‘I suppose you cannot have read Middlemarch, as you say nothing about it. It stands quite alone. As one only just moistens one’s lips with an exquisite liqueur to keep the taste as long as possible in one’s mouth, I never read more than a single chapter of Middlemarch in the evening, dreading to come to the last, when I must wait two months for a renewal of the pleasure. The depth of humour has certainly never been surpassed in English literature. If there is ever a shade too much learning that is Lewes’s fault[[64]].’
But there was another reason for his enjoyment of Abergwili. Student as he was, he delighted in the sights, the sounds, the air of the country. He never left it for his annual migration to London without regret, partly because it was so troublesome to move the mass of books without which he could not bear to leave home, but still more because the bustle and dust of London annoyed him; and in the midst of congenial society, and the enjoyment of music and pictures, his thoughts reverted with longing regret to his trees, his flowers, and his domestic pets. He had begun his social relations with dogs and cats in Yorkshire, and an amusing story is told of the way in which the preparations for his formal reception when he came home after accepting the bishopric of S. David’s, were completely disconcerted by the riotous welcome of his dogs, who jumped on his shoulders and excluded all human attentions[[65]]. At Abergwili he extended his affections to birds, and kept peacocks, pheasants, canaries, swans, and tame geese, which he regularly fed every morning, no matter what the weather might be. They treated him with easy familiarity, for they used to seize his coattails with their beaks to show their welcome. His flowers had to yield to the tastes of his four-footed friends. One day his gardener complained, ‘What am I to do, my Lord? The hares have eaten your carnations.’ ‘Plant more carnations,’ was his only reply. Fine summer weather would draw him out of ‘Chaos’ into the field or garden; and one of his letters gives a delicious picture of his enjoyment of a certain June, sitting on the grass while the haymakers were at work in the field beyond, reading The Earthly Paradise, and watching the movements of ‘a dear horse’ who paced up and down with a ‘system of hay rakes behind him to toss it about and accelerate its maturity[[66]].’
It must not, however, be supposed that Bishop Thirlwall lived the life of an indolent man of letters. No bishop ever performed the duties of his position more thoroughly, or with greater sacrifice of personal ease and comfort. His first care was to learn Welsh, and in a little more than a year he could read prayers and preach in that language. In his large and little-known diocese locomotion was not easy, and accommodation was often hard to obtain. Yet he visited every part of it, personally inspected the condition of the schools and churches (deplorable enough in 1840), and regularly performed the duties of confirmation, preaching, and visitation. In the charge of 1866 he reviewed the improvements which had been accomplished up to that time, and could mention 183 churches to the restoration of which the Church Building Society had made grants, and more than thirty parishes in which either new or restored churches were in progress. Besides these, there were some which had been restored by private munificence; others, including the cathedral, by public subscription; many parsonages had been built, livings had been augmented, and education had been largely increased[[67]]. To all these excellent objects he had himself been a munificent contributor, and we believe that between the beginning and the end of his episcopate he had spent nearly £40,000 in charities of various kinds[[68]]. Yet with all these claims on the gratitude of the clergy we are sorry to have to admit that he was not personally popular. It would have been more wonderful perhaps had he been so. The Welsh clergy forty years ago were a rough and uncultivated body of men, narrow-minded and prejudiced, and with habits hardly more civilized than those of the labourers around them. They were ill at ease with an English man of letters. He was to them an object of curiosity, possibly of dread. The new Bishop intimated his wish that the clergy should come to his house without restraint, and when there should be treated as gentlemen and equals. This was of itself an innovation. In his predecessor’s time when a clergyman called at Abergwili he entered by the back door, and if he stayed to dinner he took that meal in the housekeeper’s room with the upper servants. Thirlwall abolished these customs, and entertained the clergy at his own table. This was excellent in intention, but impossible in practice. The difference in tastes, feelings, manners, between the entertainer and the entertained made social intercourse equally disagreeable to both parties; and the Bishop felt obliged to substitute correspondence for visits, so far as he could, reserving personal intercourse for the archdeacons, or those clergymen whose education enabled them to appreciate his friendship[[69]]. Again, the peculiar tone of his mind must be remembered. He was nothing if not critical; and, further, as one of his oldest friends once said in our hearing, ‘he was the most thoroughly veracious man I ever knew.’ He could not listen to a hasty, ill-considered, remark without taking it to pieces, and demonstrating, by successive questions, put in a slow, deliberate tone of voice, the fallacy of the separate parts of the proposition, and, by consequence, of the whole. Hence he was feared and respected rather than beloved; and those who ought to have been proud of having such a man among them wreaked their small spite against him by accusing him of being inhospitable, of walking out attended by a dog trained to know and bite a curate, and the like. These slanders, of which we hope he was unconscious, he could not answer; those who attacked him in public he could and did crush with an accuracy of exposition, and a power of sarcasm, for which it would be hard to find a parallel. We need only refer to his answers to Sir Benjamin Hall, M.P. for Marylebone, on the general question of the condition of the churches in his diocese, appended to his charge for 1851, and on the special case of the Collegiate Church of Brecon, in two letters to the Archbishop of Canterbury; or to the Letter to the Rev. Rowland Williams, published in 1860. Mr Williams had published some sermons, entitled Rational Godliness, the supposed heterodoxy of which had alarmed the clergy of his diocese, seventy of whom had signed a memorial to the Bishop, praying him to take some notice of the book; in other words, to remove the author from the college at Lampeter, of which he was vice-principal. The Bishop had declined to interfere, and in his charge of 1857 had discussed the question at length, considering it, as was his manner, from all points of view, and, while he found much to blame, defending the author’s intentions, on the ground of the high opinion of his personal character which he himself held. This, however, did not satisfy Mr Williams. We cannot help suspecting that he was longing for a martyr’s crown; and, indignant at not having obtained one, he addressed the Bishop at great length in what he called An Earnestly Respectful Letter on the Difficulty of bringing Theological Questions to an Issue. He described the charge as ‘a miracle of cleverness,’ but deplored its indefiniteness; he drew a picture of ‘a preacher in our wild mountains’ who came to seek counsel from his bishop and got only evasive answers—‘in all helps for our guidance Abergwili may equal Delphi in wisdom, but also in ambiguity[[70]]’—and entreated the Bishop to declare plainly his own opinion on the questions raised. For once Bishop Thirlwall’s serenity was fairly ruffled. Stung by the ingratitude of a man whom he had steadily befriended, and whose aim was, as he thought, to draw him into admissions damaging to himself, he struck with all his might and main, and, as was said at the time, ‘you may hear every bone in his adversary’s body cracking.’ One specimen of the remarkable power of his reply must suffice. On the comparison of himself to the Delphic oracle he remarked:
‘Even if I had laid claim to oracular wisdom I should have thought this complaint rather unreasonable; for the oracle at Delphi, though it pretended to divine infallibility, was used to wait for a question before it gave a response. But I wish above all things to be sure as to the person with whom I have to do. I remember to have read of one who went to the oracle at Delphi, “ex industriâ factus ad imitationem stultitiæ”; and I cannot help suspecting that I have before me one who has put on a similar disguise. The voice does not sound to me like that of a “mountain clergyman”; while I look at the roll I seem to recognize a very different and well-known hand. The “difficulties” are very unlike the expression of an embarrassment which has been really felt, but might have been invented in the hope of creating one. They are quite worthy of the mastery which you have attained in the art of putting questions, so as most effectually to prevent the possibility of an answer[[71]].’
But if Thirlwall’s great merits were not fully appreciated in his own diocese, there was no lack of recognition of them in the Church at large. His seclusion at Abergwili largely increased his influence. It was known that he thought out questions for himself, without consulting his episcopal brethren or his friends, and without being influenced in any way, as even the most conscientious men must be, in despite of themselves, by the opinions which they hear expressed in society. Hence his utterances came to be accepted as the decisions of a judge; of one who, standing on an eminence, could take ‘an oversight of the whole field of ecclesiastical events[[72]],’ and from that commanding position could distinguish what was of permanent importance from that which possessed a merely controversial interest as a vexed question of the day. We have spoken of the advantages which he derived from his secluded life; it must be admitted that it had also certain disadvantages. The freshness and originality of his opinions, the judicial tone of his independent decisions, gave them a permanent value; but his want of knowledge of the opinions of those from whom he could not wholly dissociate himself, and, we may add, his indifference to them, caused him to be not unfrequently misunderstood, and to be charged with holding views not far removed from heresy. ‘I will not call him an unbeliever, but a misbeliever,’ said a very orthodox bishop, whose love of epigram occasionally got the better of his charity. His brother bishops, like the Welsh clergy, feared him more than they loved him; they knew his value as an ally, but they knew also that he would never, under any circumstances, become a partisan, or adopt a view which he could not wholly approve, merely because it seemed good to his Order to exhibit unanimity. It was probably for this reason, as much as for his eloquence and power, that he had the ear of the House of Lords on the rare occasions when he addressed it. The Peers knew that they were listening to a man who had the fullest sense of the responsibilities of the episcopate, but who would neither defend nor oppose a measure because ‘the proprieties’ indicated the side on which a bishop would be expected to vote. Two only of his speeches are republished in the collection before us—on the Civil Disabilities of the Jews (1848), and on the Disestablishment of the Irish Church (1869). We should like to have had added to these that on the grant to the Roman Catholic College of Maynooth (1845), which seems to us to be equally worth preserving. On these occasions Bishop Thirlwall took the unpopular side at periods of great excitement; his arguments were listened to with the utmost attention; and in the case of the Irish Church it has been stated that no speech had a greater effect in favour of the measure than his.
