NEWMAN AND TENNYSON.
[To THE EDITOR Of THE "SPECTATOR."' Sin,—Your article in the Spectator for July 18th under the above heading was deeply interesting as a piece of original criticism on a somewhat unexpected theme. It was also most suggestive as opening out a fresh and important line of thought in connection with two of the greatest teachers and thinkers of the age. It so happened that I was reading the " Life and Letters of Fenton J. A. Hort " when your article appeared, and I was much struck by the similarity of the criticism of Newman, especially contained in a letter of Dr. Hort's in Vol. IL, p. 423. It is impossible to quote from the letter in part without spoiling the effect of the whole. One passage, however, will, I venture to think, suggest an answer and explanation on more than one difficult point raised in your article. In comparing and contrasting the religious faith and teaching of Tennyson and Newman the writer of your article says : " There is perfect agreement on the point that the sense of duty is the deepest root of faith. Newman is never tired of pressing the point that the spirit of obedience to duty is the beginning of all true religion." Dr. Hort writes : "In matters of belief what Maurice said of him is profoundly true, that he was governed by an infinite scep- ticism counteracted by an infinite devoutness. But for his in- destructible sense of God's reality and presence he must have early become a thoroughgoing unbeliever, and then, not con- tent with a sober and reasonable faith, he delighted to use his never-failing subtlety in finding reasons and excuses for any belief which he wished to accept. The natural result of such teaching was that some of his ablest and most devoted disciples after a while gave up the attempt to follow him in his wonderful leaps, and fell away from Christian faith altogether." These two quotations seem to explain and account for the sympathy and (to a certain extent) unity of teaching of Newman and Tennyson ; here is " the parallelism between the religious aims of these two very different men" of which your article speaks. But to any of your readers who are interested in this matter I would say, Read the whole of Dr. Hort's letter (with others on the same subject in both volumes of this deeply interesting biography)), and trace for yourselves, in what is in itself a piece of most• discriminating criticism, how it illustrates and enlarges the field of the main contention of your article.—I am, Sir, &c.,
K. G. W.
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