Autobiographical Memoir — Chapter 2{53} IT did certainly startle Mr. Newman's friends at Trinity to find him contemplating an attempt upon an Oriel fellowship; and many of them it pained also, for they were sure it would end in a second miscarriage. They had not the shadow of a hope of his succeeding; they would have thought him wise if, instead of following an ignis fatuus, he had accepted one of the family tutorships offered for his acceptance. What would confirm them in this view was the grave fact, that he had lost almost the whole of the current year in recreations and diversions of his own, instead of devoting the time since he took his Bachelor's degree in preparation for a difficult competition. What his actual occupations had been appears accidentally from a series of passages in his letters home, and in his private memoranda, some of which shall now be given in the order in which they were written. To his Father he writes on his return to Oxford in February 182l, after his failure in the schools: I arrived here safe the day before yesterday, and have found a general welcome. Dr. [Note 1] and Mrs. Lee have been very kind. I intend attending the lectures on anatomy and mineralogy. To the same on March 20: I have been with Mr. Kinsey to Abingdon, to the house of a gentleman who has a fine collection of minerals. We were employed in looking over them from one to four o'clock. Some of them are most beautiful. When I come home I shall make various excursions to the British Museum, if open, for the sake of the minerals. {54} During this term he attended the course of lectures on mineralogy given by Professor Buckland, and made a careful analysis of them, which is to be found among his papers. To his Mother in the same month: Thank Harriett for her skill in steaming away the superfluous water of the nitro-sulphate of copper. The mineralogical lectures were finished yesterday ... I am glad to be able to inform you that Signor Giovanni Enrico Neandrini has finished his first composition. The melody is light and airy, and is well supported by the harmony. To the same in June: I have been very much to myself this term. Buckland's lectures [on geology] I had intended to have taken down, as I did last term, but several things prevented me—the time it takes, and the very desultory way in which he imparts his information: for, to tell the truth, the science is so in its infancy that no regular system is formed. Hence the lectures are rather an enumeration of facts from which probabilities are deduced, than a consistent and luminous theory of certainties, illustrated by occasional examples. It is, however, most entertaining, and opens an amazing field to imagination and to poetry. To these accidental notices of his employment of his time after his B.A. degree, others may be added, more complete because in retrospect. He says in passages of his private memoranda that he had now 'more leisure for religious exercises and the study of the Scriptures than when he was a fagging drudge'; that 'mineralogy and chemistry were his chief studies, and the composition of music'; though, from the time he thought of standing at Oriel, he gave considerable time to Latin composition, to logic, and to natural philosophy; that, as an undergraduate, he used to say, 'When I have taken my degree I will do many things—compose a piece of music for instruments, experimentalise in chemistry, thirdly [on which he insisted much] get up the Persian language.' In consequence of this last design, his Mother bought him an Arabic and Persian vocabulary, now in the Oratory library, but nothing came of it. It does not appear from any papers {55} he has left how this study came into his mind. Was it suggested by Henry Martyn's history? These notices have, perhaps, a claim to be introduced into this Memoir for their own sake; but here they are simply meant to illustrate the surprise and discomposure with which his good friends at Trinity, nay, almost he himself, in spite of himself, contemplated his resolution to engage in so forlorn a hope as an attempt on an Oriel fellowship. None thought it possible that he could succeed in it; and, at his suggestion, Mr. Kinsey wrote to his father with the purpose, as far as might be, of putting before him the state of the case, and guarding him against disappointment. He, Kinsey, told him that in the competition at Oriel 'the struggles of the best have failed'; and that, 'knowing the many opponents which his son would have to encounter, men of celebrity for talent and reading, he, the writer, with all his eager desire for his friend's success, did not permit himself to be at all sanguine as to his beating the field.' Mr. Short was as little inclined to look hopefully upon Newman's prospects at Oriel as the rest, but he took a larger view of the matter, and was not unwilling that he should stand. He knew enough of him to expect that he would do himself and his college credit, and he had strongly expressed this to friends of Newman in London, who, being sincerely interested in him, and anxious about his future, asked Mr. Short what he had to say on the subject, who answered them that Newman would not succeed, but that he would show what was in him, and thereby in a certain measure retrieve his unexpected failure the year before; he wished the Oriel men to have an opportunity of passing a judgment on him. In truth, it was, naturally and fairly, a matter of personal and collegiate interest with Mr. Short, over and above his goodwill towards Newman. The opening of the Trinity scholarships was Short's doing, and he had actually recommended him to stand in 1818. In the election, formidable out-college opponents had been put aside for him, and his failure in examination had been an untoward incident in the first start of a great reform. Mr. Short had brought out these feelings to him with the greatest delicacy, soon after his misfortune. On his asking {56} Short, in April 1821, whether he should write for one of the Chancellor's prizes, yearly given for the best English and Latin essays, Mr. Short answered in the affirmative, and went on to give the following reasons for wishing it: 'I have no doubt,' he said, 'of your producing something that either will succeed now or train you to certain success another year. In fact, the uppermost wish in my mind respecting you is that you may distinguish yourself in the rostrum, and prove to the world, what is already well known to ourselves, that the purity of our elections is unsullied. For should your old competitor at Worcester obtain high honours in the schools, sneerers will not be wanting to amuse themselves at your and our expense. Perhaps these reasons never occurred to you.' Short had said, in a former part of the letter, that he should himself have suggested to him to attempt the essay long before, but he had been anxious whether Mr. Newman's health allowed it. By a singular coincidence Oriel College that same year, and at that