FROM THE LIBRARY OF 
 
 REV. LOUIS FITZGERALD BENSON, D. D. 
 
 BEQUEATHED BY HIM TO 
 
 THE LIBRARY OF 
 
 PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 
gjolm fteble 
 
EDINBURGH *. PRINTED BY THOMAS CONSTABLE, 
 FOR 
 
 EDMONSTON^AND DOUGLAS. 
 
 LONDON HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 DUBLIN M'GLASHAN AND GILL. 
 
 GLASGOW JAMES MACLEHOSE. 
 

 3fo!»t Heble 
 
 AN ESSAY ON THE 
 
 AUTHOR OF THE 'CHRISTIAN YEAR' 
 
 BY J. C. SHAIEP 
 
 PROFESSOR OF HUMANITY ST. ANDREWS 
 
 EDINBUEGH 
 
 EDMONSTON & DOUGLAS 
 
 1866. 
 
Contents. 
 
 i. OXFORD [N 1S40-41, 1 
 
 ii. MR. NEWMAN— HIS INFLUENCE IN OXFORD. 
 
 in. MR. NEWMANS DEPARTURE FROM OXFORD, 21 
 
 iv. KEBLE'S EARLY YEARS, . 28 
 
 v. HIS LIFE IN OXFORD AND FAIRFORD, 34 
 
 vi. RISE OF THE OXFORD MOVEMENT, . . 47 
 
 vii. KEBLE AFTER NEWMAN'S DEPARTURE, . 59 
 
 vin. 'LYRA INNOCENTIUM,' .... 73 
 
 ix. 'THE CHRISTIAN YEAR :' FOUR CHARACTER 
 
 ISTICS OF IT, SO 
 
 x. (1.) ITS PECULIAR TONE OF RELIGIOUS 
 
 FEELING, 85 
 
 xi. (-2.) HOME FEELING, .... 94 
 
 xn. (3.) RESERVE, 93 
 
 xin. (4.) DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE, . . 104 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2013 
 
 http://archive.org/details/johnkebleeOOshai 
 
preface- 
 
 It may seem hardly worth while to re- 
 publish, in a separate form, so brief a tract 
 as this. And, indeed, had I taken counsel 
 with myself alone, I might have waited in 
 hope of some day making it part of a larger 
 book. But a wish was expressed by one, to 
 whom I could not but defer, that the re- 
 publication, in one form or another, should 
 be undertaken without delay. This opinion, 
 most kindly conveyed to n^e by the chosen 
 friend of Keble — Sir J. T. Coleridge, — at once 
 determined me. I could not be wrong in 
 following the suggestion of one whose name 
 gave it so great weight. At the same time 
 I am happy to take the opportunity which 
 this preface affords me to acknowledge the 
 
via preface. 
 
 free, I hope not too free, use I have made 
 of Sir J. T. Coleridge's delightful letters in 
 The Guardian for the facts of the poet's life. 
 Some interval must necessarily elapse be- 
 fore a regular Life of Keble can be written. 
 Meantime this essay, revised and somewhat 
 enlarged as it now is, may have an interest 
 which it will probably lose when the Bio- 
 graphy appears. Another circumstance may 
 possibly give it some value : while Keble 
 will generally be portrayed by those who 
 have been all their lives surrounded with 
 the same associations as he was, he is here 
 described as he appeared to one reared amid 
 quite other traditions. 
 
 J. C. SHATRP. 
 St. Andrews, Nov. 7, 1866. 
 
SECTION FIRST.— OXFORD IN 1840-41. 
 
 THE closing chapter of Lockkart's Life of 
 Scott begins with these words : ' We 
 read in Solomon, "The heart knoweth its 
 own bitterness ;" and a wise poet of our own 
 time thus beautifully expands the saying — 
 
 M Why should we faint, and fear to live alone, 
 Since all alone, so Heaven has will'd, we die, 
 Nor even the tenderest heart, and next our own, 
 Knows half the reasons why we smile and sigh ? " ' 
 
 On glancing to the footnote to see who 
 the wise poet of our own time might be, the 
 reader saw, for the first time perhaps, the 
 name of Keble and The Christian Year. To 
 many in Scotland, at least, this was the 
 earliest intimation of the existence of the 
 
 A 
 
2 Soijn Itefrie. 
 
 poet, and the work that has immortalized 
 him. If some friend soon afterwards 
 happened to bring from England a copy 
 of The Christian Year, and make a present 
 of it, the young reader could not but be 
 struck by a lyric here and there, which 
 opened a new vein, and struck a note of 
 meditative feeling, not exactly like anything 
 he had heard before. But the little book con- 
 tained much that was strange and unintel- 
 ligible, some things even startling. Very 
 vague were the rumours which at that time 
 reached Scotland of the author. Men said 
 he belonged to a party of Churchmen who 
 were making a great stir in Oxford, and 
 leavening the University with a kind of 
 thought which was novel, and supposed to be 
 dangerous. The most definite thing said was 
 that the new school had a general Eoman- 
 izing tendency. But this must be a mistake 
 or strange exaggeration. Folly and senti- 
 mentalism might no doubt go far enough 
 at Oxford. But as for Eomanism, the 
 revival of such antiquated nonsense was 
 simply impossible in this enlightened nine- 
 
Sofjn Itrfile* 3 
 
 teenth century. If such an absurdity were 
 to show itself openly, was there not still ex- 
 tant the Edinhurgh Review ready to crush it ? 
 To many such ere now it had administered 
 the quietus. Would it not deal as summarily 
 with this one too ? Such was the kind of 
 talk that was heard when Scott's Life ap- 
 peared in 1838. For more exact informa- 
 tion, young men who were inquisitive had 
 to wait, till a few years later gave them 
 opportunities of seeing for themselves, and 
 coming into personal contact with what was 
 actually going on in Oxford. 
 
 It was a strange experience, for a young 
 man trained anywhere, much more for one 
 born and bred in Scotland, and trained 
 within The Kirk, to enter Oxford when the 
 religious movement was at its height. He 
 found himself all at once in the midst of a 
 system of teaching which unchurched him- 
 self and all whom he had hitherto known. 
 In his simplicity he had believed that 
 spiritual religion was a thing of the heart, 
 and that neither Episcopacy nor Presbytery 
 availeth anything. But here were men — 
 
4 3toim Itebie. 
 
 able, learned, devout-minded men — main- 
 taining that outward rites and ceremonies 
 were of the very essence, and that, where 
 these were not, there was no true Chris- 
 tianity. How could men, such as these were 
 reported to be, really go back themselves 
 and try to lead others back to what were 
 but the beggarly elements ? It was all very 
 perplexing, not to say irritating. However, 
 there might be something more behind, 
 which a young man could not understand. 
 So he would wait and see what he would 
 see. 
 
 Soon he came to know that the only 
 portions of Oxford society, unaffected by 
 the new influence, were the two extremes. 
 The older dons, that is, the heads of houses, 
 and the senior tutors, were unmoved by it, 
 except to opposition. The whole younger 
 half of the undergraduates generally took no 
 part in it. But the great body that lay 
 between these extremes, that is, most of the 
 younger fellows of colleges, and most of the 
 scholars and elder undergraduates, at least 
 those of them who read or thought at all, 
 
3ofju Jfcefrfe* 5 
 
 were in some way or other busy with the 
 new questions. When in time the new- 
 comer began to know some of the men who 
 sympathized with the movement, the first 
 impression was of something constrained 
 and artificial in their manners and deport- 
 ment. High character and ability many of 
 them were said to have ; but to a chance 
 observer it seemed that, in as far as their 
 system had moulded them, it had made 
 them the opposite of natural in their views 
 of things, and in their whole mental attitude. 
 You almost longed for some free breath of 
 mountain air to sweep away the stifling 
 atmosphere that w r as about you. This might 
 come partly, no doubt, from the feeling with 
 which you knew that these men must from 
 their system regard you, and all who had 
 the misfortune to be born outside of their 
 sacred pale. Not that they ever expressed 
 such views in your hearing. Good manners, 
 as well as their habitual reserve, forbade 
 this. But, though they did not say it, you 
 knew quite well what they felt. And if at 
 any time the ' young barbarian ' put a direct 
 
6 3ofjn Iteble. 
 
 question, or made a remark which went 
 straight at these opinions, they would only- 
 look at him, astonished at his rudeness and 
 profanity, and would shrink into them- 
 selves. 
 
 Now and then, however, it would happen 
 that some adherent, or even leading man of 
 the movement, more frank and outspoken 
 than the rest, would deign to speak out his 
 principles, and even to discuss them with 
 undergraduates and controversial Scots. To 
 him urging the necessity of Apostolical Suc- 
 cession, and the sacerdotal view of the Sacra- 
 ments, some young man might venture to 
 reply — ( Well ! if all you say be true, then I 
 never can have known a Christian. For up 
 to this time I have lived among people who 
 were strangers to all these things, which, 
 you tell me, are essentials of Christianity. 
 And I am quite sure that, if I have never 
 known a Christian till now, I shall never 
 know one.' The answer to this would pro- 
 bably be, ' There is much in what you say. 
 No doubt high virtues, very like the Chris- 
 tian graces, are to be found outside of the 
 
Christian Church. But it is a remarkable 
 thing, those best acquainted with Church 
 history tell me, that outside of the pale of 
 the Church the saintly character is never 
 found.' This naive reply was not likely to 
 have much weight with the young listener. 
 It would have taken something stronger to 
 make him break faith with all that was most 
 sacred in his early recollections. Beautiful 
 examples of Presbyterian piety had stamped 
 impressions on his memory not to be effaced 
 by sacerdotal theories or subtleties of the 
 schools. And the Church system which 
 began by disowning these examples placed 
 a barrier to its acceptance at the very 
 outset. 
 
 But however unbelievable their theory, 
 further acquaintance with the younger men 
 of the new school, whether junior fellows or 
 undergraduate scholars, disclosed many traits 
 of character that could not but awaken re- 
 spect, or something more. If there was 
 about many of them a constraint and reserve 
 which seemed unnatural, there was also in 
 many an unworldliness and self-denial, a 
 
8 Sofjn JUMe* 
 
 purity of life and elevation of aim, in some 
 a generosity of purpose and depth of devotion, 
 not to be gainsaid. Could the movement 
 which produced these qualities, or even 
 attracted them to itself, be wholly false and 
 bad? This movement, moreover, when at 
 its height, extended its influence far beyond 
 the circle of those who directly adopted its 
 views. There was not a reading man at least 
 in Oxford, who was not more or less indirectly 
 influenced by it. Only the very idle or the 
 very frivolous were wholly proof against it. 
 On all others it impressed a sobriety of 
 conduct and a seriousness not usually found 
 among large bodies of young men. It raised 
 the tone of average morality in Oxford to a 
 level which perhaps it had never before 
 reached. You may call it over-wrought 
 and too highly strung. Perhaps it was. 
 It was better, however, for young men to 
 be so, than to be doubters or cynics. 
 
 
SECTION II. 
 MR. NEWMAN, HIS INFLUENCE IN OXFORD. 
 
 IF such was the general aspect of Oxford 
 society at that time, where was the 
 centre and soul from which so mighty 
 a power emanated? At that time it lay, 
 and had for some years lain, mainly in 
 one man — a man in many ways the most 
 remarkable that England has seen during 
 this century, perhaps the most remarkable 
 whom the English Church has produced in 
 any century, — John Henry Newman. 
 
 The influence he had gained, apparently 
 without setting himself to seek it, was some- 
 thing altogether unlike anything else in our 
 time. A mysterious veneration had by de- 
 grees gathered round him, till now it was 
 
io Sofjrx Iteble. 
 
 almost as though some Ambrose or Augustine 
 of elder ages had reappeared. He himself 
 tells how one day, when he was an under- 
 graduate, a friend with whom he was walk- 
 ing in the Oxford street cried out eagerly, 
 'There's KebleP and with what awe he 
 looked at him ! A few years, and the same 
 took place with regard to himself. In Oriel 
 Lane light-hearted undergraduates would 
 drop their voices and whisper, ' There's New- 
 man !' when, head thrust forward, and gaze 
 fixed as though on some vision seen only by 
 himself, with swift, noiseless step he went 
 by. Awe fell on them for a moment, almost 
 as if it had been some apparition that had 
 passed. For his inner circle of friends, many 
 of them younger men, he was said to have a 
 quite romantic affection, which they returned 
 with the most ardent devotion and the in- 
 tensest faith in him. But to the outer world 
 he was a mystery. What were the qualities 
 that inspired these feelings ? There was of 
 course learning and refinement, there was 
 genius, not indeed of a philosopher, but of a 
 subtle and original thinker, an unequalled 
 
edge of dialectic, and these all glorified by 
 the imagination of a poet. Then there 
 was the utter unworldliness, the setting at 
 naught of all things which men most prize, 
 the tamelessness of soul, which was ready 
 to essay the impossible. Men felt that here 
 was 
 
 1 One of that small transfigured band 
 Whom the world cannot tame.' 
 
 It was this mysteriousness which, beyond 
 all his gifts of head and heart, so strangely 
 fascinated and overawed, — that something 
 about him which made it impossible to reckon 
 his course and take his bearings, that soul- 
 hunger and quenchless yearning which no- 
 thing short of the eternal could satisfy. 
 This deep, resolute ardour of soul was no 
 doubt an offence not to be forgiven by older 
 men, especially by the wary and worldly- 
 wise ; but it was the very spell which drew 
 to him the hearts of all the younger and the 
 more enthusiastic. Such was the impression 
 he had made in Oxford just before he relin- 
 quished his hold on it. And if at that time 
 it seemed to persons at a distance extravagant 
 
i2 Sofjtt %tW. 
 
 and absurd, they may have since learned 
 enough to make it plain to them that there 
 was enough in him who was the object of it 
 to justify the impression. 
 
