emotions which perhaps never recur exactly | called the Oxford movement. Of this, Dr. in the same form. Önce 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." Newman tells us, Keble was the real author. Let us cast a glance back and see 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. I bore 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 meeting of these two. "When I was elected Fellow of Oriel," Dr. Newman continues, "Keble was not in resi dence, 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 sayings preserved in his Remains: '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. 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 language 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 filled the chair, it is greatly to be regretted that when there was placed there a true poet, who was intent on speaking the secret of his own art, he should be 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, his cherished thoughts on his It naturally occurs to ask how far is The own favourite subject. Of the theory of Christian Year identified with the principoetry embodied in the two volumes of his ples of the Tractarian movement. On the published lectures, something may yet be one hand, The Christian Year was pubsaid. The Latin is easy and unconstrained, lished in 1827, the movement did not begin the thought original and suggestive. A till 1833. The former, therefore, cannot be great contrast to the more than Ciceronian regarded as in any way a child of the latter. paragraphs of his predecessor Copleston, And this accounts for what often has been bristling as they are to weariness with all remarked, how little of the peculiar Tractathe refinements of Latinity, but underneath rian teaching appears in the book. On the these containing little but outworn common- other hand, it is easy to see how the same places. nature which, in a season of quiet, when controversy was at a lull, shaped out of its own musings The Christian Year, would, when confronted with opposing tendencies, and forced into a dogmatic attitude, finds 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 speak and act With slight interruptions, Keble continued 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 venerable old man, who to the last retained the full use of his faculties, was taken to his rest; and be fore the end of it Keble became the Vicar of Hursley, and the husband of Miss Charlotte Clarke, second daughter of an old college friend of his father's, who was incumbent of a parish in the neighbourhood of Fairford. This was the happy settlement of his life. For himself he had now no ungratified wish, and the bonds then tied were loosened only by death." Only two years before Keble left Fairford, and at the very time when he entered on his poetry professorship, began what is under some such primary and external sanction; and could use argument mainly as a means of recommending or explaining what had claims on his reception prior to to proof. What he hated instinctively was heresy, insubordination, resistance to things established, claims of independence, disloyal ty, 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 mind," as it was called, was led by a number of active-minded and able men, whose chief rallying-point was Oriel Common Room, whose best 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 University 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 things of faith too much to human judgment, and to seek to limit their religious belief by their own powers of understanding. They seemed then, as now, "to halve the gospel of God's grace," accepting the morality, and, if not rejecting, yet making little of the supernatural truths on which that morality is based. 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 religous 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 symN-9 VOL. XLV. 66 sons pathies with the intellectual party, who sincerely welcomed him as a brilliant specimen of young Oxford. He instinctively shut up before literary display, 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, of Aufklärung," 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 antagonistic than now. Dr. Arnold, indeed, though belonging in the main to the school of liberalism, combined with it more religious 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 example, 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 Tory party of Church and State, he had no sympathy. He saw that they had no principle of growth in them, that their only aim was to keep things as they were. His sympathy for the old Catholic religion, that feeling which made him say in The Christian Year "Speak gently of our sister's fall," would naturally make him wish to see Catholic disabilities removed. But then he disliked both the man by whom, and the arguments by which, Emancipation was supported. 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 Reform 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 points, the Irish Church, and suppressed three of its bishoprics. This might seem to be but a small matter in itself, but it was 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, the last teeth pulled from those fangs 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, were helpless, and spoke slightingly of apostolical succession and the nonjurors. Was the Establishment principle, then, the only rock on which the Church was built? Keble and his young friends thought scorn of that. This feeling first found utterance in the assize 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 1883." That sermon itself we have not seen, but the tone of it may be gathered from those lines in the Lyra Apostolica, 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 England. To staid respectability it has always been, and still is, one of the chief recommendations 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." In the last century she had cast out enthusiasm in the person of Wesley; at the beginning of this, she had barely tolerated it in the Newtons and Cecils, and other fathers of evangelicism. 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, resolute--flung aside with disdain timid arguments from expediency. They set themselves to defend the - Church with weapons of more 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 these younger men were content to do without preferment. They had at least got beyond 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, J. H. Newman soon became its leader. In all his conduct of it, one his great aims was to give to the sentiments 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. As for Keble, during the eventful years that followed, though his place was still in his country cure, his sympathies and cooperation 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 republished 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 Newman. What then must his feelings have been when that younger friend, by whom he had so stood, with whom he had so often taken counsel, abandoned the Church of England, and sought refuge in that of Rome? As late as 1863, a friend of his, when walking with him near Hursley, drew his attention to a broken piece of ground-a chalk-pit, as it turned out-hard by. "Ah!' he said, 'that is a sad place, connected with 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 inevitable; and one day I received a letter in his handwriting. I felt sure of what it contained, and I carried it about with me through the day, afraid to open it. At last I got away to that chalkpit, and there forcing myself to read the letter, I found that my forebodings had been 6 too true; it was the announcement that he has it been seen in so winning an aspect as was gone.' it wore in the quiet of that Gloucestershire parsonage. It seems natural to ask how it came that, when Newman left, Keble adhered to the Church of England. They were at one in 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 circumstances. 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 unresting 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 Butler, by a very questionable process, 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 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 assurance, 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 determined 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 boyhood, and gone with him into full manhood. With him home-affection was hardly less sacred than loyalty to the Faith. These two 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. It would appear, however, that the Anglican Church never had so invincible a hold on him as it had on Keble. By few perhaps 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. Keble 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. "Here daily for the residue of his life, until interrupted by the failing health of Mrs. Keble and his own, did he minister He 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 impressed deeply both by his reading and his preaching; when 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 themselves were at all times full of that abundant scriptural knowledge which was the most remarkable quality in him as a divine: it has always 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 remember 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 some moments in his arms, he 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 burden 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 plexed, to strengthen the wavering, and, as far as might be, to heal the breaches that had been made. Throughout the ecclesiastical contests of the last twenty years, per 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 Rome had made no change either in his heart or head which could hinder their real sympathy. The result was that in September last these three, Drs. Newman, 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. P., indeed, was present when the attack began. Trying as it all was, I was very glad to have them here, and to sit by them and listen." though never loud or obtrusive, he yet took | den him; not only the entire humana resolute part in maintaining the principles heartedness of its tone, which made its way with which his life had been identified. One last extract from Sir J. Coleridge's beautiful sketch of his friend will give all that need here be said of this portion of Keble's life:"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. Questions 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 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 consequences, equally turned to him as a comforter 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 occasioned; 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 soundness and clearness which 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 which he possessed; people 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 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 glad 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 wearing 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 be given in time to the world. It is earnestly to be hoped that the task will be intrusted to some one able to do justice to it. There are are two kinds of biographies, and of each kind we have seen examples in our own time. One is a golden chalice, held up by some wise hand, and gathering the earthly memory ere it is spilt on the ground. The other kind is as a millstone, 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 generation, 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 it 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 widely-spread quickening of religious life which has taken place within the English Church since the Reformation. To him, and the party to which his very |