very time, was subjecting itself, and even more directly and wittingly, to a criticism upon its impartiality in conducting its competitive examinations, fiercer and more public than this, which Mr. Short only feared for Trinity. Though in that day the acknowledged centre of Oxford intellectualism, Oriel had never professed, in its elections, simply to choose the candidate who passed the best examination; and, though on its foundation were for the most part men who had taken the highest honours in the schools, it never made the school standard its own. Religious, ethical, social considerations, as well as intellectual merits, external to the curriculum of the schools, all told in its decisions; the votes fell on the men whom each elector in his conscience thought best to answer to the standard of a Fellow of Oriel, as the statutes of Adam de Brome and King Edward II. determined it. In consequence, there was ever the chance of the election of a candidate of a nature to startle his competitors and the public at large, as being unexpected and unaccountable. Such an anomalous election, as many men thought it, had taken place in 1821, just three days before Newman's letter to Mr. Short above spoken of. A second-class man had been {57} preferred to one whose name stood in the first class; and though the successful candidate did, as if in justification of his selection, gain the Chancellor's Latin essay prize a few months later, yet it so happened his rival, whom he had beaten, was able, at the annual Commemoration, to hurl defiance at him in the theatre from the opposite rostrum, as having been the successful competitor for the English essay. This essay, as being in English, gave opportunity for vigorous, brilliant, and popular writing, which was denied to a composition written in Latin; and judgment on the rival merits of the two men was thus shifted to a public opinion, external both to college and University, and in fact that judgment was passed in certain influential quarters to the disadvantage of the successful candidate and his electors. There was a Review of great name, then as now, which had for many years been in feud with Oxford, and especially with Dr. Copleston, Provost of Oriel, and his Society. An editor, whoever he be, taking human nature at the best, sometimes 'dormitat,' however 'bonus'; and an article against Oriel found its way into his July number, so exceptionable, to use a mild word, that in a second edition—according to the recollection of the present writer—sentences or expressions were erased from it. The article is upon classical study; and after speaking of the English Universities generally in that connexion, it directs its attention to their open fellowships, and to the nature of the examination usual for determining the choice between the candidates, and to the proceedings and the result of the election. The allusion to Oriel, and to the election made at the preceding Easter, was unmistakable. The following is a portion of the writer's invective, for such it must be called. [N.B.—Let it be observed I have concealed the really bad fact that the writer was the unsuccessful candidate. But Copleston has blabbed it.] [Note 2] Let a young man only abdicate the privilege of thinking—to some no painful sacrifice—and devote his whole body and soul to the sordid ambition of success, and the way to win {58} with such electors is no formidable problem ... After a dull examination in the schools—if a failure so much the better—he may begin to be the butt of Common-Rooms, circulate tutor's wit, and prose against the 'Edinburgh Review.' ... Guiltless of fame, of originality, or humour, our tyro may then approach the scene of action, secure that the judges will take good care that 'the race shall not be to the swift nor the battle to the strong.' Hardy professions of impartiality are indeed held forth, to attract unwary merit; and selfish mediocrity finds the most exquisite of all its gratifications in the momentary chance of harassing the talent it would tremble to confront. The candidates are locked up to write themes, solve a sorites, discover the Latin for an earthquake, and perform other equally edifying tasks; and the close of this solemn farce is the annunciation of a choice that had been long before determined, in proportion to the scrapings, grins and genuflections of the several competitors. Who can be surprised if, under a system like this, genius and knowledge should so seldom strike a lasting root? or that maturity, which succeeds to a youth so prostituted, should produce, by its most vigorous efforts, nothing better than learned drivelling and marrowless inflation? It is scarcely necessary to say that this tirade against Oxford and Oriel was as unjust as it was unmannerly; however, diis aliter visum. Such a spirited denunciation seems to have been considered in a high quarter just what was wanted to show the world what retribution was to descend, and what terrible examples would be made, if an Oxford college presumed to maintain a standard and exercise a judgment of its own, on the qualifications necessary in those who were to fill up vacant places on its foundation; and, though the Oriel Fellows were of too independent and manly a cast of mind, and had too high a repute and too haughty pretensions, to succumb to a self-appointed and angry censor, yet, in spite of their natural indignation at his language, the charge brought against them, as coming with so weighty a sanction, would necessarily tend to make them more wary of the steps they took in the ensuing election of 1822—more unwilling, if it could be helped, to run risks, and more anxious that their decisions should be justified by the event. This state of things, then, at Oriel cannot be said to have told in Mr. Newman's favour, when at length he {59} resolved on submitting his talents and attainments, such as they were, to the inspection of Provost and Fellows. For they could not pronounce in his favour without repeating, in an exaggerated form, their offence of the foregoing year: that is, without passing over the first-class competitors, and electing instead of them one whose place in the paper of honours was ever taken, in popular estimation, as the token of a mistake or a misfortune; an intimation, known and understood by all men, that there had been an attempt at something higher and a failure in attaining it. Such being the external view presented to us by Mr. Newman's venturous proceeding, let us trace seriatim, from his private memoranda, how it presented itself to his own mind. The examination was to be in the first days of the ensuing April; it was now the middle of November; he had at least four good months before him. He notes down on November 15: I passed this evening with the Dean—Mr. Kinsey—whose Oriel cousin was there. He said the principal thing in the examination for Fellows was writing Latin. I thought I ought to stand; and, indeed, since, I have nearly decided on so