13 SEPTEMBER 1851, Page 15

FATHEE NEWMAN, AND ROMAN MYSTIFICA.TIONS- NO. III.

Sin—As before, / resume the inquiry into Mr. Newman's bold claims to some great men departed, as a subject possessing an interest beyond the mere object of exposing his unscrupulous appropriation of that which does not be- long to him. "In our own time," says Mr. Newman, "there was Walter Scott, ashamed of his own Catholic tendencies, and cowering before the jealous frown of the tyrant tradition" [of Protestantism]. "Tare was Wordsworth, obliged to do penance for Catholic sonnets by Anti-Catholic complements to them." This daring claim to two great poets of our own generation requires some general remarks upon their position RS writers, in order to make their claim even intelligible.

To identify an author with the creations of his own imagination, is-a very general delusion ; and it may be set down as one of the teats of genius, that it is thus able to invest-its subject with a magic haze, through which we are unable to distinguish the real from the ideal. Still, there is a corrective for this : thanks to the minuteness of modern memoirs and biographies, we are now, much more freely than of yore, admitted to see our men of genius in their "working dress," and to know something of the toil and care,, the emendations, polishings, and corrections, with which they finish off their fairy-land works for the public eye. There is the same kind of gratification in thus seeing the author in his study as in visiting the sculptor in his studio ; but in both cases we undergo a disenchantment—some of the plea- sure of illusion is gone for ever; nor is it possible for those once admitted to the arcane of authorship to be carried away by the magic of fiction, as in the days before their initiation. The same principle applies to every address to the imagination. Who can tell how much of that enchantment which "Punch" exeroises over his street audience lies in the green baibe drapery, from which emerge the mysterious personages and unearthly voices of that celebrated drama ?

One result. of this illusion, which is occasionally no less unpleasant than unjust to an author, is that of holding him responsible for all the sentiments and opinions which the course of his work may require him to put into the mouths of his imaginary characters. Such responsibility may be fairly im- posed upon him when, as in the case of Alexander Pope, he writes in a

moral or didactic strain," but not when he avowedly lays his scene in the world of faery. It is no part of my business or intention to defend or excuse the morale of "Cain, a Mystery, by Lord Byron "; but I must assert the va- lidity of one part of the noble author's defence, when he urges the impossi- bility of "making Lucifer talk like the Bishop of Lincoln' ; and had there been no better grounds for-censuring the-scope and tendency of his writings, I for one would never convict him of impiety merely for making the crea- tures. of his invention "talk in character." We may blame the choice of subjects., and say that a mind barer regulated would never have selected such; but to condemn him for a ligwous and consistent execution of the subject he had chosen, is certainly unfair, and may possibly have provoked the daring and irritable-spirit of Byron to further and more reckless defiance of censures pronounced on such untenable grounds.

These remarks are preparatory to our inquiry, upon what possible grounds Mr. Newman can sustain his proposition that Sir Walter Scott had " Catho- lic tendencies of which he was as/joined"? And I do not hesitate to assert, that he can only find them in that shadowy world inhabited by such person- ages as "the Last Minstrel," "Captain Clutterbuek," "Doctor Dryasdust," "Jedidiah Cleishhottom," and (though last not least) the " EinoLoze of the Alarcon OF WAVERLEY l"—for assuredly it was only when it pleased the great magician of the North to masquerade it as one of these imaginary per- sonages, that we ever find a word or sentiment justifying Mr. Newman's as- sumption. But if we take the same Scott in propria persona, as shown in the admirable biography of his literary executor—whether we look at him when rinowiug off, an opinion in a confidential letter, or jotting down a pawing thought in the unreserve of his " gurnal" (iournal)—we then find opinions expressed of " Catholicity " which set aside for ever Mr. Newman's fable of "latent Catholic tendencies" held in control by any restraining cause what- ,ever. And in testing Mr. Newman's assertions on this point, let it not so forgotten, that whatever ambiguity there might at one time be in his use of this term "Catholic," there is now none—he means by it Romanism in all.itt grossness. Some years since, when that gentleman and his followers vrere in the embryo state which it pleased them to denominate "Anglo-Ca- tholic," it was my fortune to pass an evening in his company at his College in Orford; and, widely as I thought him even then to have diverged from the principles of the English Church, I should have scouted the suggestion that his acute and cultivated mind could by any process be brought to enun- ciate as "Catholic" such follies as he has put forward in a late lecture ; where he announces his implicit belief in even the grossest of the "lying wonders" with which, as he truly says, his "Catholicism" "from North to South," and "from East to West," is "hung-and garnished "—ler old won- ders 48 fornew—for St. Raymond "crossing the sea on his cloak" as for the 'Winking Madonna of Rimini," for the "-holy oust of Troves" as for the

