John Gibson Lockhart(1794-1854).
John Gibson Lockhart was a man of many gifts and accomplishments, a good scholar, a keen satirist and critic, a powerful novelist, an excellent translator. He was accomplished with the pencil as well as with the pen, and some of his caricatures are at once irresistibly amusing and profoundly true. His ‘Scotch judge’ and ‘Scotch minister’ would make the reputation of a number ofPunch. His biting wit won for him thesobriquetof ‘the Scorpion;’ but notwithstanding his sting he won and retained through life many warm friends. He was trained for the Scottish bar, but attached himself to the literary set ofBlackwood, in which Christopher North was the most striking figure. With him and Hogg Lockhart was concerned in an exceedingly amusing skit, the famousChaldee Manuscript; but the joke gave so much offence that this ‘promising babe’ was strangled in the cradle. A good deal of more serious literary work belongs to the period before 1830,—the novels, a mass of criticism, and theSpanish Ballads. Then too was formed the connexion which opened to Lockhart the great work of his life. He was introduced to Scott in 1818. The acquaintance prospered. Scott liked the clever young man, Scott’s daughter liked him still better, and in 1820 Lockhart married Sophia Scott. Largely through her father’s influence he was appointed editor of theQuarterly Review, an office which he held until 1853, and in which he became to a very great degree, both by reason of what he wrote and of what he printed, responsible for the tone of criticism at the time.
Lockhart undoubtedly shared that excessive personality which was the blot of criticism, and especially of theBlackwoodschool, in his generation. He has been charged with theBlackwoodarticle on Keats, and with theQuarterlyarticle onJane Eyre, but he may now be acquitted of both these sins. It was however Lockhart who wrote theQuarterlyarticle on Tennyson’s early poems; but this, though bad in tone and excessively severe, is to a large extent critically sound. So far as they can be traced, Lockhart’s criticisms are such as might be expected from his mind,—clear, incisive and vigorous. They are however often unsympathetic and harsh, because criticism was then too apt to be interpreted as fault-finding, and Lockhart could not wholly free himself from the influence of a vicious tradition.
But it is by hisLife of Scott(1836-1838) that Lockhart will live in literature. He had in an ample measure the first of all requirements in a biographer, personal acquaintance with the man whose life he wrote. Almost from the time of his introduction, and certainly from the date of his marriage, Lockhart’s relations with Scott were of the closest; and though he was not personally familiar with the facts of Scott’s earlier life, he knew quite enough to understand the springs of the man’s character. Moreover, in the autobiographical fragment and in the endless stores of family and friendly anecdote open to him he had ample means of making good the deficiency. For among Lockhart’s advantages is to be reckoned the fact that he had not merely married into the family, but had married, as it were, into the circle of friends. TheLife of Scottshows that the families of Abbotsford, of Chiefswood and of Huntley Burn (the last Scott’s great friends the Fergusons) were for many purposes only one larger family.
There are certain dangers, as well as great advantages, to the biographer even in intimate friendship. Misused in one way, it lowers the biographer’s own character; misusedin another, it either lowers or unnaturally exalts that of his subject. Boswell, employing his materials with excellent effect for the purposes of his book, degrades himself. Froude, making a mistake of another sort, exaggerates all the less lovable characteristics of Carlyle; while there are multitudes who paint pictures not of flesh and blood, but of impossible saints and heroes. ‘A love passing the love of biographers’ was Macaulay’s phrase for the excess of hero-worship. Lockhart has avoided all these errors. When his book was read the contradictory charges were brought against him, on the one hand of having exaggerated Scott’s virtues and concealed his faults, and on the other of ungenerous and derogatory criticism. We may be sure that Lockhart’s temptation, if he felt any, was rather to ‘extenuate’ than to ‘set down in malice.’ But, with a noble confidence in a noble character, he does not extenuate. To describe Scott as a mere money-lover would be untrue; yet many have felt that there is a fault in his relation to wealth, and Lockhart uses just the right words when he says, ‘I dare not deny that he set more of his affections, during great part of his life, upon worldly things, wealth among others, than might have become such an intellect;’ and he gives just the right explanation when he goes on to trace this defect to its root in the imagination. In his treatment of the commercial matters in which Scott was involved, Lockhart is equally judicial.
