English Literature
authoritative standard of faith, which should remain steadfast through the
changing centuries and amid all sorts and conditions of men. The first led
to that rare and beautiful spiritual quality which shines in all his work;
the second to his frequent doctrinal and controversial essays; the third to
his conversion to the Catholic church, which he served as priest and
teacher for the last forty-five years of his life. Perhaps we should add
one more characteristic,--the practical bent of his religion; for he was
never so busy with study or controversy that he neglected to give a large
part of his time to gentle ministration among the poor and needy.
He was born in London, in 1801. His father was an English banker; his
mother, a member of a French Huguenot family, was a thoughtful, devout
woman, who brought up her son in a way which suggests the mother of Ruskin.
Of his early training, his reading of doctrinal and argumentative works,
and of his isolation from material things in the thought that there were
"two and only two absolute and luminously self-evident beings in the
world," himself and his Creator, it is better to read his own record in the
_Apologia_, which is a kind of spiritual biography.
At the age of fifteen Newman had begun his profound study of theological
subjects. For science, literature, art, nature,--all the broad interests
which attracted other literary men of his age,--he cared little, his mind
being wholly occupied with the history and doctrines of the Christian
church, to which he had already devoted his life. He was educated first at
the school in Ealing, then at Oxford, taking his degree in the latter place
in 1820. Though his college career was not more brilliant than that of many
unknown men, his unusual ability was recognized and he was made a fellow of
Oriel College, retaining the fellowship, and leading a scholarly life for
over twenty years. In 1824 he was ordained in the Anglican church, and four
years later was chosen vicar of St. Mary's, at Oxford, where his sermons
made a deep impression on the cultivated audiences that gathered from far
and near to hear him.
A change is noticeable in Newman's life after his trip to the Mediterranean
in 1832. He had begun his life as a Calvinist, but while in Oxford, then
the center of religious unrest, he described himself as "drifting in the
direction of Liberalism." Then study and bereavement and an innate
mysticism led him to a profound sympathy with the mediæval Church. He had
from the beginning opposed Catholicism; but during his visit to Italy,
where he saw the Roman church at the center of Its power and splendor, many
of his prejudices were overcome. In this enlargement of his spiritual
horizon Newman was greatly influenced by his friend Hurrell Froude, with
whom he made the first part of the journey. His poems of this period
(afterwards collected in the _Lyra Apostolica_), among which is the famous
"Lead, Kindly Light," are noticeable for their radiant spirituality; but
one who reads them carefully sees the beginning of that mental struggle
which ended in his leaving the church in which he was born. Thus he writes
of the Catholic church, whose services he had attended as "one who in a
foreign land receives the gifts of a good Samaritan":
O that thy creed were sound!
For thou dost soothe the heart, thou church of Rome,
By thy unwearied watch and varied round
Of service, in thy Saviour's holy home.
I cannot walk the city's sultry streets,
But the wide porch invites to still retreats,
Where passion's thirst is calmed, and care's unthankful gloom.
On his return to England, in 1833, he entered into the religious struggle
known as the Oxford or Tractarian Movement,[245] and speedily became its
acknowledged leader. Those who wish to follow this attempt at religious
reform, which profoundly affected the life of the whole English church,
will find it recorded in the _Tracts for the Times_, twenty-nine of which
were written by Newman, and in his _Parochial and Plain Sermons_ (1837-
1843). After nine years of spiritual conflict Newman retired to Littlemore,
where, with a few followers, he led a life of almost monastic seclusion,
still striving to reconcile his changing belief with the doctrines of his
own church. Two years later he resigned his charge at St. Mary's and left
the Anglican communion,--not bitterly, but with a deep and tender regret.
His last sermon at Littlemore on "The Parting of Friends" still moves us
profoundly, like the cry of a prophet torn by personal anguish in the face
of duty. In 1845 he was received into the Catholic church, and the
following year, at Rome, he joined the community of St. Philip Neri, "the
saint of gentleness and kindness," as Newman describes him, and was
ordained to the Roman priesthood.
By his preaching and writing Newman had exercised a strong influence over
his cultivated English hearers, and the effect of his conversion was
tremendous. Into the theological controversy of the next twenty years we
have no mind to enter. Through it all Newman retained his serenity, and,
though a master of irony and satire, kept his literary power always
subordinate to his chief aim, which was to establish the truth as he saw
it. Whether or not we agree with his conclusions, we must all admire the
spirit of the man, which is above praise or criticism. His most widely read
work, _Apologia Pro Vita Sua_ (1864), was written in answer to an
unfortunate attack by Charles Kingsley, which would long since have been
forgotten had it not led to this remarkable book. In 1854 Newman was
appointed rector of the Catholic University in Dublin, but after four years
returned to England and founded a Catholic school at Edgbaston. In 1879 he
was made cardinal by Pope Leo XIII. The grace and dignity of his life,
quite as much as the sincerity of his _Apologia_, had long since disarmed
criticism, and at his death, in 1890, the thought of all England might well
be expressed by his own lines in "The Dream of Gerontius":
I had a dream. Yes, some one softly said,
"He's gone," and then a sigh went round the room;
And then I surely heard a priestly voice
Cry _Subvenite_; and they knelt in prayer.
