Father Payne paused a moment, lost in thought.

“But,” I said, “do you mean that Newman calculated all his effects?”

“Oh, not deliberately,” said Father Payne, “but he was an artist pure and simple—­he was never less by himself than when he was alone, as the old Provost of Oriel said of him.  He lived dramatically by a kind of instinct.  The unselfconscious man goes his own way, and does not bother his head about other people:  but Newman was not like that.  When he was reading, it was always like the portrait of a student reading.  That’s the artist’s way—­he is always living in a sort of picture-frame.  Why, you can see from the Apologia, which he wrote in a few weeks, and often, as he once said, in tears, how tenderly and eagerly he remembered all he had ever done or thought.  His descriptions of himself are always romantic:  he lived in memories, like all poets.”

“But that gives one a disagreeable sense of unreality—­of pose,” I said.

“Ah, but that’s very short-sighted,” said Father Payne.  “Newman’s was a beautiful spirit—­wonderfully tender-hearted, self-restrained, gentle, sensitive, beauty-loving.  He loved beauty as much as any man who ever lived—­beautiful conduct, beautiful life—­and then his gift of expression!  There’s a marvellous thing.  It’s pure poetry, most of the Apologia:  look at the way he flashes into metaphor, at his exquisite pictures of persons, at his irony, his courtesy, his humour, his pathos.  He and Ruskin knew exactly how to confide in the world, how to humiliate themselves gracefully in public, how to laugh at themselves, how to be gay—­it’s all so well-bred, so delicate!  Depend upon it, that’s the way to make the world love you—­to tell it all about yourself like a charming child, without any boasting or bragging.  The world is awfully stupid!  It adores well-bred egotism.  We are all deeply inquisitive about people; and if you can reveal yourself without vanity, and are a lovable creature, the world will overwhelm you with love.  You can’t pay the world a greater compliment than to open your heart to it.  You must not bore it, of course, nor must you seem to be demanding its applause.  You must just seem to be in need of sympathy and comfort.  You must be a little sad, a little tired, a little bewildered.  I don’t say that is easy to do, and a man must not set out to do it.  But if a man has got something childlike and innocent about him, and a naive way with him, the world will take him to its heart.  The world loves to pity, to compassionate, to sympathise, much more than it loves to admire.”

“But what about the religious side of it all?” I said.