Gladstone's review of it, the three volumes were already in a third
edition, the rush at all the libraries was in full course, and Matthew
Arnold--so gay and kind, in those March weeks before his own sudden
death!--had clearly foreseen the rising boom. "I shall take it with me
to Bristol next week and get through it there, I hope [but he didn't
achieve it!]. It is one of my regrets not to have known the Green of
your dedication." And a week or two later he wrote an amusing letter to
his sister, describing a country-house party at beautiful Wilton, Lord
Pembroke's home near Salisbury, and the various stages in the book
reached by the members of the party, including Mr. Goschen, who were all
reading it, and all talking of it. I never, however, had any criticism
of it from him, except of the first volume, which he liked. I doubt very
much whether the second and third volumes would have appealed to him. My
uncle was a Modernist long before the time. In _Literature and Dogma_ he
threw out in detail much of the argument suggested in _Robert Elsmere_,
but to the end of his life he was a contented member of the Anglican
Church, so far as attendance at her services was concerned, and belief
in her mission of "edification" to the English people. He had little
sympathy with people who "went out." Like Mr. Jowett, he would have
liked to see the Church slowly reformed and "modernized" from within. So
that with the main theme of my book--that a priest who doubts must
depart--he could never have had full sympathy. And in the course of
years--as I showed in a later novel written twenty-four years after
_Robert Elsmere_--I feel that I have very much come to agree with him!
These great national structures that we call churches are too precious
for iconoclast handling, if any other method is possible. The strong
assertion of individual liberty within them, as opposed to the attempt
to break them down from without; that seems to me now the hopeful
course. A few more heresy trials like those which sprang out of _Essays
and Reviews_, or the persecution of Bishop Colenso, would let in fresh