MRS. HUMPHRY WARD AND THE ARNOLDS. [TO THE EDITOR OF
THE " SPEETRroit."]
SAS,—In reading Mrs. Humphry Ward's very interesting Recollec- tions of Matthew Arnold and Tom Hughes I was reminded of an essay on a kindred subject which I wrote long -ago. From that essay I will here make an extract:-
" My chief intercourse with Tom Hughes was towards the end of his life. I found that he was then anti-Gladstonian, with that peculiar vehemence which is characteristic of the class which I would designate as the English Mugwumps '—those who, with full conviction and somewhat jauntily, followed the Radical leaders up to a certain point, and then suddenly broke off from them. It was on the occasion when these political conversations occurred that I found he was regaling his leisure at Biarritz with the perusal of Maurice's philosophical works. He owned that he found them stiff; but he attached the utmost weight to them, and took their author's speculations quite seriously. This seemed to me a little out of date; for, in the atmosphere of Balliol, Maurice has often been regarded as a very nebulous theologian. He has sometimes even been thought a schoolmaster to lead men to Jowett, or to Matthew Arnold. With Matthew Arnold Hughes had little sympathy. I asked him whether Matthew had not been supposed at Rugby to give less promise than his younger brother gave. Hughes told me at some length, and with great confidence, not merely that this was the Rugby verdict, but that he believed that verdict to have been absolutely correct. His praise of the younger brother makes me ponder with regret on the results which that accomplished desultor religionum might have achieved if he had not expended so much of his energy in vain theological oscillations. I remarked that. Matthew Arnold, in spite of his championship of 'Equality,' seemed to me to be at bottom an aristocrat. I should think so, indeed,' said Hughes; he was an aristocrat from the crown of his head down to the soles of his feet. At Rugby he was called "Lofty Matt and lofty Matt he always remained.' It seemed to me that when Arthur Stanley wrote Christian Institutions his theology had become (as Patti- EMI would have phrased it) defecated to a pure transparency '; did not Hughes think that Stanley, at the close of his life, came very near to Matthew Arnold? No,' was the emphatic reply. ' Arthur Stanley was a real Christian, and Matt was only a sham Christian.' He was evidently irritated by the suave patron- age which that Hebrew prophet in white kid gloves (as I long ago irreverently called him) accorded to the manifold forms of theology—a patronage which was never more conspicuous than when, being asked how, as Inspector of Schools, he managed to hold the balance between the numerous and conflicting sects of Nonconformists, he answered in a tone of benign condescension : `I am splendidly impartial; for I look with equal contempt on all their miserable superstitions! ' If this was said half in jest, the jest was of the kind in which many a true thing is spoken." In a like serio-comic tone he exclaimed : " They call me the enemy of the Church; but I am not. Bishops ask me to dine, and an Archbishop shakes hands with me! " I once .spoke to Archbishop Thomson about a severe criticism on Matthew Arnold which had come from the pen of an eminent Oxonian (I think Goldwin Smith). I was struck by the thoroughly sympathetic tone of the archiepiscopal rejoinder, " Yes, I thought he was hard on Matt."—I am, Sir, &c., LIONEL A. TOLLEMACHE. Athenaeum Club, Pall Mall, S.W.
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