"Heart speaketh to heart."
NEWMAN'S work is literature, of course, because he was an artist. And here the difficulty is not that he has been underrated, but that this side of his genius has been distorted, to the discredit of his ability as a thinker and a man. "One can never get too much of Newman," says Augustin Birrell; Professor Gates has shown the remarkable suitableness of his style for university study, and Canon Barry has much to say of lights and shadows, of the "English of the center" and the eloquence which runs through Newman's every page. Nevertheless, there are people for whom this supreme ability detracts from the worth of his prose; who see in it the note of insincerity as of siren melody woven with honest battle-song: and thus the "Cambridge History" finds that the author of the "Apologia" was "always, subconsciously perhaps, an artist." As if the weather-beaten theologian whose gaze was resolutely fixed on the opening gates of Hell was some kind of scented aesthete, fashioning phrases for their comeliness! He tells us, indeed, of the stern fatigue which the work of writing cast upon him; of times when he was ready to sink exhausted beside his table; of the similitude between the labour of getting out a book and the anguish of child-birth. He believed that the secret of style lies in an "incommunicable simplicity" which arises from the fact that an author has a single purpose and a single vision, and that through all his possible amplifications he adheres to it sternly. Newman's literary polish is something like rubbing a mirror to make the image stand forth clearly and realistically.
No. In order to understand Newman's artistic ability, one must know what Art meant to him. It was not Beauty only, or its reflection, but Beauty rendered useful: Beauty not as a spinster, a maiden, or a harlot, but Beauty wedded to Truth. To the end of his life he was Platonic in his love for symbols and in his reading of nature as a screen; hence the famous identification of music and angel-song, and his tryst with Wordsworth in the religious instincts of children. The artist is always a man who sees things, realities, in pictures, who has shattered the daylight into a rainbow; but unless he is a modern or perverted artist, he does not turn the spectroscope upon his individual candle. Newman saw the splendour of God through the windows of the world and refused to close his eyes; for his concern was not with abstractions but with men, images of a Creator. In consequence he was an artist who in following with abandon the light of his mission, turned the faded pathways of teaching and polemics to streets of glory.
What is most interesting in Newman's controversial work is the poise of his personality. One feels sure that he has looked the ground over, calculated the chances of the engagement carefully, and provided against any emergency. There will be no impetuous charge on an unimportant position, no reckless fan-flare, or waste of energy. He will engage the enemy all along the line, meeting him with reinforcements where they are needed, but will never forget the essential thing, which is to advance. Not that he keeps forces in ambush; he seems rather to deploy all his troops upon the field in open sight of the enemy and then to beat him none the less vigorously. These elements in Newman's construction are matched by the spirit of his style. He is now restrained, keeping his natural impetuosity sternly in rein, then vigorous in pressing the attack, and finally exuberant, eloquent, copious in the triumphant din of the victory march. This close correspondence is found also, in a remarkable way, in the steady mutual development of Newman's mind and expression. As his religious convictions deepen, his writing hand grows more elastic and he is not so sparing of emotion. There is one kind of inner life behind the "Oxford Sermons" and another behind the "Dublin Lectures"; the man who wrote "Lead, Kindly Light" could not have composed "The Dream of Gerontius"; and Wilfrid Ward is right when he says, "An eventful personal history and experience is the main cause of all that is recognized as beautiful in his style."
The materials out of which Newman fashioned his prose were all of the best. Early in life he had felt the sonorous rhythm of Gibbon's somewhat archaic but stately sentences, and a mind that fed on Locke and Whately could not have been indifferent to the sense of a word. Besides the classics, among whom the Cicero who "writes Roman" was his favourite, he loved the older poets, particularly Crabbe and Southey (strange association!) and the novels of Scott and Thackeray. Above all, however, he owed a debt to the English Bible, whose simple and fascinating diction has benefited so many authors. Newman never played the "sedulous ape," but found the pen a weapon which he gradually and laboriously came to understand. There are times when he speaks with actual contempt of the "literary essay," and he considered his poems trifles devoid of intellectual significance. In short, for all his attachment to meditation and prayer, he was a plain, blunt man whose writing was part of his business and who strove to make of it, accordingly, an efficient instrument. To speak of Newman as an "artist," then, is to employ the word in a sense which Oscar Wilde would scarcely have understood; for a counterpart to it one must go back to the ages of Christian art, when monks painted the walls of their churches in order to gain souls; when the workman was a sculptor because he had an idea to express and a prayer to say in his daily toil; when music sang the Miserere and the Gloria in the shadow of the Cross. Of course there were times when Newman succumbed to the temptation of a phrase. But the lapse is far less frequent with him than it was with the great churchman who most resembles him -- St. Augustine.
