CLXVIII. TO W. EMPSON, ESQ.

Rugby, November 28, 1837.

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The whole question turns upon this:-whether the country understood, and was meant to understand, that the University of London was to be open to all Christians without distinction, or to all men without distinction. The question which had been discussed with regard to Oxford and Cambridge, was the admissibility of Dissenters; which in common speech does not mean, I think, Dissenters from Christianity: no one argued, so far as I know, for the admission of avowed unbelievers. I thought that the University of London was intended to solve this question, and I therefore readily joined it. I thought that whatever difficulties were supposed to exist with respect to the introduction of the Greek Testament, related to Dissenters only, and, as such, I respected them; and our plan, therefore, waiving the Epistles, requires only some one Gospel and the Acts; that is, any one who is afraid of the Gospel of St. John, may take up St. Luke, or St. Mark; and St. Luke and the Acts have been translated by the Irish Board of Education, and are used in the Irish schools with the full consent of Catholics and Protestants; nor do I imagine that any Protestant Dissenters could consistently object to either. I do not see the force of the argu ment about the College in Gower Street; because we admit their students to be examined for degrees, we do not sanction their system, any more than we sanction the very opposite system of King's College. Nor does it follow, so far as I see, that University College must have a Professor of Theology, because we expect its members to have a knowledge of the elements of Christianity. University College hopes-or has not yet ventured to say. does not hope that its students are provided with this knowledge before they join it. But I should protest, in the strongest terms, against its being supposed that our University is to be merely an University College with a Charter if so, undoubtedly I would not belong to it for an hour. You say that we are bringing in the Greek Testament by a side wind, in putting it in amongst the Classical writers: but, if by Classics we mean any thing more than Greek and Latin Grammar, they are just the one part of our Examination which embraces points of general education: for instance, we have put in some recommendations about Modern History, which, if Classics be taken to the letter, are just as much of a departure from our province as what we have done about the Greek Testament. On the whole, I am quite clear as to my original position, namely, that if you once get off from the purely natural ground of physical science, Philology, and pure Logic,-the moment, in short, on which you enter upon any moral subjects,whether Moral Philosophy or History,-you must either be Christian or Antichristian, for you touch upon the ground of Christianity, and you must either take it as your standard of moral judgment,—or you must renounce it, and either follow another standard, or have no standard at all. In other words, again, the moment you touch on what alone is education,-the forming the moral principles and habits of man,-neutrality is impossible; it would be very possible, if Christianity consisted really in a set of theoretical truths, as many seem to fancy; but it is not possible, inasmuch as it claims to be the paramout arbiter of all our moral judgments; and he who judges of good and evil, right and wrong, without reference to its authority virtually, denies it. The Gower Street College I therefore hold to be Antichristian, inasmuch as it meddles with moral subjects, having lectures in History and yet does not require Professors to be Christians. And so long as the Scriptures were held to contain divine truth on physical science, it was then impossible to give even physical instruction neutrally; you must either teach it, according to God's principles, (it being assumed that God's word had pronounced concerning it,) or in defiance of them. I hope we may meet on Saturday: I know that you are perfectly sincere, and that

Lis so nevertheless, I am persuaded that your argument goes on an over-estimate of the theological and abstract character of Christianity, and an under-estimate of it as a moral law; else how can L― talk of a clergyman being in a false position in belonging to the University, if he does not think that the position is equally false for every Christian: if it be false for me it is false for you, except on the priestcraft notion, which is as unchristian, in my opinion, as the system in Gower Street. Indeed, the two help one another well.

CLXIX. TO J. C. PLATT, ESQ.

Rugby, December 6, 1837.

I am afraid that I did no service to the Hertford Reformer; for what I sent them was, I knew, too general and discursive for a newspaper: but they would insert all my articles, and I felt that they would not thank me for any more such, and I thought that I could not manage to write what really would be to their purpose. You must not misunderstand me, as if I thought my writings were too good for a newspaper; it is very much the contrary, for I think that a newspaper requires a more condensed and practical style than I am equal to,-such, perhaps, as only habit and mixing more in the actual shock of opinions can give a man. My writing partakes of the character of my way of life, which is very much retired from the highway of politics, and of all great discussions, though it is engaged enough with a busy little world of its own.

