LIFE OF CARDINAL NEWMAN.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume x, Issue 473, 5 May 1882, Page 23

LIFE OF CARDINAL NEWMAN.

The time has not yet came when the life of Cardinal Newman can he written otherwise than as he himself has written it iv the Apologia Nor will the biographer, even with all the treasures of hid Eminence's correspondence at his di.»posal, find it easy to supplement with effect and to set foith with adequacy, those revelations which one of the greatest of modern English writers hafl made about himsdf. No one but a Catholic could delineate John Henry Newman, and perhaps no one but a Catholic who had begun life as an Anglican, and had loved the Anglican Church as the great Oratorian once loved it. What he was and what he left in the Anglican Church no born Catholic we ever met was able to realize ; and what he is to Catholics and what the Catholic Chuich is to him can never be dreamed of by those who are not of the Fold. Nevertheless, we cannot be sorry that Mr Jennings— a Protestant journalist connected with the Birmingham Press— should have undertaken to compile such a biography as was possible to him with limited opportunities and a dearth of new materials. From the first page of his volume to the last, fresh facts we have not found ; but we can afford to hear over and over again those sayings which have been our familiar iriends for years, and to be reminded of the details of incidents and acts which lave made an indelible impression on our lives. Besides, there is a public not familiar with anything more than the name of Cardinal Newman and to that public Mr. Jennings appeals. Moreover, he appeals to it in a tongue that it understands — in good journalistic H n?lish, never obsenre if never brilliant, never flagging if never soaring to the hkies. That Cardinal Newman should not havo wished a sort of imprimatur of his own to be put on the volume by a publisher's statement that he had read the proofs, we can well understand. In the first place his Emi-ence would be naturally sensitive about putting bimselt forward in connection with a biography in which he was the subject of warm praise ; and in the second place, ia doing so he would have done an injustice to bis friends by leading them to suppose that

the biography contained new records. Moreover, the Cardinal could not possibly, even at this hoar of the day, give a formal sanction to the publication of the famous letter winch ho wrote to his bishop at the time of the Vatican Council, and which found its way into The .some think providentially, and others the reverse. His Eminence hims-lf thought its publication imprudent— else he would ?w «^ c wlthMli 't— for h<i °wn»l, of the feelings which it expressed that be was continually asking himself whether ho oudit to make th.-m public yet dul not. Perhaps it was well, after all, that such a letter, whica must itself (or others to the same purpose from the same hand) have one day seen the light, should have been published before itspurpo tcor.ldberaUunderstoot: for assuredly it will need some knowledge of the events and the newspaper articles which Preceded { U n« ce ifi-S!i fi -S!i tlOn . of u Pap^ Infailib:l *7 *° know why Cardinal Newman felt little c.se than fear and dismay " ; and what he meant when he charged "an insolent and Hg^ressive faction " with makin^ " the heart of the just sad. whom the Lord had not made sorrowful"" If mdeod. there was one reason m .re than any other why we should regret the existence of that letter it is certainly not one of pity for If Veuillot, whom his Eminence scathingly compared with Murphy, the No- Popery lecturer ; but that the words of the Cardinal will perpetuate memories which we should all be glad to forego, and the recollection of distresses which the decision of the Vatican Council finally and for ever dispelled. And now, in the happy sense of security which folio A-ed tl^ decision, it is difficult to know whom most to commiserate— thi party who did not hesitate to agitate that the Council should give Buch and such a definition, or the party who dreaded that the Cnincil could be influenced by such an agitation •v v- been the fiUe of Gardinal Newmau to be ever in struggle with himself or in controversy wiih others-typical in this of his a*e. Open the biography where one will, the eye seems to light upon a wayfarer rather than on one at rest, and on a soldier rather than on one at peace. How he left the City of Confusion for the City of bamts is told by Mr. Jennings as nearly as possible in the Cardinal's own word*. The war to the knife with Achilli is recorded, and Mr. Jennings does well, after giving the rather pharisaical words io which Mr. Justice Coleridge delivered judgment, 6ning the defendant £100 to ad J that "even the runes, notwithstanding its Protestant leaning spoke out strongly, and declared that the result of the trial would deal a terrible blow to the administration of justice in England and that Roman Catholics would have good cause in future to assert that here there is no justice for them, whenever litigation turns on a caus* which arouses the Protestant passion of judges or juries" But, in recording the contest with Kingsley, there was a comment which Mr Jennings need not have added. If a man's widow be his bio<*rapher the world guns in the intimacy of the portrait drawn— at^he i expense, in^me cases, of the fidelity ; and if Mrs. KiDgsley chose to say that her husband generously allowed Dr. Newman to get tae best of the battle, because he understood the Oratorian was in poor health which might be made poorer by defeat, we should be barbarous to wish to deprive a widow of any consolation she may have in such a delusion ; but we do deprecare, as ridiculous, the serious translation of such a sentiment from her pages to those of the impartial biographer or historian. What, indeed, had Mr Kingsley to say, and where was his mode of escape ? Mr. Kingsley begins then by exclaiming—" O the chicanery the wholes ile fraud, the vile h- pocrisy, the conscience-killing tyranny of Rome ! We have not far to seek for an evidence of it 1 here s Father Newman to wit : one living specimen is worth a hundred dead ones. He, a priest writing of priests, tells us that l^ing is never any harm." I intcrpo-e : " You are taking a most extraordinary liberty with my name. If I have .=aid this, tull me when and where." Mr. Kingsley replies: "You said it, reverend sir, in a sermon wnioh you preached when a Protestant, as Vicar of St. Mary's, and published in 1844; and I could read you a very salutary lecture on the effects which that sermon had at the time on my own opinion of you " I make answer : "Oh * * • Not, it seems, as a priest speaking of priests ; but let us have the passage." Mr. Kingsley relaxes : "Do you know, I like your tone. From your tone I rejoice, greatly rejoice, to be able to believe that you did not mean what y. >xl said." I rejoin : Mean it ! I maintain I never said it, whether as a Protestant or as a Catholic." Mr. Kingsley replies : " I waive that point." I object : "is it possible ! What ? Waive the main question ! I either «ud it or I didn't. You have made a monstrous charge against me; direct, distinct, public. You are bound to prove it at directly, as distinctly, as publicly ; or to own you can't" '•Well," says Mr. Kingsley, "if you are quite sure you did not say it, 1 11 take your word for it ; I really will." "My word ! I am dumb. Somehow I thought that it was my word that happened to be on trial. The word of a professor of lviner that he docs not lie ! " 5| But Mr. Kingsley reassures me : "We are both gentlemen," he says, •« I have do:ie as much as one English gentleman can ezDeet from another." * r^ "I begin to see ; he thought me a gentleman at the very time that he said I taught lying on system. After all, it is not I, but it is Mr. Kingsley who did not mean what ha said." Habcmus oonfitentjni ream. J So we have confessedly come round to this, preaching without practisinc ; the common theme of satirists from Juvenal to Walter Scott ! "I left Baby Charles and Steenie laying his duty before him " s.iys Kin,' James of the reprobate Dalgamo : « 0 Geordie, jinglin? Ueordie. it was grand to hear Baby Uuarles laying down the guilt of dissimulation, and Steenie lecturing on the turpitude of incontinence." Other passages of Cardinal Newman's, more tender, bat none more masterly, we are tempted to quote ; but must, perforce, tear ourselves away from a fascinating topic. We owe Mr. Jennings gratitude for reviving dormant recollections, and we trust that a multitude of readers will have to thank him for an introduction to a figure which, when seen even by strangers, is not merely that of an author and a theologian— but also of a friend.— Weekly Register,