  who,  with  moderate  abilities,  were 


ARNOLD  107 

distinguished  for  high  principle  and  modesty. 
And  his  object  in  teaching  was  to  awaken  the 
intellect  of  every  individual  boy ;  he  taught  by 
questioning,  not  by  giving  information  ;  herein 
unlike  one  of  his  most  famous  contemporaries, 
who  would  break  off  early  in  a  Greek  or  Latin 
lesson  to  pour  out  eloquent  general  disquisitions 
on  antiquities,  history,  poetry,  or  what  not.  The 
boys  enjoyed  it,  especially  if  they  had  imper- 
fectly prepared  the  lesson :  but  the  Demosthenes 
or  Juvenal  stood  still  :  it  was  pretty,  but  it  was 
not  Art.  Arnold's  instruction  was  interwoven 
with  the  processes  of  the  boys'  own  minds,  com- 
pelled them  to  form  opinions,  and  to  realise  the 
boundary  line  between  their  knowledge  and  their 
ignorance.  "  You  come  here,"  he  would  say, 
"  not  so  much  to  read,  as  to  learn  how  to  read." 
"  I  call  that  the  best  theme,"  he  would  say 
again,  "  which  shows  that  a  boy  has  read  and 
thought  for  himself ;  that  the  next  best,  which 
shows  that  he  has  read  several  specified  books, 
and  has  digested  what  he  read  ;  that  the  worst, 
which  shows  that  he  has  followed  but  one  book, 
and  followed  that  without  reflection."  Much 
more  might  I  quote,  garnered  from  the  talk  of 
old  Rugbeians  whom  I  have  known,  now,  alas  ! 
a  slender  surviving  band,  glad  always  of  a  willing 


io8      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

listener  to  their  affectionate  outpourings.  They 
describe  the  tall  commanding  figure,  striding 
along  the  lanes  beside  his  wife's  white  pony  on 
half-holidays.  They  recall  the  sternness  of  aspect 
and  manner  by  which  "  Black  Arnold,"  as  the 
boys  called  him,  inspired  craven  fear  in  conscious 
evil-doers,  abiding  awe  even  in  those  who  loved 
him  best.  They  repeople  the  Library  in  the 
Tower  where  he  taught  the  Sixth,  with  much  to 
say  of  his  brilliant  extempore  translations  into 
English,  his  graphic  vitalisation  of  the  author 
and  the  age  under  treatment,  his  lessons  on 
Modern  History  and  Scripture.  They  dwell 
most  of  all  upon  those  marvellous  Sunday  ser- 
mons, which  swept  into  the  current  of  his  own 
high  thoughts  and  stamped  momentarily  with 
the  contagion  of  his  own  genius  all,  even  the 
most  careless,  boys  who  heard  them,  and  which 
to  us  who  read  them  now  historically  depict  the 
workings  of  his  own  mind  and  the  chronicle  of 
his  progress  in  the  School. 

But  Arnold  was  more  than  a  great  School- 
master ;  he  was  a  historian,  a  divine,  a  politician  : 
and  the  crusading  spirit  which  burnt  within 
compelled  him  to  put  forth  forcibly,  as  his 
message  to  the  outer  world,  his  views  on  all  these 
subjects — "  I  have  a  testimony  to  deliver  and  I 


ARNOLD  109 

must  write  or  die."  He  contemplated  three 
great  works,  fragmentary  during  the  distractions 
of  School  life,  to  be  matured  and  completed  in 
the  leisure  and  retirement  of  his  later  years ;  a 
History  of  Rome,  a  Commentary  on  the  Old  and 
New  Testaments,  a  treatise  on  Christian  Politics. 
His  earlier  labours  had  shown  a  preference  to 
Greek  over  Roman  History ;  his  own  mind  seems 
to  have  been  Greek  rather  than  Roman  :  the 
splendid  truthfulness  of  Thucydides  enthralled 
him  in  proportion  as  he  was  repelled  by  the 
falsehood  and  emptiness  of  Livy :  for  Pericles, 
for  Socrates,  for  Plato,  for  Alexander,  his  en- 
thusiasm was  passionate  and  unbounded  ;  and 
even  over  the  later  age  when  Greece  was  living 
Greece  no  more  he  lingered  with  a  melancholy 
pleasure.  But  the  immensity  of  the  Roman  field, 
its  championship  of  law  and  order,  appealed  to 
him  in  the  end  with  stronger  force,  and  on 
Rome  he  began  to  write.  Three  volumes  only, 
as  we  know,  he  lived  to  perfect  :  throughout  the 
first  two  he  was  groping  painfully  in  the  dark ; 
the  third,  dealing  with  the  Second  Punic  War, 
gave  full  scope  to  his  peculiar  powers  :  in  it  for 
the  first  time  appeared  an  adequate  estimate  of 
Hannibal.  From  his  letters,  and  from  his  articles 
in  the  Encyclopedia,  we  can  form  some  idea  of 


no      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

his  judgments  on  later  men  and  times :  his 
admiration  for  Pompey,  and,  in  spite  of  his 
crimes,  for  Sylla  ;  his  strong  moral  reprobation 
of  Caesar,  his  loathing  for  Marius,  his  attitude 
towards  the  beginnings  of  the  Christian  Church, 
its  revival  of  Judaic  principles,  its  extinction  of 
individual  responsibility,  its  delight  in  teachers 
such  as  Athanasius  and  Augustine.  He  con- 
ceived his  work  with  the  hope  that  hfe  might 
carry  it  to  the  coronation  of  Charles  the  Great, 
as  Macaulay's  opening  sentence  announced  an 
intention  of  extending  his  history  to  the  time  of 
men  still  living.  Dis  aliter  visum. 

His  Commentary  on  the  Testaments  would 
have  carried  out  his  theory  that  the  proper  end 
of  Theology  was  the  scientific  exposition  of 
Scripture.  The  dual  element  in  Bible  history  is 
obvious  to  every  one  ;  the  historical  statement  of 
fact  is  mingled  with  assertion  of  divine  super- 
intendence. In  the  opening  of  the  Patriarchal 
age  we  have — (i)  The  familiar  material  migration 
of  a  pastoral  nomad  tribe  ;  (2)  the  call  of  God 
to  Abraham  to  get  him  out  from  his  own  people 
into  a  land  which  God  would  show  him.  So  in 
the  tragic  story  of  the  first  Jewish  King  we 
have — (i)  A  quarrel  between  Crown  and  Mitre, 
between  a  Pope  and  Emperor  ;  Saul  jealous  of 


ARNOLD  1 1 1 

and  disobeying  Samuel,  defeated  in  the  contest, 
his  anger  wreaking  itself  in  outrageous  acts, 
culminating  in  madness  and  despair  :  (2)  the 
curtain  raised  to  reveal  a  Titanic  duel  over  a 
human  soul  between  a  good  and  evil  Spirit  from 
the  Lord.  As  a  practised  historian,  Arnold 
would  check  the  narrative  impartially  by  the 
canons  of  historical  criticism  ;  as  a  divine,  he 
would  in  accordance  with  contemporary  belief 
separate  and  bow  before  the  oracular  revelation 
of  an  interposing  Deity,  authenticated  by  the 
supernatural  inspiration  of  the  sacred  writers. 
How  far  his  mind  would  have  retained  this  last 
assumption  in  the  light  of  later  investigation  we 
cannot  tell  :  as  it  was,  he  stood  between  the 
Bibliolater  and  the  Rationalist ;  and  his  book, 
had  it  come  to  the  birth  instead  of  being,  as  it 
was,  merely  adumbrated  in  scattered  sermons, 
must  have  advanced  the  cause  of  biblical  study, 
distorted  at  the  time  or  imperfectly  understood. 
His  third  great  contemplated  work,  on  Church 
and  State,  or  Christian  Politics,  brings  us  to  the 
very  heart  of  all  his  thoughts  and  actions,  diffe- 
rentiating him  not  only  from  his  Noetic  friends, 
but  from  all  contemporary  and  past  religious 
writers.  To  him  "  Politics "  meant  what  it 
meant  to  the  great  philosophic  Statesmen  who 


ii2      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

first  coined  and  used  the  word,  namely,  the 
Science  of  human  happiness,  as  the  supreme 
problem  which  Society  is  called  upon  to  solve. 
He  belonged  to  no  party  :  he  abhorred  Toryism 
as  the  spirit  of  resistance  to  change,  maintaining 
a  selfish  conservatism  of  what  has  become  mani- 
festly untenable,  thus  retarding  and  deranging 
the  process  of  social  regeneration.  In  an  aristo- 
cracy of  birth  he  saw  a  bulwark  against  Jacobinism, 
though  arraigning  the  insolence  of  our  aristo- 
cracy as  calling  for  restrictive  reform.  Hating 
Trades  Unions — then  in  their  early  violent  not 
in  their  later  peaceful  stage — he  saw  in  democracy 
a  righteous  protest  against  the  injustice  shown 
by  the  higher  to  the  lower  orders.  His  indigna- 
tion never  mounted  higher  than  against  social 
misery,  and  the  neglect  of  the  clergy  to  under- 
stand and  cope  with  it.  He  would  quote  the 
denunciations  of  Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  Amos,  St. 
James ;  and  warn  that  these  evils  unredressed 
must  lead  to  sanguinary  revolution.  "Liberalism," 
a  term  then  newly  invented,  stood  to  him  for  all 
those  principles  of  reform  which  he  thought 
identical  with  Christianity  itself ;  but  he  de- 
tested and  warned  against  all  party  ties,  save 
that  which  binds  to  the  party  of  Christ  against 
surrounding  wickedness.  And  if  "  abhorred," 


ARNOLD  113 

"  detested,"  "  hated,"  seem  to  be  strong  words, 
they  are  not  too  strong  to  express  his  passionate 
energy  in  advocating  all  which  he  believed  to 
make  for  righteousness,  in  denouncing  and 
anathematising  its  contrary. 

Of  his  published  views  none  excited  so  much 
interest  or  aroused  against  him  so  much  obloquy, 
as  his  theory  of  Church  and  State.  A  Christian 
State,  he  held,  can  govern  itself  only  on  Christian 
principles ;  through  its  chosen  representatives  it 
must  frame  and  administer  laws  as  in  the  eye  of 
its  great  Taskmaster  Christ.  St.  Paul's  reminder 
to  his  converts  that  earthly  rulers  are  vicegerents 
of  the  Almighty,  that  even  hated  tribute- 
gatherers  and  publicans  are  God's  ministers, 
indicated  in  his  belief  the  Christian  political 
verity.  To  think  and  speak  of  the  Church  as  a 
separate  body  controlling  morals  and  religion  is 
therefore  fatal  to  this  ideal.  A  Christian  State 
is  a  Christian  Church  ;  it  rules  in  the  name  of 
Christ ;  its  Courts  and  Legislature,  if  Christian, 
are  therefore  ecclesiastical ;  the  function,  work, 
and  constitution  of  Church  and  State  is  identical ; 
no  severance  between  them  can  be  conceived 
which  does  not  impair  the  Christian  character 
of  both.  This  theory  might  not,  he  admitted, 
for  many  years  be  wholly  carried  into  practice  ; 

H 


u4      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

but  he  laboured  for  its  theoretical  acceptance  as 
bringing  its  realisation  nearer.  He  thus  received 
in  its  fullest  sense  the  Reformation  doctrine  of 
the  King's  Supremacy ;  a  supremacy  of  the 
Monarch  as  representing  the  Christian  State  in 
all  causes  civil  or  spiritual,  over  all  persons  lay  or 
clerical.  The  notion  that  the  clergy  compose 
the  Church,  that  a  close  corporation  of  priests 
and  bishops  whether  one  or  many  independently 
govern  the  Church,  he  held  to  be  a  fatal  false- 
hood, looking,  with  Coleridge,  on  the  separation 
between  laity  and  clergy  as  the  first  and  funda- 
mental apostasy.  Admitting  the  practical  con- 
venience of  establishing  within  the  Church  a 
body  of  men  trained  to  conduct  public  worship, 
to  study  and  expound  the  Scriptures,  he  could 
only  view  them  as  servants  of  and  appointed  by 
the  State,  just  as  he  would  cause  public  officials 
of  the  State  to  feel  themselves  appointed  ministers 
of  the  Church.  Therefore  he  wished  to  associate 
laity  and  clergy  in  all  convocational  Synods  : 
where  clergy  could  not  be  procured,  he  would 
enjoin  civil  or  military  officers  to  offer  public 
prayers  and  administer  the  Sacraments,  pointing 
out  that  Tertullian  admits  lay  officiators  in  the 
Eucharist,  and  that  the  Church  of  England  no- 
where pronounces  clerical  administration  essential 


ARNOLD  115 

its  validity.  He  would  restore  Church  dis- 
cipline ; — more  frequent  services  and  communions, 
crosses  and  wayside  oratories,  religious  orders  of 
men  and  women  without  the  snare  of  perpetual 
vows.  If  once  the  usurpation  of  a  clerical  body 
were  removed,  all  these,  he  believed,  would  fall 
into  their  place :  there  would  emerge  a  National 
Church,  which  with  whatever  diversities  of  cere- 
monial or  opinion  would  be  united  by  acceptance 
of  Christ's  leadership  and  communion  with  His 
Spirit.  It  should  embrace  all  Christian  sects 
except  Unitarians  ;  these  he  would  admit  to 
the  Universities,  but  would  deny  to  them  civil 
rights  :  their  theism  directly  contradicted  his 
own  ;  they  clung  to  the  notion  of  an  invisible 
God ;  he  could  only  conceive  God  at  all  as 
revealed  in  the  person  of  Christ.  But  he  con- 
demned as  presumptuous  the  Trinitarian  language 
of  the  Athanasian  Creed,  and  believed  that  its 
abandonment  would  greatly  improve  the  present 
complexion  of  Unitarianism.  Apart  from  this, 
he  repudiated  the  damnatory  clauses,  and  argued 
with  some  special  pleading  that  the  8th  Article 
was  not  intended  to  refer  to  them. 

On  all  these  points  he  was  in  direct  antagonism 
to  the  rising  party  of  the  Tracts.  He  attacked 
them  as  teaching  the  necessity,  not  the  expe- 


n6      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

diency,  of  Episcopacy ;  their  reliance  on  "  Tradi- 
tion," derived  by  Newman  from  "  Hawkins' 
unhappy  sermon,"  he  called  a  monster  dis- 
paraging all  reverence  for  Antiquity,  fettering 
progress  and  forfeiting  the  advantages  of  inces- 
santly accruing  experience.  He  refused  autho- 
rity to  the  ante-Nicene  Church  and  its  General 
Councils ;  conceiving  that  each  particular  Church 
could  legislate  and  determine,  under  Scripture 
guidance,  for  its  own  members  only.  Apostolical 
Succession  he  vested  in  the  Church,  not  in  the 
clergy,  and  denounced  the  view  put  forth  in  the 
earlier  Tracts  as  a  device  of  Satan  to  destroy  the 
Church.  We  remember  the  horror  with  which 
his  pupil  Stanley  first  heard  this  view  of  Succes- 
sion propounded  by  his  friend  and  fellow-under- 
graduate Roundell  Palmer.  Arnold  called  it  a 
profane  heraldic  theory,  making  our  heavenly 
inheritance  a  matter  of  pedigree,  conveying  no 
moral  nobleness,  nay  descending  through  a  breed 
often  contaminated  or  bad  ;  morally  powerless, 
intellectually  indefinite,  incompatible  with  law 
and  government,  substituting  a  ceremonial  for  a 
spiritual  Christianity.  By  it  the  Newmanites 
had  gained  the  clergy ;  the  keynote  of  their 
teaching  was  Sacerdotalism,  and  that  rested  on 
the  Succession.  The  Tracts  make  the  clergy 


ARNOLD 


117 


mediators  :  "  Let  us  go  straight  to  Christ  with- 
out leaning  on  the  crutches  of  the  Church."  If 
in  some  of  these  points  he  went  beyond  his 
Noetic  brethren,  he  was  at  one  with  them  in 
their  repudiation  of  the  "  Sabbath."  They  all 
held  that  the  observance  of  Sunday  is  in  no  way 
touched  by  the  precept  of  the  Fourth  Com- 
mandment ;  that  command  was  local,  tempo- 
rary, obsolete  ;  the  Christian  festival  is  binding 
on  us  as  a  law  of  the  Spirit,  one  Lord's  day  in 
seven  providing  for  our  needs.  He  estimated 
the  value  of  the  Eucharist  by  our  Lord's  own 
summarised  interpretation  in  St.  John  vi.  63. 
The  operation  of  material  agency  to  produce  a 
spiritual  effect  he  held  to  be  opposed  to  reason 
and  denied  by  Christ  :  if  meat  cannot  defile 
morally,  no  more  can  it  morally  cleanse  and 
strengthen.  And  he  found  that  wherever  value 
was  attached  to  the  Elements,  in  that  proportion 
the  true  Sacramentum,  the  oath  pledging  each 
man  to  Christ  and  to  his  brethren,  became  less 
and  less  regarded. 

On  the  training  of  the  clergy  he  laid  great 
stress  :  would  make  them  adepts  in  Scripture 
with  every  help  from  antiquarian,  geographical, 
philological  lore  :  they  should  be  equipped  for 
preaching  by  habitual  study  of  the  best  writers, 


n8      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

secular  as  well  as  sacred  ;  should  be  good  Greek 
and  Hebrew  scholars,  should  be  familiar  with 
history,  political  economy,  biographies  of  good 
and  able  men. 

Excepting  Hooker  and  Butler,  he  held  a  low 
opinion  of  English  divines  :  it  never  seems,  he 
thought,  to  occur  to  them  whether  doctrines 
which  they  defend  are  true  or  false.  In  John 
Bunyan  he  found  greater  genius,  with  truer  and 
more  edifying  understanding  of  Christianity,  than 
in  any  of  them.  Amongst  modern  books  he  had 
an  immense  admiration  for  Macaulay,  whose 
History,  however,  did  not  appear  till  after  his 
death  :  in  Carlyle's  "  French  Revolution"  he  found 
"  a  comprehension  of  the  true  nature  of  history 
such  as  it  delighted  my  heart  to  meet  with  "  ; 
and  he  consulted  the  sage  in  1840  on  a  scheme 
which  he  had  much  at  heart,  the  formation  of  a 
Society  devoted  to  the  redemption  of  the  poorer 
classes.  In  one  respect  he  was  obscurantist :  he 
denied  altogether  the  educational  value  of  Science : 
he  was  content  that  his  children  should  be 
ignorant  of  its  commonest  truths :  "  The  one 
thing  needful  for  a  Christian  is  Christian  moral 
and  political  philosophy."  And  his  ideal  of 
National  Education  he  condensed  into  the  phrase 
"  Christianity  without  Sectarianism." 


ARNOLD  119 

His  views  on  all  these  subjects,  expressed  partly 
in  his  contributions  to  periodical  literature,  are 
reiterated  in  his  letters  to  various  friends, — to 
old  Pupils,  to  Judge  Coleridge,  Hawkins,  Hull, 
Blackstone,  Sir  T.  Pasley,  Whately.  With  this 
last  his  friendship  was  especially  close  and  con- 
stant. It  was  not  a  union  of  opinion  :  the 
intellectual  temperament  of  the  two  men  was 
different,  Whately  deriving  all  his  conclusions  by 
abstract  reasoning,  Arnold  preferring  the  in- 
vestigation of  facts.  Yet  while  Whately  did 
not  fail  to  challenge  Arnold's  precipitancy  in 
argument  and  action — "  You  have  three  faults, 
rashness,  rashness,  rashness  " — none  more  truly 
appreciated  the  moral  nobleness  of  his  character. 
He  admired  his  friend's  contagious  buoyancy  of 
spirit ;  his  intense  enjoyment  of  his  own  life,  whose 
great  and  unbroken  happiness  he  accepted  with 
mingled  gratitude  and  awe  ;  the  strong  horror 
of  injustice  which  alone  caused  him  to  suffer 
from  unmerited  abuse  ;  his  affection,  once  given, 
bestowed  with  passionate  ardour  ;  "  He  was  at- 
tached to  his  family  as  if  he  had  no  friends,  to 
his  friends  as  if  he  had  no  family,  to  his  country 
as  if  he  had  no  family  and  no  friends."  And 
though  some  of  his  old  associates  were  separated 
from  him  by  irreconcilable  differences,  he  always 


120       PRE-TRACTARIAN    OXFORD 

spoke  of  them  with  personal  affection  and  longing 
for  reunion  :  in  the  very  summer  of  his  death 
Keble  was  to  have  visited  him  at  Fox  How. 

The  severance  had  indeed  been  real.  Between 
the  years  1834  and  1838  the  storm  and  stress  of 
his  battailous  life  attained  their  highest  tension. 
Hitherto  "  Judaising  "  doctrines,  which  he  be- 
lieved to  have  been  and  to  be  subversive  of 
Christianity,  had  existed  at  Oxford  or  elsewhere 
in  a  vague  sporadic  form  :  now  suddenly  they 
stood  before  him  concrete,  palpable,  close  at 
hand.  Absent  from  Oxford  during  sixteen  years, 
he  was  unaware  of  the  novel  opinions  which  had 
been  held  in  common  by  and  had  drawn  to- 
gether certain  residents,  few  in  number,  but 
able,  learned,  zealous.  The  appearance  of  the 
Tracts,  unfolding  a  theological  system  thought 
out  and  formulated,  shaped  by  concerted  action, 
energetically  propagated,  and  at  once  attracting 
adherents,  struck  him  at  first  with  sheer  amaze- 
ment. Each  successive  Tract  laid  down  prin- 
ciples which  he  had  all  his  life  been  combating  ; 
he  saw  in  them  the  superstition  of  a  priesthood 
without  its  power,  a  pursuance  of  objects  which, 
if  gained,  would  make  no  man  better,  nor  lead 
to  any  good,  spiritual,  intellectual,  or  moral. 
And  the  first  combined  public  action  of  the  new 


ARNOLD  121 

party,  the  persecution  of  Hampden,  engineered 
avowedly  by  its  leaders,  with  indefensible  plead- 
ings, denial  of  justice  to  the  accused,  reference 
to  an  irregular  and  wholly  unqualified  tribunal, 
roused  his  strongest  animosity.  He  longed  to 
fight  them  on  the  spot ;  wished  that  a  post 
could  be  found  for  him  in  Oxford  which  would 
enable  him  to  become  resident  :  and  those  of 
us  who  dally  with  might-have-beens  can  see  how 
such  an  appointment  must  have  changed  the 
aftercourse  of  theological  history  in  England. 
Newman's  paramount  influence  was  due  most  of 
all  to  his  monocracy  :  amongst  the  upholders  of 
Reformation  principles  he  found  none  worthy 
to  oppose  him — nee  viget  quidquam  simile  aut 
secundum — very  many  followed  him  reluctantly, 
because  there  was  no  one  else  to  follow.  Arnold, 
a  greater  scholar,  as  great  a  preacher,  as  im- 
posing a  personality,  with  convictions  equally 
assured  and  impact  equally  forcible,  would  have 
formed  a  rival  camp  :  the  beliefs  on  which  New- 
man trampled  would  not  have  gone  by  default  : 
both  parties,  perhaps  both  protagonists,  would 
have  learned,  gained,  been  modified,  by  collision 
and  contact.  Oxford  residence  was  impossible 
to  him,  but  his  pen  was  free,  and  he  relieved 
his  indignation  by  the  tremendous  philippic  in 


122       PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

the  Edinburgh  Review  entitled  by  its  Editor 
"  The  Oxford  Malignants."  Moreover,  if  what 
he  deemed  superstition  was  confronting  him  on 
one  side,  he  was  no  less  disturbed  by  what  he 
denounced  as  infidelity  on  the  other.  He  had 
accepted  the  offer  of  a  Fellowship  in  the  newly- 
founded  London  University,  with  the  hope  of 
giving  to  it  a  religious  complexion,  of  making  it 
"  Christian  not  Sectarian."  He  proposed  and 
carried  a  resolution  that  all  candidates  for  degrees 
should  pass  an  Examination  in  the  Scriptures. 
This  rule  raised  opposition,  and  at  a  later  meet- 
ing was  rescinded,  the  Scripture  Examination 
being  made  permissive,  not  essential ;  after  much 
correspondence  he  finally  withdrew  from  the 
Senate. 

During  these  years  in  fact  he  not  only  stood 
alone,  but  was  the  subject  of  unpopularity 
amongst  his  brother  clergy  as  fierce  as  that 
which  gathered  round  his  friend  and  contempo- 
rary, Hampden.  In  advocating  Roman  Catholic 
claims  he  had  enlarged  on  the  incompetence  of 
the  clergy  to  deal  with  political  topics  ;  and  by 
his  plea  for  enlarging  the  national  character  of 
the  Church  an  axe  was  laid  to  the  root  of 
cherished  clerical  prerogative.  Lord  Melbourne, 
desiring  to  make  him  a  bishop,  was  deterred  by 


ARNOLD 


123 


apprehension  of  the  storm  such  a  nomination 
must  raise.  He  was  withheld  by  Archbishop 
Howley  from  preaching  a  consecration  sermon  in 
Canterbury  Cathedral,  for  the  avowed  reason  that 
his  presence  in  the  metropolitan  pulpit  would 
give  offence  to  the  clergy ;  and  a  motion  of 
censure  on  his  published  opinions  was  all  but 
carried  at  a  meeting  of  the  Rugby  Governors. 
But  about  the  year  1840  the  tide  began  to  turn, 
ushering  in  for  him  the  close  of  fierce  contro- 
versy, and  the  commencement  of  a  quieter  time. 
His  ten  years  of  work  had  told  upon  the  School ; 
its  distinctions  were  frequent  and  brilliant,  its 
moral  tone  approximating  to  his  ideal.  The 
opposition  excited  by  his  educational  and  political 
views  had  in  a  great  measure  begun  to  die  away  ; 
his  "  Sermons  on  Prophecy "  attracted  many 
who  had  held  aloof  from  him  ;  and  though  his 
disapproval  of  the  Oxford  "  Judaisers  "  was  un- 
abated, he  saw  their  ground  shifting,  and  foretold 
the  secessions  which  were  shortly  to  impair  their 
influence.  We  hear  no  more  of  dejection  and 
despair  ;  his  interest  in  life  seemed  to  have  re- 
vived, his  energy  showed  no  decrease,  and  the 
serenity  of  earlier  days  returned.  One  remaining 
trouble  haunted  him  in  these  years  more  and 
more,  the  sufferings  of  the  lower  Orders  :  he 


i24       PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

lamented  the  apathy  of  the  Clergy  towards  these 
disabilities,  and  endeavoured  unsuccessfully  to 
organise  a  Society  for  their  investigation  and 
remedy,  such  as  has  found  existence  in  the 
"  Christian  Social  Union  "  of  to-day.  In  1841 
a  fresh  interest  was  infused  into  his  life  by  an 
offer  from  Lord  Melbourne  of  the  Regius  Pro- 
fessorship of  Modern  History  at  Oxford.  Readers 
of  Dean  Stanley's  Life  will  remember  the  delight 
which  his  inaugural  Lecture  in  the  Theatre  gave 
to  all,  the  rapture  with  which  his  old  pupils  saw 
their  Idol  assume  the  su-perbiam  qucesitam  mentis , 
stand  upon  the  pedestal  which,  as  they  felt,  he 
should  have  occupied  long  before.  In  the 
February  following  he  came  up  to  deliver  his 
first  course  of  seven  Lectures  ;  spending  in  Oxford 
with  his  wife  and  older  children,  three  weeks 
of  deep  enjoyment.  Day  after  day,  when  his 
Lecture  was  over,  he  would  set  forth  with  his 
favourite  pupils,  with  Stanley,  and  Lake,  and 
Clough  just  elected  at  Oriel,  to  explore  again 
the  old  beloved  haunts ;  Bagley  Wood  and  Shot- 
over  and  Horspath,  and  Cumnor  and  Elsfield, 
and  the  little  valleys  behind  the  Hinckseys  which 
his  son  was  some  day  to  glorify  in  immortal  verse.1 

1  It  was  during  this  visit  that  for  the  first  and  only  time  he 
met  Newman,  sitting  next  to  him  in  Oriel  Hall  and  Common 


ARNOLD  125 

With,  this  brief  glimpse  of  his  beloved  Uni- 
versity returned  the  longing  to  live  in  it,  but 
not  in  the  pugnacious  spirit  of  some  years  before. 
"  He  must  be  of  a  different  constitution  from 
mine,  who  can  wish,  in  the  discharge  of  a  public 
duty  in  our  common  University,  to  embitter  our 
academical  studies  with  controversy,  to  excite 
angry  feelings  in  a  place  where  he  has  never  met 
with  anything  but  kindness,  a  place  connected 
in  his  mind  with  recollections,  associations,  and 
actual  feelings,  the  most  prized  and  the  most 
delightful." 

I  am  old  enough  to  remember  the  shock  which 
pulsed  through  England  when,  in  June  1842,  the 
sudden  death  of  Dr.  Arnold  was  announced. 
Some  years  earlier  the  impression  would  have 
been  coloured  by  the  predilection  or  the  bitter- 
ness of  partisanship  ;  that  had  faded  now  :  it 
was  felt  only  that  a  great  man  had  fallen — fallen 
in  mid-career,  just  when  his  energy  was  finding 
new  channels,  his  nobleness  taking  on  a  fresh  com- 
plexion. It  was  my  good  fortune  to  know  his  dis- 
tinguished pupil,  Lake,  the  late  Dean  of  Durham  ; 
and  to  hear  from  his  lips,  with  the  charm  of  first- 
Room.  Hawkins,  his  host,  was  unnecessarily  nervous  :  the 
talk — it  could  hardly  be  otherwise — was  general  and  harmless. 


126      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

hand  recital,  those  recollections  which  were 
condensed  into  Stanley's  closing  chapter.  He 
described  his  stroll  with  Arnold  on  the  evening 
of  June  nth,  when,  like  the  Prophet  and  his 
disciple,  "  they  two  went  on  and  talked  ;  "  the 
portentous  news  which  met  him  as  he  descended 
next  morning  to  the  breakfast  table  ;  the  blank 
mute  torpor  of  that  long  Sunday ;  his  night 
journey  to  Fox  How,  his  early  morning  drive 
through  the  exquisite  Rothay  valley  to  the  home 
where  the  younger  children  were  awaiting  their 
father's  arrival  and  preparing  to  celebrate  his 
birthday  ;  their  return  to  see  his  face  in  death. 
He  lies  in  the  Chapel  consecrated  by  his  weekly 
Parables  ;  his  best-known  epitaph  not  there,  but 
in  the  filial  lines  of  the  inspired  son  who  inherited 
his  father's  genius  : — 

O  strong  soul,  by  what  shore 
Tarriest  thou  now  ?  for  that  force 
Surely  has  not  been  in  vain  : 
Somewhere  surely,  afar, 
In  the  sounding  labour-house  vast 
Of  Being,  is  practised  that  strength, 
Zealous,  beneficent,  firm. 

Yes  !  in  some  far  shining  sphere 

Still  thou  performest  the  word 

Of  the  Spirit  in  whom  thou  dost  live, 


ARNOLD  127 

Prompt,  unwearied,  as  here  ! 
Still  thou  upraisest  with  zeal 
The  humble  good  from  the  ground, 
Sternly  repressest  the  bad  ! 
Still,  like  a  trumpet,  dost  rouse 
Those  who  with  half-open  eyes 
Tread  the  borderland  dim 
Twixt  vice  and  virtue  ;  revisitest, 
Succourest  !  this  was  thy  work, 
This  was  thy  life  upon  earth. 

We  were  weary,  and  we 
Fearful,  and  we  in  our  march 
Fain  to  drop  down  and  to  die. 
Still  thou  turnedst,  and  still 
Beckonedst  the  trembler,  and  still 
Gavest  to  the  weary  thy  hand. 
If  in  the  path  of  the  world 
Stones  might  have  wounded  thy  feet, 
Toil  and  dejection  have  tried 
Thy  spirit,  of  that  we  saw 
Nothing — to  us  thou  wert  still 
Cheerful,  and  helpful,  and  firm  ! 

Therefore  to  thee  it  was  given 
Many  to  save  with  thyself; 
And,  at  the  end  of  the  day, 
O  faithful  shepherd  !  to  come 
Bringing  thy  sheep  in  thy  hand. 


CHAPTER    V 
HAMPDEN 

He's  truly  valiant,  that  can  wisely  suffer 

The  worst  that  men  can  breathe,  and  make  his  wrongs 

His  outside,  wear  them,  like  his  raiment,  carelessly, 

And  ne'er  prefer  his  injuries  to  his  heart, 

To  bring  it  into  danger. 

