My Autobiography Part 10

CHAPTER VIII

EARLY FRIENDS AT OXFORD

I was still very young when I came to settle at Oxford, only twenty-four in fact; and, though occasionally honoured by invitations from Heads of Houses and Professors, I naturally lived chiefly with undergraduates and junior Fellows, such as Grant, Sellar, Palgrave, Morier, and others. Grant, afterwards Sir Alexander Grant and Princ.i.p.al of the University of Edinburgh, was a delightful companion.

He had always something new in his mind, and discussed with many flashes of wit and satire. He possessed an aristocratic contempt for anything commonplace, or self-evident, so that one had to be careful in conversing with him. But he was generous, and his laugh reconciled one to some of his sharp sallies. How little one antic.i.p.ates the future greatness of one's friends. They all seem to us no better than ourselves, when suddenly they emerge. Grant had shown what he could do by his edition of Aristotle's _Ethics_. He became one of the Professors at the new University at Bombay and contributed much to the first starting of that University, so warmly patronized by Sir Charles Trevelyan. On returning to this country he was chosen to fill the distinguished place of Princ.i.p.al of the Edinburgh University. More was expected of him when he enjoyed this _otium c.u.m dignitate_, but his health seemed to have suffered in the enervating climate of India, and, though he enjoyed his return to his friends most fully and spending his life as a friend among friends, he died comparatively young, and perhaps without fulfilling all the hopes that were entertained of him. But he was a thoroughly genial man, and his handshake and the twinkle of his eye when meeting an old friend will not easily be forgotten.

Sellar was another Scotchman whom I knew as an undergraduate at Balliol. When I first came to know him he was full of anxieties about his health, and greatly occupied with the usual doubts about religion, particularly the presence of evil or of anything imperfect in this world. He was an honest fellow, warmly attached to his friends; and no one could wish to have a better friend to stand up for him on all occasions and against all odds. He afterwards became happily married and a useful Professor of Latin at Edinburgh. I stayed with him later in life in Scotland and found him always the same, really enjoying his friends' society and a talk over old days. He had begun to ail when I saw him last, but the old boy was always there, even when he was miserable about his chiefly imaginary miseries. Soon after I had left him I received his last message and farewell from his deathbed. We are told that all this is very natural and what we must be prepared for-but what cold gaps it leaves. My thoughts often return to him, as if he were still among the living, and then one feels one's own loneliness and friendlessness again and again.

Palgrave roused great expectations among undergraduates at Oxford, but he kept us waiting for some time. He took early to office life in the Educational Department, and this seems to have ground him down and unfitted him for other work. He had a wonderful gift of admiring, his great hero being Tennyson, and he was more than disappointed if others did not join in his unqualified panegyrics of the great poet. At last, somewhat late in life, he was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and gave some most learned and instructive lectures. His knowledge of English Literature, particularly poetry, was quite astounding. I certainly never went to him to ask him a question that he did not answer at once and with exhaustive fullness. Some of his friends complained of his great command of language, and even Tennyson, I am told, found it sometimes too much. All I can say is that to me it was a pleasure to listen to him. I owe him particular thanks for having, in the kindest manner, revised my first English compositions. He was always ready and indefatigable, and I certainly owed a good deal to his corrections and his unstinted advice. His _Golden Treasury_ has become a national possession, and certainly speaks well both for his extensive knowledge and for his good taste.

Lastly there was Morier, of whom certainly no one expected when he was at Balliol that he would rise to be British Amba.s.sador at St.

Petersburg. His early education had been somewhat neglected, but when he came to Balliol he worked hard to pa.s.s a creditable examination. He was a giant in size, very good-looking, and his manners, when he liked, most charming and attractive. Being the son of a diplomatist there was something both English and foreign in his manner, and he certainly was a general favourite at Oxford. His great desire was to enter the diplomatic service, but when that was impossible, he found employment for a time in the Education Office. But society in London was too much for him, he was made for society, and society was delighted to receive him. But it was difficult for him at the same time to fulfil his duties at the Education Office, and the result was that he had to give up his place. Things began to look serious, when fortunately Lord Aberdeen, a great friend of his father, found him some diplomatic employment; and that once found, Morier was in his element. He was often almost reckless; but while several of his friends came altogether to grief, he managed always to fall on his feet and keep afloat while others went down. As an undergraduate he came to me to read Greek with me, and I confess that with such mistakes in his Greek papers as ?? p???? instead of t? p???, I trembled for his examinations. However, he did well in the schools, knowing how to hide his weak points and how to make the best of his strong ones. I travelled with him in Germany, and when the Schleswig-Holstein question arose, he wrote a pamphlet which certainly might have cost him his diplomatic career. He asked me to allow it to be understood that the pamphlet, which did full justice to the claims of Holstein and of Germany, had been written by me. I received many compliments, which I tried to parry as well as I could. Fortunately Lord John Russell stood by Morier, and his prophecies did certainly turn out true. "Don't let the Germans awake from their slumbers and find a work ready made for them on which they all agree." But the signatories of the treaty of London did the very thing against which Morier had raised his warning voice, as the friend of Germany as it was, though perhaps not of the Germany that was to be. Schleswig-Holstein _meer-umschlungen_ became the match, (the Schwefel-holzchen), that was to light the fire of German unity, a unity which for a time may not have been exactly what England could have wished for, but which in the future will become, we hope, the safety of Europe and the support of England.

