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