The tact of Lockhart deserves as much praise as his fairness of judgment. As regards part of his work, he was put to the test a few years ago by the publication of Scott’sJournal. Lockhart had made liberal extracts from this journal, explaining at the same time that passages were necessarily suppressed because of their bearing upon persons then alive. A comparison of his extracts with the journal now accessiblein extensoshows how skilfully hesuppressed what was likely to give pain, while at the same time producing much the same general impression as the whole document leaves.
A biography, like a letter, may be said to have two authors, the man written about and the person who writes. Scott certainly gave Lockhart the greatest assistance, both by what he wrote and by what he was. At the beginning the delightful fragment of autobiography, towards the end the profoundly interestingJournal, and all through the free, manly, large-hearted letters, were materials of the choicest sort. Scott himself moreover, genial, cordial, of manifold activity, a centre of racy anecdote, was a person whom it was far more easy to set in an attractive frame than any mere literary recluse. Many could have produced a good life of such a man. Lockhart’s special praise is that he has written a great one. Except Johnson, there is no English man of letters so well depicted as Scott. Lockhart’s taste and style are excellent. The caustic wit which ran riot in the youngBlackwoodreviewer is restrained by the experience of years and by the necessities of the subject. Lockhart’s own part of the narrative is told in grave, temperate English, simple almost to severity, but in a high degree flexible. In the brighter parts there is a pleasant lightness in Lockhart’s touch; in the more serious parts he is weighty and powerful; and on occasion, especially towards the end, there is a restrained emotion which proves that part of his wonderful success is due to the fact that his heart was in his work.
Arthur Penrhyn Stanley(1815-1881).
Arthur Penrhyn Stanley ranks considerably below Lockhart, yet hisLife of Arnold(1844) is inferior only to the few unapproachable masterpieces of biography. Stanley was a fluent and able writer in several fields, but in most respects his work is now somewhat discredited.HisCommentary on the Epistles to the Corinthians(1855) has been severely handled for inaccuracy and defective scholarship. HisLectures on the Eastern Church(1861) andOn the Jewish Church(1863-1876), and his book of Eastern travel,Sinai and Palestine(1856) are delightful in literary execution, but they are popular rather than solid. Stanley neither was nor, apparently, cared to be exact. He trusted too much to his gift of making things interesting, and had an inadequate conception of the duty he owed to his readers of writing what was true. Other travellers who have followed his footsteps in the East have sometimes found that the scenes he describes, in charming English, are such as are visible only to those whose eyes can penetrate rocks and mountains. This constitutional inaccuracy is a blot upon nearly all his works, and his one permanent contribution to literature will probably prove to be theLife of Dr. Arnold. There is here, as Stanley’s biographer justly says, ‘a glow of repressed enthusiasm which gives to the work one of its greatest charms.’ Stanley loved Arnold, and threw himself with unwonted thoroughness into the task of depicting him. For two years, we are told, he abandoned for it every other occupation that was not an absolute duty. The principal defect of theLifeis that the plan—a portion of narrative, and then a body of letters—is too rigid and mechanical. But the narrative is exceedingly good, giving within moderate compass a clear impression of Arnold; and the letters are well selected and full of interest.
Minor Historians and Biographers.
Sir Archibald Alison(1792-1867).
Sir Archibald Alison was the son of a clergyman who won a name for a work on thePrinciples of Taste. Alison practised at the Scottish bar, became Sheriff of Lanarkshire,and was knighted for his services to literature. Hismagnum opusis aHistory of Europe during the French Revolution, which he afterwards continued to the accession of Napoleon III. It is laborious and honest, though not unprejudiced. Disraeli sneeringly said that ‘Mr. Wordy’ had proved by his twenty volumes that Providence was on the side of the Tories.
John Hill Burton(1809-1881).
John Hill Burton, best known as the historian of Scotland, was an industrious man of letters, who wrote on many subjects,—The Scot Abroad,The Book Hunter, andThe Age of Queen Anne, as well as theHistory of Scotland. The last is the work of a capable and careful writer rather than of a great historian. Burton is sensible and dispassionate, and he has collected and put into shape the principal results of modern research as applied to Scotland.
John Forster(1812-1876).
John Forster was a laborious but somewhat commonplace writer. He was the author of aLife of Goldsmith(1848) and aLife of Sir John Eliot(1864). But his most valuable works are two biographies of contemporaries, theLife of Landor(1869) and theLife of Dickens(1872-1874). Forster had little power of realising character, and the subjects of his biographies are never clearly outlined. HisLife of Dickenshas an importance beyond its intrinsic merits, because it is the most authoritative book on the great novelist.
Walter Farquhar Hook(1798-1875).
