There was about this time a great stirring of the public mind on religious subjects, and Lucas, reflecting deeply on the chaotic state of Christendom and the ever-multiplying forms of schism, became attracted to views set forth with great ability by Oxford divines, tending to revive mediæval practices and produce a tranquil reliance on ancient ecclesiastical authority. But he felt no inclination to stop at the half-way house. To exchange Quakerism for Anglicanism would, he thought, be a loss rather than a gain; for the doctrines of the Society of Friends could, at least, be stated definitely, whereas those of the Church of England were matter of ceaseless debate between three parties—High Church, Low Church, and Broad Church. He therefore broke through every barrier, and ruptured many ties of friendship, interest, and old association. His Reasons for becoming a Roman Catholic was a pamphlet remarkable for the poetic exuberance of its style, and still more from the fact of its being addressed to Friends, and its defending Catholicism from a Friend's point of view. A few articles published in the Dublin Review established Lucas' literary reputation among his co-religionists, and he was soon invited to edit a new Catholic weekly journal, which he named the Tablet. The first number appeared on the 16th of May, 1840, and during fifteen years Lucas continued to direct the undertaking, and to take a leading part in its composition. Some of the literary and miscellaneous papers were, in the early days of the publication, contributed by non-Catholics; but it was then, and has ever since been, regarded as an exponent of Catholicism—not, indeed, absolutely authoritative, but in the highest degree weighty, and semi-official.
It can scarcely be necessary to speak of the ability which this journal displayed in Lucas' hands. One anecdote will suffice to prove the intellectual readiness and aptitude of the editor. An article which appeared in the Dublin Review in 1849, on the "Campaigns of the Duke of Marlborough," at once attracted the notice of Sir William Napier, the historian of the Peninsular War. Competent judge as he was, he supposed the article to be written by a soldier, and could not conceive that any other than a military man could exhibit so much familiarity with the manœuvres of armies and the tactics of generals. When he learned that it was a civilian who thus described and commented on the battles of Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet, he hastened to make his acquaintance, and offered him every species of encouragement.
But if English Catholics were fortunate in having a really literary man at the head of their most popular journal, they were still more so in possessing an archbishop who was a connoisseur in art, skilled in science, and profound in ancient and modern lore. There were few subjects with which Cardinal Wiseman was not conversant; and when weary of business and serious study, he would often refresh his own mind and entertain his friends by discussing topics altogether outside the ordinary grave circle of a prelate's discourse. He could talk of pancakes and posy-rings, of "Cymbeline" and "Peter Bell," as fluently as of general councils and the Acts of the Martyrs. His Essays, reprinted from the Dublin Review, his Connection between Science and Revelation, his Fabiola, a Tale of the Catacombs, and his Lives of the Last Four Popes, abundantly establish his literary reputation, and are equally creditable to his research, observation, and inventive faculty. The story of Fabiola was composed, as he tells us, "at all sorts of times and places, early and late; in scraps and fragments of time, when the body was too fatigued or the mind too worn-out for heavier occupation; in the roadside inn, in the halt of travel, in strange houses, in every variety of situation and circumstance, sometimes trying ones." In the midst of his episcopal labors, he found time for the delivery of numerous lectures on secular subjects, which attracted public attention to many curious points in literature, art, and science. In the present age, when every field of knowledge and experiment is crowded with eager students, and when a disposition is seen everywhere to subordinate all discoveries and researches to high, if not always correct, views of religion, it seems to be of the utmost importance that Catholics in general should, as far as they are able, copy the example of Cardinal Wiseman in cultivating the happy and hallowed alliance of truth divinely revealed and truth humanly ascertained, feeling sure that, however the two may seem here and there to clash one with another, the discrepancy between them is only apparent, and will vanish on closer investigation.
Dr. Newman has adopted a perfectly unique mode of enriching the Catholic literature of his country. He is now, in his advanced age, republishing all his works from the commencement of his author-life. Many of these appeared while he was still a clergyman of the Church of England; but to these he appends qualifying or explanatory notes, thus laying before his readers both his first and second thoughts. This often gives him an opportunity of rebutting his former errors, and, by a brush of arms, laying low many a favorite Anglican defence. The series serves, also, to fill up various parts of his biography which had been sketched only in the Apologia pro Vita Sua. It is, therefore, welcome to the reading public in general, to whom his earlier life has never lost its interest in consequence of his conversion. The avidity with which his works are read by non-Catholics is no small proof of their merit intellectually considered. Indeed, to use the words of one writing in a hostile spirit in the Pall Mall Gazette of Sept. 23, 1872: "The extreme beauty of his language, the rarity of his utterances, his delicate yet forcible way of dealing with opposition when obliged to do so—all these things have invested his image with a kind of halo, to which, for our parts, we scarcely remember a parallel."
