Cardinal Newman, of whom I shall write to-day, was the first of the
great writers born in the nineteenth century, and he lived from 1801 to
1890. Besides being a master of English prose he was no mean poet;
but above all else he was a man of immense personal power, which was
strangely associated with a manifest saintliness which compelled
diffidence from those admitted to his intimacy.
I have described him as I knew him in my _Memories_;[1] and now will
quote to you his utterance on music and its effect upon the heart of
man, which has always seemed to me too precious to leave buried in a
sermon:--
"Let us take an instance, of an outward and earthly form, or
economy, under which great wonders unknown seem to be typified; I
mean musical sounds as they are exhibited most perfectly in
instrumental harmony.
"There are seven notes in the scale; make them fourteen; yet what
a slender outfit for so vast an enterprise! What Science brings so
much out of so little? out of what poor elements does some great
master in it create his new world!
"Shall we say that all this exuberant inventiveness is a mere
ingenuity or trick of art, like some game or fashion of the day,
without reality, without meaning? We may do so; and then, perhaps,
we shall also account theology to be a matter of words; yet, as
there is a divinity in the theology of the Church, which those who
feel cannot communicate, so is there also in the wonderful
creation of sublimity and beauty of which I am speaking. To many
men the very names which the Science employs are utterly
incomprehensible. To speak of an idea or a subject seems to be
fanciful or trifling, to speak of the views which it opens upon us
to be childish extravagance; yet is it possible that that
inexhaustible evolution and disposition of notes, so rich yet so
simple, so intricate yet so regulated, so various yet so majestic,
should be a mere sound, which is gone and perishes?
"Can it be that those mysterious stirrings of heart, and keen
emotions, and strange yearnings after we know not what, and awful
impressions from we know not whence, should be wrought in us by
what is unsubstantial, and comes and goes, and begins and ends in
itself? It is not so; it cannot be. No; they have escaped from
some higher sphere, they are the outpourings of eternal harmony in
the medium of created sound; they are echoes from our home; they
are the voice of angels or the magnificat of Saints, or the living
laws of Divine Governance, or the Divinic attributes; something
are they besides themselves, which we cannot compass, which we
cannot utter,--though mortal man, and he perhaps not otherwise
distinguished above his fellows, has the gift of eliciting them."
Of quite another order is the Cardinal's description of a gentleman.
Here there is no flight of poetical imagination, but a manifestation of
felicitous intuition and penetrating insight as rare as it is convincing,
and the generous wide vision of a man of the world, undimmed by the
faintest trace of prejudice:--
"Hence it is that it is almost a definition of a gentleman to say
he is one who never inflicts pain. This description is both
refined and, as far as it goes, accurate. He is mainly occupied in
merely removing the obstacles which hinder the free and
unembarrassed action of those about him; and he concurs with their
movements rather than takes the initiative himself. His benefits
may be considered as parallel to what are called comforts or
conveniences in arrangements of a personal nature: like an easy
chair or a good fire, which do their part in dispelling cold and
fatigue, though nature provides both means of rest and animal heat
without them.
"The true gentleman in like manner carefully avoids whatever may
cause a jar or a jolt in the minds of those with whom he is cast;
all clashing of opinion, or collision of feeling, all restraint,
or suspicion, or gloom, or resentment; his great concern being to
make everyone at their ease and at home. He has his eyes on all
his company; he is tender towards the bashful, gentle towards the
distant, and merciful towards the absurd; he can recollect to whom
he is speaking; he guards against unseasonable allusions, or
topics which may irritate; he is seldom prominent in conversation
and never wearisome.
"He makes light of favours while he does them, and seems to be
receiving when he is conferring. He never speaks of himself except
when compelled, never defends himself by a mere retort; he has no
ears for slander or gossip, is scrupulous in imputing motives to
those who interfere with him, and interprets everything for the
best. He is never mean or little in his disputes, never takes
unfair advantage, never mistakes personalities or sharp sayings
for arguments, or insinuates evil which he dare not say out. From
a long-sighted prudence he observes the maxim of the ancient sage,
that we should ever conduct ourselves towards our enemy as if he
were one day to be our friend. He has too much sense to be
affronted at insults, he is too well employed to remember
injuries, and too indolent to bear malice.
"He is patient, forbearing, and resigned, on philosophical
principles; he submits to pain because it is inevitable, to
bereavement because it is irreparable, and to death because it is
his destiny. If he engages in controversy of any kind his
disciplined intellect preserves him from the blundering
discourtesy of better, perhaps, but less educated minds, who, like
blunt weapons, tear and hack instead of cutting clean, who mistake
the point in argument, waste their strength in trifles,
misconceive their adversary, and leave the question more involved
than they find it. He may be right or wrong in his opinion, but he
is too clear-headed to be unjust, he is as simple as he is
forcible, and as brief as he is decisive.
"Nowhere shall we find greater candour, consideration, indulgence;
he throws himself into the minds of his opponents, he accounts for
their mistakes. He knows the weakness of human reason as well as
its strength, its province, and its limits. If he be an unbeliever
he will be too profound and large-minded to ridicule religion or
to act against it; he is too wise to be a dogmatist or fanatic in
his infidelity. He respects piety and devotion; he even supports
institutions as venerable, beautiful, or useful, to which he does
not assent; he honours the ministers of religion, and it contents
him to decline its mysteries without assailing or denouncing them.
He is a friend of religious toleration, and that, not only because
his philosophy has taught him to look on all forms of faith with
an impartial eye, but also from the gentleness and effeminacy of
feeling which is the attendant on civilisation.
"Not that he may not hold a religion too, in his own way, even
when he is not a Christian. In that case his religion is one of
imagination and sentiment; it is the embodiment of those ideas of
the sublime, majestic, and beautiful, without which there can be
no large philosophy. Sometimes he acknowledges the Being of God,
sometimes he invests an unknown principle or quality with the
attributes of perfection. And this deduction of his reason, or
creation of his fancy, he makes the occasion of such excellent
thoughts, and the starting-point of so varied and systematic a
teaching, that he even seems like a disciple of Christianity
itself. From the very accuracy and steadiness of his logical
powers, he is able to see what sentiments are consistent in those
who hold any religious doctrine at all, and he appears to others
to feel and to hold a whole circle of theological truths, which
exist in his mind no otherwise than as a number of deductions.
"Such are the lineaments of the ethical character which the
cultivated intellect will form apart from religious principle."
Surely this is a wonderful utterance from a Cardinal of the Church of
Rome, full of urbanity and the wisdom of the world.
Your loving old
G.P.
[Footnote 1: Pp. 52-57.]
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