The Life of Froude | Page 8

that
he should soon die. But a reading-party during the Long Vacation of
1839 resulted in an engagement, which changed the course of his life.
Hitherto he had been under the impression that nobody cared for him at
all, and that it mattered not what became of him. The sense of being
valued by another person made him value himself. He became
ambitious, and worked hard for his degree. He remembered how the
master of his first school had prophesied that he would be a Bishop. He
did not want to be a Bishop, but he began to think that such grandeur
would not have been predicted of a fool. Abandoning his idle habits, he
read night and day that he might distinguish himself in the young lady's
eyes. After six months her father interfered. He had no confidence in
the stability of this very young suitor's character, and he put an end to
the engagement. Froude was stunned by the blow, and gave up all hope
of a first class. In any case there would have been difficulties. His early
training in scholarship had not been accurate, and he suffered from the
blunders of his education. But under the influence of excitement he had
so far made up for lost time that he got, like Hurrell, a second class in
the final classical schools. His qualified success gave him, no
satisfaction. He was suffering from a bitter sense of disappointment and
wrong. It seemed to him that he was marked out for misfortune, and
that there was no one to help him or to take any trouble about him.
Thrown back upon himself, however, he conquered his discouragement
and resolved that he would be the master of his fate.
It was in the year 1840 that Froude took his degree. Newman was then
at the height of his power and influence. The Tracts for the Times,
which Mrs. Browning in Aurora Leigh calls "tracts against the times,"
were popular with undergraduates, and High Churchmen were making
numerous recruits. Newman's sermons are still read for their style. But
we can hardly imagine the effect which they produced when they were
delivered. The preacher's unrivalled command of English, his
exquisitely musical voice, his utter unworldliness, the fervent
evangelical piety which his high Anglican doctrine did not disturb,
were less moving than his singular power, which he seemed to have
derived from Christ Himself, of reading the human heart. The young

men who listened to him felt, each of them, as if he had confessed his
inmost thoughts to Newman, as if Newman were speaking to him alone.
And yet, from his own point of view, there was a danger in his
arguments, a danger which he probably did not see himself, peculiarly
insidious to an acute, subtle, speculative mind like Froude's.
Newman's intellect, when left to itself, was so clear, so powerful, so
intense, that it cut through sophistry like a knife, and went straight from
premisses to conclusion. But it was only left to itself within narrow and
definite limits. He never suffered from religious doubts. From
Evangelical Protestantism to Roman Catholicism he passed by slow
degrees without once entering the domain of scepticism. Dissenting
altogether from Bishop Butler's view that reason is the only faculty by
which we can judge even of revelation, he set religion apart, outside
reason altogether. From the pulpit of St. Mary's he told his
congregation that Hume's argument against miracles was logically
sound. It was really more probable that the witnesses should be
mistaken than that Lazarus should have been raised from the dead. But,
all the same, Lazarus was raised from the dead: we were required by
faith to believe it, and logic had nothing to do with the matter. How
Butler would have answered Hume, Butler to whom probability was
the guide of life, we cannot tell. Newman's answer was not satisfactory
to Froude. If Hume were right, how could he also be wrong? Newman
might say, with Tertullian, Credo quia impossibile. But mankind in
general are not convinced by paradox, and "to be suddenly told that the
famous argument against miracles was logically valid after all was at
least startling."*
-- * Short Studies on Great Subjects, 4th series, p. 205. --
Perplexed by this dilemma, Froude at Oxford as a graduate, taking
pupils in what was then called science, and would now be called
philosophy, for the Honour School of Literae Humaniores. He was
soon offered, and accepted, a tutorship in Ireland. His pupils father, Mr.
Cleaver, was rector of Delgany in the county of Wicklow. Mr. Cleaver
was a dignified, stately clergyman of the Evangelical school. Froude
had been taught by his brother at home, and by his friends at Oxford, to

despise Evangelicals as silly, ignorant, ridiculous persons. He saw