JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
August 11, 1890
CARDINAL NEWMAN
GREAT leader of men, an influential ecclesiastic, a man of saintly life, a spiritual force of great power, a master of English prose, has passed away from us with John Henry Newman. To modern England he has been as one of the dead from the night Father Dominic, the Passionist, passed over his threshold at Littlemore, and he has himself written the biography of that dead self in one of the masterpieces of English literature. What Father Newman did in life and letters is of quite subordinate interest to the spiritual career of the Fellow of Oriel, who exercised so much influence on the Church of England and might have exercised more. It is only so far as that career has affected the inner life of England and its manifestations in English letters that it can be considered in this place.
It seems almost a paradox to say of the author of forty volumes that his true sphere was in action, not thought or literature. Yet it is a paradox that contains more than the usual fraction of truth. He was born to lead men; the very modesty that caused him at times to deny this concealed his dissatisfaction even with the enormous mastery over men's souls and fates that he wielded for so many years. It was by personal intercourse that he sought to move the world, and did move it. The tenacity with which he clung to old friendships was significant of much. His whole life was a sermon, the text of which might well be the title of his epoch-making discourse, Personal Intercourse the Means of Propagating the Truth—the sermon that really started the Tractarian Movement, and not Keble's on National Apostasy. Throughout his Anglican period the ecclesiastical things which touched him most nearly were not things of dogma, but lay in the sphere of almost practical politics. At every point of his career it was some problem in the relations of Church and State that affected him most strongly. The abolition of the Irish bishoprics, the miserable muddle of the Jerusalem bishopric, the alliance of O'Connell and the Whigs—these things, and things like these, are the turning-points of his career. Even the diplomatic reserve and 'economy of truth' with which the world credited him for so many years were marks of the ecclesiastical statesman, not of the religious thinker.
It bears out this classification of him as a man of action, not of thought, that almost every one of the forty volumes of which we have spoken is what might be termed occasional. His sermons, fine as they are, are occasional on the face of them. 'Tract No. xc,' is a tract for immediate consumption. The magnificent Apologia is but a pamphlet writ large. His Verses are, as their title-page informs us, 'on Various Occasions.' Even when he engaged in works that might seem to imply a purely theoretic interest, like his Essay on Development, they were written with a practical aim, even though it were a personal one—of working the subject out to 'quiet him,' as he said, somewhat after the principle of κάθρσις, familiar to the Greeks and to Goethe. His was not the writer's nature that is irresistibly impelled to writing and thinking for their own sakes. He thought, he wrote, that he might influence the actions of men. He did influence their actions, but, as a consequence, most of what he wrote has in reality died away with its practical effect, and of his forty volumes but a few sermons, 'Lead, kindly Light'—the one hymn of our language—the Apologia, and perhaps The Idea of a University, will form permanent additions to English literature. His histories are unhistorical, his criticism uncritical, and much of his theology is founded on his history and his criticism. His Arians and his Via Media, his Anglican Difficulties, even his Grammar of Assent, have mainly a personal interest to commend them.
And yet what literary powers were those that thus seem to have been squandered away on temporary objects! Bizarre as his reasoning seemed to most of us, how subtly he weaved the weft of it! Dealing for the most part with subjects remote from human interest, he would so order his argument that it would have the attraction of a plot for us. Topics that seemed forbidding both for their theological technicalities and their repulse of reason were presented by him with such skill that they appeared as inevitable as Euclid and as attractive as Plato. All the resources of a master of English style—except, perhaps, one, description—were at his command; pure diction, clear arrangement, irony, dignity, a copious command of words combined with a reserve in the use of them—all these qualities went to make up the charm of Newman's style, the finest flower that the earlier system of a purely classical education has produced. It is curious, by the way, that the only two men of our time who have written on theology and possessed a style, Dr. Martineau and Newman, have had Huguenot blood in their veins. And with Newman all this was informed with the attraction of a personality so rare and a nature so rich that the appeal is irresistible even to those who care little for his topics.
