This son of a practical London banker was writing verses at nine, a mock drama at twelve, and at fourteen, “he broke out into periodicals, The Spy and Anti-Spy, intended to answer one another.”  Of his tendency toward mysticism in youth, he wrote:—­

“I used to wish the Arabian Tales were true; my imagination ran on unknown influences, on magical powers and influences.  I thought life might be a dream, or I an angel, and all this world a deception, my fellow angels by a playful device concealing themselves from me, and deceiving me with the semblance of a material world.”

In his youth he imitated the style of Addison, Johnson, and Gibbon.  Few boys of his generation had as much practice in writing English prose.  At the age of fifteen years and ten months he entered Trinity College, Oxford, from which he was graduated at nineteen.  Two years later he won an Oxford fellowship, and in 1824 he became a clergyman of the Church of England.

The rest of his life belongs mainly to theological history.  He became one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement (1833-1841) toward stricter High-Church principles, as opposed to liberalism, and in 1845 he joined the Catholic Church.  He was rector of the new Catholic University at Dublin from 1854 to 1858.  In 1879 he was made a cardinal.  Most of his later life was spent at Edgbaston (near Birmingham) at the Oratory of St. Philip Neri.

Works and General Characteristics.—­Newman was a voluminous writer.  An edition of his works in thirty-six volumes was issued during his lifetime.  Most of these properly belong to the history of theological thought.  His Apologia pro Vita Sua, which he wrote in reply to an attack by Charles Kingsley, an Episcopal clergyman, is really, as its sub-title indicates, A History of His Religious Opinions.  This intimate, sympathetic account of his religious experiences won him many friends.  He wrote two novels:  Loss and Gain (1848), which gives an excellent picture of Oxford society during the last days of the Oxford Movement, and Callista (1852), a vivid story of an early Christian martyr in Africa.  His best-known hymn, Lead kindly Light, remains a favorite with all Christian denominations. The Dream of Gerontius (1865) is a poem that has been called “the happiest effort to represent the unseen world that has been made since the time of Dante.”

Those who are not interested in Newman’s Episcopal or Catholic sermons or in his great theological treatises will find some of his best prose in the work known as The Idea of a University.  This volume, containing 521 pages, is composed of discussions, lectures, and essays, prepared while he was rector of the University at Dublin.

Newman’s prose is worthy of close study for the following reasons:—­

(1) His style is a clear, transparent medium for the presentation of thought.  He molded his sentences with the care of an artist.  He said:—­