 But it maybe asked, what actions or definite 
 results were there to account for so deep and 
 widespread a veneration? Of course there 
 were the numerous products of, his prolific 
 pen, his works, controversial, theological, 
 religious. But none of these were so deep 
 in learning as some of Dr. Pusey's writings, 
 nor so widely popular as The Christian Year; 
 and yet both Dr. Pusey and Mr. Keble were 
 at that time quite second in importance to 
 Mr. Newman. The centre from which his 
 power went forth was the pulpit of St. Mary's, 
 with those wonderful afternoon sermons. 
 Sunday after Sunday, year by year, they 
 went on, each continuing and deepening 
 the impression made by the last. As the 
 hour interfered with the dinner-hour of the 
 colleges, most men preferred a warm dinner 
 without Newman's sermon to a cold one 
 with it, so the audience was not crowded — 
 the large church little more than half filled. 
 
Sofjn Utblz. 1 3 
 
 The service was very simple, no pomp, no 
 ritualism ; for it was characteristic of the 
 leading men of the movement that they 
 left these things to the weaker brethren. 
 Their thoughts, at all events, were set on 
 great questions which touched the heart of 
 unseen things. About the service, the most 
 remarkable thing was the beauty, the silver 
 intonation of Mr. Newman's voice, as he 
 read the lessons. It seemed to bring new 
 meaning out of the familiar words. Still 
 lingers in memory the tone with which he 
 read, ' But Jerusalem which is above is free, 
 which is the mother of us all.' When he 
 began to preach, a stranger was not likely 
 to be much struck, especially if he had been 
 accustomed to pulpit-oratory of the Boan- 
 erges sort. Here was no vehemence, no de- 
 clamation, no show of elaborated argument, 
 so that one who came prepared to hear a 
 ' great intellectual effort ' was almost sure to 
 go away disappointed. Indeed, w r e believe 
 that if he had preached one of his St. Mary's 
 sermons before a Scotch town congregation, 
 they would have thought the preacher a 
 
14 Sofjn lUfole. 
 
 ' silly body.' The delivery had a peculiarity 
 which it took a new hearer some time to get 
 over. Each separate sentence, or at least 
 each short paragraph, was spoken rapidly, 
 but with great clearness of intonation ; and 
 then at its close there was a pause, lasting 
 for nearly half a minute ; then another 
 rapidly but clearly spoken sentence, fol- 
 lowed by another pause. It took some 
 time to get over this, but, that once done, 
 the wonderful charm began to dawn on 
 you. The look and bearing of the preacher 
 were as of one who dwelt apart, who, though 
 he knew his age well, did not live in it. 
 From his seclusion of study, and abstinence, 
 and prayer, from habitual dwelling in the 
 unseen, he seemed to come forth that one 
 day of the week to speak to others of the 
 things he had seen and known. Those who 
 never heard him might fancy that his 
 sermons would generally be about apo- 
 stolical succession or rights of the Church, 
 or against Dissenters. Nothing of the kind. 
 You might hear him preach for weeks with- 
 out an allusion to these things. What there 
 
3oJjn lUblz. T5 
 
 was of High Church teaching was implied 
 rather than enforced. The local, the tempo- 
 rary, and the modern were ennobled by the 
 presence of the catholic truth belonging to all 
 ages that pervaded the whole. His power 
 showed itself chiefly in the new and un- 
 looked-for way in which he touched into life 
 old truths, moral or spiritual, which all Chris- 
 tians acknowledge, but most have ceased to 
 feel — when he spoke of ' Unreal Words/ of 
 1 The Individuality of the Soul/ of ' The In- 
 visible World/ of a ' Particular Providence ;' 
 or again, of ' The Ventures of Faith/ ' War- 
 fare the condition of Victory/ l The Cross 
 of Christ the Measure of the World/ ' The 
 Church a Home for the Lonely/ As he 
 spoke, how the old truth became new r ! how 
 it came home with a meaning never felt 
 before ! He laid his finger — how gently, 
 yet how powerfully, — on some inner place 
 in the hearer's heart, and told him things 
 about himself he had never known till then. 
 Subtlest truths which it would have taken 
 philosophers pages of circumlocution and big- 
 words to state, were dropt out by the way in 
 
1 6 3ofjn WitUt. 
 
 a sentence or two of the most transparent 
 Saxon. What delicacy of style yet what 
 strength ! how simple yet how suggestive ! 
 how homely yet how refined ! how penetrat- 
 ing yet how tender-hearted ! If now and 
 then there was a forlorn undertone which at 
 the time seemed inexplicable, if he spoke of 
 'many a sad secret which a man dare not 
 tell lest he find no sympathy/ of 'secrets 
 lying like cold ice upon the heart/ of ' some 
 solitary incommunicable grief/ you might be 
 perplexed at the drift of what he said, but 
 you felt all the more drawn to the speaker. 
 To call these sermons eloquent would not be 
 the word for them ; high poems they were 
 rather, as of an inspired singer, or the out- 
 pourings as of a prophet rapt, yet self-pos- 
 sessed. And the tone of voice in which 
 they were spoken, once you grew accus- 
 tomed to it, sounded like a fine strain of 
 unearthly music. Through the stillness of 
 that high Gothic building the words fell on 
 the ear like the measured drippings of 
 water in some vast dim cave. After hear- 
 ing these sermons you might come away 
 
Sofjn Itefrte 17 
 
 still not believing the tenets peculiar to 
 the High Church system ; but you would 
 be harder than most men, if you did not 
 feel more than ever ashamed of coarseness, 
 selfishness, worldliness, if you did not feel 
 the things of faith brought closer to the 
 soul. 
 
 There was one occasion of a different 
 kind, when he spoke from St. Mary's 
 pulpit for the last time, not as Parish mini- 
 ster, but as University preacher. It was 
 the crisis of the movement. All Oxford 
 assembled to hear what Newman had to 
 say, and St. Mary's was crowded to the 
 door. The subject he spoke of was 'the 
 theory of Development in Christian Doc- 
 trine/ a subject which, since then, has 
 become common property, but which at 
 that time was new even to the ablest men 
 in Oxford. For an hour and a half he 
 drew out the argument, and perhaps the 
 acutest there did not quite follow the line 
 of thought, or felt wearied by the length of 
 it, illustrated though it was by some start- 
 ling examples. Such was the famous 
 
 B 
 
1 8 Sofjn Itebie. 
 
 ' Protestantism has at various times de- 
 veloped into Polygamy/ or the still more 
 famous ' Scripture says the sun moves 
 round the earth, Science that the earth 
 moves, and the sun is comparatively at 
 rest. How can we determine which of 
 these opposite statements is true, till we 
 know what motion is ? ' Few probably who 
 heard it have forgot the tone of voice with 
 which he uttered the beautiful passage about 
 music as the audible embodiment of some 
 unknown reality behind, itself sweeping like 
 a strain of splendid music out of the heart 
 of a subtle argument : — 
 
 * Take another instance of an outward and 
 earthly form, or economy, under which great 
 wonders unknown seem to be typified — I 
 mean musical sounds, as they are exhibited 
 most perfectly in instrumental harmony. 
 There are seven notes in the scale; make 
 them fourteen ; yet what a slender outfit for 
 so vast an enterprise ! What science brings 
 so much out of so little ? Out of what poor 
 elements does some great master create his 
 new world ! Shall we say that all this 
 
3ofjn Jtefcle, J 9 
 
 exuberant inventiveness is a mere ingenuity 
 or trick of art, like some game or fashion of 
 the day, without reality, without meaning ? 
 We may do so ; and then, perhaps, we shall 
 also account the science of theology to be a 
 matter of words ; yet, as there is a divinity 
 in the theology of the Church, which those 
 who feel cannot communicate, so there is 
 also in the wonderful creation of sublimity 
 and beauty of which I am speaking. To 
 many men the very names which the science 
 employs are utterly incomprehensible. To 
 speak of an idea or a subject seems to be 
 fanciful or trifling, and of the views which 
 it opens upon us to be childish extravagance ; 
 yet is it possible that that inexhaustible 
 evolution and disposition of notes, so rich 
 yet so simple, so intricate yet so regulated, 
 so various yet so majestic, should be a mere 
 sound which is gone and perishes ? Can it 
 be that those mysterious stirrings of heart, 
 and keen emotions, and strange yearnings 
 after we know not what, and awful impres- 
 sions from we know not whence, should be 
 wrought in us by what is unsubstantial, 
 
20 Sofpt %Mz. 
 
 and comes and goes, and begins and ends in 
 itself ? It is not so ; it cannot be. No ; 
 they have escaped from some higher sphere ; 
 they are the outpourings of eternal harmony 
 in the medium of created sound ; they are 
 echoes from our Home ; they are the voices 
 of Angels, or the Magnificat of Saints, or the 
 living laws of Divine governance, or the 
 Divine attributes ; something are they be- 
 sides themselves, which we cannot compass, 
 which we cannot utter, though mortal man, 
 and he perhaps not otherwise distinguished 
 above his fellows, has the power of eliciting 
 them.' 
 
SECTION III. 
 Mr. NEWMAN'S DEPARTURE FROM OXFORD. 
 
 THIS was preached in the winter of 1843, 
 the last time he appeared in the 
 University pulpit. His parochial sermons 
 had by this time assumed an uneasy tone 
 which perplexed his followers with fear of 
 change. That summer solved their doubt. 
 In the quiet chapel of Littlemore which he 
 himself had built, when all Oxford was 
 absent during the long vacation, he preached 
 his last Anglican sermon to the country 
 people, and only a few friends, and poured 
 forth that affecting and mournful farewell to 
 the Church of England. The sermon is en- 
 titled 'The Parting of Friends/ The text 
 was ' Man goeth forth to his work and his 
 
22 3of)tt luble. 
 
 labour until the evening.' He went through 
 all the instances recorded in the Bible of 
 human affection sorely tried, reproducing 
 the incidents in the very words of Scripture, 
 — Jacob, Hagar, Naomi, Jonathan and David, 
 St. Paul and the elders of Ephesus, and last, 
 the weeping over Jerusalem, and the ' Behold, 
 your house is left unto you desolate/ — and 
 then he bursts forth — 'A lesson, surely, and 
 a warning to us all, in every place where 
 He puts His name, to the end of time, lest 
 we be cold towards His gifts, or unbelieving 
 towards His word, or jealous of His workings, 
 or heartless towards His mercies. ... 
 mother of saints ! school of the wise ! 
 nurse of the heroic ! of whom went forth, in 
 whom have dwelt memorable names of old, 
 to spread the truth abroad, or to cherish and 
 illustrate it at home ! thou, from whom 
 surrounding nations lit their lamps ! virgin 
 of Israel ! wherefore dost thou now sit on 
 the ground and keep silence, like one of the 
 foolish women who were without oil on the 
 coming of the Bridegroom ? Where is now 
 the ruler in Sion, and the doctor in the 
 
3ofjn Itefrle, 2 - 
 
 J 
 
 Temple, and the ascetic on Carmel, and the 
 herald in the wilderness, and the preacher 
 in the market-place ? Where are thy "effec- 
 tual fervent prayers " offered in secret, and 
 thy alms and good works coming up, as a 
 memorial before God ? How is it, once 
 holy place, that " the land mourneth, for the 
 corn is wasted, the new w 7 ine is dried up, the 
 oil languisheth, because joy is withered away 
 from the sons of men?" Alas for the day ! 
 how do the beasts groan ! the herds of cattle 
 are perplexed, because they have no pasture; 
 yea, the flocks are made desolate. Lebanon 
 is ashamed and hewn down ; Sharon is like 
 a wilderness, and Bashan and Carmel shake 
 off their fruits. my mother, whence is 
 this unto thee, that thou hast good things 
 poured upon thee and canst not keep them, 
 and bearest children, yet darest not own 
 them ? Why hast thou not the skill to use 
 their services, nor the heart to rejoice in 
 their love? How is it that whatever is 
 generous in purpose, and tender or deep in 
 devotion, thy flower and thy promise, falls 
 from thy bosom, and finds no home within 
 
24 Sofjn %zW. 
 
 thine arms ? Who hath put this note upon 
 thee, to have " a miscarrying womb, and dry 
 breasts," to be strange to thine own flesh, 
 and thine eye cruel to thy little ones ? Thine 
 own offspring, the fruit of thy womb, who 
 love thee and would toil for thee, thou dost 
 gaze upon with fear, as though a portent, or 
 thou dost loath as an offence ; at best thou 
 dost but endure, as if they had no claim but 
 on thy patience, self-possession, and vigil- 
 ance, to be rid of them as easily as thou 
 mayest. Thou makest them " stand all the 
 day idle " as the very condition of thy bear- 
 ing with them ; or thou biddest them begone 
 where they will be more welcome ; or thou 
 sellest them for nought to the stranger that 
 passes by. And what wilt thou do in the 
 end thereof ? 
 
 ' Scripture is a refuge in any trouble ; only 
 let us be on our guard against seeming to 
 use it farther than is fitting, or doing more 
 than sheltering ourselves under its shadow. 
 Let us use it according to our measure. It 
 is far higher and wider than our need, and 
 it conceals our feelings while it gives expres- 
 
Soijtt Iteble. 25 
 
 sion to them. It is sacred and heavenly ; 
 and it restrains and purifies, while it sanctions 
 them. . . . And my brethren, kind and 
 affectionate hearts, loving friends, should 
 you know any one whose lot it has been, by 
 writing or by word of mouth, in some degree 
 to help you thus to act ; if he has ever told 
 you what you knew about yourselves, or 
 what you did not know ; has read to you 
 your wants and feelings, and comforted you 
 by the very reading ; has made you feel that 
 there was a higher life than this daily one, 
 and a brighter world than that you see ; or 
 encouraged you, or sobered you, or opened a 
 way to the inquiring, or soothed the per- 
 plexed, if what he has said or done has ever 
 made you take interest in him, and feel well- 
 inclined towards him, remember such a one 
 in time to come, though you hear him not, 
 and pray for him, that in all things he may 
 know God's will, and at all times he may be 
 ready to fulfil it/ 
 
 Then followed the resignation of his fel- 
 lowship, the retirement to Littlemore, the 
 withdrawal even from the intercourse of his 
 
26 Script 3&zW. 
 
 friends, the unloosing of all the ties that 
 bound him to Oxford, the two years' pon- 
 dering of the step he was about to take, — so 
 that when in 1845 he entered the Church of 
 Borne, he did it by himself, making himself 
 as much as possible responsible only for his 
 own act, and followed by but one or two 
 young friends who would not be kept back. 
 Those who witnessed these things, and knew 
 that, if a large following had been his ob- 
 ject, he might, by leaving the Church of 
 England three years earlier, in the pleni- 
 tude of his power, have taken almost all the 
 flower of young Oxford with him, needed 
 no Apologia to convince them of his honesty 
 of purpose. And the moral power his pre- 
 sence had been in Oxford was proved by 
 nothing more than by the tremendous reac- 
 tion that followed his departure, — a reaction 
 from which I know not if that University 
 has yet recovered. Such was the impression 
 made by that eventful time on impartial 
 but not uninterested spectators — on those 
 who by early education and conviction were 
 kept quite aloof from the peculiar tenets of 
 
3o|jn Utile. 27 
 
 High Churchmen, but who could not but 
 be struck by the moral quickening which 
 resulted from the movement, and by the 
 marvellous character of him who was the 
 soul of it. 
 
