LI FE - OF- DEAN - FARR A R BY- R T A- FARRAR * JUL 31 1904 * Division LI BX 5199 .F37 F37 1904 Farrar, Reginald. The life of Frederic Willia Farrar, D.D. , F.R.S. , etc. THE LIFE OF FREDERIC WILLIAM FARRAR Boohs by Dean farrar MEN I HAVE KNOWN. 12mo. $1.75. GREAT BOOKS. 16mo. $1.25. THE PATHS OF DUTY. 12mo. 35 cents. LIFE OF CHRIST. Illustrated. 2 vols. 12mo. Cloth. $2.50. 12mo. Half Calf. $5.00. THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. HEW YORK Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015 https://archive.org/details/lifeoffredericwiOOfarr THE LIFE OF FREDERIC WILLIAM FARRAR D.D., F.R.S., etc. SOMETIME DEAN OF CANTERBURY BY HIS SOI REGINALD FARRAR NEW YORK THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY PUBLISHERS Copyright, 1904, BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. Published March, 1904. TO PREFACE In writing my father's life, I have aimed at producing rather a memoir of such length as should be within the compass of the general reader than a complete and exhaustive biography. I have adopted the method of inviting friends and colleagues who were associated with my father at different periods of his life to con- tribute reminiscences of those periods, and to these friends, naming them in the order in which their con- tributions appear in this book, it is now my pleasant duty to tender hearty thanks for their kind and generous response; to — Professor E. Spencer Beesly. Sir Edwin Arnold, K. C. S. I. His Honour Judge Vernon Lushington. Canon Henry Bell. Mr. George Russell. Mr. Walter Leaf. V. S. The Very Reverend Dr. H. Montagu Butler, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Mr. E. F. E. Thompson. The Reverend Dr. H. A. James, Head Master of Rugby School. Professor C. E. Vaughan. Mr. C. L. Graves. J. D. R. The Right Reverend Bishop Montgomery. vii viii PREFACE The Reverend W. E. Sims. The Reverend W. J. Somerville. The Venerable Archdeacon Vesey. Mr. T. Archibald Brooks, Principal of the Govern- ment High School, Delhi. The Reverend Canon Page-Roberts. The following members of my own family, Mrs. J. S. Thomas, The Honourable Mrs. J. S. Northcote, The Reverend Eric M. Farrar, and The Reverend Ivor G. Farrar have contributed reminiscences, which I grate- fully acknowledge. My mother, to whom I dedicate this volume, and my wife have given me much valuable assistance in the way of advice and criticism and in revising the proof sheets. I have also to acknowledge permission courteously accorded me by the respective editors to make extracts from the following periodicals ; from — The Temple Magazine . The Quiver. The British Monthly. The Manchester Guardian. The Cornhill Magazine. The Morning Advertiser. Great Thoughts. I have also, by permission of the publishers, made use of extracts from " Men I Have Known " and the "Biographical Life of Christ" (Cassell & Co.). A bibliography of my father's principal published writings, compiled by Miss Zoe Hawley, has been added. To the help thus promptly and generously given is mainly due whatever of value the Memoir may possess. If I may be allowed a word of personal reference, I would beg indulgence for many shortcomings in the work, of which I am painfully conscious, on the ground PREFACE ix that it has been compiled in the scant leisure of a busy official life. I have tried impartially to paint the por- trait of my father as he lived, not ignoring the fact that his work was often the subject of criticism, but writing throughout, as a son must needs write of such a father, in a spirit of loving reverence. If I have in any meas- ure conveyed the lesson that a manhood spent in the service of God and his fellow-men was the direct out- come of a youth of stainless purity and strenuous effort, if I have helped any to realise the renowned preacher and writer as a genial friend, a most loving husband, and a most tender father, I have not wholly failed in my task. R. FARRAR. Chiswick, November, 1903. CONTENTS PAGE Bibliography xiii CHAPTER I. Childhood and Reminiscences of his Parents . i II. The Schoolboy 10 III. The Student 21 IV. The Undergraduate 38 V. Assistant Master at Marlborough 53 VI. Harrow Days 71 VII. Head-master of Marlborough . . . .141 VIII. The Life of Christ and Other Theological Writings 191 IX. St. Margaret's, Westminster .... 216 X. The Parish Priest 234 XI. The Preacher of "Eternal Hope" . . . 254 XII. Visit to America 284 XIII. Bread upon the Waters 302 XIV. Dean of Canterbury 313 Index 353 xi ILLUSTRATIONS Dean Farrar Frontispiece Photogravure of a Portrait from Life. FACING PAGE Charles Pinhorn Farrar 2 Father of Dean Farrar. King William's College, Isle of Man .... 10 Trinity College, Cambridge 38 The Park, Harrow 94 Where Farrar lived as Assistant Master. Mrs. Farrar 118 Dr. Farrar, Mrs. Farrar, and a Group of Students at Harrow 132 Dr. Farrar in Middle Life 166 St. Margaret's and Westminster Abbey . . . 218 The Deanery, Canterbury 314 Deanery Study, Canterbury 324 Dean Farrar 336 Last Photograph taken. Canterbury Cathedral 348 Second Arch from right is Site of the Dean's Grave. BIBLIOGRAPHY 1857 People of England. Longmans. 1858 An Essay on the Christian Doctrine of Atonement. Bell and Daldy. 1 edition. Eric ; or, Little by Little. A. & C. Black. Thirty-sixth edition, 1903. 1859 Lyrics of Life. Macmillan. i860 Julian Home: a Tale of College Life. A. & C. Black. Eighteenth edition, 1902. The Origin of Language, based on Modern Researches : an Essay. Murray. 1 edition. 1862 St. Winifred's; or, the World of School. Originally published anonymously. 1862. A. & C. Black. Twenty-sixth edition, 1903. 1865 Chapters on Language. Longmans. 3 editions. 1866 Greek Grammar Rules. Longmans. Twenty-second edition, 1899. 1867 Greek Syntax, and Hints on Accidence. Longmans. Thirteenth edition, 1897. Defects in Public School Education : a Lecture. Macmillan. xiii xiv BIBLIOGRAPHY 1868 Seekers after God. Macmillan. Seventeenth edition, 1902. The Fall of Man, and Other Sermons. Macmillan. Seventh edi- tion, 1893. 1870 Families of Speech : Four Lectures. Longmans. 2 editions. 1871 The Witness of History to Christ: the Hulsean Lectures for 1870. Macmillan. Ninth edition, 1892. 1873 Silence and the Voices of God, with Other Sermons. Macmillan. Eighth edition, 1892. The Three Homes : A Tale for Fathers and Sons. Cassell. Eighteenth edition, 1903. 1874 Tha Life of Christ. Cassell. Ninth edition now being published. 1876 In the Days of thy Youth : Sermons preached at Marlborough College. Macmillan. Eleventh edition, 1899. 1878 Eternal Hope : Five sermons preached in Westminster Abbey. Macmillan. Eighteenth edition, 1901. Language and Languages, Families of Speech, etc. Longmans. Sixth edition, 1899. Saintly Workers : Five Lenten Lectures. Macmillan. Fifth edition, 1892. 1879 Life and Work of St. Paul, with maps. Cassell. 10 editions. BIBLIOGRAPHY xv 1880 Ephphatha ; or, the Amelioration of the World : Sermons. Mac- millan. Second edition, 1891. The Gospel according to St. Luke, with maps, notes, and intro- duction. (Camb. Bib. for Schools.) Cambridge University Press. Seventeenth edition, 1902. 1881 Mercy and Judgement. Macmillan. Third edition, 1894. Words of Truth and Wisdom. W. H. Allen. Third edition, 1900. Grant, Edinburgh. 1882 The Early Days of Christianity. Cassell. 5 editions. Music in Religion and Life : a Sermon. Simpkin, Marshall. 1 edition. 1883 General Aims of Teacher and Form Management : Two Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge by F. W. Farrar and R. B. Poole. Cambridge University Press. Second edition, 1895. My Object in Life. Cassell. Eighth edition, 1894. The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews, with notes and introduction. (Camb. Bib. for Sch.) Cambridge University Press. Fifth edition, 1902. 1884 The Message of the Books : Discourses and Notes on the New Testament. Macmillan. Fifth edition, 1897. The Gospel according to St. Luke in Greek, with maps, notes, and introduction. (Camb. Gk. Text for Sch.) Cambridge Univer- sity Press. Ninth edition, 1903. 1886 The History of Interpretation : Bampton Lectures, 1885. Macmillan. Sermons and Addresses delivered in America. Macmillan. Second edition, 1892. xvi BIBLIOGRAPHY 1887 Everyday Christian Life : or, Sermons by the Way. Isbister. Reprinted repeatedly. Solomon, his Life and Times. (Men of the Bible.) Nisbet. 1888 Africa, Drink Trade. (From Contemporary Review) Home Words Office. 1889 Lives of the Fathers : Church History in Biography. A. & C. Black. Sermons. Sonnenschein. Fourth edition, 1898. The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews, in Greek, with notes and introduction. (Camb. Gk. Text for Sch.) Cambridge Uni- versity Press. Third edition, 1894. 1890 The Gospel according to St. Luke. (Smaller Camb. Bib. for Sch.) Cambridge University Press. Eighth edition, 1900. The Minor Prophets. Nisbet. Very large sale. The Passion Play at Oberammergau. Heinemann. Third edition, 1900. Truths to Live By : Companion to Everyday Christian Life. Isbis- ter. Reprinted repeatedly. With the Poets : a Selection of English Poetry. Dent. 1891 Darkness and Dawn : a Tale of the Days of Nero. Longmans. Eighth edition, 1898. Social and Present-day Questions. Hodder. Fourth edition, 1903. 1892 The Voice from Sinai : the Eternal Bases of the Moral Law. Isbis- ter. Reprinted repeatedly. 1893 Our English Minsters. (Joint authorship.) Isbister. Reprinted repeatedly. BIBLIOGRAPHY xvii The Lord's Prayer : Sermons in Westminster Abbey. Isbister. Reprinted repeatedly. The First Book of Kings. (The Expositor's Bible.) Hodder. i edition. 1894 Christ, Paul, and Early Christianity. The Life of Christ as represented in Art. Black. Third edition, 1 901. The Second Book of Kings. (The Expositor's Bible.) Hodder. Second edition, 1902. 1895 Biblical Character Sketches. ( Joint authorship.) Nisbet. Third edition, 1898. Gathering Clouds : Days of St. Chrysostom. Longmans. 2 editions. The Book of Daniel. (The Expositor's Bible.) Hodder. Second edition, 1903. Woman's Work as Daughter, as Wife, and as Mother. Nisbet. Second edition, 1895. 1896 The Bible and the Child : the Higher Criticism and the Teaching of the Young. (Joint authorship.) Clarke. 1 edition. The Young Man Master of Himself. Nisbet. Third edition, 1898. 1897 Prophets of the Christian Faith. (Joint authorship.) Clarke. 1 edition. Sin and its Conquerors. (Preachers of To-day.) Nisbet. The Bible : its Meaning and Supremacy. Longmans. Second edition, 1897. The Herods. Nisbet. 1 edition. Westminster Abbey. (Reprinted from "Our English Minsters.") Isbister. Reprinted repeatedly. 1898 Allegories. Longmans. 1 edition. Great Books : Bunyan, Shakespeare, Dante, Milton, The Imitation. Isbister. Reprinted repeatedly. xviii BIBLIOGRAPHY Temperance Reform as required by National Righteousness and Patriotism : Lees and Raper Memornl Lecture. Nisbet. Second edition, 1899. Texts explained ; or, Helps to understand the New Testament. Longmans. True Religion : Sermons. Freemantle. Second edition, 1903. (World's Pulpit Series.) Brown & Langham. 1900 Progress in the Reign of Queen Victoria : a Brief Record of Sixty Years. Bliss. Selections: the Life of Christian Service. The Life of Lives : Further Studies in the Life of Christ. Cassell. Second edition, 1903. BIBLIOGRAPHY xix EDITIONS PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED STATES 1868 Seekers after God. Lippincott & Co. 1870 The Witness of History to Christ : Hulsean Lectures. Macmillan & Co. 1871 The Fall of Man and Other Sermons. Macmillan & Co. 1874 The Life of Christ. Cassell. Dutton. Wendell. Silence and the Voices of God, with Other Sermons. Dutton. 1885 An Eulogy on General Grant; Westminster Abbey, Aug. 4th, 1885. Dutton. Inspiration: a Symposium. Whittaker. Success in Life : prefaced by a Brief Biography. Cupples. Treasure Thoughts from the Writings of F. W. Farrar. Lothrop. 1886 The History of Interpretation: the Bampton Lectures for 1885. Dutton. Lectures, Addresses, Essays. Alden. Sermons and Addresses delivered in America, with an introduction by P. Brooks. Dutton. 1887 Africa and the Drink Trade. National Temperance. Books which have influenced Me. Pott. The Atonement : a Symposium. Whittaker. Non-Biblical Systems of Religion : a Symposium. Whittaker. XX BIBLIOGRAPHY 1888 Everyday Christian Life ; or, Sermons by the Way. Whittaker. Solomon : His Life and Times. (Men of the Bible Series.) Ran- dolph. Twenty Sermons. (The Contemporary Pulpit.) Whittaker. 1890 The Minor Prophets. (Men of the Bible Series.) Randolph. The Passion Play at Oberammergau. J. W. Lovell. Truths to Live By : a Companion to Everyday Christian Life. Whittaker. Wider Hope : Essays and Strictures on the Doctrine and Literature of Future Punishment. Dutton. 1891 Darkness and Dawn. Longmans. Places that Our Lord Loved. Prang. Social and Present-day Questions. Bradley & Co. 1892 The Voice from Sinai : the Eternal Bases of the Moral Law. Whit- taker. In the Days of thy Youth : Sermons preached at Marlborough Col- lege. Macmillan. 1893 Eric ; or, Little by Little. Macmillan. Non-Biblical Systems of Religion: a Symposium. Cranston & Curtis. In the Field with their Flocks Abiding. (Xmas Carol.) Whit- taker. Julian Home : a Story of College Life. Macmillan. St. Winifred's : a Tale of School Life. Macmillan. The First Book of Kings. (The Expositor's Bible.) A. C. Arm- strong. The Lord's Prayer: Sermons preached in Westminster Abbey. Whittaker. BIBLIOGRAPHY xxi 1894 The Cathedrals of England. Whittaker. The Second Book of Kings. (The Expositor's Bible.) A. C. Arm- strong. The Life of Christ as represented in Art. Macmillan. 1895 The Farrar Year-book: Selections from the writings of F. W. Farrar, D.D. Dutton & Co. Gathering Clouds. Longmans. My Brother and I, by F. W. F. and others. Hunt and Eaton. The Book of Daniel. (The Expositor's Bible.) Armstrong. The Life of Christ. 2 Vols. Crowell & Co. Westminster Abbey and the Cathedrals of England. Winston & Co. 1896 Biblical Character Sketches, by F. W. F. and others. Whittaker. The Bible and the Child, by F. W. F. and others. Macmillan. The Path of Duty : Counsels to Young Men. Crowell & Co. The Three Homes : a Tale for Fathers and Sons. Dutton & Co. 1897 Lectures on Ecclesiastical History delivered in Norwich Cathedral. (St. Ignatius and St. Polycarp, by F. W. F.) Whittaker. Men I Have Known. Crowell & Co. The Bible : its Meaning and Supremacy. Longmans. True Manhood : Sermons. W. B. Ketcham. Sin and its Conquerors ; or, the Conquest of Sin. Fleming H. Revell Co. 1898 Allegories. Longmans. Great Books. Crowell & Co. The Life Story of Aner: an Allegory. Longmans. The Herods. E. R. Herrick. Also Whittaker. 1899 Texts explained; or, Helps to understand the New Testament. Dodd, Mead & Co. xxii BIBLIOGRAPHY Westminster Abbey ; with a chapter on the Poets' Corner by Dean Stanley. Mansfield & Wessels. 1900 The Life of Lives : Further Studies in the Life of Christ. Dodd, Mead & Co. 1901 True Religion : Sermons. Whittaker. LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR CHAPTER I CHILDHOOD AND REMINISCENCES OF HIS PARENTS Frederic William Farrar was born in the Fort of Bombay, August 7, 183 1, his father, the Rev. Charles Pinhorn Farrar, being then a chaplain of the Church Missionary Society. It has been observed that there is a certain congruity in the fact that one whose luxuriance of imagination and diction was said — at any rate by his enemies — to be at times too tropical, should have been born beneath the "larger constellations burning" of the gorgeous East. Few traditions are extant of those early years, but I met in India in 1900 an aged Mahratha Brahman who was educated and taught English by the Farrars in Nasik, and who spoke of them with the utmost affection : and about thirty years ago an old Mahrathi woman was living who had been in the ser- vice of the Farrars at Nasik, and who said to a lady missionary, " Ah ! you tell me the same things as Farrar Mem sahib." This old woman could remember " Freddy Baba," and spoke of him as " a great case," i.e. a very lively child. At the age of three, Freddy Baba was sent home to England with his elder brother Henry and placed under the care of two maiden aunts, cultured and refined ladies who lived at Aylesbury. A few memories of his childhood are preserved in " Eric," 2 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR which is in some respects autobiographical, and from which, therefore, some quotations may be introduced to illustrate this period. " Very soon he forgot all about India ; it only hung like a distant golden haze on the horizon of his memory. When asked if he remembered it he would say, thought- fully, that in dreams, and at some other times, he saw a little boy, with long curly hair, running about in a flower-garden, near a great river, in a place where the air was very bright. But whether the little boy was himself or his brother Vernon, whom he had never seen, he couldn't quite tell." " In his bedroom there hung a cherub's head, drawn in pencil by his mother, and this winged child was inextricably identified in his imagination with his ' little brother Vernon.' He loved it dearly, and whenever he went astray, nothing weighed on his mind so strongly as the thought, that if he were naughty he would teach little Vernon to be naughty too, when he came home." His " little brother Vernon " was an imaginary portrait, but the little pencil sketch to which this description refers was an actual possession of my father's childhood which he dearly cherished, and looked on as, in some sort, his guardian angel, and is still preserved. His aunts, one of whom is remembered as " Aunt Rufella," and the training which he received at their hands, are thus described : " With Mrs. Trevor and her daughter, religion was not a system, but a habit — not a theory, but a continued act of life. All was simple, sweet, and unaffected about their charity and their devotions. They loved God and they did all the good they could to those around them. The floating gossip and ill-nature of the little village never affected them ; it melted away insensibly in the presence of their culti- I CHILDHOOD AND REMINISCENCES 3 vated minds ; so that friendship with them was a bond of union among all, and, from the vicar to the dairy- man, every one loved and respected them, asked their counsel, and sought their sympathy." "They called themselves by no sectarian name, nor could they have told to what ' party ' they belonged. They troubled themselves with no theory of education, but mingled gentle nurture with ' wholesome neglect.' There was nothing exotic or constrained in the growth of Eric's character. He was not one of the angelically good children at all, and knew none of the phrases of which infant prodigies are supposed to be so fond. But to be truthful, to be honest, to be kind, to be brave — these lessons had been taught him, and he never quite forgot them ; nor amid the sorrows of after life did he ever quite lose the sense — learned at dear, quiet Fair- holm — of a present loving God, of a tender and long- suffering Father." Thus kindly and wisely nurtured, Fred Farrar passed a happy childhood, a little fair-haired, blue-eyed fellow, roaming about the garden and orchard at the bottom of which ran a clear stream, and which supplied him a theatre for endless games. He was allowed to go about a good deal by himself and it did him good. He grew up fearless and self-dependent and never felt the want of amusement. Having been rather a solitary child, he developed at a very early age a voracious appetite for books. He had the good fortune to be born and to develop his literary taste before the modern boom in cheap and ephemeral fiction, before the flooding of the market with the abysmal futilities of the modern sixpenny magazine. The few books to which he had access, both at this period and in his school days in the Isle 4 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR of Man were perforce read and re-read till they became- a part of himself. Thus he made an early acquaintance with Scott's novels, of which, as with all boys, "Ivanhoe" was the favourite, and the characters in it grew to be as real to him as the people in the streets. The little volume of Milton which his mother gave him when he was quite a child, and which was his constant compan- ion till the day of his death, he conned so intently and so often that, while still a child, he knew many passages of " Paradise Lost " by heart. At the age of six Fred Farrar was sent to the Latin school at Aylesbury. Of this school he thus speaks in " Eric ": "Although he learnt little there, and gained no experience of the character of others or of his own, there was one point about Ayrton [Aylesbury] Latin School which he never regretted. It was the mixture there of all classes. On those benches gentlemen's sons sat side by side with plebeians, and no harm, but only good, seemed to come from the inter- course. The neighbouring gentry, most of whom had begun their education there, were drawn into closer and kindlier union with their neighbours and dependants, from the fact of having been their associates in the days of their boyhood. Many a time afterward when Eric, as he passed down the streets, interchanged friendly greetings with some young glazier or tradesman whom he remembered at school, he felt glad that thus early he had learnt to despise the accidental and nominal differ- ences which separate man from man." When he was eight years old his parents returned from India and took a house in the Isle of Man, on the shores of Castleton Bay. Here for three years, till their return to India, he and his brother Henry, for whom he had a very strong affection, lived with their parents, and attended King William's College, which was close to their home. 4 CHILDHOOD AND REMINISCENCES 5 With his father, a very reticent and somewhat austere man, of the strictest evangelical opinions, he appears, partly owing to absence during the years of boyhood, never to have been on really intimate terms. For the memory of his mother, a saintly woman, whose maiden name was Caroline Turner, he cherished the deepest love and reverence. In 1890, when he was nearly sixty years old, he thus wrote of her: — " First among the influences which have formed my life, I must mention the character of a mother who has been dead for nearly thirty years, but of whom my remi- niscences are as vivid and as tender as if she had passed away but yesterday. I have never spoken of her, though I dedicated one early book to her dear memory. She has had no memorial in the world ; she passed her life in the deep valley of poverty, obscurity, and trial ; but she has left to her only surviving son the recollections of a saint. I may say of her with truth that she was canonised by all who looked on her, and I echo with all my heart the words of the Poet Laureate : — " Happy he With such a mother! faith in womankind Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high Comes easy to him." In another passage he says : — " My mother's habit was, every day, immediately after breakfast, to withdraw for an hour to her own room, and to spend that hour in reading the Bible, in medi- tation, and in prayer. From that hour, as from a pure fountain, she drew the strength and sweetness which enabled her to fulfil all her duties, and to remain un- ruffled by all the worries and pettinesses which are so often the intolerable trial of narrow neighbourhoods. 6 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR As I think of her life, and of all it had to bear, I see the absolute triumph of Christian grace in the lovely ideal of a Christian lady. I never saw her temper disturbed ; I never heard her speak one word of anger, or of cal- umny, or of idle gossip. I never observed in her any sign of a single sentiment unbecoming to a soul which had drunk of the river of the water of life, and which had fed upon manna in the barren wilderness." He preserved her last letter in an envelope, on the back of which he wrote, "Sacred to the most dear memory of the best of mothers. The enclosed was the last letter she ever wrote — Farewell, darling mother, till the Resurrection morning, when God shall bring with Him them that sleep in Jesus." A letter written to one of his Harrow pupils, a letter which influenced the boy's whole life, and which he carefully preserved " among his most sacred 1 arcana ' " for more than thirty years, may be inserted here. " My dear : My esteem and regard for you, ever since I knew you, have been so sincere, and I have so firm a belief in the manliness and Christian principle which mark your character, that I feel sure you will allow me the privilege of a friend and master, if I speak to you about one very sacred and solemn duty — your bearing at home. I should never think of intruding into so delicate a matter, if one who loves you had not asked me affectionately to let you know that sometimes by a little impatience about advice you are led to use expressions which wound and cause pain to those whom I know that you would wish in your inmost heart to shelter from the least breath of sorrow at any cost of your own personal suffering. The chief duty of a Christian lies, my dear boy, in the quiet, unseen life of CHILDHOOD AND REMINISCENCES 7 his own home, and if he does not learn there to practise that noble virtue of unselfishness — that highest type of charity — which consists in daily and hourly consider- ateness for the feelings of others, he will have lost one of the strongest resources and one of the most healing memories for all his future life. " As life goes on you will realise with more and more intensity the fact that true, pure, devoted friendship — and still more that genuine love — is a thing which we very, very seldom obtain in life. As we grow older we more and more walk alone, and our path is marked by the graves of those who were more to us than others can ever be. It is then, I think, that we yearn most strongly for the sacred affection of mother or sister or kinsman whom we have lost. It is now eight years since my own mother died. She was, if ever there was, a saint of God. Her love to me was more than almost any love can ever be, and I loved her with all my heart. And yet one morning, as I sat in school, a letter brought me the intelligence that the previous night she had gone to bed in perfect health and happiness, and yet before morning God had called her to Himself. When this news was brought to me, my first thought was how much kinder, how much more loving I might have been ; how in a thousand ways, by word and deed, which would have cost me nothing and which would have caused a thrill of happiness, I might have brightened and beautified her earthly life. It was a bitter thought that, much as I loved her, / had not always been as kind to her as I might have been, and I looked back with joy only to those occasions when I had not treated her love for me as a matter of course, but had shown by acts of kindness and gentleness how infinitely I valued her blessing and her prayers. Little faults of impatience, 8 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR little haughtinesses in the expression of opinion and the rejection of advice, then seemed to me almost like crimes, and I longed, too late, for the opportunity which could never more return. That you, my dear , may be spared from all such painful retrospects, that you may live worthily of your high Christian calling, and that these few words of a sincere friend may not offend you but rather help to save you from vain regrets is the earnest hope of, yours affectionately, " Frederic W. Farrar." And two letters referring to his parents in India will not perhaps be out of place. "Bombay, November i, 1875. " Reverend and dear Sir : I have met lately with several Europeans who have read your very valuable work, the ' Life of Christ.' I regret very much that its price places it quite beyond the reach of the English speaking natives of India, Christian and non-Christian. " Allow me to suggest that if a cheap edition were pub- lished, there would be a considerable demand for it in this country, and your object in writing the book would, as far as India is concerned, be to a certain extent realised. "Your venerable father, the Rev. C. P. Farrar, was the means of my conversion, he baptized me in Nasik in 1845. The labours of both Mr. and the 1st Mrs. Farrar are still remembered by many Hindu people at Nasik and its vicinity, and many would have rejoiced at their return to India. Why should not you visit the land of your birth and benefit the people of it by your vast learning. 'Come over and help us,' Acts xvi. 10. 9|f ^ # tifc ^ CHILDHOOD AND REMINISCENCES 9 " Will you kindly give my best regards to your father, and accept the same yourself. " I am, Rev. and dear Sir, " Yours faithfully, "Appaji Bapuji, C. M. Society." " September 14. " Dear Sir : ifr ■jjf ^(6" ffc ^ " I had enjoyed in India, so far as an unlearned man may enjoy, your Hulsean Lectures, and you will not wonder at my especial interest in the works and career of Dr. Frederic Farrar when I tell you that from 1843 to 1846 I was constantly hearing of their son Frederic's promise from your father and mother, whom in those years I knew so well at Nasik in India. I often fancy that those who leave us are watching us with intense interest, and as I read your work yesterday evening, I thought to myself, if the indications of genius in her boy gave your sainted mother such pleasure, what joy to find the great truths for which she laboured and lived thus put before the world by yourself. " I never met a lady in India whose work in every re- spect I honoured as much as Mrs. Farrar's. . . . " I remain, dear Sir, "Yours faithfully, "H. D." THE SCHOOLBOY 1 1 that we looked ' depressed and emaciated,' interfered on our behalf, and robbed the bishop of the luxury of gauging our very shallow attainments. " I remember that the first time I entered his study I saw on the chimneypiece a picture of my celebrated ancestor, the Marian martyr — Farrar, Bishop of St. David's, who was burnt alive at Carmarthen in 1555. The bishop told me that he was thinking of writing a sketch of his predecessors in the ancient see of Sodor and Man, and that Bishop Farrar was one of them. I have since learnt that this was a mistake. Bishop Farrar was one of Archbishop Cranmer's chaplains, and was appointed Bishop of St. David's by Edward VI. There is not only no trace of his having set foot in the Isle of Man, but no trace of his having been appointed there. Perhaps the error arose from his sometimes signing himself R Men., which was an abbreviation for Mene- viensis, or 1 of the see of St. David's.' " That those were happy years may be gathered from the fact that under a coloured print of his old school he has written the lines from Coleridge. Ah ! dear delights, that o'er my Soul On Memory's wing like shadows fly! Ah ! flowers that Joy from Eden stole, While Innocence stood laughing by. Rough as was the school, in some respects, and poor as was the teaching, he encountered there many of the influences that fundamentally moulded his character. First among these must be named the rugged and beautiful scenery of the island, unspoiled as yet by "trippers," where the mail came but once a week in winter, and the people generally spoke Manx. In " Eric " he thus describes the first impressions made 12 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR upon him by his new home : " Not twenty yards below the garden, in front of the house, lay Elian [Castleton] Bay, at that moment rippling with golden laughter in the fresh breeze of sunrise. On either side of the bay was a bold headland, the one stretching out in a series of broken crags, the other terminating in a huge mass of rock, called, from its shape, The Stack. To the right lay the town, with its gray old castle and the mountain stream running through it into the sea; to the left, high above the beach, rose the crumbling fragment of a picturesque fort, behind which towered the lofty build- ings of Roslyn School. Eric learnt the whole land- scape by heart, and thought himself a most happy boy to come to such a place. He fancied that he should never be tired of looking at the sea, and could not take his eyes off the great buoy that rolled about in the centre of the bay, and flashed in the sunlight at every move." Sojourning in this beautiful island my father acquired that abiding love of natural scenery, which, to the end of his life, remained the pure source of his keenest pleasures. He never failed to spend his annual holiday by the seaside, and to the last, the year held for him no happier hours than those he spent pacing the yellow sands, with his children at his side, drinking in the sea breezes, and holding his Panama hat in his hand, to let them gently ruffle his fine hair, to blow, as he expressed it, the cobwebs from his brain. Such games as were played in his school days were spontaneous, and athletics had not attained the compulsory, and perhaps excessive organisation with which we are now familiar, and which absorbs the whole energies of boys out of school hours, leaving them but little leisure or inclination for country rambles. He was never a cricketer, but was fond of fives and of foot- THE SCHOOLBOY 13 ball, which he continued to play as a Harrow master. He was, and remained till late in life, a fine swimmer, and as a boy loved to swim " far into the bay, even as far as the huge, tumbling red buoy that spent its restless life in ' ever climbing with the climbing wave ' ; " but he was a tireless and athletic walker, and his chief delight was in long rambles and climbs among the mountains and along the coast scenery for which the Isle of Man is famous, and here, while yet a boy, God spoke to him in the voices of the mountain and the sea, and loving nature, he learnt to love nature's God. His voracious appetite for books was perhaps an innate quality, but the circumstances of his school days did much, by their very limitations, to develop his literary taste. To the end of his life he loved the occasional relaxation of a good novel, but the boon, or, shall we say the blight, of cheap literature had not yet descended upon the land, and the schoolboy of those days was at least saved, in spite of himself, from be- coming the debauchee of shoddy fiction. Even such standard novels as those of Scott, Fenimore Cooper, and Captain Marryat, which, fortunately, were almost the only romances then available, circulated almost by stealth. They were eagerly devoured, and he relates how the boys used to lie awake at night hotly discussing their favourite characters in these novels. The teaching of the school was poor in many respects, poor, especially, as regards the niceties of classical scholarship, but one wise custom prevailed for which in after years he was always deeply thankful. This was the practice of set- ting passages of English poetry to be learnt by heart. In the course of these exercises he committed to memory long passages of Byron, Goldsmith, Moore, Scott, Shelley, Wordsworth, and other poets. A memory naturally reten- 14 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR tive was thus developed to a phenomenal degree, and the foundation was laid of a knowledge of English poetry, that for range and accuracy has probably never been equalled except, it may be, by Lord Macaulay. In his Marlborough days it was a tradition in the Common Room that it was impossible to "stump" the master with any known passage from the English poets. In respect of prose, mere dearth of books to stay his vora- cious appetite drove him back upon his school prizes ; thus, before he was sixteen he had read such works as Hooker's "Ecclesiastical Polity," Prideaux's "Connec- tion between the Old and New Testaments," and Cole- ridge's " Aids to Reflection," solid fare, which the modern schoolboy would, it is to be feared, be apt to regard as " stodgy." Some stress is due to the fact that the absence of organised school games conferred an immu- nity from that atmosphere of athletic "shop" which is to the modern public-school boy as the breath of his nostrils. The young cynic of to-day derides the boys of Eric and St. Winifred's, who are represented as eagerly discussing out of school the characters of Ho- meric heroes ; but the fact remains that the more intel- ligent boys of that epoch, being precluded from such lofty themes as cricket averages, or the prospects of Surrey v. Yorks, did find interest in discussing the " shop " of their school classics, regarded as human literature. Among the influences of his school days, which de- cisively moulded his character, must be mentioned a sermon which he heard preached from the text, " Let them be as the grass growing upon the housetops, which withereth before it groweth up ; wherewith the mower filleth not his hand, nor he that bindeth sheaves his bosom." This image of barren grass upon the house- THE SCHOOLBOY i5 top, presented in vivid language, as the symbol of an idle and useless life, powerfully stimulated his imagi- nation, and caused him to register a vow that, God help- ing him, that reproach should never be his. This text and its lesson are recorded in connection with the char- acter of Daubeny in " St. Winifred's." Few definite incidents of his life at King William's College have been preserved, though his memories of that school have con- tributed much to the local colour of " Eric " and " St. Winifred's." One of the few recorded refers to the fire, in 1844, by which the school buildings were destroyed. Fred Farrar was one of the first to give the alarm. " I shall never forget," he says, "waking up at night with the suffocating smell of smoke, and, when I opened the door at one end of the long dormitories, being met by the bursting flames. I roused my brother, and we ran together from bed to bed, waking up the boys. Then came the fearful suspense, while we all stood huddled together in a dark passage, waiting for the key to be found for the only safe door of exit ; and the joy when it was at length opened, and we rushed pell-mell out of doors, barefooted, and with scarcely anything on but our nightshirts. It was a December night, and the cold was intense ; but the wonderful sight of the flames issuing from the windows made me forget everything else. It was the grandest and most awful sight I ever witnessed. Fortunately my brother and I had friends to take us in; and afterwards we were placed, along with other boys, in a house, until the college was re- built, and trusted entirely by ourselves, without a master being placed in charge." The boys' scanty wardrobes were destroyed by this fire, and they had to borrow clothes from friends. Among his schoolfellows were the Rev. T. R. Brown, author of " Fo'c'sle Yarns," and 16 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR Professor E. Spencer Beesly, who was for a year his study-mate, and to whom I am indebted for the follow- ing contribution. Professor Beesly s Narrative When I went to King William's College after the sum- mer vacation of 1 846, Farrar and I were both fifteen, he being a few months my junior. He had been there for several years, and had just reached the highest form. I was placed in the same form, and we shared the same study. We at once became great friends. I had been taught entirely by my father, and had read, in a loose, slovenly way, a great deal more Latin and Greek than Farrar had ; but he was the more accurate scholar, and he always beat me in examinations. Our study was a tiny room high up in the tower, just big enough to hold our two chairs, a table, and a wooden coal box of cu- bical shape with a cover, which furnished a third seat. The table must have been a very small one, for I re- member that our two writing-desks, when opened, com- pletely covered it. The room was lofty, relatively to its other dimensions, and in winter very cold. Our coal box was filled up once a week, and its capacity was not great, for one of us used to carry it up to the study. We could, therefore, not afford to have even the smallest fire, except in the evening ; and very cold we often were as we sat at our work. Everything was on the same Spartan scale. For breakfast and tea we had thick pieces of buttered bread : for dinner one very scanty helping of meat, with boiled rice or swedes instead of bread or potatoes. Bread was very dear that winter, and the potato crop had perished. On Sundays there was pudding, and on Thursdays treacle roll; on other days no second course. My recollection of those din- THE SCHOOLBOY 17 ners is vivid. I used to rise from them almost as hun- gry as when I sat down. Silence was strictly enforced. If a boy was observed whispering to his neighbour he was "stood out," and lost the remainder of his meal. I do not know that we had any claim to a more liberal dietary. The charge for our board and educa- tion was very low, and I dare say the margin of profit was small enough. I do not remember that there was any illness while I was there. The situation was a very healthy one on the seashore, and the schoolrooms and dormitories were airy and not overcrowded. There were four boarding-houses. Ours occupied a wing of the college, and consisted, I think, of about forty boys. The classical teaching was poor, the mathematical — a subject in which my education had been entirely neglected — was, I believe, better. ^Eschylus, Demos- thenes, Virgil, and Tacitus were the classical subjects that year in our form. Our Greek and Latin composi- tion did not go beyond Kerchever Arnold's books. We were made to write English verse sometimes, in my opinion a most useful and humanising exercise for schoolboys. Farrar shone at this ; and I, and others, caught some of his enthusiasm for poetry. But we were almost entirely without books, and we had access to no library. A few well-thumbed novels, liable to con- fiscation, circulated surreptitiously. We had no news- papers, and knew nothing of what was going on in the world. In the winter there was postal communication with England only twice a week. The religious teaching, of which we had a good deal, was of the narrowest evangelical type. It was for that reason that Farrar and I and many other boys had been sent there. But none of the masters had any religious influence that I know of. The moral tone, at the « 18 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR beginning of my time, was neither better nor worse than in most schools ; but in the course of the year it was much injured by some new arrivals. Perhaps this deterioration was confined to our house ; I remember little or nothing about the others. Farrar's influence was always exercised on the side of all that was honour- able, high-minded, humane, and refined. He was already as a boy what he was afterwards as a schoolmaster, a " preacher of righteousness," and not a preacher only, but a shining example and a support to all who were well inclined. Having never left my home till I went to King William's College, I was quite unprepared for the difficulties, dangers, and temptations of school- life, and I had great reason to be thankful that I was from the first thrown into close intimacy with so valu- able a friend. In a well-organised school, where his remarkable ability and untiring industry would have procured for him monitorial authority, Farrar, who had plenty of pluck, would have had the means of repressing and punishing evil-doers. But there was no such organisa- tion at King William's College. The law of the strong- est prevailed, and there were many older and stronger than Farrar. But his approbation and friendship were valued by the better sort, and many, no doubt, were kept straight by unwillingness to lose his esteem. Games were not cultivated in any systematic way. Cricket was as primitive and unconventional as upon a village green. There was no regular eleven. Foot- ball was pursued with vigour, but with no particular rules. I do not remember that Farrar played cricket, but he was fond of foot-ball and fives. I left King William's College at midsummer 1847. Farrar had to return there after the vacation. He wrote THE SCHOOLBOY 19 to me very despondently. The examination at mid- summer had placed him at the head of the school. There were no more honours for him to gain. He had learnt all that any one there could teach him. It was a dreary outlook for an ardent young fellow conscious of his own ability and thirsting for better instruction. But before the end of the year his prospects brightened. His parents returned from India. His father became the incumbent of a parish in the north of London, and Farrar, living at home, pursued his studies at King's College. I was with a private tutor at Brixton, so we saw one another from time to time. During 1850-185 3, while he was at Cambridge and I at Oxford, we did not meet, but we kept up a correspondence. In 1854 we were again thrown together as assistant masters at Marlborough. I am sorry that I have not been able to paint my old school in more favourable colours. My friendship with Farrar is the only pleasant recollection that I have of it. I believe it is now an excellent school." As I muse upon these years, extremely uneventful, yet of interest in virtue of their formative influence upon the character of one who was destined to turn many to righteousness, I conjure up the picture of a happy and healthy schoolboy, of a bright and open countenance, with eager, well-opened eyes, clear-cut features, and fine waving hair ; gay and playful, yet tremendously in earnest ; joining heartily in games, fond of bathing and swimming, but fondest of long rambles and scrambles along the cliffs or over the mountains, with his ear at- tuned to the voice of nature ; remarkably well read for a schoolboy, and with his memory stored with treasures gathered from the best English poets ; a good scholar, 20 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR in spite of the deficiencies of his training, who, at the age of sixteen, stood at the head of his school, and had won all the prizes it had to offer, and who had laid already the foundation of that habit of unflinching, un- remitting industry which was one of the chief secrets of his success in life ; a boy whose moral influence was always strenuously exerted on the side of all that is manly and honest ; beyond all, a boy of stainless and virginal purity, who took for his motto the text " keep innocency and do the thing that is right, for that shall bring a man peace at the last." CHAPTER III THE STUDENT Frederic Farrar was entered as a student at King's College toward the end of 1847. His father, who had finally left India, had obtained the curacy in charge of St. James, Clerkenwell, and so for three years " Fred " lived at home and enjoyed the precious privilege of daily intercourse with his saintly mother. These were indeed strenuous years, of intense and in- cessant application, during which he appears to have taken for his model the youthful Milton. When I was yet a child no childish play To me was pleasing, all my life was spent Serious to learn and know, and thence to do What might be public good ; myself I thought Born to that end, born to promote all truth, All righteous things ; therefore, above my years, The law of God I read, and found it sweet, Made it my whole delight — These lines from " Paradise Regained " are inscribed under a portrait of Milton as a boy, which for years hung in my father's dressing-room. The influence of Milton on his character, his thoughts, and his style was one of the determining factors of his life, and was exer- cised especially in his King's College days. His old College Reports are still preserved and testify to his diligence and progress at this period. 21 22 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR "King's College, 1848. Frederic William Farrar Divinity .... First prizeman of his year. Most satis- factory. — Edward H. Plumptre. Classics . . . . Very satisfactory. English Literature Highly satisfactory, prizeman of his year. — F. D. Maurice. 1849 Divinity .... Most satisfactory (as usual). — R. W. J elf. English Literature Very satisfactory, Stephen's prizeman. — F. D. Maurice." In addition to a classical and theological scholarship at King's College, he gained a London University- scholarship, and thus relieved his parents from the burden of any expense for his education. He was placed first in the examinations both for matriculation and for honours, and graduated B.A., London, in 1852. In 1858 he was appointed an Honorary Fellow of King's College. One of his chief pleasures was to go about on Sundays with his brother Henry to hear celebrated preachers. In this manner he heard Bishop Wilberforce, Canon Melville, Canon Dale, Dean Close, and all the foremost preachers of that day. At this time he was also a regular Sunday School teacher. Of his teachers, those to whom he owed most were the great F. D. Maurice, and Dr. Plumptre, afterwards Dean of Wells, with whom he maintained a lifelong friendship, and of whom he says, " I count his friendship among the conspicuous blessings, and his teachings among the formative influences of my life." In " Men I have Known," he says, " Dean Plumptre of Wells was a lifelong friend to me, since the days when I was a THE STUDENT 23 boy at King's College. He weekly looked over my papers in answer to questions on his Lectures, and he gave me excellent advice and useful encouragement, together with the blessing of his unfailing regard and kindness. I was very diffident about myself, and I might almost say of Dean Plumptre, as Jeremy Bentham said of Lord Lansdowne, ' He raised me from the bot- tomless pit of humiliation ; he first taught me that I could be something' — however small." The influence of Maurice upon his life may be described in his own words. " I first learnt to know, to honour, and to love F. D. Maurice when, as a boy of sixteen, I went to King's College, London. He was then Professor of History and Literature, and lectured to us twice a week. We were supposed to take notes of his lectures, and were examined on the subjects of them at the end of the term. I never learnt shorthand ; but the desire to profit by the lecture system, which was the main method of teaching at King's College, made me so far a ' tachy- graph ' that I could with ease take down everything that was essential in the lectures of Professor Brewer, Professor Maurice, and Dr. Jelf. Maurice's lectures were ' caviare to the general.' Many of the ' stu- dents,' as we were called, cared nothing for them, and were much more impressed by the lectures of his assist- ant, which were full of facts. But those of us who had any sense of reverence, or any insight into genius and character, felt that we were in the presence of a great and noble man, and were proud to be under his instruc- tion. His lectures were meant to deal rather with the meaning and philosophy of history than with those details which he rightly supposed we could derive from any ordinary hand-book. Certainly his lectures were a 24 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR strong intellectual stimulus to those of us who were at all capable of rightly apprehending them. " The classes were attended by some ninety or a hun- dred students, whom it was the custom of the place to regard and treat as ' University Men,' though so many of us were but boys. Every one was addressed as ' Mr' ; and as we were all living at our respective homes, only those of us who formed friendships among ourselves knew anything about each other. A certain number were of course the merest Philistines, who neither understood the lectures nor cared for them in the slight- est degree ; and some, of yet coarser grain, had not the ordinary manners to respect the lecturer or their fellow- students. These youths often behaved execrably. Maurice did not know most of them even by name, as he only saw them in the lecture room ; and as none of the ordinary public-school discipline existed, and any punishment short of expulsion was unknown, he had no means of controlling them. That power of disci- pline, which many seem to possess as a natural gift, was not his ; and as we ' students ' were not a homo- geneous body living under one roof, but a conglomer- ation of separate atoms without a particle of authority over each other, we could not coerce boors into a better demeanour. At last, however, one man was in some way identified, and Dr. Jelf brought him into the lecture room and made him apologize. Even this was not effectual. On one occasion things came to a climax. Some brainless youth had concealed himself under the platform on which the seats rose tier after tier, and as the lecture proceeded, he emphasised its periods, unseen, by tapping with a stick on the floor, giving very pro- nounced raps when there was any sentence peculiarly THE STUDENT ?5 solemn and eloquent. This was too much for our equanimity. I never knew the man's name, but I joined in a memorial of sympathy to Maurice, in which we expressed our disgust at such ill-bred barbarism, and offered our best services to put an end to it thereafter. From this time the disorder ceased. " At that time I was intensely interested in the learning and historic research of the four portly volumes of Elliot's ' Horae Apocalypticae,' of which, boy as I was, I had made a complete analysis. I asked Maurice what he thought of it, and I remember the sort of cold shock I felt when he told me that he regarded the entire system of inter- pretation as utterly baseless. It was some years before further study brought home to me his conviction, that, though the book of Revelation might, like those of all inspired writers, have 'springing and germinal develop- ments,' it was primarily 'the thundering reverberation of a mighty spirit struck by the plectrum ' of the Nero- nian persecution. " When I was a master at Harrow, Professor Maurice was more than once my guest, and he was a most de- lightful one. He kindly became godfather to my second son — the Rev. Eric Maurice Farrar — who bears his name. I was seriously taken to task, and almost had a quarrel with certain excellent, but narrow-minded, per- sons, for inviting him to address the members of the in- stitute at Harrow ; but I stuck to my point, and we were rewarded by hearing his beautiful lecture on 'The Friendship of Books.' " F. D. Maurice was regarded by many as a somewhat transcendental philosopher, and was humorously charac- terised by Matthew Arnold as one " who spent his life 26 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR in beating about the bush with deep emotion, but never starting the hare " ; but my father always felt that he owed a deep debt to his teaching, and in particular it was from his books that he learnt the germ of those con- victions to which he gave utterance in his sermons on " Eternal Hope." Dr. Hayman, of Rugby, who was my father's private tutor at King's College, thus wrote of him at a later date: "A more interesting pupil I certainly never have had, nor one more remarkable for rapid acquisition, ready insight, and careful attention. ... I have found matured in the man the same purity and unselfish gen- tleness which were conspicuous in the boy, and I have noticed in his works a power of clothing the repulsive skeleton of a dry subject, and illuminating the dead letter of the past with a sympathetic light and insight of his own." To Sir Edwin Arnold I am indebted for the following generous and beautiful appreciation of my father as he appeared in those days to a friend and fellow-student : — AT KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON " I have been honoured by a request from the Editor of this Biography that I should furnish him with some brief notes of what I recollect about Dean Farrar, when he was a fellow-student of mine at King's College, London. " There is more than one pen, among our contempo- raries at that time, which could better discharge this task ; but none that would undertake it with livelier and more admiring — nay, I must frankly say, with more affectionate — memories than the present writer. My impressions of the Dean, then for the first time formed, were from the beginning instinctively of a friendly THE STUDENT 27 character, so impossible was it not to be interested and attracted by the tall, quiet, soft-mannered scholar, with the serious eyes and the gentle smile, who did all his class work with such dutiful precision, and was never at fault when questioned by the classical master, whether it was about a tough passage in Tacitus, a disputed line in a Greek Chorus, or the ^Eolic Aorist, the ' enclitic de,' or the geography of St. Paul's voyages. " Our classical lecturer was the Rev. Mr. Browne, an elegant and tasteful scholar, who was particularly strong in Greek iambics, and loved the exactness and the ardour of his rural pupil. For like myself, Farrar in those days had lived more in the country than the town ; and, like myself also, was going through three or four terms at King's College before proceeding to the University. Sometimes our Latin class would be taken by Frederick Denison Maurice, who had also, as would be expected, a deep appreciation of the value of classical learning, and a capacity to measure the stately grace and finished skill of the great authors of Athens and Rome. Yet the personal appearance of that eminent clergyman went somewhat strangely — not to say uncouthly — now and then with the exquisite levity of Catullus, and the plain speaking of Juvenal. " I call to mind with half amused, half painful retro- spect an afternoon in the College Hall, when Maurice was reading with us that well-known Ode of Horace, beginning with ' Quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa.' He felt no doubt better than we, the delicate charm with which the verses were embroidered and jewelled by phrases too subtle for translation ; but the contrast be- tween the solemn, ascetic countenance of the lecturer, the airy daring of the poet, and the deplorable levity of his Latin lady associates proved too much for the good 28 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR behaviour of the class. The students broke into a dis- respectful clamour, offering rude comments, and auda- cious new readings, to their hypersensitive teacher, who became so indignant at such disrespect that he refused to continue his lecture. " To teach such ill-mannered pupils for a nature as refined and shy as that of Maurice was like trying to shape logs of timber with a penknife. I recall the trivial incident only to mention how much Farrar im- pressed me at that moment by the youthful gravity with which he rebuked the noisiest of those ungrateful young rebels, and the scholarly shame I could see him experi- encing at the slight put upon the famous author and the gifted tutor who were being so unworthily treated. The words of agreement which passed between us on that occasion served as an introduction, and from them arose a friendship which has been for me one of my most prized possessions, and which never changed, and never grew colder on either side — for I know I may venture to say as much — from that afternoon when Farrar' s gentle indignation helped to bring the hall to its senses, until the day when my class-fellow died, a pillar and ornament of the Church, and the most brilliant name upon the long and renowned line of the Deans of Canterbury. " There grew up, as all are aware, between Farrar and Maurice a fast friendship, which was continued until the death of that earnest and conscientious man. Far- rar was not likely to make many boyish alliances with the students who flocked at that time to King's College. They were naturally no very distinguished samples of the rising generation ; and were attracted in larger numbers to the practical departments of the institution than to its classical and literary side. Some half a THE STUDENT 29 dozen, however, in each of the classes rapidly separated themselves, as is the wont, from the rank and file ; and equally as is also the custom, tutors and professors gave themselves almost exclusively to those among us who had evidently come to learn. We formed, therefore, a favoured little clique, of which Farrar was certainly the best and brightest specimen, while of the others I can call up very few individuals. Mr. Edward Dicey, C.B., was one of them, and another who gave promise of be- ing a great legal luminary was Mr. Clement Tudway Swanston, about whom I only know that he afterwards married the daughter of a well-known judge, and be- came lost to literature in the Nirvana of the courts. But, already some of us were bent upon climbing one side or the other of Parnassus. We started a monthly serial for ourselves, The Kings College Magazine, and I think that the very earliest efforts of our respective muses, as regards Farrar, Dicey, and myself, saw the light in that now-forgotten periodical. I recollect a little poem appearing in it from my dear old friend upon the theme of a Roman triumph, the opening line of which ran : — " The golden Pompa cometh, The Pompa streams along ; and, let it be declared, there were some mighty fine lines in that little piece of work. So were there also in cer- tain other stanzas from his pen, describing scenes in Elysium, of which my memory supplies me with this pretty passage picturing the heroes of the ' Iliad 1 repos- ing after their warlike toils, and telling how "Achilles and Tydides In happy quiet there Unbind the shadowy helmets From off their golden hair. 3o LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR I did not dare then, and much less will I venture now, to set anything of my own by the side of the really ex- cellent work with which Farrar's taste and learning en- riched our humble serial. He was nevertheless pleased to admire a certain piece of mine upon 'The Sacrifice of Iphigenia,' and it is a curious recollection, showing how the early bent remained, that he gained the Chan- cellor's prize at Cambridge, for English verse, in the same month in which I won the Newdigate at Oxford. Throughout these early exercises of his genius, as in al- most everything he wrote or uttered in later years, there was evidenced that deep-seated love of ornamental epi- thets and richly embellished diction which sciolists, who could not — to save their lives — have penned a single line to rival it, attacked as ' florid,' ' turgid,' and ' tawdry.' It was his manner, and often splendidly sustained. Like an architect who prefers to build in the Corinthian order, rather than the Doric, or Ionic, he knew well what he was about, and there was nothing except erudite adornment and masterful command of musical or beautiful phrase in the literary acanthus leaves of his capitals, and the flowing volutes of his rhetoric. It is only a great sculptor who will have the courage to make his statue of Pallas Athene out of gold and ivory, and it was from inexhaustible quarries of memory, and the sure control of a wide scholarship, that he could thus safely trust himself to gild and to embroider the melodious march of his periods. " A good many prizes and examinations brought our little band of the classical department into almost con- stant rivalry. In the course of these it was my almost invariable fate to be proxime accessit to Farrar, thus see- ing him carry off, even if sometimes only 1 by a neck,' THE STUDENT 31 the coveted prize of the race ; but along with the others I grew accustomed to these inevitable defeats, soon learning to recognise that nothing could make head against his indomitable energies. Oddly enough, I beat him in one or two theological contests ; and my library shelves have always held and now exhibit a dry and solemn work entitled ' Pearson upon the Creed,' which is a liturgical trophy presented by the college and won in battle against the comrade who was destined to die the Dean of Canterbury. In subsequent years, when he was become a popular and famous preacher and a shin- ing light of the Church, I did not allow my unopened volumes to persuade me even secretly that I ought to have been made a bishop, but I think I chuckled more than once over such a grotesque triumph. So little, however, did these rivalries develop into jealousies that on one occasion when he had vanquished myself and six or seven others in a scholarship examination, it was I who took a cab up to Clerkenwell to communicate the fact to our conqueror. Nobody in truth could grudge any success to his modest and gentle worth, and I be- lieve that I was almost as well pleased in telling him as he in hearing. ' The same old story, dear boy, Farrar first, proxime accessit Arnold.' "There he was — only a few hours out of the exami- nation-room — working away as hard as ever for some new approaching contest, behind a barricade of books, maps, and dictionaries, an antagonist too indefatigable to contend with, too amiable and kind-hearted to envy or underrate. With such a passion and power for work you would not expect to hear me say that Farrar, at this time, cared for out-of-doors sports, or any of the pas- times which generally absorb youthful enthusiasm. We should have tried in vain to get him to take part in our 32 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR occasional boating trips on the river, visits to the theatre, cricket matches, and the like. Books were enough for him. In them he found the society which he most loved, and, moreover, he knew very well that circumstances at home rendered it necessary to earn his living by them, and win from scholarship the only competence likely to fall within his reach. If learning was to be the goddess of his aspirations, he must, somehow or other, live by what lay in her hands to bestow ; and in this respect he was, perhaps, the only one of our set who took so serious a view of the advantages of early hard work. Yet it is only when a young man begins to teach himself, that he has really commenced what can be called education. " No doubt the exclusiveness arising from such cease- less industry kept him destitute of that true joy of early life — youthful friendships — and gave to his character, among those who judged it imperfectly, an air of asceti- cism and semi-monkish solitude. Farrar was very impa- tient, as I well remember while at King's College, of frivolous conversation and the light jests of lazy minds. I am afraid at that date he looked upon the society, even of ladies, as a dreadful waste of time, and the gentler sex itself as, in the ungallant phrase of a great poet, nothing better than 'a fair defect.' Often since then I have ventured to rally him, the centre of an adoring wife and affectionate children, the light of a happy household ; but he stayed me once by quoting from Shakespeare what Benedict says, ' When I swore to die a bachelor, I did not think that I should live to be married.' ******* " But next to books, even in those days, and more than books in the days which came afterwards, little children held his heart by the strings. For them he always evinced a tenderness and interest which were almost THE STUDENT 33 feminine ; and it was quite natural, therefore, that after his brilliant career at Cambridge, he should have given himself to the life of a schoolmaster. Anybody may see in his novel of school-life, entitled ' Eric,' how high his estimate was of what a good teacher ought to be, and how great and absorbing, but also how serious, a duty, he thought it to superintend the education of youth. I sent a son of my own to his care when he was appointed head-master of Marlborough, for the simple reason that I regarded him as the best of all schoolmasters. All the clever boys grew deeply at- tached to the patient, earnest, and richly endowed man, whose smile was so sweet when an act of boyish virtue or a brilliant piece of class-work pleased him, and who was so gentle in his displeasure, and so just, even in his anger. The noisy, lazy, and shallow among his pupils found him, perhaps, pedantic, dry, and exacting, for he loved hard work too well for himself to understand how distasteful it seemed to some natures. Boys are stern and keen judges of their instructors, and those who were smitten with the modern passion for athletics did not al- ways find Farrar enthusiastic enough about cricket, foot- ball, and the out-of-door portion of an English boy's upbringing. Yet he was proud of the victories which Marlborough, under his rule, gained in the fields of exer- cise and youthful competition, though I doubt whether he ever wielded a bat or handled any implement of sport, such as gun, fishing-rod, or hunting gear. I, do not know if my son picked up at Marlborough any- thing much more important than to swim well, yet that was certainly not the fault of his head-master. 