do not know
enough. Secondly, I should be puzzled to use the little knowledge
that I have. I was not a friend of his, but only an acquaintance
treated with extraordinary kindness whom it would ill become to
note what he thinks defects, while the great powers and qualities
have been and will be described far better by others. Ever since
he published his University Sermons in 1843, I have thought him
unsafe in philosophy, and no Butlerian though a warm admirer of
Butler. No; it was before 1843, in 1841 when he published Tract
XC. The _general_ argument of that tract was unquestionable; but
he put in sophistical matter without the smallest necessity. What
I recollect is about General Councils: where in treating the
declaration that they may err he virtually says, "No doubt they
may--unless the Holy Ghost prevents them." But he was a wonderful
man, a holy man, a very refined man, and (to me) a most kindly
man.

Of Dr. Doellinger he contributed a charming account to a weekly print,(263)
and to Acton he wrote:--

I have the fear that my Doellinger letters will disappoint you.
When I was with him, he spoke to me with the utmost freedom; and
so I think he wrote, but our correspondence was only occasional. I
think nine-tenths of my intercourse with him was oral; with
Cardinal Newman nothing like one-tenth. But with neither was the
mere _corpus_ of my intercourse great, though in D.'s case it was
very precious, most of all the very first of it in 1845.... With
my inferior faculty and means of observation, I have long adopted
your main proposition. His attitude of mind was more historical
than theological. When I first knew him in 1845, and he honoured
me with very long and interesting conversations, they turned very
much upon theology, and I derived from him what I thought very
valuable and steadying knowledge. Again in 1874 during a long
walk, when we spoke of the shocks and agitation of our time, he
told me how the Vatican decrees had required him to reperuse and
retry the whole circle of his thought. He did not make known to me
any general result; but he had by that time found himself wholly
detached from the Council of Trent, which was indeed a logical
necessity from his preceding action. The Bonn Conference appeared
to show him nearly at the standing-point of anglican theology. I