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YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

From the
collection of oxford books
made by
FALCONER MADAN
Bodley's Librarian

"REMINISCENCES ^

OF

CHARLES POURTALfeS GOLIGHTLY."
A LETTEK
REPRINTED, WITH ADDITIONS,
AND A P.REFACE,
FROM "THE GUARDIAN" NEWSPAPER OF JAN. 13, 1886;

BY
EDWARD MEYRICK GOULBURN, D.C.L, D.D.
DEAN OF NORWICH.

parfjet an& Co.
OXFORD, AND 6 SOUTHAMPTON-STREET,
STRAND, LONDON.
Staces,
NORWICH.

REMINISCENCES

OF

CHARLES POURTALfeS GOLIGHTLY."
A LETTER
REPRINTED, WITH ADDITION-S,
AND A PREFACE,
FROM " THE GUARDIAN" NEWSPAPER OF JAN. 13, 1886 ;
BY
EDWARD MEYRICK GOULBURN, D.C.L., D.D.
DEAN OF NORWICH.

Iparfeer an^ Co.
OXFORD, AND 6 SOUTHAMPTON-STREET,
"STRAND, LONDON.
Staces,
NORWICH.

TO
MRS. CORNWALLIS CARTWRIGHT,
AT WHOSE REQUEST
THESE "reminiscences" OF AN OLD AND HIGHLY
ESTEEMED FRIEND OF HER FAMILY
WERE PREPARED FOR PUBLICATION
AS A SEPARATE PIECE,
THIS PAPER IS
INSCRIBED
WITH AFFECTIONATE REGARDS
AND CORDIAL SYMPATHY.

PREFACE.

T HAVE been asked by the lady to whom these
pages are inscribed, and who, with other mem
bers of her family, honours and cherishes the me
mory of Mr. Golightly, to put forth my " Reminis
cences " of him, which appeared in " The Guardian "
of Jan. 13, in a more permanent form, and to make
such additions to them as I should have done, had
I not been crippled, when writing to " The Guar
dian," by the consideration that I must confine
myself to certain limits of space. I gladly comply
with her request, not only from the regard which
I entertain for her, but also because the task of
retracing in memory the happy days which it was
my lot to spend at Oxford is a most congenial one.
The effort to recall Golightly, first as a most kind
friend and counsellor to undergraduates, then, in later
days, as a companion, and finally as a parishioner,
has summoned up from the grave of the past many
other familiar figures, (but few of them remam
now), with whom my intercourse was most pleasant
and (to myself) most useful and improving. Indeed
it is not only a touching but a solemn thought for
me that I had the advantage in those days of inti
mate acquaintance with several eminently good and
devout men, the subject of this memoir and the late
Bishop Waldegrave being of the number, and shall
be accountable for the use which I made of their
wise and godly counsels, and good examples. No
B 3

VI PREFACE.

doubt sentiment by itself — the sentiment which
clings fondly and tenderly to the happy intercourse
of other days — is but a barren comfort for the re
moval of such friends ; it requires to be re-inforced
by the well assured hope of re-union in "a better
country." But when thus re-inforced let us not
undervalue it ; it is a sweet solace amid all the
degeneracy, restlessness, and heartlessness of the
present age to look back to an age, which (at all
events as the imagination of elderly people repre
sents it to them) was far higher in its moral stand
ard, far calmer, far fuller of sympathy. And es
pecially is this solace felt by Oxford men in look
ing back to their Alma Mater as she was, before
yet Royal Commissions had manipulated her with
clumsy fingers, diverted to the construction of an
intellectual and philosophical arena funds intended
by pious Founders for the service of the Church
and the poor, effected a divorce between the higher
education of the country and the Church, and
turned Oxford into a clique of savants (narrow,
self-contained, and totally uninteresting to those
who have it not in them to be savants themselves)
from being what it once was, a citadel of the Faith,
and an influence upon English Society which was
felt even at its extremities. It is indeed a refresh
ment under such circumstances to shut one's eyes
to the present, and open them awhile upon the past.
And one feature of that past, as contrasted with the
present, is that it had its characters. Some men
stood out from the rest in force of will, in origi
nality of thought, in the singularity of their ways
and habits of viewing things. But the characters
have died or are fast dyjng off; the tendency of

PREFACE. Vll
the times being to merge individual peculiarities,
to chisel away all the high relief in which some
personalities of old stood out from the general
surface of social life, and to reduce all men to
one dull, dead, monotonous level. The subject of
this memoir was undoubtedly a character. And
undoubtedly also he was in his day, and in his own
line, a power in Oxford. And as to these qualities
he added singular piety and goodness, and a quaint
humour, which not even the acrid tendencies of
Controversy could sour, he may well be deemed
worthy of a slight memorial sketch, in times when
men of not half his worth and moral fibre are often
commemorated in a bulky octavo, full of wearisome
and perpetually recurring details. E. M. G.
The Deanerv, Norwich,
February 4, 1886.

