he was assiduously carrying on his studies in mathematics and oriental languages, but wrote little until 1847, when he published anonymously a History of the Hebrew Monarchy, intended to introduce the results of German investigation in this department of Biblical criticism. In 1849 appeared The Soul, her Sorrows and Aspirations, and in 1850, Phases of Faith, or Passages from the History of my Creed—the former a tender but searching analysis of the relations of the spirit of man with the Creator; the latter a religious autobiography detailing the author’s passage from Calvinism to pure theism. It is on these two books that Professor Newman’s celebrity will principally rest; having in both to describe his personal experience, his intense earnestness has kept him free from the eccentricity which marred most of his other writings, excepting his contributions to mathematical research and oriental philology. There was, indeed, scarcely a crotchet, except “spiritualism,” of which he was not at one time or another the advocate. His versatility was amazing: he wrote on logic, political economy, English reforms, Austrian politics, Roman history, diet, grammar, the most abstruse departments of mathematics, Arabic, the emendation of Greek texts, and languages as out of the way as the Berber and as obsolete as the dialect of the Iguvine inscriptions. In treating all these subjects he showed signal ability, but, wherever the theme allowed, an incurable crotchetiness; and in his numerous metrical translations from the classics, especially his version of the Iliad, he betrayed an insensibility to the ridiculous which would almost have justified the irreverent criticism of Matthew Arnold, had this been conveyed in more seemly fashion. His miscellaneous essays, some of much value, were collected in several volumes before his death: his last publication, Contributions chiefly to the Early History of Cardinal Newman (1891), was generally condemned as deficient in fraternal feeling. He was far from possessing his brother’s subtlety of reasoning, but he impresses by a transparent sincerity and singleness of mind not always displayed by the more celebrated writer; his style is too individual to be taken as a model, but is admirable for its simplicity and clearness. His character is vividly drawn by Carlyle in his life of Sterling, of whose son Newman was guardian: “a man of fine attainments, of the sharpest-cutting and most restlessly advancing intellect and of the mildest pious enthusiasm.” It was his great misfortune that this enthusiasm should have been correlated, as is not unfrequently the case, with an entire insensibility to the humorous side of things. After his retirement from University College, Professor Newman continued to live for some years in London, subsequently removing to Clifton, and eventually to Weston-super-Mare, where he died on the 7th of October 1897. He had been blind for five years before his death, but retained his faculties to the last. He was twice married.
See T. G. Sieveking, Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman (1909). (R. G.)
NEWMAN, JOHN HENRY (1801–1890), English Cardinal,
was born in London on the 21st of February 1801, the eldest son of John Newman, banker, of the firm of Ramsbottom,
Newman and Co. The family was understood to be of Dutch
extraction, and the name itself, spelt “Newmann” in an earlier
generation, further suggests Hebrew origin. His mother,
Jemima Fourdrinier, was of a Huguenot family, long established
in London as engravers and paper manufacturers. John Henry
was the eldest of six children. The second son, Charles Robert,
a man of ability but of impracticable temper, a professed atheist
and a recluse, died in 1884. The youngest son, Francis William
(q.v.), was for many years professor of Latin in University College,
London. Two of the three daughters, Harriett Elizabeth and
Jemima Charlotte, married brothers, Thomas and John. Mozley;
and Anne Mozley, a daughter of the latter, edited in 1892 Newman’s
Anglican Life and Correspondence, having been entrusted
by him in 1885 with an autobiography written in the third
person to form the basis of a narrative of the first thirty years
of his life. The third daughter, Mary Sophia, died unmarried in
1828.
At the age of seven Newman was sent to a private school conducted by Dr Nicholas at Ealing, where he was distinguished by diligence and good conduct, as also by a certain shyness and aloofness, taking no part in the school games. He speaks of himself as having been “very superstitious” in these early years. He took great delight in reading the Bible, and also the novels of Scott, then in course of publication. At the age of fifteen, during his last year at school, he was “converted,” an incident that throughout life remained to him “more certain than that he had hands or feet.” It was in the autumn of 1816 that he thus fell under the influence of a definite creed, and received into his intellect impressions of dogma never afterwards effaced. The tone of his mind was at this date evangelical and Calvinistic, and he held that the pope was anti-Christ. Matriculating at Trinity College, Oxford, 14th December 1816, he went into residence there in June the following year, and in 1818 he gained a scholarship of £60, tenable for nine years. But for this he would have been unable to remain at the university, as in 1819 his father’s bank suspended payment. In that year his name was entered at Lincoln’s Inn. Anxiety to do well in the final schools produced the opposite result; he broke down in the examination, and so graduated with third-class honours in 1821. Desiring to remain in Oxford, he took private pupils and read for a fellowship at Oriel, then “the acknowledged centre of Oxford intellectualism.” To his intense relief and delight he was elected on the 12th of April 1822. E. B. Pusey was elected a fellow of the same society in 1823.
On Trinity Sunday, 13th June 1824, Newman was ordained, and became, at Pusey’s suggestion, curate of St Clement’s, Oxford. Here for two years he was busily engaged in parochial work, but he found time to write articles on “Apollonius of Tyana,” on “Cicero” and on “Miracles” for the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana. In 1825, at Whately’s request, he became vice-principal of St Alban’s Hall, but this post he held for one year only. To his association with Whately at this time he attributed much of his “mental improvement” and a partial conquest of his shyness. He assisted Whately in his popular work on logic, and from him he gained his first definite idea of the Christian Church. He broke with him in 1827 on the occasion of the re-election of Peel for the University, Newman opposing this on personal grounds. In 1826 he became tutor of Oriel, and the same year R. H. Froude, described by Newman as “one of the acutest, cleverest and deepest men” he ever met, was elected fellow. The two formed a high ideal of the tutorial office as clerical and pastoral rather than secular. In 1827 he was a preacher at Whitehall. The year following Newman supported and secured the election of Hawkins as provost of Oriel in preference to Keble, a. choice which he later defended or apologized for as having in effect produced the Oxford Movement with all its consequences. In the same year he was appointed vicar of St Mary’s, to which the chapelry of Littlemore was attached, and Pusey was made regius professor of Hebrew. At this date, though still nominally associated with the Evangelicals, NeWman’s views were gradually assuming a higher ecclesiastical tone, and while local secretary of the Church Missionary Society he circulated an anonymous letter suggesting a method by which Churchmen might practically oust Nonconformists from all control of the society. This resulted in his being dismissed from the post, 8th March 1830; and three months later he withdrew from the Bible Society, thus completing his severance from the Low Church party. In 1831–1832 he was select preacher before the University. In 1832, his difference with Hawkins as to the “substantially religious nature” of a college tutorship becoming acute, he resigned that post, and in December went with R. H. Froude, on account of the latter’s health, for a tour in South Europe. On board the mail steamship “Hermes” they visited Gibraltar, Malta and the Ionian Islands, and subsequently Sicily, Naples and Rome, where Newman made the acquaintance of Dr Wiseman. In a letter home he described Rome as “the most wonderful place on earth,” but the Roman Catholic religion as “polytheistic, degrading and idolatrous.” It was during the course of this tour that he wrote most of the short poems which a year later were printed in the Lyra Apostolica. From Rome Newman returned to Sicily alone, and was dangerously ill with
