UC-NRLF B 3 IMM 3E^ -W- ;:ii"^it'^i^' t' •" -'. ; V L / V '--^ ;»''' ^^: 3 i.-irr— r"M^ I I'M I I ■! II I 111! J f c£ca6ct'S of Religion Edited by H. C. Beeching, M.A. THE LIFE OF JOHN KEBLE ^cabcx^ of "glcltgiott Edited by H. C. Beeching, M.A. Crovm 8vo, cloth extra, with portrait, Ss. 6d. Under the above title Messrs. Methuen are publishing a series of short biographies, free from party bias, of the most prominent leaders of religious life and thought. CARDINAL NEWMAN. JOHN WESLEY. BISHOP WILBERFORCE. CHARLES SIMEON. CARDINAL MANNING. THOMAS CHALMERS. LANCELOT ANDREWES. WILLIAM LAUD. JOHN KEBLE. AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY. MARTIN LUTHER. THOMAS CRANMER. HUGH LATIMER. JOHN CALVIN. JOHN DONNE. GEORGE FOX. JOHN HOWE. JOSEPH BUTLER. FRANCOIS FENELON. ERNEST RENAN. C. H. SPURGEON. E. H. Hidton. J. H. Overton. G. TV. Daniell. B. C. G. Moule. A. W. Button. Mrs. Oliphaiit. R. L. Ottley. W. E. Button. W. Lock. E. L. Cutis. Owen Edwards. A. J. Mason. A. J. Carlyle. W. A. B. Coolidge, Augustus Jessop. Thomas Bodgkin. E. F. Borton. B. Eashdall. Viscount St. Cyrcs. Madame Darmcsteter. Dr. Cliff&rd. Other volumes will be announced in due course. « < ' JOHN KEBLE, ^r^-;;/ « Portrait hy Geo7-ge Richmond, R.A. JOHN KEBLE BY WALTER LOCK, M.A. FELLOW OF ST. MARY MAGDALeJt COLLEGE, LATE SUB-WARDEN OF KEBLE COLLEGE, OXFORD WITH A rORTRAlT FROM A PAINTING BY GEORGE RICHMOND, R.A. SEVENTH EDITION METHUEN & CO. 36 ESSEX STREET, W.C. LONDON 1895 • « » • » Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London & Bungay. SORORI ME^ HAS PRIMITIAS QUAS IPSA FOVIT, AUXIT, CASTIGAVIT. GRATUS DEDICO. 782421 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION Two reasons give a special appropriateness to the publication of a memoir of Mr. Keble at the present time. This year is the hundredth anniversary of his birth, a fact which reminds us how quickly time is flying, and in its flight bearing off those who could speak of him with first-hand knowledge. Again, much has been published of late throwing light on the Oxford Movement ; The Oxford Movement^ by Dean Church, The Letters and Correspondence of J, H. Neiuman, The Autohiography of Isaac Williams^ are books of very varied character, but they ail agree in one point : they all bear a strong witness to the force, the originality, the stimulating power of that character whose humility and self-repression have often caused his real work to be undervalued. This memoir will be found, it is hoped, more complete than any yet published. I have been allowed access to much unpublished correspondence, and have had the viii PREFACE. privilege of intercourse with personal friends of Mr. Keble, and I wish to express my warmest thanks to those who have helped me in either of these ways. But the memoir is not complete. I have not had access to all the correspondence. There is much still to be examined and sifted and published, and I can only hope that this volume may serve for a time to revive the memory of its subject, and may then pass away before the completer account of him that ought to be given to the world. It ought to be given to the world, for there is scarcely a letter or a treatise of his through which there does not shine some glimpse of the beauty of the writer's character, from which the reader does not rise without a sense of being brought nearer to the Presence of God. Walter Lock. Feast of SS. Simon and Jude, 1892. CONTENTS CHAP. I. PREPARATION FOR THE WORK OF LIFE 1792 — • XOtJ_j ••• ••• ••• «•• • • • • • • II. THE PROFESSOR OF POETRY III. THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IV. THE STRUGGLE. 1833 — 1841 ... V. THE STRUGGLE (continued). 1811 — 1845 VI. LYRA IXNOCENTIUM VII. RECOVERY. 1816 — 1860 VIII. THE END. 18G0 — 1866 IX. THE PREACHER ... X. THE SPIRITUAL ADVISER... XI. CHARACTERISTIC AND INFLUENCE APPENDIX I. APPENDIX II. INDEX • • • • • • ••• ••• ••• ••» PAG7 1 29 50 74 103 129 141 172 189 204 223 239 242 246 CORRIGENDA p. 1, four lines from end, for Aldermanbury read St. Mary's Aldermary p. 26, note, second line, for suscipi- read suscip- p, 31, line 8, for as well as read and also p. 35, line 7 from bottom, for placing read putting p. 50, line 2 from bottom, for treble read triple p. 103, second line of the Greek quotation, for einraXanwu read evTraKa/xwv p. 114, last line, p. 115 first line, /or he refused . . . patience, read finding it hopeless to challenge its legality he waited in silence p. 135, third line of the stanza quoted, /or love read lore p. 136, line 13, after Ken, place only a comma, ,, line 14, after Justification, 2}lctce a semi-colon p. 156, line 9, for eu read iv p. 186, line 11, for October, 1864 read September, 1865 p. 204, quotation from Acts iv. 36, for itrrlv reaxl iaTiv ,, ,, ,, for napaK\7}a4ws reaxl UapaKKrjffews JOHN KEBLE. CHAPTER I. PREPARATION FOR THE WORK OF LIFE, 1792 — 1832. "Voice of the meekest man, Now while the Church for combat arms, Calmly do thou confirm her awful ban, Thy words to her be conquering, soothing charms. Voice of the fearless saint 1 Ring like a trump where gentle hearts Beat high for truth, but doubting lower and faint. Tell them the hour is come, and they must take their parts." J. K., Miscellaneous Poems, p. 36, (of R. Hooker.) John Keble sprang from a family which had origin- ally come from Suffolk, but had since the sixteenth century been settled in Gloucestershire. One of his ancestors, Sir Henry Keble, grocer, had been Lord Mayor of London in 1511, and had been noted for his liberality towards the rebuilding of Aldti i pmanbu r y St. f^Kr^S Church and towards other charities ; a descendant of his, Richard Keble, purchased the manor of East Leech Turville, in Gloucestershire, which remained in his 2 JOHN KEBLE. family till the beginning of the eighteenth century. At the end of that century the representative of this family was. the father of the subject of this memoir, himself a;.lsd the Rev. John Keble, who, after being a Scholar and Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, had married a 'lady of Scotch descent, Sarah Maule, the daughter of the incumbent of Ringwood in Hampshire, and had settled at Fairford in Gloucestershire, as Vicar of the neighbouring parish of Coin St. Aldwyn's. Here, on St. Mark's Day, 1792, John Keble was born, being thus eight years older than Dr. Pusey (1800), nine than Cardinal Newman (ISOl), ten than Isaac Williams (1802), eleven than HiuTell Froude (1803). He was privately baptized the next day, and publicly received into the Church in July. He was educated entirely by his father at home, and even if he owed to that, as he himself thought in later years, a certain desultoriness in study and a want of practical knowledge of the world, yet it was probably far the best course for one of his shy, sensitive temperament : he grew up with a fresh ofenuine interest in classics and mathematics, in Encrlish literature and history; with an unquestioning deference to his parent's wishes, with a warmth of affectionate- ness to brother and sister, in which he never failed, which affected his movements at each change in his life, and which stood him in good stead again and again, especially in the great strain of Newman's secession. In his life, as in that of St. Andrew, " Christ laid the foundations of the Church on brotherly love." ^ The family consisted of five members, the eldest, Elizabeth (1790—1860), " his wife," as he used playfully to call her, who was nearly all her life an invalid, and, ^ Sermons, Occasional and Academical, p. 275. PREPAEATIOX FOR THE WORK OF LIFE. 3 as such, shy and nervous at first with strangers, yet gradually winning upon them by her sweetness and religious spirit, and who for many years shared his home at Hursley and his work and hopes for the Church. " I wish you could see my father and eldest sister," he wrote once to Coleridge ; " to me they are uniques." Then came John, born in 1792 ; then Thomas, in 1793, who followed him as a scholar to Corpus Christi College, then became Fellow and Tutor there, then acted as curate at East Leech, finally settling as vicar at Bisley in Gloucestershire. With him nearly every scheme of action was discussed : he was a contributor to the Tracts for the Times, helped John with the edition of Hooker, the Library of the Fathers, and the Plain Sermons ; and was ev^er felt to be a steadying influence upon his life. " I was myself inclined to eclecticism at one time (he wTote in 1838), and had it not been for my father and brother, wdiere I should have been now, who can say?" Then came Sarah (1796 — 1814), whose death formed the first gap in the circle ; and lastly, Mary Anne (1799—1826), his "sweetheart," the bright, fresh, merry-hearted one, who wanted every one to live in sun- shine, to whom he was accustomed to talk more freely than to any one else in the world, and who was probably the strongest influence upon his life until the time of her early unexpected death. Both she and Elizabeth were highly cultivated and religious, and we find them reading Italian and French with their brother, and also with great enjoyment Butler's Analogy, Hooker's Eccle- siastical Polity, and Strype's Lives of the Arclibishops, The traditions of the family were Cavalier and Non- juring ; in later years Dr. Pusey recalled to Keble the way in which the latter's words about the Stuarts Lad 4 JOHN KEBLE. been one of the first thinors that broke throusrh his Liberalist tendencies. " I was thoughtlessly, or rather I must say confidently, taking it for gi^anted that the Stuarts were rightly dethroned, when I heard for the first time a hint to the contrary from you. Your seriousness was an unintended reproof to my petulant expression about it ; so it stuck by me, though it was some time before it took root and burst through all the clods placed upon it." Later still, in answer to some depreciatory opinion of Dr. Pusey's about the Nonjurors, Keble replied, *' I cannot think that the Nonjurors' position was so very bad or useless an one. I seem to trace our present life in good measure to it." From such a home he came up to Oxford, " a fresh, glad, bright, joyous boy." ^ After an unsuccessful attempt at Magdalen College, he was elected in December 1806 to an open scholarship at Corpus Christi College, and entered into residence at the beginning of 1807, while still under fifteen years of age. His college life was not eventful ; he threw himself heartily into lectures, and forty years later dedicates his volun:^e of Sermons to his tutor, the Rev. W. N. Darnell, " in ever grateful memory of invaluable helps and warnings received from him in early youth ; " he also shared fully the social life of his college, and his letters contain several references to the Common Room parties held at the end of each term, and kept with difficulty within due limits of sobriety. " Our Common Room party was yesterday," he writes once to his brother, " when I had the hardest trial I have yet gone through in Oxford in avoiding ' intostication.' However, they were on this occasion much more sober than they have been on 1 Dr. Pusey, in the Keble College Proceedings^ 1868, p. 43. PREPARATION FOR THE AVORK OF LIFE. 5 former." He wrote frequently, but never successfully, for the prize for English Poetry ; and several of his poems composed in this ' Scene of my Earliest Harp- ings' will be found in the Miscellaneous Poems. He calls it Home of my Muse and of my Friends, and it is as home of his friends that it had most influence on his after-life. The college was a small college, lending itself to close intimacies, and it contained at this time a number of striking members. There was J. T. Coleridge, elected in 1809, fresh from Eton, full of enthusiasm for the poetry of his uncle and of Words- worth — Coleridge, who remained to the end of his life the firm friend and wise adviser \vhom Keble always consulted in any ecclesiastical questions which were connected with the law of the State, and who lived to be his affectionate biographer. There was Noel Ellison, "the genial, joyous, graceful Ellison," also elected in 1809, who afterwards became Tutor of Balliol, and Kector of Huntspill ; John Tucker, " the single-hearted and devout," who became a missionary in India ; G. J. Cornish, elected in 1810, a man of keen sensibility, of poetic taste, but quiet retiring character, who, after becoming Fellow and Tutor of his college, withdrew to parochial life, and from 1828 — 1849 was Vicar of Kenwyn, above Truro. He is author of the poem on the Redbreast, quoted in the Cliristian Year, and the strength of Keble's atfection for him is measured by the words he wrote to a friend on his death, " My dear Dyson, do ask for me that I may meet him again." Then there was C. Dyson, to whom these words were written, rather senior to the other friends, perhaps the most intimate of all, the fastidious critic, the wise, cheering, cuUivatcd friend, whose influence was mainly 6 JOHN KEBLE. effectual in procuring the publication of the Christian Year, and whom Keble seldom omitted to consult at important moments of his life. Last of all, not elected till 1811, but at once admitted into this circle, was Thomas Arnold, the eager, enthusiastic, religious Liberal, who differed from Keble in almost every point, and yet wound himself very closely round his heart. " The more I see of Arnold, the more I love him," he wrote in 1816; and in 1819, "I hardly know anyone now that Dyson is gone (from Oxford), who would be so great a loss to me." To him Arnold turned when in great religious perplexity, and found comfort and peace in his advice. The line that Arnold took in later years seemed to him so " wilful and presumptuous in his way of dealing with holy things," that he felt that he could not regard him as a fellow-labourer in the same cause. This was his feelinsr in 1832, but the break with him had been a severe strain upon himself, and he writes in 1840, " I have had an Easter letter from Arnold, so kind and mitig^ated in tone that I cannot but be com- forted by it, and in time I trust he may come nearer to Church views. I feel somehow that we are nearer to each other than we have been." To these friends in college should be added one out-college friend, John Miller of Worcester College. He was some years senior, having taken his degree in 1808, and Keble always regarded him with very great reverence for his seriousness, and loved him for his genial merriment. Miller's Bampton Lectures for 1817, upon " the Divine authority of Holy Scripture from its adaptation to the Real State of Human Nature," impressed his mind very much by its cautious tone, its tender and scrupulous respect for the simple Preparation for the work of life. ? faith of the poor, and its deep reverence in the treat- ment of the Bible. In 1829 he called him "the most original divine of our days," and one sentence from the Bampton Lectures seems to have suggested the poem for St. Bartholomew's Day in the Christian Year; another sentence in one of his sermons suggested the title of the volume. It has been worth while to dwell upon this group of friends, for with the one exception of Arnold, they were friendships for life kept up by visits and correspondence, and never without their influence upon him. But their main influence was that of the Oxford days. They did that which was all-important for the shy, sensitive, home-bred boy; they gave him confidence in himself by the unrestrained way in which they admitted him to their confidence. In many a college society such a temperament would have withered and shrunk into itself; in this kindly warmth it grew and blossomed. All the natural gaiety of heart, all the frolicsome humour which characterizes his home letters, reappears in his letters to these friends. Just as his brother and sisters have their comic nicknames, so it is with these friends. The wise Miller is "Hooker" ; Arnold is "the p sheep " ; Cornish " the monkey " ; Dyson is " Jeremiah," or " The Venerable Bede," or " Simorg " ; his own brother is " Thomas Aquinas " ; J. Tucker is the " Queen of Babylon," or " Bab," or " Semiramis," and is spoken of always as ''she." Thus when he left Corpus Christi he carried away a stronger self-confidence ; and he carried away also a wider knowledge of English literature, and a love and reverence for the memory of one of the noblest names of which the college could boast — Richard Hooker. 8 JOHN KEBLE. In the summer of 1810, when he was only a little over eighteen, he obtained the very rare distinction of a double first-class in Classics and Mathematics. As it was then common for Bachelors to reside, he continued in Corpus Christi until, on April 21, 1811, just before his nineteenth birthday, he was elected to an open Fellowship at Oriel College ; Whately, afterwards Arch- bishop of Dublin, being elected at the same time. In the following year he gained both the Chancellor's Essays, the English Essay on Translation from Dead Languages, the Latin on a comparison between Xeno- phon and Julius CjEsar as Military Historians. It was the most brilliant academical career of his time. It *•' invested him with a briorlit halo and somethinoj of awe in the eyes of an undergraduate." ^ Twelve years later the young Newman writes, " I shall only mention Keble. At eighteen he took two first classes. Soon after he gained the two Essays in one year and a Fellowship at Oriel. He is the first man in Oxford." ^ The two leading spirits in the Common Room at this time were Copleston and Davison ; of these the latter became a firm and life-long friend of Keble. It was at his suggestion that the last poems of the Christian Year were written, and after his death Keble helped to edit his Remains. But he was never quite at home in the Oriel Common Room in the sense in which he had been at Corpus Christi. The tone was one of vigorous, rough-and-ready discussion of all things under heaven and earth, wanting in tenderness and reverence ; he was shy of the criticism of " the Oriel wags"; among them, he seemed to Newman, "more 1 I. Williams, Autohiograj^hy, p. 17. 2 LetterSy i., p. 75. PREPARATION FOR THE WORK OF LIFE. 9 like an undergraduate than the first man in Oxford, so perfectly unaffected and unassuming in his manner ; " ^ and the way in which Pusey and Newman in 1827 faded to understand Keble's character is a sufficient proof how Jittle he had been really quite himself there. At first he had no college work, and was busy with his own reading and with private pupils, taking reading parties in the vacation and paying visits to his friends ; and many of the early poems published afterwards in the Miscellaneous Poems bear witness to the briorhtness and hopes of this time. In 1818 he refused the offer of a Sub-Librarianship at the Bodleian Library. He was Public Examiner in the Final Schools from 1814 — 1816; Master of the Schools in 1816; and Public Examiner again 1821 — 1823. One of these occasions is specially interesting ; as he listened to one of his fellow-examiners assigning the class to one of the candidates, his mind wandered off to think of the future that might be in store for the Examiner himself, and the result was the poem in the Christian Year for St. John's Day — " ' Lord, and what shall this man do 1 ' Ask'st thou Christian for thy friend ] If his love for Christ be true, Christ hath told thee of his end. This is he whom God approves, This is he whom Jesus loves." His own reading during these years was very varied ; we find him reading Ariosto, Chateaubriand, Madame de Stael, Blackstone's Commentaries, Ockley's Histoi^y of the Sarace7is, Spenser, Wordsworth, Southey^ Byron; but his studies were drawing more and more 1 Letters, i., p. 72. 16 JOHN KEBLE. towards Theology. He learnt Hebrew, and wrote in 1813, "The study of Divinity grows upon me. There are so many questions little and great, grammatical, historical, and metaphysical, to be answered before one can say that one thoroughly understands a verse of the Bible, that I almost despair of reading it through on this side of threescore." Butler's Analogy, more than any other book, except perhaps Aristotle, formed the staple of his thoughts. Butler's humility of tone, his sense of the vastness and mystery of the Divine system, his willino'ness to confess that he knew but a frino^e of a great subject, his determination not to ignore the facts of what God has done in favour of an a priori theory of what He ought to do; his strong hold upon the analogy between nature and religion, lending itself to Keble's poetic love of treating all material phenomena as types of spiritual facts; his theory that the intellect cannot carry us farther than a prohaUe result in religion, and that only faith and love can convert probability into certainty — these fundamental positions reappear again and again in Keble's writings ; and Newman has told us how they assumed a new power and meaning under the influence of Keble's " creative mind " ; they rooted the Sacramental system in the eternal methods of God's working, and won Newman himself from his individualism. Almost immediately after reaching his twenty-third birthday he was ordained Deacon by the Bishop of Oxford on Trinity Sunday, 1815, and Priest on Trinity Sunday, 1816 : his Fellowship served as a title, although he also assisted his father at Coin, riding over from Oxford for the purpose, and in thesummerof 1815 he took temporary charge of the two nei^hbourino^ villaofes of East Leech t^KEPARATION FOR THE WORK OF LIFE. 11 and Burthorpe. It seemed to liim that " the salvation of one soul was worth more tlmn the framing of the Magna Charta of a thousand worlds," and he approached the work with awe and trembling, and yet with un- abated confidence in Christ's power to use his service. The aim that he set before him helps to explain the deep language of self-reproach and remorse which is so strongly marked in the Christian Year and in his correspondence. Before the ordination he wrote to Colerido-e — " Pray for me too : pray earnestly, my dear, my best friend, that He would give me His grace, that I may not be altogether unworthy of the sacred office on which I am, rashly I fear, even now entering ; but that some souls hereafter may have cause to bless me. Pray that I may be free from vanity, from envy, from discontent, from impure imaginations ; that I may not grow weary, Dor wander in heart from God's service : that I may not be judging others uncharitably, nor vainly dreaming how they will judge me, at the very moment that I seem most religiously and most charitably employed. Without any foolish affectation of modesty, I can truly say that the nearer the time approaches, the more strongly I feel my own unfitness and unworthiness for the ministry : yet as I hope it is not such but that it may be removed in time by earnest and constant use of the means of grace, I do not think it needful to defer my Ordination, but I want all the help I can get in the awful and difficult preparation : do not therefore forget me in your prayers." In the preceding year he had lost his sister Sarah, and perhaps this, combined with the tension of the Ordination, produced a tone of melancholy, which 12 JOHN KEBLE. oppressed liim at this time and seemed to him wilful and sinful. Much of the Christian Year cannot be understood without the remembrance of this mood, and therefore it will be well to add another extract from a letter to Coleridge — "Our domestic distresses have furnished me with too good an excuse for indulging a certain humour calling itself melancholy, but I am afraid more truly entitled proud and fantastic, which I find very often at hand, forbidding me to enjoy the good things and pursue the generous studies which a kind Providence throws so richly in my way. ... I have long known this to be very wrong, but I never felt the mischief of it so much as in the midst of your happy family. I felt as if I was saddening everybody, and thousands and thousands of resolutions did I make that I would shake off this selfish remembrance of j^ast and distant calamities, that I would enjoy myself wherever I went. I trust I shall be able, though late, to accomplish these good reso- lutions, and it will be a long and steady course of self-discipline alone, grounded upon high motives, and assisted by the prayers, advice, and example of my relations and friends, which will enable me by God's blessing to do so." His life became thus for a couple of years mainly pastoral ; his profession became " my dear delightful profession" : but at the end of IS 17 he was recalled to a more academical life, being appointed Tutor at Oriel. In January, 1818, he writes to Coleridge that he is going back " to lay down the law^s of ye and Sr) to a set of wriofglinof watch-consultino^ undersjraduates." The work was in many ways delightful to him, for tuition seemed to him a species of Pastoral Care. His sense of a tutor's PREPARATION FOR THE WORK OF LIFE. 13 responsibility will best be illustrated by words wliich he wrote years afterwards : " Considerate Catholics know well that there is practically no separating the high and comprehensive views which that name imports from any of the moral branches of education. Silence them as you may on directly theological questions, how are they to deal with ethics or poetry or history, so as not to guide their disciples by the light which the Church throws on all? And there is a j^et deeper consider- ation : they may perhaps think that College Tuition is a branch of the Pastoral Care, at least if they are them- selves ordained at God's altar; and then they will have no further alternative — they must either teach Catholicism or not teach at all." ^ Newman has admitted how he came ultimately to see that Keble's mind was at one with his own in his con- ception of tutorial work, so that his description of his own tutorial aims might be transferred to Keble ; there was the same willingness to spend any effort on his pupils' work (we find Keble working with them some- times as early as six a.m.), the same attempt to culti- vate relations with them not only of intimacy, but of friendship and almost of equality ; in Hurrell Froude's words, " Where Keble was, donnishness and humbug would be no more in college, nor the pride of talent nor io^noble secular ambition." ^ Keble retained this office for six years and formed many lasting intimacies, one with Sir W. Heathcote leading ultimately to his appointment as Vicar of Hursley. One who came into residence just after he ^ The Case of Catholic Subscription to the XXXIX. Articles, 1841, p. 12. 2 J. H. Newman, Letters, i., pp. 152 — 154. 14 JOHN KEBLE. left, and who only saw him when he applied for matricu- lation, Sir C. Anderson, bears striking testimony, in a letter written in 1889, to the quiet, powerful effect which he had upon young men. - " I was entered by Keble when I went up to matriculate, a raw youth of nineteen. Keble was then Tutor and Resident, and he examined me and took me to the Vice-Chancellor to swear to the Articles, and during the two hours I was with Keble his manner and kindness and a certain influence, which I hardly can describe, came over me, so that when I went to reside, and he had then left Oxford, I found the Tutors at Oriel so wholly different that I greatly regretted Keble's absence. I am more than ever convinced that, had he been elected Provost, things would have been very different at the University." The impression which he made upon outsiders is excellently illustrated by the following contemporaneous account, written by a sister of his friend, George Cornish, after a visit of Keble's to Sidmouth — " Se][)t. 8, 1819. — Keble went away early. We are all very sorry to lose him, as he is a person that is not to be met with every day. I have heard a great deal of him from George before I saw him, so that it was like meeting an old friend His manners are singularly simple, shy, and unpolished, though without the least rudeness or roughness, as he is the mildest and quietest person I almost ever saw. He speaks very little, but always seems interested in what is going on, and often says the cleverest and most witty things as if he was not the least aware of it. In his own family I should think he must be more missed when absent than any one else could possibly be ; he seems formed for a domestic circle and all the feelings attendant on home. PREPARATION FOR THE WORK OF LIFE. 15 Without making any fuss about it, he seems so inter- ested in every one, and has such a continual quiet cheerfulness about him, that I cannot imagine how his fatlier and mother, brother and sisters, can do without him. But it is his religious character that has struck me more than anything else, as it is indeed that from which everything else proceeds. I never saw any one who came up so completely to my ideas of a religious man as Keble, and yet I never saw^ any one who made so little display of it (I use this word for want of a better at present) ; he seems to me a union of Hooker and George Herbert — the humility of one with the feeling and love of the other. In short, altogether he is a man whom the more you see of and know, the less you mu-t think of yourself."^ During these years he was much interested by making the acquaintance of Wordsworth (1815), and of Southey and Heber (1819). His own poetic powers were reaching their maturity, and some of the freshest and most melodious poems of the Christian Year date from this time. In 1822 — 1823 he was Select Preacher before the University, and in 1823 he preached the Assize sermon ; ^ but the variety of the work and the cares of discipline were trying to him ; he longed for something more permanent and more pastoral. " I begin to be clear that I am out of my element here," he wrote in a moment of despondency as early as 1819 ; in 1821, " I have made up my mind to leave Oxford as soon as this examination affair is over ; " in 1822, " I get fonder and fonder of the country and of poetry and of such things every year of my life." Finally, in 1823, he 1 Monthly Packet, 1887, p. 189. " Diary of an Octogenarian." ^ Academical /Sermons, i. — iv. 16 JOHN KEBLE. accepted a college living at Coleby in Lincolnshire ; but withdrew his acceptance at the last moment. For, on May 11, his mother died, and he at once decided to live in his father's neighbourhood that he might be able to help him. His mother's death inspired the poem on the Annunciation, which appears, though in an altered form, in the Christian Year. The first draft (written on June 1, 1823) will be found in the Miscellaneous Poems. It is in the main the same as that in the Christian Year, but when that was published his sorrow was still fresh, and the allusions to his mother and him- self seemed too saered for publication, and the verses about The Virgin Mother were substituted. In his own MS. there is written by the side of the last stanza, " May 10, 1823. Extract from pocket-book— ' Eheu, elieu, vale, vale, carissima, vale, eheu, vale, at veniet felicius sevum, Qnando iterum tecum, sim modo digniis, ero.' " ^ On his leaving Oriel several of his pupils followed him to his new sphere of work. He became curate at Southrop near Fairford, being responsible for this as well as the other two small villages of East Leech and Bur- thorpe. The home was at Southrop ; here he continued for three years, refusing, in 1824, the Archdeaconry of Barbodoes, which was offered him by Bishop Coleridge, and these three years are in some ways the most im- portant of his life. They laid the germs of the Trac- tarian movement. The pupils who were with him, and from whom he refused to receive any payment, were men of brilliancy and promise, the first and chief being Robert Wilberforce, afterwards Fellow and Tutor of 1 Tliese lines are to be found in Bi*>hop Lowth's ex^itaph on his daughter s tomb at Cuddesdon. PREPARATION FOR THE WORK OF LIFE. 17 Oriel College; Isaac Williams, afterwards Fellow of Triaity, and curate to Newman ; and Hurrell Froude, also Fellow and Tutor of Oriel, and the link between Keble and Newman. In their society Keble's nature expanded thoroughly ; their intercourse was free, affec- tionate, joyous, playful : " there is master the greatest boy of them all," was the gardener's comment upon it. But under all this gaiety of heart a deep seriousness was know^n to lie, and it would break out from time to time in shy, simple ways, as when once just before Froude was leaving, Keble took him aside and said, "Froude, you thought Law's Serious Call was a clever look ; it seemed to me as if you had said that the Day of Judgment would be a pretty sight." ^ The moral and spiritual influence which he wielded over them was enormous. Robert \Yilberforce, when in later years he joineji the Church of Rome, is reported to have said that the one power which had held him to the Church of Eng- land was John Keble's character and wisdom ; Isaac Williams, the Harrow cricketer and scholar of Trinit}'', looked back to the day when Keble invited him to Southrop as the era of his conversion, when he was first roused to take a serious view of life. " It was this short walk of a few yards and a few words spoken that were the turning-point of my life. If a merciful God had miraculously interposed to arrest my course, I could not have had a stronger assurance of His Presence than I have ahvays had in looking back to that day." ^ Speaking of Keble's classical tuition, he says that he can remember in no other way to have derived so much moral benefit and actual religious teaching as when in 1 I. Williams, Autobiography , p. 28. * Ihid. p. 16. 18 JOHN KEBLE. a state of tuition himself from this indirect mode of instruction in another, to whom he owes everything that renders life valuable.^ Froude, the " brio-ht and beauti- ful Froude," the most original genius of the whole; Froude, so aggressive, so restless in inquiry, so audacious, so relentless in pressing premises to their ultimate con- clusions, so full of mischief, so unmeasured in speech, so keen an enemy to all that was unreal or pretentious, and yet withal so affectionate and generous and winning and imaginative, a "man fitted above all others to kindle enthusiasm," ^ was touched and aAved by the unworldly simplicity of his tutor, and put himself unreservedly under his intellectual and spiritual guidance. It was like a high-bred horse responding at once to a master's touch. The effect upon these pupils will be best illus- trated by Dean Church's account of it in his description of Isaac Williams : " He had before him in John Keble a spectacle which was absolutely new to him. Ambi- tious as a rising and successful scholar at college, he saw a man looked up to and wondered at by every one, absolutely without pride and without ambition. He saw the most distinguished academic of his day, to whom every prosjDect was open, retiring from Oxford in the height of his fame to busy himself with a few hundreds of Gloucestershire peasants in a miserable curacy. He saw this man caring for and respecting the ignorant and poor as much as others respected the great and learned. He saw this man, who had made what the world would call so great a sacrifice — apparently unconscious that he had made any saciifice at all — gay, 1 T7ie CJiristian Scholar, Preface, p. liv. Cf. Thoughts in Past Years : " Others admire in thee a poet's fire " (written about Keble). 2 J. H. N., Correspondence, ii., p. 241. PREPARATION FOR THE WORK OF LIFE. 10 unceremonious, bright, full of play as a boy, ready with his pupils for any exercise, mental or muscular — for a hard ride, or a crabbed bit of ^Eschylus, or a logic fence with disputatious and paradoxical undergraduates, giving and taking on even ground. These pupils saw one, the breadth of whose religion none could doubt, 'always endeavouring to do them good, as it were, unknown to themselves and in secret, and ever avoidins: that his kindness should be felt and acknowledged ' ; showing in the whole course of daily life the purity of Christian love, and taking the utmost pains to make no profession or show of it."