The Sun.
London, England, 1866-04-10 00:00:00

THE LATE JOHN KEBLE.

John Keble, the author of Ile." Christian Year," has
gene td'his rest. To most of those in the rough work of
the world the name, if to them a name at all, belongs to the
past ; but everywhere throughout this empire are hearts
and households to which the news will come like a far dis-
tant sound, more felt than heard. So retiring were the
personal habits of the.rettn, so quiet and unambitious his
course, that we must begin with dates, places, and names.
It was an Oxford tradition that Keble was only 18 when he
obtained, with the greatest ease, a double-first—that is, the
first class both in classics and mathematics. This was at
Easter, 1810, and would put his birth in 1792, so that he
would have died in his 75th year, but as we see different
statements on this point we make ours under correction.
It was commonly said that at the age of 14 he became a
scholar at Corpus, where they used to elect very early, and
soon became known as an exact and elegant scholar. Few
of his admirers would suspect him of mathematical powers,
but no one who knew his force of mind and resolute will
could doubt that he would master any task his friends and
tutors set him to. He was soon elected Fellow of Oriel,
of which Coplestone was then Provost. It was not till
two years after his degree that his name appeared in any
prize list. He then had the chance of writing " a Prize
Composition in Verse" on "Moses conducting the children
of Israel," on " Mahomet," and on "John the Baptist ;"
and no doubt he made the attempt, but the mould was
probably too stiff for him, and he did not succeed. In
1812 ho obtained at once the prizes for an English Essay,
on Translation from Dead Languages, and a Latin Essay
comparing the military memors of Xenophon with those
of Caesar. Both subjects have a curious bearing on his
works and character, of which more by and by. He be-
came tutor, and some of the most distinguished men-of the
age passed through his lecture room. He was Public
Examiner In 1814 and 1815, at an ago when most
young men are trembling in the hope of a " pass "
—that is, if we are right as to his age, and again in 18 1
and 1822. About this latter date he ceased to reside, and re-
tired to his father's living of Fairford, where he had a few
select pupils, and whence he made frequent visits to Ox-
ford. During the whole period of this residence at Oriel,
Keble was in contact with Coplestone, Whateley, Davison,
and several other men of great intellectual power, and rather
boldly speculative in religion as well as politics. The old
" Oriel School" was then one of the facts and one of the
terrors of the age, and Keble can have had no'easy time
of it. But Davison ho loved and admired ; he gathered
about him young friends, Burrell Froude, Newman, and
the Wilberforces ; and, as men looking out for a prophet
and teacher, all these hada great admiration for an almost
forgotten man, John Miller, of Worcester College.
In 1827, 39 years ago, came out the Christian Year, than
which no book of modern times has come nearer to what
we may call a Divine work. The greater part had already
existed for some time in albums, written under great va-
riety of circumstances. Bome of the poems were the work
of a.day—a fe_w hews. It was_talli.:ivhen half or more ,
listen to those who wanted the whole year, and in print.
The root springing up out of a dry ground was tender and
sensitive ; and in those days and in that small circle it was
thought oven shocking to publish a sermon actually
preached. But with much violence to feeling the MSS.
were collected, printed, advertised, and sold. They were not
for everybody and everybody was not for them ; but, with
all their faults, which aro great, they came straight from the
inner soul of a good, and true, and saintly man, and they
member
tstraoif the Church
innerCthheurchof
soul
England. All
ryhe hearty and
weread n honestthen
at Oxford, in the first ring raised by the pebble in the
glassy pool, remember the effect there. Men read the poems,
and shortly found that without one conscious effort at
learning they could say every word. An undergraduate
would enter a room, seat himself at the fire, and, in a
tremulous voice, pour our " Keble" without end, re-
ceiving the faintest sign of impatience in his host
with indifference, if not contempt. It was a positive
possession, and soon a wide, a spreading, and a
growing one. Woe to men not naturally saintsor blessed
with good memories ! Men of standing could hold their
own and venture to criticise. The Goliath of the Low
Church party talked of Keble's " obscure lyrics," and asked
what they worn about. But that Low Church party itself
was having meetings of its own and running off to Dissent,
and protesting, oven in the University pulpit, against the
Church of England, root and branch, altogether. But "The
Christian Year" did notprosper the less for being addressed
to ears willing and prepared. It was soon found every-
where. To the surprise of the Oxford world, edition ra-
pidly succeeded edition. At that time it was thought im-
possible to get a spontaneous sale for a really sound reli-
gious work, the thing must be done by subscription. But
this book had a life of its own. The editions, and the
thousands published, were counted with pride. To be
sure, something was taken out of that pride by the vastly
greater sales of Robert Montgomery's books, and Pollock's
" Course of Time ;" but then those were addressed ad
paptdute, and this book ad gregem. The " Christian Year"
has, however, survived them, and .has reached its 80th edi-
tion. It will survive them, and be the Church of England's
manual of meditative poetry for centuries to come.