In all Church matters he was a thorough Liberal. His view of the Church of England cannot be better stated than by quoting a passage from one of his Letters to a Friend. He had been reading Mr Robertson’s sermons; and after saying that their author was specially recommended to him by the hostility of the Record, ‘which I consider as a proof of some excellence in every one who is its object,’ he thus proceeds:
‘He was certainly not orthodox after the Record standard, but might very well be so after another. For our Church has the advantage—such I deem it—of more than one type of orthodoxy: that of the High Church, grounded on one aspect of its formularies; that of the Low Church, grounded on another aspect; and that of the Broad Church, striving to take in both, but in its own way. Each has a right to a standing-place, none to exclusive possession of the field. Of course this is very unsatisfactory to the bigots of each party—at the two extremes. Some would be glad to cast the others out; and some yearn after a Living Source of Orthodoxy, of course on the condition that it sanctions their own views. To have escaped that worst of evils ought, I think, to console every rational Churchman for whatever he finds amiss at home.’[[73]]
Had the Bishop added that he wished each of these parties to have fair play, but that none should be exalted at the expense of the others, we should have had a summary of the principles which regulated his public life. Let it not, however, be supposed that he was an indifferent looker-on. He held that truth had many sides; that it might be viewed in different ways by persons standing in different positions; but still it was to him clear, and definite, and based upon a rock which no human assailant could shake. This, we think, is the keynote which is struck in every one of those eleven most remarkable Charges which are now for the first time collected together. We would earnestly commend them to the study of all who are interested in the history of the Church of England during the period which they cover. Every controversy which agitated her, every measure which affected her welfare, is discussed by a master; the real question at issue is carefully pointed out; the trivial is distinguished from the important; moderation and charity are insisted upon; angry passions are allayed; and, while the liberty of the individual is perpetually asserted, the duty of maintaining her doctrines is strenuously inculcated. As illustrations of some of these characteristics we would contrast his exhaustive analysis of the Tractarian movement or the Gorham controversy, with his conduct respecting Essays and Reviews. In the former cases he hesitated to condemn; he preferred to allay the terror with which his clergy were evidently inspired. In the latter, though always ‘decidedly opposed to any attempt to narrow the freedom which the law allows to every clergyman of the Church of England in the expression of his opinion on theological subjects,’ he joined his brother bishops in signing the famous ‘Encyclical,’ which we now know was the composition of Bishop Wilberforce, because he thought that in this case the principles advocated led to a negation of Christianity.
Thirlwall’s position towards theological questions has been called ‘indefinable[[74]].’ In a certain sense this statement is no doubt true. It was quite impossible to label him as of this or that party or faction; or to predict with any approach to certainty what he would do or say on any particular occasion. He had no enthusiasm (in the ordinary sense of the word) and no sentiment, and therefore, when a question was submitted to him, he did not decide it in the light of previous prejudices, or welcome it as a point gained towards some cherished end. He considered it as if it were the only question in the world at that moment, and as if he had never heard of it, or anything like it, before; he looked all round it, and balanced the arguments for and against it with the accuracy of a man of science in a laboratory. As a result of this process he frequently came to no resolution at all, and frankly told his correspondent that he would leave the matter referred to him to the decision of others. But, if what he held to be truth was assailed, or the conduct of an individual unjustly called in question, Thirlwall’s hesitation vanished. We have already mentioned his conduct in the House of Lords; but it should never be forgotten that he was one of the four Bishops who dissented from the resolution to inhibit Bishop Colenso from preaching in the various dioceses of England; and that he stood alone in withholding his signature from the address requesting him to resign his see. Again, when Mr J. S. Mill was a candidate for Westminster in 1865, and his opponents circulated on a placard some lines from his Examination of Sir W. Hamilton’s Philosophy intended to shock the minds of the electors as irreverent if not blasphemous,—a proceeding which was eagerly followed up by the Record and the Morning Advertiser in leading articles—Thirlwall at once wrote to the Spectator, maintaining that this passage contained “the utterance of a conviction in harmony with ‘the purest spirit of Christian morality’; that nothing but ‘an intellectual and moral incapacity worthy of the ‘Record’ and its satellite could have failed to recognise its truth’; and that it ‘thrilled’ him ‘with a sense of the ethical sublime’[[75]].”
There were many other duties besides the care of the diocese of S. David’s to which the Bishop devoted himself, but these we must dismiss with a passing notice. We allude to his work as a member of the Ritual Commission, as chairman of the Old Testament Revision Company, and in Convocation. Gradually, however, as years advanced, his physical powers began to fail, and he resolved to resign his bishopric. This resolution was carried into effect in 1874. He retired to Bath, where he was still able to continue many of his old pursuits, and, by the help of his nephew and his family, notwithstanding blindness and deafness, to maintain his old interests. He died rather suddenly, July 27, 1875, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, where, by a singularly felicitous arrangement, his remains were laid in the same grave as those of George Grote.