[Footnote 180: These were John Bowden, "with whom" (Dr. Newman writes in the Apologia) "I spent almost exclusively my undergraduate years." He died just before Dr. Newman became a Catholic. His two sons are now fathers in the London Oratory.—Hurrell, Froude, whose noble character and high gifts Dr. Newman has sketched with admirable force, truth, and beauty, in three pages of the Apologia, which he sums up by saying: "It is difficult to enumerate the precise additions to my theological creed which I derived from a friend to whom I owe so much. He made me look with admiration toward the Church of Rome, and in the same degree dislike the Reformation. He fixed on me the idea of devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and he led me gradually to believe in the Real Presence." He died February 29th, 1836, "prematurely," says Dr. Newman, "and in the conflict and transition-state of opinion. His religious views never reached their ultimate conclusion, by the very reason of their multitude and their depth."—John Keble, the author of The Christian Year, of whom Dr. Newman writes (Apologia, edition i. p. 75) words expressing deep feelings shared by many who are now, by God's grace, members of the Catholic Church. He died in 1865, and at this moment, on his birthday, April 27th, the first stone of a new college at Oxford, erected as a testimonial to him, and bearing his name, is being laid by the Archbishop of Canterbury.—Robert Isaac Wilberforce, second son of William Wilberforce. From his earliest years his character seemed made up of truth, purity, unselfishness, tenderness of affection, and indefatigable diligence. As his great powers developed, they showed themselves perhaps the more remarkable from their combination with a degree of humility so extraordinary as to be his chief characteristic. After a university career of unusual distinction, he was elected fellow of Oriel College, on the same day with Hurrell Froude, with whom he is classed by Dr. Newman, in the Apologia, as one with whom he was, "in particular, intimate and affectionate." He became a country clergyman, and afterward archdeacon; and in 1838 published (in combination with the present Bishop of Oxford) the Life of William Wilberforce. His theological works were all of later date. It is characteristic that he always declared he would never have undertaken any of them if Mr. Newman had not left the field unoccupied. In the opinion of most persons, except himself, his equal in learning and ability was not then left in the Church of England. In 1854, he became a member of the Catholic Church, and died in 1857, while studying at Rome for the priesthood.—Isaac Williams was fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. He remained much longer in Oxford, sharing Mr. Newman's intercourse and counsels. In 1840, Mr. Newman dedicated the beautiful volume on The Church of the Fathers "to my dear and much admired Isaac Williams, the sight of whom carries back his friends to ancient, holy, and happy times." He is, perhaps, best known by his published poems; but he has also published a series of devotional commentaries on the gospels, of great beauty and to which many are deeply indebted. He died in 1865. Dr. Newman went to visit him in his country retirement only a few days before. Our readers, we think, will feel an interest in this brief memorial of a group of men so closely connected with the collection in which many of these poems originally appeared.]
To these are added, in the present volume, a few of earlier and a good many of later date. All of them seem equally to have been composed without any view to publication, and considering that their illustrious author has always been remarkable for a dislike to put himself forward, and for an almost extreme susceptibility of feeling, some persons may wonder that he has ever been able to persuade himself to give them to the world. We do not share their wonder; for we long ago came to the conclusion that it is by men of the greatest natural reserve that the fullest confidences of their inner feelings are not unfrequently made. In the common intercourse of society such men display least of their real feeling. But being distinguished from others by the depth and strength of their thoughts and affections, more lasting convictions and emotions, and greater self-knowledge, they can, upon any call of duty, speak out most unreservedly and sincerely; and the pain it gives them to make any revelation of their inner selves is such that, to do it completely, costs them little, if anything, more than to speak of themselves at all. This, all the world sees, has been exemplified in the Apologia, and in its measure it has been the same with the Lyra Apostolica, and with the present volume. The poems in the Lyra were, nearly all of them, the expression of the thoughts which crowded into the mind of Dr. Newman during a tour in the Mediterranean, between December, 1832, and July, 1833. The present volume adds very greatly to their interest by giving the place and day of their composition. Thus, the poem headed "Angelic Guidance" was written on the day on which he left Oxford. In our days, in which a very few hours upon the Great Western takes Oxford men to Falmouth without trouble or fatigue, the date, "Whitchurch, December 3d, 1832," is interesting. Whitchurch is a somewhat dreary and secluded village, at which the direct road from Oxford to Southampton intersected the mail road from London to Exeter and Falmouth. There was in those days a coach to Southampton, to the top of which Mr. Newman mounted, (the present writer and other Oriel friends standing in the street, in front of the Angel Inn, to see the last of him.) Before midday he reached Whitchurch, and there had to wait till night for the Falmouth mail. We should be curious to know what has become of the large inn at Whitchurch which was maintained by this sort of traffic. It must long ago have been shut up. Mr. Newman's life had hitherto been almost entirely confined to one or two places, and now he was starting alone for distant lands, and began by waiting many hours at a lonely and (crede experto) sufficiently dreary inn. His thoughts turned to the guardian angel who, as he already believed, bore him company. The Apologia tells us how early in life his thoughts had run upon angels and their ministrations. He says of these lines: "They speak of 'the vision' that haunted me. That vision is more or less brought out in the whole series of these compositions." We need hardly say how much these circumstances add to the interest of the poem, which appeared in the Lyra without any explanation of the circumstances under which it was composed.
