Critic in 1838 on the life of Scott, and was more fully developed in two volumes of Praelectiones Academicae.
His regular visits to Oxford kept him in intercourse with his old friends in Oriel common room, and made him familiar with the currents of feeling which swayed the university. Catholic emancipation and the Reform Bill had deeply stirred, not only the political spirit of Oxford, but also the church feeling which had long been stagnant. Cardinal Newman writes, “On Sunday July 14, 1833, Mr Keble preached the assize sermon in the University pulpit. It was published under the title of National Apostasy. I have ever considered and kept the day as the start of the religious movement of 1833.” The occasion of this sermon was the suppression, by Earl Grey’s Reform ministry, of ten Irish bishoprics. Against the spirit which would treat the church as the mere creature of the state Keble had long chafed inwardly, and now he made his outward protest, asserting the claim of the church to a heavenly origin and a divine prerogative. About the same time, and partly stimulated by Keble’s sermon, some leading spirits in Oxford and elsewhere began a concerted and systematic course of action to revive High Church principles and the ancient patristic theology, and by these means both to defend the church against the assaults of its enemies, and also to raise to a higher tone the standard of Christian life in England. This design embodied itself in the Tractarian movement, a name it received from the famous Tracts for the Times, which were the vehicle for promulgating the new doctrines. If Keble is to be reckoned, as Newman would have it, as the primary author of the movement, it was from Pusey that it received one of its best known names, and in Newman that it soon found its genuine leader. To the tracts Keble made only four contributions:—No. 4, containing an argument, in the manner of Bishop Butler, to show that adherence to apostolical succession is the safest course; No. 13, which explains the principle on which the Sunday lessons in the church service are selected; No. 40, on marriage with one who is unbaptized; No. 89, on the mysticism attributed to the early fathers of the church. Besides these contributions from his own pen, he did much for the series by suggesting subjects, by reviewing tracts written by others, and by lending to their circulation the weight of his personal influence.
In 1835 Keble’s father died at the age of ninety, and soon after this his son married Miss Clarke, left Fairford, and settled at Hursley vicarage in Hampshire, a living to which he had been presented by his friend and attached pupil, Sir William Heathcote, and which continued to be Keble’s home and cure for the remainder of his life.
In 1841 the tracts were brought to an abrupt termination by the publication of Newman’s tract No. 90. All the Protestantism of England was in arms against the author of the obnoxious tract. Keble came forward at the time, desirous to share the responsibility and the blame, if there was any; for he had seen the tract before it was published, and approved it. The same year in which burst this ecclesiastical storm saw the close of Keble’s tenure of the professorship of poetry, and thenceforward he was seen but rarely in Oxford. No other public event ever affected Keble so deeply as the secession of Newman to the Church of Rome in 1845. It was to him both a public and a private sorrow, which nothing could repair. But he did not lose heart; at once he threw himself into the double duty, which now devolved on himself and Pusey, of counselling the many who had hitherto followed the movement, and who, now in their perplexity, might be tempted to follow their leader’s example, and at the same time of maintaining the rights of the church against what he held to be the encroachments of the state, as seen in such acts as the Gorham judgment, and the decision on Essays and Reviews. In all the ecclesiastical contests of the twenty years which followed 1845, Keble took a part, not loud or obtrusive, but firm and resolute, in maintaining those High Anglican principles with which his life had been identified. These absorbing duties, added to his parochial work, left little time for literature. But in 1846 he published the Lyra Innocentium; and in 1863 he completed a life of Bishop Wilson.
In the late autumn of the latter year, Keble left Hursley for the sake of his wife’s health, and sought the milder climate of Bournemouth. There he had an attack of paralysis, from which he died on the 29th of March 1866. He was buried in his own churchyard at Hursley; and in little more than a month his wife was laid by her husband’s side.