doing. How active still are the evil passions of vainglory, ambition, &c., within me! After my failure last November, I thought that they would never be unruly again. Alas! no sooner is any mention made of my standing for a fellowship than every barrier seems swept away; and they spread, and overflow, and deluge me: [hosper xun hippois heniostropho dromou], &c. [Note 3] He continues (December 1): There is every reason for thinking I shall not succeed, and I seem to see it would not be good for me, but my heart boils over with vainglorious anticipations of success. It is not likely, because I am not equal to it in abilities or attainments; it seems probable that I shall fail once or twice, and get some fellowship somewhere at last. Two months later, February 5, 1822, he writes: Today I called on the Provost of Oriel, and asked his permission to stand at the ensuing election. I cannot help {60} thinking I shall one time or other get a fellowship there: most probably next year. I am glad I am going to stand now; I shall make myself known, and learn the nature of the examination. The principal thing seems to be Latin composition, and a metaphysical turn is a great advantage; general mathematics are also required … Last 5th of January [1821], I wrote to my aunt: 'I deprecate the day in which God gives me any repute, or any approach to wealth.' Alas, how I am changed! I am perpetually praying to get into Oriel, and to obtain the prize for my essay. O Lord! dispose of me as will best promote Thy glory, but give me resignation and contentment. On February 21 he came of age, and he writes to his Mother in answer to her congratulations: 'I thought of the years that are gone, and the expanse which lies before me, and quite shed tears to think I could no longer call myself a boy'; and then, after noticing his employments, he continues: 'What time I have left, I am glad—and, indeed, obliged—to devote to my attempt at Oriel, wishing to prepare myself for that which (after all) will not admit of preparation.' Then he says, in corroboration of what Mr. Kinsey was saying in the letter above quoted: I was very uneasy to find by something in my Father's and your letter, that you thought I had a chance of getting in this time. Do not think so, I entreat. You only hear, and cannot see the difficulties. Those on the spot think there is little or no chance; and who, indeed, will not rightly wonder at the audacity of him who, being an under-the-line himself, presumes to contend with some of the first men in the University, for a seat by the side of names like Keble and Hawkins? He wished his home friends not to share his hopes, lest they should have to share his disappointment. The chances were much against him; his hopes, nevertheless, were high, but while an avowal of this might mislead those who did not know Oxford, it would incur the ridicule of those who did. His hopes are recorded in a memorandum made the next day: I have called on Tyler today [the then Dean of Oriel]. I do not know how it happens, but I certainly feel very confident with respect to Oriel, and seem to myself to have a great {61} chance of success. Hope leads me on to fancy my confidence itself has something of success in it, and I seem to recollect something of the same kind of ardour when I stood at Trinity. However, before many weeks were out, he was obliged to let out to his Father the hopes he had been so carefully concealing from him. Made anxious by the tone of his son's letter, written on occasion of his birthday, he wrote to warn him that, if he continued in the desponding temper which his letters home betokened, he certainly would not be able to do justice to his talents and attainments, and would be the cause of his own failure. This obliged him to answer on March 15 thus: I assure you that they know very little of me, and judge very superficially of me, who think I do not put a value on myself relatively to others. I think (since I am forced to speak boastfully) few have attained the facility of comprehension which I have arrived at from the regularity and constancy of my reading, and the laborious and nerve-bracing and fancy-repressing study of mathematics, which has been my principal subject. On the 18th he repeats in a private memorandum: I fear I am treasuring up for myself great disappointment; for I think I have a great chance of succeeding. I lay great stress on the attention I have given to mathematics, on account of the general strength it imparts to the mind. Besides, ever since my attempts at school, I have given great time to composition. As when I was going up for my degree examination every day made my hopes fainter, so now they seem to swell and ripen as the time approaches. The examination was now close at hand, and he suffered some reaction of feeling when he plunged into it. On the close of it he thus writes: I have several times been much comforted yesterday and today by a motto in Oriel hall [in a coat of arms in a window], Pie repone te. I am now going to bed, and have been very calm the whole evening. Before I look into this book again it will be decided. {62} Next day—the Friday in Easter week—he writes: 'I have this morning been elected Fellow of Oriel.' [Note 4] Some account of what passed in this, to him, memorable day is introduced in his 'Apologia'; other incidents of it are noted in his letters to members of his family, and others again he used to recount at a later date to his friends. When the examination had got as far as the third day, his papers had made that impression on Dr. Copleston and others of the electors, that three of them—James, Tyler, and Dornford—went over to Trinity to make inquiries of the Fellows about his antecedents and general character. This, of course, was done in confidence; nor did his kind tutor, Mr. Short, in any degree violate it; at the same time he was himself so excited by this visit, that he could not help sending for Mr. Newman on the pretext of inquiring of him what had been his work, and how he had done it; and by the encouraging tone in which he commented on his answers, he did him a great deal of good [Note 5]. Newman used to relate how, when sent for, he found Mr. Short at an early dinner in his rooms, being about to start from Oxford; and how Short made him sit down at table and partake of his lamb cutlets and fried parsley—a bodily refreshment which had some share in the reassurance with which Short's words inspired him. He wrote to his Mother in retrospect, some three weeks after, 'Short elevated me so much, and made me fancy I had done so well, that on Wednesday I construed some part of my [viva voce] passages with very great readiness and even accuracy.' Mr. Newman used also to relate the mode in which the announcement of his success was made to him. 