Yes, that was an exceptionally rich nature which has just been removed from the world. He moved many men, because he had within him the making of many men. He had points of contact with nearly all the currents of thought and feeling which were to transform the higher England in Queen Victoria's reign. That revolt of his against 'Liberalism.' as he called it, was prophetic of nearly all the deeper movements of our time. The resort to history for spiritual nourishment, which led him from the Evangelicalism of Simeon to Rome herself, has become a source of inspiration for the higher politics and economics of our time. There was something, too, of the romantic temper in him—that return to the mystic glow and imaginative colouring of the Middle Ages that has done so much for our literature and our art. Even the method of evolution appears to have operated on Newman's mind in the doctrine of development that finally led him to Rome. And that absorbing interest of Newman in dogmatic theology was but a foreshadowing of what has befallen most of England's higher minds during the past half-century, even when it has led them to agnosticism. England is the only European country that cares for theology, say continental observers, and its passionate interest in theology begins in this century with the movement with which Newman's name will for ever be connected. Even the rise of the interest in art and music seems to be foreshadowed in Newman's own personal fondness for them. Newmanism, as we may call it, included all these things, and thus touched the national life in the early decades of Queen Victoria's reign in far more points than might seem at first sight to be the case.
But it was chiefly and mainly in his passion for theology that he came nearest to the higher strivings of his countrymen. In no one of his time was manifested more strongly the wish to believe which some of his disciples have ranked so high above the desire to know. His whole life was dominated by this wish, and it is this that gives such dramatic unity to the Apologia. No other autobiography—certainly not that of St. Augustine, its nearest prototype in literature—is so intensely theological. It is not the life of a man we read, it is the drama of a soul, and of a soul entirely occupied with the relations of itself to God. Surely few men have always lived their life so completely in the great Taskmaster's eye. He seems to have ever lived in the spirit of that childish fancy of his, that the men around him were angels disguised in human form—in other words, that God and he were the only noumenal realities of the world. It was characteristic of his whole tone of thought that in dealing with what seemed to be a purely logical problem in his Grammar of Assent, he postulated a new sense—the Illative Sense—clearly for the one purpose of giving validity to faith. Logician as he was, he subordinated here, as elsewhere, the claims of logic to the claims of theology.
What was it, then, that caused 'Newmanism' to be ultimately ineffective and led Newman further and further away from the main currents of English thought and feeling? All these rich forces of his spiritual nature were tyrannised over by a subtle intellect and a passion for logical consequence which is furthest removed from English habits of mind, and may, perhaps, be traced to his Huguenot mother, as it has been equally exemplified, though in an opposite direction, by Professor Newman, the Cardinal's brother. No Frenchman could be more consequent in following logic to an absurdity than Newman. Now English institutions, whether of State or Church, are founded on compromise, or the renunciation of logical consistency. Hence the aloofness of Newman from the practical course of English politics, ecclesiastical or constitutional. There is something foreign about his whole tone of thinking, which has found a natural and logical outcome in his death as a cardinal of the Roman Church. The same attitude of mind accounts for his deficiency in the essentially English feeling of humour, which is intimately connected with the spirit of compromise. Irony he possessed in all its efficacy, but the attempts at humour in his so-called novels, Loss and Gain and Callista, are strained in the extreme.
How comes it, then, that Newman, of all men in the world, with his hatred of compromise and thirst after logicality, should have ever thought to find rest in a via media, a compromise among compromises? There comes in another quality of his mind, which is equally un-English outside the particular profession for which it is appropriate. In reckoning up the formative influences on his character, something should be said of the legal tone which was given to it in early years by the fact that he was intended for the Bar. There is a curious touch of the man of the world in much that was done and said by the author of the Dream of Gerontius. In much of his dialectic there is a subtlety of distinction which recalls the legal quibble, and at times even the legal fiction. It was a crude feeling of this that caused Kingsley to ask his famous question, 'What, then, does Dr. Newman mean?' to which he obtained so crushing a reply. To the Philistine truth is a matter of yea or nay; there is no place for subtle gradations of meaning and reference. Kingsley was, with all his powers, something of a Philistine, and required this sharpness of outline in what we may term truths of the emotions. Newman easily overthrew the contention, but the very subtleties which he had to introduce into his defence, in all parts of it that were not merely personal, gave the British public an uneasy feeling that there was some justification for Kingsley's general position. Newman amply vindicated his own personal veracity, but he was scarcely so successful in removing all suspicion of what is euphemistically termed 'economy of truth' in the practice of the Church he had joined, and in his own method of dealing with theological problems. It was the nisi prius tone that left this impression, and it was generally this legal and quibbling tone in the treatment of religious topics that helped to undermine Newman's influence from the time of the appearance of 'Tract No. xc.'
