Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott Part 4

On either view, then, I think that a work which is addressed only or princ.i.p.ally to men's feelings would be mistimed--it would not convince of the necessity, and it would find but a small number of men disposed at present to give it their sympathy.

There are, indeed, those other considerations which you mention respecting the minds which would find relief in being allowed to dwell upon the subject, and so might be the better persuaded to remain within our communion; but, on the other hand, there is the risk of provoking such conduct on the part of the Bishops and others as would drive some out, and render the position of those who remained more difficult than ever. And surely it would be most unfair to take the measure of what the Church of England allows on this or any other difficult point in theology from what might happen to be the view of men such as our present rulers, upon whom the whole question has come unawares, and whose prejudices upon this point in particular, backed by the secular policy of the State for 300 years, would be pretty sure to lead them to some active, and probably united censure. I wish therefore, much, that minds of this cla.s.s could be persuaded that it is not the Church of England which they are testing, but a disorderly body which ten years ago did not know what it was, and is now only gradually becoming conscious; and that if they can satisfy themselves that the views they entertain are compatible with what they deem the true theory of the Church of England, they would be content to hold them quietly for the present, and not risk themselves and others upon so doubtful a venture.

This, I think, is all that I can say--being confessedly in the dark upon the most material points; but if you should think it useful either to myself or to others to give me a full statement you shall have my best judgment. Your confidence I have no other claim upon than that which arises from my disposition to put confidence in you--to think that you know better than any one else the real difficulties of our present position, and that you can look at the remedy, however painful, firmly and practically.

Whatever, therefore, approves itself to you, I am anxious to know, as furnishing for myself, if not the best conclusion, yet the best hope of a conclusion--the best track into which to let my thoughts run. But beyond what you may think good for me in these respects I have no right to ask, and I do not ask for your thoughts. They probably would be above and beyond me, and the responsibility of knowing them would outweigh the use which I should be able to make of them. [Footnote: To this letter of Mr. Hope's I do not find a reply of Mr. Newman's until November 26, when he apologises for having kept him in suspense, adding: 'So far from your not having written to the purpose, you laid down one proposition in which I quite acquiesce; that the subject of the supremacy of Rome should be moved _argumentatively_, if at all. I felt I had gained something here, and rested upon it, and gave up answering you, as it turns out, selfishly.' At the end of the letter he says: 'As to myself, I don't like talking; when we meet we shall see how we feel about it.' His reserve may, I think, be safely accounted for by his great unwillingness that such a man as Mr. Hope should be swayed by him to an act to which, as yet, he himself did not feel himself called.]

Yrs ever truly,

JAMES R. HOPE.

Rev. J. H. Newman.

In a letter to Mr. Newman dated the following day, November 9, Mr. Hope criticises, on the side of caution, various pa.s.sages in the 'Life of St.

Stephen Harding' (by Mr. J. D. Dalgairns, afterwards so well known as Father Dalgairns, of the London Oratory), the first and most celebrated of the series, proofs of which Mr. Newman had sent to him for his opinion.

These criticisms chiefly relate to expressions which might offend ordinary Anglican readers, and which Mr. Hope proposed to soften. Mr. Newman in the end noted against almost all these expressions _stet_. He remarks to Mr. Hope (December 11): 'It seemed to me that, considering the _tone_ of the whole composition, an alteration of the word (_e.g._) "merit"

was like giving milk and water for a fit of the gout, while it destroyed its integrity, vigour--in a word, its go.' Again: 'I am convinced that those pa.s.sages are _not_ flying in people's faces, but are parts of a whole, and express ideas which cannot _otherwise_ be expressed.'

These points were rather matter of prudence as viewed by Mr. Hope; on two others, touching the questions of 'exemptions' and 'impropriations,' Mr.

Hope appears to have been himself unable to go along with the view of the writer of the 'Life of St. Stephen,' whom he considered to defend the _principles_ of exemption too far. Mr. Newman here conceded some alterations, which, however, I am unable to state, not having the proof before me, which Mr. Hope does not quote, but, as finally given, the pa.s.sages referred to may be found in the 'Life of St. Stephen Harding,' pp.

47-49 and 65.