1 There 1 Is there not a stcry in Goethe where the fond parent brings his offspring to a famous pedagogue to be transformed into a philosopher ? After a year or so the father comes back to inquire into his son's progress, and 34 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR came a certain evil day when the dahabieh, in which I was sailing on the Nile, was capsized by a desert whirl- wind, and the fact that I was able to save from drown- ing my wife, my daughter, and all but one of my score of Arab sailors was largely due to the unclassical por- tion of the training which my son obtained while a pupil under Dr. Farrar's mild ferule. " At the universities we were separated — Farrar going to Cambridge — though he had, I think, no very great taste for mathematics — and I to Oxford. But King's College had made us lasting friends, and London eventually brought us again into personal and literary contact. Others, however, will have the happy task of dwelling upon the steps by which he ascended the hill of Fame, becoming even more renowned as a preacher than he had made himself as a teacher, and building up a record of honour by his books, one of which — ' The Life of Christ ' — would have sufficed to confer renown adequate to any ambition. The world has judged that magnificent work by a verdict which no petty criticisms can affect or alter. I believe that it has taken and will always occupy an important place on the shelves of that theological literature which has grown up from the strong and earnest desire of our age to reconcile religion and science. The spirit of sincere belief which mingles in it with an equally sincere devo- tion to truth is to be found also in his ' Eternal Hope,' and was heard by many a comforted and grateful ear among the congregations which listened with delight to his ardent sermons. I, however, must not go beyond the period of his noble and blameless life of which I am beholds him gallop up at the head of a string of horses which he has been training. Whereupon the pedagogue explains that he would have made him a philosopher if his Creator had not intended him for a horse-breaker. THE STUDENT 35 permitted, in these few pages, to recall some passing impressions. It was for me, also, an epoch of impor- tance. Oxford lay before me, and those happy years when, under her wing, work and play went so pleasantly together, and we passed from boyhood to manhood over a golden bridge. It was the time when I was reading Shelley and Keats and Coleridge with a great deal more assiduity than I could bring to classics and mathematics; and then the British Museum, close to my London lodgings, absorbed a great deal of my devotion. Thus, except in theology, of which I knew nothing, and Farrar everything, I never once scored against my amiable antagonist. And if it would have given him one grain of satisfaction, I think I could have sacrificed to his dear and pleasant comradeship even ' Pearson upon the Creed.' " The following touching letter from an old King's College friend and rival is of interest not only for itself but from the fact that it is utilised in connection with one of the characters of " Julian Home." "Canada West, 30th Oct., 1858. " My dear Farrar : Our lots in life, since at King's College we ran a neck and neck race, have been widely different. " To use a more congenial metaphor, you have hitherto sailed through life with spreading sails and flying colours, until you are now quietly anchored at Harrow, after a successful voyage ; while I, on the contrary, have often been nearly wrecked from mad and careless navi- gation, and my shattered bark, which made a bad start from Oxford, has turned up like a waif or stray at 36 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR (in Canada West), and is, I hope, soon going to be en- tirely refitted. " To drop the well-worn classical simile, I have come to Canada to better my fortunes, and as I am now a wiser, sadder, and better man than I have been, I trust most devoutly to succeed. " I am a candidate for. . . . You know, my dear Farrar, that I was naturally blest with good abilities. You know also, doubtless, from some kind friend, that I sometimes made a bad use of these abilities ; but in memory of our old King's College friendship — the most pleasant by far of my old friendships — I would beg of you to forget my errors, and ignore my shortcomings, and to speak of me in a few lines of recommendation as you once knew me when we were kindly rivals in the arena at King's College. ******* "Though I have begun the labour of life later in the day than yourself and others, and have not borne the heat, I cannot forget that even those who wrought one hour likewise received their pay. "The old book of my life was so smutched and begrimed, torn, dog-eared, and scrawled over, that it was scarcely worth while to turn over a new leaf. I have, therefore, commenced an entirely new volume, and trust by God's blessing that when ' Finis ' comes to be written in it, some few of the pages will bear re- perusal. " At the distance of nearly four thousand miles from home — in this cold climate — with no friends — no for- tune — nothing but my head and heart — I feel some- times so melancholy that I almost wish to be out of the world altogether. " Forgive me then for writing to you in the spirit I THE STUDENT 37 do now, and pray that my efforts to improve my life, my talents, and my fortunes may be crowned with suc- cess. I will add no more. Accept my kindest wishes for your happiness and well being, and believe me, my dear Farrar, now as ever, " Your sincere friend, " A. B. "To the Rev. F. W. Farrar, Harrow." CHAPTER IV THE UNDERGRADUATE In October, 1856, my father went up to Trinity Col- lege, Cambridge, as a " sizar," and supported himself at first entirely on the income derived from his sizar- ship and King's College scholarship. His father, being only a curate, was a very poor man, and the son took a legitimate pride in the fact that from the time he entered at King's College, and throughout his career at Cambridge, he paid the expenses of his own educa- tion entirely by scholarships and exhibitions, and, as he has often told me, his education never cost his father a penny. So poor was he, and so rigid was his self-denial and his resolution to spare those struggling parents in London the least farthing of expenditure on himself, that during his early undergraduate days at Trinity he refused himself the indulgence of tea for breakfast and drank only water. At this period the sizars dined an hour after the general " Hall," and their dinner consisted of the dishes which had previously figured on the Fellows' table. In other ways the sizars were needlessly dif- ferentiated by somewhat invidious distinctions from the rest of the undergraduates; and my father, judging from some remarks in "Julian Home," seems to have been rather sensitive on this head. At the age of twenty-one he obtained a Trinity scholarship, and his material cir- cumstances were greatly improved. Meanwhile neither 38 THE UNDERGRADUATE 39 his position as a sizar, nor the austere self-denial which, partly from necessity, partly from a strong sense of duty, he practised, at all precluded him from sharing in the best intellectual society of the place. In particular he was a member of the very small society of "Apostles," a club formed for the reading and discussion of papers, to which never more than five or six undergraduate members at a time belonged, and which has always at- tracted, as it still does, the best intellects of Cambridge. To this society such men as Archbishop Trench, Dean Alford, Thompson Master of Trinity, Lord Houghton, F. D. Maurice, Sterling, Sir Henry Maine, the late Sir A. Buller, Sir J. Fitzjames Stephen, Lord Tenny- son, Arthur Hallam, F. T. Hort, and many eminent men now living have been proud to belong. One of his fellow-members and a very intimate per- sonal friend was the late Professor J. Clerk Maxwell. I extract, as illustrating the thoughtful tone prevalent in his circle of undergraduate friends, the following lines from a notice of his friend, contributed by my father to the Temple Magazine : — " At one time when I was an undergraduate I became very despondent about my mathematics. In those days the rule had only just been altered which insisted that a classical student should take honours in the Mathe- matical Tripos before he was even permitted to present himself in the classical. I might have availed myself of this rule, but did not like to do so. Having been origi- nally intended for Oxford, I had never taken much trouble with mathematics, and had, moreover, been very badly and carelessly trained in them. Hence I was nervous about the Tripos ; and seeing this, Maxwell, who was a ready verse-writer, felt a genuine sympathy with me in my disheartenment, and wrote me a little apologue 40 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR called ' The Lark and the Cabbage.' In this he com- pared himself, with his mathematical studies, to the cab- bage ; and me, with my supposed poetic aspirations, to the lark, the upshot being that I had better not attempt the Mathematical Tripos, but reserve myself for classics. I replied in a similar strain of nonsense, ending with — " It is a lark to be a lark, 'Tis green to be a cabbage. " Sometimes, however, he wrote more serious verses ; and when I left Cambridge he was one of the half-dozen friends who entered their thoughts for me in a little manuscript book. What he wrote was striking and noble — far more so, I should imagine, than has often been written by one undergraduate for another. It was as follows : — " ' He that would enjoy life and act with freedom must have the work of the day continually before his eyes. Not yesterday's work, lest he fall into despair ; not to- morrow's, lest he become a visionary ; not that which ends with the day, which is a worldly work; nor yet that only which remains to eternity, for by it he cannot shape his actions. " 1 Happy is the man who can recognize in the work of to-day a connected portion of the work of life, and an embodiment of the work of eternity. The foundations of his confidence are unchangeable, for he has been made a partaker of Infinity. He strenuously works out his daily enterprises, because the present is given him for a possession. Thus ought man to be an impersona- tion of the divine process of nature, and to show forth the union of the infinite with the finite ; not slighting his temporal existence, remembering that in it only is THE UNDERGRADUATE 41 individual action possible, nor yet shutting out from his view that which is eternal, knowing that time is a mys- tery which man cannot endure to contemplate until eternal truth enlighten it.' " In those days dinner was celebrated at what seems to us the early hour of four o'clock in the afternoon, an arrangement which gave a long morning for work ; and, for reading men of that time, when athletics were less highly organised than is now the case, a long evening, a two hours' "constitutional" before Hall being the usual form of exercise. About nine o'clock the undergraduate was quite ready for tea and the relaxation of a chat, and it was the rec- ognized custom that a man was at liberty to drop in and take " tea-pot luck " with any friend provided that he contributed to his own entertainment by bringing with him his milk-jug. A quotation from "Julian Home," which like "Eric" contains many autobiographical touches, is here given to illustrate the zest with which my father entered into the social life of his college : — "Oh, those Camford conversations — how impetuous, how interesting, how thoroughly hearty and unconven- tional they were ! How utterly presumption and igno- rance were scouted in them, and how completely they were free from the least shadow of insincerity or ennui. If I could but transfer to my page a true and vivid pic- ture of one such evening spent in the society of St. Werner's (Trinity College) friends — if I could write down but one such conversation, and at all express its vivacity, its quick flashes of thought and logic, its real desire for truth and knowledge, its friendly fearlessness, its felicitous illustrations, its unpremeditated wit, such a record, taken fresh from the life, would be worth all that 42 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR I shall ever write. But youth flies, and as she flies all the bright colours fade from the wings of thought, and the bloom vanishes from the earnest eloquence of speech. " Yet, as I write, let me call to mind, if but for a mo- ment, the remembrance of those happy evenings, when we would meet to read Shakespeare or the poets in each other's rooms, and pleasant sympathies and pleasant differences of opinion, freely discussed, called into genial life friendships which we once hoped and believed would never have grown cold. The belief has proved to be mistaken, the hope delusive, and the evanescence of youthful friendships, amid the hardness and malice of the world, is not the least bitter of life's experiences. Rut though the reality has ceased, who shall forbid to any one the enjoyment of remembrance ? Let the image of that bright social circle, picturesquely scattered in arm-chairs round the winter fire, rise up before my fancy once more, and let me recall what can never be again. Of the honoured and well-loved few who one night re- corded their names and thoughts in one precious little book two are dead, though it is but five years back ; C. E. B is dead ; and R. H. P is dead ; C. E. B , the chivalrous and gallant-hearted, the champion of the past, the ' Tory whom Liberals loved ' ; and R. H. P , the honest and noble, the eloquent speaker, and the brave actor, and the fearless thinker — he, too, is dead, nobly volunteering in works of danger and diffi- culty during the Indian mutiny ; but others are living yet, and to them I consecrate this page ; they will for- give the digression, and for their sakes I will venture to let it pass. We are scattered now, and our friendship is a silent one ; but yet I know that to them, at least, changed or unchanged, my words will recall the fading memory of glorious days." THE UNDERGRADUATE 43 His method of work and reading may be illustrated by the following extract : — " He studied with an ardour and a passion before which difficulties vanished, and in consequence of which he seemed to progress not the less surely, because it was with great strides. For the first time in his life, Julian found himself entirely alone in the great wide realm of literature — alone to wander at his own will, almost without a guide. And joyously did that brave young spirit pursue its way — now resting in some fra- grant glen, and by some fountain mirror, where the boughs which bent over him were bright with blossom and rich with fruit — now plunging into some deep thicket, where at every step he had to push aside the heavy branches and tangled weeds — and now climbing with toilful progress some steep and rocky hill, on whose summit, hardly attained, he could rest at last, and gaze back over perils surmounted and precipices passed, and mark the thunder rolling over the valleys, or gaze on kingdoms full of peace and beauty, slumbering in the broad sunshine beneath his feet. Julian read for the sake of knowledge, and because he intensely enjoyed the great authors whose thoughts he studied. He had read parts of Homer, parts of Thucydides, parts of Tacitus, parts of the tragedians, at school, but now he had it in his power to study a great author entire, and as a whole. Never before did he fully appreciate the ' thunderous lilt ' of Greek epic, the touching and vo- luptuous tenderness of Latin elegy, the regal pomp of history, the gorgeous and philosophic mystery of the old dramatic fables. Never before had he learnt to gaze on 'the bright countenance of truth, in the mild and dewy air of delightful studies.' Those who decry clas- sical education do so from inexperience of its real char- 44 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR acter and value, and can hardly conceive the sense of strength and freedom which a young and ingenuous in- tellect acquires in all literature, and in all thought, by the laborious and successful endeavour to enter into that noble heritage which has been left us by the wisdom of bygone generations. Those hours were the happiest of Julian's life ; often would he be beguiled by his studies into the ' wee small ' hours of night ; and in the grand company of eloquent men and profound philosophers he would forget everything in the sense of intellectual advance. Then first he began to understand Milton's noble exclamation : — " How charming is divine philosophy ! Not harsh and rugged as dull fools suppose. But musical as is Apollo's lute, And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets, Where no crude surfeit reigns. k " He studied accurately, yet with appreciation ; some- times the two ways of study are not combined, and while one man will be content with a cold and barren estimate of 7e's and 7roi/s derived from wading through the un- utterable tedium of interminable German notes, of which the last always contradicted all the rest; another will content himself with eviscerating the general meaning of a passage, without any attempt to feel the finer pulses of emotion, or discriminate the nicer shades of thought. Eschewing commentators as much as he could, Julian would first carefully go over a long passage solely with a view to the clear comprehension of the author's lan- guage, and would then re-read the whole for the pur- pose of enjoying and appreciating the thoughts which the words enshrined ; and finally, when he had finished a book or a poem, would run through it again as a whole THE UNDERGRADUATE 45 with all the glow and enthusiasm of a perfect compre- hension. " Sunday at Camford was a happy day for Julian Home. It was a day of perfect leisure and rest ; the time not spent at church or in the society of others he generally occupied in taking a longer walk than usual, or in the luxuries of solemn and quiet thought. But the greatest enjoyment was to revel freely in books, and devote him- self, unrestrained, to the gorgeous scenes of poetry, or the passionate pages of eloquent men. 1 On that day he drank deeply of pure streams that refreshed him for his weekly work ; nor did he forget some hour of commune, in the secrecy of his chamber and the silence of his heart, with that God and Father in whom alone he trusted, and to whom alone he looked for deliverance from difficulty and guidance under temptation. Of all hours his happiest and strongest were those in which he was alone — alone, except for a heavenly presence, sitting at the feet of a Friend, and looking face to face upon himself." The effect produced upon his mind by the chapel services he thus describes : — " St. Werner's (Trinity) Chapel on a Sunday evening is a moving sight. Five hundred men in surplices throng- ing the chapel from end to end — the very flower of English youth, in manly beauty, in strength, in race, in courage, in mind — all kneeling, side by side, bound to- gether in a common bond of union by the grand historic association of that noble place — all mingling their voices together with the treble of the choir and the thunder- music of the organ. This is a spectacle not often equalled ; and to take a share in it as one for whose sake, in 1 The poets that most influenced his mind at this period were Milton, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. 46 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR part, it has been established, is a privilege not to be forgotten." I make no apology for introducing these passages from "Julian Home" because, from many conversations I have had with my father, I know that they reproduce not only his ideals, but his practice and habit of mind during his Cambridge career. The following extract from " Men I Have Known " gives us a good idea of his attainments in his under- graduate days : — " Professor Harold Browne, afterwards Bishop of Ely and Winchester, was always kind to me. He welcomed some of my papers in the Preliminary Examination with words of singularly high encouragement, and told me that he had kept them for years. I only came across the learned Professor Mill once. He had set a paper in the University Scholarship Examination, and his way always was to print four or five Latin and Greek pas- sages for translation, and ask the candidates to assign them to their proper authors. This was generally an easy thing to do ; but one year he set a passage from the soldier-historian, Ammianus Marcellinus, who died about a.d. 390, and had been an officer in the bodyguard of the Emperor Julian. I should think that this was the first and the only instance in which the Latinity of the Syrian author has been used as a test of scholarship in a Uni- versity competition. Dr. Mill told me that I was the only one of all the candidates who had assigned the passage to its rightful author ; and as I was only a fresh- man at the time, he was a little surprised, and asked me how I came to be acquainted with such a writer, whom he personally admired, but who was wholly unknown to the classical curriculum of Cambridge. I answered that it was by mere accident. Ammianus Marcellinus is not THE UNDERGRADUATE 47 infrequently referred to in Elliot's ' Horae Apocalyp- ticae,' and this had interested me in him, and made me acquainted with his style." By his untiring industry, joined to a memory singu- larly retentive, my father not only attained distinguished university success, but laid the foundation of an edifice of learning, which those of his contemporaries who knew him best regarded as phenomenal. His college tutor, J. L. Hammond, thus wrote of him : " From a long list of pupils I should select him as the one most remarkable for mental activity and eager pursuit of knowledge. To this vigour and earnest- ness of purpose he united a high and generous spirit and a perfectly blameless character — the pleasantness of his manners and the frankness and amiability of his disposition made him one of the most agreeable, as he certainly was one of the most distinguished, of my pupils." In 1854 he graduated B.A. First class (bracketed Fourth Classic) in the Classical Tripos and a junior optime in the Mathematical Tripos. In 1855 he won the Le Bas Prize (for an essay on " The Influence of the Revival of Classical Studies on English Literature dur- ing the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I "). In 1856 he was elected a Fellow of Trinity College, and won the Norrisian Prize (for an essay on " The Christian Doctrine of the Atonement not inconsistent with the Justice and Goodness of God"). He graduated M.A. in 1857. " The Master of Trinity at this epoch was the famous Dr. Whewell, author of the ' History ' and of the ' Philos- ophy of the Inductive Sciences,' a man who was supposed to know 'something about everything, and everything about some things,' and of whom it was said that ' science was Dr. Whewell's forte, omniscience his foible.' On one occasion, two of the Fellows, thinking to get beyond his 48 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR range, began to talk on the subject of Chinese meta- physics, v/hich they had got up for the purpose. Whe- well listened in silence for a time, and then observed, ' Ah ! I see you have been reading a paper which I wrote for an Encyclopaedia of Science.' After that, they laid no more plots to find limits to his universal knowledge ! " My father thus writes of him : " I vividly recall the fine and stately presence of the Master, which (as an- other myth related) made a prize-fighter deplore that so splendid a physique, and such thews and sinews, should be thrown away on a mere clergyman ! " " To me Dr. Whewell was always kind, and more than kind. When I was elected a Scholar he addressed me in friendly terms. He read through with me the poem on ' The Arctic Regions,' which obtained for me the Chancellor's medal. In one line I had called the ice- bergs 'unfabled Strophades.' 'Ah!' he said, 'an ad- mirable expression ! ' And he had a little talk with me as to whether I meant a particular word to be ' irrides- cence' or 'iridescence.' In the examination for the Trinity Fellowships a paper was always set in Moral Philosophy and Metaphysics. I happened to have read all through the works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, for whom I felt in those days a boundless admiration, and whose works I had selected for one of my Trinity prizes. In my paper I had often referred to the views of Cole- ridge, and this pleased the Master very much, for (though I did not know it) he, too, had a great sympathy and admiration for S. T. C. He told me with a pleasant smile that he had never before met with a fellowship candidate who had made the same use of Coleridge's views as I had done." Criticising some essay of my father's in which he thought he had made undue use THE UNDERGRADUATE 49 of the editorial "we," Dr. Whewell said, "Ah, that is what I call 'Wegotism.' " The Chancellor's gold medal for English verse was won by my father in 1852. The subject for the year was " The Arctic Regions and the Hopes of Discover- ing the Lost Adventurers." In his " Reminiscences of Lord Tennyson " he thus tells the story of it : — " I was fortunate enough to obtain the Chancellor's gold medal at Cambridge for a poem — a very poor one, I fear — on 'The Arctic Regions.' It was in blank verse, and my competing for the medal was almost ex- clusively due to the accident that I had once been detained for more than two hours at a small railway station in the country. The prize had not once been given for a poem in blank verse since the single occa- sion on which it had been won by Tennyson in 1829 for a poem on ' Timbuctoo.' There is a legend at Cam- bridge that one of the then examiners — the History Professor, Professor Smyth — had written on the outer leaf of this poem v.q., which he meant for 'very queer,' but the other examiners took it for v.g., ' very good,' and assigned the medal to it. The legend is, I should think, an entire myth, and unquestionably Tennyson's prize poem contains some far finer passages than any other poem which had been so rewarded either at Cambridge or Oxford, though among the successful competitors have been such names as those of Heber, Macaulay, and Mack- worth Praed. As so many years had elapsed since he had broken a fixed tradition by a blank verse poem, and since I had followed his example, I took the liberty, which I knew his kindness would forgive, of sending him my verses, and mentioning the circumstance. In those days the poet wrote his own letters, which he rarely did in later years, and I received the following reply : — ■ 50 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR " ' Dear Sir : — I have just received your prize poem, for which I return you my best thanks. I believe it is true that mine was the first written in blank verse which obtained the Chancellor's medal. Nevertheless (and though you assure me that reading it gave you the deep- est pleasure), I could wish that it had never been written. — Believe me, dear sir, yours very truly, " ' A. Tennyson.' " The two following letters from Cambridge friends are given to illustrate the high level of life and thought which obtained in the little coterie of friends : — " My dear Farrar : I have just read the Tripos list, and I assure you that your place gave me more pleasure than any other, bracketed with your old enemy — or rather rival. There is no one, dear Farrar, of all those who have gone out this year who in my opinion has been a greater blessing to the circle of friends among whom they have been thrown than you have — all who knew you must ever recollect the kindness and goodness of your heart, and the warmth of your love. Your social and pleasant evenings in which the greatest pleasure was always to hear you talk will ever be one of my dearest recollections of Trinity. I am sure, too, you will let me add that there is no one to whom a University career has done more good or on whom high University honours could have been better conferred, than on you. Others may have maintained their former reputation. But you have each year increased yours — and will no doubt shortly succeed in surprising every one by some tremendous doings in the fellowships. . . . " Ever your affectionate friend, "William E. Robinson." THE UNDERGRADUATE 51 Judge Vernon Lushington writes : — ******* " To me he then seemed — and I greet the memory of it — as the type of a gifted and rich-hearted young student, rejoicing in his first outlook on intellectual life as a man. He had no special interest, I think, in the scientific studies of the place, or even in history, and still less in politics ; but in scripture phrase he had ' compassion for the multitude.' " His subject was a pure and exalted personal morality for all, not of the mere negative kind, but a very active one, and the imaginative literature illustrating such aspirations, — the literae Jmrnaniores in short. He de- lighted in ' the cloud of witnesses.' These he studied with extraordinary eagerness, for the matter chiefly, but also for the form. They fed his ardent spirit, gave him a great hope and courage, and called forth his own powers of copious expression both by word and pen. " His own life at that time was a retired one. Simple and healthy himself, he took little or no part in games or other amusements ; he was essentially a student, and a most industrious one, consorting meanwhile with the most thoughtful of his contemporaries, and delighting in discussing with them his favourite subjects : they in turn recognised his remarkable talents and character. Mutatis mutandis he was a sort of young Milton among them. It was my good fortune to be often in his fa- miliar company, and we were always on affectionate terms, but I hardly lived with him. Our after paths diverged, and I had no share, except as a remote spec- tator, in his brilliant and strenuous career. But our af- fectionate regard for one another remained on both sides unchanged to the end. 53 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR " To sum up : in my memory of your father, the youth was in a rare degree the father to the man. He showed in his youthful manhood the elements, the striking fea- tures of his after goodness and distinction ; necessarily also the corresponding limitations (since life is so wide as well as so deep, and happily so manifold). " With grateful and happy recollections of my old friend, I am " Always truly yours, "Vernon Lushington." CHAPTER V ASSISTANT MASTER AT MARLBOROUGH In 1854, before the results of the Tripos were out, he was invited to become an assistant master at Marl- borough College. The circumstances of this mastership and of his ordination are told in an autobiographical frag- ment, " My First Sermon," contributed to a magazine: — " My life has been planned and guided for me. When I stood for my degree at Cambridge, I did not know what my lot was to be. I had decided to become a candidate for Holy Orders ; but whether I should stay up at Trinity College, Cambridge, try for a fellowship, and live on it as a tutor, or whether I should take a curacy somewhere in the country, or whether I should seek work as a school- master, or whether I should become a missionary as my father had before me, all these things lay, as Homer says, 'on the knees of the Gods.' The call and the direction came unsought. Before my degree was out I received a letter from the Head-master of Marlborough College, afterward Bishop of Calcutta, Dr. G. E. L. Cotton, — then a perfect stranger, — asking me to accept a mas- tership in the Wiltshire College, where my friends, Pro- fessor E. S. Beesly and Mr. E. A. Scott, were already at work. I obeyed the call, and after a few weeks Dr. Cotton, who remained a very dear friend to me and corresponded with me up to the day of his sudden and lamented death, asked me to be his colleague in the work of the Sixth Form. Many of the boys in that S3 54 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR Sixth Form have, since then, risen to positions of emi- nence. I remember once seeing a boy chasing another, who wore a scarlet cap, round the court, and shouting after him, ' Keblepuris ! Keblepuris ! ' That is the Greek for the ' red cap,' and the boy had taken it from ' The Birds ' of Aristophanes, which we were then reading. The boy who was chasing the other is now the Right Reverend, the Primate of Australia; the boy in the red cap is now the Right Reverend, the Lord Bishop of Glasgow. It reminds one of Shenstone's lines : — "Yet, nurs'd with skill, what dazzling fruits appear! E'en now sagacious foresight points to show A little bench of heedless Bishops here, And there a Chancellor in embryo. "When Cotton went to Marlborough the school, now so popular and famous, was passing through an acute period in its history. One of the first remarks which Dr. Cotton made to me was, ' You know any day the school may disappear in blue smoke.' The college was at that time overwhelmed with debt, owing to bad management, and at first each boy was actually costing more than the low annual sum he paid, though the boys were badly fed and roughly housed. With indomitable patience and resolution, and often ' in the teeth of clenched antago- nisms,' Cotton altered this; and though he was by no means a facile schoolmaster, and could punish with sever- ity, his quaint humour and his unqualified devotion to their interests, together with his admirable weekly ser- mons, soon gave him the highest influence among the boys. He gathered round him a devoted staff of mas- ters, who, for the sake of the school, were ready for any self-denial, and who treated the boys as so many younger brothers. In the old rough days there were masters I ASSISTANT MASTER AT MARLBOROUGH 55 who, though they doubtless meant to be kind, kept up the inexorable severity with which, until this generation, boys had normally been trained for many years. In those days the commonest possible sight was to see boys' backs scored with red and blue marks from strokes of the cane, or to see their hands sore or cut from what were called ' pandies,' inflicted by the same instrument of torture. Nous avons change" tout cela. The 'rebel- lion,' which had most seriously shaken the very exist- ence of the school, was hardly detumescent ; but Cotton's sovereign good sense soon swept away even the remem- brance of it. I recollect that, when I arrived as a young master, some forty-three years ago, the first thing I saw was a huge chalk inscription on the wall, ' Bread or blood!'' Cotton simply summoned the boys together, told them that his best efforts were being given to im- prove the commissariat (which was not in his hands), and that, instead of scrawling up vulgar and stupid in- scriptions, they should confide in him. The masters con- ferred together, swept away the old bursar-and-steward arrangement, took the finances in their own hands, agreed not to draw one penny of their incomes till the end of the year (to save interest), and then to regard each pound as a share. They also offered to give up the whole of their incomes altogether, if funds were not forthcoming, or only to take any percentage of them which might be available. At the end of the year — such had been the improvement inthe management — every hundred pounds was worth more than a hundred pounds, though the com- fort of the boys had been largely and in every way im- proved. The whole body of masters then at once gave up the additional quota which was fairly theirs. That year of crisis saved in all respects the fortunes of the school, and turned all its sons into the most loyal of 56 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR Marlburians. It is a great delight to me to have been a master during so interesting a year." Old pupils still living recall how he would take them for long walks over the downs, pouring himself out in a continuous flood of vivid talk the whole time, and how he would entertain them to tea on his return, and the lavish recklessness with which he shovelled the tea out of his caddy into the tea-pot. The following characteristic sketch by Canon Henry Bell, a pupil of my father's during the first Marlborough period, and an assistant master for a year during his head- mastership, gives a delightful picture of this epoch : — " Farrar came to Marlborough as a master in 1854. I was one of his first pupils in — I think it was — the Lower Fifth. We were taken in the big schoolroom with eight other Forms. I quite remember how his treatment of us was a revelation. His whole manner, his kind way of speaking to us, was something we had never been accustomed to : he completely won our hearts, and there was nothing we would not have done for him. The old regime was that of the law, — 1 Do this, or die'; 'Know your Virgil,- — or, Stand round.' No doubt we were a rough, idle lot — how could it have been otherwise when the cane was the only incentive and the sole civiliser ? To have a kind word spoken to one was a thing unheard of, undreamt of — but Far- rar came. He was one of Cotton's inspirations, — with him Edward Ashley Scott, and ' Charley ' Bere, as we affectionately called him. "More 'inspirations' joined him the following year, names never to be forgotten for all time for all they did for Marlborough, — Spencer Beesly, 1 Tomkinson, Bull, 1 Spencer Beesly was already at Marlborough when my father joined the staff. ASSISTANT MASTER AT MARLBOROUGH 57 Jex Blake, Gilmore. Well, Farrar came, and brought the boys who were in his Form a new idea of life, and the conviction that we were made for something better and higher than to be caned and cuffed. Till Farrar came we did our verses out of a book, — I hope I have forgotten its name forever, — but I remember it opened with a sketch of an exulting horse careering over a plain, or some twaddle of that kind. 1 We were thoroughly- satisfied with it — we knew nothing better ; and was there not a convenient crib ! Well, Farrar pitched the book into the fire, and gave us some poetry instead. Why, most of us had hardly heard of poetry : the exult- ing horse was our one ideal of it. Our first copy was, ' Oh, call my brother back to me,' which was followed up by 'Cophetua,' 'Ye Mariners of England,' and many another. " I remember we were doing in Form Horace's Epistles, and one day — I suppose he was the head of the Form, I certainly was not — there came a letter to Fryer — we called him Friar Tuck — asking some of us to tea. I wish I could reproduce the humorous words in which the invitation was couched : all I can recall about it is that it was a parody on one of the Epistles, of the Third Book I think, which we had been doing in Form. " Si potes archiacis convive recumbere lectis — Nec modica coenare times olus omne patella — Supremo te sole domi Torquate manebo. " Such an event as tea with a master was an event in- deed. I for one was in mortal terror. What was one a The lines run — The fiery steed, his tail in air proudly cocked, Not without much neighing traverses glad pastures. As my father said of it in his Royal Institution Lecture, "This is the sort of kelp and brick-dust used to polish the cogs of their mental ma- chinery." 58 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR to say ? — how comport oneself ? I almost wished my name had been left out of the invitation. But the mo- ment we got into the room he shook hands with us, welcomed us, and in two minutes we were at ease and at home with him, as he plied us with jam and cake, and chaffed us in his own genial way. I remember he es- pecially chaffed me about cricket : ' What fun can you see in trundling a piece of leather at three bits of stick ! ' He was with us in the Fifth only a very short time, but I look back to it as the time when my friend- ship with Farrar began which lasted till his death. " Of course his place was with the Sixth. I can recall a whole holiday when he took the members of the Sixth in a Brake to Stonehenge, and I was invited to join them. Philistine as I was, I persuaded them to take a football. I'm afraid Stonehenge in itself had but little interest for me. On our arrival I remember being taken to gaze on the huge stones, and being terribly bored and only too glad when the lecture was over and one could get the football out. I remember how we chose sides and Far- rar joined in the game and enjoyed it as much as we did. But what ruffians he must have thought us ! What a bathos ! Football and the Druids ! " Farrar was never what you may call a game lover, but he knew that he could get hold of fellows best by join- ing with them in their games; so when he came he took to fives and was soon no mean hand, and to football, in which he could perhaps never have excelled, but which he played with an energy which many of us of that day well remember. "Too soon, alas ! Harrow stole him from us and kept him till 1 87 1, when he returned to us as head master. It was my privilege to work under him for a year, only too short a period, but long enough to show me how his ASSISTANT MASTER AT MARLBOROUGH 59 whole heart and soul was bent on doing his best for every boy in the school to make his school days bright and happy. He loved Marlborough always with the intens- est love, and never spared himself for her. Well, I will only add that I feel an affection for Farrar, and retain a memory of his very many kindnesses which will always last. He had a peculiarly lovable nature, which could not fail to attract. The world is indeed poorer for his death. H. B." Of his work at this period Dr. Cotton wrote : " I never knew any one who had a greater power of stimu- lating intellectual exertion and literary taste. The im- pulse which he imparted to my sixth form was quite extraordinary. When boys first joined it they seemed in a very short time to be imbued by him with a new intellectual life and a real desire of knowledge and im- provement for their own sakes." The following is the story of his ordination and of his first sermon : — " As soon as I was old enough to be ordained, I sent my name as a candidate to the then Bishop of Salisbury, Dr. Walter Ker Hamilton, asking him to ordain me on my mastership to help in the clerical work of the school. My name was at once accepted, and I had just time to get to Salisbury for the ordination examination on the day that the school broke up. " The only way of getting to Salisbury in time was by taking a coach which passed through Marlborough at three at night. Accordingly, I got the college watch- man to awake me ; and then I was absolutely insane enough, on a night in late December, to take a seat out- side the coach with no rug and no great-coat ! It was a night of keen frost, and I wonder that the night drive 6o LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR did not kill me. I was congealed to the very bone, and when we got to Salisbury I felt very ill. Fortunately, however, I was young, and my health was very strong ; and although everybody noticed how ghastly I looked when I entered the Bishop's Hall for examination, I escaped with nothing worse than a bad cold. "I was ordained on Christmas Day, 1853, and I was appointed to read the Gospel in the Cathedral. On the morning of that day one of the Salisbury clergy wrote and asked me to take a service and to preach for him at the workhouse in the afternoon. He said that of course I could not write a sermon at such short notice, espe- cially as the whole morning was broken up with the long ordination service ; but he sent me a volume of the ' Church Homilies,' and advised me to preach the Homily for Christmas Day. I felt a dislike, however, to take a book with me and read a Homily which I did not know very well, and which would necessarily sound a little archaic. I therefore snatched what brief leisure I could, and sat down to write at least a sermonet. My text was naturally the angels' song, and I think a poorer little sermon could rarely have been preached. It was an attempt to show what the world might have been if man had never fallen ; what the world would be once more when God was all in all ; and how we might per- sonally attain this blessedness by faith in Him who for us men and for our salvation had taken our nature upon Him. I remember the scene now : my walk to Salis- bury Infirmary ; the gathering of poor feeble old men and women in the bare and miserable chapel ; the ill- equipped and unprepared young deacon, a few hours old in the ministry, who had to read and preach to them ; the vacant gaze of the old women, and the stony stare of the old men as they listened to a sermon of a style ASSISTANT MASTER AT MARLBOROUGH 61 somewhat academic, and wholly unsuited to them ; the fact that one at least, and I think several, unceremoni- ously got up in the middle and walked out, which under the circumstances was very excusable. And yet that wretched little sermon, which I believe exists somewhere, but at which I certainly could not look without a shudder, contained one lovely passage which (as I faithfully ex- plained) was not my own. It was the beautiful close of the Christmas Day Homily, and is, I think, the most beautiful passage in all the Homilies. It runs as follows : ' Therefore, dearly beloved, let us not forget this ex- ceeding love of our Lord and Saviour. Let us confess Him with our mouths, praise Him with our tongues, be- lieve on Him with our hearts, and glorify Him with our good works. Christ is the Light; let us reveal the Light. Christ is the Truth ; let us believe the Truth. Christ is the Way ; let us follow the Way. And because He is our only Master, our only Teacher, our only Shep- herd and Chief Captain, let us become His scholars, His soldiers, His sheep, His servants. . . . Let us re- ceive Christ not for a time, but for ever; let us believe His word not for a time, but for ever ; let us become His servants not for a time, but for ever, considering that He hath redeemed us not for a time, but for ever, and will receive us into His heavenly kingdom, then, to reign with Him, not for a time, but for ever.' 1 " Such was my first sermon, preached in a country workhouse, and a dead failure, I should imagine, if ever there was one. Why, it may be asked, did I not take 1 My collateral ancestor, Robert Farrar, Bishop of St. David's, burnt for the Protestant faith at Carmarthen in the reign of Queen Mary, was a chaplain of Cranmer's, and is known to have had some share in the Homilies. I try to persuade myself that he wrote this homily, and so lent me the only good part of my first sermon. — Note by Dean Farrar. 62 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR what would have been the natural and much more effec- tive course, and speak to the poor people a few words extempore ? Often and often since I have preached extempore to poor haymakers in a barn, and to great congregations in cathedrals and elsewhere, and prob- ably, with a little training, it would have come even more easy to me to preach without a manuscript than with one. But I had never had one-quarter of a min- ute's training or advice about either reading or preach- ing, and it never occurred to me that I could preach without book. The chief thing that strikes me as I look back across the vista of nearly forty years, is how sad was the neglect of that ordinary training, which might have made so many of us more effective, who belong to the generation which is passing away ; how much we might have gained if we had even been vouchsafed a little practice in the art of reading. How much our con- gregations might have been saved if the elementary rules of elocution had ever been explained to us, and, above all, if some little instruction had been imparted to us about those things which constitute the faults or the merits of sermons. . . . But we of earlier date were left to stumble on our way as best we could. . . ." The following extract from a private letter gives an interesting little vignette of the young master as he appeared to another of his pupils : — " F. W. F. came to Marlborough like an apparition — a flame of fire — kindling enthusiasm for all that was noble and chivalrous. No one ever was so young as he was in those days, and I suppose he was then twenty- three or twenty-four ; but the marvel was, how he knew such a l®t and associated himself with us little fellows, as if we could minister to his happiness. I learnt much from him which has made my life a happy one. . . . ASSISTANT MASTER AT MARLBOROUGH 63 He played football (Rugby) like a madman, running amuck with his eyes shut, and got awfully mauled, latissima pulvere farm, as some fellows said, much to his delight. We were reading the ' Georgics ' at the time." I give here an extract from my father's sermon, on "The History and Hopes of a Public School," one of the series of sermons preached at Marlborough during his head-mastership, and collected in the volume, " In the Days of Thy Youth " : — "On August 25, 1843, the first Marlburians walked with considering footsteps about the place which was to be the new home of their boyhood, and to which, as time passed on, some of their sons were to follow them. Some of you who sit on these benches to-day are sons of some of those two hundred who, thirty-one years ago, first entered this place as Marlborough boys ; and of their traditions, of their influences, of their characters, of the motives brought to bear upon them, of the manner in which they yielded to those motives, so far-reaching are the pulsations of our moral life, all of you are the heirs. The sound of their boyish laughter, the echo of their happy voices, has died away, and many of them have passed away from the life of earth. In a body so large as this, many die as the years pass on. I remem- ber the first boy who ever entered my room as a pupil here nearly twenty years ago. He lies now under the deep sea wave. I remember the first head of my form here — that memorial window records his character. Yes, we die ; but not the effect of our deeds. All other sounds " Die in yon rich sky, They faint on hill, on field or river ; Our echoes roll from soul to soul, And live for ever and for ever. 64 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR " If you be living weak, miserable, effeminate lives, then let it be a warning and an awful thought ; if you are living true, manly, righteous lives, let it be an en- nobling, an inspiring thought, that your lives too will live, in their moral echoes, for coming generations of Marlborough boys. " The college then was founded, and they who had laboured and given their substance for it won thereby a grace and a blessing which nothing else could have given them. " But how did their work prosper ? At first not well. Let us bear in mind that in those days it was a great and wholly new experiment ; and some hundreds of boys — all strangers to one another, collected in one build- ing, without a past, without unity, without traditions, — fell at first into many rough and discreditable ways, which seemed likely at one time to make the name of Marlburian a byword and a hissing. It must have been a bitter thing for those who then worked for our school to bear ; but they who sow faithfully, though it be in tears, shall reap in joy. Yes, ' laborare et orare' were (as in one way or other they always are) success- ful, and the first master of Marlborough 1 has lived to see that he was doing a work which, though different from that achieved by others, has yet been granted to few. For to those days of trial, and greatly to his work, we owe that organisation which has since been imitated in its minutest particulars by later schools. And what was still wanting, it was granted to his successor to achieve. It is something for every Marlborough boy to know that when he looks at that portrait of Bishop Cotton which 1 Dr. Wilkinson. ASSISTANT MASTER AT MARLBOROUGH 65 adorns our hall, he is looking at the likeness of one of the best men whom this generation has produced. It was God's special blessing to a new school that sent him here. He was not great as the world counts greatness. When he came here he was but little known beyond a narrow circle of attached friends. Nor was it at once either in numbers, or in intellectual successes, or in im- proved finances, that Marlborough began to flourish. Yet undoubtedly it was Bishop Cotton who saved the school. He was here but six years ; and great as was his work as Bishop of Calcutta and Metropolitan of India, before that disastrous fall into the waters of the Indian river after which he was seen no more, it is yet with this place that his name will be most identified. It was my own deep happiness in those days to know him, to love him, to work with him, and in daily walks and intercourse with him, as afterward by letters, until he died, to learn what manner of man he was. And how did he save Marlborough when it might any day » have disappeared, unhonoured and unregretted, from its place among the public schools of England ? My brethren, it is well for you to know ; it is a valuable lesson for any one to know : it was not by the genius of the thinker ; it was not by the brilliancy of the scholar; it was not by that burning enthusiasm and personal ascendency with which Arnold of Rugby had done his work. Such gifts were not his ; but it was by those fruits of the Spirit which are in the reach of all and by that heavenly grace which is given in even larger measure to them that seek it. A calm hopefulness, a cheerful simplicity, an exquisite equanimity of temper, a humility which made him a learner to the very end, a genuine, self-denying love for Marlborough, and for those boys whom God had here intrusted to his charge 66 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR — these were what gave to his life that mysterious power which is always granted to the unselfish purpose and the single eye. And this was the type of character — God grant that it may long be stamped upon some of the sons whom this school shall train ! — which he produced among his pupils and his colleagues. I shall never for- get the spectacle which the Marlborough of that day presented. Something was due, no doubt, to the fact that it was a day of adversity, which often brings out all that is noblest and sweetest in human lives. But cer- tainly the few here present who remember that time will bear me witness that it taught us all a priceless lesson. We all felt that it was a struggle, first, whether Marl- borough College should live at all, next, whether it should live in honour or obscurity. We won no great successes ; we were beaten in every game ; there was much that was mean in our surroundings ; much that was trying in our arrangements ; much that was still coarse and rough and unintellectual in the habits of the place. And yet how we all loved it ! How boys and masters alike worked for it ! What a pride they felt, even in its humility ! What a thrill of delight we all felt when one succeeded ! How ready they were, some of them, even to the permanent surrender of better pros- pects to serve Marlborough and work for her. And verily they have their reward ; they have their reward, that is, if the highest price which life can offer is clearly to see what is best, and resolutely to do it. And is there anything better than this ? Life is not the mere living. It is worship ; it is the surrender of the soul to God, and the power to see the face of God ; and it is service ; it is to feel that when we "die, whether praised or blamed, whether appreciated or misinterpreted, whether honoured or ignored, whether wealthy or destitute, ASSISTANT MASTER AT MARLBOROUGH 67 we have done something to make the world we came to better and happier ; we have tried to cast upon the water some seeds which long after we are dead may still bring forth their flowers of Paradise." The following lines were composed as he returned from Dr. Wilkinson's funeral : — IN MEMORIAM M. M. WILKINSON, D.D. First Master of Marlborough College. Died March 4, 1876. Aye, they are o'er, his pain and his endeavour, Our scant acknowledgment, and frequent wrong; Hushed are all tones of praise or blame forever, For those who listen to the angel's song. He sowed the seed with sorrow and with weeping, Barely he saw green blade or tender leaves ; Yet in meek faith, unenvious of the reaping, Blessed the glad gatherers of the golden sheaves. But we, when reapers unto reapers calling. Tell the rich harvest of the grain they bring, Shall we forget how snow and sleet were falling On those tired toilers of the bitter spring ? And yet of him nor word nor line remaineth, Picture nor bust, his work and worth to tell ; And though not he nor any friend complaineth, We ask in sadness, — " Marlborough, is it well?" Enough ! he murmured not, — in earthly races To winners only do the heralds call ; But oh ! in yonder high and holy places Success is nothing, and the work is all. So — since ye will it — here be unrecorded The work he fashioned and the path he trod ; Here, but in heaven each kind heart is rewarded, Each true name written in the books of God. F. W. F. 68 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR To his first Marlborough period belongs this hymn, which is printed in the Marlborough College hymn- book : — Father! before Thy throne of light The guardian angels bend, And ever in Thy presence bright Their psalms adoring blend, And casting down each golden crown Beside the crystal sea, With voice and lyre in happy quire Hymn glory, Lord, to Thee. And as the rainbow lustre falls Athwart their glowing wings, While seraph unto seraph calls, And each thy goodness sings ; So may we fall, as low we kneel To thank Thee for thy grace That Thou art here, for all who fear The brightness of Thy face. Here, when the angels see us come To worship day by day, Teach us to feel our heavenly home And love Thee, e'en as they : Teach us to raise our songs of praise, Like them, Thy love to own, That boyhood's time and manhood's prime Be Thine, and Thine alone. Two letters to his friend, Professor E. S. Beesly may be inserted here : — "Trinity College, August 16. " My dear Beesly : I have many friends at M. [Marlborough] to whom I would gladly write, both among boys and masters, but no one has an earlier or better claim than you. I must, however, write chiefly on business. ******* ASSISTANT MASTER AT MARLBOROUGH 69 " Will you also tell Turner and Ilbert to go to Fleuss and get their likeness well finished by September, in order that I may take it with me if I come down. I should like to have Warren's phiz very much, and also Han- bury's together ; but I don't know whether Fleuss's like- nesses are good enough to make it worth while to have . another picture as a pendant to the Iiberto-Turner. ■3(6- ¥fc ^ ^ ■iff " I am trying to read for a fellowship, but despairingly and under great disadvantages. I shall leave in about ten days for Harrow to see about furniture, and get taken in. " Tell Bull I travelled up to Cambridge with his minute nephew, who did not cry once, and showed a temper most angelic for a baby ! Though Bull and I used intellectually to drive each other into corners, I hope, in spite of our skirmishes, that he will not forget a coadjutor who will always remember him with mingled gratitude, friendship, and respect. " I hope Scott is in more vigorous health ; please give him my love, and also remember me to all friends. I shall be very glad to hear from you. You can't think how painful I felt it to leave M. A tear starts while I think of it — -not the place or the position, but those whom I loved there more fondly than I knew, and who will already have well-nigh forgotten my existence. I met Ilbert in London and hardly spoke to him. " Excuse my folly, and believe me ever " Your affectionate friend, " F. W. Farrar." "Colehill, January 25. " My dear Beesly : I am sorry to hear of your in- tended attempt at Brazenose, because if you try you are 70 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR pretty sure to succeed, I suppose, and then we shall lose you, which will be a loss to all of us, but peculiarly to me, for I have little real society among the masters. ******* Still it will, I suppose, assist your prospects, and so I heartily hope you success on this ground. At the Union I hope you will make a brilliant and effective display, but take care and don't compromise yourself by too violent language. It does no sort of harm to adopt a conciliatory tone for expressing the most uncom- promising arguments. " I passed the ordination examination with flying colours, and was first in it, and so had to read the Gospel in the Cathedral, which I did with the completest self- possession, greatly to the astonishment of the rest. The Bishop complimented me peculiarly on my doctrine, though I expressed my opinions quite unshrinkingly. I had to preach and take a full service next day in Salis- bury at very short notice, and have since been assisting my father, and it is the general opinion of the drapers and grocers here that I am 'a promising young man.' " I have done next to nothing, owing to the greatest interruptions. I have heard from Theobald and the darling 'iXfiepri'Siov, and many Upper VI fellows, but only from two Lower. I was disgusted at the way they did. Cobb got a quadruple first only through super- human diligence, and they all might have done the same; but though they worked hard, it was not hard enough for their dull and sluggish capacities. " A brother of Hawkins, the senior classic of my year, is coming into the Lower to be under me, by his brother's advice. Wishing you heartily all happiness, I remain, " Your affectionate friend, " F. W. Farrar." CHAPTER VI HARROW DAYS Toward the close of 1855 my father was appointed by Dr. Vaughan, who remained to the close of his life one of his most affectionate friends, an assistant master at Harrow. Here he remained for fifteen years, — years filled not only by a strenuous devotion to his magisterial duties, which won for him the grateful and loyal affection of successive generations of Harrovians, but by many and varied activities outside the routine of school, which brought him into wider prominence. In 1858 he may be said to have begun his public career as an author with " Eric, or Little by Little," published by request, and founded on reminiscences, partly autobiographical, of his old school in the Isle of Man. This was followed in 1859 by "Julian Home," a tale of college life, of which the local colour is derived from Trinity College, Cambridge. " St. Winifred's, or the World of School," was not published till 1865. "The Three Homes" was originally published under the pseu- donym F. T. L. Hope (derived from Tennyson's " faintly trust the larger hope") and the authorship of the book was not publicly claimed till 1896. It first appeared as a serial in the Qtiiver, and since its publication in book form more than thirty thousand copies have been sold. This seems the proper place to attempt a critical esti- mate of my father's work as a writer of schoolboy fiction. It would be idle to blink the fact that these books have been exposed to much hostile criticism, and in particular 71 72 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR " Eric," the most popular and the most characteristic of the series, alike in its real beauties and noble moral les- sons, and by reason of some defects which lay it open to cheap criticism. No journalist, writing of Farrar's work, considers that he has done his duty by the public till he has duly insti- tuted a comparison between "Eric" and "Tom Brown," to the disparagement of the former. For the discerning critic these books, each admirable in its own genre, no more challenge comparison than do the works of Fra Angelico and Frith. " Tom Brown's School Days" is the work of a realist, and no book more true to the life of the schoolboy has been, or is likely to be, written. It gives an incompara- ble picture of the average public-school boy, — healthy, athletic, chock-full of animal spirits, morally sound at the core, common-sense, if also commonplace. We recognise the portrait as drawn by a master-hand. We get noth- ing but good by reading the book ; yet healthy and ex- cellent as is its tone, we are not profoundly touched to finer issues by it. Again, the genius of Rudyard Kipling has given us in " Stalky & Co." a lively and amusing presentment of one side, the slangy side, of schoolboy life. Those who do not know the schoolboy, not seldom find the ruse Stalky detestable ; but for all his cynicism the young scamp is sound at heart, and his moral ideals, so stoically veiled, are not ignoble. He is such a humorous rascal that I almost forgive even his jeers at Eric. But no high moral purpose underlies these sketches. We enjoy them, but are neither better or worse for them. "Eric" and "St. Winifred's" are of a wholly different strain, and no one of enlightened literary judgment would attempt to compare them with the above. They HARROW DAYS 73 are the work of an idealist, and of one who never wrote without a definite moral purpose. If, Reader, you dislike idealism, and cannot tolerate books written " with a pur- pose," — cadit qucestio, — "Eric" and "St. Winifred's" are not for you. No cynic, and no mere worldling-, was ever wholly in sympathy with Farrar's work ; and the clever modern public-school boy is but too often an ama- teur of cynicism, whose motto is Surtout point de zkle. He detests emotion, sneers at it in others, and stoically suppresses it in himself. " The boys of ' Eric ' and ' St. Winifred's ' are not real boys like Tom Brown," says the youthful cynic of to- day, " but young prigs who are always ' high-falutin ' and spouting poetry." He does not spout poetry — not he. Well, — perhaps they are not convincingly real boys, any more than the characters of Dickens are real persons. Their virtues, and even their vices, are ideal- ised, but the heroes are such boys as Farrar was him- self, and, be it remembered, " Eric " was written from reminiscences of a school in the Isle of Man, and of an epoch where alike the virtues and the vices of boys were more primitive and less sophisticated, than is the case in our large modern public schools of this generation. "St. Winifred's," which came six years later, and was in- fluenced by both Marlborough and Harrow experiences, though it has had less effect, perhaps, than " Eric," is truer to the real life of boys, and has been far less open to criticism. Judged by the mere vulgar standard of sales, the success of these two books has been phe- nomenal. " Eric " has gone through more than fifty editions, but the inner history of the book will never be fully given to the world. I dare venture to say that few boys, however much they may sneer at it in after years, have read " Eric " for the first time without tears 74 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR coming to their eyes ; but the number of simple-hearted lads who have been profoundly touched and uplifted by this book, and of those who have been turned from evil courses and moved to sincere repentance by it, will never be fully known. Hardly a week ever passed since " Eric " was first published without my father receiving from all parts of the English-speaking world — from India, from the colonies, and from America — letters from earnest men who were not ashamed to write and confess with grati- tude that the reading of " Eric " had marked a turning- point in their lives, and that its lessons had been with them an abiding influence for good. Some of these letters, too sacred and too intimate for print, have been preserved, and are an eloquent testi- mony to the far-reaching power with the meek and lowly of heart of this much-criticised little book, a power that will survive the sarcastic comments of the Press, and even the sneers of Stalky & Co. Of all the tributes to " Eric " none is more moving than that paid by the great Dr. Magee, who was at that time Bishop of Peterborough. In consequence of the Bishop's dictum that " it would be better that England should be free than that England should be compul- sorily sober," a sharp and somewhat bitter controversy had arisen between my father and the Bishop. When in 1883 the latter lay upon what he himself and others thought to be his dying bed, he wrote to my father and in words of touching dignity, and of peculiar pathos as coming from so proud a man, expressed his sorrow for all that had beclouded their friendship, and went on to thank him for having written " Eric," of which he said, " It has been the salvation of my son. You should have known this earlier but for the demon of pride." HARROW DAYS 75 I insert here a few letters, 1 referring to " Eric " and his other works of schoolboy fiction. The first three are from my father to his friend E. S. Beesly. The remain- der are specimens of letters he was constantly receiving from readers of those books. " Harrow, November 16. " My dear Beesly : I fear I forgot to write your name in the ' Eric ' I sent you, a neglect which I will supply hereafter. I hear that it is selling rapidly and that a second edition is likely to be soon required. I know the Saturday Wasp only too well personally, but I won't mention names. His unchristian tone will do the book no harm, except that little fools here have read it and think him an oracle. " The lacrimosity is, I know, too much, and arises from the state of mind in which I wrote it. I really never thought of B , who will probably never see or hear of the book, or N neither. Montagu and Owen are Harrow boys; the latter mentally developed and made to act as he would do if he were ever in such cir- cumstances. Wildney is a little boy named W who was really introduced to me as ' a very nice little fel- low — a regular devil.' He brutalised himself by drink, was expelled, and went to sea. " I had absolutely and totally forgotten young H as much as if he never existed, and it was only by an effort of memory that I now recalled him. You remember infinitely more than me. Russell, too, is a Harrovian. Wildney and Duncan are the favourites here : the book here has sold immensely. I had quite forgotten the I I may mention that my father seldom, if ever, prefixed the date of the year to his letters, but only that of the month. 7 6 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR bottle of wine incident, which was suggested by a carouse before your time. " Ball is C . Tell me if ' Eric ' finds its way among Marlburians and if they and the masters like it. Also please let me know if, and when, a review occurs in the Daily News. The Critic, Spectator, Examiner, Daily Express, and Evening Conrant have all been favourable, and I am daily expecting more. I have had ^50 for the book (this entre nous) and am to have more at the second edition, if there is one. " By the bye, Black quite supposes you to be at work on the ' History ' and will be glad to hear from you when it is at all in a forward state, he bade me tell you. "If you can do anything to help ' Eric,' I know you will. The letters I have received from Oxford and Cambridge have been most kind and also the warm encomiums of boys and master here — the former all the more valuable from their happy and warm spontaneity. " Good-bye, " Ever your affectionate friend, " F. W. Farrar." " Harrow, December 7. "My dear Beesly: One line — I have no time for more — to tell you that I am exceedingly obliged for the Review in the Daily News and feel indebted for your kindness. I hear — but have not yet seen — that the odious ' Press ' has been abusing ' Eric ' and me. I daily expect the second edition. " I have just heard from Brown at K. W. C. ' Eric ' has been read there. No opinion can be got out of Dixon, but H. thinks it will injure the school. Absurd ! but even if so, I am not to blame — for the picture, as HARROW DAYS 77 far as it is one, is highly flattered. K. W. C. has no Mr. Rose, or even Mr. Gordon — or Dr. Rowland. K. W. C. had certainly no Russell or Owen ; and the things that did go on there are really far worse than I have described. By the bye — you are supposed by some readers to be the prototype of Montagu. Are you flat- tered ? It was confidently asserted to me by an old Marlburian. " Ever your affectionate friend, " F. W. Farrar." " Harrow, March 2nd. " My dear Beesly : By all means come on Sunday, whichever you like best. I shall be glad to see you. In these days to me the days are dark, and friends are few. Do not think that I care for the Saturday Review. With Coleridge I deplore unfavourable criticism from the good, but I despise it from the weak, and I welcome it from the bad ! "Julian has done all the good I meant him to do, and more. I have had many warm testimonies as to the good the book has done, and one of them from a judge, one of the most distinguished on the bench, and a per- fect stranger to me. I can despise the lies of the Sat- urday Reviewer. They injure him more than me. Meanwhile thirteen thousand copies of the book have sold already. When you come, tell me frankly as a friend what things offended you. No one is more open than I to candid criticism, and no one winces at it less. " Do come, and believe me always " Your affectionate friend, " F. W. Farrar." 78 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR "Cambridge, November 15, 1874. " Sir : I write to perform a duty that I owe to you and one which I have intended to do for some time. I wish to tell you that I have experienced more pleasure from that schoolboy tale of yours, viz : ' Eric,' than from anything that has happened to me in my life. I first read it at school, and have had a copy by me for years now. " I really can fairly say that I have never gained so much from all that I have ever heard or read, or that has ever happened to me as I have from that book. I like Eric's nature and the pieces of poetry in it im- mensely, and I am sure those to whom I have lent it have also enjoyed it. " Believe me, "Yours truly, "A. B. (Student)." "Norwich, May 29, 1878. " Reverend Sir : As Secretary of a very influential Literary Class, and that moreover in connection with a Churchman's Club, it may perhaps give you some amount of pleasure to hear that a great many members of the class have derived a very great and lasting bene- fit from those eloquent and beautiful books 'Julian Home,' and 'Eric, or Little by Little.' I myself have to thank you most sincerely for writing them. They elevate the mind to a purer and more holy atmosphere, and if read when the mind is in chaos and tumult, they whisper ' peace, calm, blessed peace ! ' They give tone, health, and vigour to the spiritual frame, and feed the lamp of the Shekinah with oil pure as a crystal. In the hour of weakness I have found them a source of strength, and from many of my friends I hear con- HARROW DAYS 79 stantly of the good that has resulted from a thoughtful perusal of your forcible works. . . . " I am, Reverend Sir, " Your faithful servant, " R. D ." "December 29, 1879. " Dear Dr. Farrar : I expect that you will be sur- prised at my addressing you thus, but, although we have never met, you seem to be quite an old friend to me. My special desire is to thank you most heartily and sin- cerely for the great comfort, sympathy, support and en- couragement I have in the first instance received from the reading of your ' Eric ' and ' St. Winifred's,' as a boy : and especially from your Marlborough Sermons, as a young man. I wish that the Captain of every school in England could read what you say." ******* "Hunslet, Leeds, 29, 1, 1 oi. " Reverend and dear Sir : In the belief that the following fact will be of interest to you, and tho' perhaps quite familiar, may give some satisfaction, I venture to write this note — tho' a complete stranger to you. " During some years of work in E. London, and here on the outskirts of Leeds, I have tried to do some- thing by way of getting boys to read books of the healthy sort. And I have repeatedly noticed that both among the very poor of London, and among the better sort of working folk here, boys have always been enthu- siastic in praise of ' Eric ' and ' St. Winifred's.' " I confess that this has surprised me, as I always feared that the clothing of the stories would make them 8o LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR somewhat difficult for the less educated. But I have found myself altogether mistaken. " May I therefore, sir, offer my small tribute of thanks to you on behalf of my own boyhood, and for the many boys who, to my own knowledge, have been delighted, as welj as braced, by the books. " Believe me, Reverend Sir, " Yours obediently, " T. S. G. B , "Curate, Hunslet Parish Church." "March 27, 1902. " My dear Sir : I am taking the liberty of writing to you without personally knowing you, because I wished to tell you what good your books have done me. I left Shrewsbury School at Xmas, and it was through read- ing ' Eric ' that I first learnt to hate sin, and ever since that time, about four years ago, I have tried to live a pure, brave, and true life at school ; and I have tried to help others to do the same, and I know in some cases by God's help I have not failed. I feel so deeply grate- ful to you for writing such books, for I tremble to think what my school life would have been, if I had gone on as I was doing till I read ' Eric ' and others. I was going into the army, but now it is my dearest wish to become a priest, so I shall be going to Oxford, I think, but not just yet. I felt I must write to you, so please do not mind. " I wish I had the honour of your acquaintance : some day I may have, perhaps, when I am a man, and not just a big boy. " With many thanks, " Believe me, " Ever yours gratefully, "W. H. P. K ." HARROW DAYS 8 1 " Newcastle-on-Tyne. " Sir : Having been too deeply interested for words in a very touching work edited by you, called ' Eric, or Little by Little,' I take the extreme liberty, which I hope you will excuse, of addressing myself to you, and the further liberty of confessing a very great curiosity to know the exact situations of various places mentioned, and the further or present history and names of those mentioned in that beautiful, because unadorned, little history. " Your little schoolboy history has led me to reflect on my former life and resolve with not my own strength to fit myself for a useful man, and not a mere backslider as heretofore. " I pledge myself as a boy of honour and a gentleman's son not to disclose whatever you may choose to honour me with to any one whatever. I also sign my true name to this letter. " I am, sir, " Yours truly, " R. C. A — r The following appreciation written after his death may be inserted here : — "the late dean farrar "A great Churchman is dead, but to boys he will always be remembered as the author of two of the finest school tales ever written. In ' Eric ' and ' St. Winifred's ' he has left behind him a more lasting monument than any that could be erected of marble. He wrote of the deeper emotions of boy life and touched its inner chord in a way which, it seems to us, no other writer has ever equalled. 