Among the numerous forms which Newman's writing assumed there was, apparently, none in which his genius exercised itself so spontaneously as in the sermon. Here he was most closely in touch with his ministry, and here his words seemed most certain of their effect. Moreover, as in the case of Emerson, much speaking gave him an accomplished ear for the effective sentence and provided scope for the test of his insight into other souls. At first Newman felt insecure; it was only too true that the ideas he laid down in the homilies preached at Oxford led to other ideas which as yet he had not explored. Deeply conscious of a voyage upon which he was being led, he was often forced to grope where he should have seen. After his conversion this difficulty vanished, and to the day of his death he spoke as a man confident, calm, seeing things as they are. What could be more striking than the contrast between the style of the Oxford sermon on "Faith and Reason," and that on "The Second Spring"? Note an unusually eloquent sentence from the former: "He that fails nine times and succeeds the tenth, is a more honorable man than he who hides his talent in a napkin: and so, even though the feelings which prompt us to see God in all things, and to recognize supernatural works in matters of the world, mislead us at times, though they make us trust in evidence which we ought not to admit, and partially incur with justice the imputation of credulity, yet a Faith which generously apprehends Eternal Truth, though at times it degenerates into superstition, is far better than that cold, skeptical, critical tone of mind, which has no inward sense of an overruling, ever-present Providence, no desire to approach its God, but sits at home waiting for the fearful clearness of His visible coming, whom it might seek and find in due measure amid the twilight of the world." How evidently is the spirit here held in leash!
Place beside this a sentence chosen at random from that paean of religious victory which Newman has called "The Second Spring": "And in that day of trial and desolation for England, when hearts were pierced through and through with Mary's woe, at the Crucifixion of Thy Body mystical, was not every tear that flowed, and every drop of blood that was shed, the seeds of a future harvest, when they who sowed in sorrow would reap in joy?" The difference in inspiration here is quite evident. But from, the clean sanctity of the rhythm in his later sermons Newman went apparently at will to the ornate eloquence of the lectures at Dublin University. In this case, too, his heart was wholly in his work, but that work trembled in the balance of Irish opinion. And the passage in which he treats of the amicable relations that had existed between England and the Sister Isle during the ages of faith will compare, for powerful appeal to an audience, with the best pages of Bossuet. Newman's rhetoric was the product of the successful and subtle blending of his own spirit with the views of his hearers. This it is that makes of oratory an art; and when the subjects upon which it dwells are perennially latent in the human breast, then it is immortal art.
It is in the "Sermons" that the lover of Newman will continue to find his most profound reproductions of the image of this world and the next. None the less, his thought would scarcely have become complete, or his style have reached its full strength, had it not been for the treatises. "The Development of Christian Doctrine" considered merely as literature provides an interesting study; it was written during a period of tumultuous transition, and the supreme inner struggle of a giant mind is reflected in the sentences which sometimes clench like fists and then open and are extended in conciliation. The idea of the book itself is original, daringly so; and the difficulties to be encountered hedge it in like a circle of spears; but Newman disposes of them, en passant, it would seem, were it not for his candour and earnestness, and moves steadily ahead with the force of his intuition. There are illuminative sketches, given by the way; brilliant illustrations wherever these are needed; and the whole is welded into a goodly vessel by indefatigable devotion and religious zeal. The epilogue is worth noticing, for it is really a dedication placed at the end. The author, torn by parting with his Anglican friends, leaves them his work for guidance, and goes into the future with his eyes shining but cast down with the weight of tears. To many these lines have seemed Newman's greatest prose.
