ulterated by it.
He was, I should say, sometimes misled by a theory that genius cut
through a subject by logic or intuition, without looking to the right or
left, while common sense was always testing every step by consideration
of surroundings (I have not got his terse mode of statement), and that
genius was right, or at least had only to be corrected here and there by
common sense. This, I take it, would hardly have answered if his
trenchancy had not been in practice corrected by J.H.N.'s wider
political circumspection.
He submitted, I suppose, to J.H.N.'s axiom, that if the movement was to
do anything it must become "respectable"; but it was against his nature.
He would (as we see in the _Remains_) have wished Ken to have the
"courage of his convictions" by excommunicating the Jurors in William
III.'s time, and setting up a little Catholic Church, like the
Jansenists in Holland. He was not (as has been observed) a theologian,
but he was as jealous for orthodoxy as if he were. He spoke slightingly
of Heber as having ignorantly or carelessly communicated with (?)
Monophysites. But he probably knew no more about that and other
heresies than a man of active and penetrating mind would derive from
text-books. And I think it likely enough--not that his reverence for the
Eucharist, but--that his special attention to the details of Eucharistic
doctrine was due to the consideration that it was the foundation of
ecclesiastical discipline and authority--matters on which his mind
fastened itself with enthusiasm.
FOOTNOTES:
[18] I ought to say that I was not personally acquainted with Mr.
Froude. I have subjoined to this chapter some recollections of him by
Lord Blachford, who was his pupil and an intimate friend.
[19] "In this mortal journeying wasted shade Is worse than wasted
sunshine."
HENRY TAYLOR, _Sicilian Summer_, v. 3.
[20] _Remains_, Second Part, i. 47.
[21] _Remains_, i. 82.
[22] _Apologia_, p. 84.
[23] 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 r
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