Morier's later advance in his diplomatic career was certainly most successful. He possessed the very important art of gaining the confidence of the crowned heads and ministers he had to deal with.

Bismarck, it is true, could not bear him, and tried several times to trip him up. Even while Morier was at Berlin, as a Secretary of Legation, Bismarck asked for his removal, but Lord Granville simply declined to remove a young diplomatist who gave him information on all parties in Germany, and to do so had to mix with people whom Bismarck did not approve of. Besides, Morier was always a _persona grata_ with the Crown Prince and the Crown Princess, and that was enough to make Bismarck dislike him. Later in life Bismarck accused him of having conveyed private information of the military position of the Germans to the French Guards, such information being derived from the English Court. The charge was ridiculous. Morier was throughout the war a sympathizer with Germany as against France. The English Court had no military information to convey or to communicate to Morier, and Morier was too much of a diplomatist and a gentleman, if by accident he had possessed any such information, to betray such a secret to an enemy in the field. Bismarck was completely routed, though his son seemed inclined to fasten a duel on the English diplomatist. Morier rose higher and higher, and at last became Amba.s.sador at St. Petersburg.

When I laughed and congratulated him he said, "He must be a great fool who does not reach the top of the diplomatic tree." That was too much modesty, and yet modesty was not exactly his fault; but he agreed with me as to _quam parva sapientia regitur mundus_.

Nothing could seem more prosperous than my friend Morier's career; but few people knew how utterly miserable he really was. He had one son, in many respects the very image of his father, a giant in stature, very handsome, and most attractive. In spite of all we said to him he would not send his son to a public school in England, but kept him with him at the different emba.s.sies, where his only companions were the young attaches and secretaries. He had a private tutor, and when that tutor declared that young Morier was fit for the University, his father managed to get him into Balliol, recommending him to the special care of the Master. He actually lived in the Master's house for a time, but enjoyed the greatest liberty that an undergraduate at Oxford may enjoy. His father was wrapped up in his boy, but at the same time tried to frighten him into hard work, or at least into getting through the examinations. All was in vain; young Morier was so nervous that he could never pa.s.s an examination. What might be expected followed, and the father had at last to remove him to begin work as an honorary attache at his own emba.s.sy. I liked the young man very much, but my own impression is that his nervousness quite unfitted him for serious work. The end was beyond description sad. He went to South Africa in the police force, distinguished himself very much, came back to England, and then on his second voyage to the Cape died suddenly on board the steamer. I have seldom seen such utter misery as his father's. He loved his son and the son loved his father pa.s.sionately, but the father expected more than it was physically and mentally possible for the son to do. Hence arose misunderstandings, and yet beneath the surface there was this pa.s.sionate love, like the love of lovers. When I saw my old friend last, he cried and sobbed like a child: his heart was really broken. He went on for a few years more, suffering much from ill health, but really killed at last by his utter misery. I knew him in the bright morning of his life, at the meridian of his great success, and last in the dark night when light and life seems gone, when the moon and all the stars are extinguished, and nothing remains but patient suffering and the hope of a brighter morn to come.

How little one dreamt of all this when we were young, and when an amba.s.sador, nay, even a professor, seemed to us far beyond the reach of our ambition. I could go on mentioning many more names of men with whom I lived at Oxford in the most delightful intimacy, and who afterwards turned up as bishops, archbishops, judges, ministers, and all the rest. True, it is quite natural that it should be so with a man who, as I did, began his English life almost as an undergraduate among undergraduates. Nearly all Englishmen who receive a liberal education must pa.s.s either through Oxford or through Cambridge, and I was no doubt lucky in making thus early the acquaintance of a number of men who later in life became deservedly eminent. The only drawback was that, knowing my friends very intimately, I did not perhaps later preserve on all occasions that deference which the dignity of an amba.s.sador or of an archbishop has a right to demand.

