It has been told of Cardinal Newman, that he never liked to pass a single day, without rendering an English sentence into Latin. To converse with the Roman authors, to handle their precise and sparing language, is, I can well believe it, a most wholesome discipline; and the most efficient remedy against those faults of diffuseness, of obscurity, and of excess, which are only too common among the writers of our day. It may have been to this practice, that Cardinal Newman owed something of his clearness, and of his exquisite simplicity: and for his style, he should be idolised by every one who has a taste for literature. I have said many things in praise of the ancient authors: it pleases me, as I finish, to offer my humble tribute to an author who is quite our own; to one, who in all his writings has bequeathed us perfect models of chaste, of lucid, and of melodious prose.
NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD: September 15, 1890.