SECTION IV. 
 KEBLE'S EARLY YEARS. 
 
 DR. NEWMAN" himself tells us that all 
 the while the true and primary author 
 of that movement was out of sight. The 
 Eev. John Keble was at a distance from Ox- 
 ford, in his vicarage at Hursley, there living in 
 his own life, and carrying out in his daily ser- 
 vices and parish ministry those truths which 
 he had first brought forward, and Newman 
 had carried out, in Oxford. But though out of 
 sight, he was not out of mind. The Chris- 
 tian Year was in the hands of every one, 
 even the youngest under-graduate. Besides 
 its more intrinsic qualities, the tone of it 
 blended well with the sentiment which the 
 venerable aspect of the old city awakened. 
 
3fottt tteble. 29 
 
 i 
 
 It used to be pleasing to try and identify 
 amid the scenery around Oxford some of the 
 descriptions of nature with which the poems 
 are inlaid. During these years the poet- 
 priest's figure was but seldom seen in the 
 streets of Oxford, — only when some great 
 question affecting the Church, some discus- 
 sion of No. 90, or trial of Mr. Ward, had 
 summoned Convocation together. Once, if 
 my memory serves, I remember to have 
 seen him in the University pulpit at St. 
 Mary's, but his voice w r as not strong, and 
 did not reach many of the audience. His 
 service to his party had lain in another 
 direction. It was he who, by his character, 
 had first awakened a new tone of sentiment 
 in Oxford, and attracted to himself whatever 
 else was like minded. He had sounded the 
 first note which woke that sentiment into 
 action, and embodied it in a party. He had 
 kept up, though from a distance, sympathetic 
 intercourse with the chief actors, counselled 
 and encouraged them. Above all, he gave 
 poetry to the movement, and a poetic aspect. 
 Polemics by themselves are dreary work. 
 
30 Sofjtt IteWe* 
 
 They do not touch the springs of young 
 hearts. But he who, in the midst of any 
 line of thought, unlocks a fountain of genu- 
 ine poetry, does more to humanize it, and 
 win for it a way to mens affections, than 
 he who writes a hundred volumes, however 
 able, of controversy. Without disparage- 
 ment to the patristic and other learning of 
 the party, the two permanent monuments 
 of genius which it has bequeathed to Eng- 
 land may be said to be Newman's Parochial 
 Sermons, and Keble's Christian Year. 
 
 All that was known of Keble at that 
 time to the outer world of Oxford was vague 
 and scanty. The few facts here added are 
 taken from what has since been made pub- 
 lic by two of his most attached friends, Sir 
 John Coleridge and Dr. Newman, the former 
 in his beautiful letters, memorial of Keble, the 
 latter in his Apologia. Yet these facts, though 
 few, are well worthy of attention, both because 
 Keble' s character is more than his poetry, and 
 because his poetry can only be rightly under- 
 stood in the light of his character. For there 
 is no poet whose poetry is more truly an 
 
Sofjn %Mt. 3 1 
 
 image of the man himself, both in his inner 
 nature, and in his outward circumstances. 
 
 His father, whose name the poet bore, was 
 a country clergyman, vicar of Coln-St.-Ald- 
 wynd's, in Gloucestershire, but the house in 
 which he lived, and in which the poet was 
 born, was at Fairford, three miles distant 
 from the cure. John was the second child, 
 and elder son of a family which consisted of 
 two sons and two daughters. His mother, 
 Sarah Maule, was, we have heard, of Scot- 
 tish extraction. The father, who lived till 
 his ninetieth year, was a man of no com- 
 mon ability. Of him his son, we are told, 
 ' abvays spoke not only w T ith the love of a 
 son, but with the profoundest reverence for 
 his goodness and wisdom/ It would seem 
 that this was one of the few clerical homes 
 in England in which the opinions, traditions, 
 and peculiar piety of the Nonjurors lived on 
 into the present century. Unlike most sons 
 distinguished for ability, John Keble never 
 outgrew the period of absolute filial rever- 
 ence, never questioned a single opinion or 
 prepossession which he had imbibed from 
 
32 Sofjn Iteble. 
 
 his father. Some of his less reverential 
 companions used to think that this was an 
 intellectual loss to him. 
 
 The father's ability and scholarship are 
 proved by his having himself educated 
 his son, and sent him up to Oxford so 
 well prepared, that at the age of fifteen he 
 gained a Corpus scholarship, an honour 
 which seems to have then held the same 
 place in university estimation that Balliol 
 scholarships have long held and still hold. 
 This strictly home training, in the quiet of 
 a Gloucestershire parsonage, placed in the 
 very heart of rural England, under a root 
 where the old High Church tradition lived 
 on, blended with what was best in modern 
 piety, makes itself felt in every line the poet 
 wrote. On all hands one hears it said that 
 there is no education like that of one of the 
 old English public schools. For the great 
 run of ordinary boys, whether quick-witted 
 and competitive, or lazy and selfish, this 
 may perhaps be true ; but for natures of 
 finer texture, for all boys who have a de- 
 cided and original bias, how much is there 
 
Sofjn Iteble. 
 
 OJ 
 
 that the rough handling of a public school 
 would ruthlessly crush ? From all the bet- 
 ter public schools coarse bullying, we know, 
 has disappeared ; but for peculiarity of any 
 kind, for whatever does not conform itself 
 to the ' tyrant tradition ' — a manly and 
 straightforward one we admit — they have 
 still but little tolerance. If Keble had once 
 imbibed the public school spirit, The Chris- 
 tian Year would either never have been 
 written, or it would have lacked some of its 
 tenderest, most characteristic traits. 
 
SECTION V. 
 HIS LIFE IN OXFORD AND IN FAIRFORD. 
 
 IF he was fortunate in having his boy- 
 education at home, he was not less 
 happy in the college which he entered 
 and the companions he met there. It is 
 the happiness of college life that a young- 
 man can command just as much retirement, 
 and as much society as he pleases, and of 
 the kind that he pleases. All readers of 
 Arnold's Life will remember the picture 
 there drawn of the Scholars' Common Eoom 
 at Corpus, by one of the last survivors, the 
 venerable Sir J. Coleridge. He tells us 
 that, when Keble came into residence, 
 early in 1807, it was but a small society, 
 numbering only about twenty undergradu 
 
3ofjn Iteble. 35 
 
 ate scholars, and these rather under the 
 usual age, who lived on the most fami- 
 liar terms with each other. The Bachelor 
 scholars resided and lived entirely with 
 the undergraduates. Two of Keble's chief 
 friends among the Corpus scholars, though 
 younger in academic standing than himself, 
 were Coleridge, afterwards Judge Coleridge, 
 and Arnold Keble indeed must have 
 already graduated before Arnold came into 
 residence. Besides these were many other 
 men distinguished in their dav in the Uni- 
 versity, but less known to the outer world. 
 It was a stirring time when Keble was 
 an undergraduate. Within the University 
 the first wakening after long slumber had 
 begun, and competitions for honours had 
 been just established. From without news 
 of the great Peninsular battles was arriving 
 from time to time. Scott's trumpet-blasts 
 of poetry w r ere stirring young hearts. In 
 Corpus Common Room, as elsewhere, the 
 battles were fought over again, and the 
 classical and romantic schools of poetry were 
 vehemently discussed. And among these 1 
 
o 
 
 6 3o|jn lU&le* 
 
 more exciting subjects, the young scholar 
 Coleridge would insinuate the stiller and 
 deeper tones of Wordsworth's lyrical ballads, 
 which, then but little known, he had heard of 
 from his great uncle. These two, Scott and 
 Wordsworth, were to the end Keble's first 
 favourites of contemporary poets, and those 
 who chiefly moulded his taste and style. 
 Most of the scholars were high Tories in 
 Church and State, great respecters of things 
 as they are ; none, no doubt, more so than 
 Keble. The great questioner of the pre- 
 vailing creed was Arnold, who often brought 
 down on his own head the concentrated argu- 
 ments of the whole Common Eoom. But 
 youth's genial warmth healed these under- 
 graduate disputes, as, alas ! the same con- 
 troversies could not be healed when taken 
 up by the same combatants at a later day. In 
 that kindly atmosphere Keble's affectionate 
 nature expanded, as a flower in the sun. 
 His was a temperament to drink in deeply 
 whatever there was of finest influence in 
 Oxford. No doubt the learning he there 
 gained was something to him, but far more 
 
3ofjn %Mt. 37 
 
 was the vision of the fair city herself, ' with 
 high aisle, and solemn cloister, seated 
 among groves, green meadows, and calm 
 streams/ These, and the young friendships 
 which they for a few years embosom, are 
 what made Oxford then, and make it even 
 now, the one spot in England wherein ' the 
 darlings of the nation ■ find romance still 
 realized. Keble seems to have been much 
 the same in character then as in after years. 
 His ^affection toward the friends he made 
 at Oxford was warm and deep, and lasted 
 in most instances with his life. With what 
 feelings they regarded him may be gathered 
 from the words of his brother scholar at 
 Corpus, who, when a fifty- five years' friend- 
 ship had come to its earthly close, could say 
 of him, l It was the singular happiness of 
 his nature, remarkable even in his under- 
 graduate days, that love for him. was always 
 sanctified, as it were, by reverence — rever- 
 ence that did not make the love less tender, 
 and love that did but add intensity to the 
 reverence.' 
 
 In Easter term 1810, Keble obtained 
 
'8 Sofjn %Mt. 
 
 3 
 
 double first class honours, and this success 
 was soon afterwards followed by another 
 still greater — his election to an Oriel 
 Fellowship. The Oriel Common Boom 
 numbered among its Fellows, then and for 
 some time afterwards, all that was most dis- 
 tinguished in Oxford for mental power and 
 originality. Copleston, Davison, Whately, 
 then belonged to it, and were among Keble's 
 electors. Arnold, Newman, Pusey, were 
 soon afterw r ards chosen Fellows of the same 
 college. ' Eound the fire of the Oriel Com- 
 mon Room,' we are told, ' there were learned 
 and able, not rarely subtle and disputatious 
 conversations, in which this lad of nineteen 
 was called to take his part. Amid these he 
 sometimes yearned for the more easy, yet 
 not unintellectual, society of his old friends 
 at Corpus/ He found, no doubt, that 
 undergraduate days are more congenial to 
 warm friendships, than the highly rarefied 
 atmosphere of an intellectual Common 
 Room. Where men touch chiefly by the 
 head, they find that this is the seat as 
 frequently of a repulsive as of an attractive 
 
3of)n %Mt. 39 
 
 force. While he was an undergraduate, and 
 during the early days of his fellowship, he 
 wrote a good many beautiful little poems, 
 which his friends still possess, and the year 
 after his election to Oriel, lie gained the 
 University prizes for the English and Latin 
 essay. 
 
 The interval from 1810 to 1815 he spent 
 in Oriel, taking part in college tuition, and 
 acting as an examiner in the Degree Schools. 
 Was it some time during these years, or at 
 a later date, that the incident recorded by 
 Dr. Newman took place? 'When one day 
 I was walking in High Street, with my 
 dear earliest friend, with what eagerness did 
 lie cry out, " There's Keble !" and with what 
 awe did I look at him ! Then at another 
 time I heard a Master of Arts of my college 
 give an account, how he had just then had 
 occasion to introduce himself on some busi- 
 ness to Keble, and how gentle, courteous, 
 and unaffected Keble had been, so as almost 
 to put him out of countenance. Then, 
 too, it was reported, truly or falsely, how 
 a rising man of brilliant reputation, the 
 
4o 3of)tt %zW. 
 
 present Dean of St. Paul's, Dr. Milinan, 
 admired and loved him, adding, that some- 
 how he was strangely unlike any one 
 else/ 
 
 In 1815 he was ordained Deacon, the fol- 
 lowing year Priest ; soon afterwards he left 
 the University, and never again perma- 
 nently resided there. He had chosen the 
 calling of a clergyman, and though within 
 that field other paths more gratifying to am- 
 bition lay open to him, he turned aside from 
 them, and gave himself to parochial work as 
 the regular employment of his life. He be- 
 came his father's curate, and lived with him 
 at Fairford, engaged in this duty for twenty 
 years, more or less. This rare absence or 
 restraint of ambition, where it might have 
 seemed natural or even right to have grati- 
 fied it, was quite in keeping with Keble's 
 whole character. ' The Church,' says Sir J. 
 Coleridge, ' he had deliberately chosen to be 
 his profession, and he desired to follow out 
 that in a country cure. With this he asso- 
 ciated, and scarcely placed on a lower level, 
 
the affectionate discharge of his duties as a 
 son and brother. Calls, temporary calls of 
 duty to his college and university, for a time 
 and at intervals diverted him (he was again 
 Public Examiner from 1821 to 1823); but 
 he always kept these outlines in view, and 
 as the occasion passed away, reverted to 
 them with' the permanent devotion of his 
 heart. Traces of this feeling may be found 
 again and again in The Christian Year! 
 
