SOURCE: Tillotson, Geoffrey. “Newman's Essay on Poetry: An Exposition and Comment.” In Criticism and the Nineteenth Century, pp. 147-87. N.p.: Archon Books, 1967.

In the following excerpt, originally published in 1951, Tillotson discusses Newman's influential 1829 essay, “Poetry with Reference to Aristotle's Poetics,” which is informed by John Henry Newman's Evangelical religious beliefs.

The intellectual range and powers of Newman as a young don are nowhere concentrated more splendidly than in his essay on poetry.¹ ‘Poetry with Reference to Aristotle's Poetics’ was furnished in response to a request of the strangely versatile Blanco White,² who had been asked to edit a new magazine, and who looked to his friend Newman for a secular contribution to it: ‘Give me an article on any subject you like’, he pleaded, ‘Divinity excepted for the present, for of that I expect a flood.’³ Blanco White had known the young Newman for the few years...