Walter Farquhar Hook was a prominent clergyman, whose doctrine, that the English Roman Catholics were really seceders from the Church of England, caused a great stir when it was first promulgated. His vast design of theLives of the Archbishops of Canterbury(1860-1876) was ultimately executed in twelve big volumes. The planwas too large and the characters treated too multifarious for really good biography, but it is solid and valuable work.
Sir John William Kaye(1814-1876).
Sir John William Kaye wrote two meritorious books of military history,The History of the War in Afghanistan(1851), andThe History of the Sepoy War in India(1864-1876). The latter, which roused some controversy, was left unfinished at Kaye’s death, and was afterwards completed by Colonel Malleson.
Sir Francis Palgrave(1788-1861).
Sir Francis Palgrave was in the early part of his life an active contributor to theEdinburghandQuarterly Reviews, and a diligent editor of state documents. HisRise and Progress of the English Commonwealth(1832) threw much light on the early history of England. Palgrave was in his day one of the most earnest students of mediæval history.
Philip Henry, Earl Stanhope(1805-1875).
Philip Henry, Earl Stanhope, wrote theHistory of the War of the Succession in Spain, theHistory of the Reign of Queen Anne, and theHistory of England from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles. He took great pains with his work, but he does not reach distinction either of thought or style.
Sir William Stirling-Maxwell(1818-1878).
Sir William Stirling-Maxwell is less widely known than he deserves to be, but this is partly due to the expensiveness of his works. He wroteAnnals of the Artists of Spain,The Cloister Life of Charles V.,Velasquez and his Work, and a posthumous book,Don John of Austria. All his work is distinguished for learning and good taste.
Agnes Strickland(1806-1874)
Agnes Strickland was a popular writer whose work is readable rather than profound or original. Her principal books are theLives of the Queens of England, followed up byLives of the Queens of Scotland.
Patrick Fraser Tytler(1791-1849).
Patrick Fraser Tytler, another historian of Scotland, came of a family distinguished both in literature and in law. HisHistory of Scotlandhas been superseded in general favour by Burton’s, which has the advantage of embodying more recent research. Tytler however was the abler man of the two, and he had a higher literary gift than Burton. Except where the narrative has to be re-written in the light of later discoveries, his judgment is always worth weighing.
THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY.
The early part of the nineteenth century was not very prolific in the department of speculative thought, but signs of movement may be detected in the third decade. Each of the English universities became the centre of a very active intellectual society. The Cambridge men showed a bent towards general literature and philosophy, or to theology of a type cognate to philosophy. In the works of Whately Oxford gave signs of a philosophical revival; but she devoted herself mainly to theology, and the practical isolation of Whately, a hard and arid though a vigorous man, calls the more attention to her speculative poverty. The celebrated ‘Oxford movement,’ whose roots are in the twenties, though its visible growth dates only from the thirties, is of incomparably greater importance than this feeble revival.
John Keble(1792-1866).
Newman, the great artificer of the movement, rightly traces its inception to the influence of John Keble. But Keble’s true literary form is poetry, and his principal contribution to poetry belongs to the preceding period. His prose works are not in themselves of great importance. As Professor of Poetry at Oxford he delivered lectures (in Latin) on critical subjects. In his character of pastor he preached many sermons, and a selection from them was published in 1847. The most famous of his pulpit utterances wasone preached in 1833 on ‘National Apostasy.’ ‘I have ever considered and kept the day,’ says Newman, with regard to the delivery of this sermon, ‘as the start of the religious movement of 1833.’ Finally, in 1863, appeared Keble’s latest work of importance, aLife of Bishop Wilson.
Keble’s influence was essentially personal, and was due to his saintly life more than to anything he wrote, even in poetry. The Tractarian movement took its rise in a longing for saintliness, of which Keble furnished a living example. He was not to any considerable extent an originator of theory. Certain germs of theory about the Church, about its relation to pre-Reformation times, about authority in religion, were in the air, and they became absorbed in Keble’s system. But his was not a creative mind, and his position at the head of the Anglo-Catholic movement was little more than an accident. He was like a child who by a thrust of his hand sends a finely-poised rock thundering down a hill. In his literary aspects he is disappointing. A brilliant boy and a most blameless man, he remains throughout too little of this world. The pale perfection of his life is reflected in his works. He would have been better had he been less good; he would have been much better had he been less feminine.
