DR. ABBOTT ON CARDINAL NEWMAN.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE '4 SPECTATOR."
SIR,—Your sense of what is due to yourself as well as to me will lead you, I think, to insert the following brief refutation of the fresh charge which Mr. Ward has brought against me, based upon a misquotation (of course unintentional) of a passage from " Philomythus."
Mr. Ward describes me as complimenting Cardinal Newman " on the grace with which he conceals' the underlying foul- ness and falsehood of his method."
If I had committed such an error, I could have expressed regret for it, and have at once corrected it in the second edition of my work. But there is nothing to correct. My words were as follows :—" If this sort of work is to be done
at all, I do not see how it could be done with a grace more calculated to conceal its underlying foulness and false- hood."
Surely a man of average intelligence, and a fortiori Mr. Ward, ought to be able to see the difference between saying "An author conceals fasts," and "The grace and deftness of the author's style are calculated to conceal facts." Of course my meaning was, that the concealment was unintentional.
Yet Mr. Ward seems to have been hitherto unable to see the difference between such unconscious deception as this, and the deliberate knavery of "electing" to interpolate a word of one's own in a quotation from an opponent ; and hence he thinks it "almost amusing" that I, after having imputed (as he supposes) deliberate knavery to Newman, should feel sore at being called an approximate knave myself. However, he is "happy to withdraw" the charge, "if the expression con- veys so much to " me.
I take note of the withdrawal; and I venture to assure him that not to me alone, but to every literary man of any self- respect, such an " expression " must always " convey" a very serious meaning. Mr. Ward has misquoted me; but if I had been led in the heat of controversy to say that he had " eleeted " to do so, I should have been thoroughly ashamed of having so completely forgotten myself as to say what I had never for a. moment believed.
Mr. Ward once more speaks of my " serious misrepresenta- tions." Knowing, as he does, that your want of space has precluded you from inserting my reply to those charges, and that I have promised to publish my reply with all speed, he would have shown better taste, I think, to wait till I had attempted to prove to the satisfaction of the literary world, that he (and not I) is guilty of " serious misrepresentation." He will not have to wait long.—I am, Sir, &c., EDWIN A. ABBOTT.
Braesidc, Willow Road, N.W., May 9th.
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