IReminlscencea of
Cbatlee pourtalee (Boligbtl^*

Sir, — Will you allow me, as one who in my un
dergraduate days received much kindness from him,
and afterwards became his parish priest, and a close
friend of his, to supplement the interesting " In
Memoriam" of the Rev. C. P. Golightly given in
last week's " Guardian " by a few particulars, which
I think may prove interesting to those who liked
him well enough to seek to reproduce an image of
him in their minds ?
Whether he attracted or repelled (and I am in
clined to think that he did attract all who knew him
well, while no doubt he repelled those who knew
him only by the part he took in the polemics of his
day), it will be granted on all hands that he was
a strong character — strong morally, "eminently
truthful and sincere," fearless, single-minded, and
straightforward (as your "In Memoriam" says) — ¦
and also in his own line strong intellectually, quick
to discern the point to be proved, and resolute to
keep his antagonist to it, gifted also with great
power of exhibiting in a terse and telling form the
arguments on his own side of a subject. I say he
was in his own line strong intellectually, because I
think that his intellectual gifts were of a peculiar
order, and not quite like those of other men. He
has often told me that he believed that the first

ID

sermon he ever preached was also the best he ever
preached. And I can well understand it. There
was but little growth or expansiveness in his mind ;
while he possessed and exhibited considerable men
tal vigour, the vigour remained what it was origin
ally—did not seem to receive accessions and en
largement as time went on. Still it was vigour.
No one who reads that pamphlet of his in answer
to Mr. Wilberforce, the strain of composing which
probably contributed to the mental derangement
which preceded his end, can deny to it the praise
of very considerable ability, whatever judgment
may be formed as to the grounds of complaint
which Mr. Wilberforce had given him, or as to the
policy of raking them up.
Mr. Golightly was a man of high, and I should
say of somewhat austere, moral tone. His judg
ment upon Eton, the school where he had been
educated, was severe to a degree which I, as myself
an old Etonian, and having that strong attachment
to the school which most old Etonians share, at
first was inclined to resent, until I gained a further
insight into the character of my friend. He was
constantly dwelling on the immense amount of evil
learned and practised at Eton (as indeed in all
Public Schools of that day), on the neglect of reli
gious instruction which characterized it, and on the
iniquity of the conventional breaches of morality
which were sanctioned by the public opinion of the
boys (such as the universal connivance at the prac
tice of pleading "first fault" to escape a flogging,
even when the culprit knew well that it was not his
first fault). He was reluctant to acknowledge any
redeeming traits in the school, or at least he spoke

1 1

as if there were none. And he alleged that he was
borne out in this estimate of the school by Walter
Kerr Hamilton, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury,
who also was a kind and dear friend of mine, and
whose opinions upon the subject I had many op
portunities of ascertaining. He also would say,
with Golightly, that Eton (in his day) was "very
vile." And yet I think he never spoke of it without
some tinge of sentiment colouring his words, be
tokening a drawing of affection towards the scenes
and surroundings of his boyhood. I never dis
cerned anything of this kind in Golightly's animad
versions upon the school, which were unrelieved
altogether by bright and pleasing reminiscences.
At first this seems an unattractive and somewhat
repelling trait ; but I believe it to have been a real
part of his character. He did not lack tenderness
nor sentiment ; I have seen him shed tears in re
counting, after the lapse of a considerable time, the
death of a dear friend ^ and manifest the liveliest
interest in the winning ways of children ; but com
promise with evil, relenting towards evil, or what
he conceived to be so, was simply not in his nature ;
" thine eye shall not pity, neither shalt thou spare,"
was his moral tone both towards vice and heresy.
An old and attached friend of his confirms this fea
ture of his character in an anecdote with which he
has kindly furnished me of the state of agitation and
horror, into which Golightly was once thrown by
the sight of some indecent and obscene words which
the boys of a village had scrawled upon a wall or
pavement. He would not pass on in his walk till
they were completely obliterated (which proved to
' The Rev. T. T, Churton, late Rector of West Shefford, Berks.
B 4

12

be a work of some little difficulty), and was per
turbed in mind for the remainder of the day by the
thought of the " desperate wickedness " of the hu
man heart which, even in children of tender years,
can throw up to the surface such moral filth. In
these days of moral laxity, when plenary indulgence
is so freely conceded to every form of sin and error,
and passes current under the name of liberality, is
there not something admirable in this austerity (if
we must so call it), something which may act as the
antiseptic salt to preserve our social life from utter
corruption, even as in their age the testimony of the
old Jewish prophets did ?
I suspect that from the circumstance of Go
lightly's having ample means, and living in comfort,
but few were aware that his character had in it the
stamina of self-discipline and self-denial. I remem
ber his telling me, at a ver^^ early period of my ac
quaintance with him, that he entertained scruples
about a beautiful little pony-carriage and pony
which he possessed, because the money spent on
them might be better bestowed upon objects of
piety" and charity. Whether this was the cause
of his ultimately parting with his little equipage,
I cannot say ; but certain it is that he did part with
it, and that in later years his only form of regular
exercise was walking. It is of a piece with this
trait that in the room which, before the enlarge
ment of his house, he used, not only for his studies,
but also for the reception of friends, there was no
sofa or couch, and (if I remember right) only one
arm-chair, which I never saw him occupy. He
used constantly to say that common chairs and
tables were all that was needed for life in drawing-

13
rooms and dining-rooms, and that when people
felt that they wanted repose, it was time for them
to go to bed.
When Mr. Mozley says of him that "his religion
was that of Scott, and Newton, and Cecil, and Bax
ter, and certain select Puritans, not without a little
High Church seasoning," I hardly think he puts
Golightly's ecclesiastical temperature as "High"
as it really was. A distinction has been drawn
between a High Church Evangelical and an Evan
gelical High Churchman to this effect — that in the
first, the Evangelicalism is the basis of the man's
religious mind, and the High Churchism is super
induced, and the growth of a later age ; in the
second, the views are fundamentally High Church,
and the Evangelicalism is the colour subsequently
given to them. To this latter class rather than the
former I should say that Golightly belonged, though
I doubt not that the controversy with the Tractarian
school in which his better years were spent, drove
him into a more pronounced Low Church attitude
than was strictly congenial with his nature. He
was bred in High Church traditions. Some one
who had known the habits of his family told me
that, when he was a boy, the family carriage was
regularly seen rolling to the parish church on Saints'
days as well as Sundays, and that scrupulous attend
ance upon all Church ordinances was given by
them. Being myself descended from one of those
Huguenot families, which (like his) came over to
this country at the Revocation of the Edict of
Nantes, I can remember the scrupulosity with which
some older members of the family practised both
Church observances and fasting. And certainly
B 5

