.

[11] Abbey and Overton, _English Church in the Eighteenth Century,_ ii.
180, 204.

[12] _V._ Maurice, _Life,_ i. 108-111; Trench's _Letters;_ Carlyle's
_Sterling_.

[13] "In what concerns the Established Church, the House of Commons
seems to feel no other principle than that of vulgar policy. The old
High Church race is worn out." Alex. Knox (June 1816), i. 54.

CHAPTER II

THE BEGINNING OF THE MOVEMENT--JOHN KEBLE

Long before the Oxford movement was thought of, or had any definite
shape, a number of its characteristic principles and ideas had taken
strong hold of the mind of a man of great ability and great seriousness,
who, after a brilliant career at Oxford as student and tutor, had
exchanged the University for a humble country cure. John Keble, by some
years the senior, but the college friend and intimate of Arnold, was the
son of a Gloucestershire country clergyman of strong character and
considerable scholarship. He taught and educated his two sons at home,
and then sent them to Oxford, where both of them made their mark, and
the elder, John, a mere boy when he first appeared at his college,
Corpus, carried off almost everything that the University could give in
the way of distinction. He won a double first; he won the Latin and
English Essays in the same year; and he won what was the still greater
honour of an Oriel Fellowship. His honours were borne with meekness and
simplicity; to his attainments he joined a temper of singular sweetness
and modesty, capable at the same time, when necessary, of austere
strength and strictness of principle. He had become one of the most
distinguished men in Oxford, when about the year 1823 he felt himself
bound to give himself more exclusively to the work of a clergyman, and
left Oxford to be his father's curate. There was nothing very unusual in
his way of life, or singular and showy in his work as a clergyman; he
went in and out among the poor, he was not averse to society, he
preached plain, unpretending, earnest sermons; he kept up his literary
interests. But he was a deeply convinced Churchman, finding his standard
and pattern of doctrine and devotion in the sober earnestness and
dignity of the Prayer Book, and looking with great and intelligent
dislike at the teaching and practical working of the more popular system
which, under the name of Evangelical Christianity, was aspiring to
dominate religious opinion, and which, often combining some of the most
q