Hurrell Froude: Memoranda and Comments

Hurrell Froude: Memoranda and Comments

THE epistolary matter in the first section of this volume is drawn from material already in print: chiefly from Part I. of The Remains of the Reverend Richard Hurrell Froude, M.A., Fellow of Oriel, published by the Rivingtons in 1838, and, incidentally, from John Henry Newman: Letters and Correspondence to 1845, published by the Longmans in 1890: from one notable work, that is to say, which is wholly forgotten, and from another yet recent, of great and unique interest, which has not yet won its full public appreciation. For the unrestricted use of the desired extracts from these books, the Editors grateful thanks are due equally to the representatives of the elder branch of the Froude family, and to Cardinal Newmans literary executor. The liberal selection from Hurrell Froudes Letters which appeared in the Remains is invalidated, to modern curiosity, by manifold suppressions and omissions necessary for private reasons then in force. Some clue, however, is to be found, if it be looked for, towards the identification of those to whom his correspondence was addressed. The Editors of the Remains silently adopted, for the Letters, the same system of differentiation as they had already employed, two years before, in regard to the authorship of the collected poems in Lyra Apostolica: that is to say, in both books stands for Keble, for Newman, for Robert Wilberforce, and for Isaac Williams. As Hurrell Froudes own contributions to the Lyra had appeared over the signature , it was easy to surmise that Beta in the Remains might refer to his brothers or sisters, and Alpha, by a sort of primacy, to his father: as is certainly the case. But it was more difficult, for instance, to identify as Mr. Frederic Rogers, or as the Rev. John Frederick Christie: for to these xii there was no key but that of internal evidence of an elusive sort. The Greek alphabet, in the Remains, served only as a heading to marshal the recipients of the Letters written by Froude; proper names figuring in the course of the Letters were almost in every instance replaced by a blank. The verification of these names will perhaps be accepted, though not all are based on a manuscript reading;[1] and of course no blank has been filled experimentally without due indication of that process. Nor has effort been made, at any point, to fill out sentences, or gaps of any kind, save those caused by the suppression of proper names. This line of procedure, and, indeed, the entire scheme of the rifacciamento, stands subject first and last to the circumstance that the Editor has had no access to the great mass of dated and classified manuscript correspondence now at Edgbaston. As it was impossible to collate the Froude-Newman Letters with the originals, there appeared something supererogatory in reprinting any of the others in their complete form, or including unpublished addenda most kindly placed at the Editors disposal, when an exception had to be ruled in regard to the most interesting and most important material of all. Unfortunately, moreover, Froudes letters to his father, the Archdeacon, to Robert Wilberforce and to Isaac Williams, have perished; and those to Mr. Keble, if existent, had not been recovered by his grandnephew, the Rev. George C. Keble, at the time when this volume went to press. A few letters have been pieced together by comparison of passages, as they stand in the Remains, and in the Newman Correspondence, issued a half-century later. Examination of the fac-simile page of the amusing letter from Barbados, written on December 26, 1834, and of its counterpart in the text here given, copied from that of the Remains, will show that some de-editing might be called for, under the right conditions, in the matter of Hurrell Froudes edited correspondence. It will be seen, on the whole, that neither close study nor long acquaintance with the subject could keep xiii the reprinting, as it pressed forward, from degenerating into more or less of a game of guesswork. Yet exclusions and limitations may cast a befitting half-light upon used literature of long ago, which was in itself elliptical, and tends to create new ellipses, inasmuch as its purpose now is to throw stress less on historic or theological issues than on human character. Many given data, or few, yield pretty much the same residuum when the personality which reigns over them is as rich and strong as Hurrell Froudes. Says one of the most penetrating of modern writers: ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 58007
Author: Guiney, Louise Imogen
Release Date: Oct 2, 2018
Format: eBook
Language: English