Hurrell Froude: Memoranda and CommentsGuiney, Louise Imogen
History
Hurrell Froude: Memoranda and Comments
Guiney, Louise Imogen
Froude, Richard Hurrell, 1803-1836
Christian saintliness in temper or spirit he seems to have had as
little tincture as any persecuting Spanish saint), left an aureole of
glory upon his memory.
‘Such was Froude’s hatred of Puritanism that, as may be learnt from
Dean Church, he was “blind to the grandeur of Milton’s poetry.” Church
speaks, himself, of his “fiery impetuosity, and the frank daring of
his disrespectful vocabulary.” He quotes James Mozley as saying: “I
would not set down anything that Froude says for his deliberate
opinion, for he really hates the present state of things so
excessively that any change would be a relief to him.” He says that
“Froude was made for conflict, not to win disciples.” He admits his
ignorance. “He was,” he tells us, “a man strong in abstract thought
and imagination, who wanted adequate knowledge.” He quotes from the
_Apologia_ Newman’s admission of two noticeable deficiencies in
Froude: “he had no turn for theology”; “his power of entering into the
minds of others was not equal to his other gifts.” Such a power, we
may note, is very unlikely to belong to men of fierce and hasty
arrogance and self-confidence. It finds its natural home in company
with “the wisdom from above,” which is not only “pure,” but “gentle
and easy to be entreated,” the characteristics of a saintliness of
another sort than that of Froude. Dean Church admits that the
_Remains_ contain phrases and sentiments and epithets surprisingly at
variance with conventional and popular estimates: “as, for example, we
may explain, when Froude speaks of the illustrious Bishop Jewel, whom
Hooker calls ‘the worthiest divine that Christendom hath bred for the
space of some hundreds of years,’ as ‘an irreverent Dissenter,’ Church
adds that ‘friends were pained and disturbed,’ while ‘foes exulted,’
at such a disclosure of the spirit of the Movement.” The apology he
offers is that “if the off-hand sayings of any man of force and wit
and strong convictions were made known to the world, they would, by
themselves, have much the same look of flippancy, injustice,
impertinence, to those who disagreed with the speaker or writer…. The
friends who published Froude’s _Remains_ knew what he was; they knew
the place and proportion of the fierce and scornful passages; they
knew that they did not go beyond the liberty and the frank speaking,
which most people give themselves in the abandon and understood
exaggeration of intimate correspondence and talk.” To which the reply
is obvious: if the Editors (who were no other than Newman and Keble)
had disapproved of the tone and style of these _Remains_, as it is
evident that Dean Church himself, notwithstanding his strong friendly
bias, could not help disapproving of them, they would either not have
published them, or would at least have suggested some such apology as
that suggested by Dean Church. But, in fact, they published them
without any such apology, and it cannot be seriously doubted that they
rather rejoiced in than condemned such gross improprieties.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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