The Oxford Movement Leaders
Newman. By F. L. Cross. (Philip Allan. Os.) . Cardinal Newman and Oxford. By J: M. Flood, -(Nicholson . and Watson. 10s. 6d.)
THE first three of these books belong' to a series -of Lives of the Traetatiarts which-claims to be a complete library of the Oifoid Movement. it is a proud boast to make ; but if
biography can ever justify a claim to be the soul of history, it will assuredly be in connexion with a great religious move- ment. ror religion is caught and not taught ; it relies for its spread upon a type of propaganda which is the direct result of the contact of one personality with another. - For its pur- poses Organization and machinery are of little use. Character is all-important.
As an aid to the study. of character these - books are all
illustrated with portraits of their respective -heroes. It is interesting to notice that in each case recourse is had to the Richmond series. One wonders whether this is altogether just, Possibly. Newman owes his pre-eminence in the popular estimation as much to the highly idealized representation by Richmond as to the exquisite art of his Apologia. If the. general public had easy access to sonic of the representations preserved at Oriel and Trinity it is quite possible that another estimate of him might gradually be framed. On the other hand, no one could guess the character of Pusey as the devout and heroic lover from the grim and grisly profesSor -delineated by Richmond. It is probably Keble who is least disguised by the artist. The gentle and refined features, which to the irreverent still have about them a puckish...suggestion of Monkeybrand," display, the strength and cheerfulness which. did more than anything else to perpetuate the results of the Oxford Movement in the Anglican Communion. .
One would hardly draw the judgement contained in the last sentence from Mr. Ingram's pleasantly written biography. Ile is obviously. anxious not to exalt his subject overmuch ; he does not count him either a great poet or an original thinker. Keble himself would have agreed and would indeed have repudiated that latter suggestion with horror. He re- presented what he believed to be the old tradition of Angli- canism, and he was proud to be able to claim that what he and his friends were teaching he had himself learned from- his father. In that tradition he remained steadfast to the end. It was from him that the others drew their strength. He was not the man to initiate movements. Froude contended. that he himself had to act as "poker to Keble's fire," and the dating of the Movement from Keble's Assize Sermon was just a private whim of Newman's. But everyone went to Keblc for advice and he was Pusey's confessor for many a year.
It was Pusey, thus fortified, who bore the brunt of the struggle. A true popular insight, and not the mere accident of first signing a tract, led to the Revival being dubbed " Paseyism," a -name by which it is still known on the Continent. The very fact' of Pusey's longevity was far more important than is generally recognized. He was born with the century, and his association with the Movement lasted nearly fifty years. He was thus able to live down the opposi- tion he had stirred up in his own University and to become an honoured member of -its governing body. This is sympto- matic of his work for the Movement. He supplied it for -half a century with vast stores of learning and a large pro- portion of his own limited wealth, to say nothing of sagacity and the prestige of a position that could not be ignored. In the end he ruled the policy of the English Church Union as in earlier years he had determined the policy of the Tracts.
We are fortunate in having a sympathetic account of him by Mr. Prestige, who, a glad adventurer at this particular kind of literature, has given us one of the best short biogra- phies we have read. It should do much to reinstate Pusey in- the popular esteem and restore to him that foremost place in the Movement ivhich recent writers have tended to deny him.
The reason for misjudgement on this head is due to the fact that everyone is so taken up with. Newman. Of the two books devoted to him in our present list Mr. Flood's is a chatty 'and agreeable account of Newman in his Anglican daya Dr.- Cross, on the other hand, attempts no literary artifice—his hook ends as if it had been cut with a knife—but he does give us a first-hand study of Newman's character and thought,' From the point of view of an addition to learning his volume is far more important than its size would suggest.
Dr. Cross is probably right- in maintaining that, while the importance of Pusey and Keble is derived from the Oxford• Movement, Newman would have been an exceptionally fas- cinating personality if he had never been associated with it. He believes that although the Apologia is meticulously accu-- rate in its details, it gives all unconsciously a fundamentally inaccurate account Of the course of Newman's intellectual development. According to him Newman's secession was due not to any inherent necessity of his theological thought but to a weakness of character which he calls ressentiment, not resentment _exactly, but that slave morality which in' Nietzsche's view was characteristic of Christianity and enabled the Christian who had forbidden himself -to meet his foe in the face to content himself with a victory over him in the imagination. To this Dr. Cross would ascribe the seces- sion, the Apologia, and the attitude to the Roman Catholic authorities in the melancholy later years. • Well, that may be so, and in any case it is interesting. But may not a sufficient cause for Newman's secession be found in the fact that he was just afraid ? He had-been undeceived. about the bishops ; perhaps he was not in the ark of salvation after all. To live without assurance was for him impossible.• He sought it where at least its external guarantees seemed to his tortured mind secure. It was this weakness that nearly. wrecked the Movement, as it was the more commonplace sturdiness of Keble and Pusey that saved it.
J. W. C. WAND.
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