In the same letter of December 11 Mr. Newman informs Mr. Hope that he had resolved on giving up the 'Lives' as a series, and publishing such as were in type, or were written, as separate works. His comment on the motives which had led him to this decision is of great interest:--

I a.s.sure you, to find that the English Church cannot bear the Lives of her Saints (for so I will maintain, in spite of Gladstone, is the fact) does not tend to increase my faith and confidence in her. Nor am I abandoning _publication_ because I abandon this particular measure. Rather, I consider I have been silent now for several years on subjects of the day, and need not fear now to speak.... If these ['Lives,' as separate works]

gradually mount up to the fulness of such an idea as the 'Lives of the Saints' contemplated in process of time, well and good.

He had said in a letter to Mr. Hope of December 5: 'G.'s remarks have shown me the _hopelessness_, by delay or any other means, of escaping the disapprobation of a number of persons whom I very much respect.' This was in reply to a letter of Mr. Hope's of the same day, which I found it difficult to introduce in its chronological order, and which may conveniently be placed here, as Mr. Hope in it clearly shows that his sympathies, notwithstanding his difficulties, went with the 'Lives,' and, like himself, backs his moral support with open-handed liberality:--

_J. R. Hope, Esq. to the Rev. J. H. Newman._

Dec. 5, '43.

Dear Newman,--I enclose the proofs and Gladstone's remarks. The great point made by him here, as elsewhere, at present, is non-estrangement from the existing Ch. of E.; and in this many who are disposed to quarrel with the Reformation are yet heartily disposed to join. In fact, I suppose it will shortly become, if it be not already, the symbol of a party. To that party I do not feel myself at all strongly drawn, and therefore do not sympathise in G.'s views about the _Life_; but if his views be a fair representative of the best cla.s.s of opinions such as I allude to, you may conclude that the high Anglicans will be against you. Of the middle and low there never, I suppose, was a doubt.

For my own part, I read the sheets greedily, and felt that they took me back to subjects which were once much in my thoughts, and ought never to have got so far out of them as they have. Nor was I at all put out by the general tone which seems to me inseparable from the subject; but here and there are pa.s.sages which I think needlessly direct and pointed, so much so indeed as to appear, merely in point of composition, abrupt and wilful.

These I think I could point out. G., you see, thinks his objections separable from the main design, which seems to me hardly possible--perhaps you will think the same of mine, but they relate only to isolated pa.s.sages, and rather to giving them obliqueness than to changing them altogether.

However, I do not mean to say that I could suggest anything which would obviate G[ladstone]'s difficulties, and these are, after all, your main subjects for consideration. What effect they will have upon you I cannot certainly conclude, but in case they should incline you either to delay or to total giving up, I have only to say that I shall be glad to contribute one or two hundred pounds towards defraying the expenses.... In fact, if upon any public eccl. grounds the work is to be delayed or not to go on, I cannot see that my money could be more fitly bestowed than in facilitating the arrangement.

Yours ever truly,

JAMES R. HOPE.

Rev. J. H. Newman.

No need was eventually found for the liberal offer with which the above letter concludes. The following letter, though rather a long one, is certainly not likely to fatigue the reader, and seems almost necessary to be given, in order to complete this part of my subject:--

_The Rev. J. H. Newman to J. R. Hope, Esq._

Oriel College: Dec. 16, 1843.

My dear Hope,--You have not understood me about Gladstone, doubtless through my own fault. The truth is, I am making a great concession--not to him, but to my respectful feelings towards him. I thought you could see it, and only feared you would think it greater than it really was. So I tried to put you on your guard.

1. I withdraw _my name_ from _any plan_. This is no slight thing.

I have frequent letters from people I do not know on the subject of the Lives of the Saints, and doubt not it is raising much talk and interest. A name always gives point to an undertaking--considering my connection with the Tracts of the Times, it would especially to this. You yourself and Badeley (whom, please, thank for some kind trouble he has been at about a book for me) said, 'Delay the plan, _for_ you will be putting _yourself_ at the head of the extreme party--the B[ritish] C[ritic]

having stopped:' now, I am more than _delaying_, I am withdrawing my name. I am sure this is a great thing, even though my initials occurred to this or that life.

