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DR. MOZLEY'S LETTERS.* Da. MOZLEY was comparatively an unknown man till the publication of his masterly Bampton Lectures—a compact piece of close reasoning which so prejudiced a critic as Professor Tyndall characterised as a " strong " book. By his Oxford friends he was indeed recognised, even in his undergraduate days, as a man of original mind, independent judgment, and great conscientiousness in surveying a question all round before he made up his mind about it. These qualities are conspicuous in his youthful articles in the British, Critic, as well as in the productions of his ripe intellect and practised pen. There is nothing slovenly in the very earliest of his published efforts ; nothing superficial. It was all real work, the result of careful reading and patient thinking. But the world at large knew nothing of his anonymous articles ; and even his books on Predestination and the Baptismal controversy, brimful as they are of intellectual power, appealed to, and were read by, a limited class of readers. It was not till the Bampton Lectures were published that he was generally recognised as one of the most powerful and original thinkers among living theologians. The -originality and freshness of his mind were displayed in the University Sermons, published a short time before his death, even more than in his Bampton Lectures—sermons which have suggested to others, as well as to Mr. Gladstone and Lord Blachford, an amalgam of the sermons of Bishop Butler and Cardinal Newman combined. Had Mozley's delivery been equal to his matter, his tenure of the Chair of Divinity at Oxford would have been one of the events of the day. In an affectionate letter to him, when he was lying prostrate -from the first stroke of paralysis from which he never recovered, Dr. Pusey says : "I often think of those young days of yours 'when you were in this house [he lived in Dr. Pusey's house study- ing theology for some time after taking his degree]. Your

• Letters of the Rey. J. B. Mosley,D.D., late Canon of Christ Church and Regius Prof e sor of Divinity in the University of Oxford. anted by his Bi,ter. London ; itivingtons. 1854.

brain seemed to me the most active I had ever seen." This activity of brain is conspicuous all through these letters, not excepting those written from school in his early teens. His school life was not happy. He was shy and awkward,— qualities which are apt to invite molestation from school-fellows. But worse than the teasing of schoolboys were the unfeeling jeers of the head-master and want of sympathy of the other masters. He gives an amusingly pathetic expression to his experience of school-life in a letter written to his sister before he was thirteen. "I often think," he says, "how much more agreeably you spend your time than I do mine, since I'm surrounded on every side by masters. So I think I may complain, in the words of the Psalmist, Many men are come about me ; fat bulls of Basan close mein on every side.' School-boys have very seldom much news to tell. We hear just as mach about banks breaking and failures as if we were shut up in the Black Hole of Calcutta."

When he was hardly out of his thirteenth year it was settled, on the recommendation of his brother Thomas,—himself destined to become a distinguished man of letters, but then an under- graduate at Oriel,—that James Mozley should compete for a Scholarship at Corpus. The letters which he wrote to his brother in view of that event are really remarkable for their thoughtfulness and literary merits. The competition came off when James Mozley was still three months short of fourteen, and he came out first in the examination, but did not get the scholarship on account of his extreme youth, as the scholarship would oblige him to go into residence almost immediately, and this was considered too serious a risk at his tender age. Eventually he went to Oriel, where his brother had meanwhile obtained a Fellowship, and there, too, his bad-luck pursued him. Those who knew his powers expected him to take a first class, and he only took a third. The explanation is partly given in a letter to himself from one of his sisters—a charming letter- writer, by the way—and partly in a letter from him in reply. The sister writes :—

"It would have been an injustice to you not to feel very considerable disappointmea at first, because I think that both from your reading and natural abilities we had a right to expect more from you ; but the battle is not always to the strong, even supposing you were well prepared ; and as Tom always lays the blame of any failure on the whole family, not on the individual, I suppose I must console you by saying that the family genius is not made for examinations, being too slow and deliberate—unable to call up its resources at a moment's warning."

Certainly this was a true criticism of James Mozley's genius, and it accounted in part, but only in part, for his taking only a third class. At the close of the examination he had in fact been put in the second class ; but the best of those placed in the second

class were so little inferior to those put in the first, that the examiners resolved on the following day to re-examine the second class, with a view to a more marked differentiation.