It was, too, this nisi prius attitude that enabled Newman to believe as long as he did in his via media. It is impossible even at this distance of time to explain with any clearness the subtle distinctions which in Newman's mind differentiated the Anglican Church, as the via media, from the Roman Catholic Church. The distinctions he makes are exactly of the legal kind. There was no room in his mind for what Englishmen would call the common-sense method of solving the difficulties his own subtleties had raised. He never to the last faced the plain fact that the Roman Catholic Church no longer occupies the position of the Church of the fifth century or of the fifteenth. That Church is so far removed from the tone and feeling of the modern world that it is impossible to consider conversion to its fold anything but il gran rifiuto of these latter days—a renunciation of all the privileges the modern mind holds dear; and, to do it justice, the Roman Church fully recognises the fact. But it remains that Newman did make the renunciation, and thereby declared his antipathy to the modern ideals. They who hold to those ideals may admire Newman, but they must condemn his renunciation of reason and its claims.
He had the head of a lawyer, we have said, but it should be added that he had the heart of a saint. The saintly life has never been more faithfully followed than by John Henry Newman. It is due to his life more than to his doctrines or his presentation of them that so marked a change of public opinion has occurred about Newman and about his Church. After all, men judge creeds by the characters they produce rather than by the logical consistency of their doctrines. That the pendulum of public opinion about Roman Catholics in England has swung back from violent antipathy to sympathetic admiration is due in large measure to the saintly life of John Henry Newman.
HUTTON'S 'NEWMAN'[1]
R. HUTTON opens yet another new series by a biographical essay on Cardinal Newman, which seems likely to be the first of many biographies of the late Cardinal. It is but fair to Mr. Hutton to add at once that it was prepared during Newman's lifetime, and has not been hurriedly written to supply a demand caused by the Cardinal's death. It is far from a biography in the ordinary sense of the word; of the man apart from the theologian we hear but little. Mr. Hutton has essayed to give a short history of Newman's religious opinions while he was in the Anglican Church, derived in the main from the Apologia, but told from a point of view necessarily less personal, and therefore more impartial.
In many ways the essay is successful in giving the reader the main critical points in that remarkable transition from the extreme left to the extreme right of Christian thought.
Mr. Hutton's abstracts are clear, and his criticisms judicious, if not profound. Yet somehow the total impression left is not a very decided one, owing, perhaps, to the absence of any summary of the main lines of development which led from Newman the Evangelical to Newman the Cardinal. The stages are clear, and have been discriminated once for all by Newman himself in the Apologia. It was difficult, if not impossible, for any one coming after Newman to improve on that statement, or amend it in any way. The chief merit Mr. Hutton's treatment can claim is that of conciseness.
The main lines of that development are familiar enough by this time to all who have read Newman's masterpiece. How the intense Evangelicalism of his boyish years was gradually dissolved and replaced by an equally intense conception of the authority of the Church, and how this led logically on to the momentous question, 'Which is the true Church?' how this was answered at first with the old high and dry Churchmen, and then, as the Erastianism of the Anglican Church as then constituted became clear, how the need of Church reform or reformation became apparent, and so the via media was devised as the ideal towards which the new reformation should travel—all this is something we have all known since 1864, if, indeed,, it was not known earlier. Mr. Hutton has now and again a comment on the facts or the views, or he contests the contentions of the Tractarians on various points, but as a rule he tells again the twice told tale, with clearness, indeed, but without much force.
