B 00 K S.
MOZLI4-lY REMINISCENCES.*
[FIILST NOTICE.]
MR. MOZLEY is extraordinarily fortunate in the main subject of his Iteminisceares. They deal chiefly, he tells us on the title- page, with Oriel College and the Oxford movement, but in fact their principal interest is still more definite and personal. Above everything else, they are reminiscences of Cardinal Newman, and they have the charm which everything associated with that mysterious and solitary figure inevitably possesses. In one respect, Mr. Mozley is specially qualified to tell the story of the Oxford movement. The leaders of that movement necessarily have their estimate of it affected by their attitude towards the step which deprived them of a leader. If they followed Newman—the Cardinal seems already to have gained that emancipation from complimentary prefixes which ordinarily is only gained by death —they regard Rome as the one natural and legitimate goal, and all who have not reached it as having made ship- wreck. If they have not followed him, there will ordinarily be an effort, conscious or unconscious, to mark the point at which he missed the true end of his labours, and gave to an alien Church the devotion he should have kept for the Church of England. Mr. Mozley holds a middle place between these extremes. He regards the Oxford movement with the keenest possible interest, but it is with an interest which is historical and personal, not theological. The characters of those who took part in it, even in a humbler degree, have to him " an unearthly radiance." He is happy in dwelling on their memo- ries, no matter in what Church they have lived or died. If he has a harsh word for any of them, it is only for those who have afterwards learned to look back upon their share in the move- ment with contempt or aversion. "The rapid current of modern thought in the eutirely negative direction has intensified some opinions, and hardened some hearts from which candour or kindness might once have been looked for. They cannot tell the story of faith, who believe in nothing but matter and them- selves."
Mr. Mozley's personal knowledge of Cardinal Newman dates from 1826. At that time, the Cardinal was an Oriel tutor, and but for the Provost the intellectual and spiritual energy which created the Oxford movement, and has left its mark upon the Christianity of Europe, might, perhaps, have been devoted to College and University reform. The Provost was the last man from whom he could have looked for opposition. It was to Newman that Dr. Hawkins owed his election. Only Newman's influence with the Junior Fellows could have prevented the choice of the College from falling upon Keble. As tutor, New- man had "such a devoted body of pupils as Oxford had never seen since the chiefs of the Northern and Southern fac- tion, or the heads of rival scholastic systems, moved about with little armies." He had associated with him Robert Wilberforce and Harrell Fronde, and the three bestowed on their pupils "as much time and trouble as is usually only expected from very good private tutors." After a time they proposed to the Provost to make certain improvements in the course of lectures, the selection of books, and the formation of classes. Modern hooks were to be compared with the Classics ; the characters and special gifts of the Undergraduates were to be more regarded ; and the con- nection between tutor and pupil was to be drawn closer. Something of the revolution which, about the same time, Arnold was effecting at Rugby, Newman, Wilberforce, and * Reminivences chiefly of Oriel College and the Oxford Marcum,. By the Rev. T. Mozley, formerly Follow of Oriel. London: Longmont. 1882. Fronde wished to effect at Oriel. Dr. Hawkins refused to listen to any one of these changes. He disliked the greater influence over the Undergraduates which the Tutors would gain by them, and he disliked being virtually given the choice between getting up the books the tutors might choose, or being shut out from the college examinations. The tutors would not give way, and the Provost gave them notice to quit. He refused to enter any more undergraduates in their names, and declared that he would find lecturers from outside to do their work. As the older men left, the three tutors found their classes getting smaller and smaller, until in the end there was no one for them to teach. Within three years, therefore, of Hawkins's election as Provost, Newman had cause to regret the support he had given him. Whether he did regret it is another question. If he had any thoughts of the kind, says Mr. Mozley, "he kept them to himself, for his most intimate friends cannot remember a single word of self-accusa- tion. It was his wont to accept his own acts as Provi- dentially over-ruled to purposes beyond his own ken." But the wrench to Newman's mind and purposes must have been great. "So far as I can remember," says Mr. Mozley, "from my election at Easter, 1829, to Newman's return from the Mediter- ranean, at midsummer, 1833, his main idea, still rather a dream than a purpose, was the reconstitution of the College on the old statutory lines." The statutes "implied residence, and bound the Fellows to it, as also to theological studies," and Newman may well have thought that if the College could be invested with a homogeneous character by means of elections conducted under his influence, it might become a great religious influence in the University.