2. I have given up continuity, and that certain and promised. 128 pp. were to come out every month, and the work was to go on to the end, except as unforeseen accidents interfered (as they have). Now we know how difficult it is to keep people up to their work. The work is now left to the unpledged zeal of individuals. And there will be nothing methodical or periodical in it to force itself upon people.

I do consider, then, I have given up a very great deal. But what I have not given up is the _wish_ that the work should be done; only I have put it under great disadvantages--so great that I do not think it ever will be done--at the utmost fragments will be done--and that without method, precision, unity, and a name.

And why have I done this? 1. Sincerely because I thought both by heading it and by giving it system I should be administering a continual blister to the kind feelings towards me, and the conscientious views of persons I respect as I do G. I a.s.sure you it is no pleasant thing to me to lose their good opinion, tho' I can't expect much to keep it. 2. I fear to put up something the Bishops may aim at. I may be charged at, as the Tracts have been. Then J. should be in a very false position. I must move forward or backward, and I dread compulsory moves. 3. What is the most immediate and practical point, I don't think I could get a publisher to take on him the _expense_ of a _series_, but few people would dread the risk of a single life of one or two hundred pages. Accordingly, I think I shall publish the one of which you saw a bit at once, to see whether it sells.

That I shall to a certain extent be connected with it, and that I shall aim at making it a series, is certain; and this, as I said, was my reason for warning you that I was not giving way to G. so fully as I appeared to be.

Ever yrs affly,

J. H. NEWMAN.

P.S.--... What set me most urgently on my present notice was that _I could not help it_. Though I gave up my series, which I wished to do, _Lives remained_, written or printed, or promised, _which would appear anyhow_, or scarcely could not.

The great event connected with the movement in 1844 was the publication of Ward's 'Ideal of a Christian Church,' which at first caused less excitement than might have been expected, at least in London. Thus Mr. Badeley writes to Mr. Hope (October 26), 'Ward's book pa.s.ses very quietly here at present;' and again (November 8), 'The book here makes very little noise.'

But meanwhile the heads of Houses were moving at Oxford, and on February 13, 1845, a memorable day, the book was condemned, and its author deprived of his degrees by the House of Convocation. Mr. Hope was absent on the Continent at the beginning of the strife, to which his letters do not contain much allusion. Perhaps the same motives of caution upon which he objected to the 'strong meat' of the 'Lives of the English Saints' would have led him to similar views as to the extreme unreserve of the 'Ideal.'

When, however, the question of Mr. Ward's condemnation came on, he voted against it, as he was sure to have done if he voted at all. It is hardly necessary to remind the reader that on the same occasion it was proposed to pa.s.s a censure on No. 90; but this was vetoed by the proctors, and consequently never came to the vote. I find the following draft of an address of thanks to the proctors in Mr. Gladstone's hand, and with the subjoined signatures and date in Mr. Hope's, among the Hope-Scott papers:--

We the u.s. M. of C., understanding that you have resolved to put your negative upon the Proposal relating to the Ninetieth Tract in Convocation on Thursday, the 13th instant, beg leave to tender to you our cordial thanks for a determination which we consider to have been demanded by the principles of our Academical Const.i.t^n.

W. E. G.

Manning and self. Feby. 11, '45. J. R. H.

As far as regards Mr. Gladstone, this ought to be compared with a correspondence in the Oakeley case, which will be found cited _infra_, p. 58.

To the earlier part of the period now before us belongs some very kind service rendered by Mr. Hope to his dear friend the Rev. W. Adams, Fellow of Merton, and Perpetual Curate of St. Peter's-in-the-East, Oxford, in seeing through the press his celebrated allegory, 'The Shadow of the Cross,' on which there is a rather full correspondence extant (1842-43), but of more special interest as connected with Mr. Adams' biography than his own, except so far as it proves the affectionate intimacy which subsisted between them. One letter of later date (December 15, 1846) is endorsed in Mr. Hope-Scott's handwriting:--'William Adams, R. I. P.