It is only when he comes to the culminating episode—the composition of the Essay on Development—that Mr. Hutton offers much that is fresh or throws light on the matter in hand. The chapter devoted to this remarkable book is a closely written piece of analysis interwoven with comment that does credit to Mr. Hutton. He makes too much, perhaps, of the anticipation of Darwinism involved in such a treatment of doctrine. The idea was in the air at the time. Chambers's Vestiges of Creation, which appeared just then, was only the popularisation of much evolutionary speculation that was going on around Newman as he was writing his essay on the relation of doctrinal evolution and truth, for that is his main subject. What are the signs that show which doctrinal changes are development and which degeneration? That is the problem which Newman set himself to solve in the last year of his life as an Anglican. We all know the answer that he practically gave to the question, but it is of interest to have presented to us so clear a summary of the main points which led Newman to seek the true Church in Rome alone, and not, as heretofore, in the ideal Middle Way which he and his school were to make dominant in the Anglican Church.
The seven marks of true development were to be found in the Roman Church, and in the Roman Church alone, and therefore Newman joined that communion. The remarkable thing about all this is the intensely theological tone of the whole procedure—theological as opposed to religious. Mr. Hutton has a whole chapter devoted to a defence of Newman from the charge of being secretly infidel or sceptical. But to any one who reads a page of his writings it is abundantly clear that Newman never came within the region where doubt or infidelity exists. His whole attitude towards faith is a proof of this. He never needed a foundation for his faith, for the faith itself was a presumption in favour of the facts or feelings that were to prove the faith. This is perhaps not altogether a fair way of stating the case; but Newman is consistent throughout in declaring that faith itself is the most effectual way of removing the difficulties that attend faith, nowadays most of all, but that have attended it at all times in the world's history.
Indeed, this utter absence of any scepticism as to the fundamental principles of revealed religion is implied in such a treatment of theology as was adopted in Newman's writings both while he was within and after he had left the Anglican Church. It is to him the scientia scientiarum, a kind of deductive science analogous to geometry, starting, like it, with definitions, and assuming, like it, a number of axioms. This conception at once leads on to sacerdotalism, as it is obvious that the knowledge of such a technical science and its application to practice can only be safely intrusted to experts. Hence the opposition of the Tractarians to Protestantism, which from this point of view represents the claim of the common man to understand and apply a highly technical science.
When we combine with this confidence in the capacity of a dogmatic theology to solve the difficulties of life an intense feeling of the historic continuity of the race we have the idées mères of Newman's position throughout his career. The conception of the unity of history is implied in all Newman's work, and is the foundation of his conception of religious development that led him ultimately to Rome. Simultaneously almost with Hegel's philosophy of history Newman applied the conception of evolution to man's spiritual nature, before Spencer, Darwin, and Wallace had applied the same ruling idea to organic nature. That this should have led him and his school to Rome is easily comprehensible now, but Newman's history in the Anglican Church was a bold attempt to claim for her the same privileges as the Church of Rome in this respect.
Mr. Hutton rests his claim for Newman's greatness on the persistency with which he applied himself to the working out in full detail of his main conceptions in theology, and on the greatness of the powers which, as Mr. Hutton intimates, he sacrificed to those objects. He might have been, it is argued, a great poet or a great literary artist in prose, and he gave this up in order to save the Church of England and to devote his whole energies to theology. It is very doubtful, we think, whether Newman would have become a great poet in any other way than he did, as a hymn-writer and as the author of The Dream of Geronitius. It is, again, somewhat difficult to guess in what direction but the theological Newman's exquisite prose, which at times became over-florid in his Romish works, could have been effective. He had few of the qualities that make the great historian, his literary essays are not even readable nowadays, and his so-called novels are only of interest in their theological bearing. Newman's whole mind and spiritual feeling were against the whole position of modern research—he could not bear not to know.
Mr. Hutton is basing his hero's claim on a false issue. Newman's claim to greatness does not lie in any deliberate sacrifice of problematic powers for the sake of theological science. He deserves the name of great because in an age of materialism and superficial intellectualism he held aloft the banner of spiritualism, because amidst all obloquy and insult he held to what he considered the truth,, because he yielded up the proud position of a great spiritual leader to follow the inward summons. He has been one of the operative forces that have aided to transform England. It is for this reason he has been honoured and mourned by Englishmen of all creeds, quite apart from the merits and demerits of the theology to which he devoted his saintly life.