82 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR So wonderfully beautiful and pathetic are some of the passages in these two stories that even the most hard- ened reader cannot get over them without tears coming into his eyes ; and yet they are so thoroughly manly. We look upon the heroes as if they were our friends ; we glory in their triumphs, we suffer with them in their misfortunes. The good that these two books have done must be incalculable, and in reading them one feels the stronger to withstand temptation and a more loving spirit enters the heart for one's fellow-men. "F. J. S." FARRAR AS A TEACHER The epithet which most characteristically attaches to my father's qualities as a teacher is " stimulating." His old friend Dr. Butler, then head-master of Harrow, 1 says in a letter about this date, " your teaching and inspiring powers would throw life and thought into any form of any school in England." He was not content to be merely an effective teacher within the limits of a narrow routine, but aimed at realising for himself, and imparting to others, the true meaning and ideal of education as an instrument of bringing out the full powers of the mind and equipping the student for the duties of life. Brill- iant as were his own scholastic attainments, and his powers as a classical tutor, he was not content with instilling an accurate knowledge of Greek and Latin syntax, or facility in prose and verse composition, which in those days were regarded in most public schools as the be-all and end-all of a classical education, but tried to awaken in his pupils a sense of the grandeur of the literature which is enshrined in those " dead " languages, to lead them to appreciate the "thunderous lilt" of Greek 1 The present Master of Trinity. HARROW DAYS 83 epic, the touching and voluptuous tenderness of Latin elegy, the regal pomp of history, the gorgeous and phil- osophic mystery of the old dramatic fables, 1 to regard the Odyssey as " the best novel that was ever written," and Herodotus as a Greek romance of the rise and fall of empires, and " strange stories of the deaths of kings." In this connection I cannot refrain from inserting the fine rendering of the denouement of the Odyssey which he gives in " Julian Home " : — " So he read to them how Ulysses returned in the guise of a beggar, after twenty years of war and wander- ing, to his own palace-door, and saw the haughty suitors revelling in his halls ; and how, as he reached the door, Argus, the hunting-dog, now old and neglected, and full of fleas, recollected him when all had forgotten him, and fawned upon him, and licked his hand and died ; and how the suitors insulted him, and one of them threw a footstool at him, which by one quick move he avoided, and said nothing, and another flung a shin-bone at his head, which he caught in his hand, and said nothing, but only smiled grimly in his heart — ever so little, a grim, sardonic smile ; and how the old nurse recognised him by the scar of the boar's tusk on his leg, but he quickly repressed the exclamation of wonderment which sprang to her lips ; and how he sat, ragged but princely, by the fire in his hall, and the red light flickered over him, and he spake to the suitors words of solemn admo- nition ; and how, when Agelaus warned them, a strange foreboding seized their souls, and they looked at each other with great eyes, and smiled with alien lips, and burst into quenchless laughter, though their eyes were filled with tears of blood : and how Ulysses drew his own mighty bow, which not one of them could use, and how 1 Cf. " Julian Home." 84 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR he handled it, and twanged the string till it sang like a swallow in his ear, and sent the arrow flying with a whiz through the twelve iron rings of the line of axes ; and then, lastly, how like to a god, he leaped on his own threshold with a shout, and emptied his quiver on the ground, and gathered his rags about him, and, aided by the young Telemachus and the divine swineherd, sent hurtling into the band of wine-stained rioters the swift arrows of inevitable death." But, more than this, he first kindled in the heart of many a Marlborough and Harrow boy a love for Eng- lish literature, and especially for English poetry, for which they have blessed his name all their lives. He was, as Dr. Thring of Uppingham pithily said of him, " not a mere knowledge-box with the lid open, but a true guide and teacher, able and willing to help, inspirit, and lead the way." Though he had never been trained in any branch of natural science, and indeed had no special aptitude in that direction, he was very keen to implant in his boys a love of nature and to encourage the study of natural history. With this object he founded the Harrow Natural History Society, a pioneer of many similar soci- eties. He took great pains to ascertain from Sir Joseph Hooker and others the best method of teaching botany and became himself a fairly proficient botanist. The following appreciation, by one of his favourite Harrow pupils, Mr. George Russell, gives an excellent description of my father's teaching : — " When I was at Harrow, Farrar was an assistant mas- ter there, and I have always blessed the day when I fell under his influence. At that time he had charge of ' the Remove,' — the top form of the Lower School, — the HARROW DAYS 85 average age of the boys who composed it being, I suppose, about fourteen. Every one who knows Public Schools knows that boys of that age are thorough Philistines, despising intellect and glorying in their brutal ignorance. For such creatures it was a most beneficial experience to pass into Farrar's hands. He employed all his varied resources — kindness, sympathy, sternness, rhetoric, sar- casm — in the effort to make us feel ashamed of being ignorant, and anxious to know. He was ruthless in his determination to disturb what he called the ' duck- weed ' — the mass of sheer indolence and fatuity which pervaded his form — and to bring out and encourage the faintest signs of perception and intelligence. His contagious enthusiasm stimulated anything which we possessed in the way of intellectual taste or power. "He taught us to love what was beautiful in literature, art, and nature. He lived and moved and had his being in poetry, and was never so happy as when helping us to illustrate our Virgil or Euripides from Wordsworth and Milton. His Dissertation on Coleridge in the Fellow- ship examination at Trinity had won the rare and stately praise of Dr. Whewell, and he loved to indoctrinate his Harrow pupils with the wisdom of ' the great poet- philosopher.' Again, he had early passed under the influence of Ruskin, and that influence reproduced itself in the constant endeavour to make us see the loveliness of common things, — sunsets and wild flowers and fresh grass and autumn leaves. He tried to make us under- stand Nature as well as love her, by elementary lessons in botany and mineralogy. He decorated his school- room with antique casts as models of form, and Fra Angelico's blue Madonnas and rose-coloured angels on golden backgrounds as models of colour. " He brought illustrations for his teaching from Alps 86 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR and rivers and rainbows, and pursued his love of beauty down to the microcosm of gems and bindings, illumina- tions and stained glass. He laid great stress on delicate and graceful penmanship — not a common accomplish- ment among schoolboys, — and he paid heed to the minutest details of his pupils' appearance and manners. ' B , how many centuries have elapsed since your boots were last cleaned ? ' is a sonorous interrogation which comes rolling on the ear of memory, blent with such voices as these : ' A , don't sit there " gorgonising me with your stony British stare," ' and ' C , your igno- rance is so profound that it ossifies the very powers of scorn.' " As some critics here depreciated Farrar's preaching, it is only fair to say that at Harrow it was a powerful influence for good. His sermons in the School Chapel were events long looked forward to and deeply enjoyed. His exuberance of rhetoric, though in latter years it offended adult audiences, awed and fascinated boys, and his solemn yet glowing appeals for righteousness and purity and moral courage left permanent dints on our hearts, and — what is less usual — on our lives. I have never forgotten the first sermon which I heard from him. It was preached after the first communion of the boys confirmed at Harrow on March 19, 1868, and is printed under the title ' Hope in Christ,' in the volume called ' The Fall of Man, and other Sermons.' I had never before heard eloquence employed in the service of religion, and the effect was indelible." Another old Harrovian thus writes : — "The news of Farrar's death — one can't somehow lead off with a prefix or an affix to the name of the noble- hearted man now gone to rest, preferring to remember HARROW DAYS 87 him and style him as we did when boys at school — will be keenly felt by many a middle-aged man who came beneath his genial influence years ago. With us he was always Farrar ; no soubriquet, complimentary or other- wise, was ever fastened on him : the nature and the ele- vated character of the man forbade the slightest approach to juvenile frivolity ; and whilst we admired and re- spected, we all loved Farrar. It was my inestimable privilege to pass the best part of three years under his be- nign control, for I was in the second shell, the first shell, and the remove with him at Harrow, and I can most truth- fully aver that the memories of the example he set his form, and the great lesson of human charity which he impressed upon our minds, cannot fail to have proved a blessing to us all in after life. In all my experience of this man of exquisite nature, and our associations con- tinued long after the old Harrow days, I never heard him utter an ill-natured or a harsh observation concern- ing any human being. His great and increasing object was to discover what good an individual possessed, and to develop that good, no matter how small, by all that in him lay. " In pursuance of this end he used to lay himself out to gain the confidence as well as the respect and the regard of his form, and the boys reciprocated the feel- ings of good-will that he expressed towards them by act as well as word. There was no master in the school who could show a lighter punishment book, for even if his boys were disinclined for work, their affection for their master insured discipline amongst them ; and as for any- body attempting to deceive Farrar, who always trusted to one's honour, why, the rest of the form would have had something to say and do that would have been most unpleasant to the delinquent. Our dear old master — 88 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR one calls him old, though he was on the sunny side of his eighth lustrum at the time I am writing of — however, possessed methods peculiarly his own for getting his boys to work. If a lad professed his inability to commit to memory the Latin lines included in a repetition lesson, Farrar would substitute Milton for the other poet, as- suring his victim with a serene smile that the substituted task was not beyond the capacity of the most case-hard- ened victim of Circe — a very favourite expression of his — that had ever conceived the world to be formed in the humble imitation of a cricket-ball : this being the utmost limit of sarcasm to which our master would com- mit himself. So in the case of other work, a boy who evinced a desire to cut one subject was promptly coun- tered by the imposition of another, and perhaps easier, task which for very shame he could not plead his in- ability to perform. " I am not aware that in any of the allusions which have been made to the life-work of Dr. Farrar that a reference has been made to the devotion he bestowed upon natural history subjects. His form room beneath the Vaughan Library was more like a miniature museum than a place for instructing a lot of boys in Greek and Latin. It was entirely owing to his initiative that special prizes, and valuable ones too, were offered in successive years for the best collections of birds' eggs, butterflies, fresh-water and land shells, and such like objects, his idea being to provide an interest in life for the boys who were not enthusiastic in the matter of cricket. An ex- ceptionally fine swimmer himself, he was determined that every boy in his form should acquire the art of keeping himself above water ; and in pursuance of his desire to attain that end he used to give out at the com- mencement of the summer term that as soon as every HARROW DAYS 89 boy could swim the length of ' Ducker ' twice, he would let the whole form off a morning school. The hint was always taken, and it became the business of the big boys to see that the small ones qualified for the test. Farrar even went the length of taking part in the football match which took place between Remove A and Remove B, but it must be confessed that we did not gain much by his assistance; for the master of our opponents, Mr. E. E. Bowen, a great athlete, assisted his boys, and so Remove B lost on the deal, but we won the match, and in his delight our dear old master let us off another first school, r which gave us an additional hour in bed the next morn- ing. " At the time when Dr. Farrar was appointed Uni- versity preacher at Cambridge it was my lot to occupy rooms in Caius just opposite St. Mary's Church, and in an unguarded moment I let it become known that he had invited himself to tea after the service. The result was a scene that he referred to years afterward, when we met one day in Ludgate Hill, as one of the most gratifying experiences of his life, as my rather restricted quarters were filled to overflowing with old Harrow boys all eager to greet our guest. Nor was there one amongst them that went empty away, for he had a word of good- will and counsel for all, and not a few amongst them expressed their sense of the value of his service. In short Farrar possessed a faculty such as Arnold had, for identifying himself with the nature of the boys under his care, and hence the secret of his influence over them. Incapable as he was of a dishonourable action, his example was contagious, and he knew his power and exercised it for the benefit of us all. As a churchman, as a writer, and as a scholar he was doubtless great ; but as a teacher for the young he stood alone amongst his 90 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR contemporaries. Had it been otherwise the memories of his gentleness of disposition, his nobility of character, his manliness, and love of truth, would have long since passed away instead of remaining crystallised in the minds of many others who, like myself, were privileged to be benefited by the great truths he expounded for the welfare of his boys." When I wrote to the writer of the above extract, which appeared in the Morning Advertiser, for his per- mission to make use of it, I received from him the follow- ing very kind answer : — " Morning Advertiser, Fleet St. July 26, 1903. " Dear Sir : My Editor has handed to me your letter to him, and also the enclosure which I hasten to reply to. It will afford me much melancholy satisfaction if you make any use of what I wrote about your dear, good father, for whom my respect and boyish love will ever continue, though I left Harrow as far back as 1868. He was, to my mind, the ideal adviser for the young, a Christian with a great mind, and a scholar, yet his gen- tleness and goodness were such that he was incapable of despising the direst of his 'victims of Circe,' amongst whom I fear I was conspicuous. I was with him for nearly two years in the ' Remove,' and I never heard him say an ill-natured or an unkind thing about a living creature, except to a boy who had lied to him. Very few fellows, however, tried a falsehood with your father, for we others, idle, lazy, or whatever we were, would not stand that, for he possessed a faculty for making every- body who came in contact with him remember that he was a gentleman : so in our form it was considered the height of blackguardism to 1 deceive Farrar.' I only HARROW DAYS 9' wish we had all followed out his teachings in after life. You must excuse the abnormal length of this letter, but your father is a theme upon which I have great diffi- culty in restraining my feelings. . . . " Yours very truly, i< >' After preaching the University Sermon alluded to above, my father received the following letter, — dated, it will be noticed, nine months later : — " Dear Sir : I have taken up my pen to write to you more than once, but until now have never really deter- mined on doing so. " Please excuse the liberty I take in addressing you. The fact is, since I heard your sermon preached before the University of Cambridge in March last, my desires and aims have been so completely changed that it is my duty as well as great pleasure to write and inform you, that you, through God's grace, have been the means of it. " Your book of sermons has helped me on still further, and I trust you will soon publish another set. " I suppose a minister must preach for an object ! If yours was to set your hearers' desires on high, above this earth, and its passing pleasures, in one you have succeeded, and I pray, my dear sir, you will have long years to effect changes as complete as mine. " I am, with great respect, "A University Man. "January 18, 1869." 92 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR The following contribution is placed at my service by his old pupil, Walter Leaf, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and senior Classic in 1874: — "In 1866, when I first knew Harrow, Farrar was, I think, already looked upon by his school at large as by far the most distinguished member of the staff — the Head Master being, of course, hors concours. Farrar himself, I well remember, was never tired of telling us that our greatest man was Westcott ; but whatever truth there may have been in this unselfish eulogy, Westcott's reputation was at that time limited to academical and theological regions, while Farrar was fast making a name in the world at large; and his F.R.S. was an official stamp which we boys were ready enough to recognise and reverence. We believed this distinction to have been given for his philological work, and respected to the full his Greek Grammar — even his Greek Grammar card, which summed up in striking form, with vivid illus- trations, some of the most characteristic peculiarities of Greek Syntax. " Personally I had no experience of Farrar as a form- master. In 1866 he was still taking a low form — lower than the one at which I entered the school. But he was never at his best as a teacher of a low form ; his half- humorous impatience of the dull and backward was not all assumed, and his quick sympathies needed the in- telligent response of the picked boys before his powers of stimulating and guidance could show themselves. Hence it was that he was never so happy at Harrow, where he never had a high form, as with the Sixth at Marlborough. But I was during my whole school career his ' pupil ' in the technical sense, which at Harrow practically excluded teaching ; for the weekly ' pupil- room,' where the tutor gave a lesson of an hour to the HARROW DAYS 93 whole of his pupils in the lower school, was by the nature of the case somewhat of a farce, and was looked upon both by boys and tutor as a perfunctory task. " It was, I think, his public reputation which induced my father to place me under him, for when he went to reside at Harrow he knew none of the masters person- ally. But this official connection led to a warm and inti- mate friendship between Farrar and my parents, which lasted to the end. As regards myself, the relation of pupil and tutor brought me ample instruction, though outside the official time-table. Farrar's sympathy, when once engaged, was unfailing ; and his talk, with its infi- nite resources of quotation and literary enthusiasm, was just what was wanted to stir a boy's open but unin- structed spirit. It would be too much to pretend that after a lapse of nearly forty years I can remember many details ; but I have a distinct recollection of a constant influence brought to bear upon my somewhat unimagi- native nature in favour of poetry. It is perhaps charac- teristic that one poem which I remember approaching through him was Myer's ' St. Paul,' then, of course, very recently published. It appealed to him unmistak- ably, and his admiration was handed on to me. " But our purely personal relations were, of course, even more important to me than the intellectual. The high moral standard which he set before himself, and fearlessly impressed upon us boys, may be lightly passed over here, for his whole life tells equally of it. We were all sensible of it through his sermons, and in private intercourse with him the better we knew him the more we saw that his preaching spoke the inmost being of the man. But in the every-day affairs of life those who had to deal with him could always trust to his sympathy and active help. I still remember the trifling incident which 94 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR first won the heart of a shy and reserved new boy. In the temporary absence of our regular master, the form was taken by a colleague not gifted with a warm heart or keen insight. He brought up against me an imaginary offence, and, refusing to listen to my denial and expla- nation, gave me my first punishment. It was trifling enough in itself, some ' fifty lines ' ; but it had to be written out on special paper, 'pun-paper,' which one had to get from one's tutor. Smarting with the in- justice, I went to Farrar to get the paper; and I have never forgotten the sympathy and kindness with which he heard what I had to say, and instead of giving me the ' pun-paper ' promised to speak to his colleague. I heard no more of my punishment. "Shortly before I left Harrow he succeeded to the mastership of a large house which, during the long and ultimately fatal illness of his predecessor, had lapsed into notorious want of discipline. I had hitherto been living with my parents as home-boarder ; but now Farrar strongly urged upon them and me that I should enter his house as head, practically undertaking the re- duction of it to order. The task was a formidable one both for him and for me. I foresaw the intense unpopu- larity which my position would involve, and begged to be excused. But he pressed and gained his point. Into the struggle which followed I need not enter ; it was even harder than I anticipated. But when it was once over I saw that Farrar had been right ; and I have ever looked upon it as my greatest debt to him that he should have insisted upon my taking this first share of the grave responsibility of life. It was a lesson that I needed, and I am most grateful for the firmness with which he insisted on teaching it. " Another great debt brings none but pleasant memo- HARROW DAYS 95 ries with it. When he went to Palestine in 1870, shortly- after I had left the school, he asked me to go with him and his old friend W. F. Ingelow, brother of the poet- ess. The journey was a hurried one, as it had to be compressed into the Easter holidays. We went by Alex- andria to Jaffa and Jerusalem, riding north to Mount Gerizim, where we were present at the most interesting ceremony of the Samaritan Passover. We then went on by Nazareth to the Lake of Gennesaret, and thence by Safed and the coast road past Tyre and Sidon to Beirut and back by Alexandria (with a flying visit to Cairo) and Naples, where I left my companions to join my parents in Florence. " It is needless to say how admirably qualified Farrar was to stir the imagination on every site of the Holy Land — always ready with his historical reminiscences and the apt quotations, bearing the little hardships of travel with a grim patience — for he did not enjoy them — yet ever active and alert to all that could throw a light upon the great subject on which his mind was continually brooding. Of incidents somewhat outside the ordinary routine of the journey I remember particularly a visit to Mr. Holman Hunt in his studio at Jerusalem ; he was then, I think, engaged on studies for ' Christ among the Doctors.' The journey had its humorous events. In those days it was considered proper for every traveller to carry a revolver for defence against the possible party of marauding Bedawin. Farrar, who was destitute of the warrior's instinct, regarded his weapon with consid- erable anxiety. One evening, however, he thought he ought to clean it and went outside the tent for the pur- pose. Ingelow and I, sitting outside, heard a report — involuntary of course — and two holes in the tent showed that the bullet had passed within measurable distance of 96 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR our heads. Then I have a vivid recollection of his face in the tent of the Sheikh of the Samaritans on Mount Gerizim, when a nargileh was placed before him and he was told that courtesy to our host required him to smoke it. Again, when our tent was blown down upon us in a violent thunderstorm at Safed, I remember the comic pathos of his voice exclaiming, ' I'm outside 1 — a posi- tion which Ingelow and I presently shared. The con- tretemps, by the way, pleasantly enlarged our experience — tents and bedding alike were too soaked for further use ; and for the rest of our journey to Beirut we had to trust for shelter to the hospitality of the village sheikh or the native caravans. " But of all my recollections the clearest and deepest, because strengthened and confirmed by many years of later intercourse, is that of the warm and generous heart which offered a full and loyal friendship so early and in such wise fashion." The charm and interest of his teaching remain as a tradition in the memories of many old pupils, but a more permanent monument of his skill as a trainer of scholars is enshrined in his " Greek Syntax," which was amplified out of Farrar's " Greek Card," so well known to many generations of schoolboys, and was first published in March, 1867. The scope of this work is best indi- cated by a citation from its preface : — " I aimed above all things at making every point intel- ligible by furnishing for every usage (as far as possible) a satisfactory reason ; and by thus trying to eliminate all mere grammatical mysticism, I hoped that I should also render grammar mteresti?ig to every boy who has any aptitude for such studies, and is sufficiently advanced to understand them. On the latter point I venture to HARROW DAYS 97 lay some stress. I have published elsewhere my rea- sons for believing that we commence too soon the study of formal grammar, and that this study, which is in itself a valuable and noble one, should be reserved to a later age and for more matured capacities than is at present thought necessary. I should never think of putting this Grammar into the hands of boys who have no aptitude for linguistic studies, or of any boys below the fifth or sixth forms of our public schools ; and I have purposely avoided stating rules or reasons under a form in which they could be learned by rote. Taught in a parrot-like manner to crude minds, I believe that grammar becomes bewildering and pernicious; taught at a later age and in a more rational method, I believe that it will be found to furnish a most valuable insight into the logical and metaphysical laws which regulate the expression of human thought, and that it will always maintain its ground as an important branch of knowledge, and a valuable means of intellectual training. " All grammars must necessarily traverse a good deal of common ground, but the careful perusal of a very few of the following pages will prove, I trust, that this Syn- tax differs in its method from all, or nearly all, that have preceded it ; partly in the more free and informal manner of treatment, partly in its perpetual reference to the gen- eral principles of Comparative Philology, and partly in its constant endeavour to leave no single idiom of Greek unillustrated by the similar idioms or peculiarities of other ancient languages, of modern languages, and of English. A good illustration often throws over an idiom a flood of light unattainable by the most lengthy expla- nation ; and I feel great hopes that a student who has gone, carefully, through the following pages will, — in addition to what he will have learnt about ancient Greek, 98 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR — have acquired some insight into the principles of his own and of other languages. Further than this, I shall have failed in my endeavour if he do not also gain some interest in observing the laws and great cyclical ten- dencies of language in general. The historical devel- opment of one language bears a close analogy to the historical development of a large majority of the rest ; and this is the reason why I have called such repeated attention to modern Greek, and to the traces in Hellen- istic Greek, which in modern Greek are still further developed and carried to their legitimate result." How amply the " Greek Syntax " fulfilled those ob- jects, let any public-school classical master testify. That it met a long-felt want is proved by its immediate success and by the fact that by 1880 it had reached its eleventh edition. 1 Every rule of syntax is explained in lucid English, and impressed on the memory by a wealth of illustration which makes the book a pleasure to read. Indeed, a friend who is by no means a profound scholar once told me, long after he had abandoned classical studies, that he found it as interesting as a novel, and frequently picked it up for the amusement of an idle hour. Before Farrar appeared to ease their shoulders from the burden, the public-school boys of England had groaned under the yoke of the " Primer," of which he thus writes : — " The ' Primer ' — that utterly disastrous legacy of the commission, which, in spite of the strenuous opposition of many of us, is now forced as a standard grammar upon nine great public, and countless private, schools — is a delightful manual, in which the little victim, not without amazement, learns by heart in Latin such a 1 Over 14,500 copies of this book have been sold. HARROW DAYS 99 multitude of lucid empiricisms as that ' factitive verbs have two accusatives, one of the object, the other of the oblique complement.' Here, too, at the tender age of eight or nine his young imagination is terrified, often by ignorant men, with such incubi and succubi as ' quid-quale verbs,' ' gerundive attractions,' ' sub- oblique clauses,' 'spirants,' 'receptive complements,' ' relations circumstantive and probative,' ' quasi pas- sives,' 'semi-deponents,' and I know not what, — which are hard enough for grown men to understand, even if they do not despise this clatter of pedantic (be- cause needless) polysyllables, but which to a child must be worse than 'gorgons and hydras and chimaeras dire.' " The above extract is taken from a lecture " On Some Defects in Public School Education," delivered by my father before the Royal Institution. It is a significant fact and highly characteristic of his energy and versatil- ity that, at the very time he was bringing out this ' Syn- tax,' which was to do so much, not only to make smooth for the public-school boy the stony paths of classical learning, but to vindicate his own reputation as a scholar, he should simultaneously be engaged in preparing the most tremendous onslaught that has ever been delivered on the system of classical education as then in vogue. The "Syntax" was published in March, 1867; the Royal Institution lecture had been given in February of the same year. This attack on current methods of education — all the more effective for being delivered, as it were, from within, by a scholar whose achievements as a schoolboy and undergraduate had been exception- ally brilliant, and who was armed with the experience of thirteen full years of labour spent in the heart of public schools and devoted to their service — mercilessly ex- ioo LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR posed the shortcomings of a system which turned out boys, not only destitute of all literary and scientific culture, but even so ignorant of the dead languages in which they had been assiduously drilled for an indefi- nite term of years, that they could not speak two Latin sentences, or construe Xenophon without a crib. He drove home this indictment of the hide-bound obscurantism and obsolete pedantry of so-called " classi- cal " education, with all the force of his ardent rhetoric, in glowing periods, enriched with a wealth of imagery, illustration, and quotation. The lecture is now out of print. The subject was so important, its effect has been so far-reaching, and its style is so characteristic that I have here ventured to take from it a few extracts which will give some idea of its scope. A Royal Commission had recently reported on pub- lic schools ; the lecture was an outcome of this report, drew popular attention to its findings, and gave voice to the determination of the younger and more progres- sive school of teachers that the old system should be reformed : — " I must, then, avow my own deliberate opinion — arrived at in the teeth of the strongest possible bias and prejudice in the opposite direction — arrived at with the fullest possible knowledge of every single argu- ment which may be urged on the other side — I must avow my distinct conviction, that our present system of exclusively classical education as a whole, and carried out as we do carry it out, is a deplorable failure. I say it, knowing that the words are strong words, but not without having considered them well ; and I say it be- cause that system has been ' weighed in the balance and found wanting.' It is no epigram, but a simple fact, to say that classical education neglects all the powers of HARROW DAYS IOI some minds, and some of the powers of all minds. In the case of the few it has a value, which, being partial, is unsatisfactory ; in the case of the vast multitude, it ends in utter and irremediable waste. "The proofs of the fact are now but too patent in the faithful report of eminent and most friendly commis- sioners. For after diligent, anxious, and repeated study of the four thick blue volumes in which their laborious investigations lie buried from the public ken, I can draw from them no other conclusion than that which may be summed up in these few words : That but a small pro- portion of our boys (say twenty-five per cent) go to the universities ; that yet the entire curriculum of our public schools is framed with a view to the universities ; and that even of this poor twenty-five per cent, who are, as it were, the very flower and fruit of the system, — and if I may so phrase it, its raison d'etre, — a considerable number (many would be inclined to say the larger num- ber) leave school at the age of eighteen or nineteen, not only ignorant of history, both ancient and modern, ignorant of geography and chronology ; ignorant of every single modern language ; ignorant of their own language and often of its mere spelling ; ignorant of every single science ; ignorant of the merest elements of geometry and mathematics ; ignorant of music ; ignorant of draw- ing ; profoundly ignorant of that Greek and Latin to which the long, ineffectual years of their aimless teach- ing have been professedly devoted ; and, we may add, besides all this, and perhaps worst of all, completely igno- rant of — altogether content with — their own astonish- ing and consummate ignorance. 102 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR " Are we, in the nineteenth century, to learn no more and to teach no more — nay, to attempt and to achieve actually less — than was learnt by young Romans in the school of Quintilian, or at best by Gregory and Basil in the retirement of Athens ? The young Greek learnt something of geometry ; the young Roman something of law ; even the young monk of the Middle Ages learnt in his meagre quadrivium some scraps of such science as was then to be had. Are we alone to follow the example of the Chinese in a changeless imitation of our ancestors, and to confine our eager boys for ever between the blank walls of an ancient cemetery, which contains only the sepulchres of two dead tongues ? " That Greek or Latin — taught in a shorter period, and in a more comprehensive manner — should remain as the solid basis of a liberal education, we are all (or nearly all) agreed : none can hold such an opinion more strongly than myself ; but why can it not be frankly recognised that an education confined to Greek and Latin is a failure because it is an anachronism ? It has outlived its time. It is utterly out of harmony with the spirit of the age. It may have been all very well three centuries ago, but is it to remain unaltered after three centuries, which in the history of the human race have the importance of thirty ? This is an age of progress, and we keep spinning round and round on the same pivot ; an age of observation and experiment, and we keep bowing and scraping to mere authority ; an age, as Professor Huxley has said, ' full of modern artillery, and we turn out our boys to do battle in it, equipped with the sword and shield of an ancient gladiator.' Its continuance is due not to its importance, but mainly, as the commissioners admit, to custom and prescription ; and now the new wine is bursting the old bottles." HARROW DAYS 103 In " Men I Have Known " my father thus writes of the effect of this lecture : — " Struck with the good effect of interest in science on the intellectual development of many boys, I urged in my Lecture that the very artificial drilling in Latin and Greek verse should be minimised, and entirely aban- doned in the case of boys who had no sort of aptitude for it. I had known boys, who after years of training in it, only succeeded in producing at last some limping and abortive heptameter ! Sir Henry Holland was in the chair; Professor Tyndall, Mr. Spottiswoode, after- wards President of the Royal Society, and other scien- tific leaders were present. They hailed my Lecture with the utmost warmth — paid it the unusual honour of printing it, not in epitome, but at full length, in the Transactions, and also begged me to publish it as a separate pamphlet. I was, of course, howled at as a hopeless Philistine by all who were stereotyped in the old classical system. That is the result which invariably follows the enunciation of new truths or plans for nec- essary reform. But the Lecture produced a marked effect. At that time there was certainly not more than one well-known school which had a ' Science Master ' ; now there is scarcely a school of note which has not. Then the ' Latin verse ' system — which for most boys was almost abysmally useless, or which, at the best, only produced very indirect results — was in all but universal practice : now it is almost entirely abandoned. This is not the only battle in my life in which outbursts of ridicule and anathema have been wholly fruitless to hinder progress in a cause which I had ventured to plead at a time when it was new and entirely unpopular. I had one reward in the lifelong pleasure of enjoying some intercourse with men who hailed my advocacy with 104 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR the highest approval. It was in consequence of thte, and events which followed, that I first received the fol- lowing very interesting letter from Mr. Darwin. He wrote : — "'March 5, 1867. " ' My dear .Sir : I am very much obliged to you for your kind present of your Lecture. We have read it aloud with the greatest interest, and I agree to every word. I admire your candour and wonderful freedom from prejudice ; for I feel an inward conviction that if I had been a great classical scholar I should never have been able to have judged fairly on the subject. As it is, I am one of the root and branch men, and would leave classics to be learnt by those who have sufficient zeal and the high taste requisite for their appreciation. You have indeed done a great public service by speaking out so boldly. Scientific men might rail for ever, and it would only be said that they railed at what they did not understand. I was at school at Shrewsbury under a great scholar, Dr. Butler. I learnt absolutely nothing except by amusing myself by reading and experiment- ing in chemistry. Dr. Butler somehow found this out, and publicly sneered at me before the whole school for such gross waste of time. I remember he called me a Poco curante, which not understanding 1 thought was a dreadful name. " ' I wish you had shown in your Lecture how science could practically be taught in a great school. I have often heard it objected that this could not be done, and I never knew what to say in answer. I heartily hope that you may live to see your zeal and labour produce good fruit ; and with my best thanks, I remain, my dear sir, " ' Yours very sincerely, " ' Charles Darwin.' HARROW DAYS 105 "Mr. Frederic Harrison wrote: — "'7 New Square, Lincoln's Inn, March 27th. " ' My dear Farrar : I have read your Lecture with very great delight. I thoroughly go with you, and I feel that such words coming from such a quarter and from the position from which you utter them, are worth volumes from any other. I know how much public spirit it takes for any one in the place you hold to speak his mind independently, but such expressions of yours make it easier for others to be candid. And they will be. There is one point in which I think your Lecture fails to be consistent with itself. The style in which the old classical system is condemned by you is in a measure its own justification. It may fairly claim in the felicity of expression and the fulness of illustration and reference an example of the literary value of scholarly training. The attack on scholarship could only have come from a scholar. It is hit by a shaft from its own wing. " 1 Yours ever truly, " ' Frederic Harrison.' " My Lecture on Public School Education was fol- lowed by another, on January 31, 1868; by various papers in magazines; by various speeches; by a volume of Essays 1 which I edited, and which were contributed by Mr. C. S. Parker, M.P., Lord Houghton, Archdeacon Wilson, Professor Sedgwick, Professor Seeley, Professor Hales, and myself. But perhaps the chief effect of the initiative I had taken was that I was asked to read a 1 Sc. : " Essays on a Liberal Education." [The Essay on " Greek and Latin Verse Composition as a General Branch of Education " is by the editor.] io6 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR paper on the subject at the meeting of the British Asso- ciation in Nottingham, 1867. At the reading of that paper many scientific men were present. The British Association granted my request to form a Committee on the subject of Public School Education. The members of the Committee were Professors Tyndall and Huxley, Archdeacon Wilson (then a Master at Rugby), the late Sir G. Grove, Mr. Griffiths, secretary of the Associa- tion, and myself. I remember a delightful dinner at my house at Harrow, at which, among others, Tyndall, Huxley, and Mr. Herbert Spencer were present, when we discussed the subject. Another of our meetings was at Professor Huxley's, where we dined, and where I remember that Sir G. Grove, illustrating the general ignorance of the most ordinary matters of science, said that he had once vainly challenged any one of a society of gentlemen to tell him accurately the difference be- tween a barometer and a thermometer ! As a result of the discussion, Archdeacon Wilson and I drew up a report, which was freely annotated by the other mem- bers, especially by Professor Tyndall. " This report was accepted and printed by the British Association. The consensus of opinion in favour of our views grew constantly stronger, and the futile character of the old public-school curriculum has been so far amended that it is no longer a subject of regret and complaint." Concurrently with his other work, my father was much engaged at this period in philological studies. In i860 he published "An Essay on the Origin of Lan- guage," based on modern researches and especially on the works of M. Renan; in 1865, "Chapters on Lan- guage"; in 1870, "Families of Speech, Four Lectures delivered before the Royal Institution of Great Britain HARROW DAYS in March, 1869." In 1878 the "Chapters on Lan- guage " and " Families of Speech " were reprinted in a single volume, " Language and Languages." His "Origin of Language" attracted the notice of Charles Darwin, who was so much struck by the book that in 1866 he proposed my father for the Fellowship of the Royal Society, to which he was duly elected. In this distinction, which is not often attained by those whose sphere is literature rather than natural science, he felt a justifiable pride. In this connection the following letter which my father received from Darwin is of interest : — " Down, Bromley, Kent, November 2. " Dear Sir : As I have never studied the science of language, it may, perhaps, be presumptuous, but I cannot resist the pleasure of telling you what interest and pleasure I have derived from hearing read aloud t your volume. " I formerly read Max M idler, and thought his theory (if it deserves to be called so) both obscure and weak ; and now, after hearing what you say, I feel sure that this is the case, and that your cause will ultimately triumph. " My indirect interest in your book has been increased from Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood, whom you often quote, being my brother-in-law. " No one could dissent from my views on the modifi- cation of species with more courtesy than you do. But from the tenor of your mind, I feel an entire and com- fortable conviction (and which cannot possibly be dis- turbed), that, if your studies led you to attend much to general questions in Natural History, you would come to the same conclusions that I have done. io8 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR " Have you ever read Huxley's little book of Six Lec- tures ? I would gladly send you a copy if you think you would read it. Considering what geology teaches us, the argument for the supposed immutability of specific types seems to me much the same as if, in a nation which had no old writings, some wise old savage was to say that his language had never changed ; but my metaphor is too long to fill up. " Pray believe me, dear sir, yours very sincerely obH S ed ' «Ch. Darwin." Though an evolutionist in philology, my father, who, of course, made no claim to be a biologist, never fully accepted the Darwinian theory of evolution in the ani- mal kingdom, inclining to the belief that species were immutable. But he imported no " odium theologicum " into the discussion, and always regarded the question of the evolution of species as an open one to be decided on purely scientific grounds. He thus writes : — " Acknowledging his gift of the ' Descent of Man,' I said that one insuperable difficulty in the acceptance of his theories was, that from all I had ever read about Anthropology, and from all my studies in Comparative Philology, it seemed to me indisputable that different germs of language and different types of race were traceable from the farthest prehistoric days. The argu- ment has, since then, been indefinitely strengthened by the discovery of the earliest known skulls and remains of primeval races, which show that, even in those im- measurably distant days, there were higher and lower types of humanity. Mr. Darwin admitted the fact, but made this very striking answer : — " ' You are arguing from the last page of a volume of many thousands of pages' HARROW DAYS 109 " When Darwin died, I happened to see Professor Huxley and Mr. W. Spottiswoode in deep and earnest conversation at the Athenaeum. I asked them why no memorial had been sent to the Dean of Westminster, requesting that one who had been an honour to his age should be buried in the great historic Abbey. 1 There is nothing which we should like so much,' said Professor Huxley. ' Nothing would be more fitting ; it is the sub- ject on which we were talking. But we did not mean to make the request, for we felt sure it would be refused.' I replied, with a smile, ' that we clergy were not all so bigoted as he supposed ' ; and that, though I had no authority to answer for the Dean, I felt no doubt that, if a memorial were sent to him, the permission would be accorded. I said that I would consult the Dean, and let them know at once. Leave was given. I was asked to be one of the pall-bearers, with nine men of much greater distinction — Sir J. Lubbock, Professor Huxley, Mr. J. R. Lowell, Mr. A. R. Wallace, the Dukes of Devonshire and Argyll, the late Earl of Derby, Sir J. Hooker, and Mr. W. Spottiswoode ; and on the Sunday evening I preached at the Nave Service the funeral sermon of the great author of ' the Darwinian hypothe- sis.' Ecclesiasticism was offended ; but if what God requires of us is ' to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with Him,' I would rather take my chance in the future life with such a man as Charles Darwin, than with many thousands who, saying, ' Lord, Lord,' and wearing the broadest of phylacteries, show very faint conceptions of honour, kindness, or the love of truth, and are sadly to seek in the most elementary Christian virtues." In his funeral sermon he thus spoke of Darwin : — " This man, on whom for years bigotry and ignorance no LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR poured out their scorn, has been called a materialist. I do not see in all his writings one trace of materialism. I read in every line the healthy, noble, well-balanced wonder of a spirit profoundly reverent, kindled into deepest admiration for the works of God. . . . Calm in the consciousness of integrity ; happy in sweetness of home life ; profoundly modest ; utterly unselfish ; ex- quisitely genial ; manifesting, as his friend has said of him, ' an intense and passionate honesty, by which all his thoughts and actions were irradiated as by a central fire,' — Charles Darwin will take his place, side by side, with Ray and Linnaeus ; with Newton and Pascal ; with Herschel and Faraday, — among those who have not only served humanity by their genius, but have also brightened its ideal by holy lives. . . . And because these false antagonisms have been infinitely dangerous to faith, over Darwin's grave let us once more assure the students of science that, for us, the spirit of mediaeval ecclesiasticism is dead. We desire the light. We believe in the light. We press forward into the light. If need be, let us perish in the light. But we know that in the light we shall never perish. For to us God is light; and Christ is, and will be, to the end, 1 the Light of the World.' " I may here introduce a fragment from " Men I Have Known," reminiscent of my father's friendship with another great biologist, Thomas Huxley: — " I continued to know and to meet Professor Huxley for many years and on many occasions. I sometimes met him in company with Mr. Matthew Arnold, and nothing could be more delightful than the conversation elicited by their contrasted individualities. I remember a walk which I once took with them both through the pleasant grounds of Pain's Hill, where Mr. Arnold's HARROW DAYS in cottage was. He was asking Huxley whether he liked going out to dinner parties, and the Professor answered that as a rule he did not like it at all. ' Ah,' said Mr. Arnold, ' I rather like it. It is rather nice to meet people.' 1 Oh yes,' replied Huxley, ' but we are not all such everlasting Cupids as you ! ' " I sometimes had very earnest and delightful conver- sations with Professor Huxley on religious subjects, and I always found him perfectly open-minded, reverent, and candid. But in his case, as in the case of other eminent men of science and literature, I found that his concep- tions as to what the clergy are bound to believe and maintain were exceedingly wide of the mark. He imagined that we are compelled to defend a great many opinions, especially with reference to parts of the Old Testament, which might possibly have represented the views of a hundred years ago, but which are now repu- diated even by learned archbishops and bishops. When I showed him that some difficulties and objections to parts of the Christian creed which loomed large upon his mind had no connection with the faith at all — that they affected beliefs which had never been incorporated into any catholic formula — that some of the statements which he impugned were the mere accretions of igno- rance, the errors of superstition, and the inventions of erring system, he would listen indeed with sincere inter- est, and promise to consider the points of view which I had tried to explain, but which were wholly new to him. I always fancied that he retained the notion that, while what I urged might represent the views of a few of the clergy, they were the reverse of the views of the many. I failed, I fear, to convince him that Christianity is one thing, and that current opinions about Christianity may be quite another. But conversations with him left on 112 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR my mind the deep impression that what many men dis- like is not in the least the doctrine and the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, but something which has no necessary connection with it, and is sometimes a mere mummy painted in its guise." The range of my father's studies and the breadth of his views is further illustrated by the fact that about this period, viz. in 1867, he found time to write "Seekers after God," a popular historical account of three great heathen philosophers, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, " who amid infinite difficulties, and surrounded by a corrupt society, devoted themselves to the earnest search after those truths which might best make their lives 'beautiful before God.'" Two volumes of sermons, also, " The Fall of Man, and Other Sermons preached before the University of Cambridge," 1867, and "The Witness of History to Christ : Five Sermons, being the Hulsean Lectures for 1870," belong to the Harrow period, besides single ser- mons, lectures, and articles, — a record which shows an amazing power of work and concentration in a man who was all this time actively engaged in the onerous duties of a schoolmaster, responsible not only for routine teaching in school, but for private tuition, and the care of a house full of boys. In 1869 he was appointed an Honorary Chaplain to the Queen, a distinction to which very few men in the position of Assistant Master at a public school have attained. He was promoted to be Chaplain-in-Ordinary in 1873. In connection with one of his articles for " Smith's Dictionary of the Bible," he tells the following story : — " I had been asked to write the article on ' Deluge ' for Smith's ' Dictionary of the Bible.' I wrote it, but HARROW DAYS ii3 took the views about the non-universality of the Deluge which most inquirers now hold. The editor and pub- lishers, alarmed at this deviation from stereotyped opin- ion, postponed the insertion of the article, and in vol. i. inserted, ' Deluge : see Flood.' But even when they had got as far as ' Flood ' they had not made up their minds, and said, ' Flood : see Noah.' My article was consequently sacrificed ; for ' Noah ' had been already assigned to the present Bishop of Worcester. Yet, after all, Dr. Perowne (as he then was) came to much the same conclusion as myself; for he wrote, 'that even the language used with regard to the Flood itself — strong as it undoubtedly is — does not oblige us to sup- pose that the Deluge was universal" Unless we realise the extent to which current theo- logical opinion has been revolutionised in the last forty years, — a change which has been due in no small meas- ure to the fearless advocacy of my father and a mere handful of men like-minded, — it is difficult to under- stand the storm of obloquy which the very mild rational- ism of Bishop Colenso excited in the early sixties. In these days when the notorious Cape Town judgment is forgotten, and when what was regarded as blasphe- mous heresy by our fathers has become a commonplace article of belief for ourselves, it is not easy to appreciate the courage required, a generation ago, to take up the cudgels for this God-fearing and saintly Divine. I therefore insert here some passages from my father's " Reminiscences of Bishop Colenso," which throw an interesting light both on the Broad Church views of the subject of this biography, and the tendency of thought in the last generation : — " Indignant at the utterly shameful treatment which he was receiving at all hands, and glad to show my ii4 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR humble sympathy with a noble-hearted man, conspicuous for the ardent and fearless sincerity of his love of truth, I wrote to ask him to stay with me at Harrow. He had himself in former days been a Harrow Master, and he intensely enjoyed one or two quiet and happy Sundays with us. In those days, if a Bishop happened to be present in Harrow School Chapel, it was the custom to ask him to pronounce the benediction. Bishop Colenso did so ; and will it be believed that numbers of letters came from parents, objecting that their sons should be blessed by one whom, in their utter ignorance of all the merits of the questions involved, they chose, with great injustice, to stigmatise as a heretic ! The burden of this . disagreeable correspondence fell, not on me but on the Head-master ; and consequently, when next the Bishop wrote to offer himself for a Sunday, I had, with the deepest regret, to ask him to come on a week-day in- stead. The persecution he incurred — which even went to the length of an impotent attempt to deprive him of his bishopric, and to reduce him to the condition of a pauper by robbing him of his income — was as incredi- ble as it was infamous. I well remember his telling me that he found it by no means easy to get servants ; and that his laundress had actually declined to wash for him any more, because by doing so she lost customers ! I re- member, too, that once when I had been preaching in a large West End church, the Bishop invited me to his house, and I walked out of the church with him, he taking my arm. As his tall form was seen amid the throng of worshippers, he was recognised as he left the church, and I heard audible and awestruck whispers, 'He's walking with Bishop Colenso /' He faced this tornado of abuse, and these hurricanes of universal anathema, with the calmest dignity. He never once HARROW DAYS ii5 lost his temper; he never returned so much as one angry word to men who had heaped on him every species of abuse and contempt, and of whom many were incomparably his inferiors, not only in learning, but in every grace. "A touch of humour helped him. He told me how, once, seeing an English bishop at Euston Station, the Bishop, to his great surprise, advanced most cordially to meet him, and gave him a warm shake of the hand, which Colenso as warmly returned. But, alas ! the next moment the English prelate said, 'The Bishop of Cal- cutta, I believe ? ' (or some other see). "' No,' replied Colenso, 'the Bishop of Natal.' The effect, he said, was electrical. The English bishop almost rebounded with an ' Oh ! ' and left him with a much alarmed and distant bow, as if after shaking hands with him he needed a purifying bath. ******* " Bishops and ecclesiastics denounced and excom- municated him ; and others wrote epigrams like — * There was a poor Bishop Colenso, Who counted from one up to ten, so That the writings Levitical He found were uncritical, And went out to tell the black men so. Yet the Bishop of Natal had written, with utter self- sacrifice, at the cost of all, for the sake of what he re- garded as the truth. When questioned about the literal accuracy of parts of Scripture, which were perhaps never meant to be literally understood, ' My heart,' he says, 'answered in the words of the prophet, Shall a man speak lies in the name of the Lord? I dare not do so.' Future times will remember Bishop Colenso with u6 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR honour and gratitude when the names of nineteen- twentieths of his accusers have been buried in merciful oblivion." With characteristic generous impetuosity my father threw himself into the work of organising a Colenso defence fund, in connection with which the following letters from Dr, Jex Blake and from Bishop Colenso himself are of interest : — "Rugby, Feb. 26, 1864. " My dear Farrar : Do not be in such a hurry. I came back from Oxford this afternoon, having spoken to a good many men there about Colenso Appeal Fund. I found no one, except Jowett, inclined to go in for the Fund as at present started. I found a good many people prepared to join in an effort to bring " in the interests of justice" the Cape Town trial before a superior court. Speaking generally, people had a distrust of Colenso, and were prepared to help him as a victim but not as a champion. I hope that Spottis- woode will be able either to get a more satisfactory preamble to the present list altogether, or a separate column for men who like myself wish to subscribe on the ground of protest against Cape Town verdict. Or failing that, I hope a separate list may be got up on that basis : and that such a list may help Colenso, and be a comfort to him. " Names are likely to be ' conspicuous by absence ' if the movers of a Defence Fund omit to take into con- sideration the wishes of a large part of the few clerics who at all sympathise with them ; and as regards Temple himself, he would probably say that men must not set up to be religious innovators who cannot stand the burden of temporary isolation. He might also be HARROW DAYS 117 inclined to add that few things so unbusiness-like in their proceedings as the Colenso Defence Fund appears at present to be, find things go smoothly with them. " You must give people time ; and a few names had better not be paraded prematurely. Still less will it pay to publish anonymous ' Priest of 41 years' standing.' Please let Bowen see these few lines, as my work is in arrears and I really have not time for a duplicate letter. "We shall be very glad to see you at Easter. " Yours sincerely, " T. W. Jex Blake." "May 6, 1864. " My dear Farrar : I have been thinking that I had better not accept the invitation to Harrow this year, under present circumstances. I don't doubt that I , should have a friendly reception, perhaps even a hearty one, from the school. But after the experience of last year, some parents may feel very strongly on the sub- ject — and it would be a pity to expose the school to the danger of suffering from too close a connection with me. Unless, therefore, you strongly urge the contrary, I intend to decline Dr. Butler's invitation, if it comes. " Ever yours sincerely, "M. Natal." In i860, at Easter-tide, and shortly after his sainted mother's death, Frederic Farrar met and loved at first sight a sweet and beautiful girl of nineteen, Lucy Mary, third daughter of the late Mr. Frederic Cardew of the East India Company's service. They were married before the end of the year, and for forty-three years of n8 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR love unbroken trod the path of wedded life in mutual society, help, and comfort. What my mother was as gracious hostess, sympathetic counsellor, and affectionate friend, old Harrovians, old Marlburians, Westminster parishioners, and dwellers in Canterbury who loved and almost idolised her, have testified ; of her virtues as mistress and ideal housewife, Cooper and Frances who died in our service, Nana and Gauron who are still with us, and other old servants who have served her with lifelong devotion could speak ; what she has been and is as mother, we, her children, who rise and call her blessed, know, but could never fully express. What she was as a wife is a theme too sacred for her son to handle in these pages, but those who call to mind the image of my father in his home life will ever see at his side the tender and gracious figure of her whose adorning was the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, of a woman loving and amiable, faithful and obedient to her husband ; in all quietness, sobriety, and peace, a follower of holy and godly matrons. Eight children were born during the Harrow period, the two youngest, Percival and Ivor, being born at Marlborough. In 1868 my parents moved from a much smaller house at Harrow to the Park, which my father thus describes : — "The Park had once been the seat of Lord North- wick, and before it was built over as it now is, was a very beautiful place. It stood in its own grounds of thirty- six acres, with fields and a home farm in the midst of them. A wooded walk, shady in the hottest summer day, ran round it, full of speedwell, enchanter's night- shade, agrimony, and other wild plants. The Park cov- ered one side of Harrow Hill. It commanded lovely HARROW DAYS 119 views and was adorned with some rather effective modern-antique ruins. At the bottom of the hill was a sheet of water, on which we placed some canoes and some swans. There were nearly sixty Harrow boys in our house, but they were separated from us in another part of the building. It was a charming and healthy home for children. The farm supplied them with eggs and milk, and gave them plenty of amusement when they went down to play with the swans, or the huge mastiff, or the tame pigeons. The large kitchen garden supplied the house abundantly with all kinds of fruit and vegetables, and the vine in the hothouse was laden with grapes." In this house my father was free to exercise that simple but refined hospitality in which he always took delight, making many friends, not only among his col- leagues, with all of whom he was on cordial, and with many on intimate terms, but among the parents of his boys and with many men eminent in literature, science, and art. Such was my father in his Harrow days, a man be- loved by his boys, though they sometimes made fun of his impetuous enthusiasms, honoured and trusted by the parents who were glad and proud to confide their sons to his care ; loved and honoured by his colleagues, who were generously proud of his growing fame ; laborious in acquiring and eager in imparting his growing store of learning ; throwing himself with ardent and even well- nigh reckless chivalry into all causes which make for progress and increased breadth of thought ; displaying at times a certain impatience, which old friends recall with a regretful tenderness ; but animated always by a fiery zeal for righteousness and a passionate hatred of all that is mean or false or vile. 120 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR From a large number of letters I have selected a few illustrative of the Harrow period. Here is one from a parent : — " Dear Dr. Butler : I find from my boys that the fact of Mr. Farrar's having succeeded to Mr. Harris's house, etc., will in the natural course of things remove Theobald from his tuition. " I am in utter despair at the idea, and so I find is Theobald. " It will be very, very good of you to allow Theobald to be still his pupil and arrange with Mr. Farrar that he shall keep him on. " I assure you, all my boys have the greatest possible regard, esteem, respect, and affection for him, and he possesses an influence over them which I feel it would be very difficult for any one else to acquire, and Theo- bald having been so long his pupil ! Could not and would you not make an exception in his favour ? If you are so good as to grant it, I am certain from gratitude it will be an additional incentive to Theobald to be steady at his work and to get on. " I am sure that you will kindly remember that my three youngest boys have never had any other tutor but Mr. Farrar, that it was by your own appointment that they had the privilege, and the event has proved how judicious your arrangement was by the influence for good which he has exercised over them, and by the real affection and devotion they feel for him. " With my kindest regards to Mrs. Butler, " Believe me, " Yours very sincerely, "A. B." HARROW DAYS 121 Another from the son of the above writer : — "December 29th. " My dear Mr. Farrar : Hubert showed me your letter you wrote to him about my going to the Univer- sity, — that is, to Oxford ; Cambridge is simply a hole. I am sure you think it so now. The worst of it is that I shall have to swat, which as you know I don't like at all. But then if I could make up my mind to swat, and took a pretty good degree at Oxford, it would leave me quite free, whereas if I went into the army I should have to stick to it. You think I had better go to Ox- ford. I think too, it will be best on the whole. Just fancy, I have read the whole of that Milton's " Para- dise Lost " and all the holiday task once ; I intend to read it again. I mean to swat like fun next quarter, as I was so ashamed of the place I took last quarter, and ' Nil desperandum Farrar duce et auspice Farrar.' " I hope Mrs. Farrar and the children are quite well, and believe me ever " Yours sincerely, "A. B." From a boy who had been expelled : — " My dear Mr. Farrar : Thank you very much for your kindness in writing to me. I have indeed begun life very badly, but I now mean to turn over a new leaf. " It was very kind of you to try and take me back as you have so often before forgiven me. All my endeav- ours shall be that I should turn out a good man, and I sincerely trust that your kind hope of seeing me again may be realised, and that you will find me changed from a bad boy into a God-fearing man. Thank Mrs. 122 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR Farrar for me for her kind message, and if she will accept a sad farewell from me, as also yourself, I shall feel gratified. " Believe me " Yours sorrowfully. " P. S. I have received all my things, for which I thank you. I left a small prayer-book in chapel. If it will not give you trouble, may I ask you to send it me ? " From the late Bishop of Durham : — "Harrow. " My dear Farrar : I rejoice to see your volume of sermons. They cannot but do good. Some I know ; some I hope to know : and all are alike welcome. We probably differ in some opinions and approach many questions from different sides, but I should be unwilling to think that we do not agree fully as to the scope of life, and the strength of life ; and in that fellowship of highest aspiration and faith all lesser differences are as nothing. Almost every day makes me feel more keenly that it is not the work that is seen that is most fruitful and that all earthly measures fail in spiritual things, and there is deep consolation in the thought. " With sincerest thanks for the volume, and every wish for the full continuance of your great work among us, " Ever yours most truly, " B. F. Westcott." From the late Dean of Llandaff : — " My dear Farrar : I must not insult you by com- pliments upon your sermon of yesterday : but neither can I leave you without the expression of the deep debt of gratitude which I feel myself to owe you for such a HARROW DAYS 123 noble effort for the good of souls. I cannot doubt that it will be remembered by many, as it was listened to with profound attention by all. " The time will come, I hope, when you will publish that sermon with others. Perhaps a sermon published by itself does not possess the permanence of character which one would desire for it : but I am sure that, when the time comes for publishing a volume of sermons, you will not find them passed by. " Ever, my dear Farrar, " Yours truly and affectionately, " Charles T. Vaughan. " Harrow, Monday. " Do not trouble yourself to write in answer. I only send this, because it is a comfort sometimes to be assured that one has not preached to inattentive or unsympa- thising hearers." From the present Master of Trinity: — " My dear Farrar : I must not let the Sunday night quite pass without heartily thanking you for your most valuable sermon. " I think we greatly wanted to have your main point put before us, and I could not have wished to have it put more beautifully, convincingly, and solemnly. " We have both of us lived too long to expect to see any very immediate or palpably extensive effects from sermons. The listlessness of the Harrow boys will, I fear, continue to be our thorn in the flesh as long as we continue to labour together here. But I nevertheless believe that your words will have touched many a con- science and that they will come back to such in listless 124 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR hours, partly here, partly in college rooms, partly in the days of professional life. " It seems to me that our material here illustrates most strongly the ' How hardly shall they that have riches ' — How hardly shall the sons of parents, the majority of whom are probably men of easy means, learn to regard exertion as at once a duty and a happiness ! " Still there is a considerable remnant of non-idolaters if not of heroic Abdiels. The seven Harrow firsts in the last Trinity May was a good sign — not less good because it was not brilliant. S and P are working thoroughly hard there; so I fancy is P and dear good C . " Here all the first seven are working at high pressure, and apparently with great interest, unless it be possibly the ill-adjusted A . He broke down deplorably in the Demosthenes last week, no less than twice. "This must read like a rambling letter, but I think you may trace a certain unity running through it. God bless you always, dear friend. " Affectionately as ever, " H. Montagu Butler. "Harrow, March 16, 1862, 11 p.m." A humorous letter in rhyme, from his colleague, E. H. Bradby: — " Harrow, August 9, '6i. " Dear Farrar, I grieve to disquiet your rest, Or mar your ruricolar ease, But truth fairly spoken must always be best, Though it fail at the moment to please. When you left it, your house had a scaffold in front, And now could you see it, you'd find — HARROW DAYS Of your wrath let the builder encounter the brunt — A scaffold just like it behind. Thus for decapitation on both sides prepared, Is the victim put out of its pain ? No — to mark execution the public have stared, And waited and clamoured in vain. Can it be that you hold a reprieve still in view ? If not, as a matter of sense, 'Tis not fair to the house, to say nothing of you, To keep it so long in suspense. I know from one corner the slates have been stript, And an angle of brick has arisen, But if more has been done, may the writer be whipt, And his progeny pine in a prison. Bricks and timber, 'tis certain, encumber the road, Bricks and timber encumber the door, But I don't see them rise to their final abode, Or condense into storey and floor. Some six or eight hands — there were eight on to-day, — Rush hither and thither apace, But time, the unceasing, works faster than they, And will beat them, I fear, in the race. My fears may be vain, but I think it were well That you sent to your landlord a letter To ask how things prosper, your wishes to tell, And cry, " Finish, the sooner the better." This I know from experience, though honest and kind, He's a horse somewhat slow on the road, And without being cruel you'll certainly find That his paces are helped by the goad. For the rest, don't betray whence your knowledge arose, For I've matters on hand of my own ; And should he be wroth, why the six weeks may close And leave me and my mansion undone. 126 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR All Harrow now rests from its terminal whirl ; We have had but one birth since you parted, — Madame Ruault the mother, the offspring a girl ; The parents are not broken-hearted. Good-by ! We are happy, thank God, we are well ; They flourish, my wife and my daughter. I hope you, my friend, the same story can tell Of your wife, son, and self, at Freshwater. E. H. B." To his friend, E. S. Beesly, on the birth of his eldest son : — "May 19th. " Dear Beesly : Many thanks for your kind lines of congratulation. The pleasure of having a child is indeed intense, it seems to open up in one's heart an unfathomable fountain of love. Still it is yXv/cvTrncpos and brings its own anxieties. He is a pretty little boy — but so delicate. I hope, indeed, that he will have you for a kind friend when he grows up, if he does grow up, as I trust he will. You must come and make his ac- quaintance this term, by the time Mrs. Farrar is well. She and the child are doing well at present. " I was very glad to catch even a glimpse of Mr. Con- greve at your house. " Ever, my dear Beesly, " Your affectionate friend, " F. W. Farrar." The above letter refers to the editor of these memoirs, who has outgrown his youthful delicacy of constitution. The two next letters allude to a ridiculous canard as to my father's Harrow experiences which seems to have HARROW DAYS 127 obtained some vogue at Marlborough and caused some temporary annoyance. " Harrow, Nov. 6. " My dear Beesly : I am eternally obliged to Ilbert for letting me know the preposterous scandal which I hope I have now effectually knocked on the head, — though not before I have been sufficiently annoyed; for like ill winds it spread even to Cambridge, where fortu- nately my friend, Cecil Monro, at once tore it up by the roots. " Meanwhile I get happier every day ; fellows of all sorts understand me better : I have a tight grip (which I shall not soon relax) on the turbulent, and I am getting (I hope) into the affections of the better ones, in spite of certain lewd fellows of the baser sort. Briefly, I am getting a footing here among the boys. I shall have ample room and verge enough to work under a defective system. The thing I feel most is want of sympathy. Watson is my most genial friend here, and him I really like. I do wish you were here to flounder about a little: I can't do it half so effectually. But still, some things I have done already and shall do more. I preach on Sunday, and shall, if I can manage, rough them well. They need it. They are too supercilious and absurd by half. But unluckily one only preaches to the lower half of the school. I was so sorry that Blake missed All Souls. " Do come ; a day or two's warning will be ample, for I could let you know then in the (unlikely) case of my being unable to receive you. Why not next Saturday ? Would a boy be a bore to bring (he must come in a hat, caps being unknown here). Warren or Ilbert? but follow your own taste and do just as you like about it 128 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR altogether. I am looking forward to seeing Bull. Why not come with him if possible. " You can't think how society stagnates here. Conver- sation is unknown. Harrow forms the sole topic of Harrow, the only good point being that scandal is never talked or hinted. " I met young Oxenham the other day and was delighted with him. " You should see my daily list of punishments. Heigh- ho ! This kind of thing requires a brave, stout-hearted, patient, strong man. " Ever your most affectionate, " F. W. Farrar. " You told me nothing about my missing goods." " Harrow, October 29. " My dear Beesly : I am perpetually annoyed by let- ters from the boys at M speaking as if I had been subjected to personal violence (!) by the boys here, and to-day I was informed that I had been tied by a great- coat, and pelted with cinders ! ! I can't tell you the ineffable disgust which those preposterous reports give me ; and as they are as grotesquely and groundlessly and absolutely false, and as diametrically the reverse of anything possible as they can be, I do wish, once for all, that they could be authoritatively contradicted. Whence such absurdly and gratuitously nonsensical tittle-tattle can have originated I cannot even dream, unless some Harrovian has been humbugging one of the M fellows. " The idea ! I wonder whether you all think me made of straw? Likely that I should be roughly handled, every one and all of whom instantly obey my slightest order, and who are in as complete a state HARROW DAYS 129 of subjection now as any form in Marlboro'. Never was there a better exemplification of the story of the three black crows. While I am absent some boys, tak- ing advantage of Mayor's ignorance of their names, unscrew a desk and crack nuts, and from that Ilbert tells me half the school believe that I have been gar- roted ! a thing just as likely as that Scott and Tom- kinson should be found some fine morning crucified with their heads downward on the first eleven cricket ground by their respective forms. " I really should not have troubled about this if I had not been bothered by rumours of it from all sides, and am now quite tired of the absurdity ; so please if any of the members of the Common Room share these hal- lucinations, will you kindly undeceive them ? "In fact I am getting on excellently; I declared war with my form and have conquered. Now we get on together as well as it is possible to do on a system where boys only know masters as punishment machines, — a system whose trammels I am breaking more and more every day. Do come and see me if only to assure the boys from ocular demonstration that my exhausted frame can just survive the dangerous injuries it has received. " Yours ever, " F. W. Farrar." Later, he writes in a more cheerful strain : — " Harrow, Oct. 20. " Dear Beesly : I put off answering your letter, hoping to do it more at length ; but I have never been busier than now, and find it hopeless just at present. I am to be ordained priest at a fortnight's notice! 