^ But the influence was not wholly from him upon them ; they too, and especially Froude, reacted upon him. His ecclesiastical principles became more clear cut ; on the one hand, there had been growing upon him an intense distrust of the Evangelicalism of the day, Vv^nch seemed to depend entirely upon feeling, to neglect the sense of duty and the cultivation of char- acter; it seemed to him so often unreal, and he was fond of quoting William Law's warning to Wesley, " Remember that a man may deceive himself as easily by the phrase 'justification by faith,' as by any other combination of syllables." On the other hand, he loathed even more strongly the cold Deism of the last century with its modern Erastianism, wdiich would reduce the Church to a mere creation of the State, and would ultimately deny the supernatural. The " Anglo- Hanoverian " Church tone of the eighteenth century repelled him with its utilitarian cui bono principles, its presumptions in favour of liberty and against self- denying faith, its preference for external evidences of ^ The Oxford Movement , p. 59. 20 JOHN KEBLE. religion, its excessive and easy-going toleration, its want of a charitable austerity.^ It neglected the feel- ings as Evangelical! sro neglected the character, and his mind craved for a religion which should atfect the whole man, and keep both feelings and intellect under the control of the wilL To enforce this he fell back upon the conception of the Church which he had inherited, as of a body independent of the State, founded by the Lord Himself, perpetuated by direct succession from the Apostles, one in continuous histor}^ and in doctrine with the Primitive Church, filled with a supernatural and sacramental life, witnessinoj to a hioh moral standard before the world. Such a conception fired him with indignation at State encroachments, at neglect of discipline and doctrine, at the prevailing worldliness of tone ; it made him doubt the wisdom of much that the Reformers had done. In 1824 he wrote to Coleridge that he doubted Davison's application of the apostasy to the Church of Rome, and adds, " My impression for a lono- time has been that we have as much to do with it as they." Such a noble conception of the Church naturally laid hold of the imagiuations of his pupils, and through them passed as a power into Oxford. To make that conception a reality he devoted his whole life with a Quixotic chivalry which nothing could daunt : for that he sent forth his pupils as a band of missionaries. Not that any immediate result was yet produced: the train was laid, but the circumstances were not yet favourable for firing it, nor was the genius yet with them who was to apply the light. 1 Cf. his Keview of " The Unpublished Papers of Bishop War- burton.'' Occasional Facers and Reviews^ p. 108. PREPARATION FOR THE WORK OF LIFE. 21 This intercourse with pupils ceased in the year 1825, when Keble became curate in sole charge of Hursley, near Winchester, under Archdeacon Heathcote. The Archdeacon, who lived in Winchester, was responsible for the charge both of Otterbourne and of Hursley, and was obliged to depute the latter entirely to his curate ; and as this was a widely-scattered parish of more than a thousand inhabitants, the new curate had no time to devote to tuition. He passed a year of great happiness in this -new work, receiving visits from his father and sisters and many of his college friends, including Arnold. But the brightness was clouded and stopped by the most unexpected and perhaps the deepest sorrow of his life. In September, 1826, his favourite sister, Mary Anne, was taken suddenly ill at Fairford, and died within a few days. In answer to a letter of sympathy from Froude he wrote — " I knew you would be very sorry when you heard of what has come upon us, and I feel that I can write freely to you about it ; but I cannot half describe to you the depth and intensity, at least as it seemed to me, of my thoughts and feelings during Mary Anne's illness and for some time since. Certainly no loss could be so great, humanly speaking, to Elizabeth and my father, but they are both such sort of people that I have long been used to consider everything that happens to them as a certain good ; and there was nothing bitter in my grief as far as they were con- cerned, much less in thinking of Mary Anne herself; but the real bitterness was when I thought of many thinofs in which I have been far less kind to her than I oucrht to have been. Somehow or other I have for years been accustomed to talk to her far more freely 22 JOHN KEBLE. than to anybody else in the world, though of course there were two or three whom I loved quite as well. But it has so happened that whenever I was moody or fretful she has had to bear with me more than any one, and if I chose I could sit down and torment myself by the hour with the thought of it. This is the only feeling of real bitterness that I have on the subject, but I know it is wrono- to indulo-e it, and I trust soon to get over it entirely; indeed, I seem to have done so already, only I feel one cannot in any way depend upon one's self. I am certain no person who believes in the Atonement ouoht to induloe in bitter remorse, and therefore, by God's blessing, I don't mean to be un- comfortable if I can help it, even in the thought of my past faults. I have been so too much already, and it only seems to make one lazy and weaken one's own hands and one's friends. If you please, therefore, don't let us encourage one another in melancholy any more; but let us always resolutely look to the bright side of things, and among other helps to be quiet, let us always talk as freely to one another as Ave do now, for nothing relieves one so much as making a clean breast." ^ To this occasion we owe the short Fragment on Ids sister Mary Anne's cleatli^ and the simple unrhymed poem on The Burial of the Dead, which was intended for the Christian Year. He shrank, however, from publishing it so soon, but later it appeared in the Zyra Apostolica, No. 50.^ This loss changed Keble's plans once more ; his father and sister needed some companion, and he returned to Fairford and acted as curate there until his father's death in 1835, refusing 1 Letters of Spiritual Counsel, p. i. 2 Miscellaneous Poems, p. 236. ^ Hid. p. 15, PREPARATION FOR THE WORK OF LIFE. 23 the living of Hursley when offered him by Sir W. Heathcote in 1829, and that of Paignton, which was offered to him, " as to the most eminently good man in the Church," by the Bishop of Exeter in 1831. He still remained a Fellow of Oriel, but his friends there were not content that he should only appear at the rare intervals of college meetings, and on more than one occasion they attempted to revive his connection with Oxford. At the end of 1827 the Provostship of Oriel became vacant by the appointment of Dr. Cople- ston to be Bishop of Llandaff and Dean of St. Paul's. There was no doubt that the choice would fall either on Keble or on Hawkins. On December 8th, Hawkins wrote to Keble what the latter describes as a "kind little letter," apparently asking whether he would be a candidate ; to which he replied on December 9th, postponing his answer, but adding, " I am in great hopes that by not caring too much for things we shall be enabled to turn what might have been unpleasant into a time of comfortable recollection as long as we live. You and I agreed to remember one another at a trying time for both a little more than a twelvemonth ago ; if you please, we will do the same now.'' Meanwhile, Keble's old pupils were strongly in his favour and urged him to stand. He was quite willing to do so, feeling that it was not so very much more diffi- cult a trust than any other pastoral employment, and conscious that he had some qualifications for it ; but he had left Oxford, and was not intimately known by many of the Fellows. Hawkins was a resident tutor in full work; he too had gained a double first-class, having taken his degree a year after Keble, and he >vas a man of shrewd practical wisdom and intellectual 24 JOHN KEBLE. keenness, though devoid of any deep power of sympathy. By a strange irony the balance was decided against Keble by Newman and Pusey. Neither of them knew Keble at all intimately, Newman having been elected in 1822, Pusey in 1823, just as Keble was leaving Oxford. Pusey wrote to him on December 14th, saying that he had decided to vote for Hawkins, " yet should the choice of the majority finally fall upon you, I should anticipate from your promotion high and extensive benefits to the college. It is difficult on the subject not to say too much or too little ; I will therefore only add that it is not upon any comparison of the indi- viduals, but in relation to a 23ractical office that I have formed my decision." Newman wrote on December 19th, a letter marked by delicate consideration, and yet, as experience proved, showing an extraordinary want of insight into the relative sympathy of Keble and Hawkins with his own conceptions of College and University reform. On December 27th, Keble wrote to Froude withdrawing his candidature, and putting it with thoughtful unselfishness on selfish reasons; he doubted whether he would be comfortable there ; he had calls elsewhere ; he was afraid of the Oxford epidemic of intellectualism. On December 28th, he wrote to the same effect to Hawkins, and the contest was ended. Whether the result would have been less disastrous to .the College and the University if Keble had been elected is an idle speculation. Nev/man never regretted his vote, for it seemed to him afterwards that, had Keble been elected, he himself would have still retained his tutorship, and so would have had no leisure for the Tractarian movement. Pusey regretted it deeply ; PREPARATION FOR THE WORK OF LIFE. 25 "Unliappily, some of us who loved him did not know the power of his deep sympatliy with the young heart, and thought another more practical. He could not bear division, and so withdrew. The w^hole of the later history of the Church might have been changed had we been wiser; but God, through our ignorance, withdrew him, and it must have been well with him, since God so over- ruled it. To us it became the sorrow of our lives." ^ Yet the whole correspondence gives such an impression of considerateness, of thoughtfulness, of sincerity, of perfect freedom from self-seeking, from jealousy, from bitterness on all sides, that it is refreshing to read. And Keble, who had wTitten years before on the occasion of Hawkins' election to a Fellowship, " Everything was conducted on so liberal a plan that it does my heart good to belong to such a society as Oriel," felt this still, and went back to his pastoral work with no trace of embittered feeling, but with a deeper devotion to his duties, as though God had more clearly put them as a sacred trust into his hand. It may well be that the way in which he accepted this disappointment may have gained him the power which he wielded over Newman and Pusey in later years ; it may well be that the life at a distance from Oxford, amid the realities of pastoral work, gave him coolness and self-control and wisdom which would scarcely have been genernted in the heart of the conflict; and thus his very rejection may have gone to make him " an unseen silent influence, movino^ hearts at will." 2 But though absent his voice was still heard in any- 1 Sermon at Keble College, St. Mark's Day, 1876, p. 27. 2 J. H. N., Essays, ii., p. 446. For the best account of the election see the Ckuxrdian for January 30, 1889. 26 JOHN KEBLE. thing which stirred the University; in 1829 Mr. Peel, having suddenly changed his mind and passed the Koman Catholic Emancipation Act, offered himself for re-election at Oxford, but many Churchmen there felt that they could not change their opinions thus readily ; the independence of the Church and of Oxford seemed to them at stake, and Mr. Peel was rejected. Keble (who afterwards dated the conflict between Church and State from this time) threw himself heartily into the opposition, and published with his signature a short set of queries addressed to the electors, ending with one, very characteristic — " Whether, on occasions like this, we are not bound to look forward and consider not onl}^ how our academical interests may be affected at present, but how our conduct will appear in the pages of future historv ? " When the election was over he wrote a humble and affectionate letter to Piisey, asking pardon of all Mr. Peel's friends, and especially, through Pusey, of the Bishop of Oxford, " if anything in which I have had a part may have given him a moment's pain, or if I have seemed unworthily suspicious of one for whom he must be deeply interested." For a few years his letters give the impression that he was casting about for some adequate life's work. The Christian Yeao^ was now published, and he had no pupils. We find him examining for the Ireland Scholar- ship in 1828 ; for the India House in 1830 and 1831 ; he composes the Index to Cardwell's edition of Aristotle's Ethics (1830)^; he is working at his translation of the 1 Cf. the Preface : " Indicem toti operi amico ciiidam acceptum referiunis, digniorisane qui ipse Aristotelem illustrandum suscipi- ^ret, nobis vicissim suas partes traditurus," PREPARATION FOR THE WORK OF LIFE. 27 Pscalter into English verse; he is interested in the conditions of the poor and studying Malthus, and anxious to promote emigration on a large scale in order to relieve the distress. At one time, when there were agrarian riots in the neighbourhood, he rode out fear- lessly and good-naturedly with the mob, arguing with them and trying to keep them from mischief. In 1831 he published anonymously a pamphlet entitled A Hint from Bristol J in which he took advantage of the Bristol riots to plead against Reform, and to exhort honest men to have true courage to set themselves calmly and reso- lutely against the *' evil spirit which is abroad teaching this nation all kinds of irreverence." In this year, however, two different events supplied him with the work which he desired ; at the beginning of the year he undertook for the Clarendon Press a complete edition of the works of his favourite, Richard Hooker ; and in the winter he was elected Professor of Poetry. His friends had been anxious that he should be a candidate for the chair in 1821, but he then refused to oppose Milman. By this time, however, the Christian Year had established his poetic reputation, and he was elected without any opposition. This office had the advantage that it brought him up to Oxford once a term for his terminal lecture, and also required his presence at Commemoration in alternate years to deliver the Creweian oration in com- memoration of the Benefactors of the University. Thus through the most eventful years of the Tract- arian movement, he was in constant touch with its leaders, while the preparation for these two important works made the next few years some of the busiest of his life. One of his own poems will best show the spirit with which he was setting himself to his task. 28 JOHN KEBLE. THE CHURCHMAN TO HIS LAMP. " Come, twinkle in my lonely room, Companion true in hours of gloom ; Come, light me on a little space, The heavenly vipion to retrace, By saints and Angels loved so well, — My mother's glories ere she fell. There was a time, my friendly Lamp, When, far and wide, in Jesus' camp. Oft as the foe dark inroads made. They watch'd and fasted, wept and pray'd ; But now, they feast and slumber on, And say, ' Why pine o'er evil done ? ' Then hours of Prayer, in welcome round, Far-severed hearts together bound ; Seven times a day, on bended knee. They to their Saviour cried ; and we — One hour we find in seven long days, Before our God to sit and gaze ! Then, lowly Lamp, a ray like thine Waked half the world to hymns divine ; Now it is much if here and there The dreamer, by the genial glare, Trace the dim Past, and slowly climb The steep of Faith's triumphant prime. Yet bv His grace whose breathing gives Life to the faintest spark that lives, I trim thee, precious Lamp, once more, Our fathers' armoury to explore, And sort and number wistfully A few bright weapons, bathed on high. And may thy guidance ever tend AVliere gentle thouglits and courage blend ; Thy I'ure and steady gleaming rest On pages with the Cross imprest ; Till, touch'd with lightning of calm zeal, Our fathers' very heart we feel." CHAPTER 11. THE PROFESSOR OF POETRY. ^^ pijfia 5' ipypLCiTujv \^oviujTioov pWTivu o Ti ye (Jvv ^apiTiov Tii'xg. yXuJaaa ^psvoc; t^kXoi (3a0eiag." Pindar, JVe?n., iv. 11. In dealing with Keble as a poet, we start with the great advantage of having not only his poems them- selves, but also his critical theory of Poetry. Although the fullest statement of this is subsequent to the publication of the Christian Year, whether in the Latin lectures as Professor of Poetry (1832 — 1841), or in a shorter English form in his review of the Life of Sir Walter Scott (British Critic, 1838) ; yet it had already been sketched in outline in a review of Copleston's Prcdectiones Academical {British Critic, 1814); and in an article on " Sacred Poetry" {Quarterly Review, 1825):^ hence it will, both logically and chronologically, be the true order if we discuss the theory first, and the application of it to his own poems afterwards. Keble never professes to give a full definition or 1 These three reviews are reprinted in the Occasional Papers and Reciews ; the references will be to that volume. 30 JOHN KEBLE. description of Poetry, but only to describe and illustrate one function which it serves ; and this he approaches from the point of view of the poet, and only incidentally from that of the reader. The title De Poetical Vi Meclica points to the kernel of his theory. Poetry is essentially for him a relief to the poet, a relief for overcharged emotion. It is the utterance of feelings which struggle for expression, but which are too deep for perfect expression at all, much more for expression in the language of daily life. Feeling of any kind, he points out, is always seeking some form of expression for itself; the infant can find it only in cries, in gestures, in expression of the features ; the grown-up man finds it mainly in the power of speech. "My heart was hot Avithin me, and while I was thus musing the fire kindled, and at last I spake with my tongue" (Ps. xxxix. 3), — this verse is quoted by him as expressing the secret of all poetry. This is true of all feelings, but most true of the deej^est feelings, which are stirred either by the sight of external nature or by the facts of human life. Nature appeals to the feelings either by its mystery and vastness, stirring man's wonder, his questioning, his awe ; or by its tranquil beauty and calm, soothing his wearied spirit. Human life appeals to them either by its happiness suggesting a perfection which lies beyond it, through the finite stirring the passion for the infinite ; or by its sadness, suggesting the contrast between what it is, and what it might be, and so stirring tenderness and pity and melancholy. In either case the feelings are stirred by the sense of higher spiritual truths which underlie the visible phenomena. But it follows naturally from this that the deeper the feeling, the less adequately will it be THE PROFESSOR OF POETRY. ^i able to be expressed ; language fails it ; the prose language of daily life is felt at once to be inadequate ; and further, the feeling itself shrinks from publicity, it is too sacred to be cast before every one ; true love and true grief alike shun the light of day and the sight of men. Hence there is a necessary reserve and modesty about the expression of it ;^ metrical language serves both to conceal a*rrf«reii=«B,,to reveal the truth ; again, the poet hides his passion under allegory and simile, or description of some event in the heroic past which is sufficiently akin to the present to relieve his feeling while it does not betray his secret. Hence expression will be more poetical in proportion as it gives the sense of struoolino- with an ideal truth. Yet another distinction must be noticed. The facts of life aftect people differently according to their temperament. With one class the feelings are passion- ate, tumultuous, headstrong, bursting out into lyric utterance on the spot and then passing away. With another, they are quiet, strong, permanent; they feed themselves on their object ; they persist tln'oughout life ; they work themselves out in longer and more sustained efforts of epic or dramatic poems. Of these two classes Keble unhesitatingly gives the preference to the second. •' In quietness and calm will always be found the true praise of poetry, whether you seek for sweetness or for majesty."^ The permanence of the feeling is a test of its reality ; the self-control is the proof that the poet feels himself overmastered by a Higher Power. From this distinction springs his classification of poets. Primary poets are those who sing because they must, ^ FriJbl Acad., p. 608. 32 JOHN KEBLE. who have some one strong, consistent, j)ernianent feeling, which reaj^pears again and again ; secondary j^oets are either those who are stirred genuinely by a passing emotion, or those who are little more than clever literary imitators, writing for pleasure or for interest. The form of the poetry is never taken as the dividing line, though it is used at times as a clue to ^uide the reader to the truest and most q:enuine feelino: in the poet, on the ground that truth of feeling feels after truth of form. The more trustworthy tests are modesty, reserve, the absence of paradox and display, and above all, consistency ; that poet is the highest poet who, ". . . . wlien brought Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought Upon the plan that pleased his childish thought." Taking these tests as his standard, Keble in his lectures examines all the chief Greek and Latin poets, not without a touch of humour here and there, as though he were a Public Examiner once more, as where he stops to wonder whether Sophocles' love of Attic scenery may not earn him a first-class, but ultimately decides to place him in the second ; there are also many interesting illustrations from modern poets and digres- sions on points where poetry touches on the borderland of religion. As the lectures have never been translated, we venture to give an outline of his argument, with a fuller account of one or two details which he has touched with a lovino^ fullness himself. Homer comes first, and is classed at once as a primary poet. His overmastering feeling is a sad regret for the heroic age, with its common national feeling, its reverence for its leaders, its faith in the interposition of THE PROFESSOR OF POETRY. 33 Gods. The Iliad is the glorification of heroic warfare ; it represents the feelings of the veteran soldier delight- ing in his past campaigns. Hence it is not merely " the wrath of Achilles : " it is an Iliad, a story of a successful warfare, exhibiting every kind of fighting, singing the praises of every warrior, whether Greek or Trojan ; dwelling on the incidents of camp life, of the feasts, the games, the armour, the horses, the hunting, the peasant life around, the scenes of Nature, and the wealth of Troy. We see Agamemnon, the proud aristo- crat, caring for his country much but for his dignity more ; Diomed the ambitious ; Ajax the rough, brusque, simple, obedient soldier; Hector the lovable, brave, domestic, human hero ; but above them all, the type of an almost superhuman consecration, Achilles, the eager, noble warrior, ^^A\o knows that death awaits him and yet has gone forth to the war, self-consecrate, preferring a glorious death to inglorious inactivity ; full of affec- tionate remembrance for his parents, devoted to his friend, honourino- old acre, recos^nizinfr excellence in friend or foe, and, for all these reasons, dear to heaven. The Odyssey is the work of the same writer, though in his old age. It is the work of the veteran soldier with his warrior instincts still alive in him, recording the love of exploration which marked the heroic era. As Alexander the Great combined in his own person the warrior and the explorer, so Homer in his poems. The type is now Ulysses, the explorer, wise, shrewd, full of expedients, self-trustful; longing for home with a strength of feeling which is proof against all seduc- tions and all perils ; but he is essentially a king ; the Odyssey is not merely the return of a traveller, it is the triumphal victory of a king, who comes to enjoy his own D 34 JOHN KEBLE. again and to right his country. The influence of the Gods is over all : they protect Ulysses and punish the suitors ; their presence is seen only by their favourites ; 5^et sinners are Avarned against their doom ; there is nothing like fatalism in the story. The suitors are the type of the arrogant, irreligious democrats, who neither respect guests, nor honour the dead, nor reverence the Gods, but measure all things by the standard of their own enjoyment; and so the poet is against them; for true poets are almost bound to oppose the popular party, because of its utilitarian standard, which is never carried away by any lofty enthusiasm, and because of its absence of true reverence and self-restraint. It would have everything open and public. Jt was this want of self-restraint which caused the popularity, and was a fatal flaw in the real poetic power of Byron. Two other interesting observations lead to comparisons with modern poets. Homer's frequent references to simple peasant life, his description of beggars, the dignity i\ with which he invests slaves, show that, like Burns, he was a poor man, in sympathy with poverty. But Homer tries to soothe the lot of the poor ; he looks with a simple peasant's admiration on wealth, he treats it as the gift of heaven ; but he never rails against riches, nor is indignant at the injustice of Providence. On the other hand, Burns, with the same love of peasant life and simple nature, is unable to treat the rich with courteous gentleness ; his undisciplined love of pleasure leads to anxiety, indignation, querulousness ; he chafes against fortune and rails against the rich. Unlike Homer, he cannot be " A wise good man, contented to be poor." Again, a subtle examination of the treatment of THE PROFESSOR OF POETRY. 35 Nature in the Iliad and Odyssey leads Keble to think that the Iliad was written before, and the Odyssey after, the blindness of Homer. The Iliad is full of similes which are drawn from the passing phases of Nature, the gambols of animals, the changes in the sky, the quick movements of men, and are such as give evidence of a keen sight. The Odyssey has few such, but more complete descriptions of places, cities, harbours and rivers, such as a poet could recall and dwell upon in memory. If this is true, how much more striking still becomes the uniform spirit of bravery in the face of fortune, of happy contentment with the ways of heaven; it lifts him to a level above Milton, the other great blind poet, who even in that poem of endurance and chastened religious spirit, the sonnet on his blindness, wants the full charm of Homeric content, and shows that in political life he would not side with Homer but rather with the restless popular cause. The examination of Homer is followed by an inter- esting discussion, in which it is hard not to believe that Keble is referring to his own poetical history. The question is raised whether a great example in literature is likely to deter or to stimulate other poets. On the one side it is urged that young poets might think that all was done that could be done in poetry; and that the more sensitive a poet w^s, the more would he be discouraged from pkt^^a^ his poetry into competitioir with his great predecessor. On the other side, — and it is this with which Keb:e sympathizes, — contact with a true poet kindles and inspires the timid ; the strong and sanguine are stirred by emulation ; and the inex- perienced are at least helped in the form of expression. No doubt thus a danger arises of the growth of a school 36 JOHN KEBLE. of servile imitators. Servile imitation, however, only affects ihQform, and the danger of it can be avoided by writing in a different kind of poetry. The conclusion is that a great example stimulates far more than it depresses. This was the case with Homer's example : for nearly all the poets of early Greece bear traces of his influence, and yet they have their own over- mastering impulse, growing naturally out of and meeting the needs of their own days. The Minor Poets, Alcseus, Sappho, Archilochus, Simonides, short as their extant fragments are, were all clearly primary poets, each of them striking out new metres to express their feelings. Such conspicuously was the case with iEschylus, who receives a fuller treatment than any poet. The whole of the lectures about him are marked by loving and keen insight ; the treatment of the Orestcia is excellent and will repay dwelling on at some length. The dominant feelings in ^schylus are twofold : (1) a hearty love of fighting, whether by land or sea ; (2) the sense of the mystery which hangs over human life, passing into a belief in an overruling Providence. No doubt the Pro7netJieus Vmchis gives a contradictory impression ; Zeus seems there to be treated as an arbi- trary tyrant, angry at benefits conferi'ed on mankind ; but this is only one play of an incomplete trilogy, and even in this there is a glimpse of a future deliverance for Prometheus, the friend of mankind. It is in the Orestcia that the religious tone and teaching of ^Eschylus find full expression ; it might be even regarded as a palinode for the Promctlietts. It is a great vindication of the ways of God to .man, for the fortunes of the family of Pelops are not the real centre on which the interest turns, but rather the triumph of Zeus. Zeus appears as THE PROFESSOR OF POETRY. 37 a righteous God, sternly inflicting punishment for sin ; but he is also a kindly God, who teaches mankind by their sufferings. Throughout the Agamemnon there runs a sense of awed expectation at the coming judgment. The half-comic rustic liomely wit of the warder at the opening of the play is like the calm before a storm. Like the humour of Shakspere, it heightens the contrast with the tragedy to come ; it is so true to life, with its grotesque touches in the midst of sorrow. The sense of doom is intensified in the Chorus by the omens, given by birds and animals, which so often seem to share the secrets of heaven: the destruction of Troy was the act of Zeus taking venge- ance for violated ho^^pitality ; there are hints of other doom yet in store for Agamemnon, and even in the beautiful picture of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, the interest is centred on Agamemnon as he shelters the weakness of his will under the plea that the sacrifice is an act of necessity. Clytemnestra tempts him to his fate, by forcing him by her taunts to walk on the purple tapestries; her words are full of double meaning; yet in her pretence of love, in her defence of the murder, in her appeal to the genius of the house, in her sacrifices to the Gods, she seems to bear witness to the stinfrs of conscience, to the power of an innate fear of God. Cassandra appears as the type of prophecy, the witness for a present God though pointing to a future event. In the presence of the hypocrisy of Clytemnestra she is silent. When that is withdrawn, she bursts forth into inarticulate cries ; as she finds sympathy in the Chorus, her prophecies become clearer and clearer. She is the most touching of all prophets on the Greek stage; tender-hearted, full of pity for the sorrows of .38 JOHN KEBLE. men, ever mindful of parents and of country and of the love of Phoebus, she pours forth her prophecy, unfeed, unforced, not summoned from afar as an outsider, but herself sharing in the events. Her inspiration comes from no omens or auguries, but direct from the God himself; she is a standing witness that they who in- crease knowledge increase sorrow for themselves; that the sharer of the secrets of heaven shares them to her own ruin ; she has well-nigh the dignity of a martyr for the truth. Thus, though unrighteousness triumphs for the time, through the clouds and darkness is seen a hope of retribution : over all is felt a sense that no chance or fatalism is guiding events, but a wise and kindly providence. In the Choejphorm this is more marked still. Instead of brooding expectation there is only serene confidence in the justice of God. The whole play is like a great liturgy ; it opens with prayer ; the action is carried on before the father's tomb ; the death of Clytemnestra is raised above all suspicion of personal vindictiveness into an act of righteous vengeance ; prayers recur again and again ; the Chorus recalls past instances of Divine Justice ; Orestes is like a priest offering the victims upon the altar ; over all stands supreme the command of heaven, and the sense of the presence of the murdered dead. The terrible character of the act is softened in the case of Orestes by the fact that he is actinof aecainst his natural instincts at the biddino^ of duty ; in the case of Electra by her gentleness for her mother and fondness for Orestes. The plot, however, grows more complicated. The murderess is punished, but a fresh deed of murder has been committed, and once more the murderer is punished. THE PROFESSOR OF POETRY. 39 What is to be the solution ? This is given in the Uiivicnides. There we see the reconciliation of mercy Avith strict justice, effected by an api^eal to Zeus. Orestes is pursued to the very shrine of Apollo ; so near is he to destruction. The Mimenides represent the common idea of strict justice insisting on punish- ment : Apollo represents forgiving mercy ; Orestes says little, he is confident in his cause, but humbly and reverentl}^ leaves it to Apollo. The final appeal is to the decision of Zeus, given — to please Attic pride — through the Areiopagus. Mercy triumphs, but the representatives of Justice are only just outvoted, and are ultimately reconciled and welcomed to dwell among men ; lest any should think himself pious and good without godly and reverent fear. This trilogy is described in much greater detail than any other poem, and we have lingered over it as a piece of true criticism, which is of permanent value for the real appreciation of the plays. Probably no such sympathetic reading of the character of Cassandra is to be found elsewhere. The other Greek tragedians are treated slightly. But scant justice is done to Sophocles. His strongest claim to be regarded as a primary poet is based upon his love of home and the places associated with early life ; but this is not expressed often enough to put a permanent stamp upon his poetry. There is, apart from this, no one dominant feeling ; he does not draw direct from Nature ; his wonderful descriptions of pain are rather those of the bystander than of the sufferer; the comic element of life is absent; his minor charac- ters are featureless : whole situations recur in different plays ; he is too even-tempered [evKoXos) to sympathize 40 JOHN KEBLE. with strong feeling. His very excellences, the finished style, the over-elaborate plots, the scenic effects, make against his claim ; so he is ranked among the secondary poets, though first among them. About Euripides, on the other hand, Keble's opinion had changed with the deeper study required for these lectures. He ranks him now as a primary poet. His faults are, no doubt, obvious — the rhetorical and frigid sententiousness ; the too frequent political allusions ; the separation of his choral songs from the subject of the plot; yet he has a dominant passion in the love of human life in its domestic and simple forms. As Socrates brought philosophy into daily life, so Euripides brought poetry ; slaves are treated with dignity ; the feelings of his heroines are common to women of all classes ; he is no misogynist at heart, as the portraits of Antigone and Polyxena show ; he has no unbelieving hatred of the Gods, for nowhere are to be found more religious portraits than those of Hippolytus the chaste, of Ion, the dedicated servant of the Delphic temple, of the Bacchse, the stewards of divine mysteries. Pindar meets wdth an even fuller and more enthusi- astic treatment. He is undoubtedly a primary poet, for through all his elaborate metres, through his many digressions, through the variety of his themes, there is seen a genuine love for the old heroic acre and for the great national games of Greece. This may seem a trivial point ; but as Scott's poetry had sprung from his love of hunting and of country life, so to a Greek the national games were a training-field for warfare, a rallying- centre for all his fellow-countrymen; they were that which in Pindar's days most nearly reproduced the heroic age. So he lavishes his praise on everything THE PROFESSOR OF POETRY. 