‘In his Private Journal, which was written chiefly in 1826, when he was about twenty-four, the feeling round which all others seem to group themselves, is a craving after an ideal happiness, real and attainable, though not yet, of which all our refined perceptions of beauty, nobility, and holiness are but indications and foretastes, and in which, as our character becomes equal to our capacities, they must eventually converge. With this is joined, as perhaps its necessary condition, a sensitive and pure taste for all that is beautiful or lofty to sight or mind; high, though unpractised, poetical powers; and an earnest appreciation of the reverence due to holy things, even to our own higher thoughts and deeper emotions.

‘This itself explains why these powers and feelings, lying, it seems, deepest, were unknown, almost unsuspected, by more than two or three of his nearest friends. His acquaintance more readily perceived and appreciated an unusually deep and true mode of dealing with mathematical questions; a subtlety, boldness and ingenuity of reasoning; a frank and accurate apprehension of the full force of an adverse argument; and a definiteness of conception and expression which seemed to cut through an intricate question, throwing off, rather than grappling with objections, with a clearness which one could hardly believe not to be sophistry.

‘But this book derives its commanding interest from the stern self-chastisement of body and mind, from which both reason and imagination receive their tone and substance. With this the Journal acquaints us; and there is something which really cows an ordinary reader, in the unsparing steadiness with which faults are sought for, the bitter self-abasement with which they are felt, and the unrelenting determination with which they are punished; all being recorded, except when addressed to God, with a plain and sometimes contemptuous homeliness of expression, which seems as if the author wished to do dishonour to himself and his thoughts, or held that a feeling which claimed to be deep and true, should not disdain to buy, by humiliation, the privilege of utterance….

‘… In 1825, in which year he took his degree, passages in his letters show the existence of those romantic views of religion which occupy so prominent a place in his character from that time forward. Of part of the intervening time, he speaks often in his Journal with very deep contrition: but anyone who observes the deep humiliation with which he confesses faults of which ordinary persons would think but little, (common indeed to all who have really high views of Christian excellence,) will be very cautious in inferring much as to the facts themselves, from this most bitter recollection of them. The Journal itself may perhaps be best introduced by some letters, giving an account of the first part of the time which it records.’

[To the Rev. John Keble, but not sent.]

Sept. 28, 1826.

‘“I have been meaning to write to you every day for a long time, and I do not suppose you would wish me to be influenced in putting off longer by the sad thing we have just heard.[344] At least, if I may judge from myself, there is so little difference between what are called real afflictions and imaginary ones, that it seems just as rational to go on in the common way when under the former as the latter. With me, this last summer, both at the time, and looking back on it,

seems to have gone very strangely; and I do not see any ground why my reason should contradict my feelings, because the things which affect me are either, in their nature, confined to the person who feels them, or are thought trifles by people in general. I have been trying almost all the Long [Vacation] to discover a sort of common-sense romance: I am convinced there must be such a thing, and that Nature did not give us such a high capacity for pleasure without making some other qualification for it besides delusion. But the speculation has got much more serious, and runs out into many more ramifications than I expected at first; and it seems to me as if I might make it the main object of a long course of reading, the first step of which would be to follow your advice in learning Hebrew and reading the early Fathers. This I have determined upon doing immediately upon my return to Oxford; and the intervening space I shall pass away as I can, with I. and P.,[345] among the mountains and waterfalls. Since I wrote this in the morning, I have been walking with P., whose quietness of mind makes me quite ashamed of my speculations, and I hardly like sending you this letter; however, if I have been making myself a fool all the summer, it is better I should not go on brooding on it by myself; for letting somebody know the state of my thoughts is the only way of keeping them straight; and I know no one but you who would make sufficient allowance for me to venture on such things with. Perhaps you may think it very odd, but this is the first time I have had resolution to ask for the papers which they found of my mother’s after her death.”

‘The writer seems to have shrunk from allowing this letter to reach his friend. In its stead, the following was sent:

‘“I have made three attempts to write, but all of them ran off into something wild, which, upon reflection, I thought would be better kept to myself. The fact is, that I have been in a strange way all the summer, and having had no one to talk to about the things which have bothered me, I have been every now and then getting into fits of enthusiasm or despondency. But the result has been in some respects a good