Thomson was a dear friend of mine when he was still a fellow of Queen's College. We worked together, as may be seen by my contributions to his _Laws of Thought_, and the translation of a Vedic hymn which he helped me to make. I think he had a kind of antic.i.p.ation of what was in store for him. Though for a time he had to be satisfied, even when he was married, with a very small London living, he soon rose in the Church, at a time when clergymen of a liberal way of thinking had not much chance of Crown preferment. But having gone at the head of a deputation to Lord Palmerston, to inform him that Gladstone's next election as member for Oxford was becoming doubtful, owing to all the bishoprics being given to the Low Church party-the party of Lord Shaftesbury-Palmerston remembered his stately and courteous bearing, and when the see of Gloucester fell vacant, gave him that bishopric to silence Gladstone's supporters. This was a very unexpected preferment at Oxford, but Thomson made such good use of his opportunity that, when the Archbishopric of York became vacant, and Palmerston found it difficult to make his own or Lord Shaftesbury's nominee acceptable to the Queen, he suggested that any one of the lately elected bishops approved of by the Crown might go to York, and some one else fill the see thus vacated. It so happened that Thomson's name was the first to be mentioned, and he was made Archbishop, probably one of the youngest Archbishops England has ever known. He certainly fulfilled all expectations and proved himself the people's Archbishop, for he was himself the son of a small tradesman, a fact of which he was never ashamed, though his enemies did not fail to cast it in his teeth. I confess I felt at first a little awkward with my old friend who formerly had discussed every possible religious and philosophical problem quite freely with me, and was now His Grace the Lord Archbishop, with a palace to inhabit and an income of about 10,000 a year. However, though as a German and as a friend of Bunsen I was looked upon as a kind of heretic, I never made the Archbishop blush for his old friend, and I always found him the same to the end of his life, kind, courteous, and ready to help, though it is but fair to remember that an Archbishop of York is one of the first subjects of the Queen, and cannot do or say everything that he might like to do or to say. When I had to ask him to do something for a friend of mine, who as a clergyman had given great offence by his very liberal opinions, he did all he could do, though he might have incurred great obloquy by so doing.

But when I think of these men, friends and acquaintances of mine, whom I remember as young men, very able and hard working no doubt, yet not so entirely different from others who through life remained unknown, it is as if I had slept through a number of years and dreamt, and had then suddenly awoke to a new life. Some of my friends, I am glad to say, I always found the same, whether in ermine or in lawn sleeves; others, however, I am sorry to say, had _become_ something, the old boy in them had vanished, and nothing was to be seen except the bishop, the judge, or the minister.

It was not for me to remind them of their former self, and to make them doubt their own ident.i.ty, but I often felt the truth of Matthew Arnold's speeches, who, in social position, never rose beyond that of inspector of schools, and who often laughed when at great dinners he found himself surrounded by their Graces, their Excellencies, and my Lords, recognizing faces that sat below him at school and whose names in the cla.s.s lists did not occupy so high a place as his own. Not that Matthew Arnold was dissatisfied; he knew his worth, but, as he himself asked for nothing, it is strange that his friends should never have asked for something for him, which would have shown to the world at large that he had not been left behind in the race. It strikes one that while he was at Oxford, few people only detected in Arnold the poet or the man of remarkable genius. I had many letters from him, but I never kept them, and I often blame myself now that in his, as in other cases, I should have thrown away letters as of no importance.

Then suddenly came the time when he returned to Oxford as the poet, as the Professor of poetry, nay, afterwards as the philosopher also, placed high by public opinion among the living worthies of England.

What was sometimes against him was his want of seriousness. A laugh from his hearers or readers seemed to be more valued by him than their serious opposition, or their convinced a.s.sent. He trusted, like others, to _persiflage_, and the result was that when he tried to be serious, people could not forget that he might at any time turn round and smile, and decline to be taken _au grand serieux_. People do not know what a dangerous game this French _persiflage_ is, particularly in England, and how difficult it becomes to exchange it afterwards for real seriousness.

Those early Oxford days were bright days for me, and now, when those young and old faces, whether undergraduates or archbishops, rise up again before me, I being almost the only one left of that happy company, I ask again, "Did they also belong to a mere dreamland, they who gave life to my life, and made England my real home?" When I first saw them at Oxford, I was really an undergraduate, though I had taken my Doctor's degree at Leipzig. I lived, in fact, my happy university life over again, and it would be difficult to say which academical years I enjoyed more, those at Leipzig and Berlin, or those at Oxford.

There were intermediate years in Paris, but during my stay there I saw but little of students and student life. I was too much oppressed with cares and anxieties about my present and future to think much of society and enjoyment. At Oxford, these cares had become far less, and I could by hard work earn as much money as I wanted, and cared to spend. In Paris, I was already something of a scholar and writer; at Oxford I became once more the undergraduate.

This young society into which I was received was certainly most attractive, though that it contained the germs of future greatness never struck me at the time. What struck me was the general tone of the conversation. Of course, as Lord Palmerston said of himself when he was no longer very young, "boys will be boys," but there never was anything rude or vulgar in their conversation, and I hardly ever heard an offensive remark among them. Most of my friends came from Balliol, and were serious-minded men, many of them occupied and troubled by religious, philosophical, and social problems.

What puzzled me most was the entire absence of duels. Occasionally there were squabbles and high words, which among German students could have had one result only-a duel. But at Oxford, either a man apologized at once or the next morning, and the matter was forgotten, or, if a man proved himself a cad or a sn.o.b, he was simply dropped. I do not mean to condemn the students' duels in Germany altogether.