I was much gratified in the summer by going over to France for about ten days, at the end of the holidays, with my wife and three eldest children. Seven years had elapsed since I had been in France last, so that many things had quite an appearance of novelty, and I fancied that I could trace the steady growth of every thing from the continuance of peace, and the absence of most of those evils which in times past so interfered with national prosperity. We went to Rouen, Evreux, and Chartres, and then came back through Versailles and Paris. I admired Paris as I always had done, and we had very fine weather; but I had no time to call on any body, even if all the world had not been in the country. This litte tour I owed to the election, which brought me up from Westmoreland to Warwickshire to vote, and it was so near the end of the holidays, that it did not seem worth while to go back again. I watched the elections with great interest, but not with much surprise. In 1831, when I wrote for the Sheffield Courant, I shared the common opinion as to the danger which threatened all our institutions from the force of an ultra-popular party. But the last six years have taught me, what the Roman History ought indeed to have shown me before,-that when an aristocracy is not thoroughly corrupted, its strength is incalculable; and it acts through the relations of private life, which are permanent, whereas the political excitement, which opposes it, must always be shortlived. In fact, the great amount of liberty and good government enjoyed in England, is the security of the aristocracy; there are no such pressing and flagrant evils existing, as to force men's attention from their own domestic concerns, and make them cast off their natural ties of respect or of fear for their richer or nobler neighbours; and as for Ireland, the English care not for it one groat.

CLXX. TO MR. JUSTICE COLERIDGE.

Rugby, December 8, 1837.

I have asked Hull to send you the two first printed sheets of my History. You had promised to look at the manuscript, and, if you agree with me, you

will find it pleasanter to read print than writing. Specially will you notice any expressions in the Legends which may seem to you to approach too near to the language of our translation of the Bible. I have tried to avoid this, but, in trying to write in an antiquated and simple language, that model with which we are most familiar will sometimes be followed too closely; and no one can deprecate more than I do any thing like a trivial use of that language which should be confined to one subject only. I hope and believe that I have kept clear of this; still I would rather have your judgment on it; I think you will at the same time agree with me that the Legends ought to be told as Legends, and not in the style of real history. We had a four hours' debate at the University, and a division in our favour with a majority of one. But the adversary will oppose us still step by step; and they are going to ask the Attorney-General's opinion, whether we can examine in the Greek Testament without a breach of our charter!!! A strange charter surely for the Defender of the faith to grant, if it forbids the use of the Christian Scrip

tures.

CLXXI. TO REV. T. J. ORMEROD.

(After speaking of the affair of the Archbishop of Cologne.)

Fox How, December 18, 1837.

Certainly there is no battle in which I so entirely sympathize as in this of the Christian Church, against the PriestcraftAntichrist. And yet this is not quite true, for I sympathize as cordially in its battle against the other Antichrist; the Antichrist of Utilitarian unbelief, against which I am fighting at the London University. If - persuades the government to sanction his views, it will be a wrench to me to separate from the only party that hitherto I have been able to go along with; and to be obliged to turn an absolute political Ishmaelite, condemning all parties, knowing full well what to shun, but finding nothing to approve or sympathize with. But so I suppose it ought to be with us, till Christ's kingdom come, and both the Antichrists be put down before him.

CLXXII. TO MR. JUSTICE COLERIDGE.

Fox How, December 20, 1837.

We have been here since Saturday afternoon, and I think it has rained almost ever since; at this moment Wansfell and Kirkstone and Fairfield are dimly looming through a medium which consists, I suppose, as much of water as of air; the Rotha is racing at the rate of eight or nine miles an hour, and the meadows are becoming rather lake-like. Notwithstanding, I believe that every one of us, old and young, would rather be here than any where else in the world.

I thank you very heartily for your letter, and, in this present leisure time of the holidays, I can answer it at once and without hurry. Your judgment as to the Legends, determines me at once to recast that whole first chapter. I wish, however, if it is not giving you too much trouble, that you would get the manuscript, and read also the chapter about the banishment of the Tarquins and the battle by the Lake Regillus. I think that you would not find it open to the same objections; at least Wordsworth read it through with a reference merely to the language, and he approved of it; and I think that it is easier and more natural than the first chapter. But I have not, and I trust I shall not, shrink from any labour of alteration, in order to make the work as complete as I can ; it will, after all, fall infinitely short of that model which I fancy keenly, but vainly strive to carry out into execution. With