"Accordingly, the next morning," says James Mozley, "they sent for me, and gave me a piece of Latin. If I had been quick over it, it would all have been right. As it was, from natural slowness, together with being considerably fagged with the former day's work, and also an over-anxiety about being correct, the viva voce, too, dinging in my ears all the time, I am fain to confess, as M.P.s say, that I was a very considerable time about it—more than three hours." He was unsuccessful afterwards in more than one trial for Fellowships, and his "natural slowness," which with him was always sureness, had probably a good deal to do with his failure. But there were other and more potent reasons, chief among which was the taint of his Tractariauism, and, in the contest for an Oriel Fellowship, the additional objection to the admission of two brothers to the governing body. Mozley succeeded at last in obtaining a Fellowship at Magdalen.

The letters in the volume are all more or less interesting, and are mostly from Mozley himself. But there are also letters from other well-known pens, including Dr. Newman's, Dr.

Pusey's, Mr. Keble's, Mr. Gladstone's, the Dean of St. Paul's, and Dr. Liddon's. The letters also throw considrable light on events which have since become historical, and are interspersed with interesting traits of a variety of distinguished men. The Bishops, as a body, do not come out well. Timidity, vacillation, lack of statesmanship, are the distinguishing features which the Episcopal Bench presents in Mozley's Letters. Take, for example, the Hampden controversy. Hampden was a man of some ability and learning ; but he was a dull writer, a confused thinker, and an intolerant bigot till he became a Bishop. But neither the Bishops nor Heads of colleges ever discovered Hampden's

heterodoxy while he was inventing tests against Tractarians. It was after the publication of Hampden's Rampton Lectures that

the authorities elected him to the Chair of Moral Philo- sophy in preference to Newman. Yet when Lord Melbourne nominated Hampden to the Chair of Divinity, the Bishops and dons raised an outcry against the appointment. The good- natured and cynical Premier appears to have acted in perfect good-faith in the matter. He had no idea—how should he ?- that Bampton Lectures which the University had rewarded with the Chair of Moral Philosophy could have been so heterodox as to disqualify their author for the Chair of Divinity. The first hint of Hampden's heterodoxy that reached Lord Melbourne's ears was from a member of his own Government, Sir Charles Wood, now Lord Halifax. "The instant he heard of Hampden's probable appointment be went -to Lord Melbourne and remonstrated, but was met with the answer that all was settled." Lord Melbourne had, in fact, been assured by the Bishop of Llandaff (Coplestone) that "the charge" against Hampden "was perfectly futile." So the remonstrance came too late.

When Hampden was fairly in possession of the Divinity Chair the question arose whether the Bishops should insist on

attendance at his lectures as a condition of ordination on the part of candidates for Holy Orders. The Bishops did insist, and thereby condoned whatever taint there might have been on Hampden's orthodoxy. Yet they strenuously opposed his nomination to the Episcopate. "I am rather amused," says

Mozley, "at the touchiness of the Bishops, now that there is a chance of their having Hampden on the same bench with them. They have very little respected our touchiness in Oxford on the subject, and have made men attend his lectures,—a circumstance with which Lord John will twit them, I doubt not." Mozley tells a delightfully characteristic anecdote of Lord Melbourne in connection with Sir Charles Wood's remonstrance against Hampden's appointment to the Divinity Professorship :—" Pray, Wood [who was an Oriel man], how is it that in the bosom of your sluggish University, and out of a college by no means the largest in it, so many heresiarchs have lately sprung up ? First, there is Whately, Arnold, and Hampden ; then there is Mr. Keble, and Mr. Newman, who, I hear, are quite as great theologians as the others, only in another way." The insinuation that "great theologians" and " heresiarchs " are convertible terms is charming.

Mr. Gladstone's name turns up frequently in Mozley's Letters. Here is a glimpse of the impression which the treatise on The State in its Relations with the Church made in political society :— " It is a very noble book, I believe, and has damaged, if not destroyed, his prospects with the Conservatives. People are saying now, Poor fellow !' and so on. Hope, of Merton [afterwards Hope Scott], told Newman this, as what he heard in town, and also said persons out of the political world could not understand the sacrifice Gladstone had made."