14
at the time I knew him Golightly seemed to enter
tain strong convictions of what would be called a
High Church character. I remember that at one
of his dinner parties at Oxford a very able and dis
tinguished Fellow and Tutor of a college made in
conversation some remark which either was, or
which Golightly conceived to be, disparaging to
the Absolution in the daily service ; he thought it
might be dispensed with, and the congregation sus
tain no loss. Golightly was down upon him in a
moment. " My dear  , will you have the kind
ness to inform us how long you have been in
Priest's orders ?" The gentleman interrogated would
fain have evaded the question, and attempted to do
so by justifying the opinion he had just expressed ;
but Golightly was so persistent in keeping him to
the point, that he was at last obliged to own that he
had been ordained priest only two years ago. Then
the whole weight of Hooker, with whose teaching
Golightly's mind was profoundly imbued, was brought
to bear upon him. " The judicious Hooker says,
' The sentence of ministerial absolution hath two
effects ; touching sin, it only declareth us free from
the guiltiness thereof, and restored into God's fa
vour ^' And you, a young man who have only
been in full orders for two years, presume to say
that the declaration of such high blessings as these
might as well be dispensed with !" This is enough
to show that the High Church element in Mr. Go
lightly's theological views had some strength and
consistency. Indeed, with deference to Mr. Moz
ley, I should be disposed to say that, at the time
I knew him. Hooker and Bishop Hall would more
^ Eccl. Pol., book vi. chap. vi.

15
exactly represent Golightly's views than the divines
who are named by him. I possess a copy of the
best edition of Bishop Hall's works, beautifully
bound, which he gave me as an acknowledgment of
our having read (or rather studied) together certain
parts of Hooker's writings — a gift which is doubly
valuable to me now that he has passed away.
"Absolution" and "Priest's Orders" remind me
of another incident, which shows how thoughtfully
he had weighed not only the Holy Scriptures (to
them I will come presently), but also our Church
Service. He happened to be in one of the Oxford
churches, where I officiated on the Sunday after
I was ordained priest. As we walked away to
gether, he told me bluntly enough that, though
I was now authorised to say the Absolution, it was
clear, from my mode of reading it, that I did not
understand it. I was a little nettled. " Who,"
I asked, "can help understanding it?" " I do not
mean," he replied, " that you do not understand
its separate clauses ; but that you fail to perceive
the sequence of thought between the former and
the latter part of the formulary. The priest first
declares God's forgiveness of all who comply with
certain terms — repentance and faith : ' He pardon-
eth and absolveth all them that truly repent, and
unfeignedly believe his holy Gospel.' Then he
exhorts the people to pray that they themselves
may come under these terms : ' Wherefore let us
beseech him to grant us true repentance and his
Holy Spirit.' If you had had an insight into this
point you would have laid a slight emphasis on the
second ' us ' — ' to grant us true repentance,' whereas
you placed your emphasis upon ' grant,' showing

i6
me that you missed the sequence of thought.
Golightly was very sensitive about the Absolution.
He has often said to me— I think he said it in
connexion with the incident at the dinner party
mentioned above—" I hold that at the very instant
when the priest pronounces Absolution a full pardon
is conveyed to the soul of every one whom God
sees to come under the terms of it." I give his
ipsissima verba, not implying either concurrence
or dissent on my own part, my sole object being
to exhibit the man.
As regards the Holy Scriptures, the way in which
he studied them, though very slow, was most fruit
ful. His great maxim on this subject was, " Think
out the difficulties for yourself, and settle them
by the action of your own mind before you con
sult any commentator." In this way he took, if
I remember right, two or three years in going
through as many chapters of St. Luke. When he
came to " the daughter of Phanuel," he set himself
to find out why this particular is mentioned;
Simeon's parentage is not given us ; why should
Anna's be ? I found him jubilant one morning
over the solution — "'Phanuel,' the same word as
' Penuel,' means ' the face of God;' and no doubt
Anna's parentage is thus mentioned on account of
the providential coincidence of her lot with her
father's name — she had the high privilege of seeing
the face of God Incarnate." I think we looked at
Grotius to confirm the conjecture, and found that
he took the same view, I recall also an edifying
remark of his on the first chapter of St. Luke.
It struck him as requiring to be accounted for, that
Zacharias the priest, though we are told that he

17
prayed for a son (St. Luke i. 13), does not in his
song directly give thanks for the boon, but only
mentions his son incidentally as the Lord's fore
runner (v. 76). The account Golightly gave of
this was that the priest, being " filled with the Holy
Ghost," was absorbed in the thought of God's
faithfulness to His promises, and of the glories
and blessedness of Messiah's kingdom, and found
no room in his mind for lower and lesser blessings.
In his- study of Holy Scripture he manifested
a strong and (as I venture to think) a somewhat
narrow leaning to the contextual sense of the words,
and eschewed all allegorical interpretations as the
offspring of the fancy. To Origen's method of
exposition he often expressed antipathy as that
by which, if pursued, "anything might be made
out of anything." I remember once attending St.
Mary-the-Virgin's Church in Oxford with him,
when the present Dean of Chichester, a dear and
dearly valued friend of his (then Incumbent of St.
Mary's parish), preached on the circumstance of
our Lord's having been arrested on His way to
the house of Jairus by the woman with the issue
of blood. The sermon was directed to bring out
the allegorical meaning of that diversion from our
Lord's original purpose ; and the preacher called
special attention to the fact that the woman had
laboured under her malady for twelve years, the
exact period of the girl's life, (" A certain woman
which had an issue of blood twelve years ;" " for she
was of the age of twelve years." St. Mark v. 25, 42).
Our Lord came down from heaven on a mission to
the lost sheep of the house of Israel, — a mission
which He is still pursuing ; the mystical Joseph