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 {63} 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 not 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 down stairs 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. He repeats, in his letter to his Mother, a circumstance in his first interview, which followed, with the Provost and Fellows—which in his 'Apologia' he has quoted from his letter to Mr. Bowden: 'I could bear the congratulations of Copleston, but when Keble advanced to take my hand I quite shrank, and could have nearly shrunk into the floor, ashamed at so great an honour—however, I shall soon be used to this.' He pursues his history of the day thus: … The news spread to Trinity with great rapidity. I had hardly been in Kinsey's room a minute when in rushed Ogle like one mad. Then I proceeded to the President's, and in rushed Ogle again. I find that Tomlinson rushed into Echalaz's room, nearly knocking down the door, to communicate the news. Echalaz in turn ran down stairs; Tompson heard a noise and my name mentioned, and rushed out also; and in the room opposite found Echalaz, Ogle, and Ward. Men hurried from all directions to Trinity to their acquaintance there, to congratulate them on the success of their college. The bells were set ringing from three towers (I had to pay for them). The men who were staying up at Trinity, reading for their degree, accuse me of having spoilt their day's reading. {64} There is a letter from him to his brother Charles, in which he says 'I took my seat in chapel, and dined with a large party in the Common-Room. I sat next to Keble, and, as I had heard him represented, he is more like an undergraduate than the first man in Oxford; so perfectly unassuming and unaffected in his manner.' And, lastly, he says in a letter to his Father: 'I am absolutely a member of the Common-Room; am called by them "Newman," and am abashed, and find I must soon learn to call them "Keble," "Hawkins," "Tyler."' So ends the eventful day. As to Mr. Newman, he ever felt this twelfth of April, 1822, to be the turning-point of his life, and of all days most memorable. It raised him from obscurity and need, to competency and reputation. He never wished anything better or higher than, in the words of the epitaph, 'to live and die a Fellow of Oriel.' Henceforth, his way was clear before him; and he was constant all through his life, as his intimate friends know, in his thankful remembrance year after year of this great mercy of Divine providence. Nor was it in its secular aspect only that it was so unique an event in his history; it opened upon him a theological career, placing him upon the high and broad platform of University society and intelligence, and bringing him across those various influences, personal and intellectual, and the teaching of those various schools of ecclesiastical thought, whereby the religious sentiment in his mind, which had been his blessing from the time he left school, was gradually developed and formed and brought on to its legitimate issues. This narrative of his attempt and its success will be most suitably closed by the judgment on his examination, as given by the very man to whom, more than to anyone, the Oriel examinations owed their form and colour, and who specially on that account had to meet the stress of those Northern criticisms which, in their most concentrated and least defensible shape, have been exhibited above. 'That defect,' says Bishop Copleston, speaking of the qualifications of a Fellow, in a letter to Dr. Hawkins under date of May 2, 1843, 'which I always saw and lamented in examiners, and in {65} vain endeavoured to remedy, still seems not only to exist but increases—the quackery of the schools. Every election to a fellowship which tends to discourage the narrow and almost the technical routine of public examinations, I consider as an important triumph. You remember Newman himself was an example. He was not even a good classical scholar, yet in mind and power of composition, and in taste and knowledge, he was decidedly superior to some competitors who were a class above him in the schools.' As Mr. Newman held the important offices of tutor and public examiner in the years which followed, it may be right to observe here that immediately on his becoming Fellow of Oriel, he set himself to make up his deficiency in critical scholarship, and with very fair success. Whately, soon after his election, among his other kind offices, signified this to him, being what he said a little bird had told him. Top | Contents | Biographies | Home Letters and Extracts Connecting Chapters 2. and 3. of the Autobiographical MemoirThere remains a letter, from a school-fellow and University friend, which shows the popular estimate of an Oriel fellowship as well as the writer's sense of his friend's power: F. R. THRESHER TO JOHN HENRY NEWMAN April 12, 1822. In a letter with some college details to his Father he speaks of Keble: May 16, 1822. TO HIS SISTER HARRIETT August 2, 1822. The following lines speak of the fatigue to hand and wrist that continuous writing was to Mr. Newman through life: TO HIS SISTER August 17, 1822. Possibly the care and attention used to defy this weakness may have contributed to the beauty and precision which Mr. Newman's handwriting maintained to the end. Mr. Newman spent the Long Vacation of 1822 in Oxford, where his youngest brother Francis, about to enter Worcester College, joined him. In expectation of his arrival he writes to his Mother: September 25, 1822. The only way ultimately to succeed is to do things thoroughly. I lost much time by superficial reading during the whole Long Vacation this time two years. Francis shall not go such bad ways to work. Liber sum (my pupil having gone), and I have been humming, whistling, and laughing loud to myself all day. At the end of the following letter a name occurs which was in the future to be closely connected with his own. TO HIS FATHER Dr. and Mrs. Lee were kind enough to call on me and ask me to dinner to meet Serjeant Frere, Head of Downing College. Mrs. Frere sings finely. Serjeant Frere seems to have a great veneration for Copleston, and asked me much about him. He did not know him. Directly he heard I was of Oriel he turned round, as if the name of the college was an old acquaintance. I mentioned to you the names of Greswell, Pusey, and Churton, who are to stand next year. Surely I should have had no chance next year if I had not succeeded this. Of his brother Francis, who was reading with him up to November 29 of this year, when he was entered at Worcester College, Mr. Newman writes to his Mother: Oriel: November 5, 1822. It was a time of family anxieties, in which Mr. Newman eagerly took his part. To his Father he had written, Dec. 5, 1822: 'Everything will—I see it will—be very right if only you will let me manage'; telling him in the same letter of his work lately undertaken for the 'Encyclopædia Metropolitana.' Mrs. Newman acknowledges his letter a few days after: December 12, 1822. And that he did manage may be gathered from indirect notices. Looking back in 1823 on the past year 1822, Mr. Newman