About Newman
Newman, a Man of Letters
July 27, 2024
St. John Henry Newman was a Catholic priest, thinker, writer and life-long educator. Before he began to write he had done a lot of reading and study of the classic authors, something which he continued to do for the rest of his life.
As a college undergraduate, he wrote his first articles and as a young professor and clergyman he began writing sermons, poems and essays. He would later write many books including novels.
In a lecture titled “Literature” delivered in 1855 at the Catholic University of Ireland, Newman said that “A great author is not one who merely has a copia verborum, whether in prose or verse, and can, as it were, turn on his will any number of splendid phrases and swelling sentences, but he is one who has something to say and knows how to say it.“[1] Men such as Homer, or Pindar, or Shakespeare, or Dryden, or Walter Scott did not aim at eloquence for its own sake; instead they were inspired by their subjects, “pouring forth beautiful words because they had beautiful thoughts.”[2]
Newman thought that great authors were those who were able to put into thought and writing ideas for their times and in their own language. Such was Virgil or Cicero for Rome, and Shakespeare for middle Age England. And in fact, such was Newman for 19th century England together with poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and novelists like Charles Dickens.
Newman also wrote two novels which – according to scholar Ian Ker – have a tendency towards psychological detail (realism) and satire.[3] Not surprisingly the novels Newman wrote, Loss and Gain (1848), and Callista, A Tale of the Third Century (1855) both had an autobiographical tone, and an apologetic raison d’être. Whereas Loss and Gain is almost purely a novel of ideas,[4] Callista is a novel which is rich in psychology and action.
Newman’s novels, however, are also historical. From his boyhood, Newman read and enjoyed the novels by Sir Walter Scott, renowned for initiating the genre of romantic historical novels.[5] Scott used historical narrative with a mix of real and fictional characters. It is very likely that his writing had an impact on Newman’s novels as it did on many other Victorians.
In a letter in 1837, Newman wrote his sister Jemima that he was delighted reading The Bethrothed (I Promessi Sposi) by Manzoni, and commented, “It has not the vigour or richness of Walter Scott, but it seems to me full of nature, and displays a religious feeling, which never approaches W. S.’s compositions, beautiful as they are. It is most inspiring – it quite transported me in parts.”[6]
Callista, the heroine of the novel with this title, was a third century Greek pagan in the Roman Province of Africa who converts and reminds us of Newman, and his conversion. In the protagonist’s words we perceive Newman’s own sentiments. At her trial Callista for associating with Christians, she announces: “I have found my true Love, whom before I knew not.”[7] The rich imagery from nature is symbolic of human and supernatural realities. Newman’s two short novels contained the pathos and catharsis of powerful conversion stories. Richard H. Hutton, the famous literary critic and contemporary of Newman, opined “I know nothing in all fiction more delicate, more spiritual, more fascinating than the story of Callista’s conversion and death.”[8]
In a subsequent recording we will continue speaking of Newman’s literary accomplishments. Here we close by noting that Newman’s study of the classics prepared him to teach the faith with beauty and persuasion employing sermons, essays, novels and poems.
[1] John Henry Newman, “Literature,” Idea, 291.
[2] Ibid, 279.
[3] Ker, pp. 364-7.
[4] Stephen Prickett, “Literary Legacy,” in Oxford Handbook of John Henry Newman, p. 587.
[5] Newman wrote to James Hope-Scott, “I have ever had devotion, I may call it, to Walter Scott. As a boy, in the early summer mornings I read Waverly and Guy Mannering in bed, when they first came out, before it was time to get up.” May 14, 1871, Newman Studies Digital Collection.
[6] Letter to Mrs. John Mozley, October 6, 1837, LD, vol. 6, 215.
[7] Callista, 380.
[8] Quoted in Joseph J. Reilly, Newman as a Man of Letters, p. 87.
