‘… I much regretted not being with poor Froude at or nearly before his death…. Poor Froude! he was peculiarly _vir paucorum hominum_: I thought that knowing him, I better understood Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Froude was a person most natural, but so original as to be unlike anyone else, hiding depth of delicate thought in apparent extravagances. _Hamlet_ and the _Georgics_ of Virgil, he used to say, he should have bound together. Many have imagined, and Newman endeavoured to persuade himself, that if Froude had lived he would have joined the Church of Rome, as well as himself. But this I do not at all think. There was a seriousness and steadfastness, at the bottom, in Froude, so that I had always confidence in him:[357] Newman told me once, half-seriously, that the publication of Froude’s _Remains_ was owing to me, as I had said to him, if persons could have so much brought before them that they could thoroughly understand Froude’s character, then they might enter into his sayings; but unless they knew him as we did, they could not understand them. For, indeed, one constantly trembled for him in mixed society, both in Common Rooms and in other places, feeling that he would not be understood…. On the day of the book coming out, I went into Parker the bookseller’s with Copeland; and there we were startled at seeing one who then was the chief opponent of the Church principles of Newman and ourselves. It was Ward of Balliol, author of the _Ideal_. He sat down with the book in his hands, evidently much affected; and then we afterwards heard, to our astonishment, that he had been very much taken by the book, had bought a copy for himself and another to give away, and was, in fact, quite converted.’ From ‘ORIGIN OF THE TRACTS FOR THE TIMES,’ A POEM IN THE 1852 EDITION OF ‘THOUGHTS IN PAST YEARS,’ by ISAAC WILLIAMS.[358]