66

"I

were written against each other. The former ran to thirty
numbers from May 8 to October 21; the latter ran to
twenty-seven numbers from August 8 to October 31. "
am rescuing from the flames the commencing lines of each
and the last words of the latter. The Portfolio
the name
being given by G. Adams, the eldest of the three sons of X
the American Minister to the British Court was written
by the club of senior boys nicknamed the Spy Club. The
American Minister himself contributed to it. It began
November 6, 1815, ran through twenty numbers, ended May
16, 1816. There is nothing in it worth preserving. I have
kept, however, Mr. Adams's lines on The Grasshopper and
the Ant. The Beholder was all my own writing; it ran
through forty numbers and 160 pages closely written."1 In
the manuscript books from which is taken this extract are
comments which show that he marked his own literary pro-
gress. This," he writes of one of his school themes, "is in
the style of Addison." When he entered Oxford, he still
kept up his essays in the technique of writing. He examined
the tragedies of Eschylus in the light of the Poetics of
Aristotle. He and his friend Mr. Bowden published a poem
in 1819 on the subject of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.
Their periodical, The Undergraduate, done after the
manner of Addison's Spectator, began and ended in 1819.
His exact knowledge of English brought trouble upon him
in one of his examinations. He Englished Vergil's "pro-
prium" by "proper," instead of his own," remembering
how Shakespeare used it in Cymbeline and Measure for
Measure, and the censure of the examiners fell upon him.
At this time he admired Gibbon's style greatly. Newman
admitted that the style of the author of The Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire lacked simplicity; it was affected,
monotonous; but "when I reflect on his happy choice of
expressions," he says, "his vigorous compression of ideas,

1 Letters and Correspondence of John Henry Newman during his Life in the English Church, vol. i, p. 16. By Anne Mozley.

only of in 1813′′

and the life and significance of every word, I am prompted indignantly to exclaim that no style is left for historians of an after day."

During his absence from England, 1833, poetry became his natural language. His letters home are full of it. To his mother, to his sister Jemima, he often sends a sonnet or a song. "I send two songs à la mode de Walter Scott," he writes,

"When mirth is full and free,

Some sudden gloom shall be;

and another, beginning,

When Heaven sends sorrow
Warnings go first."

His constant exercises in poetic form helped to give that delicate cadence to his prose which is so remarkable, and which ought to be to the scrupulous student a subject of care. Euphony in prose style is too little regarded by many of us who try hard, with almost scientific precision, to be clear and forcible. In despair an earnest young writer has often said, "But Newman had a naturally fine ear for music." This is probably true, and yet how many persons with a good sense of musical values write harsh and repellant prose. If anybody thinks that Newman left any of his artistic effects to chance, let him read the early letters 1 of this great stylist and follow chronologically the development of his prose. Sir Walter Besant, a novelist of distinction in the last century, was one of the first writers to insist that a course in English verse is an excellent preparation for the writing of English prose. And in tracing the development of Newman's style, one becomes more and more convinced that this is true. The great poets, — Dryden, for instance, — when they dropped into prose, wrote good prose.

2

-

The progress of Cardinal Newman's style is the progress of

1 Letters and Correspondence. By Mrs. Mozley.

2 Author of All Sorts and Conditions of Men, etc.

A

the man, and one finds the sincere man under all the changes in his style. Literature to him was never a science, but always an art, an art used as a means for strengthening the relation of souls with their Creator. The alpha and omega was God, and it was by the Word, which he esteemed as the symbol of God, that he felt he could make this relation stronger and deeper. The working of God in him was a perennial source of wonder and gratitude, and without vanity, with utter simplicity, he chiselled his word that it might reflect the greatness of the goodness of God dealing with a human creature. His accuracy in weighing his thoughts is no less exact than his accuracy in weighing the phrase in which he expresses not only his thought but the very color, the tint of the temper in which his thoughts were uttered. His letters show this even more than his works written for publication; for he believed in the letter as the most valuable expression of the varying moods of personality. Literature is, above all, personal expression, and Newman's letters are not only the finest kind of literature, but without them the phases of development of his Anglican period cannot be understood. So careful was he that there should be no cloud of misunderstanding, — since his life and its manifestations must be known to the world, he preferred that their records, before the period at which he entered the Catholic Church, should be put in the hands of a Protestant. No Catholic could interpret conditions of mind and soul so alien to him, as no Protestant could be entirely in sympathy with the later development of his life in the Catholic Church. And yet Dr. Edwin A. Abbott,' a devout Protestant, can do nothing better in the way of showing his insight into Newman's Anglican life than by comparing Newman with Hamlet:

"We compared Newman to Hamlet, the man of dreams, and doubts, and scruples, and delays, interspersed with fitful

1 The Anglican Career of Cardinal Newman. By Edwin A. Abbott, vol. i, p. 353. Macmillan & Co.

actions. His affectionate friend, Rogers, cool, composed, colected, thoughtful, the model of honor, we might compare to Hamlet's friend, Horatio. Proportionally, Froude (having passed through his self-questioning period) is Laertes, the man of action and violence, who likes straight courses, abominates tricks and procrastinations, and is always burning for the sake of the good cause 'to sweep to his revenge.' Hamlet who, while talking, abuses himself for talking, and, in the very heat of his passion, despises himself for being passionate, and because he is scrupulous, calls himself a coward, avows himself ready to give anything for a friend who is not 'passion's slave,' and is drawn towards the man of deeds and straightforward purposes, who knows no scruples and entertains no delays. Mr. Alpheus Henry Snow, in his monograph on Newman, has no illusions about the Hamlet-like characteristics of Newman. He sees that his mental growth was as subtle as it was normal:

"Perhaps, indeed, it is well for Americans to study Newman. Englishmen, who write of him, naturally and almost inevitably fall into the class either of eulogists or enemies," Mr. Snow says, and Mr. Snow, like Dr. Abbott, is a de

vout Protestant. 66 It is safe to assume that the truth about him cannot be learned from those who are endeavoring to establish a cult for his homage. Already, indeed, the satirists have expressed this thought by naming the devotion of his followers 'Newmania.' Still less can a man's religious enemies be expected to know the truth about his workmuch less, to estimate it at its proper worth."

There is no question even among "his religious enemies" as to the unrivalled beauty, strength, and simplicity - fitness, in a word of his prose style. And to-day it is only the unintelligent bigot who could assume to doubt the purity of his motives or the splendid altitude of his ideals. Dr. Abbott does not see what Dr. Barry,2 in his admirably well1 Indianapolis, 1892.

2 Newman. By William Barry, New York. Charles Scribner's Sons.

balanced Life of Cardinal Newman, keenly points out, that the very defects which Dr. Abbott emphasizes as shown during Newman's Protestant days were due to his growing discontent with a system which satisfied neither his heart nor his mind. It is true that there is no joy, no gladness, and very little peace in his Anglican sermons. One has only to read his novel Loss and Gain to discover why. There was little joy or gladness in his life, as this autobiographical novel shows. Dr. Alexander Whyte,1 so devout as to believe, without any authority whatever, that Newman, in the end, recanted the creed for which he became as a fool for Christ's sake," bears witness to the overwhelming joy of Newman's later life. At eighty he still handled his violoncello. He adapted Latin plays for the students at Edgbaston. "And the six days of the secular week were not sufficient for the flow of spirits that welled up from the old cardinal's heart." The Sunday was joyous, too, a rather rare thing in Birmingham "It would be well worth any student science to compare Newman and Darwin in

natural Develop

ment books" Dr. Whyte writes,2 in his series of lectures, intended to minimize the influence of Newman on the minds of his students: "Newman's categories are, to my mind, even more suggestive and philosophical than Darwin's are, or those of any of his successors."

66

"Shy men," Dr. Barry says, are formalists, and so was he. The clerical style is heightened in his first essays by a gravity of demeanor and a severity of speech that have left on critics like Dr. Abbott an impression far from favorable to him, as though he were wrapped in predestinarian gloom. He was utterly in earnest, masterful by tempera ment, severe on himself, not inclined to hope, a and in any case melancholy, as youth will be until it finds a definite vocation. He never strikes the note of joy in these early discourses. He shudders at the sight of his own failings,

1 Newman: An Appreciation, p. 59. By Rev. Alexander Whyte, D.D. Longmans, Green & Co. 1902.