Considering how mixed the society of German universities is, and the perfect equality that reigns among them-they all called each other "thou" in my time-the son of a gentleman required some kind of protection against the son of a butcher or of a day-labourer. Boxing and fisticuffs were entirely forbidden among students, so that there remained nothing to a young student who wanted to escape from the insults of a young ruffian, but to call him out. As soon as a challenge was given, all abuse ceased at once, and such was the power of public opinion at the universities that not another word of insult would be uttered. In this way much mischief is prevented. Besides, every precaution is taken to guard against fatal accident, and I believe there are fewer serious accidents on the _mensura_ than in the hunting-field in England. When I was at Leipzig, where we had at least four hundred duels during the year, only two fatal accidents happened, and they were, indeed, accidents, such as will happen even at football. Of course duels can never be defended, but for keeping up good manners, also for bringing out a man's character, these academic duels seem useful. However small the danger is, it frightens the coward and restrains the poltroon. For all that, what has taken place in England may in time take place in Germany also, and men will cease to think that it is impossible to defend their honour without a piece of steel or a pistol. The last thing that a German student desires to do in a duel is to kill his adversary. Hence pistol duels, which are generally preferred by theological students, because they cannot easily get a living if their face is scarred all over, are generally the most harmless, except perhaps for the seconds.

Before closing this chapter, I should like to say a few words on the impressions which the theological atmosphere of Oxford in 1848 produced on me, and which even now fills me with wonder and amazement.

When I came to Oxford, I was strongly recommended to Stanley on one side, and to Manuel Johnson on the other,-a curious mixture. Johnson, the Observer, was extremely kind and hospitable to me. He was a genial man, full of love, possibly a little weak, but thoroughly honest, nay, transparently so. I met at his house nearly all the leaders of the High Church movement, though I never met Newman himself, who had then already gone to reside at his retreat at Littlemore. On the other hand, Stanley received me with open arms as a friend of Bunsen, Frederick Maurice, and Julius Hare, and as I came straight from the February revolution in 1848, he was full of interest and curiosity to know from me what I had seen in Paris.

At first I knew nothing, and understood nothing of the movement, call it ecclesiastical or theological, that was going on at Oxford at that time. I dined almost every Sunday at Johnson's house, and at his dinners and Sunday afternoon garden parties I met men such as Church, Mozley, Buckle, Palgrave, Pollen, Rigaud, Burgon, and Chretian, who inspired me with great respect, both for their learning and for what I could catch of their character. Stanley, on the other hand, Froude, and Jowett, proved themselves true friends to me in making me feel at home, and initiating me into the secrets of the place. There was, however, a curious reticence on both sides, and it was by sudden glimpses only that I came to understand that these two sets were quite divided, nay, opposed, and had very different ideals before them.

I had been at a German university, and the historical study of Christianity was to me as familiar as the study of Roman history.

Professors whom I had looked up to as great authorities, implicitly to be trusted, such as Lotze and Weisse at Leipzig, Sch.e.l.ling and Michelet at Berlin, had, after causing in me a certain surprise at first, left me with the firm conviction that the Old and New Testament were historical books, and to be treated according to the same critical principles as any other ancient book, particularly the sacred books of the East of which so little was then known, and of which I too knew very little as yet; enough, however, to see that they contained nothing but what under the circ.u.mstances they could contain, traditions of extreme antiquity collected by men who gathered all they thought would be useful for the education of the people.

Anything like revelation in the old sense of the word, a belief that these books had been verbally communicated by the Deity, or that what seemed miraculous in them was to be accepted as historically real, simply because it was recorded in these sacred books, was to me a standpoint long left behind. To me the questions that occupied my thoughts were to what date these books, such as we have them, could be a.s.signed, what portions of them were of importance to us, what were the simple truths they contained, and what had been added to them by later collectors. Well do I remember when, before going to Oxford, I spoke to Bunsen of the preface to my Rig-veda, and used the expression, "the great revelations of the world," he, perfectly understanding what I meant, warned me in his loud and warm voice, "Don't say that at Oxford." I could see no harm, nor Bunsen either, nor his son who was an Oxford man and a clergyman of the Church of England; but I was told that I should be misunderstood. I knew far too little to imagine that I had a right to speak of what was fermenting and growing within me. During my stay at Leipzig and Berlin, and afterwards in my intercourse with Renan and Burnouf, the principles of the historical school had become quite familiar to me, but the application of these principles to the early history of religion was a different matter. How far the Old and the New Testament would stand the critical tests enunciated by Niebuhr was a frequent subject of controversy, during the time I spent at Paris, between young Renan and myself. Though I did not go with him in his reconstruction of the history of the Jews and the Jewish religion, and of the early Christians and the Christian religion, I agreed with him in principle, objecting only to his too free and too idyllic reconstruction of these great religious movements. Besides, before all things, I was at that time given to philosophical studies, chiefly to an inquiry into the limits of our knowledge in the Kantian sense of the word, the origin of thought and language, the first faltering and half-mythological steps of language in the search for causes or divine agents. All this occupied me far more than the age of the Fourth Gospel and its position by the side of the Synoptic Gospels. I had talked with Sch.e.l.ling and Schopenhauer, and little as I appreciated or understood all their teachings, there were certain aspirations left in my mind which led me far away beyond the historical foundations of Christianity. What can we know? was the question which I often opposed to Renan at the very beginning of our conversations and controversies.

