The bitterness of these five years of neglect, in which he had been eating his heart in silence, must be remembered in connexion with the famous Kingsley controversy, which in 1864 roused him to put on his armour and fight for his reputation. There had always been an element of combativeness in Newman's disposition. 'Nescio quo pacto, my spirits most happily rise at the prospect of danger,' he wrote early in life. And when he could persuade himself that not only his honour but that of the Church was at stake, he could feel and show the true Catholic ferocity, the cruellest spirit on earth. 'A heresiarch,' he had written even in his Anglican days, 'should meet with no mercy. He must be dealt with by the competent authority as if he were embodied evil. To spare him is a false and dangerous pity. It is to endanger the souls of thousands, and it is uncharitable towards himself'! This was the temper, soured by defeat and not mellowed by age, which Charles Kingsley in an evil moment for himself chose wantonly to provoke. At Christmas 1863 there appeared in Macmillan's Magazine a review of Froude's 'History of England,' in which Kingsley wrote 'Truth for its own sake has never been a virtue with the Roman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it need not be, and on the whole ought not to be—that cunning is the weapon which Heaven has given to the saints wherewith to withstand the brute male force of the wicked world.' This charge was in fact based on a careless reading, or an imperfect recollection, of the twentieth discourse in 'Sermons on Subjects of the Day.' The discourse in question is a somewhat nauseous glorification of the servile temper, but it only says that the meekness of the saints is (by Divine providence) so successful that it is always mistaken for craft. The imputation of cunning is therefore a note of sanctity in its victim. Kingsley ought to have read the sermon again, and withdrawn unreservedly from an untenable position. But he thought that something less than a complete apology would serve; and so gave Newman the opportunity of his life. When the withdrawal which he offered was rejected, Kingsley made matters ten times worse for himself by an ill-considered pamphlet called 'What then does Dr. Newman mean?' In this effusion he vents all his scorn and hatred for Catholicism—for its tortuous tactics, its monstrous credulity and appetite for miracles, which must proceed, according to him, either from infantile folly or from deliberate imposture. Forgetting altogether that he has to defend himself against a specific charge of slander, he offers his great opponent the choice between writing himself down a knave or a fool—a knave if he pretends to believe in the Holy Coat and the blood of St. Januarius, a fool if he does believe in them.
The coarseness of this attack upon an elderly man of saintly character and acknowledged intellectual eminence, who had to all appearance blighted a great career by honestly obeying his conscience, offended the British public, which was now fully disposed to give a respectful and favourable hearing to whatever Newman might care to say in reply. In a Catholic country it would have been useless for a Protestant, however falsely attacked, to appeal to Catholic public opinion for justice; but Newman understood the English character, and saw his splendid chance.
The famous defence was, from every point of view except the highest, a complete triumph. And although Hort was strictly accurate in describing the treatment of Kingsley as 'horribly unchristian,' it is demanding too much of human nature to expect a master of fence, when wantonly attacked with a bludgeon, to abstain from the pleasure of pricking his adversary scientifically in the tender parts of his body. The bitterest passages were excised in later editions; and the 'Apologia' remains a masterpiece of autobiography, and a powerful defence of Catholicism. To Newman this appeared to be the turning-point in his fortunes. He felt strong enough to administer a severe snub to Monsignor Talbot, his old enemy, who, hearing of the success the 'Apologia,' invited him to preach at Rome. Then at once he threw himself into a great scheme for founding an Oratory at Oxford. Eight and a half acres were bought between Worcester College, the Clarendon Press, the Observatory, and Beaumont Street, a magnificent site, which the Oratorians acquired for only £8400. But here again he was thwarted. W.G. Ward opposed the scheme with all his might, insisting on the necessity of 'preserving the purity of a Catholic atmosphere throughout the whole course of education.' The whole tendency of the Ultramontane movement was to secure, before all other things, a body of militant young Catholics to fight the battles of the Church. Newman was willing to support the English Church in its warfare against unbelief; to the Ultramontane a Protestant is as certainly damned as an atheist, and is more mischievous as being less amenable to Catholic influence. Manning and Talbot seem to have given the project its coup de grâce at Rome, and Newman sold the land which he had bought. He was bitterly disappointed; but the growth of public esteem had given him self-confidence, and he did not again fall into despondency, though he had a strange presentiment of approaching death, which prompted his last famous poem, 'The Dream of Gerontius.' A second attempt to go to Oxford was thwarted by enemies at Home and in England in 1866-7. The extreme party, with Manning, now Archbishop, at their head, seemed to be victorious all along the line. They were able to proceed to their supreme triumph in the Vatican Council which issued the dogma of Papal Infallibility. Newman, while others were intriguing and haranguing, was quietly engaged in preparing his subtlest and (on one side) his most characteristic work, 'The Grammar of Assent,' an attempt at a Catholic apologetic on a 'personalist,' as opposed to an 'intellectualist' basis. He declined to take an active part in the theological conferences about infallibility, being by this time well aware how little weight such arguments as he could bring were likely to have at Rome. He was disgusted at the insolent aggressiveness of the Ultramontanes, but he had no wish to combat it. The situation was hopeless, and he knew it. The death of several friends increased the sense of isolation, and during the years 1875 to 1879 his silence and depression were very noticeable to those who lived with him. His dearest friend, Ambrose St. John, was one of several who died about this time. But Trinity College, Oxford, made him an honorary fellow in 1877, an honour which seemed to prognosticate the far higher distinction which was soon to be conferred upon him.