It is impossible to read these poems without feeling how much a man takes with him from home of the thoughts which are called out even by the most striking and memorable scene. The events going on in England—the evident decay of what he still believed to be the "reformed church"—formed the coloring medium through which he looked at all he saw. Thus, at sea, the day he left Gibraltar, he wrote the lines headed "England:"
"Tyre of the West, and glorying in the name
More than in Faith's pure fame!
O trust not crafty fort, nor rock renown'd
Earn'd upon hostile ground;
Wielding Trade's master-keys, at thy proud will
To lock or loose its waters, England! trust not still.
"Dread thine own power! Since haughty Babel's prime.
High towers have been man's crime.
Since her hoar age, when the huge moat lay bare,
Strongholds have been man's snare.
Thy nest is in the crags; ah! refuge frail!
Mad counsel in its hour, or traitors, will prevail.
"He who scann'd Sodom for his righteous men
Still spares thee for thy ten;
But, should vain tongues the Bride of Heaven defy,
He will not pass thee by;
For, as earth's kings welcome their spotless guest,
So gives he them by turn, to suffer or be blest."
The Apologia tells us that the golden lines, "Lead, kindly light," were composed when the "orange-boat" in which the author sailed from Palermo to Marseilles was becalmed in the straits of Bonifacio. It is not mentioned, we think, that it was in the darkness of the night. They are here headed, "The Pillar of the Cloud:'
"Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home—
Lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet: I do not ask to see
The distant scene,—one step enough for me.
"I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou
Should'st lead me on.
I loved to choose and see my path; but now
Lead Thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears.
Pride ruled my will: remember not past years.
"So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on.
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone;
And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile."
"Off Algiers," in sight of the grave of that great African church which produced St. Augustine, St. Cyprian, and Tertullian, is the date of "The Patient Church," in which, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, the writer, relying on the promise of Christ, looked forward to the ultimate victory of the church, and which begins:
"Bide thou thy time!
Watch with meek eyes the race of pride and crime;
Sit in the gate and be the heathen's jest.
Smiling and self-possest,
O thou, to whom is pledged a victor's sway,
Bide thou the victor's day!"
On December 28th, 1832, Mr. Newman caught his first sight of a Greek shore. It is highly characteristic that the first thought which it inspired to the most finished classical scholar of his day in Oxford, was not of Thucydides, not even of Homer, but of "the Greek fathers:"
"Let heathens sing thy heathen praise,
Fall'n Greece! the thought of holier days
In my sad heart abides;
For sons of thine in truth's first hour.
Were tongues and weapons of his power.
Born of the Spirit's fiery shower.
Our fathers and our guides.
"All thine is Clement's varied page;
And Dionysius, ruler sage,
In days of doubt and pain;
And Origen with eagle eye;
And saintly Basil's purpose high
To smite imperial heresy,
And cleanse the altar's stain.
"From thee the glorious Preacher came,
With soul of zeal and lips of flame,
A court's stern martyr-guest;
And thine, O inexhaustive race!
Was Nazianzen's heaven-taught grace;
And royal-hearted Athanase,
With Paul's own mantle blest."