He did not, indeed, follow out his convictions to their legitimate results; he fancied that he responded to them sufficiently by remaining where he was. But his poems will ever remain a witness against the church in which they were composed, because it can never reduce to practice the doctrines he taught in reference to the holy eucharist, the confessional, and the communion of saints. Meanwhile they are silently imbuing the minds of Anglican readers with feelings and arguments favorable to the divine system of the Catholic Church. Though his Christian Year is adapted to the services of the Church of England, and though its chief purpose, as stated in the preface, is "to exhibit the soothing tendency of the Prayer-Book," the author's sympathies are with the Book of Common Prayer in its Catholic, and not in its Protestant aspects. During more than forty years it has been chiselling the Anglican mind into a more orthodox shape. It moulds the chaotic elements of faith into substance, form, and life. It supplies the lost sense of Scriptures, and lays the foundation of towers and bulwarks it cannot build. It opens bright vistas of realized truth, and points to glorious summits from the foot of the hill. It is not inspired with genius of the highest order; the range it takes is more circumscribed in some respects than that of Cowper; it seldom reaches the sublime, and is always pleasing rather than original. But in spite of these drawbacks, it has wound itself more and more into public esteem. No poetry is read more habitually by members of the Established Church. The number of those is very large who take down The Christian Year from their bookshelves every Sunday and festival. It rings every change on the theme Resignation, and presents it in all its truest and most beautiful lights. It has extracted from the sacred writings the very marrow of the text, has developed in a thousand ways the typical and mystic import of Scripture histories, expressed from them abundantly the wine and oil of consolation, and conveyed it to us in poetic ducts of no mean kind.
"As for some dear familiar strain
Untired we ask, and ask again.
Ever, in its melodious store.
Finding a spell unheard before;"
[Footnote 68]
so, many Anglicans of the devouter sort recur to Keble's poems year after year, and end the perusal only with death. Other poets charm and instruct the mind, he forms it; and while others are but read, he is learnt. Even the conviction which he cherished of the heavenly mission of the church of Queen Elizabeth, though misplaced, added to the sweetness and soothing character of his verses. But it is deserving of note that his latter volume, Lyra Innocentium, which contains more lamentation than he uttered before over the shortcomings of his own communion, and more intense aspirations after Catholic dogma and practice, evinces at the same time less inward quietude in the writer, and imparts less of it to the reader. One poem, indeed, called "Mother out of Sight," on the absence of the holy Mother of God from the English mind, invoking her, as it did, in a strain of glorious verse, was omitted, lest it should perplex and disquiet those who were unused to such invocations, and believed them to be forbidden by the Anglican Church.
[Footnote 68: Christian Year, "Morning.">[
To cite passages from Keble's poems illustrative of their soothing tendency, would be to copy almost all he wrote. They fell like the dew of Hermon, and were a sign and symbol of the man himself. "His bright, fresh, joyous, and affectionate nature," says one who knew him well, "was an ever-flowing spring, always at play, always shedding a gentle, imperceptible, and recreating dew upon those who came within its reach. There was a Christian poetry about him, a natural gift, elevated and transformed by his consistent piety and religious earnestness, which gilded the commonest things and the most ordinary actions, and cast the radiance of an unearthly sunshine all around him." [Footnote 69] What wonder that the illustrious author of the Apologia used to look at him with awe when walking in the High Street at Oxford? What wonder that, when elected a Fellow of Oriel, and for the first time taken by the hand by the Provost and all the Fellows, he bore it till Keble took his hand, and then, as he said, "felt so abashed and unworthy of the honor done him, that he seemed desirous of quite sinking into the ground"? [Footnote 70] Yet the greater was blessed of the less. For depth and subtlety of reasoning, for power and pathos in prose composition. Dr. Newman has surpassed beyond all measure everything which Keble did or could accomplish. In poetry, the world in general has awarded the palm to Keble, and the world, we believe, is right. In the art, at least, of calming the ruffled spirit, the poet of The Christian Year has outdone his beloved rival and friend.
[Footnote 69: The Month, vol. iv. p. 142.]
[Footnote 70: J. H. Newman's Apologia, p. 76.]
The Lyra Apostolica brought Keble and Newman together as athletes in the arena of poetry; and that series of poems affords a good opportunity of comparing their several merits, to those who have the key to the writers' names. They appeared in the British Magazine, signed only with Greek characters representing the following writers:
| Alpha | J. W. Bowden. |
| Beta | R. H. Froude. |
| Gamma | John Keble. |
| Delta | J. H. Newman. |
| Epsilon | R. J. Wilberforce; |
| Zeta | Isaac Williams. |
By far the greater number of the pieces were written by Keble and Newman, and almost all by the latter have reappeared this year in a series, which supplies a poetic commentary on the author's life. These Verses on Various Occasions range over a period of forty-six years, and having each of them the date and the place where composed attached to it, the interest of the whole is thereby greatly increased. Among the poems is that remarkable one, "The Dream of Gerontius," which was published in The Catholic World in 1865. But neither Dr. Newman's verses thus collected, nor the series entitled Lyra Apostolica in general, are marked by that repose which is the prevailing feature of The Christian Year. The motto chosen by Froude for the Lyra was truly combative, and shows the feeling both of Newman and himself, then together at Rome. It was taken from the prayer of Achilles on returning to the battle, and it implores Heaven to make his enemies know the difference, now that his respite from fighting is over.