WORKS OF NEWMAN. Readers approach Newman from so many different motives,
some for doctrine, some for argument, some for a pure prose style, that it
is difficult to recommend the best works for the beginner's use. As an
expression of Newman's spiritual struggle the _Apologia Pro Vita Sua_ is
perhaps the most significant. This book is not light reading and one who
opens it should understand clearly the reasons for which it was written.
Newman had been accused of insincerity, not only by Kingsley but by many
other men, in the public press. His retirement to solitude and meditation
at Littlemore had been outrageously misunderstood, and it was openly
charged that his conversion was a cunningly devised plot to win a large
number of his followers to the Catholic church. This charge involved
others, and it was to defend them, as well as to vindicate himself, that
Newman wrote the _Apologia_. The perfect sincerity with which he traced his
religious history, showing that his conversion was only the final step in a
course he had been following since boyhood, silenced his critics and
revolutionized public opinion concerning himself and the church which he
had joined. As the revelation of a soul's history, and as a model of pure,
simple, unaffected English, this book, entirely apart from its doctrinal
teaching, deserves a high place in our prose literature.
In Newman's doctrinal works, the _Via Media_, the _Grammar of Assent_, and
in numerous controversial essays the student of literature will have little
interest. Much more significant are his sermons, the unconscious reflection
of a rare spiritual nature, of which Professor Shairp said: "His power
shows itself clearly in the new and unlooked-for way in which he touched
into life old truths, moral or spiritual.... And as he spoke, how the old
truth became new! and how it came home with a meaning never felt before! He
laid his finger how gently yet how powerfully on some inner place in the
hearer's heart, and told him things about himself he had never known till
then. Subtlest truths, which would have taken philosophers pages of
circumlocution and big words to state, were dropped out by the way in a
sentence or two of the most transparent Saxon." Of greater interest to the
general reader are _The Idea of a University_, discourses delivered at
Dublin, and his two works of fiction, _Loss and Gain_, treating of a man's
conversion to Catholicism, and _Callista_, which is, in his own words, "an
attempt to express the feelings and mutual relations of Christians and
heathens in the middle of the third century." The latter is, in our
judgment, the most readable and interesting of Newman's works. The
character of Callista, a beautiful Greek sculptor of idols, is powerfully
delineated; the style is clear and transparent as air, and the story of the
heroine's conversion and death makes one of the most fascinating chapters
in fiction, though it is not the story so much as the author's unconscious
revelation of himself that charms us. It would be well to read this novel
in connection with Kingsley's _Hypatia_, which attempts to reconstruct the
life and ideals of the same period.
Newman's poems are not so well known as his prose, but the reader who
examines the _Lyra Apostolica_ and _Verses on Various Occasions_ will find
many short poems that stir a religious nature profoundly by their pure and
lofty imagination; and future generations may pronounce one of these poems,
"The Dream of Gerontius," to be Newman's most enduring work. This poem aims
to reproduce the thoughts and feelings of a man whose soul is just quitting
the body, and who is just beginning a new and greater life. Both in style
and in thought "The Dream" is a powerful and original poem and is worthy of
attention not only for itself but, as a modern critic suggests, "as a
revelation of that high spiritual purpose which animated Newman's life from
beginning to end."
Of Newman's style it is as difficult to write as it would be to describe
the dress of a gentleman we had met, who was so perfectly dressed that we
paid no attention to his clothes. His style is called transparent, because
at first we are not conscious of his manner; and unobtrusive, because we
never think of Newman himself, but only of the subject he is discussing. He
is like the best French prose writers in expressing his thought with such
naturalness and apparent ease that, without thinking of style, we receive
exactly the impression which he means to convey. In his sermons and essays
he is wonderfully simple and direct; in his controversial writings, gently
ironical and satiric, and the satire is pervaded by a delicate humor; but
when his feelings are aroused he speaks with poetic images and symbols, and
his eloquence is like that of the Old Testament prophets. Like Ruskin's,
his style is modeled largely on that of the Bible, but not even Ruskin
equals him in the poetic beauty and melody of his sentences. On the whole
he comes nearer than any other of his age to our ideal of a perfect prose
writer.
OTHER ESSAYISTS OF THE VICTORIAN AGE. We have selected the above five
essayists, Macaulay, Carlyle, Arnold, Newman, and Ruskin, as representative
writers of the Victorian Age; but there are many others who well repay our
study. Notable among these are John Addington Symonds, author of _The
Renaissance in Italy_, undoubtedly his greatest work, and of many critical
essays; Walter Pater, whose _Appreciations_ and numerous other works mark
him as one of our best literary critics; and Leslie Stephen, famous for his