130 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR " All things here are very happy. I love my pupils more and more, and my little house contains four of the most promising boys in the school. Will it all last ? I don't deserve it. Vaughan favours me with really an unusual share of kindness and confidence. " Many thanks for your kind congratulations. It is a great relief to have got the Fellowship, as it makes one feel more independent. I hope now to work a little at bibliography. " Love to friends, and believe me ever "Your affectionate friend, " F. W. Farrar. " Pray tell Hanbury, will you, that I cannot write at present, being steeped in work, and tell Cobb I will write (don't forget) as soon as I possibly can." " Harrow, Feb. i. " Dear Beesly : Scene — dining room ; fire gone out and all the people fast asleep in bed. Time — 12 on Sunday night. Condition — very cold feet, fatigue, and general muddle-headedness ; in spite of which, as this is my only chance of having leisure for a fortnight, I must write now. " Your letter telling me how lax I have been convicts me of gross selfishness, for which the extreme and ever increasing heaviness of my engagements constitutes no excuse. But indeed I had no notion how dilatory I had been, hearing of you so constantly as I do, when not from you; only believe me, my dear Beesly, nothing would be a deeper pain to me than if this laziness of mine (for I must call it by this name, though harsher than I deserve) ever lost me your friendship or made you think me cold or indifferent. On the contrary, I HARROW DAYS value it as one of my best possessions. Once in my life — once only I think — I lost a true friend ; and one other has caused an estrangement to him on my part — both cost me such bitter grief that I could not bear the lessening of another's esteem. One mustn't be always saying so : but as insincerity is certainly not one of my many faults, you will, I know, forgive and excuse me. " B stayed a day with me, and made himself very agreeable : indeed, I thought him much improved in all ways. But then, you know, I always believed in him — while you were one of those who considered him only a specious humbug. " Fowler is my guest at this moment with cartloads of photographs which he displays all day and night. They are from Rome, Florence, etc. Our tour was pre- eminently successful and delightful. The Harrow boy who came with us I had always liked, but now I love him tenfold, having been cheered by his ruddy face in perils and pleasures. " Won't you come here for a Sunday this term ? It is one's only chance of seeing you, and we could talk over many things. ******* " So do come here — bringing a boy if you like, and whom you like — and you shall find a warm welcome from "Your affectionate friend, " F. W. Farrar." Archdeacon Vesey thus describes one of the Harrow holiday tours : — " I think I first became acquainted with your father at Cambridge, shortly before he took his degree. When 132 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR I was curate of Great St. Mary's, at the end of 1855, I used to see him from time to time, when he came up to Cambridge from Marlborough, and afterward from Harrow ; but our real intimacy began when, during the Harrow holidays at Christmas, 1856, he joined me at Rome, where I was spending some weeks with another Cambridge friend on my way to Sinai and Palestine. Your father came out with a Harrow boy named Far- quhar, and we had a delightful time visiting together most of the points of interest which were new to both of us. He had had a disagreeable voyage to Civita Vec- chia, and had to put in at Elba on account of bad weather ; he arrived at our apartment in the Piazza di Spagna ' bleeding pauls,' as he expressed it, ' from every pore,' from successive encounters with the Pon- tifical Dogma officials. You will readily imagine how his companionship more than doubled the pleasure, of my visit, — whether in our morning explorations in the Forum, such as it then was, with French soldiers over- looking the unwilling excavators as they wheeled their barrows at a snail's pace ; or in the Coliseum, where a Franciscan monk was to be heard preaching at every station, and the massive blocks of travertine were partly hid with flowers and fern and other foliage, now, alas ! removed when what the witty Americans called the ' sandpapering process ' was carried out by the Italian government ; or in the delightful afternoon excursions into the Campagna, to Tivoli, where we lunched al fresco on New Year's Day ; or to the graves of Keats and Shelley in the old Protestant cemetery hard by the pyra- mid of Caius Cestius. Wherever he went, his keen power of observation, his enthusiasm, his fund of know- ledge and wealth of varied quotation made him the most delightful fellow-traveller. Sometimes he ex- HARROW DAYS 133 pressed in verse the thoughts which our visits aroused. For example, after an excursion to Hadrian's villa near Tivoli he wrote the following lines, which once appeared in print, but are not, I think, generally known : — " Where the cypress upheaves its dark green leaves By the side of the glistening pine, Mark how the rose of the sunlight glows And the snow-fringed mountains shine. And round us arise to the wondering eyes The wrecks of imperial pride, As along the walls of the painted halls We are wandering side by side. And not one aisle of the royal pile But adds to the ruined scene, And ferns are waved, o'er the courtyards paved With mosses of red and green. Aye! the lightning hath shattered, the storm wind hath scattered, The palace-homes they built ; And the dark years fall like a funeral pall On the tale of their purple guilt. And the golden domes of their gorgeous homes Are crushed on the crumbling soil : For unless God hath given His blessing from Heaven, But lost is the builder's toil. Rome, New Year's Day, 1857. " On one occasion we went together to the studio of Overbeck, the well-known German artist. Among other pictures, he showed us one which he called ' Marriage' ; and the way in which he treated the subject, in a series of vignettes, will be apparent from the lines which your father handed to me the next morning: — 134 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR " ' Magnum sacramentum : dico autem de Christo et ecclesia. " ' With a deepening impulse of love and prayer, We gazed on the lines of the picture fair ; And the holy Painter stood at our side, As we traced the tale of the gentle bride, — The joys and the sorrows of wedded life, The glory of peace, and the shade of strife. Now they are linked in the golden band, Heart in heart and hand in hand ; And forth on the untried path they start With eyes upraised and a beating heart. And they heed him not on the bridal morn, The angel who scatters the boughs of thorn. Mark how he hovers their path above, The glittering spirit with looks of love. And the cross he bears thro' the thickest glooms, Is bathed in the rays of his silver plumes, And yet on the pair is the burden laid, As they wearily toil thro' the checkered shade. Soon, 'neath the weight of the painful load, They faint and fall on the steep hill road. But the Holy One shines at their side again, To lighten the labour and heal the pain ; And with gladder steps and a calmer soul They pass along to the heavenly goal. But o'er them a seraph is leaning down With a gleaming wing and a golden crown, And children come with their innocent eyes And pure souls, white from the starry skies, As over the sunlit moss he throws Violet and lily and wreathed rose. Thro' the sun and shade, thro' the joy and woe, Dark or bright does the life-stream flow ; But the cares are veiled, and the Cross is bless'd As they near the gates of their final rest ; HARROW DAYS *35 And they hear — blest pair — ere the path is trod The songs that welcome their souls to God. The gates are alight with a million gems, And the flash of the rainbow diadems, And the diamond swords and the helm of truth, And the flower-like curls, and the brows of youth, And the robes of light, and the tongues of fire, And the golden harps of the seraph choir. Keep, O Lord, in our memory green The image fair of that saintly scene ; Teach us, O Lord, that we ne'er repine, Give us hearts that may rest on Thine, And aye may the thoughts of our journey blend With the glories that wait at its holy end. Rome, 1856. F. W. F.'" To my father's old friend and qiwndam chief, Dr. Butler, the Master of Trinity, I am indebted for the following tribute : — "Trinity Lodge, Cambridge, Sept. 11, 1903. " My dear Reginald Farrar: In offering you these few recollections of your dear Father, I am very sensible of their utter inadequacy. It is only in the faintest way that they recall either his beautiful youth at Trinity or his brilliant services at Harrow. But, as you know, I have been writing under physical difficulties, and the publication of your Memoir would not bear delay. I must trust and believe that the other records of your Father's rich and beneficent career will be far more fully and generously expressed. " Believe me affectionately yours, " H. Montagu Butler. " My friendship with Frederic Farrar must have begun in 1852 or 1853, when we were undergraduates at Trinity, 136 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR he in his second year of residence, I in my first. We were both members of a small Shakespeare Society, which met once a week in our several rooms to read a play, the parts of which had been previously distributed. In these delightful hours we came of course to know one another very closely, and, half unconsciously, to take measure of our respective gifts and tastes. Farrar was greatly loved and admired by us all. Intellectually he was conspicuous by his very wide reading in English literature, notably in poetry and in the philosophical writings of S. T. Coleridge. He came to Trinity from King's College, London, and brought with him a pro- found love and reverence for F. D. Maurice, whose lectures he had there attended, and a keen interest in all the Christian social schemes which Maurice and Charles Kingsley and others were at that time advo- cating. " Apart from this high mental culture, he impressed us all by the singular purity and elevation of his whole character, his fiery enthusiasm for every noble cause or idea, his outspoken courage, his passionate scorn for injustice, for concealment of convictions, for anything that he held to be mean and low. " His special gift of eloquence was occasionally, but not very frequently, exercised at the Union. Whenever he spoke, he was listened to with marked respect as not only a good speaker, but as an orator of quite exceptional powers ; but perhaps he was somewhat too much in earnest for so mercurial an assembly. A lighter touch, with a little more playfulness and humour, might have been more effective. " Once, I remember, he electrified us all by a crush- ing reply to some mosquito of a critic who had dared almost to impeach the unfortunate members of the HARROW DAYS 137 Library Committee. These officers had been elected some three weeks before by universal suffrage to select new books for the Term's consumption. And now heard themselves denounced as a narrow, heartless etc., oligarchy because they had not included in their choice a few silly books which had been ' recom- mended ' by some irresponsible advisers. Farrar, as one of the ' oligarchs,' ' came down upon ' this con- spirator with all his thunders. He treated him as a Catiline or a Borgia. We were somewhat amused, but we loved him all the better for his na'fvete and his fervour. " His winning the Chancellor's medal for an English poem on the Search for Sir John Franklin gave great pleasure to us all. It was not a commonplace prize ex- ercise. It was a real poem, marked by deep feeling and rare wealth of language, and it was felt that the right man had been crowned. "When, in 1854, he became Fourth Classic in a very strong year, and was summoned by Dr. Cotton to assist him in his task of revivifying Marlborough College, his departure from us was keenly felt. He had been truly a 'burning and a shining light.' His friendship had been a delight, his example a privilege, his fine, rich, vehement nature an inspiration. When, in October, 1856, he be- came a Fellow of Trinity, we all rejoiced with him. The tradition still lives, I believe it to be well founded, that Dr. Whewell, our great Master, was especially pleased with his philosophical and metaphysical paper. It showed very extensive reading and keen interest in such subjects. " It is not for me to follow Farrar to Marlborough, and to speak of the few happy years of his apprenticeship there. Enough to say, what I know from Dr. Cotton 138 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR himself, that the Master was proud of his young and brilliant colleague, that he felt the value of his influ- ence over the Sixth Form, and that he became deeply attached to him as a friend. " Cotton and Dr. Vaughan had been on the most affec- tionate terms of friendship ever since their undergradu- ate days at Trinity, and it was doubtless through Cotton's reluctant mediation that Vaughan, in 1855, invited the young Trinity Fellow to join his distinguished staff at Harrow — a staff which at that time included the names of Harris, Steel, Rendall, Westcott, H. W. Watson, all, like the Head-master himself, past or present Fel- lows of the same College. E. E. Bowen was soon to follow. " I must not attempt to give more than the barest sketch of Farrar's services to Harrow during the re- maining years of Dr. Vaughan's head-mastership and the first eleven years of my own. His position was from the first, and throughout, original and peculiar. He was all along the companion of his boys, whether in form, or in the house, or in games or walks. He had no fears of compromising his dignity by such familiarity. Some boys no doubt took advantage of his confidence and his informalities, but he soon became loved and looked up to as well as admired. His teaching was strangely fresh and inspiring. On the one hand, he drew up formal printed cards to impress upon young learners the simple facts of accidence and the simpler rules of syntax. On the other hand, he was always drawing forth, from the stores of his really wonderful memory, which we had known so well at Cambridge, noble and memorable quotations from the poets, es- pecially his grand favourite Milton. By this ' double action ' he sought to make his pupils feel that if grammar HARROW DAYS 139 was the gateway to knowledge, literature and human nature were all the while its temple. " Devoted as he was to scholarship and literature, he was also the founder of our Natural History Society. Himself a considerable botanist, he inspired a number of boys, not all of them classics or mathematicians, with a desire to explore the secrets of nature, and especially to make careful collections of flowers gathered during happy walks in the neighbourhood of Harrow. " His gradually increasing intimacy with men distin- guished in science and literature was pleasantly placed at our service. It was to him that we owed the first lectures of Tyndall on sound, of Huxley on the anatomy of the lobster, of Ruskin on minerals. In short, he helped to ' enlarge our intercourse ' with the wider intel- lectual world outside our own borders. " It would be wrong, and even absurd, to close this brief notice without a few words on his school sermons. His position as a great preacher is part of the history of the Church of England during the last thirty-five years of the nineteenth century. I suppose there is scarcely a cathedral or a university pulpit or a school chapel in which his voice has not been heard, and he rarely refused a request from a brother clergyman in either town or village. A man who has preached so con- stantly, so ubiquitously, and to such varied audiences, has left a definite impress on those who either heard or read his words. To define that impress is no part of my task, save so far as it concerns Harrow. There his position was unique. Our custom was that the clerical assistant masters preached in turn at the morning ser- vice in the school chapel. Farrar's turn was eagerly expected both by the boys and by the parents of our home-boarders. There was always great pressure to 140 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR obtain admission to the chapel on the Sundays on which he preached. Needless to add, he was listened to with the most breathless attention. To say that the solemn cadences of his fine, rich voice were weighted with the most intense earnestness is the language of common- place, but it is at least true. He seemed always to have before him two haunting visions, the one of boyish inno- cence, the other of boyish wickedness. If to some of us he appeared sometimes to see these two great extremes out of their due proportion, and to be less clear-sighted as to the wide region which lies between them, we were none the less grateful for his loving sympathy with the one and his solemn warnings to the other. Hundreds of Harrow boys, I cannot doubt it, will look back upon his words from the chapel pulpit — his voice, his look, his whole personality — as among the chief blessings of their school life." CHAPTER VII HEAD-MASTER OF MARLBOROUGH In i 87 i my father was appointed Head-master of Marlborough on perhaps the strongest testimonials ever given for a similar candidature. Among others, Profes- sor Max Miiller, his antagonist in the lists of philology, generously testified that he "would add lustre to any school in England " ; and his old tutor Maurice declared that he would be " well able to combine the culture of other days with the special wisdom of ours." It was a great delight to him to return to Marlborough, his first love, and the years spent here were in some respects the happiest and most unclouded of his life. In 1867 he had been a candidate for the head-master- ship of Haileybury, which was given to one of his Har- row colleagues, Dr. Bradby. That more unqualified support was not accorded to him on this occasion is due in part to regretful doubts inspired by the perhaps some- what indiscriminate vigour of his onslaught upon the system of classical education, and by fears on the part of old and dear friends that his characteristic impetuosity might imply a certain lack of judicial balance. This defeat was, naturally, a keenly felt disappoint- ment at the time, but better things were in store for him ; and when he stood for Marlborough his reputation not only as a brilliant scholar, preacher, and man of letters, but as a leader of men and a schoolmaster of ex- 141 142 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR ceptional strength of character, was so fully established that his claims could no longer be resisted. During Farrar's mastership, assisted as he was by an exceptionally able staff of colleagues who served under him with loyal and heart-whole devotion, Marlborough rose to the very zenith of her great reputation. The story of those days is so well told by others in the following pages that I need add but little to it. I will merely insert, from a chart of the school history, a brief list of the principal organic changes inaugurated during Farrar's mastership, though some of them had been projected and prepared in the reign of the great and good head-master who preceded him, Dr. Bradley, the late Dean of Westminster : — 1 871 . Improvements in the Drainage. Purchase of Freehold. Science Teaching commenced (Mr. Rodwell, Science Mas- ter). 1872. The "New Houses," i.e. Littlefield and Cotton House. 1873. Bradleian. 1875. Masters' Retirement Fund. Decoration of Chapel, conversion of Covered Playground to Gymnasium during this Period. In the actual execution of these schemes the lion's share fell to the "Bursar," named, loved, and revered by every generation of Marlburians to the present day, my father's former pupil, colleague at Marlborough, son-in- law later, and lifelong friend, the Rev. John Shearm Thomas (died September 26, 1897). To the Marlborough period belong, besides other publications, two volumes of sermons, " The Silence and Voices of God," 1874, and " In the Days of thy Youth," 1 876, preached in Marlborough Chapel. None who heard those sermons can wholly forget the overpowering in- HEAD-MASTER OF MARLBOROUGH 143 tensity of conviction, or the fiery eloquence with which the master drove home to his boys the great truths of righteousness. I was a lad of fifteen when I heard those sermons preached, but there still rings in my ears the passionate force with which my father delivered the lines — How like a younker or a prodigal The scarfed bark puts from her native bay, Hugged and embraced by the strumpet wind. How like a prodigal doth she return, With over-weathered ribs and ragged sails, Lean, rent, and beggared by the strumpet wind. These sermons will illustrate one of his strongest characteristics as a preacher, — the power, namely, of riveting great moral truths upon the mind by apt and striking quotations from the poets, which lingered in the memory even after the sermon itself was forgotten. I have given already one extract from " In the Days of thy Youth," and must resist the temptation to add others. Of his powers and gifts as a preacher I shall speak again ; here I will only say that in force and direct- ness of appeal, as well as in beauty of language and imagery, these sermons to boys revealed the preacher at his best. The following letter serves to illustrate the effect the sermons produced in, at least, one instance : — " Private "The College, Marlborough. " A Marlborough boy desires to express his greatest gratitude and thanks to Mr. Farrar, for a sermon which, he trusts, has done him more good, and brought him nearer heaven, than anything he ever heard in his life. " A Marlborough Boy." 144 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR My father's description of Marlborough, — from the " Memorials of Cyril Lytton Farrar," may be quoted as giving a picture of this beloved home : — " The Lodge at Marlborough College was as charming a home as children could possibly have enjoyed. The grounds of the college, the master's garden, the wilder- ness, the bathing-pool, the mound, the playground, were delightful places for their walks and games. The green downs with their copses and fresh breezy air were close at hand, and in spring they were a mass of primroses, wild anemones, and violets. When the children went to the west woods they could get baskets full of daffodils. The forest with its deer, and its lovely undulations, and its green glades and avenues and noble trees was close at hand. The garden of the Lodge itself was full of roses. It had a lawn-tennis ground and a field, and the river Kennet flowed at the bottom of the kitchen garden. The schoolroom and nurseries were in a separate part of a beautiful and convenient house. Our carriage and pony-carriage were in constant request for picnics to Mar- tinsell and other lovely places. We also had two pretty ponies, called Tommy and Ruksh, for the children to ride. They had a multitude of pets. Mr. Lucas had given us a tame fawn, which followed us about the gar- den. He had also given us some rare and beautiful fowls, and we had plenty of poultry. We brought a tame sea-gull from Swanage, which after a time flew away. We had a dove-cot full of white pigeons, which were perfectly tame, and would settle in crowds on the sill of the nursery window and eat from the children's hands. " The children grew up amid the fresh young life of a great English school in the country. They were sur- rounded by its deep and varied interests, and had their HEAD-MASTER OF MARLBOROUGH 145 little share in its constant festivals. Many a happy- afternoon they enjoyed in the forest and on the downs with boys of the school. Some of the boys, who in one way or other were known to us, had the run of the house, and came in and out almost as they liked. Among them were Hallam Tennyson, Everett Millais, Philip Burne- Jones, and Leslie Norris. Our guests were numerous, and some of them were distinguished and well-known men. Sir J. E. Millais, Mr. E. Burne-Jones, the Bishops of Salisbury and Limerick, Mr. E. Normand Lockyer, Sir Henry Thompson, Sir Edwin Arnold, Judge Thomas Hughes, Canon Rowsell, Dr. Abbott, Bishop Creighton, and many others came to stay with us. It was an advantage to the children to meet such men, and they received abundance of kindly notice both from guests and from the masters and boys of the college. Mr. F. Storr and Canon Bell, who were then assistant masters, were great friends with the children. The former was constantly in the schoolroom, and once dis- arranged the machinery of the Swiss cuckoo clock which Mrs. Orford Holte had given to Maud, and which she still has with her in Tasmania, by hanging one of the dolls to the chains. Cyril, with his bright temperament, was always a special favourite. At that time he had fixed on the army as his future destination, and when asked what he meant to be, he used to answer stoutly that he should be " Captain Farrar of the Royal Horse Guards, b'oo" [sc. "Blue"]. Mr. P. E. Thompson, one of his colleagues, contributes the following reminiscences : — " I am very glad of the opportunity of paying my tribute of respect to my old friend and former chief at Marlborough, the late Dean of Canterbury. 146 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR " My earliest recollection of Farrar (the surname alone comes naturally, and surely needs no addition) is of him as an undergraduate at Cambridge. I was a student at King's College, London, which he had left two or three years before, covered with honours. He came to take part in our Debating Society. We regarded his coming with great interest, for, naturally, to us he was a hero who at Cambridge was more than fulfilling our expectations. I can recall his appearance vividly. He was still some- what boyish in figure, slim, with fairly thick, dark brown hair, and without that white complexion which was so marked in later years. His manner was simple and pleasant, without the sense of complete sureness, and his speech ready but not measured. A modest, able, delightful young fellow, you would have said. He was a strong liberal in politics, and in a good-humoured way, without any bitterness or sarcasm, rallied the conserva- tive proposer of the motion debated, sketching from the premisses of his speech the probable career which awaited him. My next reminiscence is about a year later, when Farrar had taken his degree. I was talk- ing with our classical professor, the late Archdeacon Browne. ' Farrar was here yesterday,' he said to me ; ' he is doing a very stupid thing. With his degree and university distinctions he might make sure of his fel- lowship and work at Trinity. He ought to stay up at Cambridge ; instead of this he is going to Marlborough, a new school with a bad reputation, so far as anything is known of it' This was at the beginning of Cotton's mastership, when that truly remarkable man, whom Farrar always held in deep reverence, was gathering about him a band of exceptionally able young Oxford and Cambridge men, attracted by no prospect of mate- rial advantage, but animated solely with the enthusiasm, HEAD-MASTER OF MARLBOROUGH 147 which his own magnetic character inspired, for creating a great public school after an unfortunate start. Of that band of men, among whom Farrar was conspicuous, who cast their bread upon the waters, I have often thought in the words of the divine paradox, ' He that loseth his life shall save it.' When I was at Oxford I remember a young Marlborough scholar coming up to my own college, full of admiration and affection for the brilliant young Cambridge man who threw himself heart and soul into the work of the Sixth, and the life and thoughts of the whole school. "Years passed. I had gone to Marlborough in 1859. Farrar, who in 1855 had been appointed to a mastership at Harrow by Dr. Vaughan, had made himself widely known as teacher, educationalist, preacher, philologist, and writer of fiction. He was to come and preach our Founder's Day sermon at Marlborough. This was, I think, in 1866. I had not seen him for thirteen years, and naturally my curiosity and interest were deeply roused. As he walked up the College Chapel my sur- prise at the change which had come over him was ex- treme. The boyish undergraduate of 1853 had become, speaking unchronologically, the Dr., or the Canon Far- rar of middle life. His form was ampler, his carriage more erect, his movements deliberate and stately, the hair darker and thinner, the complexion whiter. The rich, mellow voice rolled out its measured periods of sustained and controlled oratory. The sermon produced a powerful effect on the Sixth. Our Founder's Day is the festival of St. Michael and All Angels. The angels of God were the crises in human life which come as his messengers. " Four more years had passed, and Bradley was leav- ing Marlborough for Oxford. It was no secret that 148 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR Farrar had always cherished the hope of becoming one day Master of Marlborough. He had never lost his first love. I remember how at a school dinner, a dis- tinguished Harrow master, in speaking of Farrar, who was present, humorously reminded him that all through his Harrow career he had never lost an opportunity of assuring the Harrow people of the far greater impor- tance and interest of Marlborough. The great Brad- leian period had drawn to a close. The brilliant sunset was obscured by some clouds of temporary anxiety. There had been one or two bad bouts of scarlatina, and doubts had naturally risen about the sanitary arrange- ments of the school. But if the misfortune had occurred in Bradley's time, it was he, with the cooperation of the bursar, the late Rev. J. S. Thomas, the right-hand man of three successive masters, who provided the remedy. The sanitary arrangements were thoroughly overhauled and rectified. The overcrowded college dormitories were to be relieved by building two large boarding- houses, which were at once commenced. Of Bradley, confessedly the greatest head-master of his own day, no one who had the happiness of serving under him can speak without emotion, admiration, and affection. At this juncture Farrar came as head-master, with a splen- did reputation and a splendid new connection. Testi- monials will always be read with some critical hesitation ; but there was no mistaking the unreserved terms in which the present Master of Trinity, the late Bishop Lightfoot, Max Miiller, and F. D. Maurice his revered teacher at King's College, spoke of him. His connection was as large as it was varied, comprising men of the greatest eminence in art, science, literature, and commerce. Such a reputation, and such a connection rapidly dis- pelled the anxiety which was felt at the time by the HEAD-MASTER OF MARLBOROUGH 149 friends of the school; and if Marlburians cherish, as they ever will cherish, the memory of Bradley with imperishable gratitude, they will also feel the deepest gratitude to Farrar for this alone, that his coming helped the school at what must be regarded as a crisis in its history. None was more sensible of this great service than Bradley, most generous of men, and the able bursar ; none more ready to recognise it. " Farrar's delight on coming back to Marlborough as head-master was quite touching. He was interested in everything : the teaching of the Sixth, the reviewing of the forms, the games, the various institutions, such as the Rifle Corps, the Natural History Society, parent of all similar school institutions (he was himself a keen amateur botanist), the music, and above all the preach- ing. Well do I remember his first sermon. He took as his text, ' What mean ye by this service ? ' He preached without notes, and I always regretted that he afterwards abandoned ex tempore preaching, for his style was less, rather than more, rhetorical than in his written sermons, and arrested attention in a most remarkable manner. ' This service ' of the College Chapel was meant to be no mechanical roll-call, but the source of spiritual life to the school. Such, indeed, had always been the ideal, and still is the ideal, of successive mas- ters ; but the ideal was admirably put. Equally well can I recall his first Prize Day gathering. On these occasions he was at his greatest ; he was quite supreme. The freehold of the college property had been secured shortly before his coming, after protracted negotiations. Standing upright before the table in the presence of the school and the guests, in heroic vein, the mock ele- ment of which was admirably concealed, he rolled out this sentence, ' From the Pavilion to the Bowling Green 150 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR and the Kennet, from the Bathing-place to the London Road — we are monarchs of all we survey.' " Humour was not a conspicuous quality in him, but he keenly enjoyed a sally, even when good temperedly directed against himself, and sometimes displayed it very effectively. On that morning he had said to me, 'Tell me if there is anything which I ought not to omit.' 4 Don't forget Mr. Sellick,' I replied. For the benefit of non-Marlburians I must briefly describe the indescribable and invaluable Mr. Sellick. He served Marlborough faithfully for some forty years as 1 extra master,' being a factotum whose place no one has since taken or could take. He was responsible for getting and issuing school books, pens, ink, and paper, for organising the coming and going of the boys, for issuing pocket money, journey money, and for a host of things too long to be recorded here. He was a very thick-set man, with a broad ruddy face, quick eyes, and a rich Devonshire lingo, in which he uttered judgments of men and things quite impartially with unapproachable pithiness. It was he who managed all the arrangements for the upper school on Prize Day, including the disposition of the many prizes ready to the hand of the master. Bradley's allusion to Mr. Sellick at the end of the prize-giving was always keenly looked forward to, for Mr. Sellick was universally loved, feared, and enjoyed. The mo- ment came. The master appeared to have no more to say, when after a pause he recommenced, ' And now I have one more duty to perform, — a duty which un- performed would mar this great gathering with a sense of incompleteness.' Another pause. ' That duty is to thank publicly that Prince of Organisers, Mr. Sel- lick — ' The rest was lost in the thunders of applause awakened, while Mr. Sellick's rubicund face and twin- HEAD-MASTER OF MARLBOROUGH 151 kling eyes sank like a setting sun behind the screen of his ample arms. " Farrar came with a strong sense of the continuity of Marlborough traditions, with deep reverence for his predecessors, but at the same time with that most valu- able of gifts in a new head-master, the ' fresh eye.' He introduced many smaller alterations, such as regu- lations for greater neatness and uniformity of dress, rules concerning examinations, and other things which need not be noticed specially. Some of these new regu- lations were perhaps a little resented by the laudatores temporis acti, but they were undoubted improvements and justified by success. Farrar unquestionably did some- thing or much to cultivate the manners of the Marl- borough boy, which were certainly a little 'to seek,' and to polish his exterior ; but he had no desire to impair their Wiltshire simplicity. " What then were his chief characteristics as teacher and head-master, as ruler of boys, and president of his colleagues ? Farrar was an omnivorous and a rapid reader, with a prodigious memory. He had done great things by his own efforts and he expected great things from others. There are two distinct methods of teach- ing, the minute and the wide, the intensive and the extensive. Milton's ideal was a combination of the two. It is futile to discuss their comparative merits ; a good teacher will choose the one for which he feels himself best fitted. Bradley's method was the minute. ' I only got through seven lines of Vergil this morning,' he said to me one day ; this being of course an extreme case. To suppose that a pupil trained in the intensive method may not develop into the wide and extensive reader, or that one whose lessons cover wide stretches of reading may not in time use his large experience for analysis 152 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR and minute criticism, is refuted by facts. Farrar be- lieved in wide reading as a means both to culture and accuracy. Not long ago I received a letter from an old boy of mine who had been under Farrar in the Sixth. He had been ranching for many years in the wilds of Texas. He had never lost a love for English literature with which Farrar had infected him, indeed he has now a finer taste and a fuller knowledge of English authors than most cultivated and well-read men. We have often exchanged notes on books. In that letter, at the end of a list of works which he recommended, he added Farrar's favourite motto, Lege, lege, illiquid haerebit. When another very able boy in my house was going up for his scholarship, I asked him what classical books and what English authors he had read. I was fairly amazed with the ground he had covered. An unseen passage or a subject for an essay could scarcely come amiss to him. He was far and away first in that schol- arship examination. Undoubtedly, Farrar's power of stimulating able and susceptible boys to wide reading on their own account was very remarkable. " Farrar was an optimist with regard to boys in some but not in all respects. He drove his Sixth in most mat- ters with a loose rein. There was in his period a re- markably able succession of boys, and not only able but original in mind and independent in character. A few can only be described as eccentric in the true sense of the term and — well, a bit impish. With some there was a tendency to vfipis for the time. But only for the time. I have followed the career of most or all, and, knowing most of them personally, I can truthfully say they have become useful, upright, honourable men, most in good, some in distinguished positions. " But it must not be supposed that he was lax or soft HEAD-MASTER OF MARLBOROUGH 153 where sternness was demanded. Where a question of morals was concerned, no head-master could be more prompt and severe. He consoled and encouraged the offender, but his first consideration was the welfare of the community. Similarly, in dealing with a breach of manners or discipline. In the upper school once a chorus of distinguished amateurs entertained the school on the evening of a cricket match. Some thoughtless louts at the back so far forgot themselves as to interrupt the singers with silly imitations. In an instant the master was on his feet. Facing the claque, with flashing eyes and imperious voice, he asked them if they imagined that he would tolerate such behaviour. Did they know what was due to the performers, to their guests, to themselves as members of the school, that they dared indulge in manners which would disgrace a twentieth-rate theatre ? The effect was electric. Boys can understand and ap- plaud a display of instant and fearless authority. "Of his masters, again, Farrar expected much, — rightly much ; sometimes, I think, too much in the way of read- ing. He was annoyed when there were signs that a form master's teaching was not abreast of the latest scholarship. He was once positively indignant, when examining the lowest form of the upper school in Greek accidence, to find that the boys had not even an elemen- tary knowledge of the influence of the lost letter Jod on Greek inflection. So indignant was he that I almost expected him to exclaim with Longfellow's Rabbi : — " So surely as the letter Jod Once spake and cried aloud to God, So surely shalt thou feel the rod, And punished shalt thou be. This is an amusing and an extreme case, at which he would have laughed against himself by and by. But, 154 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR as with boys, so with masters, Farrar's stimulating effect was great. I can only say for myself that during the five and a half years of his mastership I read far more widely than I had ever read before. One could not keep up with him, but one could keep him in sight. Here I should like to tell a favourite story of mine at the risk of being personal, for it shows Farrar at his best. At the end of the holidays he asked me what I was going to read with my form next term. ' Some of the Iliad,' I replied. ' Have you read Paley's pref- ace ? ' he inquired. Paley's edition had just been pub- lished. Well, I had read it very carefully, for I intended to discuss it with my boys. ' I consider,' the master continued, 'that Paley completely proves his case in all the three points which he raises.' I did not think so, but purposely said little or nothing, for I anticipated what would come. I had a very sharp set of boys that term, and from time to time examined Paley's hypotheses, giving my reasons for disagreement. In due time the form went in for review. Review over, the head boy came to me in high feather. Something, I saw, was in the wind. 'Awful sport, sir,' he exclaimed. 'What do you mean ? ' I asked. ' Oh, the master trotted us out on Paley. " Don't you think that Paley is right, when he says, etc." " No, sir, no," we called out. " No ! why not ? " " Because, sir, etc." " Oh, I see," the master said, and burst out laughing, "your form master has been at you. We'll drop the subject." ' I am very fond of this incident, for it shows Farrar's native magnanimity. A smaller-minded head-master would have resented the appearance of being bearded by an assistant master through his form. Not so Farrar ; he saw the fun of the thing, and was delighted to find that a teacher could read and think for himself. Needless to add that we HEAD-MASTER OF MARLBOROUGH 155 were always on the best of terms or this would not have occurred. I could give many instances of his generosity of mind. He may sometimes have been impatient and even hasty. He may have been in the right or in the wrong, but a misunderstanding was impossible if you went the proper way to work. You had only to go to him, to treat him fairly, and he would at once meet you with open arms, literally so, as I once well remember. " The nearer you got to him, the better you understood him, the more you liked him, honoured him, and loved him. Can more be said ? To some he appeared stately and unapproachable. The truth is that Farrar was naturally a shy man, not at ease in all company, with- out the gift of small talk. The mistake was to treat him as unapproachable. Treat him as a friend, a thing of flesh and blood, even poke good-humoured fun at him, and he gave way in a moment, becoming brother with brother. The following authentic story shows how he appeared to a small boy who regarded him as nil ?nor- tale: 'I was never in the Sixth,' he explained, 'but Dr. Farrar came to review the lower school form in which I then was. As he came in, in his silk gown, with that stately form, oh, I did feel small ! " Go on, ," he said to me. I went on and got through it. When the review was over, he stopped and talked to us, among others to me. " Where were you born ? " he asked. " In India, sir," I replied. " Ah, I was born in Bom- bay myself." We had quite a talk, and then he shook hands. I was proud of myself. I didn't wash that hand for two days. I never got into his form ; but when he was installed dean, I took a holiday and went to Canterbury ; and when he died I went there to the funeral service. We never allowed a word to be said against him at home.' 156 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR " One or two more anecdotes before ending. The first illustrates his generosity. Thomas, the bursar and sub- sequently son-in-law, went to remonstrate with him at what he considered his extravagance in contributing to school objects. 'You are always heading lists with twenty or thirty guineas. You must think of yourself more.' ' Oh,' he exclaimed, ' it only means writing another article for the Contemporary or Fortnightly.' More than one assistant master can remember, when he was out of sorts, how the master came to his room, and said, ' Now, don't you worry yourself. You go to bed. I'll take your form in the morning.' Not many men could have endured the extra physical strain, still fewer would have volunteered it. Of his prodigious powers of work I remember a conspicuous instance. At the close of the Christmas holidays I went to see him, and asked him what he had been doing. 'Looking through the proofs of the " Life of Christ," ' he replied. ' Have you not been away ? ' I asked. ' No,' he answered, ' I have worked at them thirteen hours a day the whole time.' I remonstrated. ' Oh no,' he said, ' change of work is as good as a holiday.' " It has been said that Farrar was interested in the whole life of the school. He breathed spirit into departments in which he had small knowledge. He was no musician, but he greatly encouraged the singing of the school, and the House Glee Competition was instituted in his time. He had been Chaplain to the Rifle Corps at Harrow, and took great interest in the drill and shooting. The shooting Eight won the Ash- burton shield at Wimbledon for the first and only time in the history of the school. Marlborough had not beaten Rugby at cricket for nine years when he came. It won during his first two years, was beaten the next three HEAD-MASTER OF MARLBOROUGH 157 years, and won again in his last year and the year after. Of course it would be absurd to attribute these successes to him, but his famous ' Collapse ' sermon shows the power of stimulus which he could exert. We had been badly beaten the year before by Rugby. Next year, shortly before the end of term, when the match at Lord's was to come off, the master preached on ' Moral Collapses.' The real object of the sermon came after a pause at the close. ' And a defeat in cricket may be due to a collapse, — to a moral collapse.' On this he briefly but powerfully dwelt, ending with a quotation from Assheton Smith (!), apropos of taking a fence : 'Throw your heart over, and your horse and body will follow.' "The period from 1871 to 1876 was one of great and undoubted success. Farrar had relieved Marlborough from anxiety by his coming. He had thrown himself heart and soul into his work during his mastership. 'We knew that he could not stay long, that he was on the high-road to preferment,' said one of his best and most devoted pupils, 'but that did not interfere with his giving his best to the school.' Widely known and famous as he was, he made Marlborough more widely known. In an important debate at a head-master's conference, when another great head-master, Dr. Percival, and he were ranged on opposite sides, on rising to speak he was introduced in a ballad sent to the Journal of Education as ' Great Marlborough preluding war.' The list of university successes gained by the school during his five and a half years holds its own well with any period of equal length preceding or succeeding. " Farrar was an idealist, an ardent, perhaps impatient, enthusiast, conscious of a mission, conscious also of his own powers and of the obligation laid upon him. Such 158 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR he appeared, doubtless, and possibly such alone, to those who had not known him at closer quarters, or in his own home, where all that was simplest, most genuine, and tenderest in his nature was revealed. And respice finem. In his last afflicting and humiliating illness he was visited by a friend of a kinsman of mine to whom he said, ' Farrar had preached many an eloquent sermon, but nothing in his life was so eloquent as the patience and resignation with which he bore his suffering. Then the real man shone out.' " No sketch of Farrar's life at Marlborough would be adequate without some allusion, however brief, to the hospitality ever freely accorded at the Lodge to boys present and past, to masters, and to guests. It can easily be understood how great a refreshment such hos- pitality is felt to be after the daily routine of class room and playground. But it was when only one or two were present, when one was privileged to be, as it were, one of the family, that Farrar was seen at his best in his own home. And Mrs. Farrar — may I without a breach of good taste say how much we all owed to her and how gratefully we remember her kindness ? Always the same, gentle, companionable, putting you at once at your ease, sincere, you soon found out how exceedingly competent she was, how invaluable a help to her husband, how wise and true a guide to her children. Much more might be said ; I trust that I have not said too much. " On the morning of his leaving, I thanked him for what he had done for the school, and for his personal kindness to me, expressing at the same time my sense of his loss. At once, but with deliberation and conviction, he uttered one of those common-sense and just judgments with which now and again he startled one. ' No one is necessary here. This school is too well established.' HEAD-MASTER OF MARLBOROUGH 159 Strictly true, as I at once admitted, but that it is true is due to a few able and devoted men like Farrar. " In a prayer which the late Dean wrote for the school he bids us thank God ' for our benefactors, and for the lives and examples of all who have served Him here.' Among these he will ever hold a conspicuous place." " The Rev. Dr. James, Head-master of Rugby and a former colleague of my father's, has kindly allowed me to insert the following appreciation : 1 — " It is a sad pleasure for me to write, as best I may, a sketch of Dr. Farrar for the Marlburian. It must be clearly understood that I can only do so from the point of view of one who was, for all too brief a period, associ- ated as a subordinate with him in his magisterial work. What he was to the school must be told by one of his Sixth form. " It should not be forgotten that Farrar was once an assistant master at Marlborough in its early days of struggle. He used to tell, with an amused sense of con- trast, stories of that bygone time ; how once he had wit- nessed a procession of hungry boys parading the court with a banner inscribed with the words ' Bread or blood' ; or of the unfriendly relations, which he strove hard to ameliorate, between boys and masters. Nothing, per- haps, that he ever wrote was more graceful than the little poem in which he appealed to the Marlburians of a later generation — 'the glad gatherers of the golden grain ' — to perpetuate the memory of Dr. Wilkinson, the first master of the college. But it is of his head- mastership that I must chiefly speak. It was my privi- lege to serve as an assistant master at Marlborough, 1 For permission to use this and the following extract I am indebted to the courtesy of the editor of the Marlburian. — R. F. i6o LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR under Bradley for a year, and under Farrar for three. Seldom, indeed, has it been the good fortune of any public school to be ruled by two masters of such emi- nence in succession ; and seldom, surely, have two suc- cessive masters been in such marked contrast. I was not at Marlborough when the change came, nor until a year or two afterwards, having taken up work at Ox- ford in the meantime. But I knew from my friends on the staff, and I learnt afterwards for myself, how great in some ways the change was, and how it had impressed itself upon the school : naturally it was some time before boys or masters became reconciled to it — for public schools are conservative institutions. Both Bradley and Farrar were inspiring chiefs, but the stimulus was con- veyed in very different ways. Bradley had been vivacious, curt, plain-spoken, ubiquitous, restlessly energetic. If the truth must be told, we junior masters (I am not sure that I might not leave out the word 'junior') were not a little afraid of him, popular as he was with us. But Farrar was nothing if not dignified, courteous, consider- ate, conciliatory. It was not that he could not be angry ; many a time I have seen the indignation gather upon his brow when he had to deal with meanness, disloyalty, or wrong-doing. But he was by nature far less critical than Bradley ; generous of his praise, as of everything else ; easily wounded by unfair criticism himself, and so scrupulously careful not to wound others. Disre- spect he could not tolerate ; alike in boys and in col- leagues it hurt him. I remember once a junior master began a letter to him with ' My dear Farrar.' It was a pure lapsus calami, I believe ; but it called out a dignified, if kindly, rebuke. The master was bound, Farrar wrote, to exact, even from colleagues, the respect due to his position. The line of teaching which these two great HEAD-MASTER OF MARLBOROUGH 161 masters followed (I cannot help perpetually comparing them) was very different, as the Sixth of 1871 found, and as we found who were in charge of lower forms. " Where Bradley had insisted upon accurate scholar- ship, Farrar exacted literary attainment. I do not mean by that that either neglected the other point ; I could quote amusing stories of Bradley's merciless denunciation of illiteracy and the stimulus he gave to private reading ; and I remember how Farrar came away quite refreshed, as he put it, from a review of a form taught by a spe- cially scholarly master. But where Bradley had looked first and foremost for accuracy, Farrar demanded the knowledge of grammatical parallels and literary illustra- tions. Where Bradley had encouraged the intelligent teaching of syntax largely as an aid to the prose com- position which he valued so highly as an instrument of education, and in which he was himself so great a mas- ter, Farrar's interests centred rather on the classification of points of style, and on the elements of philology, — a study which seemed likely at that time to take a more important position in the curriculum of school and uni- versity than it has since actually attained, and in which he had been a pioneer. These reviews of our forms were a considerable power in the school. I have heard boys say that they went into a review of Bradley's in a state of absolute terror, well knowing the ' verbera linguae ' which they had to expect if they did not know their work. The review was thoroughly business-like ; every boy was ' put on,' and the marks carefully assigned. " Farrar's reviews were much more of a literary lesson. Only a few boys construed ; the marks represented less the gradations of individual knowledge or ignorance than the efficiency of the form as a whole. And what we learnt principally from his reports was our success 1 62 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR or failure in interesting our boys in the literary associ- ations of their work. No doubt each method of exami- nation had its special value. Farrar's was the harder to satisfy, but we grumbled sometimes that it was too much in the air, and too little in the nature of a per- sonal incentive to work so far as the boys were con- cerned. But, as he once put it, he found them 'with the dust of their grinding thick upon them,' and his desire was for more sweetness and light ; and to our- selves I am sure the results, and the master's criticisms, were valuable as encouraging a broader view of teach- ing, as well as a wider range of reading on the part of the teacher. " But the channel through which Farrar's influence principally found its way into the school was, unques- tionably, the Chapel pulpit. His sermons were an un- failing source of delight, interesting the dullest, kindling the ablest, going to the very core of boy life, moral and spiritual. His style is familiar to us all ; it has been severely criticised a thousand times, not always fairly. Reviewers, Farrar complained to me once, never recog- nised that, bad or good, it was at any rate natural to him, and that he could not substitute another for it. It was due in part, he said, to his fondness for certain authors (among whom he mentioned Jeremy Taylor) in early life. At any rate, the sermons were written always in most pictorial English ; they were replete with illus- trations from poetry, history, biography, which he poured forth ' like wealthy men who care not how they give,' vigorous, pathetic, denunciatory, persuasive, by turns ; but always splendidly eloquent. The veriest dullard could not but attend, for though parts of them were only for the ablest of his congregation, there was al- ways ample food for the youngest. Take them all in HEAD-MASTER OF MARLBOROUGH 163 all, I have heard no such sermons to boys as Farrar's. Who that listened to them, or has read them, could ever forget, for instance, the one on poor Congreve's death ; or that in which he described the martyrdom of Bishop Coleridge Patteson ? They owed something, no doubt, to that clear, mellow, and powerful voice of his — so singularly musical in one who had not been endowed by nature with the gift of a specially musical ear. " Then there was his warm, personal interest in us all, masters as well as boys. In my own case it was deep and life-long, and I can never forget or, alas ! repay it. No trouble was so great, no pressure of work so severe, as to prevent his doing a service for one who was, or had been, a colleague. " His power of work was stupendous (the word is no whit too strong). How he found the time, amid all the thousand duties of a head-master's life, to write such a book as the ' Life of Christ,' 1 has always been a marvel to me. No doubt he was a singularly rapid worker, but it was an extraordinary achievement. "I must say something — and yet I feel the subject is too sacred to say much — about the home life at the Lodge, and afterwards at Westminster and Canterbury. None of us who were privileged to get glimpses of it from time to time — and Farrar's boundless hospitality made this possible for most of us — will readily forget them. His home was all that an English home can be at its best. The love of wife and children lay deeply rooted in his heart, and they repaid it with a true devo- tion. This sketch would be incomplete in a most vital point if it omitted to say how much we all, and the 1 It is from no want of appreciation that I have not attempted to deal here with Farrar's works. Being public property they seemed to lie out- side the limits of a personal sketch such as this. — Note by Dr. James. 1 64 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR school at large, owed to Mrs. Farrar's gentle, gracious presence, unvarying kindness, and keen interest in all that concerned Marlborough. It was a privilege, too, to meet, from time to time, the well-known men of whom the master counted so many among his friends, and who visited him at the Lodge. It was a great wrench to him when he decided to accept the canonry at Westminster. 'To my inexpressible sorrow,' he wrote, 'I am called, by what seems the clear voice of duty, to leave my beloved Marlborough — never more flourishing, never more happy or more blessed than it has been this year. I must not look back, but let the brightness of the past cheer me in the dimmer, sadder, more uncertain future.' The work, with the addition of his continued literary labours, was oppressively hard. ' The Abbey alone would furnish me with employment more than ample,' he wrote again, 'and the parish [of St. Margaret's] ten times more.' No need to tell what a power his sermons were in the Abbey. But we had all hoped he would be made a bishop ; and it was, no doubt, a trial to him, conscious as he was of his own powers and services, to see third-rate men promoted over his head to episcopal rank." Prof. C. E. Vaughan, an old Marlburian and formerly head of the school under my father, thus writes to the Marlburian ; — " Dr. Bradley died on the 13th of March ; Dr. Farrar on the 22nd. It is not often that a school has been called upon to mourn two such losses within so short a space, and it is strange that two men, so closely connected in the work of their lives, should have been so closely joined in death. "When Dr. Farrar was appointed Head-master, in 1871, HEAD-MASTER OF MARLBOROUGH 165 he was met by a task about as difficult as it is possible to imagine; a task before which he himself might not unnaturally have quailed. He was called to follow one of the most brilliant teachers and one of the most suc- cessful Head-masters ever known. And I fear it cannot be said that the Sixth Form of that day did much to lighten his burden. With the perverse loyalty of youth, we were more concerned to show our devotion to the parted, than to welcome the coming guest. Everything that was not done exactly as Bradley would have done it, was looked at with suspicion. All the ideas which made the originality of our new teacher were set down as wandering fires to be followed at our peril. We con- veniently forgot that nothing would have been so bad for the school, and nothing probably so hateful to our- selves, as a copy, however good, of the excellent thing which had just been taken from us ; and that having lost an original man of one sort, we were fortunate — more fortunate than we deserved — in finding an original man of quite another sort. " Many of those who began by nursing this prejudice came before long to feel ashamed of it, and have never ceased to reproach themselves for their folly. It was a bad way of showing our gratitude to Bradley ; it was a lamentable display of ingratitude toward Farrar. " It is perhaps the greatest of all tributes to Farrar's powers, both of intellect and character, that he should have speedily triumphed over such a prejudice. Even before the first generation, the generation which had been under the spell of Bradley, had passed away, the great qualities of Farrar had begun to make themselves felt. And long before his too short time at Marl- borough was at an end, it is pleasant to think that they were universally acknowledged. It was simple justice LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR — the justice which, in the long run, comes to every man of lofty character and conspicuous talents — that this should be the case. And, if any man ever deserved the admiration and affection of his pupils, surely it was Farrar. Personally, the longer I live, the more strongly I feel the vastness of the debt I owe to the quickening power of his teaching. And I have no doubt that others feel the same. " Farrar brought to his work two qualities which have always been rare among masters, and which, it is to be feared, by no means tend to become commoner. What- ever the critics may have said, — but the really com- petent critics never said it, — he had a wide, deep and constantly increasing knowledge : the knowledge not of the accomplished man of letters, but of the genuine scholar. And he had also a literary instinct such as few teachers can ever have approached. " His thirst for knowledge was an education in itself to those he taught. Books of which we had never heard were constantly, though metaphorically, hurled at our heads; fields of interest, of which we had never dreamed, were opened to all who had the wits to enter. Without any desire to do so — certainly without any delight in doing so — he made us feel our own ignorance at every moment ; and, if we had any grace in us, he made us eager to share what we could appropriate of his knowledge. " It is sometimes said that a teacher has no need of learning; that the 'gift of teaching' — a certain method, natural or acquired — is all that he should ask or seek. ' Give me half an hour's start on a book,' such a teacher has been heard to exclaim, ' and I will back myself to do as much for my pupils with it as the greatest scholar.' To such follies as this Farrar was a standing HEAD-MASTER OF MARLBOROUGH 167 rebuke. He knew that a teacher is the better for every scrap of knowledge he can add to his store. And it is just because his own knowledge was so wide and so well under command, that so many of his pupils owe their first conscious love of knowledge to his lessons. Many of us may feel that we do little credit to our old master ; and that we might have done much more than we have done to follow his lead. But all who have thought about the matter must be aware how much he had to offer; they must know that it was something immeasurably more valuable than what the vast ma- jority of teachers, even of good teachers, have it in their power to give. " His knowledge covered a very wide range of sub- jects. Natural history, philology, theology, history, all came within his net. But it was his literary knowledge and his literary sense that probably made the deepest im- pression on his pupils. Here was a man who knew the literature of his own country as well as he knew that of the ancients. That, in itself, was surprising enough in those days ; let us hope that it is commoner now. Here again was a man who, with all his feeling for words, never stopped short at the mere words of his author, but always insisted on looking through them to the thought, the imagination, the human heart, at work behind. There must have been many to whom this was a revelation. I am sure it was to me. And this also was one of the greatest services a teacher could possibly have rendered to his pupils. " His literary sense made him, among other things, an excellent translator. Snatches of his extemporised ver- sions of Tacitus and Aristophanes — rather a queer combination, especially for so grave a man — still linger in my memory after more than thirty years. But it 168 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR was perhaps of yet greater use from the power it gave him of presenting every subject in a way which was always effective, and not seldom, in the best sense of the word, enlightening. As his books and published sermons show, he had an infallible instinct for seizing exactly the points which were most certain to rouse the interest of his hearers, and combining them in the most vivid and attractive setting. He was a born orator. And the gift that made him so, though it may sometimes have carried him away, was a gift that any teacher might do well to covet. If it were a commoner posses- sion than it is with teachers, there would be less igno- rance and more keenness among their pupils. " But, after all, it would give a very false impression to speak merely of Farrar's intellectual qualities. They may have been the first things to strike one. They are bound to come first into one's mind, when one thinks of his influence as a teacher. But behind them all was a character of singular nobility ; transparently simple; keenly sensitive ; capable of strong indignation, but quick to forgive and forget, however just might be his ground of offence ; full of self-denial ; full also of kind- ness and generosity toward others. " Perhaps his native kindness was never shown so strongly as when any of his pupils were in trouble or ill-health. He would come to sit with them; or — which he knew would give yet greater pleasure — would ask Mrs. Farrar to come in his stead. He would supply them with a mount from his own stable, and sometimes come himself for a gallop with them on the Downs. Even when work was most pressing, he would find time for genial services of this sort; perching himself, stiff and stark, on the box of his carriage to correct proofs, while the invalid sat behind in state. There was a HEAD-MASTER OF MARLBOROUGH 169 comic side to his appearance on these occasions, as he himself, in all probability, was well aware. But the kindness was none the worse for that. On the con- trary, the recipient of it, if he had any humour, was likely to be all the better pleased. " It was not in the nature of things that talents so brill- iant should be allowed to remain for ever in the service of a school, — not even if the school were Marlborough itself. In less than six years Dr. Farrar was called to Westminster. There he remained, one of the most powerful religious influences in London, till, some six years ago, he was appointed to the Deanery of Canter- bury. It is a deep reproach to successive Ministers that he was never advanced further, to a bishopric. But there is a sense in which his pupils and all who love his memory may be proud of the slight. It was the price that he paid, and paid willingly, for his advo- cacy of what he knew to be the truth." Another old Marlburian, C. L. Graves, writes : — " Of the five and a half years your father was at Marlborough I spent four and a half under his headship and three and a quarter — Easter 1872 to Midsummer 1875 — in the Sixth. In his youth he had known my mother's family in the Isle of Man, and was thus pre- disposed to take a friendly interest in me, but I have no reason to suppose that the unfailing kindness I received at his hands was in any way exceptional. " As a teacher he was eminently stimulating. The actual number of hours spent in school by the Sixth — especially by those who, like myself, were on obtaining the Responsions Certificate let off mathematics — was few, but my impression is that Farrar was most success- 170 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR ful in inducing us to work and read for ourselves out of school. "Lege, lege, aliquid haerebit was his constant cry, and the appeal was not in vain. His lessons were always picturesque, notably those on history, which were enriched by anecdotes and quotations, largely from the poets, which he delivered almost invariably from memory. " Toward his pupils his prevailing temper was one of geniality, though he would indulge in outbursts of indig- nation at our Philistinism which at times bordered on the comic. ' Can any boy,' I remember him once ask- ing, ' tell me within five hundred years the date of Joan of Arc ? ' I will not say that he never lost his equa- nimity, but he certainly often had great provocation. Some of the cleverest boys in the Sixth used to lay themselves out to play on his foibles and susceptibilities, yet I have good reason to believe that the most ingenious of his tormentors had all the while a warm feeling for the Head-master whose sense of propriety they would from time to time endeavour to disconcert. " As an instance of his magnanimity I may recall the following episode. It was the custom, and doubtless is still, that in competing for the school prizes the name of the competitor should be enclosed in a sealed envelope bearing a motto which was also written at the head of the exercise. The announcement was generally made in hall, when the Head-master broke the seal of the envelope containing the motto of the successful compet- itor and gave out the winner's name. One year the subject of the English verse prize was 'The Death of Nelson ' ; and the strongest competitor chose as his motto, ' He's gone where the good niggers go,' hoping that if he succeeded the Head-master would be obliged HEAD-MASTER OF MARLBOROUGH 171 to read out the grotesque legend. I am sure many Head-masters in similar circumstances would have resented such a piece of impertinence, even to the extent of disqualifying the competitor at the outset. There was no doubt, however, as to the superiority of his poem, so Farrar awarded him the prize, contenting himself with merely announcing his name. " If Farrar never overworked his Sixth, he never spared himself. Of his extraordinary industry ample evidence will be found in other parts of this memoir. Yet he was the most accessible of Head-masters, always ready to give information or advice. His lessons were pre- pared with the utmost care and an almost superfluous wealth of illustration. Indeed, he often tried to get too much into the hour, and as time ran short the lesson generally became a monologue. One of the trivial things that stick in my head in this connection is the way in which, when he was pressed for time, he used occasionally to misplace his words. 1 My dear boy,' I remember his once saying, appalled by a confession of unexpected ignorance, ' do you mean to say that you have never heard of the famous statue of Michael Angelo by Moses ? ' " Of the generous and gracious hospitality dispensed by Farrar and his wife at the Lodge, I have the most grateful and pleasant recollection. In hall, too, where he regularly dined with the Sixth, and often brought a guest, he was, for all his stately demeanour, the least formidable of companions, his invariable mode of address being, ' Come and talk to me, and amuse me, my dear boy.' "Judged by the test of numbers, of games, and of scholarship, Farrar's head-mastership coincided with a period of great prosperity and efficiency at Marlborough. 