—‘We returned to-day, and on reading over these resolutions, which I called a vow, I find I have acted very poorly up to them. I believe they have operated as a sort of check upon me in some respects, that I have been less of an epicure and less of an interferer than I should have been else. But yet, quite at starting, I suggested, when my father proposed going ashore, that it would take a longer time than he calculated on: but this was merely a suggestion. And on one of the evenings when we were by ourselves, I argued about people going to Church in a way very inconsistent with our relative situations; neither was I quite cordial in my acquiescence with propositions of my father’s about minor excursions at S[alcombe?] and feel as if I had pressed unpleasantly on him some of my opinions about tides, and names of places.’
—‘Yesterday, I was talking to [Phill?] about [Peg?[22]]; and among other things, when I said how considerate she was about everybody’s wants, and how she was always on the lookout for an opportunity to relieve them, I said (and have reason enough to say it) that things of that sort did not come into my head. But I am afraid I must confess that I was a little annoyed at [Phill? allowing] that she did not think they did! I cannot accuse myself of having been so insincere as to have laid a trap for a compliment; but I was not quite prepared to find that my negligence was such as to obtrude itself on the observation of those who would always make the best of one. O God! give me grace to look on this as a warning voice from Thee, and let the remembrance of it brace my energies for the future…. Also, I yesterday gave way to a covetous inconsistent wish for a beautiful colt that we happened to see, and which my father had half a mind I should get for my own. I feel all these selfish wishes crowding on me, and have no clear decided rule by which to check them. I think I will always ask myself, when I wish for an elegant superfluity, what business I have to be so much better off than my sisters, and will not allow myself anything I can avoid till I have got them all the things they are reasonably in want of.’
—‘Teach me to be ever mindful of the wants and wishes of others, and that I may never omit an opportunity of adding to their happiness; let each particular of their condition be present with me, what they are doing or suffering. I am most fearfully deficient in this mark of a child of God. Protect me from all covetous desires of the pleasant things which money can procure: the D[enbury?] cottage, the new dining-room window, nice furniture, equipage, musical instruments, or any other thing, in order to obtain which I must lessen my means of benefiting others.
—‘I have done many things to-day that I ought to be ashamed of. For instance: I said to the [Provost?] I had not examined carefully an analysis that I had hardly read a word of. I have assumed, too, a harsh manner in examining. I feel too anxious to show my own knowledge of the
subjects on which I am examining. Was very inattentive at morning Chapel, and not sorry to find that there was none in the evening. I believe the day before yesterday I made a bungle in examining W[illy] in Euclid, which made him appear to be doing wrong while he was quite right, but did not discover it in time to rectify it by confession (which I hope I should have done).’
The youth who wrote much else thus singularly and severely of himself, had an almost fierce sincerity. At an early hour, he made up his mind to be in his strength, what many men are said to be in their weakness, ‘nobody’s enemy but his own,’ and he carried out both clauses implied in the contract. Neither at Eton nor at Oxford, with opportunities by the score, did he ever make a single ‘influential’ personal friend; to no position or emolument did he ever aspire, though he was to give unremitting and precious labour to what he believed to be the best cause in the world. ‘Froude and I were nobodies,’ said Newman, two lifetimes later, with a touch of whimsical pride. Like a child of Socrates, our philosopher would fain see how many things there are which he could do without; like a child of Seneca, he would fain enjoy this life, with the zest possible to those alone who are always ready to leave it. Enough of this Journal, most practical in all its self-searching. It appears to concern itself with trivialities only to those who do not realise how relentless is the ascetic spirit, and how small a quarry it will still hunt when all the tigers are met and exterminated. As was said of a greater than Hurrell Froude: ‘Ce diable d’homme a toujours été en se perfectionnant. Il serait devenu honnête homme, si on l’eut laissé vivre.’
When Mr. Keble went down to his curacy at Southrop, at the beginning of the Long Vacation of 1823,[23] Hurrell went with him to read for his B.A. degree, which he took in December of that year. The summer was to him, as to one
of his companions there, Isaac Williams, the turning-point in his career. In those tranquil fields and winding roads and the solemn little village Church, where he found ‘a man wholly made up of love, and religion a reality,’ Hurrell began to see the Last Things: he never could forget the place, the person, and the occasion which meant so much to him in the Providence of God. His third companion, Robert Wilberforce, ‘did not feel towards Keble,’ wrote Isaac Williams, ‘as we did at that time, having been brought up in an opposite school.’ In all the fresh and brave happinesses of nature and of grace which were round Keble like an aureole wherever he went, Hurrell brightened and strengthened visibly.
‘You are my Spring: and when you smile, I grow.’
He learned from him to follow conscience and to fear applause. As soon as he parted from Mr. Keble, their long correspondence began, and the home-loving pupil was proud indeed when the ‘first man in Oxford,’ as Newman enthusiastically called him, came on a visit to Dartington. We know from recent testimony of a delightful pen[24] how dear the neighbourhood became to Mr. Keble, and how often he would wander away from the animated household of his friends to the fourteenth-century priest’s-house hard by at Little Hempston, an almost unique survival, with its small quadrangle, its hall and solar, of Chaucer’s time. The lovely old Vicarage, in its still secluded situation, had taken captive Hurrell’s twenty-year old fancy, as a letter of 1823 to Mr. Keble shows.