Gerard Manley Hopkins
Burke, Molly M.
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS By MOLLY M. BURKE THE growing interest in Gerard Hopkins's poetry demands a more intimate and accurate knowledge of his career and personality than is afforded by Mr....
...In August, 1886, Hopkins and Bridges stayed for some weeks at Rochdale, where they studied Herodotus together...
...In 1863 Hopkins won an exhibition and passed from Highgate to Balliol College, Oxford...
...I was very Protestant in those days, and thought to pose him...
...In 1882 Father Hopkins joined the professional staff at Stonyhurst where he became a universal favorite...
...I have long foreseen where the only consistent position would lie...
...The Resurrection A heart's clarion...
...Wilson, who was one of the examiners, told me that "for form," he was by far the best man in the first class...
...Following the advice of Newman, he returned to Oxford, and the next year, took a first class in classics...
...The drudgery" imposed upon him, "the political dishonesty which he was there forced to witness," and finally, "the material contagions of the city," are accounted responsible for his death in 1889...
...Manley Hopkins—a high churchman of the moderate school, and sometime Hawaiian consul—Gerard Hopkins was born at Stratford in Essex, on July 28, 1844...
...Two years later he was appointed to a fellowship in the Royal University of Dublin...
...his colleagues included Thomas Arnold, Stewart, and Ornsby, all Oxonians and ardent Newmanites, and the newcomer "soon became very popular," and could "kind love both give and get...
...Away grief's gasping joyless days, defection, Across my foundering deck shone A beacon, an eternal beam...
...In an interesting paper, entitled Oxford 1863-67 (the period, let us note of Creighton, E. S. Talbot, Barratt of Balliol, John Wordsworth, afterward Bishop of Salisbury, and Kitson of Queens') the Reverend L. W. Lechmere writes: One evening I went to the Clarendon Hotel to hear a lecture on the Reformation by a kind of Anglican monk...
...He had not read more than half of the nine books when he went in for "Greats...
...Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend, How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost Defeat, thwart me...
...Bridges declares: He was so punctilious about the text, and so enjoyed loitering over the difficulties, that I foresaw we should never get through, and broke off from him to go my own way...
...Bridges quite overlooks the elements of courageous resistance and trusting patience in the "terrible" sonnets...
...The occasion indeed is not worth mentioning but that Gerard Manley Hopkins was also present...
...The eldest son of Mr...
...It may be noted that the poetical output of this year included the beautiful sonnet, Duns Scotus's Oxford, and that strangely conversational poem, The Bugler's First Communion...
...At sixteen he wrote a prize poem, entitled The Escorial, and two years later produced A Vision of Mermaids, wherein he betrays his keen, exuberant sensitiveness to the impressions of the external world...
...He was sent to Cholmondely Grammar School, Highgate, where one of his masters, Richard Watson Dixon, remembers him to have been "a pale young boy, very light and active, with a very meditative and intellectual face...
...But Mr...
...True it is that he entered upon a period of darkness and questioning discontent: . . . and why must Disappointment all I endeavor end...
...It seems from what Geldart told me, he became interested in me, and wished to meet me...
...The variety of his talents and a capacity for steady work won for him the approbation of his masters, and under their tuition he learned to value the classics, became deeply interested in music, literature and architecture and revealed a talent for drawing...
...In 1879 he was back in Oxford, working with Father Parkinson on the Saint Aloysius Mission...
...While the lyric cadence of the meter recalls the haunting melodies of Tennyson, the prodigality of colorful beauty in the lines sets them beside the early work of Keats...
...this did not, however, prevent his success, and my tutor, Mr...
...But perhaps the things of most promise with God begin with weakness and fear...
...Bridges's Memoir...
...He accepted a post at the Oratory, where he taught for several months, and then in 1868 entered the Society of Jesus...
...At this moment, looking back over forty years, I seem to be gazing upon some great portrait of a face, rather than upon a face...
...He accepted the position with reluctance, and upon arriving in Ireland wrote to Newman: In the events which have brought me here I recognize the hand of Providence, but nevertheless have felt and feel an unfitness which led me at first to decline the offer made me, and now does not yet allow my spirits to rise to the level of the position and its duties...
...Two months later, undeterred by the pleadings of Liddon and Pusey, he was received into the Church...
...I am glad I excited this interest, however undeserved, for otherwise I might never have met one who, in the course of a short hour, made the impression upon me he did...
...A final quotation must suffice to indicate that Hopkins was a noteworthy figure, even among illustrious contemporaries...
...Hopkins realized that the source of the trouble came from within, "the self-yeast of spirit a dull dough sours," from an imperfection that rendered him incapable of facing life with equanimity, but could never deprive him of a firm grasp of eternal things: Enough...
...Once convinced of the validity of the claims of Rome, Hopkins sought an interview with Newman, to whom, in a letter dated August 28, 1866, he writes: I do not want to be helped to any conclusions of belief, for I am thankful to say my mind is made up...
...We walked together almost daily, and when he left college lived in the same lodgings...
...He was "a square man in a round hole," the "somehow-or-other-manned wreck of the Catholic University" was only "just afloat" and Hopkins, to quote the verdict of a contemporary, was "much too good a man for the pioneer roughness of it all...
...Of all I came across at Oxford, there was not one whose superfineness of mind and character was more expressed in his entire bearing...
...A keen and scholarly intellect, combined with a personal charm and winning sense of humor, attracted men of his own caliber and he quickly became one of a select company of young scholars...
...Bridges has selected a grim and dramatic picture of Hopkins's residence in Ireland...
...William Addis writes: Hopkins and I were almost of an age, though he was my junior in university standing...
...Yet he found himself in congenial surroundings...
...What high serenity, what chastened intellectual power, what firm and resigned purpose, and withal what tranquil sadness, or perhaps seriousness, suffusing the features rather than casting a shadow upon them...
...Numerous sources of more substantial information exist, but since they are scattered and somewhat difficult of access, it may not be inappropriate to construct from them a short paper on the poet...
Vol. 12 • September 1930 • No. 19