THERE  are  men  whose  lot  it  is  to  become  the 
occasion,  not  the  cause,  of  strife  ;  who  without 
conscious  challenge  or  desert  find  themselves  the 
centre  of  controversial  storms  and  the  victims 
of  malignant  persecutions.  Such  a  man  was 
Hampden.  Gentle,  peaceful,  diffident ;  deeply 
religious,  and  carefully  loyal  to  his  Church,  he 
was  branded  by  the  clergy  as  a  heretic,  and  was 
followed  through  twelve  years  with  unremitting 
animosity,  not  only  theological  but  personal.  No 
one  now  reads  his  learned  works  :  the  volume  of 
his  Bampton  Lectures  which  I  disinterred  from  a 
College  Library,  venerable  in  disuse,  dust,  and 
damp,  came  to  pieces  in  defiance  of  my  careful 
reverent  handling  :  but  all  who  feel  interest  in 

Oxford  life  of  the  nineteenth  century  must  pay 

128 


HAMPDEN  129 

some  attention  to  the  "  Hampden  rows,"  as  they 
were  called,  of  1836  and  1847. 

A  descendant  of  the  famous  patriot,  born  at 
Barbadoes  in  1793,  RENN  DICKSON  HAMPDEN, 
member  of  a  family  which  had  fled  from  England 
at  the  Restoration,  and  resided  ever  since  in  the 
West  Indies,  was  sent  to  this  country  at  five  years 
old,  and  placed  until  his  eighteenth  year  under 
the  care  of  Mr.  Rowlandson,  Vicar  of  Warminster, 
to  whose  influence  on  his  intellectual  develop- 
ment and  his  religious  character  he  paid  through- 
out his  life  a  tribute  of  aifectionate  gratitude. 
In  1811  he  entered  Oriel  as  a  Commoner,  under 
the  tuition  of  Copleston  and  Davison.  His  inti- 
mate friends  were  Ingham  of  his  own  College, 
and  Hinds,  afterwards  Bishop  of  Norwich.  His 
only  recreation  was  music,  which  he  shared  with 
Trefusis,  afterwards  Lord  Clinton,  and  with 
Packe,  afterwards  M.P.  for  Leicestershire,  who 
sate  in  later  life  for  Bulwer  Lytton's  Squire 
Hazeldean  in  "  My  Novel."  The  shyness  and  diffi- 
dence which  distinguished  him  through  life  was 
conspicuous  in  undergraduate  days,  and  is  noticed 
in  a  letter  written  from  Oriel  to  Mr.  Rowlandson 
by  his  tutor  Davison.  Carrying  an  introduction 
to  Southey  at  Keswick  during  a  Long  Vacation 
ramble,  he  lost  heart  on  approaching  Greta  Hall, 


130      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

and  while  actually  at  the  door  turned  and  fled. 
Reading  without  private  tuition,  he  gained  a 
Double  First  in  1813,  and  was  in  the  following 
year  elected  to  a  Fellowship  at  Oriel.  Ordained 
early,  and  soon  afterwards  married  to  his  cousin 
Mary  Lovell,  he  served  several  country  curacies, 
then  settled  in  London,  publishing  there  in  1827 
his  first  work,  on  the  "  Philosophical  Evidence  of 
Christianity."  It  was  written  in  homage  to 
Bishop  Butler,  being,  as  he  called  it,  a  reverent 
attempt  to  expand,  clear,  modernise  on  its  anti- 
quated and  faulty  side  the  splendid  structure  of 
the  Analogy;  and  was  followed  in  1828  by  a 
volume  of  Parochial  Sermons.  Soon  afterwards 
he  removed  to  Oxford  ;  examining  in  the  Schools, 
and  writing  amongst  other  Articles  in  the 
Encyclopedia  Britannica  a  Paper  on  Thomas 
Aquinas,  which  contained  the  germ  of  his 
Bampton  Lectures.  These  last  were  preached 
in  1832,  and  about  the  same  time  he  obliged  his 
old  friend  Hawkins,  now  Provost,  by  undertaking 
a  Tutorship  at  Oriel  during  the  dislocation  of 
College  work  caused  by  Hawkins'  dismissal  of 
the  three  famous  Tutors,  Newman,  Hurrell 
Froude,  and  Robert  Wilberforce. 

t    The  course   of  Christianity,    as    of   all  other 


HAMPDEN  131 

organised  religions,  has  been  marked  by  recurrent 
struggles  between  Reason  and  Authority  ;  be- 
tween the  speculations  of  the  few  and  the  dogmas 
of  the  majority.  These  took  shape  in  the  so- 
called  heresies  of  the  Early  Church  with  their 
rebutting  Creeds ;  in  the  great  Lutheran  revolt, 
in  the  English  Protestant  Reformation.  But 
there  was  a  period  of  ecclesiastical  history  which 
contrived  a  specious  reconciliation  of  these  op- 
posing principles ;  a  period  when  unbounded 
liberty  of  discussion  was  permitted  and  pursued 
strictly  within  the  limits  set  by  the  Doctors  of 
the  Church.  The  faithful  might  not  question 
dogma,  but  might  speculate  upon  it  to  any 
extent.  The  thinkers  and  writers  of  this  period 
were  called  Schoolmen  ;  their  teaching  is  known 
as  the  Scholastic  Philosophy,  and  it  formed  the 
subject  of  Hampden's  Bampton  Lectures.  The 
word  Scholastic  or  Scholarly  was  applied  origi- 
nally in  an  invidious  sense  to  those  whose  aim  in 
doctrine  and  in  writing  was  not  to  render  service 
to  mankind,  but  to  parade  themselves  as  erudite 
and  eloquent,  scholastici  et  diserti.  Later  it  ob- 
tained and  still  holds  a  secondary  meaning  from 
the  Disputations  of  the  Schools  with  which  it 
came  to  be  associated.  Founded  on  the  system 
and  employing  the  method  of  Aristotle,  and 


1 32      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

engaging  powerful  intellects  in  its  service,  it 
dominated  for  five  hundred  years  the  teaching  of 
the  Church.  It  created  a  theological  termino- 
logy. Trinitarianism  with  its  Substance  and  its 
Persons,  Predestination,  Justification,  Sanctifica- 
tion,  Grace,  Perfection,  Merit,  Assurance,  with 
many  more  such  technicalities,  are  terms  trace- 
able to  scholastic  discussion  ;  and  their  acquired 
meaning  continued  to  shape  men's  modes  of 
thought,  until  the  system,  based  as  it  was  on 
deductions  from  the  imaginary  nature  of  God, 
received  its  deathblow  amongst  the  higher  class 
of  thinkers  from  the  inductive  philosophy  of 
Bacon. 

Its  most  popular  text-book  was  a  work  known 
as  "The  Book  of  the  Sentences"  by  Peter 
Lombard,  Bishop  of  Paris,  a  pupil  of  the  great 
Abelard.  This  was  a  compilation  of  passages 
from  the  writings  of  eminent  Latin  doctors,  and 
was  imitated  from  a  "  Treatise  on  the  Orthodox 
Faith  "  by  John  Damascenus,  a  Greek  monk  of  the 
eighth  century.  It  is  not  remarkable  for  logical 
precision  ;  but  the  form  of  "  Questions  "  under 
which  it  discusses  theological  topics  was  con- 
tinued by  Peter  Lombard's  successors,  and  be- 
came characteristic  of  the  School.  He  was 
followed  by  Albert  the  Great  (1193),  and  by 


HAMPDEN  133 

Albert's  illustrious  disciple,  Thomas  Aquinas.1 
The  task  which  these  writers  set  themselves  was 
to  dilate  and  expand,  to  endow  with  method  and 
distinctness,  the  dogmas  which  the  Church  had 
sanctioned  ;  and  they  performed  it  with  exhaus- 
tive penetration,  thought,  and  skill,  with  con- 
summate perfection  of  workmanship.  But  their 
art  was  purely  dialectical  :  founding  theology 
on  definitions,  its  whole  force  was  employed  on 
verbal  analysis.  The  barrenness  and  absurdity  of 
those  later  disquisitions,  which  have  been  used, 
unfairly  often,  to  cover  scholasticism  with  ridi- 
cule ;  such  as  the  query  whether  the  world  was 
created  in  six  days  because  six  is  the  most 
perfect  number,  or  if  six  be  the  most  perfect 
number  because  the  world  was  created  in  six 
days  :  together  with  that  mysterious  but  popular 
conundrum,  "  An  magna  Chimaera,  bombinans 
in  vacuo,  edat  secundas  intentiones  ;  "  were  only 
an  application  of  its  original  and  sanctioned  pro- 
cesses to  inferior  material,  often  by  inferior  hands. 
It  ignored  at  once  the  historical,  the  rhetorical, 

1  The  following  were  the  most  eminent  of  the  Schoolmen  : 
Johannes  Scotus  Erigena  (886);  Anselm  (1038-1109)  ;  William 
of  Champeaux  (died  1121);  Peter  Lombard  (died  1160); 
Alexander  of  Hales  (died  1245);  Bonaventure  (died  1274); 
Albertus  Magnus  (1193-1280);  Thomas  Aquinas  (1225-1270)  ; 
Duns  Scotus  (died  1308);  Buridan  (died  about  1350)  ;  Johannes 
Gerson  (1368-1429). 


i34      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

the  ethical  character  of  the  Scriptures  :  im- 
mersed in  the  philosophy  of  the  Divine  Being, 
it  altogether  disparaged  Revelation  as  a  code  of 
moral  discipline.  Even  now  it  is  no  dead  relic  : 
its  survival  in  our  English  University  disputation 
for  degrees  in  Divinity  has  become  a  farce  :  but 
in  the  Roman  Church  it  still  holds  visible  sway ; 
the  texture  of  Roman  theology  is  formed  by  the 
metaphysics  of  the  Schools.  It  subsists  among 
Protestant  churches  in  the  form  of  controversy 
as  to  Original  Sin,  Regeneration,  Faith,  and 
Works  :  the  very  practice  of  preaching  from  a 
"  text  "  is  a  remnant  from  Scholasticism.  And 
so  long  as  Religion  is  made  professional ;  so  long 
as  the  religion  of  the  few  is  divorced  from  that 
of  the  many  ;  so  long  as  Sentiment  and  Contem- 
plation override  practical  and  altruistic  piety ;  to 
that  extent  the  spirit  of  Anselm,  of  Lombard,  of 
Aquinas,  is  not  dead  but  living. 

This  is  an  outline  of  the  Lectures.  They  are 
filled  with  matters  of  collateral  interest  not  often 
brought  together  ;  such  as  the  conflict  between 
Nominalism  and  Realism,1  the  Pelagian  con- 

1  That  Abstract  Ideas  have  no  separate  entity  was  the 
doctrine  of  the  Nominalists  :  the  Realists  held  that  such  ideas 
possess  an  independent  and  separate  existence.  This  meta- 
physical distinction,  over  which  men  fought  with  clubs  and 
swords  in  the  Oxford  High  Street,  may  perhaps  illustrate  for 


HAMPDEN  135 

troversy,  the  rationale  of  the  "  Filioque,"  the 
technical  philosophy  of  Transubstantiation.  It 
may  be  said — and  without  fear  of  contradiction, 
since  no  one  now  reads  or  will  read  the  book 
— that  it  exhibits  wide,  well-focussed  learning, 
and  that  it  filled  a  gap  in  English  theological 
literature. 

How  were  the  Lectures  received  at  the  time  ? 
By  very  large  congregations,  says  Hampden's  bio- 
grapher :  by  empty  benches,  says  Tom  Mozley. 
That  vivacious  anecdotist  does  not  always  hold 
a  mirror  up  to  Truth  :  but  it  is  quite  possible 
that  the  audiences,  eager  and  curious  at  first, 
became  fit  though  few  as  the  dryness  of  the  sub- 
ject was  manifested.  When  published,  Arnold 
wrote  admiring  them  :  "  Hampden's  Bampton 
Lectures  are  a  great  work,  entirely  true  in  their 
main  points  and  I  think  most  useful."  Whately 
recalls  long  afterwards  the  high  applause  with 
which  they  were  received  by  experts  :  Miss 
Hampden  notes  the  many  letters  from  inquiring 
students  which  poured  in  as  they  were  read. 
Certainly  no  adverse  contemporary  criticism, 
theological  or  literary,  was  cited  later  by  the 
heresy-hunters.  Were  they  original  ?  An  asser- 

the  general  reader  the  character  and  the  value  of  militant 
School  Divinity. 


136      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

tion,  first  made  in  the  Times,  and  widely  repeated 
in  the  Press,  declared  them  to  be  from  the  pen 
of  Blanco  White.  They  owed  much,  we  may 
believe,  to  White's  intimate  acquaintance  with  a 
subject  at  that  time  known  to  few,  if  any,  English 
Divines.  Old  Canon  Hinds  Howell,  who  died 
only  a  few  years  ago,  was  Blanco  White's  pupil 
in  1831  and  1832.  He  told  me  that  for  a  year 
together  scarcely  a  day  passed  without  Hampden's 
coming  in  to  consult  his  learned  friend.  But  to 
advise  a  writer  on  points  within  one's  ken  is  not 
to  write  his  book  :  the  Lectures  are  written  in 
the  style  of  Hampden,  not  of  White  :  their 
thought  and  handling  bear  the  stamp  of  the 
School  in  which  Hampden  had  been  nursed  : 
Whately,  who  knew  both  men  well,  conclusively 
contradicted  the  report  :  nor  can  any  one  read 
the  much  earlier  Essay  on  the  Philosophical 
Evidence  of  Christianity,  without  discerning  in  it 
the  germ  of  the  Bampton  Lectures. 

In  1833  Hampden  was  appointed  by  the 
Chancellor,  Lord  Grenville,  on  Whately's  strong 
recommendation,  to  the  Headship  of  St.  Mary's 
Hall.  It  had  been  a  refuge  for  men  older  than 
the  generality  of  undergraduates,  under  the 
grandfatherly  rule  of  Dr.  Dean  and  his  Vice- 
Principal,  George  Radcliffe.  Of  Dean  I  believe 


RENN    DICKSON    HAMPDEN 
(From  the  Oriel  portrait  by  Sir  Daniel  Macnee) 


HAMPDEN  137 

10  memories  remain ;  Radcliffe  was  a  "  char- 
acter." Tall,  rubicund,  outrageously  corpulent, 
Johnsonese  in  speech  and  manner,  he  served  on 
Sundays  the  little  church  at  Radley,  through  the 
week  entertained  to  nightly  cards  and  hot  supper 
in  his  handsome  rooms  at  the  Hall  a  few  of  the 
cheery  revellers,  male  and  female,  whose  unpro- 
ductive wit  and  knowledge  misapplied  formed, 
in  strong  contrast  to  the  contemporary  Oriel 
aristocracy,  the  charm  and  possibly  the  discredit 
of  early  nineteenth  century  Oxford.  Dismissed 
by  Hampden,  he  lived  on  for  many  years  at  a 
small  house  in  Holywell,  taking  a  few  boys  as 
pupils,  and  recounting  to  his  friends  with  sarcastic 
comments  and  with  frequent  Greek  quotations 
the  story  of  his  dethronement  and  the  glories  of 
a  vanished  epoch.  Under  his  lenient  sway  the 
men  had  lived  comfortable,  tranquil  lives,  un- 
troubled by  vexatious  discipline,  or  by  more 
teaching  than  was  just  necessary  for  a  Pass 
degree.  Hampden  amended  the  discipline,  added 
to  the  buildings,  weeded  out  the  inveterates,  so 
invigorated  the  teaching  that  in  the  second  year 
after  his  appointment  one  of  his  men,  Charles 
Yonge,  obtained  First  Class  Honours. 

In  1834  a  proposal  was  laid  before  the  Uni- 
versity to  substitute  a  declaration  of  assent  for  a 


138      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

subscription  by  oath  to  the  Articles  on  matricula- 
tion. Rejected  in  Convocation,  it  drew  from 
Hampden  a  pamphlet  on  "  Religious  Dissent," 
advocating  admission  of  Dissenters.  The  treatise 
had  a  large  sale,  and  occasioned  a  letter  of  warm 
approval  from  Dr.  Arnold,  who  had  come  up 
to  vote  for  the  relaxation  of  the  oath.  "  I  often 
think,"  he  wrote,  "  of  the  instructive  fact,  that  the 
Reformation  of  the  Church  in  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury was  carried  by  a  reforming  Government,  sup- 
ported by  a  small  minority  of  the  clergy,  against 
the  majority  of  the  clergy,  the  country  gentle- 
men, and  the  populace."  Its  tolerant  spirit  to- 
wards Nonconformity,  and  its  statement  that  the 
authority  of  Scripture  was  of  greater  weight  than 
the  authority  of  the  Church,  excited  bitter  re- 
sentment in  the  rising  Newman  School,  and  was 
the  prime  cause  of  the  subsequent  persecution  of 
Hampden.  In  the  same  year  he  was  appointed 
to  the  Professorship  of  Moral  Philosophy,  and 
lectured  in  due  course.  His  Lectures,  when 
published,  were  pronounced  by  Whately  to  con- 
tain clear  thought,  enthusiasm  for  his  subject, 
and  much  beauty  of  diction. 

In  1836,  on  the  death  of  Dr.  Burton,  Lord 
Melbourne  offered  to  Hampden  the  Regius 
Professorship  of  Divinity.  Thereupon  arose  an 


HAMPDEN  139 

unexpected  and  violent  outcry.  Hampden  had 
many  enemies.  His  plea  for  Dissenters  had,  as 
we  have  seen,  given  deadly  offence.  The  clergy 
looked  upon  the  Universities  as  Church  pre- 
serves, the  intrusion  within  whose  pale  of  non- 
subscribing  schismatics  would  be  the  abomination 
of  desolation.  Wordsworth,  Master  of  Trinity, 
Cambridge,  had  deprived  Thirlwall  of  his  College 
Lectureship  for  presuming  to  support  a  similar 
measure,  and  Hampden's  advocacy  of  it  was  not 
forgotten  in  Oxford.  It  was,  moreover,  a  time 
of  keen  political  excitement  :  nine-tenths  of  the 
non-residents  and  a  large  proportion  of  the 
residents  were  Tories  ;  Hampden  was  a  Liberal. 
The  Noetic  doctrines,  of  which  he  was  an  ex- 
ponent, struck  at  the  root  of  the  new  Tractarian 
teaching  :  in  his  University  Sermons  he  had 
attacked  their  tenets  and  their  practices ;  in  an 
eloquent  Lecture  he  had  denounced  their  favourite 
theory,  the  acceptance  of  unwritten  tradition  as 
distinct  from  Scripture.  It  was  their  policy  to 
combine  and  direct  the  scattered  hostility  which 
he  had  provoked.  His  opinions  expressed  against 
themselves  could  not  disqualify  him  for  a  theo- 
logical professorship,  but  in  his  Bampton  Lectures 
heresy  might  perhaps  be  found.  A  committee 
was  formed,  headed  nominally  by  Vaughan 


1 40      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

Thomas  of  Corpus,  really  engineered  by  Pusey 
and  Newman  :  the  first  put  out  a  pamphlet,  the 
second  a  volume.  This  last  was  called  "  Eluci- 
dation of  the  Leading  Views  contained  in  Dr. 
Hampden's  Bampton  Lectures  "  ;  extracts,  that 
is,  from  the  Lectures  to  substantiate  a  charge  of 
heresy.  The  Common  Rooms  were  bombarded 
with  a  succession  of  placards  containing  ever 
fresh  allegations  ;  these  were  circulated  in  the 
country  parsonages ;  a  petition  was  sent  to  the 
Archbishop,  entreating  him  to  invoke  the  personal 
interposition  of  the  King.  Hampden's  name 
stood  rubric  on  the  walls  and  plastered  posts ;  was 
vilipended  from  the  pulpit  of  St.  Mary's  ; l  was 
made  to  ring  through  the  land  with  the  epithets 
attached  to  it  of  heretic,  latitudinarian,  sceptic. 
He  wrote  to  Lord  Melbourne  offering  to  with- 
draw if  the  Government  felt  itself  embarrassed 
by  the  uproar  :  the  Prime  Minister  refused  con- 
cession to  what  he  regarded  as  an  unworthy 
outcry;  was  touched  by  his  nominee's  disinte- 
restedness ;  sought  his  personal  acquaintance ;  ex- 
horted him  to  disregard  the  clamour  :  "  Be  easy, 
Doctor ;  I  like  an  easy  man."  George  Anthony 

1  Lancaster  of  Queen's,  Usher  of  Magdalen  College  School, 
spoke  of  him  in  a  sermon  at  St.  Mary's  as  "that  atrocious 
professor.''  The  scandalised  College  deprived  him  of  his 
preaching  turns,  and  he  published  two  protesting  pamphlets. 


HAMPDEN  141 

tenison  always  used  to  say  that  Newman  and 
his  friends  had  only  themselves  to  thank  for  the 
appointment.  Lord  Melbourne  had  intended  to 
nominate  Edward  Denison,  Fellow  of  Merton, 
afterwards  Bishop  of  Salisbury ;  but  he  was  told 
that  the  Tractarians  were  persecuting  Hampden 
for  his  pamphlet,  and  so  gave  the  preference  to 
him.  Newman  himself  had  taken  hitherto  no 
outward  part  against  Hampden,  feeling  that  such 
action  on  his  part  might  seem  like  spite  for  the 
new  Professor's  acceptance  of  the  Oriel  Tutor- 
ship when  he  was  dismissed  by  Hawkins  :  but  so 
soon  as  the  nomination  was  announced,  he  at 
once  drew  up  the  "  Elucidations  "  (written,  it 
was  said,  in  a  single  night),  on  the  strength  of 
which  the  Bampton  Lectures  were  called  heretical. 
The  new  Professor  must  be  endured :  but  it 
was  possible  to  inflict  upon  him  a  maiming  stigma  : 
and  a  statute  was  proposed  to  Convocation  ex- 
cluding Dr.  Hampden  from  his  place  on  the 
Board  which  appointed  the  Select  Preachers.  The 
tale  is  graphically  told  by  Nassau  Senior,  who  was 
present.  He  describes  the  crowd  in  the  Theatre, 
composed  chiefly  of  country  clergy  inquiring 
eagerly  as  to  the  merits  of  the  case  from  men 
who  might  be  supposed  to  know,  but  did  not ; 
Vaughan  Thomas'  Latin  oration ;  the  interposing 


1 42      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

non  -placet  of  the  Proctors,  E.  G.  Bayley  of  Pem- 
broke and  H.  Reynolds  of  Jesus ;  the  frantic  yells 
and  groans  from  the  foiled  Inquisitors ;  the  abrupt 
dissolving  of  the  Convocation  and  exit  of  the 
Vice-Chancellor.  With  more  accommodating 
Proctors  the  measure  was  reintroduced  next  year 
and  passed  :  but  it  was  pronounced  illegal  by 
the  leading  lawyers  of  the  day.  The  Heads, 
regretting  their  previous  action,  pressed  for  its 
repeal,  but  found  the  Convocation  inexorable  ; 
they  therefore  created  a  new  Board  of  Examiners 
in  Theology,  placing  Hampden  at  its  head. 

Looking  back  with  calmness  now  upon  the 
whole  proceeding,  we  are  driven  to  admit  four 
things.  First,  that  the  arraigned  Lectures  had 
been  for  several  years  before  the  University,  not 
only  without  adverse  criticism  but  with  warm 
applause.  Secondly,  that  since  their  publication 
the  Chancellor  had  distinguished  Dr.  Hampden 
by  appointment  to  the  Headship  of  a  Hall,  the 
University  by  his  election  to  the  Moral  Philo- 
sophy Chair,  no  remonstrance  being  offered  in 
either  case  from  any  quarter.  Thirdly,  that 
probably  not  one  in  a  hundred  of  the  voters 
had  read  the  Lectures,  or,  if  read,  was  qualified 
to  sit  in  judgment  on  them  :  while  the  "  Elucida- 
tions "  from  which  such  men  formed  their  opinion 


HAMPDEN  143 

were  garbled  :  sentences  detached  from  their 
context,  qualifying  words  omitted,  perverse  inter- 
pretations intruded,  the  main  drift  of  argument 
ignored,  and  single  passages  perverted  to  the 
accuser's  purpose.  Fourthly,  that  no  formal 
charge  was  ever  brought  against  the  Lecturer, 
nor  any  opportunity  given  to  him  of  self-defence. 
On  crooked  dealings  Nemesis  is  wont  to  wait. 
In  the  condemnation  of  Newman's  Tract,  and  in 
Pusey's  suspension  by  the  Six  Doctors,  the  in- 
gredient of  the  chalice  they  had  brewed  was 
commended  to  their  own  lips. 

The  appointment  was  confirmed,  the  agitation 
died  away, — for  a  season  ; — and  the  new  Professor 
entered  zealously  on  the  duties  of  his  office. 
They  involved  a  curious  episode,  known  as  the 
"  Macmullen  case,"  which  drew  much  attention 
at  the  time.  The  Rev.  R.  G.  Macmullen  of 
Corpus,  who  afterwards  seceded  to  Rome,  offered 
himself  as  a  Candidate  for  the  Bachelor  in 
Divinity  degree.  It  was  the  Professor's  duty  to 
propose  subjects  for  the  necessary  exercise,  which 
Hampden  did  ;  but  Macmullen  desired  to  have 
them  changed,  alleging  that  to  dispute  upon 
them  would  be  painful  to  him.  Pointing  out 
that  they  were  framed  consistently  with  the 
Thirty-nine  Articles,  Hampden  refused  to  change 


I44       PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

them  :  the  Courts  of  Law,  appealed  to  by  Mac- 
mullen,  justified  the  Professor's  decision  ;  Mac- 
mullen  gave  in  and  accepted  them.  Hampden's 
courses  of  public  and  private  Lectures  were 
numerously  attended,  and  highly  appreciated  by 
his  pupils  :  as  Incumbent  of  Ewelme,  a  Living 
attached  to  the  Professorship,  he  spent  his  vaca- 
tions happily  in  the  duties  of  a  Parish  Priest, 
greatly  beloved  by  his  parishioners.  Myself  a 
frequent  visitor  in  1852  to  the  beautiful  little 
village,  with  its  picturesque  cottages,  its  sparkling 
trout  stream,  its  noble  fifteenth  century  church 
erected  by  a  Duchess  of  Suffolk  who  is  supposed 
on  somewhat  legendary  grounds  to  have  been  a 
granddaughter  of  the  poet  Chaucer,  I  well  re- 
member the  respect  and  affection  with  which  the 
villagers  still  spoke  of  their  former  Rector.  It 
was  a  great  delight  to  him,  in  1843,  to  take  part 
in  a  commemoration  of  his  famous  ancestor's 
death  at  Chalgrove  Field,  only  a  few  miles  from 
Ewelme. 

In  1847  Hampden  was  recommended  to  the 
Queen  by  Lord  John  Russell  for  the  vacant  See 
of  Hereford.  The  opposition  of  1836  was  forth- 
with resumed,  by  the  same  party  and  with  the 
same  weapons.  Newman  indeed  was  severed 


HAMPDEN  145 

from  his  old  associates,  and  the  welfare  of  the 
English  Church  was  to  him  no  longer  matter 
of  concern  ;  but  his  "  Elucidations  "  were  re- 
published  without  his  knowledge  or  permission. 
Meetings  of  the  country  clergy  were  everywhere 
called  in  protest,  and  a  remonstrance  signed  by 
thirteen  bishops  was  presented  to  the  Prime 
Minister,  stating  that  the  appointment  would 
cause  uneasiness  among  the  clergy,  and  would 
abate  their  confidence  in  the  righteous  exercise 
of  the  royal  supremacy.  Lord  John  declined  to 
recognise  a  feeling  "  founded  on  misapprehen- 
sion and  fomented  by  prejudice."  Wilberforce, 
Bishop  of  Oxford,  Hampden's  diocesan,  initiated 
proceedings  officially  against  the  bishop  designate, 
and  afterwards  withdrew  them  with  a  confession 
strangely  damaging  to  himself.  Merewether, 
Dean  of  Hereford,  informing  the  Prime  Minister 
of  his  intention  to  forbid  the  affixing  of  the 
Chapter  seal  to  the  instrument  of  election,  re- 
ceived an  answer  which  has  become  historic.1  On 
the  other  hand  the  Heads  of  Houses  in  a  body 
revoked  their  former  censure  and  assured  the 

1  "  SIR, — I  have  had  the  honour  to  receive  your  letter  of  the 
22nd  instant,  in  which  you  intimate  to  me  your  intention  of 
violating  the  law.— Yours  &c.,  J.  RUSSELL." 

I  have  seen  the  original  letter.  It  was  formerly  in  the 
collection  of  Miss  Kinglake,  sister  to  Eothen. 

K 


146      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

bishop  designate  of  their  confidence  ;  Provost 
Hawkins  defended  his  old  colleague  in  a  letter  to 
Wilberforce  of  veiled  but  cutting  rebuke  ;  indi- 
vidual dignitaries  like  Dr.  Cramer  and  Archdeacon 
Hare  volunteered  their  sympathy  and  indigna- 
tion ;  a  general  address,  bearing  2000  signatures, 
came  from  statesmen,  scholars,  professional  men 
of  note.  Time  had  done  its  softening,  educating 
effect  on  all  except  the  clergy.  Long  after- 
wards, Mr.  Gladstone,  refusing,  as  a  member  of 
the  King's  College  Council,  to  condemn  Maurice 
on  grounds  not  specifically  formulated  and  allow- 
ing no  defence  to  the  accused,  perceived  that  his 
vote  against  Hampden  twenty  years  before  had 
infringed  the  same  principles,  and  wrote  express- 
ing his  regret.  But  the  struggle  was  not  over. 
The  election  passed  the  Hereford  Chapter, 
though  not  unanimously  :  the  "  Confirmation  " 
in  Bow  Church  was  opposed  by  three  clergymen, 
who,  when  their  demur  was  overruled  by  the 
Vicar-General,  applied  to  the  Court  of  Queen's 
Bench  for  a  mandamus,  and  the  question  was 
argued  for  six  days  before  Justices  Erie,  Cole- 
ridge, Patteson,  and  Lord  Denman.  The  Court 
was  divided  ;  the  opposition  consequently  failed. 
Copleston,  present  in  Court,  was  the  first  to 
announce  the  news  to  his  old  pupil  and  friend, 


HAMPDEN  147 

and  Hampden  returned  victorious  to  Oxford.  I 
well  remember  his  appearance  in  the  High  Street 
on  the  following  day  :  he  might  be  pardoned 
if  amid  the  exultation  of  some  and  the  visible 
disappointment  of  others  his  own  demeanour 
indicated  the  triumph  which  he  felt. 

The  long  struggle  was  at  an  end  ;  and  he  took 
peaceable  possession  of  his  See.  Throughout  the 
conflict  he  had  behaved  with  perfect  temper, 
dignity,  and  self-restraint ;  but  his  shy,  sen- 
sitive temperament  had  suffered  severely  from 
the  publicity  thrust  upon  him  :  monstrari  digito 
'prcetereuntium  was  as  painful  to  him  as  it  was 
gratifying  to  the  Roman  Laureate ;  and  his 
affectionate  nature  was  severely  lacerated  by 
the  averted  faces  or  the  open  frowns  of  lifelong 
friends.  None  the  less,  he  had  emerged  blame- 
less as  well  as  victorious  from  the  ordeal,  and 
sought  glad  refuge  in  the  comparative  retirement 
of  his  beautiful  Hereford  home  and  the  congenial 
duties  of  his  new  position.  He  rose  at  once  to  the 
high  conception  of  episcopal  duties  which  was  be- 
coming general  in  the  English  Church,  exercising 
wide  and  close  supervision  of  his  diocese,  estab- 
lishing intimate  relations  with  his  clergy,  stimu- 
lating the  educational  efforts  which  had  not 
then  been  subsidised  by  the  State,  meeting  the 


148      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

sectarian  problem  as  it  could  then  and  cannot 
now  be  solved,  by  prescribing  catechetical  in- 
struction with  a  conscience  clause.  He  forbade 
the  introduction  of  novel  ritual,  wherever, 
though  not  in  itself  unlawful,  it  wounded  the 
prepossessions  of  parishioners.  As  regards  Church 
politics  generally  he  opposed  the  revival  of 
Convocation,  and  looked  with  genuine  alarm  on 
the  possible  disestablishment  of  the  Church.  He 
was  also  conservative  theologically,  accepting  the 
Scripture  miracles,  censuring  the  view  taken  of 
them  in  "  Essays  and  Reviews,"  denouncing 
Colenso's  book,  on  the  not  very  conclusive  ground 
that  the  credit  due  to  an  alleged  history  must 
be  decided  not  by  the  rules  of  arithmetic,  but 
by  the  evidence  of  facts  in  the  world  and  the 
probabilities  in  its  favour  from  that  evidence. 
Eighteen  works  stand  against  his  name  in  the 
British  Museum  Catalogue. 