That there were great truths in the teaching and preaching of Christ, Renan was always ready to admit, but while it interested me how the truths proclaimed by Christ could have sprung up in His mind and at that time in the history of the human race, Renan's eyes were always directed to the evidence, and to what we could still know of the early history of Christianity and its Founder. I could not deny that, historically speaking, we knew very little of the life, the work, and the teachings of Christ; but for that very reason I doubted our being justified in giving our interpretation and reconstruction to the fragments left to us of the real history of the life and teaching of Christ. To this opinion I remained true through life. I claimed for each man the liberty of believing in his own Christ, but I objected to Renan's idyllic Christ as I objected to Niebuhr's filling the canvas of ancient Roman history with the figures of his own imagination.

Naturally, when I came to Oxford, I thought these things were familiar to all, however much they might admit of careful correction. Nor have I any doubt that to some of my friends who were great theologians, they were better known than to a young Oriental scholar like myself.

But unless engaged in conversation on these subjects, and this was chiefly the case with my friends of the Stanley party, I did not feel called upon to preach what, as I thought, every serious student knew quite as well and probably much better than myself, though he might for some reason or other prefer to keep silence thereon.

What was my surprise when I found that most of these excellent and really learned men were much more deeply interested in purely ecclesiastical questions, in the validity of Anglican orders, in the wearing of either gowns or surplices in the pulpit, in the question of candlesticks and genuflections. "What has all this to do with true religion?" I once said to dear Johnson. He laughed with his genial laugh, and blowing the smoke of his cigar away, said, "Oh, you don't understand!" But I did understand, and a great deal more than he expected. Truly religious men, I thought, might please themselves with incense and candlesticks, provided they gave no offence to their neighbours. It seemed to me quite natural also that men like Johnson, with a taste for art, should prefer the Roman ritual to the simple and sometimes rather bare service of the Anglican Church, but that things such as incense and censers, surplice and gown, should be taken as they are, as paraphernalia, the work of human beings, the outcome of personal and local influences, as church-service, no doubt, but not as service of G.o.d. G.o.d has to be served by very different things, and there is the danger of the formal prevailing over the essential, the danger of idolatry of symbols as realities, whenever too much importance is attributed to the external forms of worship and divine service.

The validity of Anglican orders was often discussed at the Observatory, and I no doubt gave great offence by openly declaring in my imperfect English that I considered Luther a better channel for the transmission of the Holy Ghost than a Caesar Borgia or even a Wolsey. Anyhow I could not bring myself to see the importance of such questions, if only the heart was right and if the whole of our life was in fact a real and constant life with G.o.d and in G.o.d. That is what I called a truly religious and truly Christian life. What struck me particularly, both on the Newman side, and among those whom I met at Jowett's and Froude's, was a curious want of openness and manliness in discussing these simple questions, simple, if not complicated by ecclesiastical theories. When Newman at Iffley was spoken of, it was in hushed tones, and when rumours of his going over to Rome reached his friends at Oxford, their consternation seemed to be like that of people watching the deathbed of a friend. I am sorry I saw nothing of Newman at that time; when I sat with him afterwards in his study at Birmingham, he was evidently tired of controversy, and unwilling to reopen questions which to him were settled once for all, or if not settled, at all events closed and relinquished. I could never form a clear idea of the man, much as I admired his sermons; his brother and his own friends gave such different accounts of him. That even at Littlemore he was still faithful to his own national Church, anxious only to bring it nearer to its ancient possibly Roman type, can hardly be doubted. When he wrote from Littlemore to his friend De Lisle, he had no reason to economize the truth. De Lisle hoped that Newman would soon openly join the Church of Rome, but Newman answered: "You must allow me to be honest with you in adding one thing. A distressing feeling arises in my mind that such marks of kindness as these on your part are caused by a belief that I am ever likely to join your communion ... I must a.s.sure you then with great sincerity that I have not the shadow of an internal movement known to myself towards such a step. While G.o.d is with me where I am, I will not seek Him elsewhere.

I might almost say in the words of Scripture, 'We have found the Messias!'..."

How true this is, and yet the same Newman went over to the unreformed Church, because the Archbishop of Canterbury had sanctioned Bunsen's proposal of an Anglo-German bishopric of Jerusalem, quite forgetful of the fact that Synesius also had been bishop of Ptolemais. Again I say, What have such matters to do with true religion, such as we read of in the New Testament, as an ideal to be realized in our life on earth?