It is presumptuous to criticise what we have already de-
f
scribed
not h sweet
the country
world
Churchnuo t yd
000 p
mffa rtmfshooueenns a
around
ryeo,
peopleuonf thed
;h
aiagCn
hdh udi
rathernre esdhe f
frnoee
as in some sort Divine, but men now do that and
more. The " Christian Year" seems to tell too well its
mtethin—s, faith held in its purity, but preached
eEnYnglatnadle
rt
ent
ands
et
nitc tlf eondf
et
nys ydpss t er w
wiih discretion—a pure sentiment, and a generous self-
confidence to be cherished with care and tact—and the
surrounding monuments of three great compromises—the
Reformation, the Restoration, and the Reovlution of 1688.
The path of the Anglican devotee through all these
stumbling-blocks, cavernous recesses, sloughs of despond,
and real terrors must be narrow and difficult. It is not
much to say of an undertaking in this present year
of grace that it is an unbroken tradition from the
great Caroline Divines. It so happens that per-
plexity, obscurity, peculiarity of opinion verging on error,
the marks of particular schools and of personal character,
have kept this tradition very winding, low, and narrow.
It has been complicated with the political mistakes of the
Non-Jurors, the abstruse wisdom of Norris of Bemerton,
the singular philosophy of Hutchinson, which even now
has High Church followers, and the opinions of almost
every man who could obtain for the Church the most tem-
porary and the most useless battle ground. If we venture
to say that the " Christian Year" is too exclusively the
manual of well-educated Church people, we must take
a test. Let that test be the cleverest and best girl in a
National School, the teacher—perhaps we might say the
schoolmistress Can she use these meditations intelligently,
easily, and • usefully, even with every favouring circum-
stance ? We fear not. Out of more than 100 poems only
20 are not absolutely obscure, though even in this case we
should expect such a person as we have supposed to read
them with some fixed and inveterate misunderstandings of
the text. There are about 15 more that such a person
would master with more difficulty and oven less success.
More than 70 aro really only meant for people who with a
little aid could make out the train of thought in a Greek
Chorus. In one of them there is a transition so violent
that nobody was yet found who could bridge it over orsay
what reference the end of the poem had to the beginning.
Indeed we were once told that the author himself expressly
declined to help an admirer through the gap.
The natural and most rightful comparison is with
George Herbert, and here something is to bo said
on both sides. George Herbert also would be difficult
to all but the highly educated. He wrote, however,
two centuries and a half since, and it is not fair to
him to compare him with poets of these days. On the
other hand, ho began to write when Shakspere was in his
grave, and yet the plays of Shakspere are performed
without the change of a word to understanding and
enthusiastic audiences at Sadler's-wells. It may be
answered that the affairs of the world, and in-
deed all the matters that enter into conversation, and the
game of social life, are more beaten ground, and more
familiar modes, than the secret workings of the soul. Be
it so. Yet surely then latter are no excuse for extreme