‘“They are taken away for some purpose, surely; their gifts are not lost to us: their soaring minds, the fire of their contemplations, the sanctity of their desires, the vigour of their faith, the sweetness and gentleness of their affections, were not given without an object. Yea, doubtless they are keeping up the perpetual chant in the Shrine above, praying and praising God day and night in His Temple like Moses upon the mount, while Joshua and his host fight with Amalek.”
‘… Deprived of Froude, and now of his mother, with one sister married, and the other to be married a few months afterwards, Newman must have felt alone indeed. How much this feeling of communion with the departed had been growing in Newman may be seen from the only two poems of 1835[375] (the last until we come to the Roman period), both of which bring before us the intercession of the dead for the living. There can be no doubt whose voice Newman was henceforth to hear most distinctly amid all the earthly din and uproar of the conflict of the Tracts: it was that of the man whose Breviary (assigned to him by a chance utterance of some friend, which he accepted as a message from Heaven) lay always on his study table, destined to lie there for half a century; to the possession of which he attached such importance, that besides minutely describing the incident in the Apologia, he records it in the Letters, along with his mother’s death, as one of nine important events of this critical year: “My knowing and using the Breviary.”[376]
‘Froude (not Froude’s opinions, but Froude himself, or his personality, Froude first, living, and then, as a posthumous influence, still more powerful after death), did more than any other external thing to make Newman what he became, and to shape, through Newman, the Tractarian Movement. Some of Newman’s most important steps dated from the year of their intimacy. It was in 1829 that the two
became close friends: Newman the non-political, and Froude the High Tory…. A priori, we ought to be prepared to believe that Froude pushed Newman on. Froude was a High Churchman from the first, with an inclination towards the Mediæval Church, and from this he never swerved: Newman was an Evangelical, extricating himself from Evangelicalism. The former had no doubts; the latter was at that time perpetually doubting. How could it be otherwise than natural that the former should take the lead of the latter?
‘… Froude is not quite fairly, or at least fully, represented in the Remains. The Journal, and even the Letters, fail, perhaps, to express some latent feeling which might have softened apparent harshness. To those who knew him well, his words were interpreted by his personality, which all concur in describing as bright, graceful, and even “beautiful.” … It was this brilliant and graceful embodiment, in one so earnest, so ascetically strict, so clear-headed, and so confident, [one] of definite consistent imaginations about spiritual things (which imaginations Newman describes as “intellectual principles”) that first arrested, and ultimately captivated the older friend, who was at first disposed to smile at, even while admiring, the erratic, “sillyish,” “red-hot” High Churchman….
‘… Fundamentally agreeing with Froude, from the first, in the principles of religious fear, obedience, and self-distrust, Newman differed from him only in the expression and application of them; and on these points Froude’s mind was settled while Newman’s was still in flux. No wonder that, by degrees, Newman lost confidence in any utterance of his own unless Froude first stamped it with his approval. Did not Froude always take the lead, experimenting, as it were, on himself? And had not Newman repeatedly to confess that Froude was right, and he himself wrong? One reason for this was, that Froude, being of an æsthetic bent, instinctively turned from the Primitive Church, which was, to him, an affair of books, and of which he knew very little, to the Mediæval Church, with which he was in complete harmony, or to the Anglican Nonjurors, about whom he had some sympathetic knowledge. This gave to his notions a naturalness and a practicableness in which Newman’s were deficient. For this,
and for other reasons, Froude seemed to be a seer in regions where Newman was only a groper; and so, in time, the latter came naturally not only to depend on the former, but also to avow his dependence so far as to declare his unwillingness to commit himself to anything definite till the man who could see had given it his imprimatur. Still, the brighter and more pleasing side of Froude’s character must not allow us to forget that his search after holiness implied not only something bordering on abjectness towards God, but also strife on earth, and the appearance of ill-will towards a great multitude of men. These qualities explain in part the secret of his power over Newman, who would not have allowed himself to be influenced by any but a detached soul holding aloof from all the world, and especially, perhaps, from the rabble, that “knoweth not the law.” But Froude was by far the more combative of the two, and appears to have acted on Newman, as on Keble, in the way of an inciting cause, or, to use his own metaphor, a “poker.”
‘We find here depicted [in the Remains] a Christian in whose most secret records, self-examinations and prayers, there appears scarcely any mention of Christ as a Person, and very little trace of any love of Christ (who hardly appears at all in them except in some reference to the sacramental Body and Blood); yet one who with all his heart and soul is seeking after that salvation which he supposes to be derivable from Christ’s Church; a man who obstinately detested, first in himself, then in others, the least vestige of affectation, cant, and hypocrisy: who spoke what he meant, as he meant it, and would always have gone, if his friends had allowed him, by the straightest of ways towards what he deemed the best of objects; a man, therefore, of an essentially truth-loving disposition, searching for Truth in all sincerity, but restricted by a “system” to a search within certain limits and through certain methods; shut out from the great world of men, and shut into the comparatively small world—not indeed, as Newman was, of books, but—of ecclesiastical traditions and imaginations; by nature, without any deep feeling of human-hearted sociality, without love of man as a fellow-man; by ecclesiasticism led rather to hate than to love; loving indeed a few, but only as a
Spartan might love his companions-in-arms, loving those select spirits by whose side he could battle for the interests of “the Church.”
‘Such a picture, though “instructive,” is not pleasing. Yet those who feel inclined to ridicule, or to give way to disgust, as they peruse records of one whom they may be disposed to call the Minute Ascetic,—telling us of his shame at feeling ashamed that he had muddy trousers, or no gloves, or of his remorse for talking “flash,” or for not finding it easy to keep awake during a sermon, or for wanting to win sixpences at cards, will, if they read a little further, generally find other entries of a different character, as, for example, touching a certain offertory: “Intended £2: 10s., but thought I should be observed, so vowed £5 to the —— Mendicity Society.” We cannot smile at the man who, beneath under-statements conveyed half in slang, half in the language of Tractarian reserve, concealed a resolution not only to deny himself, but even, so far as he could, to suppress himself; who so hated his own individuality, and was so alarmed at the least touch of the self-will of genius within him, that he made it his “great ambition to become a humdrum.” Doomed to an early lingering death, and to leave others to continue the religious conflict in which he, of all the combatants, took the keenest and most passionate pleasure, he drops no word of self-commiseration and repining; and in the last month of his life, having contributed the proceeds of his Fellowship to the cause, he asks Newman to use it at his pleasure, and to make people infer that the money was being contributed by a large number of subscribers. “Spend away, my boy, and make a great fuss, as if your money came from a variety of sources.” If this was “economy,” it cannot, at all events, be scoffed at. Nothing is here for contempt, least of all from commonplace, compromising, half-way-halting semi-Christians or quasi-Christians. Manifestly, we have here a man: no mere word-bag or lump of sensations, but a being with a will, and with a controlling purpose; one who knew his own mind, and therefore had a right to lead those who did not know theirs; a fine specimen of the ecclesiastic militant, essentially a champion of holiness, though essentially, if charity be essential, not a Christian. Such was Richard Hurrell Froude,