Page:The Poems and Prose remains of Arthur Hugh Clough, volume 1 (1869).djvu/29

Rh Dr. Arnold, and the exponent of his various theories of church government and politics.

In November 1836 he had gained the Balliol scholarship, and the October following he went into residence at Oxford. There he soon made friends with some of those with whom he became afterwards intimate—Mr. Ward, Sir B. Brodie, and Professor Jowett;—a little later, with Dr. Temple and Professor Shairp; and, later still, with Mr. T. Walrond and the two eldest sons of Dr. Arnold, whose names frequently occur in his correspondence.

Now came the time which we regard as essentially the of his life. He began his residence at Oxford when the University was stirred to its depths by the great Tractarian movement. Dr. Newman was in the fullness of his popularity, preaching at St. Mary's, and in pamphlets, reviews, and verses, continually pouring forth eloquent appeals to every kind of motive that could influence men's minds. Mr. Ward, one of Clough's first friends at Oxford, was, as is well known, among the foremost of the party; and thus, at the very entrance into his new life, he was at once thrown into the very vortex of discussion. Something of the same fate which, as a young boy, forced on him a too early and independence in matters of conduct, followed him here; and the accident of his passing from the Rugby of Arnold to the Oxford of Newman and Ward, drove him, while he ought to have been devoting himself to the ordinary work of an undergraduate reading for honours, and before he had attained his full intellectual development, to examine and in some degree draw conclusions concerning the deepest subjects that can occupy the human mind. This must be felt to have been a serious disadvantage. As his friend Mr. Ward himself says with much feeling, when looking back on that time after many years, 'What was before all things to have been desired for him, was that during his undergraduate career he should have