t8
was sent by His Father on an errand to His
brethren according to the flesh. But as He is
pursuing this errand, the Gentiles, represented by
the woman with the issue of blood, who was deeply
conscious of her complaint, and of its being irre
mediable by human skill, come up behind Him
and steal a blessing from Him by touching the
hem of His garment with the hand of faith. He
stops in His progress to elicit and hear their con
fession, to hold communion with them, to bless
them, and send them away with the spiritual heal
ing which they sought. Meanwhile the maiden
lies dead and motionless ; the Jewish Church,
while the Gentiles are being healed, is dead in
formalism and the letter of the Law, and gives
no signs of spiritual vitality. But the maiden shall
live again. Christ is on His way to the house
where she lies; and when He arrives there. He
shall utter over her that Talitha cumi, which shall
make her live unto God by faith and love; "and
so all Israel shall be saved." This was the out
line of one of the most beautiful allegorical sermons
I have ever heard ; and I sat absorbed in what
was to me the thrilling interest of the argument,
but feeling very doubtful as to how Golightly would
take it. As we were walking back from church,
it became apparent that he had no receptivity what
ever in his mind for such a method of interpre
tation, and the breaking out occasionally of his
love and high esteem for the preacher, side by side
,vith his objections to the way in which Holy
Scripture had been handled in the sermon, the
alternation of expressions of warm personal regard
with, " But I confess that I can't agree with him

19
as to the allegorical character of the Gospel nar
ratives," &c., was almost comical in its effect.
I think that even some of the allegories so instruc
tively drawn out in Bishop Trower's beautiful
"Commentaries at Family Prayer" (a posthumous
work) would hardly have found favour in his eyes,
though it is true that the Bishop's allegorizing is
all of Old Testament narratives. Bishop Trower
was one of his dearest friends, whom he looked
up to with affectionate veneration, and if anything
could have reconciled him to an allegory, it would
have been the fact of the Bishop's having pro
pounded it. I remember his taking me to task
for a sermon which I preached one Easter-tide in
Holywell Church, on " a swarm of bees and honey
in the carcase of the lion," which words I took as
an allegory of the Christian's finding sweetness of
consolation, and eventually the -activity of Resur
rection Life, in Death itself. With some little
malicious satisfaction (as I knew his profound
deference for all our authorised formularies) I
showed him that the allegorical interpretation of
the story about Samson has the sanction of our
Homily for Easter Day"". His objection to that
"^ " The mighty conquest of His resurrection was not only
signified before by divers figures of the Old Testament, as by
Samson when he slew the lion, out of whose mouth came sweetness
and honey ; and as David bare his figure when he delivered the
lamb out of the lion's mouth, and when he overcame and slew
the great giant Goliath ; and as when Jonas was swallowed up
in the whale's mouth, and cast up again on land alive : but was
also most clearly prophesied by the prophets of the Old Testa
ment, and in the New also confirmed by the apostles." — " The
Sermon of the Resurrection." Second Tome of Homilies,
Hom. xiv.

20

use of Judges xiv. 8 collapsed at once ; and he only
said, " Why didn't you tell us then, by way of lay
ing a foundation for your sermon, that the idea
which you unfolded in it, was taken from the
Homily ? That is quite sufficient sanction for it.'
It was evident that he would have repudiated the
notion, had I had no authority to show for it.
Dean Lake has mentioned in a letter to " The
Guardian" that it was Mr. Newman who recom
mended Golightly to make all his study of Holy
Scripture devotional in its aim and character, and
never to allow it to become purely critical. I re
member his several times acknowledging his in
debtedness to Mr. Newman for this piece of ad
vice ; and he showed his appreciation of it by acting
on it. Not only in reading the Scriptures them
selves, but before sitting down to any theological
study (as when we studied together Hooker's great
Sermon on Justification) he would kneel and recite
with the Lord's Prayer, this adaptation of our
Collect for Whitsun Day, which I take to have
been his own : " God, who at the Feast of Pen
tecost didst teach the hearts of Thy faithful people,
by the sending to them the light of Thy Holy Spirit;
Grant us by the same Spirit to have a right judge
ment in all things ; deliver us from, error, if we be
in error ; preserve us from, it, if we be not ; and
guide us into all truth; through Jesus Christ our
Lord." He often highly commended Calvin's
fashion of interspersing his Commentaries with
short collects or ejaculations, in which the teaching
of the passage before the expositor was presented
in a devotional form, and made to express itself
in a prayer. In connexion with his method of

21

handling Holy Scripture, I give one of his Scrip
tural arguments on the subject of Infant Baptism,
(the object of this sketch being to recall him
vividly to the minds of his friends, by means of
his sayings and doings), though far from thinking
it conclusive. "Our Lord says, 'Suffer the little
children to come unto me, and forbid them not :
for of such is the kingdom of God.' These latter
words are generally supposed to mean that people
of a child-like disposition are the subjects of the
kingdom, — that to them it belongs as their heritage.
But this would be no reason at all for our Lord's
encouraging little children themselves to be brought
to Him. See how the argument would stand, if
the subject had been lambs instead of children.
' Suffer lambs to come unto Me, because oi persons
of a lamblike disposition is the kingdom of heaven.'
This would be no arg-ument at all for bringing lambs
to the Saviour, that harmless and gentle people
are the subjects of His kingdom. No ; the mean
ing must be, ' God's kingdom has (literal) children
— the little ones of the human family — for its con
stituents ' (not, of course, for all its constituents,
but for a very large number of them) ; ' therefore
shut not out little children from coming to Me on
earth ; place them in My arms by Baptism."
But, first, will the Greek {rwv jap toiovtcou ia-Tiv ^
^aaiXeta rov Qeov) bear this interpretation ? I am
afraid my dear friend Canon Evans of Durham
would shake his head, if it were put to him, and tell
us that, had this been meant, the words would have
been, tovtwv yap i<nlv r] ^aatXeia k.t.\. And, secondly,
is not the "for" abundantly justified on the usual
view of the meaning ? The simplicity, docility.