 This book was first given to the world on 
 the 23d of June 1827, when Keble was in 
 his thirty-fifth year. This, the great work 
 of his life, which will keep his name 
 fresh in men's memory when all else that he 
 has done will be forgotten, had been the 
 silent gathering of years. Single poems had 
 been in his friends' hands at least as early 
 as 1819. They had urged him to complete 
 the series, and by 1827 this was done. No 
 record of the exact time when each poem 
 was written has yet appeared. We should 
 imagine that more of them were composed 
 at Fairford than at Oxford. The discussion 
 
42 3o|)n %Mt. 
 
 and criticism natural to a university are not 
 generally favourable to poetic creation of 
 any kind, least of all to so meditative a 
 strain as Keble's was. But it may have 
 been that in this, as in other things, he was 
 ' unlike any one else.' It was only at the 
 urgent entreaty of his friends that he pub- 
 lished the little book. He was not anxious 
 about poetic fame, and never thought that 
 these poems would secure it. His own plan 
 was 'to go on improving the series all 
 his life, and leave it to come out, if judged 
 useful, only when he should be fairly out of 
 the way/ Had this plan been acted on, 
 how many thousands would have been de- 
 frauded of the soothing delight these poems 
 have ministered to them ! But even those 
 who most strongly counselled the publication 
 little dreamt what a destiny was in store for 
 that little book. Of course, if the author 
 had kept it by him he might have smoothed 
 away some of its defects, but who knows 
 how much it might have lost too in the 
 process? 'No one/ we are told, 'knew 
 
3oijn %tMt. 43 
 
 its literary shortcomings better than the 
 author himself. Wisely, and not in pride 
 or through indolence, he abandoned the at- 
 tempt at second hand to amend this inhar- 
 monious line, or that imperfect rhyme, or 
 the instances here and there in which his 
 idea may be somewhat obscurely expressed. 
 Wordsworth's acute poetical sense recognised 
 such faults ; yet the book was his delight.' 
 Probably it was a wise resolve. All emen- 
 dation of poetry long after its first composi- 
 tion runs the risk of spoiling it. The author 
 has to take up in one mood what was origin- 
 ally conceived in another. His first warm 
 feeling of the sentiment has gone cold, and he 
 cannot at a later time revive it. This is 
 true of all poetry, more especially of that 
 which deals with subtle and evanescent emo- 
 tions which can never perhaps recur exactly 
 in the same form. Once only in a lifetime 
 may he succeed in catching 
 
 Those brief unisons, which on the brain 
 One tone that never can recur has cast, 
 One accent never to return again.' 
 
44 Sfofjn Jtefrle, 
 
 In 1833 Keble was appointed Professor 
 of Poetry at Oxford. The Statutes then 
 required the professor to give two or three 
 lectures a year in Latin. The ancient lan- 
 guage was required to be spoken from this 
 chair longer than from any other, probably 
 from fear of the trash men might talk if 
 fairly unmuzzled. However prudent this 
 may have been when a merely average 
 functionary held the chair, it is greatly to be 
 regretted that when it was filled by a true poet, 
 who was intent on speaking the secret of his 
 own art, he should have been so formidably 
 weighted. The present gifted occupant of 
 that chair has fortunately been set free, and 
 has vindicated the newly acquired freedom 
 by enriching our literature with the finest 
 poetical criticism it has received since the 
 days of Coleridge. But Keble had to work 
 in trammels. He was the last man to rebel 
 against any limitations imposed by the 
 wisdom or unwisdom of our ancestors. 
 Faithfully he buckled himself to the task of 
 translating into well-rounded Latin periods 
 
3oI)n TiZMt. 45 
 
 his cherished thoughts on his own favourite 
 subject. Of the theory of poetry embodied 
 in the two volumes of his published lectures, 
 something may yet be said. The Latin is 
 easy and unconstrained, the thought original 
 and suggestive. A great contrast to the more 
 than Ciceronian paragraphs of his prede- 
 cessor Gopleston, bristling as they do to a 
 marvel with epigrammatic Latinity, but 
 underneath that, containing little that is 
 not commonplace. 
 
 With slight interruptions, Keble con- 
 tinued to live with his father at Fairford, 
 and to assist him as his curate till 1835. 
 ' In that year this tie was broken. At 
 the very commencement of it the vener- 
 able old man, w T ho to the last retained the 
 full use of his faculties, was taken to his 
 rest ; and before the end of it Keble be- 
 came the Vicar of Hursley, and the husband 
 of Miss Charlotte Clarke, second daugh- 
 ter of an old college friend of his father's, 
 who w 7 as incumbent of a parish in the 
 neighbourhood of Fairford. This was the 
 
46 3ol)u Mzbk. 
 
 happy settlement of his life. For himself 
 he had now no nngratified wish, and the 
 bonds then tied were loosened only by 
 death/ 
 
SECTION VI. 
 RISE OF THE OXFOKD MOVEMENT. 
 
 ONLY two years before Keble left Pair- 
 ford, and at the very time when he 
 entered on his poetry professorship, began 
 what is called the Oxford movement. Of 
 this, Dr. Newman tells us, Keble was the 
 real author. Let us cast a glance back and 
 sue how it arose, and what it aimed at. 
 With what feelings Newman, when an 
 undergraduate, looked at Keble, we have 
 seen. Some years afterwards, it must have 
 been in 1819 or 1820, Newman was elected 
 to the Oriel Fellowship which Arnold 
 vacated. Of that time he thus writes : — ' I 
 had to hasten to the Tower to receive the 
 congratulations of all the Fellows. 1 bore 
 
48 Sofjtt UtW. 
 
 it till Keble took my hand, and then felt so 
 abashed, and unworthy of the honour done 
 me, that I seemed quite desirous of sinking 
 into the ground. His had been the first 
 name I had heard spoken of with reverence 
 rather than admiration when I came up to 
 Oxford/ This was probably the first meet- 
 ing of these two. 'When I was elected 
 Fellow of Oriel/ Dr. Newman continues, 
 ' Keble was not in residence, and he was shy 
 of me for years, in consequence of the marks 
 I bore upon me of the evangelical and 
 liberal schools. Hurrell Froude brought us 
 together about 1828. It is one of his say- 
 ings preserved in his Eemains : " If I was 
 ever asked what good deed I had ever done, 
 I should say that I had brought Keble and 
 Newman to understand each other."' Thus 
 made friends, these two were to work great 
 things together. 
 
 It naturally occurs to ask how far is The 
 Christian Tear identified with the principles 
 of the Tractarian movement. On the one 
 hand, The Christian Year was published in 
 1827, the movement did not begin till 1833. 
 
3of)tt Ifceble* 49 
 
 The former, therefore, cannot be regarded as 
 in any way a child of the latter. And this 
 accounts for what has often been remarked, 
 how little of the peculiar Tractarian teaching 
 appears in these poems. On the other hand, it 
 is easy to see how the same nature which, in 
 a season of quiet, when controversy was at 
 a lull, shaped out of its own musings The 
 Cliristian Year, would, when confronted with 
 opposing tendencies, and forced into a dog- 
 matic attitude, find its true expression in the 
 Tractarian theory. Keble was by nature a 
 poet, living by intuition, not by reasoning ; 
 intuition born of, fed by, home affection, 
 tradition, devout religion. His whole being 
 leaned on authority. ' Keble was a man 
 who guided himself/ says Dr. Newman, ' and 
 formed his judgments, not by processes of 
 reason, by inquiry or argument, but, to use 
 the word in a broad sense, by authority.' 
 And by authority in its broad sense he means 
 conscience, the Bible, the Church, antiquity, 
 words of the wise, hereditary lessons, ethical 
 truths, historical memories. ' It seemed to 
 me as if he felt ever happier when he could 
 
 D 
 
5o 3of)n. %M&. 
 
 speak and act under some such primary and 
 external sanction ; and could use argument 
 mainly as a means of recommending or ex- 
 plaining what had claims on his reception 
 prior to proof. What he hated instinctively 
 was heresy, insubordination, resistance to 
 things established, claims of independence, 
 disloyalty, innovation, a critical or censorious 
 spirit/ Keble then lived by authority, and 
 hated the dispositions that oppose it. There 
 is a temper of mind which lives by denying 
 authority — a temper whose essence, or at 
 least whose bad side, is to foster these very 
 dispositions which he hated. With that tone 
 of mind and the men possessed by it, sooner 
 or later he must needs have come into 
 collision. For such a collision, Oxford did 
 not want materials. 
 
 During Keble's time of residence, and 
 after he went down, the University had been 
 awakening from a long torpor, and entering 
 on a new era. ' The march of the mind/ as 
 it was called, was led by a number of active - 
 minded and able men, whose chief rallying- 
 point was Oriel Common Boom, whose best 
 
3oijn Iteble. 5 l 
 
 representative was Whately. These men 
 had set themselves to raise the standard of 
 teaching and discipline in the Colleges, and 
 in the University. They were the Univer- 
 sity Reformers of their day, and to them 
 Oxford, when first arousing itself from long 
 intellectual slumber, owed much. As they 
 had a common aim, to raise the intellectual 
 standard, they were naturally much thrown 
 together, and became the celebrities of the 
 place. Those who did not belong to their 
 party thought them not free from 'pride of 
 reason/ an expression then, as now, derided 
 by those who think themselves intellectual, 
 but not the less on that account covering a 
 real meaning. It is, as it has been called, 
 ' the moral malady ' which besets those who 
 live mainly by intellect. Men who could not 
 in heart go along with them thought they 
 carried liberty of thought into presumption 
 and rationalism. They seemed to submit 
 the tilings of faith too much to human judg- 
 ment, and to seek to limit their religious 
 belief by their own powers of understanding. 
 They seemed then, as now, ' to halve the 
 
52 3o|jn lUble. 
 
 gospel of God's grace/ accepting the morality, 
 and, if not rejecting, yet making little of 
 the supernatural truths out of which that 
 morality in a large measure springs. Such 
 at least was the judgment of their opponents. 
 From men of this stamp, energetic but hard, 
 upright but not very humble or reverent, a 
 man of deeper religious seriousness, like 
 Keble, instinctively ' shrank into himself.' 
 ' He was young in years when he became a 
 University celebrity, and younger in mind. 
 He had the purity and simplicity of a child. 
 He had few sympathies with the intel- 
 lectual party, who sincerely welcomed him 
 as a brilliant specimen of young Oxford. 
 He instinctively shut up before literary dis- 
 play, and pomp, and donnishness, faults which 
 will always beset academical notabilities. 
 He did not respond to their advances. 
 " Poor Keble/' H. Froude used gravely to 
 say, " he was asked to join the aristocracy of 
 talent, but he soon found his own level." He 
 went into the country, but he did not lose his 
 place in the minds of men because he was 
 out of sight/ It could not be that Keble 
 
and these men could really be in harmony, 
 — they, ' sons of Auf klarung/ men of mere 
 understanding, bringing all things to the one 
 touchstone of logic and common -sense, and 
 content with this ; he, a child of faith, with 
 more than half his nature in the unseen, 
 and looking at things visible mainly as they 
 shadow forth and reveal the invisible. They 
 represented two opposite sides of human 
 nature, sides in all but some rare instances 
 antagonistic, and never seemingly more an- 
 tagonistic than now. Dr. Arnold, indeed, 
 though belonging in the main to the school 
 of liberalism, combined with it more reli- 
 gious warmth than was common in his own 
 party. It is this union of qualities generally 
 thought incompatible, which perhaps was 
 the main secret of his great influence. But 
 the combination, which was almost unique 
 in himself, he can hardly be said, by his ex- 
 ample, to have rendered more easy for his 
 followers in the present day. 
 
 The Catholic Emancipation was a trying 
 and perplexing time for Keble. With the 
 opponents of the measure in Oxford, the old 
 
54 3fo|jn MzW. 
 
 Tory part of Church and State, he had no 
 sympathy. He saw that they had no prin- 
 ciple of growth in them, that their only aim 
 was to keep things as they were. His sym- 
 pathy for the old Catholic religion, that 
 feeling which had made him say in The 
 Christian Year, 
 
 1 Speak gently of our sister's fall,' 
 
 would naturally make him wish to see 
 Catholic disabilities removed. But then he 
 disliked both the men by whom, and the 
 arguments by which, Emancipation was sup- 
 ported. He would rather have not seen the 
 thing done at all, than done by the hands of 
 Whiggery. A few years more brought on 
 the crisis, the inevitable collision. The Earl 
 Grey Administration, flushed with their 
 great Eeform victory, went on to lay hands 
 on the English Church, that Church which 
 for centuries had withstood the Whigs. 
 They made their attack on the weakest 
 point, the Irish Church, and suppressed 
 three of its bishoprics. This might seem to 
 be but a small matter in itself, but it was 
 
Sofjn Hrfrte* 55 
 
 an indication of more behind. Lord Grey 
 had told the Bishops to set their house in 
 order, and his party generally spoke of the 
 Church as the mere creature of the State, 
 which they might do with as they pleased. 
 The Church must be liberalized, those 
 last fangs must be pulled which had so 
 often proved troublesome to Whiggery. 
 This was too much for Keble. It touched 
 him to the quick, and made him feel that 
 now the time was come when he must speak 
 and act. By nature he was no politician nor 
 controversialist. He disliked the strife of 
 tongues. But he was a man ; he had deep 
 religious convictions ; and to change what 
 was ancient and catholic in the Church was 
 to touch the apple of his eye. "When he 
 looked to the old Tory party he saw no help 
 in them. To the aggressive spirit they had 
 nothing to oppose but outworn Church and 
 State theories. The Bishops, too, w 7 ere help- 
 less, and spoke slightingly of apostolical 
 succession and the nonjurors. Was the 
 Establishment principle, then, the only rock 
 on which the Church w T as built ? Keble and 
 
56 Stfyn Iteble* 
 
 his young friends thought scorn of that. 
 This feeling first found utterance in the as- 
 size sermon which Keble preached from the 
 University pulpit, on Sunday the 14th of 
 July 1833, and afterwards published under 
 the title of ' National Apostasy/ ' I have 
 ever considered and kept the day/ says Dr. 
 Newman, 'as the start of the religious 
 movement of 1833/ That sermon itself we 
 have not seen, but the tone of it may be 
 gathered from those lines in the Lyra Apo- 
 stolica, where Keble speaks of 
 
 ' The ruffian band, 
 Come to reform where ne'er they came to pray.' 
 
