Mr. Keble was settled in 1825 as Curate in sole charge of Hursley, Hampshire.
To the Rev. John Keble, Aug. 16, 1825.
‘… Suaviter ut nunc est inquam: but it was not so with poor [Williams] in the packet, being that he was sick all the way from Portland Head to Plymouth Sound; and was so completely miserable that he would not be spoken to, and kept on groaning out that he would give all he ever expected in the world to be on shore. By this unfortunate circumstance he was prevented from seeing the sun rise over the watery element in the very act of “pillowing his chin upon an orient wave,” and from bearing testimony (which I can do) that there is nothing the least sublime in the mere fact of being out of sight of land, and having nothing but the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky. But what was most melancholy of all, he was unable to get a glimpse of all the glorious coast of the south promontory of Devonshire…. Next day we came upon Southampton, while it was under one of the most imposing magnificent effects possible: a rainbow, lost in a dark cloud which was raining as hard as it could pelt, was resting one of its ends on the woods: and the sun on the waters, and the spires, made the misty smoke that was rising up from the town, quite imposing and sentimental. However, my complacency was much alloyed by the tantalising sight of the beautiful yachts, with their glittering sails, skimming along in the breeze, which had just started up after the violent rain which had fallen, and the melancholy Heu, non mea rushed on me with irresistible force.’
How well he loved a boat! He complains, in one entry of his Journal, that the thought of boats distracts him insufferably during his prayers.
Hurrell was asked to say his say about The Christian Year, then in manuscript. He seems to have been inclined to begrudge the fact that Keble had set himself to write not as a poet for poets, but as a challenging voice to ‘earth-drudging hearts.’ That he appreciated the lasting charm of the book is
quite apparent from the singularly apposite quotation applied to it in the second letter on the subject.
To the Rev. John Keble, Sept. 10, 1825.
‘About the poems—it is really too ludicrous for a fellow like me to sit down deliberately to criticise the taste and philosophy of a production of yours: so that I have no inclination to expose or commit myself, by detailing to you my remarks on particular passages. There are, as you may suppose, many places which, in fun, I would show fight about; and there is something which I should call Sternhold-and-Hopkinsy in the diction, of which I began to note down the first instances I met; but, finding it go through, I concluded it was done on a theory. But though I am not quite such a fool as to think my opinion worth offering in point of criticism, it may not, perhaps, be quite useless to confess it as a matter of fact, with which you may begin an induction as to the probable good you may do by publication. I confess, then, and not without some shame, that you seem to me to have addressed yourself too exclusively to plain matter-of-fact good sort of people … and not to have taken much pains to interest and guide the feelings of people who feel acutely, nor to have given much attention to that dreary visionary existence which they make themselves very uncomfortable by indulging in, and which I should have hoped it was the peculiar province of religious poetry to sober down into practical piety. I know all this may be great nonsense, may be even humbug; for long experience has convinced me how much I can cheat myself as to my real feelings. But that you may see that it has not been concocted since, but was the impression made on me while reading, I will extract a note which I made … I suppose I meant that things like Gray’s Elegy, which turn melancholy to its proper account, by pointing out the vanity of the world without telling us so, seem to me more to answer the purpose. And now I will cease making an ass of myself!… I am half-conscious that the same sort of objections might be made against the Psalms; and though I cannot but think that they will make your poems less generally liked and read, I am far from confident that it may not be better,
upon the whole, for those who attend to them as a religious duty.
‘I can hardly shut up without telling you of such an interesting set of fellows that we heard of in our peregrinations. They were sixteen French fishermen and three boys, who had all come over, in one boat, to get bait on the English coast, and were kept there ten days by the wind: all that time they sat upon the deck knitting stockings and nightcaps; and, when Sunday came, they were just so far out at sea that the people on the coast could hear them singing the Roman Catholic service so beautifully, and in the evening they came on shore, and danced, out of mere jollity, for an hour. They were such grateful fellows, that a gentleman on the coast who had done them some kindness, could hardly get rid of them without his giving them some commission to do for him in France, i.e. to let them smuggle something over for him; and, when they could not remove his scruples as a Justice of [the] Peace, they caught him an immense fish, and were quite disappointed that he would not accept it as a present.’