In the ranks of the movement so initiated were included an unusual number of men who must be classed among the ‘might-have-beens’ of literature; men of great reputation eclipsed by premature death, men who never wrote, or men whose writings disappointed expectation. Nearly all its members had literary tastes, a fact not surprising when we consider how large a part imagination played in its start and development. But Hurrell Froude, one of the most daring-minded men engaged in it, died early, leaving only inadequate remains as evidence of hisgreat gifts. W. G. Ward lived, but only to prove by hisIdeal of a Christian Churchthat the power of writing good English was not among his endowments; and if the poetry of Keble is only second or even third-rate, that of Isaac Williams, a versifier of the movement, is of lower grade still. Manning was more the man of action than the man of letters; while the work of Dean Church and Canon Liddon, both of whom had marked literary talents, falls principally outside the limits of this period. There remain two remarkable men, one the very soul of the movement, the other its greatest recruit, who have attained, the first a great, the second a respectable place in letters. These are Cardinal Newman and Pusey, of whom the latter may be considered the exception to the rule that the Tractarians were by nature and instinct men of letters. Pusey was not; he was rather the technical theologian with no direct interest in letters at all.
John Henry Newman(1801-1890).
John Henry Newman has been described by J. A. Froude, in language hardly too strong, as ‘the indicating number’ of the movement, all the others being, in comparison with him, but as cyphers. The story of Newman’s inner life has been told with inimitable grace in theApologia pro Vita Sua, and this is not only his greatest contribution to literature, but the best document for his life and doctrines. There are few studies more interesting than the contrast presented by this book on the one side, and thePhases of Faithby its author’s brother, F. W. Newman, on the other. The younger Newman too has a mind prone to religion, but he decides to rest in reason, while his brother leans upon authority. Not unnaturally they drift very far apart; not unnaturally too the author of thePhases of Faithis amazed that it took his brother ten years to discover whither he was going.
Newman’s education was private till he went to Oxford, where, in 1822, he won a fellowship at Oriel, then the great intellectual college of the university. He was at this time a Calvinist in his religious views, and held, among other things, that the Pope was Antichrist. At Oxford he came under the influence of Whately, who, he says, taught him to think. But the two men were essentially antipathetic and foredoomed to part, not the best of friends. Newman drew gradually closer to men of a very different stamp—R. J. Wilberforce, Hurrell Froude and Keble. HisArians of the Fourth Centurywas finished in 1832, and he took rest after the fatigue of writing it in a memorable journey with Hurrell Froude in the Mediterranean. During this journey he composed most of his verses printed in theLyra Apostolica, and towards the end of it the exquisite hymn, ‘Lead, kindly light.’
After his return, in 1833, Newman began, ‘out of his own head,’ theTracts for the Times. They culminated in the celebratedTract XC(1841), which raised such a storm of opposition that the series had to be closed. Contemporaneously with theTracts, Newman was busied with other works in defence of theVia Media. To this class belongThe Prophetical Office of the Church(1837) and theLectures on Justification(1838). He was moreover building up a great reputation as a preacher; and, as if all this was not enough, he was for several years editor ofThe British Critic. The storm raised by his opinions, and especially byTract XC, drove him into retirement at Littlemore in 1841. He called it his Torres Vedras, in the conviction that he, like Wellington, was destined to ‘issue forth anew,’ and to conquer. But the actual course was different. In 1843 he retracted his former strictures on Rome, and resigned his charge of St. Mary’s. For two years more he lingered in the Church of England,foreseeing the inevitable end, but slow to take a step of such importance without absolute assurance. In 1845 he was received into the Roman communion. Here the history of his spiritual development may be said to close. ‘It was,’ he says, ‘like coming into port after a rough sea.’ He repudiates the idea that his mind was afterwards idle; but there was no change, no anxiety, no doubt. He seems to be unconscious that this individual peace may be dear bought for the human race, and that the absence of doubt is, to use his own favourite word, the ‘note’ of a low type.
Among the voluminous works of Newman, in addition to those of his Anglican period already mentioned, the most important areThe Development of Christian Doctrine(1845), theApologia pro Vita Sua(1864),The Dream of Gerontius(1865), and theGrammar of Assent(1870).