" Estatica" of Lord Shrewsbury. Mr. Newman's easy belief "has stomach for them all " ; and they are all part and parcel of his newly-adopted fully developed "Catholicity," which he does not shrink from placing on the same level as the Divine incarnation. When he has the assurance to claim Sir Walter Scott as having any "tendency" to such follies as these, he sets us on search for a few of those freely-worded but therefore more im- portant opinions which are scattered through Scott's confidential communi- cations.

"It is, after all," says Sir Walter when he had seen the working of the Burnish system in Ireland, "a helpless sort of superstition, which with its saints' days, and the influence of its ignorant bigoted priesthood, destroys ambition and industrious. exertion." Again, in the unreeerve of his journal, speculating on the results of the Relief Bill, then pending, he says, "I hold Popery to be such a mean, depraving superstition, that I am not sure I could have found myself liberal enough for voting for the repeal of the penal laws- as they existed before 1780: they must, and would in course of tame, have smothered Popery ; and I coulees I should have seen the Ohl Lady of Baby- lon's mouth stop with pleasure." He then (though he had fallen in with

the Duke of • 'm's policy) adds these homely, but sagacious, and as they now prove prop :tie words—" It (Emancipation) is an awful risk. The world is in fact as silly as ever, and a good oonvietence of nonsense will always find believers ; and why not Popery? So I hope-the Duke of Wel- lington will keep the horned beast well in hand, and not let her get her leg over the harrows." Might not one well imagine that Scott's keen eye, looking adown the streamof time, saw as by second sight those "preparatory schools" which Puseyism has sinoe opened through the land for teaching a sufficient "competence of nonsense' to. qualify the students for the upper classes of Romish theology ? and who will not read in the development of Burnish policy, within the last nine months in England, the fulfilment even- to the letter of his homely simile of "the horned beast getting her leg over the harrows" ? but beyond all, who will be able to suppress a smile at the idea of the writer of these shrewd sarcastic opinions having "Catholic ten- dencies of which he was ashamed " ?

Still the q.uestion remains, what can be the grounds-on which Mr. New- man's assertion rests ? We must find them in Sir Walter Scott's works of fiction, and in the artistic use he has made of the Romish system and ritual . in getting up the decorations and dresses of his mediaival dramas and tales. Little did the Great Unknown dream, while he was working out the rich • mine of his invention and fashioning it into fancy-work of CI-ethic pattern, that a day would come when his "auld-warld stories" would be pressed_into the service of an Oratorian lecture, as arguments or proofs of the latent Ca-, tholicisin of England. But even taking this to be the ground of Mr. New. man's assumptions, let us examine a little more closely whether it beara him out. Lotus first examine his poetry.

I can just now recollect but two passages of his poems in which the usages or practices of the Burnish Church are prominently brought forward. As to his occasionally putting an expression of Burnish devotion or execration, as the case might be, into the mouth of some of his personages, this was no more than part of that "speaking in character" to which I have before re- ferred. Thus, when the aged minstrel calls " Jesu, Maria, shield us well" against. the Lady of BranIcsome's "glamour," or old "Bell the Cat" ex- claims in disgust at Marmion's treachery-

" letter forged ! St. Jude to epees!.

Did ever krught so foul a deed?"

or when Harry Blount rates his companion with

"&. Arithon fire thee! wilt thou stand

All day with bonnet in thine band ?"—

these passages, according to Mr. Newman's mile of judgment, would denote a " tendency " in their author to "the invocation of sainta " ; but, unfor- tunately, we have elsewhere a direct intimation in plain prose, of the same author's opinion that "saint-worship is an absurdity which degrades the religion of the _Romanies." But to pass by these, on two occasion, when Sir -Walter Scott has formally introduced the "Catholic system" in action, let us consider whether in doing so he exhibits any " tendency " betokening a favourable estimation of it?

The first I shall mention is the powerful scene in Mrmion, where three heads of the Roman Church are met in "awful conclave,"

"In chapter of St. Benedict,

For inquisition stern and strict

On two apostates from the faith,

And if need were, to doom to death."