His  personal  habits  may  be  briefly  noticed. 
He  had  great  power  of  mental  concentration  ; 
writing  and  reading  always  in  the  midst  of  his 
family  undisturbed  by  playing  children  or  by 
talk.  He  avoided  general  society,  refusing  to 
season  his  fireside  with  gossip  ;  "  I  wish,"  said  a 
highly  conversational  lady  who  had  sate  by  him 
at  dinner,  "  I  wish  your  friend  the  Bishop  would 


HAMPDEN  149 

at  least  remember  that  it  is  a  fine  day,  or  that 
the  weather  is  cold ;  "  but  with  persons  well- 
informed  and  erudite  he  was  an  animated 
and  agreeable  talker.  His  own  knowledge  was 
extensive ;  and  he  knew  the  contents  of  his 
library  intimately  :  a  voracious  reader,  he  had 
Scott's  love  for  the  binding  and  condition  of 
his  books,  with  Macaulay's  power  of  assimilating 
their  contents  by  rapid  skimming  of  the  pages. 
He  had  Gladstone's  passion  for  Homer,  devour- 
ing him  with  ever  fresh  enjoyment.  Like 
Gladstone  too  he  cultivated  the  lighter  side  of 
scholarship  ;  one  of  his  latest  mental  efforts  was 
a  translation  into  Greek  of  Toplady's  famous 
hymn.  He  loved  the  Waverley  Novels,  the  "Anti- 
quary "  and  "  Ivanhoe  "  being  his  favourites ;  he 
used  to  say  that  Scott  had  more  of  Shakespeare 
in  him  than  any  poet  of  the  age.  Till  late  in 
life  he  had  never  opened  Tennyson,  but  was 
subjugated  to  read  and  admire  him  by  a  chance 
perusal  of  Enoch  Arden.  Throughout  his  life 
he  was  a  musical  enthusiast,  frequenting  concerts 
on  every  opportunity,  attending  the  Hereford 
Festival  within  a  twelvemonth  of  his  death. 
He  died  in  1868,  after  an  episcopal  reign  of 
twenty  years ;  and  was  laid  by  the  side  of  his 
beloved  wife  in  the  Cemetery  at  Kensal  Green. 


CHAPTER   VI 

HAWKINS 

Hie  est  Praepositus,  Cunctis  oppositus, 
Qui  magna  gerit,  et  tempus  terit,  dum  parva  qua^rit. 
Vir  reverendus,  sed — diligendus. 

IN  the  year  1862  a  Microscopical  Society,  of 
which  I  happened  to  be  Secretary,  came  into 
existence  at  Oxford.  A  note  from  the  Provost 
of  Oriel  requested  me  to  call  upon  him,  and 
I  went.  After  some  pleasant  reference  to  my 
Father,  his  old  friend,  he  told  me  that  he  had 
heard  of  our  Society ;  that  he  viewed  with  great 
interest  all  new  departures  of  an  intellectual  kind 
within  the  University,  and  was  glad  to  be  asso- 
ciated with  them ;  that  he  knew  nothing  of 
Science  or  of  Microscopes,  but  that  he  was  not 
too  old  to  learn,  and  desired  to  enrol  himself 
among  our  Members.  So  he  came  to  all  our 
Meetings,  the  one  avowed  Inscientist  amongst 
us ;  looked  through  our  instruments,  listened 
attentively,  but  silently,  to  our  discussions. 
Cordially  welcomed  by  our  seniors,  Acland, 
Phillips,  Rolleston,  and  the  rest,  he  gave  I  think 


150 


HAWKINS  151 

to  all  of  us  an  object  lesson  in  the  unwearied 
intelligence  which  at  seventy-four  years  old  still 
sought  out  fresh  woods  and  pastures  new. 

EDWARD  HAWKINS,  son  to  a  country  clergy- 
man, and  grandson  of  a  famous  surgeon,  Sir 
Caesar  Hawkins,  was  born  in  1789,  educated  at 
Merchant  Taylors,  came  up  to  St.  John's  College, 
Oxford  in  1807,  obtained  a  Double  First  Class  in 
1811,  was  elected  to  a  Fellowship  of  Oriel  in 
1813  ;  being  two  years  junior  in  the  College  to 
Whately,  a  year  senior  to  Arnold  and  to  Hampden. 
His  wish  was  to  study  Law,  and  those  who  knew 
him  best  described  his  mind  as  of  an  essentially 
legal  texture  :  but  his  widowed  mother  and  her 
younger  children  were  in  great  measure  de- 
pendent on  his  exertions,  and  the  pecuniary 
prospects  of  an  Oxford  life  were  more  hopeful 
than  those  of  the  Bar.  So  after  a  short  visit 
with  a  pupil  to  Paris,  whence  with  many  other 
Englishmen  he  was  driven  by  the  return  of 
Napoleon  from  Elba,  he  settled  down  in  College, 
publishing  an  edition  of  "  Paradise  Lost "  with 
much  classical  erudition  in  its  illustrative  notes, 
and  great  abundance  of  quotation  ;  preaching  also 
a  set  of  Bampton  Lectures  on  "  The  Connected 
Uses  of  the  Principal  Means  for  attaining  Chris- 


152      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

tian  Truth,"  which  under  a  clumsy  title  corre- 
lated the  functions  of  the  Bible  and  of  the 
Church.  In  1823  he  became  Vicar  of  St.  Mary's, 
where  he  introduced  the  afternoon  sermons  which 
at  a  later  time  under  Newman  were  famous. 
The  appointment  brought  peace  to  the  soul  of 
junior  Oriel ;  for  it  compelled  him  to  resign  the 
office  of  "  Censor  Theologicus,"  which  had  for 
some  years  past  imposed  upon  him  the  duty 
of  inspecting  and  correcting  the  abstracts  of 
University  Sermons  exacted  from  every  under- 
graduate. This  had  in  earlier  hands  been  a 
somewhat  loose  performance  :  the  Censor  exa- 
mined the  exercises  perfunctorily  or  not  at  all ; 
the  men  wrote  what  the  text  seemed  to  demand, 
or  what  the  preacher  might  be  supposed  to  have 
said,  or  deputed  one  of  their  number  to  be  present, 
and  copied  his  production,  with  a  few  judicious 
alterations.  Hawkins  invariably  attended  the 
sermons,  followed  and  retained  their  substance, 
and  demanded  of  each  man  evidence  that  he  had 
been  present,  and  had  attentively  followed  the 
preaching.  He  used  to  boast  of  being  the  only 
man  who  had  understood  and  could  describe 
the  Bampton  Lectures  of  a  certain  Archdeacon 
Goddard.  This  gentleman  was  wont  to  take 
brief  jottings  into  the  pulpit,  and  expand  them 


HAWKINS  153 

as  he  proceeded,  with  much  iteration  and  in- 
coherence. Hawkins  took  careful  notes,  and  re- 
duced the  chaos  on  his  return.  That  the  result 
was  his  own,  not  Goddard's,  he  would  admit; 
but  he  preserved  and  showed  the  composition, 
as  crediting  him,  in  one  matter  at  least,  with  a 
Monopoly  of  Knowledge. 

In  1822  Newman  had  been  elected  Fellow,  and 
has  told  us  how  much  he  owed  to  Hawkins, 
gaining  from  his  friend's  lips  his  own  first  con- 
ception of  the  Church  as  a  divinely  constituted 
organisation,  together  with  a  belief  in  baptismal 
regeneration  and  in  the  value  of  Tradition.  "  He 
was  the  first  who  taught  me  to  weigh  my  words 
and  be  cautious  in  my  statements.  He  led  me 
to  that  mode  of  limiting  and  clearing  my  sense 
in  discussion  and  controversy  which  to  my  sur- 
prise has  since  been  considered  to  savour  of  the 
polemic  of  Rome."  Hawkins  had  preached  in 
1818  a  notable  sermon  on  Tradition,  urging  a 
view  novel  at  the  time  and  original  so  far  as  he 
was  himself  concerned,  that  doctrine  must  be 
learned  from  the  formularies  of  the  Church,  only 
proved  from  Scripture.  It  brought  him  into 
direct  conflict  with  the  Noetic  teaching,  in  which 
he  had  hitherto  concurred,  as  held  by  Whately, 
Baden  Powell,  Hampden,  Arnold. 


154      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

In  1828,  on  the  removal  of  Copleston  to 
Llandaff,  he  became  Provost  of  Oriel.  That  he 
should  have  been  preferred  above  Keble  testifies 
his  extraordinary  reputation  in  the  College.  Had 
the  election  been  contested,  its  issue  is  uncertain  ; 
but  learning  that  half  the  Fellows  were  likely  to 
support  Hawkins,  Keble  withdrew  :  "  Let  good 
old  Hawkins  walk  over  the  course."  I  have  seen 
it  stated  that  Newman  intended  to  vote  for 
Hawkins  against  Keble  :  this  is  not  the  case  :  he 
acquiesced  in  the  decision  of  his  colleagues,  but 
declared  that  he  could  not  have  voted  against 
Keble.  Burgon,  with  one  of  his  queer  eyes 
always  on  the  comic  side  of  everything,  has  pre- 
served on  Golightly's  authority  an  amusing  inci- 
dent in  the  election.  Custom  demanded  that  the 
College  gate  should  be  closed,  the  Fellows  drawn 
up  within,  the  Provost  elect  detained  without  : 
that  the  latter  should  knock  for  admission,  the 
gate  be  opened,  the  Provost  admitted  and  re- 
ceived. These  formalities  were  duly  observed. 
A  knock  was  heard,  and  Newman,  the  Dean, 
asked  Quis  adest  ?  "  Please,  Sir,  it's  me,"  was  the 
half  audible  response  :  the  gate  was  opened,  and 
through  the  double  line  of  expectant  Fellows 
marched,  buckbasket  in  hand,  the  College  washer- 
woman. Once  more  the  gate  was  closed :  soon 


HAWKINS  155 

came  three  peremptory  knocks :  and  to  the  invo- 
cation Quis  adest  ?  pealed  the  answer,  "  Edvardus 
Hawkins,  Hujusce  Collegii  Pr&positus" 

So  the  new  Provost  entered  on  his  forty-six 
years  of  rule.     To  the  Headship  were  annexed 
a    Canonry    of    Rochester   and   the   Rectory  of 
Purleigh  in  Essex.     In  the  last  he  installed  an 
efficient     and     highly    paid    locum    tenens,    and 
would   gladly  have   been   relieved   from  its   re- 
sponsibility ;  against  the  severance  of  the  Canonry 
from  the  Headship  he  fought  to  the  end  of  his 
life.     It  made  a  clerical  Provost  inevitable  ;   and 
he  opined  that  no  layman  could  discharge  the 
duties  of  a  College  Head ;   pleading  further  that 
its  augmentation  of  his  stipend  was  essential  to 
the  dignity,  and  by  no  means  incommensurate 
with  the  labours  of  the  office.     I  remember  once 
in   Congregation   his   declaiming   on   "  the   very 
arduous   duties   of   a    College   Head."     Thorold 
Rogers  caused  great  merriment  by  saying  that 
he  had  no  very  clear  idea  of  what  the  Provost's 
duties  were,  but  that  he  would  cheerfully  dis- 
charge them  for  half  the  Provost's  salary.     "  It 
was   the    right    thing   to   say,   but   it   needed   a 
brigand  to  say  it,"  was  Moral  Philosophy  Wilson's 
comment  to  some  of  us  who  sate  around  him. 
From  the  first  he  was  despotic  in  the  College, 


156      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

and  in  his  intercourse  with  the  Fellows  watch- 
fully jealous  of  his  authority.  His  dismissal  of 
the  three  Tutors,  Newman,  Hurrell  Froude, 
Robert  Wilberforce,  whose  conception  of  their 
duty  to  undergraduates  threatened  to  set  up 
brothers  near  the  throne,  has  become  historic. 
It  is  thought  I  believe  by  the  present  Fellows 
that,  as  matter  of  collegiate  policy,  the  step  he 
took  was  judicious  ;  but  his  action  seems  to  have 
been  dictated  by  personal  apprehension.  He 
feared  that  tutorial  independence  would  leave 
him  out  of  the  current  of  College  education,  and 
that  the  introduction  of  new  and  unfamiliar 
books,  already  initiated  by  the  three  Tutors, 
would  place  him  at  a  disadvantage  in  Collections. 
He  called  in  the  aid  of  Hampden  to  tide  over 
the  crisis ;  and  replaced  the  three  by  G.  A. 
Denison,  and  the  younger  Copleston,  men  moving 
on  a  less  exalted  plane,  but  unlikely  to  disturb 
their  Provost  with  rivalry.  The  change,  taken  in 
connection  with  Hawkins'  tenure  of  power,  would 
seem  to  have  been  at  the  time  unfortunate  for 
the  College.  Mark  Pattison,  an  undergraduate 
when  that  took  place,  speaks  of  it  as  the  turning- 
point  in  the  fortunes  of  Oriel.  "  From  this  date 
the  College  began  to  go  downhill,  both  in  the 
calibre  of  the  men  who  obtained  Fellowships 


HAWKINS  157 

and  in  the  style  and  tone  of  the  undergraduates." 
And  Dean  Lake,  surveying  his  own  Oxford  days, 
attributes  altogether  to  Hawkins  the  dethrone- 
ment of  Oriel  from  its  supremacy  among  the 
Colleges.  He  was  not  less  masterful  on  the 
Hebdomadal  Board,  at  that  time  composed  of 
the  Heads,  with  the  Proctors  for  the  year,  and 
the  one  primary  legislative  body.  His  legal 
mind,  assiduous  attendance,  practical  common- 
sense,  business-like  habit,  and  resolute  tempera- 
ment, gave  him  undisputed  ascendency  over  all 
his  colleagues.  He  met  his  match  only  once 
in  Lake,  who  during  his  Proctor's  year  played 
the  part  of  Village  Hampden  much  to  Hawkins' 
discomfiture.  He  was  amongst  the  first  to 
denounce  the  Tracts  :  his  pen  drafted  the  con- 
demnation of  Tract  90,  which,  vetoed  by  the 
Proctors  in  1841,  was  perhaps  justified  by 
subsequent  events.  He  had  discerned  the  in- 
stant at  which  the  Movement  passed  from  a 
Catholic  to  a  Romeward  tendency,  nor  was  he 
disarmed,  as  were  many,  by  Newman's  violent 
denunciations  of  Rome  in  1837-41.  In  his  own 
volumes  on  "  Scriptural  Types  and  Sacraments," 
his  pamphlets  on  the  "  Ministry  of  Men  "  and  on 
the  theory  of  Apostolical  Succession,  he  warned 
against  the  dangers  towards  which  Newman  and 


158       PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

his  friends  were  drifting  ;  but  both  in  the  pulpit 
and  with  the  pen  he  was  impar  congressus :  in 
spite  of  him  the  Man  and  the  Movement  ran 
their  course  until  the  Hegira  from  Littlemore 
in  1845. 

A  few  years  of  quiet  succeeded,  during  which 
he  accepted  and  ably  discharged  Dean  Ireland's 
Professorship  of  Scriptural  Exegesis.  At  this 
time  too  was  painted  by  F.  Grant  the  portrait 
which  now  hangs  in  the  College  Hall.  But  fresh 
combat  was  in  store.  In  1854  was  passed  the 
Act  of  Parliament,  founded  on  the  Royal  Com- 
mission of  1851,  which  reformed  the  government 
of  the  University,  altered  the  Statutes  of  the 
Colleges,  and  redistributed  their  emoluments. 
That  such  reforms  were  necessary,  and  must 
originate  not  from  within  but  from  without  the 
University,  has  long  since  been  admitted  by 
every  one  ;  but  they  aroused  Hawkins'  resent- 
ment. They  offended  his  conservatism,  his  abso- 
lutism, his  clericalism.  He  refused  to  answer  the 
Commissioners'  letter  of  inquiry;  memorialised, 
and  wrote,  and  spoke ;  of  course  in  vain  :  laid 
to  heart  at  last  the  consoling  close  of  Horace's 
beautiful  Ode  ;  accepted  patiently  what  he  could 
not  alter,  and  played  his  part,  submissively  if  not 
quite  cheerfully,  in  the  new  order  of  things. 


HAWKINS  159 

He  piqued  himself  on  his  attitude  towards  the 
undergraduates  :  took  pains,  Mark  Pattison  tells 
us,  to  know  each  of  them  individually ;  questioned 
each  freshman  privately  before  admitting  him 
to  the  Holy  Communion ;  exercised  towards 
them  punctual  hospitality ;  would  mitigate  where 
possible  in  Collections  the  wrath  expressed  against 
some  weak  brother  by  his  Tutors.  One  offence 
he  could  not  overlook  :  you  might  count  on 
leniency  in  minor  peccadilloes ;  might  hope  that 
in  grave  offences  mercy  would  season  justice  : 
but  you  must  not  smell  of  smoke  :  of  the  nasty 
weed — so  he  always  called  it — he  had  King 
James'  horror.  I  am  afraid  that  the  genius  of 
youth  is  more  sensitive  to  eccentricities  than  to 
benevolence  ;  for  the  anecdotes  which  reach  me 
from  old  Orielites  of  long  ago  illustrate  chiefly 
the  comic  side  of  Hawkins'  rule.1  They  tell  for 
instance  that  it  was  his  custom  to  give  one  finger 
to  a  Commoner,  the  whole  hand  to  a  "  Tuft," 
and  that  he  was  somewhat  embarrassed  when  a 

certain  man  went  down  as  Mr. ,  came  back 

as  Lord of .     An  Oriel  undergraduate 

took  to  preaching  in  St.  Ebbe's  slums  :   Hawkins 
angrily  inhibited  him.     "  But,  Sir,  if  the  Lord, 

1  Some  of  the  anecdotes  which  follow  have  been  told  in  the 
41  Reminiscences  of  Oxford";  but  it  was  impossible  to  omit 
them  here. 


160      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

who  commanded  me  to  preach,  came  suddenly 
to  judgment,  what  should  I  do  ?  "  "  I,"  said 
Hawkins,  "  will  take  the  whole  responsibility  of 
that  upon  myself."  He  would  grant  an  exeat 
during  term  time  only  in  very  special  cases.  A 
man  begged  leave  to  absent  himself  in  order  to 
bury  his  uncle.  "  You  may  go,"  was  the  re- 
luctant permission  ;  "  but  I  wish  it  had  been  a 
nearer  relation."  His  high  and  dry  churchman- 
ship  made  him  impartially  intolerant.  Of  the 
Newmania  he  always  spoke  as  "  the  late  unhappy 
movement,"  nor  was  he  less  severe  upon  "  Essays 
and  Reviews,"  not  perceiving  that  their  teach- 
ing sprang  lineally  from  that  of  his  own  Noetic 
brethren.  When  Edward  Irving's  son  obtained 
a  First  Class  at  Balliol  and  wished  to  stand  for 
an  Oriel  Fellowship,  Hawkins  declined  to  receive 
him  unless  he  would  formally  recant  his  father's 
opinions.  In  this  to  be  sure  he  was  no  worse 
than  old  Gaisford,  who  when  "  Sam  "  Gardiner 
the  historian  thought  it  his  duty  to  communi- 
cate to  the  Dean  his  adoption  of  Irvingite 
opinions,  gave  him  no  answer,  but  sent  for  the 
College  books  and  erased  his  name.  To  J.  A. 
Froude,  the  reputed  (and  actual)  author  of 
"  Shadows  of  the  Clouds,"  he  refused  a  certifi- 
cate when  standing  for  a  Fellowship  at  Exeter. 


HAWKINS  161 

Froude  was  elected  there  through,  the  influence 
of  Sewell,  who  looked  on  him  as  a  promising 
High  Churchman,  and  was  correspondingly 
savage  when  undeceived  by  the  publication  of 
the  "  Nemesis  of  Faith."  When  Jowett  was 
bitten  by  a  Balliol  dog,  and  the  culprit  was 
expelled  from  the  College,  the  joke  went  round 
that  Hawkins  had  received  the  animal  and  ten- 
derly entertained  it.  Yet  on  the  other  hand  he 
refused  to  accept  the  resignation  of  Blanco  White, 
who  wrote  avowing  himself  anti-Trinitarian  ;  and 
dissuaded  Clough  from  taking  a  similar  step  pre- 
maturely in  his  first  distracted  mood. 

His  talent  was  destructive  rather  than  con- 
structive, detecting  flaws  in  other  men's  ideas 
rather  than  originating  his  own.  He  had  an 
intellect  subtle  and  penetrating,  not  wide  and 
comprehensive  :  Whately  would  compare  Tyler 
to  a  south  wind  warm  and  blustering,  Hawkins 
to  an  east  wind  keen  and  searching.  He  seemed 
to  think  that  every  one  required  damping  :  a 
young  man  at  his  table,  when  a  certain  periodical 
was  discussed,  volunteered  the  statement  that  it 
contained  Papers  from  his  own  pen.  "  I  dare- 
say," said  the  Provost,  "  there  is  a  good  deal  of 
trash  published  in  it."  Walking  in  the  garden 
he  noticed  that  in  one  place  the  ivy  seemed  to 

L 


1 62      PRE-TRACTARIAN    OXFORD 

have  been  frequently  brushed  aside.  Assembling 
the  scouts,  he  asked  which  young  gentleman's 
trousers  had  green  on  them  of  late.  The  culprit, 
thus  detected,  was  already  in  bad  odour  through 
irregular  habits,  and  was  sent  down.  Sharp  and 
shrewd  and  practical,  his  mind  wanted  largeness  : 
a  master  of  detail,  he  was  deficient  in  grasp,  and 
lived  amongst  minutiae  until  his  accuracy  became 
pettiness,  his  conscientiousness  scrupulosity,  his 
over-exactness  destructive  of  sentiment  and 
warmth.  He  had  neither  the  unchallengeable 
lordliness  of  Copleston,  on  whom  as  Provost  he 
professed  to  model  himself,  nor  the  analytic, 
logical,  all  comprehending  certitude  of  Whately, 
nor  the  crusading  contagious  vehemence  of 
Arnold  :  his  intellect,  like  Ezekiel's  cherubs,  went 
straight  forward  and  turned  not  when  it  went, 
but — it  moved  in  narrow  ways.  He  was  the  con- 
verse of  the  Sweet  Auburn  pastor  ;  his  virtues 
leaned  to  the  side  of  failings.  They  were  there- 
fore troublesome  to  those  around  him  ;  he  would 
needs  take  into  his  keeping  not  only  his  own  but 
his  neighbour's  conscience,  insisting  on  what  you 
ought  to  think,  as  well  as  on  what  you  ought  to 
do.  "  He  provoked  me  very  often,"  said  New- 
man, and,  he  added  with  a  very  probable  sur- 
mise, "  I  daresay  I  as  often  provoked  him." 
He  hated  and  severely  repressed  what  Byron 


PROVOST    HAWKINS 
(From  the  Oriel  portrait  by  Sir  Francis  Grant,  R.A,} 


HAWKINS  163 

used  to  call  "  enthusymusy."  Men  feared  to 
preach  before  him  :  he  mercilessly  snubbed 
Newman's  early  St.  Clement's  sermons.  Burgon 
delivered  in  his  presence  a  carefully  prepared  dis- 
course on  the  Sabbath  walk  of  the  two  disciples, 
and  expected  commendation.  All  he  got  was — 
"  Emmaus  ?  why  do  you  call  it  Emmaus  ?  it  is 
Emma'us,  Emma'us,  Emm&us"  A  lady  spoke  to 
him  ecstatically  of  the  poems  in  the  "  Christian 
Year  "  :  "  Can  you  understand  them  ?  "  he  said, 
sticking  out  his  chin  as  was  his  wont.  On  his 
resignation  of  the  Headship  Pusey  came  to  bid 
him  a  lugubrious,  probably,  he  feared,  a  final 
farewell.  "  Not  at  all,"  said  the  youthful  octo- 
genarian in  his  sharpest,  crispest  tones,  "  we  shall 
most  likely  often  meet  here  again."  He  lived 
curiously  in  the  past  :  at  a  time  when  Australia 
was  becoming  one  of  the  realms  of  gold,  and 
Englishmen  had  long  dominated  the  vast  conti- 
nent, he  still  conceived  of  it  as  in  his  childhood, 
and  would  allude  in  his  sermons  to  "  the  degraded 
savages  of  New  Holland." 

Lastly,  let  us  rejoice  in  proclaiming  that  his 
fine  moral  instincts  were  tinged  by  no  distortion, 
weakness,  or  absurdity  :  they  ruled  him  con- 
tinuously and  generously  from  the  cradle  to  the 
grave.  The  springs  of  his  private  munificence 
were  never  dry  :  no  deserving  case  was  ever  put 


1 64      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

before  him  unalleviated.  From  the  age  of 
seventeen,  when  they  became  orphans  on  their 
father's  death,  he  played  a  father's  part  to  each 
brother  and  sister  in  turn  until  they  were 
launched  self-supporting  into  life. 

Vivet  extento  Proculeius  aevo, 
Notus  in  fratres  animi  paterni, 
Ilium  aget  penna  metuente  solvi 
Fama  superstes. 

And  children,  instinctive  judges  of  natural 
benevolence,  were  always  fond  of  him  :  like 
Whately  and  like  Hampden,  he  loved  and  en- 
joyed their  society. 

With  his  withdrawal  to  Rochester  the  public 
interest  of  his  life  ceases.  He  amused  himself 
with  gardening,  delighted  in  the  Cathedral  Ser- 
vices, dominated  the  Chapter  as  he  had  ruled 
the  Heads.  Obstructive  at  Oxford,  he  appears 
to  have  been  iconoclast  at  Rochester.  At  four- 
score we  find  him  writing  to  a  friend  that  in 
consequence  of  the  age  and  infirmity  of  some 
among  the  Canons  he  found  it  necessary  to 
bestow  increasing  attention  on  Cathedral  busi- 
ness ;  and,  like  old  Routh,  he  never  to  the  end 
passed  on  himself  the  sentence  of  decrepitude. 
He  died  after  a  brief  illness  in  his  ninety-third 
year,  and  was  laid  in  the  Cathedral  precincts. 


CHAPTER   VII 

BADEN   POWELL 

The  laws  of  Nature  are  the  thoughts  of  Nature ;  and  these 
are  the  thoughts  of  God. 

IN  this  pregnant  dictum  of  Oersted,  which  he 
often  quoted,  we  find  a  key  to  the  intellectual 
ambition  of  the  remarkable  philosopher  who 
comes  next  upon  our  list.  The  Noetic  brother- 
hood included  only  one  Scientist,  PROFESSOR 
BADEN  POWELL.  At  once  fearless  and  devout,  an 
accomplished  savant  and  a  studious  divine,  he 
not  only  extended  in  many  departments  the  pro- 
gress of  mathematical,  astronomical,  and  physical 
inquiry,  but  worked  out,  with  ability  and  bold- 
ness, with  a  single-minded  aspiration  after  truth, 
yet  in  a  calm  and  temperate  spirit,  those  attrac- 
tive problems  of  the  relation  between  science 
and  religion,  which  his  contemporaries  for  the 
most  part  only  handled  in  support  of  personal 
and  party  preconceptions,  or  shirked  through 
fear  of  the  odium  which  they  were  certain  to 
excite.  He  was  born  at  Stamford  Hill  in  1796, 

the  son  of  a  Kentish  country  gentleman.     From 

165 


1 66      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

twelve  to  seventeen  years  old  he  was  taught 
Classics,  Mathematics,  and  Divinity,  by  a  suc- 
cession of  private  tutors ;  and  in  1814  was  entered 
at  Oriel  as  a  Commoner.  His  contemporaries 
at  the  University  were  men  well  known  in  later 
years  as  Charles  or  "  Commentary  "  Girdlestone, 
Edward  Greswell,  John  Leicester  Adolphus, 
Hartley  Coleridge,  Ogilvie,  Rickards  the  friend 
of  Keble,  Archdeacon  Clerke,  Plumtre  after- 
wards Master  of  University,  Bethell,  Howard 
afterwards  Lord  Carlisle.  Daubeny,  his  lifelong 
friend  and  ally  in  the  struggle  on  behalf  of 
Science,  was  by  a  year  or  two  his  senior.  In 
1817  he  obtained  a  First  Class  in  Mathematics ; 
was  soon  afterwards  ordained ;  became  Curate 
at  Midhurst ;  was  presented  to  the  Vicarage  of 
Plumstead  ;  marrying  in  1821,  and  leading  for  six 
years  an  active  parochial  life.  A  treatise  on 
Optics,  published  in  1824,  caused  his  election  to 
a  Fellowship  of  the  Royal  Society  ;  and  in  1827 
he  succeeded  Rigaud  as  Savilian  Professor  of 
Geometry,  returning  thereupon  to  Oxford,  and 
for  many  years  inhabiting  the  professorial  house 
in  New  College  Lane,  once  the  residence  of 
Halley,  whose  telescope  stand  was  in  my  time 
still  visible  on  the  housetop.  For  the  professor- 
ship Babbage  was  a  candidate,  strove  hard  to  be 


BADEN   POWELL  167 

elected,  and  keenly  felt  the  preference  given  to 
Powell ;  but  he  bore  no  malice,  the  two  became 
fast  friends,  and  so  remained  until  Baden  Powell's 
death.  The  influence  of  his  old  Provost,  Copies- 
ton,  then  Bishop  of  Llandaff,  but  still  all  powerful 
at  Oxford,  had  been  strongly  exerted  in  favour 
of  his  election  to  the  Chair  :  we  find  the  new 
Professor  consulting  him  as  to  an  inaugural 
Lecture,  the  Bishop  advising  that  in  the  ele- 
mentary condition  of  Oxford  Mathematics  a 
Lecture  would  not  attract  an  audience,  and  that 
the  credit  of  the  University  and  its  Professor 
would  be  better  consulted  by  the  publication  of 
philosophical  essays  and  scientific  researches.  The 
advice  was  taken  :  he  had  already  printed  in  the 
Royal  Society's  Transactions  a  Paper  on  Radiant 
Heat  :  now,  in  1828,  he  published  independently 
a  Paper  on  the  Elements  of  Curves  ;  and  shortly 
after  a  work  on  the  Differential  Calculus.  His 
Lectures  meanwhile  were  attended  by  a  select  if 
limited  audience.  When  in  1870  Dr.  Ridding 
introduced  Physical  Science  into  the  Winchester 
School  work,  he  stimulated  the  enthusiasm  of 
his  Science  Teachers  by  telling  them  with  what 
delight  he  had  formerly  watched  and  imitated 
Baden  Powell's  skilful  management  of  the  minute 
light- waves.  Many  more  Papers  followed  as  the 


1 68      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

years  passed  ;  on  Light  and  Heat,  on  Foucault's 
Pendulum  and  Gyroscope,  on  Comte's  "  Philo- 
sophic Positive,"  with  biographical  notices  in 
various  Quarterly  Reviews  of  eminent  philo- 
sophers such  as  Newton,  Young,  Arago.  On  the 
same  lines  as  these  last  was  his  "  Historical 
View  of  the  Progress  of  Physical  and  Mathe- 
matical Science  from  the  Earliest  Ages  to  the 
Present  Time,"  published  in  1834. 

In  1836  his  wife  died  ;  and  in  the  following 
year  he  was  married  to  Charlotte  Pope,  sister 
of  his  friend  Mrs.  Whately.  She  died  in  1844, 
leaving  four  children,  the  oldest  of  whom,  Miss 
Charlotte  Elizabeth  Powell,  still  survives ;  and 
has  favoured  me  with  some  highly  interesting 
reminiscences  of  her  father  as  she  recalls  him 
during  her  childish  life.  At  her  mother's  death 
she  was  only  in  her  seventh  year,  but  became  his 
constant  playmate  and  companion,  until  at  twelve 
years  old  she  passed  under  the  guardianship  of 
an  aunt.  She  tells  how  he  would  take  her  with 
him  for  walks  in  the  College  Gardens  or  in 
Christchurch  meadow,  would  allow  her  to  sit 
silently  employed  with  pictures  or  with  pencil 
and  paper  while  he  worked  amid  his  books  and 
instruments.  She  learned  to  watch  for  the 
pauses  in  his  work,  when  her  questions  would 


BADEN   POWELL  169 

please  and  interest  him.  "  I  well  remember," 
she  says,  "  his  sitting  absorbed  and  engrossed 
with  his  eye  at  the  little  telescope,  focussing 
his  darkened  glasses  to  the  long  beam  of  light 
admitted  through  the  shutters,  or  lighting  the 
mysterious  spirit  flame,  and  working  with  prisms 
and  lenses.  I  would  watch  with  puzzled  interest 
until  he  had  noted  down  his  observations  ;  and 
then  when  I  questioned  him,  he  would  take  me  on 
his  knee  and  show  me  the  effect  of  the  magnify- 
ing  lens,  and  let  me  look  through  the  pieces  of 
coloured  glass,  and  interest  me  in  the  prismatic 
spectrum  cast  on  the  wall  by  the  prism  in  the 
window.  I  recollect  too  how  amused  and  pleased 
he  seemed  if  next  day  I  remembered  the  names 
of  the  colours  ;  or  how,  in  default  of  these 
desired  pictures,  he  would  interest  me  in  the 
illustrating  plates  of  a  mathematical  treatise  ; 
telling  me  the  names  of  the  figures  there  por- 
trayed, and  calling  my  attention  to  similar  shapes 
in  surrounding  objects,  while  my  attempts  to 
pronounce  their  names,  and  my  indifferent  suc- 
cess in  remembering  them,  seemed  to  amuse  and 
please  him  greatly. 

