Newman's Poems.
BY H. W. Wilberforce
.
The little volume of poems published anonymously under this humble title, [Footnote 179] produced an impression immediately on its publication, not only among Catholics but among English readers in general, which could hardly have been caused by a volume of poems from any other writer of the day, with the exception, perhaps, of the Laureate. The explanation is to be found in the initials J. H. N. at the end of the preface—a signature long ago of world-wide celebrity.
[Footnote 179: Verses on Various Occasions. London: Burns, Gates & Co. 1868. For sale at the Catholic Publication House, 126 Nassau street, New York.]
There may be those who feel surprised to find that a man chiefly known as having been, under God's providence and grace, the main author of the Oxford movement of 1833, should be found to have possessed and exercised extraordinary poetical gifts. It may perhaps be partly a lurking feeling of envy, partly a just perception how rarely any one man combines numerous unconnected powers, which makes the world at large reluctant to admit that any man has greatly distinguished himself in a line far removed from that specially his own. But that feeling, be its origin what it may, does not in reason apply to the case before us, because it would seem that the gifts which specially qualify a man to produce a deep effect upon the hearts and consciences of his fellows, to be the founder and leader of any great school of thought, social, moral, political, or religious, are very much the same as those required for the making of a great poet.
This is at first sight so obvious, that we incline to think the only real argument against it would be, an appeal to experience. It will be said, there is a small class of men who have won among their fellows (as if it were a title of honor formally secured to them) the name of "the poet," and no one of them has been, except in his own special art of poetical composition, among the great leaders of human thought. But this is easily accounted for. A man immersed for years in public affairs of any kind, however richly his mind may have been stored with poetical images, and however natural it may have been to him to have sought for them a poetical expression, can rarely have had leisure to cultivate the merely artistic part of poetical composition to the degree necessary for success as a poet. It is hardly likely that in his case there should combine the many accidental circumstances necessary (over and above the possession of great poetical endowments) for the composition, publication, and general diffusion of any considerable poetical work. And even if all these should happen to meet, the mere fact of being very greatly distinguished in any other line is of itself, we strongly suspect, enough to prevent any man from being chiefly remembered as a great poet. The name of "the poet Cowper" is a household word in every English family. But if "William Cowper, Esq., of the Inner Temple" (as his name stands on the title-page) had risen to the woolsack, we believe that, even though he might have written the same poems, he would never have gained the title. If indeed mediocrity in everything else had sufficed to gain a high and permanent reputation for a man of equal mediocrity in poetical talents, we should now have talked of Cowper's friend as "the poet Hayley." But that the highest poetical genius does not obtain the title for a man otherwise conspicuous, is proved by the example of Shakespeare. Merely because he has left behind him dramatic works to which the world affords no rival, not even the preeminent poetical genius shown in his poems has caused the world at large to speak and think of him as "the poet Shakespeare." Nor would Dryden, despite of his matchless lyric poems, have attained the title, if among his numerous plays he had written Hamlet, Macbeth, and Lear.
It seems to us that these considerations are enough to answer the objection from experience, which might perhaps be urged against our opinion, that the qualities which qualify a man to exercise a deep influence on his fellows and make him a leader of the souls of men, are in fact the same as those which qualify him for success as a poet.
We think this volume will convince most of those who read it that we are right. The weighty and touching thoughts of these poems bear the stamp of the same mint from which issued those volumes of sermons, which, far more than any other work, have impressed a permanent stamp upon the generation of English readers which is now tending, as Dr. Newman says of himself, "toward the decline of life." It is impossible to read them without feeling that, if his life had been one of mere literary leisure, his chosen employment would probably have been poetry. As it is, he has evidently resorted to it, not when he was thinking of others, but when he sought to relieve the fulness of his own soul. In this world he has written in prose; his poetry has been the record of his inner struggles and emotions, and has been written for himself and his God.
As long as any memory of the English nation and the English language remains among men. Dr. Newman, we doubt not, will be remembered and reverenced; not indeed as one of the few whom poetry has made great, but as one of the great men who have written poetry. And so far from deeming it strange that such should be the case with the great author of the movement of 1833, we, for our part, should have thought it strange if, in a man of the highest literary culture, the intense feelings in which that movement originated had not relieved themselves by poetical expression. We believe, indeed, that few if any great moral movements have taken place in which something more or less of the same kind has not been found. Perhaps the most remarkable exception was the change of religion in England in the sixteenth century; the leaders in which not only produced no great poetical work, but did not leave behind them so much as a hymn. This was a striking contrast, not only to the contemporary movement in Germany, and to that of the Methodists in the eighteenth century, but also to that of the earlier Lollards. The explanation, however, is not far to seek. Lord Macaulay says, "Ridley was perhaps the only person who had any important share in the English Reformation, who did not consider it as a mere political job." Now, attractive as jobbing is to many very clever men, it is hardly qualified to inspire any poetical afflatus. Cranmer was too busy getting what he could for himself, to be musing over poetical images. Besides, the Reformation in England appealed not so much to men's deeper feelings, as to their natural and reasonable dislike to have their property confiscated and themselves imprisoned, hanged, and cut up alive; and this last kind of appeal neither needed nor encouraged poetical powers.
To return to the volume before us, the poems were so evidently written only for the author himself that it is our signal good fortune that they have ever been published. The greater part of them first appeared in a series called the Lyra Apostolica, in many successive numbers of the British Magazine, edited by the late Hugh James Rose, in which several of Dr. Newman's earliest prose writings were originally published. It was afterward issued in the form of a small volume, the first edition of which appeared in 1836. By far the greater part of it was supplied by Dr. Newman; the other poems, by five of his intimate friends. [Footnote 180]