'LETTERS,' ETC.[2]
FTER a great man's death the floodgates of biography are opened. First come the press memoirs, often running to the length of monographs, then the magazine articles and the popular lives, and the climax is reached by the official biography; itself, perhaps, to be followed by rival lives, or at least popular summaries. This familiar process is clearly being followed in the case of Newman, and we are now in the midst of the first onrush of the waters. The three books under notice include the first instalment of the official biography, dealing with Newman's life as an Anglican, Mr. Fletcher's popular life, and a revised reprint of Mr. Meynell's excellent magazine articles. The two latter are written from a Roman Catholic point of view, the first from that of an Anglican, and thus together they cover the whole development of Newman's career.
It will always be impossible, as it will be unnecessary, to write or rewrite Newman's life as an Anglican. The Apologia stands in the way, in which he himself wrote his early life once and for all time. True, it is only the 'History of his Religious Opinions.' But with Newman, more, perhaps, than with any other man, his religious opinions were his life. Certainly Miss Mozley's work does not profess to retell the story of the Apologia. Her volumes are, in fact, a huge appendix to that work, containing the pièces justificatives for it. They are full of materials, but these do not explain themselves, and at every turn have reference to the events spoken of in the Apologia.
In large measure this supplement to Newman's religious autobiography is the work of Newman himself. He has throughout the two volumes edited the letters and added explanatory words and notes, which often read very oddly, interspersed as they are in the midst of the text. Indeed, it seems probable, from the date attached to many of these annotations,—1860,—that something like the present collection was intended to do the work that the Apologia itself did so efficiently. If that be so, the world owes a large debt of gratitude to Kingsley for having provoked the more artistic presentation of the facts. It would be quite safe to prophesy, if one can prophesy about past events, that Newman's name would have far different associations with it if these volumes, or volumes similar to them, had taken the place of the Apologia. While nearly every line of that masterpiece is of entrancing interest, there is scarcely a single page in these two bulky volumes which anybody would care to read again for its own sake. Part of this unreadableness is due to the want of explanatory and connecting matter. There is not even a list of the celebrated Tracts. The second volume in particular, which is entirely devoted to the 'Movement,' is in the main a collection of business letters, the business being of a highly ideal character no doubt, but still its details are in large measure of the character of machinery. Whether intentionally or no, almost everything of human interest has been eliminated from these pages, which are filled throughout with controversial and theological details, with scarcely any reference to the feelings and aspirations of the workers in the 'Movement.'
These volumes, then, must be regarded as a supplement to the Apologia, and their direct interest is the additional light they throw on its pages. The main increase of knowledge about Newman's life consists of an autobiographical memoir running to some seventy-six pages, and bringing his life-history up to the summer of 1832, the year preceding the beginnings of the 'Movement.' This is, unfortunately, written in oblique narration, and thus loses much of its vividness. Take, for instance, the following passage:—
'The Provost's butler—to whom it fell by usage to take the news to the fortunate candidate—made his way to Mr. Newman's lodgings in Broad Street, and found him playing the violin. This in itself disconcerted the messenger, who did not associate such an accomplishment with a candidateship for the Oriel Common-Room; but his perplexity was increased when, on his delivering what may be supposed to have been his usual form of speech on such occasions, that "he had, he feared, disagreeable news to announce, viz. that Mr. Newman was elected Fellow of Oriel, and that his immediate presence was required there," the person addressed, thinking that such language savoured of impertinent familiarity, merely answered, "Very well," and went on fiddling. This led the man to ask whether, perhaps, he had mistaken the rooms and gone to the wrong person, to which Mr. Newman replied that it was all right. But, as may be imagined, no sooner had the man left, than he flung down his instrument, and dashed downstairs with all speed to Oriel College. And he recollected, after fifty years, the eloquent faces and eager bows of the tradesmen and others whom he met on his way, who had heard the news, and well understood why he was crossing from St. Mary's to the lane opposite at so extraordinary a pace.'
