llicans, the Jansenists, from whom at last he derived much
support, Richer, Van Espen, Launoy, whom he regarded as the original of
Bossuet, Arnauld, whom he thought his superior, are absent from his
pages. He never overcame his distrust of Pascal, for his methodical
scepticism and his endeavour to dissociate religion from learning; and
he rated high Daniel's reply to the _Provinciales_. He esteemed still
more the French Protestants of the seventeenth century, who transformed
the system of Geneva and Dort. English theology did not come much in his
way until he had made himself at home with the Italians and the primary
French. Then it abounded. He gathered it in quantities on two journeys
in 1851 and 1858, and he possessed the English divines in perfection, at
least down to Whitby, and the nonjurors. Early acquaintance with Sir
Edward Vavasour and Lord Clifford had planted a lasting prejudice in
favour of the English Catholic families, which sometimes tinged his
judgments. The neglected literature of the Catholics in England held a
place in his scheme of thought, which it never obtained in the eyes of
any other scholar, native or foreign. This was the only considerable
school of divines who wrote under persecution, and were reduced to an
attitude of defence. In conflict with the most learned, intelligent, and
conciliatory of controversialists, they developed a remarkable spirit of
moderation, discriminating inferior elements from the original and
genuine growth of Catholic roots; and their several declarations and
manifestoes, from the Restoration onwards, were an inexhaustible supply
for irenics. Therefore they powerfully attracted one who took the words
of St Vincent of Lerins not merely for a flash of illumination, but for
a scientific formula and guiding principle. Few writers interested him
more deeply than Stapleton, Davenport, who anticipated Number XC.,
Irishmen, such as Caron and Walshe, and the Scots, Barclay, the
adversary and friend of Bellarmine, Ramsay, the convert and recorder of
Fenelon. It may be that, to an intellect trained in the historic
process, stability, continuity, and growth were terms of more vivid and
exact significance than to the doctors of Pont-a-Mousson and Lambspring.
But when he came forward arrayed in the spoils of Italian libraries and
German universities, with the erudition of centuries and the criticism
of to-day, he sometimes was content to follow where forgotten
Benedictines or Franci