And it so happened that at the same time I knew of families rendered miserable through Newman's influence, of young girls, daughters of narrow-minded Anglicans, hurried over to Rome, of young men at Oxford with their troubled consciences which under Newman's direct or indirect guidance could end only in Rome. Newman's influence must have been extraordinary; the tone in which people who wished to free themselves from him, who had actually left him, spoke of him, seemed tremulous with awe. I would give anything to have known him at that time, when I knew him through his disciples only. They were caught in various ways. I know of one, a brilliant writer, who had been entrusted by Newman with writing some of the _Lives of the Saints_. He did it with great industry, but in the course of his researches he arrived at the conviction that there was hardly anything truly historical about his Saints and that the miracles ascribed to them were insipid, and might be the inventions of their friends; such legends, he felt, would take no root on English soil, at all events not in the present generation. In consequence he informed Newman that he could not keep his promise, or that, if he did so, he must speak the truth, tell people what they might believe about these Saints, and what was purely fanciful in the accounts of their lives. And what was Newman's answer? He did not respect the young man's scruples, but encouraged him to go on, because, as he said, people would never believe more than half of these Lives, and that therefore some of these unsupported legends also might prove useful, if only as a kind of ballast.

"I rejoice to hear of your success," he writes, August 21, 1843. "As to St. Grimball, of course we must expect such deficiencies; where matter is found, it is all gain, and there are plenty of Lives to put together, as you will see, when you see the whole list.

"I am rather for _inserting_ (of course discreetly and in way of selection) the miracles for which you have not good evidence. (1) They are beautiful, you say, and will tell in the narrative. (2) Next you can say that the evidence is weak, and this will be bringing credit for the others where you say the evidence is strong. People will never go _so far_ as your narrative. Cut it down to what is true, and they will disbelieve a part of _it_; put in these legends and they will compound for the true at the sacrifice of what may be true, but is not well attested."

I confess I cannot quite follow. If a man like Newman believed in these saints and their miracles, his pleading would become intelligible, but it seems from this very letter that he did not, and yet he tried to persuade his young friend to go on and not to gather the tares, "lest haply he might root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest." I do not like to judge, but I doubt whether this kind of teaching could have strengthened the healthy moral fibre of a man's conscience and have led him to depend entirely on his sense of truth. And yet this was the man who at one time was supposed to draw the best spirits of Oxford with him to Rome. This was the man to whom some of the best spirits at Oxford confessed all they had to confess, and that could have been very little, and of whom they spoke with a subdued whisper as the apostle who would restore all faith, and bring back the Anglican sheep to the Roman fold.

I saw and heard all that was going on, the hopes deferred, the secret visits to Littlemore, the rumours and more than rumours of Newman's defection. Such was the devotion of some of these disciples that they expected day by day a great catastrophe or a great victory, for after the publication of so many letters written at the time by Wiseman, Manning, De Lisle, and others, there can be little doubt that a great conversion or perversion of England to the Romish Church was fully expected. De Lisle writes: "England is now in full career of a great Religious Revolution, this time back to Catholicism and to the Roman See as its true centre ... the best friends of Rome in the Anglican Church are obliged still to be guarded." Such words admit of one meaning only, and if Newman had been followed by a large number of his Oxford friends, the results for England might really have been most terrible. But here, no doubt, the English national feeling came in.

What England had suffered under Roman ecclesiastical rule had not yet been entirely forgotten, and the idea that a foreign potentate and a foreign priesthood should interfere with the highest interests of the nation, was fortunately as distasteful as ever, not only to a large party of the clergy, but to a still larger party of the laity also.

It seemed to me very curious that so many of Newman's followers did not see the unpatriotic character of their agitation. Either subjection to Rome or civil war at home was the inevitable outcome of what they discussed very innocently at the Observatory, and little as I understood their schemes for the future, I often felt surprised at what sounded to me like very unpatriotic utterances.

Another thing that struck me as utterly un-English and has often been dwelt on by the historians of this movement, was the curiously secret character of the agitation. What has an Englishman to fear when he openly protests against what he disapproves of in Church or State? But Newman's friends at Oxford behaved really, as has been often said, like so many naughty schoolboys, or like conspirators, yet they were neither. A very similar charge, however, was brought against the liberal party. They also seemed to think that they were out of bounds, and were doing in secret what they did not dare to do openly. It is well known that one friend of Newman's, who afterwards became a Roman Catholic, had a small chapel set up in his bedroom in college, with pictures and candles and instruments of flagellation. No one was allowed to see this room, till one evening when the flagellant had retired after dinner and fallen asleep, the servants found him lying before the altar. Nothing remained to him then but to exchange his comfortable college rooms for the less comfortable cell of a Roman monastery, and little was done by his new friends to make the evening of his life serene and free from anxiety. These things were known and talked about in Oxford, and generally with anything but the seriousness that the subject seemed to me to require. Again at the Observatory a point was made of having games in the garden such as boccia on a Sunday afternoon, thus evading the strict observance of the Sabbath, without openly trying to restore to it the character which it had in Roman Catholic countries.

German theology was talked about as a kind of forbidden fruit, as if it was not right for them to look at it, to taste it, or to examine it. Even years later people were afraid to meet Professor Ewald, Bishop Colenso, and other so-called heretics at my house. They even fell on poor Ewald at an evening party. Ewald was staying with me and working hard at some Hebrew MSS. at the Bodleian. He was then already an old man, but in his appearance a powerful and venerable champion.

