Hurrell Froude: Memoranda and CommentsGuiney, Louise Imogen
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Hurrell Froude: Memoranda and Comments
Guiney, Louise Imogen
Froude, Richard Hurrell, 1803-1836
――‘Made good resolutions about behaviour when I go home. Never to
argue with my father, or remonstrate with him, or offer my advice,
unless in cases where I feel I should do so to the [Provost?]. For
even if it subjects me to unnecessary inconvenience, it would do so
equally in both cases; and, if I would submit to it in one case
through pusillanimity, I ought in the other for a punishment. It would
be a good way to make opposite vices punish each other so, and be
likely to cure both in time. In the same way to behave to Bob and my
sisters as I would to [College equals?]: to comply with their wishes,
and not interfere with their opinions, except where I would with the
latter. I must try at home to be as humble, and submissive, and
complying, as I can; and here as resolute and vigorous, till I get to
be the same in all places and all company. I do not preclude myself
from making amendments in this resolution, till I have left Oxford.’
――‘It has turned out a beautiful day, and fasting will cost but little
pain. I have just been shocked at hearing that ――――’s acquaintance,
Mr. ――――, had shot himself yesterday. How strongly it reminds me that
I understand little of the things invisible which I talk and think
about, when the most terrible occurrences having taken place quite
close to me affect me so little! I could work up my feelings easy
enough, but it is enthusiasm[18] to anticipate in this way the steady
effects of moral discipline; even supposing both effects are, whilst
they last, the same. I could not help crying violently just now, on
reading over my mother’s paper. The ideas somehow mixed up together,
and forced on my thoughts what a condition I may be in as to things
unseen, and yet be unconscious of it. O God, keep up in my mind a
feeling of true humility, suitable to my blindness and the things that
I am among.’
――‘I have just been reading over my account of the time I spent at
home last summer…. The great root of all my complicated misdeeds seems
to have been (1) A want of proper notions respecting my relations to
my father. (2) A notion that I was a competent judge how to make other
people happy, by giving a tone to their pursuits. (3) A craving after
the pleasures which I admire. (4) Arrogant pretensions to superiority.
(5) A wish to make my conduct seem consistent to myself and others.
The first is the main point, and when I have carried that, the rest
will all go easily. The only way we can ever be comfortable is by our
all uniting to make his will our law, and what little I can do towards
this will be better accomplished by example than by presumptuous
advice…. Nor do I see how I can so well repress my arrogance as by
always keeping in mind that I am in the presence of one who is to me
the type of the Most High.’
(To KEBLE.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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