Except theApologia, no work of Newman’s is more valuable or more helpful to an understanding of him thanThe Dream of Gerontius, subtle, mystical, imaginative. Newman’s great reputation for prose, and the supreme interest attaching to his life, seem to have obscured the fame he might have won, and deserved, as a poet. His poetry is religious without the weakness, or at any rate the limitedness, which mars so much religious verse. He was, in poetry as well as in theology, a greater and more masculine Keble, one with all the real purity of Keble, but with also the indispensable flavour of earth. ‘I was in a humour, certainly,’ he says of the Anglican divines, ‘to bite off their ears;’ and one loves him for it. It is worth remembering also that he taught the need of hatred as well as love; and though he explained and limited the teaching, there is meaning in the very form of expression. There was iron in Newman’s frame and gall in his blood.
Newman’s mind was fundamentally imaginative, and in him imagination, though of an intellectual cast, was conjoined with an acutely sensitive organisation. Moreover, he had a tendency to solitude which powerfully influenced his development. Finally, along with his sensitiveness and power of imagination there went a subtle gift of logic, subordinate upon the whole to imagination, but clamorous until it had received what might at least plausibly pass for satisfaction. These characteristics together explain Newman’s work.
There can be no dispute about the imaginative cast of Newman’s mind. He had, besides the poet’s, the philosopher’s or speculative imagination. He pondered habitually over the secret of the universe. There is an often quoted sentence at the beginning of theApologiawhich is vital to a comprehension of him. ‘I thought life might be a dream, or I an angel, and all this world a deception, my fellow-angels by a playful device concealing themselves from me, and deceiving me with the semblance of a material world.’ It has been said that no one has any genuine gift for philosophy who has never doubted the reality of material things. Newman evidently had the necessary ‘note’ of philosophy, but he had it with a morbid addition which, without careful control, might lead to strange and even disastrous results. If Newman had only known German he would have found in the German philosophers an idealism far more profound and more rational than any he was ever able to frame for himself. But in England the dominant philosophy was Benthamism, the dominant theology was equally hard, and Newman turned from both in disgust, took to the theological road-making of theVia Media, and finally found refuge in Rome, driven by the conviction that ‘there are but two alternatives, the way to Rome and the way to atheism.’
Newman’s sensitiveness produced a shrinking from intercourse and strengthened a love of solitude probably constitutional and not altogether wholesome. He was believed to be, and to have the ambition to be, the head of a party. In truth, he shrank almost morbidly from the idea of leadership, and it was in spite of himself that he gathered followers. Even the few friends with whom he lived in familiar intercourse came ‘unasked, unhoped.’ It would have been better for him had he been able to speak out more freely and to harmonise himself with the world around him. Instead, he fell back upon himself and upon a study of the Fathers, hoping to find the full truth in the primitive days of Christianity. This is a fatal error which, in theory, vitiates most theology, but from the effects of which a great deal of it is saved by inconsistency. Newman himself was afterwards led in his course towards Rome to recognise development in doctrine. The Fathers are doubtless excellent reading, but they are safe reading to him only who can read them in the light of the present day. It is vain to think of stopping the wheels of change even in theology. A creed which meant one thing in the first century, even though its verbal expression remain the same, means something widely different in the nineteenth. Newman unfortunately could conceive of modern thought only as a detestable and soul-deadening ‘liberalism,’ a halfway house to atheism, as Anglicanism was, in his mature view, a halfway house to Rome. Had he been more a real participant in contemporary life, his conceptions would insensibly have taken their bent from the ‘liberalism’ he hated; and, little as he thought it, he had something to learn from that liberalism, just as it had something to learn from him.
Newman was moreover a logician, though he ultimately found refuge in a communion where thescienceof logic islittle needed. The subtlety of his logic is unquestionable. The doubt which some feel is rather with regard to its honesty. This doubt however is only felt by those who fail to understand how behind and beneath and above his logic there spread and towered his imagination and his emotions. Newman was compelled by the law of his nature to find a foundation for his religion; he neither understood nor respected those who let it exist as a mere sentiment. ‘I determined,’ says he with reference to a time of crisis, ‘to be guided, not by my imagination, but by my reason.’ It was this resolve that kept him so long out of the Church of Rome. He is wholly, even transparently sincere. Nevertheless, in spite of himself, heisguided by imagination after all. The conclusion is at every point a foregone one; and his pause results, not in genuine reasons for the change, but in increased strength of feeling compelling it. This is what observers have noted in Newman’s logic, and what has led them to doubt his sincerity. His dice are always loaded, but they are loaded against his own will. The absolute need for him to rest on authority makes it certain from the start that authority will win.
