§ IV.Mr. Ward's Charge of "unmannerly abuse"
"SIR, -You wish to close 'our unwelcome controversy'- which you yourself provoked by charging me with unfairness and insincerity -having made a second attack on me in which you leave the charges of unfairness unwithdrawn (as to some of which -e.g., that about 'faith-healing' -even you, I should have thought, would have confessed yourself to have been in wrong), and the charge of insincerity withdrawn in such terms as to aggravate the offence[1].
"I sent you a reply to Mr. Ward's charges (I) of "direct misrepresentation", (2) "unmannerly abuse", and you returned it, restricting me to a column. Cancelling, therefore, all that section of my lettere which refers to 'direct misrepresentation', I ask scholars to believe me for the present (as being unheard) to be innocent of this offence, promising to publish the suppressed section at an early opportunity. I have only space to deal with the charge of 'unmannerly abuse', under which Mr. Ward complains that I apply to Newman the words (1) 'slatternly', (2) 'insolent aggressiveness', (3) 'conudct worthy of a bookseller's hack'.
"(I.) I called parts of Newman's essay (not Newman) 'slatternly'. Whoever denies this, has either not read the essay, or his scholarship is beneath contempt. I adhere to this.
"(2.) The words "just a spice of insolent aggressiveness" described the occasional abruptness adn provocativeness of Newman's style, which Newman himself described as 'a blow in the face' and Froude as 'a blow in the stomach'. Similarly, Dean Church described Mr. W.G. Ward's style as 'intolerably provoking' and 'unreversedly defiant and aggressive. The words ' just a spice of ' ought not to have been omitted [by Mr Ward]. I adhere to this.
"(3.) Who could suppose Mr. Ward's quotation that I expressly denied that Newman was 'hack'? A 'hack' is one who stoops to inferior literary work for gain. Newman, in his essay, stooped to inferior work, but not for gain. This my words clearly showed: -'Newman could not have thus degraded his pen for a bribe of any material kind'[2]. I adhere to this.
"So much for my 'unmannerly abuse'. But what has Mr. Ward to say about his (what shall I call it?) use of language? I pass over such phrases as 'gross instances of attempting to establish a case by misleading treatment'; but no amount of charity will enable me to pass over the charge of ' electing ' to interpolate a word of my own in a quotation from Newman. And this, too, in a quotation which I had given correctly on another page! Every man of letters knows that to impute this is to impute something approximating to knavery. In 1864 Newman wrote: -'I do not like to be called to my face a liar and a knave'. The tables are turned. In 1891, similar terms are reserved for one who ventures to point out Newman's intellectual failings, forced to this thankless task by what he conceived to be a moral obligation. I have already received from the editor of the Spectator a withdrawal of the charge of an approximation to lying; I have now to ask Mr. Ward to withdraw the charge of an approximation to knavery. All your readers will agree that the latter charge ought not have been written; some may think that, when written, it ought no to have been printed.
"Cannot Newman's best friends see that they are playing into the hands of his worst enemies (of whom assuredly I am not one) when they -imbued with his works, and supposed to be imbued with his spirit- defend him in this way? - I am, Sir, &c".
- ↑ "We suppose we had no right to say that we did not believe him to be quite sincere... and we withdrawn the statement". Here, as elsewhere, the italics are mine.
- ↑ The editorial restriction, obliging me ot be brief, made me perhaps boscure. But an illustration will make my meaning clear. If I say about a statesman, for example, "His conduct on this occasion was whorthy of a madman, but we know well that he was one of the most clearheaded men of his time" -do I accuse him of madness? Do I not rahter clearly deny that he was a madman? So here: "Such conduct is whorthy of a bookseller's hack, not of one who apires to be called a theologian. But we know well that Newman was absolutely indifferent to pecuniary considerations, and could not thus have degraded," &c.