Sunday, July 28, 2013

Cardinal Virtue: Style and substance in the voice of John Henry Newman

At the Weekly Standard, Edward Short reviews a new book, an anthology, by Ian Ker entitled The Genius of John Henry Newman: Selections from his Writing. It begins:

When John Henry Newman died in 1890, English papers around the world singled out different aspects of his life and work for praise or censure, but on one point they were unanimous. As the obituarist of the Colonies and India put it, “We question whether there is a living writer who had a command of the English tongue at once so eloquent and incisive, though often ironical.” The force of Newman’s style may have been universally acknowledged, but the content of the writing was rarely paid the attention it deserves. Then, as now, Newman had many admirers and many detractors, but few true critics. Indeed, for many, insisting on the beauty of Newman’s style was a convenient way of ignoring the style’s content altogether.

There is a parallel of this in the way that Newman’s contemporaries tended to take up religion. In one of his greatest sermons, “Unreal Words” (1839), Newman observed how profession could become an evasion not only of the practice but even the apprehension of religion. “Let us never lose sight of two truths,” he exhorted his readers, “that we ought to have our hearts penetrated with the love of Christ and full of self-renunciation; but that if they be not, professing that they are does not make them so.” Similarly, effusing about the beauty of Newman’s prose style can never be a substitute for grasping the matter that the style presents.

On the subject in general, Newman himself said this in The Idea of a University:

...we read in Persian travels of the way in which young gentlemen go to work in the East, when they would engage in correspondence with those who inspire them with hope or fear. .  .  . They cannot write one sentence themselves; so they betake themselves to the professional letter--writer. .  .  . They have a point to gain from a superior, a favour to ask, an evil to deprecate; they have to approach a man in power, or to make court to some beautiful lady. The professional man manufactures words for them, as they are wanted, as a stationer sells them paper, or a schoolmaster might cut their pens. Thought and word are, in their conception, two things, and thus there is a division of labour. The man of thought comes to the man of words; and the man of words, duly instructed in the thought, dips the pen of desire into the ink of devotedness, and proceeds to spread it over the page of desolation. Then the nightingale of affection is heard to warble to the rose of loveliness, while the breeze of anxiety plays around the brow of expectation.

Newman, says Short, "was adamant that [quoting Ker] "thought and speech are inseparable from each other. Matter and expression are parts of one: style is a thinking out into language."

And Gerard Manley Hopkins says of him: "What Cardinal Newman does is to think aloud, to think with pen and paper. .  .  . He seems to be thinking ‘Gibbon is the last great master of traditional English prose; he is its perfection; I do not propose to emulate him; I begin all over again from the language of conversation, of common life.’ "

On the worldly pseudo-Christianity that is as much a part of our society as it was of his, he speaks of "an existing teaching .  .  . built upon worldly principle, yet pretending to be the Gospel, dropping one whole side of the Gospel, its austere character, and considering it enough to be benevolent, courteous, candid, correct in conduct, delicate, — though it includes no true fear of God, no fervent zeal for His honor, no deep hatred of sin."

Such a mundane religion puts Newman in mind of the far more unworldly Middle Ages, which his Protestant contemporaries were disposed to regard as lost in Roman error and corruption. For Newman, "The present age is the very contrary to what are commonly called the dark ages; and together with the faults of those ages we have lost their virtues. I say their virtues; for even the errors then prevalent, a persecuting spirit, for instance, fear of religious inquiry, bigotry, these were, after all, but perversions and excesses of real virtues, such as zeal and reverence; and we, instead of limiting and purifying them, have taken them away root and branch. Why? because we have not acted from a love of the Truth, but from the influence of the Age."

There is so much that is quotable in this little review that I'll let readers seek the rest for themselves. Since there are so many memorable passages in Newman's work, I've been reminded of my intention to dedicate a page to his aphoristic selections, though I'm not sure the word "aphorism" is adequate to the depth of his insights, but it will have to do for now.

I should mention that Mr. Short has a book of his own coming out soon, called Newman and His Family, published by Bloomsbury.

Back to the Newman Page


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2 Responses to Cardinal Virtue: Style and substance in the voice of John Henry Newman

Paul J Cella says:
August 2, 2013 at 4:39 pm (Edit)
These are the qualities that make the Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864), Newman’s great spiritual autobiography, such a special book. Far from being an exercise in self-vindication, it is full of the most guileless honesty.

That is a very apt description. Newman (at least in his writing) shares with Chesterton that feeling of genuineness, that wholesome quality of humane integrity, which has always drawn me to these writers.

William Luse says:
August 3, 2013 at 10:17 am (Edit)
C.S. Lewis would agree with you. He said as much of Chesterton. And I think it rubbed off on Lewis, whose writing also shares those qualities.

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