 That was a trumpet-note which rallied to 
 the standard of the Church whatever of 
 ardour and devotion young Oxford then 
 contained. These virtues had never been 
 greatly countenanced in the Church of Eng- 
 land. To staid respectability it has always 
 been, and still is, one of the chief recom- 
 mendations of that Church, that it is an 
 embodied protest against what one of its own 
 Bishops is said to have denounced as ' that 
 most dangerous of all errors — enthusiasm/ 
 
Sojjn SeMe. 57 
 
 In the last century she had cast out en- 
 thusiasm in the person of Wesley ; at the 
 beginning of this, she had barely tolerated 
 it in the Newtons and Cecils, and other 
 fathers of evan^elicism. But here was a 
 fresh attempt to reintroduce it in a new 
 form. The young men who were roused by 
 Keble's note of warning — able, zealous, re- 
 solute — flung aside with disdain timid argu- 
 ments from expediency. They longed to do 
 battle with that most prosaic of all political 
 theories, Whiggery, and to smite to the 
 ground the spirit of compromise which had 
 so long paralysed the Church of England. 
 They set themselves to defend the Church 
 with weapons of ethereal temper, and they 
 found them, as they believed, in reviving 
 her claims to a heavenly origin and a divine 
 prerogative. That these claims sounded 
 strange to the ears even of Churchmen at 
 that time was to these men no stumbling- 
 block — rather an incentive to more fearless 
 action. True, such a course shut them out 
 from preferment, hitherto the one recognised 
 aim of the abler English Churchmen. But 
 
58 
 
 Soiju %tMz. 
 
 these younger men were content to do with- 
 out preferment. They had at least got be- 
 yond that kind of worldliness. If self still 
 clung to them in any shape, it was in that 
 enlarged and nobler form, in which it is one 
 with the glory of the Church Catholic in all 
 ages. The views and aims of the new party 
 soon took shape, in the 'Tracts for the 
 Times/ If Keble was the starter of the 
 movement, John Henry Newman soon 
 became its leader. In all his conduct of 
 it, one of his great aims was to give to the 
 sentiments and views which had originated 
 with Keble a consistent logical basis. The 
 sequel all men know. The inner working 
 of the movement may be read in The 
 Apologia. 
 
SECTION VII. 
 KEBLE AFTER NEWMAN'S DEPARTURE. 
 
 AS for Keble during the eventful years 
 that followed, though his place was 
 still in his country cure, his sympathies and 
 co-operation were with Newman and other 
 friends in Oxford. He contributed some of 
 the more important Tracts ; poems of his 
 embodying the sentiments of the party 
 appeared from time to time, and were re- 
 published in the Lyra Apostolica. In 1841, 
 when the famous No. 90 was published, to 
 the scandal of the whole religious world, 
 Keble was one of the few who stood by New- 
 man. What then must his feelings have 
 been when that younger friend, by whom he 
 had so stood, with whom he had so often 
 
60 Sofjn Itefrle* 
 
 taken counsel, abandoned the Cliureh of Eng- 
 land, and sought refuge in that of Eome ? 
 As late as 1863, a friend of his, when walk- 
 ing with him near Hursley, drew his attention 
 to a broken piece of ground — a chalk-pitas 
 it turned out — hard by. ' "Ah ! " he said, 
 "that is a sad place, connectad w r ith the 
 most painful event of my life." I began to 
 fear that it had been the scene of some 
 terrible accident which I had unwittingly 
 recalled to his mind. " It was there," he 
 went on, " that I first knew for certain that 
 J. H. N". had left us. We had made up our 
 mind that such an event was all but inevit- 
 able ; and one day I received a letter in his 
 handwriting. I felt sure of what it con- 
 tained, and I carried it about with me through 
 the day, afraid to open it. At last I got 
 away to that chalk-pit, and there forcing 
 myself to read the letter, I found that my 
 forebodings had been too true ; it was the 
 announcement that he was gone," ' 
 
 It seems natural to ask how it came that, 
 when Newman left, Keble adhered to the 
 Church of England. They were at one in 
 
3of)tt SeMe, 61 
 
 their fundamental principles. What, then, 
 determined them to go different ways ? Of 
 many reasons that occur this one may be 
 given. The two friends, though agreeing in 
 their principles, differed widely in mental 
 structure and in natural temperament. They 
 differed scarcely less in training and circum- 
 stances. Keble, as we have seen, cared little 
 for reasoning, and rested mainly on feeling 
 and intuition. Newman, on the other hand, 
 though fully alive to these, added an unrest- 
 ing intellectual instinct which could not be 
 satisfied without a defined logical foundation 
 for what it instinctively held. Not that 
 Keble was without a theory. Taking from 
 Butler the principle that probability is the 
 guide of life, he applied it to theological 
 truth. Butler, by a very questionable pro- 
 cess, had employed the maxim of worldly 
 prudence, that probability is the guide of 
 life, as an argument for religion, but mainly 
 in the natural sphere. Keble tried to carry 
 it on into the sphere of revealed truth. The 
 arguments which support religious doctrine, 
 he said, may be only probable arguments 
 
62 3o!m Itefrle* 
 
 judged intellectually; but faith and love, 
 being directed towards their Divine Object, 
 and living in the contemplation of that 
 Object, convert these probable arguments 
 into certainties. In fact, the inward assur- 
 ance, which devout faith has of the reality 
 of its Object, makes doctrines practically 
 certain, which may not be intellectually 
 demonstrable. Newman tells us that he 
 accepted this view so far, but, not being fully 
 satisfied with it, tried, in his University 
 sermons and other works, to supplement it 
 with considerations of his own. In time, 
 however, he felt it give way in his hands, 
 and either abandoned it, or allowed it to 
 carry him elsewhere. 
 
 But besides difference of mental structure, 
 there were other causes which perhaps de- 
 termined the divergent courses of the two 
 friends. In the case of Keble, whatever is 
 most sacred and endearing in the English 
 Church had surrounded his infancy and boy- 
 hood, and gone with him into full manhood. 
 With him loyalty to Home w T as hardly less 
 sacred than loyalty to the Faith. These two 
 
 
afofm j&tiic. 6 
 
 j 
 
 influences were so intertwined in the inner 
 fibres of his nature that it would have been 
 to him very death to separate them. Of Dr. 
 Newman's early associations we know no 
 more than the little he has himself disclosed. 
 1 1 would appear, however, that the Anglican 
 Church never had so invincible a hold on 
 him as it had on Keble. By few perhaps 
 lias it been seen in so winning an aspect as 
 it wore in the quiet of that Gloucestershire 
 parsonage. 
 
 When, in 1835, Keble left the home of 
 his childhood for the vicarage of Hursley, he 
 found a church there not at all to his mind. 
 It seems to have been a plain, not beautiful, 
 building of flint and rubble. He determined 
 to have a new one built — new all but the 
 tower — and in this he employed the profits 
 of the many editions of The Christian Year ; 
 and when the building was finished, his 
 friends, in token of their regard for him, 
 filled all the windows with stained glass. 
 1 Here daily for the residue of his life, until 
 interrupted by the failing health of Mrs. 
 Keble and his own, did he minister. ... He 
 
64 3ofm Itrfile* 
 
 had not, in the popular sense, great gifts of 
 delivery ; his voice was not powerful, nor 
 was his ear perfect for harmony of sound ; 
 but I think it was difficult not to be im- 
 pressed deeply both by his reading and his 
 preaching ; w T hen he read, you saw that he 
 felt, and he made you feel, that he was the 
 servant of God, delivering His words ; or 
 leading you, as one of like infirmities and 
 sins with your own, in your prayer. When 
 he preached it was with an affectionate 
 simplicity and hearty earnestness which 
 were very moving ; and the sermons them- 
 selves were at all times full of that abundant 
 scriptural knowledge which was the most 
 remarkable quality in him as a divine : it 
 has alwavs seemed to me among the most 
 striking characteristics of The Christian Year. 
 It is well known what his belief and feelings 
 were in regard to the Sacraments. I re- 
 member on one occasion when I was present 
 at a christening as godfather, how much he 
 affected me, when a consciousness of his sense 
 of the grace conferred became present to me. 
 As he kept the newly-baptized infant for 
 
Soljn Iteble. 65 
 
 some moments in his arms, lie gazed on it 
 intently and lovingly with a tear in his eye, 
 and apparently absorbed in the thought of 
 the child of wrath become the child of grace. 
 Here his natural affections gave clearness 
 and intensity to his belief; the fondest 
 mother never 'loved children more dearly 
 than this childless man/ 
 
 When Newman was gone, on Keble, along 
 with Dr. Pusey, was thrown the chief bur- 
 den of the toil and responsibility arising out 
 of his position in- the church. Naturally 
 there was great searching of hearts amongst 
 all the followers of the Oxford theology. 
 Keble had to give himself to counsel the 
 perplexed, to strengthen the wavering, and, 
 as far as might be, to heal the breaches that 
 had been made. Throughout the ecclesias- 
 tical contests of the last twenty years, though 
 never loud or obtrusive, he vet took a re- 
 solute part in maintaining the principles 
 with which his life had been identified. 
 ( )ne last extract from Sir J. Coleridge's beau- 
 tiful sketch of his friend will give all that 
 need here be said of this portion of Keble's 
 
66 Sflfjtt Wu&lt. 
 
 life : — c Circumstances had now placed him 
 in a position which he would never have 
 desired for himself, but from which a sense 
 of duty compelled him not to shrink. Ques- 
 tions one after another arose touching the 
 faith or the discipline of the Church, and 
 affecting, as he believed, the morals and 
 religion of the people. I need not specify 
 the decisions of Courts or the proceedings 
 in Parliament to which I allude ; those 
 whose consciences were disturbed, but who 
 shrunk from public discussion, and those 
 who stirred themselves in canvassing their 
 propriety, or in counteracting their conse- 
 quences, equally turned to him as a com- 
 forter and adviser in private and in public, 
 and he could not turn a deaf ear to such 
 applications. It is difficult to say with what 
 affectionate zeal and industry he devoted 
 himself to such cares, how much, and at 
 length it is to be feared how injuriously to 
 his health, he spent his time and strength in 
 the labour these brought on him. Many of 
 these involved, of course, questions of law, 
 and it was not seldom that he applied to me 
 
— and thus I can testify with what care and 
 learning and acuteness he wrote upon them. 
 Many of his fugitive pieces were thus oc- 
 casioned ; and should these be, as they 
 ought to be, collected, they will be found to 
 possess even more than temporary interest. 
 I had occasion, but lately, to refer to his 
 tract on " Marriage with the Wife's Sister," 
 and I can only hope that the question will 
 soon be argued in Parliament with the sound- 
 ness and clearness wdiich are there employed. 
 But even all this does not represent the calls 
 made on his time by private correspondence, 
 by personal visits, or, where it was necessary, 
 by frequent, sometimes by long journeys, 
 taken for the support of religion. I need 
 hardly say that his manner of doing all this 
 concurred in raising up for him that immense 
 personal influence wdiich he possessed ; peo- 
 ple found in their best adviser the most 
 unpresuming, unwearied, affectionate friend, 
 and they loved as well as venerated him.' 
 
 The appearance of Dr. Newman's Apologia 
 in 1864 was to Keble a great joy. Not that 
 he had ever ceased to love Dr. Newman with 
 
68 3of)tt %tW. 
 
 his old affection, but the separation of now 
 nearly twenty years, and the cause of it, had 
 been to Keble the sorest trial of his life. If 
 the book contained some things regarding 
 the Church of England which must have 
 pained Keble, there was much more in it to 
 gladden him ; not only the entire human - 
 heartedness of its tone, which made its way 
 to the hearts even of strangers, but the deep 
 and tender affection which it breathes to Dr. 
 Newman's early friends, and the proof it 
 gave that Home had made no change either 
 in his heart or head which could hinder 
 their real sympathy. The result was that 
 in September 1865 these three, Dr. Newman, 
 Dr. Pusey, and Mr. Keble, met under the roof 
 of Hursley vicarage, and after an interval of 
 twenty years looked on each others' altered 
 faces. It happened, however, that at the 
 very time of this meeting Mrs. Keble had 
 an alarming attack of illness. Keble writes : 
 — ' He (Dr. Pusey) and J. H. N. met here the 
 very day after my wife's attack. Pusey 
 indeed was present when the attack began. 
 Trying as it all was, I was very glad to 
 
Sofjn Itdrte. 69 
 
 have them here, and to sit by them and 
 listen.' 
 
 Soon after this, in October, Mr. and Mrs. 
 Keble left Hursley for Bournemouth, not to 
 return. Since the close of 1864 symptoms 
 of declining health had shown themselves in 
 him also. The long strain of the duties that 
 accumulated on him in his later years, with 
 the additional anxiety caused by Mrs. Keble's 
 precarious health, had been gradually wear- 
 ing him. After only a few days' illness he 
 was taken to his rest on the day before last 
 Good Friday. In a few weeks Mrs. Keble 
 followed, and now they are laid side by side 
 in Hursley churchyard. 
 
 The picture of this saintly life will of 
 course in time be given to the world. It 
 is much to be hoped that the task will be 
 intrusted to some one able to do justice to 
 it. There are two kinds of biographies, 
 and of each kind we have seen examples in 
 our own time. One is as a golden chalice, 
 held up by some wise hand, to gather 
 the earthly memory ere it is spilt on the 
 ground. The other kind is as a millstone, 
 
70 Soijn WiMt. 
 
 hung by partial, yet ill-judging friend, 
 round the hero's neck to plunge him as 
 deep as possible in oblivion. In looking 
 back on the eminent men of last genera- 
 tion, we have seen one or two lives of the 
 former stamp, many more of the latter. 
 Let us indulge the hope that he who writes 
 of Keble will take for his model the one or 
 two nearly faultless biographies we possess, 
 and above all that he will condense his 
 work within such limits as will commend it 
 not only to partial friends, but also to all 
 thoughtful readers. 
 