writes in a private journal: This year past (1822) has been a scene of laborious study from the commencement to the close. Let me praise that excessive mercy which has blessed me with so strong a frame. I have sometimes quite trembled on retiring to rest at my own exertions. Quite well, indeed, am I; free from headache and every pain. {69} Recalling this year later on, there is added: For the Long Vacation of 1822 I took, for I do not know how long, only four hours' sleep. The year 1823 begins busily. To his Mother Mr. Newman writes: I have four pupils. I have since had an application from a Merton man, and this morning from a Wadham man. My fourth pupil is from Exeter, very docile and very nice ... Mr. Mayer passed through Oxford on Tuesday, and dined with me in Hall. The President of Corpus died about ten days since. He was the father of the University, being entered in George II.'s time. TO HIS SISTER HARRIETT July 23, 1823. The Oriel election is coming on very soon. There are very strong men standing. Besides Mr. Pusey, whom I think you have heard me mention, there are two Queen's men (one a double first), a Brasenose, who has read (his friends are ready to depose) twelve hours a day ever since he came to Oxford; a Balliol; Mr. Proctor, of Jesus; an Oriel; and two Trinity. All are first classes except the two last. In a book of private memoranda occur the following thoughts written in 1823: April 6.—If a man speaks incoherently, as I think, on regeneration, if he speaks of the merit of works, if he speaks of man's natural free will, I may suppose I do not understand him, and that we differ in terms. But when he talks of our natural sin as an infirmity and I as a disease, he as an imperfection and I as a poison, he as making man imperfect, as the {70} angels may be, I as making him the foe of God, and an object of God's wrath, here we can come to no argument with each other, but one or other of us must fearfully mistake the Scriptures. Again: April 13.—We are apt to get censorious with respect to others as soon as we ourselves have adopted any new strictness. At least, that is the case with me. For a long time after God had vouchsafed His grace to me, I saw no harm in going to the play. [Till 1821. But I don't suppose I can have gone more than once or twice between 1816 and 1820.] Directly I changed I grew uncharitable towards those who went. While I was an undergraduate I profaned Sunday; for instance, I made no objection to reading newspapers on Sunday; yet the minute I leave off this practice, I can hardly bring myself to believe anyone to have a renewed mind who does so. Humility is the root of charity. Charity hopeth all things, even as regards those who outwardly appear offending. Time following letter, to a young man of sceptical opinions, is of the same date—1823: … I cannot conclude this without adverting to the subject which engaged our attention on our last walk. We find one man of one opinion on religion, another of another; and thus may be led hastily to conclude that opinions diametrically opposed to each other, may be held without danger to one side or the other in a future state. But contradictions can be no more true in religion than in astronomy or chemistry; and there is this most important distinction between scientific and religious opinions, that, whereas errors in the former are unattended with danger to the person who maintains them, he who 'holdeth not the faith' (I am not now determining what that faith is), such a one is said to be incapable of true moral excellence, and so exposed to the displeasure of God. The first point, then, is to press upon the conscience that we are playing with edged tools; if, instead of endeavouring perseveringly to ascertain what the truth is, we consider the subject carelessly, captiously, or with indifference. Now it will be found, I presume, on a slight examination, that the generality of men have not made up their religious views in this sincere spirit … This is not the frame of mind in which they can hope for success in any worldly pursuit; why then in that most difficult one of religious {71} truth? ... I should be grieved if you thought I was desirous of affecting superior wisdom, or gaining converts to a set of opinions. In every one of us there is naturally a void, a restlessness, a hunger of the soul, a craving after some unknown and vague happiness, which we suppose seated in wealth, fame, knowledge, in fact any worldly good which we are not ourselves possessed of ... Mr. Newman's letters to his sisters about this date show an active sympathy and interest in their education, and progress in thought and accomplishments. They sent their verses to him for criticism, and his answers always show interest and a mind at work. August 22, 1823, he writes to H. E. N.: My first reason for not having been down to see you is that I wish to give you time for perfecting your translation of Tasso, and your Andante minor. Again, speaking of his sister: Harriett has been showing me what she has done of the passage of Gibbon; of course it may be corrected, but it does her much credit. It is a harder thing to do than might at first be imagined. In a postscript he writes: Jemima is an ingenious girl, and has invented a very correct illustration of the generation of asymptotic curves. In a letter to his Mother he sets his youngest sister of eleven a task: For Mary I hang on the end of this letter a string of grammatical questions [Note 6]. The following advice was written about the time when, acting on his own precepts, he had committed the Epistle to the Ephesians to memory: {72} TO HIS SISTER HARRIETT October 13, 1823. The following letter to his Mother lets the reader into the social habits, with regard to costume, of the Oxford of some seventy years ago: November 1, 1823. I am beginning to attend some private lectures in divinity by the Regius Professor, Dr. Charles Lloyd, which he has been kind enough to volunteer to about eight of us [Note 7]; so you may fancy my time is much occupied. I have taken a ride or two, make it a practice to be in bed by eleven o'clock, and rise with the lark at half-past five. When I rise I sometimes think that you are lying awake and thinking—and only such apprehensions make me uncomfortable. The year 1824 naturally brought reflections with it, such as are found among his memoranda: February 21.