He is the only man I remember who, after copying Hebrew MSS. for twelve hours at the Bodleian with nothing but a sandwich to sustain him, complained of the short time allowed there for work. He came home for dinner very tired, and when the conversation or rather the disputation began between him and some of our young liberal theologians, he spoke in short pithy sentences only. He considered himself perfectly orthodox, nay, one of the pillars of religion in Germany, and laid down the law with unhesitating conviction. As far as I can remember, he was answering a number of questions about St. Paul, and what he thought of Christ, of the Kingdom of Christ, and the Life to come, and being pestered and driven into a corner by his various questioners, and asked at last how he knew St. Paul's secret thoughts, he not knowing how to express himself in fluent English, exclaimed in a loud voice, "I know it by the Holy Ghost." Here the conversation naturally stopped, and poor Ewald was allowed to finish his dinner in peace. He had been Professor at Bonn, when Pusey came there as a young man to study Hebrew after he had been appointed Canon of Christ Church and Professor of Hebrew, and he expressed to me a wish to see Dr.

Pusey. I told him it would not be easy to arrange a meeting, considering how strongly opposed Dr. Pusey was to Ewald's opinions.

Personally I always found Pusey tolerant, and his kindness to me was a surprise to all my young friends. But the fact was, we moved on different planes, and though he knew my religious opinions well, they only excited a smile, and he often said with a sigh, "I know you are a German." His own idea was that he was placed at Oxford in order to save the younger generation from seeing the abyss into which he himself had looked with terror. He had read more heresy, he used to say, than anybody, and he wished no one to pa.s.s through the trials and agonies through which he had pa.s.sed, chiefly, I should think, during his stay at a German university. The historical element was wanting in him, nay, like Hegel, he sometimes seemed to lay stress on the unhistorical character of Christianity. My idea, on the contrary, was that Christianity was a true historical event, prepared by many events that had gone before and alone made it possible and real. Even the abyss, if there were such an abyss, was, as it seemed to me, meant to be there on our pa.s.sage through life, and was to be faced with a brave heart.

But to return to my first experiences of the theological atmosphere of Oxford, I confess I felt puzzled to see men, whose learning and character I sincerely admired, absorbed in subjects which to my mind seemed simply childish. I expected I should hear from them some new views on the date of the gospels, the meaning of revelation, the historical value of revelation, or the early history of the Church.

No, of all this not a word. Nothing but discussions on vestments, on private confession, on candles on the altar, whether they were wanted or not, on the altar being made of stone or of wood, of consecrated wine being mixed with water, of the priest turning his back on the congregation, &c. I could not understand how these men, so high above the ordinary level of men in all other respects, could put aside the fundamental questions of Christianity and give their whole mind to what seemed to me rightly called in the newspapers "mere millinery."

I sought information from Stanley, but he shrugged his shoulders and advised me to keep aloof and say nothing. This I was most willing to do; I cared for none of these things. My mind was occupied with far more serious problems, such as I had heard explained by men of profound learning and honest purpose in the great universities of Germany; these troubles arose from questions which seemed to me to have no connexion with true religion at all. Even the differences between the reformed and unreformed churches were to me mere questions of history, mere questions of human expediency. I did not consider Roman Catholics as heretics-I had known too many of them of unblemished character in Germany. I might have regretted the abuses which called for reform, the excrescences which had disfigured Christianity like many other religions, but which might be tolerated as long as they did not lead to toleration for intolerance. Luther might no longer appear to me in the light of a perfect saint, but that he was right in suppressing the time-honoured abuses of the Roman Church admitted with me of no doubt whatsoever. Large numbers always had that effect on me, and when I saw how many good and excellent men were satisfied with the unreformed teaching of the Roman Church, I felt convinced that they must attach a different meaning to certain doctrines and ecclesiastical practices from what we did. I had learned to discover what was good and true in all religions, and I could fully agree with Macaulay when he said, "If people had lived in a country where very sensible people worshipped the cow, they would not fall out with people who worship saints."

I know that many of my friends on both sides looked upon me as a lat.i.tudinarian, but my conviction has always been that we could not be broad enough. They looked upon me as wishing to keep on good terms with high and low and broad, and I made no secret of it, that I thought I could understand Pusey as well as Stanley, and a.s.sign to each his proper place. Stanley was of course more after my own heart than Pusey, but Pusey too was a man who interested me very much. I saw that he might become a great power whether for good or for evil in England. He was, in fact, a historical character, and these were always the men who interested me. He was fully aware of his importance in England, and the great influence which his name exercised. That influence was not always exercised in the right way, so at least it seemed to me, particularly when it was directed against such friends of mine as Kingsley, Froude, or Jowett. Once, I remember, when he had come to my house, I ventured to tell him that he could not have meant what he had said in declaring that the G.o.d worshipped by Frederic Maurice was not the same as his G.o.d. Curious to say, he relented, and admitted that he had used too strong language. To me everything that was said of G.o.d seemed imperfect, and never to apply to G.o.d Himself but only to the idea which the human mind had formed of Him. To me even the Hindu, if he spoke of Brahman or Krishna, seemed to have aimed at the true G.o.d, in spite of the idolatrous epithets which he used; then how could a man like Frederic Maurice be said to have worshipped a different G.o.d, considering that we all can but feel after Him in the dark, not being able to do more than exclude all that seems to us unworthy of Deity?

