143 - John Keble; A Study In Limitations

John Keble; A Study In Limitations
By Georgina Battiscombe
395 pp. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1964. $8.50.

Authors and readers are willing today to approach Victorian personalities with, a more sympathetic interest than was the case a few years ago. The Oxford Movement shares in this reappraisal, helped by the combination of events and characters which gives the episode a dramatic character; and in addition the principles of the nineteenth-century Catholic revival still (or perhaps one should say, again) rouse strong feelings, pro or con. Of the three famous Tractarian leaders, Pusey's career was soon recorded in detail, and lives of Newman seem to come daily from the press; but not until now has John Keble received the deserved tribute of a full-scale biography. With the help of much unpublished material (for it seems to have been a habit of the Tractarians to produce and preserve masses of correspondence) Georgina Battiscombe has now happily filled that gap. In doing so she deserves well of students of modern literary and spiritual movements in general, as well as of those interested in Anglican history in particular. Her work is pleasant, Informative, useful-I would

144 - John Keble; A Study In Limitations

not call it either thrilling or profound, but do not complain, since Keble would doubtless have been horrified if such qualities had naturally appeared in his biography.

Mrs. Battiscombe's work helpfully rounds out our picture of Keble's life, especially of his personal and family relations and his ministry at Hursley; in tolo, as far as I can see, she amplifies and confirms rather than alters the generally accepted picture. In structure the book follows what is I believe a somewhat misleading convention, namely, that the Oxford Movement, in the strict sense of the events of 1833-1845 at Oxford, was the dominating moment in the lives of its protagonists. The years after 1845 are described under the heading "Aftermath," which might equally well and perhaps better have been something like "Fruition." As Mrs. Battiscombe points out, Keble was no mere "hermit of Hursley" (p. 268), but an influential leader with wide contacts by no means limited to England.

Students of the subject will naturally agree or disagree on various details, welcoming the material Mrs. Battiscombe contributes to the discussion. I would agree that The Christian Year is better religion than poetry-as Mrs. Battiscombe observes, that was the intention (pp. 110 ff.) -but I think she minimizes the vigor of Keble's Catholic convictions because of their careful Anglican expression-even including the deathbed alteration of "Not in the hands" to "As in the hands" (of the Real Presence), which was certainly not simply a concession to others as she seems to imply (p. 111). Or in another connection, could one go much further than

Ave Mariá! thou whose name
All but adoring love may claim
(Christian Year, "The Annunciation")

which Keble published in 1827? It is amusingly typical that pictures of Keble are based on a lost portrait; I fear Mrs.. Battiscombe perpetuates a legend in describing her frontispiece as by Richmond, since it is in fact the sketch produced for the centennial in 1933, showing Keble 'with a young face but white hair, and wearing the modern clerical collar, invented about 1865, which lie probably never used (cf. Plate VIIa, p. 284). Most fascinating of all aspects of the book to this reader is Mrs. Battiscombe's charmingly ambivalent relation to her subject. As the subtitle shows, she came to criticize if not exactly to scoff, and in spite of herself remains to eulogize. Admittedly Keble, scholar and pastor, was not a philosopher like Newman or a reformer and organizer like Pusey-though he probably had a deeper grasp of the problems of church and state than Mrs. Battiscombe realizes. But "a saint is the best form of propaganda for any religion" (p. xvii), and modern Anglicanism finds it

145 - John Keble; A Study In Limitations

natural to raise John Keble to the honors of the altar. In words Mrs. Battiscombe quotes from Liddon (p. 354)

"when all else had been said and done, people would -wait and see what came from Hursley before making up their minds as to the path of duty."

Or, more simply:

Bless'd are the pure in heart,
For they shall sec our God,
The secret of the Lord is theirs,
Their soul is Christ's abode.
(Christian Year, "The Purification")

E. R. Hardy
Berkeley Divinity School
New Haven, Connecticut