172 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR The school was fuller than it had ever been before : in cricket it was the era of A. G. Steel : the Spencer cup and the Ashburton shield were won for the first time by Marlborough : while on the score of entrance scholar- ships to the universities, and other distinctions, Marlbor- ough stood in the front rank of the public schools. But that Farrar had his limitations as well as his fine quali- ties as a Head-master it would be impossible to deny. To put it in an exaggerated way, he was incapable of inspiring terror ; underneath that impressive and stately exterior there was a very soft heart. His faults and foibles were essentially those of an ingenuous and affec- tionate nature." My father did not impress all men, or all boys, alike. To deny that he had the defects of his 'qualities would be to give a false impression, and it cannot be gainsaid that there have always been some who, in spite of love and even reverence for him, were apt to be tickled by incongruities that arose at times from contact of the lofty and remote plane on which he lived and thought with the plane of commonplace realities. I give, therefore, some extracts from an article written in a vein of kindly cynicism, contributed to the Cornhill Magazine by one of his old pupils "J. D. R." 1 There are spots in the sun, — so we are told. I do not endorse all J. D. R.'s criticisms, and whole-hearted admirers of my father may think that he has been over- keen to discern and expose his old Marten foibles, but, despite the pin-pricks, his essay is on the whole a tribute of genuine if somewhat critical appreciation : — 1 By kind permission of the Editor of the Cornhill Magazine. HEAD-MASTER OF MARLBOROUGH 173 ******* "The first characteristic of Farrar — old habit makes me drop the Dean — which struck the average school- boy was his grandeur of manner. I have been told that those who first met F. D. Maurice face to face were similarly struck. " Aristotle's description of the external marks of the grand man suited Farrar exactly. ' His gait is slow, his voice deep, and he speaks (like heroic verse) in meas- ured cadence.' And this grand manner clung to him inalienably, came from or passed into his very soul, I hardly know which. At all events, it revealed the man's inmost literary bent. What was most genuine in his literary tastes impelled him toward grandeur. Bias toward the big was an instinct with him. Nothing was more inevitable than that he should prefer Milton be- fore all other poets and Milton before all other prose writers. Probably he is the only nineteenth century man of letters of whom it could be said that his character was steeped and saturated in Milton. Admiration for Milton in the sense in which Farrar admired Milton exists no longer, if it ever existed. Some attraction or affinity drove him toward whatever looked large and splendid, away from what looked little and sordid. That was why he preferred the desolate unearthly glory of Milton to the glorious humanity of Shakespeare. In- deed, I think that he liked Milton the more, because Milton is remote from humanity, shrinks from contact with its coarser manifestations, and lets us too easily forget the facts of actual life. Probably, after Milton, ^Eschylus came next in his heart of hearts : and his sympathy was intense with that conception of the awful- ness of fate which pervades the great epic and dramatic writings of every age. His sympathy was intense, and 174 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR it was also discerning ; and he used to illustrate it with unerring felicity by such and such an adjective in the suitors' scene of the Odyssey, such and such a turn in the plot of Macbeth, such and such sentences in Sopho- cles, or even by a well-known passage from Shelley, and a little-known passage from Froude. When the Erinyes darkened the air, Farrar was in his element. Now Farrar was essentially a worshipper of poets and the like ; and I thought then, and still think, that these literary tastes formed the inmost fibre of the man, and therefore of the schoolmaster. And this semblance of grandeur cast on everything which he said and did some- times some shadow of itself, sometimes some shadow of its opposite, but more usually an intermixture of serious and farcical which used to strike us as so whimsical that we could not laugh at it, we could only quote it. ******* " I can certainly remember one occasion on which he conveyed to me a sense of pure unadulterated grandeur. It was one Sunday evening when he read in chapel the chapter in Job about the horse, with a classic repose and a rich resonance of voice, the like of which I have never heard since. His voice was not suited to decla- mation, or emotion, or variety of intonation ; but if only the speaker could keep quite calm and speak or read something which really suited it, it was matchless, and Job and Isaiah suited it. His reading of Job and Isaiah has produced on me the effect of some great but severe piece of music which bears being played monotonously — say, some fugue of Bach — performed on a perfect instrument. ******* " As I have said, under certain conditions and for cer- tain purposes, his voice could produce unrivalled legato * HEAD-MASTER OF MARLBOROUGH 175 effects with the ease and certainty of some old Italian violoncello. Now, his voice was always with him ; and is it to be supposed that this was the only occasion on which it did justice to itself ? that Milton, ./Eschylus, and those passages from Shakespeare, Sophocles, and the Odyssey which appealed most to him did not also elicit the same nobility of tone ? Over and over again while teaching us he spoke and read big things well and without effort ; and whenever he did so, he did so un- affectedly and majestically. The best, perhaps the only, philosophic scrap which I picked up from his table was a lucid exposition of Coleridge's distinction between the imagination and fancy. But I am much more grateful to him for the way in which he made me feel in my marrow and my bones some far-off inkling of the imag- inative power which possessed Milton and ^Eschylus, and inspired one side of Homer's, Sophocles', and Shakespeare's genius. " Farrar's industry was positively tireless, and the more so because he did nothing by deputy. He was like perpetual motion or radium. The man who was form master and transacted all the business of Head-master of a great public school, preached hundreds of sermons, and crammed his ' Life of Christ ' with references to scholars, pedants, poets, and saints during those five brief years, 1 87 1 to 1876, lived a crowded life. And he seemed to have thought or hoped that his pupils would prove equally energetic. So one afternoon he took some friends on a surprise visit to some Sixth-form studies in ' A ' house, thinking or hoping to find its occupants — like Charity Pecksniff — at work. O sancta simplicitas! The industrious apprentices were caught red-handed in the very act of enjoying ' a brew,' — or ought I not to write brown-handed ? For in those days a brew con- 176 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR sisted of cocoa and roast potatoes. At the next lesson Farrar began to narrate the story of his disillusion in low, mourning voice thus : ' I confidently expected to be able to point with pride to my sixth-form boys absorbed and immersed in study of some Attic masterpiece — "'Presenting Thebes, or Pelops 1 line, Or the tale of Troy divine.' Then, gradually raising his voice, he continued : ' But what was my indignation, vexation, and shame when I discovered them greedily engaged in ravenously devour- ing the semese fragments of a barbaric repast,' and those last six words, uttered fortissimo with intense vigour, launched him on a speech whose sesquipe- dalian grandiloquence Dr. Middleton might have envied. Indeed, for full five minutes he was like ' a bitten dic- tionary,' and at the end of it his good humour was quite restored. Our first impression was, how odd it was that he should have felt disappointed ! Our second, Could he really expect to crush cocoa and roast pota- toes with those furious blows of his Nasmyth hammer ? Our third, What Gargantuan humour ! What fresh, fluent, and spontaneous rhetoric ! How purposeless it seemed when levelled against our cocoa and roast po- tatoes ! How effective it has proved against his dumps ! True, it was at first unconscious, then semi-conscious, and only at last (if then) wholly conscious ; but this only made the humour more humorous. Such outbursts as these made our school life lively. ******* " I have referred to his all-devouring industry. That in itself was stimulating and inspiring. Moreover, he had a fine memory and a sense of the picturesque which fed largely on literary histories, and which invested our HEAD-MASTER OF MARLBOROUGH 177 studies of Guizot, Duruy, Sismondi, andMichelet with an unique charm and fascination. Yet how incredible the advice sounded which he used to impart to all and sundry, students and athletes, dull and clever, when he said good-bye to them for the holidays : 'My dear boys, if you will take down from your shelves and read during the holidays some good books like Gibbon's " Rome," Milman's "Latin Christianity," Grote's "Greece," or Mommsen's " Rome," it will be so much clear gain.' I can still remember the innocent assurance with which he hurled forty-one volumes at our devoted heads, and his curious emphasis on the last four monosyllables still rings in my ears. We could not help remembering it, if for no other reason, for the reason that it seemed absurd ; and, we said, ' There is not much light in it,' and we smiled ; then we thought over it again, and said, ' There is, after all, some true fire in it,' and we went away and worked. It is possible that our Head-master sent toddlers on the tramp before they could walk : but not all the sensible, prompt, and decisive persons in the world will ever persuade me that zeal has not something to do with knowledge. And, assuredly, Farrar was a whole-hearted, infectious, proselytising zealot. "Perhaps Farrar's influence — as a zealot for belles letlres — was increased by the sense we always had that he formed part of that literary world to which he was so passionately devoted. We did not derive that sense from the oddity with which he invariably re- ferred to Ruskin, Stanley, Browning, Tennyson, M. Arnold and others as his 1 eminent friends ' — an oddity to which it would require Dickens's pen to do justice — far less from his literary ventures : but partly from the fact that it was true that they were his friends, and partly from the fact that when at his best and simplest 178 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR he was himself a distinguished man and seemed, as I have said, at home with big things ; and partly from the quiet way in which he would now and then repeat some familiar talk with one of that glorious company, say, with Browning or Tennyson. Thus he would tell us how Browning told him how the famous ride from Ghent to Aix had set pedants diving into old books, but that it really took place in the nineteenth century in a yacht on the Mediterranean. And I remember the following conver- sation early in 1875 : Dr. F. : ' I have just been staying with Tennyson, who read me his new poem. It is a com- pletely new departure.' Precocious Boy: 'Then it is a drama.' Dr. F., with withering contempt : ' My dear boy! do you really think that I am a little child with whom you can play at guessing ? ' And the P. B. was baffled. A few months later ' Queen Mary ' was published. Farrar's nearness to these kings of dream- land invested them and the dreams which were their subjects with a reality which helped us to understand literature. " As a disciplinarian he was unconventional, to say the least. He did not take a drill-sergeant view of his pro- fession. He gave us great liberty, rode with a very loose rein, and trusted to our moral force instead of to his own vigilance. However, he proclaimed all his own weak points from the house-top ; thus, his rooted belief that he knew boys whom he did not know led him into many blunders, for which, however, his evidently kindly mean- ing easily atoned ; and the too great care with which he took offence, and then forgave, looked like want of judgment, but was partly due to the unsuspecting sincer- ity which made him utter everything that was passing through his mind. He made up for want of firmness by excess of kindness. Indeed, as a form master he would HEAD-MASTER OF MARLBOROUGH 179 have been defenceless against his pupils, if his pupils had been against him. ******* " Farrar's stateliness invariably brought his blunders into unfair relief ; his unfailing earnestness, candour, and kindness invariably corrected the effects which his blunders might have otherwise produced. We regarded his great qualities with admiration and his failings with tenderness. " I remember the shock which the contrast between Bradley and Farrar produced on veteran pupils of Brad- ley. One of them, indeed, who was neither a scoffer nor a Philistine, wrote to his late Head-master on a post-card, in the days when post-cards were the last new thing : — " Dear Dr. Bradley, We miss you sadly ; And wish Dr. Farra' Would go back to Harra'. " Other veterans carped worse even than this bad boy cackled; and predicted a plentiful crop of milksops, ped- ants, prigs, and sciolists on the one hand, and, on the other hand, of untamed rebels marching under the banner of inculta rusticitas. But I have no patience with those who expect any class of people to conform to a given type. One good custom can corrupt the world : and an able man who means well and is true to himself can break the best rules. Besides, facts are on the side of Farrar's efficiency as a Head-master. It was just after the great fever. Parents wrote by every post withdraw- ing their sons' names from the doomed school. The bursar's books were all but a blank. The school was threatened with extinction. Then Farrar came, and the tide turned. He raised the school out of the slough of i8o LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR despond. During the five years that followed, the for- tunes of the school were restored, and boys who were immediately under him won as high and as many hon- ours as those won in Bradley's five best years, though the credit for that feat was doubtless partly due to other masters, or possibly even to the boys themselves. Indeed, it is impossible to see who could have done better for Marlborough than Farrar. He was the very man for the post at that time. The moment required a head-master with a reputation and a personality, with un- sparing energy and unflagging enthusiasm : and Farrar fulfilled these requirements. " He was as unlike in nature to the typical schoolboy as it was possible to be. None could have ever called him 'jolly ' or ' old fellow.' He was not adamantine and Rhadamanthine like Temple. He was not sunny, sen- sible, and wide-awake like Bradley. He was sui generis. At first sight he seemed all stateliness and austerity ; cold, splendid, one-sided, unattainable : resembling what he used to call ' that burnt-out old cinder, the moon.' The last sight of him revealed only an excess of sincerity, sensitiveness, candour, and kindliness. Would that Aristotle or some one else had invented some word for this particular excess ! He was transparency itself. The first quality set off and ennobled the very rare and high enthusiasm which was his most valuable teaching asset ; it also accounted for some of his faults and ac- centuated all his faults as a schoolmaster. The last quality — the glass-house in which he lived — accounted for his other faults and saved him from the effects of all his faults as a schoolmaster. So singular a character was likely to be misunderstood by geese and carps who are guided by superficial impressions ; nor was it likely to show much knowledge of the characters HEAD-MASTER OF MARLBOROUGH 181 of others ; but it appealed irresistibly either to the imagi- nation or to sympathy, and that did almost if not quite as well. I have known some half-dozen other head-mas- ters, and have often discussed all of them with their pupils — for I fear that I was ever a gossip — but I adhere to my belief that Farrar was the most interesting of the lot. " So at least this fine man's virtues and frailties appeared to me a generation ago, when I was a dreamy, short- sighted, half-baked schoolboy, with but little knowledge of character and but little sense of proportion ; and as I now diffidently raise the curtain on some few almost forgotten scenes of private experiences in a public school, I only hope that in doing so I have offended none, either by my incapacity or by my mistakes, either by my stinted praise or mild criticism, because, as Dante said of his old schoolmaster, — " Che in la mente m'e fitta ed or m'accuora La cara e buona imagine paterna Di voi quando nel mondo ad ora ad ora M 1 insegnavata come I' uom s 1 eterna. 1 ' The following sketch, by my sister Mrs. Thomas, of my father in his home life, before marriage and profes- sional duties had more or less scattered the circle of children, seems to belong rather to Marlborough than to Westminster days, and is therefore inserted here : — " In looking back on childhood, it is difficult to analyze the working of a father's influence on the home. That of a mother is all-pervading. She is constantly with her children, her love and tender care surround them, and to her they naturally turn for every detail of family life, while as a rule the father has more power, but less opportunity, more authority and less intercourse. Yet 1 82 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR it is undoubtedly the fact that a good father — more even than a mother — forms the character of the home. The mother carries out his plans, softens, beautifies his designs, completes the whole building, but the master- hand is the father's. " In the case of my father, though we only saw him, as a rule, in the. brief intervals of his incessant work, I do not hesitate to say that his influence was the under- current of our lives, and that from him we learnt high, strong lessons of self-denial, self-control, self-culture, and above all self-surrender to God. He left us a heri- tage of good, for which we and our children after us may well be called to give account. A man of few words, with scarcely any aptitude for ordinary chit-chat, a remark from him came with more than ordinary weight, and a conversation with him taught and sug- gested more than school books could do. It gave us a consciousness of worlds beyond our petty ken ; it opened glimpses of literature and art ; it awoke the possibility of travelling for ourselves in those regions of knowledge and research which his own steps trod so unweariedly. Our petty ideals fell away before his lofty standard of right and high endeavour, and yet with him it was always ' Go and do thou likewise,' so that we were borne along the wave of his enthusiasm, not drowned by its volume. He never quenched our small aspira- tions but listened kindly to the crudest opinion so long as conceit was not mixed up with it. This was one secret of his influence over children and young people. Even the hobbledehoy stage learnt self-respect under the courteous sympathy that encouraged their efforts. ' Teach thy tongue to say, I do not know,' he once remarked with a kindly smile to a blushing, awkward child, overwhelmed with shame at being unable to HEAD-MASTER OF MARLBOROUGH 183 answer a question put to her at the luncheon-table ; only that — yet the smile and aptly quoted proverb relieved the shame of self-conscious youth and put in its stead desire to clear the reproach of ignorance by effort at improvement. " I never remember my father giving us a set lesson ; he taught us more by apposite suggestion, by allusions to books or events, by anecdote or illustration, especially he taught by his own appreciation of the good and great, making us see for ourselves what was worth learning. I might mention many instances of this. An episode of Francis d'Assisi's life told in a sermon, and in reply to our questions a few glowing words on the saint, with ' you should read it for yourself,' and the volume is handed over as is anything that we ask for from his study. (Read it we did, and many another book the same way.) A walk among the cornfields on a doubtful summer afternoon while 1 waves of shadow went over the wheat ' ; and after his quotation, I think more than one of us went home resolved to get Tennyson's ex- quisite song by heart. A story from the ' Idylls of the King,' and soon Arthur and his Table Round becomes one of our household plays. " Or we watch his face quivering with enthusiasm while we listen to his generous eulogy of a great or noble deed, 1 and feel how awful goodness is and see virtue in her shape how lovely.' Again we catch his burning words of scorn or hatred of wrong and oppression, mean- ness or cruelty, and we too learn to hate what is base. " My father rarely spoke directly on religious matters in the family circle, but we instinctively knew that he lived for God and His service. He showed us the beauty of religion in his life. " He was a man of fastidious refinement and delicacy 1 84 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR of feeling, reserved almost to pride, austere, even stern, at times. Coupled with this, however, were great ten- derness and much quiet humour. He could not bear to see his children in pain or grief — he loved to give them pleasure ; and though he seldom caressed us, we never doubted his warm family affection. Which of us, for example, can forget the long illness and temporary blindness of a tiny brother, and our father's solicitude then ? " As to humour, he appreciated it fully in others if not witty himself. 1 1 am tired, talk to me and amuse me,' he would say to his children, or to boys at the sixth- form dining-table, and would then lean back in his chair, enjoying their chatter, after a time perhaps rous- ing himself to join in as eagerly as they. Many a time did his hearty, infectious laughter break out in recount- ing some tale, or his eye light up with quiet glee in exchanging repartees with friends. Little oft-repeated family jokes inspired by him have now been invested with almost sacred remembrance, too dear for repetition in these pages. His playful tilts at ignorance or awk- wardness may be mentioned as instancing his power of dealing with the young — satire without a sting, be- cause of the genial smile and kindly inflection that accompanied them. ' Grotesque idiot,'. — ' Antedilu- vian megatherium,' — ' Have you ever heard of an obscure person named William Shakespeare,' are among these. We think of them now with that laughter which is akin to tears. " Love of the beautiful was strongly marked in my father. The wide stretches of green down, with the strong, sweet air fanning his bare brow ; the stately beech avenue, and sunflecked glades of forest bracken ; the ' hosts of golden daffodils ' ; the fragrant carpets HEAD-MASTER OF MARLBOROUGH 185 of bluebells ; the banks of pale, tender primroses ; the patches of frail, rose-stained anemones in the copses, — all these were positive joy to him. His face would light up with rare pleasure, as he gazed over the rolling foam, or marked the quiet splash of the rippling tide, and drank in large draughts of sea-breezes while pacing up and down the smooth, yellow sands. The spirit of Heber's lines seemed ever in his thoughts. " O God, O good beyond compare, If thus Thy meaner works are fair, . . . How glorious must the mansions be, Where Thy redeemed shall dwell with Thee. I quoted these lines to him not long before his death, and he seemed to listen with pleasure. Beauty in art, too, was a source of great delight, — a delight which he tried to transmit to others. He used to say that good art was an important factor in education, and he carried out his theory by covering the walls of every room in the house with pictures suggestive of the sacred and lovely, either copies or originals. His explanations of pictures and the graphic way in which he would point out their beauties were lessons in themselves. He could never see a treasure in art, beautiful either from rich colour or grace- ful form, whether picture, vase, or figure, without wish- ing to possess himself of it. This was his one form of self-indulgence, and it was a happy one, for our home became, in time, a museum of lovely objects. " It was a dear home, that in Marlborough, and our thoughts must often revert to it with fond regret. We remember the large, sunny garden, with its terraces ending in the field, its clump of shady trees, and the river below. But I can best describe it in his own words : — 1 86 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR " ' The river valley with its towers and trees ; the forest with its mossy glades and primroses and waving boughs ; the west woods with their wild anemones and daffodils ; the free, fresh downs with the winds of heaven that breathe health over them ; the natural amphitheatre of Martinsell, and the glorious expanse on which I had gazed so often from its green and breezy summit ; and more than these, the nearer scenes so bright with their thousand imperishable memories ; the terrace, the mound, the cricket field, the wilderness, the roofs of the old house rising over the clipped yews and between the groups of noble limes. And often, as on these gorgeous summer evenings, the sunsets have rolled over us in their countless waves of crimson fire, I have sat in my own garden amid the woodland sights and sounds — the peace, the coolness, and the song of birds, the quiet lapse of the river heard in the stillness, the air full of the odours of rose and jasmine, and then heard the chapel bell breaking the stillness, and passed through the court with its groups of happy boys, and so into the beautiful reverence of this dear House of God — I have thought that not often has our Heavenly Father given better elements of happiness to you and to me.' " My father sympathised in our love of pets. There was the innocent-faced donkey, ' Blacknose,' who every day might be seen plodding steadily along the lanes with the scarlet-capped babies in panniers on each side, and a vigorous little fellow astride his back. There were the white pigeons with rosy feet who came to our nursery windows to feed from our hands, — the sea-gulls brought from Swanage Bay, the numerous families of rabbits and the tame fawn that ran races with us on the terrace and which we fed with milk from a bottle. Mar- tins built in the shady schoolroom porch, and he with HEAD-MASTER OF MARLBOROUGH 187 us loved to watch the tiny mother darting in and out to feed her nestlings and see the fledglings perched on the ledge ready for their first flight. "Opposite our house was the sick house, where my mother daily cheered the invalids with her sweet face and words. Convalescent boys would be given the run of our garden, and were taken for drives by my father himself — he as often as not perched on the box, cor- recting papers, with his guest on the carriage seat. We have spoken elsewhere of his love for boys, and I can only recall here the way he would pace up and down his garden, with his arm on a boy's shoulder, or sit with him on the lawn correcting his ' prose.' Per- haps the happiest times in our young lives were when starting out in brakes and carriages, crowded with happy boys, to picnics to Martinsell or the forest, and on these occasions my father was not the least happy of the party. " We left Marlborough with singular regret, and to my father the pang of leaving his beloved school and peace- ful country scenes for the squalor of London life was never quite got over. I remember the melancholy journey to London and how one of the party was unable to restrain her tears at the last glimpse of well-known landmarks. My father, putting aside his own regret, said tenderly, ' Never mind — you will come back to Marlborough one day.' It was a curious coincidence that the child to whom he spoke was the only one who did come back to make a new home in Marlborough. "Our life in Westminster was very different and we greatly missed our freedom and country pleasures ; my father never could get reconciled to the comparatively noisy and sordid surroundings of our new home. Also the gloom, grime, and hideous eighteenth century deco- 188 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR rations of St. Margaret's church filled him with pain. He used with pathetic humour to groan over the big iron stove in the south aisle where a certain disreputable- looking man took his seat on Sunday evenings ; the fat and frowsy pew-opener ; the false apse, painted blue with yellow stars ; the huge galleries ' like the reced- ing forehead of a gorilla,' as he used to say. But he bravely and cheerfully made the best of it. The church after stupendous efforts was restored and beautified. The graceful arches and historical interest of West- minster Abbey partly made up for his lost country duties. St. James's Park, where he would take us to feed the water-fowls, was a pleasure, also the old college garden in which we children spent the summer evenings in merry games. " What helped most to cheer and brighten my father in those early Westminster years was the society of ' The Curates,' who, young, ardent, bright, and intel- lectual, gave an atmosphere of cheerful vigour to the house, and lightened many an hour of anxiety and de- pression. Chief among those he reckoned the two who afterward became members of our family and of whom it is not necessary to speak here ; but I cannot pass over the Sunday evenings when parents, children, and curates gathered in a circle after supper, when talk — literary, witty, or serious — went on, led by my father, who on these occasions seemed to open the treasures of his learning and experience for our benefit. When it grew late he would rise with the stereotyped joke, ' Your mother wants to go to bed,' and so disperse the reluctant company. " The restrictions of London life were broken annually by our visits to the seaside, holidays looked forward to by my father with as much eagerness as by his children. HEAD-MASTER OF MARLBOROUGH 189 Even at the seaside he allowed himself no real holiday, for, with the exception of two daily walks, he sat at his books from morning till night, content if from his open window he could catch the breeze and see the blue expanse of ocean. Here his marvellous powers of con- centration came in. As a rule we had only one sitting room, beside that appropriated to the babies, so that he was seldom alone. Yet he did his writing all day at the window table, not only undisturbed by games, read- ing aloud, or chatter, but ever ready to turn round with an observation on the subject of discussion. I may safely say that never do I remember his showing irritation at having to write under circumstances that would deprive most authors of power to compose. Rather do I think that his work was aided and not hindered by the atmos- phere of simple, domestic joys which surrounded him in our holidays. One or more of us were his compan- ions in his daily walk, — walks when he would repeat and make us repeat poetry. Then, too, he would search with us for wild flowers and talk of their properties or peculiarities. "Others have written of his parish work in London, so I will only speak here of the large circle of friends, men or women of fame and power who added greatly to the interest of our lives. Such names as Tenny- son, Browning, Matthew Arnold, Millais, Frith, Hol- man Hunt, Jean Ingelow, Tom Hughes, and perhaps first in friendship among ecclesiastics, the beloved Dean Stanley, are typical of the society in which my father delighted. " Above all, we had the happiness of living for many years, with few separations, since the school or profes- sion of most of us lay at one time in London, and the only thing which troubled my father's pleasure in having igo LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR his children round him was his anxiety to see them all well started in life, ambition for them being among his few weaknesses — if weakness it may be called. " Of the large family party who lived in those happy homes of Marlborough and Westminster, — " All. are scattered now and fled, Some are married, some are dead, And he who was to them as father, priest, and friend sleeps under the gray cathedral wall of his last home." CHAPTER VIII THE LIFE OF CHRIST AND OTHER THEOLOGICAL WRITINGS In 1874 was published the "Life of Christ," the magnum opus by which my father's name is best known to the world. The Preface is dated from The Lodge, Marlborough College, Monday before Easter, 1874. The work was undertaken at the request of the publishers, who " wished to place in the hands of their readers such a sketch of the Life of Christ on earth as should enable them to realise it more clearly and to enter more thoroughly into the details and sequence of the Gospel narratives." It would be foreign to my purpose, even were I com- petent to the task, to attempt a detailed appreciation of the book, which will, besides, be more or less familiar to any who are sufficiently interested in my father to read his Life, but a work so important demands some- thing more than a passing notice. The author says in his Preface : " After I had in some small measure prepared myself for the task, I seized, in the year 1870, the earliest possible oppor- tunity to visit Palestine, and especially those parts of it which will be for ever identified with the work of Christ on Earth. Amid those scenes wherein He moved — in the " Holy fields Over whose acres walked those blessed feet Which, eighteen hundred years ago, were nailed, For our advantage, on the bitter cross — 191 192 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR in the midst of those immemorial customs which re- called at every turn the manner of life He lived, at Jerusalem, on the Mount of Olives, at Bethlehem, by Jacob's Well, in the Valley of Nazareth, along the bright strand of the Sea of Galilee, and in the coasts of Tyre and Sidon — many things came home to me for the first time, with a reality and vividness unknown before. I returned more than ever confirmed in the wish to tell the full story of the Gospels in such a manner and with such illustrations as — with the aid of all that was within my reach of that knowledge which has been accumulating for centuries — might serve to enable at least the simple and the unlearned to understand and enter into the human surroundings of the life of the Son of God." . . . " If," he continues, "the following pages in any meas- ure fulfil the object with which such a Life ought to be written, they should fill the minds of those who read them with solemn and not ignoble thoughts ; they should 1 add sunlight to daylight by making the happy happier ' ; they should encourage the toiler ; they should console the sorrowful ; they should point the weak to the one true source of moral strength. But whether the book be thus blest to high ends, or whether it be received with harshness and indifference, nothing at least can rob me of the deep and constant happiness which I have felt during almost every hour that has been spent upon it." This journey was undertaken in company with his friends Walter Leaf, a beloved Harrow pupil, and the late William Ingelow, the witty and genial brother of the poetess. Readers of the book will appreciate how much it has gained from the knowledge of local colour which the author was thus enabled to acquire. THEOLOGICAL WRITINGS 193 The Hulsean Lectures of 1870 on "The Witness of History to Christ," had to some extent prepared and qualified him for the work, but can only be regarded as preliminary studies. The " Life of Christ " is generally spoken of, and often by ignorant critics with a sneer, as " popular," and popular it certainly is in the sense that it is avowedly written in the service of the simple and the unlearned, popular too in the sense that it is understood of the people, and has brought the Light of the Gospel to thousands to whom the books of theologians accounted more learned and profound are sealed. But if " popu- lar " be held to connote " superficial," no epithet could be more misapplied. Whatever defects the Life of Christ may be thought to have, and it has been freely criticised, that it is a monument of learning and re- search can only be denied by those who have never read the book. The list of authorities, giving the catalogue of books and editions frequently referred to in the Life, is alone sufficient to vindicate the deep learning of the author, and on almost every page will be found evi- dence of the minute and laborious pains he took to illustrate and elucidate every incident, and even every phrase of the Gospel Narratives. In judging Farrar's work, and this is true not only of the " Life of Christ," but of all his books, it must not be forgotten that there are two orders of scholars, the "intensive" and the "extensive" school, both necessary to the world — those whose function is original re- search, and those whose function it is to interpret and make available the labours of the former class, whose work would otherwise remain buried under its own weight. And it was to this latter class that my father unquestionably belonged. He laboured in the fields of 194 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR Philology, Theology, and History ; but, wide as was his learning, it cannot be claimed for him that either as a philologist, as a theologian, or as a historian he un- earthed new treasures of knowledge — by original re- search. But it is true of him, as has been said, that "as a writer he came into the market-place with the treasures of Biblical and historical learning and put them at the service of the simple " ; and not of the simple only, for though some few may have been his masters in depth, very few were his equals in width of learning, and even of professed English theologians there are but few, from Lightfoot downwards, who would not gratefully acknowledge their indebtedness to Farrar. Indeed my father had no warmer admirers than those great theologians Lightfoot and Westcott, with whom he is sometimes invidiously contrasted. For instance, though a Hebrew scholar, he was not a profound Hebraist ; but he was the first great literary churchman of his day to appreciate and make effective use of the body of Talmudic learning made available by German scholars. In regard to the style in which the " Life of Christ " is written, the terms "florid" and "exuberant" have been reiterated ad nauseam by every journalist, and it is true, as has been expressed by one of the kindliest of his critics, and not all were kindly, that " in matters of composition his intellectual method was of the Corin- thian rather than the Ionic or Doric order " ; but the same critic goes on to say, " If the faults of Dr. Farrar's mental temperament, in his love of gorgeous phrase and encrusted epithets, are to be plainly discerned in these pages, it does but render them like a missal which has been a little overgilded and painted, the book itself being a noble and precious product of English theo- THEOLOGICAL WRITINGS 195 logical learning, and an enduring witness in every line to the piety, the lofty faith, and the conscientious accu- racy of the author." To the question of style I shall recur in connection with my father as a preacher. It must not be forgotten that this gigantic task, which would have been a notable achievement as the outcome of years of lettered leisure devoted to no other object, was with my father a Trape'pyov, accomplished in the spare hours of a busy schoolmaster's life, between the years 1870 and 1874. Engaged often in teaching and other routine magisterial duties from seven o'clock in the morning till nine o'clock at night, with many letters to write and frequent sermons to prepare, " months," he says, "have often passed without my finding time to write a single line ; yet, even in the midst of incessant labour at other things, nothing forbade that the subject on which I was engaged should be often in my thoughts, or that I should find in it a source of peace and happi- ness different alike in kind and in degree from any which other interests could either give or take away." But leisure, with him, meant ever change of occupation, not smoking, or chatting, or a game of whist ; and after a hard day's work in school his steady lamp would burn far into the night ; while he valued his holidays chiefly for the privilege they gave him of working thirteen hours a day at his beloved book. Which of his chil- dren does not remember the ponderous and solidly constructed "book-box," with its fifteen cubic feet of formidable tomes, mostly German theology, the working- tools of my father's literary craft, which accompanied the family to the seaside on every successive summer holiday ? And he reaped from the " Life of Christ " a rich reward in 'the suffrages of the simple and unlearned 196 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR for whom the book was written. Though financially the profits of the author were scanty indeed in propor- tion to the commercial success of the book, for it was not published upon the "royalty" system (and indeed my father sometimes felt that his work had deserved more generous treatment at the hands of his publishers) ; the demand for the book was enormous. Twelve editions, at the rate of one a month, were exhausted in the first year of its publication. Since its first appearance the work has gone through thirty editions in England alone, has been " pirated " in America, and has been translated into almost every European language, including two independent translations into Russian, and even into Japanese. But more, even, than the evidence of success derived from sales, the author valued the testimony of hundreds who, year by year, and from all parts of the world, con- tinued to write to him, acknowledging their deep spiritual indebtedness to this and other works of his. The joy of feeling that he had been, under God, the humble instru- ment of turning many to righteousness was a reward which no bitterness of criticism could take from him. The " Life of Christ" may be regarded as the first of a trilogy, dealing with the foundations of the Christian faith, being followed in 1879 by the " Life of St. Paul " (which is considered by many judges as of greater theological value, if of less popular interest, than the "Life of Christ"), and in 1882 by the "Early Days of Christianity." He continued to make further studies in the Life of Christ, publishing in 1894 the beautiful "Life of Christ as represented in Art"; and finally, in 1900, from the Deanery, Canterbury, his last important work, " The Life of Lives," written when the atrophy, which finally THEOLOGICAL WRITINGS 197 compelled him to abandon all literary work, had begun already to fasten on that right hand which had toiled so long in the service of mankind. The "Life of Lives" is dedicated Conjugi Dilectissimae et Fidelissima? Laborum, Felicitatis, Dolorum Per XL Annos Participi Hunc Librum D.D.D. Fredericus Gulielmus Farrar III Non. Apr. MDCCCC In his Preface the author sent it forth "with the humble petition offered, ' with bent head and beseeching hand,' that He who deigned to bless my former efforts, will bless this effort also, to the furtherance of His King- dom, and the good of His Church." Had this beautiful book, so full of pathetic interest for those who love the author, been confined merely to the first and last chapters, in which he employs all the resources of his wide knowledge of history and litera- ture, and all the fervour of his intense conviction, to bring home to the hearts of his readers the compelling force of the life, teaching, and example of Christ Jesus, it would have been a profoundly valuable contribution to the cause of Christianity ; and comparing the " Life of Lives " with the earlier " Life of Christ " we recog- nise that age, without dimming the learning of the divine, had brought with it added depth of spiritual insight. The following letter from Professor Margoliouth, the great Hebrew scholar, illustrates the value attached by a man of profound learning to " The Life and Work of St. Paul " : — 198 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR "Little Linford Vicarage, March 12, 1880. " Dear Sir : Utter stranger as I am to you, yet I can- not resist the strong desire which took possession of my mind, and heart, too, to write a few lines to you. " I have now read and re-read, attentively and criti- cally, your great opus, ' The Life and Work cf St. Paul.' I have the courage of my conviction to pronounce it the greatest useful practical work that the Church of Eng- land has produced since the Reformation. " The two volumes, indeed, contain certain opinions and sentiments, criticisms and exegeses, quotations and renderings of the same which I cannot possibly acquiesce in. But the difference in our respective readings, con- struings, and applications of some passages in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, German, etc., does not alter my matured judgment of the importance of your last two volumes to the Church of Christ. " The reason for my presuming to write all this to you is a patriotic one. I am anxious to give expression to a thought which haunted me whilst I read and re-read 'The Life and Work of St. Paul.' The thought was, and is, this : If the two volumes were but somewhat, not too much, condensed and then rendered into Hebrew, the work might prove the most effective preparer and maker-ready of the way for turning the hearts of the disobedient and unbelieving Jews to the wisdom of the Just One. Far more so than the numerous tracts pub- lished and circulated by certain missionary associations. " I am, dear sir, " Yours faithfully, "M. Margoliouth. "The Rev. Canon Farrar, D.D." THEOLOGICAL WRITINGS 199 Two other books, " Darkness and Dawn," a tale of Nero's days, and " Gathering Clouds," a tale of the days of Chrysostom, dealing with the period of degeneration which set in with the fourth century, when the faith lost its first ideals, though in form works of fiction, treat of the history of the Early Church and may be regarded as continuing the same series which was further carried out in " Lives of the Fathers." The works forming the "Trilogy" reveal the author's profound and intimate knowledge of theological scholar- ship ; these later books and his " Lives of the Fathers " exhibit a knowledge not less profound and intimate of the history of the early Christian centuries. In " Dark- ness and Dawn " and " Gathering Clouds " the manner in which history is interwoven with fiction, like threads in the texture of " shot " silk, affords an excellent exam- ple of the method in which Sir Walter Scott was so successful ; indeed, in reading them we are irresistibly reminded of that author. We are equally fascinated by the flowing grace of the style, the charm and interest of the narrative, and the marvellous historical lessons which it conveys. I may give some idea of their scope by a citation from the preface of "Gathering Clouds," which is dedicated: — Filiis carissimis R.A.F. E.M.F. F.P.F. I.G.F. Hanc Corruptae Quidem Ecclesiae Fidei Tamen Incolumis Adumbrationem D.D. Pater Amantissimus " In 'Darkness and Dawn' I endeavoured to illustrate in the form of a story an epoch of surpassing historical and moral interest, — the struggle in the first century 200 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR between a nascent Christianity, armed only with the irresistible might of weakness, and a decadent pagan- ism, supported by the wit, the genius, the religion, the philosophy, the imperial power, and all the armies of the world. I showed that the victory of Christianity was won by virtue of the purity and integrity which it inspired ; and that nothing was able to resist a faith which placed the attainment of the ideal of holiness within the reach of the humblest of mankind. I tried to show some glimpse, so far as it was possible, of the frightful spiritual debasement for which a heathendom which had become more than half atheistical was re- sponsible ; and of the noble character which Christianity developed into a beauty till then not only unattained, but unimagined, alike in the high and in the low. So far as the historic outline was concerned, the picture was not an imaginative landscape but an absolute photo- graph. Every circumstance, every particular, even of costume and custom, was derived directly from the history, poetry, satires, and romances of classic writers, or from the literature and remains of the early days of Christianity. If I had not followed this method I should not have been faithful to the main object which I set before me. " In ' Darkness and Dawn ' I showed the influences which enabled the Church to triumph over the world : it is now my far sadder task to show how the world re- invaded, and partly even triumphed over, the nominal Church. I there showed how the Darkness had been scattered by the Dawn : I have here to picture how the Sun of Righteousness, which had risen with healing in his wings, was overshadowed by many ominous and lurid clouds. 1 Of the Byzantine Empire,' says Mr. THEOLOGICAL WRITINGS 201 Lecky, ' the universal verdict of history is that it con- stitutes, without a single exception, the most thoroughly base and despicable form that civilization has yet assumed . . . the Byzantine Empire was preeminently the age of treachery . . . the Asiatic Churches had already perished. The Christian faith, planted in the dissolute cities of Asia Minor, had produced many fanatical ascetics and a few illustrious theologians, but it had no renovating effect upon the people at large. It introduced among them a principle of interminable and implacable dissensions, but it scarcely tempered in any appreciable degree their luxury or their sensuality.' "The apparent triumph of Christianity was in some sense and for a time its real defeat, the corruption of its simplicity, the defacement of its purest and loftiest beauty. " Yet, however much the Divine ideal might be obscured, it was never wholly lost. The Sun was often clouded; but behind that veil of earthly mists, on the days which seemed most dark, it was there always, naming in the zenith, and it could make the darkest clouds palpitate with light. No age since Christ died was so utterly corrupt as not to produce some prophets and saints of God. These saints, these prophets, in age after age, were persecuted, were sawn asunder, were slain with the sword by kings and priests ; but the next generation, which built their sepulchres, had, in part at least, profited by their lessons. "'The Church,' said St. Chrysostom, 'cannot be shaken. The more the world takes counsel against it, the more it increases; the waves are dissipated, the rock remains immovable.' " In reading this story, then, the reader will be pre- sented with an historic picture in which fiction has been 202 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR allowed free play as regards matters which do not affect the important facts, but of which every circumstance bearing on my main design is rigidly accurate, or, at any rate, is derived from the authentic testimony of con- temporary Pagans and of the Saints and Fathers of the Church of God." From many hundreds, the majority of which I have not had time even to glance at, I have selected a few of the letters which my father constantly received, and which my mother's loving devotion preserved, thanking him for the " Life of Christ " and other books and sermons. I have tried to avoid overloading this memoir with eulogistic letters, a plethora of which would have a fulsome effect ; but it is impossible to give an adequate conception of the results of my father's teaching with- out introducing at least a few typical letters testifying to its quickening and ennobling influence on the hearts and lives of men. " August 20, 1874. " My dear Farrar : Just before I left London I had the pleasure of receiving your book from yourself, and it is furnishing both Mrs. Vaughan and me a profit- able and interesting study during our season of rest. It is, indeed, a marvellous proof of your industry and power of abstraction, that you should have been able to create such a work in the horee subsecivce of such a labo- rious life as yours. Its success seems to be an accom- plished fact within the first few weeks (I had almost said days), of its publication. May you receive on all sides the thanks and the applauses which you have so richly earned. Active and useful as your life has been hitherto — and never more so than in your present THEOLOGICAL WRITINGS 203 great sphere — I do not wish that education (in the narrower sense of that word) should engross the whole of it. I look forward to seeing you compelled, ere long, to give your mature and disciplined powers to the more direct (though not perhaps the more real) service of the Church in her highest ministries. " I have never thanked you as I ought and would, for your wonderful kindness to me in my illness. I never knew till then the soothing capacity of a telegram. " Ever your affectionate old friend, " C. T. Vaughan." "July 2nd, 1874. "My dear Farrar : Hades confitentem ! I long to make a clean breast to you on the subject of that promised review of your great book, which must have appeared so inexplicably deferred. For the first week after I laid it on my desk I was severely indisposed ; then I took it up and perused it from beginning to end with the truest admiration for a work of such far-reach- ing scholarship, noble inspiration and unfailing grace in treatment. But I felt that / could not and must not write the review. From its honourable initial motto manet immota fides to its eloquent close I must have arraigned it for the philosophical fault of draping upon that noble and sacred central figure the ideas and the morals, the discoveries and developments which are not neces- sarily propter Christum because post Christum. Why not arraign it ! you will say ; and certainly in any indict- ment of a book and such an author there would have been little, probably, to touch our friendship, but the book appeared to me too precious as an educator to be 204 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR made a theme for polemics ; it appeared so good and useful, so high and ' sweet ' a presentation of Chris- tianity as you see it (as I wish I could see it) that I decided to give it over to a hand more skilful, very likely, and certainly more orthodox. "This gentleman has accomplished his easier task, and I shall shortly print the notice. But you will say there are two sins confessed — a promise to you deferred, and a duty to the public put by. I can only say that if I am to state my reasons for believing that Chris- tianity must disappear as all faiths — qua faiths — have disappeared and are disappearing, it must be against some champion whose lofty and noble purpose does not constantly disarm my convictions. It would take a long conversation to justify this feeling and to tell you how thoroughly I share your faith in the divine humanity of Christ — while I look for many and many Christs to be. Suffice it if you believe my sincerity and take on trust the things I cannot now write. I shall preface the notice with a mention of the book's great popularity. " If I should ask you shortly to let Julian come home a week before the statutable time, would that be per- missible ? The reason is, we are going for two months to Norway with the two elder lads, and it is of great importance to start early to enjoy the long, sub-arctic daylight ; thus a week's grace would make a valuable difference in our plans. With best regards from us both to Mrs. Farrar, " I am most sincerely yours, "Edwin Arnold." THEOLOGICAL WRITINGS 205 "Sept. h, 1874. " My dear Dr. Farrar : Why do you allow the critics to wound you so deeply. They are, after all, but heartless units, whereas there are at this moment so many thousands with hearts who are thanking you for your interpretation and explanation of the ' Precious Life,' which will thereby be rendered infinitely more precious to their souls. In a letter this morning my friend Mr. Coleridge ends his few favourable lines on the subject thus : ' In such an age as this, I thank God for such a book on such a subject.' The sympathy of many loving hearts and a conscience that you have been the means of doing much good should at any rate be elements in mitigating the force of the remarks of the few adverse critics. Pardon my having written thus, but we are feeling deeply for your vexation. " With affectionate remembrances from us both to Mrs. Farrar and yourself, " Believe me, my dear Dr. Farrar, " Most sincerely yours, "Charles J. Leaf." "Florence, Oct. 20th, 1877. " Reverend and dear Sir : I venture to trouble you with a note to thank you for the precious delight I have enjoyed in reading your truly wonderful ' Life of Jesus.' No other book, except my Bible, has ever been, or I think ever can be, what yours has been. Therefore, though a stranger and unknown to you, I trust you will pardon the liberty I have taken. But I have another cause for gratitude. A few months ago it pleased the 206 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR Lord to take from our home a sweet little boy of five years. He was taken from us suddenly, and one of the comforts we had given to us in his removal was the interest he took in your ' Life.' It happened in this way. In the evening his mother read a portion of it, and next morning after I left home to attend to my pro- fessional duties she took our little darling to her own room and reread to him in child's language the portion of the previous evening. It awakened in his young mind a remarkable interest for one so young, and questions like these were put by him to his mother : ' Then was Jesus once a little boy like me?' ' Did Jesus play with marbles as I do ? ' 1 Was Jesus a real Falegname ' (car- penter) ? ' Why were the Jews so unkind to Jesus ? ' One day during his reading he suddenly said, ' Mamma, Signor Vitta will not go to Heaven.' ' Why ? ' was his mother's answer. ' Not unless he changes and believes on Jesus, because it was his people who killed Jesus.' Signor Vitta is a Jeiv ! " Frequently when the day was wet and he was kept with his nurse indoors he would come to his mother and say, ' Mamma, read a little out of the big brown book ! ' — meaning your ' Life.' It seemed to touch his heart, and we never saw him so interested in any narrative as in the parts of the book relating to the early life of our Lord. We desire to thank you most heartily for all the comfort and joy we have derived from your labour, and to express the wish that He whose blessed life you have so touchingly narrated will abundantly bless you and yours. " Now a word about myself. I am one of the English physicians in practice here, and beg to offer you a warm invitation to occupy our ' Prophet's Chamber ' should you ever come to Florence for a whole day. It will THEOLOGICAL WRITINGS 207 give my wife and myself sincere pleasure to welcome you to our home. " I am, " Reverend and dear sir, " Yours very faithfully, "A. B." "i6/n/'77. " In an illness which confined the writer to his bed- room during the early months of this year, his trained nurse read aloud to him Canon Farrar's two volumes of the ' Life of Our Lord,' which he had previously read with so much satisfaction. In the hours of nightly wakefulness and suffering, he was often comforted and refreshed by Canon Farrar's careful and conscientious setting of the precious jewels, the words and acts, as the ' Urim and Thummin,' of the High Priest of the Church of Christ, the Lord of Glory. «< >> "Stockholm, Sept. 17, 1883. " My dear Archdeacon : I have found your name so lovingly spoken of by Swedes and Norsemen in my re- cent tour, that I feel it only kind to write to tell you of it. " When I was at Lund, two years ago, one of the students (a philosophy-faculty student), whom I casually joined in looking over the Museum, told me (in poor German) that he had read your ' Life of Christ ' in Swedish, and, not to name several others (natives) who have spoken of you in my present town, I was particu- larly struck to-day in the fact that the commander (an artillery captain) of an obscure fortress about twenty- 208 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR five miles east of Stockholm told me that he had read your ' Life of Christ,' and that several other works of yours, which he did not seem to know, were also trans- lated into Swedish, and that the ' Life of Christ ' was in two forms, an expensive and large form with pictures, and a small popular edition ; and unless I misunderstood him (he was speaking in Swedish), he said that your ' Life of Christ ' had gone into more than one edition. The old soldier's face brightened as he talked about it and you. "Though, I believe, as life gets on, you feel less and less to care for criticism, favourable or adverse, than you once did, yet it must be a joyous satisfaction to you to think that you are the unknown teacher of thou- sands who will never know your face in the flesh ; and that you can afford to appeal to the hearts of these, when you are nibbled at by stupid old Mrs. Orthodoxy, and priggish Miss Criticism, and bitter Mr. ! " I have been wandering alone for seven weeks in Norway and Sweden, perhaps more interested than instructed. But, if you do not fear the sea voyage, I could recommend it from its health-giving character (equally with the Engadine), as a very accessible spot for an overworked man to run off to in an August, any year. " Forgive my intrusiveness, and believe me, " Reverend Father : Sir, " Your admirable work, ' The Life of Jesus Christ,' was translated into Russian, and had several editions. Ever yours faithfully, " A. S. F. THEOLOGICAL WRITINGS 209 We have nothing similar in our literature, therefore you will find this work not only in the metropolis, but in remote parts of our vast empire. My mother is the proprietress of a country land in the Sovern of Smo- lensk district, Sytscheoka village, Nashokino, with a very beautiful orthodox church, at a distance of twenty-two hours from St. Petersburg, and about fifteen hours from Moscow. Now I take the liberty to ask your photographic card for presenting to my mother at the day of her names day the 17/29 Sept. I am assured that a better present I cannot imagine. In the same time I must inform you that your admirable book pro- duced many times a real consolation in her solitude, and not only your name is pronounced with veneration, but your book read always with a full admiration in our family. Now you see that the aim of this letter was to inform you of my sincere intention, and of the effect produced by your book in Russia. " I am, sir, with fullest respect, your very obedient servant, "A. Lomonosoff, F.R.G.S.C." " Rev. Father Mr. Farrar, Chaplain of H. M. the Queen of Great Britain care Mr. Quaritch editor and bookseller." " Most Reverend Father and honoured Sir ! De- lighted with the depth of the thought, the charm of the narration and the new clear view of your respected book, ' The Life of Christ,' the idea occurred to me of consecrating my time to its translation into Russian, and of thereby acquainting our society with the English fathers of the Church, as yet quite unknown to the Russian public. 210 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR " I therefore beg you will grant me your permission and benediction to begin my work. " But I find it my duty to add, that as there exists in Russia an ecclesiastical censure, jealously guarding not only the dogmas, but the traditions and rules, I am reduced to the necessity of changing the text in some places, for only on this condition the book may be published in Russian. " Guided by your saint blessing I shall do my best to make my translation, as much as possible, correspond to the perfect original. "With the most profound respect I am, " Most Reverend Father and dear Sir, " Your devoted servant, "Theodor Matveieo." "Stockholm, April 15th, 1902. " My Reverend Sir : It has been my wish for many years to send you a few lines from an unlearned layman, but have hesitated as I was sure that you would be troubled by receiving from all parts of the world, warm affections of thanks for the valuable enlightening con- tents of your writings. " However, after having read for the third time 'The Bible, Its Meaning and Supremacy,' I feel it impossible to refrain from sending you the warmest thanks from the bottom of my heart, for all the great, beautiful, and glorious benefits I have received from the merciful hand of God through your works. "I have read 'The Life of Christ,' 'Eternal Hope,' ' Mercy and Judgment,' ' Seekers after God,' ' Life of Christ represented in Art,' ' Life and Work of St. Paul,' and now at last ' The Bible, Its Meaning and Suprem- THEOLOGICAL WRITINGS 211 acy,' and now I can say, through these works God has become to me greater and more glorious ; Christ, my Saviour, better understood, more loved and indispensa- ble ; the Bible more precious, and my view of things wider, brighter, and clearer. I have rejoiced with ad- miration that with your amazing erudition you have the power of expressing the deepest truths in a language simple enough to be understood by laymen. Your brilliant exposition, however valuable, is yet of less value than the great simplicity with which the most important vital questions are set forth and answered by you. " Be pleased, therefore, to accept my deeply felt, sin- cere gratitude for all the joy and blessing your writings have for many years given my spirit in its thirst after the things of eternity. " May God richly bless you and may His promise be fulfilled in you. They that turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars for ever and ever. " With profound respect, your humble and respectful servant, "C. O. B., " Formerly member of the Swedish Parliament." "Oct. 24, 1879. " Dear Canon Farrar : Allow one of your many readers to thank you heartily and sincerely for much profit, instruction, and benefit received from your ardu- ous, honest, painstaking labours, in bringing, as it were to our very doors, the living, ever living, story of the ' Divine Artisan ' in his daily life in Palestine. You have coloured my life since perusing the pages of His life as narrated so graphically, so truth-lovingly by you in this nineteenth century. 212 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR " Perhaps it may interest you to know that at the time it was published one Englishman ' up to the neck in business ' and for a fortnight employing a cab some eight hours a day, made it the pleasant companion of solitude in his cab and elsewhere in this big, busy Lon- don ; and not even the pleasure of reading for the first time Southey's' 'Nelson' or Boswell's 'Johnson' or Lockhart's ' Scott ' (which few forget) was equal to the zest with which he perused page by page the wondrous record of Jesus the great philanthropist, physician, teacher, and Saviour of all mankind. " I had read Neander and Renan. The Frenchman's vivid word-paintings of the ' Surroundings,' his charm- ing landscapes, his vivid colouring and animated style may interest, but, as water can only rise to its own level, so his conception of a benevolent Frenchman lacking the divine, has never taken hold of the common people, who heard the Divine Founder of our common Chris- tianity so gladly ; presenting a marked contrast to the audience your book has gained amongst ail classes in England. . . . « >> "Bickley Vicarage, Kent, May 22, 1874. " My Dear Farrar : I have seldom welcomed a gift book more than the two volumes which you have so kindly sent me. I feel sure that they will live, and that many men of all parties will acknowledge that you have done good service to the cause of the Great Master in writing them. "And to many thousands, I cannot doubt, they will come as at once widening their knowledge and by it strengthening their faith, as showing that freedom and THEOLOGICAL WRITINGS 213 reverence are not only not incompatible with each other, but attain their true proportions and reach their end only when they work together. From some sections, chiefly, I imagine, the Extreme Right and the Extreme Left, you must expect sharp attacks ; but those who set things at their true value will see in these attacks almost a guarantee of excellence. " I feel humbled by the kind, too kind, way in which you have mentioned my name in the Preface. I feel that the book owes very little, directly, to anything that I have been able to contribute, and I have seldom more regretted the pressure of work and care which has been on me for the last eight or nine months than when I found it hindering me in what I would so gladly have done under happier conditions. I am content to think that long years ago I was, perhaps, enabled to open to your mind the path in which it has gone on so success- fully, and has attained results which I only dreamed of. At present I feel as if my lot were rather that of a hewer of wood and drawer of water for the Temple than to offer the sacrifice or wave the incense or sit in Moses' seat. " When will you come and see us ? " Ever yours affectionately, " E. H. P[lumptre]." "Nov. 17, 1879. " My dear Farrar : Cassell's people have at last sent me the copy of ' St. Paul ' which you kindly destined for me. " I shall value it as being a treasury of thought and knowledge to which I shall always turn with the cer- tainty of finding much that I would not find elsewhere. 214 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR " I must thank you also for the kindly mention of my name in the Preface. " No good work, I imagine, is ever done in the world without a semi-chorus of ' detractions rude,' but in the long run, or even, as in this case, the short run, this is more than balanced by the knowledge that the work has been helpful to those whom it was meant to help. ' Securus judicat orbis terrarum.' I am so glad that Hilda and Margaret have met. " With all kindest regards, " Yours affectionately, " E. H. Plumptre." "The Temple, May 3, 1879. " My dear Farrar : I have trespassed unduly on your long friendship by delaying thus long my expres- sion of gratitude for the gift of your book. Hitherto, I have not been able to read it continuously ; I have dipped here and there into its contents, at points of special interest, finding always something to admire, if also (as must be the case where one has lived so long and so intimately with the subject), something also to hesitate or to pause upon. " You need not words of mine, dear Farrar, to assure you of the success of your great untertaking, both as a matter of public interest and of grateful and devout study. I know which of the two you will most value, — the heartfelt thanks of those whom you help to enter with a fuller appreciation into those immortal writings, or the more superficial applause of people who admire eloquence and assent without judgment. " I shall have the book always near me. I shall use THEOLOGICAL WRITINGS 215 it, as I have used 1 The Life of Christ,' whenever I want to be sure that I have not overlooked something vital in the interpretation or enforcement of the inspired Word. " May the highest and best of blessings be upon your work and upon the workman ! " Your attached old friend, "C. T. Vaughan." CHAPTER IX st. Margaret's, Westminster In 1875 Mr. Disraeli (as he then was) offered my father the crown living of Halifax, which, after some hesitation, he declined. " Confidential. "The Lodge, Marlborough College. " My dear Vesey : I am offered (strictly entre nous) the Crown Living of Halifax, — one of the most impor- tant. I shrink from it utterly and am sorry it has been offered. Moreover Marlboro' has serious claims on me, and I feel a most deep conviction of my entire unfitness. You have known me for twenty years : Could I do the work ? Ought I to take it ? The decision must, one way or other, affect my whole future life. Do let me have your sympathy, your prayers, and what I shall enor- mously value, your advice. " Yours affectionately, " F. W. Farrar. "I have written to Disraeli to ask till Monday to decide." "The Lodge, Marlborough College, June 15, 1875. " My dear Vesey : I have been torn by conflicting advice and conflicting views of duty, but this afternoon — not without many a pang of misgiving — telegraphed 216 ST. MARGARET'S, WESTMINSTER 217 what is probably a final refusal. I believe Halifax will soon be a Bp's see. Crushed with work or would write more. " Yours affectionately, " F. W. Farrar." In 1876 my father accepted at Mr. Disraeli's hands the post of Canon of Westminster and Rector of St. Margaret's, in succession to Canon Conway. Writing of Lord Beaconsfield, he says : — " To me he was always conspicuously kind, though he was perfectly well aware that I belonged to the Liberal school of politics. It was he who, when I was Master of Marlborough College, offered me the important and valuable vicarage of Halifax, which, however, I was un- able to accept. He now offered me the Canonry of Westminster, which is attached by act of Parliament to the rectory of St. Margaret's. I kept him long waiting for an answer ; for at that time I had no experience in parochial work, and in those days the parish was not only far more densely populous, but also unspeakably more wretched than it subsequently became. Had I followed my own inclination, I should have shrunk from so heavy a burden, and all the more because the church itself was then as repellently unattractive, with its churchwardens' Gothic and hideous galleries, as it subsequently became beautiful and interesting. But, on consulting friends of some distinction in the Church, they advised me to ac- cept the offer; and I did so. Dean Wellesley told me afterwards that if I had asked his advice he would have recommended me to decline; and that, in that case, it was certain a higher office would have speedily been placed at my disposal. I do not, however, in the least regret this, though I was assured on the highest author- 218 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR ity, that the only reason which deterred Lord Beacons- field from promoting me later on was the outburst of denunciation which followed the publishing of my ser- mons on 'Eternal Hope.' This is no more a subject of regret to me than the other. The determination of our little destinies lies in hands far higher than our own, and I have every reason to thank God that, throughout my life, the lot has, by His mercy, fallen to me in pleasant places. When some kind friend said to Mr. Disraeli, as he then was, ' Why, you have given preferment to a strong Radical ' (a remark which certainly required modi- fication), he only answered, with a laugh, that 'perhaps I should in time be brought round to his own views.' " On the last occasion when my father ever met the great statesman he said to him at parting, " Dr. Farrar, I have always felt a sincere regard for you." It may here be noted that every successive promotion in my father's career, from Marlborough onwards, was an " Irish rise " in point of income, involving some pecuniary loss. The head-mastership of Marlborough was far less lucrative than the command of a large house at Harrow, and the position involved a larger expenditure in hospitality. His Westminster preferment was, again, less lucrative than Marlborough ; while ac- ceptance of the deanery of Canterbury involved a very heavy sacrifice of income. How reluctant he was to leave his beloved Marl- borough, may be gathered from the following letter : — "July 26, 1875. " My dear Vesey : I must write to tell you how much your kind help at St. M.'s has cheered me, and how grateful I am for this proof of your affection and sympathy. ST. MARGARET'S, WESTMINSTER 219 " The bitterness of death is past. I start to-morrow for 1 Marine Parade, Folkestone, where we stay until we exchange the sweetness and freshness of God's country — the air full of roses and jasmine scent, the garden, the river, the downs, the forest, the West Woods — for the choking atmosphere and dusty purlieus of Westminster. I change the inexplicable dearness of a good, bright, and most flourishing English school for the dull, close-fisted suspicions, envies, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness of grown traders in the ' big, brutal, brick-bombarded Babylon.' Misery, you see, makes sport to mock itself. " No, I was not offered Calcutta, — should have gone if I had been. I have the feeling one has in sea-sick- ness : ' Please chuck me overboard.' " The proofs which the last week has brought that I have stirred and touched boys' hearts and consciences are a fresh pang. Why God removes me from this work I know not. I know that all we have in life is His, not ours, lent, not given, given sometimes and then taken away, and then given back (sometimes) in the same or other forms. May He grant this to me, and give me back, if not the past, and work so sweet and so encouraging, and so suited to my powers (for that can- not be), at least the country again ! " I shall work at St. M.'s, at least I shall try. God knows what will come of it all. " Come and see us, and take a prophet's chamber when you come to Convocation. " We shall be starving, but you shall have a crust. " Yours very affectionately, " F. W. Farrar." 