 By his character and influence Keble did 
 more than perhaps any other man to bring 
 about the most wide- spread quickening of 
 religious life which has taken place within 
 the English Church since the Eeformation. 
 To him, and the party to which his very 
 name was a tower of strength, England owes 
 two great services. First, they, and they 
 pre-eminently, have turned, and are still 
 turning, a resolute front against the ration- 
 alizing spirit, which would pare down re- 
 velation to the measure of the human 
 
3ofjn 7&zW, 71 
 
 understanding — cut away its foundation in 
 the supernatural, and virtually reduce it to 
 a moral system encased, perhaps in a few 
 historic facts. Secondly, they have intro- 
 duced into the English Church a higher 
 order of character, and taught it, we might 
 almost say, new virtues. They have diffused 
 widely through the clergy the contagion of 
 their own zeal and resoluteness, their self- 
 devotion and Christian chivalry. These are 
 high services to have rendered to any 
 country in any age. But with these ac- 
 knowledgments two regrets must mingle : 
 one, that with their defence of the faith 
 they should have mixed up positions which 
 are untenable, identifying with the simple 
 faith doctrines which are no part of it, 
 hut rather alien accretions gathered by 
 the Church in its progress down the ages. 
 The result of this intermingling with Chris- 
 tianity things that seem superstitious, has 
 been to drive many back into dislike and 
 denial of that which is truly superna- 
 tural. The other cause of regret is, that 
 they should have impaired the practical 
 
72 3ofjn %Mz. 
 
 power of their example by the exclusive 
 and unsympathetic side they have turned 
 towards their fellow- Christians in other 
 Eeformed communions. This exclusive- 
 ness kept back from the Oxford theologians 
 the sympathies of many, who, but for this, 
 would have been strongly drawn to them by 
 their unworldliness, fervour, and self-devo- 
 tion. Both errors have one source, the con- 
 founding the Church with the clergy, or 
 rather, perhaps I should say, the attempt 
 to place the essence of the Church in a 
 priestly organization. But though these 
 things must be said, it is not as of a 
 partisan that one would most think of 
 Keble. The circumstances of his time 
 forced him to take a side, but his nature 
 was too pure and holy to find fit expression 
 in polemics ; and the memory of his rare 
 and saintly character will long survive in 
 the hearts of his countrymen the party 
 strifes in which it was his lot to mingle. 
 
SECTION VIII. 
 LYRA TXXOCENTKWf. 
 
 OF his two prose books, his edition of 
 'Hookers works, which has, we be- 
 lieve, superseded every other, and his Life 
 of the good Bishop Wilson of Sodor and Man, 
 the author of the Sacra Privata, this is not 
 the place to speak. But before turning to 
 The Christian Year, one word must be said 
 about his later book of poetry, the Lyra 
 Innocentium. It appeared in 184:6, at an 
 interval of nearly twenty years after The 
 Christian Year. This collection of poems 
 he speaks of in May 1845, as 'a set of 
 things which have been accumulating on 
 me for the last three or four years. It has 
 been a great comfort to me in the desolating 
 anxiety of the last two years, and I wish I 
 
74 3tofm %Mt. 
 
 could settle at once on some other such 
 work.' Children, as we have seen, had 
 always been peculiarly dear to this child- 
 less man, and he had at first wdshed to have 
 made these poems a Christian Year for 
 teachers and nurses, and others much em- 
 ployed about children. In time it took a 
 different shape, but it is perhaps to be 
 regretted that he had not made it what he 
 at first intended. Children, their thoughts 
 and ways, and the feelings they awaken in 
 their elders, are themes of quite exhaustless 
 interest. And yet how seldom has any poet 
 of adequate tenderness and depth approached 
 that mysterious world of childhood ! Words 
 worth, indeed, has felt it deeply, and ex- 
 pressed it in some of his most exquisite 
 poems : — 
 
 ' dearest, dearest boy, my heart 
 
 For better lore would seldom yearn, 
 Could I but teach the hundredth part 
 Of what from thee I learn.' 
 
 This verse from Wordsworth is indeed the 
 motto chosen by Keble for his Lyra Inno- 
 centium. 
 
3ofjn Utile. 75 
 
 Of the poems on children which the 
 Lyra contains, we are free to confess that 
 they approach their subject too exclusively 
 from the Church side for general interest. 
 'Looking Westward/ 'The Bird's Nest/ 
 1 ttoreavement/ ' The Manna Gatherers/ are 
 tine lyrics, equal perhaps to most in The 
 Christian Year. But there is no thought in 
 the Lyra Innoccntmm about childhood that 
 comes near that earlier strain in which the 
 poet, as he looks on children ranged to 
 receive their first lessons in religion, bursts 
 forth— 
 
 • ( >h ! say not, dream not, heavenly notes 
 
 To childish ears are vain, 
 That the young mind at random floats, 
 And cannot reach the strain. 
 
 4 Dim or unheard, the words may fall, 
 And yet the heaven -taught mind 
 May learn the sacred air, and all 
 The harmony unwind. 
 
 ' Was not our Lord a little child, 
 Taught hy degrees to pray, 
 By father dear and mother mild 
 Instructed day by day ? ' 
 
76 Sofjtt MMt. 
 
 Then, after an interval, he goes on — 
 
 ' Each little voice in turn 
 Some glorious truth proclaims, 
 What sages would have died to learn, 
 Now taught by cottage dames. 
 
 ' And if some tones be false or low, 
 
 What are all prayers beneath 
 But cries of babes, that cannot know 
 Half the deep thought they breathe ? ' 
 
 Whatever the reason may be, certainly 
 the later book does not strike home to the 
 universal heart as The Christian Year did, 
 and it never has attained anything like the 
 same popularity. 
 
 The reference to ecclesiastical usages, not 
 known to the many, and the more pro- 
 nounced High Church feeling which it em- 
 bodies, will partly account for this. It is 
 certainly much more restricted and less 
 catholic in its range. Partly also it may be 
 that the fountain of inspiration does not flow 
 so fully as in earlier years. It may not have 
 been that time had chilled it : but other 
 duties and cares had come thick upon him 
 since his poetic springtime. Especially the 
 
3o\)n l&tW. 77 
 
 polemical stir in which his share in the 
 Oxford movement had involved him, and the 
 anxiety in the midst of which the Lyra In 
 nocentium was composed, must have left little 
 of that leisure either of time or heart which 
 is necessary for a free-flowing minstrelsy. 
 
 It may help to the fuller understanding of 
 The Christian Year, if we turn for a moment 
 to Keble's theory of poetry. He has set it 
 forth at large in his Preelections on Poetry, 
 more shortly in his review of the Life of Scott, 
 which, once famous in Oxford, is almost 
 unknown to the present generation. That 
 review, which first appeared in the British 
 Critic, is well worthy of being republished, 
 both as an exposition of Keble's character, 
 and of his views on poetry, and also as a 
 study of Scott by a reverential admirer, in 
 many things very unlike himself. The 
 theory is that poetry is the natural relief of 
 minds overpowered by some engrossing idea, 
 or strong emotion, or ruling taste, or imagi- 
 native regret, which from some cause or 
 other they are kept from directly indulging. 
 Rhythm and metrical form serve to regulate 
 
78 Soijn Itefrle* 
 
 and restrain, while they express those strong 
 or deep emotions, ' which need relief, but 
 cannot endure publicity/ They are at once 
 a ' vent for eager feelings and a veil to draw 
 over them. For the utterance of high or 
 tender feeling controlled and modified by a 
 certain reserve is the very soul of poetry/ 
 
 On this principle Keble founds what he 
 regards as an essential distinction between 
 primary and secondary poets. Primary 
 poets are they who are driven by some over- 
 mastering enthusiasm, by passionate devo- 
 tion to some range of objects, or line of 
 thought, or aspect of life or nature, to utter 
 their feelings in song. They sing, as it were, 
 because they cannot help it. There is a 
 melody within them which will out, a fire in 
 their blood which cannot be suppressed. 
 This is the true poetic fjuavla of which Plato 
 speaks. Secondary poets are not urged to 
 poetry by any such overflowing sentiment ; 
 but learning, admiration of great masters, 
 choice, and a certain literary turn, have made 
 them poetic artists. They were not born, but 
 being possessed of eucfyvta, have made them- 
 
Sofjn JteMe, 79 
 
 selves, poets. Of the former kind are Homer, 
 Lucretius, Shakspere, Burns, Scott ; of the 
 latter, Euripides, Dryden, Milton. This 
 view, if it be somewhat too narrow a basis on 
 which to found a comprehensive theory of 
 poetry, certainly does lay hold of one side of 
 the truth generally overlooked. In our own 
 day, how many are there ! possessed of a large 
 measure of artistic faculty, able to treat 
 poetically anything they take up, wanting 
 only in one thing, — a subject which absorbs 
 their interest. There is nothing in human 
 life, or history, or nature, which they have 
 made peculiarly their own, nothing about 
 which they feel more deeply, or which they 
 know more intimately, than the host of edu- 
 cated men. And so, though with a ' skill in 
 composition and felicity of language ' greater 
 than many poets possess, they are still felt to 
 be literary men rather than poets, because 
 they have no genuine impulse, no divine 
 enthusiasm, driving them to seek relief in 
 poetry. 
 
SECTION IX. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR: 
 FOUR CHARACTERISTICS OF IT. 
 
 IF we apply to himself the author s own 
 canon, The Christian Year would place 
 him in the rank of primary poets. Not that 
 it displays anything like the highest artistic 
 faculty, but because it evidently flows from 
 a native spring of inspiration. As far as it 
 goes, it is genuine poetry. The author sings 
 in a strain of his own of the things he has 
 know r n, and felt, and loved. Beneath all the 
 layers that early education and Oxford train- 
 ing have superimposed, there is felt to be a 
 glow of internal heat not derived from these. 
 The characteristic qualities of the book 
 seem to be — First, a tone of religious feeling, 
 fresh, deep, and tender, beyond what was 
 
3oijn %Mz. 8 1 
 
 common even among religions men in the 
 authors day, perhaps in any day ; secondly, 
 great intensity and tenderness of home affec- 
 tion ; thirdly, a shy and delicate reserve, 
 which loved quiet paths and shunned publi- 
 city ; fourthly, a pure love of nature, and a 
 spiritual eye to read nature's symbolism. 
 
 4 He sang of love, with quiet blending, 
 Slow to begin, and never-ending, 
 Of serious faith, and inward glee.' 
 
 To English Church people without number 
 The Christian Year has long been not only 
 a cherished classic, but a sacred book, which 
 they place beside their Bible and their Prayer- 
 Book. On the other hand, a generation of 
 literary young men has grown up, who, having 
 had their tastes formed on a newer, more 
 highly-spiced style of poetry, scarcely know 
 The Christian Year, and, if they knew it, 
 would turn away from w T hat seemed to them 
 its meagre literary merit. It would be im- 
 possible to say anything regarding it which 
 would not seem faint praise to the one class, 
 and exaggeration to the other. Bat without 
 trying to meet the views of either, it is 
 
 F 
 
82 Sofjn lUble* 
 
 worth while to study the poem for our- 
 selves. 
 
 It cannot be too clearly kept in view that 
 Keble is not a hymn- writer, and that The 
 Christian Year is not a collection of hymns. 
 Those who have come to it expecting to find 
 genuine hymns, will turn away in disappoint- 
 ment. They will seek in vain for anything of 
 the directness, the fervour, the strong sim- 
 plicity which has delighted them in Charles 
 Wesley. But to ask this is to mistake the 
 nature and form of Keble's poems. There is 
 all the difference between them and Charles 
 Wesley's, that there is between meditation on 
 the one hand, and prayer, or thanksgiving, or 
 praise on the other. Indeed, so little did 
 Keble's genius fit him for hymn-writing, that 
 in his two poems which are intended to be 
 hymns — those for the morning and the even- 
 ing — the opening in either case is a descrip- 
 tion of natural facts, wholly unsuited for 
 hymn purposes. And so when these two poems 
 are adopted into hymn collections, as they 
 often are, a mere selection of certain stanzas 
 from each is all that has been found possible. 
 
3oIjn IWMfc 83 
 
 Besides these two, there is no other poem in 
 the book, any large part of which can be 
 used as a hymn. For they are all lyrical 
 religious meditations, not hymns at all. Yet 
 true though this is, every here and there, out 
 of the midst of the reflections, there does flash 
 a verse of fervid emotion and direct heart- 
 appeal to God, which is quite hymnal in 
 character. These occasional bursts are among 
 the highest beauties of The Christian Year. 
 Yet they are not so frequent or so long-sus- 
 tained as to change the prevailingly medita- 
 tive cast of the whole book. It is owing 
 perhaps to this prevalence of meditation, and 
 that often of a refined and subtle kind, that 
 The Christian Year is not, as we have often 
 heard said, so well adapted as some simpler, 
 less poetical collections, to be read by the 
 sick-bed to the faint and weak. Unless long 
 familiarity has made it easy, it requires more 
 thought and mental elasticity to follow it, 
 than the sick for the most part can supply. 
 Yet it contains single verses, many, though 
 not whole poems, which will come home full 
 of consolation to any, even the weakest spirit. 
 
84 Stofjn %tW. 
 
 On the whole, however, it is not with Charles 
 Wesley, or any of the hymn- writers of this 
 or the past century, nor even with Cowper 
 in his hymns or his larger poems, that Keble 
 should be compared. In outward form, and 
 not a little in inward spirit, the religious 
 poets to whom he bears the strongest like- 
 ness, are Henry Vaughan and George Her- 
 bert, both of the seventeenth century. A 
 comparison with these would be interesting, 
 were this the place for it, but at present I 
 must confine myself to the consideration of 
 the special characteristics of The Christian 
 Year. These seem to be the following : — 
 
 
SECTION X. 
 (1.) ITS PECULIAR TONE OF RELIGIOUS FEELING. 
 