I confess that to me the incident of the fate of Constance Beverly and her miserable accomplice seems precisely what the most decided antagonist of the Roman system would select to expose it, and excite human feeling against its workings. While in the picturesque features of this scene of dreadful cruelty it adapted itself well to the general plan of Scott's poem, it is impossible to imagine that the author had not as his seeondary object, to teach from this " living tomb,

A lesson dread of bloody Boom,"

addressed to those times when

Some traveller should find these b.mes Whitening amid disjointed atones, And, ignorant of priest's cruelty, Marvel-such relics here should be."

In a note, he tells us that the incident was derived from the finding of et female skeleton a few years before in the Abbey of Cohlinghame, which was. evidently the remains of an "-immured nun " ; and it is not many months. since I saw, in a small town in Italy, the whole scene realized to the letter,. where, within a church, and "in niche narrow, deep, and tall," stood a dried human body., in such a position as proved too painfully, that it must have suffered the last pangs-of a lingering death after it was enclosed there. How the Church of Rome permits (where it can prevent) such proofs of its cruelty to be seen, can only be accounted for by the fact that it is within its own dominions—its own manor and hunting-ground ; and that, on the whole,,the wholesome terror excited by such spectacles-in the minds orthe more than counterbalances the effects of exposure from such stray heretic& as may occasionally turn aside to gaze on them. However that mar be,„ sure Lam that the mind of him who could conceive such a scene as the an- ther of Marrnion has described—or look upon it, as the writer of this has done—would find little room for those "Catholic tendencies" of which Mr. Newman charges Sir Walter Scott with, being at once conscious and "ashamed."

The other passage to which I refer is that in the Lay of the Last Ma- Beret, where the poem doses with an adaptation of some parts of that mag- nificent hymn the "Dies Ine " ; of which, as of some other hymns or the Catholic Church, Scott elsewhere expresses his admiration. If to admire thie.. fine and truly Catholic hymn denote "Catholic tendencies," Itake the liberty to include myself in the 'number of those who entertain them. But, keep- ing in mind what Mr. Newman means by the term "Catholic," I would ob- serve the total absenceirom that fine hymn of every sentiment or ex don against which the sternest Protestant could object as Burnish; is not a word in it to which tiny Chriatian mild refuse to subscribe ; while the grandeur of some of-its expressions and cadences raises it altogether above- the general run of monkish poetry. Mr. Newman might with equal reason: claim our Prayer-book as newish, because it contains the "To Deum," as- appropriate.Sir Walter Scott because,he admired the "Dice Ins,"

But then, "the pilgrim chiefs, in long array," with "requiem for the dead," and

"Bells which toll'd their mighty peal

For the departed spirit's weal.—

And penitential prayer divine,

Who sought out Melrose' holy shrine "-

'do not these exhibit the "Catholic tendencies" of the author? I think this a hasty and shallow conclusion of one whose wishes bias his judgment. To those who study Scott's tendencies they exhibit more of his admiration for Melrose Abbey than anything else, and are but another proof of the exquisite art with which he has interwoven the localities ef his native land into his romances. How much of this beautiful poem do we owe to its author's ad- miration of the graceful ruins on Tweedsule ? and how often does the turn and tendency of a composition depend on some personal bias or prepossession of its author? For example, many have remarked the strong Jacobite ten- dency of the interesting history of the Queens of England; but possibly few have considered how much of this may be traced to the fact that the family of its author furnished a wet-nurse to the Pretender, who followed the for- tunes of the family into exile, and left Jacobite memorials and reminiscences to influence the tastes and judgment of a present gifted descendant.