"  My  father  evidently  enjoyed  the  task  of 
making  a  child  understand ;  and  what  he  taught 
one  never  forgot.  I  remember  one  day,  when 


PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

the  search  for  a  picture-book  produced  only  an 
illustrated  astronomical  work,  he  tried  to  convey 
some  ideas  of  the  sun  and  planets  to  the  minds 
of  me  and  my  five-year-old  brother ;  and  how 
he,  seated  in  his  chair,  had  to  represent  the  sun, 
while  we  moved  around  him  in  our  orbits,  he 
laughing  heartily  at  my  attempts  to  pirouette  on 
my  own  axis  as  I  revolved  ! 

"  Our  evenings  were  always  spent  with  him 
after  his  six  o'clock  dinner,  and  then  my  brother, 
three  years  younger  than  myself,  and  I,  enjoyed 
our  children's  hour.  He  would  bring  out  what 
was  then  a  charming  novelty  in  toys,  a  kaleido- 
scope, whose  principle  he  tried  to  explain  to  us 
by  folding  a  disc  of  paper  into  its  segments, 
cutting  out  a  pattern  in  it,  and  then  unfolding 
it  and  showing  how  the  pattern  multiplied  itself. 
Often  he  would  play  Handel's  marches  on  his 
chamber  organ  for  us  to  march  to  with  military 
tramp  around  the  room,  always  correcting  any 
failure  in  keeping  time.  Sometimes  he  taught 
us  old-fashioned  hymns  and  songs,  and,  as  we 
grew  older,  simple  rounds  and  catches ;  or  he 
would  draw  for  us  delightful  funny  pictures  of 
fairies,  imps,  and  bogies. 

"  My  father  was  not  given  to  lavish  toys  on 
children ;  he  would  rather  make,  and  show 


BADEN   POWELL  171 

how  to  make,  playthings  for  ourselves  :  he  would 
cut  out  whole  menageries  of  card  animals  that 
could  stand  upon  their  feet,  and  teach  us  how  to 
construct  card  boxes  and  dolls'  telescopes.  Some- 
times he  showed  us  how  lead  was  melted  in  a 
little  iron  ladle  over  the  fire.  Then  when  the 
long  Oxford  winter  was  over  we  two  would  be 
the  companions  of  his  daily  walks,  which  as  we 
grew  older  became  increasingly  interesting.  In 
the  early  spring  we  would  pick  our  way  among 
the  islets  of  the  still  half-flooded  meadows,  Papa 
alone  venturing  on  more  precarious  footholds, 
to  cut  for  us  sheaves  of  the  willow  blossoms ;  or 
crossing  swampy  places  to  where  the  fritillaries, 
white  and  purple,  were  in  bloom,  and  bringing  us 
back  a  bunch.  In  summer  our  expeditions 
carried  us  along  the  Cherwell,  whence  he  would 
reach  for  us  with  a  hooked  stick  he  had  made 
for  the  purpose,  just  two  or  three  glorious  blos- 
soms of  the  white  water-lily,  always  carefully 
disarranging  as  little  as  possible  the  remaining 
beauties.  These  we  were  to  bring  home  to 
Mamma  ;  for  as  time  went  on  he  had  fulfilled  his 
promise  to  us  that  he  would  bring  home  Miss 
Henrietta  Smyth,  a  kind  and  delightful  young 
lady,  to  take  care  of  us  and  become  his  wife. 
"  Besides  the  quest  for  wild  flowers,  in  which 


172      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

he  always  took  great  interest,  he  encouraged  us 
to  collect  natural  curiosities,  such  as  fossils,  river 
shells,  and  wings  of  insects ;  often  bringing  us 
home  from  his  longer  walks  ammonites  and  corals 
from  the  Headington  quarries,  selenites  from 
the  hillside,  or  petrifactions  from  its  calcareous 
stream.  And  then  one  evening  he  had  for  us  a 
delightful  surprise,  in  a  real  glass-doored  cabinet 
wherein  to  bestow  our  collection  of  curiosities, 
which  I  think  we  hoped  in  time  would  rival  the 
Ashmolean  Museum.  Our  visits  to  that  quaint 
old  preserve  had  been  a  frequent  wet-day  treat 
to  us,  from  the  very  childish  time  when  he  used 
to  lift  me  up  to  stroke  the  stuffed  zebra  or  the 
tall  giraffe,  until  the  more  advanced  days  when 
he  could  explain  to  us  the  very  miscellaneous 
specimens  exhibited,  of  fossils  and  minerals,  New 
Zealand  industrial  productions,  antique  Roman 
pottery,  Guy  Fawkes'  lantern,  King  Alfred's 
jewel,  or  the  colossal  wasps'  nest. 

"  I  think  my  father  must  have  had  a  very 
remarkable  power  as  a  teacher  ;  he  insisted  on 
being  understood,  repeating  his  instruction  in 
ever  more  simplified  form,  and  with  varied  illus- 
trations, until  the  young  mind  had  at  last  mas- 
tered the  conception  or  got  at  least  some  rough 
but  intelligent  idea  of  his  explanation,  or  of  his 


BADEN   POWELL  173 

answer  to  the  questions  which  he  always  en- 
couraged us  to  put.  Those  were  the  days  when 
educational  ideas  seem  to  have  been  in  the 
smelting-pot  :  the  High  School  system  was  not 
yet  heard  of ;  cramming  for  competitive  exami- 
nations did  not  exist  for  girls ;  and  my  father, 
like  many  teachers,  had  a  reactionary  horror  of 
learning  by  rote  and  rule :  the  plan  adopted  by 
such  thinkers  on  education  as  Dr.  Whately  and 
himself  being  rather  to  make  instruction  dis- 
cursive, varied,  and  entertaining.  I  have  no 
doubt  that  these  home  lessons,  given  by  so 
widely  cultured  and  accurate  a  teacher,  as  sup- 
plementary to  the  conventional  instructions  of 
our  daily  governess,  were  of  great  importance 
to  us  in  after  life. 

"  My  father  was  exceedingly  fond  of  drawing, 
a  talent  which  he  inherited  from  his  father,  Mr. 
Powell  of  Langton,  Kent,  who,  untaught  except 
by  his  close  observation  of  nature,  could  draw 
every  kind  of  tree  with  such  beautiful  accuracy 
that  oak,  beech,  or  elm,  near  or  distant,  had 
their  distinguishing  growth  and  foliage  unmis- 
takably delineated.  My  father  also  was  un- 
taught ;  a  very  great  pity,  since  his  pen-and-ink 
sketches  of  Kentish  and  Oxford  scenery  were 
admirable.  His  oil-paintings  were  perhaps  not 


174      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

so  successful,  owing  partly  to  the  want  of  a  good 
choice  in  pigments  and  materials,  and  a  too  close 
adherence  to  what  he  conceived  to  be  the  rules 
of  the  old  masters.  Still  they  were  always 
luminous  landscapes,  and  had  the  very  spirit  of 
the  Kentish  scenery  about  them.  His  knowledge 
of  drawing  stood  him  in  good  stead  when  he  was 
preparing  on  large  sheets  of  slate-coloured  paper 
the  chalk-and-water  diagrams  that  were  to  illus- 
trate his  lectures  both  on  geometry  and  on  the 
phenomena  of  light.  In  this  work  he  would 
often  call  on  us  to  help  him,  letting  us  mix  the 
pigments,  and  paste  together  the  sheets,  explain- 
ing their  import  as  we  worked. 

"  He  was  extremely  particular  as  to  the  books 
his  children  read ;  and  in  letting  us  look  at  illus- 
trations of  Dickens,  or  the  pictures  in  a  great 
'  Arabian  Nights,'  which  lay  on  the  drawing- 
room  table,  he  put  us  on  our  honour  not  to  read, 
but  only  to  look  at  the  pictures,  saying  that  the 
books  were  '  too  old  for  us '  ;  and  I  remember 
feeling  it  quite  out  of  the  question  to  disobey. 
He  corrected  our  childish  hymn-book  with  a 
view  to  avoid  what  he  considered  wrong  teach- 
ing. I  have  the  copy  now  in  which  he  has 
changed  c  when  to  the  House  of  God  we  go  ' 
into  '  when  to  the  House  of  Prayer  we  go  ' ;  and, 


BADEN   POWELL  175 

again,  c  and  never  break  the  Sabbath  day '  into 
'  and  love  and  serve  Thee  every  day.'  The  word 
Sabbath  he  everywhere  changed  into  '  Lord's 
Day '  ;  dwelling  on  the  truths,  that  no  material 
building  can  be  under  the  Christian  dispensation 
the  '  House  of  God  '  as  was  the  Temple  ;  and 
that,  freed  as  Gentile  believers  from  the  cere- 
monial law,  we  were  not  bound  to  the  Jewish 
Sabbath,  but  that  the  memorial  of  the  Resur- 
rection Day  had  taken  its  place. 

"  My  father  made  me  bring  my  little  reference 
New  Testament  every  morning  to  read  with  him 
as  the  subject  of  a  Scripture  lesson,  and  the 
same  plan  was  followed  of  simplifying  things 
which  might  be  considered  too  difficult  for  a 
child,  by  the  presentation  of  some  central  thought 
in  the  narrative  or  passage.  Thus  I  still  remem- 
ber, in  reading  with  him  parts  of  the  Epistle  to 
the  Hebrews,  his  explanation  of  the  difference 
between  the  two  dispensations,  the  ritual  of 
Judaism  being  intended  to  point  to  the  one 
Sacrifice  of  the  Cross.  I  imagine  that  what 
seemed  to  him  the  Romanising  theories  just  then 
coming  into  fashion  through  the  influence  of  Dr. 
Pusey  and  others,  led  my  father  to  feel  the  great 
importance  of  writing  and  preaching  on  the 
differences  between  Christianity  and  Judaism, 


1 76      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

between  a  chosen  Nation  with  a  literal  temple, 
and  a  universal  Church  with  spiritual  worship. 
Certainly  I  received  the  elements  of  that  doctrine 
from  him  in  those  early  lessons. 

"  In  later  years,  when  I  was  in  my  aunt's 
home,  from  obvious  motives  of  respect,  my 
father's  theological  writings,  and  his  contribu- 
tion to  the  '  Essays  and  Reviews,'  were  never 
discussed  in  his  children's  presence.  His  views 
were  not  accepted,  possibly  were  not  understood, 
by  our  other  relatives,  but  all  we  knew  was  that 
differences  of  opinion  existed  ;  his  simple  devout- 
ness  and  faith,  his  adherence  to  the  truths  of  the 
Gospel  and  the  teaching  of  the  New  Testament, 
were  never  in  our  hearing  impugned. 

"  Besides  his  love  of  drawing  and  music  my 
father  had  the  true  artistic  taste  in  directions 
then  everywhere  overlooked  :  at  a  time,  for  in- 
stance, when  art  as  applied  to  house  decoration 
was  almost  non-existent,  he  admired,  and  taught 
us  to  admire,  the  simple  grace  of  correct  form. 
A  falsely  curved  glass  or  jug,  or  a  vulgarly  painted 
vase,  was  a  horror  to  him,  and  eschewing  in- 
stinctively the  paltry  early  Victorian  ornamen- 
tation, he  furnished  our  home  with  a  severe 
chasteness  as  to  colour  and  outline.  Specimens  of 
crystals  and  fossils,  and  simple  glasses  of  flowers, 


BADEN   POWELL  177 

were  our  chief  home  decorations,  with  a  few 
good  engravings  and  portraits  in  old-fashioned 
black  frames,  on  the  self-tinted  walls.  I  have 
heard  that  as  a  boy  my  father  had  shown  so 
much  appreciation  of  Gothic  buildings,  and  also 
so  much  skill  in  mechanical  construction,  that 
his  sisters  had  thought  architecture  would  be 
his  chosen  calling.  But  this  taste  was  never 
developed.  His  boyhood  was  passed  chiefly  in 
Kent,  where  among  the  ferny  lanes  and  oak 
woods,  and  the  rose-embowered  old  cottages  of 
an  unspoilt  village,  he  learned  his  love  of  the 
picturesque.  In  one  form  or  other,  Art  was  the 
relief  and  enjoyment  of  his  busy  life.  For  games 
of  skill  or  chance  he  had  not  any  liking.  I  never 
saw  a  card  or  a  counter  in  his  hand.  In  pen- 
and-ink  or  sepia  sketching,  in  playing  on  the 
drawing-room  organ,  constructed  with  a  bellows 
fitted  to  the  foot,  he  found  ample  amusement 
for  his  leisure. 

"  My  father  must  have  first  met  my  mother, 
Miss  Charlotte  Pope,  either  when  she  was  living 
at  Tunbridge  Wells  with  her  brother,  the  in- 
cumbent of  the  old  Chapel  of  Ease,  not  far  from 
his  home  at  Langton,  or  when  she  stayed  at 
Oxford  with  the  Whatelys ;  Dr.  Whately  having 
married  her  eldest  sister.  I  was  old  enough  to 

M 


178      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

observe,  and  well  remember  their  evident  happy 
attachment  to  each  other,  and  his  grief  when 
she  died  at  Tunbridge  Wells  in  1844.  But  he 
could  not  have  found  a  more  devoted  wife  than 
my  stepmother,  able  as  she  was  by  her  scientific 
education,  and  her  many  talents,  to  enter  into 
all  his  pursuits  with  corresponding  knowledge,  as 
well  as  with  the  zeal  of  truest  and  tenderest  love. 
She  made  him  an  ideal  companion,  and  the  ten 
sons  and  daughters  who  followed  that  marriage 
were  a  great  delight  to  him.  He  did  not,  how- 
ever, live  to  see  even  his  eldest  boy,  my  brother, 
Baden  Henry,  attain  full  manhood.  It  was  in 
the  sorrowful  year  of  his  father's  death  that  he 
managed  successfully  to  pass  the  first  Indian  Civil 
Service  Examination,  and  he  went  out  the  follow- 
ing year  to  India ;  while  the  youngest  child,  also 
named  Baden  after  my  father,  was  but  an  infant 
when  he  died ;  while  Stephenson,  afterwards  the 
general,  was  too  young  to  have  any  recollection 
of  him.  He  had  lost  two  little  daughters  and  a 
son  before  that. 

"  My  father's  disposition  must,  I  think,  have 
been  singularly  free  from  evil  thinkings,  envyings, 
and  censoriousness :  an  equable  gentleness  seemed 
to  me  to  be  his  characteristic.  He  was  never 
in  the  least  touchy,  and  would  laugh  or  smile 


BADEN   POWELL  179 


quietly  at  things  which  would  have  angered 
many  men.  He  had,  I  believe,  no  desire  to  be 
first,  or  to  gain  applause,  though  anxious  to  see 
others  agree  with  him  in  what  he  believed  to 
be  the  truth.  Divergences  from  old  friends  on 
theological  and  philosophical  subjects  may  have 
pained  him,  but  never  made  him  uncourteous  in 
speaking  of  them,  or  unwilling  to  meet  them  in 
the  old  friendly  way.  He  was  no  doubt  mis- 
understood by  many  men  of  strong  religious 
views  through  their  believing  that  his  theories 
involved  rejection  of  truths  appealing  to  them- 
selves. They  could  not  understand  that  whether 
inconsistently  or  not  he  held  through  all  differ- 
ences none  the  less  firmly  than  themselves  to 
the  faith  of  Christ,  in  spite  of  the  deference  he 
paid  to  the  writings  of  biblical  critics,  and  to  the 
dicta  of  geology,  when  its  theories  impugned 
the  Mosaic  writings.  In  some  way  that  they 
could  not  explain,  although,  outside  the  reef, 
a  surf  of  objections  and  difficulties  raged,  the 
inner  lagoon  of  his  faith  remained  calm  and 
untroubled  to  the  last." 

Some  minds  are  self-contained  :  ever  storing 
knowledge,  they  are  satisfied  with  the  pleasure  of 
acquiring,  and  care  not  to  communicate,  fearing 


i8o      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

apparently  lest  by  the  act  of  its  transmission 
virtue  should  go  out  of  them.  They  pass  away, 
obituarised  as  monuments  of  erudition,  leave 
behind  them  only  a  half-written  book  and  a 
sheaf  of  fugitive  uncompleted  fasciculi.  Other 
minds  are  educative  ;  they  garner  in  order  that 
they  may  give  out,  sciunt  ut  operentur  ;  find  joy 
in  the  mere  act  of  teaching  others.  Of  this  last 
class  was  Powell  :  he  not  only  submitted  his 
conclusions  and  discoveries  to  the  criticism  of  his 
equals,  but  eagerly  shared  them  with  the  humbler 
class  from  whom  at  that  time  culture  was  shut 
out.  We  find  him  from  the  beginning  of  the 
forties  a  gratuitous  popular  platform  lecturer 
not  only  to  the  Oxford  citizens,  but  at  remote 
Mechanics'  Institutes,  at  the  Polytechnic,  at 
Crosby  Hall,  at  the  Russell  Institution,  at  newly- 
founded  Women's  Colleges  ;  lavishing  his  know- 
ledge on  the  Eton  boys,  exerting  himself  to 
found  Public  Libraries  and  Reading  Rooms.  His 
repute  thus  early  established  as  among  the  most 
notable  Physicists  of  his  day,  he  entered  also  on 
a  field  of  work  to  which  attention  has  been 
already  drawn,  the  relation  of  Science  to  Theo- 
logy. His  first  effort  in  this  direction,  "  Revela- 
tion and  Science,"  was  followed  in  1839  by 
"  Tradition  Unveiled,"  a  production  which  drew 


PROFESSOR   BADEN   POWELL 
(From  a  portrait  by  Eddis,  in  the  possession  of  Mrs.  Baden-Powell] 


BADEN   POWELL  181 


from  Whately  two  letters  of  great  critical  value. 
Trie  Archbishop  warns  his  friend  that  the  idea 
of  an  operative  creating  God  cannot  be  inferred 
from  Natural  Theology,  which  teaches  only  the 
presence  of  an  ordering  Intelligence,  leaving  the 
nature  and  attributes  of  such  Intelligence  to  be 
approached  by  other  lines  of  argument.  That 
the  Professor  laid  to  heart  this  caution  is  obvious 
to  the  student  of  his  later  "  Philosophy  of 
Creation,"  and  to  the  principles  of  investigation 
which  he  formulated  in  a  remarkable  Article 
entitled  "  Free  Enquiry  in  Theology  the  Basis  of 
Truth  and  Liberality,"  contributed  by  him  in 
1849  to  "  Kitto's  Journal  of  Sacred  Literature." 
No  less  than  twenty-six  theological  treatises, 
articles,  or  books,  stand  against  his  name  in  the 
British  Museum  Catalogue  ;  but  their  teaching 
is  most  fully  drawn  out  in  the  three  works  which 
occupied  his  later  years  :  "  The  Unity  of  Worlds," 
"Christianity  without  Judaism,"  and  "The  Order 
of  Nature."  These  I  may  proceed  to  analyse. 

These  three  books,  taken  together,  form  a 
series.  The  writer  begins  by  explaining  the 
nature  of  the  inductive  process  on  which  all 
philosophical  reasoning  depends,  laying  stress  on 
the  power  of  Abstraction  and  the  perception  of 
Analogies.  He  illustrates  this  by  reference  to 


1 82       PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

accepted  scientific  discoveries,  such  as  the  un- 
dulatory  theory  of  Light,  the  doctrine  of  the 
inverse  squares  of  distances,  the  law  of  equal 
areas ;  pointing  to  the  accordance  revealed  in 
all  of  them  between  Reason  and  Nature.  It 
follows,  he  says,  that  Nature's  unity  is  reflected 
in  the  unity  of  those  Sciences  which  investigate 
it.  The  divisions  of  Science  are  provisional  and 
convenient  merely.  They  attack  different  sides 
of  Nature  and  are  at  present  in  different  stages 
of  advance,  yet  all  approximate  to  the  revelation 
of  Nature's  unity,  all  reflect  in  common  a  reality 
in  the  designing  Mind. 

In  pursuing  the  inductive  process  there  are 
dangers  to  be  guarded  against.  Exceptions, 
provisionally  admitted  as  principles  by  great 
philosophers,  are  sometimes  accepted  by  their 
unwary  followers  as  not  provisional  but  final. 
The  higher  and  wider  generalisations  are  slowly 
reached,  and  their  acceptance  when  reached 
retarded,  through  alarm  on  the  part  of  their 
discoverers  at  the  anomalies  which  they  seem  to 
involve  ;  although  the  highest  philosophy  views 
such  anomalies  as  unreal,  as  arising  from  present 
imperfect  knowledge,  and  to  be  inevitably  recon- 
ciled by  future  discovery.  Nature  is  of  necessity 
uniform  ;  and  the  sure  triumph  over  apparent 


BADEN   POWELL  183 

exceptions  at  once  establishes  that  uniformity 
and  supports  the  general  evidence  of  a  Supreme 
Mind  in  the  sequence  of  natural  events. 

In  the  sequence — yes  :  but  the  incautious 
philosopher  is  again  often  led  astray  by  a  false 
theory  of  Causation.  In  discovering  the  causes 
of  things  he  pretends  to  penetrate  the  efficient 
power  by  which  matter  acts  on  matter,  as 
analogous  to  the  exercise  of  volition  by  a  volun- 
tary agent  on  material  objects  within  his  control. 
Of  such  efficient  power  induction  yields  no  evi- 
dence ;  invariable  sequence  of  one  effect  after 
another  is  all  that  we  can  infer.  And  if  we 
choose  to  call  the  one  a  cause,  the  other  an 
effect,  we  must  understand  cause  to  represent 
antecedency  merely,  not  creative  power.  To  say 
that  one  phenomenon  has  caused,  another  is  to 
refer  both  to  a  law  which  both  obey ;  and  this 
obedience,  this  vindication  of  unity,  arrange- 
ment, order,  enables  us  to  treat  the  connected 
series  of  physical  causation  as  manifesting  moral 
causation. 

From  this  fallacious  estimate  of  Causation  has 
sprung  a  further  confusion  in  the  assumption  of 
a  First  or  Final  Cause,  referring  the  adaptation 
of  means  in  Nature  to  a  perceptible  and  bene- 
ficent end.  This  is  contrary  to  experience  :  the 


1 84      PRE-TRACTAR1AN   OXFORD 

supposed  beneficent  ends  are  often  not  attained, 
are  thwarted  by  disease,  malformation,  death. 

Nature,  red  in  tooth  and  claw 

With  rapine,  shrieks  against  the  creed  ; 

it  is  not  supported  by  Induction.  Of  such  end, 
such  motives,  such  adjustment  towards  that  end 
in  obedience  to  these  motives,  the  Philosopher 
discovers  nothing  :  to  him  Natural  Theology  is 
the  manifestation  of  design  in  the  order  of  the 
universe,  and  he  speaks  of  design  with  reference 
to  order  and  arrangement  in  Nature,  not  to 
practical  utility.  By  tracing  out  the  sequence  of 
physical  causes  he  is  convinced  of  the  existence 
not  of  a  great  Physical  Cause  but  of  a  great 
Moral  Cause  ;  and  knows  that  the  assumption  of 
a  supreme  Mind  is  not  the  basis  of  his  belief  in 
Nature's  uniformity  but  a  conclusion  from  it. 
"  Assume  God,"  says  Coleridge,  "  and  the  whole 
order  and  beauty  of  the  universe  becomes  in- 
telligible :  "  but  our  idea  of  God,  he  elsewhere 
points  out,  flows  from  the  order  and  beauty  of 
the  universe  :  so  that  he  would  have  us  first 
prove  God  from  the  Cosmos,  then  the  Cosmos 
from  God. 

Sometimes  it  is  argued  from  the  limitations  of 
Nature  that  a  region  of  mystery  surrounds  the 


BADEN    POWELL  185 


frontiers  of  Science,  and  that  this  undiscovered 
country  is  the  domain  of  God.  But  the  boun- 
dary line  of  Science  is  continually  extending,  the 
region  of  mystery  progressively  converted  into 
the  conquests  of  discovery  ;  the  supposed  divine 
region  invaded  and  annexed.  Newton,  not  at 
first  discerning  the  full  force  of  his  own  principle 
as  leading  to  the  doctrine  of  stability,  thought 
that  a  time  must  come  when  only  divine  inter- 
position could  restore  the  equilibrium.  This 
was  applauded  as  an  argument  for  the  necessity 
of  a  supreme  interfering  Power.  It  came  ere 
long  to  be  known  that  planetary  disturbances  so 
compensate  each  other  that  no  permanent  de- 
rangement could  arise  ;  and  with  this  discovery 
the  argument  vanished. 

So,  too,  famine,  pestilence,  earthquakes,  war, 
have  been  held  up  as  direct  appointments,  or 
even  specialised  as  "  judgments  "  of  an  inter- 
vening Power.  But  deeper  knowledge  has  made 
it  evident  that  punishment  is  occasioned  not  by 
the  caprice  of  the  Unseen,  but  by  its  laws  :  it 
does  not  break  its  laws  to  harm  mankind  ;  its 
laws  harm  men  when  they  break  them.  Law, 
order,  physical  causation,  uniformity  and  uni- 
versality of  action,  manifest  divinity  and  pro- 
vidence ;  their  apparent  interruptions  no  more 


1 86      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

prove  divine  caprice  than  a  passing  cloud  proves 
irregularity  in  the  sun's  action.  The  universe 
is  not  an  immensity  of  arbitrary  and  inscrutable 
darkness  in  which  the  inductive  world  of  the 
philosopher  forms  an  insignificant  exception,  but 
a  boundless  cosmos,  a  universe  of  perfect  order, 
increased  evidence  of  which  is  obtained  by  every 
advance  of  Inductive  Science.  Science  confesses 
its  present  limited  conception  of  Divine  per- 
fection ;  sees  omnipotence  in  the  maintenance 
of  laws,  not  in  their  interruption  ;  sees  provi- 
dence in  conservation  of  a  system  of  ordained 
causes  for  the  general  good,  not  in  their  suspension 
for  the  benefit  of  individuals. 

Can  we  rise,  as  in  Paley's  illustration  of  a 
watch,  from  the  design  to  a  designer  ?  No.  We 
infer  an  invisible  Intelligence,  or,  if  we  like'  to 
call  it  so,  a  Moral  Cause  :  how  it  operates  and 
is  directed  we  cannot  tell  :  its  attributes  and 
actions,  its  personality,  moral  government  of 
mankind,  omniscient  oversight  of  individuals, 
belong  to  the  region  of  revelation,  or  of  spiritual 
intuition  ;  not  of  Science,  not  of  Natural  Theo- 
logy :  yet  the  Natural  Theologian  believes  that 
the  further  Science  extends  its  evidence  of  such 
operations,  the  more  nearly  it  approaches  their 
source. 


BADEN   POWELL  187 

The  confusion  between  knowledge  and  con- 
jecture, which  vitiates  all  the  speculations  noticed 
hitherto,  took  shape  about  the  year  1853  in  a 
revival  by  two  men  bearing  eminent  names  of 
a  topic  often  treated  in  the  past.  It  was  asked 
in  a  brochure  ascribed  to  Whewell,  "  Are  other 
worlds  besides  our  own  probably  the  seat  of  in- 
tellectual, moral,  spiritual  life  ?  Are  conceptions 
which  have  been  hazarded  on  the  subject  con- 
tradicted or  confirmed  by  recent  astronomical 
discovery  ?  "  The  anonymous  author  answers 
his  own  question  in  the  negative ;  sums  up 
against  the  plurality  of  worlds.  A  rejoinder 
promptly  appeared  in  a  pamphlet  by  Sir  David 
Brewster,  entitled  "  More  Worlds  than  One  "  : 
and  the  whole  question  was  examined  by  Powell, 
in  a  style  illustrative  of  the  logical  exactness  with 
which  his  mind  approached  all  unproved  hypo- 
theses. We  know,  he  says,  the  physical  con- 
ditions and  cosmical  arrangements  adapted  to 
animated  existence  off  our  own  planet.  Do 
these,  so  far  as  they*are  ascertained  to  exist  on 
stars  and  planets  other  than  our  own,  warrant 
the  supposition  that  they  also  contain  animal 
life? 

I.  Are  the  nebulce  inhabitable  ?  Much  of 
what  were  formerly  known  as  nebulae  have  been 


1 88       PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

resolved  into  fixed  stars  or — what  is  all-important 
to  remember — are  in  a  stage  of  progress  towards 
becoming  fixed  stars. 

2.  Are  then  the  fixed  stars  inhabitable  ?     They 
consist  of  matter  akin  to  our  world,  are  subject 
to  the  laws  of  gravitation,  emit  light,  are  appa- 
rently suns. 

3.  Is  our  sun  inhabitable  ?     If  the  central  solid 
body   of   the   sun   is   separate   from   the   photo- 
sphere, or  system  of  rays  surrounding  it,  it  may 
retain  temperature  sufficiently  moderate   to   be 
inhabitable. 

4.  Is  our  moon  inhabitable  ?     It  appears  to  have 
no  water  and  no  atmosphere  ;    yet  this  is  dis- 
puted.    It  is  again  conjectured  that  the  hemi- 
sphere which  we  never  see  may  be  unlike  that 
which  we  see  ;    giving  scope  to  conditions  quite 
different  from  those  prevalent  on  the  face  turned 
towards    ourselves.       The    suggestion   had    been 
raised  that  its  denizens,  if  at  all  numerous,  must 
inhabit   cities,   and  that   their  smoke  would  be 
visible  to  a  powerful  telescope  ;    but  in  answer 
to  this  it  is  pointed  out  that  smoke  and  build- 
ings would  at  such  a  distance  not  reflect  enough 
light  to  be  discernible. 

5.  Are  our  nearer  planets  habitable  ?     Mars  is 
known  to  be  circumstanced  very  similarly  to  our 


BADEN   POWELL  189 

earth.1  The  climate  of  Mercury  must  be  very 
hot,  the  temperature  of  Venus  very  variable  ; 
but  conditions  are  postulated  which  may  miti- 
gate these  peculiarities.  The  Planetoids,  if  un- 
inhabitable at  present,  may  be  in  the  course  of 
such  combination  or  condensation  as  may  some 
day  fit  them  for  organic  life.  The  specific 
gravity  of  Jupiter  and  our  further  neighbours  is 
widely  different  from  our  own  ;  but  scientists 
have  opined  that  there  are  forms  of  animal  life 
with  which  this  need  not  interfere  ;  nay,  that 
human  beings  like  ourselves  might  without  in- 
convenience be  transferred  to  the  surface  of 
Jupiter. 

6.  Are  Comets  habitable  ?  Not  perhaps  in 
their  present  condition  :  but  they,  too,  may  be 
destined  to  condense  into  solid  habitable  bodies. 

Science  then  declares  the  worlds,  not  indeed 
to  be  inhabited,  but  to  be  habitable  ;  and  that 
not  necessarily  at  the  present  moment.  During 
immeasurable  ages  our  own  globe  was  without 
life  :  vast  intervals  again  extended  between  its 

1  One  wishes  that  the  Professor  could  have  known  the  more 
recent  investigations  on  Mars,  discovering  apparently  clouds 
above  its  surface,  two  moons  its  satellites,  and  the  supposed 
Schiaparelli  canals ;  conjecturally  indicating  intelligent  beings 
who,  in  want  of  water,  have  constructed  vast  trenches  to  convey 
melting  water  from  the  snow-caps  at  the  poles  over  the  arid 
portions  of  their  globe. 


1 90      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

inception  and  its  present  development ;  its  yet 
future  growth  with  that  of  its  inhabitants  is  un- 
guessed.  So,  many  of  the  so-called  heavenly 
bodies  may  be  (i)  devoid  for  the  present  of 
inhabitants  yet  destined  to  develop  them ;  or 
(2)  may  have  inhabitants  to-day  akin  or  not  akin 
to  us ;  or  (3)  may  have  reached  a  higher  stage 
than  humanity  has  hitherto  attained.  And 
finally  the  chief  physical  argument  in  favour  of 
presumption  that  all  worlds  are  inhabited  or  to 
be  inhabited  lies  in  our  conviction  of  the  uni- 
formity pervading  Nature  both  in  space  and 
time. 