The death of Pius IX in 1878 brought to an end the long reign of obscurantism at the Vatican, and with the election of Leo XIII Newman emerged from the cloud under which he had remained for more than a generation. The new Pope lost no time in making him a Cardinal, though even now the prize seemed to be on the point of slipping through his fingers. He valued the honour immensely as setting the official seal of approbation on his life's work, and the last ten years of his life were quietly happy. He was able to mingle actively in affairs of public interest, and to write long letters, till near the end. He died on August 11, 1890, in his ninetieth year, and was buried, by his own request, in the same grave with his friend Ambrose St. John.
Why is it that this sad, isolated, broken life, in which the young man renounces the creed of the boy, and the elder man pours scorn upon the loyalties of his prime; which found its last haven in a society which wished to make a tool of him but distrusted him too much for even this pitiful service, has still an absorbing interest for our generation? For it is not only in England that Newman's fame lives and grows. In France there is a cult of Newman, which has produced biographies by Bremond and Faure, as well as a history of the Catholic Revival in England by Thureau-Dangin. In England, besides Dean Church's 'Oxford Movement,' we have biographies by R.H. Hutton and W. Barry, and appreciations or depreciations by E. Abbott, Leslie Stephen, Froude, Mark Pattison, and several others.
The interest is mainly personal and psychological. Newman's writings, and his life, are a 'human document' in a very peculiar degree. Bremond is right in calling attention to the autocentrism of Newman. 'Although (he says) the words "I" and "me" are relatively rare in Newman's writings, whether as preacher, novelist, controversialist, philosopher, or poet, he always reveals and always describes himself.' Even his historical portraits are reconstructed from his inner consciousness; hence their historical falsity—all ages are mixed in his histories—and their philosophical truth. In a sense he was the most reserved of men. We do not know whether he had any ordinary temptations; we do not know whether he ever fell in love. But the texture of his mind and the growth of his opinions have been laid bare to us with the candour of a saint and the accuracy of a dissector or analyst. He reminds us of De Quincey, who also could tell the story of his own life, but no other, and whose style, like his own, was modelled on the literary traditions of the eighteenth century.