Two months later Mozley writes :—" Gladstone's book has come to a third edition, which is a great deal in so short a time." Mr. Gladstone took an active part, both as a distinguished Oxford man, and as a member of Sir Robert Peel's Government, against the dead-set made against the Tractarian party by the governing body of the University ; and one of his main motives in supporting the Oxford Bill of Lord Aberdeen's Administration in later years was the wish of liberating, as he believed, the Uni- versity from the grinding tyranny of an intolerant clique, and restoring her to freedom and self-government. If the result has been, in Aristotle's phrase, the bending of the crooked stick towards the opposite extreme by the force of the recoil, let us hope that it will finally settle in the straight line of true liberty and right belief. But Mozley was right in thinking that Mr. Gladstone's Churchmanship and his book on Church and State would damage him with the Conservative Party. When a vacancy occurred in the representation of the University in 1847 Mr. Gladstone was started by the High Church party as a desperate venture, not hoping to bring him in, but determined to show that they did not mean to be trampled on by the Heads of Houses. "The people in London,"—High-Church people, that is,—" had almost come to the resolution that he was too strong a man "—i.e., a Churchman ; and, curiously enough, it was Sir Stafford Northcote who persuaded Mr. Gladstone to consent to be put in nomination against Mr. Round, the Conservative can- didate. The result, a triumphant success for Mr. Gladstone, was unexpected by nearly everybody. So untrue is it that Mr. Gladstone ever represented Oxford as a representative of the

Conservative Party. Here is an amusing picture of the men who then ruled the University :—

" The Provost [of Oriel] has behaved very characteristically. He

been for once in his life fairly perplexed ; and be has doubled and, doubled again, and shifted and crept into holes ; at last vanishing up some dark crevice, and nothing was seen but his tail. One thought one was to see no more of him, when, on one of the polling mornings, he suddenly emerged, like a rat out of a haystack, and voted for Round. TheHeads, in fact, have been thoroughly inefficient. The election has literally gone on without them ; they have done nothing. Apparently they were sufficiently afraid of Gladstone's success not to like the chance of meeting him afterwards as declared opponents ; and they could not bring themselves to vote for him. So they have been mere individual Roundites. One has hardly felt their existence throughout the contest."

It is impossible not to feel that almost any change was pre- ferable to having the University under the dominion of a set of men who could be thus truthfully described : men who had not the courage of their convictions, except against unpopular men who were dowa.

The lover of anecdotes will find some excellent ones scattered.

over Mozley's Letters, and generally very effectively told. Here are a few. Judges Park and Coleridge presided at the Oxford Assizes, and Mozley gives the following illustration of "Park's extreme respect for tbe University, not excluding even the junior members of it ":—

" One University man was brought up by an impudent javelin-man in open Court for baying made a disturbance in trying to force his way in, on which the following dialogue took place : My Lord, I have brought up a man for—' 'A man, sir ! a gentleman, you mean, I sup- pose.' 'My Lord, he was making a disturbance—' 'Sir, he was- claiming his rights.' 'So, my Lord, I took him by the collar—' Collar, sir! what business had you to take the gentleman by the collar ?' So the javelin-man, in spite of all law and justice, was obliged to give up his captive, who was forthwith assured by old Park that he need not disturb himself at all about the matter."

The following is an amusing instance of the way in which love of ease sometimes overcomes the spirit of persecution. There was a movement on foot among the Dons to impose a de- grading test for the purpose of putting down Tractarianism :—

" In one College several of the Fellows had declared their intention to the Vice-Chancellor to vote for the Test, when they were startled by the objection that it imposed an additional examination. Very well, then, you want to saddle a new examination on the College e —' Oh! Examination ! I never heard anything about that.' Second

voice That's quite a different thing.' Third I'll be hanged if I vote for a now examination.'"