41 connected with them, the prizes, the banquets, the processions, the beauty of the victors, the liberab'ty and virtues of the kings. He is a thorough aristocrat, but his own belief in an after-world, and the sanctity then allowed to poets, make him bold to rebuke and to advise both aristocrats and tyrants ; he combines the courage and self-confidence of youth with the cheerfulness of old ao^e : he is true to his childish thous^lit throusfhout his life ; fond of children, fond of flowers, fond of his country and its scener3^ He is like the lark, that lyric bird with its free, joyous, unceasing song ; which starts from some simple nest in the barest field, and soars up with joy and song into the highest heavens, with no care to be uniform, but chano-insf its note with each new thought in wondrous harmony. Pastoral poetry is discussed next, the poetry of the quieter spirits. This has always developed later than the poetry of action ; there was none in Greece proper in spite of the Greek love of Nature ; it began in Sicily and was developed at Rome : and this is partly because Nature is the natural solace of those who are wearied, wearied either with the life of action, like Virgil, or with the life of thought, like Lucretius. Theocritus is the real inventor of such poetry, a,nd he is inspired by a genuine love of the country; but yet he is not to be ranked as more than a secondary poet. The love of the country disappears in his later poems ; it was not a lifelong, overmastering feeling; his style is diffuse and luxuriant; he is coarse and wants reserve. On the other hand, Lucretius and Virgil are both primary poets. The dominant feeling in Lucretius is his sense of the sadness of human life and the infinite mystery of Nature. He is always in earnest about his theme ; he 42 JOHN KEBLE. dwells mainly on the infinity of the universe, the swiftness of its movements, the strength of its hidden forces, the brightness of the heaven, the quick changes of the clouds, the density of the forests. It is true that he denies the existence of the Gods ; yet we may pardon one who lived before the fuller revelation had come, and whose mind was touched with madness; and his very love of the infinite is a witness to a striving after God. *' It may even happen that while the main theme of a poem is the open denial of the existence of the Gods, yet its tenor and tone is on the side of believers." ^ So it was with Lucretius ; this love of the infinite, his unwillinor acknowledgment of a Providence that gruides the world; his sense of the evils of human life, of the emptiness of earthly pleasure; his praise of quiet thought and philosophy ; his reverence for the dead ; the very roughness of his style, preferring truth to eloquence, and oppressed by the inadequac}'' of his native language to express the truth, are signs alike of a poetic and religious spirit. Virgil again is a primary poet — but not as the poet of action, not as the writer of the JEneicl. His heart is not in the battle fray ; he neither loves nor makes us love his hero ; neither ^Eneas nor the lesser heroes are real, living characters ; \var is " terrible war," breaking up the operations of peace. Whereas in Homer Nature is always subordinate to the action, in Virgil, as in a painting of Claude Lorraine's, action is subordinate to the natural beauty. The JSneid was written only to please Augustus; if there were any feeling of his own in it, it was the feeling of gratitude to Augustus for having secured him the enjoyment of the country life he 1 JPtcbI. Acad., p. 685, THE PROFESSOR OF POETRY. 43 loved. There all liis heart is ; he loves the country-folk ; he reproduces their quaint phrases and their homely proverbs ; he loves their flocks and their bees, like the true peasant, who treats them not as mere means of gain, but as friends and companions, and is alive to all their wants, anxieties, and comforts. The very vines are half personified ; their training is like the education of the young; and the country itself appeals to him as strongly, though quite differently, as it did to Lucretius. Lucretius dwells on its infinite mysteries ; Virgil on its tranquil beauty : Lucretius scarcely ever mentions any particular place, unless it is necessary for his argument ; Yirgil is constantly introducing local allusions, whether to places known in his childhood, or visited in travel, or consecrated bv some relis^ious association : Lucretius never mentions his childhood at all ; Virgil dwells affectionately on his : Lucretius emphasizes the evils of life ; Virgil faces them as an optimist, and sees in them a stimulus for action and a ground of hope. His admiration for Lucretius did not make him an Epicurean ; rather his belief in the universal spirit, infused into all life and guiding all history, his frequent mention of Gods, Nymphs, and Manes ; his faith in omens ; his sense of the sympathy of Nature with man; his reverence in speaking of the dead — mark him as a Platonist. Thus he — the last primary poet among the' Latins (for Horace with all his charm has no one overmastering impulse) — in many ways prepared the way for Christian Truth, and becoming the text-book of education and the inspirer of Dante, has remained an influence to the present day. The examination of the classical poets ends with 44 JOHN KEBLE. Yirgil, in the lectures on Poetry-. In the course of them there are several interesting illustrations from English poetry, and some of these are more fully worked out in the Reviews. Thus Shakspere ''gave play to the real sympathy which he seems to have felt towards all natural and common affections, in a degree hardly conceivable by ordinary men." ^ Spenser is ranked higher than Milton as a sacred poet, because of the reserve which led him to throw his poem in the form of an allegory, and by that nieans and by his allusive style to veil the depth of his thought in the Faerie Queen, which is " a continual, deliberate endeavour to enlist the restless intellect and chivalrous feeling of an enquiring and romantic age on the side of goodness and faith, of purity and justice." ^ Milton was of a cast of mind originally austere and rigorous. He made a noble effort to rescue religion from the Puritan's degradation of it, by choosing a theme of universal and eternal importance ; but he was too out-spoken, too much marred by intellectual and spiritual pride; hence his undervaluing of woman's character, his half-attractive portraiture of Satan, his want of purity and spirituality in his conception of heaven, are serious blemishes, though they do not affect his claim to be considered "the very lodestar and pattern of that class of sacred poets in England."^ The inspiration of Scott is drawn from the passionate love of Scotch chivalry which was associated with the scenes of his childhood. His lame- ness, his profession, his domestic sorrows prevented any active indulsfence of such love, and threw back his feelings upon themselves, until at last they found 1 Life of Sir W. Scott, p. 23. ^ Sacred Poetry, p. 98. 3 Ibid., pp. 102—104. THE PROFESSOR OF POETRY. 45 expression in his poetry. "His theme is 'a romantic idealization of Scottish aristocracy ' ; but his romance is not like Homer's, who rejoiced in describing the present, and investing it with a supernatural light ; it is not like Tasso's, told with solemnity and reverence, as though in fulfilment of a religious vow; nor like Spenser's, the form and garb in wdiich the visions of an ideal world and longings for supernatural perfection are clothed. It is more like that of Pindar, starting from the present and working back into past ages ; yet the association with his childhood marks him off from all these poets, and gives his poetry a colouring of sim- plicity short only of that which would have resulted from actual truth." ^ The theory of poetry here advanced rests mainly upon the Poetics of Aristotle. " Expression by metrical words " is Keble's translation of fxifxi^aL^; ; the refusal to test poetry merely by its form is common to both. The distinction of primary and secondary poets corresponds in some measure to that of the enthusiastic and versatile temperaments to which Aristotle traces poetry ; the medical effect of poetry is akin to the " purgation " which Aristotle attributes to tragedy. But Aristotle writes as a critic, and is thinking of the effect upon the readers ; Keble, as a poet, dwells primarily on the effect upon the poet, and secondarily on that upon the readers. He is independent too of his master, and ventures to criticize him on several points, such as the importance which he assigns to the action in a tragedy. He draws from a much wider store of knowledge than Aristotle, and takes as his final guide the poems of the Old Testament, '* that sacred volume which corrects so 1 Life of Sir W. IScott, p. 50. 46 JOHN KEBLE. many of our erring anticipations." ^ " From their perfect parallelism they are the most artificial of all composi- tions, yet none ever so apt to relieve the deepest and most overflowing minds ; exhibiting therefore by their very form, as compared with their matter, the perfection of that self-control which must itself be the perfection of a mixed creature like man ; thoughts that breathe and words that burn, exactly obeying a certain high law and shaped- by it into perfect order." ^ To some such a theory may seem too much to deny the value of spontaneity, too much dominated by a religious mood, too relative to a dogmatic standard. But it must be remembered that Keble does not profess to explain every function or source of poetry ; he is only seeking for a standard that shall guide us to the best poets; he does admit of a different standard in judging heathen writers ; and he believes that the truest spon- taneity is that which is controlled by the sense of dependence on a higher Power. " The worshippers of Baal may be rude and frantic in their cries and gestures, but the true prophet speaking to or of the true God is all dignity and calmness."^ The canon for ^vhich he contends is this, that the best poets are those who have felt throughout their life the deepest feelings about Nature, about man, and about God which were possible at their time. Such a theory at least adds the highest dignity to the function of the jooet. Keble approaches the subject with something of religious awe. Although in his review of Copleston's lectures he had condemned the practice of lecturing in Latin, he defends and even ^ Sacred Foetry, p. 95. 2 j^^jg ^,f giy jy^ Scott, p. 18. ^Sacred Poetry, p. 91. THE PROFESSOR OF POETRY. 4) welcomes it for himself, as it enforces deeper thought and makes the lecturer consider what is true, not what is taking or eloquent. His task is " most serious, well- nigh sacred." Poetry is treated by him as akin to philosophy ; they both seek truth, though philosophy begins with Nature as apparently the more abstruse theme, and comes back to human life when the problems of existence become more difficult; poetry begins with human life, and takes refuge from its perplexities in Nature. More closely still is poetry akin to religion. Providence has watched over it, ordering even the developments of its various styles. As among the Jews the poetic writings of the prophets prepared tlie way for the Messiah, so among the Gentiles the best literature, whether philosophical or poetical, played the same part. Hence it is that Christians can still read the Pagan poets with a religious interest • they can afford to judge such a poet as Lucretius mora tolerantly than Cicero could, as they view him re- latively to his times. But he fancies he hears the Puritan objection that the study of such Pagan literature is unnecessary now that we have a fuller Revelation. No, he answers, far from it. It is true that in the early Christian Church some WTiters de- nounced Pagan literature, but even they used it, and were only anxious that it should not stand as a rival to the absolute Truth. It is true, too, that the early Christian Church had few poets of its own ; but they had as solace for their overburdened feelinos the Hebrew O poetry, the grandeur of the early Liturgies, and the whole Sacramental system.^ We who have so little hold on this may well be thankful to God for the poets ^ Frctl. Acad-i x:xxi. 48 JOHN KEBLE. who soothe our feelings and stir our aspirations. Even if Pagan poets seem unnecessary, yet Nature is ever liberal of its gifts; it showers them on man with no utilitarian hand ; and poetry, such as that of Virgil or Lucretius, is one of its greatest gifts, with its constant witness that neither action nor thought are adequate to satisfy the human spirit. When Christian poets did arise, they prepared the way for improvements in Religion, just as Shakspere and Spenser led the way to the Caroline revival, or Scott revived the interest in the past in our own times. For in essence Poetry and Religion are at one, and they demand one and the same temper of mind. Each is an attempt to express man's strongest feelings and to lay hold of the highest truths. Poetry lends its w^ealth of symbol and simile to the service of Relio-ion, and Relioion returns them glorified. Poetry takes to itself " all subjects which can anyhow take entire hold of the imagination and cause it to seek relief by indirect expression." ^ " The poet of the Church will find neither feeling nor condition in human life or in the works of God beyond his reach or without his province." ^ Yet Poetry, like Religion, hides its deepest truths and reveals them only to the pure in heart, to those who love them enough to press into their secrets. Thus Poetry rises almost to the dignity of a Sacrament, with its outward visible words and inward spiritual truth. As the poet himself needs, no less than the religious man, to choose his object of love worthily, to praise it sincerely, to commit himself heartily to it, to be courageously and con- sistently loyal to it, so the reader has to approach the poem as a worshipper would a Sacrament, with 1 Life of Sir W. Scott, p. 15. 2 j^^-^^^ p^ 79^ THE PROFESSOU OF POETRY. 49 reverence and a determination to press inward to its heart. "A c^ood deal is to be gained from the mere habit of lookinor at thins^s with a view to something beyond their qualities merely sensible ; to their sacred and moral meaning and to the high associations they were intended to create in us. Neither the works nor the word of God, neither poetry nor theology, can be duly comprehended without constant mental exercise of this kind. Without something of this sort, poetry and all the other arts would be relaxing to the tone of the mind." ^ The instrument which the poet uses is the imagination ; all poetic pleasure is referred to the awakening of some moral or religious feeling, not by direct instruction but by w^ay of association ; hence there must be some elasticity in the reader's mind, else it will not vibrate to the touch of the artist. '* Wherever, from the beauty of the thing imitated or from the skill of the imitator, the mind is excited to fill up the picture for itself, there is poetical pleasure, not however produced by the perception of likeness, but by the workings of the imagination." ^ This outline fails to do justice to a volume which Dean Church has called "the most original and memorable course ever delivered from the Chair of Poetry in Oxford ; " ^ and Bishop Moberly, in even stronger praise, '' One of the most charming and valuable volumes of classical criticism that ever issued from the press.""* But it may serve to draw the attention of a later generation to it and may suggest the advisability of an English translation. ^ Saci^ed Foetry, p. 100. ^ Bevicw of Copleston^ p. loG. 3 Tlie Oa-ford Movemfnt, p. 273. * Preface to J. K.'s Misccllaucoui) PoemSj p. xxi. £ CHAPTER III. THE CHRISTIAN YEAH. " Thy book I love because thyself art there." — I. WillIxVMS. Ever since his undergraduate days poetic expression had been a relief to Keble in his deepest moods, and at least as early as 1819 he had begun the poems which now appear in the CliHstian Year, and by 1820 had formed the idea of a complete collection to illus- trate the Sundays and Holy Days of the year. The conception was probably original with him, although of course it is in a line with much of Christian Poetry. The Peristeplianon and Gathemerinon of Prudentius are exactly parallel, not beiug hymns for public worship, but poetic meditations on the Martyrs' festivals and the daily hours. There is, too, something akin to it in English poetry in The Hymns arid Songs of the Church by G. Wither (1623), and an even closer analogy is to be found in Eaton's Holy Calendar of 1661.^ This is a small and interesting volume, consisting of a treble ^ • ^4 series of epigrams written to illustrate all the chief 1 The Holy Calendar, by N. Eaton, Doctor of Philosophy and Medicine, and Vicar of Bishop's Castle, Salop, 1661 ; reprinted by J. Tasker, Shrewsbury, 1888. THE CHRISTIAN TEAR 61 festivals and saints' days of the Church of England. It is written by a strong Cavalier and Churchman. As is natural at such a moment, the epigrams are fulsome in their adulation of the King, and quaint and fanciful in conceit ; yet there is much of real beauty and true feeling in them, and they are a striking witness to the continuity of the doctrine of the Church of England; there is as strong a reverence for the saints and especinlly for the Blessed Virgin, ns clear a statement of the doctrine of the Real Presence of the Lord in His Sacrament, as Avould be found in any Tractarian writings. It will therefore be excused if I quote two specimens of this book. The first is a good instance of the writer's simple sweetness of thought. NEW YEAR'S DAY. (Epigr. 1.) *' 'Tis ciistome, Lord, this day to send A gift to every vulgar freind, And shall I find no gift for Thee, That art the best of freinds to me ? There's nothing which my thoughts survey, My hfe, my soul, the light, the day j But they are all Thy gifts to me, And shall I find no gift for Thee ? Yea, Lord, behold I hear conferr My life, my soul, and whatsome're Thy liberal hand hath given to me, Back as a new-vear's gift on Thee. Say'd I a gift f Ah ! 'tis not so, Alas both men and Angels know That all these things Thy Christ hath bought, And therefore I can give Thee naught." The second will serve to illustrate the writer's interpretation of the doctrine of the Church of England — ASCENSION DAY. (Epigr. 2.) ** Look in what sense the Son of Man was said To be in Heaven whilst yet on earth He stayd. 52 JOHN KEBLE. In the same sense we grant His body, though In Heaven, may still be say'd to be below. He is ascended all agree, that same Material flesh and blood of His that came From the pure Virgin's Womb, Heavens now retain, And until all things be restor'd again, !Must still retain it ; yet it is confest. That when the holy Elements are blest By the Priest's powerful lips, though nothing there To outward sense but Bread and Wine appear, Yet doth there under those dark formes reside The body of the Son of Man that dy'd : This, what bold tongue soever doth deny, Gives in effect even Christ Himself the ly. Yet this whoe're too grossly doth maintain. Pulls his ascended Lord from Heaven again. A middle course 'twixt these two rocks to steer. Is that becomes the Christian Mariner. So to beleeve the Ascension as to grant His Real Presence iu the Sacrament ; Yet so His Real Presence there to own As not to make void His Ascension." There is no evidence that Keble knew this work, although his article on Sacred Poetry shows a wide acquaintance with previous religious poets. His favourite poets were Sbakspere ; ^ Spenser, whose alle- gorical form seemed to him to suit the true reserve which a poet ought to feel; George Herbert, with his deep penitence and chastened love for his Master; Words- worth, with his religious sympathy with Nature; Scott, with his enthusiasm for the days of chivalry and loyalty ; and, though in a less and lessening degree, Southey. Yet his poems cannot be said to bear the trace of any direct influence upon their form. The interestinsf discussion in the Prcclediones on the influence of Homer perhaps suggests that the writer himself was conscious of having been kindled by some 1 Froude (Remains, i., p. 209), in a letter to J. K., speaks of " Your favourite play, Measure for Measure." THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 53 one great poet ; if so, was it Homer ? Certainly the language of Homer has inspired some of the best poems of the Christian Year} Or was it Scott, to whom he goes back so frequently in the Frcdcdioncs, and of whom he speaks so lovmgly in his review of Lockhart's life ? Certainly either Homer with his idealization of the heroic a^e, or Scott with that of the age of chivalry, would kindle his own love of the recollections of childhood or the glories of the early Church, though the very sense of such dependence would keep him on his guard against direct imitation of their form. In the earlier poems, indeed, Southey's influence of form and tliought is perceptible, and in a less deo-ree that of Scott and Wordsworth, but he had shaken himself free and has a style that is independ- ent and entirely his own in the Christian Year. It is marred from time to time by want of smoothness of metre, by obscurity in the connection of the thought between verse and verse, but on the whole it is spon- taneous, melodious, and clear. It was while he was Tutor at Oriel that the collection of poems beojan to grow, but it was the time of his curacies in Gloucestershire and Hampshire which was most prolific. This was a period when his feelings were deeply stirred, both by his mother's death in 1823, and by that of his favourite sister in 1826. In 1825 a lonsf attachment on which he had set his heart ended in a refusal, and some of the sweetest efforts after resignation in the poems date from this year; and it was, too, a period which supplied him with the tran- quillity which transfuses emotion into poetry. He had 1 Cf. The Holy Innocents; Sixth Sunday after Einphany ; Monday hefoi'e Easter. 54 JOHN KEBLE. no idea of publication; he would have preferred that the poems should appear after his death, but they were shown among his friends. Arnold wrote as early as 1823, "It is my firm opinion that nothing equal to them exists in our language ; the wonderful knowledge of Scripture, the purity of heart, and the richness of poetry, wnich they exhibit, I never saw paralleled." Froude was more critical, thinking that they were addressed too much to matter-of-fact good people, and that they did not do enough to sober down into practical piety those whose feelings were acute, and who were inclined to indulge in a dreamy, visionary existence. He was afraid that people would take the writer of them for a Methodist.^ Dyson pressed him to publish ; Davison suggested that he should add the poems for the Occasional Services; his own father was anxious to see the work published before his death, and this was a pressure which he could never resist. Accordingly many poems were retouched to meet the criticism of obscurity, the last poems were written in the spring of 1827, and on May 30th the Preface was composed. The draft of this, which is preserved in the Library of Keble College, is written, like so many of his poems, on the back of an old letter, and consists of two paragraphs. In the first copy the paragraph which now stands second came first, but on writing it out he seems to have thought it better to state first the true spirit of the Church of England, and then the way in which this book attempted to conform to it. The whole object of it was to promote a sober standard of feeling in matters of practical religion and to illustrate the soothing tendency of the Prayer-book. It may be interesting to notice ^ Remains, i., p. 184. THE CHFd;STIAN YEAR. 55 two chancres which were made at the last moment. In the MS. of the Morning Hymn there is found after the fourth stanza a fifth which has not been published — " Hence the poor sinner still has found Life but one dull unvarying round ; And mourned ere half his course was run, That nought is new beneath the sun." This appears in the proof of the first edition, but it must have been struck out at the last moment, perhaps from a feelincj that the sad side of life had already been sufficiently dwelt on in a morning hymn which was to open the volume. Again, in the poem for Christmas Day, after stanza v. was inserted — "The heart imbued with earth Is but a place of guests, Where foul- winged thoughts of lowly birth Successive make their nests ; Each in his twilight gloom with cheerless moan, Fluttering a little while, and then for ever gone." It will be seen that this gives fresh point to the contrast in stanza vi. of the pure thoughts which dwell where Christ is ; but again the writer has not cared to emphasize the dark side of the picture. The volume was a success at once : Newman writes on June 10th, " Keble's hymns seem quite exquisite," His sister says, " The commendation of them from all the choicest people is so great as to satisfy even our voracious appetite for praise." A second edition was called for within the year, and edition has succeeded edition with almost unparalleled quickness ever since. Nowhere in the Preface is there any reference to himself, and the book (in two volumes of small 8vo.) was published anonymously ; nor did he add his name in subsequent editions. In the third edition in 1828 56 JOHN KEBLE. the last six poems were added, including the poem on November 5th, which was entitled, An Address to Converts from Popery. Beyond this no further altera- tions were made, save that on his deathbed he sanctioned the change in the thirteenth stanza of this poem. This had run — " come to our Communion Feast ! There, present in the heart, Not in the hands, the eternal Priest Will his true self impart." Probably he would not himself have written this line in later life, for he stated in 1845 that when he wrote the Christian Year he did not fully understand the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist, but he frequently refused to alter it. Froude had criticized it as early .IS 1835 (Eemains, i. p. 403); Dr. Pusey had discussed it with him in 1855, and he had then half playfully said, " I suppose that the real correction would be to put 'As' instead of 'Not';" but it seemed to him valuable as a protection against a notion of a gross carnal Presence {Euch. Ador. Pref. p. xiii, note, 1859) ; and he argued that on the analogy of such passages as " I will have mercy and not sacrifice," it might be legitimately interpreted as meaning "not in the hands only." ^ But on February 9th, 1866, Bisliop Jeune had quoted the lines in Convocation as express- ing Mr. Keble's opinion against a real objective Pre- sence ; and this weighed upon his mind so much that he decided to make the alteration which he had pre- viously suggested, and it was carried out after his death by his representative. 1 In one copy of the Original Poems he has written '' There, treasured in the heart." It seems a pity that this was not preserved. THE CHRISTIAN YEAR 57 He never liked to speak of the volume or hear it spoken of. Why was it that he shrunk from this ? The answer shall be given in the words of an old parish- ioner of Hursley, whose husband had been in Keble's service, and who said twenty-four years after his death, while her honest face glowed with pleasure as she spoke of him — "Father and I do read the Christian Year every Sunday, and it do bring him out to us more than we knew even when he was alive." It laid bare all his deepest feelings of love and penitence ; it had been written purely for his own relief, and it seemed to be wanting in due reserve to publish it. He had fre- quently treated poetry as well-nigh sacramental, as the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual truth ; and this seemed almost like exposing a Sacra- ment to be grazed at. There was too the humbler feelinfj that he had such a slight hold upon that inward and spiritual truth ; that he might have misrepresented it ; that as far as he had truly represented it, it had only flashed from time to time upon his sight, and that if people could only come and gaze into his heart, they might find it so very different from the ideal which he had tried to portray. This will appear even more clearly if we judge him by his own test. He has said that every true poet has some one permanent overmastering emotion which breaks out again and again and clamours for utterance. Would it not be true to say that with him it was " the love of innocence " t There is deep down in his heart the belief that man can answer to the love of God ; that sin is an outside element which need not be with us; tliat innocence is possible; that if it has been forfeited, still the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ can restore it. It is the passion for purity 58 JOHN KEBLK which made him so very gentle to children ; it is this which inspired the Lyra Innocentium ; it is " the innocent brightness of an infant's face " ^ which drew him to them, which made him bend over the children whom he baptized with such loving tenderness as they recalled the sense of what he might have been, and what Christ yet might make him ; it was " the bliss of childlike innocence'' that seemed to him to give such insigVit to the old acre of a true Christian : it was this which made him love the fifty- first Psalm so much, because it told of that free spirit blest "Who to the contrite can dispense The princely heart of innocence." ^ It was this which turned his thoughts so often to the type of purity, the Virgin Mother "so pure and sweet/' and prompted that which seems to have been the earliest poem of the volume, V " Bless'd are the pure in heart, For they shall see our God ; The secret of the Lord is theirs, Their soul is Christ's abode." But this was not simply a personal individual feeling. M. Renan has said of St. Paul that he felt for his churches the same affection whicli ordinarily people feel for the dearest objects of their love. That is true of Keble's feeling for the Church of England : he is jealous for her innocence, her good name, her purity, her freedom. As he had chosen for his favourite poets those whose overmastering emotion was for the glories of the past, so his own enthusiasm was kindled by the 1 The Holy Innocents, stanza iv. 2 liix,th Sunday after Trinity. THE CHRISTIAN YEAR 59 glories of the early Church, and the bright spots in her subsequent history. In his own words, '' the Christian Year always supposes the Church to be in a state of decay," and he cannot acquiesce in a Church so sluggish, so worldly, so utilitarian, because of the purity of his ideal. But he cannot despair : he recalls the student Jerome " cheering his sickening heart with his own native air," in the worst days of error ; the mailed monarch St. Louis, through court and camp holding liis heavenward course serene ; the calm and sweet of Isaac Walton's life amidst the asje of liizht, lioht without love ; ^ and all these memories are meant to awaken the slumbering, to inspire fresh hope, to lead the Church to be true to its tirst eager life of purity and truth. The whole volume is a dirge over the lost glory of the Church ; but it is much more than that ; it is a trumpet-call to Christians to be true to the life which is in them, even though they may have to face the martyr's death. Christian brothers must draw closer together to bear witness to the value of each soul and to knit firmly the bond of brotherhood. It seemed to him that it was the true function of poetry to rise above the marks of sin and woe and to recreate the ideal before men, and he rouses poets to their task in these stirring words — "Ye whose hearts are beating high With the pulse of Poesy, Heirs of more than royal race, Frain'd by Heaven's peculiar grace, God's own work to do on earth (If the word be not too bold), Giving virtue a new birth, And a life that ne'er throws old^ * First Sunday in Advent. 60 JOHN KEBLE. Sovereign masters of all hearts ! Know ye wlio hath set your parts ? He who gave you breath to sing, By whose strength ye sweep the string ; He hath chosen you, to lead His Hosannas here below ; — Mount, and claim your glorious meed ; Linger not with sin and woe." It was the thought of this ideal which saddened him so much that poets like Byron and Shelley — " Lips that might half heaven reveal " — should linger over passion and vice and be sealed in thankless silence towards God. Taking then this love of innocence as our keynote, we will examine the Christian Year rather more in detail. Some of its most beautiful poems are drawn forth by the love of Nature : there is little wealth of description; the voices of the mountain and of the sea are but little heard in it ; in the main he depicts the quiet woodland scenery of the neighbourhood of Fairford. In his own words about his poems — "their cherished haunt hath been By streamlet, violet bank, and orchard green. Mid lowly views and scenes of common earth." The soft green willow that teaches him " content- ment's power " grew on the road from Fairford to Coin St. Aldwyn. The spot where, near to each other, rise the Thames and a small tributary of the Severn, suggested the poem for the Monday in Easter week; a small island in the river Test that for the next day.^ Or again, he dwells on the features of the Holy Land as known to him from travellers' descriptions ; but in both alike he touches with a delicate accuracy the 1 Miss Yonge, Musings on the Christian Year, pp. 47, 129, 131. THE CHFJSTIAN YEAR. 61 characteristic feature and makes it live before our eyes. His poems have been compared to a woodland scene by Gainsborough for their freshness, their absence of exas^oreration, their indescribable charm. Sometimes he describes Nature for the sake of her own beauty ; he is the poet of the fresh sunrise, of the rainbow pride of summer days, but — how characteristically — more of the sunset's beauty and the glory of decaying autumn. As he watches it, a life seems to pervade the universe ; nay, it seems to throb to the stirrings of love. *' The clouds that wrap the setting sun When autumn's softest gleams are ending, Where all briglit hues together run In sweet confusion blending : — Why, as we watch their floating wreath Seem thej the breath of life to breathe ? To fancy's eye their motions prove They mantle round the sun for love. " When up some woodland dale we catch The many-twinkling smile of Ocean, Or with pleas'd ear bewildered watch His chime of restless motion ; Still as the surging waves retire They seem to gasp with strong desire ; Such sig-ns of love old Ocean gives, We cannot choose but think he lives." But it is seldom that Nature is described for her own sake : his mind hurries on to catch her lesson for man, and to draw out her influence upon him, to interpret "The secret lore of rural things. The moral of each fleeting cloud ami gale, The whispers from above that haunt the twilight vale." The joyous praise of Nature, as she does her work, " all true, all faultless, all in tune," as she pays her " tribute to the genial heaven," as. 62 JOHN KEBLE. " True to her trust, tree, herb, or reed, She renders for each scattered seed," is a t3^pe of true, innocent service ; as she passes away in quiet decay, losing her life though pure from sin and stain, yet all unmurmuring, she is a type of the good man sinking peacefully to his end. ** How quiet shows the woodland scene ! Each flower and tree, its duty done, Eeposing in decay serene, Like weary men when age is won. Such calm old age as conscience pure And self-commanding hearts ensure, Waiting their summons to the sky, Content to live, hut not afraid to die." More often a sad contrast is drawn ; Nature is ever '' reproving thankless man " ; her obedience stands over against his "rebel works and will " ; her gratitude against his "thankless joyless sight " ; her "trust entire and cease- less praise " against his sadness, whether it be that man only forgets God and yields nought in return for His lavish gifts, or whether it be that the sinner is borne down by the sense of remorse and penitence, and cannot rise to the true joyousness of forgiveness, but idly " dreams of blessings gone," " Or wakes the spectral forms of woe and crime, When Nature sings of joy and hope alone, Eeading her cheerful lesson in her own sweet time." But Nature is no cruel censor of man ; her lesion is cheerful ; her nurslings are companions gay in child- hood, soothing in the sorrows of older years ; she can even lend of her own stores of innocence to man, and will lend ungrudgingly. THE CHBISTIAN YEAR. 63 *' Ye dwell beside our paths and homes, Our paths of sin, our homes of sorrow, And guilty man, where'er he roams, Your innocent mirth may borrow. The birds of air before us fleet. They cannot brook our shame to meet — But we may taste your solace sweet, And come again to-morrow." ^ But there is a deeper truth still ; the Avhole of Nature is rich with symbolic meaning, and full of teaching about the things of God. " My book," said St. Antony, " is Nature, and it is always by me if I want to read the works of God." This is the very spirit of the three great poems on Nature in the Christian Year, those for Septuagesima Sunday, and for the Fourth Sunday after Trinity, and for the Fourth Sunday in Advent. It is brouo-ht out in losfical aro-ument in Tract No. 89, with which we shall deal later : here it is expressed in lyrical beauty. All Nature is the work of God's hand, laid out by him for man to read. It is, in a word, sacramental, it is an external, visible sign, through which we ought to read a spiritual truth; " The colouring may be of this earth, The lustre comes of heavenly birth." Even Pagan seers and poets had a faint consciousness of this deep meaning of earthly things, but for Christians all is made clear. Now that the earth has been made the scene of the Incarnation, " Henceforth, to eyes of high desire. The meanest things below, As with a seraph's rube of lire • Invested, burn and glow." ' ^ Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity. 64 JOHN KEBLE. 