22

unambitiousness, trustfulness of young children,
are in themselves (let us not be afraid to acknow
ledge it, as if the acknowledgment involved a
denial of their inheriting a corrupt nature) accept
able to God, — so acceptable that without some
measure of these dispositions, wrought in him by
Divine Grace, no adult has any real part or lot
in the kingdom : — " Except ye be converted"
(turned from high and ambitious thoughts), " and
become as little children, ye shall not enter into
the kingdom of God." I introduce this (favourite)
argument of Golightly's all the more willingly,
because incidentally it goes some way towards
proving what I have already said about him, that
(from the circumstance of his persistent antagonism
to the doctrines of the Oxford Tracts) his Church-
manship was considerably under-rated. He was
always strong on the subject of Baptism, its privi
leges, and the gift conferred in it ; he did full justice
to the words of the Catechism respecting the first
Sacrament, "wherein I was made a member of
Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor of the
kingdom of heaven." He was, indeed, a most
staunch Protestant at all times, but certainly, at
the period of my intimate acquaintance with him
(some forty years since), he was anything but a
Low Churchman. Mr. Golightly quite deserved
to be called a divine; he had a fair (not, I think,
an extraordinary) knowledge of the Fathers, was
well versed in the works of Calvin, and of the
great English theological writers, and had made
himself perfect master of the Roman controversy,
to which he seemed to have a natural attraction.
Quaint in his own character and habit of mind,

23
he loved the quaintnesses of such writers as Fuller
and George Herbert. I think I can distinctly
remember three separate occasions, on which he
quoted to me memoriter this " Scripture observa
tion," which always much impressed him, from
Fuller's Good Thoughts in Bad Tim.es : —
" Lord, I find David making a syllogism in mood and
figure, two propositions whereof he perfected. ' If I regard
wickedness in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.
But verily God hath heard me, He hath attended to the
voice of my prayer' (Ps. Ixvi. i8, 19). Now I expected
that David should conclude thus : — ' Therefore I regard not
wickedness in my heart.' But far otherwise he con
cludes : — ' Blessed be God, Who hath not turned away
my prayer, nor His mercy from me ' (v. 20). Thus David
hath deceived, but not wronged me. I looked that he
should have clapped the crown on his own, and he puts it
on God's head. I will learn this excellent logic (for I like
David's better than Aristotle's syllogisms), that whatsoever
the premisses be, I make God's glory the conclusion."
I should add, when speaking of Golightly's ac
quirements and general cultivation, that history
was a most congenial study to him. He did not
travel perhaps over a very wide area of It (his
method of study on all subjects was slow), but
what periods he did know he knew thoroughly
and accurately, and had his historical resources at
command whenever they were wanted. Long after
I had left Oxford for good, happening to be there for
a day, I, in company with the late Edward Wooll-
combe of Balliol, paid him a visit. There were cur
rent controversial topics of the day, in which we both
of us expected him to manifest the warmest inter
est. But we found him so immersed In the history
of Ccelestine V. that he could talk of nothing else.

24
and, indeed, was living wholly in the past. He
went out of the room and fetched some ecclesias
tical history (I wish I could remember what it was,
certainly not Mosheim nor Waddington, but far
fuller and more copious in particulars "') , and read
'' A correspondent, who knew and highly esteemed Mr. Go
lightly, has suggested to me that the ecclesiastical history, which
he referred to on this occasion, was probably Milman's " History
of Latin Christianity." And beyond all question it was so. Now
that I have the passage before me, all the vivid details, to which
Golightly gave such emphasis, as he read, come crowding back
upon the memory at an interval of some thirteen or fourteen
years. It will be found in vol. v. book xi. chap. vi.
" His dress " (the hermit's) " was haircloth, with an iron
cuirass ; his food bread and water, with a few herbs on Sun
days" (p. 131). "God showed him a great stone, under which
he dug a hole in which he could neither stand upright, nor
stretch his Hmbs ; and there he dwelt in all the luxury of self-
torture among lizards, serpents, and toads" (132). "The cave,
in which the saint could neither sit upright, or stretch himself
out, had a grated window with iron bars" (133). "He entered
the city of Aquila riding on an ass, with a King on each side of
him to hold his bridle" (135). The tears stood in Golightly's
eyes as he read some of these passages, and his voice became
broken and faltering ; I think what so much touched him was
the astounding revolution of human fortunes, which the story
exhibits, — the elevation of the anchorite (involuntary on his part,
and much recalcitrated against) to the supreme dignity of the
Papal throne, — the utter disappointment of all the hopes he had
formed, that he should find an atmosphere of piety and asceticism
surrounding him at the Court of Rome, — the inextricable dif
ficulties in which he entangled himself through his absolute ig
norance of affairs and of the ways of men, — and then his eventual
fall into a prison-cell, where the jealousy of a rival kept him
immured for the rest of his days, — a fall from the highest height
of glory into the lowest deep of humihation and degradation.
There are materials here for a great drama worthy of the hand
of an ^schylus or Sophocles, and it was the intensely dramatic
character of the narrative as given by Dean Milman, which