A very important element in the ecclesiastical views of some of my friends was, no doubt, the artistic. If Johnson leant towards Rome, it was the more ornate and beautiful service that touched and attracted him. I sat near to him in St. Giles' Church; he told me what to do and what not to do during service. In spite of the Prayer-book, it is by no means so easy as people imagine to do exactly the right thing in church, and I had of course to learn a number of prayers and responses by heart. To me the service, as it was in my parish church, seemed already too ornate, accustomed as I had been to the somewhat bare and cold service in the Lutheran Church at Dessau. But Johnson constantly complained about the monotonous and mechanical performances of the clergy. He had a strong feeling for all that was beautiful and impressive in art, and he wanted to see the service of G.o.d in church full both of reverence and beauty.

Johnson's private collection of artistic treasures was very considerable, and I learnt much from the Italian engravings and Dutch etchings which he possessed and delighted in showing. I often spent happy hours with him examining his portfolios, and wondered how he could afford to buy such treasures. But he knew when and where to buy, and I believe when his collection was sold after his death, it brought a good deal more than it had cost him. Another collection of art was that of Dr. Wellesley, the Princ.i.p.al of New Inn Hall, who was a friend of Johnson's and had collected most valuable antiquities during his long stay in Italy. He was the son of the Marquis of Wellesley, a handsome man, with all the refinement and courtesy of the old English gentleman. Though not perhaps very useful in the work of the University, he was most pleasant to live with, and full of information in his own line of study, the history of art, chiefly of Italian art.

The beautiful services of the Roman Church abroad, and particularly at Rome, certainly exercised a kind of magic attraction on many of the friends of Wiseman and Newman, though one wonders that the sunny grandeur of St. Peter's at Rome should ever have seemed more impressive than the sombre sublimity and serene magnificence of Westminster Abbey. Unfortunately, the introduction of a more ornate service, even of harmless candlesticks and the often very useful incense, had always a secret meaning. They were used as symbols of something of which the people had no conception, whereas in the early Church they had been really natural and useful.

In the midst of all this commotion, and chiefly secret commotion, I felt a perfect stranger; I saw the bright and dark sides, but I confess I saw little of what I called religion. Though my own religious struggles lay behind me, still there were many questions which pressed for a solution, but for which my friends at Oxford seemed either indifferent or unprepared. My practical religion was what I had learnt from my mother; that remained unshaken in all storms, and in its extreme simplicity and childishness answered all the purposes for which religion is meant. Then followed, in the Universities of Leipzig and Berlin, the purely historical and scientific treatment of religion, which, while it explained many things and destroyed many things, never interfered with my early ideas of right and wrong, never disturbed my life with G.o.d and in G.o.d, and seemed to satisfy all my religious wants. I never was frightened or shaken by the critical writings of Strauss or Ewald, of Renan or Colenso. If what they said had an honest ring, I was delighted, for I felt quite certain that they could never deprive me of the little I really wanted. That little could never be little enough; it was like a stronghold with no fortifications, no trenches, and no walls around it. Suppose it was proved to me that, on geological evidence, the earth or the world could not have been created in six days, what was that to me? Suppose it was proved to me that Christ could never have given leave to the unclean spirits to enter into the swine, what was that to me? Let Colenso and Bishop Wilberforce, let Huxley and Gladstone fight about such matters; their turbulent waves could never disturb me, could never even reach me in my safe harbour. I had little to carry, no learned impedimenta to safeguard my faith. If a man possesses this one pearl of great price, he may save himself and his treasure, but neither the tinselled vestments of a Cardinal, nor the triple tiara that crowns the Head of the Church, will serve as life-belts in the gales of doubt and controversy. My friends at Oxford did not know that, though with my one jewel I seemed outwardly poor, I was really richer and safer than many a Cardinal and many a Doctor of Divinity. A confession of faith, like a prayer, may be very long, but the prayer of the Publican may have been more efficient than that of the Pharisee.

After a time I made an even more painful discovery: I found men, who were considered quite orthodox, but who really were without any belief. They spoke to me very freely, because they imagined that as a German I would think as they did, and that I should not be surprised if they looked on me as not quite sincere. It was not only honest doubt that disturbed them. They had done with honest doubt, and they were satisfied with a kind of Voltairian philosophy, which at last ended in pure agnosticism. But even that, even professed agnosticism, I could understand, because it often meant no more than a confession of ignorance with regard to G.o.d, which we all confess, and need not necessarily amount to the denial of the existence of Deity. But that Voltairian levity which scoffs at everything connected with religion was certainly something I did not expect to meet with at Oxford, and which even now perplexes me. Of course, I should never think of mentioning names, but it seemed to me necessary to mention the fact, to complete the curious mosaic of theological and religious thought that existed at Oxford at the time of my arrival.