—I quite tremble to think the age is now come when, as far as years go, the ministry is open to me. Is it possible? have twenty-three years gone over my head? The days and months fly past me, and I seem as if I would cling hold of them and hinder them from escaping. There they lie, entombed in the grave of Time, buried with faults and failings, and deeds of all sorts, never to appear till the sounding of {73} the last trump ... Keep me from squandering time—it is irrevocable. Writing to his sister Jemima, after telling of the prevalence of smallpox in Oxford, owing, it is said, to the poorer sort of persons persisting in having their children inoculated, and of his own re-vaccination, the letter goes on: March 8, 1824. Keble has declined one of the Archdeaconries ... The other day I had a letter from Bowden. He tells me that Sola, his sister's music master, brought Rossini to dine in Grosvenor Place not long since; and that, as far as they could judge (for he does not speak English), he is as unassuming and obliging a man as ever breathed. He seemed highly pleased with everything and anxious to make himself agreeable. Labouring, indeed, under a very severe cold, he did not sing, but he accompanied two or three of his own songs in the most brilliant manner, giving the piano the effect of an orchestra . .. As he came in a private not a professional way, Bowden called on him, and found him surrounded, in a low, dark room, by about eight or nine Italians, all talking as fast as possible, who, with the assistance of a great screaming macaw, and of Madame Rossini, in a dirty gown and her hair in curl papers, made such a clamour that he was glad to escape as fast as he could. We are going through 'Prideaux's Connexion' with Dr. Charles Lloyd. A very fine class we are! Eleven individuals and eight first-classes. Mr. Newman was ordained deacon on Trinity Sunday, June 13, 1824. Amongst his papers is the following memorandum, written shortly before that event: May 16, 1824.—St. Clement's Church is to be rebuilt; but before beginning the subscription, it is proposed to provide a curate who shall be a kind of guarantee to the subscribers, that every exertion shall be made, when the church is built, to recover the parish from meeting-houses, and on the other {74} hand ale-houses, into which they have been driven for want of convenient Sunday worship ... The only objection against my taking it is my weakness of voice ... Mr. Mayer advises me to take it, so do Tyler, Hawkins, Jelf, Pusey, Ottley. Through Pusey, indeed, it was offered. Yesterday I went and subscribed to the Bible Society, thinking it better to do so before engaging in this undertaking. To his Father he wrote when the matter was so far settled: May 25, 1824. I have much more business on my hands than I ought to have ... Again he writes: TO HIS FATHER June 3, 1824. As I shall be wanted as soon as possible, my present intention is to run away from Oxford by a night coach on Trinity Sunday night, or Monday morning, stopping an hour or two at Strand [Note 8], thence proceeding to London, and returning to Oxford Wednesday or Thursday. More time neither my pupils nor the duties of the curacy will allow, and I wish, if possible, to see you all before I am nailed down to Oxford. I finished the Cicero on Friday last; finished the corrections &c. by Tuesday, and despatched my parcel to town by a night coach. It will appear, I expect, in the course of a month or five weeks [Note 9]. TO HIS MOTHER July 28, 1824. About ten days ago I began my visitation of the whole parish, going from house to house, asking the names, numbers, trades, where they went to church, &c. I have got through, as yet, about a third (and the most respectable third) of the {76} population. In general they have been very civil; often expressed gratification that a clergyman should visit them; hoped to see me again, &c. &c. If in the habit of attending the dissenting meeting, they generally excused themselves on the plea of the rector being old, and they could not hear him or the church too small, &c.; but expressed no unwillingness to come back. I rather dread the two-thirds of the parish which are to come; but trust (and do not doubt) I shall be carried through it well, and as I could wish. It will be a great thing done; I shall know my parishioners, and be known by them. I have taken care always to speak kindly of Mr. Hinton, the dissenting minister, expressed a wish to know him, &c.; said I thought he had done good—which he had—in the place. Last Sunday I had it given out in church that there would be an afternoon sermon during the summer. From what I hear, on talking to various people about it, I doubt not, with God's blessing, it will answer very well. I am glad to say the church is so full in the morning that people go away; but that is not saying much. As you recollect, it only holds two hundred; however, there often used not (I am told) to be more than fifty at church. I wish very much to establish a Sunday School. The only Sunday I have been absent from St. Clement's was last Sunday, when I was at Warton. I had three services and sermons there in the day; but did not feel fatigue. The sermons I send you were not intended for compositions: you will find them full of inaccuracies. I am aware they contain truths which are unpalatable to the generality of mankind; but the doctrine of Christ crucified is the only spring of real virtue and piety, and the only foundation of peace and comfort. I know I must do good. I may and shall meet with disappointments, much to distress me, much (I hope) to humble me; but as God is true, He will go with the doctrine: magna est veritas et prævalebit. On the subject of preaching, a memorandum, written this year of his ordination, remains September 16.—Those who make comfort the great subject of their preaching seem to mistake the end of their ministry. Holiness is the great end. There must be a struggle and a toil here. Comfort is a cordial, but no one drinks cordials from morning to night. {77} The following letter seems to show that his Father had questioned the wisdom of house-to-house visitation—a feeling prevalent with lay Churchmen of that day, by many of whom these uninvited clerical calls were regarded as an infringement of the Englishman's privilege of feeling his house his castle. TO HIS FATHER August 9, 1824. FROM HIS MOTHER August 30, 1824. Pray take care of your health. Your dear Father desires his love. Adieu, my dear—that the Almighty may guide and preserve you in all things is my earnest prayer. TO HIS MOTHER August, 1824. My afternoon sermons have, thank God, succeeded very well, and I find myself much stronger in voice than when I began preaching. Thank Charles for his two French letters. Tell him the article in the 'Quarterly' on pulpit eloquence is by Milman. In the autumn of this year Mr. Newman was called home by grave accounts of his Father's illness, and found him on his death-bed. {79} FROM HIS MOTHER August 17, 1824. In a private diary are some touching entries on his Father's last days, in which he ministered to him. The father and son were very dear to each other: That dread event has happened. Is it possible? O my Father! I got to town on Sunday morning. He knew me; tried to put out his hand, and said 'God bless you!' Towards the evening of Monday he said his last words. He seemed in great peace of mind. He could, however, only articulate 'God bless you; thank my God, thank my God!' and, lastly, 'My dear.' Dr. C. came on Wednesday and pronounced him dying. Towards evening we joined in prayer, commending his soul to God ... Of late he had thought his end approaching. One day on the river he told my Mother, 'I shall never see another summer.' On Thursday he looked beautiful. Such calmness, sweetness, composure, and majesty were in his countenance. Can a man be a materialist who sees a dead body? I had never seen one before. His last words to me, or all but his last, were to bid me read to him the 53rd chapter of Isaiah. Mr. Newman died on Wednesday, September 29, 1824. In the same diary is the following entry: October 6.