Keble also published A Metrical Version of the Psalter (1839), Lyra Innocentium (1846), and a volume of poems was published posthumously. But it is by the Christian Year that he won the ear of the religious world. It was a happy thought that dictated the plan of the book, to furnish a meditative religious lyric for each Sunday of the year, and for each saint’s day and festival of the English Church. The subject of each poem is generally suggested by some part of the lessons or the gospel or the epistle for the day. One thing which gives these poems their strangely unique power is the sentiment to which they appeal, and the saintly character of the poet who makes the appeal, illumining more or less every poem.
The intimacy with the Bible which is manifest in the pages of the Christian Year; and the unobtrusive felicity with which Biblical sentiments and language are introduced have done much to endear these poems to all Bible readers. “The exactness of the descriptions of Palestine, which Keble had never visited, have been noted, and verified on the spot,” by Dean Stanley. He points to features of the lake of Gennesareth, which were first touched in the Christian Year; and he observes that throughout the book “the Biblical scenery is treated graphically as real scenery, and the Biblical history and poetry as real history and poetry.”
As to its style, the Christian Year is calm and grave in tone, and subdued in colour, as beseems its subjects and sentiments. The contemporary poets whom Keble most admired were Scott, Wordsworth and Southey; and of their influence traces are visible in his diction. Yet he has a style of language and a cadence of his own, which steal into the heart with strangely soothing power. Some of the poems are faultless, after their kind, flowing from the first stage to the last, lucid in thought, vivid in diction, harmonious in their pensive melody. In others there are imperfections in rhythm, conventionalities of language, obscurities or over-subtleties of thought, which mar the reader’s enjoyment. Yet even the most defective poems commonly have, at least, a single verse, expressing some profound thought or tender shade of feeling, for which the sympathetic reader willingly pardons artistic imperfections in the rest.
Keble’s life was written by his life-long friend Mr Justice J. T. Coleridge. The following is a complete list of his writings:—1. Works published in Keble’s lifetime: Christian Year (1827); Psalter (1839); Praelectiones Academicae (1844); Lyra Innocentium (1846); Sermons Academical (1848); Argument against Repeal of Marriage Law, and Sequel (1857); Eucharistical Adoration (1857); Life of Bishop Wilson (1863); Sermons Occasional and Parochial (1867). 2. Posthumous publications: Village Sermons on the Baptismal Service (1868); Miscellaneous Poems (1869); Letters of Spiritual Counsel (1870); Sermons for the Christian Year, &c. (11 vols., 1875–1880); Occasional Papers and Reviews (1877); Studia Sacra (1877); Outlines of Instruction or Meditation (1880).
KECSKEMÉT, a town of Hungary, in the county of Pest-Pilis-Solt-Kiskun, 65 m. S.S.E. of Budapest by rail. Pop. (1900), 56,786. Kecskemét is a poorly built and straggling town,
situated in the extensive Kecskemét plain. It contains monasteries
belonging to the Piarist and Franciscan orders, a Catholic
(founded in 1714), a Calvinistic and a Lutheran school. The
manufacture of soap and leather are the principal industries.
Besides the raising of cereals, fruit is extensively cultivated in
the surrounding district; its apples and apricots are largely
exported, large quantities of wine are produced, and cattle-rearing
constitutes another great source of revenue. Kecskemét
was the birthplace of the Hungarian dramatist József Katona
(1792–1830), author of the historical drama, Bánk-Bán
(1815).
KEDDAH (from Hindu Khedna, to chase), the term used
in India for the enclosure constructed to entrap elephants.
In Ceylon the word employed in the same meaning is corral.
KEDGEREE (Hindostani, khichri), an Indian dish, composed of boiled rice and various highly-flavoured ingredients. Kedgeree is of two kinds, white and yellow. The white is made with grain, onions, ghee (clarified butter), cloves, pepper and salt. Yellow kedgeree includes eggs, and is coloured by turmeric. Kedgeree is a favourite and universal dish in India; among the poorer classes it is frequently made of rice and pulse only, or rice and beans. In European cookery kedgeree is a similar dish usually made with fish.