The careful study and calm, clear analysis of historical situations borne out in the essay on "Development" are present also in the "History of the Arians," the "Via Media," and the "Essays," but these works rarely show Newman at his best. In them the student is more at work than the apostle or the seer, and after all these are the more interesting. The "Grammar of Assent," however, is not only Newman's most subtle book, but, perhaps, after the "Apologia" his most brilliant in the matter of style. There are a few pages at the beginning unworthy of him -- schoolmaster pages, justifiable only because the subject matter is too formal for inspired treatment. But what marvelous passages one meets with farther on, vivid with analogy and concrete presentation, glowing with the breath of a great cause! Chapters on the awakening of religious ideas, on the nature of intuition, and on the operation of conscience, have the slow, sure march of conviction moving about in the labyrinth of the human mind with perfect tranquillity. Or again, the treatment of natural and revealed religion walks the surface of the sea with ideal Christian faith, and the waters are calm; only the heart of the pilgrim beats with the melody of mingled humility and joy. The "Grammar of Assent" is not an easy book to exhaust; if one feels sufficiently interested in philosophy one can return often and discover new beauties, unnoticed before. It is an epic of the human soul, a subject perpetually interesting because of the darkness of its mystery.
Careful handling of a philosophic theme is what might reasonably be expected of a man so deeply religious as Newman, but the artistic alchemy with which he was gifted changed his thought into a variety of appealing forms. Ordinarily reserved with a quite Victorian dignity, he sometimes, when occasion demanded, indulged in laughter that was Gallic in its incisiveness. There are only a few traces of it in his earlier works, but when he set himself to the task of defending the rights and reputation of Catholics, his ability proved startling. What an amusing and yet effective expose is his picture of the Russian who had discovered the iniquities of Blackstone and set his countrymen right! "Loss and Gain," too, intersperses the story of a convert with witty portraits, of which that of the bore is the most famous. Still, he was urbane here even if very serious; the same quality later appeared to advantage in the "Idea of a University," where his description of a gentleman gives one of the most delicately ironical interpretations of insincerity to be met with anywhere. These things, he knew, would appeal to his hearers much more strongly than anything he could say directly.
Occasionally, however, this note of laughter turned acrid and struck its man down. Thus, in his attack on Achilli the ex-priest Newman minced no words, and though the blow he delivered cost him the humiliation of an unfair legal trial, it silenced Achilli forever. Who can forget, if he has read them, the mordant paragraphs of the reply to Kingsley, with their terrible arraignment of the latter's method in controversy? Kingsley was overwhelmed, and when Newman finally concluded and bade his devil's advocate "fly into space," there was precious little of him remaining to take the advice. In these pages words seem to burn, not with the morbid light of Byron's verse, but with the full radiance of indignation aroused to the defense of a holy cause. But this gift, which would have sufficed a Junius, was, as in Pascal, severely curbed. It was the same with Newman's other strictly literary powers. In "Callista" he wrote a novel which lacks, indeed, the broad life of Dickens or Scott, but which is as finely wrought as anything by George Eliot. In this study of the soul of a pagan girl who awakened to the appeal of Christianity and finally suffered in its defense, Newman read the spirit of a bygone age, the third century, as well as anyone had read it. There are delightful, fascinating descriptive passages, of Juba's madness, for instance, and dramatic scenes like that of Callista's martyrdom, which are not to be found in everybody's novels. Of course, there is no perfect technique and not enough human interest to satisfy the inebriate fiction-reader; Newman did not write for him. Nevertheless it seems safe to affirm that if he had elected to transfer his powers to the art of story-telling, he could have equaled the other great Victorians in the baking of what Thackeray called "sweetmeats."