220 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR His ever affectionate old friend, Dr. Vaughan, wrote thus from the Temple : — "April 19, 1876. " My dear Farrar : Your letter reaches me here to-day, and I long to be able to say ' God bless you ' with a voice carrying comfort and reassurance to your soul. Such a change is anxious and formidable, and one is always asking oneself, ' Why made ? ' But I have an unshaken trust in the hand that is over us, and in the love above all love, which takes under its charge the new life, and makes it quietly and half-consciously absorb rather than replace the old. " You will find a thousand interests arising around you in your new home and work. It is a grand work in itself, though no one knows better than I that the charge and love of the young can never be equalled in pathos and tenderness by any other work or any other oversight which can be given us in this world. Still, it will be always coming back upon you in the form of unexpected gratitudes and imperishable affections, seek- ing you out in your new position and ever looking to you as their natural rest and home. How happy it will make me to feel that in the great, and sometimes homeless, world of London you will find at the Temple a love and a sympathy at once old and new. " I know that you will suffer yourself to look only forward and upward, feeling that the lot has fallen, and that its disposing is of the Lord. " Ever affectionately yours, " C. T. Vaughan." In spite of the natural pangs he felt in leaving Marl- borough, the Rector soon became deeply attached to his new cure. ST. MARGARET'S, WESTMINSTER 221 St. Margaret's is an extremely interesting, and, in spite of the hideous metamorphosis it had undergone at the hands of Puritans and eighteenth-century Philistines, an intrinsically beautiful church. Nestling under the shadow of the great Abbey, the parish church is as old as the Abbey itself, being meant for the population, whereas the Abbey church was mainly for the monks. The parish of St. Margaret's is mentioned in a charter of King Edgar as early as a.d. 962. Shortly after the great Abbey of Westminster was established on Thorney Island, there gathered round its walls an ever-increasing community of persons, many of them engaged in work for the Abbey. Others had settled there for the sake of protection, for hard by was the Sanctuary, an historical connection still perpetu- ated in the names "Broad Sanctuary" and "Little Sanctuary." In 1064 Edward the Confessor found that the spiritual attention required by this settlement dis- tracted the monks from the due exercise of their reli- gious duties and meditations. Accordingly the saintly secular monarch caused a church to be built within the precincts of the Abbey, the purpose of this edifice being to serve as a parish church to the inhabitants of the infant city of Westminster. The old round-arched Saxon building stood until the reign of Edward I, when it was pulled down, and a new church raised in its stead. In the reign of Edward IV the parishioners modernised the building into the early Perpendicular Gothic edifice which still stands. At a later date the church was saved from destruction by the zeal of the parishioners, who demolished the scaffolding which Protector Somer- set had raised round it with a view to pulling it down to make way for a new palace for himself. The complete restoration of the ancient and historic 222 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR church was the new Rector's first task. The restora- tion had indeed been contemplated in his predecessor's time, and a small sum of money had been collected, but nothing further had been done. No trait was more characteristic of my father than his ardent devotion to the beauty of God's temple. He passionately desired — not only that the services of the temple should be, not indeed ornate, but decorous and stately, and resonant with exquisite melody, but — that the fabric should lack no structural dignity and grace which could be bestowed on it, and should glow with the rich and vivid colouring for which he had a passion almost Oriental. When he went to Marlborough the chapel was a bare and barnlike erection, which was, structurally, perhaps past praying for; but he never rested till at least the interior had been beautified and enriched by Bodley's designs, till the bare walls glowed with frescoed panels, carved scroll work, and gilded tracery. The chapel being dedicated to St. Michael and All Angels, he commissioned Spencer Stanhope to paint a series of frescoes representing the angels of Scripture, which for beauty of design and delicacy of colouring are among that artist's masterpieces. When the new school chapel was built, in 1886, these frescoes, together with the panel work, were transferred to it. Some exquisite windows by Burne-Jones and Morris were also added during Farrar's mastership. On coming to St. Margaret's he found the interior of what had been originally a fine Perpendicular church metamorphosed into a Georgian changeling of the ugliest and dreariest type. Heavy galleries, which my father was wont to compare to " the receding forehead of a gorilla," ran round three sides of the building, the choir ST. MARGARET'S, WESTMINSTER 223 and organ being, as was usual in Georgian churches, in the west gallery ; a sham apse of lath and plaster, painted blue with gilt stars, desecrated the chancel ; the fine Perpendicular mouldings of the windows had been destroyed by Puritans or mere Philistines ; the pulpit was one of the old " two-deckers " ; and the walls were thickly plastered with ugly mural tablets setting forth the virtues of worthy citizens, long since forgotten, while on the other hand certain beautiful and interesting Tudor monu- ments were plastered up and out of sight. The very spirit of Georgian apathy and Philistinism seemed to be brooding over this once beautiful church. This was a state of things which the Rector could not tolerate for a single day. With impetuous energy he set about the Herculean task of sweeping clean away at once the accumulated filth and the eighteenth-century erections which disgraced the fabric. The wooden gal- leries, together with the sham apse, were ruthlessly demolished, the plaster scraped from the walls, and the stones pointed. His method of dealing with the hideous mural tablets was distinctly original. They could not well be destroyed, but the Rector, having obtained the requisite "faculty," consigned the bulk of them to the decent obscurity of the belfry tower ; while the few that were beautiful and of interest were released from their plaster shrouds, cleaned, freshly coloured where neces- sary, and placed in appropriate positions. The original mouldings of the windows, which had been mostly re- placed by a plain and tasteless pattern, were restored according to the design of the few that fortunately survived. The ceiling was covered in with oak, an oak screen was erected, and the choir and the main body of the church filled with carved oak pews. A carved stone 224 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR pulpit painted with glowing colours replaced the old " two-decker." The pride and glory of St. Margaret's church is the noble east window, perhaps the most beautiful and interesting window in England. It was originally pre- sented by the town of Dort, in Holland, to Henry VII, to commemorate the marriage of his son Arthur with Catharine of Aragon, and contains the only surviving portrait of that prince. Intended to be erected in Henry VII's chapel in Westminster Abbey, which was not yet completed at the time, the window was placed pro tempore in Waltham Abbey. The relations of Henry VIII with Catharine of Aragon would not be likely to inspire him with any wish to claim the window for Westminster ; and in Waltham Abbey, ac- cordingly, it remained till the dissolution of monasteries, when it was removed to New Hall. There it remained till the civil wars, when it was taken down and buried underground by General Monk to save the treasure from the violence of the Puritans ; but at the Restora- tion it again saw the light. About 1740 it became the subject of a bargain, and was sold to a private gentle- man for fifty guineas, whose son, some twenty years later, realised a handsome profit by selling it, for four hundred guineas, to the restorers of St. Margaret's, where it has found its permanent resting place. The authorities of Westminster Abbey instituted a lawsuit to recover what they considered, perhaps not unjustly, to be their property ; but the then Rector and churchwardens of St. Margaret's, holding possession to be nine points of the law, fought stoutly to retain what had been for so long their own, and after prolonged liti- gation won the lawsuit and kept the window. When my father was restoring the church he found that the ST. MARGARET'S, WESTMINSTER 225 window had suffered rather seriously from damp during its prolonged sojourn in the earth, and that the colour was flaking off in parts. To preserve it from future damage it was thought necessary to cover it with a fac- ing of plate glass. This somewhat detracts from the appearance of the window, but it is hoped that it will have the desired effect of saving this priceless treasure of art for future generations. The interstice of masonry, between the moulding proper to this window and that of the window put in during the Civil War, was filled with beautiful fresco work by Clayton and Bell. The churchyard, when the new Rector came, was filled with crumbling tombstones with indecipherable legends, the vacant spaces between which held muddy pools of water in rainy weather. He boldly determined to sink these obsolete memorials six feet under the earth. After obtaining the necessary " faculty," and getting with infinite labour and the exercise of much tact the permission of surviving relatives, this was accomplished ; and Londoners of to-day may well be grateful for the fine tract of close green turf which forms such an effec- tive foreground to the Abbey. An inner vestry was added, and the final structural improvement was the addition of the beautiful west porch in 1891. I may mention among the features which give interest to the church a carved reredos in lemon wood, Italian work — circa 1768. This represents Our Lord at supper with the two disciples at Emmaus. One of the disciples is a portrait of Cardinal Ximenes. I have dealt with the restoration of St. Margaret's at some length, because the story is very characteristic of my father's zeal for the house of the Lord, and also of his thoroughness, energy, and diligence. None but those who remember the church as it was, and are able 226 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR to contrast this picture mentally with its present condi- tion, can realise how gigantic was the task, nothing less than the transformation of the whole building from roof to floor. And none but those who were behind the scenes can realise the labour it cost, the hundreds of letters it involved, and the efforts needed to raise the necessary funds, a feat that would have been impossible for a man of less commanding influence. Having restored the fabric and made it worthy of its ancient traditions, my father proceeded further to beau- tify the church, in which he now felt the greatest pride, by filling the windows with stained glass. When he came to St. Margaret's there was only one stained glass window in the building, the glorious east window. The Rector successfully exerted all his influence with his friends to procure the erection of a series of windows commemorative of the history of the church, and made further interesting by quatrains inscribed under them, specially composed for him by some of our greatest poets. Of these my father has told the story in " Men I Have Known," from which I have introduced some extracts for the interest of the personal reminiscences involved. " The printers of London gave me a beautiful stained glass window in memory of the first English printer, who lies buried in the church, and whose signature occurs in its records as an auditor of its accounts. I wanted to place four lines under the window, and asked the Laureate to write them for me, suggesting that he might make them turn on Caxton's motto, ' Fiat Lux.' I was with him when he wrote them, in his bedroom at the deanery of Westminster, and witnessed, so to speak, their birth throes, until he became satisfied with them. He declared that they had cost him more trouble than many a substantial poem. They are : — ST. MARGARET'S, WESTMINSTER 227 " Thy prayer was ' Light — more Light — while Time shall last ! ' Thou sawest a glory growing on the night. But not the shadows which that Light would cast Till shadows vanish in the Light of Light. " When I placed the Jubilee window of Queen Vic- toria's reign in St. Margaret's, I asked Mr. Browning to write the quatrain under it for me. He did so, and these were the four highly characteristic lines : — "Fifty years' flight ! wherein should he rejoice Who hailed their birth, who as they die decays ? This : — England echoes his attesting voice — Wondrous and well : thanks, Ancient Thou of Days. "The very quaintness of the lines, — their charac- teristic oddness of collocation, as in ' Ancient Thou of Days,' — the fact that they were written in the poet's special style of what his critics called ' Browningese,' made them more interesting to me than if they had been smooth and commonplace. They illustrate the cause which made people call him unintelligible ; namely, that his sentences frequently did not ' construe,' but required some long subauditur to show their dependence. " Yet so far was he from being careless about the lines, that he took the trouble of a long walk to St. Margaret's to see if they were correctly punctuated on the brass plate underneath the window. He found that the engraver had altered a comma, and requested me to have it at once corrected. " When the fine west window to Sir Walter Raleigh was given to me by Americans to commemorate the fact that the headless body of that great explorer lies buried in St. Margaret's, I chose Mr. Lowell (who was then the American Ambassador) as the fittest poet to write the memorial quatrain. 228 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR " The New World's Sons, from England's breasts we drew Such milk as bids remember whence we came ; Proud of her Past, whereupon our Future grew : This window we inscribe to Raleigh's fame. "When I told Mr. Childs (of Philadelphia) how closely Milton had been connected with St. Margaret's, where his banns of marriage were published, and where his dearest wife ('my late espoused saint') and infant daughter lie buried, he gladly consented to give a window to Milton's memory. For this window I asked Mr. Whittier to write the inscription. "The New World honours him whose lofty plea For England's freedom made her own more sure, Whose song, immortal as its theme, shall be Their common freehold while both worlds endure." The bodies of certain Cromwellians were basely ejected from Westminster Abbey at the Restoration. Among those thus foully outraged was the body of Admiral Blake. My father rejoiced to pay a belated tribute to Blake's memory, by inducing naval officers and others to subscribe to a window to his memory in St. Margaret's. He thus writes : — " His dishonoured resting-place is that promiscuous and forgotten pit, which to the shame of our indifference covers the mortal remains of Pym, of Strode, of May the historian and poet, and of Cromwell's venerable mother. Into that pit in St. Margaret's churchyard their bodies were flung, two hundred and twenty-eight years ago, by the meanest act of revenge upon the dead which ever disgraced an English king and an English Parliament. And no honour has ever since been shown to the man whose splendid courage held Portugal and France in awe ; who chastised the pirates of Tunis ; who defended England against the fleets of Van Tromp ST. MARGARET'S, WESTMINSTER 229 and De Ruyter and De Witt, and who died on his way from that great victory at Santa Cruz, in which he attacked and destroyed the Spanish fleet after deeds unsurpassed even by Grenville or by Nelson." For the Blake window the following lines were written by Sir, then Mr., Lewis Morris: — Kingdom or Commonwealth was naught to thee, But to crown England queen o'er every sea. Strong sailor, dauntless patriot, true and just, Rest here! our Abbey keeps no nobler dust. For the Lloyd window Sir Edwin Arnold wrote : — A master printer of the press, he spake By mouth of many tongues, he swayed The pens which break the sceptres. Good Lord, make Thy strong ones faithful and thy bold afraid. " My dear son, Cyril Lytton Farrar, was Lord Lytton's godson, and was named after him : and when this glad- hearted and gifted youth died at Peking at the age of twenty-one, Lord Lytton contributed the lines placed under the memorial window in the vestry of St. Margaret's : — "Dead almost ere his race of life began, Far is his boyhood's grave in bright Cathay : Farther beyond our reach the future man, Whose life has now begun the larger Day." And — " Mr. Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote for me the quatrain which is carved on his memorial tablet : — " Afar he sleeps whose name is graven here Where loving hearts his early doom deplore ; Youth, promise, virtue, all that made him dear, Heaven lent, earth borrowed, sorrowing to restore." 230 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR The death in 1891 of my brother Cyril in China, where he was an officer in the "Customs," was a great grief to my father. Cyril was a youth of rare promise, of a singularly gay and sunny temperament, rich in artistic talents, and one who amid manifold temptations pre- served the purity and simplicity of his childhood, and " kept the spell of home affection still alive in his heart." Of his early death my father wrote : " All life will be darker to the end because of it." His home letters, some brimming over with pure fun and merriment, some describing his life in China with graphic descriptive touches which gave promise of great literary power, others, dealing candidly with his religious difficulties and spiritual aspirations, have been enshrined by his father in a volume of touching interest, printed for private circulation, " Memorials of Cyril Lytton Farrar." At this time Dr. Vaughan wrote to him : — -The Temple, February 8, 1891. " My dear old Friend : I could not read unmoved the tidings of your great sorrow. The loss of a dear son seems to me (to whom it can only be an imagina- tion) almost too hard a trial to be lived through. But you are borne up by a firmer faith than mine. The dis- tance adds to the bitterness — depriving you of the sorrowful comfort of looking upon the dear face in death and laying the precious body in its last bed. " May God comfort you and the dear patient sufferer beside you — and dear Eric too, and the loving sisters. I hope, and I hear, that your great effort of last Mon- day was got through before you actually knew of the departure from earth. " Always, in joy and sorrow, " Affectionately and gratefully yours, " C. T. Vaughan." ST. MARGARET'S, WESTMINSTER 231 During the restoration of St. Margaret's, services were held in the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey, and with characteristic liberality the Rector seized the oppor- tunity thus afforded him of inviting Max M idler and other distinguished laymen to occupy the pulpit. The restored church soon became the centre of in- tense spiritual activity, and one of the most popularly frequented in London. To meet the demand for seats of the hundreds who flocked from all quarters of the town to hear the golden-voiced preacher, a system was adopted which seemed to be equitable to regular parish- ioners and strangers alike. There were no pew-rents, but sittings were assigned to members of the congre- gation, and reserved for them, if they chose to be punctual, till the moment the organ began to play. From that moment all seats became free, and strangers were at liberty to occupy any pew of which the regular ten- ants were not already in possession. The Rector himself almost invariably preached on Sunday mornings, and the sight of the morning congregation was deeply im- pressive. Not only was every pew quite full, but the chairs in the aisles, the chancel steps, the step of the altar rails, even the steps of the pulpit itself were eagerly seized upon. Hassocks were passed out from the pews to seat others, many were glad to stand throughout the service, and frequently scores who had been unable to find even standing room overflowed into the adjacent Abbey. The style of these sermons has been criticised, — tastes differ, — but no one dare deny that the elo- quent pastor fed the spiritual hunger of thousands of earnest men and women. And his words rang out with authority, and came home to the hearts and consciences of men, because his hearers felt that the passionate elo- quence was no mere rhetoric, but the language of utter 232 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR sincerity and intense conviction, the language of one who was, as has been said of Luther, a " Gott-ertrunkener Mensch," a man steeped in God, who preached not for effect, but lived the truth he preached, who loved right- eousness with all the force of his being and hated sin with a perfect hatred. The wife of the present writer was once walking with the Rector in the Chapter Garden at Westminster, and ventured to say, " That was a won- derful sermon you preached this morning; do you mind my asking do you believe it all, every word ? " " Ab- solutely," replied my father. " But what would you do if, after death, you found it was partly a mistake after all ? " " I should go before the throne and say, ' I fol- lowed my reason and my conscience, the highest things I had to guide me.' " To the question of my father's sermons I shall recur in the next chapter. St. Margaret's had long been the church of the House of Commons. The Rector strove to render this official connection, which had almost fallen into abeyance, a real and vital one. Seats were reserved at Sunday morning services for members, and the Speaker, several officials of the House, and many of the members were regular attendants. Special services were held in St. Margaret's to commemorate the Queen's Jubilee and on other occa- sions, and the emphasis thus given to religious observ- ance in connection with the great council of the nation was felt to be of real value. The selection, therefore, of the Rector of St. Mar- garet's to be Chaplain to the House of Commons, in 1890, was very appropriate. My father held this office for five years and greatly enjoyed the opportunities it gave him of making friends among the members, many of whom, from the Speaker downward, were warmly attached to their Chaplain. ST. MARGARET'S, WESTMINSTER 233 On being appointed Archdeacon of Westminster in 1883, he wrote thus to his friend, Archdeacon Vesey : — "17 Dean's Yard, Westminster, April 28. " My dear Vesey : It was the greatest pleasure to hear from you. How odd is one's destiny. Here I am stranded — like a desolate wreck on the lonely shore ! in a title which of all others I could most loudly have declared I should never possess, and which seems to me of all others to suit me least ! No emoluments, and no duties, except Ruri-decanal. Certainly no gaiters or shovel-hat — father of cooking pots ! only an apron on grand occasions. My little granddaughter asks whether I shall carry crumbs in it to the sparrows ? and whether it will be as pretty as mother's lawn-tennis apron ? I reply that I shall have it black, because it saves wash- ing. Mrs. Farrar won't let me stir about any change of dress till I have consulted you. Tell me ought one, when archidiaconally dressed in an evening, to wear apron, silk stockings, knee-breeches, and shoes with silver buckles ? I am as ignorant as a babe. " I am very glad that you like ' My Object in Life.' " Yours very affectionately, " F. W. Farrar." CHAPTER X THE PARISH PRIEST Of my father as a parish priest three of his former curates, the Right Rev. Bishop Montgomery, the Rev. W. E. Sims, Vicar of Aigburth, Liverpool, and the Rev. W. J. Sommerville, Rector of St. George the Martyr, Southwark, testify in the present chapter ; my brother, the Rev. Eric Maurice Farrar, Vicar of St. John's, Hoxton, also a former curate, writes of his temperance work. To these testimonies I need not add. They afford convincing proof that the man who was known to the world as a great preacher, a profound scholar, and a man of unparalleled literary activity, was at the same time the energetic and efficient ruler of one of the best- organised parishes in London. From time to time charming " At Homes," to which every grade of parish worker was welcomed and truly made to feel "at home" gave a concrete embodiment of the spirit of loyal and hearty devotion, which knit together the pastor and his flock. These cheerful and eminently social parish gath- erings were known in the family as " The Herrings," and certainly were somewhat densely packed. In reference to parish work, my father was wont humorously to allude to himself, his wife, his daughters, and the curates respectively, as "the Rector, the Director, the Miss Di- rectors, and the Correctors." 234 THE PARISH PRIEST 235 Bishop Montgomery writes : — "When Canon Farrar came to Westminster in 1876 he had had no experience of the science of parish work. It is a science, and one in which growth is always pos- sible, for it is a little world to be governed, which includes every sort of character and problem ; and unless a man is ever pondering, he is likely to discover one day that he has omitted even to think of his whole classes of parishioners in any complete sense : for example, all the publicans in the parish, or the servants, or the young men lodgers, or the cabbies, or the police. "As almost the first of the Canon's new curates, I strongly advised him to leave the details of parish work to us, to whom it was a familiar science, and of course to the large band of workers under us. It was obvious that the Canon was not brought to Westminster for the parish work, but for the sake of the Abbey and of St. Margaret's pulpit, as a factor in the religious life of London. Upon the whole, the Rector accepted this position, whilst he kept himself in constant touch with parish work, and himself took part in certain work ; for example, he regularly taught for some years in the schools, those schools to which he was so deeply attached, headed as they were by the remarkable man who was known and loved and trusted by every one con- nected with the parish and the church. The Rector, with his eager and sympathetic nature, visited of course to a certain extent. Ere long he encountered an expe- rience novel to him, but familiar to us who had grad- uated in the school of parish life. He called one day at the house of a parishioner, about whom it might be said that he was suffering from ' over-exertion in drink.' The caller was dismissed with contumely. It was long before the dear Canon recovered from the shock, and I 236 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR suppose we young fellows laughed, and begged him all the more earnestly to reserve himself for those who called for him, whilst we did that rougher work for which our more brutal natures were better fitted. " Rough it was indeed in those days in part. Old Pye Street still stood. I think it would have been difficult to have found a spot more full of crime. A lay reader of ours knew London life, and had seen a house in that street more than once strewn with silver plate. To him it was ' pewter.' He was no detective, and could never have shown his face there if he had given information. The whole street drank hard whilst such plunder lasted. One case which came under my own experience' may be of interest as an instance of low life under the shadow of the Abbey. I received a message one day to admin- ister Holy Communion to a dying girl in Pye Street. She was in the last stages of consumption, and her story was to the effect that her husband lived on her wages, which he forced her to obtain by a life of sin. Some memory of her childhood made her ask for the Sacra- ment before she died, more sinned against than sinning. " It was a case for giving what she asked for without overmuch examination. She summed up her repentance in one sentence : ' I have worked very hard, and I am very tired.' The husband was playing dominoes with a companion whilst his wife was dying behind a screen. I did what I could to make all decent and in order behind the screen whilst I gave her the Sacrament. The game, however, was not intermitted. " But the transformation of St. Margaret's, both as a building and as a spiritual force, was the crown of the Canon's work as Rector. It is no derogation to the earnest men who were in power in the parish before him to say that Canon Farrar revolutionised the church from THE PARISH PRIEST 237 every point of view. It was simply that the old order changed. No one who enters the church now can realise what it was in 1876, with the hideous galleries blocking the windows, the 'three-decker' with the dirty velvet cushion (the special aversion of the new Rector), and the general appearance of neglect caused by the squalid appointments of the church. With characteristic energy he determined to sweep the place clean, whatever the cost might be. He put all his tremendous force into his appeals : his wonderful voice rang through the building pleading for the worthy restoration of a build- ing scarcely inferior to any in London for historic interest. The congregations were of course enormous. Constantly those who could not gain admittance betook themselves to the Abbey instead. The House of Com- mons seats (for it is the church of the House of Com- mons) were filled. Americans made it a point to worship, not only in the Abbey, but also to listen to Canon Farrar in his parish church. Soon a large choir was formed, homely in one sense, a truly parochial choir, composed of men who were never absent, and whose numbers were only limited by the space in the chancel. The sidesmen and churchwardens never failed to be present, and were hard-worked officials in their attempts to cope with eager throngs collected from all parts of London, and indeed of the world. I have seen the church so full, again and again, that it was almost a painful sight. To many of us it has seemed that the Rector's ministry in his own church was almost a greater thing than his preaching in the Abbey. In the parish church his preaching had a more homely note. He was addressing his own people, and his sermons were all the more helpful to earnest-going people because they were not quite so much tours de 238 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR force. Thousands came to be fed by a man who believed in righteousness, and was not afraid of thundering against those who did not. Upon the whole I think his most helpful sermons were those which explained a book of the Bible in its broad outlines. A sermon on the Book of Job haunts me to-day. Equally effective were his sketches of men and women, whether in the Bible or outside of it. Indeed I remember the feeling that passed through the congregation one Sunday evening when he spoke of a Frenchman named Arouet and of his public spirit, and then after a thrilling pause reminded them that he was speaking of Voltaire. No one can doubt that a very deep and beneficent influence was exerted on broad Christian lines by the Rector of St. Margaret's, an influence felt by thousands in all parts of the world. Voice, manner, and matter, all combined to make men ready to go back and do a better week's work in conse- quence of the Rector's sermon. "The church was shut for about a year, while the work of restoration went on under Sir Gilbert Scott and a distinguished committee. Meanwhile the congrega- tion worshipped in the Chapter House, lent by the Dean and Chapter ; and when the work was nearly com- pleted it was difficult to believe that it was the same building. A little girl, upon first seeing the effect, exclaimed, 'Why, mother, this is heaven.' Not much of great importance was discovered during the restora- tion. I remember spending an evening with the Abbey clerk of works in a vault under the altar, trying to find Raleigh's head, but without success. " One is inclined to linger lovingly over the affection- ate parish life of that period. There was no particle of disunion ; money was forthcoming for every purpose. Every worker seemed to consider that there was no THE PARISH PRIEST 239 parish like St. Margaret's. The yearly reunions of old boys, of churchworkers, of every sort of parish organi- sation, were charming. Nor is it possible to omit (how- ever much she might desire it) some allusion to the conspicuous, but inobtrusive, part taken by the Rector's wife in every parish movement. Those who were there in those days can alone know what it meant. The Rector was, I think, the first to allow that one depart- ment at least was better in his wife's hands than in his own. It is still mirth-provoking to recall the subject of parish accounts during the first few months of the Rector's reign. Was it not the duty of the Rector to keep the parish accounts himself ? Could a distinguished Head-master and scholar not cope with so small a matter as that ? It was but a short time to the end of the year, and we awaited the result with bated breath. At length, about Christmas time, the moment came when the Rector's balance-sheet must be prepared. It was an occasion not to be forgotten when the distinguished scholar produced a sheet of paper scored all over, and crossed with figures, which represented the accounts of numerous organisations. "'My dear, I can't quite make these accounts come straight.' " I do not think any human being ever made anything out of them. It was a day of laughter, tender and over- flowing. "The Rector's wife after this took charge, with boundless success. " Parish life is a prosaic subject to the public. But it means a great deal to those who find in it their little world, and a very happy, human, and useful world. Some of us think that the St. Margaret's career of Canon Farrar contains the brightest and most permanently 240 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR useful portion of his life after he left Marlborough, and that no place is so fitted for a memorial of him as his parish church." The Rev. W. E. Sims writes : — " The career of a parish priest whose days are passed in ministering to the needs of the people committed to his care, and who finds his reward in the 'joy of doing good,' whatever may be its real intrinsic value, affords perhaps little that is interesting to the general reader. Its success is the result of diligent attention to details that viewed separately seem to be trifles, and although ' perfection is no trifle ' the consideration of multifari- ous items making up 'the common round, the daily task,' is apt to be tedious. The annals of a parish are seldom rich in romantic incident, and a plain unvarnished tale of industrious devotion to simple duties lacks force in its appeal to the imagination. And yet no account of Dr. Farrar would be complete that left out of sight his labours as Rector of St. Margaret's for the long period of nineteen years. The world knows that he was an accomplished scholar, a brilliant writer, and a preacher of prophetic power, but only those who were brought into close association with him at Westminster are fully aware of the influence that he exercised in the less conspicuous sphere of a pastor. It is no exaggeration and implies no adverse reflection upon his predecessors to say that he completely changed the conception of parochial work that prevailed in the parish of St. Mar- garet's, and made a church, that probably had been saved from demolition chiefly on account of its historical associations, the centre of an active and vigorous reli- gious life. His fame as an orator and an author whose name was ' a household word ' attracted immense con- THE PARISH PRIEST 241 gregations with the result that ample means were found for the prosecution of enterprises, having as their object the welfare of the parishioners, that were impossible under any previous regime. Nor was material provi- sion for the efficient conduct of parochial organisations the only, or chief, outcome of the Rector's efforts. He possessed to a remarkable degree the power of com- municating his own enthusiasm to others, and gathered round himself a large, devoted, and ever increasing band of workers, both men and women, who derived inspira- tion from his teaching and gave practical effect to schemes suggested for the social amelioration or reli- gious improvement of the people. It was Dr. Farrar's policy to allow his colleagues and other helpers an absolute freedom in the management of these various agencies when once the particular object had been approved and the proposed method of attaining it ex- plained. There was no unnecessary interference, but always the keenest interest and sympathy. Easily ac- cessible at all times the Rector would lay aside the unfinished sermon or book to listen to reports of the progress of parish affairs, and apparently the more minutely they descended into details, the greater satis- faction they gave him. His wonderfully retentive mem- ory, so remarkably displayed in public utterances, enabled him also to retain a multiplicity of particulars respect- ing the organisations of the parish and the circumstances of individual parishioners, astonishing to those who thought not unnaturally that his incessant literary activ- ities and the many important claims made upon his time and energy as Canon of Westminster as well as Rector of the parish, must leave but little leisure for the comparatively minor duties that engross the attention of less busy men. But Dr. Farrar made it a regular 242 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR part of his work to familiarise himself with everything that was going on. He required his colleagues to report all cases of sickness or distress, and presided regularly at the meetings of district visitors, where the circum- stances of the infirm or indigent were fully discussed with a view to their relief ; and he frequently requested the present writer to let him know of any persons in affliction who might be glad of a personal visit of sym- pathy or condolence. Systematic house-to-house visita- tion had, of course, to be left to the curates ; but where the Rector's presence could afford any comfort, he was always ready to go. He 'reckoned nothing human alien to himself.' When Dr. Farrar was appointed, the parish of St. Margaret's presented many features of unusual difficulty. The church, built in close proximity to the Abbey, was scantily attended, it badly needed restoration, and was surrounded by a churchyard that was an eyesore to the neighbourhood. The new Rector immediately addressed himself to the task of remedying this unsatisfactory state of things. His sermons at once attracted enormous and influential congregations, the services were improved, the church was completely restored and greatly beautified at a cost of .£30,000, and the adjacent desert of dilapidated tombstones was con- verted into a pleasant open space, with wide approaches to St. Margaret's and the Abbey. What took place in and around the church was typical of what happened also in the parish. "A large part of the area was occupied by the palace of Westminster, palatial government buildings, and pub- lic or private offices. In close vicinity to these were mean streets, inhabited chiefly by the very poor. As the march of improvement gradually cleared some of these away, they were replaced by huge blocks of highly THE PARISH PRIEST 243 rented flats, occupied largely by people with homes elsewhere who hardly recognise any responsibility towards the district of their temporary sojourn. No class of parishioners is more inaccessible to the clergy, as a rule, than the inhabitants of flats. It would seem speculatively improbable that in a parish such as I have described any great work could be done out- side the walls of the church. And yet before long it had become the home of almost every kind of paro- chial organisation. At Dartmouth Hall, a disused Dis- senting meeting-house situated in a street at that time notorious for poverty and vice, and acquired by the Rector for that purpose, there were established mis- sion services, Sunday-schools, clubs for working-men and working-women, and for young lads and girls, sewing classes, Bible readings, a Band of Hope, and popular Saturday evening entertainments. At the new mission room in another part of the parish there were Sunday services for children and infants, Bible classes, mothers' meetings on two days in the week, Girls' Friendly Society classes, temperance meetings and concerts, literary and scientific lectures, and a youths' Institute furnished with a gymnasium. Classes of in- struction for Sunday-school teachers were held in the vestry of the church and a Bell Ringers' Society met in a room in the tower under the belfry. In addition to these organisations of a purely parochial character large National Schools, fully equipped with every requisite for the work of education, were maintained for the benefit of the children of the neighbourhood and used on Sun- days for religious purposes. In all these agencies the Rector took the keenest personal interest. He presided invariably at meetings of the managers of the day schools. He visited the Sunday-schools. He lectured 244 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR on Dante, Milton, and other subjects of interest before the Literary Society. He kept himself in touch with the secretaries and treasurers, the teachers, the mem- bers of various committees, the choirmen and all who in any way helped forward the work of St. Margaret's. When candidates were being prepared for confirmation, it was his rule to make the acquaintance of each one individually and to address them collectively at least once a week. " It is not easy to convey to a reader unfamiliar with the details of parish life an idea of the inces- sant labour involved in these manifold duties. A clergyman's work is never finished : at the beck and call of all who need his services, and they are many ; the victim of constant interruptions, with a correspon- dence larger than that of many business men, — Dr. Farrar usually wrote about twenty letters a day, — with a congeries of societies, such as those to which refer- ence has been made, claiming unremitting attention to maintain their efficiency, for all clerical experience proves that, however zealous an incumbent's helpers may be, these organisations cannot be kept in a vigorous state of usefulness without much personal effort and self-sacrifice. When we consider these facts and re- member that this constant daily wear and tear was maintained during all those nineteen years of Dr. Far- rar's incumbency of St. Margaret's, it becomes a matter of astonishment that, amid so many distractions, he found opportunity for the preparation of sermons that display to perhaps a greater extent than any contem- porary pulpit discourses the fruits of culture, and the composition of works that have attained a wider celeb- rity than was supposed to be possible for scholarly productions in the province of theology. But Dr. THE PARISH PRIEST 245 Farrar worked in the spirit of that line of Goethe's ' unhasting, unresting,' and, because he was never idle, found time for everything. He usually wrote standing at a table desk near the window of his study which overlooked Dean's Yard, and there he might be found immersed in literary production or parochial business at almost any hour of the day. Sometimes during the last few years in Westminster he felt that the respon- sibilities attached to the maintenance of a highly organised parish, in combination with his other work, involved too great a strain ; but he never spared himself, and even when absent during his autumn holiday ex- pected to hear from the curate left in charge detailed narratives of all that was going on in his beloved St. Margaret's, the church and parish that he raised by his splendid abilities and untiring energy from a position of comparative insignificance to one of commanding influ- ence and widespread renown. "Aigburth Vicarage, September, 1903." The Rev. W. J. Sommerville writes: — " During the whole of Dr. Farrar's life at Westmin- ster, St. Margaret's was thronged from Sunday to Sun- day. When he himself was not preaching on a Sunday morning, he gave his people opportunities of hearing all the greatest preachers in the church. Sunday by Sunday, Bishops, Canons, Deans, occupied the famous pulpit when the Rector himself was absent. " Practically all the distinguished preachers in the church, between 1875 and 1895, preached at some time or other in St. Margaret's. Surely never was congrega- tion so favoured, and never did curates have so much reason for thankfulness. 246 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR " But there was another side to his character. The world knew him as the great preacher, writer, and orator ; but we who served under him knew him as our inspired leader, guide, counsellor, and friend. " We knew him in the humbler role of a parish clergy- man, and never did a parish have a more faithful and earnest pastor than he. Dr. Farrar worked for his people, thought of them, and prayed for and with them. " In all the various details of parochial life he took the keenest interest. Sunday by Sunday, when he was not in residence in the Abbey, he was to be found open- ing the Sunday-schools (which he rightly regarded as the great bulwark of the church) like the humblest curate in the land. We knew, too, how keen was the interest he took in the mission services, clubs, and guilds of the parish, and how ready he always was to visit a dying parishioner. I never knew the possibil- ities and beauty of extempore prayer until I knelt with him one day by the bedside of a dying man in a small street close to the Aquarium. " But perhaps Dr. Farrar was seen at his best in the preparation for confirmation. Who that ever heard those addresses on the six Saturday evenings after Easter will be likely to forget them ? The scholar, preacher, and writer were laid aside, and one saw only the saint of God yearning over those young soldiers of Jesus, and desirous, above all, of leading them into the paths of righteousness. I shall never forget the last night of his ministry at St. Margaret's. He had in- vited all the young people who had been confirmed under his ministry to join with him in the Lord's Supper after evening prayer. In spite of the almost tropical downpour of rain, nearly six hundred young men and THE PARISH PRIEST 247 women responded to his invitation, and joined with him in the great sacrament of Christ's love. I have seen letters from many young men and young women in business addressed to him, thankfully acknowledging the blessings they had derived from his influence and teaching ; and this, after all, is the true test of min- isterial success. " Nor were his activities confined within the borders of his own parish. He was a devout and loyal member of the Church of England, and never had the slightest inclination to attach himself to any other communion ; but his great heart beat in sympathy with all forms of religious activity. No good cause ever appealed to him in vain. In everything connected with social ameliora- tion he took the keenest interest. " The temperance cause never had a more earnest ad- vocate than he. No one ever more strongly denounced the squalor and degradation in which so many of the poor were compelled to live. I have been with him on Sunday afternoons to large gatherings of men in East and North London, where he spoke on such questions as purity or home life with marvellous power, and on week nights to missionary gatherings, temperance dem- onstrations, large assemblies of Boys' Brigades, in all of which he was equally at home. St. Margaret's, West- minster, was indeed a Rational Church, and worthy of its great position as the ' Parish Church of the House of Commons' during his time. He opened its doors to General Booth and the Salvation Army, to the Church Army, to Volunteers, to almost every society doing good work in the church itself or without it, to Dr. Barnardo and Dr. Stevenson and their orphanages, and last but not least, to that great charity for the blind, the Royal Normal College at Norwood. This is 248 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR surely what one means by Catholic in the highest sense, not the obstinate clinging to, or revival of, some puerile ceremony or custom, but the frank recognition of the fact that the Christian Church is the sum of all those who profess and call themselves Christian, the blessed company of all faithful people." The Rev. Eric Farrar writes : — " No biography of Frederic William Farrar would be complete without some allusion, however brief, to his temperance work. Many, especially working-men, who knew him not as the author of 'The Life of Christ,' knew him as one of the most eloquent temperance preachers of the day. During his University, Harrow, and Marlborough career he was not convinced of the necessity for total abstinence ; but as soon as he came to London his labours as a parish clergyman, where he was constantly confronted with the ravages of the ' Drink Demon,' caused him to take an active interest in the temperance cause. He signed the pledge and preached his first temperance sermon in Westminster Abbey on October 8, 1876. " In an address delivered in New York he himself gave some of the reasons which induced him to become a total abstainer. " ' 1 first became a total abstainer because I was easily convinced that the use of alcohol was not a necessity. I saw, for instance, that whole nations had not only lived without it, but had flourished without it. I be- lieve that the human race had existed and had flourished a considerable time before it was discovered.' " Other reasons were because he saw in the carefully prepared statistics of insurance societies that total ab- THE PARISH PRIEST 249 stinence as an indisputable fact contributed to longev- ity ; that greater feats of strength and endurance were achieved without it than with it ; that a great number of our most eminent physicians had declared most positively that, in hundreds of thousands of cases, alcohol was a prolific source of disease, even in those who took it in quantities conventionally deemed moderate. " It was then because Dr. Farrar believed that ' total abstinence would tend to simplicity of life, to health, to strength of body, to clearness of mind, and to length of days,' that he decided it was a desirable thing for him, at any rate, to give up alcohol altogether. "But to this must be added one more reason, which, more than all else, made Dr. Farrar, as it has made thou- sands, a total abstainer. It was pity, sheer human pity. In his ministry at St. Margaret's, under the shadow of the great Abbey of the Houses of Parliament, he wit- nessed the effects of alcohol. He was ' brought into almost daily contact with or cognisance of tragedies the most brutal, miseries the most unspeakable, the depths of Satan, the horrible degradation of womanhood, the death and anguish of children, the catastrophe and devastation of homes, the abnormal debasement of souls, the chronic and revolting squalor, the unspeakable, im- measurable, and apparently illimitable arrears of human misery in its most unmitigated forms, which have their source and origin in the temptations forced upon the poor by the shameless multiplication of gin-shops and public houses.' He saw that public houses were, 'to many of those for whom Christ died, what the flames of the guttering rushlight are to the wretched moths who flutter about them and through them and into them, until they are first singed and maimed, then shrivelled and scorched to death.' It was the deep 250 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR pity, then, Dr. Farrar felt for all the slaves and victims of strong drink, that not only made him an abstainer, but caused him to speak out with impassioned eloquence, endeavouring to arouse others to their duty towards the victims of intemperance. " Till almost the last year of his life, in spite of many other laborious works and pressing duties, he threw himself into the cause. In the pulpit and on the plat- form, he made his voice heard with no uncertain sound. He spoke to mass meetings of men on the subject in nearly all the large towns of England. He was made a vice-president of the Church of England Temperance Society, of the United Kingdom Alliance, and of the Temperance League. Many of his sermons were pub- lished by these and kindred societies, the most remark- able of which are perhaps ' The Vow of the Nazarite,' 'A Nation's Curse,' 'The Shadow of Civilisation,' and 'Individual Responsibility.' His controversy with Lord Bramwell in the Nineteenth Century was not only exceedingly powerful, but also most useful in strength- ening the hands of abstainers. He counted it an honour and a privilege to have been chosen to deliver the first Lees and Raper Memorial Lecture. On this occasion Archbishop Temple presided and Archdeacon Wilberforce, Sir Wilfrid Lawson, and many other dis- tinguished people were on the platform. It was a great occasion, and Dr. Farrar — in spite of the weakness which was even then growing upon him — fully sus- tained his reputation. He lectured for an hour and twenty minutes, gathering up into one terrible in- dictment facts of every kind concerning the evils of the drink traffic. At the conclusion of the lecture, the archbishop described Dr. Farrar as a man ' with the gift of using such language as it was delightful to THE PARISH PRIEST 251 hear and difficult to forget.' The lecture has since been published in book form and constitutes a repertory of apt and high-class temperance quotations. "But though an impassioned and fervent temperance preacher and speaker, Dr. Farrar was no fanatic. He never asserted anything so wrong and so foolish as that it was a sin to drink wine ; nor was he ever so unchari- table as to pronounce a syllable of condemnation against moderate drinkers. Though he encouraged all his family to abstain, there was always wine at hand for guests who desired it, and he clearly saw and taught that the question of abstinence or non-abstinence was one which could be only settled by the individual con- science and in connection with individual circumstances. " With regard to the political aspect of the question Dr. Farrar, though he did not shrink from the distinctively American mode of prohibition, gave his preference to the more English policy of local option and direct veto. Long before Mr. Ritchie and Mr. Goschen so vainly raised the question of compensation (in 1888 and 1890), Dr. Farrar declared : 'You might as well talk of protecting the vested interests of a cancer as protecting the existing conditions of a system which, in the lan- guage of the president of one of its own Defence Leagues, gives us at least 64,000 too many out of our 107,337 licensed houses, of which he describes some as seething hells of vice, immorality, and crime.' Dr. Farrar was eager for temperance legislation and used all his influence in this direction, believing that little could be done to overcome England's national sin with- out the help of Parliament. In the House of Commons he was often present on the occasion of temperance debates, and there he heard Mr. Gladstone declare that ' the evils wrought by drink were more deadly because 252 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR more continuous than the three great historic scourges of war, famine, and pestilence combined.' " On his death the temperance press unanimously de- clared that the cause had lost one of its best and most persuasive champions. God buries His workmen, but continues their Work ; and though dead, Dr. Farrar will continue to speak for many a long day, until it may be the deepest shadow of civilisation has given way to the dawn of a brighter day." My father's beautiful but little known Teacher's Hymn may fitly close this chapter. Soft is the blush of dawn In heaven's serene repose, And bright the dewy lustre gleams Upon the opening rose ; But clouds may dim the day, And evening skies may lower, The dewdrop vanisheth away And cankers kill the flower. Sweet as the dawn, and pure As rose in early dew, The light of Innocence doth shine In childhood's heaven of blue; Oh, never may that light Be quenched in cloudy gloom ; Oh, that no cankerworm may blight That rose's crimson bloom ! The mirth, the beauty pass, We do not bid them stay, We ask Thee not, dear Lord, to keep Thy blessed griefs away ; We pray that sin alone Be conquered by Thy grace, Nor evil in the heart be sown Thine image to efface. THE PARISH PRIEST As lilies by the waves Thy childhood grew to man, In loveliness and graciousness Thine early summers ran ; So may Thy children grow To be for ever Thine, Till onward to noon's perfect glow Their golden dawn may shine. And oh! to us, dear Lord, May grace and aid be given To save Thy little ones for Thee, And guide their feet to heaven ; To love, as Thou didst love, Their tender early days, Till in Thy Paradise above They join our song of praise. CHAPTER XI THE PREACHER OF "ETERNAL HOPE " These twenty years at Westminster witnessed the zenith of my father's power and reputation as a preacher. His sermons preached to boys at Harrow and Marlbor- ough were in their sphere intensely powerful for good, and their echoes still live in the ears of many of his old pupils ; but his influence at Westminster was national, and his title to rank among the very few great pulpit orators of the Victorian era cannot be questioned. Some critics have thought that Farrar's style was marred at times by a certain exuberance of diction, and that his sermons were overloaded with poetical imagery. There is perhaps some justice in the criticism, but two facts must be considered in mitigation, if mitigation be needed. The sermons were delivered in the routine of an exceptionally busy life by a prophet whose mission it was to preach the Kingdom to all people, and to as many as would hear him, and who became all things to all men that he might by all means save some. Certain great pulpit orators, as Liddon and Magee, whose out- put of sermons was far less in amount, have had leisure to prepare discourses, studied, polished, and refined, which may have been finer as oratorical efforts, though hardly richer in moral and spiritual influence, than in- dividual sermons of Farrar's. But my father, it must be remembered, never aimed at the reputation of an orator ; he had his message to deliver, and could not stop to cull 254 PREACHER OF "ETERNAL HOPE" 255 phrases or deliberate niceties of rhetoric. His eloquence was unstudied, and if unchastened, his style was at any rate absolutely natural, spontaneous, and sincere. How could it be otherwise ? He preached to his own flock always once, and frequently twice, on Sundays, and his great kindness of heart made it very difficult for him to say "No " to requests to preach away from home during the week. Indeed, few men have been more ready than he was to help his brother clergy when appealed to. I am, probably, well within the mark when I compute that he preached not less than one hundred and twenty ser- mons every year. Up to the eyes in pastoral and liter- ary work, burdened with a large correspondence, and never shrinking from any labour that presented itself to his sensitive conscience as a duty, he was seldom able to devote more than three or four hours to the prepara- tion of a sermon. Scant leisure was his to prune and polish, and, as has been said, " The ink upon the paper was often damp as the chimes for service marked time for eager multitudes." These sermons, then, were written currente calamo, and the manuscripts show very few erasures ; expression was easy to him ; he poured out his ardent soul as the Spirit gave him utterance, and without effort lavished from the rich treasures of his memory garnered stores of poetic illustration and historic parallel. Again, the wealth of poetic imagery which en- riched and embellished his sermons has been held by some fastidious critics for a defect in style : this fault, too, if fault it be, was at least absolutely natural. It may be safely said that my father never paused, as do some preachers, to choose a quotation which should illustrate his meaning. We cannot do justice to this aspect of his preaching unless we try to realise that 256 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR quotation with him was entirely spontaneous, almost involuntary, because his marvellous memory was stored, nay, saturated with passages from the poets which had become, as it were, a part of his very being, and which, when the appropriate association evoked them, came unbidden to his lips. To quote was with him as natural and automatic as to breathe, and even those florid turns which passed for mere exuberance of diction were not seldom unconscious or semiconscious quotations which the sapient critic failed to recognise. But why pause, after all, to justify these purple patches. In them lay one of the secrets of his power to touch the heart. He had in a transcendent degree the art to rivet a great moral or spiritual truth upon the memory with some passage of immortal verse which should remain a KTrjua e? aei long after the echoes of the sermon had died away. Again, with what a flood of historic illustration and parallel were these discourses enriched and fertilised ! Read, for example, " The Witness of History to Christ," the Hulsean Lectures for 1870, and you cannot fail to be amazed with the learning and research of the preacher, yes, but even more with the habit of mind which led him to regard all history and all literature as so many witnesses to God, and to set store by his vast knowledge only as a trust to be used in the Master's service. The following extract from a newspaper humorously illustrates my father's prodigality in the use of quota- tions. " Those who are acquainted with Dean Farrar's works know that they swarm with all manner of quotations, acknowledged and unacknowledged, but we venture to think (says the Daily News) that the following beats PREACHER OF "ETERNAL HOPE " 257 the record : In the course of the two sermons that he preached at Great St. Mary's, Cambridge, he quoted twenty-three Scriptural phrases or texts, excluding para- phrases, and used altogether upwards of eighty different quotations. An analysis will be read with curiosity. Dean Farrar has four Greek quotations in original — Pindar 'the Greek comedian,' ' the Greek father,' and an unacknowledged passage ; also two Greek words used by St. Luke, and Latin quotations in the original from ' the Roman Poet,' ' the Roman bard,' ' the gay lyrist,' St. Augustine, St. Francis Xavier, and Orosius, to say nothing of the inscriptions on Balliol College and Lin- coln's Inn and such flowers of speech as ' summum bonum ' and ' toto ccelo, toto inferno.' These were, no doubt, introduced out of compliment to a University congregation. " Some score of sentences, which may be prose or poetry, are found in the two sermons within quotation marks and without their source being stated. Dean Farrar quotes poetry without mentioning the author (Shakespeare, Tennyson, etc.) twelve times in all — the total amounting to forty-seven lines. He also quotes ' a late eminent judge,' 'the German writer,' 'a brutal onlooker,' and ' one of our greatest men of science.' "Dean Farrar quotes from and mentions by name the following list, which is worth setting out after the man- ner of all records — " Christ (three passages) St. Francis Xavier (two pas- David sages, Latin and English) Solomon Marcus Aurelius St. Peter ' Cieantha ' St. Paul Epictetus St. John Hermas St. Luke Pindar St. Augustine Pyrrho 258 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR Orosius Milton (four passages) Leibnitz Browning (ditto) Amiel (two passages) Byron (twice) Von Hartmann Renan (twice) Novalis Wordsworth Schopenhauer Lord Herbert of Cherbury Salvator Rosa Emerson Henry Smith Ruskin William Brown (the boy martyr) Thackeray Shakespeare (two passages Sir Fitzjames Stephen acknowledged) After this it savours of anti-climax to add that the preacher also alluded by name, without quoting from, to the prophet Isaiah, Whitefield, Augustus Caesar, Trajan, St. Louis of France, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Thomas Aquinas, the author of the ' Imitatio Christi,' Dives, Lazarus (the subject of miracle), 1 the poor, ugly teacher whom the Greek Pharisees doomed to drink hemlock,' Mary (Queen), Othello, Desdemona, Cordelia, and Pan. There has been nothing to equal this since Sir John Lubbock published his ' Pleasures of Life.' " The wide range of subjects covered by his sermons is well exemplified in a volume published in America under the title " Social and Present Day Questions." This embraces some of my father's deeply interesting biographical studies — Sir Walter Raleigh, General Grant, General Garfield, Dean Stanley, Cardinal New- man, Charles Darwin, John Bright, Garibaldi, and Count Leo Tolstoy, and a sermon on " Biography (The Teachers of Mankind)," highly characteristic of his method and style, a sermon on "Art" to which I shall recur later, and, among other subjects, sermons on " Social Amelioration," " National Duties," " National Perils," and "The Ideal Citizen." In this volume is PREACHER OF "ETERNAL HOPE" 259 also included a generous tribute to the national char- acter of the Jews and an appeal against the stupid ferocities of the Jtidenhetze which won for him the gratitude and affection of many of the leaders of that ancient people. To those who have never heard him preach it is im- possible to convey an adequate idea of his personality, a magnetism which was the birthright of perfect sincerity, intense conviction, and utter purity of heart, or to de- scribe the matchless music of his voice, now melodious and even as a flute, now ringing out like a clarion, anon sinking to a hoarse whisper of passionate emotion. To many who heard him the tones of that beloved voice, now hushed in death, are among their dearest memories. An American divine, the Rev. John Reid Shannon, writes thus : — "Dr. Farrar was a prose poet. His discourses were fragrant with the most beautiful flowers of speech. It was natural for him to speak with golden utterance, with artistic colouring, and poetic efflorescence. He was a weird magician of language ; he had a marvel- lously rich flow of good, racy, vigorous, idiomatic Eng- lish, a wonderful command of phrase and range of expression ; he clothed his ideas with noble, musical, picturesque words, which were as lenses giving clearest vision of the thoughts he presented. The splendours of his rhetoric touched the imagination with flashing lights, not unlike diamonds whose facets throw back upon the eye the lustrous rays of the morning sun. "There was in his discourses a freshness like the wind that blows around the mountain heights. How he preached inward righteousness ! How he denounced formalising priestcraft ! How he inveighed against the 26o LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR hollowness and emptiness of religious externalism ! He would not have the form put for the reality, the shadow for the substance, which seems to be the trend of things to-day in the Established Church of England ; for its glorification of ordinances, its gorgeous outward religious conformities, are, in many sanctuaries, not far removed from the ceremonialism of the Church of Rome. The avowed and uncompromising opponent of all this, Dr. Farrar stood as a teacher and preacher of spiritual religion." By courtesy of the editor I am permitted to give the following extract from an article by W. Scott King in the British Monthly : — " Old St. Philip's, Birmingham, is crowded from altar to doors with eager-eyed, panting, expectant young men waiting to hear the brilliant author of 1 The Life of Christ' and 'Seekers after God.' Among them is a boy student from a neighbouring college. Standing erect in the far pulpit is a noble, stately figure with pure, clear-cut features, gentle yet throbbing brow, and sil- vered hair, and a voice — oh, what a voice ! He is tell- ing a story of shame and wrong, and Tom Hood's pitiful lines are falling from the angry, quivering lips : — " Mad from life's history, Glad to death's mystery. Oh, end it ! — end it ! It is insupportable. The very altar candles flickered like some torch held low and search- ingly over the dark waters. The end comes — ' Young man! is this your handiwork?' And a deep sob as of conscience-smitten remonstrance goes up from the heaving mass in answer. " Again, it is a Sunday morning in May, and the altar PREACHER OF "ETERNAL HOPE" 261 is dressed in white lilies, and two thousand of the city's wealthiest and most cultured have gathered to hear the author of 'St. Winifred's* and 'Darkness and Dawn.' It is Temperance Sunday and the text is awaited almost with fear. Then it came ! ' Ye shall be hated of all men for My sake.' Did they look a martyred congre- gation — stylishly dressed, well fed, complacent ? Then followed the characteristic sermon — quotation upon quotation from Juvenal and Herodotus, from Milton and Browning, metaphor on the heels of metaphor, gorgeous in purple and gold diction, illustrations from London life, Athenian life, from Corinth and Birmingham, anal- ogies from nature, and apothegms from Cicero, from Dante, from General Booth. It has been said that Dean Farrar 'thought in quotations,' and indeed so it seemed ; but the quotations were a-thrill with molten passion and consuming solicitude, reminding one of what his old friend and master said of him so long ago, ' In Farrar the culture of other days is blended with the wisdom of ours.' " There is an interesting passage in " Dean Stanley's Life," in which allusion is made to one of these sermons, preached on the last Sunday in 1876. The Dean had picked up Lord Beaconsfield in Whitehall, and carried him into the Abbey, where the two men, in their different ways the most remarkable, and, so to say, picturesque, individuals of the time, stood for a few minutes on the pedestal of one of the vaster monuments in order to hear Canon Farrar preach. As they came out into St. Margaret's churchyard, the Premier confided to the Dean his impressions. " I could not follow him," he said. " Perhaps I am hard of hearing, and I was not accustomed to his voice ; but it was a fine delivery and 262 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR suitable to the occasion. But I would not have missed the sight for anything — the darkness, the lights, the marvellous windows, the vast crowd, the courtesy, the respect, the devotion — and fifty years ago there would not have been fifty persons there ! " I may here- add that my father throughout his life almost invariably wrote his sermons ; but as he did not, after the manner of some preachers, keep his eyes glued to the manuscript before him, but was able at a single glance to take in the substance of a page, his utterances had a freedom and power which is seldom associated with written discourses. His style was so easy that hearers who did not know his practice not seldom thought they were listening to an extempore sermon. The intensity of his zeal for God and fervent hatred of evil gave a vehement force to many of the preacher's utterances. On this point he says himself, in " Mercy and Judgment " : — " It has been laid to my charge, almost as if it were a fault, that in those sermons I adopted a vehement tone. Is it a sin to feel strongly and to speak strongly ? Are the Prophets and the Psalmists never vehement ? Is St. Paul never vehement ? Are St. Peter and St. James and St. John never vehement ? As for ' adopting a vehement tone,' my reply is that I never 'adopt' any tone at all, but speak as it is given to me to speak, and use only such language as most spontaneously and naturally expresses the thoughts and feelings with which I write. ' Every one,' says Dr. Newman, ' preaches according to his frame of mind at the time of preaching,' and it is quite true that at the time when I preached those sermons [sc. 'Eternal Hope'] my feelings had been stirred to their inmost depths. I am not the least ashamed of the ' excitement ' at which party news- PREACHER OF "ETERNAL HOPE" 263 papers and reviews have sneered. I do not blush for the moral indignation which most of what has since been written on this subject shows to have been intensely needful. In the ordinary course of parochial work I had stood by death-beds of men and women which had left on my mind an indelible impression. I had become aware that the minds of many of the living were hope- lessly harassed, and — I can use no other word — devas- tated by the horror with which they brooded over the fate of the dead. The happiness of their lives was shattered, the peace of their souls destroyed, not by the sense of earthly bereavement, but by the terrible belief that brother, or son, or wife, or husband had passed away into physical anguish and physical torment, endless and beyond all utterance excruciating." There are not a few who hold that Farrar's chief service to God and the Church was his outspoken repu- diation of the commonly held doctrine, which attributed to a loving Creator the everlasting torture of souls which He has created ; and who believe that, when all his other books are forgotten, he will still be remembered with gratitude as the fearless preacher of " Eternal Hope." Though this ghastly doctrine of everlasting torment is seldom taught in the present generation, it cannot be too strongly asserted that a generation ago it was commonly received as a tenet of orthodoxy that sinners were pun- ished by God with everlasting torment in hell-fire, and that only a few souls were exempt from this damnation. Even so late as 1880 the devout and earnest Dean Goul- burn wrote, and dedicated to the Dean of Chichester, an elaborate defence of the thesis that God's purpose in creation was that the majority of mankind should suffer everlasting punishment in hell, and that this purpose 264 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR is not inconsistent with His justice and love. That the doctrine still found many supporters is shown by the fact that a second and enlarged edition of " Everlasting Punishment " was published in the following year. The theory, thus nakedly upheld with uncompromis- ing and courageous plainness of utterance, less than a quarter of a century ago, by a dignitary of the Church, justly honoured for his learning and piety, was commonly, almost universally, believed during the first half of the nineteenth century. It was this doctrine that made of the elder Mill a professed atheist. "Think," said he, "of a God who could create mankind with the infallible foreknowledge and therefore with the intention that the vast majority of them should suffer everlasting torment." "What- ever power," says John Stuart Mill, "such a Being may have over me, there is one thing He shall not do. He shall not compel me to worship Him ; and if as a penalty for my refusal to worship Him, that Being can send me to hell, then to hell I will go." And it cannot be doubted that more than any single cause a dogma founded on the distortion of isolated texts, mostly mistranslated and all misapplied, elaborated by the sombre imaginings of mediaeval monasticism, and rivetted upon Protes- tantism by Calvinistic divines, a dogma which imputes to the God of love the malignant and maleficent attri- butes of a fiend, has contributed to the spread of atheism and infidelity. " If this," says Leslie Stephen, "be the logical result of accepting theories, better believe in no God at all." The pious author of the " Saints' Rest," after im- pressing on his readers that they are but a small part of mankind to whom "it is their Father's good pleasure to give the kingdom," proceeds to declare : "The ever- PREACHER OF "ETERNAL HOPE" 265 lasting flames of hell will not be thought too hot for the rebellious ; and when they have burned there through millions of ages, He will not repent him of the evil which has befallen them. Woe to the soul that is thus set up as a butt for the wrath of the Almighty to shoot at ! and as a bush that must burn in the flames of His jealousy, and never be consumed ! . . . Terrible thing, * when none in heaven or earth can help them but God, and He shall rejoice in their calamity ! " And the doctrine thus enunciated by the saintly Baxter has been explicitly taught by Jonathan Edwards, who declared, inter alia : " The damned shall be tormented in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb, so will they be tormented also in the presence of the glorified saints. Thus the saints will be made more sensible how great their salvation is. The view of the misery of the damned will double the ardour of the love and gratitude of the saints in heaven." Dr. Pusey has taught : "Apart from all those terrific physical miseries of which our Lord speaks, . . . the society of the damned were misery unutterable. Gather in one in your mind an assembly of all those men and women from whom, whether in history or in fiction, your memory most shrinks ; gather in mind all which is most loathsome, most revolting. Conceive the fierce fiery eyes of hate, spite, frenzied rage, were fixed on thee, looking thee through and through with hate . . . hear those yells of blasphemy and concentrated hate as they echo along the lurid vault of hell ; every one hat- ing every one" ("Parochial Sermons"). 1 Charles Spurgeon wrote : " When thou diest thy soul will be tormented alone ; that will be a hell for it : 1 It is fair to add that those views of Dr. Pusey were much modified in after years. 