CHAPTER VI.

1837-1839.

LETTERS-NOTES OF JOURNEYS-MATRICULATION AT OXFORD-EDUCATIONAL MAGAZINE-LETTERS TO MR.

STRACHEY.

HOLBORN HILL, October 20th, 1837.

MY DEAR GODWIN,-I positively cannot write a line upon any other subject, till I have vindicated the inquiries I made respecting Mr. HB.* from the most unjust imputation you have cast upon them. If you had been anything of a phrenologist you might have known how large my organ of philoprogenitiveness is, from the way in which my hat sits upon my head. And if I had been deficient in the mere animal instinct, do you think I should not care one farthing' for one of those dear little creatures who have never broken their baptismal vow, though they knew nothing about it? I can assure you Mrs. Godwin has judged me much more correctly, and when I inquire in future, I beg you will harbour no such naughty suspicions, unless you think that I should despise the young gentleman because he is yours. But really

* Mr. Godwin's child,

to be serious, there is something in infancy of overpowering sublimity. The deep mysteries of nature and grace that meet in the little troublesome brat, are the subjects which the angels desire to look into; the first generous affection it feels is a reflection from the Supreme Love; the first sense it has of there being a right and a wrong is the voice of God within it, struggling with the fulfilment of the promise of the serpent to our first parents, 'in the day ye eat thereof, .... ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil;' the first sense it has of its own eternity (which I am disposed to think is in general very early) is a conscious seal of its communion with, and relationship to, the Supreme Reason. It is not a convertible material which can be used for a purpose, but it is a person, an end, for which things are created, an eternal constituent, in one way or another, of God's empire. Without any Platonic dreams, and without those associations with which Christ, in what He said and did personally, as well as through His ordinance, has invested the infant man; without asserting that

'Trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God who is our home;

Heaven lies about us in our infancy.'

Taking just the most prosaic view of the subject which a man can take, is it not a most sublime thought that the birth of a man is the beginning of an eternity? There is nothing in the range of my reading which has struck me as so unpardonable and disgusting as Dr. Priestley's remarks on the infancy of our Saviour in the history of his early opinions

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101

respecting the nature of Christ. Have you read them?

But I thank God that I have, in common with beasts, and birds, and cetaceous fishes, a strong instinctive love of the young of my kind. I love to think about the little creatures, to look at them, to talk nonsense to them, and above all, to watch the singleness of their emotions. A free healthy child actually seems to be the personification of his ruling emotion. He is the only part of God's immortal creation in which we can witness the absence of those chilling conflicts, and ragged, patched-up states of mind of which we are conscious in our more advanced career. After this confession you must never on any account have the shadow of a suspicion that my interest in a child (and, need I add, especially in a child of yours?) is anything but a most solid and sincere feeling.

Was ever anything so mournful as what has befallen our poor friend, Dr. Joe? We shall never, my dear friend, look upon the like again. Can you ever forget the porter and the oyster on the fork, with the half-squinting eyes meeting on the oyster, so full of quiet fun? He was, moreover, at the bottom, a real, good fellow, as sincere and correct as any one I ever knew:

cui Pudor et Justitiæ soror, Incorrupta Fides nudaque Veritas Quando ullum inveniet parem?'

I say this of him after an acquaintance of nearly twenty years' standing. I cannot help mourning over him as dead. His father told me that he was in a very happy state of mind, and did not appear to be

in the least disqualified for inward thinking, though entirely for outward intercourse. They still hope for his amendment, but I fear there is little ground, and we know how easily affection will convert a wish on such a subject into a hope.

During the six hours I spent in Southampton the other day, I saw Brookfield. He was quite well, and did not seem to have changed his identity, though he still retained the good graces of Dr. Wilson and his followers, and has not toppled down headlong' (like Eutychus), as was sagely prognosticated of him.

I cannot tell you now what the epithet I applied to Lord Lyndhurst's mouth was, but I suppose it must have been something nearly synonymous with roguish. I beg your pardon for writing so badly, but you must know I never learnt to write; however, as I have a profound respect for the final end of writing, I think I must some day make a sacrifice to it, and cultivate the habit of putting in every letter of a word in good round portly style.-Ever very truly yours,

S. CLARK.

CAMBRIDGE, 12th month, 22nd, 1837.

MY DEAREST MARY,-Though I might truly plead a close succession of engrossing engagements, still I cannot make thee any sort of apology which would be adequate to my feelings of regret on account of my long delay in answering thy two last letters. I know, however, that thou wilt not be ready to judge unkindly, in supposing that forgetfulness or want of affection has had any part in causing the deficiency.

I am sure I wish, quite as much as thou dost, that

DISTASTE FOR RELIGIOUS DISPUTES.

103

I was nearer to you, and could converse much and often with you on the subject of religion. As to the controversy which is agitated in the Society of Friends, I should be very glad to be out of the reach of hearing of it. I feel more and more the extreme unsatisfactoriness of religious disputes, not only, nor yet chiefly, from the unkind and bitter feelings which they are apt to produce in each party, nor yet for their tendency to make one party deny the truth of some real principle, which the opposite upholds; but I feel them to be still more injurious to myself, and I see them to be so to others, from their being sure to produce a false estimate in the minds of those who are engaged in them, of the value of particular notions. I do not deny the great value of right doctrines; on the contrary, I look upon them as deeply necessary, and as being the ground-work of what has preserved the Church; but still they are only valuable, as they serve to teach and confirm men in the knowledge and feeling that God is our Father, and that we owe all that we possess to His free grace. It is this feeling living and reigning within us, that makes the state called 'the kingdom of God,' 'the new Jerusalem, and other such terms in the New Testament. It is a great comfort, my dear sister, that, however widely we may differ from some that we dearly love on particular notions, still we can meet on this broad ground, that the Creator of all things has reinstated us in the condition of sons and daughters, that He spared not His own Son Who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth,' but sent Him down to be our brother and fellow-sufferer in all the evils to which our nature is subject, and therefore that we are all