'y Christ's death and resurrection have given earth a newer meanmsf- " And the base "world, now Christ has died, Ennobled is and crlorified." So the eyes of his high desire are keen to trace these analogies : his Love to offer of her best. The sky is like the Maker's Love ; the sun is like the Light of the World ; the moon like the Church which reflects its rays ; the stars are the saints above ; the trees the saints below; the dew is the grace of heaven; the fire and the wind tell of the Spirit; the oleanders on the shores of the Lake of Gennesaret are like hermits watching around the sacred hill where the Saviour had prayed ; the Paschal moon is like a saint left alone with Christ ; the morning sun shining on each dew- brightened blade of grass, and giving it a new lustre, speaks of the value of each soul ; or again, as it scatters the darkness of the nioht and the mists of the morninsf and lights up the whole city with its glow, it is a symbol of the Gospel message reaching and kindling Mammon's gloomiest cells, and fills us with the certain hope that " No mist that man may raise shall hide the eye of Heaven." ^ Some of these illustrations may seem fanciful, but the analogy underlies all our Lord's teaching by parables, and if we do not take Nature as the adequate type of man with his free will, it must be true. But even in tracing the?e analogies the thought of sin breaks in; we may interpret these analogies wrongly ; w^e may be entirely deafened to their message ; w^e may only cast 1 In every summer night " Heaven is teaching earth to comfort man." Miscellaneous Poems, p. 242. o THE CHUISTIAN YE All 65 ■i wistful looks at the bright things in earth and sky ; but the fault lies with us, not with them, and not with Him who made them — ^ ^ k/ " Two worlds are onrs ; Hi^nly sin Forbids us to descry The mystic" heaven and earth within, ' Plain as the sea and sky.'' The passion for innocence is equally marked in the treatment of human life. Each soul is of infinite value in Christ's sight : each Christian has received special privileges, and cannot ever be as the heathen, ever be as though he had not received them. Hence the true attitude even of sinless human life is that of grateful dependence upon God, and while true to that, each human virtue is strong and beautiful. The son's and mother's love is of all the most sacred, because that was Christ's own ; the love of brother for brother lasts unimpaired although they part in life; a comrade's song bids the lonely watcher to be bold and strong; married life seems to have a glory above that of this earth — ^ " And there are souls which seem to dwell Above this earth — so rich a spell Floats round their steps, where'er they move, From hopes fulfilled and mutual love." Nowhere could we have a more exact description of all that makes the- Englishman's idea of a true home than in the lines — "Sweet is the smile of home ; the mutualiook J jR. When hearts are of ejjch other sure ; ^v ^^O^^'^^ Sweet all the joys that crowd the household nook, " The haunt of all affections pure." And though none need leave the world for cloistered cell, yet in a sense the " hermits blest and holy maids " 66 JOHX KEBLE. are the nearest heaven on earth ; for this earth has but shadows which we may not rest in ; no help save Him who made it is meet for the^soul, and all earthly love must be foregone at His dear call. Thus much would be true had man never sinned ; but, in fact, he is " a sinner in a life of care " ; even joy has its dangers, " There is an awe in mortal's joy, A deep mysterious fear." Praise is a peril to him ; his tears of penitence may be self-deceiving ; there must be discipline, self-denial, sobriety, reserve, " clean hands and a self-ruling mind." Each Christian has to learn " the lowly lesson of con- tent " ; his voice must take *' somewhat of Resignation's tone " ; he must be " Eeady to give thanks and live ^ l^ v ^"^ On the least that Heaven may give," \ S for " to be tranquil and be blest " is the path of safety, and the lesson of sweet peace is " rather to be resigned than blest." Those who live such lives, who spend with Christ their happy days, are sure to know Him by proof, and are able to tell of Him to their brethren, till they too see the Saviour plain. And yet we may not have any sense of assurance such as will let us for one moment relinquish effort or lose the sense of depend- ence. "The gray-haired saint may fail at last": nothing but death can bind us fast to the shore of love. This is a part of our probation, and the thought recurs again and again in the poems, as we shall find it later in the arguments about the Roman controversy. It is found in the most strong of all the outpourings of THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 67 personal affection for the Saviour, in one of his earliest poems — " Then, fainting soul, arise and sing, Mount, bat be sober on the wing ; Mount up, for heaven is won by prayer, Be sober, for thou art not there ; Till Death the weary spirit free, Thy God hath said, Tis good for thee To walk by faith and not by sight ; Take it on trust a little while ; Soon shalt thou read the mystery right In the full sunshine of His smile." It is found equally strong four years later— " There are who, darkling and alone. Would wish the weary night were gone, Though dawning morn should only shew The secret of their unknown woe : , Who pray for sharpest throbs of pain To ease them of doubt's galling chain : ' Only disperse the cloud,' they cry, ' And if our fate be death, give light and let us die/ " Unwise I deem them, Lord, unmeet To profit by Thy chastenings sweet, For Thou wouldst have us linger still Upon the verge of good ar ill, That on Thy guiding hand unseen Our undivided hearts may lean, And this our frail and foundering bark Glide in the narrow wake of Thy beloved ark." Sorrow and disappointment are treated as God's blessings in disguise, because they make us see that this is to be no world of rest for us. We may not wish them away, we can only pray for a thankful heart, and feel that we are never so safe as when "... . our will Yields undiscerned by all but God." But what of the sorrow of sin, of remorse, of the secret 68 JOHN KEBLE. memories of evil, which weigh us down ? That too is God smiHng on us in wrath : but we may not give way to melancholy; we may not nurse even thoughts of remorse : we must confess our sins ; but then we must look away from self to Christ's atoning work — ". . . . by the judge within Absolved, in thankful sacrifice to part For eA'er with thy sullen heart, Nor on remorseful thoughts to brood, and stain The glory of the Cross, forgiven and cheer'd in vain." Here, where he is speaking of each worshipper taking part in the Commination Service, the language is only of the judge within : elsewhere he speaks of the com- fort of human aid — " How sweet, in that dark hour, to fall On bosoms waiting to receive Our sighs, and gently whisper all ! They love us — will not God forgive ] " For through humanity man passes up to God. On the one hand he who fails in human love will be unable to -respond to the Divine — " The heart that scorn'd a father's care, How can it rise in filial prayer ? How an all-seeing Guardian bear ? Or how shall envious brethren own A Brother on th' eternal throne, Their Father's joy, their hope alone ? How shall Thy Spirit's gracious wile The sullen brow of gloom beguile, That frowns on sweet Affection's "Smile 1 " On the other hand, Christ's pastors have to teach "•' first filial love and then Divine " ; the love of human friends is an assurance that God, who loves us better than He knows, will forgive; for His love will not THE CUBIST I AN YEAR. 69 fail, even if father and mother forsake ; Christ will ever perform a brother's part. Principal Shairp has singled it out as one of the special characteristics of Keble that, combined with devout reverence for the Person of our Lord, there is in him, first perhaps of his contemporaries, a closer, more personal love to Him as a living Friend. Again, Dean Church has said that one result of Tractarianism was the increased care for the Gospels and study of them as compared with other parts of the Bible.i Is there any connection between these two facts, and is this another part of the debt which Tractarianism owes to Keble ? Certainly the Gospel scenes are dwelt on with loving- details ; certainly the Lord is ever present as the abiding Friend, as the Saviour. The doctrine of the Atonement is indeed dear to the writer ; it is only when " sprinkled with His atoning blood " that Christians can stand before their God; but (to adapt Dean Church's w^ords) the great Name stands no longer for an abstract symbol of doctrine, but for a living Master, who can teach as well as save.. He is the Friend who can abide with us from morn till eve ; He is dearer than father or mother, than brother or husband; caring for each of His follow^ers '' as if beside nor man nor angel lived in heaven or earth." What language could tell of trustful personal love more directly than this ? " My Saviour, can it ever be That I should gain by losing Thee ? The watchful mother tarries nigh Though sleep have closed her infant's eye, For should he wake and find her gone, She knows she could not bear his moan. Oxford Movement, p. 167. 70 JOHN KEBLE. But I am weaker tlian a child, And Thou art more than mother dear ; Without Thee heaven were but a wild : How can I live without Thee here 1 '' This personal love of God is ever round us; in Nature, in the Gospel, in the Church are His gifts and His appeals to man; and if man refuse to listen to this appeal, then the same love has "wrath that can relent no more." The voice that promised eternal bliss has also threatened eternal Avoe ; that warning may not be neglected ; God's truth and justice may not be sacri- ficed. If it were, " Where is then the stay of contrite hearts ? Of old they lean'd on Thy eternal word, But with the sinner's fear their hope departs, Fast link'd as Thy great Name to Thee, Lord." As we shall see throuo^hout his life, no false tender- ness can keep back the stern ?ide of the Gospel ; and though it is perhaps an accident, it is not an insignifi- cant accident that the last word of the completed volume is a word of fear — " And oh, when worn and tired they sigh With that more fearful war within. When Passion's storms are loud and high. And brooding o'er remembered sin The heart dies down — mightiest then, Come ever true, come ever near. And wake their slumbering love again, Spirit of God's most holy Fear ! " Yet with all its sternness, the one really descriptive epithet of the book is " soothing T Its object was to illustrate " the soothing tendency of the Prayer-book." " I woo the soothing art " was the writer's professed aim ; it speaks of the " soothing " power of Nature ; of THE CHBISTIAN YEAIL 71 the " soothing cliarm " of the Holy Communion service ; of the awful " soothing " calm which alights on mourners. " It was the most soothing, tranquillizing, subduing work of the clay ; if poems can be found to enliven in dejection, and to comfort in anxiety, to cool the over- sanguine, to refresh the weary, and to awe the worldly ; to instil resignation into the impatient and calmness into the fearful and agitated — they are these." ^ Its most permanent value lies in this power to soothe ; but perhaps at the time its power to stir was of even greater weight. In it will be found nearly all the truths and the tone which came to the front in Tractarianism. Dean Church has said that the Oxford Movement had two great sides, the one theological, the other resolutely practical. Theologically it forced an answer to the questions — " What is the Church ? Is it a reality, or a mode of speech ? On what grounds does it rest ? How may it be known ? Is it among us ? How is it to be discriminated from its rivals or counter- feits ? What is its essential constitution ? What does it teach ? What are its shortcomings ? Does it need reform ? " On the other hand, its ethical tendency was shown in its increased care for the Gospels and study of them ; and in the increased sense of the necessity of self-discipline. *"' Seriousness, reverence, the fear of insincere words and unsound professions, were essential in the character which alone it would tolerate in those who made common cause with it." Both these sides are characteristic of the Christian Year, written before the movement and confessedly contributing to it. The detailed questions about the Church are indeed absent ; its notes, its relation to ^ J. H. Newman : Essays, ii., p. 441. 72 JOHN KEBLE. other bodies — these were forced to the front in later days ; but every reader must have been brought face to face with the question of its reality and of its claims upon his own life ; he must have been di^awn closer to the Gospels, and braced to self-discipline and the pursuit of holiness. The poems awe and stir and soothe alike, because they are so real; they have so vivid a sense of the spiritual world, with all its terrors as well as its beauty and grace. He is the prophet of the fear of God no less than the poet of His love. For the success of the Christian lyrist it is " essential that what he sets before us must be true in substance, and in manner marked by a noble simplicity and confidence in that truth, by a sincere attachment to it and entire' familiarity with it." ^ That was his own ideal, and one who knew him well has said, " If there is one quality which more than any other may be said to mark his writings, it is their intense and absolute veracity. Never for a moment is the very truth sacrificed to effect. I will venture to say with confidence that there is not a sentiment to be found elevated or amplified beyond what he really felt, nor, I would add, even an epithet that goes beyond his actual and true thought. What he was in life and character, that he was transparently in every line he wrote — entirely, always, reverentially true." ^ The result upon others is best summed up in the words of Hurrell Froude : " Your poems are the best helps to conceiving that we really are the people for whom such great and wonderful things have been done," ^ and the secret of this in the words of Dr. Pusey : ^ Occasional Papers and Reviews^ p. 91. - Bp. Moberley : Preface to Miscellaneous Poems, p. xvii. ^ Remains, i., p. 210. THE CERISTIAN YEAB. 73 " It taught, because his own soul was moved so deeply ; the stream burst forth, because the heart which poured it out was full ; it was fresh, deep, tender, loving, because himself was such ; it disclosed to souls secrets which they knew not, but could not fail to own when known, because he was so true and thought aloud ; and conscience everywhere responded to the voice of conscience." ^ 1 Sermon at Keble College, 1876, p. 26. CHAPTER IV. THE STRUGGLE. 1833 — 1841. " What if to the trumpet's sound Voices few come answering round ? '*' Scarce a votary swell the burst When the anthem peals at first? God hath sown and He will reap. Growth is slow when roots are deep." J. K. : Lyra Apostolica, clxviii. We must turn back from poetry to the prose and struggle of life, or shall we say from Lyric Pastoral to Tragedy ? While Keble was thus working at his lectures, Fortune seemed to be turningf more and more ao^ainst the Church. The Reform Bill had flushed the demo- cratic spirit ; everything was to be brought under the control of the people and tested by a narrow, utilitarian standard. The Church could be no exception to this ; and as Convocation had been virtually suppressed, she had no voice by which to speak, and the State pro- ceeded to set her in order through a Parliament which was no longer essentially a Parliament of Churchmen. But " when the tale of bricks is doubled, Moses is at hand." The spirit of Churchmanship was rising in rebellion against this treatment in many quarters. In 1814, Bishop Jebb of Limerick had foretold such a THE STRUGGLE. 75 crisis, and the way in which it would be met. " Perhaps we may live to see our Dod wells and Hickeses and Colliers divested of the old peculiarities, shorn of some excrescences, and enlarged b}- a philosophic appre- hension of the Scripture. Perhaps, too, a little of persecution, or of somewhat resembling persecution, may be providentially permitted to train up men with an attachment to the Church as a hierarchy, as distinct from the State, and as dignified only by its intrinsic excellence, by its venerable antiquity, and by its apostolical institution." ^ In 1833, as the events drew nearer, an even more detailed prophecy is to be found in the strikinof words of one of the old-fashioned Hisfh Church leaders, Mr. Sikes, of Guilsborough. Noticing that the srreat want in the teachincj of the time was that no account was taken of the Holy Catholic Church, he foretold that the neglect of so important an article of the Faith must have its reprisals. " When it is brought forward it will swallow up the rest. . . . Our present confusion is chiefly owing to the want of it, and there will be yet more confusion attending its revival. The effects of it I even dread to contemplate, especially if it comes suddenly, and woe betide those, whoever they are, who shall in the course of Providence have to bring it forward. . . . They will be endlessly misunderstood and misinterpreted. There will be one great outcry of Popery from one end of the country to the other. It will be thrust upon minds unprepared and upon an uncatechized Church. Some will take it up as a beautiful theory unrealized ; others will be frightened and scandalized and reject it, and all will want a guidance which one hardly knows where they ^ Quoted in Perry : Student's E/ujliah Church Uistoiij,ui., -p. 180. 76 JOHN KEBLE. shall find. . . . How the doctrine may be first thrown forward we know not, but the powers of the world may any day turn their backs upon us, and this probably will lead to those effects I have described." ^ This is exactly what was happening ; the powers of the world were turning their backs upon the Cliurch ; but its champions were being prepared. In London an active body of Churchmen, with Joshua Watson as their centre, had done and were doing much to carry Church principles into active work. The National Society had been founded in 1811 ; the Christian Knowledge Society had been reorganized ; King's College had been founded in 1829 ; the bishoprics of Calcutta (1814), Jamaica, and Barbadoes (1824) had been founded and endowed by the State. At Cambridge, Hugh James Rose, " the most accomplished divine and teacher in the English Church," ^ was, as Christian Advocate in the University pulpit, and, after 1832, as editor of the British Magazine, bidding " us, when hearts were failing, stir up the gift that was in us, and betake ourselves to our own true mother." 2 But it is with Oxford that we are primarily con- cerned. There Oriel had become the centre of Church- manship. Newman had entirely emancipated himself from Whateley's influence, and had accepted Keble's principles. This had been Froude's doing, and he boasts of it as the one good work of his life, that he had brought Keble and Newman to understand each other; and 1 From a conversation with Rev. W. J. Copeland, preserved in Mr. Copeland's handwriting in his copy of Sikes' Parochml Com- munion, and printed in J. H. Newman's Letters and Correspond- ence, ii., Appendix, p. 483. . 2 R. W. Ghurcli, The Oxford Movement, p. 86. 2 J. H. N. : Dedication to Parochial Sermons, vol. iv. THE STRUGGLE. 77 Keble was the link between Newman and his Fairford and Bisley friends. In 1831 he had invited Newman to Fairford with the words, " I want some of your criticism, for somehow I can't get it out of my head that you are a real honest man " ; in 1832 he wrote : " My brother wants to see you, and I want you to see him." Isaac WiUiams, who had been curate to T. Keble at Bislev, was now curate to Newman at St. Mary's, and formed another link with tlie older Church- man. Dr. Pusey also was drawing closer to Newman and his friends, though he had not yet definitely com- mitted himself to them. In this group Newman was coming clearly to the front as leader in Oxford ; for since 1830 he had ceased to be tutor, and only held the Vicarage of St. Mary's, a post which gave him leisure for study, and made him known as a preacher ; one writer has even traced the start of the movement to his sermon on " Personal Influence the means of Pro- l^agating Truth," preached in 1882.^ Finally, his Mediterranean holidav with Froude in the winter of the same year enabled them both to stand by for a while, to look at the conditions of the struggle on which they were entering from the outside, to take its measure, and to prepare their weapons, while the recovery from his serious illness in Sicily seemed to Newman a Divine sanction to the inner conviction that he had a work to do for the Church. But Newman, as well as the others, still looked to Keble as " the true and primary author " of the move- ment;- he writes of himself that while lying on his sick-bed at Syracuse, " I began to think of all my 1 Thb Times : Obituary Notice, August 12, 1890. 2 Ap/yft." ^SCH. Agam., 1531-6. We liave seen tliat one of the objects, though but a subordinate object, of the movement, had been to resist the claims of the Roman Church. But the Hampden controversy in 183G had produced an apparent change. The stress laid upon the dogmatic character of Catholic truth, and the importance attached to Church authority, lent themselves to the charge, which the friends of Hampden knew well how to use, that the movement was really Romanizing, that its principles must end in secession. Nor was this a wholly unfounded suspicion. The appeal to antiquity, the doctrine of Apostolical succession, the sense of continuity, all were equally valid for Rome as lor England. The sense of this 104 JOHN KEBLE. came home with a strange shock and reversal of opinion to men who had been accustomed to think of the Pope as Antichrist; and when once this prejudice was shaken, the Roman Church, with its wide-spread organization, its developed life of self-sacrifice in brotherhoods and sisterhoods, its elaborate system of dogma and of canon law, offered a more attractive picture to the imagination than an insular provincial Church, struggling to preserve a Catiiolic creed in the spirit of compromise, and obscuring its witness for self- sacrifice in what was too often an atmosphere of self- satisfied worldliness. Were there, then, no counter- balancing facts ? or, if not, was the Church of England to surrender its position ? To this problem Newman addressed himself in his lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, in 1837. Discarding, as indeed Keble had done as early as 1824, the theory which identified the Pope with Antichrist, he urged that we are bouii i to recognize heartily all that is good in Rome, that both Rome and England are branches of the Catholic Church, that Rome has preserved sides of truth which we have lost, and bears more clearly the note of Catholicity ; but that on the other hand it bears less clearly than we the note of Apostolicity ; its witness to the Truth is less clear, less true to Tradition ; its doctrine of Infallibility is not borne out by history, and it claims for the human mind a greater certainty than man has a right to claim. But the suspicions were not allayed. In 1838, the Bishop of Oxford, in a Charge which was not unsympa- thetic, yet spoke cautiously and warningiy of the movement; there was "a cloud from Cuddesdon," but a cloud that soon blew over. Newman's first inclina- THE STRUGGLE. 105 tion had been to cease the Tracts, but Keble was stroDgly for contiiiuiug them. *' No one has encouraged me but you," Newman writes to him. But the more conservative Bisley group of Tractarians had taken fright at a proposal to translate the Breviary for the use of English Churchmen ; and again Keble was the mediating and soothing influence. Yet, " unpleasant tendencies to sjolit were developing themselves on all sides'';^ for there Avas a new factor in the problem, a contingent of allies who were destined to have a great influence on the issue of the campaign. The excite- ment of battle, the deep spiritual appeal of Newman's sermons, the intellectual subtlety of his lectures, drew round him a band of young Oxford men, full of enthusi- asm, ready for self-sacrifice, but untrained in any historic sense of Churchmanship, and therefore liable to be carried away by the conception of an ideal Church presented for the first time to their minds. The leader of these was W. G. Ward, a man of strong logical power, with a passion for dialectic, with a long- ing for personal sanctity, who had been converted from a follower of Arnold to that of Newman, but one who had no knowledge of history, no real care for it, and little consideration for the feelings of others ; one who in some ways was the Hurrell Froude of the later part of the movement, but Hurrell Froude such as he was untamed and unsoftened by the influence of Keble. Such were the " tendencies to split developing them- selves on all sides" at the beginning of 1839, nor did they grow^ less during that year. The publication of Froude's Remains, with his outspoken language in 1 J. H. N. : Lt'ttera, ii,, p. 272. 1 106 JOHN KEBLE. condemnation of tlie Reformers, and his praise of many points in the Roman system, unbalanced by the quali- fications which his love of truth would have supplied had he been reviewing the whole question, or had he been writing in the face of the circumstances of the time, tended to widen the split and to increase the violence of the Romanizing party : '' It delighted me more than any book of the kind I ever read," wrote Ward to Dr. Pusey.i The counter-move of the Oxford residents to erect the Martyrs' Memorial drove the cleavage further. Newman would not subscribe to it ; Keble would have preferred some memorial of the Reformation without mention of the Reformers, and was unwilling to express a public dissent from Froude in his opinions of the Reformers as a party; Pusey was willing to recognize that we owe to the Reformers our position of adherents to Catholic antiquity; but all three ultimately refused to subscribe. In the course of the same year Newman himself received the first shocks to his own allegiance to Anglicanism : in the study of the Monophysite heresy, a suspicion crossed his mind that the position of the Anglican Church was similar to that of the Monophy- sites ; in the study of the Donatist heresy the principle on which St. Augustine decided against them, " securus judicat orbis Terrarum," seemed to favour Rome rather than England. But Newman's doubts were known to few ; indeed they seemed to pass from his own mind ; he wrote in the British Critic of January, 1840, an article on the Catholicity of the English Church, still upholding the theory that both Churches were true branches of the Catholic Church, and should be neutral ^ W. G. Ward and the Oxford Mucement, p. 84. THE STRUGGLE. 107 ill their judgments of each other. He was, however, very apprehensive of lapses on the part of the younger writers, who urged that while both Churches were Catholic, the Roman was the nearer to the ideal, that it had retained the most valuable truths, and that English Churchmen were at liberty to revive and restore everything in doctrine and practice which they found there. The tone of their articles in the British Critic was already giving offence to Keble, who was fearful lest people "should speak in a light, lawless tone of the Church of Engjland and her authorities in their orreater veneration for the Church of the Fathers." The position of Newman was intensely difficult. He craved for quiet and time for thought. He resigned his editorship of the British Critic to his brother-in- law, T. Mozley; he prepared to leave his rooms in Oriel and live entirely at Littlemore; he even consulted Keble on the duty of resigning the Vicarage of St. Mary's. He urged that he did not really influence those who were his hond fide parishioners, that on the other hand he did influence the undergraduates, for whom he was not responsible, in a way which the Heads of Houses resented, and again that he found that he excited sympathies in favour of Rome stronger than the arofuments which he used agjainst it. Keble replied shortly on the first two points, that we may not measure our influence by what we see, and that the Heads of Houses had no authority over the Vicar of St. Mary's ; on the third point he was more explicit : he did not see how the resignation of St. Mary's would mend matters as long as he continued exercising influence by his writing. No doubt the Tractarian position lent itself to such risks, but his presence in 108 JOHN KEBLE. Oxford helped to minimize the risk ; no one had yet joined the Church of Rome, and his retirement might cause equal scandal and distress. His advice was, theD, clearly against retirement, unless Newman could see some way to obviate the scandals which might ensue. Newman followed this advice and remained, but the pressure from the Romanizing party was still upon him; and early in 1841 he wrote Tract 00, with the object of showing that the Articles had been composed as articles of peace between the two opposing parties at the time of the Reformation, that they could not have been intended to contradict the teaching of the Council of Trent, which w^as formulated after the Articles, but were only aimed at the current popular Romanism, and consequently that they were capable of a Catholic in- terpretation, for they were intended to keep the Catholic party in the Church : " Though the offspring of an un- catholic age, they are, through God's good providence, to say the least, not uncatholic, and may be subscribed by those who aim at being Catholic in heart and doctrine." This w^as proved by a careful and legal examination of their language. The Tract before publi- cation was sent to Keble, wdio read it through with his curate and strongly recommended its publication. The tone of it, in its desire to keep men loyal to the Church in England and yet to recognize thoroughly that Church's shortcomings, the call to repentance and con- fession and jDrayer for unity, and meanwhile the ex- hortation to submit to imperfections as a punishment, to go on teaching, if only " with the stammering lips of ambiguous formularies and inconsistent precedents and principles partially developed" — these exactly fell THE STRUGGLE. 109 in with Keble's own patient humility, and, in fact, the Tract did not in its position advance an inch beyond the orround which he had taken in common with New- man in the Preface to Fronde's Remains. But the atmosphere was more charged now with elements of disturbance. Everywhere were feelings of distrust, doubt, panic; and panic begat injustice. On February 27th the Tract was published, but, like all the other Tracts except Dr. Pusey's, published anonymously. On March 8th, four tutors, alarmed at the tendency of it, printed a joint memorial to New- man, as editor of the series, asking that the name of the writer should be revealed. Newsman beoan at once to prepare a defence of the Tract, showing how the tutors had misunderstood him ; but, meanwhile, the Hebdomadal Board, though no appeal had been made to them, took cognizance of the matter. On March 10th the Vice-Ghancellor laid the Tract before the Board; on the 12th it was decided to condemn it, and a Committee was appointed to draw up the resolution. In vain Newman wrote, pleading for delay till his answer to the four tutors should be printed ; in vain Dr. Pusey wrote privately to the Vice- Chancellor to bear witness to the loyalty of the writer of the Tract, and to his desire to keep back anxious minds from Rome by writing it ; in vain Keble wrote, taking upon himself the responsibility for the publi- cation. On the 15th a resolution was passed by the Board, which repudiated the whole series of Tracts as being in no way sanctioned by the University itself, and passed judgment on this particular Tract on the ground that the modes of interpretation suggested in it, evading rather than explaiuing the sense of the no JOHX KEBLE. Thirty-nine Articles, and reconciling subscription to tliem with the adoption of errors which they were designed to counteract, defeat the object and are in- consistent with the due observance of the statutes which require subscription to the Articles. On the 16th Newsman's answer w^as published ; this was still anonymous, but on the publication of the decision of the Board he wrote to the Vice-Chancellor to acknow- ledge the authorship, and to take the sole responsibility upon himself. The injustice of the decision, and the touching, humility with which Newman received it, drew Churchmen closer together; the more conservative element of the party rallied round him ; the extremer party, through the mouth of Ward, were equally enthu- siastic, but damaged his cause by pressing the argument further than Tract 90 had done, and claiminof the rigfht to hold all Roman doctrines. A shower of pamphlets follow^ed ; but it is only with one that we need concern ourselves. On April 2nd Keble addressed a letter to Judge Coleridge, pointing out the dangers involved in the course proposed by the Board — a letter which w^as privately circulated at the time, and not published till 1865. In it he pleaded for patient reflection and enquiry before any irretrievable step was taken ; for the danger w^as that a liberty of interpretation wliich had always been allowed in the Church should now be barred. A resolution of the Board was not authori- tative ; but it would be a serious matter if the whole Convocation of the University were to condemn authoritatively such an interpretation ; it W'Ould be difficult for any tutor who believed the interpretation to be true to hold his office ; nay, it ^vould be a question whether Masters of Arts who had subscribed the Articles THE STRUGGLE. Ill when this interpretation was left open, could remain members of the University. Such an act of Convo- cation would really be the adoption of a new test. The matter was even more serious if applied to clerical subscription; if the Catholic interpretation of the Articles was barred, what were the clergy who believe it to do ? It was true that only a Synodical act of the whole Church could make such a change, and such a Synod was not likely to meet ; yet if all the bishops, or a majority of them, w^re to pronounce separately against the interpretation, if even one's own bishop were officially to denounce it, the duty of the consistent Churchman w^ould be very difficult ; he must either continue his work under protest from his bishop to the Metropolitan or to a Synod, or he must retire into another diocese or into lay communion. " Farther than it, w^e could not even appear to separate from that which we believe to be the manifestation of the Holy Catholic Church in our country. We could not be driven into schism against our will. We could only wait patiently at the Church door, v/ishing and praying that our bonds might be taken off, and pleading our cause as we best might from reason and Scripture and Church precedents." The letter ended with an appeal to those who did not sympathize with him, not to force on extreme measui'es which would weaken the Church's position as against Rome, which would drive many from taking Holy Orders, and be the cause of schism and controversy. The extracts quoted above show how much Keble feared the possibility of some secessions to Rome, and tried to meet the danger, even as Newman's words in Tract 90, " Every change in religion carries with it its own condemnation, which is not attended by deep re- 112 JOHN KEBLE. pentance," betray the same fear, and a desire to secure that, at any rate, a change should not be made with a light heart. But, for the moment, the danger passed. When, on St. Andrew's Day, Keble, who was appointed to preach before the University, prepared a sermon against secession, Newman dissuaded him from preach- ing it ; he thought there was no one in Oxford in any immediate danger of such an act. Moreover, the Heads took no further steps 'against him. He was waiting quietly to see what would happen outside Oxford ; whether the bishops would acquiesce in or denounce the Catholic interpretation. The Church seemed to him on her trial. In the course of the 3^ear two things occurred, each of which seemed of bad omen. The Archbishop of Canter- bury agreed to a plan suggested by M. Bunsen, for appointing a Protestant Bishop at Jerusalem, to exer- cise jurisdiction over the German and English residents. To Newman this was naturally abhorrent, as it showed that the English Chui-ch was ready to ally itself in common action with Lutherans and Calvinists, and to admit them to communion without any renunciation of their errors. " The Archbishop is doing all he can to unchurch us," he wrote to his sister, and he liberated his own soul by a formal protest which he forwarded to the Bishop of Oxford. Keble had been doubtful of the wisdom of this protest ; it seemed to him rather want- ing in reverence towards those whom he censured, and the fact of a presbyter protesting against an act of his Metropolitan seemed to require some very commanding call of duty to justify it. The other matter touched Keble more closelv. In July the Bishop of Winchester refused to give Priest's THE STRUGGLE. 