THE claims which John Newton makes on our attention are
varied and curious. As the son of a sea-captain he was taught to worship an eighteenth-century taskmaster God ; but subsequently he was seized by a press-gang and introduced to a sufficiency of tempta- tions at sea. Dr. Johnson said that the impressed seaman suffered a worse fate than the felon, for " a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company " ; and certainly John Newton learnt as a sailor to blaspheme with the full alphabet of vice. Then, escaping from the Navy, the young man became the virtual slave of a slave-trader: the direst of humiliations, fevers and despairs comprised his lot until he contrived, with his father's help, to become himself the captain of a slave-ship.
If such misfortunes are not remarkable in the centur■'s context, Mr. Bernard Martin shows us that aspects of Newton's tribulations call for comment. Wordsworth read An Authentic Narrative, the book Newton wrote about his forced adventures, and the poet presented, in The Prelude, a picture of the press-gang's victim trying to solace himself with a " Treatise of Geometry."' More- over, Mr. Martin makes the very likely suggestion that Coleridge " thought himself into the feelings of the Ancient Mariner " with the special help of Newton's narrative.
There are, indeed, convincing parallels between the psychology of Coleridge's poem and Newton's experiences as Mr. Martin relates them. The Ancient Mariner's crime corresponds to the impressed sailor's blasphemy ; and Newton was recalled to religion by a rudimentary prayer uttered without thought during a storm, just as the Ancient Mariner was saved by the blessing he gave " unaware " to the water snakes. Again, like the Ancient Mariner, John Newton lived to perform " the penance of telling his story as a warning to others." It is typical of the age that the re-converted Newton could continue to act as captain of a slave-ship ; but his convention was to accept the idea of the heathen as sub-human. It is vastly to Newton's credit that, when he had left the sea and matured as a vicar of St. Mary Woolnoth, he encouraged Wilber- force ; and, although he prayed, " From poison and politics, good Lord, deliver me," that he became an active associate of the Abolitionists.
John Newton's other considerable claim to fame is a's a friend of William Cowper, who settled at Olney while Newton was curate of the parish. The spiritual friendship was a comfort to the distracted Cowper, who had already withdrawn from most contacts with the world ; but even the devoted Mr. Martin cannot make very much of the unspectacular details. The Olney Hymns, though, remain as a monument to this period. In all, one cannot say that John Newton's life, after the preparatory years of violence, pro- vides the biogfapher with spectacular events. The ex-slave-trader clergyman had trouble with drunken bell-ringers, and his preface to Cowper's first book of poems had to be withdrawn because personages still despised the evangelicals ; yet in such trials of later life the good man was cushioned by the love of his wife, Mary. So the total span, in spite of occasional intrusions into history, strikes the reader as a tale of domestic virtue.
Perhaps, then, it is a pity. that Mr. Martin, in his labour of enthusiasm, has paused so often to be certain that we see the picture. If he had given emphasis to the inner development rather
than fussed with the period setting of scenes, he might have done more to carry on the work of improving our sense of moderation which was so dear to John Newton's large heart. As it is, his book makes striking contributions to the footnotes of literature, social reform and the Evangelical movement.
OSWELL BLAKESTON.
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