Theological  arguments  urged  against  the  exist- 
ence of  inhabited  worlds  other  than  our  own 
Powell  views  with  the  natural  displeasure  of  the 
scientist,  as  forcing  inductive  philosophical  pro- 
bability into  conformity  with  theological  pre- 
possessions. He  resents  them  also  as  being  based 
on  an  assumption  as  to  the  unique  importance 
of  Man  :  they  deny  the  existence  of  rational 
beings  elsewhere  in  order  to  exalt  Man's  exclu- 
sive destiny  :  the  universe  is  decreed  by  them  to 
be  a  waste  in  order  to  enhance  the  dignity  of  one 
small  race,  inhabiting  a  speck  in  one  of  the  smaller 
planets  in  a  subordinate  solar  system  of  a  sub- 
ordinate stellar  cluster.  The  idea  retrogrades  to 


BADEN   POWELL  191 

mediaeval  astronomy,  by  which,  in  accordance 
with  biblical  cosmogony,  our  earth  was  the 
centre  of  a  universe  created  to  minister  to  its 
welfare.  It  lays  down  that  this  support  of 
telluric  humanity  was  the  sole  end  and  purpose 
of  creation  ;  contradicting,  solely  because  it  does 
not  know  them,  all  other  ends  and  purposes ; 
ignoring  the  statement  of  one  amongst  the  most 
exalted  of  Scripture  writers,  that  "  for  God's 
pleasure  they  exist  and  were  created."  It  asserts 
a  physiological  break  or  gap  between  man  and 
the  rest  of  the  animal  creation,  a  supposition 
forbidden  absolutely  by  scientific  fact.  It  argues 
from  a  supposed  First  Cause,  an  idea  tenable 
only  by  induction  from  visible  causes,  not  to  be 
made  an  ap-^j  from  which  these  are  to  be  in- 
ferred. To  such  arguments  and  assumptions 
Natural  Theology  is  of  necessity  indifferent.  If 
this  be  the  sole  inhabited  world,  from  what  we 
know  of  it  we  demonstrate  Design  ;  if  habita- 
tion be  infinitely  extended,  the  demonstration  is 
commensurably  exalted  :  it  admits  all  worlds  as 
harmonising  parts  in  one  great  world,  and  infers 
universality  of  Life,  actual  or  potential. 

Some  arguments  advanced  in  the  name  of 
Theology  the  Professor  finds  it  difficult  to 
treat  seriously.  As,  that  other  worlds  may  be 


192      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

required,  and  must  be  kept  vacant  for,  human 
beings  after  death  ;  for,  as  Milton  says — 

The  immortal  mind  which  hath  forsook 
Her  dwelling  in  this  fleshly  nook  ; 

or  that  man's  monopoly  in  spiritual  privileges  is 
hazarded  by  the  presence  of  innumerable  other 
claimants ;  or — most  astonishing  of  all — that  the 
divine  supervision  demanded  by  a  multiplicity 
of  worlds  may  involve  overlooking  in  the  case  of 
humble  individuals ;  as  Baal  when  on  a  journey 
was  unconscious  of  his  votaries  at  Carmel ;  or  as 
Homer's  Jupiter,  visiting  the  far-off  blameless 
Ethiopians,  was  unavailable  for  his  duties  in  the 
Trojan  struggle.  Touching  these  in  turn  sublimi 
semel  flagello,  with  a  slight  flick  of  his  uplifted 
lash,  he  points  out  the  wild  inconsistency  of 
reasoning  at  all  on  subjects  beyond  the  scope 
of  reason  ;  urging  once  more  that  the  very  idea 
of  a  spiritual  nature  in  man,  which  forms  the 
groundwork  of  religious  speculation,  differs  essen- 
tially from  his  physical  system  and  is  outside 
scientific  reasoning;  that  while  natural  philo- 
sophy may  not  impossibly  contain  within  itself 
the  germ  of  spiritual  knowledge,  the  conceptions 
and  the  dogmas  of  Christianity  are  independent 
of  and  cannot  be  supported  by  physical  theories. 


BADEN   POWELL  193 

He  concludes  the  volume  with  an  Essay  on  the 
"  Philosophy  of  Creation."  By  "  Creation  "— 
an  unfortunate  term,  as  seeming  to  beg  a  ques- 
tion which  Philosophy  does  not  pretend  to  solve 
—he  understands  the  origination,  first,  of  the 
material  universe,  secondly,  of  our  own  globe, 
including  both  its  physical  revolutions  and  the 
organic  life  upon  its  surface.  As  to  the  origin  of 
life  upon  our  globe,  Geology  tells  us  nothing  : 
it  does  indicate,  not,  at  present,  without  breaks 
and  omissions  in  the  series,  an  orderly  succes- 
sion of  inorganic  formations  and  deposits  in  the 
earth's  crust,  with  a  regular  ascent  from  the 
lowest  to  the  highest  form  of  life  in  its  inhabi- 
tants. Physiology,  by  comparison  both  of  adult 
and  of  fetal  structures,  has  proved,  through  Von 
Bars'  splendid  discovery,  that  while  all  classes  of 
animals  from  the  Radiate  to  the  Vertebrate  are 
specialised  after  a  certain  period,  yet  up  to  that 
period  they  follow  a  common  plan,  proving  that 
unity  of  organisation  in  all  animals  which  had 
been  previously  an  undemonstrated  hypothesis. 
Before  Powell's  death,  but  some  time  after  his 
book  was  written,  the  whole  subject  was  illumi- 
nated, consonantly  in  every  respect  with  his 
views  and  justifying  his  conjectures,  by  Darwin's 
monumental  work,  cited  by  the  Professor  ad- 

N 


194      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

miringly  in  the  last  production  of  his  pen.  He 
here  concludes  with  a  summary  of  the  bearing  of 
his  own  arguments  on  Theology,  Natural  Theo- 
logy, and  Revelation ;  showing  that  they  in  no 
way  affect  Christianity,  assist  rather  than  impede 
the  recognition  of  a  God.  "  We  know  not  what 
was  the  beginning,  or  will  be  the  end,  of  created 
beings.  And  though  the  whole  of  the  present, 
equally  with  the  past,  be  but  changing  phases 
of  existence,  and  the  material  universe  itself  be 
but  perishable  and  transitory,  yet  Harmony  and 
Symmetry  are  permanent  and  eternal,  arche- 
types of  the  Divine  plan,  impress  of  that  supreme 
Reason  and  Wisdom,  the  Divine  Logos  of  the 
Christian  genesis,  '  who  was  in  the  beginning 
with  God  and  was  God  ;  by  whom  all  things 
were  made,  and  without  him  was  not  anything 
made  that  was  made.'  "  l 

The  object  of  the  treatise  which  comes  next 
in  order,  "  Christianity  without  Judaism,"  was 
to  liberate  Christian  doctrine  from  the  incum- 
brances  of  the  Mosaic  scheme.  Powell  composed 
it  at  a  time  when  the  deliverances  of  Sinai  and 

1  These  three  Papers  are  ably  discussed  in  the  National 
Review  of  July  1855,  and  in  the  Edinburgh  Review  of  October 
in  the  same  year.  I  may  also  draw  attention  to  an  able  review 
of  "The  Order  of  Nature"  in  the  Literary  Gazette  of  July  1859. 


BADEN   POWELL  195 

the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  were  by  the  great 
majority  of  Protestants  treated  as  having  equal 
authority,  the  latter  being  in  some  instances 
even  interpreted  by  the  former.  Theories  of 
verbal  inspiration  and  of  Biblical  infallibility  were 
universal  among  the  half  educated,  both  laity 
and  clergy.  The  time  had  come,  he  thought, 
for  a  simple  matter-of-fact  inquiry  as  to  the 
nature  and  value  of  the  Jewish  dispensation 
announced  in  the  Old  Testament. 

If  in  theory  the  written  word  of  Scripture  was 
from  the  first  accepted  as  a  doctrinal  referee,  it 
has  in  practice  been  badly  treated.  Before  the 
Reformation  it  had  become  subordinate  to  a 
body  of  traditional  teaching  upheld  dogmatically 
by  the  authority  of  the  Church  ;  while  Protes- 
tants, avowed  bibliolaters,  destroyed  its  value  as 
a  rational  guide.  They  viewed  every  "  text  " — 
the  word  in  this  sense  dates  only  from  the  six- 
teenth century — as  in  itself  an  independent 
message  of  arbitrary  authority,  refusing  allow- 
ance to  its  contextual  object  or  design,  to  the 
time,  place,  occasion  which  gave  it  birth.  Hence 
arose  a  brood  of  sects,  ranging  from  Anti- 
nomian  to  Calvinist,  at  once  widely  different  and 
mutually  destructive,  yet  all  equally  unassailable 
as  supported  by  an  invincible  array  of  "  texts." 


196      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

To  assign  their  true  meaning,  value,  authority, 
to  the  widely  differing  books  which  collectively 
form  "  the  Bible,"  it  is  necessary  to  examine  into 
the  ideas  and  systems  of  the  generations  to  whom 
they  were  severally  addressed,  and  to  take  into 
account  their  designed  adaptation  to  the  special 
wants,  capacities,  conditions,  circumstances  of 
the  parties  thus  instructed. 

He  proceeds  in  his  next  chapter  to  draw  a  line 
between  Law  and  Gospel,  between  Judaic  and 
Christian  dispensations,  quoting  the  Epistle  to 
the  Hebrews  in  its  contrast  between  the  sundry 
times  and  divers  manners  of  the  past,  and  the 
ultimate  revelation  to  us.  Primaeval  precepts, 
as  of  the  Sabbath ;  patriarchal  ideas,  as  of  a 
covenant  or  bargain  between  God  and  Man,  he 
shows  to  have  been  temporary,  with  no  obliga- 
tion on  later  times.  Then,  while  the  institu- 
tions recorded  in  Genesis  were  all  prefatory  to 
the  Law,  the  Law  in  all  its  details  had  the  sole 
motive  of  separating  Israel  from  the  rest  of  the 
world  ;  its  precepts  being  therefore  minute  and 
literal,  not  rising  to  broad  principles  of  conduct. 
It  was  a  concession  to  popular  weakness,  as  in 
polygamy  and  divorce  ;  to  local  customs,  as  in 
circumcision  ;  to  barbarian  instincts,  as  in  the 
lex  talionis.  Its  idea  of  the  Deity  was  anthropo- 


BADEN   POWELL  197 

morphic,  often  the  reverse  of  lofty.  Its  concep- 
tion and  all  its  details  bore  a  temporary  stamp. 
Its  formalities  were  in  a  great  measure  spiritualised 
by  the  Prophets,  who  abrogated  some  of  its  pre- 
cepts and  predicted  the  supersession  of  others. 

Christ  did  not  repeal  these  ordinances.  He 
obeyed,  upheld,  eulogised  the  Law,  yet  expanded 
it,  and  stamped  it  with  a  moral  character.  He 
confined  His  mission  to  the  House  of  Israel  : 
His  teaching  was  preliminary  and  preparatory  to 
the  establishment  of  a  new  dispensation,  which 
He  called  the  "  Kingdom  of  God."  In  His  talk 
with  the  woman  of  Samaria  and  elsewhere  he 
foretold  this  as  about  to  come  in  the  form  of  an 
independent  and  universal  spiritual  religion. 

The  Apostles  were  slow  to  recognise  this  uni- 
versality of  the  mission  with  which  their  Master 
had  entrusted  them.  Their  eyes,  partially 
opened  by  the  conversion  of  Cornelius,  came, 
under  the  somewhat  rough  influence  of  St.  Paul, 
to  see  its  novelty  and  breadth.  Paul  laid  violent 
hands  on  those  privileges  of  superiority  and 
separation  with  which  the  Law  was  inextricably 
bound  up  :  by  a  characteristically  adroit  trans- 
mutation of  parable  he  exhibited  the  proud 
Jew  as  the  base-born  son  of  Hagar,  the  despised 
Gentile  as  called  to  Christian  emancipation  and 


198      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

inheritance  of  promise,  not  through  obedience 
to  the  Law  but  through  exercise  of  faith.  Old 
observances  cease :  the  repealed  Sabbath  is  sub- 
limed into  an  eternal  heavenly  rest ;  circum- 
cision is  not  literal  in  the  flesh,  but  figurative  in 
the  heart  and  spirit.  Meanwhile  Jew  and  Gentile 
stood  alike  condemned ;  the  Jew  through  un- 
avoidable breaches  of  his  entangling  Law,  the 
Gentile  through  violation  of  the  behests  of  con- 
science ;  both  were  to  be  accepted  and  justi- 
fied on  a  new  and  common  ground.  In  the 
light  of  this  teaching  the  Law  needed  not  to  be 
formally  abrogated  ;  it  died  a  natural  death. 

We  are  led  next  to  discern  the  views  of  Law 
and  Gospel  held  by  the  Early  Church.  It  was 
natural  that  while  a  majority  of  the  first  Chris- 
tians were  Jews,  Old  Testament  Scriptures  should 
be  read  in  the  churches  and  Old  Testament 
obligations  respected  ;  and  though  to  the  non- 
Jewish  mind  there  was  never  any  confusion  be- 
tween the  Mosaic  and  the  Christian  system,  yet 
certain  Christian  observances  came  to  bear  a 
stamp  of  Judaism.  Especially  was  this  the  case 
with  regard  to  the  Sabbath.  By  Christians  it  was 
never  observed;  so  early  as  the  first  century  we  find 
the  religious  assemblies  held  not  on  the  seventh  but 
on  the  first  day  of  the  week ;  and  in  all  the  writings 


BADEN   POWELL  199 

of  the  early  centuries  a  broad  distinction  is  drawn 
between  Sabbatism  and  Christian  observance. 

This  question  of  the  Sabbath  pressed  heavily 
on  the  Professor's  mind :  it  used  to  be  said  in 
Oxford  that  he  had  Sabbath  on  the  brain  ;  that 
if  you  went  to  hear  him  preach,  the  Sabbath  was 
certain  to  be  introduced.  And  I  well  remember 
listening  to  a  sermon  delivered  by  him  at  St. 
Clement's  Church  in  1845  :  the  text  was  "  Abba 
Father  "  ;  the  main  topic  was  the  error  involved 
in  connecting  Sunday  with  the  Fourth  Com- 
mandment, or  importing  into  it  the  Jewish 
strictness  of  observance.  He  meant  us  to  under- 
stand that  all  days  ought  to  be  kept  holy,  not 
only  one  in  seven ;  but  this  did  not  remove 
from  the  minds  of  the  small  tradesmen  and 
College  servants  who  formed  his  audience,  a 
sensation  of  dismay  at  the  apparent  demolition 
of  their  Sunday.  The  rejoinder  too  may  have 
occurred  to  some  of  them  that  since  the  hallow- 
ing of  every  day  was  difficult  or  impossible  to 
ordinary  men,  it  was  politic  to  keep  and  conse- 
crate the  one  day  in  seven  which  custom  had 
rescued  from  general  indifference.  No  doubt 
it  represented  in  his  mind,  as  in  that  of  Dr. 
Arnold,  the  fatal  effect  on  Christian  doctrine 
of  the  Judaising  spirit  prevalent  in  all  ages,  and 


200      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

intensified  by  the  Puritanical  element  in  Pro- 
testantism ;  this  particular  manifestation  being 
pressingly  brought  home  to  him  by  the  dismal 
aspect  which  in  religious  and  semi-religious  homes 
he  found  everywhere  impressed  upon  the  Sun- 
days. He  traces  with  abundant  learning  the 
progress  of  Judaical  ideas ;  their  whole-hearted 
adoption  by  the  Schoolmen,  their  repudiation  by 
Luther,  Calvin,  and  the  more  learned  English 
Reformers.  He  rules  out  the  appeals  to  utility 
and  to  moral  obligation,  enlarges  on  the  mischief 
of  a  formal  adhesion  to  outward  ordinances  when 
substituted  for  change  of  heart  and  life.  The 
Old  Testament,  he  points  out,  must  be  read  by 
the  light  of  the  New  ;  and  in  conclusion  glances 
at  a  truth  which  the  English  public  of  his  day 
was  hardly  fitted  to  receive,  and  to  which  Arnold 
looked  as  destined  to  inflict  upon  existing  notions 
a  greater  shock  than  had  been  received  since  the 
proclamation  of  Papal  fallibility,  the  truth  namely 
that  the  Bible  contains  discrepancies,  contradic- 
tions, and  inaccuracies  so  patent,  that  it  can 
no  longer  be  looked  upon  as  infallible  ;  that  it 
must  abide  the  ordeal  of  what  was  just  beginning 
to  be  called  the  "  higher  criticism  "  ;  that  the 
views  of  inspiration  must  be  recast,  and  based  on 
new  beliefs. 


BADEN   POWELL  201 

The  Order  of  Nature,"  published  in  1859, 
was  the  latest  solid  volume  produced  by  Powell. 
It  surveys  the  progress  of  Physical  Science  in  the 
world's  history,  with  special  reference  to  its  bear- 
ing on  Religious  belief,  on  Theology  in  general, 
on  Revelation,  and  on  Miracles.  Scientific  in- 
quiry in  its  infancy  was  content  with  visionary 
contemplations  of  Nature,  its  impressions  were 
made  up  of  mystical  combined  with  religious 
fancy  ;  nor  was  any  strict  line  of  demarcation 
drawn  between  fanciful  hypothesis  and  physical 
fact.  Sound  principles,  thrown  out  casually  by 
a  Pythagoras  or  an  Anaxagoras,  were  overpowered 
and  lost  under  the  subtleties  of  succeeding  philo- 
sophers ;  in  the  study  of  Nature  there  was  no 
sequence,  no  connection,  no  advance.  Thus  in 
the  speculations  of  Anaximenes  and  Thales ;  in 
the  prophetic  introduction  of  the  word  Kosmos, 
Order,  to  express  the  visible  world ;  in  the 
Ptolemaic  astronomy  with  its  crystalline  sphere 
and  -primum  mobile — 

They  pass  the  planets  seven,  and  pass  the  fixed, 
And  that  crystalline  sphere  whose  balance  weighs 
The  trepidation  talked,  and  that  first  moved  ; 

we  see  only  felicitous  theoretical  anticipations  of 
truths  half  conceived.  The  pre-eminent  system 
of  Aristotle,  supreme  and  uncontrolled  through- 


202      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

out  the  Middle  Ages,  in  the  hands  of  its  later 
champions  was  made  to  violate  the  inductive 
spirit,  and  degenerated  into  a  battle  of  words  : 
the  pretensions  of  Astrology,  the  ingenious  but 
barren  syllogisms  of  the  Schoolmen,  adopted 
by  the  Church,  and  enforced  by  anathema  and 
persecution,  arrested  all  freedom  of  generalisa- 
tion, all  sound  conception  of  physical  analogy. 

With  Copernicus,  Galileo,  Kepler,  modern 
Science  commenced  :  but  their  principles,  sub- 
versive of  Aristotelian  dogmas  and  fiercely  per- 
secuted by  the  clergy,  were  slow  in  finding 
acceptance,  until  the  true  grounds  of  physical 
inquiry  were  established  once  for  all  by  the 
father  of  inductive  philosophy,  Francis  Bacon. 
Des  Cartes,  who  followed  him,  failed  as  being 
purely  deductive  :  nor  do  any  other  great  names 
occur  until  we  reach  the  Newtonian  epoch.  The 
magnitude  of  Newton's  discoveries  and  their  far- 
reaching  character  are  dwelt  upon  with  reverent 
appreciation,  brief  reference  being  made  to  the 
problems  of  his  personal  and  intellectual  char- 
acter, which  had  puzzled  all  his  biographers. 
The  philosophy  of  Leibnitz  is  characterised  as 
advancing  physical  truth,  yet  unduly  subjected 
to  theistic  consideration.  Then,  through  Hal- 
ley,  T.  Burnett,  Woodward,  Whiston,  and  the 


BADEN   POWELL  203 

Hutchinsonian  school,  we  pass  on  to  Locke. 
Locke  cleared  away  beneficially  the  old  mystical 
notions  of  "  innate  ideas  "  ;  yet  still  in  him,  as 
in  S.  Clarke,  Cudworth,  Wollaston,  the  physical 
was  unduly  subordinate  to  the  metaphysical 
spirit.  Against  this  tendency  Bishop  Berkeley's 
powerful  writings  were  a  protest ;  while  the 
seventeenth  century  Deists,  from  whom  more 
might  have  been  expected,  show  lack  at  once  of 
philosophical  and  physical  speculative  clearness. 
The  irresistible  advance  of  thought  is  shown  in 
the  famous  Analogy  of  Bishop  Butler,  slightly 
impaired  by  an  untenable  distinction  between 
"  common  "  and  "  extraordinary  "  natural  pheno- 
mena. Conyers  Middleton  limited  himself  to  an 
attack  on  Miracles ;  Hume's  argument  breaks 
down  in  its  confusion  between  physical  and 
moral  possibility  ;  between  credibilities  in  cases 
involving  the  laws  of  matter  and  those  dependent 
on  moral  volition. 

The  full  demonstration  of  cosmical  order  and 
unity,  up  to  this  point  not  attained,  is  due  to 
French  philosophers  ;  to  the  completing  of 
Newton's  gravitation  theory  and  the  proved 
stability  of  the  planetary  system  at  the  hands 
of  Clairault,  Laplace,  Lagrange.  Influenced  by 
them,  the  several  sciences  began  to  emerge  from 


204      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

their  confusion.  Bradley,  in  terrestrial  physics, 
proved  the  orbital  motion  of  the  earth  ;  Priestley 
discovered  oxygen  ;  Geology  dispersed  the  myths 
of  the  Mosaic  cosmogony  ;  Physiology  relegated 
"  final  causes  "  to  their  true  position  of  ulterior 
results.  Davy  prepared  the  way  for  Faraday  ; 
by  their  alliance  and  intercommunication  all 
branches  of  discovery — a  correlation  to  be  firmly 
established  later  on  by  Grove — combined  to  fix 
the  idea  of  law,  and  to  discredit  the  hypothesis 
of  interference ;  the  discussion  giving  birth  to 
various  schools,  of  a  theological  or  antitheological 
complexion,  known  as  Materialist,  Rationalist, 
Positivist,  and  supported  by  such  names  as  Paulus, 
Spinoza,  Strauss,  Comte.  In  this  connection, 
however,  the  Professor  carefully  vindicates  the 
progress  of  inductive  philosophy  from  any  neces- 
sary tendency  to  irreligion  ;  that  he  traces  to 
the  influence  not  of  physical  but  of  metaphysical 
speculation  ;  and  he  claims  confidently  for  the 
leaders  of  Science  of  his  own  time  that  they  had 
in  no  single  instance  avowed  or  published  opinions 
hostile  to  the  moral  and  spiritual  teaching  of  the 
New  Testament. 

His  second  Essay  treats  of  the  Order  of  Nature 
as  bearing  on  men's  supposed  insight  into  the 
nature  and  attributes  of  God.  Science  asserts 


BADEN   POWELL  205 

the  invariable  preservation  of  that  order,  it  con- 
templates nothing  beyond  or  out  of  Nature.  The 
so-called  supernatural  can  never  be  matter  of 
reason,  since  so  soon  as  it  is  brought  within  the 
domain  of  reason  it  ceases  to  be  supernatural. 
From  the  study  of  natural  order  is  implied 
a  governing  mind  :  to  the  origin  of  the  order 
thus  investigated,  to  the  attributes  of  the  mind 
evinced  by  them,  it  gives  no  sort  of  clue.  Con- 
ceptions of  a  Personal  God,  an  Omnipotent 
Creator,  a  Providential  Overseer,  a  Being  holding 
converse  with  the  spirit  of  man,  must  originate 
from  some  other  source  than  physical  Philosophy. 
Of  creation  or  of  a  creator  Science  yields  no 
evidence  ;  such  ideas  can  be  supported  only  on 
the  ground  of  a  Revelation  as  accepted  by  Faith. 
He  here  pauses  to  ask  if  the  great  law  of  Order 
is  belied  by  marvellous  events,  by  what  are 
roughly  termed  Miracles.  Disbelief  in  their 
occurrence  at  the  present  day,  is  almost  uni- 
versal :  from  a  contemporary  so-called  miracle 
the  half-educated  turn  away  as  from  a  thing 
incredible  ;  the  scientific  mind  examines  it,  gains 
a  correct  appreciation  of  the  phenomena  alleged, 
finds  them  explicable,  or,  failing  to  refer  them 
to  any  known  class  of  facts,  sets  them  down  as 
apparent  anomalies  and  awaits  their  solution  with 


206      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

confidence.  Present-day  miracles,  therefore,  are 
likely  to  receive  scant  contemporary  belief ;  but 
as  we  go  back  into  history  we  find  increasing 
readiness  to  credit  them  ;  and  thus  a  new  element 
is  introduced  into  the  discussion,  that  namely  of 
historical  testimony.  We  have  to  examine  the 
value  of  the  documentary  evidence  adduced,  and 
the  credulity  of  the  age  which  accepted  it.  And 
since  in  all  ages  the  grounds  of  conviction  have 
altered  with  the  state  of  knowledge,  we  must 
inquire  whether  those  who  attested  the  occur- 
rence of  any  extraordinary  fact  possessed  such 
knowledge  of  the  Order  of  Nature  as  might  cause 
hesitation  in  ascribing  to  divine  interposition 
appearances  which  analogy  could  interpret  as  in 
accordance  with  physical  causation.  Holding 
this  clue,  our  author  surveys  the  attempts  made 
in  the  past  to  interpret  in  accordance  with  reason 
the  miracles  of  Scripture.  He  enumerates  (i)  the 
rationalistic  view  ;  as  that  the  cities  of  the  plain 
were  destroyed  by  a  natural  volcanic  eruption, 
the  passage  of  the  Red  Sea  due  to  co-operation 
of  wind  and  tide,  pointing  out  that  this  leaves 
many  miracles  unexplained.  (2)  The  naturalistic 
theory  of  Paulus,  which  looked  on  miracles  as 
real  historical  events,  regarded  as  supernatural 
in  an  ignorant  age,  explicable  by  more  modern 


BADEN   POWELL  207 

intelligence  :  a  line  of  thought  employing  often 
resources  far  fetched,  laboured,  trivial,  yet  not  to 
be  indiscriminately  condemned.  (3)  The  mythic 
theory  of  Strauss,  who,  with  vast  learning  and 
minutest  knowledge  of  the  Bible,  represented  its 
miraculous  records  as  designedly  fictitious,  a 
legendary  invention  for  exalting  the  Messianic 
character  of  Jesus.  His  catalogue  of  the  contra- 
dictions and  discrepancies  which  haunt  the  nar- 
rative is  unimpeachable,  but  he  fails  to  show  how 
tales  drawn  up  designedly  as  myths  should  have 
been  mistaken  at  the  time  for  true  histories  by 
op-portents  as  well  as  friends.  (4)  We  pass  to  the 
subjective  theory  of  Feuerbach,  who  thought 
that  as  the  belief  in  God  Himself  is  a  subjective 
reflection  of  man's  spiritual  feelings,  so  all  parts 
of  the  Christian  scheme,  including  miracles,  are 
the  result  of  internal  impression  on  an  earnest 
soul,  which  it  believes  to  be  external  realities. 
To  the  speculations  of  Ewald  the  Professor  assigns 
the  name  of  psychological :  the  mystical  language 
in  which  they  are  couched  gives  obscurity  to 
their  meaning  ;  but  Ewald  seems  to  think  that, 
mind  acting  on  matter,  intense  spiritual  exalta- 
tion on  the  part  of  Jesus  met  by  passionate 
expectation  in  His  followers,  produced  exagge- 
rated narratives  of  His  works.  Neander  likewise 


208      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

removes  miracles  altogether  from  the  region  of 
historical  testimony,  sees  in  their  acceptance  an 
activity  of  faith,  not  an  assent  of  the  under- 
standing. Summing  up  these  attempts  Powell 
concludes  that  their  references  to  the  spirituality 
of  Christian  belief,  removing  miracles  from  the 
domain  of  positive  fact,  leave  unassailed  the  prin- 
ciple of  the  immutable  uniformity  of  Nature. 

In  a  fourth  Essay  he  examines  the  attitude 
towards  miracles  of  his  own  contemporary  theo- 
logians, and  notes  in  some  of  them,  especially  of 
the  Tractarian  School,  a  disposition  to  consider 
unaccountable  events  of  to-day  no  less  strictly 
miraculous  than  those  recorded  in  Scripture.  I 
remember  more  than  fifty  years  ago  taking  part 
in  a  discussion  on  this  very  point.  Dr.  Pusey, 
who  was  present,  upheld  with  animation  this 
view  of  literal  acceptance,  citing  a  case,  here 
recalled,  of  a  young  lady  who  had  lain  helpless 
for  years  through  a  spinal  disorder  affecting  the 
hip  joint,  and  who  under  the  influence  of  her 
own  prayers  and  those  of  her  spiritual  adviser 
rose  suddenly  from  her  couch  and  walked  com- 
pletely cured.  The  apparent  fact  was  undis- 
puted, and  the  case  had  aroused  eager  public 
discussion ;  one  class  of  theologians  claiming 
it  as  an  undoubted  miracle,  another  refusing 


BADEN   POWELL  209 

credence,  not  to  the  fact,  but  to  its  miraculous 
character.  The  views  of  both,  coloured  by 
strong  theological  bias,  were  scientifically  worth- 
less ;  and  the  case  itself  collapsed  under  the  in- 
vestigations of  Fraser  and  Brodie,  the  two  first 
surgeons  of  the  day,  who  explained  it  as  an 
instance,  not  by  any  means  in  their  experience 
unique,  of  hysterical  affection  simulating  organic 
disease.  The  hysteria  yielded  to  the  excitement 
of  passionate  prayer  ;  and  with  it  departed  all 
symptoms  of  organic  derangement.  But  the 
story  is  used  by  Powell  to  illustrate  the  diver- 
sities of  attitude  towards  miracles  entertained  by 
the  modern  religious  mind,  and  it  is  pointed  out 
that  neither  belief  nor  disbelief  was  here  based 
on  argument,  but  on  theological  prepossession. 
So  with  the  Port  Royal,  the  mediaeval,  the 
earliest  post-apostolic  ecclesiastical  miracles ;  in 
all  cases  and  at  all  times  the  belief  in  miracles 
has  been  matter  not  of  evidence  addressed  to 
the  mind,  but  of  religious  faith  impressed  upon 
the  spirit.  The  mere  fact  was  nothing  :  how- 
ever well  attested,  it  might  be  set  aside  ;  how- 
ever fabulous,  it  might  be  accepted  ;  according 
to  the  predisposing  religious  persuasion  of  the 
parties. 

In  conclusion  the  Professor  affirms  that  the 


2io      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

proven  idea  of  Kosmos,  of  universal  Order,  while 
excluding  all  interruptions  to  such  order  in  the 
physical  world,  is  consistent  with  the  admission 
of  spiritual  mysteries  in  the  world  invisible.  On 
physical  subjects  the  sacred  writers  held  the 
accepted  doctrines  of  their  time,  and  delivered 
them  in  the  only  language  which  their  hearers 
could  understand.  Their  treatment  of  these 
subjects  merges  miracles  in  mysteries,  removes 
them  from  the  region  of  material  difficulty  to 
the  spiritualised  domain  of  Faith,  leaving  un- 
disturbed that  uniformity  of  natural  order  and 
arrangement  which  has  been  the  whole  conten- 
tion of  this  thesis.1 

Baden  Powell's  views  on  the  entire  subject  are 
summarised  in  the  last  message  proceeding  from 
his  pen,  a  Paper,  published  in  1860,  as  one  of 

1  See  in  this  connection  an  able  Article,  dealing  with  New- 
man's "Lectures  on  University  Subjects,"  in  the  Westminster 
Review  of  July  1859.  Of  the  various  explanations  offered, 
Feuerbach's  is  most  in  accordance  with  the  psychological  con- 
clusions of  to-day,  in  interpreting  the  hallucinations  of  children, 
of  clairvoyants,  of  persons  slightly  deranged.  In  all  these  cases 
the  visions  are  subjectively  genuine  :  the  child  sees  lions  in  a 
wood  or  fairies  on  the  green,  having  not  yet  attained  to  the 
faculty  of  distinguishing  between  the  imagined  and  the  objec- 
tively real.  In  some  cases  the  mind  never  attains  to  this 
faculty  ;  and  so  the  clairvoyant  subjectively  sees  spirits  in  a 
room,  as  the  lunatic  sees  more  devils  than  vast  hell  can  hold. 