113 Orders to his curate, the Rev. Peter Young, on the ground of his statements about the Real Presence in the Eucharist, and in September spoke severely of Tract- arianism in his Charge. For the moment Keble was inclined to resign, or at least to challenge the Bishop to bring: the matter to a les^al issue ; but he was dissuaded by Pusey and Newman, and ultimately contented himself with a formal protest against the Bishop's action, addressed to his Metropolitan. The Archbishop's answer was kind, but rather vague and unsatisfactory, and it produced no result. Mr. Young remained in Deacon's Orders, a faithful, affectionate, trustworthy, and trusted curate at Hursley, till 1857, when he removed to the Exeter diocese, and was ordained for the Bishop of Exeter by the Bisho}) of Oxford at Cuddesdon. Meanwhile the anti-Tractarian party grew more aggressive, and there was a quick succession of sharp struesles. On "October 19, 1841, Keble delivered his last lecture as Professor of Poetry, and it became necessary to elect his successor. Isaac Williams was the most obvious candidate, and was at once proposed by his friends. But he was a Tractarian, the author of Tract 80 on " Reserve in communicating Religious Knowledge," and on that ground unacceptable to many. Mr. Garbett of Brasenose was entered as a rival candi- date. Owing, partly, to a kindly but ill-judged letter of Dr. Pusey's, the election was treated as a party ques- tion ; and on a comparison of promises it was found that Mr. Garbett could command 921, as compared with 632 given to Mr. Williams, and the latter withdrew. In June 1842 further ill-will was caused in con- nection with Dr. Hampden. An attempt made by his friends to rescind the censure passed upon him I 114 JOHN KEBLfi. in 1836 was rejected by 334 to 219; in the autumn of the same year Dr. Hampden himself attempted to crush out the Tractarian teachinsj bv makioo^ the theses which were WTitten by candidates for the B.D. degree into a test of orthodoxy. This was a new departure, and beyond the actual power allow^ed him by the statutes ; hence Mr. MacmuUen, w^hose degree Dr. Hampden refused, appealed against it, and when the Vice- Chancellor vetoed the degree, his veto was appealed against and ultimately overthrown. Keble, who felt the injustice of the treatment, w^as inclined to throw himself into the breach. "I suppose it would be a bravado," he wrote to Dr. Pusey, " if I came up and took my B.D. degree myself, and so got them to try it out in my case rather than his." In the next year the opponents essayed a higher flight. On May 24th Dr. Pusey preached a sermon before the Unis^ersity on "The H0I3' Eucharist a Comfort to the Penitent." This was delated to the Vice-Chan- cellor by Dr. Faussett; the Vice-Chancellor at once sent for the sermon, appointed six doctors, including Dr. Faussett, to examine it ; they, refusing a hearing to Dr. Pusey, passed their condemnation upon it as contrary to the doctrine of the Church of England, and the Vice-Chancellor suspended Dr. Pusey from preach- ing for the space of two years. A request, signed by sixty members of Convocation, that he would make known the grounds of the decision, and state what parts of the sermon were contrary to the teaching of the Church, was refused by the Vice-Chancellor. It was a Cadmean victory. The humility with which Dr. Pusey accepted the sentence won sympathy for his cause ; bo rcfu^jc4-to- hav^--iU4eg:ality-<>haMeBge4,— be^e s / , THE STRUGGLE. 115 ^fe silence w t th patiioncc , and on resuming his turn as preacher after the suspension, resumed the subject as though nothing had happened. And further, the effect of the conduct of the opponents was this. They had silenced the voices of the two people at Oxford who by the weioht of their character and of their learninsf could have controlled and guided the younger spirits. Pusey was suspended from preaching ; Newman, wincing under censure, had withdrawn from Oriel and was living in quiet and retirement at Littlemore, feeling that one condemned by the Hebdomadal Board had no right to take active part in academical politics. Meanwhile, the younger members of the movement were unchecked. In the pages of the British Critic^ Ward and Oakeley were pressing their views to extremes. The Articles were treated by them as essentially Puritan, and there- fore needing to be explained away in what Ward after- • wards called a " non-natural " sense ; the ideal notes of the Church were enumerated, and it was aro-ued that the o English Church not only failed to reach that ideal, but fell far short of the point reached by the Church of Rome : the Roman teaching was accepted as the right development of primitive truth. The failures of Rome, the positive excellences of England in teaching and in practice, were alike thrown into the background. Both Pusey and Keble were anxious about the tone of these articles, and Palmer wrote his Narratwe of Events connected luith the Tracts for the Times, in order to protest against this tendency to Romanism. The result was that the British Critic was discontinued, but Ward prepared an answer to Palmer, which apj^eared in June, 1844, entitled The Ideal of a Christian Church, reiterating and developing the superiority of the Roman 116 JOHN KEBLE. Church, and claimiu^ the rit/bt to hold the whole cycle of Roman doctrine. This, naturally enough, gave the signal for another great struggle in Oxford. The Hebdomadal Board took up the matter in the Michaelmas Term, and in December gave notice that in the Hilary Term they should propose to condemn Mr. Ward's book, and to deprive him of his degrees. Six passages were quoted in full, and were charged with being inconsistent with the Articles and with Mr. Ward's good faith in subscribing them. But the Board went further than the immediate danger, and proposed to guard against a recurrence of it by enacting that every one who subscribed the Articles henceforth should make a declaration that he did so in the sense in which they were both first published and were now im^Dosed by the University. The outcry against this third resolution was so great that it was withdrawn on January 23rd ; but yielding to a largely-signed petition, the Board substituted for it an equally unwise proposal, to pass upon Tract No. 90 the censure which they themselves had passed upon it when it first appeared. The outcry against this was as great as against their previous resolution; pamphlets were written, legal opinions circulated on both sides. On a cold, snowy day in February nearly 1200 members of Convocation came to vote. Feelinof had turned some- what in Ward's favour, but his speech was absolutely uncompromising and unconciliatory. The pro]305al to condemn the book was carried by 777 to 891 ; that to degrade the writer by 569 to 511 ; while the censure on Tract No. 90 was vetoed by the two Proctors, Mr. Guillemard and Mr. Church. An expression of thanks which was circulated by Mr. Charles Marriott and signed THE STRUGGLE. 117 by 543 members of Convocation, showed that the Proctors had rightly interpreted the feeUng of the University. Keble was in the minority on each vote. Early in the con- troversy, on January 16th, he had written from Hursley a short paper entitled, Heads of Consideration on the Case of Mr. Ward, " the most weighty of all the pro- tests on Mr. Ward's behalf." ^ He was not personally acquainted with Mr. Ward. He was repelled by his off-hand tone. He admits that he feels serious disagree- ment with some of his principles ; but he was attracted by his thoroughness and earnestness. He felt grateful for much that Mr. Ward had written, and was especially fired by the injustice which meted out to Romanizing exairsferations a measure so different from that meted to ultra-Protestant or even Sabellian teaching. The two points on which he lays stress are the inexpe- diency and probable illegality of the act. It was inexpedient for a deliberative body, like Convocation, ever to perform a judicial act. It was specially inex- pedient in this case, because there was no necessity for it, as so few people agreed with Mr. Ward ; because there was no security for impartiality where it was notorious that more flagrant inconsistencies with the truth passed unpunished ; and because it impugned the good faith of Mr. Ward, whereas every one, who knew his character, knew that that at least was unti'ue. It was probably illegal because it was doubtful whether Con- vocation could degrade a Master of Arts except for offences for which this penalty was imposed by the statutes. When the degradation had passed, it is said that Keble refused, for a whole year, to wear his own 1 "Wilfrid Ward, in William George Ward and the Oxford Movement, 118 JOHN KEBLE. Master's hood, so keenly did he feel the unfakness of the judgment. Such was the drama being enacted before the world — a drama serious enough, though Ward, with his rollicking humour, with his comic songs, with the sudden surprise of his engagement to be married at the moment when he was upholding the celibacy of the priesthood, contrived to mystify the spectators, and make them think that it was a comedy which was being played. But behind the scenes it was a real tragedy which was being enacted. Newman had retired from his Oriel rooms, and settled at Littlemore in February, 1842 ; in his retirement there, the charges of the Bishops, repudiating the principles of Tract 90, seemed to him to show that the Church of England would refuse to accept her Catholic heritage. In February, 1843, he retracted the hard things which he had said about Rome; in* August of the same year, Lockhart, one of the inmates of his house at Littlemore, who had come there perplexed about the claims of the Roman Church, and who had promised to give three years to the consideration of the question, broke his promise and joined the Church of Rome before one year had elapsed. In September, Newman resigned the Vicarage at St. Mary's, this time with Keble's acquiescence. In 1845, the theory of development seemed to open a way to Newman by which he could explain honestly the divergences between Primitive and Roman doctrines. On October 6th he resigned his Fellowship at Oriel, and within two days was received into the Church of Rome. They were years of spiritual and physical tension, painful alike to the sufferer and to those who knew what was passing. The scene might be com- THE STRUGGLE. 119 pared to that of Prometheus chained to the rock ; and meanwhile, from time to time, there came from Hursley voices of sympathy, of encouragement, of hope, of delicate suggestion, of respectful tenderness for the mystery that was passing in the recesses of another's soul, like the utterances of a chorus, one in heart and in years with the Protagonist. Thus, in answer to Newman's request for advice about resigning St. Mary's, Keble writes, on May 14, 1843 — '' Believe me, my very dear Newman, that any thought of wilful insincerity in you can find no place in my mind. You have been and are in a most difficult position, and I seem to myself in some degree able to enter into your difficulties; and although one sees of course how an enemy might misrepresent your continuing in the English Priesthood with such an impression on your mind, I have no thought but of love and esteem and regard and gratitude for you in this as in everything in this way. But I can only just say what I feel, perfectly unequal as I know myself on every account to give you advice on this awful matter. My feeling is that your withdrawing from the English Ministry under the present circumstances will be a very perilous step, not so much in itself, but because of its bringing you, as I fear it would, in every respect nearer what I must call the temptation of going over. (2) That this latter would indeed be a grievous event, considerinGf that for what is wroncr without our fiiult in the place where God's providence has set us we are not ourselves answerable, but we are for what may be wrong in the position we choose for ourselves. (3) That this difference in point of responsibility ought in a matter 120 JOHN KEBLE. of practice to outweigh the difference you feel on the other side in the evidence for the claims of Rome and against her additions to the Creed, and especially as (4) you seem to ground jonr impression chiefly on points of historical evidence ; you speak of it as a ' hideous dream ' from which you would gladly awake ; it does not overpower you with a sort of intrinsical lustre, as many Divine truths I suppose might. (5) You speak_ in one part of your letter of our Church shoNving no sign of repentance, no yearning after Catholicity ; but is not the time too short for any one to be acting on this impression ? Certainly there is a great yearning even after Rome in many parts of the Church, which seems to be accompanied with so much good that one hopes if it be right it will be allowed to gain strength. But from Bishops one could hardly look at present for more than toleration; and that I consider even myself to have from my Diocesan, much more you from yours. Are you sure that some of your feeling on this head is not owing to a natural reaction from having had too eager expectations at some time ? (6) I am not sure how far it is right to talk of consequences, but I suppose, as far as we can judge of them, that no one thing would tend more entirely to throw us back and undo what little good may have been done of late. As to the question itself, I am really too ignorant of the parts of history to which you refer to say a word ; but can it be that the evidence seems so overpowering as to amount to moral certainty ? and if not, ought not but a small probability on the other side to weigh against it practically ? " You see my deep feeling about your withdrawing from your ministerial place refers almost wholly to what THE STRUGGLE. 121 I fear might come after ; if I were secure against such consequeuces, I cannot say that I should think it wrong, great as the alarm would perhaps be for a time, and the loss too in many respects. " One thing occurs to me. Do you not think it possible that you may have over-estimated the claims of Rome in your later studies from a kind of feeling that your earlier expressions had done her wrong ? and now that you have retracted them, would it not be well to examine the matter over again, free as you would be from that particular bias ? "And now, my dearest Newman, I have one most earnest request to make of you : that you will not in the smallest degree depend on my advice or opinion in this matter, for you do not, you cannot [luords struck out] to advise with about it, in every res'pcct but true love (I believe) towards you. It frightens me to think how rashly, and with how small preparation, I have been dealing with these great matters, and I have all manner of imagin- ations as to how my defects may have helped to unsettle people, and in particular to hinder you from finding peace. Yet do not suppose I would stop you from writing to me if it is the least relief to you to do so. On the contrary, not to hear from you would be a sad loss. All I want is that you should put no sort of implicit faith in me, but take up with what I say when you see anything in it that is reasonable and right, not otherwise. " I still cling to the hope you taught me to entertain, that in the present distress, where the Succession and the Creeds are, there is the Covenant, even without visible inter-Communion. " God forgive and bless us, and choose our burthen 122 JOHN KEBLE. for us, and help us to bear it ; and if it be His will, may wg two never be divided in communion. " Ever your most grateful and affectionate "J. Keble." Again, on July 29tli — " You may well believe that I have been full of thoughts about you, the more in one sense that I feel so utterly helpless and unable to think of any- thing which I can suggest as good for a person tried as you are, except what I am sure you have thought of long ago. Thus sometimes I think it would be good for you to withdraw as much as possible for a wdiile from theological study and correspondence, and be as entirely taken up with parochial concerns ; but then I am met with the recollection that you expect so soon to be separated from poor Littlemore. Again, I think unre- served confidence in some really worthy confessor might be a great help to you at times — I mean the sort of submission which would make jon put by a subject if he bid you, without his assigning any reason. And I suppose it may be well for one to watch and pray, especially against the temptation of always being on the move, which I suppose is the portion of some minds." On Jan. 22, 1844, he writes— " These are some of my impressions. First, I feel more strongly with every month's, week's, day's experience the danger of tempting God, and the deep responsibility I should have to bear were I to forsake this Communion ; and yet with the same lapse of time one seems to feel more and more the truth and beauty and majesty of so much which they have and we seem at least to have not. Secondly, one is at times very very strongly THE STRUGGLE. 123 impressed with the thought of the Evil One, how surely he would endeavour to ruin the good work, supposing it begun, in the English Church, by laying hold of any undiscerned weakness or ill-tendency in the agents to entice or drive them out of it ; such tendencies one can imagine in your case — among the rest a certain restlessness, a longing after something more, some- thing analogous to a very exquisite ear in music which would keep you, I should think in spite of yourself, intellectually and morally dissatisfied wherever you were. If you were in a convent, you would be forced to subdue it and as it were swallow it down; may it not perhaps be your calling now to do the same, though under no such definite rule, for others' sake as well as your own ? ^lay it not be your duty, according to your own line of argument just made public, to suppress your misgivings — nay, what seem your intellectual con- victions, as you would any other bad thought, making up your mind that the conclusion is undutiful, and therefore there must be some delusion in the premises ? Another thought one has is of the utter confusion and perplexity, the astounding prostration of heart and mind into which so many would be thrown, were their guide and comforter to forsake them all at once, in the very act, as it would seem to them, of giving them directions which they most needed. I really suppose that it would be to tJiousands quite an indescribable shock, a trial almost too hard to be borne, making them sceptical about everything and everybody. Surely, when it is a person's duty (as St. Paul's) to take such a step as that, the tokens from above will be such (one naturally expects) as no one could mistake; and may we not piously believe that when it is the will of Divine 124 JOHN KEBLE. Providence that such persons as Pusey, for example, should leave their present Communion, something equivalent to that voice will occur, such as an unequi- vocal act of heresy on the part of our Church, leaving no doubt on the mind, and that till such tokens are given, it is His will men should stay where they are ? I am running on, I fear, not very wisely ; and I wish I may not be distressing you, but if I could express myself better, I believe I really mean what I have learned from yourself. * * * ♦ • * * *'I am writing in great ignorance, and very likely quite beside the mark ; if I pain or disturb you, forgive me. Somehow or other I was almost forced to write. You know I see you looking at me day after day, and I must speak to you now and then, and when I speak, I must say what is in my mind. May it do no harm, if it does no good. I am sure my account is heavy enough without that." This extract from a letter of March 3rd is interesting — "My grand swallow of pain on the subject was perhaps three-quarters of a year ago, when I received a long letter of yours, and retired into a dirty old chalk- l^it to read it. I cannot tell you with what sort of fancy I look at the place now." In June, he was pained by the publication of Arnold's Zife and Letters, and he writes — " You will readily understand what is the bitterest part of one's feelings in the whole matter, both in respect of Arnold and of your change, not that I mean to compare the two subjects in the least degree in point of distressfulness, but in both one has a sad depressing thought, that if one were or had been other than one THE STRUGGLE. 125 is, the anofuisli midit have been averted or mitigated. To think that you remember me continually is indeed a most consoling thought. May it always be so, and may I be more worthy of it." In November, 1S44, he sends him an extract from a letter of Sir J. T. Coleridge about the gratitude, vener- ation, and love which many in the English Church feel towards him, and adds — " Therefore, my dear Newman, do not in any case imagine that you have not hundreds, not to say thousands, sympathizing with you, and feeling indeed that they owe their very selves to you. I can only speak for 07ic of certain knowledge. Your sermons put me in the way, and your healing ministration helped me be3'ond measure. This is certain knowledge of mine, .... and wherever I go there is some one to whom you have been a channel of untold blessing. You must not be angry, for I feel as if I could not help saying it, and I am sure the very air of England all around you would say the same, if it could be made vocal. They have had unspeakable help from you, and it is now their turn to helj) you wath their prayers and good wishes, now that j^ou seem to be called for a while to be patient in comparative silence and inactivity." On February 20, 1845, he writes an affectionate birthday letter, recalling the bright associations of the day in which the first stone of Littlemore Church was laid. This is printed in Newman's Letters, and need not be repeated here ; but the following letter, which closes the correspondence, though already published, is too touching to be omitted. " October Srd, 1845. — I feel as if I had something to say to you, although I don't very well know what it M JOHN KEBLE. will be ; but Charlotte's illness having for the present at least abated, I find that I am better able than I have been for near a fortnight past to think and speak coherently of other things, and what can I think of so much as you, dear friend, and the ayo^via which awaits us with regard to you : except, indeed, when my thoughts travel on to Bisley to Tom's bedside ; for there, as well as here, everything almost seems to have been, perhaps to be, hanging by a thread. At such times one seems in a way to see deeper into realities, and I must own to you that the impression on my own mind of the reality of the things I have been brought up among, and of its being my own fault, not theirs, whereinsoever I am found wanting, this impression seems to deepen in me as Death draws nearer ; and I find it harder and harder to imagine that persons such as I have seen and beard of lately should be permitted to live and die deceiving themselves in such a point, as whether they are aliens to the grace of God's Sacraments or no. " October 11th, midnight. — I had written thus far about a week ago, and then left off for very weariness, and now that I am thinking of going on with my writing, T find that the thunderbolt has actually fallen upon us, and you have actually taken the step which we greatly feared. I will not j^lague you, then, Avith what I mio'ht otherwise have set down — somethinsr which passed directly relating to yourself in what fell from my dear wife on this day fortnight, when in perfect tranquillity and self-possession, having received the Holy Communion, she took leave of us all, expecting hourly to sink away. By God's great mercy she revived, and still continues among us, with MU STRUGGLE. l2t I trust increasing hopes of recovery ; but the words which she spoke were such that I must always think of them as of the last words of a saint. Some of tliem I had thought of rej^orting to you, but this at any rate is not the time. " Wilson has told me how kindly you have been remembering us in our troubles ; it was very kind, when you must have so much upon your own mind. Who knows how much good your prayers and those of other absent friends may have done us both hei-e and at Bisley ? for there too, as I dare say you know, has been a favourable change, and a more decided one, I imagine, than here — at least their doctor has told them they may make themselves comfortable, which is far beyond anything that has yet been said to us. But his recovery is very very slow. There too, as well as here, everything has fallen out so as to foster the delusion, if delusion it be, that we are not quite aliens, not living among unrealities. Yet you have no doubt the other way. It is very mysterious, very bewildering indeed ; but being so, one's duty seems clearly pointed out : to abide where one is, till some new call come upon one. If this were merely my own reason or feeling, I should mistrust it altogether, knowing, alas ! that I am far indeed from the person to whom guidance is promised, but when I see the faith of others, such as I know them to be, and so very near to me as God has set them, I am sure that it would be a kind of impiety but to dream of separating from them. " Besides the deep grief of losing you for a guide and helper, and scarce knowing which way to look (though I trust, thanks (in good part) to your kindness in many ways, I am not in so wretched a condition as I was), 128 JOHN KEBLE. you may guess what uncomfortable feelings haunt me, as if I, more than any one else, was answerable for whatever of distress and scandal may occur. I keep on thinking, 'if I Lad been different, perhaps N. w^ould have been guided to see thir.gs differently, and we might have been spared so many broken hearts and bewildered spirits.' To be sure, that cold hard way of going on, which I have mentioned to you before, stands my friend at such times and hinders me, I suppose, from being really distressed, but this is how I feel that I ought to feel, and [words struck otct] I tell you [words struck out] and how I wish you to help me. That w^ay of help, at any rate, is not forbidden you in respect of an}^ one of us. " My dearest Newman, you have been a kind and helpful friend to me in a w^ay in which scarce any one else could have been, and you are so mixed up in my mind wath old and dear and sacred thoughts, that I cannot well bear to part with you — most unworthy as I know myself to be, and yet I cannot go along with you. I must cling to the belief that we are not really parted — you have taught me so, and I scarce think 3^ou can unteach me — and having relieved my mind Avith this little word, I wdll only say, God bless you and reward you a thousandfold all your help in every way to me unw^orthy, and to so many others. May you have peace W'hen you are gone, and help us in some w^ay to get peace ; but somehow I scarce think it will be in the way of controversy. And so with somewhat of a feeling as if the Spring had been taken out of my year, " I am always your affectionate and grateful " J. Keble." CHAPTER VI. LYRA INNOCENTimi. " Or if perchance a sadden'd heart That once was gay and felt the .'spring, Cons slowly o'er its alter'd part, In sorrow and remorse to sing, Thy gracious care will send that w^ay Some spirit full of glee, yet taught To bear the sight of dull decay, And nurse it with all-pitying thought ; Cheerful as soaring lark, and mild As evening blackbird's full -toned lay. When the relenting sun has smiled Bright througli a w^hole December day. These are the tones to brace and cheer The lonely watcher of the fold, When nights are dark, and foemen near, When visions fade and hearts grow cold." The Christian Year. SS. Simon and Jude. The years between 1841 and 1846 were years of intense strain and weary waiting. Where were things tendincr ? Would the Church of Enoland refuse to .answer to the high call made upon her ? What would J. H. N. do ? If he went to Rome, ought .others to follow ? What would be his own duty ? Such ques^ itions were pressing ujion Ket.le's heart, ar\(^J the tcnsioa 130 JOHN KEBLE. once more found relief in verse. Once more, as in tlie early days in Gloucestershire, there is strong feeling and there is tranquillity. Once more Keble goes back to his ideal. Tlie vision of innocence and of holiness refreshes him again, and it is seen mirrored in the faces of young children. '' Those who christen children," he said, "have a right to love them." In the lines of the Christian Year, quoted above, he had described the comfort which the young could bring to the sad ; and he found tones to brace and cheer him in the simple village children of Hursley, and in the o^rowino^ families of Sir W. .Heathcote at the Park and of Dr. "Moberly, whose children spent the holidays in a farm-house in Hursley parish. As early as 1841 he edited The Child's Christian Year. This is essentially a book for children ; it had been compiled by Mrs. Yonge for the parish school at Otter- bourne, under Keble's supervision. Four only of the hymns have since been reprinted as his own.^ The object of the book, as described in the Preface, was **to bring ordinary parochial teaching into unison with the tone of the Prayer-book, and by consequence with that of the Ancient Universal Church; and for this purpose to raise and purify the standard by which the poor judge of religious teaching. Incidentally it is hoped that attention to this part of education may do much towards preparing another generation for something like a revival of Discipline — the only Church Reform which can really deserve the name. As things are at present, to speak of such a thing sounds almost like talk in a dream; yet if the w^ ell- disposed of our young people were trained up in the tone of the Ancient ^ Miscellaiveous Poems, pp. 103 — 109. LYBA INNOCENTIUM. 131 Church, were tauglit to sympathize with her and look to her for sympathy, the spirit of discipline, it would seem, could not fail to revive, and what are now mere forms would again take to themselves power." ^ This was written on November 6, 1841. During the following years his own poems on childish life grew apace ; and in 1845 an external circumstance decided him to publish them. He had made up his mind to restore the church at Hursley. Coleridge, Dyson, and Patteson advanced him money for this on the security of the copyright of the Christian Year ; but this was not sufficient, and the need of further funds led to the publication of the Lyra Innocentium, which appeared — but without the author's name — in the beginning of 1846. This is not, like the compilation of 1841, a book for children ; it does not profess to be ; according to its title it is a book '' on children ; their ways and privi- leges " ; and so it is a " mother's book " — " a sort of Christian Year for teachers and nurses." It is not so well known as the Christian Year, for it does not appeal to so wide a circle, and yet in two respects it may rank above it. First, there is more of lyrical freedom, more of metrical variety and of musical melody. The Song of the Manna Gatherers is more dramatic, and has perhaps more vigorous movement in it than any of his poems. The Offertory and Continual Services have ^ On a stray piece of paper still preserved in Keble's writing are found the following " principles in choosing and correcting hymns " — " (1) Always use * we ' instead of ' I,' or nearly always. (2) Insert as many touches of doctrine as may be. (3) Under every head have at least an ancient or archaic hymn." The paper is undated, and probably refers to a later date (1856), when he was helping Lord Nelson edit the Salisbury H>/mnal. 132 JOHN KEBLE. a charm, the one of bright joyousness, the other of quiet harmony, that are wonderfully in keeping with their subject. Again, there is more brightness, more inspiriting hopefulness about its tone. The tone of the ChristioM Year had been sadder ; it always assumed that the Church is in decay ; the poems of the Zyra Aioostolica had been more defiant against its foes ; whereas these are gladsome with the signs -of life and tokens of revival that are already to be seen in the Church. Jeremiah has given place to the stripling David, advancing hopefully and trustfully against Goliath. In 1826 he had written, " I hold it to be a selfish and dangerous sort of thing for people to be always turning their eyes inwards " : and perhaps it is not untrue to trace in the brighter and less subjective tone of the Lyra some result of the discipline which he had exercised over himself in this matter. In the poetic imagery there is the same loving — some- times over-strained — use of Holy Scripture. There is less of the mystical interpretation of Nature ; more, as is perhaps natural in dealing with children, of illus- trations from animal life, " The Lord lends His crecdures all, A tongue to preach His will," and the young in the nest, the hen gathering her brood under her wing, the redbreast carolling during Service, form some of the softest touches in the picture. The Christian Year stands to the Zyra Innocentium as Ps. xix. does to Ps. viii. In Ps. xix. the glory of the heavens, and the undefiled purity of the Law of the Lord giving wisdom unto the simple, leads up to the cry to be saved LYRA INNOCENTIUM. 