Life and letters of Thomas Hodgkin / by Louise Creighton.

  • Thomas Hodgkin
Date:
1917
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Life and letters of Thomas Hodgkin / by Louise Creighton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    454/494 (page 412)
    His character found expression in his literary work. His merit as a historian was greatly increased, if not created, by his large amount of human nature. He lived in the past and made it live to others—yet in past as in present he felt the obligation of keeping the balance true, and of examining the evidence before coming to any con¬ clusion. Perhaps no one ever came nearer to my ideal of a Christian gentleman. You see it in his books and you felt it in his talk. His beautiful self came out in all that he wrote and said and did. His charity and kindliness, with his high standard of moral rectitude, marked all that he uttered about men and women of all ages, our own included, and his modesty with all his learning was to me most touching.1 Perhaps no adjective describes his manner and the effect his temperament made on others so well as urbane. There was a quiet dignity and thoughtful consideration for others, a spirit of moderation and width, which found expression both in his manner and his talk. The following quotations tell what some of those who knew him well felt about him. I always came away from him with higher thoughts and the feeling of having breathed purer air. His walk with God was so real. He was one of those men who make us feel that personality is more real and more immortal than anything else in this world. . . . He certainly had the secret of happiness, unselfishness and sympathy.2 His face, naturally beautiful, had in it that serenity and light that made one wonder if John Keble looked like that. I think of him as I saw him in my church in Newcastle, at one of our Quiet Meetings, kneeling, doubt¬ less out of his most Christian courtesy and consideration for our ways rather than his own. The old grey walls which for five hundred years had enshrined the splendour of a mediseval Catholicism, and now were again the home of a rich Catholicism restored, looked down upon him there as upon the living image of worship and adoration. It was delightful to see him in his beautiful home at Barmoor, for me a never-to-be-forgotten visit, alas only just in time ; 1 Alice Gardner, 2 A,JL* Smith’ (now Master of Baliol),