266 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR but at the day of judgment thy body will join thy soul, and then thou wilt have twin-hells, thy soul sweating drops of blood, and thy body suffused with agony. In fire exactly like that which we have on earth thy body will lie, asbestos-like, for ever unconsumed, all thy veins roads for the feet of pain to travel on, every nerve a * string on which the devil shall for ever play his diaboli- cal tune of hell's unutterable lament ! " (Sermon on the Resurrection of the Dead.) The catechism of the Wesleyan Methodists describes hell as "a dark and bottomless pit full of fire and brim- stone, in which the wicked will be punished by having their bodies tormented with fire, and their souls by a sense of the wrath of God. And these torments will last for ever and ever." The saintly churchman from whom they take their name seems to have held similar views. It is true that a silent revolt against this fetich had been spreading among thoughtful people, and that mur- murs had been whispered even within the pale of ortho- doxy ; that a few broad-minded theologians had hinted at the revision of current eschatological doctrines, and that of educated laymen few even professed to be bound by the clanking chains of Calvinism. But the doctrine commonly taught was that propounded by Baxter. It is needful to insist on the fact that the belief in everlasting hell-fire was generally held by orthodox Christians in the last generation, because we cannot otherwise appreciate the fearless courage required in a clergyman to stand up in the National Pulpit and de- nounce this doctrine in language which left no room for ambiguity. In 1877 a discussion was being held in the Nineteenth Century on the soul and future life ; and the question PREACHER OF "ETERNAL HOPE" 267 raised by Mallock, " Is Life worth Living ? " had excited the attention of both clergy and laity. In reference to this question my father delivered from the pulpit of Westminster Abbey in November and December the five sermons, never originally in- tended for publication, and preached in the ordinary course of his duties, which, when it became necessary to do so in simple self-defence against the many perver- sions of his real views which were prevalent among those who had not heard the sermons, he published in the volume entitled "Eternal Hope." It must be borne in mind, therefore, in regard to the style of the book, and to allegations sometimes made, that it depends for its effect rather on rhetoric than on close reasoning ; that this, which was in respect of its far-reaching influence, perhaps, my father's most im- portant work, and the one by which his name will be handed down to posterity, was not an elaborately pre- pared theological treatise, but consisted mainly of ser- mons thrown off in the routine of a very laborious life, and preached Sunday after Sunday to vast popular audiences. It is impossible to give here anything approaching to a full account of " Eternal Hope," which will, besides, be familiar to most readers of these pages. Its importance as a contribution to systematic theol- ogy resides in the Preface and Excursus, in which the author pleads earnestly for a revision of certain transla- tions rendered "hell," "damnation," and "everlasting" in the Authorised Version. He shows that the words /c/aitri?, Kp(va>, Karaicpi'vco, etc., rendered into " damn " and its cognates, imply neither more nor less than "judgment," or "condemnation"; that often words rendered "hell," "Sheol," "Hades," and "Tartarus" 268 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR (2 Pet. ii. 4) mean simply " the unseen world," or the world "beyond the grave," and "Gehenna" a punish- ment — which, to the Jews, as a body, never meant an endless punishment — beyond the grave ; and, finally, that the word alu>vLo." If, as has been often thought and said, " Eternal Hope " cost the fearless preacher high ecclesiastical preferment, the sermons won for him a far higher reward in the love and gratitude of thousands who looked up to him as the deliverer of the faithful from the gloom and terrors of a fetich worship, which they had been taught to regard as an essential of right belief, and who rejoiced in the freedom to worship God as the God of Love, not as the pitiless Creator whose vengeance had decreed the great mass of His creatures to a doom of hideous and never PREACHER OF "ETERNAL HOPE" 275 ending torment. From a very large number of letters I have selected a few illustrative of the deep gratitude which those sermons evoked : — "November 26, 1877. " Mv dear Sir : Millions will bless you for your brave and inspired utterance against the most sorrowful super- stition that ever oppressed weary and heavy laden man. We want again the outright, burning words of old pro- phetic times when men felt that 'the hand of the Lord was upon ' them. " Heartily yours, "J. P. H." " November 28th. " My dear Canon Farrar : I must express my thanks to you for your sermon in the Abbey. God give you the wisdom and the courage to free our Church from the incubus of the hell of Dr. Watts k.t.X. which has kept the laity away from us more than ritualism or any- thing else. Is your sermon published ? If not might I have the special favour of the loan of the MS. I have talked to many persons privately in the last few years upon this subject, and especially to the Bishops, and I believe that every Bishop on the bench agrees in his heart with you, but they dare not say it. Don't trouble to do more than reply on a post-card. I know how you are pressed. " I am most truly yours, "B. W." " Kalxtara, Ceylon, Dec. 18, 1877. " My dear Canon Farrar : I seem to draw a new breath ! to live a new life ! to have heard the best tidings 276 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR of comfort to all men that I have ever yet heard during the sixty-two years of my life, now that I this moment read of your sermon preached in the sacred Abbey de- nouncing the doctrine of Eternal Punishment. " It seems to me as if all through heaven and earth there was a general rejoicing on the day you rent * asunder that hideous veil, tore the black hiding cloth, from top to bottom, and showed God's real face to man. " For a long time past, more especially since the two years I have spent in this island, I have sorrowed in heart over the blasphemy of representing our Creator as He is represented by those who preach the doctrine of eternal damnation and everlasting hell-fire, and make the devil the triumphant conqueror and our God (our Almighty God) the helpless God who yields up those He cannot save by tens of thousands, whilst those He has saved and will save are counted by scores. Much as there is of devil worship in the island, there is noth- ing that approaches the intensity of faith in the power of the devil that is, alas ! so universally preached in our Church. Sad as it is to see the hopeless, helpless at- tempts of these dear, dark races to propitiate the Devil in the Swami festivals, bringing the sick forward, adorning themselves with garlands of flowers, gay robes of saffron, blue, white, and red, piling edifices of brass pans, beating tom-toms and kettledrums, making deaf- ening noises and yelling shouts, dancing hideous dances with savage contortions, dragging a poor solitary goat along with this deluded crew, and finally sacrificing it with a red cock and a sheep ; all this to propitiate their devil, to cure their sick, to avert surrounding pestilence or threatened famine, or any impending evil : this devil worship of theirs, so sad to see, is, surely, but child's play compared with the devil worship of our PREACHER OF "ETERNAL HOPE" 277 Church — with our creed of the omnipotence of the devil, with the faith that our God creates a world nine-tenths of which He dooms or has to see doomed to everlasting punishment, while He, the Creator, the Redeemer, the Sanctifier, is content to decree that this should be so, and is made to say that for this end the human race was and is created, to feed the everlasting flames of a hun- gry, never satisfied, all devouring hell-fire. ******* " May God give you length of days to establish your new doctrine to man. Dearest F. D. Maurice, from heaven, he will be glad. May you live to see our Bible the message of salvation, to see the hell side torn out of it for ever and ever, and God as He is in His Holy Majesty, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, there given to us as always Love, Justice, and Mercy, a Heav- enly Father dealing with His children not less tenderly than a human father with an erring son ! "Do you remember who it is that troubles you with this long letter ? Do you remember when you kindly walked from Farringford to Freshwater one day and in my dining-room (as I see you standing now) gave your Holy Book to your ever grateful " Julia Margaret Cameron." "Palm Sunday, 1878. " My dear Farrar : There is nothing of the kind I can say quite sincerely which would give me greater pleasure than to be allowed to sympathise with your work, and to have my name in any way joined with it. You cannot have the subject more at heart than I have, but you can bring it home to men, and that is a great privilege. I rejoice to hear of the sermons and of 278 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR their effect. May they become a thousand-fold more fruitful. " He whose soul constrains him to speak strong words will rouse some violent opposition, but sympathy is real if more commonly silent ; and I am sure that you need not fear that many hearts are not with you. That is not to be ' unpopular ' in any sense of the word which can cause a moment's pain. " Brooke's success was a great joy to me. He will, I think, use it as a trust. " With kindest regards, " Ever yours sincerely, " B. F. Westcott." "Sunday Evening, 14th January, 1883. " My dear Canon Farrar : I cannot help writing to thank you for the sermon of this afternoon ! I had said so much to Horsley, and other friends, about last Sunday's sermon, that I hardly dared hope they would hear one as fine. But I must say they were as satisfied as I was. Horsley said, coming out, * Do you pretend that you thought last Sunday's sermon finer ? If so, all I can say is, I cannot understand how it could be, for / have never heard anything to equal what we have heard to-day.' And I feel sure he is right, and the crowd of young and old men who heard it will thank you and bless you in their hearts as I do most sincerely. Fierce in your denunciation of sin, you comfort one and encourage one at the same time by telling us how to overcome it in words that the first scholar of our time as well as the humbler people like myself can feel and understand as you intend they should be under- stood. I know you will excuse my writing thus, but I feel so grateful to you that I hardly know how to PREACHER OF "ETERNAL HOPE" 279 express my feelings without appearing foolish. Of course I do not dream of your answering this note. When we meet I will be able to tell you in better Eng- lish how much I have felt and how you have touched me. I happened to sit with numbers I knew, and they joined me in a chorus of delight. The anthem cooled us down a bit ! " Ever yours sincerely, "A. B." "January 2, 1902. " Most Reverend Sir : I trust you will not deem it an impertinence on my part in addressing these few lines to you, but I cannot refrain from expressing the deep sense of gratitude I feel towards yourself after a perusal of two of your books. Some twenty years back I frequently went to hear you at St. Margaret's, West- minster ; and at the time derived much pleasure and comfort : since then, I regret to say, I have not looked so closely to my future welfare as I should have done, but an event in my life which recently happened has recalled me (I sincerely trust) to my senses. It was a loss by death. I at once turned my thoughts, or rather my thoughts voluntarily returned, to the old days I mention, and as I could no longer go to hear you, by some impulse I was led to get one of your books from the public library. It was ' The Fall of Man,' and I can assure you I studied it with delight and profit. I have just finished reading your ' Mercy and Judgment,' and no book I have ever read so much comforted, instructed, and delighted me. I feel so deeply grateful for such a well thought out and common-sense book that I could not refrain from attempting in a few feeble words to convey the sense of heartfelt gratitude I feel. Many 28o LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR doubts which I had have been cleared away, and I think I understand your meaning in the works referred to. Their perusal has made me more than ever determined to strive to have the higher life of the hereafter, and the other questions do not so much matter ; but at the same time, your vivid descriptions of God's love (as against the doctrine of vengeance) have made me think that one's shortcomings will be looked upon from a heart of love, and not one wishing to put forward all errors so as to punish. I cannot well express my thoughts, but I do indeed again and again thank you. I shall, if they are in the library, read your works. I wish I had done so before. " Might I, as a set-off for troubling you, tell you of a little incident connected with yourself ? About eighteen years ago I went to hear you one Sunday afternoon at the Old Victoria Coffee Hall, Waterloo Road. The old theatre was packed with persons, mostly from the sur- rounding slums. Your address was listened to in great silence, and at its close a man of the costermonger class, sitting next to me, turned to a friend of his, and, slapping him on the knee, said, 1 Bill, I can understand that bloke,' meaning yourself. I thought at the time, and still think, that this was as eloquent a tribute as was ever paid to a man of learning addressing such an audience. Again asking your pardon for addressing you and with my heartfelt thanks I beg to remain, " Your ever grateful servant, "T. F. D." "Sandes Tolen, Valdres, Norway, Aug. 22, 1903. " It will interest you to know that up here, right in the wilds, in a Norwegian house, we have found a trans- lation of your father's ' Eternal Hope ' and 1 Mercy PREACHER OF "ETERNAL HOPE" 281 and Judgment.' It belongs to the farmer here, and is well worn. <( ,, But if the sermons brought the preacher much grati- tude, they also drew down upon him not a few anathe- mas from those who were wedded to the doctrine of everlasting torment as a tenet of orthodoxy. Of these a single sample shall suffice : — " Sir : If your sermon has been correctly reported in the John Bull, which you preached last Sunday after- noon in Westminster Abbey, in which you boldly denied the doctrine of eternal punishment, which is distinctly taught in the Church of England, as well as in the Word of God, for the Church teaches nothing contrary to God's word ; you will, of course, if you are an honest man, secede from that church as I believe Sir Samuel Minton has done. You may be a theologian, but I fear that you have never been taught by God's Spirit, or you would not preach such a soul-destroying error as that which you preached last Sunday, if the report be a cor- rect one. Look, for instance, at one passage, out of multitudes that can be adduced, Rev. xx. 10: 'And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and false prophet are and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.' Then read the 22d chapter, verses 18, 19, and you may well tremble. I think that your position as a clergy- man is a most fearful one, and I pray that your eyes may be opened to see your danger before it be too late, and you find yourself in the lake of unquenchable fire. " I am, sir, " Yours faithfully, "A Student of God's Word." 282 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR The following letter, written by my father to Mrs. Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner, daughter of the late Charles Bradlaugh, is of interest : — "Dear Madam : I do not know a single reasonably educated Christian who takes the mere symbols of heaven for heaven. We do not suppose that heaven is a cubic city, or a pagoda of jewels, or even an endless seven-fold chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies. Long ago a Christian poet sang : — " O for a deeper insight into heaven : More knowledge of the glory and the joy Which there unto the happy souls is given ; For it is past belief that Christ hath died Only that we eternal psalms might sing ; That all the gain Death's awful curtains hide Is this eternity of antheming, And this praised rest : shall there be no endeavour ? " If I could find a printed sermon of mine, entitled • What Heaven Is,' you would see that we regard it as a place of progress, of fruition of all that is noble, of growth and progress upward and onward, of endless and beneficent activity, of a love which knows no fear and no hatred, of a growing more like to God because we shall see Him as He is. In Browning's poems you will see this view of heaven constantly set forth ; and the eminent theologian, Whichcot, said two centuries ago, ' Heaven is a temper.' I have often quoted with ap- proval the saying of Confucius, ' Heaven means prin- ciple.' The old detestable notions of happy souls rejoicing over the torments of the lost have long been exorcised, and if you have time to glance at my ' Eter- nal Hope ' or ' Mercy and Judgment,' which now re- present the best opinions in the Church, you will see PREACHER OF "ETERNAL HOPE" 283 many proofs that the Calvinistic horrors of an unnatural theology have never been authorised by many men, even by greatest Christian fathers and canonised saints of the mediaeval Church. " Let me add, I for one have not uttered a syllable of disrespect about your father, though I am a convinced believer. I only met him once, as Chaplain of the House of Commons, and we exchanged a courteous greeting. Had I been able to show him Christianity as I see it, I do not think he would have wished to be counted among the foes of our Gospel — if such was his attitude. But Christianity has been more sorely wounded in the house of its friends than by its enemies. " Yours faithfully, "F. W. Farrar." CHAPTER XII VISIT TO AMERICA In 1885, my father, in company with his friend, Arch- deacon Vesey of Huntingdon, and Mr. W. Ingelow, a brother of the poetess, paid a long visit to Canada and America. He landed at Quebec on September 13, 1885, and after visiting Montreal, Toronto, Buffalo, Bal- timore, Philadelphia, Washington, New York, Boston, Chicago, and other principal cities of America, sailed from New York on December 5. He was received by both Canadians and Americans with quite extraordi- nary warmth and enthusiasm, a reception which justified the prophecy made by Dean Stanley on the occasion of his American visit that "if Canon Farrar should ever visit this country, he would create a furore : he is exactly the kind of man that would suit Americans." Not only was he already popular in America from his books and sermons (several of which, by the way, had been freely " pirated " by American publishers), but the warmth and kindness of his reception was in no small measure due to the fact that he had won the hearts of Americans by his magnificent eulogy on General Grant, delivered in Westminster Abbey in August of the same year. He was engaged to deliver lectures on Dante and Browning, and he gave besides many sermons, lectures, and addresses on "Education," "Temperance," "Biblical 284 VISIT TO AMERICA 285 Exegesis," " Napoleon," " The Press," and " Farewell Thoughts on America." His eloquent lecture on Dante sent many Americans to the study of that poet, and was most warmly received ; though he used to quote with amusement the comment of a Chicago journalist, who said that the fact of the poet having gone over from the Guelphs to the Ghibel- lines was proof that Dante was a Mugwump, and the father of Mugwumps ; and the saying of an Indianapo- lis newspaper man, who remarked of the lecture, " Oh, yes, it is all very well, but Dante is a dead issue ! " "Dante," replied the lecturer, "is not a dead issue. He taught lessons which are filled with instruction and inspiration for all time to come." His application of the moral truths to be learned from the study of Dante and the poet's message for ourselves is so fine and char- acteristic an example of my father's literary methods and style that I am tempted to give here an extract from this lecture. " Is vice in this nineteenth century dead, that you can afford to despise the lessons which would set it before you in its true nature ? Is any of that pitch on our hands ? Are any of our tongues tipped with that envenomed flame ? Are none of us tempted like those wretches in the vestibule of hell, to stand leisurely neu- tral in the great conflict between good and evil ? If any of us have followed the example of those whom Dante saw in that place, then Dante has the same strong and significant lessons for this century that he had for the days in which he lived. You have all read the Book of Wisdom, and you know the lesson of the last chap- ters of that remarkably eloquent book is this : That wherewithal man sinneth, by the same also shall he be punished. It is always one sin, and that a favourite 286 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR one, by which souls are destroyed. Sometimes in a single line Dante infuses a moral lesson which is a moral gain for life. One lesson he teaches is that the forgiveness of sin is one thing and the remission of sin another. The spirits in purgatory do not feel worthy to see God till the angels have brushed from their fore- heads the seven letters which stand for the seven sins. That punishment is the easiest to bear which follows soonest on the sin. Another truth which Dante points out is the absolute necessity for repentance. He means to teach us, too, that there is danger in contact with evil. He feels the taint of the vices he looks on. He feels that he becomes base as he listens to the revil- ings of the base, and false when he listens to treachery. " Dante's vision has in it a moral lesson worthy to be pondered long, for it is a faithful allegory of a spiritual torment, certain to be visited on all who forsake God's law. The moral hell and moral heaven consist not only in flames of torment and beatitude, but in tempers; not only in flames or golden cities, but in phases of the soul. His object is to hold up before men the purity of God's moral government, to arouse them to a sense of the mystery of their state, to point them to the beauty of the Christian temper, to teach them the fulness of the grace of God, to bring the human soul to a conception of the possibility of rising step by step into a joy not imaginable by man, and yet of a higher order than the ideal of earth. His subject is not so much the state of souls after death, about which Dante knew just as much and just as little as you or I, because he knew just as much and just as little as has been revealed to us by God. He does not mean to describe a kind of hell in which all mankind has ceased to believe as a reality, but behind this he means to give the full verity of a moral VISIT TO AMERICA 287 hell. His subject is not so much the state of souls after death as that man is rendering himself liable, by the exercise of free will, to the rewards and punishments of justice. It is solely by realising such truths that any one of us can attain the ideal which Dante wanted to picture forth before us and help us to attain — the ideal of one who in boyhood is gentle and obedient and modest, in youth is temperate, resolute, and loyal, in ripe years is prudent, just, and generous, and who in age has attained to calm wisdom and to perfect peace in God." His lecture on Browning was no less eloquent. My father drew much of his inspiration from Browning, and seldom preached a sermon without quoting from him. He had the deepest reverence for his genius, and counted it among the choicest rewards of his life to be honoured with his intimate personal friendship. He says of him in this lecture: "A hundred names drawn from the history of all ages would not exhaust Brown- ing's dramatis persona or adequately represent the many-coloured tapestry on which he has woven so many figures, now lurid as the thundercloud, now soft as the summer's eve. No other poet has sounded such depths of human feeling, or can startle the soul with such a kindling energy. There is hardly a period, hardly a human situation, on which he has not flung the light of his splendid genius." The effect of this lecture is described in " Men I Have Known " : — " In later years Mr. Browning was particularly cordial to me, not only because he knew how deep was the debt of gratitude which I owed to him for all that I had learnt from his poems, but also because he was kind enough to believe that I had greatly promoted the sale 288 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR of his writings in America. When, some ten years ago, I visited America, it had not been at all my original intention to make what is called 'a lecturing tour,' but only to deliver a theological course on a particular foundation to which I had been invited by the Bishop of Pennsylvania. When, however, I yielded to the strong pressure which induced me to lecture in some of the great cities of the States, I chose ' Browning's Poems' as the subject for one of my lectures. The poet's readers and admirers in America could not at that time have been very numerous, for before I gave my lecture at Boston — certainly the most intellectual and literary city in the United States — I was told that not half a dozen copies of his poems had been sold there during the year. The morning after my lecture, every copy which could be procured either in Boston or in the neighbourhood was in immediate demand. Mr. Brown- ing more than once expressed his obligation to me for this service ; but I could not claim the smallest gratitude. I am sure that he overestimated the effects of my lec- tures upon the sale of his works ; and, in any case, I was only acting in the spirit of the old sentence, Xafnrd- 8ia iv %epalv e^oi'Te? SiaBwaovatv aXX^Xoi?. I was trying to hand on the torch which had given light to me." It would seem from this that Browning's recognition by the American public was even tardier than it had been in England. In this connection my father tells in " Men I Have Known " the following interesting anec- dote, which he had from the poet's own lips : " I once spent a Sunday at Oxford at the house of Dr. Jowett, the master of Balliol — one of those charming Sundays in which he used to welcome the presence of one or two congenial guests. Mr. Browning was on that Sunday the only other guest staying with Dr. Jowett, and I had VISIT TO AMERICA 289 a long walk and talk with him that afternoon. The second volume of ' The Ring and the Book ' had just come out, and something turned our conversation in the direction of his poems, of which he did not often speak voluntarily. He alluded without the least bitterness to the long course of years in which his works were doomed to something like contemporary oblivion, during which very few copies, indeed, of them were sold, and scarcely one of them attained to a second edition. I said some- thing about the Browning Society, which had then been recently formed, and he said that there were many who professed to laugh at it, but for his part he was grateful for this and every other indication of a dawning recog- nition, considering the dreary time of neglect and ignorant insult which he had been doomed to undergo. And then he told me the story which he also, I believe, told to others, but which I narrate in the form in which he told it to me that Sunday afternoon. He said that when one of his earlier volumes came out — I think, ' Bells and Pomegranates ' — a copy fell into the hands of Mr. John Stuart Mill, who was then at the zenith of his fame, and whose literary opinion was accepted as orac- ular. Mr. J. S. Mill expressed his admiration of the poems, and of the originality of the lessons they con- tained ; and he wrote to the editor of Taifs Magazine, then one of the leading literary journals, asking if he might review them in the forthcoming number. The editor wrote back to say that he should always esteem it an honour and an advantage to receive a review from the pen of Mr. J. S. Mill, but unfortunately he could not insert a review of ' Bells and Pomegranates,' as it had been reviewed in the last number. Mr. Browning had the curiosity to look at the last number of the magazine, and there read the so-called review. It was as follows : 290 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR ' " Bells and Pomegranates," by Robert Browning : Balderdash.' " ' It depended, you see,' said Mr. Browning, ' on what looked like the merest accident, whether the work of a new and as yet almost unknown writer should receive an eulogistic review from the pen of the first literary and philosophic critic of his day, — a review which would have rendered him most powerful help, exactly at the time when it was most needed, — or whether he should only receive one insolent epithet from some nameless nobody. I consider,' he added, 'that this so-called review retarded recognition of me by twenty years' delay.' " The extraordinary enthusiasm with which my father was received by Americans is illustrated by the fact that when he was advertised to deliver a lecture on " Edu- cation" at the Johns Hopkins University at Baltimore, at least twenty-five hundred persons, not including mem- bers of the University, made written application for admission to the academy. The following extract from a Philadelphia paper gives a good picture of the multitude which thronged to hear him preach in the Protestant Episcopal Church of the Holy Trinity : — "The appearance of nave and transept realised the hackneyed expression of a ' sea of faces ' to the most jaded imagination. It was a veritable sea, in which all architectural distinction was drowned. Nothing could be seen of the dividing lines of pews. The divisions of the aisles were completely lost, or only indicated by currents in the ocean of humanity. This marine effect was heightened by the appearance of the organ loft, which, hanging in the air above the entrance of the VISIT TO AMERICA 291 church, and crowded with a multitude of people so great as to hardly allow the choristers room to open their hymnals, looked like a towering rock to which the sea below had risen, and, falling, left there the debris of the tide. Only the Holy of Holies was left uninvaded by the multitude. The steps to the chancel were occupied by long rows of men and women. One white-haired old gentleman sat on the very pulpit steps. Between these places of observation and the chancel were chairs on which women were seated. The very cushions on which communicants kneel about the chancel rail were occupied. The fringe of this crowd was on the steps of the church and in the street itself." The sermon was on Biblical Exegesis, and the preacher took for his text Hebrews xiii. 27, "And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain." "People," he said, "often worry themselves because they cannot believe this or that, when this or that has nothing to do with true religion, when this or that is not insisted upon by the Universal Church. You feel uncertainty about this or that passage in the Old Testa- ment, about the sun standing still, or about the rising of a dead man at the tomb of Elisha. I counsel you to study these things humbly, get the best accounts of them you can, but remember that they are questions of history, or archaeology, to which you, at the best, can only bring intelligent consideration. Finally, if you cannot understand them, let them go. These are not generally necessary to salvation. There is not a word about them in the Apostles', or the Nicene, or the Atha- nasian Creed, nor in the Thirty-nine Articles of the 292 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR Christian faith, nor — more important still — is there a word about them in the Lord's Prayer, nor in the Sermon on the Mount. You will not be questioned about those things at the bar of Judgment. You will be asked if you have kept your body in temperance, soberness, and chastity ; if you have been rigidly hon- est ; if you have heightened the moral standard of the world by your presence in the world. ******* " Do not, I entreat you, confuse the truths of Chris- tianity with a mass of disputed or disputable questions. Christianity does not depend upon this or that particu- lar view of sacraments or mysteries. Christianity is not what St. Augustine taught, nor St. Anselm, nor Bishop Pearson, but what Christ taught. Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ ? Do you keep His command- ments ? Do you love your brother as yourself ? These are the questions for you to ask yourself. In heaven there are neither Anglicans, nor Catholics, nor Dissent- ers ; neither High, Low, nor Broad Churchmen ; neither the Damnamus of Augsburg nor the Anathema of Trent. It is the abode of saints — that is, of the good. So taught the Founder of this, your city of brotherly love, saying it would be for you to stand or fall as you fulfilled the teaching or neglected it. If we are Chris- tians, if we are good men, according to our lights, nothing can make us afraid." Another extract from a sermon preached in the same church from the text " Little children, keep yourselves from idols " is a splendid example of the fiery eloquence with which my father denounced wickedness and idolatry. " Do none of you, my brethren, worship Moloch, or Mammon, or Baal Peor ? Have none of you in your hearts a secret niche for Belial ? When your heart is VISIT TO AMERICA 293 absorbed in a passion of envy, hatred, and rage ; when you are determined, if you can, to wound by false words, by bitter attacks, by open or secret injuries ; when you display the ' eternal spirit of the populace ' by giving yourselves up to a passion of reckless depreciation of social, political, or religious opponents ; when you in- voke the very name of God that you may emphasise the curses against your enemies — is God the God of your worship ? Of your lips, yes ; of your life, no. What are you then ? Whatever you may call yourself, what are you but a worshipper of Moloch ? " And when you talk of nothing, think of nothing, scheme after nothing, I had almost said, pray for noth- ing, but money, money, money, all the day long ; hasting to be rich and so not being innocent ; ready, if not down- right to forge or steal in order to get it, yet ready to adulterate goods, to scamp work, to have false balances and unjust weights, to defraud others of their rights and claims, to put your whole trade, or commerce, or profession on a footing which, perhaps conventionally honest, yet goes to the very verge of dishonesty ; toiling for money, valuing it first among earthly goods, looking up to those who have won it as though they were little human gods, hoarding it, dwelling on it, measuring the sole success in life by it, marrying your sons and daughters with main reference to it — is God the God of your worship ? Of your lips, yes ; of your life, no. What are you then but an idolater, a worshipper of Mam- mon ? " If you are a drunkard, or impure ; if the current of your life is absorbed and swayed by unholy impulses ; if you have flung the reins upon the neck of your evil passions ; if the temple of your body is full of chambers in which wicked thoughts are ever banding before the 294 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR walls which glow with unhallowed imagery — again is God the God of your worship ? Of your lips, yes ; of your life, no. What are you then but an idolater ? In what respect are you then less guilty than Zimri, the Prince of Simeon, who worshipped Baal Peor ? Not an idolater ? Alas ! my brothers, every one of us is an idolater who has not God in all his thoughts, and who has cast away the laws of God from the government of his life. I know not that it is a much worse idolatry to deny God altogether and openly deify the brute impulses of our lower nature than it is in words to confess God, yet not to do, not to intend to do, never seriously to try to do what He commands, or to abandon what He for- bids." My father was much touched, as he could hardly fail to be, by the cordiality of his reception in America. " I have been impressed," he said, " with the warmth and universality of the kindness that I have received on all sides. It has come not merely from the bishops of the United States and Canada, but also from the representa- tives of all religious denominations, including Roman Catholics, Quakers, and Congregationalists. I have been most struck with the enormous power of life, energy, and vivacity in every department." Of American audiences he says : " Some one has spoken of the 'appalling silence of American audiences,' and that strikes one as their most remarkable character- istic. The stillness is absolute, and the attention of the audience is perfect, but they are exceedingly undemon- strative, much more so than English audiences." This remark applies to his Dante and Browning lec- tures, but when he lectured on a subject so near their hearts as Temperance, an American audience could be demonstrative enough. Of his lecture on Temperance, VISIT TO AMERICA 295 delivered under the auspices of the National Temperance Society in Chickering Hall, New York, a correspond- ent wrote : " Over and over again some enthusiastic listener, bubbling with excitement, let his feelings run riot in applause, and when the Archdeacon rose to reply, the scene for a few moments was of a most extraordinary kind, so terrific was the outburst of applause. One less used to public life would assuredly have been tremen- dously embarrassed by the overwhelming cordiality of the demonstration, but the man of massive, marble brow, lined with the intense application of his life of study, stood the very picture of calm self-possession waiting to be heard." The following letter from an American pastor is of interest in this connection : — " Brooklyn, U. S. A., June 4, '77. " Dear Dr. Farrar: Ever since your incomparable 1 Life of Christ ' appeared I have counted you a personal benefactor. But now whenever I read your fearless and eloquent speeches for the total abstinence reform, I hail you as the benefactor of all Britain and the world. " Allow me to thank you — not only for myself, but for the Executive Committee of the ' National Temper- ance Society ' — of which I have the honour to be the chairman. "When in London (in 1872) and addressing meetings in Exeter Hall, with my intimate friend Rev. Newman Hall and with Sir Wilfrid Lawson and others, I had not yet known of you as a battler in our ranks. When next I visit England, it will give me great delight to take the hand which has wrought such a service for me as the preparation of your books and addresses. 296 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR " We, too, have an uphill clamber with this movement against the decanter and the dram shop. " But in God's ' by and by ' the victory shall be won. We are fighting the most gigantic curse that desolates our globe. You in Britain and we in America have a common partnership in toil for the rescue of our Saxon race from this monster evil. " It will give me great pleasure to receive even a line from one whom I so revere and even love. " Please to present my kind regards to Dean Stanley, who honoured me with many courtesies when I was visiting London, as the Deputy to the Presbyterian General Assembly of Scotland. I cherish the memory of that rare and saintly woman, the Lady Augusta, as do other Americans who ever saw or knew her. " With highest regard, " Believe me, "Yours most sincerely, "Theo. L. Cuyler, " Pastor of Lafayette Ave. Church." Considerations of space forbid me to relate in detail the incidents of this American tour. In " Men I Have Known " my father has given reminiscences of his pleas- ant intercourse with famous Americans, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell Lowell, his dear friend Phillips Brooks, his generous host George W. Childs of Philadelphia, Cyrus Field, and others. After this visit especially, reciprocal ties of peculiar kindliness attached him to the Americans. He fre- quently entertained Americans, both at Westminster, and afterwards at Canterbury ; an American pew was set apart in St. Margaret's for their use ; and he took VISIT TO AMERICA 297 especial pleasure in showing parties of quick-witted and enthusiastic Americans over Westminster Abbey or Canterbury Cathedral. America was associated for him with some of the happiest memories of his life, and he never failed to recall with gratitude the generous en- thusiasm, the warm kindliness, and the boundless hospi- tality which he experienced, both in Canada and among the citizens of the Great Republic. His old friend, Archdeacon Vesey, who accompanied him during a great part of the American tour, has been good enough to contribute some reminiscences which I will preface with a letter which my father wrote to urge him to be his companion : — " 17 Dean's Yard, Westminster, May 5, 1885. " My Dear Archdeacon : ******* "As to America — grasp your nettle! or rather your rose, with its odour and few thorns. If you don't come now, you never will — you will never see Niagara — or the Lake of the Thousand Isles — or the Rocky Moun- tains — or Boston — or an iceberg — or a humming-bird. As for the Bishop, he will be only too glad that you should have a change, and would be horrified to think that two days with him should keep you. He needs nothing. I do. I want your company. It would make all the difference to a neglected and unprosperous man like me. We will sail to Quebec early in September. I know the Allans of the Allan line, and would get a good cabin. The fare is only £ 18 first class. By com- ing with me you would have very little expense. We should probably get free passes on some, if not all, the lines, and I have already invitations for self and friend 298 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR at all the principal cities, so you would be saved all hotel bills — which might not happen another time. We should be received very kindly ; it would cost you very little, and you would come back like a giant refreshed with wine. What is £ 50 (it would not cost you more) to a man like you ? Why, it is less than £ 10 or £ 5 is to a wretch like me ! I enlist the powerful aid of Mrs. Vesey. I am sure she will wish you not to lose this opportunity. " Yours affectionately, " F. W. Farrar." Archdeacon Vesey writes as follows : — " It was my good fortune to accompany Canon Farrar for a considerable part of his tour through Canada and the United States in 1885. On the voyage out we experienced an Atlantic gale. It was approaching on our first Sunday, and the conduct of the service held in the saloon was, to those responsible for it, a matter of some anxiety. Farrar preached admirably for a few minutes on the words ' He bringeth them to the haven where they would be,' supporting himself by the handrail of the companion ladder, and, in spite of the general un- comfortable conditions which he shared with the congre- gation, succeeded in riveting every one's attention. In Canada he began delivering his lectures on Dante and Browning, preaching always twice on Sundays, and often at other times. The first was the popular lecture, and was given in many of the large cities. It was always highly appreciated, though a hint was once given to me by a great personal admirer of the lecturer, but for whom the subject had not an equal attraction, that I should ask my friend not to talk quite so much about ' that Dant ! ' VISIT TO AMERICA 299 " I think his greatest effort was the address at the opening of term at the Johns Hopkins University at Baltimore ; this was expected to be delivered to a body of some 150 or 200 students, but the desire to hear it was so great that it became necessary to engage the large theatre of the Academy of Music, where about 3000 people filled stalls, pit, boxes, and gallery to the roof. From the stage he gave a brilliant address upon the Educational Value of Philosophy and the claims of science to occupy a large share in the studies of a great University. It was illustrated, after his manner, by abundant quotations, and he held the vast audience enchained for nearly an hour and a half, not only by the interesting and attractive way in which a dry subject, as some might have thought it, was presented, but also by the charm of his singularly musical voice. " Wherever he preached great crowds assembled to hear him, and there were instances where some, unable to get into the church, climbed ladders and listened at the open windows. One lady told me she had travelled one thousand miles to hear him. At one church — I think it was in Baltimore — the crowd was so great that hundreds stood outside, and the carriage in which Farrar was could not get up to the door. When at last he got out, he was taken in charge by a policeman, who called out ' Room for the Deacon ! ' and when the vestryman asked where he was, replied, ' I've got the Deacon under my arm.' " No one could accuse Farrar at any time of want- ing the courage of his convictions : and so, with a most cordial feeling towards Americans and the deeper appre- ciation of the extreme kindness and hospitality with which they had received him, he did not hesitate to speak out on certain points, as may be seen from the 300 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR 1 Farewell Thoughts on America,' an address delivered in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York. He smarted occasionally when the interviewers worried him at inop- portune moments, and though always courteous, he could not 'help alluding in the above-mentioned address to the ' intrusiveness of the baser portion of your Press,' a complaint which was justified by the conduct of one of the journalists, who forced himself into your father's bedroom, and next morning entertained his readers with a detailed, but not very accurate, description of his dressing-gown and slippers. "Among the remarkable Americans whom he met, or who showed him hospitality, were President Cleveland, Mr. Bayard, Secretary of State and afterwards Ambas- sador to Great Britain, Mr. Cyrus Field, Mr. C. Vander- bilt, Mr. George W. Childs, his friend Phillips Brooks, afterwards Bishop of Massachusetts, the Reverend Dr. McVicar, and many others." I cannot better conclude this chapter than with a passage from his address, " Farewell Thoughts on America" : — " I have stood astonished before the growth, the power, the irresistible advance, the Niagara rush of sweeping energy, the magnificent apparent destiny of the nation, wondering whereunto it would grow. It is the work of America to show to the nations the true ideal of national righteousness. In numbers you are, or soon will inevitably be, the greatest ; in strength, the most overwhelming ; in wealth, the most affluent, of all the great nations of the world. In these things you not only equal other people, but excel them. Why ? Mainly, I believe, because your fathers feared God, and God has said, 'Him that honours Me I will honour.' VISIT TO AMERICA 301 I do not believe that America will turn her back upon the ideal of her fathers. I believe that she will be preserved from those perils which lie before her by the memories of the dead and by the virtues of the living. I believe that she will help to keep the nations from the horrors of war. I believe that she will lead us on in a triumphant path to a legislation that shall fearlessly smite the head of every abuse, to a religion that shall be free from fetich worship. I believe that she will justify to humanity her majestic faith in man. I believe that it is for these objects that God has given her an exhilarating atmosphere, a constant azure above her head, and a boundless territory beneath her feet. I believe that she is linked with us of the Old World in the bonds of a manly and of a righteous friendship, and that by the blessing of God's peculiar grace, you with us and we with you shall be so enabled to work out a new world for the glory and happiness of mankind, that hoary-headed selfishness shall feel his death-blow and go reeling to his grave, and many of the vilest evils which have hitherto afflicted the corporate life of man shall live but in the memory of time, which, like the penitent libertine, shall start, look back, and shudder at his earlier errors." CHAPTER XIII BREAD UPON THE WATERS Farrar's books are before the world to be judged on their merits. They do not, of course, appeal to all alike ; but, in so far as popularity is a true measure of worth, his reputation may be safely left to the verdict of the public. That his teaching has been spiritually helpful to thousands, is proved not only by the enormous de- mand in all parts of the world for such works as "The Life of Christ," "The Life of St. Paul," and "Eternal Hope," but by the fact that during a long course of years never a week, hardly a day, passed without his receiving, from learned and simple alike, earnest letters expressing the heartfelt gratitude of the writers for in- struction, help, and comfort derived from his books and sermons. Hundreds of such letters exist, of which I have only been able to find space for a few examples. But the point which I wish now to emphasize is that there was in his teaching a sympathetic quality, an ele- ment of psychic magnetism, which impelled many to whom he was personally a stranger to look upon him as an unknown father confessor and to write to him, from time to time, letters confiding their spiritual doubts, difficulties, and aspirations, or the most inti- mate problems of their lives. Such letters, though they added much to the burden of a heavy corre- spondence, my father, who was one of the most kind 302 BREAD UPON THE WATERS 303 and generous of men, and grudged neither time nor trouble in the service of his fellows, never failed to answer, if only in a few well-chosen words of earnest sympathy or helpful advice. By the courtesy of Mr. Brooks, a correspondent from India, who, though he had never seen his beloved teacher, yet wrote to him every year or even oftener to acknowledge his spiritual indebtedness to his works, I am permitted to print the following letter, which well illustrates this gracious quality of accessibility in my father. "When on the 23d of March I saw the brief notice in the Morning Post — an Indian paper — that 'Dean Farrar is dead,' the shock was so real that I went about for days after as one who had received a heavy blow ! " You would not wonder at it if I could convince you of what your venerable father had been to me. So far back as twenty-one years ago it was through him that I was brought, while reading 'Eternal Hope,' to the feet of the Saviour whose life he had so uniquely por- trayed, and for whose sake he was ever pleading with such strength and beauty. " I have never left India, and hence it was never my privilege to see the Dean ; but he has been at once so ennobling and elevating a character to me, and has ever been so accessible and gracious, that he allowed me to feel as if he knew me perfectly well. " Eighteen years ago I could not resist writing to him and begging him to enrich me with his photograph. That picture for a long time now has been the sole adornment of my study table, and to-day it stands below a ledge holding over fifty volumes from the pen of him whose likeness this is. Two years later my * 304 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR request to publish two of the Canon's sermons — one on the Salvation Army, the other on the Luther Com- memoration — was acceded to with the same old-time grace and courtesy. " It was so good of him that he never failed to reply to a letter. I wrote to him once, sometimes twice, every year, and without a single failure, and punctually by return mail, the cheering, comforting, inspiring an- swer would come. Precious as these letters undoubt- edly are, they are doubly more so when I remember that with an environment of incessant pressure and a thou- sand calls on his time, the Dean yet would reward every one with an autograph answer. If punctuality is the politeness of kings, accessibility is, if anything, a higher virtue ; and how preeminently both these shine out in Dean Farrar, while it seems an impertinence to empha- size it, is what I could humbly bear very strong testi- mony to. "He once wrote, ' It is a pleasure to me to know that one whom I have never seen . . . entertains a kind feeling for me.' How characteristic a remark, when I could frame everything I have had from him in gold ! "Another letter — a very short one indeed — betok- ens the pressure of his surroundings : — "'House of Commons, August 8, 1892. " ' Dear Mr. Brooks : I write this line to offer you sincere thanks for your birthday congratulations re- ceived this morning. May God be with you.' " Here is a quotation from another letter — also dat- ing from the House of Commons — which has been as a guiding star to me in my profession of life. '"It rejoices me to know that you have attained so BREAD UPON THE WATERS 305 useful and blessed a post as that of Head master of so large a school. It is a most important and respon- sible opportunity of doing good to those who are the trustees of posterity, and you can render no service to God more valuable than that of trying to win to faith and true holiness the hearts of the young.' "Would it occasion any surprise if I said that my duties have received quite a new shape as I try to per- form them in the light cf these words ? " I owe, and my family owe, to this scholar-saint what we cannot even faintly acknowledge. My youngest brother and my eldest boy are both called ' Farrar,' and they are conscious that the name is an incentive to the doing of all that is ' lovely and honourable and of good report.' "Almost the last letter I had from the Dean con- cluded with the words, ' I offer up for you at the throne of grace an earnest prayer that God's care may keep you safe from all evil.' There are some who would re- gard the language as conventional ; but I would say, in all humility, that to me and mine, most truly the prayers of this righteous man have availed much. " You would not accuse me of egotism for writing as I have done. I am writing to a son, and feel I cannot adequately speak of the goodness of the father, as I experienced it. " Such a character as his was, could only be happy in blessing others, and I suppose I am only one of a host who, though personally unknown to Dean Farrar, still enjoyed the high favour of his counsel and the benefit of his prayers. His was a large heart, and he was always graciously open to speak to everybody. " It is in and through such men that the Kingdom of the Christ is exalted, and sons and daughters are won 306 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR to Heaven. Can we ever be sufficiently grateful to them, or exhaust ourselves in expressing our deep appre- ciation ? «t. Archd. Brooks." I have also ventured to give anonymously, and with such reservations as shall secure from discovery the iden- tity of the writers, a few letters which show how men and women, seeking comfort for their souls, turned instinc- tively for help to the author whose books and sermons had been to them as dew in the wilderness, and who felt justly confident that in appealing to him for a more personal and individual measure of counsel and sym- pathy they would not appeal in vain. More of these letters, many of them human documents of touching interest and pathos, might be given, if space per- mitted ; I think, however, these are enough for my pres- ent purpose. "April 27, 1901. " Mv dear Sir: I cannot help writing just a few, lines to you, to say how very glad I am that you have got through your severe illness. I have watched the papers every day to see how you were going on. I am so glad that you are better. I do hope that such a great man as you will long be spared to preach and write as you have done. I have a few of your books, some of them written thirty years ago, 'The Silence and Voices of God,' ' Seekers after God,' ' Eternal Hope.' I work ten hours a day in a cotton-mill, but never a week passes but I take one of your books down and read some portion of it. They are really charming to me. I only wish that I could go and hear such a man speak or preach, but I am only poor, having been BREAD UPON THE WATERS 307 somewhat unfortunate, and I have four children to bring up ; one boy I am trying to keep at school till he is put to some trade. " But I shall try to get more of your books if I can, and leave them to my boy, and tell him that he must read such books. I have only been to London once, a long time ago. If I could come again sometime, I should try to come to see you and perhaps hear you preach, about which I have read so much. You gave an address on temperance at Oxford a long time ago, the best that ever I read. I am a temperance man, never touches drink in any form. Allow me to say again how glad I am that you are better. " I am, sir, " Yours truly, " F. S ." "Dear Sir: I am a Jew by birth, and have given my heart to Christ through your work, ' Life of Christ.' Twenty times I have read the chapter of the Cruci- fixion, and twenty times I have bitterly weeped. I am a Russian Jew, and your valuable work I have read in Russian language. Being persecuted of my brethren, I have corned in London, and now I am in a Christian establishment for converted Jews. But my medicin, what has lead me to bliss, I cannot forget, and now being in England five months, I have wished to read the origi- nal of ' Life of Christ.' But alas ! I cannot find it. To buy I am poor, and to read it in the free librias I have not time ; have I decided to ask of you, in memory of my salvation, the book 'Life of Christ.' I trust in your Christian love. " Your truly disciple in mind, "Ben-Zion Lensman." 308 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR " February 6, 1879. " Frederic W. Farrar, D.D. " Well-beloved though unknown friend : Although you are chaplain to the Queen of England, and I a poor isolated, world-hidden, neglected invalid, I cannot help loving you, and I beg you to lend me your eye and heart a few moments. " You perhaps remember that I wrote you several years ago, when you were yet at Marlborough. Your re- sponse, although brief, was the very marrow of ' the law of the Spirit of Life,' and I prize it above rubies. I was then clinging in remorse and torturing apprehension to the edge of the precipice that slopes into bottomless perdi- tion. Your letter awakened me fully to a sense of my ruin and the absolute necessity of an immediate, final, and self-sacrificing grapple with the legion of devils which had taken possession of me. I would have writ- ten to you sooner in acknowledgment of your kindness, but thought it best to defer till I could honestly say that, through the grace of Christ, I had been more or less victorious over my enemies. I have lost many a battle since you wrote me, but not the burning desire and ever increasing effort to be more than conqueror through Him that loved me. I am still a poor sinner, but have broken many of my fetters, and hope, through grace, soon to be the Lord's freeman. " I have no words to express my sense of the great- ness and grandeur of the Christian life inspired by your writings. Although I cannot go with you in your view of the ultimate destiny of those who perish in their sins, my heart has gone a thousand times across the Atlantic in warmly affectionate greetings for your sweet, lofty, soul-guiding, soul-elevating words." BREAD UPON THE WATERS 309 " Dear Sir : I write to you in awful trouble, because you are so good and merciful. Oh, help me ! My brother is dead — has destroyed himself. Not on purpose — oh ! do not think that, — he was ill, worried, not himself, and in a moment of madness it was done. But I cannot bear it, cannot be resigned, cannot pray. I feel as if I could never believe in God or love Him again. " And so I come to you, because you believe so truly, because you are so sincere, so merciful ; because I have more faith in you than in any man on earth. Oh! if you have any pity, write one little line and help me. I am only a poor weak girl, whom you have never met. But you will forgive me because I am crushed with misery. " Direct to ... " "North Dakota, U.S.A. " Reverend Sir : Pardon a stranger for intruding upon your valuable time, and believe that only the desire for the information asked for below prompts me to do so. Many years ago, when but a boy, I read, in some publi- cation, the name of which I have forgotten, a sermon preached by you at Westminster. The text was John xvi. 9-1 1. " It sunk deep into my mind and fifteen years of pioneer life on this Western frontier have not effaced the domi- nant thought of it, 'Christ judging the Prince of this world.' I have tried to find it among your published works in this country, but so far have been unsuccessful, hence this letter to you. Will you please inform me where I can procure it, either in pamphlet form or among your published works ? I have your ' Life of Christ,' ' Seekers after God,' ' Early Days of Christianity,' and 'In the Days of thy Youth'; and though belonging to 3io LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR no church, those books have often steadied me by their high ideals in this rushing life of the West, when other- wise I might have gone utterly astray ; for the life of an attorney — my profession — is here full of temptation. " Trusting that you will not think me too presumptu- ous in thus trespassing upon you, "I am, sir, " Respectfully yours, « S. B. M * " March 17, 1902. "Dear Dr. Farrar: Though an insignificant stranger, I am venturing to write to you, as I would like you to know how one of your books has been used by God. " Some five years ago, I gave a copy of your ' Lord's Prayer ' to a lady to whose sister I am betrothed. She lent the book, humanly speaking by chance, to a friend, upon whom it made a great impression. It was the beginning of a new life for him. Of course he had gone through certain forms before, but apparently did not have any real love for Christ. But all that is changed now, and I know from my own personal knowledge that he has experienced a very real conversion. He has been working for God ever since, and on Saturday night there was opened at Smithwicks a Gospel Hall which he has largely, if not entirely, built. The lady I mentioned went to the opening meeting, when about five hundred people were present. The gentleman told her how rejoiced he was that God had so blessed his efforts, and added this sentence — ' All through Dean Farrar's book.' "Those are the words I was desirous you should know. My friend has joined the Plymouth Brethren, whilst I am as keen as ever upon the Church of England, but I know you will agree that the denomination is of BREAD UPON THE WATERS 311 secondary importance, — that the belonging to the real Church of Christ is the essential thing. " Thanking you for help myself, as indeed I have done before, "Yours very respectfully, « e. W. J .*' " November 7, 1899. " Reverend and dear Sir : Loving reverence and deep gratitude constrain me now to write thus to you, as indeed I have thought of doing for some years past. " Amid all the work in which you are engaged for God and His Church, and among the many claims, which even perhaps as you read this are upon thought and time, will you pause for a brief moment to receive the thanks of one who owes, perhaps more than pen and ink may express, of deep and earnest thanks for all the spiritual and intellectual help your writings have been to me. " For twenty years your 'Life of Christ,' that beauti- ful study of the grandest theme that has ever occupied the mind and thought of man, has been beside my Bag- ster's Bible almost as a daily text-book ; and I want to tell you that some years ago, when for months I was going through a dark time of doubt and soul-question- ing, when through looking too m?ich at Christians repre- senting the Christ, I had lost sight of Himself for a time : then it was that glancing again at that ' Life of Christ,' and knowing that to one of your great intellect and questioning mind, Jesus Christ was a living blessed- reality, my soul found anchor and my heart could rest, in spite of storm and stress. God bless you, dear Dean Farrar, and reward you ten-thousand fold by flooding and filling your heart with that same rest and peace. 312 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR " Then since the ' mists have rolled away ' your other books have been a great joy to me. ... ' From Dark- ness to Dawn ' I have read and re-read, for it opens up that page of history in an intensely fascinating way. My children like it better than any of their story-books. I am reading now to my three little girls at home, on Sunday afternoons, ' Gathering Clouds,' to which they look forward with much pleasure. And though you may smile at her precociousness, the youngest, who is only six, is deeply interested in the story of Philip and Eutyches entwined with the history of the great Chrysostom. . . . You will forgive my telling you all this, but I thought you would like to know how the children love your books, as well as those of a larger growth. " With many apologies for thus trespassing on your time, and with earnest prayer that our God may spare you yet for years to His church, which has so much need of your faithful voice and fearless pen, and with deep and affectionate gratitude, " I am, dear and Reverend Sir, " Your obedient servant, « c. K. T ." "Will the Dean allow a woman to whom his writings gave great help and light doctrinally (twenty years ago, and more, now), to thank him again, not only for that but for more personal comfort and strengthening in a time of spiritual depression — which she has received from hearing his rendering of the lessons lately, in the Morning Prayer at the Cathedral ? As a pastor of souls, he will, she trusts, think it no intrusion on her part, to tell him of this good gift which God has sent through him." CHAPTER XIV DEAN OF CANTERBURY In 1895 my father was nominated by Lord Rosebery to the Deanery of Canterbury, rendered vacant by the death of Dean Payne-Smith. Although its acceptance involved a considerable sacrifice of income, having lived to see most of his sons and daughters settled in life, he had little hesitation in accepting the appointment. Canterbury is the premier Deanery of England, and the new Dean, the thirty-first since the Reformation, took over the rule of the great Cathedral, imbued with a profound sense of the value to the Church of England of its historic associations. An extract from his inaugural sermon may be given to illustrate the spirit in which he assumed his new duties, and his high ideal of the Cathedral as a factor in the life and thought of the nation : — " Canterbury Cathedral surpasses even Westminster Abbey in the closeness of its connection with the eccle- siastical history of the English race. What the Abbey is for the history of the English nation, that the Cathe- dral is for the history of the English Church. It has its memories of Henry II and of Edward III, and its tomb of Henry IV, and relics of the flower of English chivalry. Here lie many of the English Primates ; here are concentrated the memories of thirteen centuries of our Church's history — memories of St. Augustine of 313 314 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR Canterbury, and the Bretwalda Ethelbert ; of St. Dun- stan and King Edvvy ; of St. Alphege and the Danes ; of Lanfranc and the Conqueror; of St. Anselm and William Rufus ; of St. Thomas a Becket and Henry II ; of Stephen Langton and Magna Charta ; of Chaucer and the Canterbury Pilgrims ; of St. Edmund of Canter- bury (one of the loveliest of our holy examples); of Archbishop Parker and Queen Elizabeth ; of William III and the saintly Tillotson ; of the tragic martyrdoms and violent deaths of Archbishop Sudbury, of Arch- bishop Alphege, of Archbishop Cranmer, and of Arch- bishop Laud. " And every English Cathedral, by its structural mag- nificence and its historic reminiscences, is a noble wit- ness for two most precious heritages of the Church of God : the continuity of worship and the continuity of faith. " These glorious cathedrals evinced the intensity of that belief, stimulating a princely munificence which must almost be said to exist no more. We do not, and could not, alas ! in these days build Canterbury Cathe- drals or Westminster Abbeys, though they were built, not by a nation of thirty-nine million, but by a nation of less than five million, which is now the population of London alone, and they were built by a nation of which the wealth was but a drop compared to the Pactolus of riches which now rolls into our coffers over its sands of gold. They are the costly legacy from the poor ages of faith to the wealthy ages of selfishness. It cannot be denied that in those days — in spite of error, igno- rance, and superstition — the saints of God held their faith with a more burning and self-sacrificing conviction than in these more feverish and worldly times. Happy DEAN OF CANTERBURY 315 is it for us that their faith has been eternised in these lovely legacies, for — " They dreamt not of a perishable home Who thus could build. Be mine, in hours of fear, Or grovelling thought, to seek a refuge here ; Or thro' the aisles of Westminster to roam, Where bubbles burst, and folly's dancing foam Melts if it cross the threshold. " Only let us all, from the highest to the lowest, be of one mind, — that without sincerity, without reverence, without thoroughness, without attention, there can be no acceptable service, no beauty of holiness. The in- cense will but smoulder distressfully on the altar if it be not enkindled with the flame of true devotion. Oh, let no familiarity, let no frequency in our services, cause them to sink into mere idle functions. Let our songs, our anthems, our services, our Scripture lessons, our sermons, always mean something ; let no professional- ism, no careless lolling, lounging indifference, or lack of due reverence, ever degrade their pure gold into odious dross; and even you, my boys of the choir, — in whose present happiness and future welfare I shall always feel a deep interest, — difficult as I know the effort may often be to you, yet learn habitually to regard this sa- cred scene as ' the place of angels and archangels, the Court of God and the image of heaven.' Never whis- per together ; never stare about you to right or to left as you enter this holy place ; never enter in a straggling or irregular manner. Let no wandering thoughts taint with worldliness or sin the prayers and praises which will be so blessed if you learn to offer them with a pure heart fervently. May God take you under His gracious care and keeping, and make you, in heart as well as in name, the children of His Sanctuary ! 316 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR " But, apart from its architectural glory, and beyond the sphere of its daily worship, a Cathedral should be an impulse, a source of elevation, ' a centre of all civilis- ing influences, material, intellectual, social, in the world around it.' The City, the Diocese, the whole Church of God, should rejoice in it, and be the better for it. Each separate class and guild of Art and Science, of Commerce and Soldiership, of Philanthropy and Educa- tion, as well as all ranks and degrees of our ordinary life, should look to it as a source of strength. It should extend a sympathetic love and generous influence to the young ; the boys and girls who grow up under its purple shadows should be the better in life, and the richer in memories, from its influence. Sometimes, at least, it should gather the little ones of Christ under its roof in the Name of Him who loved them, took them up in His arms, laid His hands upon them, and blessed them." What the Dean did for the structure of the Cathedral is briefly told by my brother, the Rev. Ivor Farrar, in the following narrative : — " Like many another English Dean, Dr. Farrar had to bear the punishment for the negligence of those who preceded him. During the palmy days of the eighteenth century, when the Dean received .£10,000 a year, the Cathedral buildings had been suffered to fall into sad decay. Then followed the days of agricultural depres- sion, and the stipend of the Dean dropped to £1000 a year, and tottering walls and leaking roofs called loudly for a fabric fund to save them from utter ruin. The work of preservation had been begun by Dean Payne- Smith, but he had only appealed to the county of Kent, too poor to render much assistance. On his appoint- ment in 1895, Dean Farrar issued a wider appeal to all DEAN OF CANTERBURY 317 churchmen to come to the rescue of their premier Cathe- dral. .