Οὕρεά τε σκιόεντα θάλασσά τε ἠχήεσσα.
‘I start sometimes between three and four, and come back between six and seven, in which interval the thermometer averages between 78° and 76°, and there is generally a roaring wind from the sea…. I wish I knew how you were, and what you are about.’
To the Rev. John Henry Newman, Jan., 1835.
‘I am ashamed of myself for having grumbled at you; your letter[213] almost made me cry! My dumps are my only excuse, and you may guess I have had a good dose of them. Now I am in much better spirits about myself, and flooded with letters to boot, so I ought to be in a good humour; yet I don’t know whether the prospect of being home again soon, and the knowledge of what is going on there, has not made me less contented…. I am sorry to hear such poor accounts of you and Isaac. Keble says you are overworked. So does Christie; yet I would not have you leave any of it except the Deanship. On one or two points I am inclined to grumble at you. You seem to be finessing too deep. Why publish poor Bishop Cosin’s Tract on Transubstantiation?[214] Surely no member of the Church of England is in any danger of overrating the miracle of the Eucharist?… I am more and more indignant at the Protestant doctrine on the subject of the Eucharist, and think that the principle on which it is founded is as proud, irreverent, and foolish as that of any heresy, even Socinianism. I must write you out a sentence
of Pascal on this. (My edition is differently arranged from most, so I cannot refer you to it.[215]) Speaking of Isa. xlv. 15, he says: “Il a demeuré caché sous la voile de la nature qui nous le couvre, jusqu’à l’Incarnation; et quand il a fallu qu’il ait paru, il s’est encore plus caché, en se couvrant de l’humanité…. Enfin, quand il a voulu accomplir la promesse qu’il fit à ses apôtres de demeurer avec les hommes jusqu’à son dernier avènement, il a choisi demeurer dans le plus étrange et le plus obscur secret de tous: savoir, sous les espèces de l’Eucharistie.” And then he goes on to say that deists penetrate the veil of Nature, heretics that of the Incarnation; “mais pour nous, nous devons nous estimer heureux de ce que Dieu nous éclaire jusqu’à le reconnaître sous les espèces du pain et du vin.” I believe you will agree with me that this is orthodox…. Also, why do you praise Ridley?[216] Do you know sufficient good about him to counterbalance the fact that he was the associate of Cranmer, Peter Martyr, and Bucer? (N.B.—How beautifully the Edinburgh Review[217] has shown up Luther, Melancthon, and Co.! What good genius has possessed them to do our dirty work?) I have also to grumble at you for letting Pusey call the Reformers “the Founders of our Church,” in that excellent and much-to-be-studied paper on Fasting.[218] Pour moi, I never mean, if I can help it, to use any phrases even, which can connect me with such a set. I shall never call the Holy Eucharist “the Lord’s Supper,” nor God’s priests “Ministers of the Word,” nor the Altar “the Lord’s Table,” etc., etc.; innocent as such phrases are in themselves, they have
been dirtied: a fact of which you seem oblivious on many occasions. Nor shall I even abuse the Roman Catholics as a Church for anything except excommunicating us. So much for fault-finding…. I am amused to see among your Sermons the Naples one and the Dartington one. I can see the train of thought which suggested the latter.[219] Since then I have never been well, and then came my poor sister’s business, who, by the bye, is now at Madeira…. I have two schemes about the Tracts…. 1st, I should like a series of the Apostolical Divines of the Church of England…. 2nd, I think one might take the Jansenist saints, Francis de Sales,[220] the nuns of Port Royal, Pascal, etc., who seem to me to be of a more sentimental imaginative cast than any of our own, and to give more room for writing ad captandum…. Must it not be owned that the Church of England Saints, however good in essentials, are, with a few rare exceptions, deficient in the austere beauty of the Catholic ἦθος? K[eble] will be severe on me for this, but I cannot deny that Laud’s architecture seems to me typical.’
This is the letter so charmingly annotated for us by Lord Blachford’s anecdote. ‘There’s a Basil for you!’ said Newman, with humorous deprecation, when he read the grudging advice to lay by, in his great weariness, ever so little of his accustomed work. The comparison rose readily to his lips, for he had been busy writing the chapters of his Church of the Fathers, month by month, and he was fresh from the beautiful portraiture of SS. Basil and Gregory Nazianzum.[221] He had called Hurrell his Basil under no mere momentary sense of a certain ineradicable blithe hardness in his friend. Newman, as sensitive and seeing as S. Gregory himself, must have been conscious at the time how mysteriously fragments of modern
biography were getting lodged into his Early Christian exegetics: for in truth he and Hurrell were as like Gregory and Basil as their impersonators in a miracle play. The analogy is not irrelevant, and it is the more attractive the more it is followed out, especially as there is in it nothing akin to the painful difference which long severed the loving-hearted great Saints from each other. ‘Basil’ at Dartington pitied no one much, himself least of all; the personal consideration affected him at all times as little as it had affected his mighty archetype, a man of yea and nay, of cloudless vision and unstinted enterprise.
Newman had written: ‘One of the more striking points of Basil’s character was his utter disregard of mere human feeling where the interests of religion were concerned…. This self-sacrifice, which he observed in his own case for the good of the Church, he scrupled not to extend to the instance of those to whom he was related, and for whom he had to act. His brother and his intimate friend, the two Gregories of Nyssa and Nazianzum, felt the keenness and severity of his zeal as well as the comfort of his affection.’ And again: ‘Gregory disliked the routine intercourse of society, he disliked ecclesiastical business, he disliked publicity, he disliked strife …; he loved the independence of solitude, the tranquillity of private life, leisure for meditation, reflection, self-government; study and literature. He admired, yet he playfully satirised Basil’s lofty thoughts and heroic efforts. Yet upon Basil’s death, Basil’s spirit, as it were, came into him…. Was it Gregory or was it Basil that blew the trumpet in Constantinople, and waged a successful war in the very seat of the enemy, in despite of all his fluctuations of mind, misgivings, fastidiousness, disgust with self, and love of quiet? Such was the power of the great Basil, triumphing in his death, though failing throughout his life. Within four or five years of his departure to his reward, all the objects were either realised, or in the way to be realised, which he had vainly attempted and sadly waited for. His eyes had failed in longing: they waited for the Morning, and death closed them ere it came.’ All this amounts to a strange and touching forecast.