somehow, and
England is not hospitable, and the parties here to whom I am in
submission believe too devoutly in the God of this world to forgive
an absolute apostasy. Under pain of lost favour for ever if I leave
my provision at Oxford, I must find another, and immediately. There
are many matters I wish to talk over with you. I have a book
advertised. You may have seen it. It is too utterly subjective to
please you. I can't help it. If the creatures breed, they must come
to the birth. There is something in the thing, I know; for I cut a
hole in my heart, and wrote with the blood. I wouldn't write such
another at the cost of the same pain for anything short of direct
promotion into heaven."

Of Kingsley himself Froude wrote* to another clerical friend, friend
of a lifetime, Cowley Powles: "Kingsley is such a fine fellow--I
almost wish, though, he wouldn't write and talk Chartism, and be
always in such a stringent excitement about it all. He dreams of
nothing but barricades and provisional Governments and grand
Smithfield bonfires, where the landlords are all roasting in the fat
of their own prize oxen. He is so musical and beautiful in poetry,
and so rough and harsh in prose, and he doesn't know the least that
it is because in the first the art is carrying him out of himself,
and making him forget just for a little that the age is so entirely
out of joint." A very fine and discriminating piece of criticism.

--
* April 10th, 1849.
--

The immediate effect of The Nemesis, the only effect it ever had,
was disastrous. Whatever else it might be, it was undoubtedly
heretical, and in the Oxford of 1849 heresy was the unpardonable
sin. The Senior Tutor of Exeter, the Reverend William Sewell, burnt
the book during a lecture in the College Hall. Sewell, afterwards
founder and first Warden of Radley, was a didactic Churchman, always
talking or writing, seldom thinking, who contributed popular
articles to The Quarterly Review. The editor, Lockhart, knew their
value well enough. They tell one nothing, he said, they mean
nothing, they are nothing, but they go down like bottled velvet.
Sewell's eccentricities could not hurt Froude. But more serious
consequences followed. The Governing Body of Exeter, the Rector* and
Fellows, called upon him to resign his Fellowship. This they had no
moral right to do, and Froude should have rejected the demand. For
though his name and college were on the title-page of the book, the
book itself