NEWMAN
800
NEWMAN
Pius IX died; and, by a stningo conjiinnturo, in that
same month Nowman returned to Oxford as Honor-
ary Fellow of Trinity College, "dear to him from un-
dergraduate days". The event provoked Catholics
to emulation. Moreover, the new pope, Leo ^HI,
had also lived in exile from the Curia since 1846, and
the Virgilian sentiment, " Haud ignara mali", would
come home to him. The Duke of Norfolk and other
p^nclisli peers api)roach(!d Cardinal Manning, who
suhinitteil tlieir strong representation to the Holy See.
Pope Leo. it is alli'ged, w;is already considering how he
miglit di.-itiiigiiisli the aged Oratorian. He intimated,
accordingly, in February, 1S79, his intention of be-
stowing on .Newman the cardinal's hat. The message
affected him to tears, and he exclaimed that the cloud
W!is lifted from him forever. By singular ill-fortune,
M;inninK umlerstood certain delicate jihrases in New-
man's reply as declining the purple; he allowed that
Btalement to apjx'ar in "The Times", much to every-
one's confusion. However, the end was come. After
a hazardous journey, and in broken health, Newman
arrived in Rome. He was created Cardinal-Deacon
of the Title of St. George, on 12 May, 1879. His higli-
etlo speech, equal to the occasion in grace and wisdom,
declared that he had been the life-long enemy of Lib-
eralism, or "the doctrine that there is no truth in re-
ligion, but that one creed is as good as another", and
that Christianity is "but a sentiment and a taste, not
an objective fact, not miraculous".
Hitherto, in modern times, no simple priest, without duties in the Roman Curia, had been raised to the Sa- cred College. Newman's elevation, hailed by the English nation and by Catholics everywhere with un- exampled enthusiasm, was rightly compared to that of Bessarion after the Council of Florence. It broke down the wall of partition between Rome and Eng- land. To the many addresses which poured in upon him the cardinal replied with such point and felicity as often made his words gems of literature. He had revised all his writings, the last of which dealt some- what tentatively with Scripture problems. Now his hand would serve him no more, but his mind kept its clearne-ss always. In "The Dream of Gerontius" (1865), which had been nearly a lost masterpiece, he anticipated his dying hours, threw into concentrated, almost Dantean, verse and imagery his own beliefs as suggested by the Offices of Requiem, and looked for- ward to his final pilgrimage, "alone to the Alone". Death came with little suffering, on 11 Aug., 1890. His funeral was a great public event. He lies in the same grave with Ambrose St. John, whom he called his "life under God for thirty-two years". His de- vice as cardinal, taken from St. Francis de Sales, was Cor ad cor lorjuitur (Heart speaketh to heart); it re- veals the secret of his eloquence, unaffected, graceful, tender, and penetrating. On his epitaph we read: Ex umbris el iinaginibua in veritatem (From shadows and symbols into the truth) ; it is the doctrine of the Econ- omy, which goes back to Plato's "Republic" (bk. VII), and which passed thence by way of Christian Alexandria into the philosophy of St. Thomas Aqui- nas, the poetry of the Florentine, and the schools of
Oxford. John Henry Newman thus continues in mod<
ern literature the Catholic tradition of Ivist and West,
sealing it with a manyr's faith and suffering, stead-
fast in loyalty to the truth, while discerning with a
prophet's vision the task of the future.
As a writer of English prose Newman stands for the perfect embodiment of Oxford, deriNing from Cicero the lucid and leisurely art of exposition, from the Greek tragedians a thoughtful refinement, from the Fathers a preference for personal above scientific teaching, from Shakespeare, Hooker, and that older school the use of idiom at its best. He refused to ac- quire German; he was unacquainted with (ioethe as with Hegel; he took some principles from Coleridge, perhaps indirectly; and, on the whole, he never went beyond Aristotle in his general views of education. From the Puritan narrowness of his first twenty years he was delivered when he came to know tlie Church as essential to Christianity. Then he enlarged that con- ception till it became Catholic and Roman, an histori- cal idea realized. He made no attempt, however, to widen the Oxford basis of learning, dated 1830, which remained his position, despite continual reading and study. The Scholastic theology, except on its Alex- andrian side, he left untouched; there is none of it in his "Lectures", none in the "Grammar of Assent". He wrote forcibly against the shallow enlightenment of Brougham; he printed no word concerning Darwin, or Huxley, or even Colenso. He lamented the fall of DolUnger; but he could not acquiesce in the German idea by which, as it was in fact applied, the private judgment of historians overruled the Church's dog- mas. Conscience to him was the inward revelation of God, Catholicism the outward and objective. 'This twofold force he opposed to the agnostic, the ration- alist, the mere worldling. But he seems to have thought men premature who undertook a positive reconciliation between faith and science, or who at- tempted by a vaster synthesis to heal the modern con- flicts with Rome. He left that duty to a later genera- tion; and, though by the principle of development and the philosophy of concrete assent providing room for it, he did not contribute towards its fulfilment in de- tail. He will perhaps be known hereaf t er as t he Catho- lic Bishop Butler, who ex-tended the "Analogy" drawn from experience to the historical Church, prov- ing it thus to be in agreement with the nature of things, however greatly transcending the visible scheme by its message, institutions, and purpose, which are alike supernatural.
The best authorities on Newman are his own writings: Col- lected Works (36 vols., popular ed.. London, 1895); My Campaign in Ireland (London, 1896) ; Medilations and Devotions (London, 1895) ; Addresses and Replies (London, 1905) (the last three pos- thumous, ed. by Neville) ; Letters and Correspondence (to 1845), ed. Anne Mozlet (London, 1891). Sec also monographs by HuTTON (London, 1891): Barry (London, 1904); BR^MONn (Paris, 1907); Lilly in Did. of Nat. Biography, s. v.; and con- sult: Wilfrid Ward, W. G. Ward and the Oz/ord Movement (London, 1889); Idem. Life and Times of Cardinal Wiseman (London, 1897) ; PnRCELL, Life of Cardinal Manning (London, 1895): de Lisle and Purcell. Life and Times of Ambrose I'hxl- lipps de Lisle (London. 1900) ; Gasquet. Lord Acton and h\s Circle (London, 1906); with caution T. Mozley, Reminiscences of Oriel (London, 1882). See alsobibliography under Oxford Movement.
William Barry.
IV
Kcw York— BlndcfS.