If the reader will translate this back into I's, my's, and me's, the gain of vividness will be apparent. It is a pity that Miss Mozley did not induce the Cardinal to reconsider his choice of form for this autobiographical fragment. The gain such a narration receives from being put in the first person may be illustrated by the following letter embedded in the memoir:—
'On Wednesday, April 29, about breakfast-time, Mr. Wilson and Mr. Short called for me, and asked me whether I intended to stand for the scholarship. I answered that I intended next year. However, they wished me to stand this year, because they would wish to see me on the foundation. I said I would think of it. I wrote home that day. How often was my pen going to tell the secret! but I determined to surprise you. I told you in a letter written in the midst of the examination that there were five [candidates] of our own [men]; did you suspect that I was one of the five? A Worcester man was very near getting it. They made me first do some verses; then Latin translation; then Latin theme; then chorus of Euripides; then an English theme; then some Plato; then some Lucretius; then some Xenophon; then some Livy. What is more distressing than suspense? At last I was called to the place where they had been voting; the Vice-Chancellor [the President] said some Latin over me; then made a speech. The electors then shook hands with me, and I immediately assumed the scholar's gown. First, as I was going out, before I had changed my gown, one of the candidates met me and wanted to know if it was decided. What was I to say? "It was." "And who has got it?" "Oh, an in-college man," I said; and I hurried away as fast as I could. On returning with my newly-earned gown, I met the whole set going to their respective homes. I did not know what to do; I held my eyes down. By this I am a scholar for nine years at £60 a year. In which time, if there be no Fellow of my county (among the Fellows), I may be elected Fellow, as a regular thing, for five years without taking orders.'
These four autobiographical chapters and the accompanying inter-chapters in which Miss Mozley has given supplementary documents form the most important addition to our knowledge of Newman and his career contained in these volumes. They tell us of his early home and education. They give interesting details like that just given of his college career. Above all, they display him in a more secular aspect, so to speak, than we are accustomed to regard him. As he himself informs us, it was only on his election to the Oriel Fellowship in 1822 that the possibility of a theological career occurred to him. Besides this they give glimpses of the charming character of his sister, Mary, whose loss affected him so deeply. The fragments of her letters have a girlish charm that lightens the somewhat gloomy and austere tone of the book, so rarely relieved by touches of humour from Newman or his correspondents, the only exceptions being Keble and Hurrell Froude.
A large part of the first volume is taken up by Newman's impressions during his grand tour with the Froudes in 1832-33. Much of this is not of extraordinary interest, and might have been well omitted. Yet it is quite true—and this is one of the main points brought out in this work—that the solitary travel in Sicily and the fever that overtook him there formed the crisis in Newman's life. His escape from death might easily seem miraculous and a special sign of grace to so ardent a believer. But for the untiring attention of his courier, Gennaro, his life would have paid the penalty of a somewhat hazardous exploit. His feeling of special mission was intensified by the narrow escape from death.
The celebrated hymn 'Lead, kindly Light,' turns out to be the exact expression of the deep feelings aroused by his Sicilian experience; it was written, as is well known, on his voyage to Marseilles during his convalescence. Almost every expression has a personal reference: 'I am far from home,' 'those angel faces' (his father and sister Mary), 'Pride ruled my will' referred to the strong feeling Newman had that his Sicilian illness was a punishment for his self-will. Even 'the moor and fen, crag and torrent,' were probably the reflex of the deep impression Sicilian scenery had made upon him. If one could generalise from a single example—and one often does so generalise in the first instance—it might seem that the popular effect of a poem depends on the intensity of personal feeling with which it is written. A poem's impressiveness, one might say, depends on the number of heart's drops instilled into it.