BADEN   POWELL  211 

the  then  famous  now  forgotten  "  Essays  and 
Reviews."  They  rose  into  extravagant  repute 
and  passed  through  many  editions,  from  no  sur- 
prising force  or  eloquence  in  the  Articles  the 
book  contained,  but  first,  from  a  readiness  in  the 
public  mind  to  welcome  free  handling  of  re- 
ligious and  biblical  topics,  in  language  not  con- 
ventional and  in  a  spirit  not  traditional,  at  the 
hands  of  eminent  divines ;  and  secondly  from  the 
bitterness  with  which  the  volume  was  received 
by  the  great  majority  of  the  clergy,  from  its 
censure  in  Convocation,  and  from  the  punitive 
measures  attempted  in  the  courts  of  law  against 
some  of  its  authors. 

The  Article  was  entitled  "  On  the  Study  of  the 
Evidences  of  Christianity."  It  dealt  with  those 
who  have  in  the  present  day  upheld  the  truth 
of  Scripture  miracles  as  suspensions  or  violations 
of  the  law  of  Nature  ;  and  who,  conscious  of 
the  paradox  they  were  proclaiming,  argued  that 
Divine  Omnipotence  is  supreme,  that  such  sus- 
pensions were  necessary  to  the  ends  of  the  dis- 
pensations which  they  accompanied,  that  in 
matters  religious  the  credibility  of  external  facts 
must  be  referred  to  a  submissive  spirit  of  faith. 
It  is  answered  that  Divine  Omnipotence  can  only 
be  deduced  from  the  pages  of  the  Bible,  and 


212      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

cannot  be  brought  to  prove  the  truth  of  state- 
ments in  the  book  on  which  this  presumption  is 
founded  :  that  the  allegation  of  "  necessity '' 
could  only  be  applied  to  miracles  proved  on 
independent  grounds  :  that  matters  of  admitted 
external  and  historical  fact  must  appear  at  the 
bar  of  reason  and  be  judged  by  historical  criti- 
cism :  that  the  basis  of  belief  cannot  be  shifted 
from  evidence  of  fact  to  influence  of  internal 
persuasion  :  and  that,  even  admitting  honesty  in 
the  reporters  of  supernatural  appearances,  the 
probability  of  mistake  or  deception  on  their  part 
is  greater  than  the  probability  of  the  event 
having  really  taken  place  in  the  way  and  from 
the  causes  assigned.  Reason,  he  added  finally,  is 
not  to  be  confused  with  feeling,  external  pheno- 
mena with  emotional  receptiveness.  Miracles 
are,  or  are  not,  brought  forward  as  historical 
facts  :  if  not  historical,  they  become  fables ;  if 
historical,  they  must  be  criticised  historically. 
Those  who  champion  the  supernatural  view  of 
miracles  are  in  conflict  with  the  whole  current 
of  accepted  thought  and  knowledge  around  them. 
Their  appeal  to  testimony  refuses  to  modify  mere 
attesting  statement  by  reasoning,  by  analogy,  or 
by  antecedent  credibility.  The  essential  ques- 
tion of  miracles  stands  apart  from  testimony  : 


BADEN   POWELL  213 

not  the  mere  fact,  but  the  cause  and  explanation 
of  it,  is  the  point  at  issue.  The  Gospel  miracles 
are  objects,  not  evidences,  of  faith,  nor  is  Chris- 
tian hope  restricted  to  external  signs. 

The  volumes  which  I  have  endeavoured  to 
analyse  are  the  most  characteristic,  as  they  are 
the  most  mature,  of  the  Professor's  works.  They 
attained  a  wide  circulation  ;  and  their  influence, 
among  younger  students  more  especially,  was 
very  great.  A  noted  Liverpool  clergyman  and 
preacher,  much  distressed  by  doubts  as  to  whether 
his  enlarged  views  on  the  authenticity  and  in- 
spiration of  the  Old  Testament  historical  books 
were  inconsistent  with  his  clerical  and  minis- 
terial position,  found  his  difficulties  removed  by 
a  study  of  "  Christianity  without  Judaism."  The 
same  work  was  reprinted  in  1866  by  a  Mr. 
Robertson  of  Edinburgh  at  his  own  expense, 
and  scattered  broadcast  through  Scotland.  At 
the  author's  death  letters  from  eminent  men 
poured  in  upon  his  widow,  bearing  testimony  to 
the  debt  of  gratitude  which  the  writers  owed  to 
their  lost  and  venerated  instructor.  Sir  William 
Grove  tells  her  how  he  had  read  the  "  Unity  of 
Worlds  "  nine  times  through,  preserving  his  early 
copy  thickly  scored  with  admiring  pencil  marks. 


2i4      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

Robert  Stephenson  spoke  of  the  same  book  as 
his  "  second  Bible,"  declaring  that  he  owed  to  it 
the  mental  happiness  of  his  life.  Charles  Darwin, 
whose  "  Origin  of  Species "  appeared  shortly 
before  the  Professor's  death,  declared  that  he 
had  gathered  out  of  Powell's  teaching  the  logical 
weapons  by  which  he  reasoned  on  his  collected 
facts.  "  His  books,"  wrote  an  eloquent  critic  in 
the  Westminster  Review  ^  "  will  bear  comparison 
with  Locke  and  Bacon  in  profundity  and  pre- 
cision, with  George  Combe  in  fertility  of  illus- 
tration, with  Brewster  or  the  author  of  the 
'  Vestiges '  in  beauty  of  style  and  polished 
elegance  of  language."  Their  conclusions,  ac- 
cepted almost  universally  to-day,  at  the  time  of 
publication  excited  in  many  minds  alarm  and 
anger  ;  nor  did  their  author  escape  the  obloquy 
which  assails  all  protagonists  in  the  cause  of 
truth.  "  Oh  !  how  I  sigh  after  Truth,"  said 
Montalembert  to  Rosmini.  "  Young  man,  you 
can  never  attain  truth  without  martyrdom,"  was 
the  older  philosopher's  answer.  Powell  bore  his 
share  of  it  without  shrinking  :  but,  himself  re- 
specting always  the  feelings  of  others,  and  speak- 
ing unkindly  of  no  one,  he  suffered  keenly  from 
the  malignant  hostility  and  the  breaches  of 
friendship  in  which  his  outspoken  avowals  in- 


BADEN   POWELL  215 

volved  him.  That  his  life  should  never  have 
been  written  is  a  loss  to  his  own  time  and  to 
ours.  The  duty  of  finding  a  biographer  was 
accepted  by  Dean  Stanley,  who,  after  rejecting 
several  aspirants,  as  unequal  to  the  task  of  ap- 
praising at  once  the  scientific  and  the  theological 
aspects  of  his  mind,  undertook  with  the  assist- 
ance of  Mrs.  Baden-Powell  to  write  it  himself, 
but  was  prevented  by  death.  A  vast  quantity 
of  materials  for  such  a  work,  untouched  since 
they  were  collected  at  his  death,  remain  in  the 
custody  of  his  widow.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that 
they  may  yet  find  an  adequate  biographer,  able 
to  appreciate  and  portray  all  sides  of  his  many- 
coloured  life. 

In  all  the  fierce  controversies  of  that  excited 
time  he  had  taken  an  inoffensive  but  an  active 
part.  Of  the  "  Hampden  rows,"  as  they  were 
called,  he  possessed  all  the  pamphlets,  papers, 
letters  issued,  with  much  special  and  unpublished 
matter  besides  :  he  believed  the  collection  to  be 
unique.  So  also  he  had  amassed,  what  is  still 
extant  among  his  Papers,  a  complete  history 
of  the  1830  Examination  Statute.  He  was  a 
member  of  the  first  "  Royal  Commission  on  Uni- 
versity Education,"  appointed  in  1850.  Alone 
amongst  the  Commissioners,  he  urged  the  in- 


216      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

elusion  of  organised  ^Science  Teaching  in  any 
reformed  curriculum.  The  contention  on  the 
subject  was  prolonged  and  hot,  and  Powell 
threatened  to  resign  unless  he  could  have  his 
way.  Then  Jeune  stepped  forward  on  Powell's 
side,  announcing  that  a  perusal  in  early  life  of 
Mrs.  Marcet's  "  Conversations "  had  inspired 
him  with  a  high  admiration  for  Physical  Science  ; 
and  the  dissentients  gave  in.  I  well  remember 
the  black  looks  which  were  lavished  on  these 
two,  as  on  Goldwin  Smith  and  Stanley,  the 
Secretaries,  whenever  they  appeared  in  Oxford. 
Jeune  told  Mrs.  Baden-Powell,  that  though  living 
in  the  charmed  circle  of  Heads,  who  exchanged 
hospitality  by  rule,  his  invitations  to  dinner 
sensibly  fell  off.  Jeune  cared  no  more  than  his 
nickname-sake  Mephistopheles  would  have  done, 
and  Stanley  was  amused  always  by  manifestations 
of  hostility  :  but  Powell,  who  dearly  loved  his 
friends,  and  had  kept  himself  calm  through  all 
the  frays  of  that  agitated  decade,  was  deeply 
wounded.  His  own  gentleness  towards  oppo- 
nents was  never  impaired  by  irritation  ;  after 
his  death  Manning  asked  to  be  introduced  to 
his  widow,  wishing  to  tell  her  that  he  and  his 
associates  respected  Baden  Powell  above  all  the 
Protestant  world :  "He  was  the  only  one  of  our 


BADEN   POWELL  217 

opponents  who  always  spoke  the  truth  about 
us  :  strongly  opposed  to  our  avowed  beliefs,  he 
yet  never  accused  us  of  what  we  did  not  pro- 
fess." He  was  himself  habitually  hospitable  :  it 
was  a  joke  in  the  family  that  the  mention  of 
any  acquaintance  would  rouse  him  to  say — "  Do 
ask  him  to  dinner  ;  it  is  a  long  time  since  he 
dined  with  us."  All  eminent  visitors  to  Oxford 
assembled  at  his  table  :  Struve  from  St.  Peters- 
burg, Le  Verrier,  Lord  Northampton,  Sir  John 
Lubbock  (the  elder),  Airy,  De  Morgan,  Edward 
Forbes,  "  Bob  "  Lowe,  Darwin,  Buckle,  were 
made  welcome  in  New  College  Lane.  At  the 
meeting  of  the  British  Association  in  1847,  he 
being  President  of  the  Mathematical  Section, 
Le  Verrier  and  Adams  met  for  the  first  time  at 
his  house.  The  Paris  savant  had  come  to  an- 
nounce his  interesting  discovery  that  the  comet 
whose  sudden  apparent  return  had  bewildered 
astronomers  three  years  before,  was  only  one  of 
three  distinct  comets  observed  in  1770,  1843, 
1844.  After  briefly  demonstrating  his  discovery 
to  the  assembled  guests,  he  inscribed  in  Mrs. 
Baden-Powell's  album  a  rough  diagram  of  the 
three  eccentric  orbits,  writing  under  it  the 
words,  "  Ces  trois  com^tes  sont  differentes  1'une 
de  1'autre.  Ce  28  Juin  1847  Oxford,  N.  G.  Le 


2i 8       PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

Verrier."  And  that  the  discussion  as  to  priority 
of  discovery  between  himself  and  Adams  in 
another  famous  case  might  not  be  renewed  in 
this,  he  pressed  Adams  also  to  sign  the  Paper, 
which  his  confrere  did  in  these  words — "  Certifie 
conforme  a  la  seance  d'aujourd  hui  28  Juin  1847. 
J.  C.  Adams."  On  a  later  occasion,  when 
Whately,  Whewell,  and  others  were  dining,  Mrs. 
Powell  had  provided  a  dish  of  eighteen  plovers' 
eggs  to  match  the  number  of  her  guests.  It 
stood  in  front  of  Whately,  who  amid  the 
vehemence  of  his  talk  helped  himself  to  and  de- 
voured sixteen  of  the  eggs  successively.  Mrs. 
Whately  used  to  cap  the  story  by  relating  rue- 
fully how  at  a  large  ceremonial  dinner  in  Dublin 
she  had  ordered  a  dish  of  Ruffs  and  Reeves,  an 
unusual  and  very  costly  dainty.  At  that  time 
guests  saw  their  dinner  in  the  flesh,  not,  as  now, 
through  the  medium  of  a  menu.  The  Ruffs  and 
Reeves,  in  a  side-dish,  were  opposite  and  close 
to  an  Irish  clergyman,  who,  liking  their  looks, 
stuck  his  fork  into  one  after  another.  The 
hostess,  not  willing  that  her  specialties  should 
take  wing  into  a  single  maw  instead  of  being 
widely  admired  and  partaken,  tried  to  tempt  the 
esurient  gentleman  with  other  delicacies — "  May  I 
help  you  to  this,  Mr.  ,  or  will  you  not  take 


BADEN   POWELL  219 

some  of  that  ?  " — to  be  met  with  the  placid 
answer,  "  No  thank  you,  Ma'am,  these  little 
birrds  will  do  well  enough  for  me." 

Powell  possessed  great  taste  in  Art,  owning 
and  appreciating  a  considerable  collection  of 
paintings  by  English  and  Foreign  Artists.  Many 
drawings  from  his  own  brush  or  pen  in  water- 
colour  or  black  and  white  remain  to  attest  his 
skill.  The  gift  was  inherited  by  his  son  Frank, 
whose  "  Wooden  Walls  of  England "  hangs  in 
the  public  gallery  at  Salford.  The  father  was  an 
admirable  caricaturist,  an  accomplishment  which 
he  shared  with  his  friend  Warden  Shuttleworth  ; 
Whately  used  to  say  that  Powell's  fine  sense 
of  humour  came  out  in  his  drawings  more  than 
in  his  words.  As  he  told  a  College  story,  or 
described  an  incident  in  everyday  life,  his  dex- 
terous fingers  would  with  a  few  strokes  of  the  pen 
illustrate  his  narrative.  I  have  seen  many  of  his 
sketches,  scratched  and  thrown  aside,  preserved 
afterwards  by  his  wife.  Facial  expression,  sit  of 
dress,  significance  of  posture,  are  delineated  by 
minute  touches  with  almost  the  fidelity  of  a 
Cruikshank.  The  costumes  of  his  time  :  short 
feminine  dresses  and  sandal  shoes,  enormous 
bonnets,  capacious  muffs  :  the  male  choking 
neckcloths,  polished  Hessians,  dandy  eyeglass, 


220      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

hirsute  ornaments  of  the  cheek,  ranging  from 
slight  educated  whisker  to  truculent  Newgate 
fringe  ;  Dons  with  bewigged  head,  policemen 
with  shiny  hat-tops,  dustmen  with  sou'wester 
and  bell,  congregations  with  grotesque  clerk  and 
pretty  female  singers,  form  a  gallery  of  pre- 
Victorian  and  early  Victorian  dress,  each  being 
set  off  by  some  happy  Horatian  or  Virgilian  pun. 
A  bone  stolen  from  a  dainty  poodle  by  a  savage 
unkempt  mongrel  is  labelled — "  Cur  non,  Mopse, 
boni  ? "  Above  two  jovial  symposiasts  sitting 
with  claret  jug  between  them  in  the  beatific 
stage  of  intoxication  is  inscribed — "  Magisque 
viri  nunc  gloria  claret"  An  undergraduate  baffled 
in  Collections  by  the  Asses'  Bridge  is  consoled 
by  "  Audet  et  ignoto  sese  committere  ponti"  A 
covetous  parson  for  his  tithes  distraining,  who, 
regardless  of  the  farmer's  protests,  selects  the 
fattest  pigling  from  a  curly-tailed  litter,  is 
marked  "  Suum  cuique"  Buckland  lectures  in 
the  Ashmolean  ;  one  hand  pointing  to  an  ichthyo- 
saurus on  the  wall,  the  other  manipulating  two 
of  the  monster's  paddle-bones  on  the  table  :  the 
motto,  in  happy  double  meaning,  is  "  Pignusque 
direptum  lacertis"  The  "  Age  "  coach,  with 
heaped  luggage,  cloaked  passengers,  Weller-cos- 
tumed  Jehu,  is  driving  off  to  the  dismay  of 


BADEN   POWELL  221 

intending  passengers  who  have  arrived  too  late, 
and  for  whom  a  moral  is  pointed  by  the  line — 
"  Utendum  est  sEtate,  cito  pede  praeterit  JEtas" 
A  horrible  old  chiffonier  is  picking  foul  frag- 
ments from  a  refuse-heap,  while  a  nightman's 
cart  moves  off :  the  legend  is  "  Suave  est  ex 
magno  tollere  acervo."  "  Uno  avulso  non  de- 
ficit alter,"  hails  the  departure  from  the  Schools 
of  a  plucked  undergraduate,  making  way  for  a 
brother  in  calamity.  A  sweep  with  soot-bag  and 
shovel,  marching  careless  down  the  street,  leaves 
tokens  on  the  finery  of  a  sprucely  dressed  lady 
and  gentleman  :  the  motto,  misquoted  here  as 
almost  universally,  is,  "  Nihil  tetigit  quod  non 
ornavit."  Two  maids  are  toiling  with  stay-laces 
to  attenuate  yet  further  the  waist  of  an  already 
too  slender  beauty  :  "  In  tenui  labor  "  advertises 
the  struggle.  A  bearded  Turk  is  eating  dinner 
with  his  fingers ;  his  English  convive  hands  him 
a  fork  with  the  words,  "  Naturam  expellas  furca" 
A  Cambridge  freshman,  sauntering  with  stony 
expressionless  face  along  King's  Parade,  is  labelled 
"  Cantab-it  vacuus."  A  larger  comic  cartoon 
of  the  Hampden  controversy  was  lithographed 
by  subscription,  and  is  still  to  be  met  with. 
His  most  elaborate  work  in  this  kind  was 
"  Whately's  Logic  Illustrated,"  which  he  pre- 


222      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

sented  to  the  Archbishop.  The  chapter  on 
"  Abstraction  of  Property "  is  enforced  by  a 
gipsy  stealing  linen  while  the  laundry-maid's 
fortune  is  being  told  by  the  thief's  mother. 
The  ensuing  chapter  on  "  Simple  Apprehension  " 
shows  the  capture  of  the  culprit  by  a  constable  ; 
while  those  which  follow  on  "  Judgment  "  and 
"  Discourse  "  exhibit  the  sequel  in  the  criminal 
court.  "  The  Illicit  Process  of  the  Major " 
shows  an  officer  eloping  with  a  lady  ;  the  curt 
refusal  of  a  less  fortunate  suitor  exemplifies  the 
"  Particular  Negative."  Each  chapter  in  turn 
is  whimsically  comedised  :  the  jeu  d? esprit  is, 
I  believe,  preserved  in  the  Whately  family. 

Baden  Powell,  writes  his  wife  to  me  amongst 
other  interesting  reminiscences,  was  by  nature 
singularly  modest ;  appearing  always  unaware  of 
his  own  great  powers  and  extraordinary  attain- 
ments in  Art,  Literature,  Science.  His  fund  of 
ready  wit,  she  goes  on  to  say,  his  refined  tastes 
and  habits,  his  ready  sympathy,  the  simple 
nobility  of  his  nature,  endeared  him  to  a  de- 
voted band  of  friends.  He  was  a  great  lover  of 
children  :  as  a  young  father  he  was  the  only 
member  of  the  family  who  could  at  once  soothe 
a  fractious  infant,  and  to  the  last  when  com- 
pelled to  be  away  from  home  he  would  always 


BADEN   POWELL  223 

if  possible  have  his  wife  and  children  with  him. 
His  little  ones  came  to  him  every  day  for  ex- 
planatory lessons  in  the  New  Testament,  and  he 
was  often  to  be  seen  with  the  older  amongst 
them,  on  week-days  as  on  Sundays,  at  the  Ser- 
vices in  St.  Andrew's,  Wells  Street.  It  was  his 
own  unfailing  custom  to  read  a  chapter  from  the 
Greek  Testament  immediately  after  breakfast. 
His  last  marker  was  in  Philippians  iii.,  the  verses 
8-1 6  were  pencil  scored,  a  double  mark  against 
verse  8. 

The  fidelity  of  the  portrait  accompanying 
this  chapter  is  acknowledged  by  all  who  knew 
him  ;  his  countenance,  animated  and  intellectual, 
placid,  kindly,  humorous,  reflected  the  character 
within :  "  A  man's  wisdom,"  says  the  Hebrew 
Preacher,  "  maketh  his  face  to  shine  ;  "  by  the 
author  of  the  "  British  Association  at  Oxford  " 
it  is  thus  described :  "  Mr.  Baden  Powell,  Presi- 
dent of  the  Mathematical  Section,  is  pale  to 
whiteness,  but  beaming  with  what  resembles  the 
pleasure  of  a  happy  child."  He  had  been  three 
times  married  :  in  1821  to  Eliza  Rivaz,  who  died 
childless  in  1836.  A  year  later,  as  we  have 
already  seen,  he  married  Charlotte  Pope,  who 
died  in  1841.  His  third  wife,  wedded  to  him  in 
1846,  was  Henrietta  Grace,  daughter  of  Admiral 


224      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

Smyth,  F.R.S.,  D.C.L.,  &c.  By  her  he  had 
ten  children ;  the  eldest  not  fourteen,  the 
youngest  three  weeks  old,  at  his  death.  Their 
mother,  who  still  lives,  an  accomplished  artist, 
musician,  mathematician,  naturalist,  after  losing 
her  husband  devoted  herself  to  her  children's 
education  :  all  rose  to  eminence  in  one  or  another 
capacity,  the  defender  of  Mafeking  being  only 
one  among  several  distinguished  brothers. 

Active  almost  to  the  last,  his  death  came  as  a 
surprise  to  all  except  his  nearest  relatives,  who 
had  watched  his  failing  health  in  the  preceding 
winter.  In  June  1860  he  died  in  the  presence 
of  his  wife  and  children,  his  spirit  until  the  last 
bright  as  it  had  ever  been  ;  passing  away  from 
a  world  which  he  had  striven  uniformly  to  en- 
lighten, and  to  leave  better  and  wiser  than  he 
found  it.  Not  always,  not  often,  in  his  own 
time,  does  the  prophet-pioneer  receive  his  meed 
of  recognition  and  of  praise.  He  passes,  but  his 
work  remains ;  to  germinate,  grow,  yield  fruition 
to  a  posterity  which  has  lost  or  scantily  holds 
the  memory  of  its  benefactor.  Nor  would  he 
have  it  otherwise.  He  laboured,  not  for  himself 
but  for  mankind  ;  not  that  his  own  name  might 
live,  but  that  his  toil  of  thought  and  utterance 
might  strengthen  others'  souls,  disseminate  Truth, 


BADEN   POWELL  225 

advance  the  progress  of  humanity,  lead  up  the 
golden  year. 

Others,  I  doubt  not,  if  not  we, 
The  issue  of  our  toils  shall  see  ; 
And,  (we  forgotten  and  unknown,) 
Young  children  gather  as  their  own 
The  harvest  that  the  dead  had  sown. 


CHAPTER   VIII 

BLANCO  WHITE 

Truly,  thou  knowest  not,  and  thou  needst  not  know  : 
Hope  only,  hope  thou,  and  believe  alway. 
I  also  know  not,  and  I  need  not  know  ; 
Only  with  questionings  pass  I  to  and  fro, 
Perplexing  these  that  sleep,  and  in  their  folly 
Imbreeding  doubt  and  sceptic  melancholy. 

TRUTH,  says  Milton  in  one  of  his  inspired  rhap- 
sodies ;  "  Truth  indeed  came  once  into  the  world 
with  her  divine  Master,  and  was  a  perfect  shape 
most  glorious  to  look  on.  But  when  He  ascended, 
and  His  Apostles  after  Him  were  laid  asleep,  then 
strait  arose  a  wicked  race  of  deceivers,  who,  as 
the  story  goes  of  the  Egyptian  Typhon  with 
his  conspirators  how  they  dealt  with  the  god 
Osiris,  took  the  virgin  Truth,  hewd  her  lovely 
form  into  a  thousand  peeces  and  scatter'd  them 
to  the  four  winds.  From  that  time  ever  since, 
the  sad  friends  of  Truth,  such  as  durst  appear, 
imitating  the  carefull  search  that  Isis  made  for 

the  mangl'd  body  of  Osiris,  went  up  and  down 

226 


BLANCO   WHITE  227 

gathering  up  limb  by  limb  still  as  they  might 
find  them.  We  have  not  yet  found  them  all, 
nor  ever  shall  doe  till  her  Master's  second 
coming  :  He  shall  bring  together  every  joynt 
and  member,  and  shall  mould  them  into  an 
immortall  feature  of  loveliness  and  perfection." 
I  have  here  to  tell  of  one  who  spent  his  life  in 
searching  out  these  mutilated  fragments ;  failing, 
like  Osiris'  wife,  to  find  and  reunite  them  all, 
yet  ending  with  Milton's  confidence,  not  with 
Pilate's  sneer. 

In  the  year  1826  a  Spanish  gentleman,  formerly 
a  Roman  Catholic  priest,  now  in  English  Orders, 
came  to  live  in  Oxford.  He  had  settled  there 
for  a  short  time  some  years  earlier  on  the  invi- 
tation of  Warden  Shuttleworth  ;  and  a  twelve- 
months' residence  had  revealed  him  as  a  man  of 
very  superior  attainments,  a  scholar  in  several 
languages,  an  adept  in  philosophy  and  theology, 
an  accomplished  scientific  musician,  and  a  skilled 
performer  on  the  violin.  So  abiding  was  the 
impression  that  he  had  created  and  left  behind 
him,  that  on  his  return  in  1826  he  was  wel- 
comed by  Oriel  College  as  an  honorary  Fellow, 
and  received  from  the  University  the  degree  of 
M.A.  by  diploma,  a  compliment  at  that  time 


228      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

rarely  paid  except  to  crowned  heads  or  persons 
of  great  distinction.  Without  his  name  no  list 
of  the  Noetic  brotherhood  would  be  complete, 
besides  that  singular  yet  painful  interest  attaches 
to  his  personal  and  mental  history. 

About  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century 
an  ancient  Roman  Catholic  Irish  family,  White 
by  name,  fled  from  the  irksomeness  of  penal 
laws  to  establish  themselves  in  Seville  as  mer- 
chants. Here  they  gained  repute  and  wealth, 
were  ennobled  by  the  King,  and  married  into 
aristocratic  families  :  here  too  JOSEPH  BLANCO 
WHITE,  grandson  to  the  first  settler,  was  born 
in  1775.  His  father  was  a  quiet  gentleman  of 
approved  business  habits,  his  mother  a  native 
lady,  proud  of  her  Andalusian  blood ;  both  en- 
tirely under  the  control  of  the  priest  to  whom 
they  had  submitted  the  direction  of  their  lives 
and  consciences.  At  eight  years  old  the  boy  was 
placed  in  his  father's  office,  where  by  conversing 
with  the  Irish  clerks  and  copying  the  English 
correspondence  he  came  to  write  English  fluently 
and  to  speak  it  in  Milesian  fashion.  He  also 
learned  to  play  the  violin  from  one  of  the 
managers,  who  observed  his  genius  for  music. 
But  he  found  mercantile  bondage  odious ;  and 
as  his  only  means  of  escaping  from  it  he  declared 


BLANCO   WHITE  229 

his  wish  to  become  a  priest.  He  was  sent  to  a 
school  where  he  gained  some  general  know- 
ledge, and  at  fourteen  years  old  was  placed  in  a 
Dominican  College.  Here  he  was  instructed  in 
the  Church  Catechism  with  theological  explana- 
tions in  the  language  of  scholastic  divinity  ;  was 
immersed  in  tedious  devotional  practices,  sub- 
jected to  frequent  confessions,  forbidden  to  walk 
out  alone,  interdicted  from  all  books  except  the 
approved  Lives  of  Saints.  His  first  glimpse  into 
a  world  unrestricted  by  conventual  rules  was 
through  the  pages  of  Don  Quixote,  which  he 
obtained  by  accident  and  read  by  stealth  :  a 
similar  perusal  of  l&Umaque  in  a  Spanish  trans- 
lation which  he  found  in  his  father's  bookcase 
sowed  in  him  the  seeds  of  a  transient  revolt 
against  Christianity.  If  heathens,  he  argued, 
were  so  wise,  brave,  sincere,  so  devout  in  sacri- 
ficial homage  to  their  gods,  as  in  the  case  of 
Telemachus  and  Mentor,  how  could  it  be  as- 
serted that  their  religion  and  their  worship  were 
wrong  ?  Clearly  through  some  ancestral  White 
the  boy  must  have  inherited  a  strain  of  inborn 
scepticism.  These  questionings  were  further 
nourished  by  the  works  of  Feyjoo,  a  learned 
Benedictine  friar,  which  taught  him  to  appreciate 
the  principles  of  the  Baconian  philosophy,  and 


230      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

to  cast  ridicule  on  the  learned  absurdities  of  the 
Schoolmen.  Reprimanded  one  day  for  inatten- 
tion by  the  Dominican  teacher,  he  rose  in  his 
place  and  denounced  the  Aristotelian  philosophy, 
with  a  fluent  use  of  Feyjoo's  arguments.  Great 
commotion  ensued,  the  students  not  less  horrified 
than  the  professor  :  Blanco  was  removed  from 
the  College  and  sent  to  the  University.  Here 
he  made  rapid  progress  ;  improving  his  slight 
knowledge  of  Latin,  mastering  French  and 
Italian,  devouring  all  books  in  those  languages 
which  he  could  obtain  ;  entering  finally  with 
great  energy  on  the  study  of  divinity,  and  join- 
ing a  Society  formed  amongst  the  Students  for 
reading  and  discussion  of  History  and  Belles 
Lettres.  Meanwhile,  as  became  the  scion  of  a 
pious  house,  he  had  chosen  a  confessor  from 
amongst  the  Fathers  of  St.  Philip  Neri,  attracted 
by  the  exquisite  music  for  which  their  Oratory 
was  already  famous,  and  which  has  bequeathed 
the  name  Oratorio  to  the  highest  class  of  sacred 
dramatic  composition.  Permission  to  take  part 
in  the  performances  of  their  orchestra  relieved 
in  some  degree  the  tedium  of  the  Sunday 
observances. 

From  the  age  of  fourteen  he  was  subjected  to 
the    devotional    practices  incumbent   on   candi- 


BLANCO   WHITE  231 

dates  for  the  Tonsure.  He  recalled  these  long 
afterwards  with  strong  repugnance  :  the  early 
confessions  and  communions ;  the  prolonged 
kneeling  on  the  cold  stones  for  meditation  on 
some  text  of  Scripture  ;  the  sermon  an  hour 
and  a  half  in  length  ;  the  wearisome  daily  read- 
ing aloud  in  private  of  the  Breviary ;  worst  of 
all,  the  "  Spiritual  Exercises  of  St.  Ignatius," 
in  which  for  ten  successive  days,  intensified  by 
fasting  and  seclusion,  the  passionate  fulminations 
of  a  practised  preacher  excited  a  crowd  of  peni- 
tents into  shrieking  convulsions  by  a  minute 
description  of  impending  hell.  The  continuance 
of  these  practices,  while  kindling  emotional  sensi- 
tiveness, had  the  effect  in  most  cases  of  blunting 
moral  responsibility  :  that  in  his  case  it  was  not 
so  was  shown  by  an  incident  which  he  records. 
He  had  read  the  works  of  Muratori,  who,  ortho- 
dox on  other  points,  denied  the  Immaculate 
Conception,  a  doctrine  which  though  not  at 
that  time  formally  announced  by  Rome,  was  in- 
sisted on  by  the  Spanish  bishops.  In  confession 
White  acknowledged  that  he  had  read  the  book. 
His  confessor  refused  absolution  unless  he  would 
there  and  then  disclose,  or  pledge  himself  to 
accuse  to  the  Inquisition,  the  friend  from  whom 
he  had  received  the  book.  "  I  told  him  that  I 


232      PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

would  rather  go  to  hell  than  betray  my  friend," 
and  the  director  contented  himself  with  ad- 
vising his  penitent  to  caution  the  unknown 
against  the  sin  of  owning  a  book  which  the 
Inquisition  had  banned.  More  than  once  as  the 
time  drew  near  he  shrank  from  the  irrevocable 
step  of  ordination,  but,  yielding  to  his  mother's 
tears  and  prayers,  conquered  his  reluctance,  and 
at  the  age  of  twenty-one  received  Sub-deacon's 
Orders.  His  weeping  mother  could  now  dry  her 
eyes  :  marriage  of  a  person  in  Sub-deacon's 
Orders  was  by  Spanish  law  null  and  void  :  her 
terror  of  his  marrying,  which  seems  to  have 
influenced  her  quite  as  much  as  desire  for  the 
salvation  of  his  soul,  was  once  for  all  removed. 
In  the  notes  of  his  Journal  he  partially  lifts  the 
veil  to  show  how  nugatory,  and  at  the  same  time 
how  ruinous  to  morality,  were  the  celibate  laws ; 
how  the  incontinence  of  the  clergy  was  in  his 
time  matter  of  notoriety,  nay  of  jest ;  and  he 
quotes  as  well  known  the  saying  of  a  certain 
bishop.  Those  whom  the  prelate  had  admitted  to 
Minor  Orders,  which  stigmatise  marriage  as  un- 
seemly, yet  do  not  prohibit  it,  he  was  wont  to 
dismiss  with  the  injunction  "  Beware  of  them" 
the  Spanish  pronoun  admitting  of  a  feminine  in- 
flection :  when  he  had  ordained  his  neophytes 


BLANCO   WHITE  233 


later  as  sub-deacons,  he  would  alter  his  advice 
into  "  Let  them  beware  of  you."  In  his  own 
case,  to  some  extent  at  least,  slighted  Nature 
avenged  herself  :  for  we  hear  of  a  son,  Ferdi- 
nand, whom  he  dearly  loved  :  "  I  felt  as  if  my 
heart  was  breaking,"  he  notes  in  his  Journal, 
when,  as  a  lieutenant  in  the  4Oth  Regiment, 
the  young  man  left  him  for  Bombay  shortly 
before  his  own  death.  But  he  declares  himself 
to  have  been  rigidly  faithful  to  the  unlegalised 
connection  which  he  had  formed,  and  free  from 
the  vagrant  amours  which  characterised  many 
amongst  his  brethren. 

