‘But some say: “Whether right or wrong in his views, [Mr. Froude] ought not to have spoken so rudely of these
subjects”: and this brings us to the second head of offence, his way of expressing his sentiments on grave matters, generally. Such censurers appear to forget that his feelings are conveyed to us in familiar Letters, and of course, as his other Remains prove, in a different tone and manner from that which he would have adopted had he been preparing to give the expression of them to the world: not, however, more unsuited to the occasion than the epistolary tone and manner of very many imaginative persons, on points concerning which, nevertheless, they feel the deepest and most serious interest. This however, it may be thought, is only shifting the blame from him on his Editors. But it will be found that his phrases, however sportive, or even flippant, in their sound, had each their own distinct meaning, embodied his views, and the reasons of them, often in a wonderfully brief space, and could not be omitted without much loss of instruction, and frequent risk of missing their point and meaning. Like proverbial modes of speech, they were, of course, not always to be taken literally, though the principle they contained might be true in its fullest extent. Thus he once told a friend that he was “with the Romanists in religion, and against them in politics.” Again he says, in a letter to a friend: “When I come home, I mean to read and write all sorts of things; for now that one is a Radical, there is no use in being nice!” In another: “We will have a vocabularium apostolicum, and I will start it with four words: ‘pampered aristocrats,’ ‘resident gentlemen,’ ‘smug parsons,’ ‘pauperes Christi.’ I shall use the first on all occasions; it seems to me just to hit the thing. How is it we are so much in advance of our generation?”[383]
‘Next, the reader is requested to consider whether a good deal of what has startled him in that way may not be accounted for by the nature of εἰρωνεία: not mere ludicrous irony, according to the popular English sense of that word, but a kind of Socratic reserve, an instinctive dissembling of his own high feelings and notions, partly through fear of deceiving himself and others, partly (though it may sound paradoxical) out of very reverence, giving up at once all notion of doing justice to sacred subjects, and shrinking from nothing so much as the
disparagement of them by any kind of affectation. This whole topic admits of forcible illustration from different persons’ ways of reading sacred compositions. There is an apparently unconcerned mode of enunciation, which in fact arises from people’s realising, or at least trying to realise, their own utter incompetency to speak such words aright. Again, of all the serious persons in the world, it is probable that no two could be found who would thoroughly enter into each other’s tones and expression. We must have a little faith in our neighbour’s earnestness, in order not to think his reading affected. A little consideration will perhaps show that most of what some might be tempted to call harsh, or coarse, or irreverent in this work, may be accounted for in the manner here indicated: e.g., [Mr. Froude’s] playful custom of speaking of his own and his friends’ proceedings in the language which an enemy would adopt: calling himself and his friends “ecclesiastical agitators,” their plans for doing good “a conspiracy,” and the effect of them “poisoning people’s minds”: and his use of cant schoolboy words, which no doubt has disgusted many, may be referred to the same head.
‘Often, indeed, he seemed instinctively to put his own or his friends’ views and characters in the most objectionable light in which they could be represented, as if to show that he was fully aware of the popular view which would be taken of what he approved, or the arguments against it which would seem plausible to the many; and that he was not in the least moved by it. Thus he somewhere utters a wish that “the ‘march of mind’ in France might yet prove a bloody one.” Elsewhere he regrets “that anything should be done to avert what seems our only chance:[384] a spoliation on a large scale!” Thus he habitually forced his mind to face the worst consequences or the most unfavourable aspect of his own wish or opinion, the most obnoxious associations with which it could be connected: and therefore used terms expressive of those consequences or associations. It was one form of his horror of self-deceit. Put these things together: add also the fertility of his mind, his humour, his pointed mode of expression, his consciousness of fearless integrity, his hatred of half-truths
and cowardly veils, his confidence in his friends’ understanding him and allowing for him: and it will be found that they go far towards explaining the manner, just as the principle of adhering to Antiquity accounts for the matter, of what he says. But if after due allowance made for all these things, there should still remain more than we can easily reconcile ourselves to, in the way either of severity, or of seeming rudeness of speech; coldness where we expected fervour, and criticism where we looked for sympathy; we shall do well to remember, that the fault, if there be a fault, is not necessarily all on [Mr. Froude’s] side: it may be right to suspend our judgment, till we have ascertained whether these things be not in fact due to the character of Christian Antiquity, which he might be unconsciously realising in greater perfection than his age could yet bear.
‘Does there yet remain something that troubles us, something that we cannot at all explain? We must not forget (it is a deep and high allusion, but not, it is humbly trusted, altogether irrelevant to this case), that, as all other manifestations of Our Lord, so those which He has vouchsafed to make of Himself in His Saints, have ever been more or less mysterious and unaccountable. Which of the great Scripture characters is there, whose conduct, even that part of it which the Holy Spirit seems to mention approvingly, is not, in some respect or another, a riddle and a paradox to us, with our modern views? Are there not things recorded of the Ancient Church which we know not how to enter into, yet must needs venerate because she gave them her sanction? Nay, and is it not very conceivable that every one of those approved in God’s sight would be in like manner, were his history fully disclosed, “a monster” (as the Psalmist phrases it) to every other? that Faith is necessary, in a degree, for our holding by Christ in any one of His members, as it is the great requisite whereby we keep hold of Him our Head? These remarks are, of course, hypothetical: nothing is asserted of peculiar sanctity in any one: only it seemed advisable to remind men, that where there are appearances in one part of a character of holiness and self-denial in a remarkable degree, there we may expect, by a kind of law of God’s Providence,
to find, in other matters, something very much beside our expectations, and unlike our own moral taste.
‘At the same time, it should not be forgotten that there are persons in the world to whom this very disposition to irony and playfulness, and what we may perhaps call a certain youthfulness of expression, serves to recommend [Mr. Froude’s] views, and attract them to him. That seeming lightness, which was natural to him, is natural also to some others, perhaps not a few: and it is useful that they should have the means of knowing that it is not inconsistent with high and earnest thoughts of things invisible, and strict rules of Christian obedience.
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