There is, however, one book which in its own time and ours has been accepted as the highest indication of Newman's literary genius. The "Apologia pro Vita Sua" not only gained a complete controversial victory over hostile public opinion, but has been confidently placed by great critics beside the "Confessions" of Saint Augustine. It captivates by the absolute candour of its mood and impresses by the vigor of its conviction. Written at white heat, out of the experiences of a life singularly devoted to a noble cause, the sentences lose everything that is not elemental and tumble after one another like jets of crystal water. There is in the book no trace of flippancy or insufficiency, but the impetus of a full philosophy, an intimate religion, looking upon life with eyes that have seen. It is Newman's genuine novel, the tale of a soul that has hitherto shrouded itself in reticence, and now dares to show the purity of its nakedness. The traces of pain which it cost the author to make the revelation are evident; but he does not end until he has found the note of love and paid a gentle lyric tribute to the friendship that had shadowed his loneliness -- that of Father Ambrose St. John. Nevertheless, though the book is a personal record, it is remarkable to note how little Newman really says of himself; Jean Jacques would have narrated more private business in one chapter. What he is discussing are his personal beliefs, which he felt were objective realities that in some marvelous way had been vouchsafed him. Newman is frequently lost in the midst of Keble, Froude, Pusey, and others, but what is always kept in the foreground is the Faith. That alone mattered, and unless the reader understands this fact, Newman's clearest book is likely to remain the most obscure. He narrated the process of his conversion, the long duration of his doubts, his desperate effort to persevere in the face of strengthening conviction; and while he was quite individualistic in all these matters, what he was defending was the ministry of the Truth from the insinuation of dishonesty. That Truth would brook no taint, it would countenance no moral heckling; and to save it he took the last recourse of the apostle and became a witness, a martyr. In the Latin title there is the final, completing link with the original testimony to the Faith.
Newman's prose is at its best in the "Apologia," but it is good everywhere. He could and did write badly, but the bulk of his work is amazingly well done. Into almost all of it he threw the whole of his conviction and, having thought out a purpose, carried it resolutely through to the end. A master of the high art of refutation, which not only defeats existing objections but visualizes and meets others before they are aware of existence, makes his work bristle with barricades over which he sweeps with enthusiasm to the goal ahead. Newman felt the rhythm of speech as not even Ruskin perceived it, and his English is the language of melody that winds its coils about a theme as do Bach's notes in a fugue. He attuned the medium of sound not only to his own ear but to that of his auditor, and finally enunciated what seems the declaration of a great style:
"And since the thoughts and reasonings of an author have, as I have said, personal character, no wonder that his style is not only the image of his subject but of his mind. That pomp of language, that full and tuneful diction, that felicitousness in the choice and exquisiteness in the collocation of words, which to prosaic writers seem artificial, is nothing else but the mere habit and way of a lofty intellect . . . the elocution of a great intellect is great. His language expresses, not only his great thoughts, but also his great self. Certainly he might use fewer words than he uses; but he fertilizes his simplest ideas, and germinates into a multitude of details, and prolongs the march of his sentences, and sweeps round to the full diapason of his harmony as if rejoicing in his own vigor and richness of resource."
It remains necessary to say a word for the poetry which Newman created out of the leisure of his genius. Perfectly spontaneous, it has none of the artful diction, the compressed sensism, of modern verse. The lyrics of his earlier life, among which "Lead, Kindly Light" is the most popular, if not the best, are very simple expressions of simple moods, and in neither the thought nor the expression is there any of that haunting musical paradox which is the life of Francis Thompson. They either sing their way to the heart or fail utterly. "The Dream of Gerontius," however, is different, for there underlies this poem a powerfully dramatic conception. As the dying soul quits the earth and passes from judgment to the waters of purgatory, it is surrounded by the final life of eternity -- by the rapture of the angels and their Maker, by the malice of the demons and the damned.
"It floods me like the deep and solemn sound Of many waters,"
cries the soul of its guardian, at the same time describing the quality of this poem. The songs of the Angelicals, severe in their classic restraint and yet realistically fervent, are equal to any of the choral odes in Sophocles. "The Dream of Gerontius" is the only modern poem that could have been sung in its entirety under the chaste, aspiring arches of mediaeval Bourges.
