commencement of the Tracts for the Times. He returned full of energy and of a prospect of doing something for the Church; and we walked in the Trinity College gardens, and discussed the subject. He said, in his manner: “Isaac, we must make a row in the world! Why should we not? Only consider what the Peculiars” (i.e. the Evangelicals) “have done with a few half-truths to work upon! And with our principles, if we set resolutely to work, we can do the same.” I said: “I have no doubt we can make a noise, and may get people to join us; but shall we make them really better Christians? If they take up our principles in a hollow way, as the Peculiars” (this was a name Froude had given the Low Church party) “have done theirs, what good shall we do?” To this Froude said: “Church principles, forced on people’s notice, must work for good. However, we must try; and Newman and I are determined to set to work as soon as he returns, and you must join with us. We must have short tracts, and letters in The British Magazine, and verses (and these you can do for us), and get people to preach sermons on the Apostolical Succession and the like. And let us come and see old Palmer” (i.e. the author of the Origines Liturgicæ) “and get him to do something.” We then called on Palmer, who was one of the very few in Oxford (indeed, the only one at that time) who sympathised with us; and although he did not altogether understand Froude, or our ways and views (the less so as he was not himself an Oxford, but a Dublin man), yet he was extremely hearty in the cause, looking more to external visible union and strength than we did, for we only had at heart certain principles. We, i.e., Froude, Keble, and myself, immediately began to send some verses to The British Magazine, since published [in] the Lyra Apostolica….
‘… From this time forth, after Newman’s return, I was thrown more and more entirely into his society for about seven years, Froude waning more and more away, and disappearing from Oxford….
‘… I much regretted not being with poor Froude at or nearly before his death…. Poor Froude! he was peculiarly vir paucorum hominum: I thought that knowing him, I better understood Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Froude was a person most
natural, but so original as to be unlike anyone else, hiding depth of delicate thought in apparent extravagances. Hamlet and the Georgics of Virgil, he used to say, he should have bound together. Many have imagined, and Newman endeavoured to persuade himself, that if Froude had lived he would have joined the Church of Rome, as well as himself. But this I do not at all think. There was a seriousness and steadfastness, at the bottom, in Froude, so that I had always confidence in him:[357] Newman told me once, half-seriously, that the publication of Froude’s Remains was owing to me, as I had said to him, if persons could have so much brought before them that they could thoroughly understand Froude’s character, then they might enter into his sayings; but unless they knew him as we did, they could not understand them. For, indeed, one constantly trembled for him in mixed society, both in Common Rooms and in other places, feeling that he would not be understood…. On the day of the book coming out, I went into Parker the bookseller’s with Copeland; and there we were startled at seeing one who then was the chief opponent of the Church principles of Newman and ourselves. It was Ward of Balliol, author of the Ideal. He sat down with the book in his hands, evidently much affected; and then we afterwards heard, to our astonishment, that he had been very much taken by the book, had bought a copy for himself and another to give away, and was, in fact, quite converted.’
From ‘Origin of the Tracts for the Times,’ a poem in the 1852 edition of ‘Thoughts in Past Years,’ by Isaac Williams.[358]
‘It was before the summer holidays,
A noon I well remember, as we sat
Conversing in my College rooms, my thoughts
Mingling unconscious with the trembling leaves
Of poplars from the window; and meanwhile,