sort of dubious claim upon the reader because of the unique character of the author as well as the equally unique experience of the book. Public condemnation by a great English University represents a title to fame not easily gained during the last century; but it was grotesque enough to comport well both with the physical and mental equipment of William George Ward. In memoirs the Movement has been as prolific as in controversies; its "Lives" are legion; while its echoes, in "The Oxford Movement" of Dean Church, and the "Oxford Counter Reformation" of J. A. Froude, represent distinct contributions to literature as well as to the history of English thought. Something of the mysticism which was sure to accompany so romantic a religious awakening may conceivably have touched the spirit of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, and certainly inspired some of the poetry of Christina Rossetti. It brought into being the splendid translations of John Mason Neale, and occasioned the more popular and somewhat sentimental hymns of Father Faber, to whom must also be accorded the dubious fame of writings upon the doctrine of Eternal Punishment so lurid, that for the moment not only Newman's terrible arraignment of the "Sinner before the JudgementSeat" seems mild, but even the worst (and, alas, best-known) sermon of Edwards pales its ineffectual fires. Nor should the student overlook the influence

1 The reader who is so ill advised as to desire further acquaintance with this phase of Father Faber's work will find matter to his taste

of the movement upon a considerable number of men, who, though never immediately identified with it, yet found their sympathies awakened by its ideals. England has profited inestimably by the personal character of such men as Mr. Gladstone and Roundell Palmer among her statesmen and judges. The fact that they were less exceptional than eminent in the purity of their lives and the worthiness of their ambitions, constitutes one of the most notable elements of contrast between the public life of the third quarter of the nineteenth and that of the corresponding portion of the eighteenth centuries, when so very mundane a saint as the Earl of Dartmouth could win a sort of fame because he prayed, and men like Sandwich and Grafton exemplified the too general tone of public and private morality among the upper classes. Whenever this undeniable advance in life and letters comes to be appraised, no small portion of the inspiration and influence which caused it will have to be referred to the two great movements of religious thought for which Clapham and Oxford stand.

in an article entitled, "Rationalism and Apologetics" in the Edinburgh Review for July, 1906.

CHAPTER VII

ELIJAH AND ELISHA: CARLYLE AND RUSKIN

"Do make religion your great study, Tom; if you repent it, I will bear the blame forever." So, in 1819, wrote Carlyle's mother to her gifted son. She hoped, as only a Scottish mother could, to see him one day in a pulpit; but she longed with a yet deeper longing to make sure of his part and lot in her own faith. He had just confessed to some negligence in his reading of the Bible, but added the reassuring fact that he had spent the evening before with his favourite Job, and hoped to do better in the future. That picture of the restless and halfdistraught young teacher, conscious of powers which must enable him to go far, but terribly in doubt as to the direction whither, dwelling upon the afflictions, contradictions, patience, and integrity of Job, is significant. One wonders whether, as he reached the later chapters, which set forth the marvels of earth-shaking behemoth and man-defying leviathan, any whimsical inkling of their application to his own future character and fame could have dawned upon him. Were this credible, it would be safe to aver that the hyperbolic imagery which depicts the wonders of great and unrestrained power must

have chimed with his grim humour. He is the despair of critics, unless, indeed, they be cock-sure and shallow; and to these, as they turn their little phrases, one is tempted to cry,

"Wilt thou play with him as with a bird? or wilt thou bind him for thy maidens? I will not conceal his parts, nor his power, nor his comely proportion. Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out. He beholdeth all high things: he is a king over all the children of pride."

In his "Reminiscences" Carlyle says of his father:

"In anger he had no need of oaths: his words were like sharp arrows that smote into the very heart. The fault was that he exaggerated (which tendency I also inherit), yet . . . for the sake chiefly of humourous effect."

So ingrained was this humour and so incorrigible and often unrestrained was the habit of exaggeration, that it is only in terms of half-whimsical hyperbole that the man can be set forth. Words of measured truth and soberness take hold upon him as little as arrow and spear upon the armour of leviathan. Hence I incline to credit our greatest master of rhetorical extravagance with the most comprehensive and approximately just verdict upon his character. Carlyle, says Mr. Swinburne, was a typical sturdy peasant, "brave, honest, affectionate, laborious, envious, ungrateful, malignant, and self

ish." The list is as portentous as a group of Mr. Swinburne's adjectives must always be, but, if there be libel here, it is in the implied estimate of the peasant in general rather than in the expressed judgement upon Carlyle in particular.

To call him selfish is only to reiterate a fact that

lies patent upon the pages of his own reminiscences and his wife's journal; and the adjective must still stand, after all allowance has been made for her somewhat ungracious nature, the greatness of the tasks that absorbed him, and the fact that most husbands engaged in preoccupying duties seem selfish to their wives, -who shall say without just cause? "Malignant" is a heavy word and not to be lightly used. So good a man as Thomas Arnold blotted a page of his own biography by writing the "Oxford Malignants" for the "Edinburgh." But even he did not venture to call the author of the "Christian Year" an ass. Carlyle did so, and went on not only to designate Keats as a "Vessel of Hell," but to characterize his biography as a "Fricassee of dead dog.":

2

No other man of his day, not even Hazlitt, could have brought himself to be so consistently con

1 Nineteenth Century, vol. xv, p. 604.

' Justice perhaps requires a citation of the paragraph, though to lovers of Keats it may intensify rather than mitigate Carlyle's offence. "The kind of man he [i. e. Keats] was gets ever more horrible to me. Force of hunger for pleasure of every kind, and want of all other force . . . such a structure of soul, it would once have been very evident, was a chosen Vessel of Hell.'”