There is no way of using reason except by consenting to be wholly guided by it. Newman never consented. He always knew the general character of the answer he must receive, though he did not know the precise terms of it, whether those of theVia Mediaor those of Rome. This is the secret of Newman’s power, in his argumentative works, over those who already fundamentally agree with him, and of his failure to move those who do not. For surely it is remarkable how little real effect followed from his secession, that blow under which, it has been said, the Church of England reeled. Newman, unlike both his friends and his enemies, was well aware that few would follow him toRome; and he paused for years because he believed, on the other hand, that his secession would shatter the party for which he had so long toiled. The character of the Oxford movement was changed by Newman’s secession, because by that step many were awakened to the fact that his brilliant logic had no sound foundation in reason. Others had been awakened before. J. A. Froude in hisNemesis of Faithtells how his eyes were opened by a sentence in one of Newman’s sermons: ‘Scripture says the earth is stationary and the sun moves; science, that the sun is stationary and that the earth moves, and we shall never know which is true until we know whatmotionis.’ Froude adds the common sense criticism that if Scripture uses the word motion in a transcendental sense it may equally use other words so, and we can never know what it means.
When we add to this Newman’s impulsiveness we have a sufficient explanation of the aberrations of his reasoning. He tried to be and thought he was cautious; but he was mistaken. The pause he was accustomed to make before taking decisive action had only the appearance of caution; and the real impulsiveness of his nature is indicated by several things in his own narrative. For example, the phrase of St. Augustine,Securus judicat orbis terrarum, rings in his ears and recurs to his mind and produces more effect than volumes of argument. ‘By those great words of the ancient Father, interpreting and summing up the long and varied course of ecclesiastical history, the theory of theVia Mediawas absolutely pulverised.’ Was such a result ever before produced by such a cause? or was it that theVia Mediawas in truth built of loose rubbish over shifting sand?
The fact is that Newman’s talent for philosophy, though considerable, nay, almost great even in a strict use of the word great, was insufficient to construct a comprehensivesystem without better guidance than he could find. He was
‘Wandering between two worlds, one dead,The other powerless to be born;’
and, unable himself to bring about the birth, he turned back upon the dead old world, a conspicuous, though personally blameless and most attractive, specimen of the class of those who sink ‘from the van and the freemen’ back ‘to the rear and the slaves.’
Great part of Newman’s power and attractiveness depended upon his exquisite literary gifts. His mind grew up at Oxford, and few have shown so much of thegenius loci. He is academical in the best sense. There is a polished scholarliness in all his work, and very little English prose can be ranked as superior to his. Yet it is perfectly simple. With the true scholar’s instinct he strives for lucidity rather than magnificence. His writings frequently breathe passion, but there could be nothing less like what is commonly called ‘impassioned prose.’ Compare him with De Quincey or with Ruskin. They frequently betray a straining for effect, Newman rarely or never. His passages of eloquence come, like his friends, ‘unasked, unhoped,’ because the fervour of his own thought, or the pressure of circumstances, like the calumnies that provoked theApologia, wrings them from him. Always clear, faultless in taste, capable of great elevation but never too high for the occasion, Newman’s prose is as likely to be permanently satisfying as any of this century.
Edward Bouverie Pusey(1800-1882).
Edward Bouverie Pusey was, as regards his contributions to formal theology, superior to Newman; both as a man and as a writer he was indefinitely smaller. Pusey early won a great reputation for learning, and Newman considered his accession to the movement an event of thefirst importance. He had great tenacity, and his adhesion, once given, was sure. Notwithstanding suspicions at the time of Newman’s perversion, there never was the least chance that Pusey would go over to Rome; theVia Media, which had crumbled under Newman’s feet, was solid enough for him. He was not sufficiently imaginative to push his way into the bog which, like another Chat’s Moss, swallowed up all the material Newman could collect. On the contrary, for the forty years of his life after Newman’s secession, he went on diligently stopping the holes which Stanley and others were ‘boring in the bottom of the Church of England.’ And it is certainly a wonderful tribute to the strength of Pusey’s character that, never quailing beneath the blow of Newman’s perversion, never yielding to the opposition which looked so formidable when his party was small and feeble and despised, unretarded and unhurried, he should have steadily pursued his course and raised that party to a foremost place in the Church. One or two events of his life make it matter of thankfulness that its temporal power was not equal to its spiritual fervour. He did all he could to maintain the Anglican exclusiveness of the universities; and he would, if he could, have used the civil power to suppress opinions he deemed dangerous.