Nothing could prove more conclusively the esteem in which he is held by the English public than the reception given to his Apologia. Though this publication was polemical, though Dr. Newman's adversary was a Protestant clergyman and professor in the University of Cambridge, the verdict given by the leading journals and reviews of the day was emphatically on the side of the Priest of the Oratory—the convert from Anglicanism! Mr. Kingsley was universally condemned as having advanced what he could not substantiate; and the beautifully naïve account which the assailed gave of his own life, opinions, literary and ministerial career, was welcomed and hailed with praise, admiration, and delight. The Spectator (than which no review in England stands higher) styled the Apologia: "An interior view of one of the greatest minds and greatest natures ever completely subjected to the influence of reactionary thought"; and it added: "Mr. Kingsley has grievously wronged a man utterly unintelligible to him, but as incapable of falsehood or of the advocacy of falsehood as the sincerest Protestant." The Union Review, a High Church organ, said of the same work: "Since the Confessions of S. Augustine were given to the world, we doubt if any autobiography has appeared of such thrilling interest as the present." The Saturday Review was scarcely less emphatic. "Few books," it said, "have been published, in the memory of this generation, full of so varied an interest as Dr. Newman's Apologia." To these extracts we must add one more from a writer in the Times: "So far as one can judge from the opinions of the press, it is universally acknowledged that Dr. Newman has displayed through his whole life, and never more so than at the time he was most bitterly assailed, the most transparent idea of an honorable and high-minded gentleman."
It is not so much to the theological as to the literary character of Dr. Newman's works that we wish to call attention. As a writer of sermons, he has never been surpassed. Old as the Christian religion is, he never failed in preaching to present some portion of it in a new light. The Scriptures of the Old Testament in his hands acquire new meaning and import; and the subtlety of his thought is only equalled by the limpid clearness of his style. To those who remember him only as he appeared in the pulpit of S. Mary the Virgin's, Oxford, his image is that of a seer piercing the depths of nature and redemption, and enunciating, under the influence of a divine afflatus, truths full of awe and tenderness, but often too vast for the comprehension of his hearers.
The test of any work of art is this—that it will bear the closest inspection. The fine gold of Dr. Newman's sermon-writing becomes more evident when his discourses are molten down in the crucible of severe criticism. They have nothing to fear from dissection; rather they court the anatomist's knife. Their beauty does not lie on the surface merely, though that surface is passing fair; they have that interior charm and sweetness, that plaintive and mysterious tenderness, which belongs to the notes of a Stradivarius violin when played by a master-hand. They suggest more than they say; they are replete with thoughts that often lie too deep for tears, and make us feel that we are greater than we know. They win upon our hearts like a living voice, and make us love the writer, whom we have perhaps never seen. "Eloquent" would be a poor and vulgar adjective to apply to them. They are more than eloquent; they are poetry, religion, and philosophy combined in prose, which is prose only because it is not in rhythm.
Largely as Dr. Newman is gifted with the imaginative faculty, he has not acquired, nor, indeed, deserved to acquire, the same honors as a poet as by his prose writings. His verses entitled "Lead, kindly Light," are faultlessly beautiful, and some parts of Gerontius are very fine; but in his poetry in general there is a want of color and detail. His mind has not been turned sufficiently to the minuter qualities and phases of natural objects to make a consummate poet. He is too abstract, chill, and classical for the luxurious requirements of modern verse. But when, in his prose, he launches into matter highly poetical in its nature, as in Callista, when he describes the ravages of the locusts, or in his Sermons, when he dwells on the assumption of Our Lady's body into heaven, his language is equally copious and brilliant, reaching the highest form of speech without any sacrifice of simplicity, point, or color. Whatever Dr. Newman writes, be it sermon, history, or fiction, it has the air of an essay. It is a charming disquisition—the outpouring of the thoughts of a great and original mind on some point which deeply interests him, and the connection of which with other matters of high import he sees more clearly than other men. But he is not discursive; he does not straggle about from one subject to another, but keeps closely to that which is in hand. Hence, to cursory readers he often seems to be forgetting some truths, because he dwells so fully and forcibly on others. It is their minds which are at fault, not his. All parts of a large system of Christian philosophy are present to his view at all times; and for this very reason he can afford to spend himself on each in detail and labor upward from the particular to the universal. In this respect he resembles Plato, while in others he has been compared, not unjustly, to S. Augustine:
"Whene'er I con the thoughtful page
My youth so dearly prized,
I say, This foremost of his age
Is Plato's self baptized!
"But kindling, weeping, as I read,
And wondering at his pen,
I cry, This Newman is indeed
Augustine come again.