 IT embodies deep and tender religious 
 sentiment in a form which is old, and 
 yet new. Our best critic has lately told us 
 that ' the inevitable business for the modern 
 poet, as it was for the Greek poet in the days 
 of Pericles, is to interpret human life afresh, 
 and find a new spiritual basis for it.' Keble 
 did not think so. He was content with the 
 interpretation which Christianity has put on 
 human life, and wished only to read man 
 and nature, as far as might be, in this light. 
 Goethe, we suppose, is the great modern 
 instance of a poet who has tried ' to give a 
 moral interpretation of man and the world 
 from an independent point of view/ Of 
 course it would be simply ridiculous for a 
 
86 Sotfti Iteble. 
 
 moment to place the poetic powers of Keble 
 in comparison with such an one as Goethe. 
 But, disparite as their powers are, Keble 
 with his limited faculty, just by virtue of 
 his having accepted the Christian interpre- 
 tation, while the other rejected it, has spoken, 
 we venture to think, more words that satisfy 
 man's deepest yearnings, that sink into 
 those simple places of the heart which lie 
 beneath all culture, than Goethe with all 
 his world-wide breadth has done. The 
 religion which Keble laid to heart, and 
 lived by, would not seem to have come to 
 him through prolonged spiritual conflicts, as 
 did that of the great Puritans ; neither had 
 he reached it by laborious critical processes, 
 as modern philosophers would have us do. He 
 had learnt it first at his mother's knee. Then 
 it was systematized and confirmed by the 
 daily teaching of the Church he so devoutly 
 loved. Time brought to it expansions from 
 various quarters, but no break. The power- 
 ful influences of his university, direct and 
 indirect, chivalry reawakening in Scott's 
 poetry, meditative depth in Wordsworth, 
 
SoJjn IMMe. 87 
 
 these all melted naturally into his primal 
 faith, and combined with the general ten- 
 dencies of the time to carry him in spirit 
 back into those older ages where his ima- 
 gination found ampler range, his devotion 
 severer, more self-denying virtues than mo- 
 dern life engenders. Out of that great past 
 he brought some of the sterner stuff of which 
 the martyrs were made, and introduced it 
 like iron into the blood of modern religious 
 feeling. A poet who received all these in- 
 fluences into himself and vitalized them, 
 could not but make the old new. For not 
 till the authoritative had been inwardly 
 transfused into the moral and spiritual did 
 it for the most part find vent in his poetry. 
 There are exceptions to this which form 
 what we regard as among the shortcomings 
 of The Christian Year. But in all its finer, 
 more vital poems the catholic faith has 
 become personal, rests frankly on intuition 
 and experience, as frankly as the vaguer 
 more impersonal meditations of greater 
 poets. 
 
88 Sofjn Itefcle. 
 
 6 The eye in smiles may wander round, 
 
 Caught by earth's shadows as they fleet, 
 But for the soul no home is found, 
 Save Him who made it, meet/ 
 
 Or again the well-known — 
 
 * Abide with me from morn till eve, 
 For without Thee I cannot live : 
 Abide with me when night is nigh, 
 For without Thee I dare not die.' 
 
 Or again- 
 
 who loves the Lord aright, 
 
 No soul of man can worthless find ; 
 All will be precious in his sight, 
 Since Christ on all hath shined.' 
 
 It is the many words, simple yet deep, de- 
 voutly Christian yet intensely human, like 
 these, scattered throughout its pages, that 
 have endeared The Christian Year to count- 
 less hearts within the English Church, and 
 to many a heart beyond it. The new ele- 
 ments in the book are perhaps these — first, 
 it translates religious sentiment out of the 
 ancient and exclusively Hebrew dialect into 
 the language of modern feeling, Hitherto 
 English devotional poets, with the excep- 
 tion perhaps of Cowper, in some passages, 
 
9ofm Bdrte* 89 
 
 had adhered rigorously to the scriptural 
 imagery and phraseology. This, besides im- 
 mensely limiting their range, made their 
 words often fall wide of modern experience. 
 Keble took the thoughts and sentiments of 
 which men at the present day are conscious, 
 expressed them in fitting modern words, and 
 transfused into them the Christian spirit. 
 Secondly, there is visible in him, first perhaps 
 of his contemporaries, — that which seems 
 the best characteristic of modern religion, — 
 combined with devout reverence for the per- 
 son of our Lord, a closer, more personal love 
 to Him as to a living friend. There were no 
 doubt rare exceptions here and there, but, 
 generally speaking, religious men before spoke 
 of our Lord in a more distant way, as one 
 holding the central place rather in a dogma- 
 tic system than in the devout affections. 
 The best men of our own time have gone 
 beyond this. The Lord of the Gospels, in 
 his Divine Humanity, has come closer to 
 their hearts, and made Himself known in a 
 more intimate and endearing way. In none 
 perhaps was this change of feeling earlier 
 
90 Sofjn %zblt. 
 
 seen, or more strongly marked, than in Keble. 
 Thirdly, there is the close and abundant 
 knowledge of Scripture, with a fine and 
 delicate feeling for the beauty of its lan- 
 guage. Without confining himself to the 
 imagery or language of the Bible, he every- 
 where shows his intimacy with it, and inter- 
 weaves its words very naturally and gracefully 
 with his own. 
 
 These are some of the more catholic notes 
 of the book which have won for it a place 
 in the affections of Christians of every com- 
 munion. This depth of catholic religious 
 sentiment, it is, no doubt, which is its chief 
 and most valuable characteristic. From this 
 some may be ready to draw an argument for 
 Christian morality disjoined from Christian 
 doctrine, or for some all-embracing religion 
 which would comprehend whatever the vari- 
 ous Churches agree in, discarding all in 
 which they differ. What that residuum ex- 
 actly is no one has yet stated. But before 
 drawing such an argument from The Chris- 
 tian Year, it may be as well to ask whether 
 that book would have been so charged with 
 
devout Christian sentiment if its author had 
 not held with all his heart those doctrinal 
 truths which in his case gave birth to that 
 sentiment, but which many now wish to get 
 rid of ? If we love the consummate flower, 
 it might be as well not to begin by cutting 
 away the root. 
 
 There is, however, another side on w 7 hich 
 The Christian Year is less catholic in its 
 character. This, which may be called its 
 ecclesiastical side, is inherent in the very 
 form of the book. A poem for each Sunday 
 in the year would be welcome to very many, 
 but then what is to determine the subject of 
 each Sunday's poem ? A chance verse or 
 phrase in the Gospel for the day, as this 
 is given in the Prayer-Book, is hardly a 
 catholic or universal ground for fixing the 
 subject. Again, Christmas, Good Friday, 
 Easter Day, "Whitsunday, have of course a 
 catholic meaning, because these days, though 
 not observed by all Churches, are yet memo- 
 rials of the sacred facts by w r hich all Chris- 
 tians live. But the lesser Saints' Days, 
 Circumcision, Purification, as well as the 
 
92 3o!jn %tW. 
 
 occasional services, have a local and tem- 
 porary, not a universal import. Accordingly, 
 a perusal of the poems suggests what the 
 preface to them confirms, that they did not 
 all flow off from a free spontaneous inspira- 
 tion awakened by the thought natural to 
 each day, but that a good number were 
 either poems previously composed and after- 
 wards adapted to some particular Sunday, 
 or written as it were to order after the 
 thought of rounding The Christian Year had 
 arisen. So clear does this seem that it would 
 not be hard to go through the several poems 
 and lay finger here on the spontaneous effu- 
 sions, there on those of more laboured manu- 
 facture. The former flow from the first verse 
 to the last lucid in thought, simple and almost 
 faultless in diction ; no break in the sense, no 
 obscurity ; seldom any harshness or poverty 
 in the diction. The others are imperfect in 
 rhythm and language, defaced by the con- 
 ventionalities of poetic diction, frequently 
 obscure or artificial, the thread of thought 
 broken or hard to catch. The one set are 
 like mountain streams, that run down the 
 
 
Jofjti IteMe* 93 
 
 hill-side in sunshine clear and bright from 
 end to end, the other are like streams that 
 find their way through difficult places, often 
 hidden underground or buried in heaps of 
 stones. Yet even the most defective of them 
 come forth to light in some single verse of 
 profound thought or tender feeling, so well 
 expressed as to make the reader willingly 
 forgive for that one gleam the imperfection 
 of the rest. 
 
SECTION XI. 
 (2.) HOME-FEELING. 
 
 THE next quality I would notice is the 
 deep tone of home affection which 
 runs through these poems. This, perhaps 
 as much as anything, has endeared them 
 to his home-loving countrymen. Such is 
 that feeling for an ancient home breathed 
 
 
 m 
 
 Since all that is not Heaven must fade, 
 Light be the hand of Ruin laid 
 
 Upon the home I love : 
 With lulling spell let soft Decay- 
 Steal on, and spare the giant sway, 
 
 The crash of tower and grove. 
 
 Far opening down some woodland deep 
 In their own quiet glade should sleep 
 
 The relics dear to thought, 
 And wild-flower wreaths from side to side 
 Their waving tracery hang, to hide 
 
 What ruthless Time has wrought.* 
 
 J 
 
3ofjn Grille. 95 
 
 Again, the hymn for St. Andrew's Day is so 
 well known and loved as hardly to need 
 quoting. Every line of it is instinct with 
 simple pure affection, yet never, one might 
 think, so deeply felt or so w r ell expressed as 
 here — 
 
 1 When brothers part for manhood's race, 
 What gift may most endearing prove 
 To keep fond memory in her place, 
 And certify a brother's love ? 
 
 1 No fading frail memorial give 
 
 To soothe his soul when thou art gone, 
 But wreaths of hope for aye to live, 
 And thoughts of good together done. 1 
 
 Besides the more obvious allusions to the 
 household charities, there are many delicate, 
 more reserved touches on the same chord. 
 Such is the — 
 
 4 1 cannot paint to Memory's eye 
 
 The scene, the glance, I dearest love — 
 Unchanged themselves, in me they die, 
 Or faint, or false, their shadows prove. 
 
 1 Meanwhile, if over sea or sky 
 
 Some tender lights unnoticed fleet, 
 Or on loved features dawn and die, 
 Unread, to us, their lesson sweet ; 
 
 ' Yet are there saddening sights around, 
 Which Heaven, in mercy, spares us too.' 
 
96 Sofjn !&Mt. 
 
 But there is no need to go on with quo- 
 tations. Many more such passages will 
 occur to every reader. High education and 
 refined thought in him had not weakened, 
 but only made natural affection more pure 
 and intense. Yet in all the tenderness 
 there is no trace of effeminacy. True, the 
 woman's heart everywhere shows itself. 
 But as it has been said that in the counte- 
 nance of most men of genius there is some- 
 thing of a womanly expression not seen in 
 the faces of other men ; so it is distinctive 
 of true poetic temper that it ever carries the 
 woman's heart within the man's. And cer- 
 tainly of no poet's heart does this hold more 
 truly than of Keble's. They, however, must 
 be but blind critics, insensible to the finer 
 pathos of human life, who have on this 
 account called Keble's poetry ' effeminate.' 
 The woman's heart in him is blended with 
 the martyr's courage. Hardly any modern 
 poetry breathes so firm self-control, so fixed 
 yet calm resolve, so stern self-denial. If these 
 be qualities that can consist with effemi- 
 nacy, then Keble's poetry may be allowed to 
 
3ofjn 2&eble t 97 
 
 pass for effeminate. But those who brought 
 
 this charge against it, misled, it may be, by 
 the loud bluster that passes with many for 
 manliness, seem not to be aware that the 
 
 bravest and most trustworthy manhood is 
 also the gentlest and most tender-hearted ; 
 that, according to the saying, ' A man is 
 never so much a man as when he becomes 
 most in heart a child/ 
 
SECTION XII. 
 (3.) RESERVE. 
 
 THIS naturally leads on to the notice 
 . of another characteristic of this poetry 
 — the fine reserve, which does not publish 
 aloud, but only delicately hints its deeper 
 feelings. It was an intrinsic part of Keble's 
 nature to shrink from obtruding himself, to 
 dislike display, 
 
 1 To love the sober shade 
 More than the laughing light. ' 
 
 And one object he had in publishing The 
 Christian Year was the hope that it might 
 supply a sober standard of devotional feel- 
 ing, in unison with that presented by the 
 Prayer-Book. The time, he thought, was 
 one of unbounded curiosity and morbid crav- 
 ing for excitement, symptoms which have 
 
not abated during the forty years since Keble 
 so spoke. He wished, as far as might be, 
 to supply some antidote to these tendencies. 
 Again modern thought has, as all know, 
 turned in upon itself, and discovered a whole 
 internal world of reflections and sensibilities 
 hardly expressed in the older literature. 
 Keble so far shared this tendency with his 
 contemporaries. But he set himself not to 
 feed and pamper it, but to direct, to sober, 
 and to brace it, by bringing it into the 
 presence of realities higher than itself. 
 
 This feeling of delicate reserve, sobered 
 and strengthened by Christian thought, 
 comes out in many of the poems, in none 
 perhaps more than in the one which contains 
 these stanzas : — 
 
 1 E'en human Love will shrink from sight 
 
 Here in the coarse rude earth : 
 How then should rash intruding glance 
 Break in upon her sacred trance 
 Who boasts a heavenly birth ? 
 
 1 So still and secret is her growth, 
 Ever the truest heart, 
 Where deepest strikes her kindly root 
 For hope or joy, for flower or fruit, 
 Least know r s its happy part. 
 
ioo Sofjn Ite&le. 
 
 1 God only, and good angels, look 
 
 Behind the blissful screen — 
 As when, triumphant o'er His woes, 
 The Son of God "by moonlight rose, 
 
 By all but Heaven unseen.' 
 
 We would not pause on verbal criticisms, — 
 only the last line of the second stanza here 
 is one of many instances in which the beauty 
 of the finest thoughts is marred by the ad- 
 mission of some hackneyed conventional 
 phrase. Otherwise, these stanzas, as well as 
 the whole poem in which they occur, are 
 in Keble's finest and most native vein. 
 In keeping with the feeling breathed by 
 these lines is another which should be noted. 
 As he keeps his own deepest feelings under 
 a close veil of reserve, so he loves best the 
 virtues and the characters which are least 
 obtrusive, and generally get least praise. 
 Things wdiich the world least recognises, for 
 these he reserves his heart's best sympathy. 
 For the loud, the successful, the caressed, 
 he has no word, but perhaps one of admoni- 
 tion. It is the poor, the bowed down, the 
 lonely, the forsaken, who draw out his 
 thoughts of tenderest consolation. And 
 
3oJjn Iteble. 101 
 
 what makes this the nobler in Keble is, that 
 it does not seem to come from the principle 
 of hand ignarus mail, but rather from pure 
 strength of Christian sympathy. The traits 
 of character for which he has the keenest 
 eye, the virtues on which he dwells most lov- 
 ingly, are those which men in general take 
 least note of. The nameless children of the 
 family of God kindle in him a deep enthu- 
 siasm, such as most poets have reserved for 
 the earth's great heroes. Thus, in one of 
 his finest pasages, after contrasting those 
 Christians who live in the ' green earth ' 
 and under the ' open sky ' of the country, 
 with those whose lot is cast in the streets 
 and stifling alleys of the crowded city, he 
 bursts forth — 
 
 1 But Love 's a iiower that will not die 
 
 For lack of leafy screen, 
 And Christian Hope can cheer the eye 
 
 That ne'er saw vernal green ; 
 Then be ye sure that Love can bless 
 E'en in this crowded loneliness, 
 Where ever-moving myriads seem to say, 
 Go — thou art nought to us, nor we to thee — away 
 
 ' There are in this loud stunning tide 
 Of human care and crime ; 
 
io2 Sofjn %t\At. 
 