He has left us, in the 'Apologia,' a picture of his precocious and dreamy boyhood, when he lived in a world of his own, peopled by angels and spirits, a world in which the supernatural was the only nature. He was lonely and reserved, then as always. It is not for nothing that in his sermons he expatiates so often on the impenetrability of the human soul. A nature so self-centred has always something hard and inhuman about it; he was loved, but loved little in return. And yet he craved for more affection than he could reciprocate. 'I cannot ever realise to myself,' he wrote once, 'that anyone loves me.' It is a common feeling in imaginative, withdrawn characters. Deepseated in his nature was a reverence for the hidden springs of thought, action, and belief. When he spoke of 'conscience,' as he did continually, he meant, not the faculty which decides ethical problems, but the undivided soul-nature which underlies the separate activities of thought, will, and feeling. In this sense the epigrammatist was right who said that 'to Newman his own nature was a revelation which he called conscience.' He 'followed the gleam,' uncertain whither it would lead him. The poem 'Lead, kindly Light' is the most intimate self-revelation that he ever made. This mental attitude, which he took early in life, became the foundation of his 'personalist' philosophy, and of the anti-intellectualism which was the negative side of it. But this reliance on the inner light, which nearly made a mystic of him, was clouded by a haunting fear of God's wrath, which imparts a gloomy tinge to his Anglican sermons, and which, while he was halting between the English Church and Rome, plied him with the very unmystical question 'Where shall I be most safe?' an argument which he had used repeatedly and without scruple in his parochial sermons.[82]
It is nevertheless true that this self-centred spirit was, at least in early life, impressionable and open to the influence of others. His friendship with Hurrell Froude and Keble affected his opinions considerably: and still more potent was the pervading intangible influence of Oxford—the academic atmosphere. It cannot indeed be said that the University was at this time in a healthy condition. Mark Pattison has described with caustic contempt the intellectual lethargy of the place, and the miserable quality of the lectures. Oxford was still de facto a close clerical corporation, and in most colleges 'clubbable men' rather than scholars were chosen for the fellowships. Oriel won its unique position by breaking through this tradition, and also by making originality rather than success in the university examinations the main qualification for election. But even at Oriel, and among the ablest men, there was great ignorance of much that was being thought and written elsewhere. Knowledge of German was rare. Even the classics were not read in a humanistic spirit. 'Of the world of wisdom and sentiment—of poetry and philosophy, of social and political experience, contained in the Latin and Greek classics, and of the true relation of the degenerate and semi-barbarous Christian writers of the fourth century to that world—Oxford, in 1830, had never dreamt.[83] Theological prejudice in fact distorted the whole outlook of the resident fellows, and confounded all estimation of relative values. Newman never, all through his life, took a step towards overcoming this early prejudice. He imagined a golden age of the Church, or several golden ages, and found them in 'the first three centuries,' in the time of Alfred the Great or of Edward the Confessor, or in the seventeenth century. He was only sure that the sixteenth century was made of much baser metal. This unhistorical idealisation of the past, even of a barbarous past, was very characteristic of Newman and his friends. They bequeathed to the Anglican Church the strange legend of an age of pure doctrine and heroic practice, to which it should be our aim to 'return.' The real strength of this legend lies in the fact that it has no historical foundation. The ideal which is presented as a return or a revival is nothing of the kind, but a creation of our own time, projected by the imagination into the past, from which it comes back with a halo of authority. Newman had his full share of these illusions. In his youth and prime he was more of an Englishman than an Anglican. He despised foreigners, unless they were Catholic saints, could not bear the sight of the tricolor, and hated all the 'ideas of the Revolution.' His dictum, 'Luther is dead, but Hildebrand and Loyola are alive,' throws a flood of light upon the contents of his mind, as does the truly British prejudice which caused him to be horrified at the sight of ships coaling at Malta 'on a holy day.' His range of ideas was so much restricted that Bremond, a sincere admirer, says that his imagination lived on 'une poignée de souvenirs d'enfant.' How tragic was the fate which caught this loyal Englishman and more than loyal Oxonian in the meshes of a cosmopolitan institution in which England counted for little and Oxford for nothing at all!
The Reform of 1832 seemed to threaten the English Church with destruction. Arnold in this year wrote 'The Church, as it now stands, no human power can save.' The bishops were stunned and bewildered by the unexpected outbreak of popular hostility. Old methods of defence were plainly useless; some new plan of campaign must be devised against the double assault of political radicalism and theological liberalism. To Newman both alike were of the devil; theological liberalism especially was only specious infidelity. He never had the slightest inkling that a deep religious earnestness and love of truth underlay the revolt against orthodox tradition. His fighting instincts were aroused. When Keble attributed the scheme for suppressing some Irish bishopries to 'national apostasy,' he rushed to arms in defence of Church privileges and property. In the first Tract (1833) he says:
'A notion has gone abroad that the people can take away your power. They think they have given it and can take it away. They have been deluded into a notion that present palpable usefulness, produceable results, acceptableness to your flocks—that these and such-like are the tests of your Divine commission. Enlighten them in this matter. Exalt our holy fathers the Bishops, as the representatives of the Apostles, and the Angels of the Churches, and magnify your office, as being ordained by them to take part in their ministry.'