—Performed the last sad duties to my dear Father. When I die, shall I be followed to the grave by my children? My Mother said the other day, she hoped to live to see me married; but I think I shall either die within {80} college walls, or as a missionary in a foreign land. No matter where, so that I die in Christ [Note 12]. Shortly after the loss of his Father, Mr. Newman hears from his aunt, Mrs. Elizabeth Newman, of his grandmother's declining state. MRS. E. NEWMAN TO J. H. N. November 4, 1824. She lived to the May of the following year, having attained the age of ninety-one. On the notice of her death occur these words: 'She was my earliest benefactor, and how she loved me!' [Note 13] Some private notes remain of Mr. Newman's visits to his sick parishoners. One of these experiences may be given, as telling something of the matter and manner of his pastoral visiting: … August, 1824 [or possibly 1825].—John C ... , perhaps thirty-five: had been a coachman, and all his life in the society of coachmen ... For some months past, hearing he was in a declining way, I have called from time to time, and particularly {81}left Doddridge's 'Rise and Progress.' At length, the day before yesterday, I was sent for. He seemed very near his end, and was very desirous of seeing me. He talked of sin being a heavy burden, of which he wished to be released. 'God was most merciful in having spared him; and he ought to be most thankful' (and he said it with energy) 'that he was favoured with a clergyman to attend him.' Such is the substance of the conversation I had with him yesterday and the day before. Today I found that he had suddenly declared the weight of sin was taken off him, and tears burst from him, and he said he was so rejoiced. He seems very humble and earnest, and willingly listened to what I said about the danger of deception. I was indeed much perplexed, fearing to speak against the mysterious working of God (if it was His working), yet equally fearing to make him satisfied with a partial repentance and with emotions, and should do harm to his wife, &c. I spoke very strongly on our being sinful and corrupt till death; on the necessity of sin being found a burden always, on the fear of self-deception and of falling away even after the most vivid feelings; and on the awful state of those who, having left religion for their death-bed, could give no evidence of their sincerity. All this he seemed to admit, and thanked me very fervently. I am thinking of the cause of this. His mother, I see, is a religious woman. She cannot be indiscreet? Doddridge could mislead him—or is it the work of the Holy Spirit even in its suddenness? The correspondence of this date shows that Mr. Newman's name was becoming known beyond his parish or the walls of his college. The Athenæum Club was formed in 1823 'for the association of persons of scientific and literary attainments, and artists; and noblemen and gentlemen, patrons of learning, &c.,' by the Earl of Aberdeen, Marquis of Lansdowne, Davy, Scott, Mackintosh, Faraday, Chantry, Lawrence and others. MR. HEBER TO REV. J. H. NEWMAN November 29, 1824. If Mr. Newman should wish to become a member, Mr. Heber will be happy to propose his name to the committee as candidate for election without ballot. [N.B. I declined.—J. H. N.] {82} TO HIS MOTHER January 17, 1825. The subscription for St. Clement's Church amounts to above 2,600l., and the colleges are yet to come. Mr. Peel has subscribed 100l., so has Mr. Heber. Lord Liverpool's carriage being at the Bishop's door, has collected a crowd: Mr. Canning is with him. I forgot to talk to you about your delightful plan for next Long Vacation. In a note-book he writes: As yet the church subscription flourishes greatly, and my Sunday school is in a good train for success. I find I am called a Methodist. TO HIS SISTER HARRIETT February 14, 1825. TO HIS MOTHER February 14, 1825. At last I have managed to begin a Sunday school. We could get no Room of any kind. So Pusey was kind enough to give the church a stove, and now we muster in the church, but there is no Room. These words explain what follows. In order to use the church a temporary gallery was found necessary. The body of the old church, small as it was, being no doubt crowded with pews, and thus affording no proper standing or sitting room for scholars or teachers. TO HIS MOTHER March 4, 1825. I have undertaken for the 'Encyclopædia Metropolitana' the memoir of Apollonius Tyanæus, and the argument on Miracles, as connected with it. It is a very difficult subject, and I hesitated before I accepted it. It requires a great deal of reading and much thought. No doubt it will improve me much, but it must be done by September, and cannot be begun till June. I trust God will carry me through it. I am in hopes the 'Theological Review' will not claim my promise. [This hope proved fallacious.] TO HIS MOTHER March 29, 1825. The following tender mother's letter needs perhaps an apology for its insertion; but hers was a troubled life, and such pleasure as the letter shows, would have been at any time the greatest reward that her son's successes could earn him: MRS. NEWMAN TO HER DAUGHTER H. E. N. March 31, 1825. REV. DR. JENKYNS, VICE-CHANCELLOR, TO REV. J. H. NEWMAN April 30, 1825. REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO REV. DR. JENKYNS April 30, 1825. Accept my most sincere thanks for your kind liberality to the orphans of my parishioners, who, I can assure you, stand in need of every assistance. On May 29, 1825, Mr. Newman was ordained Priest. Mr. Newman seems to have been at this time in all but universal favour in his parish; but, if there must be an exception, his journal records what all experience will be prepared for as the obvious one: 'I had a dispute with my singers in May, which ended in their leaving the church, and we now sing en masse.' TO H.E.N. June 10, 1825. In the summer of this year it was arranged that on the Principa1 of St. Alban's (Whately) leaving Oxford with his {86} family for the vacation, Mrs. Newman and her daughters should occupy the Principal's lodgings during two months of the Long Vacation. TO HIS MOTHER July, 1825. His sisters Jemima and Mary had lately been confirmed. TO J. C. N. July, 1825. The Provost [Copleston] has been so indisposed that he has been to Cheltenham, and goes again, I fancy. Dr. Burrows has called on me, and in very polite language pressed me to write a