If we turn to Scott's prose compositions, I feel equally at a loss to know from what portions of them Mr. Newman can profess to derive hisassertions. I know none in which the Romish system is so prominently brought forward as in The Monastery and its pendant The Abbot; and in the dialogues between "Prior Eustacc" on the one side and "Master Henry Warden" on the other, the two systems of Romanism and Protestantism are severally assailed and defended in a complete theological duello. I have read these remarkable scenes for I believe the tenth time since I commenced this letter, and can only repeat my wonder at the "priestly assurance," which can attribute to the author of them what Mr. Newman calls "Catholic tendencies." While the Romish arguments are stated with a fairness and a fulness which shows the author's impartiality, we are not left in doubt, no not for a moment, in which scale truth lay. In the supernatural incident of "the Bible," that "volume blaok,"—which, as "excellent" indeed, but "fatal," the Church of Rome withholds from its people, while Scott con- trives an interference of the powers of the invisible world in order to restore the "scarce volume" to its owners—we may read the judgment of this emi- nent man on the vital question, "whether God's:Word or the Pope's Dogma is to be the court of ultimate appeal in all matters of religion ?" If we turn to consider the case of William Wordsworth, it furnishes con- clusions somewhat different from that of Scott, yet not a whit more favour- able to Mr. Newman's assertions. Scott was a man of two worlds ; Words- worth more obviously of one. Scott could leave his" chamber of imagery," and be, the next moment, the shrewd, cheerful, intelligent denizen of the regions of common sense, and the keen observer of men and manners in every-day life. Wordsworth, having early found his mission in working out a new and peculiar vein of poetic treasure, was thenceforth devoted to it wholly ; so that perhaps he forms if not a solitary yet one of a few exceptions to the general rule laid down before that the poet should not be identified with his compositions. In Wordsweirth's musings we read the man ; and the question now remains, what we can decipher in those "ecclesiastical sketch- es" which Mr. Newman calla "Catholic sonnets eked out with Anti-Catholic complements," but which the author himself called "pictures so closely connected as to have the effect of a poem in a form of stanza." I have just reread these memorials of the poet's mind, and the impression received from them in reference to Mr. Nevrman's bold and unhandsome inferences is this —that there are some natures to which generosity is unintelligible, and upon which fair dealing is wasted. Mr. Wordsworth deals fairly and tenderly with all that is true, graceful, or venerable, in the Romish system ; but he no less fairly and firmly, though with the delicacy of a gentle nature, notices " monastic voluptuousness" spinning its "unhallowed threads of revelry round convent hearths "—" transubstantiation " as "breeding awe and supernatural horror" by its "rites, which trample upon soul and sense "— "prayers for the dead " as

"Bites which console the spirit under grief Which ill can brook more rational relief Hence prayers are shaped amiss, and dirges sung For those whose doom is fixed "-

and 'Teaks of the temporary revival of Popery under "a sullen Queen," as a penal when

"Again they do invoke The creature—to the creature glory give; Again with frankincense the altars smoke. Like those the heathen served ; and masses sung ; And prayer, man's rational prerogative. Runs through blind channels of an unknown tongue."

These are a few specimens taken at random from the connected series of

sketches, in which Wordsworth has presented i certain points in the eccle- siastical history of our country ; while there are others n abundance which, though tempting me to extract them, would lengthen too much this letter, and would abundantly prove that Wordsworth, under no pressure of "tyrant tradition," but in the calm exercise of his own contemplative mind, was deeply sensible of the blessing of belonging to

" A state whose generous will through earth is dealt ; A state which, balancing herself between

Licence and slavish order, dares be free."

And his solemn recognition of the "obligations of civil to religious liberty" is at this moment, when "slavish order" is reasserting its claims to "go- vern" our land according to the "partitions" of a foreign jurisdiction, pe- culiarly worthy of attention.

Nor yet

(Grave this within thy heart) if spiritual things Be lost, through apathy, or scorn, or fear, Shalt thou thy humbler franchises support, However hardly won or justly dear." I own it requires some restraint over one's self to speak calmly of the Oratorian who, in the face of such testimonies as these, (and they might be multiplied,) can claim him who utters them as having covert "tendencies" favourable to a system directly antagonistic to the "religious liberties" of England. One result of Mr. Newman's claim, in the cases I have been con- sidering, will not, I hope, easily fade from the public recollection. For a neophyte, he has with marvellous facility assimilated himself to the practices of a system whose policy towards antagonists may be summed up in a few ctincisc formulw, as follows. "Assert boldly—let confutation follow and overtake if it can : take every concession of candour or charity, and use it without scruple as an argument against the incautious or unsuspecting donor : avail yourself of every benefit of that wide Christian toleration in which, as Wordsworth beautifully expresses it in the sonnet on the recep- tion of the emigrant French clergy by Protestant Britain,

True compassion greets them; creed and test • Vanish before the unreserved embrace

. Of Catholic humanity'— but give nothing in return, that you can avoid, no, not even a recognized &ft of worship to the British Protestant at Borne: claim toleration as a duty due to yourself—refuse it as a sin when claimed as due from you to your neighbour." Such, in few words, is the policy of the system with which we have to deal, and which pretends to dispose of the mass of testi- mony I have been hunting up, by a few. plausible, unblushing assertions, is-

sued from the Oratory of St. Philip Nen. . A. B. R.