Many men would shrink from recording all their
cold fits and hesitations and prolonged inconsistencies: I am sure it
was the breath of life to Newman to confess them, now that he had done
with them for ever. His _Lectures on the Present Position of English
Catholics_, practically preached against a raging mob, rise not only
higher but happier, as his instant unpopularity increases. There is
something grander than humour, there is fun, in the very first lecture
about the British Constitution as explained to a meeting of Russians.
But always his triumphs are the triumphs of a highly sensitive man: a
man must feel insults before he can so insultingly and splendidly
avenge them. He is a naked man, who carries a naked sword. The quality
of his literary style is so successful that it succeeds in escaping
definition. The quality of his logic is that of a long but passionate
patience, which waits until he has fixed all corners of an iron trap.
But the quality of his moral comment on the age remains what I have
said: a protest of the rationality of religion as against the increasing
irrationality of mere Victorian comfort and compromise.
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