133 from presumptuous sins. Such is the Christian Year. In Ps. viii. the glory of the heavens pales before the witness of little children, by whose means God stills the enemy, in whom man is seen crowned with glory and worship, and all dumb creatures are in subjection under his feet. Such is the Ljp^a Innoccntium. Innocence is the keynote of the whole ; the love of holiness is the emotion which has inspired it. The thankful harmony of Nature is lovingly described, and even the Christian Year has no more beautiful expres- sion of it than is to be found in Continual Services — " His spheres, recede they or advance, Before him in mysterious dance Keep tune and time ; nor e'er Fails from this lower world a wreath Of incense such as sweet flowers breathe And vernal breezes bear. Only man's frail, sin-wearied heart Bears, half in sadness, A wavering intermitted part In that high gladness." But the innocence of childhood and its winning ways are most prominent. No beauty in flower or gem can show half so fair as the charms of the new-baptized ; as in each dew-drop is mirrored some glory of heaven's great sun, so in each baptized child some ray of the Father's likeness. The tender, spotless child rehearsing his Creed has visions of spiritual truth which his elders lack ; his presence has more than angelic power to scare away thoughts of evil and of sadness — " A little child's soft, sleeping fjice The murderer's knife ere now hath stayed ; The adulterous eye, so foul and base, Is of a little child afraid." Babes have a sympathy with dumb animals, and 134 JOHN KEBLE. animals with them, which Eastern sages might explain as due to transmigration of souls, but which is part of the heritage of Eden ; their ready praise and willingness to give their toys away is a type of Christ's largess on the day of Pentecost ; their shyness is a germ of the true silent awe which all ought to feel in the Presence of God, and especially the pastor who has to work for Him. Their life is like that of the angels, in their white robes, in their ready prayer and praise, in their willingness to serve — " As angels wait in joy On saints, so on the old the duteous-liearted boy " (p. 250). And the angels catch up their prayers for home and parents, and expand them and interpret them before God as prayers for the Church and her Priests. Duteous — duteous-hearted — that is the special quality chosen for praise; but even child-life suggests notes of warning too. The mother as she looks on the child cannot but be anxious ; fear's chastening angel must, for Love's sweet sake, dwell with the child. David too was a generous boy with open brow ; the mother of Judas must have looked on him with joy and hope ; as the mother's prophet eye reads even in their sports her child's future life and character, it must be in " hope and agony " that she prays ; for that life may be soiled by violent passion or by sullen moroseness, by neglect of childhood's simple courtesies, by irreverence, by " the blight of thankless eye," by " the quick untrem- bling gaze," by the love of praise making the child rest in earthly things ; too great display may be as fatal to the child's future as Hezekiah's display of his treasures to the ambassadors of Babylon — LYRA INNOCENTIUM. 135 " For busy hands and an admiring ken Have blighted ere its time full many a rose." The child has had the sign of the Cross put upon it ; therefore it must be ready for suffering, ready to find its life thenceforward by daily dying. This child-life is often used to point the contrast with the grown-up man ; his own sense of sinfulness breaks in upon the scene, and seems so black against its whiteness — " Jesus in His babes abiding, Shames our cold ungentle ways : " and yet more often He comes in His children not to judge but to give life ; with a hope and a suggestion of what even the sinner may be. The white apparel of the baptized child and the joyous white of the bride find their counterpart in the white robe of the penitent. There is still the same deep sense of sin and of un- worthiness, but there is perhaps a yet stronger hold on the reality of absolution, a more lively hope that " the withered bough may blush with fi'uitage still " — *' fear, joy to think ! and what if yet In some far moment of eternity, ^Jl\.c i/CTt nNKdsMi^ of evil I may quite forget, And with the pure in heart my portion be ! " Others have coine to him by this time for guidance in the hour of remorse and of perplexity ; he has trusted that God will use even his unworthiness, and has found his trust true, and the witness of the reality of forgiveness in them has deepened it for himself. The sorrows of the time have drawn him out of himself and made him clin^x close to the Church, like a child clinsf- ing closer to its mother's robe among strangers, when it 136 JOHN KEBLE. can only see " far-reaching ways unknown and wide." ^ But that touch has given him boldness, and made his step free and light. He has learnt her power to train her children, to minister to all the varied needs of life. The tenderness of bright joyous children for a sister just recovering from death, and the heartfelt prayer of the parents for the child, have brought closer home to him the sense of the love of God and of His Church for the penitent.^ Moreover he has learnt more of her doctrine ; " When I wrote the former book," he says to Sir J. T. Coleridge, *' I did not understand (to mention no more points) either the doctrine of Repentance or that of the Holy Eucharist as held e. g. by Bishop Ken ; nor that of Justification* and such points as those must surely make a great difference." ^ There is certainly greater definite- ness in this volume on several points. There is a stronger sense of " the living dead " ; " the pure and childlike dead," watching our lives and joining in our prayers. The saints have grown dearer to him, and he loves to trace in the baptized not only the signs of filial likeness to the Father which is in heaven, but of like- ness to its brothers the saints, whether they recall the penitence of St. Peter, the loving smile of the loved disciple, or the purity of Blessed Mary. Especially is the reverence towards the Blessed Virgin marked — her " Whom the awful blessing Lifted above all Adam's race." The orphaned child is taught to feel that not only her own mother is praying for her, but also "A holier mother rapt in more prevailing prayer." He had 1 See the touching poem entitled Separation. 2 Cf. Languor J " the tenderest of all the poems " (Miss Yonge). 3 Memoir d. 282. Cf. I. Williams, Autobiography ^ p. 117. lYBA INNOCENTIUM. 137 intended to prefix to the volume a poem written on December 8, 1844, and entitled Mother otU of • Siyld^ in which the Blessed Virgin is " called blessed " as the one only instrument of the Incarnation, as the type of the Church, as the pattern of all purity, and in which, though we may not adore her, we are urged to seek the love and fear "which bring thee with all saints, near and more near," and suppliants are invited to greet her with an " Ave," as " Children with ' good morrow ' come, To elders in some home," and in this spirit to invite the saints to join in our prayers. Such language goes indeed very little, if at all, beyond that of the Christian Year, but Coleridge, Dyson, and other friends dissuaded him from publishing it. The poem tells of doubt and perplexity, of the wonder of many whether Mother Church could really be found in the Church of England, yet it bears witness that he himself is convinced that God's signs are still around us ; there is no hint of disloyalty ; there is a sense that the Church places too low the honour she pays to the highest of God's creatures ; but he is content to wait, even as, while grieving over the disuse of Infant Communion in another poem, he was willing to wait and take such part as the Church — "she whose laws are sealed on high " — ordains. His feeling towards other Churches was at the time one of neutrality ; he would recognize each as separate parts of one great stream, destined to be united hereafter, but for a while flowing apart. This is illustrated in the poem called The Waterfall ; there the value of each separate Christian 1 Printed after his death in Mucellaiieous Foems, p. 254. 138 JOHN KEBLE. life is illustrated by the various streams that rush together from all sides to make up the glory of Lodore ; but he is clearly thinking more of Churches than of individuals as he draws the application — "E'en so the mighty sky-horn stream : — Its living waters from above All marr'd and broken seem. No union and no love. Yet in dim caves they haply blend, In dreams of mortals unespied ; One is their awful end, One their unfailing guide. And Christ hath lowly hearts, that rest Amid fallen Salem's rush and strife ; The pure peace-loving breast Even here can find her life. What though in harsh and angry note The broken flood chafe higli ? They muse On mists that lightly float, On heaven-descending dews, On virgin snows, the feeders pure Of the bright river's mountain springs, And still their prayers endure, And Hope sweet answer brings. If of the Living cloud they be Baptismal drops, and onward press Toward the Living Sea By deeds of holiness, Then to the Living Waters still (0 joy, with trembling !) ihey pertain, Join'd by some hidden rill, Low in earth's darkest vein." Baptism and the struggle for holiness arc to each LYRA mnOCENTIUM. i39 sufficient assurance that he belongs to the Church ; the signs of spiritual life around them are full of hope. So it has been throughout the book. The possibilities of true spiritual life in the English Church are hinted at by dwelling upon all that it does for children, by trying to picture something of what their pure vision sees in it ; the hope of the penitent is rekindled by recalling to him his childish innocence, and by pointing to the hope of re-winninof that. So it is that in the Preface which he substituted (on February 8, 1846), he prays that God may pardon his sin, and strengthen him that he may guide the perplexed along their path, " And with no faint or erring voice May to the wanderer whisper, ' Stay ' : God chooses for thee : seal His choice, Nor from thy Mother's shadow stray : For sure thy Holy Mother's shade Rests yet upon thine ancient home ; No voice from Heaven hath clearly said, ' Let us depart ' : then fear to roam. Pray that the prayer of Innocents On earth, of saints in heaven above, Guard, as of old, our lonely tents ; Till, as one faith is ours, in Love We own all Churches, and are own'd. Pray Him to save by chastenings keen The harps that hail His Bride enthron'd From wayward touch of hands unclean.'* A copy of the book was sent to Newman with the accompanying message — " I hope you will receive a little book along with this, which I have asked Copeland to forward to you. You will kindly take it as a pledge of (I hope) unabated love and gratitude and constant remembrance ; though confidence (sad to say) cannot be what it was. Tlcat 140 JOHN KEBLE. is a very bitter feeling, but it will do one good, if one can at all adequately perceive and feel that it is one's own fault. " May I say God bless you, very dearest friend ? — being always " Your affte. and grateful "J. Keble." CHAPTER VII. RECOVERY. 1846—1860. ''And now what time ye all may read through dimming tears his story, How discord on the music fell and darkness on the glory ; And how, when one by one sweet sounds and wandering lights departed, He wore no less a loving face because so broken-hearted, He shall be strong to sanctify the poet's high vocation. And bow the meekest Christian down in meeker adoration ; Nor ever shall he be in prai.^e by wise or good forsaken, Named softly, as the household name of one whom God hath taken." — Mrs. Browning : Cowper's G^-ave. " The place where the priests' feet stood firm." — Joshua iv. 3. It Avill have been noticed that in the letters to Newman there are erasures from time to time. These were made by Cardinal Newman, when he deposited the originals in the library of Keble College, and he prefixed to the correspondence of 1843 — 1846 the following note — "In the letters which follow I have made erasures, which may seem strange and arbitrary, unless I say something to account for them. " Let me observe, then, that dear John Keble's heart was too tender and his religious sense too keen, for him not to receive serious injury to his spirits and his 142 JOHX KEBLE. mental equilibrium by the long succession of trials in which his place in the Oxford movement involved him. '' The affair of No. 90, Williams's failure in his contest for the Poetry Professorship, the Jerusalem Bishoprick, Young's rejection when offering himself for Orders, Pusey's censure by the six Doctors, the promotion of Thirl wall and others, my own religious unsettlement and that of so many others, the charges and hostile attitude of the Bishops, the publication of Arnold's life and letters, and the prospect of the future opened upon him (not to dwell upon the serious illness of his wife and his brother), were too much for him, and threw him into a state of extreme depression, which showed itself to his intimate friends in the lanofuao^e of self- accusation and even of self-abhorrence. "This heartrending trial, of which perhaps I saw more than any one, is remarked upon by Sir John Coleridge in his Life of Kehle (p. 283, &c., ed. 1), though he has not attempted an}'- sufficient explanation of it. He seems to attribute what was a surprise to him to the intense self-disparagement which, however strange to the run of men, is natural to a mind so religious as Keble's. Others have supposed it was a point of duty with Keble thus to speak and write, as being a proper form of introducino: a relio^ious sentiment, or what was called in a Bishop's charge some forty years ago, a sort of ' mystic humility ' — an imputation most untrue to Keble's nature. It is more exact to sav that the idea had grown upon him and vividly possessed him, that he liad allowed himself for the last ten or twelve years to be engaged in deep religious questions, and in con- troversy rising out of them, without adequate prepara- RECOVERY. 143 tion. He had set off in the company or at the head of many others, on a road which he had not explored, and as he miolit think, he had been 'the bUnd leadingr the Wind.' And, in particular, he considered himself at least indirectly, if not positively, the cause of my own abandonment of the Church of Engrland. " This impression, however, unless he had been at the time so worried and broken in heart, as I have supposed, would not have been enouo'h in itself to account for the ohiter dicta, the ejaculations, the single words and half sentences, the languaoe, so shockino- to one who knew and loved him so well as I did, in which he expressed his sense of the difficulties of the moment and his own responsibility in relation to them. " To me nothing is more painful than the contrast between the cheerfulness and playfulness which runs through his early letters and the sadness of his later. This must remain anyhow ; it is founded on the succes- sive circumstances of his history; it is part of his life; nor could one expect it to be otherwise; but I could not be so cruel to that meek, patient, and affectionate soul, to that dearly, deepl}'' beloved friend, as to leave to a future generation the exhibition of those imaginary thoughts about himself which tormented him, which grew out of grave troubles, which were very real, and which are sufficiently recorded for posterity, when they serve, as in a notice like this, to suggest to a reader the weight of those troubles." It is only fair to the reader to print also a short memorandum added by Dean Church on the sight of the above note. " Nov. 10, 1879. — I was not sure, and I am not sure, about the accuracy of the impression which such 144 JOHN KEBLE. a notice might leave, as to Keble's own state of mind — whether it would not suggest the reflection, 'Poor Keble, he felt the earth reeling and opening round Lim — the foundations are cast down,' " Great as Keble's troubles were, I do not suppose that this was his permanent state of mind; nor does the notice say so ; it only speaks of the distress of the friend and the brother workman. But I wish, what is too much to expect, that the distinction had been acknow- ledored or remembered between Keble the broken- hearted friend, and Keble the priest of the English Church. Because about this, in all his griefs, he never lost his head or his faith; though if anything could have made him do so, it would have been the event of 1845 and the parting with Newman. " But it is a very natural account for N. to give ; and it is full of his matchless tenderness and considerateness and surprising affectionateness." It needs the combination of these two judgments to do justice to Keble's feelings at this crisis. On no one person did the blow fall with heavier weight. All his affection for Hurrell Froude had passed over to Newman when Froude was taken away ; to Newman he had given his heart and his generous sympathy to the last ; he had trusted him when his Bisley friends were distrustful; he had accepted his intellectual position and entered into his imaginative enthusiasm for all that was good in the Church of Rome, and could understand its attractiveness probably more than Dr. Pusey, and j^et he stood firm under the shock. The strongest link at the moment was formed by the evidence of true spiritual grace which he saw on what seemed to be the deathbed of his wife at Hursley, and RECOVERY. 145 of his brother at Bisley ; but this was but one instance of the reality of that spiritual life to which he had been accustomed from childhood. " Exery day" he wrote, " tilings arc happening, especially in our two sick-rooms, which make it more and more impossible for me to do as he has done." ^ The first result of the blow was to deepen the sense of humility and of repentance, both in him and in Dr. Pusey ; each accused himself of failures and sins which had caused the loss of their felluw- worker. Their first common act was to unite with the otlier Tractarians, who remained loyal, — and Newman was the only Tract writer who at any time joined the Church of Rome, — in preaching at the consecration of St. Saviour's, Leeds, a church which had just been built as an act of gratitude by "a peuitent," who wished to give expression to the revived Catholic doctrines in the midst of a busy town. Keble was himself unable to go, but he sent three sermons on God's judgaients and upon Hell, which were read by Dr. Pusey, save that in the last the tone of sternness about God's judg- ments was so awful that even Dr. Pusey could not read parts of it. From this time forward the two were drawn more closely together, and kept up an active correspondence with each other, in which each heartened the other in his moments of difficulty, and pleaded for the other's prayers that he himself might be truly contrite. But the second result was a strong, vigorous effort on the part of each on behalf of Church principles. The sense of the reality of spiritual life within the Church was the strongest link that held them loyal ; 1 Letter to Dyson, Oct. 12th (Coleridge, p. 308). 146 JOHN KEBLE. if they had not followed Newman, at any rate the world should see that it was not that self-sacrifice could exhibit itself less really in the English Church. Active life went forward without any break and developed itself in new ways ; the Church lengthened its cords and strengthened its stakes; in 1836 the first bishop had been appointed for Australia; in 1840 Bishop Blomfield had made his great appeal for an extension of the Colonial Episcopate, which resulted in the bishopric of New Zealand in 1841, of South Africa in 1847, and of many others. At home the deepening sense of sin caused the more frequent use of confession, and the desire for entire self-devotion in the relioious life led to the formation of sisterhoods at Devonport, at Wantage, and at Clewer, all within a few years of Newman's secession. In Oxford Charles Marriott was collectino^ funds for a new Church Collecje for men of humbler means, a scheme which failed only through his illness ; at Hursley the sign of reviving life was seen in the restoration of the parish church, which was opened in 1848. Thus, " things were hapiKning" not only at Hursley, but throughout the whole Church, which made it more and more impossible to leave her. But all this was not effected without struo^o-le and loss. The controversy around Tract 90 and Ward's Ideal had at any rate laid bare the weak spots in the life of the Church, and each had to be made good. There were still losses by secession in the course of this ; there were exasperating appointments to bishoprics; there were decisions of the Privy Council which seemed to threaten the very central doctrines of the faith. But gradually the ground became clearer, and Churchmen came to see how little the real being of the Church RECOVERY. 147 could be touched b}^ such a secular court as the Privy Council or even by the individual utterances of bishops, and step by step was gained in securing the free leo-islative action of the Church. It will be impossible to deal with all these cases, and we must select but a few to illustrate Keble's action. First it became necessary for the leaders who remained to reassure their followers, to re-examine and re-assert the grounds on which the claims of the Church of England were based. At fir.-^t, in their affection for Newman and their belief that God had some special work for him to do in reuniting the Church, they were content to acquiesce in a position of pure neutrality towards Rome ; but this became impossible to maintain as the converts took the offensive. In order to meet the mere logical appeal to the abstract principle of authority, " it was necessary further to realize the limits of pure logic, to distinguish theoretical and practical issues, and to feel in its fullness the close connection of all questions of authority with those of practical life." ^ A short paper suggesting subjects for mutual intercession, viz. the unity and peace of the Church, the conversion of sinners, the advancement and perseverance of the faithful, was circulated among friends by " J. K., E. B. P., and C. M." (Charles Marriott). Dr. Pusey threw all the weight of his learning into the controversy, and gradually built up the great defence of the Anglican position, of which the Eirenicon was the chief outcome. Keble's line was naturally different. He was quite clear about his position ; and when Dr. Pusey wrote in 1847 that there was a widespread rumour that " you are going to leave us," 1 T/te Guardian, July 20, 1892. 148 JOHN KEBLE. he answered, "I scarcely think it can do much harm; it is so utterly without ground. or foundation; however, I have authorized two persons to contradict it as publicly as they please." And there is no trace of any hesitation on his part. He did, no doubt, from time to time, face the possibility of resigning his Orders, or even of giving up communion with the Church ; but the position he contemplated was one similar to that of the Non-jurors. He never showed a desire to join the Church of Rome. But he was not a controversialist. Although he had expressed as early as 1836 an intention to write a course of Bampton Lectures on Komauism, yet he had never found time for it, and always felt that he did not know the controversy as a controversy. He, too, was at first inclined to neutrality; but as time went on, his exasperation at the underhand methods used by some of the later converts, and the unfairness of their attacks on Dr. Pusey, and the growing sense that separate conversions did not promote peace and unity, made him more strong in his insistence upon the errors of the Church of Bome. For the present his contribution to the cause was the publication of a volume of Sermons, Occasional and Academical. One of these — the sermon which he had prepared for St. Andrew's Day, 1841 — dealt directly with the question of loyalty to the English Church, but the argument of it was now expanded into a long and careful Preface, which is the fullest passage in his writings on the subject. In it he makes no attempt to deal with the controversy controversially : as always he protests against treating any question on mere intel- lectual grounds ; moral considerations must also be weighed. Hence he does not primaiily ask, What is RECOVERY. 149 true ? but, What is right to do ? He attempts calmly, and " without consternation and amazement," " to direct a simple man's practice." The method is that of Butler's Analogy. He will not allow the question to be settled by a pj'iori considerations of what the Church ought to be, without regard to historic facts ; but assuming that historic facts point to a divided Church and prove that the Church of Rome does not preserve all the notes of an ideal Cliurch, assuming further that the controversy is a doubtful one, on which there is much to be said on both sides, he asks, What is the safe course to pursue ? The safest course is that which satisfies our moral sense of what we owe to God as a Fatlier; in other words, it will be that course which is most likely to promote a spirit of acquiescence in His will, of intellectual modesty, of contrition, of generous recognition of holiness in others, and which is least likely to give offence to others. Such a course is supplied by remaining loyal to the English Church, for as she is less attractive to the imagination, loyalty to her will show a generous contentment, like the conduct of one who is not ashamed of lowly parentage. On the other hand secession implies a great act of private judgment, and the power of deciding a number of controverted questions; it would also minimize the sense of contrition for the past, because it minimizes the sense of privilege enjoyed, and would make us disparage the saints of the English Church, whereas we are free to reverence all saints of the Roman Communion ; finally it would cause pain to some and throw others into scepticism. He tries to show that such an argument would not apply equally to Dissenters and unbelievers, because 150 JOHN KEBLE. they disavow nothing on becoming Catholic Christians ; they only add to the substance of their faith and prac- tice ; and they have stronger and clearer evidence on which to act ; nor does it put the English Church in the position of the Donatists, for we do not anathematize other Christians, and the difference between us and Rome is of detail rather than of principle, and it will probably decrease. We do not deny any important doctrine, but, at the worst, only tolerate error through want of strong discipline. If it is uro^ed that the Roman Church can o-ive a clearer guidance, the answer is that guidance in all essentials was provided before the division of the Church, that the promise of guidance to individuals is always conditional, and that a reasonable hope is a more wise trainer of character than a perfect assurance. Our unity is that of a divided family, and therefore implies the duty of all the charity and tenderness which brothers would feel to each other ; but the English Churchman must remain loyally where he is, as the position is not one of his own choosing, whereas to change would be to take the management of his soul into his own hands. The Church of Christ in Ens^land is a true branch of the Catholic Church ; it retains the essential notes of a Church ; but it is hampered by want of discipline, by toleration of error, by low ideals of life ; hence it must be a Church in penitence, and a Church under appeal to an CEcumenical Council, whenever such can be summoned. Such an argument is in a ver}'^ minor key, and would not convince, though indeed it might solemnize and give pause to one who was keenly interested in the controversy ; but at any rate it makes the appeal to RECOVERY. 151 the whole nature of man ; and Keble might avcII answer that the question never arises whether a man should choose in the abstract between England and Rome, without reference to previous claims and obliga- tions upon him. Two storms followed in 1847 which both seemed at first to threaten shipwreck to the Church, but which she weathered safely. In November Dr. Hampden, who was still under University censure for heterodoxy, was nominated by Lord John Russell to the Bishopric of Hereford. Keble at once consulted Colerido-e ns to the legal course to be proposed by the opponents of the nomination. With the help of Dr. Pusey he drew up the articles of the charge against Dr. Hampden ; he used every influence he could command with the Dean and Chapter, and the Dean was induced to oppose the confirmation of the election in Bow Church; but his opposition was overruled, and the new Bishop was consecrated. Nothing was directly gained, but it had been clearly shown how the Church was fettered by the State in the choice of her own officers, and the primary result was the formation of Church Unions both in Bristol and in London to watch over the interests of the Church; their special aims being the increase of the Episcopate, the provision of some valid security against unfit appointments, the revival of the Church legislature, and the restor- ation of discipline. The ultimate result was the revival of Convocation in 1852. One extract from a letter written by Keble to Dr. Moberly on March 6, 1848, will illustrate bis ultimate feeling about the importance of the question. Dr. Moberly had consulted him on behalf of some one 152 JOHN KEBLE. who was perplexed by the consecration and inclined to take this as a sign that the Church was no true Church. He, in his answer, is inclined to regard such a seeking for a sign as, at the bottom, a profane and heathenish state of mind, and he adds : " But is this such a sign ? I mean, if persons have thought it their duty to bear with the Puritans and Latitu- dinarians of times past, so far as not to give up the Church of England to them, nor to acquiesce in their interpretation of its formularies, what is there in this case to make them take a different view ? We are not bound in any manner to express approbation of Hampden's notions; we are not at all committed by them : we have protested against them as far as we are able, on the ground that they are contrary to the Prayer-book, and yet Avere we to retire from the Church of England because of them, must it not be on the very ground that his was the right interpretation of the Prayer-book ? It would be an- other thing were we called on as a condition of Church- manship to subscribe to his views or to refrain from holding and teaching our own. As I understand it, so far from retiring on account of the mistaken tolei'a- tion of such views, it is an additional reason for every one of us to keep his post and do his best, as I under- stand St. Basil and others to have done with the Semi- Arian bishops of their time. As long as the formularies continue unchanged, I cannot see how the toleration even of heresy in this or that bishop, or even in the whole Bench, can be other than a question of discipline, not of doctrine, and I thought it had been ruled ever since the days of Donatus that questions of discipline affect the well-being, not the being of the Church. . . . RECOVERY. 153 As to the Erastianism, the more I think it over, the more I seem to see that we are on a better ground tlian we have been, at least since the Revolution, and if people will now be patient and persevering, we have every chance of making that ground good. The one thing to ruin us would be impatience." Meanwhile, the Gorham case, which seemed more serious still, as appearing formally to authorize false doctrine as the teaching of the Church, and which proved more serious in the secessions which it caused, had already commenced. In June, 1847, the Lord Chancellor presented the Rev. G. C. Gorham to a living in the diocese of Exeter, but Bishop Phillpotts, having already had knowledge of his denial of the doctrine of regeneration in Baptism, formally examined him on the subject, and as he would only admit a conditional re- generation, the Bishop refused to institute him, in March, 1848. Mr. Gorham appealed to the Dean of Arches, who pronounced judgment in August, 1849, in favour of the Bishop. Against this Mr. Gorham appealed to the Queen in Council; and the Committee of the Privy Council, consisting of six laymen, with the two Archbishops and the Bishop of London as assessors, gave judgment on March 8, 1850 — the Bishop of London alone refusing to concur — against the Bishop of Exeter. The Judgment did not assert that conditional regeneration was the doctrine of the Church, but it did decide that it was not so clearly condemned by the Church that a bishop could refuse to institute one who held it. The Bishop of Exeter still refused to institute, but the Archbishop, in spite of the Bishop's threat to refuse to hold communion with him, instituted Mr. Gorham. The Bishop was defeated in an attempt to 154 JOHN KEBLE. provide a more satisfactory Court of Appeal, but be summoned a Diocesan S}mod in 1851 ^Yhich formally declared its firm and immovable adberence to the article of the Creed, " one baptism for the remission of sin." Aoain the evil was overruled for g-ood ; the unsatisfactory character of the Court of Appeal was brought home to the consciences of Churchmen : a precedent was set for the revival of the sy nodical action of the Church, which greatly helped forward the move- ment for the revival of Convocation. During all this anxious time Keble was incessantly active. His correspondence and his publications were occupied with two problems : How could the Church be freed from any com'plicity with the judgment? and how could the younger Churchmen who felt the attraction of Rome, and they were many — Allies, Dodsworth, Maskell, Manning, and, dearest to his heart, his old Southrop pupil, Robert Wilberforce — be kept loyal in the face of such a judgment ? In January, 1850, he consulted Sir John Awdry on the legal position. His own opinion was that as the prerogative of deciding doctrine lay with the Bishops, and as this was a lay Court never formally accepted by the Church, he was not bound in coiiscience by its decisions, but might ignore them and still hold his position in the Church, because his oath to admit the Royal SujDremacy was taken with the understanding that the supremacy would be constitutionally exercised. But others had taken counsel's opinion on the matter, which was that they were bound to accept the decision of the Court, and therefore he asks for guidance. Sir John Awdry 's answer was quite clear : (1) that not every usurpation in a Church, such as ex hypotlicd that of RECOVERY. 155 this Court was, would justify secession, and (2) tliat no judicial decision, though it turn on a matter of doctrine, binds the conscience; it is only the expression of the opinion of the judges, which may be treated as a precedent, but is not law ; as one who thinks some of the decisions of the House of Lords in secular matters erroneous is not less a loyal subject, so would one be no less a loyal member of the Church if he treated a decision of this Court of Appeal as erroneous, and if he continued to teach and preach Baptismal Regeneration as the doctrine of the Church, even though the Court should hold that unsoundness about it was not a ground on which a bishop could exclude a presentee from preferment. This letter cleared away any doubts in Keble's mind, and he threw himself actively into the controversy. He published two short papers on Church Matters in 1850, which are among the most clear, pointed, and vigorous of his writings. The first, The Trial of Doctrine, was published before the judgment, and is a protest aofainst the whole constitution of the Court ; on the grounds that it consisted of laymen, without any security that they should be members of the Church, so that the vote of a Nonconformist mi'^ht decide a case in a matter of doctrine ; that it had never been accepted by the Church, for it w^as not the same as the old Court of Delegates, being neither accompanied by the same safeguards nor appointed by the same authority : hence the clergy are not bound by their acknowledgment of the Royal Supremacy to obey it, for that assumes a constitutional exercise of the Supremacy in religion as well as in secular matters. A judgment by it cannot affect the being of the Churchy but it can its well-being. 