 With whom the melodies abide 
 
 Of th' everlasting chime ; 
 Who carry music in their heart 
 Through dusky lane and wrangling mart, 
 Plying their daily task with busier feet, 
 Because their secret souls a holy strain repeat.' 
 
 And as is the inward tone of feeling, so is 
 its outward expression, chastened and sub- 
 dued. There is no gorgeousness of colour- 
 ing, no stunning sound, no highly spiced 
 phrase or metaphor. From what have been 
 the chief attractions of much poetry popular 
 since his day, — scarlet hues and blare of 
 trumpets, staring metaphors and metaphy- 
 sical enigmas, he turned instinctively. He 
 seemed to say to these, 
 
 * Farewell : for one short life we part : 
 I rather woo the soothing art, 
 Which only souls in sufferings tried 
 Bear to their suffering brethren's side.' 
 
 Those who have called other parts of Keble 
 effeminate, might perhaps call this ascetic. 
 If it is so, it is an asceticism in harmony 
 with true Christianity, and with the sober 
 wisdom that comes from life's experience. 
 
SECTION XIII. 
 (4.) DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE. 
 
 MUCH has been said of Keble's eye 
 for nature. His admirers perhaps 
 exaggerate it, his clepreciators as much 
 underrate it. He certainly shared largely 
 in that feeling about the visible world, so 
 identified with Wordsworth that it is now 
 called Wordsworthian, — that feeling which 
 more than any other marks the direction in 
 which modern imagination has enlarged and 
 deepened. The appearances of nature fur- 
 nish Keble with the framework in which 
 most of his lyrics are set, the mould in 
 which they are cast. Some whole poems, as 
 the one beginning 
 
 4 Lessons s^veet of spring returning," 
 
104 Sofjn Itefrle* 
 
 are little more than descriptions of some 
 scene in nature. Many more take some 
 natural appearance and make it the sym- 
 bol of a spiritual truth. Two small rills, 
 born apart and afterwards blending in one 
 large stream, are likened to two separate 
 prayers uniting to bring about some great 
 result. The autumn clouds, mantling round 
 the sun for love, suggest that love is life's 
 only sign. The robin singing unweariedly 
 in the bleak November wind, suggests a 
 lesson of content — 
 
 ' Rather in all to be resigned than blest.' 
 
 These and many more are the natural 
 appearances, which, some by resemblance, 
 some by contrast, furnish him with key- 
 notes of his religious meditations. In many 
 you feel at once that the poet has struck a 
 true note, one which will be owned by the 
 universal imagination, wherever that faculty 
 is sufficiently cultivated to be alive to it. 
 In some you feel more doubtful, — the 
 analogy appears to be somewhat more faint 
 or far-fetched. In others you seem to see 
 
3oijn Itefclc* 105 
 
 clearly that the resemblance is arbitrary and 
 capricious, a work of the mere fancy, not 
 of the genuine imagination. An instance of 
 the last kind has been severely commented 
 on by a contemporary critic, who, on the 
 strength of some doubtful analogies which 
 occur in Keble's poems, has voted him no 
 poet. This critic specially comments on 
 one poem, in which the moon is made a 
 symbol of the Church, the stars are made 
 symbols of saints in heaven, and the trees 
 in Eden of saints on earth. This, if it be 
 not some remote allusion to passages of 
 Scripture, must be allowed to be a mere 
 ecclesiastical reading of nature's symbols, 
 repudiated by the universal heart of man, 
 and therefore by true poetry. But if this 
 and some other instances, pitched on a 
 false key, can be pointed out, how many 
 more are there where the chord struck 
 answers with a genuine tone ? Even in 
 the very poem which contains the sym- 
 bolism condemned, is there not the follow- 
 ing?- 
 
106 Jfofjn %Mz. 
 
 1 The glorious sky embracing all 
 
 Ts like the Maker's love, 
 Wherewith encompassed great and small 
 In peace and order move.' 
 
 Here Keble has Christianized an analogy, 
 acknowledged not only by the Greek con- 
 ception of Zeus, but more or less, we be- 
 lieve, by the primeval faith of the whole 
 Aryan race. 
 
 Of the many instances that might easily 
 be gathered from these poems, in which 
 that mysterious chord of analogy that binds 
 together human feeling and the outward 
 world is truly touched, one more must be 
 given. It is from the poem on All Saints' 
 Day. As that day falls on the 1st of 
 November, a time so often beautiful with 
 the bright calm of St. Luke's summer, the 
 following lines serve well to harmonize the 
 feeling of the season with the thoughts 
 which the Church Festival is meant to 
 awaken — 
 
 ' How quiet shows the woodland scene ! 
 Each flower and tree, its duty done, 
 Reposing in decay serene, 
 
 Like weary men when age is won, 
 
3o\)ri l&Mt. 107 
 
 Such calm old age as conscience pure 
 And self-commanding hearts insure, 
 Waiting their summons to the sky, 
 Content to live, but not afraid to die.' 
 
 As might be looked for in a real lover of 
 nature, Keble's imagery is that which he 
 had lived in the midst of, and knew. The 
 shady lanes, the more open hursts and 
 downs, such as may be seen near Oxford, 
 and farther west and south, ' England's 
 primrose meadow paths/ the stiles worn by 
 generations, and the grey church- tower 
 embowered in elm-trees, — with these his 
 habitual thoughts and sentiments suit well. 
 Even in this familiar landscape his eye 
 and ear have caught facts and aspects of 
 nature, which, as far as I know, have never 
 before been put down in books. Take that 
 instance from the poem on the Fifth Sunday 
 after Easter — 
 
 1 Deep is the silence as of summer noon. 
 When a soft shower 
 Will trickle soon, 
 A gracious rain, freshening the weary bower — 
 sweetly then far off is heard 
 The clear note of some lonely bird/ 
 
108 Sofjn HeMe, 
 
 Many an ear before Keble's must have 
 heard a solitary thrush singing in the dis- 
 tant fields amid the deep hush that preludes 
 the thunder-storm. But no poet before 
 Keble, as far as I know, had seized that 
 impressive image and embalmed it in verse. 
 Not a few such images or aspects of the 
 quiet English landscape will be found re- 
 claimed fresh from the fields for the first 
 time in The Christian Year. With this kind 
 of scenery, which was familiar to him all 
 his life, he is for the most part content, and 
 seldom travels beyond it. Indeed a very 
 true test of the genuineness of a poet's 
 inspiration would seem to be, whether his 
 imagery is mainly gathered from the scenes 
 amidst which he has lived, or borrowed from 
 the writings of former poets or other arti- 
 ficial sources. Seldom does Keble visit 
 mountain lands, only once or twice in The 
 Christian Year. But the poem for the 20th 
 Sunday after Trinity, though good, might 
 have been written by one who had never 
 seen mountains, if only he had read descrip- 
 tions of them. 
 
 
3a\}\\ lUile. 109 
 
 Besides tlie English there is another kind 
 of landscape in which Keble has shown 
 himself at home. Dean Stanley has noted 
 the fidelity with which he has pictured 
 scenes in the Holy Land. This shows not 
 only a close study of the hints that are to 
 be found in the Bible, and in the modern 
 books about Palestine, — it proyes how quick 
 must have been the insight into nature of 
 one who, though he had never himself beheld 
 that country, could from such materials 
 call up pictures true enough to satisfy the 
 eye of the most graphic of modern travellers 
 even while gazing on those very scenes. 
 
 There are two sides which nature turns 
 towards the imagination. One is that 
 which the poet can read figuratively, in 
 which he can see symbols and analogies of 
 the spiritual world. This side Keble, as 
 we have seen, felt and read, in the main I 
 think truly, though sometimes lie may have 
 missed it. What the true reading is, and how 
 it is to be discerned, is a weighty matter 
 not to be entered on here. One thing, 
 however, is certain, that the correspondency 
 
no afoljn ftefcle, 
 
 between the natural object and the spiri- 
 tual, between nature and the soul, is there, 
 existing independently of the individual 
 man. He did not make the correspon- 
 dency ; his part is to see and interpret 
 truly what was there beforehand, not to 
 read into nature his own views or moods 
 waywardly and capriciously. The truest 
 poet is he who reads nature's hieroglyphics 
 most truly and most widely ; and the test 
 of the true reading is that it is at once 
 welcomed by the universal imagination of 
 man. This universal or catholic ima^ina- 
 tion of man is far different from the uni- 
 versal suffrage of man. It means the 
 imagination of those in whom that faculty 
 exists in the highest degree, cultivated to 
 the finest sensibility. The imagination is 
 the faculty which reads truly, the fancy 
 that which reads capriciously, and so falsely. 
 The former seizes true and real existences, 
 analogies between nature and spirit ; the 
 latter makes arbitrary and fictitious ones. 
 In the school of imagination, as opposed to 
 fancy, Keble was a faithful and devout 
 
3ofm l&e&Ie, 1 1 1 
 
 student. It was the music of his pious 
 spirit to read aright the symbolical side 
 which nature turns towards man. 
 
 But nature has another side, of which 
 there is no indication in Keble's poetry. 
 We mean her infinite and unlmman side, 
 which yields no symbols to soothe mans 
 yearnings. Outside of and far beyond man, 
 his hopes and fears, his strivings and aspir- 
 ations, there lies the vast immensity of 
 nature's forces, which pays him no homage, 
 and yields him no sympathy. This aspect 
 of nature may be seen even amid the tamest 
 landscape, if we look to the clouds or the 
 stars above us, or to the ocean roaring around 
 our shores. But nowhere is it so borne in 
 on man as in the midst of the vast deserts 
 of the earth, or in the presence of the moun- 
 tains, which seem so impassive and un- 
 changeable. Their permanence and strength 
 so contrast with man — of few years and full 
 of trouble ; they are so indifferent to his 
 feelings or his destiny. He may smile or 
 weep, he may live or die ; they care not. 
 They are the same in all their ongoings, 
 
1 12 3oi)tt J&zblt. 
 
 liappen what will to him. They respond to 
 the sunrises and the sunsets, but not to his 
 sympathies. All the same they fulfil their 
 mighty functions, careless though no human 
 eye should ever look on them. So it is in 
 all the great movements of nature. Man 
 holds his festal days, and nature frowns ; he 
 goes forth from the death-chamber, and 
 nature affronts him with sunshine and the 
 song of birds. Evidently, it seems, she 
 marches on, having a purpose of her own 
 with which man has nothing to do : she 
 keeps her own secret, and drops no hint to 
 him. This mysterious silence, this unhuman 
 indifference, this inexorable deafness, has im- 
 pressed the imagination of the greatest poets 
 with a vague yet sublime awe. The sense 
 of it lay heavy on Lucretius, Shelley, Words- 
 worth, and drew out their souls' profoundest 
 music. This side of things, whether philoso- 
 phically or imaginatively regarded, seems to 
 justify the saying, that 'the visible world 
 still remains without its divine interpreta- 
 tion.' But it was not on thoughts of this 
 kind that Keble loved to dwell. If they 
 
3ofjn %tW. 1 i 3 
 
 ever occurred to him, lie has nowhere ex- 
 pressed them. He was content with that 
 other side of nature, of which I spoke 
 first, the side which allows itself to be 
 humanized, that is, to be interpreted by 
 man's faith and devout aspirations. This 
 was the side that suited his religious pur- 
 pose, and to this he limited himself. Within 
 this range few have ever interpreted nature 
 more soothingly and beautifully. 
 
 These are a few of the qualities that would 
 strike any one on first opening The Christian 
 Year. They are not, however, enough to ac- 
 count for its unparalleled popularity. Indeed, 
 popularity is no word to express the fact, 
 that this book lias been for years the cher- 
 ished companion in their best moods of 
 numbers of the best men, of the most diverse 
 characters and schools, who have lived in 
 our time. The secret of this power is a com- 
 pound of many influences hard to state or 
 explain. It has not been hindered by the 
 blemishes obvious on the surface to every 
 one, inharmonious rhythms, frequent obscu- 
 rity, here and there poverty and convention - 
 
 H 
 
ii4 3o|m Itefrle* 
 
 ality of diction. In spite of these it has won 
 its way to the hearts of the highly educated 
 and refined, as no book of poetry, sacred or 
 secular, in our time has done. Will it con- 
 tinue to do so ? Will its own imperfections, 
 and the changing currents of men's feelings, 
 not alienate from it a generation rendered 
 fastidious by poetry of more artistic perfec- 
 tion, more highly coloured, more richly 
 flavoured? Without speaking too confi- 
 dently, it may be expected to live on, if 
 not in so wonderful esteem, yet widely read 
 and deeply felt ; for it makes its appeal to 
 no temporary or accidental feelings, but 
 mainly to that which is permanent in man. 
 It can hardly be that it should lose its hold 
 on the affections of English-speaking men 
 as long as Christianity retains it. For if 
 we may judge from the past, it will be long 
 ere another character of the same rare and 
 saintly beauty shall again concur with a 
 poetic gift and power of poetic expression, 
 not certainly of the highest, yet still of so 
 high order. Broader and bolder imagi- 
 nation, greater artistic faculty, many poets 
 
Soijn He&le* 1 1 5 
 
 who were his contemporaries possessed. But 
 in none of them did there burn a spiritual 
 light so pure and heavenly, to transfigure 
 these gifts from within. It is because The 
 Christian Year has succeeded in conveying 
 to the outer world some effluence of that 
 character which his intimate friends so 
 loved and revered in Keble, that, as I believe, 
 he will not cease to hold a quite peculiar 
 place in the affections of posterity. 
 
 EDINBURGH : T. CONSTABLE, 
 PRINTER TO THE QUEEN, AND TO THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
88 Princes Street, 
 Edinburgh. 
 
 EDMONSTON & DOUGLAS' 
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