JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE[1]
James Anthony Froude was born in Dartington rectory, Totness, Devonshire, April 23, 1818. His childhood was spent in typically English surroundings of the olden time. His father was archdeacon of Totness, and exercised also the functions of a civil magistrate. He was remembered in after years by his son as "a continually busy, useful man of the world, a learned and cultivated antiquary, and an accomplished artist." Of his early training Froude wrote: "Our spiritual lessons did not go beyond the catechism. We were told that our business in life was to work and to make an honorable position for ourselves. About doctrine. Evangelical or Catholic, I do not think that in my early boyhood I ever heard a single word, in church or out of it."
He went to Oxford while the memory of his brother, Hurrell Froude, one of the most brilliant of the Tractarian group, was still fresh. He had already "swallowed such antidotes to Catholicism" as would be derived from a careful reading of Gibbon, and he was fortified against scepticism by Paley and Grotius; but as yet he had little notion of the Evangelical wing of the church. Pilgrim's Progress, even, he never read until he was grown up. At Oxford he seemed to the friends of his brother to be "keeping the party and the movement at arm's length." Mozley tells us that "his habits and amusements were solitary," and that "he combined in a rare degree self-confidence, imagination, and inquiry." Froude listened to Newman's sermons with deep interest, read Hume carefully, and found himself in great perplexity.
His confidence in his Oxford teachers was put to a severe
- ↑ Published in The Nation, October 25, 1894, as an obituary.
