Eminent Victorians | Page 8

In the face of such enormities what could
Keble do? He was ready to do anything, but he was a simple and an
unambitious man, and his wrath would in all probability have
consumed itself unappeased within him had he not chanced to come
into contact, at the critical moment, with a spirit more excitable and
daring than his own.
Hurrell Froude, one of Keble's pupils, was a clever young man to
whom had fallen a rather larger share of self-assurance and intolerance
than even clever young men usually possess. What was singular about
him, however, was not so much his temper as his tastes. The sort of
ardour which impels more normal youths to haunt Music Halls and fall
in love with actresses took the form, in Froude's case, of a romantic

devotion to the Deity and an intense interest in the state of his own soul.
He was obsessed by the ideals of saintliness, and convinced of the
supreme importance of not eating too much. He kept a diary in which
he recorded his delinquencies, and they were many. 'I cannot say much
for myself today,' he writes on September 29th, 1826 (he was
twenty-three years old). 'I did not read the Psalms and Second Lesson
after breakfast, which I had neglected to do before, though I had plenty
of time on my hands. Would have liked to be thought adventurous for a
scramble I had at the Devil's Bridge. Looked with greediness to see if
there was a goose on the table for dinner; and though what I ate was of
the plainest sort, and I took no variety, yet even this was partly the
effect of accident, and I certainly rather exceeded in quantity, as I was
fuzzy and sleepy after dinner.' 'I allowed myself to be disgusted, with --
's pomposity,' he writes a little later, 'also smiled at an allusion in the
Lessons to abstemiousness in eating. I hope not from pride or vanity,
but mistrust; it certainly was unintentional.' And again, 'As to my meals,
I can say that I was always careful to see that no one else would take a
thing before I served myself; and I believe as to the kind of my food, a
bit of cold endings of a dab at breakfast, and a scrap of mackerel at
dinner, are the only things that diverged from the strict rule of
simplicity.' 'I am obliged to confess,' he notes, 'that in my intercourse
with the Supreme Being, I am be come more and more sluggish.' And
then he exclaims: 'Thine eye trieth my inward parts, and knoweth my
thoughts ... Oh that my ways were made so direct that I might keep Thy
statutes. I will walk in Thy Commandments when Thou hast set my
heart at liberty.'
Such were the preoccupations of this young man. Perhaps they would
have been different, if he had had a little less of what Newman
describes as his 'high severe idea of the intrinsic excellence of
Virginity'; but it is useless to speculate.
Naturally enough the fierce and burning zeal of Keble had a profound
effect upon his mind. The two became intimate friends, and Froude,
eagerly seizing upon the doctrines of the elder man, saw to it that they
had as full a measure of controversial notoriety as an Oxford common
room could afford. He plunged the metaphysical mysteries of the Holy
Catholic Church into the atmosphere of party politics. Surprised
Doctors of Divinity found themselves suddenly faced with strange

questions which had never entered their heads before. Was the Church
of England, or was it not, a part of the Church Catholic? If it was, were
not the Reformers of the sixteenth century renegades? Was not the
participation of the Body and Blood of Christ essential to the
maintenance of Christian life and hope in each individual? Were
Timothy and Titus Bishops? Or were they not? If they were, did it not
follow that the power of administering the Holy Eucharist was the
attribute of a sacred order founded by Christ Himself? Did not the
Fathers refer to the tradition of the Church as to something independent
of the written word, and sufficient to refute heresy, even alone? Was it
not, therefore, God's unwritten word? And did it not demand the same
reverence from us as the Scriptures, and for exactly the same
reason--BECAUSE IT WAS HIS WORD? The Doctors of Divinity
were aghast at such questions, which seemed to lead they hardly knew
whither; and they found it difficult to think of very apposite answers.
But Hurrell Froude supplied the answers himself readily enough. All
Oxford, all England, should know the truth. The time was out of joint,
and he was only too delighted to have been born to set it