regard to the first chapter, you have convinced me that it is faulty, because it is not what I meant it to be. But as to the principle, I am still of opinion, that the Legends cannot be omitted without great injury, and that they must not be told in my natural style of narrative. The reason of this appears to me to be, the impossibility of any man's telling such stories in a civilized age in his own proper person, with that sincerity of belief, nay even with that gravity which is requisite to give them their proper charm. IfI thought that they contained really an historical skeleton, disguised under fabulous additions, it would of course be easy to give the historical outline as history in my own natural language, and to omit, or to notice with a grave remark as to their fabulousness, the peculiar marvels of the stories. This was done by Goldsmith, Rollin, &c. But I wish to give not the supposed facts of the stories, but the stories themselves in their oldest traceable form; I regard them as poetry, in which the form is quite as essential as the substance of the story. It is a similar question, and fraught with similar difficulties, to that which regards the translation of Homer and Herodotus. If I were to translate Herodotus, it were absurd to do it in my common English, because he and I do not belong to analogous periods of Greek and English literature; I should try to translate him in the style of the old translation of Comines rather than of Froissart; in the English of that period of our national cultivation which corresponds to the period of Greek cultivation at which he wrote. I might and probably should do this ill: still I should try to mend the execution without altering my plan; and so I should do with these Roman stories. For instance, the dramatic form appears to me quite essential; I mean the making the actors express their thoughts in the first person, instead of saying what they thought or felt as narrative. This, no doubt, is the style of the Bible: but it is not peculiar to it; you have it in • Herodotus just the same, because it is characteristic of a particular state of cultivation, which all people pass through at a certain stage in their progress. If I could do it well, I would give all the Legends at once in verse, in the style and measure of Chapman's Homer; and that would be the best and liveliest way of giving them, and liable to no possible charge of parodying the Bible. The next best way is that which I have tried and failed in executing; but I will try again; and if it is not too much trouble, I will ask you to look at the new attempt. I feel sure, and I really have thought a great deal upon this point, that to give the story of the white sow, of the wolf suckling the twins, of Romulus being carried up to heaven, &c., in my own language, would be either merely flat and absurd, or else would contain so palpable an irony, as to destroy the whole effect which one would wish to create by telling the stories at all.

For the other and greater matter of the University, I think it is very probable that I shall have to leave it; but I cannot believe that it is otherwise than a solemn duty to stand by it as long as I can hope to turn it to good. Undoubtedly we must not do evil that good may come; but we may and must bear much that is painful, and associate with those whom we disapprove of, in order to do good. What is the evil of belonging to the University à priori? There is no avowed principle in its foundation which I think wrong; the comprehension of all Christians, you know, I think most right; if more be meant, I think it most wrong; but this is the very point which I am trying to bring to issue; and, though my fears of the issue outweigh my hopes, yet while there is any hope I ought not to give up the battle.

CLXXIII. TO REV. DR. HAWKINS.

Fox How, January 23, 1838.

I had intended to answer your kind letter of the 21st of November long before this time; I reserved it for the leisure of Fox How, and I have found,

as is often the case, the less I have to do, the less I do of any thing. Now our holidays are fast wearing away, and in little more than a week we shall leave this most delightful home; a home indeed so peaceful and so delightful, that it would not be right to make it one's constant portion; but after the half-years at Rugby, which now begin to be quite as much as I can well bear, the rest seems to be allowed; and I drink it in with intense enjoyment, and I hope with something of the thankfulness which it claims.

To London I must go, on account of our meeting of the London University on the 7th, when the question of Scriptural Examination will again be discussed. It was curious to me, knowing my character at Oxford, to hear myself charged, at our last meeting in December, with wishing to engross the University of London for the Established Church, as the other Universities were engrossed by it already. The opposition is very fierce. .

I could not examine a Jew in a history of which he would not admit a single important fact, nor could I bear to abstain systematically from calling our Lord by any other name than Jesus, because I must not shock the Jew by implying that He was the Christ. The prevailing evils in the University of Oxford are, to be sure, rather of a different character from those of the University of London. But you have done much good with the statutes, and I delight to hear about the prospect of the six scholarships.

I have been engaged in tiresome disputes about my History with the booksellers, and they are only just settled. The first volume will now, I suppose, go to press speedily, and I have begun the second. It is delightful work, when I can get on with it without interruption, as is the case here. Besides this, I have done little except reading Newman's book about Romanism and Protestantism, and Bishop Sanderson's work on the Origin of Government, which Pusey refers to in the Preface to his Sermons. The latter work does not raise my opinion of its author; it contains divers startling assertions, admirably suited to the purposes of text quoters, which appear to advocate pure despotism; but then they are so qualified, that at last one finds nothing surprising in them, except the foolishness or the unfairness of putting them out at first in so paradoxical a form.1 . . I think, by what I hear, the cold in Oxford must have been more severe than with us. I have not seen our thermometer lower than 14, at which it stood at 9 A. M. last Saturday, in a northern aspect. But we have had no snow in the valleys till Sunday, and the water in the house has never been frozen. The hills have been very hard to walk on, all the streams being hard frozen, and the water which generally is steeping all the surface of the slopes being now sheets of ice. But the waterfalls and the snowy mountain summits, backed by the clear blue sky, have been most beautiful.

Fox How, January 27, 1838. When I consider the question I am more and more at a loss to guess how it can be satisfactorily solved. How can truth and error be brought into harmony? This Marriage question is admirably fitted for showing the absurdity of the favourite distinction between spiritual things and secular. Every voluntary moral action is to a Christian both the one and the other. Spiritual " and "ritual" differ utterly. Mere ritual observances may be separated from secular actions, but ritual observances are not a Christian's religion. A Christian's religion is co-extensive with his

1 Of Mr. Newman's book he says, in another letter," Parts of it I think very good, parts as bad as bad can be."