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New Zealand Tablet, Volume LI, Issue 46, 19 November 1924, Page 30

NOTES

Cardinal Newman's English ' We wonder how marry of our young students of English have even a passing acquaintance with Newman's prose. It may he news to them' that so keen a critic as John Morley considered Newman to be "the most winning writer of English who ever lived." k It may be news to them also that, for the infallible use of the right word in the right place, and for the 1 ability to make his words convey the most delicate [shades of meaning, he has no master. Hear what Augustine • Birrell has to say about this: "The charm of Dr. Newman's style necessarily baffles ' description: as well might one seek to analyse the fragrance of a flower, or to expound in : words the jumping of one's heart when a beloved friend unexpectedly enters the room. It is hard to describe charm. Mr. Matthew Arnold, who is ■ a poet, 1 gets near it: - i And what but gentleness uiitired, And r what but noble feeling warm, ; Wherever seen; how e'er inspired, .;•••■;•--'•.■;..., ' Is grace, is charm? / ; One can of course heap words on words. ; Dr.-Newman's J style is pellucid, it is animated, it is varied; at times icy cold, it oftener.- glows with a, fervent heat; it employs as its obedient servant a vast vocabulary, and' it does so always ■:•; with.> the ease of the ■ educated gentleman, who by a sure instinct ever avoids alike the ugly pedantry of the bookworm, the forbidding accents of the lawyer, and -the' stiff l conceit of the. man of: scientific theory." Dr. I Newman's 1 sentences r sometimes: fall upon, the ear like' well-considered judgments, : • eiakih Wbrd being/weighed and%ronte# i dufc' withdignity aid pTeVMonJ ;liut-ai' , 6in , er the£%meßti6i* f &nd language 7 cif:- the juHge/ fcre%asftly for tyiein tfe. kaYe ft© U^etj^r^^^^ti^%- The-

toric, the brilliant imagery, ther-frequent i examples, the repetition of the same idea in different words, of the eager and accomplished advocate addressing men of like passions with himself. . , ~; "I have elsewhere ventured upon a comparison between Newman and Burke. Both men despite their subtlety and learning and super-refinement, their love of fine points, and their splendid capacity of stating them in language so apt as to make one's admiration breathless, took very broad, common-sense, matter-of-fact views ' of - humanity, and ever had the ordinary man and woman in mind as they spoke and wrote. . . - Dr. Newman, recluse though he is, has always got the world stretched out before him; its unceasing roar sounds in his ear as does the murmur of the ocean in an inland shell. . . Many of his pages positively glow with light and heat and color. One, is at times reminded of Fielding. And all this comparing, and distinguishing, and illustrating, and appealing, and describing, is done with the practised hand of a consummate writer and orator. He is as subtle as Gladstone, and as moving as Erskine ; but whereas Gladstone is occasionally clumsy, and Erskine was frequently crude, Newman is never clumsy, Newman is never crude, but always graceful, always mellowed. "In sarcasm Dr. Newman is pre-eminent. Here his extraordinary powers of compression, which are little short of marvellous in one who has also such a talent for expansion, come to his aid and enable him to squeeze into a couple of sentences, pleadings, arguments, judgment, and execution. Had he led the secular life, and adopted a Parliamentary career, he would have been simply terrific, for his weapons of offence are both numerous and deadly. His sentences stab—his invective destroys. The pompous high-placed imbecile mouthing his platitudes, the wordy sophist with his oven full of half-baked thoughts, the ill-bred thetorician with his tawdry aphorisms, the heartless hate-producing satirist, would have gone down before his sword and spear. But God was merciful to those sinners; Newman became a priest and they Privy Councillors." Rhythm In Father Russell's article on Rose Kavanagh, which we published in our Jubilee issue, the gentle Irish critic notes that Wilfrid Meynell sent back an early poem of Rose's with a note pointing out that the metre was irregular. Reading the stanza over, we noticed that there was fair • reason for holding that Mr. Meynell was mistaken. It has been the traditional way of English critics to reckon too much on quantity as measured by syllables and too little on quantity as measured by time. So that, > very often a poem which an Irish reader would render in perfect metre would come lame from the lips of an Anglo-Saxon. Once one leaves the poets who are fettered and shackled' by traditional laws of English versification, the dependence on the time measure becomes obvious. You cannot read Yeats at his best, you can hardly read any modern Irish poet, if you try to scan in. the old-fashioned schoolboy manner; but read with the feeling due to the lines/give the words their right music, almost chant them, and at once you will get it aright. In English verse one finds the-same thing exemplified. Take the hackneyed but lovely lines from Tennyson: Break! break! break! At the foot of thy crags; 0 sea! .' " " ' • ■ ■'"•' * " •'.'•-..'•■•... : , Try to scan these lines by syllable-quantity and you are at once in trouble. Will you say, then, as !; Mr. Meynell said to Rose Kavanagh, that the metre is faulty? --'5 No doubt, if you did, many would endorse your' opinion; But we prefer to think that if the lines : are 1 read- properly, with due feeling, the ear will recognise that ! the lines beat harmoniously, each with three . feet, measured by : equal time spaces. - ; To come back to Irish poets, we beUeve^^hat : it is impossible to appreciate them at all if one does not read with an intelligent observation^ tim**tress,vand, . in many ; instances, even in a charting. tone..'Try; for inj stance, ■; Yeats' poem, Inisfree,>m& *ead - then decide which is more.likely to give' your".thefc'eianiijg and^the music of the beautiful liues, '.£&*;-£::; 'i&tvr