‘Mr. Froude’s Editors have now taken another step in what they consider their sacred duty to their friend who is not dead, but sleepeth, and to the Church, by presenting the
Catholic reader with the second instalment of his Remains. The contents of the present collection are, like those of the first, very miscellaneous, and rather fragments and sketches than complete compositions. This, of course, might be expected in the work of a man whose days were few, and interrupted by illness, if indeed that may be called an interruption which, at least all the period in which the pages before us were written, was every day sensibly drawing him to his grave. In Mr. Froude’s case, however, we cannot set down much of this incompleteness to the score of illness. The strength of his religious impressions, the boldness and clearness of his views, his long habits of self-denial, and his unconquerable energy of mind, triumphed over weakness and decay, till men with all their health and strength about them might gaze upon his attenuated form, struck with a certain awe of wonderment at the brightness of his wit, the intensenesss of his mental vision, and the iron strength of his argument. It will perhaps be giving a truer account of the state in which these papers appear, to say something of the sort of intention with which we conceive they were written. If it is permitted so to apply the words, they were the outpourings of a soul consumed with zeal for the house of God. The author had that in him which he could not suppress, which of itself struggled for utterance; he also was conscious that the night was fast approaching in which no man can work. Yet the good work which he believed had been prepared for him to do was somewhat in advance of his own day; and he felt no temptation to square, or round, and soften and disguise the awful themes that glowed within him, till they should be perfectly within the taste and compass of the men and times he lived to see…. With no anxiety, then, for present effect, and no embarrassing reference to any particular set of readers, he let his spirit take its own free course. He only desired to spare no labour of thought that was necessary for a thorough elucidation of his views, to detect the lurking fallacy both in his own and in others’ minds, and set the whole matter in the clearness of noonday. He wrote as he thought and felt.
‘… We will venture a remark or two with regard to that ironical turn which certainly does appear in various
shapes in the first Part of these Remains. Unpleasant as irony may sometimes be, there need not go with it, and in this instance there did not go with it, the smallest real asperity of temper. Who that remembers the inexpressible sweetness of his smile, or the deep and melancholy pity with which he would speak of those whom he felt to be the victims of modern delusion, would not be forward to contradict such a suspicion? Such expressions, we will venture to say, and not harshness, or anger, or gloom, animate the features of that countenance which will never cease to haunt the memory of those who knew him. His irony arose from that peculiar mode in which he viewed all earthly things, himself and all that was dear to him not excepted. It was his poetry. Irony is, indeed, the natural way in which men of high views and keen intellect view the world: they cannot find middle terms of controversy with men of ordinary views; they feel a gulf between them and the world; they cannot descend to the level of lower views, or raise others from that level to their own. As, therefore, there is no common ground which they can seriously or really assume with inferior and worldly minds, they fall into a way of pretending to assume common notions, and reasoning on them with unreal seriousness, in order to expose them. They cannot suppress a smile at the false assumptions and pretensions and hopes of this perishing world. The same temper leads them to assume, for the purpose of mirth, or argument, or self-discipline (which you please), the very worst that the world can possibly think of themselves, their own views and designs. Irony, in fact, seems only an ethical expression of the logical reductio ad absurdum, as applied to matters of taste, morality, and religion. Great examples have shown it to be compatible with real humility and wide benevolence; though, like many other peculiarities of style, such as depth of reflection, subtlety of reasoning, great affectionateness, poetry, or humour, it may only be understood by those who have something corresponding in themselves.
‘… As to the author now immediately before us … while we expect certainly a great effect upon the religion of the day from a mind so singularly gifted as his, we certainly
do not expect, and never have expected, a sudden and perceptible effect. Views so bold, so original, so uncompromising as his, seem to float upon the surface of the current notions of the age as oil upon the waters; they seem to have no affinity to things as they are, and to be without a medium of acting upon them. We do not, then, look for any great extension of Mr. Froude’s works or name for a long time; we are prepared to think that when talked of, it will be but objectively, as it may be called, as a phenomenon too far removed from the speakers to interest them or affect them; as what they have just heard of, or hardly seen. But all the while a secret influence may be extending itself: persons may adopt his views who are better able and willing to dilute and temper them to the feelings of the many; the tone of religious opinion and the standard of recognised principles may gradually be rising; popular errors or assumptions may be silently dropped; and numbers talk “Froudism,” as it is called, who neither know the source of their own views, nor will credit it when taxed with it. We are able to point at this very time to two remarkable instances of deep thinkers, with one of whom we have no, and with the other but faint sympathy, Bentham and Coleridge, but whom we must still allow to be unusual minds, the chief philosophers of their day, who yet in their lifetime were not understood, or appreciated, and have at length grown into celebrity, and are receiving the suitable reward of their intellectual powers, by means of what may be called the atmosphere of congenial thought which they have at length formed around them. They have created the medium in which their voices would sound, and then have been heard far and near. A like result, in the cause of Truth, not of worldly philosophy, we hope awaits the author of these volumes.’[389]
From ‘Lyra Apostolica,’ edited by H. C. Beeching, M.A., Professor of Pastoral Theology at King’s College, with an Introduction by H. S. Holland, M.A., Canon and Precentor of S. Paul’s. London: Methuen & Co. [The Library of Devotion.]
[By the kind permission of the Rev. H. C. Beeching, the Rev. H. S. Holland, and Messrs Methuen & Co.].
[I. From Canon Scott Holland’s Introduction.]
‘“It was at Rome that we began the Lyra Apostolica. The motto shows the feeling of both Froude and myself at the time. We borrowed from M. Bunsen a Homer, and Froude chose the words in which Achilles, on returning to the battle, says: ‘You shall know the difference, now that I am back again.’”[390] So wrote Dr. Newman in the Apologia, and the words give exactly the note of the temper with which the book still tingles from cover to cover. It sprang out of a critical hour in which the force of an historical movement first found speech. It was an hour of high passion that had been gathering for some onset dimly foreseen, and had now, at last, won free vent, and had flung itself out in articulate defiance…. With the defiance, goes also a strong note of confidence. The men who write, however dark their outlook seems to be, speak as those who see their way, and have made their choice, and have found their speech, and have no doubt at all about the issue. There was a certain rapture of recklessness about them at the time, such as belongs to young souls who have let themselves go, under the inspiration of a high adventure. They have burned their boats. There is no going back. Forward all hearts are set. The opportunity is come. It is now or never. Hurrell Froude was the embodiment to them of this spirit of confidence, with its tinge of audacity. He had the glow and the fascination of a man consecrated to a cause. He wrote very little of the book, but his touch is on it everywhere. And in a poem like “The Watchman,” with