Pusey’s writings are purely technical theology, not literature like those of Newman. Of their value diverse opinions will long be entertained. They are oracles to the High Church party; but it is well to consider what opponents think, especially such as have some grounds of sympathy. Pius IX. compared Pusey to ‘a bell, which always sounds to invite the faithful to Church, and itself always remains outside.’ In a similar spirit another great Romish ecclesiastic, when questioned as to Pusey’s chance of salvation, is said to have playfully replied, ‘Oh, yes,he will be savedpropter magnam implicationem.’ These are just the criticisms of those who have attacked the Puseyite position from the point of view of free thought. They are also the criticisms implied in Newman’s action. It is at least remarkable that critics from both extreme parties, together with the ablest of all the men who have ever maintained the views in question, should concur in the same judgment.
Samuel Wilberforce(1805-1873).
Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, deserves a passing mention, though he was more remarkable as a man of affairs than as a man of letters. He was of the High Church, but was opposed to the extreme Tractarians. He was still more opposed to the advanced Liberals. He wrote an article in theQuarterly ReviewagainstEssays and Reviews, he framed the indictment against Colenso, and he was one of the chief opponents of evolution before it had been discovered that evolution is all contained in Genesis. His most formal literary work is the allegorical tale ofAgathos; but his wit and power of expression find their best outlet in the letters which give to hisLifea zest rare in ecclesiastical biography.
John Frederick Denison Maurice(1805-1872).
There is no other theological sect as compact as the Oxford school, but there are two others of considerable importance and distinguished by fairly well-marked characteristics. Both are imbued with that German thought of which Newman was so unfortunately ignorant; and one of them especially had what he would have considered a deep taint of the hated ‘liberalism.’ John Frederick Denison Maurice was the chief of the first section, while Kingsley, who was more of a novelist than a theologian, and perhaps F. W. Robertson, may be regarded as affiliated to it. Maurice went to Cambridge, but was prevented bythe Unitarian faith he then held from proceeding to his degree, and ultimately he graduated at Oxford. He became Professor of English Literature and History at King’s College, London, but fell into trouble because his views on eternal punishment were unsound. At a later date Cambridge honoured him and herself by appointing him Professor of Moral Philosophy.
Maurice’s theology was always a little indefinite, but it seems best described by the word broad. His friendship for the remarkable Scotch theologian, Thomas Erskine, of Linlathen, who, though not a Calvinist, thanked heaven for his Calvinistic training, is significant on one side; his position as a disciple of Coleridge on another. Coleridge made Maurice more orthodox than he had previously been, but also preserved him from narrowness. Thanks to Coleridge, reason fills a greater space in Maurice than it does in the Tractarians. From Coleridge also Maurice derived some of the mysticism, if not mistiness, which characterised his thought. The want of clear outline is one of his chief defects. Though always suggestive, he is often somewhat elusive; and perhaps it is for this reason that his influence seems to dissipate itself without producing anything like the effect anticipated from it. The practical outcome of the school of Maurice is poor in comparison with that of the school of Pusey. This however was not wholly Maurice’s fault. The Oxford school has drawn strength from what, nevertheless, may ultimately prove to be its weakness,—the appeal to authority, so tempting to many minds for the relief it promises. Maurice is not chargeable with this fault to the same degree. But neither is he entirely free from a kindred fault. He too, like Newman, argues to a foregone conclusion. In Mill’s opinion, more intellectual power was wasted in Maurice than in any other of his contemporaries, and it was wastedbecause all Maurice’s subtlety and power of generalisation served only ‘for proving to his own mind that the Church of England had known everything from the first.’
The principal theological works of Maurice areThe Kingdom of Christ(1838),The Doctrine of Sacrifice(1854), andThe Claims of the Bible and of Science(1863). He wrote also a not very valuable treatise onMoral and Metaphysical Philosophy(1848-1862). And finally he wrote a number of tracts on Christian Socialism, of which he was the originator.
The Christian Socialists made a well-meant but not very wise attempt to raise the condition of the working classes. The name is unfortunate. If the party had thought a little more carefully they must have seen that if their socialism was economically sound there was nothing specially Christian about it; while, if it was not sound, neither it nor Christianity was benefited by the addition of the adjective. The Christian Socialists had no more thought out their principles than they had considered the name they chose, and for want of solid ground-work they failed. Nevertheless, Christian Socialism has left a mark on literature, in the works of Maurice himself, in the novels of Charles Kingsley, and to some extent in the writings of John Sterling, who was for a time of the school of Maurice.
Frederick William Robertson(1816-1853).
