Newman writes from "4, Cavendish Place, 12th May 1845":—
"My dear Nicholson,
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"I venture to enclose two tunes for the Sapphic metre, Greek and Latin, to which my sister, at my request, has added an accompaniment. Will you be so kind as to get Mrs. Nicholson to play the piano while you sing it, and tell me what is to be said to it? While dabbling in some of these tunes, I have translated divers scraps of English poetry into Greek, experimentally, especially to test the possibility of retaining any Greek accent, such as the books mark, in singing. It seems to me a clear impossibility, whether emphasis or sharpness of note predominated in the accent. I have translated 'Flow on, thou shining river' to Moore's own tune, so as to retain Greek accent as well as quantity in exact agreement to the music … the commonest metres puzzle me most….
"I wonder what you think of the Maynooth Controversy? To me it has been so puzzling a one that I have been heartily glad that nothing obliged me to express an opinion.
"Some things seem clear to me: (1) That a measure for cutting down the Church of Ireland, as by Lord Morpeth's Bill, would have been, and would now be, far better in every respect than this of Sir R. Peel; (2) that the present is a mode of perpetuating the sinecure Church of Ireland by paying the Romish, and real Church, out of English and Scotch funds. Hence it is popular with many Irish Protestants, of which Sir R. Peel boasts!" [Francis Newman seems to forget, in his frequent allusions to "Protestants", that there was a National Church in Ireland, as in England, long before the word which sprang into being at the Reformation had found its feet.]
"If they (the Government) were pleading that a Romanist people ought to be allowed to support their own Romish clergy, they could justly claim that we, as a Protestant people, would not interfere on the ground of our dislike to Romish doctrine. But when they demand to support Romanism out of common funds, they implicate us in the question, whether (on the whole) that religion contains more truth or error; and I think they force those who see it in black colours to urge the No Popery cry. So far, I am disposed to justify the Anti-Maynooth war. Sir R. Inglis may be a bigot in his view of Romanism … but I think he is not 'out of order' in intruding the religious demerit of Romanism into a parliamentary discussion. If this measure had been thrown out, I fear Ireland would have been awfully embittered. Yet I hope the fierce opposition will stop any future scheme of keeping the sinecure church untouched and endowing the priests with imperial money…. Thus I halt between two opinions."
In November, 1843, Newman touches briefly upon the Oxford movement thus:—
"You do not seem to know that the Record has been making a fuss this last month about the Bishop of Oxford's public declaration that he never requested my brother to suppress Tract 90. All he did was to suggest that 'the publication of the Tracts be discontinued,' which meant that there was to be no No. 91. The Bishop indignantly disclaims the idea that my brother had been disobedient.
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