Preface
The Author of the Volumes now presented to the Christian reader, was the eldest son of the Venerable Robert H. Froude, Archdeacon of Totness, and was born and died in the Parsonage House of Dartington, in the county of Devon. He was born in 1803, on the Feast of the Annunciation; and he died of consumption, on the 28th of February, 1836, when he was nearly thirty-three, after an illness of four years and a half. He was educated at Eton and Oxford, having previously had the great advantage, while at Ottery Free School, of living in the family of the Rev. George Coleridge. He went to Eton in 1816, and came into residence as a commoner of Oriel College, in the spring of 1821. In 1824 he took the degree of Bachelor of Arts, after having obtained on his examination, high, though not the highest honours, both in the Literæ Humaniores and the Disciplinæ Mathematicæ et Physicæ. AtEaster, 1826, he was elected Fellow of his College, and, in 1827, was admitted to his M.A. degree. The same year he accepted the office of Tutor, which he held till 1830. In December, 1828, he received Deacon’s orders, and the year after Priest’s, from the last and present Bishops of Oxford. The disorder which terminated his life first showed itself in the summer of 1831; the winter of 1832, and the following spring, he passed in the south of Europe; and the two next winters, and the year between them (1834), in the West Indies. The illness which immediately preceded his death lasted but a few weeks.
He left behind him a considerable collection of writings, none prepared for publication; of which the following two volumes form a part. The Journal, with which the first commences, and which is continued in the Appendix, reaches from the beginning of 1826, when he was nearly twenty-three, to the spring of 1828. The Occasional Thoughts are carried on to 1829. The Essay on Fiction was written when he was twenty-three; the Sermons from 1829 to 1833, when he was between twenty-five and thirty. His Letters begin in 1823, when he was twenty, and are carried down to within a mouth of his death.
Those on whom the task has fallen of preparing these various writings for publication, have found it matter of great anxiety to acquit themselves so as satisfy the claims of duty, which they felt pressing on them in distinct, and, sometimes, apparently opposite directions.
Some apology may seem requisite, in the first place, for the very magnitude of the collection; as though authority were being claimed, in a preposterous way, for the opinions of one undistinguished either by station or by known literary eminence. That apology, it is believed, will be found in the truth and extreme importance of the views to the developement of which the whole is meant to be subservient; and also in the instruction derivable from a full exhibition of the Author’s character as a witness to those views. This is the plea, which it is desired to bring prominently forward; nothing short of this, it is felt, would justify such ample and unreserved disclosures: neither originality of thought, nor engaging imagery, nor captivating touches of character and turns of expression.
Still more is this apology needed on the more grounds of friendship and duty. The publication of a Private Journal and Private Letters is a serious thing. Too often it has been ventured on in a kind of reckless way, with an eye singly to the good expected to be accomplished, no regard being had to the Author himself and his wishes. It is in itself painful, nay revolting, to expose to the common gaze papers only intended for a single correspondent; and it seems little less than sacrilege to bring out the solitary memoranda of one endeavouring to feel, and to be, as much as possible alone with his God;—secretly training himself, as in His presence, in that discipline which shuns the light of this world. To such a publication it were objection enough that it would seem to harmonize but too well with the restless, unsparing curiosity, which now prevails. No common motive, then, it may be well believed, was required to overcome the strong reluctance which even strangers of ordinary delicacy, much more kinsmen and intimate friends, must feel on the first suggestion of such a proceeding. It may be frankly allowed, that gentle and good minds will naturally be prejudiced in the outset against any collection of the sort. But the present is a peculiar case, a case in which, if the survivors do not greatly deceive themselves, they are best consulting the wishes of the departed by publication, hazardous as that step commonly is. Let the reader, before he condemns, imagine to himself a case like the following. Let him suppose a person in the prime of manhood, (with what talents and acquirements is not now the question) devoting himself, ardently yet soberly, to the promotion of one great cause; writing, speaking, thinking on it for years, as exclusively as the needs and infirmities of human life would allow; but dying before he could bring to perfection any of the plans which had suggested themselves to him for its advancement. Let it be certainly known to his friends that he was firmly resolved never to shrink from any thing not morally wrong, which he had good grounds to believe would really forward that cause: and that it was real pain and disquiet to him if he saw his friends in any way postponing it to his supposed feelings or interests. Suppose further, that having been for weeks and months in the full consciousness of what was soon likely to befal him, he departs, leaving such papers as make up the present collection in the hands of those next to him in blood, without any express direction as to the disposal of them; and that they, taking counsel with the friends on whom he was known chiefly to rely, unanimously and decidedly judged publication most desirable for that end, which was the guide of his life, and which they too esteemed paramount to all others: imagine the papers appearing to them so valuable, that they feel as if they had no right to withhold such aid from the cause to which he was pledged: would it, or would it not, be their duty, as faithful trustees, in such case to overcome their own scruples? would they, or would they not, be justified in believing that they had, virtually, his own sanction for publishing such parts even of his personal and devotional memoranda, much more of his letters to his friends, as they deliberately judged likely to aid in the general good effect? This case, of a person sacrificing himself altogether to one great object, is not of every day occurrence; it is not like the too frequent instances of papers being ransacked and brought to light, because the writer was a little more distinguished, or accounted a little wiser or better than his neighbours: it cannot be fairly drawn into a precedent, except in circumstances equally uncommon.