156 JOHN KEBLE. as it will cause confusion and distress, especially if the Court has to deal with deeper questions still, such as Inspiration or Eternal Punishment. Hence the duty of Churchmen is to petition for some Court with Synodical authority, and meanwhile to let Christendom ring with our appeal, and to continue our struggle. "All this we must do; and there is somethinor else which must nowise be left undone. For, rovro to yivos CoTTX^tM^ ovK eK77opev€TaL et fXT} ev TTpoaevxi} Kai vqaTCia (St. Matt, xvii. 21). As soon as the judgment was declared, he circulated a petition in his parish praying the Bishop of the diocese to help them, owing to the doubt which has arisen, " Whether or no the Church holds it needful to be believed that by the Blood and merits of our Saviour Christ, Original Sin is remitted to all infants in Holy Baptism ?" and this received over 200 signatures, and was forwarded with a letter assuring the Bishop that the names had been put down " with intelligence and hearty goodwill," and imploring him to repudiate the decision in order to avoid a distressing separation from the Establishment. On July 20th he published another vigorous tract, entitled A Call to Si^cah Out, in which he uro^es that thouo'h those who hold communion with the Archbishop after his sanctioning of the heresy would not formally be guilty of heresy, yet they must protest against his action and the Court. The State must allow the decision to be reviewed by the proper authority, or else the Church's rulers must disregard the decision. If not, we must agitate for a change in the relations of Church and State. We have a rioht to declare our own doctrines, to confirm, vary, and repeal our canons, to have a voice in the nomination of our RECOVERY. 157 chief pastors, and to grant or withhold our sacraments according to our proper rules. "We had rather be a Church in earnest, separate from the State, than a counterfeit Church in professed union with the State." Clearly his mind was already facing the possibility of disestablishment. In the autumn of the same year the Church Unions stirred themselves to unite Churchmen in common action against the judgment. In the Bristol Union an unwise attempt to combine the question with an expres- sion of antagonism to Rome nearly caused a split among its members, and there seemed for a moment the fear of Keble and Pusey taking opposite sides. The more conservative group of Churchmen, led by William Palmer, Archdeacon Prevost, and others, wished to make an expression of such antagonism a test of membership of the Union. Dr. Pusey offered his strongest oppo- sition to this : it seemed to him that a statement of antagonism was never a true basis of union, and that at this time antagonism to Rome might easily be perverted into repudiation of much that was true and Catholic. Keble, though opposed to a test, was inclined to a declaration of similar effect. To this too Dr. Pusey was opposed. It was a moment of severe strain for him, for nothing would induce him to appear publicly in opposition to Keble ; yet at the same time he knew that such a declaration would alienate waverers. He was on the point of leaving the Union, but ultimately the test was withdrawn, and a declaration of willingness to live and die in the Church of England was substi- tuted for it. Meanwhile in London a great meeting was summoned on July 23rd at St. Martin's Hall. The Eucharist was celebrated in several of the London 158 JOHN KEBLK churches for God's blessing upon the meeting. When the hour came, the number who attended made it necessary to have an overflow meeting in the Free- masons' Tavern, and at both resolutions were passed appealing to the Queen that the power of Convocation miorht be revived, that ecclesiastical cases mi^-ht be submitted to spiritual judges ; appealing to the arch- bishops and bishops to support these movements and to pronounce independently in favour of the Church doctrine; appealing to all Churchmen in all lands to uphold the doctrine, and thanking the Scotch bishops for a Synodical statement which they had recently issued about it. Both Pusey and Keble spoke. Keble pleaded for hopefulness and perseverance : hopefulness because he found that even his simple village poor cared so much for the doctrine, and were preparing to defend it ; perseverance because the Church of the fourth century had even a longer struofo'le to endure before the doctrine of the Incarnation was established, and we in our present state had more difficulty in reasserting true doctrine. If an}'' were inclined to mistrust the Church of England and to leave her, "the whole air of Eno^land seemed to ringr with voices from the dead and from the living, especially from the holy dead, all to this effect, ' Stay here, think not of departing, but do your work.' If it seemed to any unsatisfactory, let him consider that we were under appeal, and had been so for three hundred years, and that must be unsatisfactory, like a piece of music not come to its natural close : but what then ? It was the condition of the Church in the time of the blessed saints he had referred to for two whole genera- tions, and if we had to leave it so to those who came after us, he knew not himself that he could say a better RECOVERY. 160 word, were it the last word that he had to say, than to bid men persevere in hope." During the whole year Keble used in the public services at Hursley a special form of prayer for the distress of the Church, and when the Bishop of Exeter prepared to summon his Synod, he issued a pastoral letter to his parishioners, explaining that he had done so because the judges had decided against baptismal re- generation, and so encouraged peo'ple to think less of their sins ; because these judges had no right to decide at all; because the Church was no longer free to elect her bishops ; and because, on account of this, many were inclined to leave the Church, while others were slandering her work. When the Synod was over, he wrote an article in the Christian Bemcmbrancer of December, 1851, reviewing the gains of it. This is one of the brightest and most sprightly of his prose writings, characterized by much humour and delicate satire. He has recovered his buoyancy of spirits; he admits that the Church of England can only be a Church under appeal, and doing penance, but at any rate she is sound at the core ; she has justified herself. The eye of faith can see in her action God's hand helping us in our troubles ; the Church still witnesses to the belief in Sacramental Grace ; she speaks with a living voice, and therefore there is no ground for despair. Others, however, had less of hope and patience than himself; the influence of Keble kept Robert Wilber- force loyal till 1854, but among others, Allies, Maskell, and Dodsworth in 1850, and Manning in 1851, joined the Roman Church, as the immediate result of the Gorham decision. 160 • JOHN KEBLE. The position of Keble and Pusey was made more difficult because, during these years, 1851-52, Bishop Wilberforce informally and privately inhibited the latter from officiating in his diocese, fearing lest his adaptation of Roman devotional books and his practice about con- fession was tending to lead people to Rome. Through- out the whole difficulty Keble, both by letter and by personal interview, acted as a mediating influence. " I say to myself," he wrote, "here are two persons who really ought to understand one another, and it seems quite a judgment upon us that they cannot act together " ; and by a combination of outspoken expres- sion of his agreement with Dr. Pusey, of bold protest against unfairness in suspending him without a hearing, and by insistence upon all that was to be said on his behalf, as actively keeping back waverers from Rome, he contributed to the happy result that the Bishop removed the suspension in 1852. Two events in the next ten years turned Keble's attention mainly to the defence of the other great Sacrament. These were the trial of Archdeacon Deni- son in England, and the censure of Bishop Forbes in Scotland, for teaching the doctrine of the Real Presence and of the Eucharistic Sacrifice. In 1853 Archdeacon Denison preached two sermons in Wells Cathedral on the Real Presence, the orthodoxy of which was challenged by his neighbour, the Rev. Joseph Ditcher, and on his refusal to retract them, he was tried in 1856, in the Pro-Diocesan Court at Bath, before the Arch- bishop of Canterbury, who called upon him to retract the statements that the Body and Blood of Christ is received by those who eat and drink unworthily, and that worship is due to the real though invisible pre- RECOVERY. 161 sence of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Holy Eucharist under the form of bread and wine. On refusing to retract he was deprived of his vicarage and archdeaconry, but the sentence was overthrown by the Final Court of Appeal in 1858. During the process of the case both Dr. Pusey and Keble had done what was possible to guide and advise Archdeacon Denison. Keble had indeed been very doubtful on the point of the reception by the wicked, but ultimately w-as convinced by Dr. Pusey, and on the question of Adoration he felt very keenly. As soon as the first judgment was delivered these two circulated a protest, for the matter was more serious in one respect than the Gorham case ; the decision being that of the Arch- bishop without any interference of the State Courts. This protest was signed by eighteen clergy, and con- sisted of a re-statement of their belief that the doctrine of the Real Presence had been held as a point of faith from the earliest times ; that the most common view held in the Church had been that the wicked do eat and drink unworthily to their own condemnation the Body and Blood of Christ, which they do not discern, and that the practice of worshipping Christ then and there, especially present after consecration, had been common throughout the Church. They therefore protested against anything in the judgment which contradicts these statements, and appealed from it to a lawful Synod of the Bishops of the Province of Canterbury, and, if need be, to a free and lawful Synod of all the Churches of our communion. As a report was circulated that they intended to form a Non-juring Church, they published a letter stating that they should regard such an act as a betrayal of a sacred trust ; that no sentence of one M m JOHN KEBLii. arclibisliop could bind the conscience, as only the voice of the whole Church could do that ; but that they had felt bound in honesty to declare their intention of continuing to teach what they had always taught, and of taking the consequences. Keble followed up the protest by a careful treatise on Eucharistical Adoration. This consisted partly of a careful examination of the grounds of the practice, partly of a consideration of the duty of Churchmen in face of the judgment. The object was, not to reason out at large what he calls " that great and comfortable, and I will add necessary, truth of the Keal Presence," but rather, " calmly, and not without deep reverence of heart," to allay troublesome thoughts which interrupt devotion. Following the method of Hooker in the fifth book of the Ecclesiastical Polity, he brings the practice to the test of natural piety, of the teaching of Holy Scripture, of the Primitive Church, and of the Church of England. The argument starts from the premise that natural piety suggests adoration wherever Christ is present, and especially in tliis Sacrament, because of the greatness of the gift given, of the individual character of the blessing, and of the condescension of Christ in giving it. *' It is as impossible for devout faith, contemplating Christ in this Sacrament, not to adore Him, as it is for a loving mother, looking earnestly at her child, not to love it." The sense of such a gift calls for the most unreserved surrender that a man can make of himself, his whole spirit, soul, and body, i. e. for the most unreserved worshijD. Such an instinct would naturally be followed, unless it was definitely forbidden. But the reverse is the case : the New Testament shows us that special reverence RECOVERY. 1G3 Was paid to Christ in every detail of His humiliation, especially in His death ; that virtue was regarded as proceeding from His Body, which was treated with reverence in death, and which even then retained its cleansing power ; that it treats Him as really present in the Eucharist, both as Priest and Victim. It was natural then that this reverence should be transferred to the sacramental elements, so expressive of His humiliation, " as being in themselves so cheap and ordinary, and as representing especially His Death and Passion " ; and, as a matter of fact, the early Liturgies and tiie lan- ouao-e of the Fathers bear witness to such transference of reverence to the sacred Body and Blood in the Eucharist. Further, the Church of England has always insisted on reverence at the Liturgy, and there has been a continuous teaching of the Real Presence, though sometimes it has been attacked, " like Jehoshaphat in Ahab's robes," because it has been mistaken for Tran- substantiation. The doctrine has never been formulated about it by any Council, and therefore error about it is not formal heresy, so that we are not bound to refuse to communicate with an archbishop vvdio decides against it: but it has been continuously taught, and no judicial interpretation has the right to narrow the liberty allowed by the Church in the expression of her doctrine. The only course then for those who believe in the doctrine, is prayer, willingness to suffer for the truth, formally expressed protest, and appeal to an (Ecumenical Council. The subject is, as Keble admits, not exhaustively treated, but nothing could be more of a model of the right tone of sacred controversy, making each reader feel that he is dealing with a subject, real, solemn, and 164 JOHN KEBLE. vital. One extract may be given, in wliicli tlie act of sharing in the Eucharist is shown to typify faith in the whole Creed. " B}^ receiving His creatures of bread and wine we acknowledge Him (as St. Irenseus argues) Creator of heaven and earth, against all sorts of Manicheans ; receiving Christ's Body is confessing His Incarnation, and adoring it, His Divinity; it is the memorial of His death, and the participation of that Sacrifice which supposes Him raised and ascended into heaven ; it is obeying His command so to show forth His death till He come ; it is drinking into one Spirit : it is partaking of that one Bread which makes us one body, the Holy Catholic Church ; it is the Communion of Saints ; it is the Blood shed for the remission of sins ; it is the last Adam coming to be in us a quickening spirit, to seal us for the Resurrection of the Body and the Life Ever- lastings." In the preface to the second edition he expressed a hope that that might be the last time that he would have to deal with the subject in a controversial way ; but this prayer was not to be granted. In August, 1857, Bishop Forbes of Brechin delivered his Primary Charge to his clergy, the substance of it being a full statement of the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist, emphasizing its sacrificial aspect and the mystical identity of it with Christ's own offering of Himself, and drawing^ out the inference of the dutv of adoration of Christ present in the elements. About the same time Keble, who was an honorary canon of the college of Cumbrge, sent his own Tract to the Scottish bishops. The Bishops met in Synod in December, but after discussion postponed any action about the charge. RECOVERY. 165 Three of them, however, the Bishops of Edinburgh, Argyll, and Glasgow, put out on their own account a joint declaration on the subject of the Eucharist, protest- ing against any adoration of the elements, and against the doctrine that the offering in the Eucharist was anything more than a commemoration of the Offering upon the Cross. Keble received a copy of this declara- tion, and imagining under a mistaken impression that it was intended as a criticism upon his own Tract, and that it had been sent to him by the Bishop of Edinburgh, wrote to him a long letter of queries, criticizing the language and arguments of the declarations.^ In May, 1858, an extraordinary episcopal meeting was held, and the Bishops, although they refused to allow the Bishop of Brechin to be represented by a legal adviser, and in spite of his protest that they were acting ultra vires, issued a pastoral letter to their clergy, regretting the publication of the charge, as containing views unsound, erroneous, and calculated to lead to grave error on the two points of adoration to Christ in the gifts, and of the transcen- dental identification of the Sacrifice of the Cross and the Sacrifice of the Altar. They then lay down the lines of teaching which they wish the presbyters to follow, and issue the letter as words of fatherly guidance and admonition, " by a right essentially inherent in a provincial episcopate." Owing to Dr. Pusey's illness at this time, Keble had been the Bishop's chief adviser through the whole discussion ; he was, moreover, an honorary member of the Church of Scotland, and he felt that by former pub- lications he had incurred a deep responsibility in the matter. Accordingly, as an effort towards truth and 1 This is quoted in full in Mackey's Life of Bishop Forbes. 166 JOHN KEBLE. peace, he addressed to the presbyters of the Scotch Church a pamphlet of "Considerations" on the pastoral letter. He urges that the letter is not a Sjnodical act, because presbyters have a right to be present at a Synod, and because the discussion was carried on with closed doors, and the judgment given without any state- ment of the reasons; hence the presbyters are not bound to accept it as authoritative.. They can either acknowledge the receipt of it and take no further action, or discuss its statements in full. In view of the possibility of this latter course being taken, he argues the points at length. He acknowledges with great gratitude the facts that the Bishops appeal to the consent of the Undivided Church as the ultimate ground for decision, that they have not thought the Bishop of Brechin liable to a judicial presentment, and that there is so much positive teach- ing in their statements on the reality of sacramental grace, on the objective Presence even for condemnation to unworthy recipients, and on the sacrificial character of the Eucharist. But he criticizes the negative state- ments, showing that the denial of the statement that the Substance of Christ's Body and Blood, still less His entire Person as God and Man, now glorified in heaven, is made to exist with, in, or under the material substances of bread and wine, tends to Nestorianism, "which in one shape or another bids fair to become the prevalent tendency among the religionists of our day." On the point of the Sacrifice he proves that the Fathers have always held that Christ is the real Priest, and that the offering in the Eucharist is really identical with, not the Sacrifice on the Cross, but rather with the present offering of Himself by Christ in heaven ; the same Person otfers the same Body and Blood, but for differ- RECOVERY. 167 ent purposes — " on the Cross for expiation of sin, with vicarious suffering, pain, blood shedding, and death; in heaven for pleading and application of those atoning pains." Further, he urges that ador- ation is implied in the fact of the Real Presence, that it never has been condemned, that all which the Bishop is pleading for is a toleration which has always been permitted. Here he pleads against limitation of toleration ; and indeed the whole argument is a plea against limitation. He will not have truth limited by the objection that a particular doctrine is " Roman " ; though we cannot accept their terms of communion, yet " we ought always to be glad to agree with them, when we can do it with a safe conscience : " surely the right way must be in this or any other question, " calmly to apply the proper standards, Scripture as interpreted by our own formu- laries, and where they are ambiguous or silent by the consent of the Undivided Church ; and if the conclusions come out aoreeable to what the rest of Christendom has received, thankfully to welcome such agreement : if not, humbly and reverently to commit the cause to Almighty God, and to such authorities as it may here- after please Him to raise up for the healing of the wounds in His Church." So, too, he will not limit the Presence of the Lord by our possibility of under- standing it, *' shedding, as it does, such a glory over the celebration of the Holy Eucharist." " It were better philosophy and not worse devotion here, if anywhere, to apply the maxim of the wise man, * When you glorify the Lord, exalt Him as much as you can : for even yet will He far exceed : and when you exalt Him put forth all your strength, and be not weary : for ye never 168 JOHN KEBLE. can go far enough.' " ^ For there is One walking about who wishes to make us forget that " as Christians we are altogether in a supernatural condition, that the air around us is full of miracles, full of great, intense realities, of which the things that we see are for the most part faint shadows." The " Considerations " had little effect. In October 1859, Bishop Forbes was formally presented for trial ; the case was postponed till February 1860, and judgment delivered in March, a formal declaration of censure being passed, but no penalty imposed. On both of these last occasions Keble was present at Edinburgh, in order to help the Bishop by his wide knowledge of the controversy; and although he blamed himself for the line that he had taken at times during the con- troversy, yet it was mainly through his agency that at once truth and peace were secured, and that the Bishop was kept loyal to the Church even under these difficulties. Three other subjects, partly academical and partly political, on which Keble published pamphlets during those years, deserve a passing notice. In 1852 the opposition to Mr. Gladstone's re-election as Burgess for the University drew from him a smart and sj)irited protest against the unfairness of charging that states- man with inconsistency in dealing with the Church, on the ground of his support of the admission of Jews into Parliament : and in 1854 he tried to rally Churchmen to a determination to disavow, deprecate, and resist to the uttermost the attempt to admit Nonconformists to the University, and threw out the suggestion that the difficulty might be met by affiliating to the University 1 Ecclus. xliii. 30. RECOVERY. 1G9 denominational colles^es, even thoiifjli situated at a distance. But the point which always stung him to the quick was any attempt by Parliament to interfere with the sanctity of the Marriage Law. In 1849 he issued a short appeal ad populuni against the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill, or, as he called it, against profane dealing with Holy Matrimony in regard of a man and his wife's sister; and he obtained 10,000 ladies' signatures to a petition against it, which he forwarded through Sir G. Grey to the Queen. In 1857, in opposition to the Divorce Bill, he wrote a careful, scholarlike treatise on the indis- solubility of marriage. The treatise was an attempt to explain the difficulty which dutiful children of the Church mioht feel in the fact that while the Church forbade divorce altogether, our Lord seems to permit it under the condition given in St. Matt. v. 32, xix. 9. Keble's line of defence was that this limitation was not meant for Christians at all ; that it was only preserved in St. Matthew, the specially Jewish Gospel ; that it occurred in contexts in which Christ was not speaking to His disciples alone, but to the Jewish multitudes, and was interpreting rather than adding to the Mosaic law, and that the limitation was only meant to apply as long as the Mosaic law was in force. This was followed by a laborious examination of all the Canons and Patristic references to the subject, with the result of showing that, in spite of some conHicting evidence, there was a continuous stream of opinion against divorce for any reason among Christians, and against the re- marriage of either party after a separation. In these, as in all his treatises, the moral considera- tions are the primary with him. He discusses the 170 JOHN KEBLE. Levitical prohibition, but he does not lay much stress upon it, because whatever it may require, the " spirit of the Christian dispensation is to require more of man in proportion as it gives him more grace/' He is especially indignant at the unfairness with which the two sexes were treated by the proposers of each measure, and contrasts it with the language of the Fathers ;^ he lays stress on the indissolubility of marriage, because that gives it a sacramental character, and makes it affect the whole life ; on the prohibition of re-marriage, because it leaves room for penitence on the part of the guilty party, and reconciliation. He pleads that sad experience has taught him how terribly strong is the feeling among the poor that marriage erases the blot of previous un- chastity, and though they have now a horror of adultery, he dreads the power of One who may avail himself of the change to suggest to them that offences of that kind also may be salved by after-marriage. The pamphlet did not avail to save England from a Divorce Bill; probably of greater avail to deepen the religious sense of marriage, and so to avoid divorce, has 1 E. g. St. Augustine (Serm. 392, vol. v., p. 2) : " Who would endure an adulterous "wife 1 Yet the woman is bidden to endure an adulterous husband. What justice! Why, I ask thee? 'Why ? because I am the man,' Thou the man ? Let us prove thy manhood by thy fortitude. Thou the man ? Overcome lust. How art thou the man, whose wife is braver than thou art ? Tliou art the head of the woman, the man : it is true. If he is the head, let liim lead, let the wile follow. Only take heed which way thou goest. Have thou no mind to go where thou wouldest not have her to follow." And the Emperor Antoninus, as quoted by St, Augustine : " Care must be taken to enquire whether thou by living chastely hast been a pattern of good conduct to her. For it seems to me most unjust that the husband should exact from the wife the chastity which he does not practise himself," — Ve Conjiig. Adult. §5. RECOVERY. 171 been the hymn which he wrote Awhile the pressure of the controversy was upon him — " The Voice that breathed o'er Eden That earliest wedding-day, The primal marriage blessing, It hath not passed away. Still in the pure espousal Of Christian man and maid. The Holy Three are with us, The threefold grace is said." CHAPTER VIII. THE END. 1860—1866. " Wait humbly till tliy matin Psalm Due cadence find in evening calm." Lyra Innocentium. The reader will probably have gained the impression that Keble's interest was only in controversial questions ; but the case was really much the same as with the history of the Church. The controversies come to the front, and mu^^t be noticed by the historian. To a reader of the history of the first four centuries it might seem that the Church was mainly occupied in a series of uninteresting speculations and antagonisms ; but behind the controversy lay a spiritucil body, moving through the world ministering comfort, absolution, inspiration to its own members, moulding by silent intiuence the customs and laws of the world outside it, and so gradually wdnning its Avay to establishment and supremacy. So behind the controversial writings by which Keble came before the world, there was the quiet constructive work both of the student and of the parish priest. As a student he was engaged through all these years on his careful translation of Irenasus for the Library of the Fathers, and also on the life and edition of the THE END. -173 works of Bishop Wilson. The former was not published until after his death, but the latter issued from the press in 1863. The motto prefixed to it, " The care of Discipline is Love," shows the aspect of the good Bishop's work, whether in self-discipline or in the dis- cipline of his diocese, which had specially interested his biographer. Alike the century and the man attracted him. Around the Bishop's youth were memories of the Cavalier struggles ; during his life there were glimpses of the struggles of the Non-jurors, and, carefully trea- sured up, just here and there, sayings and deeds of Bishop Butler. The struggle between Bishop Wilson and the representatives of the Earl of Derby, who at one time boldlv claimed that the Earl and not the Arch- bishop was the Metropolitan of the Church of Man, reminded him of the struggles in England under Henry 11. and Henry VI IL, and made the annals of the small island of Man seem to be a miniature reflection of far more important histories. It seemed to his heart, saddened by the decay of faith around him, that Man had preserved later than any other part of England that simple faith in the reality and grievous effect of excommunication, and in the solemn seriousness of an oath, on which alone ecclesiastical discipline could be based. No less was he in hearty sympathy with the teaching and personal character of the Bishop. The sobriety of his teaching, his readiness to recognize the Roman Catholics as a real part of the Holy Catholic Church, the absence of any insistence on the necessity of sensible conversion and assurance of personal salvation, his principle that it is safer to obey authority with a doubting conscience than with a doubting conscience to 174- JOHN KEBLE. disobey, the public spirit which made him feel national troubles as keenly as private calamities, his interest in missionary work and in education, his pastoral spirit, his care with his candidates for Ordination, some of whom lived in his house for a year before being or- dained, his own methodical intercessions, his insistence on family prayer, bis loyal use of the daily offices of Matins and Evensong,^ his simple Prayer-book-like outspokenness in preaching or writing on subjects of delicacy, his sternness with all breaches of the marriage laws, his prompt and fearless exercise of discipline, his equitable desire to make allowances for difficulties, his liberahty to the poor, extending ultimately to the be- stowal in charity of one-half of his income ; above all, his reality, his sense of his own personal sinfulness, his realization of the Communion of Saints, and his grati- tude to God for even the least mercy of his life — every point found an answering note in Keble's own heart. He approaches his subject therefore with the greatest reverence and desire to do it justice. He tries to find explanation or at least excuse for the few points in the Bishop's life which he cannot approve. Unstinted pains are taken in verifying each place and explaining each allusion ; the relations of the Earl of Derby to the Island and the conditions of Manx land tenure are traced out with painstaking accurac}'. Some scenes, such as those of the Bishop's imprisonment and of his struggle with the civil powers, are painted very graphically ; but "^ This was impressed npon the Bishop by his friend the Rev. M. Hewetson, on his ordination as deacon in 1686, in the church of Kildare. The whole of Hewetson's Memorandum is a very strikinL? proof of the strength of Church feeling and practices iii the Church of Ireland at the end of the seventeenth century (vol. i, pp. 22-23). tHE END. 175 it must in fairness be admitted that the details rather overwiielm the general effect, and that the whole is wanting in a due sense of proportion. But the main staple of his life was the work, the incessant, anxious, unsparing, loving work, of a parish priest. From the first he had held daily service in his church. For at least four years, during the Gorham controversy, he said the Litany on Wednesdays and Fridays at 5.30 a.m., "to give those who fear God and believe His sacraments and love His Church, a chanco of calling upon Him in the early morning, while they are on theii way to their day's work." ^ He would stay behind in private prayer for an hour or half an hour. One hour every morning and two hours every Sunday were spent in teaching in the school. When a boy had been turned away from school for disorderliness, he would take him and train him privately. The prepar- ation for Confirmation was especially careful, sometimes lasting for a whole year, as he went through with the candidates the whole of the Baptismal and Eucharistic services, as well as the Catechism. If any boy or girl lived too far off to come to the classes, he would walk out himself at night with a lantern and teach them in their cottages after their work was over. He went on with the training until he could win them to come to the Holy Communion, once getting them to sign the following paper : " In the presence of Almighty God, I seriously declare that I am turning my mind towards Holy Communion : that I hope before very long, by God's mercy, to be fit for it ; that I will pray to God to make me fit, and that I will come to Mr. Keble or ^ Cf. Sermons : Septuagesima to Ash "Wednesday, p. 358, and Preface, p. vi. 176 JOHN KEBLE. Mr. Young from time to time if they wish me to do so, to have their advice about coming or staying away/' When he was away from home he used to receive accounts of each individual from his curates, and when absent once from the Confirmation itself, sent a short, earnest pastoral letter to the candidates. His favourite text was, " Ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake " ; his favourite expression, that of waiting on the sick, ever suiting himself to their hours, delighting if they asked to receive the Sacrament, but always waiting for the suggestion to come from them, that it might be a real act of their own spiritual will. His interest in missions had always been great, and it developed in later years when his personal interest in Bishop Selwyn and Bishop Patteson, and his ecC'Csiastical sympathy with the straggle of Bishop Gray for the faith in South Africa, made the life of the Colonial Church so much more real to him. After 1861 he sanctioned cricket on Sundays at the suggestion of Sir W. Heathcote, partly because he found that otherwise the men played, thoucfh under the conviction that it was wronsf, and partly influenced by the fact that the chief Evangelical families who might have been offended had left tlie parish. So wrapped up was he in his parish that the villagers had no conception of the part which he played in the Church, and a new school-mistress, who came to the place with an enthusiat^m for the author of the Christian Year, found it hard to convince the children that the Vicar was as clever as the School Inspector, and cleverer than herself. The succeeding chapters on his preaching and spirit- ual guidance will complete the picture of his more constructive work; but as in the days of Nehemiah THE END. 177 "the builders every one bad bis sword girded by bis side, and so builded," so it was in tbese years. Even in old age bis interest was as keen as ever in all tbat concerned botb Oxford and tbe Churcb. Dr. Pusey sbared witb bim all bis plans about tbe prosecution of Professor Jowett and tbe endowment of tbe Greek cbair. Before tbe election of 1865 be wrote a strongr inci-ive letter to tbe Guardian, pleading for tbe re- election of Mr. Gladstone on tbe ground of tbat states- man's real services to tbe Cburcb, especially witb regard to tbe Divorce Bill, tbe Burials Bill, tbe Royal Supremacy and its relation to tbe Final Court of Appeal. " Were I asked," be ends, " to add my name to tbe list of bis opponents, I sbould answer, No ! a tbousand times No ! for prudence' sake, for justice' sake, for Oxford's sake, and most of all for tbe Cburcb's sake." ^ In tbe same year be was interested in tbe proposals for tbe extension of tbe University, and warmly approved of tbe report of Dr. Sbirley's Com- mittee, wbicb afterwards was taken as tbe outline on wbicb tbe cbarter of Keble College was framed. But tbe cbief interest of tbese years lay in tbe struggles caused by tbe publication of Essays and Reviews. In 1850 be bad contemplated tbe serious issues wbicb must arise if sucb a Court as tbe Judicial Committee of tbe Privy Council were to deal witb subjects of sucb delicacy and seriousness as tbe Inspir- ation of tbe Bible and Eternal Punisbment ; and tbese were tbe very two points on wbicb tbey were called to decide. Tbe book was publisbed in 1860 ; in 1861 Dr. Williams was prosecuted by tbe Bisbop of Salisbury for virtually denying tbe Inspiration of the Holy 1 Gtiardian, Dec. 7, 1864. N 178 JOHN KEBLE. Scriptures ; Mr. Wilson by the Rev. J. Fendall on the same charge, and also for denying the doctrine of the Eternal Punishment of the wicked. Both clergy were condemned in 1862 by the judgment of Dr. Lushino^ton in the Arches Court. But in both cases the judgment was overthrown on appeal to the Privy Council in 1864. The Court consisted of four lay judges and three spiritual, the two Archbishops and the Bishop of London. Its policy was to limit the issues before it, and treat them with the most exact legal technicality ; holding that it could take no cognizance of anything outside the extracts from the Essays laid before it, and of the Articles referred to in them. It passed no opinion upon the general teaching or tendency of the whole Essays, but decided that on the subject of Inspiration the extracts did not contain any statement inconsistent with the exact words of our formularies ; and further that " we do not find in the formularies to which this article refers any such distinct declaration of our Church upon the subject as to require us to con- demn as penal the expression of a hope by a clergyman that even the ultimate pardon of the wdcked who are condemned in the day of judgment may be consistent with the will of Almighty God." It may be that if the distinction between a judicial decision in a penal case and the formal legislative expression of the real mind of the Church had been clearly grasped, the judgment might have been acquiesced in. But such a distinction was by no means clear then : even with the limitation imposed by the Court's ruling, the two Archbishops refused to concur in the judgment. The cry of determined, uncom- promising protest was more loud even than after the THE END. 179 Gorham judgment; leaders who had been opposed to each other through all the Sacramental struggles joined hand in hand now. More than 11,000 clergy and 137,000 laity signed declarations affirming their belief that the Church of England and Ireland, in common with the whole Catholic Church, maintains without reserve or qualification the inspiration and divine authority of the w^hole Canonical Scriptures, as not only containing but being the Word of God, and further teaches, in the words of our blessed Lord, that the punishment of the cursed, equally with the life of the riohteous, is everlastinor. Keble was indignant alike at the substance of the decisions and at the composition of the Court which had oriven them. A stronof movement was made to ^et it altered, and when this was ridiculed by the Times he wrote a letter to that paper justifying the agitation, as being the constitutional method of remedying a grievance ; ^ criticizing acutely the assumptions of his opponents, and showing that his action rested uj^on the belief that " it is better to have a real Church ; that a real Church cannot exist without dogma, and that the action of this Committee, tending as it does to do away with all dogma, tends of course to the annihilation of the Church." In the following month he read a paper at the Bristol Church Congress, in a discussion on Church Synods, admitting that there was much to be said cb priori for such a court, but that it had proved a failure, and that the failure was due to its beinor based upon a wrong principle. It was an infringement of the rights of the Bishops ; it was a human invention ; its principles for deciding doctrine, and its procedure, 1 Times, Sept. 22iid ; Guardian, Sept. 28, 1864. 