25
out the story, which seemed to touch and harrow him
just as if the events were passing under his own eye.
The ascent of the. deputation from the Conclave to
the hermit's cell on Mount Morone, the savage wild-
ness of the cell and the small reptiles and vermin
which crawled about in it ; the crass ignorance
and total incompetence for affairs which charac
terised the hermit himself, to whom, by a sudden
unanimity (ascribed to Divine inspiration), the offer
of St. Peter's chair was made ; his sincerity, his
austere virtues, and ascetic habits even in his own
palace ; his conviction, after a five months' reign,
that he would do well to abdicate, and his impri
sonment for the rest of his life, lest he should again
set up pretensions to a post, which he had not at
first accepted without earnest and agonizing prayer
— all this Golightly made, by the remarks which
he interspersed with his reading, to live again
under our eyes, and showed, I think, that he pos
sessed almost as much of " the historic imagina
tion " as Arthur Stanley himself Ccelestine V.
made a dint in our minds from that day forward.
Mr. Mozley tells us that Golightly had a " lurking
tenderness for Cardinals." I, too, have observed
this trait In him. He was particularly Interested
in the Historical Memoirs of Cardinal Pacca, the
Pope's Prime Minister in Napoleon's time, whom
Napoleon imprisoned in the Pledmontese fortress
wrought such an emotion in the mind of the subject of this
memoir, as communicated itself by sympathy to his two visitors.
It will be observed in the above extracts that even the greatest
historians are by no means always quite accurate or consistent
with themselves in particulars. In two pages which follow one
another Dean Milman tells us that Pietro di Morone "could not
stand upright," " and could not sit upright in his cell." The
former doubtless is the truth ; the latter an exaggeration.

26
of Fenestrelle. He often appealed to a passage
in this work as showing what the dogma of ^ran-
substantiation really meant, when it took hold of
a man's mind. Pacca, a devout old man, was
greatly distressed by having no access to the Sa
crament during his imprisonment. At length, after
some negotiations with the outer world, a conse
crated wafer was smuggled into his prison-chamber,
to enable him to communicate. His window-sill
formed the altar, on which the wafer was placed,
and the Cardinal spent large part of the previous
night in devotion, intending to communicate at
dawn of day. In reference to this previous night,
he makes a remark which I regret that I cannot
give verbatim, as I have not the book. It is some
thing to this effect : — " Imagine, reader, what was
my shame and confusion of face, since I had only
one prison-chamber, at having to eat my supper,
and satisfy other necessities of nature, in the very
Presence of my adorable Lord." Long after
Golightly had shown me this passage, I had an
opportunity of referring Bishop Thirlwall to it,
who was greatly struck with it, and was quite of
Golightly's opinion that it shows what Transub-
stantlatlon really means, when it Is imbibed.
It is desirable that even In a sketch of him so
slight and rapid as the present something should
be said as to his preaching. I believe he seldom
had to address educated audiences ; and I gathered
from many observations which he occasionally
dropped that he did not feel that his forte would
lie in that direction. But he delighted in ad
dressing rustic congregations, and took a world
of pains in making himself perfectly intelligible to
every one of his hearers. After he had written his

27
sermon currente calamo, he went through every
single word of it and asked himself whether every
grown-up person in the congregation would easily
understand it. If not, that was the word's death-
warrant; a simpler one was forthwith substituted
for it. He read to me one or two of the sermons
so constructed, with a running commentary here and
there as to what he had done, when "put about"
for a simpler phraseology ; and never surely were
more pains or time spent, even on the highest efforts
of oratory, than he willingly bestowed to make him
self intelligible to the humblest people. In truth
no clergyman who had not Golightly's affluence of
leisure, for which, when a College Tutor and also
an Incumbent, I used to envy him, could have done
as he did in this respect. Nor was it only in re
spect of words that he sought to be plain. I re-
merriber his once telling me that, In preaching to a
rustic congregation, I had shot far above the heads
of my audience, and on my replying that I had tried
hard to keep my language simple, he said : " It wasn't
so much of your language as of your ideas that I
complained. The ideas would have been altogether
out of the reach of persons, who have only so much
education as enables them to read and write (and
that with difficulty), even if you could have con
veyed them in words of one syllable. It Is far
more necessary to the understanding of a sermon
by peasants that its ideas should be easy to take in,
than that its words should be plain and what they
are accustomed to. You must write expressly for
the poor, if you wish to instruct the poor; no ser
mon originally intended for the higher classes will
be of much use to them, however much you may

28
simplify the phraseology." I have often thought
over this advice (so truly in keeping with the com
mon sense character of my friend's mind), and have
sometimes wondered whether the admirable Village
Sermons of Augustus Hare (published now many
years ago), the language of which was as much as
possible Saxon throughout, would altogether escape
Golightly's censure ? One of them was entitled, if
I remember right, " Principles better than Rules,
or. Wheat better than Bread." It was a most
thoughtful, valuable. Interesting discourse, expressed
in language of studied plainness ; but it might be a
question whether the leading idea was within the
reach of a peasant's mind, however much the preacher
had made it easy by the illustration of Avheat and
bread. — A little device for drawing a rural congre
gation, of which Golightly was very fond and very
proud, claims some mention here. I have heard
him speak of It, but as he put it in practice after I
had left Oxford, I never saw it In operation, which
is a subject of real regret to me. His plan was to
announce from the pulpit on Sunday afternoons
some historical subject (usually from the Old Tes
tament) on which he would preach the Sunday after
noon following. The subjects he chose were all the
most striking ones that the Bible could furnish
(Noah in the Ark; Israel crossing the Red Sea;
David encountering the Philistine ; Jonah in the
fish ; the three holy children in the furnace ; Daniel
in the lions' den, &c.). A common friend of Go
lightly's and mine told me that he was present one
afternoon (having been taken out by Golightly for a
Sunday's excursion) when Daniel in the lions' den
had been announced as the subject of the sermon.