When the action of the Provost finally put an end to this vision, Newman threw his whole force into his work at St. Mary's. His sermons drew a large and regular congrega- tion of University men, and more than anything else could possibly have done, they made him known all over England. "By the year 1831, Undergraduates from the Lakes, from Ireland, even from Scotland, from houses long addicted to Cambridge From parsonages occupied by the same family and the same traditional opinions time out of mind, were all coming up, and securing the next Sunday afternoon a good place at St. Mary's." Three times in each year these same Under- graduates went back to their homes, and disclosed the startling fact that instead of listening to University sermons, they were flocking to hear a man who was neither professor nor tutor, but the vicar of a small Oxford parish. "The Evangelical parents of the man who came back talking about nobody but Newman, and about nothing but his sermons, were sorely perturbed.
Visiting such a household, many miles from Oxford, in the summer of 1831, I was urged, besought, and invoked a dozen times even in one evening to say truly and outright, with no faltering or specialty of tone, but in the orthodox accents of unfailing certainty, whether Newman was good man." There was still room for hope on this head even in the most Evangelical family, for it was not till after Newman had finished the History of the Arians, in July, 1832, that he began seriously to review his position in reference to the Evangelical party. There is a document in existence in which the Evangelical school is elaborately compared, "particularly as to its subjective character, with the more objective system of the Primitive Church and the Church of England It was done so fairly, in so neutral a frame, that such Evangelicals as chanced to see it accepted the account of themselves, and were thereby the better pleased to remain as they were." The cure of the hamlet of Littlemore, which was associated with the cure of St. Mary's, gave Newman an opportunity of confirming in those of whom he had personal knowledge the impressions made in the pulpit. He "walked or rode there most days ; almost always with some young friend."
After 1840, Mr. Mozley has little to tell about Cardinal Newman. But throughout his volumes there are endless touches which show bow profound was the influence which Newman exercised upon every one whom he came across. "It never was possible to be even a quarter of an hour in his pre- sence, without a man feeling himself to be invited to take an onward step sufficient to tax his energy or his faith ; and New- man was sure to find out in due time whether that onward step had been taken." To his pupils, he stood "in the place of a father or an elder and affectionate brother." In revising their essays, "his first care was that the pupil should know what he intended to say, and what his words stood for." Whether as
tutor or clergyman, he "kept a sharp look-out for the hypocrisy of fluent and empty professions, to put them to some practical test." His own thoroughness ran through all he did. He " wrote and laid by a complete history of every serious question in which he was concerned. He had to render an account of it, and he
prepared himself accordingly He did the same with every book he read and every subject he inquired into." When his mind was once made up, whether on great things or small, he was inexorable in carrying out his purpose. He once found him- sel f suddenly called upon to marry the daughter of a Baptist, who had not herself been baptised. "Newman ascertained this by inquiry, and refused to perform the service or to allow the marriage in his church. The University was shocked at his inhumanity on such an occasion. Not so the young lady herself. She was baptised and married, and became an attached member of Newman's congregation, followed in time by the whole family." He once saw a man killed in jumping down from a cart to go to his horse's head, and the result "was a solemn vow that whenever he met a carter driving without reins or sitting on the shaft, he would make him get down ; and this he never failed to do." Another of his resolutions was never to pass a day without writing a Latin sentence before he had done his morn- ing's walk. "Frequently," says Mr. Mozley, "when on the point of leaving his room for an afternoon walk, he has asked me to stay a minute while he was writing his daily sentence."
We have dwelt at this length upon those chapters of Mr. Mozley's Reminiscences which deal with Cardinal Newman, because it is' inthem that every reader will be most interested. But there is, much besides in these volumes that is interesting, and much that is amusing. There are good stories about the Wilberforces,- about Archdeacon Denison, about Domford, a now forgotten Oriel Fellow of that day, and about others who were associated with the Oxford movement, while for those who care to read them there are some curious chapters describing Mr. Mozley's own theological position. We have only room to-day for an analogy suggested to Mr. Mosley while he was editor of the British,
by his relations with Dr. Ward :—" I did but touch a filament or two in one of his monstrous cobwebs, and off he ran instantly to Newman to complain of my gratuitous impertinence. Many years after, I was forcibly reminded of him by a pretty group of a plump little Cupid flying to his mother to show a wasp- sting he had just received." Are we wrong in associating with the same eminent person the following incident f—Mr. Mozley had once to go to Oxford from the country on the affairs of the British Critic, and he describes himself as feeling "guilty of irreverence by intruding on one of the contributors—the largest contributor, I may say—one Wednesday in Lent. He was ob- serving the fast, no doubt, honestly, and in a true sense ; but he was still in bed at eleven a.m., and a large dish of mutton chops was keeping hot for him at the fire."
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