180 JOHN KEBLE. by which dissentients could not justify their opinions, were alike anomalies. He also alluded to the serious- ness of the points at issue, quoting the saying of a woman in his parish, who had a son who had been a great trouble to her because of his wicked habits, and who, on hearing that the doctrine of eternal punishment w^as being called in question, said, " Oh, what an effect it will have, when my son hears of it, on him ! What w^ill become of him ? " The lines on which he would have liked to see reforms are indicated in the following suggestions embodied in a letter to Sir J. T. Coleridge. " 1. Whether it is impossible to obtain a law taking aw^ay all temporal penalties annexed to excommuni- cation, and leaving the Church really free to enforce its own rubric and canons in case of notorious sin and unbelief ? " 2. Might there not be a declaratory Act to the effect that the formularies must always be interpreted agreeably to Holy Scripture and general consent ? . . . To which Act the assent of Convocation should be obtained and recited, as in the Act of Uniformity. " 3. After providing in the completest w^ay for perfect investigation and exact legality, still might not the Bishops in Provincial Council, with full publicity to all their proceedings, be made judges in the last resort ? " ^ But it was not only with the Court that Keble was indignant. Both the decisions touched him to the quick. His knowledge of the Bible was remarkable ; he knew large parts of it by heart, and his sermons, no less than the Tract on M3^sticism, are steeped in the mystical use of its language, and marked by a striking insight into its principles. And his reverence for it 1 Coleridge : Memoir, p. 488. THE END. 181 was no less striking. " His manner of reading Holy Scripture was very remarkable. In its extreme sim- plicity it was like that of a reverent child ; and yet probably all who were in the habit of hearing him have felt the wonderful charm of it, and that he made them understand the Lessons better than any one else, conveying to them also in some measure his own intense feeling of the sacrcdness of every inspired word. He always paused before reading the Bible, often putting his hand to his forehead (as was often his way), and after the Lesson was ended he made the same pause. . . In some sermon of his he takes it for granted that the custom of pious people would be to pray inwardly before and after reading any portion of Holy Scripture." ^ That he might contribute his part to a true belief in Scripture, he set himself to work at a Commentary on St. John's Gospel, and composed the fragment on Chap. i. 1-18, afterwards printed in the Sticdia Sacra, the rich spiritual suggestivenoss of which causes regret that it never was finished. He circulated a protest against the judgment for signature in his parish. In a letter to the Times on the whole subject, he urged that the in- spiration of the Bible was a part of the " common law " of the Church, and therefore as really binding as a formulated decision; and spoke of the inspiration of the various parts of the Bible in a way that shows alike reverence and wisdom. "The New Testament declares the Old Testament to be inspired of God; accordingly, the Book of Esther to be as really inspired as the Evangelical Prophet, as really though not as largely. But since it is so inspired men know that they are bound to believe every word ^ M. T. in Coleridge : Memoir, p. 604. 182 JOHN KEBLE. of it, and if contradictions appear, to feel sure that tliey will one day disappear, either by amended readings or by satisfactory explanations. All will prove true, all exactly what was needed for its own peculiar purpose. But there may be any degrees of difference in love and fear, the awe and the gratitude with which Almighty God means us to receive one portion and another, according to the measure in which He vouchsafes to disclose Himself, or to draw nearer to us ; and again, accordinoj to the measure in which His several oifts of grace are allowed to manifest themselves throuo^h the several human writers. In this o^esped we may imagine a scale ranging from the mere adjustment of a genealogy in the Chronicles up to the first chapter of St. John. All are equally true, although all do not contain an equal amount of Divine Truth." The denial of the doctrine of Eternal Punishment seemed even more pressing as a matter of practical importance. He had an almost Calvinistic sense of the corruption of the human heart ; he knew how simple villagers are wont to regard the utterance of the law as the sole standard of truth ; he believed in the power of the Evil Spirit who was always anxious to lower the standard of truth and of morality. " We can- not spare one of the severe but most fatherly sayings by which our loving Lord has revealed to us the issue of the broad way ; least of all can we spare the thought, the conviction, of eternity." Early in 1864 he published a Litany of our Lord's Warnings, for use by those "whose hearts are aching at the recent decision." The Litany recalls all the great acts of God's justice, and His words of warning in the Bible; and in the light of them prays for mercy, for THE END. 183 protention from all that can blind men's eyes to the truth, and for guidance to the Church, the Queen, the Parliament, and for all who are in danger of neglecting this special truth. In the same year he was invited by Bishop Wilber- force to preach the sermon at the commemoration of Cuddesdon College. With this subject in his mind he preached one of the most solemn and touching of his sermons, on '* Fear as a Gift of the Holy Spirit^" and drew out the true fear of God that should be in a Christian's heart. There is the fear of judgment, of hell — the lowest form, yet still quite necessary for our- selves and for others ; for " little do they know of their brethren, how high soever their own rate of goodness may be, who depend on winning souls without it." Then there is the nobler fear of losing Christ, the object of our love ; this remains in the converted soul, and grows with the growth of our love for Him. Both these fears will cease with this life, but still beyond the grave there will be the highest fear, the deep awe and trembling reverence before God as God, an intense, unspeakable adoration, a bowing down before the Light unapf)roachable ; and this awe begins here, for even here it is our privilege to be living in a supernatural state. Thus, as the Christian Year ended with the " Spirit of God's most holy fear," so his last published sermon ended with the fear of God's Holy Spirit. One other public utterance must be noticed. In 1865 the Bishop of London was pressing for a Royal Commission to deal with the Ornaments Rubric, and some High Churchmen were inclined to support him. To one of these Keble wrote a letter,^ very strongly ^ Literary Qiurchman, January 13, 1866. 184 JOHN KEBLE. deprecating such a course. It seemed to him suicidal to invite Parliamentary interference in spiritual matters, when it was sure to be exercised in an anti-dogmatic direction. As it was, the Church of England, through the struggles of the Reformation and Restoration, had, under Providence, retained the rubric, and so ex- pressed its doctrine as to assert the reality both of the Presence and of the Sacrifice in the Eucharist; but further legislation in a moment of excitement might easily upset the exact proportion of the truth, destroy the equilibrium of parties in the Church, and quench all the fond hopes of reunion among Christians, "which just now appear to be dawning on us from various quarters." While treating the disregard of the rubric as a real blemish in our ecclesiastical practices, and rejoicing whenever the revival is tranquilly accom- plished, he pleads for equity and candid allowance and charity in the revival, and protests against the scornful, disparaging tone in which some were speaking of mid- day Communions, " with small consideration for the aged and infirm, and for such as cannot come early," and against the practice of urging all men indiscrimin- ately to be present at the Holy Mysteries. In his private life there was sadness and happiness, partings and reconciliations, towards the close. In 1860 his sister Elizabeth died, " for twenty years of health and fifty of sickness always at hand or within reach, and never a look nor a word that I know of but was wise and kind with the true kindness and wisdom." His great friend Dyson died the same year. From that time onward Keble's own health was very pre- carious, and constant visits to the seaside kept him a THE END. 185 good deal from his parish work ; and on St. Andrew's Day, 1864, he was seized with a slight stroke of paralysis, after which he never preached again. In the course of 1863 he had received an account of the proceeds of the Lyra Apostolica, and this led to a letter to Newman thankiug him for it, and sending him his own Life of Bishop Wilson. " August 4, 18G3. "My dear Newmax, " It is a great thing, I know, for me to ask, after so many years, that you should look kindly upon what comes from me. For I cannot conceal it from myself, nor yet acknowledge it without a special sort of pang, that what I have heard occasionally from Crawley and Copeland] of your feeling as to your old friend's silence, touches me perhaps as much or more than any, and it is one of the many things which now in my old age I wish otherwise. I ought to have felt more than I did what a sore burthen you were bearing for conscience' sake, and that it was the duty of us all to diminish rather than aggravate it, so far as other claims allowed. In point of fact I rather imagine the last communica- tion was on my part, with the Zyra Innocentium. Since then I have been more than once about to write, but something always happened which seemed to check me, and I suppose I said to myself, * It will be but cold and constrained after all,' and so I gave way to my dilatory habits ; and it frightens me now to think how nearly the time has passed away. I can but ask that if I have been towards you too much as if you had been dead, you will now be towards me as if I were dying ; which of course must be nearly my condition, lor 186 JOHN KEBLE. though (D. G.) wonderfully well, I am in my seventy- second year. Do then, my dear old friend, pardon me what has been wrong in this (I can see it in some measure, but I dare say there is more which I do not see), and let me have the comfort of hoping that your recollection of me will not henceforth be embittered by anything more than is inseparable from our sad posi- tion, as I am sure your kindness to me has always been the same. . . . And now, dear N., let me say ' God be with you ; and may He forgive and bring us all together, as He will and when He will.' I know that you will let me have a line or two, to say that you will believe me still and always "Yours affectionately, "J. Keble." This renewal of corresj^ondence led to the visit of Cardinal Newman in Octoc>er, 1864, when, almost by accident, Dr. Pusey also was present. Newman has himself described the strange meeting of the three friends, each scarcely recognizing the other through the great changes which time had made. It was necessarily a meeting at once joyful and painful. Keble seems to have formed some idea that Newman was uneasy in his position ; but it is very doubtful if there was any ground for this. Newman was probably more ready than he ^, had been to do justice to the reality of spiritual life in the English Church; but there was to be no closer, no more visible, union on this earth. For that he could only wait till beyond the grave ; for the present he might have taken on his lips almost word for word, the speech which Browning attributes to Pym at his parting from Strafford ; THE END. 187 " .... I love him now, And look for my cliief portion in that world Where great hearts led astray are turned again. (Soon it may be, and, certes, will be soon : My mission over, I sliail not live long.) Ay, here I know I talk — I dare and must — Of Enojland and her sreat reward, as all I look for here ; but in my inmost heart Believe, I think of stealing quite away To walk once more with Wentworth — my youth's friend — Purged from all error, gloriously renewed. ' "Certes, it will be soon." In the winter of 1865 he moved to Bournemouth on account of his wife's illness. He himself was well, able to attend service regularly in St. Peter's Church; but she grew weaker, and as the spring came he was daily expecting her death. But he was taken first from her ; he suffered wdiat seemed to be another stroke of paralysis on March 22, 1866. He lay ill for a week. " Whether wandering or clear- minded, he was constantly intent on holy things or in actual prayer ; he uttered fragments or ejaculations in the former case, which showed the habitual prayerful- ness of his heart ; he repeated, or composed as it seemed, prayers ; the Lord's Prayer he uttered most commonly."^ He passed away on March 29th, and was buried at Hursley on April 6th. When she heard that he was gone, she thanked God that he had been spared the trial of surviving her, and she said that she knew that in his dying thoughts were the words of the Christian Year for Good Friday — ■ " Lord of my heart, by Thy last cry. Let not Thy blood on earth be spent — • Lo, at Thy feet I fainting lie. Mine eyes upon Thy wounds are bent, Upon Thy streaming wound< my weary eyes "Wait like the parched earth on April skies. 1 Coleridge : Memoir, p. 559. 188 JOHN KEBLE. Wash me, and dry these bitter tears, O let my heart no further roam : 'Tis Thine by vows, and hopes, and fears, Long since — call Thy wanderer home ; To that dear home, safe in Thy wounded side, Where only broken hearts their sin and sLaine may hide." Who can doubt that they were in her thoughts too, when she followed him on the eleventh of the folio wins' month, and they who for thirty years had shared every hope and prayer and plan for the Church, were not divided in their death ? CHAPTER IX. THE PREACHER. " To gentlest tonches sweetest notes reply. Still humbleness with her low-breathed voice Can steal o'er man's proud heart, and win his choice From earth to heaven, with mightier witchery Than eloquence or wisdom e'er could own." J. K. : Misc. Foems, p. 217. "If I were to say what I really feel/' wrote Newman in 1837, " I should say plainly that no greater benefit could in my opinion be granted to the Church than the publication of sermons from you, and that on account of their matter, not only of the authority of your name." ^ Yet the only volume of sermons which Keble published in his lifetime was the Sermons, Acadcmiccd and Occasional (1847), with the preface on the Roman question, about which I have already spoken. This volume consists mainly of University sermons, preached as Select Preacher, containingr amons^ others the famous Assize Sermon of 1833, and the Winchester Sermon on Tradition. The history of two of them has special interest. On St. Andrew's Day, 1841, Keble was appointed to ^ Letters, ii., p. 229. 190 JOHN KEBLE. preach before the University. He prepared a sermon upon the duty of acquiescing in imperfections in the Church rather than hurriedly leaving the Church for some other body, and sent it to Newman for his approval ; but he dissuaded him from preaching it. The sermon is the clearest and most vigorous statement anywhere to be found in Keble's writings, of the duty of loyalty to the English Church, and puts, perhaps even more effectively, the line of argument afterwards worked out in the preface. Newman, how- ever, thought it would add to the excitement without effecting any object. "It will increase," he wrote, " upon a separate authority, the impression which is not well founded, that there are men in Oxford who are on the point of turning to Rome, with a sort of con- fession to the world at large, and as a triumph to the foe over you and us. I know of none such. There is doubtless great danger in prospect, but the persons in danger are far too serious men to act suddenly or witliout waiting for what they consider God's direction, and I should think very few indeed realize to them- selves yet the prospect of a change — nay would change, provided our rulers showed us any sympathy, or their brethren kept from saying or believing of them that they would change." ^ Whatever may be thought of this opinion in the light of subsequent events, Keble at least ac- quiesced in it. " I shall never be able to thank you enough," he wrote on December 12th, " for sending back that sermon of mine." In its stead he preached a most excellent spiritual sermon on " Counsels of Perfection," showing deep insight into the secret forces 1 J. H. N. : Letters, ii., p. 370. THE PREACHER. 191 of character, and drawing out most subtly the dangers to which rehgious people are exposed. Both these sermons were now published. It is not necessary to dwell at any length upon this volume. The first three sermons deal with the grounds of faith, and anticipate much of the preface. They are slightly laborious in style, but full of quiet, thoughtful reasoning, steeped in Aristotle and Butler, " one of the safest teachers of religion, natural and revealed, that ever blessed the Church." While emphasizing the essential value of the " implicit faith " of the simple Christian, which may seem to be bigotry and yet is true practical wisdom, " abiding by the dictates of experience, not in defiance but in default of theoretical and argumentative know- ledge," he yet insists on the duty of each man enquiring for himself into the grounds of his faith ; in a true pastoral spirit he pleads that even the poor can under- stand more than we give them credit for : '' the recollection that ' proving all things ' is as much the duty of the unlearned as it is of the educated, should make us less afraid to trust them with reasonino: than in matters of this sort we commonly are." One passage — preached in 1822 — is pathetically prophetic in the light of the subsequent history of the movement. " Not being quite satisfied concerning some part of religious truth, and ill-enduring the condition of doubt and discomfort (which after all would do them no great harm, if they would be careful always to take the safe side in practice), subtle and ingenious men set them- selves to devise argument after argument in its behalf, and thus they have often succeeded, to a wonder, in strengthening and extending the fabric of theology, 192 JOHN KEBLE. perhaps to the benefit of others, without having been able to find under it any shelter, final and complete, for their own harassed and perplexed spirits. Thus the Church has witnessed more than once the sorrowful spectacle of orthodox teachers falling off in their latter days from the very truth which they had themselves before most triumphantly defended ; the law of compen- sation, which has so wide a range in the natural world, extending, apparently, in this among other instances, to the moral world also; in that the versatility and in- genuity which enable men to devise new modes of evidence, are too often accompanied with a disposition to be restless and unsatisfied with the old." One other extract from a sermon preached at a school at Harrow Weald in 1846 shows the spirit in which he wished to see boys trained in order to fit them for the difficulties of life : " We hope and pray that from this day forward this place may begin to be a nursery, not only of sincere Christians, but of Christians willingr and able to serve the Church of God at home or abroad in her roughest and barest paths of duty ; and it is obvious that to this end they must be trained to endure hardness, to love the poor and low places of the earth, to give up their own wills more unreservedly than is expected in a commou way, even of those who are brought up in our Church." But it is as a parish preacher that Keble will be best known. Since his death. Dr. Pusey and other friends have seen through the press twelve volumes of sermons on the Christian Year, one volume of Sermons, Occasional and Parochial, a volume on the Baptismal Office, and a volume of Outlines of Instructioois or Medi- tations for the Church's Seasons, consisting of notes for THE PREACHER. 193 sermons. This last volume does not lend itself to quotation or analysis but it deserves a special mention. From 1855 onwards, Keble nearly always preached extempore, and scarcely any written sermons are pre- served after that date; but these notes date mainly after tliat year, and so contain his ripest thought. For suggestions for preaching or for individual meditation on the Bible, they are admirable, being stimulating and original and marked, like all his work, by a simple, humble, deep reverence for Holy Scripture. Of the more finished sermons. Dr. Pusey has said that the chief characteristics are affectionate simplicity and intense reality. " Mr. Keble was not a great preacher, was he ? " said one soon after his death to the landlord of the villasfe inn at Hurs^ey. "Well, I don't know what a great preacher is," was the answer, " but he always made us understand him." That is exactly it : he is never thinking of himself, but of his hearers. He said himself, when weighing the relative merits of written or ex- tempore sermons, " That course is probably best for each which most enables him to forget himself, and to think only of God, his hearers, and his subject." ^ There is no display, no elaborate ornament, there is only the desire that he shall be understanded of the people. The sermons are what his favourite Bishop Wilson said sermons should be, " pious instructions to lead men to heaven and save them from hell." ^ "In delivery he did not give his sermons the advantages of an ordinarily eloquent preajher, but he was eminently winning; he let himself down — I do not mean in language or argument, but in simplicity and childlike ^ Occasional Fapers, p. 370. 2 J^J^Q^ ^^ p 875. o 194 JOHN KEBLE. Immility — to the most uneducated of his audience ; ho seemed always to count himself one of the sinners, one of the penitents, one even of the impenitent and careless whom he was addressing, and the very quiet- ness, the almost tearful monotony of his delivery became extremely moving wdien you recollected how learned, how able, how moved in his own heart, and how earnest was the preacher." ^ " He spoke of good angels," says Miss Wilbraham, " their loving ministry and their presence in church, briefly but in words so simple and real that it seemed as if the rustling of their Avings were close around." ^ This simplicity is very striking in contrast with the academical sermons, and it is more marked in his later style : it was indeed the result of a very deliberate effort on his part. " They said to me," he told Dr. Pusey, '* that I w^as preaching over the people's heads, and so I changed my style." ^ For our purpose it will be enough to take one volume of his sermons, the course on the Baj^tismal Office, de- livered after this change in the years 1849-50, to serve as a specimen of this village preaching. " Affec- tionate simplicity" is everywhere — yes, very affectionate, but also very stern ; very Avinning in charm, but very clear in warning. Let us analyze the charm of them a little more exactly. First there is the clear de- termination to be understood. He reverences the intellect of his simple country folk ; he treats it as worth while to spend trouble in making things clear to 1 Sir J. Coleridge : Life, p. 439. 2 Musings on the Christian Year, p. ex. 3 E. B. P. ; Preface to the Village Sermons on the Baptismal Ojjice. THE PREACHER. 195 them. The principle of each rubric is drawu out ; every possible misconception of the Church's teaching is guarded against. Thus on the essentials of Baptism (p. 247) : " The two together, the words and the act, make up (as the Catechism says) the outward visible sign or form in Baptism. It would not be Baptism were a child washed or dipped in water in silence with only good thoughts — no, nor if he were washed and dipped with the best and most beautiful prayer. It would not be Baptism unless the very words which our Saviour appointed were used, *In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost' So on the other hand, neither would it be Baptism were this most Holy Name ever so solemnly repeated over the child, with the Amen of the whole Church. This would not, I say, be Baptism, unless the child or person at the same time were actually washed or dipped in the water." Again on the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration (pp. 273-4) : *• We are to say distinctly, * This chrid is regenerate,' — if there were any doubt, the Church, I suppose, would bid us say, ' We hope that this child is regenerated.' There iS no reason a<^ainst our sayincr that, if it were more according to the truth, according to our Lord's sayings, and the mind of His Holy Church. We might say, we hoped this child was regenerate, just as we say in the Burial Service, *our hope is' that our brother or sister is now resting in Christ; the word would have been just as easily spoken. But instead of saying * we hope,* we say positively, *it is regenerate.' We say it con- cerning every child : no distinction is made between this one and that one. Why should we say it if we are not to believe it? Surely the Church meant us all to believe it, and if we will be true Churchn^en we 196 JOHN KEBLE. must believe it. I say it over and over again, and I wish you to take notice of it, and always remember it, that over every child without exception, im- mediately after it has been baptized, the Priest is desired to say, 'This child is regenerate/ not, *it may be,' or, ' we hope it is,' but plainly and distinctly, ' it is.' " The illustrations are drawn from the ordinary details of village life. The nurse's care to hold a child care- fully and not let it drop, leads to the thought, "If helpless mortals can do so much for those little ones, liow much more may we make ourselves certain that the Everlasting Arms will not fall from under us ; that Jesus Christ will never of His oAvn accord cease to bear us in His loving embrace." When the Church asks God to receive the child according to His promise, this is " much in the same way as a person might present a ticket of admission to a hospital, or an order to receive a little bread or money or clothing, and, if signed by the proper person, it w^ould ensure him the gift." The sign of the cross is like the mark with which shepherds put their master's name upon each lamb separately, when it has been washed and shorn. The sponsors can truly say, " That is my desire," on behalf of the children, being " so very certain that, if the children could know, they would desire it above all things. Just as if one had a humble petition to make to the Queen for any child who was too young to know the meaning of it, to have its property taken care of or the like, one should present it in the name of the child and call it that child's petition. Or if an infant was crying at the door for hunger, though it were too young to under- stand its owu wants, or at all to speak them out in \ THE PREACHER. 197 words, yet we sliould not scruple to say ' the child is lonofins: and askiu» •)^ » 1819 ••• ••• ••• •)■> ••• ••• ••• V ••• ••• ••• 1820 ••• ••• ••■ >j (Aug. 20) ... » (Nov. 25) » ••• ••• ••• 15 ••• ••• ••• 1821 (Aug. 13) ... » •■• ••• ••• a ••• ••• ••• » ••• ••• ••• » ••• ••• ••• )> ••• ••• •■• » (Sept. 16) ... >j ••• •«• ••• M ••■ •■« ••• 1822 (Jan. 27) J) (March 2) ... )) (April 6) ... ■>■) (April 18) ... >) (Aug. 7) ... J) (Aug. 13) ... ti (Aug. 23) ... a (Sept. 14) ... » (Sept. 20) ... >» (Sept. 27) ... The Purification. First Sunday after Easter. Printed in Miscellaneous Poems.l Wliit-Sunday. Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity. St. John's Day. Septuagesima Sunday. Tenth Sunday after Trinity. St. Mark's Day. Fourth Sunday after Trinity. The Evening Hymn. St. Matthias' Day. Palm Sunday. Wednesday before Easter (The Lullaby). Fourth Sunday after Easter. Dedication. Fifth Sunday after Trinity. St. Bartholomew's Day. St. Michael and all Angels. Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity. Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity. Second Sunday after Epiphany. St. Andrew's Day. The Conversion of St. Paul. St. Luke's Day. Easter Day. Second Sunday after Trinity. Ninth Sunday after Trinity. Twelfth Sunday after Trinity. St. Matthew's Day. The Morning Hymn. Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity. 240 APPENDIX I. 1822 r (Oct. 11) [ » • ■ • • • • V • • • • • • 1823 ;(June. 1) 57 (June 5) ?5 (July 15) •5 (Sept. 25) 5? (Sept. 28) 5» (Oct. G) 3? (Oct. 7) ?5 (Oct. 7) 9? (Dec. 26) 1824 (Jan. 5) 5» (Jan. 20) 5) (Jan. 20) 5) (Jan. 20) )) (Jan. 26) ;» (Feb. 9) 55 (Feb. 18) 55 (March 6) 55 0) 55 (March 9) J) (April 24) 55 (May 17) 55 (May 18) 55 (June 3) 55 (June 25) 55 (?) 55 0) 55 0) 55 (?) 5) (?) 55 (?) 1825 (?) 55 (May 15) 55 (June 7) 55 (June 18) 55 (June 25) 5) (July 4) • 5) (July 14) 55 (Aug. 3) 55 (Aug. 15) » (Oct. 23) Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity. Third Sunday in Lent. An original draft, much altered afterwards.] Fourth Sunday in Advent. The Annunciation. Printed in Miscel- laneous Poems.^ Thursday before Easter. Twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity. Twenty-first Sunday after Trinity. Eleventh Sunday after Trinity. Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity. St. James' Day. Twentieth Sunday after Trinity. Advent Sunday. The Holy Innocents. The Circumcision of Christ. The Epiphany. Second Sunday in Advent. Third Sunday in Advent. St. Thomas' Day. Sexagesima Sunday. Quinquagesima Sunday. Second Sunday in Lent. First Sunday in Lent. Fifth Sunday in Lent. First Sunday after Epiphany. Fourth Sunday in Lent. Fifth Sunday after Easter. Sunday after Ascension Day. Sixth Sunday after Epiphany. Third Sunday after Epiphany. St. Stephen's Day. Christmas Day. Easter Eve. Tuesday before Easter. Printed as Six- teenth Sunday after Trinity. Tuesday in Whitsun Week. St. Peter's Day. Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity. Ascension Day. First Sunday after Easter. St. Barnabas' Day. Sunday before Advent. St. Philip and St. James' Day. First Sunday after Christmas. All Saints' Day. Messrs. Methuen's List 21 E. B. Layard. RELIGION IN BOYHOOD. Notes on the Religious Training of Boys. With a Preface by J. R. ILLING- WORTH. By E. B. Layard, M.A. iSmo. is, SDeliotional Boofe0* fVi^h Full-page Illustrations. Fcap, Svo. Buckram. 3^. dd. Padded morocco, 5J. THE IMITATION OF CHRIST. By Thomas a Kempis. With an Introduction by Dean Farrar. Illustrated by C. M. Gere, and printed in black and red. Second Edition. 'Amongst all the innumerable English editions of the " Imitation," there can have been few which were prettier than this one, printed in strong and handsome type by Messrs. Constable, with all the glory of red initials, and the comfort of buckram binding.' — Glasgow Herald. THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. By JOHN Keble. With an Intro- duction and Notes by W. Lock, M. A., Sub- Warden of Keble College, Ireland Professor at Oxford, Author of the ' Life of John Keble.' Illustrated by R. Anxing Bell. ' The present edition is annotated with all the care and iiisight to be expected from Mr. Lock. The progress and circumstances of its composition are detailed in the Introduction. There is an interesting Appendix en the mss. of the "Christian Year," and another giving the order in which the poems were written. A "Short Analysis of the Thought" is prefixed to each, and any difficulty in the text is ex- plained in a note. — Guardian. 'The most acceptable edition of this ever-popular -worV.'— Globe. 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