On this Sicilian illness there is a remarkable paper of Newman's in this volume which is almost morbid in the detail with which it enters into each phase of the fever. Incidentally it contains a piece of self-portraiture, which is perhaps, taking all things together, the most striking thing in these volumes:—
'Indeed, this is how I look on myself; very much (as the illustration goes) as a pane of glass, which transmits heat, being cold itself. I have a vivid perception of the consequences of certain admitted principles, have a considerable intellectual capacity of drawing them out, have the refinement to admire them, and a rhetorical or histrionic power to represent them; and, having no great (i.e. no vivid) love of this world, whether riches, honours, or anything else, and some firmness and natural dignity of character, take the profession of them upon me, as I might sing a tune which I liked—loving the Truth, but not possessing it, for I believe myself at heart to be nearly hollow, i.e. with little love, little self-denial. I believe I have some faith, that is all; and, as to my sins, they need my possessing no little amount of faith to set against them and gain their remission. By-the-bye, this statement will account for it, how I can preach the Truth without thinking much of myself.'
It must be remembered that this was written in a moment of self-depreciation, sincere enough, but rather tending to exaggerate demerits and failings. But external evidence and the general impression made by Newman on his contemporaries show that these lines are more truthful than such self-portraiture usually is. With regard to his coolness there is a confirmatory passage in a letter in the second volume, where he describes in an amusing way his meeting Arnold—the chief representative of 'Liberalism' in the Church—in the Oriel Common-Room:—
'I was most absolutely cool, or rather calm and unconcerned, all through the meeting from beginning to end; but I don't know whether you have seen me enough in such situations to know (what I really believe is not any affectation at all on my part; I am not at all conscious of any such thing, though people would think it) that I seem, if you will let me say it, to put on a very simple, innocent, and modest manner. I sometimes laugh at myself, and at the absurdities which result from it; but really I cannot help it, and I really do believe it to be genuine. On one occasion in the course of our conversation I actually blushed high at some mistake I made, and yet on the whole I am quite collected. Now, are you not amused at all this? or ought not I to blush now? I never said a word of all this about myself to any one in my life before; though, perhaps, that does not mend the matter that I should say it now.'
Both passages concur in giving an impression of cool dispassionateness that contrasts with some of the impassioned language he used in self-defence against Kingsley and in his newspaper letters. Both Mr. Fletcher and Mr. Meynell remark that this passion was simulated and calculated on the part of Newman, who defended it on the plausible ground that the British public will never believe a man is in earnest unless he loses, or seems to lose, his temper.
The end of the first volume and the whole of the second are entirely taken up with letters and documents relating to the 'Movement' which gave new life to the Anglican Church, and led the leader of it to the Roman fold. It clearly forms the raw material—the very raw material—out of which Newman drew up his own lucid account, and it affords explicit information on every phase and divagation of Tractarianism in its formative period. But its very minuteness renders it practically unreadable; there is little or no connecting narrative—only a few 'Chronological Notes' of Newman's which assume in the reader a minute acquaintance with every turn of events in the long struggle. It thus affords a mine of evidence for the Oxford Movement, but its riches have to be dug for, and it is only to be used as a supplement to the Apologia or to a book like that of Dean Church.
That these documents should confirm the Apologia is comprehensible enough, for they were mostly in Newman's hands when he wrote it, and have practically been edited by him before now being given to the world. Here and there we catch a glimpse of editorial motive: thus the note on vol. i. p. 476, 'First mention of Pusey's name,' and the entries from Newman's Journal, vol. ii. p. 24, giving details of Pusey's movements, were clearly intended to dissociate Pusey's name from the 'Movement.' Yet it remains to be proved whether the impetus and force given to it by Pusey's social position were not vital to the development of the 'Movement.' As Mr. Meynell points out, it was Newman's family connections, or rather want of them, that threw the direction of the 'Movement' into Pusey's hands, and gave rise to the popular epithet 'Puseyite.' These are, however, almost the only instances of pettiness to be observed in these volumes, unless the reference to Golightly, vol. i. p. 165 ('he is better to know than to see'), can be regarded as such. But the intense minuteness in personal details shows an amount of self-will and self-opinion in Newman which is extraordinary in a man of such genuine modesty.
