But he was thoroughly ready to amuse and instruct, or to be amused and instructed, as an eager and earnest speaker or listener on most matters of interest.  I do not remember that he had any great turn for beauty of colour; he had none, I think, or next to none, for music—­nor do I remember in him any great love of humour—­but for beauty of physical form, for mechanics, for mathematics, for poetry which had a root in true feeling, for wit (including that perception of a quasi-logical absurdity of position), for history, for domestic incidents, his sympathy was always lively, and he would throw himself naturally and warmly into them.  From his general demeanour (I need scarcely say) the “odour of sanctity” was wholly absent.  I am not sure that his height and depth of aim and lively versatility of talent did not leave his compassionate sympathies rather undeveloped; certainly to himself, and, I suspect, largely in the case of others, he would view suffering not as a thing to be cockered up or made much of, though of course to be alleviated if possible, but to be viewed calmly as a Providential discipline for those who can mitigate, or have to endure it.

J.H.N. was once reading me a letter just received from him in which (in answer to J.H.N.’s account of his work and the possibility of his breaking down) he said in substance:  “I daresay you have more to do than your health will bear, but I would not have you give up anything except perhaps the deanery” (of Oriel).  And then J.H.N. paused, with a kind of inner exultant chuckle, and said, “Ah! there’s a Basil for you”; as if the friendship which sacrificed its friend, as it would sacrifice itself to a cause, was the friendship which was really worth having.

As I came to know him in a more manly way, as a brother Fellow, friend, and collaborateur, the character of “ecclesiastical agitator” was of course added to this.

In this capacity his great pleasure was taking bulls by their horns.  Like the “gueux” of the Low Countries, he would have met half-way any opprobrious nickname, and I believe coined the epithet “apostolical” for his party because it was connected with everything in Spain which was most obnoxious to the British public.  I remember one day his grievously shocking Palmer of Worcester, a man of an opposite texture, when a council in J.H.N.’s rooms had been called to consider some memorial or other to which Palmer wanted to collect the signatures of many, and particularly of dignified persons, but in which Froude wished to express the determined opinions of a few.  Froude stretched out his long length on Newman’s sofa, and broke in upon one of Palmer’s judicious harangues about Bishops and Archdeacons and such like, with the ejaculation, “I don’t see why we should disguise from ourselves that our object is to dictate to the clergy of this country, and I, for one, do not want any one else to get on the box.”  He thought that true Churchmen must be few before they were many—­that the sin of the clergy in all ages was that they tried to make out that Christians were many when they were only few, and sacrificed to this object the force derivable from downright and unmistakable enforcement of truth in speech or action.