aptly put it: "Newman is not at home in the dark places of the invisible world." This is another way of saying that Newman does violence to his own emotions in these demon choruses and betrays the factwhich could never happen if he possessed creative imagination, the gift whose lack appears most strikingly in his novels.

Though the poem loses in interest during the central part, it regains something of its old spell toward the close, with the appearance of the Angel of the Agony, who supplicates the Man God "by that shuddering dread which fell on Thee," to have pity on the soul of Gerontius. Here Newman is not conscious that his human qualities obscure his perfect expression of infinite love nor does dramatic necessity compel the utterance of an enmity toward Eternal Goodness which he could not feel; but his own personality expands again, emotionally untrammeled and potent, now ardent in the tremulous humility of Gerontius, now in the pity of the Angel, now in the loving fraternity of the Angel Guardian. And always his humility, his love, his pity, his resignation, his hope, and his faith, which are theirs also, kindle the reader with their ardor.

There is that in the final scenes which goes deep and you close the volume with that kind of gladness whose vision is dim with tears. And small wonder; for in Gerontius, the good man, facing the end hopefully, trustfully, you have seen Newman, standing alone, the protagonist, as every man must be at the last, of his own life's drama.

In form the Dream of Gerontius bears a striking resemblance to a Greek tragedy such, for example, as the Prometheus Bound of Eschylus. We have the protagonist, a figure of peculiar importance in each poem, standing in a definite relation to Divinity, in the one case of revolt, in the other of absolute peace and ac

quiescence; we have beings which elude men's eyes as Power and Violence in Prometheus and the angels and demons in Gerontius; the very limited dramatis persona with choruses; the constant changes in the meter to suit the changes of mood; the lack of action except such as occurs off the scene and is related. Of course there are limitations to this parallel, for in Gerontius the scene changes, a circumstance which the Greek tragedy did not admit; but to the reader whose imagination follows the chief actor into a new realm, this point of unlikeness is scarcely felt.

In the "tragic choruses" (The Elements and Judaism) which we have already referred to, there is a simplicity akin to the Greek; but in Gerontius there is less severity and a deftness in handling liquids that reminds us of Tennyson. At times there is a sonority which is Miltonic and worthy the great organ-lover himself. Here is a paraphrase of the Litany for the Dead; the priest addresses the soul of Gerontius:

Go, in the name of the Holy Spirit, who

Hath been pour'd out on thee! Go, in the name
Of Angels and Archangels; in the name

Of Thrones and Dominations; in the name
Of Princedoms and of Powers; and in the name
Of Cherubim and Seraphim, go forth!

Like Milton, too, Gerontius is rich in biblical phrasing, and at random you come upon "the bitterness of death is passed"; "Satan appeared among the sons of God"; "the consummation for all flesh," and the gain in richness and dignity is immeasurable.

Nowhere else has Newman shown anything approaching so skillful a handling of meter as in Gerontius. It is varied with perfect discrimination, now dignified, now sonorous, now quickened in time as Gerontius struggles to arouse his fainting energies, now moving more swiftly still as the anxious friends pour out their supplications.

It changes again as if touched with the ecstasy of Gerontius' hope and faith and again falls to a subdued measure as his energies begin to ebb. It varies again a dozen times in as many verses as he seems to bend

and as

Over the dizzy brink

Of some sheer infinite descent

Some bodily form of ill

Floats on the wind, with many a loathsome curse.

When the agony of fear is past, the meter slips back again into a languid cadence that reflects the weariness of Gerontius:

Novissima hora est; and I fain would sleep.
The pain has wearied me

O Lord, into Thy hands.

Into Thy hands,

After the sonorous cadences of the prayers for the dying, the rise and fall of the pentameter lines in blank verse are skillfully managed and accord exquisitely with the subdued calm of the chamber of death from which a soul has just gone forth. Says Gerontius:

I went to sleep, and now I am refreshed,

and the liquids in that and the following lines are marshalled with an almost Tennysonian adroitness.

When the Guardian Angel announces his presence it is in the tripping measure of joy:

My work is done,
My task is o'er,
And so I come,
Taking it home,
For the crown is won,
Alleluia!

For evermore.

When the demons' chorus is heard it is filled with such discord as becomes their spirit of malevolence; and in contrast the cadenced harmony of the angelic verses stands out appealingly.

It would be a tempting task to go into this matter in more detail, but we have seen enough to appreciate Newman's skill and his success in an important phase of poetic technique.

Thus in all these ways which we have been considering, Newman lavished upon Gerontius the riches of his mind and spirit, his faith and skill-every virtue of his ripe years both as man and as poet. Had he been asked how much time he had spent on Gerontius he might truthfully have answered, not "A few weeks," but rather, "All my life."

And everywhere the pervasive personality of this poet among theologians breathes like a fragrance. You cannot escape it. If his verse is the utterance of fear or hope or joy or confidence or self-accusation, it is ever and always the voice of that unique being-John Henry Newman. His personality was so large, so rich, so vital, that in it men see reflections of their own, and loving him for his gifts of sympathy and understanding, feel that his utterance is theirs also. His appeal does not always reach into the universal heart as it does in Lead, Kindly Light, but in his verse men of many minds and varied moods have found a spiritual substance which stands the test as of fire, and an expression chaste, ardent, and luminous,

V

NEWMAN AS HISTORIAN

[I]

NEWMAN began his historical writing young; in fact, he was only twenty-three when he contributed an article on Cicero to the Encyclopedia Metropolitana at the request of Dr. Whately, and twenty-five when he contributed Apollonius of Tyana to the same magazine. Neither, of course, was an unusual piece of work in itself except as it gave every evidence of painstaking care, insight into human nature, and exactness of style, and proved that Newman, even in his early twenties, possessed an unusual poise of mind and a freedom from those injudicious enthusiasms by which the unwary youthful writer is betrayed into dangerous ways. The paper on Cicero showed Newman as critic rather than as historian, but in the Apollonius we find evidence of that carefulness of research which was to be the outstanding mark of his study of the Arians and proved his realization of the importance of primary sources. The Apollonius opened up to him the historic value of the early Christian centuries and Newman found them fascinating enough to bring him back to them in some of the most charming and valuable of his later studies.

From the purely historical point of view Newman's most important work is the Arians of the Fourth Century on which he slaved until he was nearly fainting from exhaustion. Not a single one of the many protean 1 Begun 1830; finished 1832; published 1833.