Much might be said of other special qualities in Newman's genius: of his remarkable method of argumentation, for instance, which hemmed in an opponent on all sides with almost the cruel science of a German general at Sedan, left no avenue of escape, and then fell upon him and beat him flat to the ground. Again, Newman the letter-writer is an interesting figure, not only in the public epistles to the Duke of Norfolk, to Pusey, or to Bishop Ullathorne, but in that vast private correspondence which he conducted with infinite care, especially after his conversion and during the long years of his Catholic repudiation, for the solace of souls, for the conversion of friends, or merely out of the goodness of his heart. The private letters reveal Newman's character as no other documents do: they show his reticence, his melancholy, his purity, his joy, his pain at the criticism and alienation of friends. Here he was intensely human and most lovable; the service which Wilfrid Ward rendered English literature by publishing them without reserve is one that can never be too highly appreciated. All of these matters, however, are subjects for special study and will appeal to those who are fascinated by the manifold genius of a great Christian.
Newman's art is, then, a large and varied gift which he lent unstintingly to the demands of an apostolic life. Intensely personal, allied to the romantics by his trust in instinct and emotion rather than in mere caustic ratiocination, he is a modern whose soul is in tune with the soul of mediaeval aspiration. There was, however, nothing unbalanced in him, nothing simply picturesque and quite untrue; he had the center of the Great Tradition as well as its trappings. Examining life as it appeared in the arena of a large and cautious mind, he avoided sacrificing harmony to exuberance, without losing the vitality that alone makes art to endure as long as the human soul. Despite the fact that Newman was something of a Hamlet, one is struck by the absence of the static within his composition, by the ease with which he handled his numerous weapons and brought them into the service of his cause. Visualizing Christianity as a living institution which had grown into a great tree as the parable of the mustard seed had foretold, he studied the future in the light of the past, and drew from both the subtle strains of his art. The Christian Ages were for him not dark but splendid, and he listened to the mingled strains of the "Dies Irae" and the "Tantum Ergo" coming from the temples where saints and kings and people worshipped, until his tongue had learned the rhythm of the solacing music that sings the love and fear of God while it muses bravely on the eternal mystery of Man.
BOOK NOTE
The works of Newman are published in a uniform edition by Longmans, Green and Company. There are special editions of some, particularly the "Apologia" and "The Dream of Gerontius." The best single work covering the entire period of Newman's activities is still "La Renaissance Catholique en Angleterre," by Paul Thureau-Dangin (3 vols.) of which there is now an English translation in two volumes. "The Life of Newman," by Wilfrid Ward, is the best and most complete biography and should be supplemented by a reading of the same author's "Last Lectures." Other biographies are by R.H. Hutton, W. Meynell, William Barry, and S.J. Fletcher. A good French view may be obtained from the various treatises by Henri Bremond -- "The Mystery of Newman"; "Newman. Le Développement du Dogme Chrétien"; "Newman. La Vie Chrétienne." See also "The Oxford Movement," by Dean Church; "The Anglican Career of Cardinal Newman," by Abbott; "Letters and Correspondence of Cardinal Newman during His Life in the English Church," edited by Anne Mozley (2 vols.); "A Memoir of Hurrell Froude," by L.I. Guiney; "The Life of Cardinal Manning," by Shane Leslie; "Memoirs," by Mark Pattison; "Studies in Poetry and Philosophy," by J.C. Shairp; "Phases of Thought and Criticism," by Brother Azarias; "The Drift of Romanticism," by Paul E. More; "Obiter Dicta," by A. Birrell; and "Four Studies in Literature," by Prof. Gates. The periodical literature on Newman is vast. One may note with profit, "J.H. Newman and Renan," by William Barry (Living Age, vol. 214:347) ; "Newman," by T.J. Gerard (Catholic World, vol. 95:61); and "Recollections of Newman," by Aubrey De Vere (19th Century, vol. 40:395). See in a general way the Catholic Encyclopedia, the "Cambridge History of English Literature," and Chesterton's "Victorian Age."