29 ,
and that the sight was such as he never saw before,
and did not expect to see again. " I have often
seen churches in London packed close, when Bishop
Wilberforce, or some other great orator, had been
announced to preach ; but that was nothing to the
way in which this village church was thronged. It
is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the whole
population had turned out into the church, and
turned out, not with the blase air of Londoners, but
with eager expectation, mingled with something of
awe, painted on their countenances. When Golightly
came out of the vestry, to which he had repaired
after the service to put on his Master of Arts' gown,
the old women In red cloaks, some of whom were
seated on the pulpit stairs for want of better accom
modation, literally devoured him with their eyes ;
indeed I suspect that one poor old soul, having got
some muddle in her mind on the subject, had taken
it into her head that he was Daniel, just come out
of the den to recount his experiences," I give the
words of the narrator as nearly as I can remember
them, being sure that I represent accurately the sub
stance of his description. If such was the sensation
created by Daniel, must not Jonah, when his turn
came, have proved at least equally attractive ? In
the state of mental susceptibility into which Go
lightly's little ruse had thrown them, no doubt seve
ral of his pious observations would adhere tena
ciously and be long after remembered. It never
fell to my lot to hear him address any other than
a rural audience. But I have been told that his
sermons to ordinary mixed congregations were some
times extremely effective, and that he would bring
out in them one idea with considerable power, yet

without tautology. Once in my absence he kindly
took a sermon for me at Holywell Church, which
much impressed one at least of his hearers, the pre
sent Sir John Leigh Hoskyns, who was then acting
as my curate. It was a sermon on King Manas-
seh's Repentance, the leading idea of which was that
the great moral purpose of the inspired narrative
^^'as effectually to preclude despair even in the very
worst cases. " A man might say with some plausi
bility. ' My sins have been greater than David's,
or St. Peter's, or St. Paul's, or the penitent thief's;'
but with no shadow of reason could he pretend
to think, ' My guilt is greater than King Manas-
seh's.' " Of course this was emphasized by the
preacher's having first rehearsed the particulars
of Manasseh's wickedness, and shown that, even
long after he himself had been forgiven and ac
cepted, and had passed away from the earth, the
provocations of his idolatry and the innocent blood
which he had shed were rank and foul in the eyes
of Heaven, and called down vengeance on the
nation [see 2 Kings xxiii. 26 ; xxiv. 3, 4]. How
truly characteristic of the preacher's matter-of-fact
common-sense turn of mind must this sermon have
been ! And I can well understand that the idea
would be thrust home upon the consciences of the
hearers with much persistency and power. If I
were asked who, of all the clergymen I had ever
known, had preached a sermon with that argument,
I think I should have named Golightly.
It had better be frankly admitted by those who,
like myself, are desirous of paying a tribute of friend
ship to his great worth and many merits, that Go
lightly sometimes lost himself in controversy. I

saw a great deal of him at the time of the publica
tion of Tract XC. ; indeed we studied that famous
Tract together, and I had the benefit of his quaint,
racy, and always shrewd observations upon every
part of it. Well do I remember his lifting up his
hands and eyes in amazement, when we came across
the implication that our Blessed Lord took ten days
after His ascension to reach Heaven, and that this
was the reason why the Pentecostal Gift was de
layed for that period of time^ This seemed to
throw him not so much into an antagonistic frame
of mind as into a fit of ecstatic astonishment (he

* The passage will be found on page 60 both of the Second
Edition of the Tract and of the Edition of i866, to which is
prefixed Dr. Pusey's Historical Preface. The section of the
Tract under which it occurs is " § 8. Transubstantiation."
The words are these [it should be observed that they did not
make their first appearance in Tract XC, but are quoted " from
a pamphlet published several years since" (p. 57) by the same
author; so that they represent his matured convictions on the
subject in questionj: — "As sight for certain purposes annihilates
space, so other unknown capacities, bodily or spiritual, may
annihilate it for other purposes. Such a practical annihilation
was involved in the appearance of Christ to St. Paul on his
conversion. Such a practical annihilation is involved in the
doctrine of Christ's ascension ; to speak according to the ideas
of space and time commonly received, what must have been the
rapidity of that motion by which, within ten days, He placed our
human nature at the right hand of God V I do not wonder at
a mind as constitutionally averse to speculation as was Golightly's
being almost dumbfounded when such an idea was proposed to
it for the first time. But I can see equally well that this idea is
quite in harmony with the subtle genius of the illustrious author.
Genius is often childlike in its conceptions ; and the idea that
our Lord took ten days in His heavenward journey is (I do not
say a childish, because that is a disparaging word, but) a child
like idea.

32
was himself intensely matter-of-fact and almost pro
saic) that any one could have harboured such a
notion. And, in bar of a harsh judgment upon
certain things which he did and said in the heat
of controversy, I may observe that / do not think
he was quite himself at that period. His mind, ha
rassed and excited by what he conceived to be the
disingenuousness of the Tract, and the danger to
which the Church would be exposed, should such
a method of dealing with the formularies prevail
and find acceptance, was momentarily thrown off
its pivot. One night, when our reading at his
house was ended, and I was returning to my col
lege, and he on a visit to the rooms of some friend
(the late Archbishop Tait, I think), he (quite se
riously, for indeed he was in no frame for joking)
expressed his apprehension that at some street
corner a party of Tractarians might be lying in
wait for him, with the view of doing him some
grievous bodily harm. All my laughing at him
did not seem to dispel the illusion. He had Tract
XC. on the brain. I only mention this incident,
because it seems to me considerably to extenuate
certain parts of his conduct in controversy, which
no one will be prepared to justify. I never knew
a man who was more public-spirited and had the
Church's interests {as he conceived of theni) more at
heart than he.
I trust that his family will collect and preserve
the minute m-em-oranda which he made of the in
cidents of those days. I suppose that some regular
history will be one day written of " the Oxford
movement " — the great religious movement of this
century, which (into whatever extravagances it may