The  Rubicon  once  passed,  he  set  himself  to 
make  the  best  of  his  new  life.  He  became  a 
Fellow  of  the  Seville  College,  proceeded  to 
Deacon's  and  Priest's  Orders,  was  elected  to  a 
Canonry  in  the  Cathedral  of  Cadiz,  and  received 
a  licence  to  hear  confessions ;  his  experience  in 
this  last  capacity  containing  painful  revelations 
as  to  the  effect  on  priests  and  people  of  habitual 
compulsory  confession.  He  was  now,  at  the  age 
of  twenty-seven,  in  a  position  from  which  highest 
ecclesiastical  promotion  was  within  his  reach. 
But  this  was  not  to  be  :  the  moral  disapproba- 
tion caused  by  his  interior  view  of  the  Church 
system  revived  and  strengthened  the  intellectual 


234       PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

doubts  which  he  had  formerly  entertained,  but 
had  suppressed  out  of  filial  tenderness.  It  be- 
came clear  to  him  that  the  Church  had  erred  : 
it  could  no  longer  claim  his  implicit  allegiance  ; 
and  since  his  whole  life's  teaching  had  impressed 
upon  him  the  belief  that  the  Church  and  Chris- 
tianity were  identical,  revolt  against  the  Church 
involved  the  rejection  of  Christianity.  What 
was  he  to  do  ?  he  could  not  relinquish  his  pro- 
fession and  remain  in  Spain  ;  such  an  act  would 
have  been  at  that  time  punished  with  death  : 
he  must  either  quit  the  country,  causing  thereby 
acute  misery  to  his  friends,  or  continue  to  bow 
himself  in  the  house  of  Rimmon,  exhibiting  out- 
ward conformity  and  discharging  priestly  functions 
with  internal  disbelief  in  their  force  and  in  the 
religious  dogmas  which  they  support.  From  this 
last  deceptive  course  he  was  saved  by  the  moral 
rectitude  which  his  sacerdotal  training  had  not 
been  able  to  suppress  :  flight  from  Spain,  how- 
ever painful  to  him,  was  the  less  of  the  two 
evils  :  not  without  difficulty  he  embarked  on  an 
English  ship,  and  landed  at  Falmouth  in  March 
1810,  being  then  thirty-five  years  old. 

Friends  soon  arose  to  help  the  solitary  exile  ; 
gentlemen  to  whom  he  had  shown  attention 
while  they  were  travelling  in  Spain  repaid  his 


BLANCO   WHITE  235 

civilities  with  interest ;  he  was  received  cordially 
by  Sir  Humphry  Davy,  then  in  the  springtide 
of  his  great  repute  ;  by  Lord  and  Lady  Holland, 
by  young  Lord  John  Russell.  His  position  in 
English  society  was  for  a  time  embarrassing  : 
speaking  with  an  accent  at  once  Spanish  and 
Irish,  he  was  in  conversation  imperfectly  in- 
telligible ;  in  the  society  of  cultivated  men  and 
women  he  found  his  vocabulary  inadequate  to 
the  expression  of  his  ideas  on  any  but  the  most 
ordinary  subjects ;  and  his  morbid  sensitiveness 
made  him  often  silent  through  fear  of  exciting 
ridicule.  That  he  should  from  the  first  have 
made  and  kept  warm  friends  among  high-bred 
and  fastidious  persons  shows  that  in  spite  of  these 
drawbacks  his  address  must  have  been  singularly 
pleasing ;  the  few  men  and  women  who  still 
remember  him  recall  him  as  a  pleasant  lively 
talker,  but  requiring  to  be  drawn  out.  His 
musical  talent  also  told  highly  in  his  favour ;  an 
exquisite  performer  on  the  violin,  it  is  said  that 
he  was  fastidious  in  his  tastes,  adoring  Beethoven, 
unable  to  endure  Handel.  He  became  Editor 
of  the  Espanol,  a  political  and  literary  journal 
written  in  Spanish  and  newly  published  in 
London  ;  and  while  the  views  he  there  expressed 
excited  animosity  and  alarm  amongst  the  domi- 


236       PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

nant  party  in  Spain,  and  for  a  time  even  exposed 
him  to  danger  of  assassination,  the  power  and 
knowledge  which  his  Articles  displayed  raised  his 
repute  both  in  Spain  and  England.  The  Editor- 
ship, though  laborious,  left  him  leisure  for  other 
work.  Reading  in  the  "  Spectator  "  a  remark 
by  Addison  that  half-an-hour  in  every  day  spent 
uninterruptedly  on  any  subject  must  in  no  long 
time  issue  in  its  mastery,  he  set  himself  under 
these  limitations  to  the  study  of  Greek,  aided 
only  by  two  grammars  and  a  Clams  Homerica, 
until  at  the  end  of  four  years  he  had  taught 
himself  to  read  with  ease  Homer,  Herodotus, 
Plutarch,  and  a  copious  volume  of  "  Extracts." 
With  the  expulsion  of  the  French  from  Spain 
the  Espaftol  was  discontinued  ;  the  services  which 
it  had  rendered  to  English  interests  in  the 
Peninsula  were  rewarded  by  a  Government 
pension  of  ^250  ;  and  great  part  of  the  leisure 
thus  gained  he  spent  on  a  renewed  study  of 
Divinity.  His  Spanish  experience  had  led  him, 
as  we  saw,  to  confound  Christianity  with 
Romanism,  and  so  to  abandon  both  ;  but  the 
English  Church,  presenting  itself  to  him  as 
anti-papal,  yet  emphatically  Christian,  caused 
him  to  reconsider  his  revolt.  Christianity,  under 
this  new  aspect,  became  reconcilable  with  his 


BLANCO   WHITE  237 

religious  and  his  moral  scruples ;  he  examined 
Anglican  formularies,  attended  Anglican  wor- 
ship, after  long  reading  and  consideration  became 
an  Anglican  clergyman  by  signing  the  Thirty- 
nine  Articles ;  and  in  1814  removed  to  Oxford 
for  the  purpose  of  studying  in  its  libraries  the 
great  Protestant  divines.  Here  he  spent  a  year 
only,  being  recalled  to  London  to  undertake  the 
education  of  Lord  Holland's  eldest  son,  and  to 
reside  in  Holland  House.  Ill  health  made  him 
an  irritable  teacher  to  a  perhaps  unpliant  pupil, 
and  he  soon  resigned  his  post.  Invited  by  the 
poet  Campbell  to  write  for  the  New  Monthly 
Magazine,  he  produced,  and  collected  later  into 
a  book,  the  series  of  Articles  known  as  Letters 
of  Leucadio  Doblado. 

Published  in  1822,  this  work  contains  a  history 
of  Spanish  life  and  customs,  professing  to  be 
written  by  a  Spaniard,  who,  having  lived  some 
time  in  England,  is  able  to  estimate  native  con- 
ditions by  comparison  with  those  of  other  lands. 
It  narrates  the  suppression  of  the  Jesuits  by 
Charles  III.,  describes  with  the  graphic  touches 
of  an  eye-witness  Court  life  during  the  reign 
of  Charles  IV.  and  his  worthless  wife  ;  paints 
the  rise  to  supremacy  of  the  notorious  Godoy, 
together  with  the  French  invasion  under  Murat, 


238       PRE-TRACTARIAN  OXFORD 

and  the  dethronement  of  the  reigning  family  by 
Napoleon.  But  the  chief  interest  of  these  pages 
lies  in  their  portrayal  of  the  Church  in  Spain. 
It  was  said  by  Renan  that  the  history  of  a 
Religion  could  be  written  only  by  one  who  had 
belonged  to  it  and  had  forsaken  it ;  and  here 
was  an  emancipated  priest  depicting  the  insti- 
tution in  which  he  had  borne  office.  He 
examined  the  tendency  of  Catholicism  as  exist- 
ing in  Spain  ;  the  consequences  of  Confession, 
of  clerical  celibacy,  of  monastic  vows  for  men 
and  women,  of  education  as  administered  by  the 
clergy,  of  the  pernicious  yet  crushing  influence 
exercised  by  the  all-powerful  Inquisition  over 
the  intellect  and  morals  of  a  nation.  Written 
with  laborious  fairness,  with  lively  incident  and 
anecdote,  with  a  command  of  English  surprising 
in  a  foreigner,  the  book  at  once  commanded 
an  extensive  reading  public  ;  and,  meeting  with 
no  denial  or  rejoinder  on  the  part  of  those  whom 
it  impugned,  was  accepted  as  genuine  history. 
It  suggested  to  Mrs.  Hemans  her  poem,  the 
"  Forest  Sanctuary."  A  young  Miss  Senior, 
who  had  been  won  to  his  own  Church  by  Dr. 
Wiseman  during  her  residence  in  Rome,  took  it 
up  in  a  house  where  White  was  staying,  and 
asked  indignantly,  "Who  has  written  this  book 


BLANCO   WHITE  239 

filled  with  lies  ?  "  "I  did,"  said  Blanco.  She 
persuaded  him  to  talk  it  over  with  her  ;  his 
arguments  convinced  her,  and  Wiseman  lost  his 
proselyte. 

it-  Three  years  of  controversial  writing  followed  : 
he  published  "  Evidence  against  Catholicism," 
in  answer  to  Butler's  "  Lives  of  the  Saints,"  and 
one  of  the  most  popular  of  his  works,  "  The 
Poor  Man's  Preservative  against  Popery."  In 
1826  he  returned  to  Oxford  :  as  M.A.  and  Fellow 
of  Oriel  was  welcomed  by  his  old  friends  there, 
and  entered  on  what  was  perhaps  the  happiest 
episode  in  his  storm-tossed  life.  He  preached 
at  St.  Mary's,  delivered  before  the  Ashmolean 
Society  a  highly  appreciated  Lecture  on  "  The 
Theory  of  Musical  Sounds,"  took  his  part  in 
the  vigorous  dialectics  of  the  Common  Room. 
He  walks  with  Whately  and  with  Hawkins,  en- 
lightens Hampden  on  the  Scholastic  Philosophy, 
is  consulted  by  Pusey,  H.  Wilberforce,  and 
Froude,  on  the  Order  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
Service  in  the  Breviary.  H.  J.  Rose  tried  to 
engage  him  with  Newman  in  a  Theological 
Library  which  Rivington  was  bringing  out. 
Newman  was  to  write  a  history  of  the  principal 
Councils,  Blanco  a  history  of  the  Inquisition. 
Newman's  attempt  took  form  in  his  "  History  of 


24o       PRE-TRACTARIAN    OXFORD 

the  Arians  "  :  White,  I  think,  completed  nothing. 
He  had  no  lack  of  out-College  friends ;  the 
Duncans,  Shuttleworth,  Baden  Powell,  Ogilvie, 
Cotton,  afterwards  Provost  of  Worcester ;  he 
was  on  affectionate  terms  with  William  Bishop, 
Vicar  of  St.  Mary's,  and  his  highly-gifted  brother 
Dr.  Charles  Bishop  of  Holywell ;  was  welcomed 
as  a  guest  by  Dr.  Nicol,  Hebrew  Professor,  and 
by  the  accomplished  musical  daughter  of  Parsons, 
Editor  of  the  Septuagint.  He  revelled  habitu- 
ally in  the  music  of  New  College  Chapel,  con- 
ducted by  a  brilliant  but  short-lived  organist, 
Alfred  Bennett.  He  himself  performed  admir- 
ably on  the  viola,  playing  trios  with  Newman 
and  Reinagle.  Listeners  noted  the  contrast 
between  his  excited  bowing  and  Newman's 
sphinx-like  immobility.  In  his  lodging  opposite 
Merton  he  received  a  few  pupils.  One  of  these, 
Hinds  Howell,  half  brother  to  Whately's  great 
friend  Bishop  Hinds  of  Norwich,  once  described 
to  me  how  Whately  "  collared  him  "  one  day  in 
Magpie  Lane,  marched  him  to  Blanco's  lodgings, 
and  there  deposited  him  with  the  shout — "  I've 
brought  you  a  pupil,  Blanco."  He  corresponded  at 
this  time  with  Coleridge,  Southey,  Mrs.  Hemans ; 
tried  without  success  to  enjoy  Wordsworth's 
poetry,  a  feat  which  perhaps  no  foreigner  ever 


BLANCO   WHITE  241 

achieved.  He  was  deterred,  he  tells  us,  by  the 
large  amount  of  fatiguing  and  second-rate  matter 
which  obscured  the  supreme  excellence  of  Words- 
worth's best  work,  and  by  the  pessimistic  tone, 
the  "  mental  drone-pipe,"  disfiguring  the  poet's 
vision  of  Society.  I  wish  that  more  of  his 
happy  Oxford  life  had  been  preserved  :  but 
his  Memoirs  are  silent,  and  Whately  forbade  the 
publication  of  his  own  letters  written  to  White 
in  the  vacations.  I  have  heard  him  described  by 
those  who  knew  him  as  of  winning  manners  and 
a  fluent  talker,  full  of  interest  in  great  subjects, 
disdaining  trivial  topics.  Tom  Mozley  ques- 
tioned him  once  about  the  smaller  religious 
houses  in  Spain.  He  answered  that  in  Spain 
you  knew  that  there  were  friars  in  a  town, 
and  you  knew  that  there  were  pigs,  and  that 
was  all  you  cared  to  know  about  either. 
He  produced  at  this  time  the  superb  Sonnet, 
which  Coleridge  pronounced,  in  a  somewhat 
inflated  eulogy,  to  be  the  finest  and  most 
grandly  conceived  in  our  language,  and  of 
which  Leigh  Hunt,  more  ecstatic  still,  declared 
that  "  it  stands  supreme  perhaps  above  all  in 
any  language,  nor  can  we  ponder  it  too  deeply 
or  with  too  hopeful  a  reverence."  As  I  have 
found  that  the  Sonnet  is  now  not  universally 

Q 


242       PRE-TRACTARIAN  OXFORD 

known,    I    transcribe    it    according    to    White's 
last  corrections  : — 


ON  NIGHT  AND  DEATH 

Mysterious  Night  !  when  our  first  Parent  knew 
Thee  from  report  divine,  and  heard  thy  name, 
Did  he  not  tremble  for  this  lovely  frame, 
This  glorious  canopy  of  Light  and  Blue  ? 

Yet,  'neath  a  current  of  translucent  dew, 

Bathed  in  the  rays  of  the  great  setting  Flame, 
Hesperus  with  the  host  of  Heaven  came, 
And  all  Creation  widened  in  Man's  view. 

Who  could  have  thought  such  darkness  lay  concealed 
Within  thy  beams,  O  Sun  ?  or  who  could  find, 
While  fly,  and  leaf,  and  insect  stood  revealed, 
That    to    such    countless    Orbs    thou    mad'st    us 
blind  ? 

Why  do  we  then  shun  Death  with  anxious  strife  ? 

If  Light  can  thus  deceive,  wherefore  not  Life  ? 

One  more  sonnet  from  his  pen,  though  not  quite 
equal  to  this,  seems  worth  preserving.  It  was 
given  to  me  by  Mrs.  W.  Arnold,  a  granddaughter 
of  Archbishop  Whately  on  one  side,  of  Dr.  Arnold 
on  another,  taken,  as  I  understood,  from  a  copy 
in  Blanco  White's  own  handwriting,  and  endorsed 
Redes  dale  1833. 


BLANCO   WHITE  243 

ON  HEARING  MYSELF   FOR  THE  FIRST  TIME 
CALLED   AN   OLD   MAN 

Ages  had  rolled  within  my  breast,  though  yet 
Not  nigh  the  bourn  to  fleeting  man  assigned : 
Yes  :  old — alas  !  how  spent  the  struggling  mind 
Which  at  the  noon  of  life  is  fain  to  set  ! 
My  dawn  and  evening  have  so  closely  met, 
That  men  the  shades  of  night  begin  to  find 
Darkening  my  brow  ;  and,  heedless,  not  unkind, 
Let  the  sad  warning  drop,  without  regret. 
Gone  Youth  !  had  /  thus  missed  thee,  nor  a  hope 
Were  left  of  thy  return  beyond  the  tomb, 
I  could  curse  life  : — But  glorious  is  the  scope 
Of  an  immortal  soul. — Oh  Death,  thy  gloom, 
Short,  and  already  tinged  with  coming  light, 
Is  to  the  Christian  but  a  summer's  night. 

His  position  in  Oxford  and  in  Oriel  seemed  to 
be  ideal,  but  drawbacks  soon  showed  themselves. 
The  adjustment  of  easy  mutual  relations  in  a 
masculine  society  whose  members  are  compelled 
to  close  and  continual  contact,  requires  some 
previous  training.  The  newly-elected  Junior 
Fellow  of  a  College,  prepared  by  public  school 
and  undergraduate  experience,  passes  easily 
through  a  term  of  quietude  and  deference  to 
conscious  sociable  equality  ;  an  outsider  suddenly 
imported  needs  peculiar  tact  and  adaptability  to 
take  his  place  naturally  in  the  new  surroundings. 


244       PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

Officers  promoted  from  the  ranks  are  said  to  be 
often  for  a  time  uneasy  in  the  mess-room  :  the 
distinguished  professors  elected  recently  from 
without  by  the  Oxford  Colleges  in  obedience 
to  parliamentary  legislation  fell  slowly  into  the 
habits  of  Hall  and  Common  Room  :  and  Blanco 
White,  of  a  temperament  acutely  sensitive, 
ignorant  too  of  what  Emerson  calls  "  the  hap- 
piest way  of  doing  things,"  was  just  the  man  to 
imagine  slights  and  lay  them  seriously  to  heart. 
Two  or  three  of  the  Heads  seemed  to  frown 
upon  him  :  that  was  possibly  the  case  ;  no  doubt 
some  of  those  fossilised  old  gentlemen,  like  a  his- 
toric Rector  of  Lincoln,  looked  on  all  foreigners 
as  "  Jarmans,"  and  wished  them  in  the  "  Jarman 
ocean."  A  coarse  rebuff  at  the  Magdalen  high 
table  from  an  uncouth  Senior  Fellow  sank  deeply 
into  his  mind.  Dining  at  Merton  one  day  he 
praised  the  bread.  Mo.  Griffith,  who  overheard 
him,  ordered  the  College  baker  to  send  a  loaf 
to  Mr.  White's  lodgings  every  morning.  The 
kindly  intended  benefaction  made  him  miserable, 
but  he  knew  not  how  to  refuse  it  dexterously, 
or  to  accept  it  good-humouredly,  and  lived  in 
terror  of  its  daily  advent.  He  fancied  rudeness 
in  the  College  servants,  was  mortified  by  the 
discovery  that  his  honorary  rank  placed  him 


BLANCO  WHITE 

(From  the  Oriel  portrait  by  F.  C.  Lewis) 


BLANCO   WHITE  245 

in  strict  precedency  below  each  freshly  elected 
Fellow  ;  reflected  that  a  time  would  come  when 
in  the  rapid  course  of  Collegiate  change  his  pre- 
sent valued  friends  would  have  departed,  and 
he  be  left  alone  amongst  a  generation  which 
knew  not  Joseph.  Soon  too  it  became  clear  to 
him  that  for  more  public  reasons  Oxford  could 
not  remain  his  permanent  home.  While,  intel- 
lectually, the  Noetics  reigned  there  supreme, 
the  party  numerically  dominant  in  religion  and 
politics  was  evangelical.  Whately,  to  be  sure, 
had  stamped  their  system  scornfully  as  the  "  self- 
sufficient  Stoicism  of  the  Roman  Poet,"  yet 
Pusey  had  been  strongly  drawn  to  it,  Newman 
was  brought  up  in  it ;  it  had  been  ably  engineered 
in  Oxford  by  Daniel  Wilson  ;  and  on  first  coming 
to  England  Blanco  had  been  drawn  to  it  by  the 
spectacle  of  its  fairest  aspect  in  the  pious  family 
of  his  friends  the  Christies.  But  its  Calvinism, 
its  blatant  platform  demonstrations,  its  creed 
based  on  a  forfeited  Eden,  a  yawning  hell,  a 
vicarious  reconciliation,  inspired  in  him  a  re- 
pugnance not  less  insuperable  than  that  which 
he  had  felt  for  Rome  :  and  in  Oxford,  shrinking 
from  their  society,  unversed  in  their  shibbo- 
leths, he  was  stamped  as  a  "  malignant "  by  Low 
Church  leaders,  who  were  strong  enough  on  the 


246       PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

governing  body  to  prevent  his  being  employed 
in  editing  for  trie  Clarendon  Press.  This  distrust 
soon  assumed  a  form  more  noxious.  In  1829 
the  Roman  Catholic  Relief  Bill  excited  bitter 
animosity  amongst  Protestants,  as  elsewhere,  so 
especially  in  Oxford  :  and  when  Sir  Robert  Peel, 
having  passed  the  enfranchising  measure,  re- 
signed his  seat  for  the  University  in  order  to 
test  the  approbation  of  his  constituents,  his  re- 
election was  vigorously  opposed.  Blanco  was  in 
London,  and  did  not  intend  to  vote  ;  but  was 
called  up  by  Pusey,  at  that  time  one  of  the 
most  liberal  amongst  the  residents,  and  recorded 
his  vote  for  Peel.  Newman,  who  had  joined 
the  No-popery  party,  was  offended  with  him  : 
others,  who  had  hailed  his  anti-papal  testimonies, 
and  could  not  see  that  abhorrence  of  religious 
intolerance  and  theological  error  might  coexist 
with  zeal  for  political  justice,  proclaimed  him  a 
venal  sycophant  and  apostate.  He  encountered 
everywhere  hard  unkindness'  altered  eye  :  and 
when  in  1831  Whately,  appointed  to  the  Arch- 
bishopric of  Dublin,  proposed  that  Blanco  should 
go  with  him  as  tutor  to  his  sons,  he  left  Oxford 
finally  without  regret. 

For  some  time  he  lived  with  the  Archbishop, 
an  inmate  beloved  by  all  except  his  pupils.     He 


BLANCO   WHITE  247 

was  an  impatient  teacher,  unable  to  enter  into 
a  beginner's  difficulties,  which  were  not  and  pro- 
bably never  had  been  difficulties  to  him.  Yet 
of  children  he  was  passionately  fond,  and  they  of 
him.  "  I  can  see  him  now,"  says  Mrs.  Simpson, 
Nassau  Senior's  daughter,  "  running  to  meet  me 
with  outstretched  arms  after  a  short  illness." 
Miss  Powell  tells  me  that  in  her  Oxford  child- 
hood she  looked  upon  him  as  a  kind  of  Uncle  :  a 
little  toy  canary  organ  which  he  gave  her,  and 
which  would  play  six  tunes,  was  a  joy  to  suc- 
cessive generations  of  little  Powells  and  Whatelys. 
And  the  nurse  in  Hampden's  family  where  he 
frequently  visited,  encountering  him  on  the 
stairs  with  an  infant  in  her  arms,  told  her  mis- 
tress that  the  strange  gentleman  had  bent  over 
the  child,  and  blessed  it  with  words  so  beautiful 
that  they  could  not  fail  to  do  it  good.  In  the 
leisure  and  seclusion  of  Redesdale,  Whately's 
country  home  near  Dublin,  his  restless  mind  and 
pen  began  again  to  work  upon  Theology.  The 
poet  Moore  had  lately  put  forth  a  book  called 
"  Travels  of  an  Irish  Gentleman  in  Search  of  a 
Religion."  He  wrote  in  the  character  of  a 
Roman  Catholic  Trinity  College  graduate,  who 
having  on  political  not  on  theological  grounds 
clung  to  his  Church  while  persecuted,  is  by  the 


248       PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

passing  of  the  Emancipation  Act  set  free  on  the 
point  of  honour.  His  College  surroundings  have 
given  him  an  admiration  for  Protestantism,  which 
he  resolves  to  embrace,  but  deems  it  necessary 
to  select  from  among  the  numerous  Protestant 
sects  that  one  which,  being  in  closest  harmony  with 
the  primitive  Church,  must  be  supposed  to  hold 
Christian  doctrine  in  its  purest  and  least  adulte- 
rated form.  He  sets  out,  therefore,  with  a  study 
of  the  Apostolical  Fathers,  but  is  bewildered  to 
find  the  Roman  doctrines  of  appeal  to  Tradition, 
of  reverence  for  relics,  of  a  corporal  presence  in 
the  Eucharist,  all  proclaimed  by  these  venerable 
pillars  of  the  earliest  Christian  age.  Coming  on 
a  little  farther,  he  finds  the  duty  of  fasting 
prescribed  by  Hermas,  the  sacrifice  of  the  Mass 
sanctioned  by  Irenaeus,  Prayers  for  the  dead  by 
Tertullian,  invocation  of  Saints  and  of  the  Virgin 
by  a  Catena  of  writers  from  Origen  to  Basil. 
So  he  proceeds  through  the  centuries,  discover- 
ing among  the  great  doctors  of  the  Church 
Protestantism  nowhere,  Roman  doctrine  every- 
where. From  these  he  turns  his  attention  to 
those  whom  the  orthodox  stigmatised  as  Heretics  : 
there  indeed  he  finds  Protestantism  pure  and 
simple  :  finds  it  adumbrated  by  the  sceptical 
Jews  of  Capernaum,  formulated  by  Docetae, 


BLANCO   WHITE  249 

Ebionites,  Ophites  ;  sees  in  Simon  Magus  the 
Arch-parent  of  the  Protestant  Reformation  ;  in 
Marcion,  Apelles,  Manichaeus,  the  prototypes  of 
Luther,  Calvin,  Zwingle.  Visiting  Germany,  he 
studies  modern  Protestantism  at  its  source,  dis- 
cerning amongst  its  founders  immorality,  in- 
fidelity, hypocrisy.  He  crosses  to  England,  traces 
there  the  demoralising  effects  of  the  Reforma- 
tion, cites  dexterously  the  adherence  to  Catho- 
licism of  the  High  Church  Elizabethan  leaders, 
sums  the  results  of  three  Protestant  centuries  as 
exhibiting  irreligion  in  the  higher  classes,  gross 
darkness  among  the  people.  He  returns  to 
Ireland,  his  search  over,  his  mind  made  up  : 
Reason  is  a  blind  guide,  the  Bible  an  insufficient 
stay,  the  way  of  Life  is  mapped  and  guarded  by 
"  the  one  and  only  true  Church."  It  is  the 
work  of  a  clever  advocate,  speaking  from  a  well- 
drawn  brief,  ignoring  all  the  facts  of  history 
which  do  not  support  his  plea.  Its  length,  its 
digressions,  its  sustained  banter,  its  violent  in- 
vectives, make  it  occasionally  tedious ;  but  it 
formed  an  excellent  handbook  for  those  desiring 
not  to  discover  truth,  but  to  fortify  by  plausible 
argument  opinions  to  which  the  accidents  of 
birth  and  education  had  committed  them. 

In  a  style  of  writing  equally  vivacious,  with 


250       PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

greater  experience  in  controversy,  and  far  deeper 
ecclesiastical  knowledge,  Blanco  White,  in  his 
"  Second  Travels  of  an  Irish  Gentleman  in 
Search  of  a  Religion,"  takes  up  the  pen.  Adopt- 
ing his  opponent's  plan,  he  continues  the  First 
Gentleman's  narrative.  The  traveller  returned 
to  Ireland,  as  we  have  seen,  a  confirmed  and 
submissive  Catholic,  his  wander-jahre  praised  to 
the  skies,  himself  caressed  and  petted  by  the 
clergy  and  devout  ladies  of  his  reinstated  faith. 
He  makes  acquaintance  with  a  charming  young 
lady,  belonging  to  the  higher  class  of  Irish 
residents,  is  cordially  received  as  an  acquaint- 
ance by  her  mother,  gives  lessons  in  German, 
falls  in  love.  His  aims  are  thwarted  by  a  priest, 
spiritual  director  to  the  ladies,  who  has  deter- 
mined that  the  girl  shall  enter  a  convent.  He 
wields  all  the  resources  of  the  Confessional  in 
order  to  effect  his  purpose,  and  by  a  forged 
letter  drives  our  Gentleman  from  the  house  and 
neighbourhood.  Ruminating  on  the  frightful 
power  over  inexperienced  ardent  souls  with 
which  the  Confessional  endows  an  adroit  un- 
scrupulous priest,  and  on  the  cruel  breaches  in 
family  life  and  individual  happiness  caused  by 
perpetuity  of  monastic  vows,  he  reflects  with 
some  self-reproach  that  in  his  examination  of 


BLANCO   WHITE  251 


Roman  claims  by  the  light  of  primitive  antiquity, 
he  had  omitted  these  two  essential  elements  of 
priestly  power.  An  anonymous  manuscript,  the 
authorship  of  which  is  later  explained,  stirs  in 
him  still  further  doubts  as  to  the  soundness  of 
his  previous  security.  This  paper  urges  that  the 
essence  of  Protestantism  is  not  the  denial  of 
certain  Roman  practices  and  doctrines,  many  of 
which  are  held  equally  by  numerous  Protestant 
bodies,  but  repudiation  of  both  the  scriptural 
and  historic  claims  of  the  Roman  bishop  to  rule 
the  beliefs  and  consciences  of  other  churches. 
The  Apostles  knew  nothing  of  one  central  in- 
fallible authority  to  be  set  up  after  their 
departure  :  St.  Peter,  predicting  "  damnable 
heresies,"  fails  to  recommend  any  Oracle  which 
shall  oppose  these  heresies  after  he  has  gone. 
The  Irish  Gentleman,  however,  had  relied  not 
on  Scripture,  but  on  the  Fathers.  Who  and 
what,  he  now  feels  impelled  to  inquire,  are  the 
Fathers  ?  A  list  of  names  is  given,  from  Clement 
to  Bernard  ;  but  who  made  them  "  Fathers  "  ? 
were  there  no  other  Christian  writers  in  their 
times  who  differed  from  them  and  who  also 
deserve  a  hearing  ?  There  were  many  such 
we  know  throughout  the  earliest  centuries  ;  but 
they  were  a  minority  ;  the  majority,  represented 


252       PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

by  the  Church  in  Rome,  called  them  "  Here- 
tics "  and  destroyed  their  writings,  while  it  called 
their  opponents  "  Fathers."  A  consensus  of  the 
Fathers  means  only  a  continuous  defence  and 
record  of  that  which  Rome  approved  :  those 
upholding  contrary  views  were  excommunicated 
and  silenced  so  long  as  the  Roman  Church  was 
unestablished,  were  persecuted,  exiled,  slain,  when 
the  Emperors  allied  themselves  to  the  Church, 
and  reinforced  priestly  anathemas  by  secular 
authority.  Constantine  forbade  heretics,  on  pain 
of  punishment,  to  assemble  for  religious  pur- 
poses ;  Theodosius  established  an  Inquisition 
which  should  search  out  heresy  and  destroy 
tainted  books.  For  denying  the  obligation  of 
Virginity  and  Fasting  Jovinian  was  beaten  with 
leaded  thongs  by  order  of  Honorius.  Aerius  and 
his  followers,  refusing  to  believe  that  prayers 
could  profit  the  dead,  were  driven  out  to  die 
of  hunger  in  the  fields.  Vigilantius,  who  con- 
demned perpetual  monastic  vows,  adoration  of 
images,  pilgrimages,  and  the  attribution  of  in- 
herent virtue  to  celibacy,  was  dismissed  into 
life-long  exile  :  thus,  says  triumphantly  the  pious 
historian  Eusebius,  "  were  hunted  out  these  wild 
beasts  and  the  leaders  of  their  impiety."  Had 
the  Irish  Traveller  searched  deeper  and  known 


BLANCO   WHITE  253 

more,  he  would  have  found  from  primitive  times 
onwards  a  noble  army  of  Protestants,  denounced 
in  one  century,  in  another  martyred,  at  the 
hands  of  the  "  Orthodox,"  "  Catholic,"  majority. 
How  did  Rome  gain  this  supremacy  among  the 
Churches  ?  What  more  natural  than  that  when 
the  Western  world  was  deprived  of  its  political 
centre  by  the  decay  of  pagan  Rome,  and  a  new 
principle  of  unity  was  offered  to  it  in  the  pro- 
fession of  Christianity,  this  same  Rome,  hitherto 
the  metropolis  of  the  world,  should  become  the 
metropolis  not  indeed  of  all  Christendom,  but 
of  Western  Christian  Europe  ?  Not  of  all 
Christendom  then  or  now ;  for  the  Eastern 
Church  has  never  bowed  before  and  is  not  even 
in  communion  with  the  See  of  Rome  :  but  when 
in  Italy,  Germany,  France,  and  Spain,  the  local 
associations  or  "  Churches "  grew  into  a  con- 
federation which  assumed  the  monarchic  form, 
history  pointed  irresistibly  to  the  Roman  bishop 
as  its  monarch  :  Western  Europe  beheld  therein 
a  reflex  of  the  ancient  imperial  Roman  State  : 
its  Pontifices  reappeared  as  "  Cardinals,"  its 
Pontijex  Maximus  as  Pope.  This  is  the  main 
argument  of  the  book ;  interwoven  with  its 
seriousness  is  a  very  readable  love-tale  :  it  ends 
with  a  formal  controversy  between  an  Italian 


254       PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

Abbate  and  a  cultivated  English  Protestant,  in 
which,  both  being  puppets  in  the  writer's  hands, 
the  victory  is  of  necessity  on  the  side  which  by 
this  time  he  has  espoused. 