sub 'umbra crucis.' J. R. H. S. 1871.' The work was published for the Christian Knowledge Society, of the committee of which Mr. Hope at the time was still a member. In connection with the same society Mr. Hope undertook a serial work, already alluded to (which was in course of publication in 1844), consisting of engravings from Scripture subjects, in a high style of art, from the cartoons of Raphael in the Loggia of the Vatican. Mr. Hope was strongly impressed with the utility of such a work for directing and elevating the taste of the humbler cla.s.ses and of schools generally, and he expended large sums of money in bringing this out. It was published in numbers containing six plates each, under the superintendence of Professor Gruner, afterwards Director of the Department of Engravings at the Royal Museum at Dresden, and prepared by Signor Corsini, a distinguished Roman draughtsman. Mr. Hope-Scott, indeed, did not carry on the work after the first five numbers (a large and costly business, however), and it was completed by Mr. Gruner alone, who published it under the t.i.tle of 'Scripture Prints from the Frescoes of Raphael in the Vatican,' edited by Louis Gruner, &c. (London: Houlston and Wright, 1866). Mr. Hope-Scott continued his benefactions to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel for several years later than the time now before us. I find a donation of 210_l_. under his name in the year 1847. He had given 200_l_. in November 1846 to the College Chapel at Harrow Weald.

Another undertaking of some importance in which he took great interest in those days, relating both to literature and religion, was the 'Anglia Christiana,' a series of the monuments of English history, which was publishing in 1844-45. Only three volumes of it came out--'Chronicon Monasterii de Bello' (Battle Abbey), Giraldus Cambrensis 'de Inst.i.tutione Principis,' and 'Liber Eliensis.' Mr. Hope much wished to have had included in the list the work called 'Pupilla Oculi,' a treatise on moral theology by John de Burgh, Chancellor of the University of Cambridge about the year 1385, which was much in use among the clergy before the Reformation. Mr.

David Lewis, of Jesus College (as a Catholic so well known for his admirable translations of the works of St. John of the Cross and of St.

Teresa), collated the text for him, but I believe it was never published. I find in the Badeley correspondence a very interesting letter of Mr. Hope's dated February 28, 1843, about the 'Pupilla Oculi,' its history and authority. The book had been cited by Mr. Badeley in the Court of Queen's Bench, and by others in the House of Lords, in the case of the Queen v.

Willis. Lord Lyndhurst and some of the judges objected to its value as evidence on the ground of its contradicting the common law on the question of legitimation by subsequent marriage. Mr. Hope discusses the subject in a masterly style: I must refrain from quoting such merely antiquarian or legal matter for its own sake, yet will subjoin some paragraphs of the letter which ill.u.s.trate the line taken by him as a lawyer at that time on the important point of the relations of Church and State:--

There can be, I think, little doubt that in old times the distinction between Church and State was one of jurisdictions rather than of laws. I mean that each was supposed to have its proper subject-matter of legislation as well as of judicial inquiry. Where the subject-matter was conceded to the Church altogether, there the Church law prevailed absolutely; where the subject-matter was of mixed cognizance, there the Church law was modified by the common or the statute law; where the subject was altogether lay, there both the laws and the tribunals of the Church were silenced. When, therefore, we would ascertain whether the law of the Church is to govern a given subject, we must first ascertain how far it was of the exclusive cognizance of the Church; and, if we find that it was princ.i.p.ally but not exclusively of ecclesiastical cognizance, how far the common law interfered to modify the ecclesiastical laws by which it was to be determined.

Now, in the case before us, this much, I think, must be admitted, viz. that marriage, as a sacrament, was exclusively subject to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction; and, therefore, that whatever view the common law might entertain as to the consequence to be attached to this or that form of it, the essence of the sacrament itself was determinable by the doctrine of the Church, and by that alone.

But if this was so, then whatever was accepted by the Church of England as to the essence of marriage must necessarily be allowed to have been the common law upon that point, i.e. there could be no other law by which it could be decided.

Granting, therefore, that J. de Burgh, or any other ecclesiastical writer, has laid down rules upon subjects of mixed jurisdiction which the common law disallows, it by no means follows that his authority is to be slighted where he speaks of matters that were exclusively ecclesiastical. Indeed, the opposition of the common law upon given points, e.g. the legitimation by subsequent marriage, gives a pregnant meaning to its silence upon others.