33
have run — and what great human movement has
not been disfigured by extravagances ?) has issued
in reviving among us Church life and Church or
ganisation, just as the Evangelical movement re
vived personal religion. Sir William Palmer, Mr.
Mozley, and one or two others have furnished
valuable materials for the historian. Mr. Golightly's
mem.oranda of what went on at head-quarters in
those days would be an equally valuable contribu
tion to the work. I do not think he expressed any
opinions in them, but confined himself to a dry
record of facts and dates, very much under the im
pression that they might be wanted for history
hereafter. I remember his registering the move
ments of " the Four Tutors " not only by the day,
but by the hour, noting down with punctilious ac
curacy the exact minute at which one of them called
upon him for conference, or he upon one of them.
If about his polemical proceedings even his best
friends are obliged to express themselves with some
qualification, assuredly it is not so as regards his
spiritual character. Mr. Mozley tells us, with a
very suitable acknowledgment of the debt which
he had thus incurred, " Golightly was the first hu
man being to talk to me, directly and plainly, for
my soul's good." But this was what Golightly was
always doing, and for the sake of doing which he
cultivated the acquaintance of all undergraduates
who were introduced to him, showed them no end
of kindness, walked with them, talked with them,
took them with him for a Sunday excursion to his
little parish at Toot Baldon. With Mr. Mozley,
I desire to acknowledge my debt. And In review
ing the great help I have received in life from in-

34
tercourse with Christian friends, I can conscien
tiously say this — that I know of no one whose in
tercourse — whether by conversation or letter — has
been more instructive and more generally interest
ing than his. He often spoke of the importance
of those Apostolic precepts, " Let your speech be
alway with grace, seasoned with salt. . . . Let no
corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth,
but that which is good to the use of edifying, that
it may minister grace unto the hearers;" and he
honoured them by exhibiting them in his practice.
Moreover, those who knew him well could not
fail to know that he was a man of prayer ; one who
found a constant resource in prayer in all those
little emergencies and difficulties of daily life, which,
while they may seem trifles, are quite sufficient to
cause anxiety. In all such cases he resorted to
prayer, and sometimes told me how wonderfully
afterwards a way opened itself out of the difficulty.
Some men, with all their goodness and Christian
graces, are essentially uninteresting characters ; have
no strong interests themselves, and, therefore, can
not awaken interest in others. But assuredly this
was not the case with him. There was a tartness
in his character, an old-fashioned qualntness, a dry
(shall I say a sly ?) humour, which gave his con
versation great zest and piquancy. He had many
lesser interests, always subordinated to the cardinal
Interest in God's Church and kingdom — an interest
in music ; an interest in birds (what a breakfast he
provided every morning for the Magdalen jackdaws,
which positively darkened the air as they flew
across to his garden at the well-known hour) ; an
interest in trees and flowers (which of his friends

35
has not seen him pruning the vines in his hothouse,
and giving a short " Georgic " on the culture of the
vine while he did so ?) ; an interest in old curiosities,
of which he possessed a store (among other things,
an Ithacan coin, with the head of Ulysses upon it,
which when he produced he used to say, " Doesn't
he look a sly chap ?" and he certainly did, — and an
exquisitely sculptured ivory crucifix, of which he
loved to tell how, when once he drew the curtain
which concealed it, and displayed it on a sudden
to Mr. Newman, the future Cardinal fell back with
an expression of awe and adoration) ; and an In
terest, finally, in humorous anecdotes, of which he
had a large fund, and which he retailed In a very
telling manner, several of them being anecdotes of
Talleyrand and Dean Swift. I recount one of
each, which Golightly's friends will immediately
recognise, as having heard them from him more
than once : —
" Talleyrand heard a very ugly man boasting of
the extraordinary beauty of his mother, upon which
he replied ; ' Peut-etre done. Monsieur, cetait voire
pere qui netait pas bienfait.' "
" Dean Swift, bound on a long ride in Ireland, was
driven by stress of weather to take refuge in a road
side inn. Dismounting, and entering the little parlour
of the inn, he saw the peasantry all crowding round
the fire to warm themselves in the cold and rain.
Hereupon he ordered the ostler in a loud voice
to give his horse a feed of oysters. The man, when
at length he had taken in the order, went to buy
the oysters, and returning shortly afterwards asked
the Dean what he was to do with them. ' Do
with them ! open them of course, and put them In
his manger.' The ostler retired to obey the man-

36
date ; and the peasantry, with looks of surprise at
one another, dropped off one by one to the stable
to see the result of the experiment, leaving the fa
cetious Dean alone with the blazing fire, by which
he comfortably ensconced himself in the only arm
chair which the little parlour boasted. In a few
minutes the ostler returned with the crowd of pea
sants at his heels; — ' Plase your riv'rence, he won't
touch one on 'em.^ ' No, I never thought he
would ; btit I will. Draw that table in to the fire,
and then bring me the oysters with some pepper
and salt and bread and butter, and I will do justice
to them.' "
But I really am making an unconscionable de
mand upon your space, Mr. Editor, and this at a
time when Important Church movements make that
space more than ever valuable, and can only al
lege as my excuse that the subject of this rapid
sketch, a man of sterling worth and weight and
power, was not (from various causes) estimated as
highly as his genuine piety and ability demanded,
and that, out of gratitude to him, I desire, if pos
sible, to redress the balance. It is a very solemn
thought for me that he is gone, bound up as he is
with all my reminiscences of those dear old Oxford
days. I am indebted to him for something more
than kindness ; for many holy lessons and for a
high example. Would that I had any reason to
think that I, who in God's providential ordering
was once his pastor, had edified him one-tenth part
as much as he has often edified me !
EDWARD MEYRICK GOULBURN,
Dean of Norwich.
The Deanery, Norwich,
January 7, 1886.

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