The total impression given by the details of the 'Movement' confirms the general idea that has long been current. It was an attempt to transfer the seriousness of Evangelicalism to the side of the High Church. In a significant passage (vol. i. p. 277) Golightly declared that the only young men in whom there was true seriousness were Calvinistic in tone. Newman had been trained Calvinistically, and was thus adapted by his training to make the required transition from the Low to the High Church. As early as 1830 T. Mozley recognised his suitability as leader of such a movement. Theologically and technically speaking, Newman and his followers made earnest, as the Germans say, with the conception of the Apostolical Succession and all that it implies: 'Apostolical,' indeed, becomes a cant word in these letters to indicate the aims of the party. Newman was thus, in Heine's phrase, though not in Heine's sense, a Knight of the Holy Ghost, and valiantly he fought the fight of the Faith.
Towards the end of the second volume Newman's development had reached a stage when Rome loomed in the distance as the inevitable goal of his theological thinking. It will come as a surprise to most people that this stage was reached much earlier than the final step would lead one to imagine. At first, indeed, he was unconscious of the direction of his steps; he did not know where he was leading his followers, because he did not know how far he was going himself. So far he could honestly deny the imputation that he was a Romanist in disguise while seemingly fighting for a via media between Anglicanism and Romanism. But it appears from a touching series of letters between his sister and himself that he was practically a Romanist in disguise for some years—probably as many as four—before he took the final step. It is curious that his consciousness of being drawn towards Rome should have coincided in point of time with the rejection by the Anglican Church, and to a certain extent by his own party, of the doctrines of 'Tract No. xc.' Here again we seem to have glimpses of quasi-personal motives in what appear to be doctrinal developments that clash with our preconceived notions of his humility and disinterestedness in the highest sense of the word.
There is one thing that comes out in these letters that is explanatory of much. He was a theologian, or rather a theological thinker, but he was not, comparatively speaking, a theological scholar in the sense in which we can apply that term to Dollinger or even to Pusey. It is curious to find a thinker who laid such absolute stress on authority in the living Church, and on development in the Church of the past, knowing so little about the actual facts of that development. Historical criticism in the field of theology was not born in his time, above all in England, and there is an utter absence of any appeal to it in these volumes.
Altogether these letters do not impress one with very high ideas of the intellect of the Tractarians. They all seem too deeply immersed in the practical details of their schemes. There is scarcely any discussion of principles, or even any distinct consciousness of the principles to be fought for. Resistance to 'Liberalism' in its inroads on the Church is a more prominent motive, it would seem, than any distinct conception of the ideals which they desired to realise. Even in Newman there is too much immersion in detail, and there is far too little of humanism in his letters to make them interesting. It is the 'Movement,' the 'Movement,' and still again the 'Movement.' Of life, of art, except stray references to music, of letters, there is scarcely anything throughout these thousand pages. It is possible that this was designed by the editor and by the Cardinal, but the result has been to make these volumes terribly technical and monotonous.
The two remaining books on our list deal more fully with the Cardinal's Catholic life. In one way this was a failure, his Cardinal-deaconship being a somewhat empty honour, and he never acquired any real influence in his adopted Church, such as has been wielded by the rival English Cardinal. It is, indeed, curious to reflect that Newman's theological thoughts on the necessary development of religious truth should have led him into the fold of the Church which practically negatives the possibility of such development. There is clearly no field in her economy for the theological thinker; the Pope's infallibility renders such efforts nugatory. On the other hand, it must be remembered that the late Cardinal's work as a literary artist was mainly performed in his Catholic period. His novels, the Dream of Gerontius, the Idea of a University, the Grammar of Assent, even the Apologia itself, were all products of his Catholic period. Except the Lyra and the sermons—but what an exception is there!—the chief works by which he will be remembered were written within the Church of his adoption. And his life in that Church, when it comes to be told, must surely be more full of human and natural interest than the somewhat morbid and gloomy period that closed in 1845.
- ↑ English Leaders of Religion.—Cardinal Newman. By R. H. Hutton. (Methuen & Co.)
- ↑ Letters and Correspondence of John Henry Newman. Edited by Anne Mozley, 2 vols. (Longmans & Co.)
A Short Life of Cardinal Newman. By J. S. Fletcher. (Ward & Downey.)
John Henry Newman. By W. Meynell. (Kegan Paul & Co.)