FOR eight or nine years, while my sons were at school, I
lived at Rickmansworth.
Unfortunately the Leweses had just
left it. Moor Park belonged to Lord Ebury, my wife's uncle,
and the beauties of its magnificent park and the amenities of
its charming house were at all times open to us, and freely
taken advantage of. During those nine years I lived the life
of a student, and wrote and published the book I have
elsewhere spoken of, the 'Creeds of the Day.'
Of the visitors of note whose acquaintance I made while I was
staying at Moor Park, by far the most illustrious was Froude.
He was too reserved a man to lavish his intimacy when taken
unawares; and if he suspected, as he might have done by my
probing, that one wanted to draw him out, he was much too
shrewd to commit himself to definite expressions of any kind
until he knew something of his interviewer. Reticence of
this kind, on the part of such a man, is both prudent and
commendable. But is not this habit of cautiousness sometimes
carried to the extent of ambiguity in his 'Short Studies on
Great Subjects'? The careful reader is left in no sort of
doubt as to Froude's own views upon Biblical criticism, as to
his theological dogmas, or his speculative opinions. But the
conviction is only reached by comparing him with himself in
different moods, by collating essay with essay, and one part
of an essay with another part of the same essay.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 392 of 404
Words from 103258 to 103516
of 106633