Frederick William Robertson owes his position entirely to the celebrated sermons which he preached at Brighton during the last six years of his life. They are not great in scholarship, nor even in eloquence, but they exhibit a character of many-sided attractiveness which was the real secret of Robertson’s power.
Mark Pattison(1813-1884).Benjamin Jowett(1817-1893).
The other section of theologians made a much firmer stand for freedom of thought than Maurice. Their leader in the earlier days of opposition to Tractarianism was Dr. Arnold ofRugby. Some of them were his pupils, and all were influenced by his spirit. In many cases however they came to hold very different ground from his, and supposing him to have lived and to have remained stable in his opinions, he might have regarded his disciples with as much disquiet and fear as he regarded the Tractarians. One of his pupils was A. P. Stanley, who entered the Church and remained in it; another was Clough, the story of whose doubts and unrest is written in his poems; and the author ofLiterature and Dogmawas a third. Outside the circle of Arnold’s pupils but in general sympathy with them were Mark Pattison, a quondam follower of Newman, and Benjamin Jowett, the celebrated Master of Balliol, whose most important literary work, the translation of Plato, comes after 1870, but whose struggle for freedom of opinion and whose persecution in its cause belong to the period under consideration. Jowett was Regius Professor of Greek, and the animosity of those who detested his opinions took the contemptible shape of withholding a reasonable salary. They mistook their man and their means. Jowett was no money-lover; his enemies could not starve him out; and the effect followed which experience proves to attend persecution when it cannot be made crushingly severe. He became the hero of the more liberal-minded, and he moulded almost as he pleased the best intellects of the most intellectual college of the university.
Both Jowett and Pattison were writers in the celebrated volume entitledEssays and Reviews(1860). This was a collection of seven papers on theological subjects, united only by a common liberalism of view. Few books, in the main so harmless, have caused such a commotion. The volume is valuable chiefly as a landmark. Some of the opinions would still be considered heterodox, but they wouldbe received now, if not with satisfaction, at least with calmness. At that time however people were sensitive on the point of orthodoxy. Darwin had just been promulgating an obnoxious doctrine, and it seemed hard that the faith, in danger from without, should be assailed also from within; for six of the seven essayists were clergymen. Legal proceedings were taken against two of them, but they only let off harmlessly humours which, if suppressed, might have been dangerous. It was with respect to the Gorham controversy, ten years earlier, that a Frenchman ‘congratulated Stanley on the fact that the English revolution had taken the shape of “le pèreGorham.”’ The truth underlying this remark applies to other things besides the Gorham case.
In 1862 the excitement was renewed by the publication of Colenso’s book on the Pentateuch. It seems arid now, for there is nothing attractive in the application of arithmetical formulas to Noah’s Ark; but it was just the kind of argument needed for the time and for the audience addressed. It is commonly objected that criticisms of the Bible are a wanton unsettlement of the faith of simple folk. One striking fact will demonstrate the need of some liberalising work. In 1864 the Oxford Declaration on Inspiration and Eternal Punishment was signed by 11,000 clergy; and according to Bishop Tait, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, the effect of this declaration was that ‘all questions of physical science should be referred to the written words of Holy Scripture.’
John Stuart Mill(1806-1873).
The society in which such a thing as this was possible stood in crying need of an intelligent philosophy. The matter was all the worse because this incident came after the great English school, dominant during the first three quarters of the century, had grown and flourished, and was on the point of decay. This was the school which in the earlyyears of the century had for its prophet Jeremy Bentham, and as inferior lights James Mill and the economists. During the third decade we see the thinkers who were in sympathy with these men gradually grouping themselves round John Stuart Mill, whose family connexions, as well as his own ability, made him a centre of the school. He was the son of the hard, dry, but able and clear-headed Scotch philosopher and historian, James Mill, who, almost from his son’s cradle, set about the task of fashioning him in his own image. In some respects James Mill’s success was wonderful. ‘I started,’ says J. S. Mill, ‘I may fairly say, with an advantage of a quarter of a century over my contemporaries.’ But even he was aware of the concomitant defects of the system. A want of tenderness on the part of James Mill led to the educational error of neglecting the cultivation of feeling, and hence to ‘an undervaluing of poetry, and of imagination generally, as an element of human nature.’ There are indications all through the younger Mill’s life as of a warm-hearted, affectionate nature struggling to burst the fetters linked around him by his early education; and there is a touch of irony in the fact that in an early mental crisis John Mill found relief in the ‘healing influence’ of Wordsworth.