Hurrell Froude: Memoranda and CommentsGuiney, Louise Imogen
History
Hurrell Froude: Memoranda and Comments
Guiney, Louise Imogen
Froude, Richard Hurrell, 1803-1836
If we know aught about the trend of human character, we know that
there was a highly integrant strain in Hurrell Froude; his whole short
life was a thirst after the coherence and continuousness of the things
of faith. If we know aught about the laws of moral motion, we know
that he could neither have gone round in a circle, nor stood still.
Like the paradoxical Briton he was, _il savait conclure_. It is far
truer, potentially, of him, than of Newman. Says Père Ragey, after the
neat and merciless manner of Frenchmen: ‘_Pour pousser ses idées
jusqu’à leurs dernières conséquences, Newman, n’avait eu qu’à suivre
la nature même de son esprit. Il était un de ces esprits (assez rares
parmi nos voisins d’outre Manche) qui se laissent conduire par la
logique, qui vont jusqu’au bout de leurs idées, et qui savent
conclure. La vie et les écrits de Pusey, au contraire, nous montrent
en lui un de ces esprits anglais si bien décrits par Taine, qui
“restent en chemin et ne concluent pas.” … De plus, il sentait bien
qu’il n’était pas seul. Il avait avec lui plus que des corréligionnaires,
plus que des collaborateurs, plus que les disciples: il avait avec lui
et pour lui l’esprit anglais. Les anglais, tout en admirant beaucoup
Newman, et en le plaçant au-dessus de Pusey, reconnaissent mieux leur
esprit dans Pusey que dans Newman._’[291]
Nothing can be safer for all of us conjointly than to answer ‘No’ at
once to that pithless query: Would Froude have followed Newman? Froude
would never have _followed_ Newman. Nor would the latter have paced up
and down for long lonely years in Oriel Lane, and in the _Limbus
Innocentium_ at Littlemore, nor invented _Oret pro nobis_ for an
anodyne, had Froude been alive. It is the summing-up of a thoughtful
review that ‘most readers of the _Apologia_ are under the impression
that [Newman] had started on the road to Rome as soon as Froude’s
influence succeeded to Whately’s; and that if he were not unfaithful,
he had to go on to the end…. Certainly, it does seem as if, after he
had lost Froude, Newman was very liable to be perplexed by opposition,
to watch for omens, to be at the mercy of accidents.’[292] Nothing
gives one such an idea of the immense propelling force which Hurrell
Froude was, as the untoward indecision into which Newman soon fell,
though he still had Pusey’s fortress-like strength at his side. Even
Keble, without the beloved ‘poker,’ burned with a somewhat darker
flame. His silent beneficent career at Hursley was a different matter
from his career as Oriel captain of artillery; and no careful student
can fail to notice that his later spiritual direction tended more and
more towards the nebulous. As for Hurrell, he was bound to be astir,
living or dead, in one direction or another. Without being prepared to
look frankly upon October 9, 1845, as his true field-day, open-minded
persons may harbour a sympathetic wonder whether in the English event
which crowns it he were quite unimplicated? ‘Was it Gregory or was it
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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