ABSTRACT
Like many before hirn, Hopkins found his way to the Roman Catholic church not by a tuming-around but as a logical development of his religious education. As the child of observant High Church Anglicans with an interest in the arts, Hopkins was early exposed to the resthetic expression of religious ideas. Many of the connections between poetry and religion which are demonstrated even in Hopkins' earliest extant poetry were directly descended from Keble's own, and were introduced to Hopkins in his home.1 Poetry such as The Christian Year in particular, and Lyra Apostolica, made important contributions to Hopkins' developing resthetic, through an emphasis on the affinity between art and religion, and the provision of a schema whereby all aspects of life could be ordered within a religious framework. Thus early Tractarian poetry holds a seminal importance for Hopkins' own poetic growth. In their tempering of Romantic ideals and their development of a Christi an resthetic, the Tractarian concepts which Hopkins discovered in his youth provided a crucial grounding for his mature poetry.