third article, which I declined; to which he gave a rebutter, and I a sur-rebutter; and there the matter dropped. Tell Mary I sometimes think of her. REV. JOHN KEBLE TO REV. J. H. NEWMAN July 19, 1825. REV. B. HAWKINS TO REV. J. H. NEWMAN August, 1825. E. B. PUSEY, ESQ. (Fellow of Oriel) TO REV. J. H. NEWMAN Göttingen: August 19, 1825. I have now been here six weeks, read not so much as I wish, attend three lectures a day for the sake of the German, see what society I can, and hope to be able, at the end of the time, to understand German pretty well, but have not yet read long enough and variety enough to know it. As to what I have seen of German inquiry in different subjects, it seems to be much more solid than usually among us. I hope your church is rising rapidly, and that, without hurting your health, you feel the good you are doing. REV. J. POPE TO REV. J. H. NEWMAN September 10, 1825. REV. DR. WHATELY TO REV. J. H. NEWMAN September 27, 1825. I trust to come out the beginning of the term with a volume of essays made out of University sermons. REV. E. HAWKINS TO REV. J. H. NEWMAN September 27, 1825. In the Long Vacation Mr. Newman takes a short holiday with his friend Bowden in the Isle of Wight, and writes of its beauties: TO HIS SISTER HARRIETT Peartree, Southampton: September 29, 1825. TO HIS MOTHER Peartree: October 2, 1825. We have been round the Needles, made an excursion to Carisbrooke, dined with Mr. Ward; we breakfasted also with Judge Bailey. We have had music almost every evening; Bowden, you know, plays the bass. I saw Kinsey at Mr. Ward's. I have not been idle; I am reading Davison on Primitive Sacrifice, and have written much on other subjects, and thought about some sermons. I return Wednesday next to Oxford. {89} TO HIS MOTHER Oxford: October 26, 1825. TO HIS MOTHER Oriel: November 14, 1825. I can pursue two separate objects better than at first. It is a great thing to have pulled out my mind. I am sure I shall derive great benefit from it in after life. I have joined in recommending Pusey not going into orders yet. He has so much to do in the theological way in Hebrew and Syriac. Looking back in 1826 on the work done in 1825, there are again allusions to the clash of occupations pressing at this time. The refreshment of Mr. Newman's holiday had enabled him to return to the various calls on his energies with less sense of painful effort than he suffered from when such enforced breaks upon concentration of thought were for any length of time the rule. I have been involved in work against my will. This time last year Smedley asked me to write an article in the 'Encyclopædia.' After undertaking it Whately offered me the Vice-Principalship. The Hall accounts, &c., being in disorder, have haunted me incessantly. Hence my parish has suffered. I have had a continual wear on my mind, mislaying memoranda, forgetting names, &c. ... The succeeding to the tutorship at Oriel has occasioned my relinquishing my curacy to {90} Mr. Simcox, of Wadham, at Easter next; at the same time resigning time Vice-Principalship of St. Alban Hall, being succeeded by the Rev. Samuel Hinds. Time interval of a year and a half between Mr. Newman's election to Oriel and his ordination has been illustrated by his letters. It is now time to return to the Memoir, and its history of the influence of Oriel within that period on his mind and principles. Top | Contents | Biographies | Home Notes1. The President. 2. Wherever a note
enclosed in brackets occurs in the text, it is to be understood that it
comes from the pen of J. H. N., as writer or transcriber, whether these
initials appear or not. 3. Choeph.
1009. 4. Writing to his
Father, the words were, 'I am just made Fellow of Oriel. Thank God!' 5. Mr. Short told
him on February 27, 1878, when he was in Oxford on the occasion of his
being elected Honorary Fellow of Trinity, that, on sending for him, he
found him intending to retire from the examination, and that he
persuaded him to continue the contest. 6. Perhaps some
reader may like to see these questions. 'Mary, supply the words omitted
in the following elliptical expressions and phrases: Wake Duncan with
the knocking—would thou couldst. The Duke, brave as he was, shuddered.
So far from it that he fled the enemy. O well is thee, and happy shalt
thou be! You are as odd a girl as ever I saw. A thrill how sweet, who
feels alone can know.' 7. Dr. Mozley's Old
Testament Lectures, delivered to Masters of Arts, were undertaken by him
as following the example of Dr. Lloyd. 8. Where his aunt,
Mrs. Elizabeth Newman, resided. 9. When the edition of 1872 was brought out, the following prefatory notice was added, but finally cancelled by the author (Historical Sketches, vol. i. p. 245): 'If the following sketch of Cicero's life and writings be thought unworthy of so great a subject, the author must plead the circumstances under which it was made. 'In the spring of 1824, when his hands were so full of work, Dr.
Whately paid him the compliment of asking him to write for the Encyclopædia
Metropolitana, to which he was at that time contributing himself.
Dr. Whately explained to him that the editor had suddenly been
disappointed in the article on Cicero, which was to have appeared in the
Encyclopædia, and that in consequence he could not allow more
than two months for the composition of the paper which was to take its
place; also that it must contain such and such subjects. The author
undertook to finish it under these conditions. It will serve to show how
busy he was at the time, to say that one day, after working with his
private pupils till the evening, he sat down to his article till four o'clock
next morning, and then walked over from Oxford to Warton, a distance of
eighteen miles, in order to appear punctually at the breakfast table of
a friend, the Rev. Walter Mayer, who on quitting home had committed his
pupils in his parsonage to the author's charge.' 10. Mr. Newman
preached his first sermon, June 23, at Warton. 11. The Editor was
once told, by Mr. Newman's sister, that this was the text of his first
sermon. 12. In the Apologia,
referring to an earlier date, we read: 'I am obliged to mention, though
I do it with great reluctance, another deep imagination that at this
time, the autumn of 1816, took possession of me. There can be no mistake
about the fact, viz. that it would be the will of God that I should lead
a single life. This anticipation, which has held its ground almost
continuously ever since ... was more or less connected in my mind with
the notion that my calling in life would require such a sacrifice as
celibacy involved; as, for instance, missionary work among the heathen,
to which I had a great drawing for some years. It also strengthened my
feeling of separation from the visible world, of which I have spoken
above.'—Apologia pro Vita sua, p. 7. 13. See stanzas to his brother, F. W. N., in the volume of poems entitled Verses.
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