reverence, would find himself in the most irritating state of opposition and impatience with much that passed as religion round him. Principles not attempted to be understood and carried into practice, smooth self-complacency among those who looked down on a blind and unspiritual world, the continual provocation of worthless reasoning and ignorant platitudes, the dull unconscious stupidity of people who could not see that the times were critical-that truth had to be defended, and that it was no easy or lighthearted business to defend it-threw him into an habitual attitude of defiance, and half-amused, halfearnest contradiction, which made him feared by loose reasoners and pretentious talkers, and even by quiet easy-going friends, who unexpectedly found themselves led on blindfold, with the utmost gravity, into traps and absurdities by the wiles of his mischievous dialectic. This was the outside look of his relentless earnestness. People who did not like him, or his views, and who, perhaps, had winced under his irony, naturally put down his strong language, which on occasion could certainly be unceremonious, to flippancy and arrogance. But within the circle of those whom he trusted, or of those who needed at any time his help, another side disclosed itself—a side of the most genuine warmth of affection, an awful reality of devoutness, which it was his great and habitual effort to keep hidden, a high simplicity of unworldliness and generosity, and in spite of his daring mockeries of what was commonplace or showy,

1

the most sincere and deeply felt humility with himself. Dangerous as he was often thought to be in conversation, one of the features of his character which has impressed itself on the memory of one who knew him well, was his "patient, winning considerateness in discussion, which, with other qualities, endeared him to those to whom he opened his heart." "It is impossible," writes James Mozley in 1833, with a mixture of amusement, speaking of the views about celibacy which were beginning to be current, "to talk with Froude without committing one's self on such subjects as these, so that by and by I expect the tergiversants will be a considerable party." His letters, with their affectionately playful addresses, δαιμόνιε, αἰνότατε, TéπOV, Carissime, "Sir, my dear friend," or "Apyeίwv ox' apioтe, have you not been a spoon?" are full of the most delightful ease and verve and sympathy.

With a keen sense of English faults he was, as Cardinal Newman has said, "an Englishman to the backbone"; and he was, further, a fastidious, hightempered English gentleman, in spite of his declaiming about "pampered aristocrats" and the "gentleman heresy." His friends thought of him as of the "young Achilles," with his high courage, and noble form, and "eagle eye," made for such great things, but appointed so soon to die. "Who can refrain from tears at the thought of that bright and beautiful Froude?" is the expression of one of them shortly before his death, and when it was quite certain that the doom which had so 1 Apologia, p. 84.

long hung over him was at hand.1 He had the love of doing, for the mere sake of doing, what was difficult or even dangerous to do, which is the mainspring of characteristic English sports and games. He loved the sea; he liked to sail his own boat, and enjoyed rough weather, and took interest in the niceties of seamanship and shipcraft. He was a bold rider across country. With a powerful grasp on mathematical truths and principles, he entered with whole-hearted zest into inviting problems, or into practical details

1 The following shows the feeling about him in friends apt to be severe critics :-"The contents of the present collection are rather fragments and sketches than complete compositions. This might be expected in the works of a man whose days were few and interrupted by illness, if indeed that may be called an interruption, which was every day sensibly drawing him to his grave. In Mr. Froude's case, however, we cannot set down much of this incompleteness to the score of illness. The strength of his religious impressions, the boldness and clearness of his views, his long habits of self-denial, and his unconquerable energy of mind, triumphed over weakness and decay, till men with all their health and strength about them might gaze upon his attenuated form, struck with a certain awe of wonderment at the brightness of his wit, the intenseness of his mental vision, and the iron strength of his argument.

We will venture a remark as to that ironical turn, which certainly does appear in various shapes in the first part of these Remains. Unpleasant as irony may sometimes be, there need not go with it, and in this instance there did not go with it, the smallest real asperity of temper. Who that remembers the inexpressible sweetness of his smile, and the deep and melancholy pity with which he would speak of those whom he felt to be the victims of modern delusions, would not be forward to contradict such a suspicion? Such expressions, we will venture to say, and not harshness, anger, or gloom, animate the features of that countenance which will never cease to haunt the memory of those who knew him. His irony arose from that peculiar mode in which he viewed all earthly things, himself and all that was dear to him not excepted. It was his poetry." From an article in the British Critic, April 1840, p. 396, by Mr. Thomas Mozley, quoted in Letters of J. B. Mozley, p. 102.

No

of mechanical or hydrostatic or astronomical science. His letters are full of such observations, put in a way which he thought would interest his friends, and marked by his strong habit of getting into touch with what was real and of the substance of questions. He applied his thoughts to architecture with a power and originality which at the time were not common. one who only cared for this world could be more attracted and interested than he was by the wonder and beauty of its facts and appearances. With the deepest allegiance to his home and reverence for its ties and authority, a home of the old-fashioned ecclesiastical sort, sober, manly, religious, orderly, he carried into his wider life the feelings with which he had been brought up; bold as he was, his reason and his character craved for authority, but authority which morally and reasonably he could respect. Mr. Keble's goodness and purity subdued him, and disposed him to accept without reserve his master's teaching: and towards Mr. Keble, along with an outside show of playful criticism and privileged impertinence, there reverence which governed Froude's whole nature. In the wild and rough heyday of reform, he was a Tory of the Tories. But when authority failed him, from cowardice or stupidity or self-interest, he could not easily pardon it; and he was ready to startle his friends by proclaiming himself a Radical, prepared for the sake of the highest and greatest interests to sacrifice all second-rate and subordinate ones.

was a

When his friends, after his death, published selec

tions from his journals and letters, the world was shocked by what seemed his amazing audacity both of thought and expression about a number of things and persons which it was customary to regard as almost beyond the reach of criticism. The Remains lent themselves admirably to the controversial process of culling choice phrases and sentences and epithets surprisingly at variance with conventional and popular estimates. Friends were pained and disturbed; foes naturally enough could not hold in their overflowing exultation at such a disclosure of the spirit of the movement. Sermons and newspapers drew attention to Froude's extravagances with horror and disgust. The truth is that if the off-hand sayings in conversation or letters of any man of force and wit and strong convictions about the things and persons that he condemns, were made known to the world, they would by themselves have much the same look of flippancy, injustice, impertinence to those who disagreed in opinion with the speaker or writer; they are allowed for, or they are not allowed for by others, according to what is known of his general character. The friends who published Froude's Remains knew what he was; they knew the place and proportion of the fierce and scornful passages; they knew that they really did not go beyond the liberty and the frank speaking which most people give themselves in the abandon and understood exaggeration of intimate correspondence and talk. But they miscalculated the effect on those who did not know him, or whose interest it was to