That  side  was  Protestantism,  considered  purely 
as  a  negation  :  that  it  now  gave  him  no  positive 
foothold,  that  he  was  quitting  the  cool  seques- 
tered vale  of  eclectic  Anglicanism  in  which  he 
had  walked  contentedly  with  Whately,  Hawkins, 
Hampden,  may  be  read  between  the  lines  of  his 
"  Travels,"  is  still  more  evident  in  his  next,  and 
latest,  production,  a  pamphlet  called  "  Heresy 
and  Orthodoxy."  The  repose  which  he  felt  for 
a  time  in  the  Church  of  England  seems  to  have 
been  attained  by  feeling  more  than  by  argu- 
ment, supported  by  admiration  for  and  religious 
communion  with  its  able  representatives  at  Oriel. 
But  his  Irish  experience  first,  and  the  Hampden 
persecution  later,  taught  him  that  a  wide  gulf 
lay  between  these  exceptionally  large-minded 
few,  and  the  great  mass  both  of  the  Irish  and 
English  Clergy.  He  found  that  amongst  these, 
in  spirit,  though  not  in  form,  Sacerdotalism  was 
as  rampant  as  it  had  been  in  Spain  ;  that  his  hor- 
ror of  Priesthood  had  driven  him  from  Popery 
only  to  find  in  these  islands  a  Protestant  hie- 
rarchy tainted  with  the  same  vices.  He  saw  too 


BLANCO   WHITE  255 

with  increasing  clearness  the  evils  of  a  State 
Church,  whose  endowment  of  religious  tenets 
and  compulsory  assent  to  Articles  of  Faith  seemed 
to  him  a  bribe,  in  the  interest  of  established 
Orthodoxy,  and  against  honest  investigation  of 
the  Truth.  He  therefore  ceased  to  officiate  in 
English  Orders  or  to  consider  himself  a  member 
of  the  English  Church.  And,  as  before  so  now, 
rejection  of  ecclesiastical  forms  brought  with 
it  a  reconsideration  of  Christian  dogmas  :  he 
could  no  longer  hold  in  any  accepted  sense  the 
inspiration  of  the  Bible,  while  the  Athanasian 
definition  of  the  Trinity  became  to  him  in- 
supportable. A  careless  saying  of  Whately's, 
intended  probably  as  a  joke,  to  the  effect  that 
writings  put  forth  from  under  an  Archbishop's 
roof  "  must  not  be  too  radical,"  had  some 
time  before  alarmed  his  fastidious  sense  of 
independence  :  if  palace  walls  were  to  shackle 
his  free  thought  and  utterance,  they  enclosed 
no  abiding  home  for  him  :  painful  as  such 
a  breach  would  be,  better  to  forfeit  a  valued 
friendship  than  sacrifice  to  it  his  assured  be- 
liefs and  his  inward  impulse  to  express  them — 
Amicus  Plato,  magis  arnica  Veritas  !  After  long 
and  painful  hesitation  he  openly  declared  him- 
self an  anti-Trinitarian ;  and  to  the  great 


256       PRE-TRACTARIAN   OXFORD 

grief  of  the  whole  family  left  the  Archbishop's 
roof. 

He  settled  himself  in  Liverpool,  attending 
a  Unitarian  Chapel  at  which  Martineau  was 
a  frequent  preacher ;  exchanging,  he  declared, 
acquiescence  for  conviction,  and  finding  in  the 
worship  and  the  teaching  of  his  new  associates 
peace  such  as  he  had  never  known  before.  The 
name  "  Unitarian  "  he  reprobated  as  being  dog- 
matic ;  longed  for,  but  failed  to  find,  some  term 
which  might  include  all  unsectarian  or  anti- 
sectarian  Christians.  He  was  no  longer  fit  to 
be  alone  :  his  bodily  sufferings,  from  an  aggra- 
vated form  of  rheumatism,  caused  him  to  become 
increasingly  helpless.  The  ever  kind  Whatelys 
provided  him  with  a  trustworthy  personal  atten- 
dant ;  a  grant  of  ^300  from  the  Royal  Bounty 
Fund,  obtained  through  Lord  Holland's  influence, 
placed  him  beyond  the  reach  of  pecuniary  in- 
convenience, and  a  niece,  Miss  Beck,  took  up  her 
abode  with  him  permanently.  He  maintained, 
while  he  could  use  his  hands,  a  correspondence 
with  friends  old  and  new ;  with  J.  S.  Mill, 
Channing,  William  Bishop,  the  beloved  Whatelys ; 
and  read  books,  English  and  foreign,  ever  fall- 
ing back  with  delight  on  Shakespeare.  Removed 
to  Greenbank,  the  country  house  of  Mr.  Rath- 


BLANCO   WHITE  257 

ie,  he  there  spent  the  last  five  months  of  his 
life,  in  acute  suffering,  and  latterly  in  absolute 
crippled  helplessness.  "  God  to  me  is  Jesus,  and 
Jesus  is  God — of  course  not  in  the  sense  of 
divines  " — were  his  last  recorded  words  :  his 
twofold  ruling  passion,  of  devotion  and  of  pro- 
test, strong  in  death.  A  consuming  desire  to 
gain  religious  Truth  :  an  equal  sense  of  sacred 
obligation  to  make  known  the  truth  which  he 
believed  himself  to  have  discovered :  a  deep 
consciousness  of  the  Divine  Presence  :  a  longing 
for  kindred  aspiration  among  his  fellow-men,  and 
for  social  communion  with  them  in  worship  : — 
these  characteristics  seem  to  constitute  the  epi- 
tome and  the  apologia  of  his  long  remonstrant 
struggling  life. 


POSTSCRIPTUM 

IT  may  be  well  to  summarise  in  conclusion  the 
opinions  which,  held  and  published  by  the 
Noetics,  warrant  us  in  associating  them  under  a 
common  title  and  crediting  them  with  a  com- 
mon aim.  They  created  no  School ;  for  that, 
method  is  necessary ;  and  they  were  essentially 
unmethodical.  They  organised  no  propaganda  : 
each  of  course  desired  in  his  writings  to  ex- 
pound and  spread  his  views,  but,  while  linked 
by  virtual  uniformity  of  opinion,  they  formed  no 
collaborating  Society,  employed  no  shibboleths, 
no  dogmas,  no  missionary  machinery. 

What  then  were  the  conclusions  which  they 
held  in  common  ? 

Politically  :  while  abhorring  party  spirit,  they 
all  denounced  as  self-destructive  and  immoral 
the  spirit  of  resistance  to  necessary  change ; 
were  virtually,  if  not  avowedly,  what  came 
afterwards  to  be  called  "  Liberal." 

Academically  :     they   approvingly   anticipated 

almost    all    the    revolutions    imported    into    the 

258 


POSTSCRIPTUM  259 

University  and  Colleges  by  the  Reforming  Acts 
of  1854  and  onwards  ;  and  urged,  what  has 
not  yet  been  carried  out,  a  strict  compulsory 
University  Examination  as  a  preliminary  to  all 
matriculations. 

Ecclesiastically  :  they  were  devoted  adherents 
of  the  Reformation  :  approved  the  Royal  Head- 
ship of  the  Church,  desired  to  bring  the  clergy 
under  direct  lay  influence ;  denounced  what 
seemed  to  them  the  fatal  error  of  confounding 
the  Church  with  the  clergy  :  their  views  as  to 
the  relation  between  Church  and  State  being 
pushed  to  an  extreme  by  Arnold. 

Educationally  :  they  would  place  religious 
teaching  by  the  State  on  ground  common  to  all 
denominations,  through  the  use  of  text-books 
carefully  and  comprehensively  devised. 

Theologically  :  they  stood  between  the  biblio- 
later and  the  rationalist ;  fearlessly  applying 
historical  tests  to  the  Scripture  narratives,  accept- 
ing them,  when  modified  by  such  corrections, 
as  oracular.  All  were  strongly  Protestant ;  all 
vehemently  anti-Sabbatarian  ;  all  denounced  the 
Tracts,  as  paving  the  way  to  Popery,  as  diverting 
the  energies  of  learners  from  the  humanistic 
studies  into  lines  mischievous  and  barren,  as 
perpetuating  priestly  domination. 


260       PRE-TRACTARIAN    OXFORD 

It  was  on  this  last  ground  that  Newman  beat 
and  supplanted  them,  winning  the  great  majority 
of  the  clergy  and  through  them  of  the  devout 
but  half-instructed  laity,  by  his  maintenance  of 
a  sacerdotal  as  against  a  national  Church.  But 
their  teachings  leavened  the  more  thoughtful 
intelligence  of  the  country;  were  inherited  by 
prophets  such  as  Thirlwall,  Stanley,  Jowett, 
Pattison,  Colenso ;  bear  fruit  to-day  in  the  free 
handling  of  Church  history,  theological  specu- 
lation, Scripture  criticism,  carried  on  by  able 
and  religious  minds  within  the  limits  of  the 
English  Church. 

Never  yet 
Share  of  truth  was  vainly  set 

In  the  world's  wide  fallow  : 
After  hands  shall  sow  the  seed, 
After  hands,  from  hill  and  mead, 

Reap  the  harvest  mellow. 


INDEX 


ACLAND,  Dr.,  150 
Adams,  J.  C.,  217 
Airey,  Professor,  217 
Arago,  1 68 

Arnold,  Dr.,  95,  &c.,  62,  70,  72, 
79,  83,  84,  126,  138,  151,  162 

Matthew,  17,  98 

Mrs.  W.,  84 

Susanna,  98 

Austen,  Jane,  58 

BABBAGE,  166 
Bacon,  202,  229 
Baden-Powell,  Mrs.,  215,  216, 

217 

Baines,  74 
Baring,  35 
Bayley,  E.  G.,  142 
Beck,  Miss,  256 
Bennett,  240 
Berkeley,  Bishop,  203 
Bethell,  166 
Bishop,  Dr.,  240 

-  W.,  240,  256 
Blackstone,  F.  C.,  97,  98 
Blanco  White,  226,  &c.,  136, 

161 

Brewster,  Sir  David,  187 
Bruce  Knight,  45 
Buckland,  97,  98 
Buckle,  217 
Bull,  Dr.,  15 
Bulwer  Lytton,  129 
Bunsen,  101 
Bunyan,  6 


Burdett,  Sir  F.,  47 
Burgon,  154,  163 
Burton,  Dr.,  138 
Butler,  Bishop,  130,  203 
Byron,  162 

CAMPBELL,  237 

Cardwell,  E.,  15 

Caricatures,  219 

Carlyle,  I,  118 

Channing,  256 

"  Christianity    without    Juda- 
ism," 194 

Clerke,  Archdeacon,  166 

Clinton,  Lord,  129 

Clough,  22,  56,  124,  161 

Colenso,  Bishop,  260 

Coleridge,  Hartley,  34,  166 

Justice,  15,96,  115,  146 

S.  T.,  34,  114,  240,241 

Cooke,  Dr.,  96 

Copleston,  17,  &c.,  3,  20,  54, 
55>°5,67,72,  129,  146,  154, 
162,  167 
-W.J.,  156 

Cotton,  Dr.,  240 

Crabbe,  55 

Cramer,  Dr.,  15,  146 

Croker,  47 

Crouch,  Isaac,  8,  &c. 

Crowe,  Orator,  9 

DARTMOUTH,  Lord,  8 
Darwin,  Charles,  217 
Emma,  48 


261 


262 


INDEX 


Daubeny,  Dr.,  74,  161 
Davison,  J.,  18,  19,  59,  129 
Davy,  Sir  H.,  204,  236 
De  Morgan,  217 
De  Quincey,  63 
Dean,  Dr.,  137 
Denison,  E.,  141 

G.  A.,  141,  156 

Denman,  Lord,  140 
Dickinson,  Bishop,  76,  83 
Dixon,  Dr.,  8 
Doblado,  Leucadio,  237 
Duncan,  Phil.,  46 
Duncans,  45,  85,  240 

EBRINGTON,  Lord,  77 
Eldon,  Lord,  2,  32 
Empson,  48 
Erie,  Justice,  146 
Espanol,  235 
Eveleigh,  i,  £c. 

FEYJOO,  230 

Forbes,  E.,  217 

Franklin,  Sir  J.,  48 

Froude,   Hurrell,   22,  49,   61, 

130,  156,239 
J.  A.,  160,  161 

GAISFORD,  Dean,  56,  160 
Gardiner,  Samuel,  160 
Gibbon,  46 

Girdlestone,  Charles,  160 
Gladstone,  146,  149 
Goddard,  Archdeacon,  152 
Golightly,  C.  P.,  154 
Grant,  F.,  258 
Green,  T.  H.,  12 
Grenville,  Lord,  32,  48,  136 

Thomas,  48 

Grey,  Lord,  70 
Griffith,  Mo.,  244 
Grove,  Justice,  204,  213 
Guizot,  85 


HALFORD,  Sir  H.,  102 
Halley,  166 
Hamilton,  Sir  W.,  14 
Hampden,   Bishop,    128,   &c., 

15,   17,   121,  135,   151,   153, 

164,  254 

Miss,  135 

Hare,  the  brothers,  97,  146 
Hawkins,   Provost,    150,   &c., 

15,  17,  40,  83,  97,  102,  119, 

130,  141,  145,254 

Sir  Caesar,  151 

Heber,  Reginald,  9 

Richard,  47 

Hemans,  Mrs.,  238,  240 

Hendy,  Abel,  4 

Hill,  John,  5,  u 

—  Mrs.,  85 

Hinds,  Bishop,  60,  62,  65,  74 

Howell,  106,  240 

Holland,  Lord,  235,  236,  256 
Hook,  Theodore,  47 
Howard,  Lord  Carlisle,  106 
Howley,  Archbishop,  123 
Hughes,  J.,  22 
Hull,  97,  119 
Hunt,  Leigh,  240 
Huskisson,  35 
Hutton,  R.  H.,  97 

INGHAM,  J.,  57 

"  Irish    Gentleman,     Travels 

of,"  247 
Irving,  Edward,  160 

JEBB,  Sir  R.}  90 
Jeffrey,  48 
Jeune,  Bishop,  216 
Johnson,  Dr.,  47 
Jowett,  260 


KEBLE,I,  12, 15,  17,18,61,74, 

96,  97,  154,  1 66 
Kett,  24,  25 


INDEX 


263 


LAKE,  Dean,  124,  125,  157 
Leibnitz,  202 
Le  Verrier,  217 
Liverpool,  Lord,  34,  35 
Locke,  203 

Lockhart,  J.  G.,  15,  48 
Lovell,  Mary,  130 
Lubbock,  Sir  J.,  217 

MACAULAY,  no,  118,  149 
Macbride,  Dr.,  5 
Mackintosh,  Sir  J.,  35,  48 
Macmullen,  R.  G.,  143 
Manning,  Cardinal,  216 
Mant,  Bishop,  23,  26 
Marriott,  Charles,  4 

-  John,  4,  14 
Martineau,  Dr.,  256 
Martyrs  Memorial,  39 
Mazzini,  I 
Melbourne,    Lord,    88,     124, 

138,  140,  141 
Merewether,  Dean,  145 
Mill,  J.  S.,  56,  68 
Milman,  Dean,  15 
Milton,  27,  41,  192,  226 
Miracles,  204,  &c. 
Montalembert,  214 
Muratori,  231 
Murray,  Archbishop,  77,  91 

NEWMAN,  i,  7,  12,  19,  22,  32, 
34,40,46,60,65,67,81,82, 
116,  124,  130,  140,  143,  153, 
154,  156,  160,  162,  163,  239, 
245,  246 

Newton,  13,  160,  168,  203 

Niebuhr.  101 

Noetic,  2 

Nominalists,  134 

Northampton,  Lord,  217 

Nugent,  Lord,  48 

O'CONNELL,  86 

Oersted,  165 


Ogilvie,  Dr.,  166,  240 

"  Order  of  Nature,"  200,  &c. 

Osborne,  Lady,  85 

PACKE,  Mr.,  129 

Paley,  186 

Palmer,  Roundell,  116 

Parker,  Joseph,  50 

Parkhurst,  Dr.,  54 

Pascal,  28 

Pasley,  Sir  T.,  119 

Patteson,  Justice,  146 

Pattison,  Mark,  156,  159,  260 

Payne  Knight,  29 

Peel,  Sir  R.,  15,61,69,  246 

Pell,  Albert,  103 

Pellew,  Dean,  96 

Penrose,  Mary,  97 

Trevenen,  96 

Phillips,  Professor,  54,  150 
Playfair,  J.,  29 

Plumer,  C.  J.,  22 
Plumtre,  Dr.,  166 
Plunkett,  Lord,  86 
Pope,  Charlotte,  177 

Mr.,  60 

Powell,  Baden,  165,  &c.,  44, 
59,63,66,  72,  83,  153,  167, 
240 

B.  H.,  178 

Frank,  219 

Miss,  168,  &c.,  247 

Mrs.,  173 

Stephenson,  178 

Price,  Bonaury,  100 

Pusey,  Dr.,  15,  18,  82,  140, 
143,  163,  239,  245,  246 

RADCLIFFE,  G.,  157 
Randall,  J.,  97 
Rathbone,  Mr.,  256 
Reinagle,  Mr.,  240 
Reynolds.  H.,  142 
Rhodes,  Cecil,  31 
Rickards,  S.,  166 


264 


INDEX 


Ridding,  Bishop,  167 
Rigaud,  Professor,  166 
Rogers,  Thorold,  155 
Rolleston,  Dr.,  150 
Rose,  H.  J.,  239 
Rosmini,  214 
Routh,  Dr.,  164 
Rowlandson,  Mr.,  129 
Russell,  Lord  J.,  47,  144,  145, 
235 

SABBATH,  71,  117,  199,259 
Sandford,  D.  K.,  29,  35 
Schlegel,  A.  W.,  48 
Schoolmen,  The,  133,  &c. 
Scott,  Walter,  4,  9,  47,  55, 149 
Selwyn,  Bishop,  87 
Senior,  Miss,  228 

Nassau,  15,  60,  69,  141 

Sewell,  W.,  161 

Sheil,  Lalor,  48 
Short,  T.,  59 

Vowler,  15 

Shuttleworth,    Dr.,   219,   227, 

240 

Simpson,  Mrs.,  62,  247 
Smith,  Elizabeth,  58 

Goldwin,  216 

Mrs.,  59 

Sydney,  29,  47 

Sonnets,  242,  243 

Southey,  129,  240 

St.  Alban  Hall,  65 

St.  Edmund  Hall,  5 

St.  Mary  Hall,  136 

Stanley,  56,  63,  84,  85,  89,  95, 

116,  124,  126,  215,  260 
Struve,  217 


TAIT,  Archbishop,  71 

Talleyrand,  103 

Tennyson,  149 

Thirlwall,  138 

Thomas,  Vaughan,  140,  141 

Thompson,  Dr.,  10 

Tierney,  35 

Tooke,  Home,  42 

Tracts,  The,  80,  90,  115,  120, 

139,  1 60,  208,  260 
Tucker,  J.,  96 
Tyler,  J.  E.,  33,  49 

"  UNITY  OF  WORLDS,"  181 
VON  BARS,  193 

WALTON,  Isaac,  17 
Wedgwood,  Hensleigh,  48 
Whately,  Archbishop,  51,  &c., 
2,7,  17,  18,  22,  44,  45,  49, 
97,  102,  151,  153,  162,  164, 
184,  218,  240,  245,  246,  254, 
255,256 

Mrs.,  64,  218 

Wheeler,  G.,  5 
Whewell,  Dr.,  187 
Wilberforce,  H.,  238 

R.,  19,  150,  156 

S.,  19,  87,  146 

Willes,  Sherlock,  57 
Williams,  Archdeacon,  21 

Dr.,  90 

Wilson,  Daniel,  5,  &c.,  245 
Wiseman,  Dr.,  238 
Wordsworth      (Master      of 
Trinity),  139 

W.,  48,  51,97 


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NEW    EDITION 


OF  THE 


WORKS   OF    MRS.   GASKELL 

IN  EIGHT  VOLUMES.     Crown  3vo.    Cut  Edges,    Cloth, 
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THE  'KNUTSFORD'  EDITION.     | 

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of  the  Misses  GASKELL. 

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CONTENTS    OP    THE  VOLUMES: 


1.  MARY   BARTON,   and   other 

Tales. 

2.  CRANFORD,  and  other  Tales. 

3.  RUTH,  and  other  Tales. 


5.  MY    LADY    LUDLOW,   and 

other  Tales. 

6.  SYLVIA'S  LOVERS,  &c. 

7.  COUSIN  PHILLIS,  A  DARK 

NIGHT'S  WORK,  &c. 


4.  NORTH  AND  SOUTH.  |   8.  WIVES  AND  DAUGHTERS. 


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NEAT  CLOTH  BINDING  OF  SPECIAL  DESIGN. 


NEW  VOLUME. 


ADAM    GRIGSON. 

By  Mrs,  HENRY  DE  LA  PASTURE. 

DAILY  TELEGRAPH.— 'Quits  a  notable  achievement  in  many  ways,  there 
being  at  least  three  pictures  of  women  contained  in  itjwhich  could  not  be  improved  upon. ' 

VOLUMES    PREVIOUSLY    ISSUED. 


THE     CRUISE     OF     THE 

'CACHALOT.'  By  FKANK  T. 
BULLEN.  With  8  Full-page  Illustra- 
tions and  a  Chart. 

TJMES.—'A  book  which  cannot  but 
fascinate  all  lovers  of  the  sea.' 

THE    WHITE    COMPANY. 

By  A.  CONAN  DOYLE.  With  8  Full- 
page  Illustrations. 

SPEAKER.  —  'A  notable  and  very 
brilliant  work  of  genius.' 

RODNEY    STONE.     By   A. 

CONAN  DOYLE.  With  8  Full-page 
Illustrations. 

PUNCH.—1  There  is  not  a  dull  page  in 
it  from  first  to  last.  All  is  light,  colour, 
movement,  blended  and  inspired  by  a 
master  hand.' 

THE  LOG  OF  A  SEA  WAIF: 

Being  the  Recollections  of  the  First 
Four  Years  of  my  Sea  Life.   By  FRANK 
T.  BULLEN,  F.R.G.S.     With  8  Full- 
page  Illustrations  by  ARTHURTwiDLE. 
TIMES.—'  Full  of  thrilling  adventure, 
admirably  told.' 

UNCLE  BERNAC:  a  Memory 
of  the  Empire.    By  A.  CONAN  DOYLH. 
With  12  Full-page  Illustrations.  Third 
and  Cheaper  hdition. 
DAILY    CHRONICLE.  -  '"Uncle 
Bernac  "  is  for  a  truth  Dr.  Doyle's  Napo- 
leon. .  .  .  The  fascination  of  it  is  extra- 
ordinary.    It  reaches  everywhere  a  high 
literary  level." 


DEBORAH  OF  TOD'S.    By 

Mrs.  HENRY  DE  LA  PASTURE. 
DAILY  TELEGRAPH.— 'A  really 
clever  and  interesting  book.  .  .  .  Every 
feminine  figure,  however  slightly  drawn, 
has  about  it  some  vivifying  touch  to 
render  it  memorable.' 

THE  BRASS  BOTTLE.    By 

F.  ANSTEY.    With  a  Frontispiece. 
SPECTA  TOR.—'  Mr.  Anstey  has  once 
more  shown  himself  to  be  an  artist  and  a 
humorist  of  uncommon  and  enviable  merit.' 

THE     GAMEKEEPER     AT 

HOME;    or,    Sketches    of   Natural 
History  and  Rural  Life.     By  RICHARD 
JEFFERIES.     With  Illustrations. 
SA  TURD  A  Y  REVIEW.—'  The  lover 
of  the  country  can  hardly  fail  to  be  fasci- 
nated  whenever  he  may  happen  to  open 
the  pages.' 

THE   TRAGEDY   OF   THE 

'KOROSKO.'      By    A.    CONAN 

DOYLK.     With  Illustrations. 
DAILY  NEWS.—'\  fine  story,  the 
interest  of  which  arrests  the  reader's  atten- 
tion at  the  start  and  holds  it  to  the  close.' 

THE     GREEN     FLAG,    and 

other  Stories  of  War  and  Sport.     By 
A.  CONAN  DOYLE. 

DAILY  TELEGRAPH.  —  'The 
battle  picture  is  perfect  of  its  kind.  Alto- 
gether the  volume  is  admirable.' 

JESS.    By  H.  RIDER  HAGGARD. 

With  12  Full-page  Illustrations. 
PALL    MALL    GAZETTE.— 'The 
story  is  a  capital   one,  and   the   interest 
never  flags  for  a  moment.' 


•a*  Other  Volumes  to  follow. 


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Outlines  of  the  History  of  Art.    By  Dr.  WILHELM  LUBKE. 

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From  the  Land  of  Princes.     By  GABRIRLLB  TESTING,  Author 

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"Author's  Edition"  of  A.  Conan  Doyle's  Novels. 

A.  Conan  Doyle's  Novels. 

Iff  TWELVE  VOLUMES. 

With  an  Introductory  Preface  and  two  Photogravure  Illustrations  to 
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Thi*  edition  of  SIR  A.  CONAN  DOYLE'S  Novels  is  limited  to  looosets,  the  first 

volume  of  each  set  being  signed  and  numbered,  and  the  volumes  are  not  sold  separately. 

The  Author s  future  work  ivill  in  due  time  be  added  to  the  edition. 

Prospectus  post-free  on  application. 

CONTENTS   OF  THE   VOLUMES: 


1.  The  White  Company. 

2.  Micah  Clarke. 

3.  The  Refugees. 

4.  Rodney  Stone. 

6.  Adventures  of  Sherlock  Holmes. 

6.  Memoirs  of  Sherlock  Holmes. 

7.  A  Study  in  Scarlet ;  The  Sign 

of  Four. 

8.  The    Great    Shadow;     Uncle 

Bernac. 


9.  A  Duet,  with  an  Occasional 
Chorus. 

10.  The  Tragedy  of  the  "Korosko"; 

The  Green  Flag  ;  and  other 
Stories  of  War  and  Sport. 

11.  The    Stark -Munro   Letters; 

Round  the  Red  Lamp. 

12.  The    Exploits    of    Brigadier 

Gerard. 


"Author,  publisher,  and  owners  of  the  volumes  are  alike  to  be  congratulated.  .  . 
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44  Nothing  could  be  more  excellent.  .  .  .  The  volumes  are,  in  fact,  perfect  in  pro- 
duction."— Daily  Chronicle. 

"  Tastefully  bound  in  red  with  gilt  lettering,  adorned  with  choice  artistic  full-page 
illustrations,  and  printed  on  a  large  page  in  bold  readable  type,  these  volumes  should 
attract  hosts  of  new  readers  to  Dr.  Doyle." — Scotsman. 

"In  every  respect  it  is  worthy  of  the  popularity  which  the  author's  stories  have 
won. " — Standard. 

"  Sure  to  be  speedily  snapped  up  by  admirers  of  this  popular  writer.  The  volumes 
are  handsomely  printed  and  bound." — Truth. 

THOROUGHLY  REVISED,  ENLARGED,  AND 

COMPLETED  EDITION 

OF  A.  CONAN  DOYLE'S  "THE  GREAT  BOER  WAR.9 

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By   A.  CONAN   DOYLE. 

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holds  the  field,  and,  we  believe,  will  continue  to  hold  it  against  all  comers."— Daily 
Telegraph. 

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fairly  and  exactly  set  forth.  It  is  the  first  full  history,  the  most  ambitious  attempt  to 
give  an  exhaustive  account  of  the  whole  war ;  and,  as  such,  and  from  its  own  intrinsic 
merit,  it  must  hold  the  ground  for  sonw  time  to  come." — Army  and  Navy  Gazette. 

LONDON  :  SMITH,  ELDEL,  &  CO.,  15  WATERLOO  PLACE,  S.W. 


WORKS    BY    MISS   THACKERAY. 

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harmonious  colouring.  .  .  .  This  sort  of  writing  is  nearly  as  good  as  a  diange  of  air."— 

A.CADEMY. 

"ENGLISH  LITERATURE  IN  THE  REIGN  OP  VICTORIA."— "  One  of  the  most  delightful 
vfour  novelists,  gifted  with  delicate  invention,  chartn  of  thought,  and  grace  of  style."— 
PROF.  Mor.LKY. 

Uniform  Edition,  each  Volume  Illustrated  with  a  Vignette  Title-page. 
Large  crown  8vo,  6s.  each. 

OLD  KENSINGTON.  BLUEBEARD'S     KEYS,    and     other 

THE  VILLAGE  ON  THE  CLIFF. 
FIVE  OLD  FRIENDS  AND  A  YOUNG 

PRINCE. 

TO  ESTHER,  and  other  Sketches. 
THE   STORY  OF  ELIZABETH;   TWO 

HOURS;  FROM  AN  ISLAND. 


KEYS, 
Stories. 

TOILERS  AND  SPINSTERS. 
MISS  ANGEL;  FULHAM  LAWN. 
MISS  WILLIAMSON'S  DIVAGATION* 
MRS.  DYMOND. 


LIFE   AND    WORKS    OF 
CHARLOTTE,   EM  SLY,  and   ANNE   BRONTE. 

The  "Haworth"  Edition. 

"  Assuredly  there  are  few  books  which  will  live  longer  in  English  literature  than  those 
we  owe  to  the  pen  of  the  Bronte  Sisters."— SPEAKER. 

In  7  Vols.  large  crown  8vo,  cloth,  gilt  top,  6s.  each ;  or  in  set  cloth  binding, 
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With  Portraits  and  Illustrations,  including  Views  of  Places  described  in  the  Works 
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Royal  Photographic  Society.  Introductions  to  the  Works  are  supplied  by  Mrs.  HUMPHRY 
WARD,  and  an  Introduction  and  Notes  by  Mrs.  GASKELL'S  "Life  of  Charlotte  Bronte," 
by  Mr.  CLEMENT  K.  SHORTER,  the  eminent  Bronte  authority. 

JANE  EYRE.  I  THE  PROFESSOR ;  AND  POEMS. 

SHIRLEY.  WUTHERING  HEIGHTS. 

VILLETTE.  I  THE  TENANT  OF  WILDFELL  HALL, 

THE  LIFE  OF  CHARLOTTE  BRONTE.    By  Mrs.  GASKELL. 

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lettered  cloth  case,  12*.  6d.  

W.    M.   THACKERAY'S   WORKS. 

The  Biographical  Edition. 

"  I  do  not  hesitate  to  name  Thackeray  first.  His  knowledge  of  human  nature  wa$ 
supreme,  and  his  characters  stand  out  as  human  beings  with  a  force  and  a  truth  which 
has  not,  I  think,  been  within  the  reach  of  any  other  English  novelist  in  any  period." -~ 
ANTHONY  TROLLOPE,  on  English  Novelists  in  his  Autobiography. 

13  Vols.,  large  crown  8vo,  cloth,  gilt  top,  6s.  each.   The  13  Volumes  are 
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Note-Books ;  and  each  volume  includes  a  Memoir  in  the  form  of  an  Introduction  by 
Mrs.  RICHMOND  RITCHIE. 


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TURES. 


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