so much light on every part of the landscape, that you may apply to day what Virgil says of night:
‘“——cœlum condidit [igne]
Jupiter, et rebus [lux] abstulit [alma] colorem.”
‘The two things which I should like to make drawings of are the bread-fruit tree, and the particular kind of palm which, in the poetical language of the country, they call the cabbage-tree; both of which are certainly very beautiful, the former most especially so; and both so unlike anything English, that I don’t yet understand how to touch the foliage…. I have two very pleasant rooms in the pleasantest spot in the whole island, and battel just as at Oxford, which serves to keep up a pleasant illusion. The College is about four hundred feet above the sea, which is about two-thirds of a mile off, and the aspect of my sitting-room is straight towards England; so that when I am sentimental and dumpish,
πόντον ἐπ’ ἀτρύγετον δερκέσκομαι ἀχνύμενος κήρ.
‘This windward coast is for ever exposed to the full roll of the Atlantic, and its monotonous perturbation wearies one’s imagination, as well as the mud and sand, neither of which does it suffer to repose for a moment. I often wish for what I used to think no very interesting object, the motionless calms of Torbay or Dartmouth.’
‘Rogers heard from Froude yesterday,’ runs a postscript of Newman to Keble on Nov. 10. ‘He says nothing about his health, but is evidently homesick and lonely.’ And two days after, Newman tenderly explains to Hurrell himself: ‘I am not surprised you should be so unjust to me, for I should be so to you under the same circumstances. You see we expected you here with the Bishop of Barbados till the middle of May, and therefore did not send letters. When we found him here without you, we instantly began to write; by accidents which we could not help (e.g., the box was a fortnight on the road to Dartington), it was August before it was off. However, you had news of Oxford up to the minute of its
going…. Keble’s father has taken to his bed, and is so ill that Keble does not leave him.’
Meanwhile, Hurrell had pursued his grievance, attacking Mr. Keble with wistful humour, during October. ‘I wish I knew Horace’s receipt for giving the sound of a swan to mute fishes,[189] and I most certainly should administer you a dose. I know you must have a great deal on your hands, so I should be contented with extracting only two pages in as big a hand as an idle undergraduate’s theme: but I really do wish to hear something of you…. Concerning your worship’s self, I have been able to collect that you were in existence on or about the 12th of June last…. [Davison’s?] death was a great surprise to me, and I may almost say a shock, as I had always looked to him to do something great for us…. Do you know, I partly fear that you … are going to back out of the conspiracy and leave me and [Newman] to our fate? I mean to ally myself to him in a close league, and put as much mischief into his head as I can. He has sent me a great many of his pamphlets, etc., which I admire greatly for their ἦθος and execution; and I have written back to him, pointing out wherein I think him too conservative.’
The deceased colleague may well have been John Davison, who had died on the sixth day of May, 1834; but Hurrell would not have seen the announcement before July. Davison is commonly reckoned as one of the old school, the Oriel Noetics, or Liberals; but there is a contrary impression of him to be drawn from some charming pages in Mozley’s Reminiscences.[190] Newman twice names him with Rose as a steadfast encourager of the earliest Tracts.[191] There is no doubt that he sympathised with the Tractarians more than his indecisive habit would suffer him to testify by deed, and he was much beloved by them. Hurrell’s expectation of ‘something great’ from him would almost inevitably centre about the Scripture Commentary which he was known to be writing and rewriting, but his fastidious self-criticism got the better of that and him, after a most Oxonian fashion, as he directed his widow to burn all