£20,000 was needed for absolutely necessary work, and by three years of incessant and ungrudging labour Dr. Farrar raised some £19,000, which with care was made sufficient to carry out the greater part of his de- signs. Of this large sum the main portion was spent on work which made no show, and could only appeal to genuine lovers of the old Cathedral. The roof of the Chapter-house, the Cloisters, and portions of the Nave had to be releaded before anything else could be thought of, and only a small sum was left to restore the Crypt and Chapter-house to something of their ancient beauty. In the Chapter-house the neglect of centuries was pain- fully apparent. The ancient ceiling, once gorgeous in blue and scarlet and gold, and bearing on its bosses the escutcheons of the pious donors who had helped to build the Cathedral, was in a lamentable and even dan- gerous state of decay ; the rain swept in through the broken windows, and the walls streamed with moisture. In commemoration of the thirteenth centenary of Augus- tine's mission, the Freemasons of Kent filled the great East window with stained glass, depicting the heroes and benefactors of Canterbury from Augustine and Bertha of the sixth century down to Victoria and Benson of the nineteenth. The ceiling was restored to its ancient col- ours and design, the remaining windows were reglazed, and a new floor replaced the old and broken tiles. " The Crypt was in a yet more pitiable condition. A long wall running east and west cut off the south aisle from the rest of the Crypt, which is the largest in Eu- rope : the windows were unglazed, and the floor was two feet above its proper level. The result of Dean Far- rar's restoration enables the tourists of to-day to see the fine proportions of the Crypt as they existed in the days 3i« LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR of King Henry VIII, without however the rich votive offerings which once made the chapel of ' Our Lady of the Undercroft ' the wealthiest treasure chamber in Eng- land. The side Chapel dedicated to the Holy Innocents was furnished for occasional services. There was much else that Dean Farrar wished to do. He had it in his heart to make a marble floor for the choir, to repolish the lovely marble pillars in the Trinity Chapel, and to fill the west window of the Chapter-house with stained glass. All this still remains for another Dean of Can- terbury to do ; but the paintings which adorn the screen above the Holy Table, the splendid brass Communion rails, the mosaic floor of the Sanctuary, and the beauty and reverence of the Cathedral services bear eloquent witness to the high zeal of the great and saintly Dean, who thus sought to make the House of God ' exceeding magnifical.' " My father's loving care of the structure of Canterbury Cathedral was the outcome, not only of his characteris- tic zeal for the structure of God's House, which he had before so effectively exercised at Marlborough and at St. Margaret's, but also of the ideal, which he felt so profoundly, and constantly strove to make others realise, of the Cathedral as the living centre of social and spirit- ual life in the city. At Canterbury, my father, by constant personal at- tendance and unceasing exercise of personal influence, strove to bring it about that the daily services in the Cathedral should be not only reverently and seemly conducted, but imbued with the living spirit of worship ; and, further, that every citizen in Canterbury should realise and take pride in the Cathedral as part of his own inheritance. DEAN OF CANTERBURY 319 The impression contributed by an American to the American Sunday School Times may be introduced here as giving an adequate portrait of the Dean in his Cathedral. " So many Americans have had much more than a glimpse of the famous Dean of Canterbury that there might seem to be no reason for writing this impression of a Sunday afternoon at Canterbury. Yet somehow that service, with all that went to make it up, has always remained fixed in memory as one of the whole and per- fect impressions of my life. I had been on ' a cathedral tour ' on the Continent, but the English cathedrals, after all, had been the ones which I always figured to myself in the years when I kept hoping that some day I should see cathedrals. " Canterbury was my first in England, and not one single element of all that my boyish and later imagina- tion had pictured out to me as the proper circumstance and atmosphere of a cathedral was wanting. The altar, the highest and remotest I ever saw, gleamed off and up in the distance with its lights. The congregation was made up of people from all parts of the earth, among whom, here and there, appeared the bright- coated soldiers. I remember the face of one of them now. All around us were the tombs, and just beyond the screen, at the foot of the steps, the Martyrdom. The organ broke the silence now and then with one of those restless, preliminary groanings which make an organ seem like a living thing, and then, beginning softly, I heard on the stone flags of the aisles in the dis- tance the scuff of the feet of the choir as they came down for the service. " At the end of the procession came Dean Farrar, and for the time Canterbury summed itself up for me in 320 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR him, just as Westminster always does in Stanley. The thing that impressed me about him most, and at once, was his apparently utter obliviousness of himself or his position. The Dean walked on to his place, with his head bowed, and seemingly with no sense of being anything but a part of it all. Professor Palmer says that one of the signs of being spiritually mature is in feeling that one is only a part. Well, then, I never saw a great man in a great position from whose whole being that feeling seemed to go forth as from Dean Farrar. He was evidently at his own disposal for that service, and wholly so. The service was all ; he was simply a part. " But the crowning impression for me that afternoon was when the time came for the second lesson, which, I believe, is always read by the Dean, when he is present, as his regular part of the service. In the same absorbed manner, as if seeing nothing around him, but wholly devoted to the thing he was doing, he went up to the reading-desk, found the lesson of the day, and began to read words which, of all Scripture, were to me the most perfect and wonderful to express what I was feeling, and which said out the very heart of an occasion, as words had never said for me before, ' Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses.' I sat spellbound by the appropriateness of it all, and feeling something beyond good fortune in my being there the day on which that lesson fell. And now Dean Farrar is one of the witnesses, but I shall always think of him as he stood reading those words. — John Sheridan Zelic." The Dean kept in warm touch, through the Mayor and Corporation, with the municipal life of Canterbury ; DEAN OF CANTERBURY 321 through his friends Colonel Abadie and Colonel Frith, and subsequently through his friend — an old Harrow pupil — Colonel Hegan, with the soldiers in the barracks, who after his death testified their respect by volunteering to line the nave at his funeral ; with St. Augustine's College ; with the parish churches of Canterbury ; with the hospital; with every organisation for good in the old city. For one instance, — he revived an old kindly custom, which had fallen into desuetude, that the Dean and Chapter should go down into the nave and shake hands with each member of the congregation at the close of the evening service on Christmas Day. How much this custom was valued by the citizens, and its effect in giv- ing a sense of personal relation between the Cathedral body and the humblest worshippers, the following letter will show : — " ' Cheer up, mother ! Please God I shall be with you again Christmas Day and shake the dear Dean's hand again.' " ' Ah ! mother, I so often think of our Sunday even- ings, when I see in the "Press" that the dear Dean is going to preach ! ' " My first sentence was uttered on the platform of the S. E. R. Station at Canterbury, when my dear boy started for South Africa, where after a few months' service he succumbed to enteric fever ; the other sentence is an extract from my boy's letter who is serving with his regiment in Burmah. My youngest boy is a member of the Y. M. C. A. and a constant attendant at the Bible Classes, and I feel sure that, after God, we are indebted to Dean Farrar for the influence his sermons (more particularly the course preached on the ' Prodigal Son ' ) have had on the lives of these boys. May God help the 322 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR Dean and spare him long to minister in the Cathedral he has done so much to beautify ! tt " Christmas, 1901." At Canterbury his perennial love of young people found ample and beautiful scope. His numerous grand- children whose highest privilege was a visit to the Deanery ; the boys of King Edward's School ; the boys of the Simon Langton Schools; the boys of the Cathedral choir ; and most of all perhaps the boys of the King's School, — on all these he lavished the paternal affection which was one of his best characteristics and which con- tact with the young never failed to elicit. An extract from some reminiscences contributed by my brother, Ivor Farrar, to an article in the British Monthly, which the editor has courteously allowed me to quote, gives a good picture of this side of his Canterbury life : — " No mention of my father's work at Canterbury would be complete without an allusion to his work among the boys of the King's School and Cathedral choir, for he had a wonderful gift of imparting to boys his own im- mense love of all that is best and noblest in English literature. The boys were frequent guests at the Deanery. Four of the senior boys were invited to break- fast every Sunday morning, while the younger boys were invited during the summer months to tea in the garden. I was always struck by the high tone which he gave to the conversation among these boys. He spoke of the past history of the Cathedral, of the stories of great and noble men in all ages and countries, and of the poets, especially his four supreme favourites — Milton, Dante, Coleridge, Tennyson. He never cared DEAN OF CANTERBURY 323 to talk of things of merely passing interest; but how- ever deep the subject might be, he never failed to make it intelligible even to boys of thirteen and fourteen. Still more wonderful was his influence among the little boys of the Cathedral choir. My father dreaded lest their frequent attendance at long Cathedral services should make their religion formal and unreal. To avert this danger, he devoted Sunday afternoons, from two to three, to teaching them himself. Other and less great men would have taken such a class without any special preparation ; but on Monday morning the Dean began thinking of next Sunday's class, and he de- voted a portion of every day to preparing for it. After his strength began to fail, I was often able to help him by reading aloud to him when his poor hands were too weak to hold a book, or even turn a page. And I noticed that Driver, Cheyne, Stanley, Ellicott, and Westcott were only a few of the books used in preparing to teach these little boys of twelve and under. Still more remarkable, when the lesson came to be given, the learned comments of great scholars had become delightful stories, full of. life and thrilling interest, with lessons that any boy could both understand and use. The choir boys never failed to enjoy his class, and the very last piece of work which my father did on earth was preparing for this class the night before he died ! " The following testimony by a King's School boy is taken from the obituary notice to The Cantuarian: — " He ever took the kindest interest in our work and in our play. His delight at the success of some indi- vidual member of the school was unbounded. His words of consolation and encouragement have many a time — we speak from experience — taken away the 324 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR bitterness of failure. Those who were privileged to enjoy the hospitality of his house — and they were not few — will count as some of the happiest in their lives those hours spent in the quiet bowling green, or over the chess board, or walking along the old city wall while the Dean advised and counselled or poured lavishly forth from his wonderful fund of anecdotes. Often, too, the monotony of the sick house was relieved by a visit from the Dean, and if he was unable to come himself he would send round some dainty for the in- mates with kind and thoughtful messages. For O. K. S. he maintained the same regard as he had for the school. He was ever anxious to hear of their doings, and re- joiced in their successes. " Many have heard him say that at his death the names of Marlborough, Harrow, and our own King's School would be found written on his heart. We feel sure that his name will ever be treasured in the hearts of all King Scholars." A sidelight on his enthusiasm for the young is given in the following letter to one of my sisters : — "The Deanery, Canterbury, July 8th. " My darling Lilian : Just now I am unusually pressed with work, and the Garden Party, with its three hundred guests, drove out of my head my loving con- gratulations on your birthday. I need not tell you, my dear child, how earnestly I wish and pray that, now and ever, God's best blessings may be richly outpoured upon you, making you very happy in your marriage, and causing your life to be most useful for the spread of His Kingdom. DEAN OF CANTERBURY 325 "I enclose the autograph, and with kindest regards to John and Mrs. Darlington, I am " Your very loving father, " F. W. Farrar. " We had such a happy function at the Cathedral yesterday. More than eight hundred boys and girls from the Sunday Schools came, sang hymns, and I gave them a ten minutes' talk on Missions. They pro- cessed round the Cathedral with trumpets and banners, singing hymns ! " Even at some risk of overlapping, I give here three further sketches by different hands, portraying my father as Dean. The first is an appreciation of his beloved chief con- tributed to this Memoir by his devoted colleague, Canon Page Roberts ; the second an extract from the beautiful memorial sermon preached on Sunday, March 29, in Canterbury Cathedral by a colleague no less loyal and devoted, Dr. Mason, Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge ; the third an extract contributed by my sister, the Hon. Mrs. J. S. Northcote, to the British Monthly. This last extract refers in part to earlier periods of my father's life with which I have already dealt, but I could not find it in my heart to share it into fragments, and have preferred to introduce it here in its entirety. Canon Page Roberts writes : — " I had only known Dr. Farrar slightly before he became Dean of Canterbury. Occasionally we chanced to meet in London, and more than once I preached for him at St. Margaret's. Soon after I had been appointed 326 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR to a Canonry in Canterbury Cathedral I remember say- ing to him, Archdeacon of Westminster as he then was, that I hoped he might become Dean of Canterbury, that place being then vacant. He shook his head and with an air of depression said there was no chance of further preferment for him. It had long been felt by many that both Liberal and Conservative Governments had overlooked the preeminent claims which Dr. Farrar had upon the highest distinctions of the Anglican Church; that both Liberal and Conservative Prime Ministers deserved blame for ignoring such merits as his while elevating less distinguished persons to the highest places. It was thought by many that he was best qualified to succeed Stanley in the Deanery of Westminster. Lord Rosebery removed the reproach and Dr. Farrar became Dean of Canterbury. " It was as though a load of suspicion and depreciation had been removed from his shoulders, as though his deserts, so long disregarded, had at length been acknow- ledged, that Dr. Farrar entered upon his new position. Old friends and acquaintances perceived in him an un- usual contentment. Eager always and incessantly active, he had now the air of cheerful satisfaction. At this time he was certainly the best-known clergyman in the Eng- lish Church. Throughout the whole land, throughout the whole English-speaking peoples, his name was famil- iar, the brilliance of his eloquence known. Wherever he went he attracted crowds to the pulpits from which he preached and the platforms from which he spoke. Canterbury felt that a very conspicuous person had come to occupy the decanal stall, was proud of the dis- tinction conferred on the city, and at once was fascinated by the fervour of his splendid rhetoric, the richness of his historic knowledge, and the high moral inspiration DEAN OF CANTERBURY 327 of his aims. He called attention to the Mother Church of England, till then too little considered. Looked upon with favour by his Sovereign and the Royal family, the King and Queen, at that time Prince and Princess of Wales, honoured Canterbury by their presence at the reopening of the Chapter house ; and many eminent persons visited her, attracted by his urgent appeals. "The need of the Cathedral for serious structural repairs was felt by the Chapter. ' Our holy Mother Canterbury sat with tattered robes.' The revenues of the Cathedral had been gradually declining while the permanent charges remained as large as ever, the Dean and Canons alone suffering from the diminished yearly income. The fabric was carefully maintained ; but there were no funds available for large structural restoration. With all the eagerness and pertinacity of his nature the new Dean initiated a movement in cooperation with the Canons of the Cathedral for the purpose of accomplish- ing the necessary work. The main burden of collecting the funds required was undertaken by the Dean. To all sorts and conditions of men he wrote, setting forth the needs of the Cathedral and its historic and national claims. Thousands of letters he wrote with his own hands, those hands so soon to become tremulous and helpless. To our kindred across the Atlantic, whose response did not come up to his expectations, to whom we may say the Cathedral belongs as well as to our- selves, he made appeal. From week to week, taxing a strength which the unresting labour of years had severely tried, he preached and spoke for the purpose on which he had set his heart. From one end of Great Britain to the other he pleaded the cause of the Cathe- dral he had come to love so well. What no other man could have done, he did. Twenty thousand pounds were 328 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR collected by his untiring efforts and were expended dur- ing his tenure, too brief, of the decanal office. There is little to catch the eye which can tell of the good work which has been done. It is hidden in roofs and walls. Not for decoration but for the preservation of the noble fabric the funds were provided ; and into that fabric, making it secure for years, those funds have been poured. " But in the care for the building itself — and with all its history, national and artistic, he was minutely ac- quainted and ever loved to communicate it to those who came to visit it — he did not lose sight of the moral and spiritual purposes for which it exists. He preached frequently at the popular Sunday Evening service, and vast numbers crowded to hear him. He had a large cir- cle of friends among the clergy, and the most eminent of these he invited to occupy the Cathedral pulpit. He was the most generous and appreciative of critics. Few could dream of equalling his eloquence or the extent of his ever available knowledge. He took a certain amount of pleasure in his own success, — although he had a tincture of pessimism, — at least he liked to tell how great were the numbers he from time to time addressed. But he imagined that others could be as attractive as he if they chose. While averse from the ritualism which symbolised sacerdotal dogmas, he was careful of dignity in worship. The ceremony appropriate to great eccle- siastical functions was studiously considered by him. He never failed, whether it were at an assemblage of bishops, the enthronement of a primate, or the solemn pageant of an archbishop's funeral, to represent with dignity the Cathedral of which he was chief. He insti- tuted a yearly meeting of the Deans of Cathedrals, the first of which took place in Canterbury. He revived an DEAN OF CANTERBURY 329 ancient custom of personally greeting, together with the Canons, the citizens of Canterbury in the nave of the Cathedral, at the conclusion of Evensong on Christmas Day. He also organised a yearly service for the com- memoration of benefactors of the Cathedral. In the boys of the choir he took the deepest interest, solemnly admitting them to their office, encouraging them with parental caresses, providing places for them when their term of work was over, and each Sunday afternoon teaching them himself in a Bible Class, — a class for which the widely read scholar made special preparation. He was never more attractive than when with boys. His interest in the King's School was unceasing and that of an expert. The masters looked up to him as a chief in their own profession. The boys recognised in him a friend who sympathised with them because he understood them. No one could speak to them as he could. The brilliance of his meditated rhetoric disap- peared when he addressed them. Playfulness, sim- plicity, tenderness, memories of thoughts and things from various ages, made a speech from him invigorating and delightful. It was good to hear Archbishop Tem- ple, who had also been a schoolmaster, delivering his rugged remarks with paternal benignity — sunshine on wintry rocks ; but the Dean was incomparable ; his speech was like a thoroughbred, easy, graceful, and free. The sixth form in the school received his frequent hospitality and knew him intimately. Indeed, the hos- pitality of the Deanery was unbounded. Until the completion of the new Palace the archbishops were entertained by him. The Sunday afternoon and even- ing preachers received his welcome. On every possible occasion the citizens of Canterbury were invited to his home. His conversation was delightful without being 330 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR monopolising, and the timid and retiring were encour- aged by his graciousness. At all the civic celebrations of Canterbury he was careful to be present and was the chief speaker ; and some preferred his spontaneous utterances to his prepared productions. There were persons who thought his taste too florid. Certain dec- orative additions to the Cathedral buildings, while admired by some, by others were looked upon with less favour. In these he was not alone responsible. Nothing was done without the assent of the Chapter, and the whole Chapter must take the praise or blame. If the Dean had a fault, and most of us have more than one, it was that when some idea entered into his mind, it became, for the time, a part of his life, to be pursued with unyielding determination. Opposition inflicted a wound. He could not bear it ; and at times his col- leagues yielded to his insistence from a sense of the quivering pain refusal would inflict. The Dean's nature was highly sensitive, and it was anguish to his colleagues to bruise it. " But patience came at last, — that rarest product of Divine Grace, and with him it had its ' perfect work.' Gradually the silvery voice became inaudible. The fluent pen refused to answer to the will. The energy which never flagged, but carried the orator and advocate from one end of Great Britain to the other, ebbed away into trembling helplessness. No word of complaint was uttered. Carried to his stall, from time to time he strove to utter the words of benediction, and like St. John at Ephesus, to the last he sought his Church. Perhaps no one did so much in the nineteenth century to enlighten what have been called the Philistine religious classes as he did. While his learning was wider than that of the majority of scholars, it was used to elevate that stratum DEAN OF CANTERBURY 331 of unintelligent piety which is the largest constituent of the Churches. Lightfoot instructed the few. Farrar educated the many. They read his books with delight and without suspicion, imbibing almost unconsciously a more liberal spirit. For he was liberal in spirit rather than rationalistic in conclusion, — more a preacher than a theologian. Suspected as unsound by some because of the very modest and almost hesitating book called ' Eternal Hope,' those who knew him clearly saw how truly conservative was his faith. Not to doubt but to pray was his ideal. For religion was paramount with him. Theology was subordinate. Therefore it was that the insinuations and virulence of certain critics failed to alienate the middle classes of the various denominations from his writings. Religion was the touch of nature which made them kin. There is no one to take his place. Other men will do other work, in some respects higher work, than he did. His work was unique, and he ' being dead yet speaketh.' His light still shines: — " Oh, never star Was lost here but it rose afar." From Canon Mason's eloquent and beautiful memo- rial sermon I take the following extracts : — ******* " How well he allowed us to know him. It was a part of his great generosity that he did not shut himself up, as some students might have done, in the retirement, well though he loved it, of his study, or in the sacred seclusion of his home life, though few men have ever been so blessed in their home life as he. That home was itself thrown open with the most liberal hospitality, and we felt that the Dean not only came out to us from 332 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR time to time, but that he lived among us. There was nothing going on in Canterbury, — nothing, I mean, of a wholesome kind, nothing that concerned the welfare of the City or of any class which it contained — without the Dean having his share in it. At all kinds of gath- erings the Dean was there, pouring out lavishly of his wonderful store of knowledge, and of his renowned elo- quence. A respected citizen of Canterbury said to me yesterday, 1 1 feel that Canterbury has lost the best friend it ever had.' Especially where the happiness and the well-being of the young were concerned, his time, his powers, his possessions, were bestowed without stint. Many in Canterbury of all classes of society have life- long reason to be thankful to him for the pains he took to procure suitable situations and employments for their sons. His great influence was exerted for that purpose, in letters and interviews, which cost him what money could not buy. What he did for the Cathedral choris- ters, whom he taught every Sunday with a fatherly ten- derness, and for whom he was preparing a lesson as usual last Sunday, when the hand of God summoned him ; what he did for the King's School, and for the individual members of it, will not soon be forgotten. It was a characteristic of all his life at Canterbury that his last public act, the very day before he died, was to drive out in the high March wind to bestow his loved and honoured presence upon the King's School sports. Then, what a life of industry it was ! It seemed as if he did not know how to be idle. When he came back from what were called his holidays, we usually found that he had preached in the principal — sometimes also in the lowliest — churches of the neighbourhood ; and that his pen had been even busier than it was here, where all sorts of avocations interrupted it. Can you form any DEAN OF CANTERBURY 333 estimate of the number of letters which he must have written — letters with a rare force of persuasion in them — to gather nearly ^20,000 together for the repair and adornment of this church ? Most of his books were written before he came to Canterbury, but he went in- cessantly on with his writing here, in his library, or sometimes in summer in the arbour on his garden wall, until that most pathetic of infirmities fastened upon his hand, and for ever stopped his active pen. Few men have ever written so much as he, and still fewer have written what has been so widely read. I have been able to count up more than thirty separate books of his, some of which are books in two large volumes, without reckoning the innumerable articles which he wrote for magazines. If you glance at the list of them, you see that many of these books are in their third, fourth, and fifth editions, while one is in its twelfth, another in its fourteenth, another in its eighteenth thousand, while one is in its twenty-fourth edition. This last is, of course, his famous ' Life of Christ,' and the twenty-four editions of which I speak are all English editions. I do not know whether there is any civilised language into which his ' Life of Christ ' has not been translated. He told me himself of two independent translations of it into Russian. I know that when I first travelled in Scandinavia some years ago, there were two names of Englishmen, and only two, which were known to every Dane, — as famil- iarly known as that of any born Scandinavian ; the two were those of Spurgeon and Farrar. It would be idle to pretend that the world was unanimous in its judg- ment upon the value of some of our Dean's works. His impetuous and rapid intellect sometimes carried him to conclusions which might perhaps have been modified if he could have lent himself seriously to thinking out an 334 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR opposite view. But those are — at least for the moment — generally the ineffective men who, like Erasmus or Maurice, see both sides of a question and plead for the recognition of what is valuable in beliefs or practices other than their own. Farrar was not of that ineffective order of mind. What he was convinced of, he was con- vinced of, and all his ardent soul went into the procla- mation of it, whoever might take the other side. He was conscious of having no wish but to follow and to enforce the truth as he apprehended it. ******* " You must not think that this characteristic intensity of conviction derogated from the largeness of his soul. On the contrary it made it all the more remarkable — all the more a sign of Divine Grace — that he should have been so forbearing and so charitable towards those who at any time differed from him. He felt more acutely than other men do the pain of difference. His was a peculiarly sensitive nature. He had a more than ordi- nary longing to be approved and loved ; and any sign that others disagreed with him caused him a degree of suffer- ing beyond what rougher men could sympathise with. But his heart went out tenderly towards those who in- flicted the suffering, and he was incapable of bearing them ill-will. ******* " It was said of Cranmer that the way to gain his affection was to do him an injury and to repent of it. I have reason to know that this was the way with Dean Farrar. All Canterbury was proud of its Dean ; but I believe that when we look back upon those eight years we shall feel that he helped us even more during the last part of the time than he did during the first. Great DEAN OF CANTERBURY 335 as was his work for the City and the Cathedral in the days of his brilliant energy, he did yet more for us when his powers began to decay, and he showed us by example how to suffer. If I may dare to say what appeared to me to be the case, I think the Dean himself was happier during the last two years or so than I ever knew him before ; and I am sure that he deserved to be so, for the presence of the Spirit of God shone out more and more conspicuously from his wasting frame. That busy right hand lost its cunning, till he could not so much as turn the pages of his sermon for himself, but had one of the King's scholars beside him in this pulpit to turn them for him ; then that wonderful voice which used to set the hearts of thousands vibrating as he spoke of righteous- ness and temperance and judgment to come became husky and feeble, and he was compelled even to give up reading the lessons. But he never murmured. Not even in his utmost privacy did he complain. All impa- tience, all fretfulness, were banished. We saw nothing but cheerfulness, gratitude, ever growing thoughtfulness for others, the courageous determination to go on doing what he could and as long as he could. Not the greatest of his sermons at Cambridge, or at Westminster, or here, was so eloquent as the sight of our speechless Dean car- ried day after day to his place in the choir. Not the most influential of his books was so convincing a wit- ness to Christ as that ' epistle known and read of all men,' — the epistle of his infirmities, not paraded, but not concealed — after the example of Him who confessed upon the cross, ' I thirst,' where we saw exhibited the transforming power of faith, so that it might be said of the Dean, as it was said of one of the ancient martyrs, that, 'Christ suffering in him achieved a great triumph, showing in a pattern for the rest to copy that there is 336 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR nothing to be feared where the love of the Father is, and nothing painful where is the glory of Christ.' Even if we should forget ' the word of the Lord ' which the Dean ' spake to us ' with his lips while he ' had the rule over us,' it will, I believe, be impossible for us to forget 1 the issue of his life and conversation ' in the months of his brave and calm advance towards a Christian death. God grant that as we 'consider' it — especially you, the young men and boys whom he loved so dearly — we may learn to 'imitate his faith.' " My sister, the Hon. Mrs. J. S. Northcote, writes as follows : — " My earliest recollection of my father goes back to 1869, when he was a Harrow master, and we children delighted to look out of the nursery window on a winter's afternoon, and watch him return from a game of foot- ball, looking so fresh and vigorous, his muddied dress betraying the activity of his play. Another recollection, relating to days when we had grown a little older, is of our walking with him in the park at Harrow, when he took us to feed the tame swans, and delighted our child- ish ears with stories, — stories of Solomon and the Hoo- poo birds, and other beautiful legends ; or of wandering with him on the Marlborough Downs while he recited to us such poems as ' O Mary, go and call the cattle home.' His mind was such a beautiful storehouse of all that is noblest in English literature, and I shall always love to remember that the best part of our education was our walks and talks with him. He simply loved Marlbor- ough. As we climbed the Downs he taught us to spy out the blue-and-pink milkwort and tiny shepherd's purse, to look for the rare orchids that were to be found in the copses, or to gather the wild geraniums in the hedges. DEAN OF CANTERBURY 337 My father always walked with his hat off, usually giving it to one of us children to carry, while the wind blew the hair from his forehead. He was a great walker when- ever he had leisure, as in the summer holidays, when he invariably stayed some weeks at the seaside. Swanage, in Dorsetshire, was a favourite resort for many years, also Llanfairfechan, in North Wales, and Newquay, in Cornwall. These summer holidays are particularly treas- ured in our memories as most delightful times. We were a family of ten children, all healthy and strong, and we went out in large parties with my father for long walks over the mountains and along the seashore. These rambles were always enriched by his wonderful talk. He was very athletic. A Scotchman whom he used to visit describes how he went up the mountains with ' the agil- ity of a young deer.' " I can also recall how in those same summer holidays my father possessed a marvellous power of absorbing himself in his work, in spite of so many children always around him. Many of his books were largely written in the leisure of these holidays, he sitting in the garden, never disturbed by our merry games, or in a room where other occupations were going on around him. In Lon- don his sermons were all written in a study that was only separated by folding doors from a drawing-room where his five daughters practised on the piano in succession. His power of concentration prevented him minding in the slightest degree what would have driven so many men distracted. Those sermons in St. Margaret's ! how wonderful they were, preached to such vast crowds as, I suppose, no other preacher ever gathered there. Not only were the aisles crowded up with extra chairs, but people sitting on the chancel steps, the pulpit steps, on hassocks put out from the pews, and crowds standing 338 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR the whole service through to listen to the golden words which have changed for good so many lives. " The social life at Dean's Yard was very charming. Around his table he gathered the historians, poets, churchmen, and the eminent in science and art of his day, and by his exceptional geniality and charm of manner not only fascinated them one and all, but got even the most reticent and silent to open out and talk as he did. He also yearly filled his rooms with the rich and the poor alike among his Church workers, having most delightful 1 At Homes,' which, as his enthusiasm for social and philanthropic work widened, grew to many scores. " During the last years of his life my father preached comparatively seldom, but he strove to make the Deanery the centre of the Cathedral and town life of Canterbury. The Deanery was filled with beautiful objects and rich with colour. It was a quaint old house, and my father was very proud of it and of the interesting collection of Deans' portraits, of which not one was missing, from the Dean of Queen Elizabeth's time down to his own. Gradually the last sad illness, which began two years ago, robbed him of his bodily, though never of his mental, activity. It was atrophy of the muscles, brought about by a slight fall some years before. But it gradually stole over his whole body, till his hands and arms were so helpless that he could not raise them even to feed himself, and he could no longer hold up his head. Then one by one he had to surrender the occupations that he loved, — writing, reading, walking, and serving in God's house. One by one they were laid aside with unmurmuring sweetness, though it was a sorrow un- speakable to him not to be able to administer the Holy Communion, or to read the lessons in the Cathedral, or DEAN OF CANTERBURY 339 even to read prayers in his own household. He had to be carried into the Cathedral for the daily services, yet he bore it all with cheerfulness and a sweet dignity that was very touching. 1 " But to the last his wonderful memory remained, and his power of clear, full expression of thought in articles and letters that could only be dictated. The last months of his life were happy and peaceful, nevertheless. His sons and daughters, who constantly gathered at the Deanery from their different homes, felt themselves to be in a holy presence, and never left him without a sense of calm and strength and uplifting. He was cheered by the diligent presence of many friends who loved to be with him, and he was sustained and comforted by no hands less loving and tender than those of her who for forty-three years had been his beautiful helpmate, and to whom he owed more than ordinary husbands ever can owe to their wives. There was no distress of farewell at the end. He sank quietly to sleep at the age of seventy-one, on Sunday, March 22. The grave in the quiet cloister that he loved is a fitting resting-place for one who not only himself has entered into the joy of his Lord, but who had set the feet of thousands on the same shining road thither. In Christo vixit — In Christo vivit." The Deanery of Canterbury, the structure of which dates back in part to the fifteenth, and in its older por- tions to the thirteeenth century, is in respect of its fine 1 Extract from a poem by another sister, Mrs. J. S. Thomas : — How the light of love streamed round him when his noble frame was bowed ! In what a Sabbath calmness did the last long shadows fall ! Hushed was the wondrous voice that used to thrill the listening crowd, But this his latest sermon was the holiest of all. 340 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR reception rooms and lovely garden one of the stateliest of the English Deaneries, and the joint taste of my father and mother made of it a very beautiful home. A striking feature of the Deanery is a very valuable series of contemporary portraits of all the Deans of Canterbury since the Reformation. To the restoration of these portraits my father generously devoted a sum of money which formed part of the farewell gift of his parishioners at St. Margaret's. Very proud was he to be the custo- dian of the unique collection. He knew by heart the history of all his predecessors (among whom was Dean Bargrave, who had been, like himself, Rector of St. Margaret's and a Royal Chaplain); and even in his latest days, when he could no longer raise his head to see the portraits, he was never weary of explaining them with characteristic fulness of historical detail to the numerous guests at the Deanery. The walls of every room in the Deanery were clothed with beautiful and interesting pictures which my father had gradually amassed, and especially with copies, prints, or photo- graphs from sacred art. His passionate love of Art, especially of sacred art, was one of his strongest char- acteristics. He was not a connoisseur of technique or an amateur of style : he did not value pictures for their rarity or costliness ; he knew little of, and cared less for, " processes " ; he loved his pictures with a Catholic taste, partly as ministering to the refined colour sense which he possessed in a very high degree, but chiefly as the beautiful embodiments of deep moral and re- ligious truths. He could not endure walls bare of pictures. As a schoolmaster, he loved to clothe with prints or with the reproductions of the Arundel Society the walls of his class rooms. Even the servants' hall was thus beautified. DEAN OF CANTERBURY 341 He had travelled a good deal on the Continent, es- pecially in his earlier Harrow days, and the range of his knowledge of sacred art in Continental galleries and our own National Gallery was almost Ruskinian. This knowledge bore fruit in one of his later works, the beautiful " Life of Christ in Art," published in 1894, a thesauron of reproductions of some of the most exquisite sacred pictures in the world. One of his best sermons is the Sermon on Art, pub- lished in " Social and Present Day Questions," from which I am tempted to give the following extract, to show the preacher's power of seizing on the moral les- sons conveyed by a great picture : — " There was yet a deeper lesson in another strange picture by Mr. Burne-Jones, called 'The Depths of the Sea.' A mermaid, beautiful in face, but hideously repellent in her scaly train, has flung her arms around a youth, and is dragging him down through the green waters to her cave. In her face is the intense malignity of cruel triumph and cruel scorn ; in the youth's face is the agony of frustration and of death. And the motto be- low is : ' Habes tota quod mente petisti, Infelix ! ' — Thou hast what thou soughtest with all thy soul, unhappy one. Oh, that it were in my power to preach to all young men a sermon of meaning so intense as that picture ! The mermaid, like the Siren of mythology, like the strange woman of the Proverbs, is the harlot Sense. She is the type of carnal temptation, ending in disillusion, shame, anguish, death. It is the meaning of that saying of the rabbis, ' The demons come to us smiling and beautiful ; when they have done their work, they drop their mask.' It is the meaning of Solomon : ' But he knoweth not that the dead are there, and that her guests are in the depths of hell.' God has granted to that youth his 342 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR ' heart's desire, and sent leanness withal into his bones. He has got what he passionately longed for, and it is — death ! " Or, once more ! If a youth needs not so much a warning against the idolatries of sense as hope to secure the conquest over them, could he learn the lesson in a more inspiring form than by going into our National Gallery, and there reading the meaning of Turner's great pictures of Apollo and the Python ? The youthful Sun-God, the emblem of victorious purity, is seated in his circle of light, launching arrow after arrow at that huge, loathly monster of corruption. Awful and terrible as that destructive monster looks, it is but a colossal worm. When the arrow pierces it, it bursts asunder in the midst. Any youth, I think, who had in his soul one gleam of noble imagination, might well, as he looked at that picture, be inspired to hate the foulness of that im- purity which can so frightfully crush to death all who put themselves in its power, but which is yet v/eak as a worm to those who ' walk in the light as Christ is in the light,' and who pierce the pestilent foulness with the arrows of the dawn." In reference to his love of art the two following letters are of interest : — " Bologna, Oct. ist, 1891. "My dearest Lilian: I began a letter to you a week ago, but the pressure and exigencies of daily travelling, and the absorbing demands of Venice, pre- vented me from finishing it. I therefore send this line to tell you that you and all my children, as well as Mother, are always in my thoughts. You had all the enjoyments of a delightful trip last year, so you can judge how pleasant it has been to Eric and me, and how DEAN OF CANTERBURY 343 much we have learnt. Venice was as enchanting as ever, to the last ; and I have greatly enjoyed my brief visits to Ferrara and Bologna, where I have learnt more about Giotto, Mantegna, Ercole Grandi, Dossi Dossi, Garofalo, and other painters than I ever knew before. At Bergamo I learnt to know the sweetness and power of Lorenzo Lotto, and at Brescia the splendours of Moretto and Romanino. I have kept art steadily in view, and it has been a great delight to me. I am bringing home no presents. Your mother objurgated, or rather adjured me, not to waste money on Salviati glass and wooden figures, or pictures for which we have no room ; and Eric bullied me out of buying an original Paolo Vanino (which I could have got for ^3) and an inkstand copied from the Porta della Salute, — so I shall have no presents this time. I am much distressed to think that dear Mother has practically had no holiday at all. We shall all miss Ivor. It is my earnest hope that he will be happy and do well. You, I know, will throw yourself heartily into all Parish work, and will go on educating yourself. Good-bye. I am, dearest Lilian, " Your loving father, " F. W. Farrar." " Oct. 8th. " Mv darling Lilian : We were so glad to hear from your letter that you are enjoying delightful Venice so much; but we were sorry to hear of mosquitoes. Eric and I, by the help of pastilles burnt inside the Zazezicri, carbolic acid soap, eucalyptus oil, and other things, escaped without one bite. " Tennyson is dead. What a loss ! but I knew when Phillips Brooks and I spent that happy day with him 344 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR at Aldworth last July that I should never see him again. Since my youth he has been a delight and a teacher to me ; and for twenty-five years a most kind personal friend. One of the poems in his forthcoming volume — a very noble one — was written at my sug- gestion. " Do you remember the picture shop at the left hand of the Fresconici, I think, a little after you turn from the left out of the Calle which leads to the Hotel Britannia, where I saw, and have ever since coveted, a little picture by Padovanicino, of a child Christ with His arm on a globe ? If it is still there, and the man will let you have it for £2 (he will ask double, but will take £2), I wish you would buy it for me. Miss Winthrop would doubt- less be kind enough to advance the money, and I would pay her the moment you return. I hope that the rest of your stay and your return will be very happy. Kind- est regards to Miss Winthrop. I am " Your loving father, " F. W. Farrar. " P. S. I write in great haste. I shall probably preach twice on Tennyson at St. Margaret's on Sunday." In his beautiful Deanery my father, who was one of the most hospitable of men, delighted to entertain a con- stant succession of guests. On one occasion he had the honour of entertaining to lunch the Prince of Wales (now our King), who came with the Princess of Wales and a distinguished company to the opening of the restored and beautified Chapter House. It was his constant aim to secure illustrious and able preachers to edify and in- terest the congregations in the Cathedral. The preachers were almost invariably entertained at the Deanery, so DEAN OF CANTERBURY 345 that he had generally one, frequently two, clergymen staying with him from Saturday to Monday. It was his practice to invite two of the King's scholars in turn to breakfast on Sunday morning, and some guests were almost sure to be invited to the charming and informal suppers on Sunday evenings. The visitors' book kept at Canterbury, as at Marl- borough and Westminster, showed a long roll of names, including many of the most illustrious. Of all his guests at Canterbury none were more welcome or more honoured than the two successive Archbishops, Benson and Temple. The old Arch- bishop's Palace at Canterbury was accidentally burnt in the time of Cranmer, and was left in ruins till Arch- bishop Parker came, in 1559. He rebuilt the Palace and resided in it, but after his time part was pulled down and part converted into tenements. Since then, until 1899, when the portion remaining was restored, in Archbishop Temple's reign, and now forms once more the Archbishop's official residence, it was the traditional custom for the Archbishop when at Canterbury to be, together with his chaplain, the guest of the Dean. For the short, all too short, period — about a year — that in- tervened between my father's appointment to Canter- bury and the death of Archbishop Benson, — who died on his knees in the House of God, a death in beautiful harmony with a most saintly life, — it was my father's constant privilege to receive the Archbishop and Mrs. Benson as his guests whenever they came to Canterbury. The friendship which had always subsisted between them ripened in this intercourse into the deepest affection. My father obtained from the Home Secretary permis- sion to bury Archbishop Temple in the Cathedral, where no Archbishop of the Reformed Church had ever before 346 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR been buried. The last Archbishop interred in the Cathedral had been Cardinal Pole, in 1558. When Archbishop Temple succeeded Ben son, the same cus- tom obtained until the restoration of the Archbishop's Palace. For him, too, my father had the profoundest respect and almost the same affection as he had felt for his predecessor. On the last occasion when he en- tertained him, Archbishop Temple, one of the least effusive of men, took my father's hand in both of his and said to him, " Words fail me to express my sense of your kindness to me." The closing years of my dear father's life at Canter- bury will always be thought of by those who knew and loved him as the most beautiful years of a life of saintly service. An accidental fall, some years before, had set up an insidious process of degeneration in the spinal cord, the results of which gradually became manifest in progres- sive muscular atrophy, and finally robbed him of all power in the upper extremities. Already, in 1899, he began to lose the use first of his right hand, — that right hand which had toiled so long and so fruitfully in the service of mankind. The beautiful " Life of Lives," published in 1900, was his last important book, — the most precious, in some respects, of all his books. The atrophy spread till both hands hung helpless from the shoulders. Even the muscles of the neck were attacked, till he could no longer hold his noble head erect; and finally atrophy of the muscles of respiration brought his life to a peaceful and painless end. But to the last his memory and his powers of mind were quite unimpaired, and his touching progressive weakness was concomitant with a wonderful and beautiful exaltation of the spiritual life. DEAN OF CANTERBURY 347 Truly — for such as he — The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, Lets in new light through chinks that time has made. If, in the ardent zeal of youth and manhood, he had ever been impetuous or impatient ; if, in his hatred of overweening sacerdotal claims, he had ever been unduly vigorous in denunciation — intolerant he never was ; if any gusts of controversy had ever ruffled the surface of that strenuous and noble life, all petty flecks and flaws were now stilled in the calm of a deeper spiritual insight, all clouds were banished by a fuller light of love. When he could no longer gird himself to go forth and preach the Gospel, there was granted to him a closer walk with the God whom he had served. Often in suffering, daily growing weaker, he bore both weakness and suffering not only with unmurmur- ing patience but with unfailing cheerfulness ; and the dogged courage with which he faced his duties to the last day of his life, is comparable to that of Browning's heroic Grammarian. As his weakness grew upon him, he talked often of resigning the Deanery, but his friend Archbishop Tem- ple would not suffer this : and indeed he carried out to the end, and most effectively, his duties as Dean. His colleagues can testify that to the last his experi- ence, his moderation, and his wise counsels guided to the best ends all the deliberations of the Chapter : when he could no longer walk to the Cathedral, he was daily carried thither in a chair by strong attendants, whom he never failed to reward with a few words of friendly gratitude, and the spectacle of that once powerful, now helpless frame daily borne to worship in the House of God was more eloquent than many a sermon : 348 LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR to the last the social influence of the Deanery and the generous hospitality of the beloved Dean were a power for good in Canterbury, even though the gracious host sat among his guests, cheerful, witty, kindly, full of anecdotes and interesting historical reminiscences, as of old, though wholly unable to lift a hand to feed himself, or even to raise his head. Wholly dependent for his physical needs on the min- istrations of others, he was enabled to bear his disabili- ties by an absence of self-consciousness as rare as it was beautiful. He never developed the peevishness or ex- acting selfishness which so often mars the character of invalids, but was touchingly grateful for every little ser- vice, — to his kind and devoted physician, Dr. Reid, whom he was wont to greet with a shower of kindly chaff ; to his children or guests when they read to him ; to visitors when they brought him some little offering of flowers cr fruit. To my dear mother, who throughout- his long decay of physical powers hardly left his side for an hour, love gave strength to minister to him by night as well as by day, and, aided only by our old family nurse, to do the work of two trained nurses. How faithful, how tender, how lovely was her devotion, even those who best knew my father in his home can only partially guess. I think my father was never happier, certainly never more serene and cheerful, with a serenity that often found its expression in a gracious playfulness, than in the last three years of his life. Certainly he won the love of others in fuller and more unstinted measure than ever before. Many letters of sympathy reached him from all quarters, among others a gracious message of enquiry from the highest lady in the land. DEAN OF CANTERBURY 349 One of these letters is given here : — "London, April 13, 1901. "The Very Revd. Dean Farrar. " Sir : I do pray God will soon restore you to health. England has few if any godly men like you. Oh, how often I and thousands more have deplored your leaving St. Margaret's — how often I have been privileged to lis- ten to your never to be forgotten sermons. I thank God I had that privilege — and your books, full of comfort to the dying. Oh, may God spare you. I am only a poor woman, but I hope to see you in Heaven. There will be a crown of glory awaiting you. " From a devoted hearer." I may be allowed to give here, for the sake of the touching review of his life with which it concludes, the last letter I ever received from his own hand, — a letter written on the type-writer, which for a time he was able to use, when no longer able to guide a pen. It was addressed to me in India, where I was at the time en- gaged on Famine duty : — "The Deanery, Canterbury, April 19, 1900. " My dearest Reggie : Your letter reached me this morning. I need not assure you, for you will be sure without my saying it, that you are constantly in our thoughts, and are remembered daily before God in our prayers. What wonderful experiences you are having ! They must at times be very fatiguing, but must at the same time be full of interest, and will always remain in your memory. Have you ever thought of putting down your adventures, and publishing them in the form of a little book ? I cannot really say whether it would be 35o LIFE OF DEAN FARRAR wise or not, for, in these days more than ever, 'of making many books there is no end,' and there are shoals of books, and even some which are not devoid of merit, which fall from the Press still-born. Have you ever heard how many novels are published every single day in the year ? No less than five ! One wonders how many of these survive for a single week. " We most earnestly trust that you may keep your health in the midst of all your most useful labours, and I feel sure that you will be sustained by the thought that you are thus called to take your part in the Imperial duties involved in the possession of our vast Empire. It must require no little fortitude, and the assistance of good spirits, to be moving day after day in the midst of pestilence and famine ; but it will help you to know that you are doing your best to alleviate both. " I have been to two experts about the weakness of my right hand, — to Dr. Buzzard and to Dr. Ferrier. They both recommended the same line of treatment, namely, daily injection of strychnia and weekly electrifying of the arm. I tell Dr. Reid that he is constantly guilty of assault and battery, and tell him that, like Henry the Sixth, u My anointed body By him is punched full of deadly holes. "Whether it does any good or not I really cannot tell, but although the hand does not seem to get any better, it does not seem to get rapidly worse. My ter- rible dread is lest the muscular atrophy should spread and make me a cripple ; but I must bear whatever it may please God to send. ******* " I can most honestly say that throughout my whole life I have been kind to many, have earnestly striven DEAN OF CANTERBURY 351 and desired to be kind to all, and have never once in my life done any intentional harm to any human being. That is enough for me, and " If powers Divine Behold our human actions, as they do, I doubt not then that Innocence shall make False accusation blush. "With best love from mother and me, I am, my dearest Reggie, " Your most loving father, " F. W. Farrar." On March 21st, in spite of a bitterly cold east wind, rather than disappoint the boys of his beloved King's School, my father insisted on being driven to witness their school sports. On the evening of the same day he was busy in preparing with his usual conscientious thoroughness the lesson which he was accustomed to give on Sundays to the boys of the Cathedral choir. On Sunday, March 22, 1903, faithful unto death, he passed away to receive his Crown of Life. " They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever." INDEX Abadie, Colonel, 320. Abbott, Dr., 145. " Aids to Reflection," Coleridge's, 14. Alford, Dean, 39. American Sunday School Times, 319. " Apostles," society of, 39. " Arctic Regions, The," Farrar's poem on, 48-50, 137. Aristophanes, "The Birds," allusion to, 54- Arnold, Dr., 65, 89. Arnold, Sir Edwin, 26, 145, 203, 204, 229. Arnold, Kerchever, 17. Arnold, Matthew, 25, 110, m, 177, 189. Art, sermon on, 258, 341, 342. Arundel Society, 340. Aylesbury, I, 4, 10. Aylesbury Latin School, 4. Bapuji, Appaji, 9. Barnardo, Dr., 247. Bargrave, Dean, 340. Baxter, Richard, 265. Bayard, Mr., ambassador to Great Britain, 300. Beaconsfield, Lord. See Disraeli, Benjamin. Beesly, Professor E. Spencer, 16, 53, 56, 68-70, 75-77, 126-131. Bell, Canon Henry, 56, 145. " Bells and Pomegranates," review of, 289. Benson, Archbishop, 317, 345, 346. Benson, Mrs., 345. Bentham, Jeremy, 23. Bere, Charles, 56. " Bible, The, Its Meaning and Suprem- acy," 210. " Biography (The Teachers of Man- kind)," sermon, 258. Black, , 76. Blake, Admiral, 228, 229. Blake, Dr. T. W. Jex, 57, 116, 117, 127. Bombay, Fort of, I. Bonner, Mrs. Hypatia Bradlaugh, 282. Booth, General, 247, 261. Bowen, Mr. E. E., 89, 117, 138. Bradby, Dr. E. H., 124-126, 141. Bradlaugh, Charles, 282. Bradley, Dr. (Dean of Westminster), 142, 147-149, 151, 160, 161, 164, 165, 179, 180. Bramwell, Lord, 250. Brazenose, 269. Brewer, Professor, 23. Bright, John, 258. British Association, 106. British Monthly, 260, 322, 325. British Museum, 35. Brixton, 19. Brooks, Phillips, 296, 300, 343. Brooks, T. Archd., 303-306. Brown, Rev. T. R., 15, 76. Browne, Harold (Bishop of Ely and Winchester), 46, 146. Browning, Robert, 177, 178, 189, 227, 287-290. Browning Society, 289. Bull, , 56, 69, 128. Buller, Sir A., 39. Burne-Jones, Edward, 145, 222, 341. Burne-Jones, Philip, 145. Butler, Dr. H. Montagu, 82, 104, 117, 120, 123, 124, 135. Buzzard, Dr., 350. Byron, Lord, 13. 353 354 INDEX Cameron, Julia Margaret, 277. Canterbury Cathedral, 313-319, 327, 328. Canterbury, Deanery of, 339, 340. Cantuarian, The, 323. Cardew, Mr. Frederic,' 117. Cardew, Lucy Mary. See Farrar, Mrs. Frederic William. Carmarthen, 11, 61. Castleton Bay, 12. Caxton, William, 226. " Chapter on Language," 106, 107. Childs, George W., 228, 296, 300. " Christian Doctrine of the Atonement not inconsistent with the Justice and Goodness of God," essay, 47. Church Army, 247. Church of England Temperance Soci- ety, 250. Clerkenwell, 21, 31. Cleveland, President, 300. Close, Dean, 22. Cobb, , 70, 130. Colenso, Bishop (Natal), 113-117. Colenso Defence Fund, 116, 117. Coleridge, Mr., 205. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 11, 14, 35, 45. 48, 77. 85. 136, 322. Coliseum, the, 132. Congreve, Mr., 126, 163. " Connection between the Old and New Testaments," Prideaux's, 14. Contemporary, The, 156. Cooper, , servant at Dean Farrar's, 118. Cooper, Fenimore, 13. Cornhill Magazine, 172. Cotton, G. E. L. (Bishop of Calcutta), 53-55. 59. 64, 65, 137. 138. 146. Cranmer, Archbishop, 11, 61 334. Creighton, Bishop, 145. Critic, The, 76. Cromwellians, 228. Cuyler, Theo. L., 295, 296. Daily Express, The, 76. Daily News, The, 76, 256. Dale, Canon, 22. Dante, 285, 322. " Darkness and Dawn," 199, 200. Darlington, Mrs., 325. Darwin, Charles, 104, 107-110, 258. " Dean Stanley's Life," 261. " Deluge," article on, 112, 113. " Descent of Man," Darwin's, 108. Dicey, Edward, C.B., 29. Dickens, Charles, 73. Disraeli, Benjamin (Lord Beacons- field), 216-218, 261. Dixon, Rev. Dr., 10, 76. " Early Days of Christianity," 196. " Ecclesiastical Polity," Hooker's, 14. " Education," lecture, 290. Edward, King, 344. Edward the Confessor, 221. Edwards, Jonathan, 265. Elliot's " Horae Apocalypticae," 25, 47. Erasmus, 334. " Eric, or Little by Little," 1-4, 11, 12, 14. 15. 33- 41. 71-81. " Essay on the Origin of Language," 106, 107. " Eternal Hope," 26, 34, 210, 218, 267, 268, 270, 271, 274, 280, 302, 303, 306, 33°- Evening Courant, The, 76. Examiner, The, 76. " Fall of Man, and Other Sermons," 86, 112, 279. " Families of Speech," lectures, 106, 107. " Farewell Thoughts on America," address, 300. Farquhar, , 132. Farrar, Rev. Charles Pinhorn, 1, 4, 5, 8-10, 21. Farrar, Mrs. Charles Pinhorn, 5-7, 21. Farrar, Cyril Lytton, 144, 145, 229, 230. Farrar, Rev. Eric Maurice, 25, 234, 248-252, 342, 343. Farrar, Frederic William, birth, 1 ; sent to England, 1 ; trained by his aunts, I, 2 ; childhood, 1-4 ; love of books, 3, 13; sent to school at Aylesbury, 4; at King William's College, Isle of Man, 4, 10; not on intimate terms INDEX 355 with his father, 5 ; his affection for his mother, 5-8 ; letter to a Harrow pupil, 6 ; letters concerning his par- ents, 8, 9 ; vacations at Aylesbury, 10 ; visits Bishop Short of Sodor and Man, 10; love of nature, 12; fond of walking and swimming, 12, 13, 88; phenomenal memory, 13, 14 ; sermon that influenced his character, 14; King William's College destroyed by fire, 15 ; Professor E. S. Beesly's reminiscences, 16; fond of football, 18, 89; an example to his school- mates, 18; description of, 19, 20; goes to London, 19; at King's Col- lege, 21 ; Milton his model, 21 ; his college reports, 22 ; gains a London University scholarship, 22; defrays expenses of his education, 22, 38; appointed Honorary Fellow of King's College, 22 ; a Sunday School teacher, 22; intimacy with F. D. Maurice and Dr. Plumptre, 22-28 ; Dr. Hayman and Sir Edwin Ar- nold's reminiscences, 26-35; letter from a college friend, 35 ; " sizar " at Trinity College, Cambridge, 38; his poverty and self-denial, 38 ; ob- tains Trinity scholarship, 38 ; mem- ber of society of " Apostles," 39 ; despondent over mathematics, 39; extract from "Julian Home" illus- trating his college life, 41-45; Pro- fessor Harold Browne and Dr. Mill, 46; prizes and graduation, 47; anec- dotes of Dr. Whewell, 47-49; his poem on " The Arctic Regions," 48, 49. r 37; wins Chancellor's gold medal, 49, 137; letter from William E. Robinson, 50; Judge Vernon Lushington's recollections, 51, 52; assistant master at Marlborough College, 53-70; colleague of Dr. Cotton, Bishop of Calcutta, 53; sketch by Canon Henry Bell, 56 ; devotion of his pupils, 56; parody on one of Horace's Epistles, 57; Sixth Form, 53-58, 147-171 ; holiday at Stonehenge, 58 ; goes to Salisbury for ordination, 59, 60; his first ser- mon, 60 ; sketch by one of his pupils, 62; extract from sermon preached at Marlborough, 63-67; lines in memory of Dr. Wilkinson, 67 ; hymn, 68 ; his letters to E. S. Beesly, 68-70, 75-77, 126-131 ; assistant mas- ter at Harrow, 71-140; as a writer of schoolboy fiction, 71 ; pseudonym , 71; "Eric," "Julian Home," "St. Winifred's," and " The Three Homes," 71-82; "Eric" compared with " Tom Brown's School Days," 72; Dr. Magee's tribute to "Eric," 74 ; letters referring to " Eric " and " St. Winifred's," 75-81 ; as a teacher, 82-94; sketch by Mr. George Rus- sell, 84-86; his interest in natural history, 84, 88, 139; Walter Leaf's recollections, 92-96 ; visit to Pales- tine, 95, 191, 192; his companions, 95 ; calls on Holman Hunt at Jeru- salem, 95; incident of the revolver, 95 ; his " Greek Syntax," 96-99 ; lecture on education delivered be- fore the Royal Institution, 99-106; letters from Charles Darwin, 104, 107 ; from Frederic Harrison, 105 ; proposed by Darwin for Fellowship of the Royal Society, and elected, 107 ; his views on evolution, 108 ; preaches sermon at Darwin's funeral, 109; his friendship with Thomas Huxley, no; Matthew Arnold, no, in ; writes " Seekers after God," also sermons on " The Fall of Man " and " The Witness of History to Christ: Hulsean Lectures," 112; appointed Honorary Chaplain to the Queen, 112; promoted Chap- lain-in-Ordinary, 112; his article on the "Deluge," 112; his Broad Church views, and Bishop Colenso, 113-117; organises Colenso Defence Fund, 116; letter from T. W. Jex Blake, 116, 117; marries Miss Lucy Mary Cardew, 117 ; domestic life, 118, 119; his children, 118 ; removal to the Park, 118; letters illustrative of the 356 INDEX Harrow period, 120-140; holiday tour to Rome, 132 ; lines on Hadri- an's villa, 133; visit to Overbeck's studio, 133 ; lines on picture called " Marriage," 133 ; Dr. Butler's recollections, 135-140; founder of Natural History Society, 139; his school sermons at Harrow, 139; candidate for head-mastership of Haileybury, and his defeat, 141 ; head-master of Marlborough, 141- 190; sermons on "The Silence and Voices of God," and " In the Days of Thy Youth," 142; home life at Marlborough, 144, 158, 163 ; Mr. P. E. Thompson's reminiscences, 145- 159; his appearance, 146, 147; shy- ness, 155 ; sketch by Rev. Dr. James, 159-164 ; Professor C. E. Vaughan's recollections, 164-169 ; C. L. Graves's reminiscences, 169-172; article in "Cornhill Magazine" by one of his old pupils, 172-18 1 ; grandeur of his manner, 173 ; his reading of Job and Isaiah, 174; his voice, 174, 175, 259; industry, 175, 176; his advice to his pupils, 177 ; his friends, 177, 189 ; as a disciplinarian, 178 ; sketch of his domestic life, by his daughter, 181- 190 ; his curates, 188, 234 ; " Life of Christ," 191-197, 202-213 ; author's preface, 191, 192; his critics, 194; in- tense application, 195; enormous de- mand for the book, 196 ; testimonials, 196-215; " Life of St. Paul," 196-198; " Early Days of Christianity," 196 ; atrophy of right hand, 196, 197; " The Life of Lives," 196, 197 ; its preface, 197 ; " Darkness and Dawn " and "Gathering Clouds," 199-202; declines crown living of Halifax, offered by Disraeli, 216; accepts from Disraeli the Canonry of West- minster, 217 ; his promotions involve pecuniary loss, 218; reluctance at leaving Marlborough, 218, 219; be- comes attached to his new cure, 220; restores St. Margaret's, 221- 226 ; window given by London print- ers in memory of Caxton, 226; Jubilee window of Queen Victoria's reign, 227; window to Sir Walter Raleigh, 227; to Milton, 228; to Admiral Blake, 228 ; the Lloyd win- dow, 229; window in memory of Cyril Lytton Farrar, 229; lines for memorial windows written by Tenny- son, Browning, J. R. Lowell, J. G. Whittier, Lewis Morris, Sir Edwin Arnold, Lord Lytton, and O. W. Holmes, 226-229; death of Cyril Lytton Farrar in China, 229, 230; his father's grief, 230; writes " Me- morials of Cyril Lytton Farrar," 230; his eloquence and influence as a preacher, 231 ; enormous congrega- tions, 231, 237 ; selected to be Chap- lain to the House of Commons, 232; appointed Archdeacon of Westmin- ster, 233 ; as a parish priest, 234-253 ; his temperance work, 235-252, 294- 296 ; Bishop Montgomery's recollec- tions, 235-240; sketch by Rev. W. E. Sims, 240-245 j Rev. W. F. Som- merville's reminiscences, 245-248 ; Rev. Eric Farrar's account of his temperance work, 248-252; his first temperance sermon in Westminster Abbey, 248 ; his " Teacher's Hymn," 252 ; preacher of " Eternal Hope," 254-283 ; ranks among the few great pulpit orators, 254 ; criticisms of his style, 254, 262 ; his use of quotations, 256, 261 ; subjects covered by his sermons, 258; splendour of his rhetoric, 259 ; opposes ceremonial- ism, 260; Dean Stanley and Lord Beaconsfield, 261 ; repudiates doc- trine of everlasting torment, 263, 266; Baxter and Jonathan Edwards, 265 ; Dr. Pusey's teachings, 265 ; Charles Spurgeon's views, 265, 266; descrip- tion of hell, 265, 266; defends his views against Dr. Pusey's criticisms, 268; corresponds with Dr. Pusey, 270 ; his convictions on the question of eternal punishment, in his book " Mercy and Judgment," 271-274 ; 1 INDEX 357 letters occasioned by his sermons on " Eternal Hope," 275-283 ; visits Canada and the United States, 284- 301 ; his companions, 284, 297-299 ; received with enthusiasm, 284, 290, 297 ; his eulogy on General Grant, 284 ; lecture on Dante, 284-287, 298 ; lecture on Browning, 287 ; Browning and J. S. Mill, 288, 289; in Balti- more, 290, 299 ; preaches in Phila- delphia, 290-294 ; on American audiences, 294; lectures in New York, on temperance, 294-296; meets famous Americans, 296, 300; annoyed by reporters, 300; " Farewell Thoughts on America," 300, 301 ; letters from readers of his books, 302-312 ; Dean of Canterbury, 313- 351 ; nominated by Lord Rosebery, 313; his inaugural sermon, 313-316; his restoration of the Cathedral, nar- rated by Rev. Ivor Farrar, 316-318 ; sketch of, by an American, 319, 320; in touch with municipal life, 320; revives custom of shaking hands, 321 ; love of young people, 322-324 ; Ivor Farrar's reminiscences, 322; his favorite poets, 322; teaches choir boys, 323; letters to his daughter, 324, 342, 343 ; sketch by Canon Page Roberts, 325-331 ; ex- tract from Canon Mason's memorial sermon, 331-336; Hon. Mrs. J. S. Northcote's recollections, 336-339; the Deanery of Canterbury, 339, 340 ; his love of sacred art, 340, 341 ; illustrious guests at the Deanery, 344-346 ; increasing • atrophy of muscles, 346; his patience and cheerfulness, 347, 348 ; not allowed to resign, 347; carried in a chair to the Cathedral, 347 ; letters of sym- pathy, 348; death, 351. Farrar, Mrs. Frederic William, 117, 158, 164, 168, 187, 233, 239, 342, 343, 348. Farrar, Henry, 1, 4, 22. Farrar, Rev. Ivor, 118, 316, 322, 343. Farrar, Lilian, 324, 342, 343. Farrar, Percival, 118. Farrar, Reginald, 126, 135, 349. Farrar, Robert, Bishop of St. David's, 11, 61 n. Ferrier, Dr., 350. Field, Cyrus, 296, 300. Fleuss, , 69. Folkestone, 219. " Fo'c'sle Yarns," 15. Fort of Bombay, 1. Fortnightly, The, 156. Forum, The, 132. Fowler, , 131. Frances, , servant at Dean Far- rar's, 118. " Friendship of Books, The," 25. Frith, Colonel, 189, 320. Fryer, , 57. Garfield, General, 258. Garibaldi, 258. " Gathering Clouds," 199. Gauron, , servant at Dean Far- rar's, 118. Gerizim, Mount, 95, 96. Gilmore, , 57. Gladstone, 251. Goethe, 33. Goldsmith, 13. Goschen, Mr., 251. Goulburn, Dean, 263. Grant, General, 258, 284. Graves, C. L., 169-172. " Greek Card," 92, 96. " Greek Syntax," 92, 96, Griffiths, Mr., 106. Grove, Sir G., 106. Hales, Professor, 105. Hall, Rev. Newman, 295. Hallam, Arthur, 39. Hamilton, Walter Ker (Bishop of Salisbury), 59. Hammond, J. L., 47. Hanbury, , 69, 130. Harris, Mr., 120, 138. Harrison, Frederic, 105. Harrow, 71-140. Harrow Natural History Society, 84. 358 INDEX Hart, F. T., 39. Hawkins, , 70. Hayrnan, Dr., 26. Heber, Reginald, 49, 185. Hegan, Colonel, 321. " History and Hopes of a Public School," sermon, 63. Holland, Sir Henry, 103. Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 229, 296. Holte, Mrs. Orford, 145. Holy Land, 95. Hood, Thomas, 260. Hooker, Sir Joseph, 84, 109. Hooker's " Ecclesiastical Polity," 14. Hope, F. T. L., pseudonym, 71. " Hope in Christ," sermon, 86. Houghton, Lord, 39, 105. Hubert, , 121. Hughes, Judge Thomas, 145, 189. Hulsean Lectures, 9, 112, 193, 256. Hunt, Holman, 95, 189. Huxley, Thomas Henry, 102, 106, 108- I", 139- " Ideal Citizen, The," sermon, 258. Ilbert, , 69, 127, 129. " In the Days of Thy Youth," sermons, 63. 142. 143- " Individual Responsibility," 250. Ingelow, Jean, 189. Ingelow, William F., 95, 96, 192, 284. Isaiah, Book of, 174. Isle of Man, 3, 4, 11, 13, 71, 73. " Ivanhoe," 4. James, Rev. Dr., 159, 163 n. Jelf, Dr. R. W., 22-24. Jerusalem, 95.' Job, Book of, 174 ; sermon on, 238. "John Bull," 281. Johns Hopkins University, 299. Journal of Education, 157. Jowett, Dr., 116, 288. " Julian Home," 35, 38, 41-46, 71, 78, 83. Juvenal, 27. Keats, John, 35, 132. King Edward's School, 322. King William's College, 4, 10, 15-19. King, W. Scott, 260. King's College, 21-35. King's College Magazine, 29. King's School, 322-324, 329, 332, 351. Kipling, Rudyard, 72. " Language and Languages," 107. Lansdowne, Lord, 23. " Lark and the Cabbage, The," 40. Lawson, Sir Wilfrid, 250, 295. Leaf, Charles J., 205. Leaf, Walter, 92, 192. Leeds, 79. Lees and Raper Memorial Lecture, 250. Lensman, Ben-Zion, 307. Liddon, , 254. " Life and Work of St. Paul," 210. " Life of Christ," 8, 34, 156, 163, 175, 191-215, 302, 307, 333. " Life of Christ represented in Art," 210, 341. " Life of Lives," 196, 197, 346. " Life of St. Paul," 196, 197, 198, 302. Lightfoot, Bishop, 148, 194. " Lives of the Fathers," 199. Llanfairfechan, North Wales, 337. Lloyd memorial window, 229. Lockyer, E. Normand, 145. LomonosofF, A., 208, 209. London University, 22, 27. Lowell, James Russell, 109, 227, 296. Lubbock, Sir John, 109, 258. Lucas, Mr., 144. Lushington, Judge Vernon, 51, 52. Lytton, Lord, 229. Macaulay, Lord, 14, 49. McVickar, Rev. Dr., 300. Magee, Dr. (Bishop of Peterborough) , 74. 254- Maine, Sir Henry, 39. Mallock, , 267. Margoliouth, Professor, 197, 198. Marlborough College, 53-68, 141-190. Marlburian, The, 159, 164. Marryat, Captain, 13. Mason, Canon, 325, 331. Matveieo, Theodor, 209, 210. INDEX 359 Maurice, Frederick Denison, 22, 23-28, 39, 136, 141, 148, 173, 277, 334. Maxwell, Professor J. Clerk, 39. May, , 228. Mayor, , 129. Melville, Canon, 22. " Memorials of Cyril Lytton Farrar," 144, 230. " Men I Have Known," 22, 46, 103, no, 226, 287, 296. " Mercy and Judgment," 210, 268, 271, 279. Mill, John Stuart, 264, 289. Mill, Professor, 46. Millais, Everett, 145. Millais, Sir John Everett, 145, 189. Milton, John, 4, 21, 44, 45, 85, 88, 138, 173. 3 22 - Minton, Sir Samuel, 281. Monk, General, 224. Monro, Cecil, 127. Montgomery, Bishop, 234-240. Moore, Thomas, 13. Morning Advertiser, The, 90. Morris, Sir Lewis, 222, 229. Mount Gerizim, 95, 96. Miiller, Max, 107, 141, 148, 231. Myer's poem of " St. Paul," 93. Nana, , servant at Dean Farrar's, 118. Nasik, India, 1, 8, 9. " National Duties," sermon, 258. " National Perils," sermon, 258. " Nation's Curse, A," sermon, 250. Newman, Cardinal, 258, 262. Newquay, Cornwall, 337. Nineteenth Century, The, 250, 266. Norris, Leslie, 145. Northcote, Hon. Mrs. J. S., 325, 336. " On Some Defects in Public School Education," lecture, 99-106. " Origin of Language," 107. Overbeck, Friedrich, 133. Oxenham, , 128. Palestine, 95, 191. Palmer, Professor, 320. " Paradise Lost," 4. " Paradise Regained," 21. Parker, Archbishop, 345. Parker, C. S., M.P., 105. Patteson, Bis>hop Coleridge, 163. Payne-Smith, Dean, 313, 316. " Pearson upon the Creed," 31, 35. Percival, Dr., 157. Perowne, Dr. (Bishop of Worcester), "3- " Philosophy of the Inductive Sci- ences," 47. Plumptre, E. H. (Dean of Wells), 22, 23, 212-214. Pole, Cardinal, 346. Praed, Mackworth, 49. Prideaux's " Connection between the Old and New Testaments," 14. " Primer," the Latin, 98, 99. Pusey, Dr., 265, 268, 270. Pym, John, 228. Quiver, The, 71. Quotations, Dr. Farrar's use of, 256- 258. Raleigh, Sir Walter, 227, 258. Reid, Dr., 348, 350. " Reminiscences of Bishop Colenso," 113-117. " Reminiscences of Lord Tennyson," 49- Renan, Ernest, 106, 212. Rendall, , 138. Ritchie, Mr., 251. Roberts, Canon Page, 325. Robinson, William E., 50. Rome, 132. Rosebery, Lord, 313, 326. Rowsell, Canon, 145. Royal Normal College, 247. Ruskin, John, 85, 139, 177. Russell, George, 84. " Sacrifice of Iphigenia, The," 30. Safed, 95, 96. St. David's, 11, 61 n. St. James, Clerkenwell, 21. St. Margaret's, Westminster, 217-233, 236 et seq. 36o INDEX St. Mary's Church, Cambridge, 89. "St. Winifred's, or the World of School," 14, 15, 7^ 72, 73, 79, 8i, 83. Salisbury, 59. Salisbury Infirmary, 60. Salvation Army, 247. Saturday Review, The, 77. Scott, Edward Ashley, 53, 56, 69, 129. Scott, Sir Gilbert, 238. Scott, Sir Walter, 4, 13, 199. Sedgwick, Professor, 105. "Seekers after God," 112, 210, 306. Seeley, Professor, 105. Sellick, Mr., 150. " Shadow of Civilization, The," 250. Shakespeare, 32, 143. Shannon, Rev. John Reid, 259. Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 13, 35, 132. Shenstone, William, 54. Short, Bishop (Sodorand Man), 10, ri. Short, Mrs., 10, ii. Shrewsbury School, 80, 104. " Silence and Voices of God," sermons, 142, 306. Simon Langton Schools, 322. Sims, Rev. W. E., 234, 240-245. Smith, Assheton, 157. " Smith's Dictionary of the Bible," 112. Smyth, Professor, 49. "Social Amelioration," sermon, 258. " Social and Present Day Questions," 258, 341- Sodor and Man, 10, 11. Somerset, Protector, 221, Sommerville, Rev. W. F., 234, 245-248. Spectator, The, 76. Spencer, Herbert, 106. Spottiswoode, W., 103, 109, 116. Spurgeon, Charles, 265, 333. " Stalky & Co.," 72, 74. Stanhope, Spencer, 222. Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn (Dean of Westminster), 177, 189, 258, 261, 284, 296, 326. Stanley, Lady Augusta, 296. Steel, , 138. Steel, A. G., 172. Stephen, Sir J. Fitzjames, 39. Stephen, Leslie, 264. Sterling, , 39. Stevenson, Dr., 247. Stonehenge, 58. Storr, F., 145. Strode, , 228. Sunday School Times, Amer., 319. Swanage, Dorsetshire, 337. Swanston, Clement Tudway, 29. Tait's Magazine, 289. Taylor, Jeremy, 162. Teacher's Hymn, 252. Temperance League, 250. Temperance work of Dr. Farrar, 248- 252, 294-296. Temple, Archbishop, 116, 250, 329, 345, 346, 347- Temple Magazine, 39. Tennyson, Hallam, 145. Tennyson, Lord, 5, 39, 49, 50, 71, 177, 178, 189, 227, 322, 343, 344. Theobald, , 70, 120. Thomas, Rev. John Shearm, 142, 148, 156. Thomas, Mrs. J. S., 181-190, 339. Thompson, Sir Henry, 145. Thompson, Mr. P. E., 39, 145-159. "Three Homes, The," 71. Thring, Dr., 84. " Timbuctoo," 49, 50. Tivoli, 132, 133. Tolstoy, Count Leo, 258. " Tom Brown's School Days," 72. Tomkinson, , 56, 129. Trench, Archbishop, 39. Trinity College, Cambridge, 38-52, 71. Turner, , 69. Turner, Caroline. See Farrar, Mrs. Charles Pinhorn. Turner, Joseph Mallord William, 342. Tyndall, John, 103, 106, 139. United Kingdom Alliance, 250. Vanderbilt, Mr. C, 300. Vaughan, Professor C. E., 164-169. Vaughan, Charles T. (Dean of Llan- daff), 71, 122, 123, 130, 138, 147, 202, 203, 214, 215, 220, 230. INDEX Vaughan, Mrs. C. T., 202. Vesey, Archdeacon, 131, 216-219, 233, 284, 297-300. Vesey, Mrs., 298. Voltaire, 238. Volunteers, 247. " Vow of the Nazarite, The," sermon, 250. Wales, Prince and Princess of, 344. Wallace, A. R., 109. Warren, , 69, 127. Watson, H. W., 127, 138. Watts, Dr., 275. Wedgwood, Hensleigh, 107. Wellesley, Dean, 217. Westcott, B. F. (Bishop of Durham), 92, 122, 138, 194, 277, 278. Whewell, Dr., 47-49, 85, 137. Whittier, John G., 228, 296. Wilberforce, Archdeacon, 22, 250. Wilkinson, Dr. M. M., 64, 67, 159. Wilson, Archdeacon, 105, 106. Wiltshire College, 53. Winthrop, Miss, 344. " Witness of History to Christ," ser- mons, 112, 256. Wordsworth, William, 13, 45, 85. Zelic, John Sheridan, 320. Date Due ; ^•^'riiliiM'mai > PRINTED IN U. S. A.