DARTINGTON OLD CHURCH, NOW DESTROYED
(The railing by the south porch enclosed the tomb of the Froudes)
THE PRESENT ASPECT OF HURRELL FROUDE’S BURIAL-PLACE
(IN THE FOREGROUND), DARTINGTON OLD CHURCHYARD
In 1836, the ‘vanishing of such a spirit without sign’ was not to be endured. It was the most natural thing in the world that all he had written should be gathered together, that such a lover of books (as Leigh Hunt says somewhere, in one of his happy literary retrospects), should himself become a book. Hurrell became a singular book, as it happened, made up, paradoxically, of matter never prepared by himself for publication; and he and it were put forth as a party manifesto. It may not be uninteresting to review the origin and character of
The Remains of the late Reverend Richard Hurrell Froude, M.A., Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, printed by the Rivingtons in 1838 and 1839, and consisting of four volumes octavo. The Editors, whose names do not appear upon the title-page, were the Rev. John Keble and the Rev. John Henry Newman. The latter is generally supposed to have done most of the work; there are published letters of Keble’s to Sir John Coleridge, and of Newman’s to Mr. Frederic Rogers, which go to show that the idea of bringing out the Remains, and the initiatory labour, including the first Preface, were Newman’s. But according to Coleridge’s Memoir, Mr. Keble, as collaborator, wrote by far the greater part of both Prefaces. For the very beautiful second one he was certainly responsible.[266]
Of Part I. of these Remains, Vol. i. is devoted to a Private Journal; Memoranda personal and philosophical; Letters to Friends; one Latin and five English poems; seven pages of remembered miscellaneous sayings; and a diary as Appendix. The companion volume is devoted to Sermons complete and fragmentary; three Essays on subjects connected with arts and sciences, and three on subjects purely ecclesiastical. Part II., Vol. i., has five papers and some fragments, none of which are on secular themes; and the final volume is given up to the History of the Contest between Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Henry II., drawn from original documents and State Papers, left unfinished by Hurrell Froude, and carried on and edited by the Rev. James Bowling Mozley.
The collecting of ‘dearest Froude’s papers’ had begun before April, 1836; they were looked over at Hursley in July; by September, Newman, otherwise busy as he was, writes that he is getting on with the transcriptions, and that James Mozley has been hard at work during the whole Vacation on S. Thomas of Canterbury. Archdeacon Froude sends up his auxiliary supplies in October, from Dartington Parsonage.
‘… I sent off a parcel to you, three days ago, by Henry Champernowne: it contains the text of dear Hurrell’s manuscripts.
All your letters to him that I can find are also enclosed. With the latter I must confess I have not parted without regret. They are memorials of your affectionate friendship with one whose image is ever before me, and to which I could never turn without a delightful interest that I cannot describe. His correspondence for many years with myself[267] turns principally on little passing incidents, or relates to matters of private concern; but it is of great value to me as a sort of journal from early boyhood nearly to the time of our separation.’
Lyra Apostolica was issued in November, and several of the critics had taken pains to single out ‘β’s’ poems for special commendation, even if at the expense of Keble and Newman: certainly Samuel Wilberforce did so, in his asked-for review, the tone of which was so disconcerting and unexpected to the asker;[268] and The Christian Observer had saluted Hurrell as ‘the most spiritual and least bigoted of the whole set.’ All this was encouraging to the projectors of the Remains, who knew better than outsiders of how keen and high an intellect, how holy an inspiration, their cause had been deprived. Newman’s notes, as the editing progressed, are very sanguine.