His saltem accumulem donis, et fungar inani
Munere.”
To adjust such a character with Catholic facts and Catholic principles is no part of my present object. The reader who takes an interest in this question will find it discussed in Dr. Newman’s Lectures on Anglican Difficulties. For me it will be sufficient to take leave of this gifted person in the well-known words: Cum talis sis, utinam noster esses!
* * * * *
‘The estimate taken [of the Reformers and] of their work by Mr. Froude, Mr. Keble, and Mr. Newman became sufficiently manifest on the publication of Mr. Froude’s Remains, with the remarks prefixed to them by the friends just mentioned. Mr. Froude had described the English Reformers in general, as “a set with whom he wished to have less and less to do.” He declared his opinion that Bishop Jewel was no better than “an irreverent Dissenter,” and expressed himself as sceptical whether Latimer (of whom, as a “Martyr,” he did not wish to speak disrespectfully) were not “something in the Bulteel line.” Dr. Pusey was too humble and forbearing to enter any kind of public protest against statements and views so different from his own. But he was generally believed not to go along with the tenour of these expressions, nor to approve, otherwise than by passive acquiescence, of the publication of those parts of the work in which they were contained…. [Living,] Mr. Froude’s frankness and attractive personal qualities gained from the rising generation of Oxford a favourable hearing for the (to them) original views, which he so ably and dashingly inculcated…. No one can read Mr. Froude’s Remains … without seeing that with him and with those with whom he corresponded, the ethical system of Oxford had exercised no small influence in the formation of mental habits. Those who, like myself, were personally acquainted with Mr.
Froude, will remember how constantly he used to appeal to [the] great moral teacher of antiquity, “Old ‘Stotle,” as he used playfully to call him, against the shallow principles of the day. There is a sense, I am convinced, in which the literature of heathenism is often more religious than that of Protestantism. Thus, then, it was that the philosophical studies of Oxford tended to form certain great minds on a semi-Catholic type.
* * * * *
‘Towards the close of his mortal career, his opinions appear to have undergone some change which was perceptible to many of his friends even in his outward demeanour. He associated less than formerly with the old High Church party of the Establishment, as he became convinced that the ills of the Church must be cured by sterner and more unworldly methods of discipline than that party was prepared to accept. An air of gravity, and a tone of severity, even in general society (so far as he mixed with it), had replaced that bright and sunny cheerfulness which was characteristic of his earlier days; and this change of exterior was greater than could be explained by his declining health, against which he bore up with exemplary fortitude. Together with a more anxious view of the state and prospects of the Establishment, he had apparently taken up a less favourable opinion of the Catholic Church, at least in its actual manifestation. A visit to the Continent had operated (from whatever cause) unfavourably upon his judgment of Catholics, whom he now first stigmatised as “Tridentines”: a strange commentary, certainly, on the view put forth later by Mr. Newman, to the effect that the prevalent Catholic system was erroneous in that it had deviated from the Tridentine rule, not in that it represented that rule! This and similar dicta, some of a still more painful import, have led such of Mr. Froude’s friends as have clung to the Established Church to believe that, had he lived, he would have remained on their side. Such a question will naturally be determined, to a great extent, according to the personal views and wishes of those who speculate upon it. Certain at any rate it is, that had he come to us, the Church would have secured the humble obedience and faithful service of a rarely gifted intellect; while, had he stayed behind, he would have added one more to the
number of those whose absence is the theme of our lamentation, and whose conversion, the object of our prayers. It is part, however, of the historian’s office to investigate such questions according to the evidence at his disposal; and in the instance before us, that evidence is far more accessible and far more satisfactory than is usually the case in posthumous inquiries. Mr. Froude’s Letters to Friends, published in his Remains, give an insight into his character and feelings, with all their various developments and vicissitudes, such as is commonly the privilege of intimate personal acquaintance, and of that alone. His bosom friends could hardly have known him better than the careful student of these Letters may know him, if he desire it: indeed, it is to such friends that he discloses himself in those Letters with almost the plain-spokenness of the Confessional.
‘Now, it must be admitted that these Letters leave the question as to the probability of his conversion very much in that evenly-balanced state in which, as I have just said, the wishes of friends or partisans come in to determine it on either side. His Letters contain, on the one hand, many passages from which, if they stood alone, it might be concluded that he was, at certain times, almost ripe for conversion. They also contain others apparently of an opposite tenour. In the former class must be reckoned those indications of antipathy, continually deriving fresh fuel from new researches, to the English Reformation and Reformers.[330] Mr. Froude’s theological sentiments had long passed the mark of the Laudian era, and settled at the point of the Nonjurors.[331] He thinks one might take for an example Francis de Sales, whom, by the way, he classes with “Jansenist Saints.”[332] Again, he was most deeply sensitive to the shortcomings and anomalies of his communion: he calls it an “incubus” on the country, and ascribes to it the blighting properties of the “upas-tree.” It is evident that he was in advance both of Mr. Keble and Mr. Newman: he twits the former, in friendly expostulation, with the Protestantism of his phraseology in parts of The Christian Year, and laments the backwardness of the latter on some questions of the day. On