Kind, amiable Archbishop Longley made a very indifferent Bishop, owing to his nervous timidity. When, as Bishop of Ripon, he arrived to consecrate the Church of St. Saviour's, Leeds, built and endowed by the munificence of Dr. Pusey, "he was afraid of being entrapped into anything, and objected to this and that. Among the rest, he saw on one of the doors the sentence, 'Pray for the sinner who built this church,' and required evidence that the sinner was alive before he consented.' The evidence was at hand in the person of the " sinner " him- self, namely, Dr. Posey. Mozley adds pertinently that there is nothing in the law against prayers for the dead. He might have put it stronger, for the legality of the practice in the Church of England has been declared in a court of law. Under the date of February,1848, there is the following curious note over the initials " R.I. W." :—" A pretty state we are in altogether, with a Radical Pope teaching all Europe rebellion !"—carious from the light thrown upon it by the later career of Pio Nono, and the conversion of the writer, Archdeacon Wilberforce, to the "Radi- cal Pope's" communion, followed by his pathetic death, alone among strangers, in a humble inn near Rome. Morley has some- times a sly way of putting an unexpected sting in the tail of an innocent-looking sentence. For example :—Lord Westbury "commented on the free-and-easy air of the present generation of undergraduates, and was highly disgusted at the pretensions of Balliol in setting up a competitive examination for admission, the result of which had been disastrous to one of his own sons.' Nor did he spare his own friends from all experience of these quiet thrusts. " Keble gave a most agreeable poetry lecture the other day, proving Homer to be a Tory (shall we say Conserva- tive ?), and finally stating reasons why it was that all real poets- were Tories." "We had a splendid sermon from Sewell of Exeter [a High Church Tory], at the Assizes, on the Origin of Evil. Not one person in the church understood one sentence of it." There is a lively picture of Bunsen. Inter alia : "He is a prodigious talker—literally talks unceasingly, and has a most amusing way of silencing others by lifting up his finger. If any one seems disposed to interrupt him he says, ' Oh ! I'm coming to that ; I'll tell you that presently,' and goes on swimmingly as before." There is also a graphic account from Mozley's pen of the trial and degradation of Ward, the author of the Ideal of a Christian Church, and afterwards the dis- tinguished Roman Catholic writer. "I heartily wish," says Mozley pathetically, "that Ward could have been gagged ; but if he does say things, and come out, he is a fact, and part of the state of things one has to cope with." Mr. Gladstone went to Oxford to record his vote on the occasion ; "exceedingly disgusted at the state of things here, and looked gloomy after the result of the Convocation, which he thought, however, very fair for a mob.'" But Ward could not be "gagged," or forced into the ways of other mortals. He plagued his Tractariau friends to the end of the chapter. In his defence before the University he claimed, as a priest of the English Church, to teach all Roman doctrines, and the wonder was that his friends stuck to him to the last, in spite of all. He was provoking; but he was genuine and attrac-

tive. There is, however, one of Mozley's stories which needs correction. Manning is obliquely accused, in more than one letter, of trimming his sails to the popular breeze,—one time denouncing the British Critic, at another preaching a violent no-Popery sermon on November 5th, from the University pulpit, and "almost taking under his patronage the Puritans and the Whigs of 1688, because they had settled the matter against the Pope." "Yet he went up to Littlemore and saw J. H. N. yesterday,"—that is, on November 6th, 1843. Dr. Manning did go up. But Newman had heard of the sermon with great disgust ; and anticipating a visit from Manning, had given strict orders to the member of his little community whose duty it was that day to act as door-keeper—a gentleman since then risen to eminence, but no longer a follower of Newman—to tell Manning that Newman would not see him. And Newman did not see him, much to Manning's grief. Mozley gives a very pleasing sketch of Newman himself at Littlemore, catechising his school children with rare art, and teaching them to sing to the accompaniment of his fiddle, which he played with exquisite skill and taste.

There is much more in this volume that solicits comment and quotation. Mozley's letters range over a large field, and touch on a great variety of subjects. One noteworthy fact is Mozley's scientific appreciation of music, without either scientific or prac- tical knowledge of the subject. Music was not only a delight to his ear ; it was to him a subtle and flexible language, speaking to his soul with a power surpassing that of articulate speech. The secession of Newman, on whom Mozley had leant with con- fidence and admiration, though always maintaining his own independence of judgment, was a great shock to him, and partly accounts for his subsequent divergence from his friends on the subject of Baptismal Regeneration. His treatise on that subject is marked by all his intellectual vigour, but with less than his usual breadth of judgment. And he makes the mistake of iden- tifying Gorham's doctrine with that of Evangelical Anglicanism. But the plain truth is that the doctrine on which the Judicial Com- mittee acquitted Gorham was not Gorham's doctrine at all, as he took care to proclaim to the world immediately after his acquittal. To Mozley's logical mind it seemed necessary, if he was to remain an English Churchman, to fit the Gorham Judgment somehow into the Anglican system ; just as Newman could not comfortably join the Church of Rome without some intellectual basis for his conversion, which he endeavoured to supply by his essay on "Development." Mozley's essay on "Predestination," too, profound and masterly as it is, exhibits only one side of Augustine's mind, and thus in some degree misrepresents him by leaving out of view a whole class of qualifying considerations.