Scholar and man of letters; brother of John Henry Newman; B.A. Worcester College, Oxford, 1826; fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, 1826–30; classical tutor at Bristol College (unsectarian), 1834; professor of classical literature, Manchester New College, 1840, and of Latin, University College, London, 1846–69; principal of University Hall, London, 1848; acquired repute by his writings on religion, among the most important of which were “History of Hebrew Monarchy,” 1847, “The Soul,” 1849, and “Phases of Faith” (an autobiographical account of his religious changes, which excited much controversy), 1850; joined British and Foreign Unitarian Association, 1876, and was vice-president, 1879; took keen interest in political questions bearing on social problems; published numerous educational, political, social, and religious works and phamphlets.
Personal
Francis Newman, then and still an ardently inquiring soul, of fine University and other attainments, of sharp-cutting, restlessly advancing intellect, and the mildest pious enthusiasm; whose worth since better known to all the world, Sterling highly estimated;—and indeed practically testified the same; having by will appointed him, some years hence, guardian to his eldest son; which pious function Mr. Newman now successfully discharges.
Francis Newman has not the qualities that a leader wants, to be successful. He is not robust enough. He is too sensitive.
Like his brother, he is a poor public speaker. At his very best he is the professor talking to his class, not the orator addressing a crowd. His manner is singularly constrained, ineffective, and even awkward; his voice is thin and weak…. He is feeble, ineffective, and often even commonplace. Nature has denied to him the faculty of adequately expressing himself in spoken words. He is almost as much out of his element when addressing a public meeting as he would be if he were singing in an opera. Few Englishmen living can claim to be the intellectual superiors of Francis Newman; but you would never know Francis Newman by hearing him speak on a platform.
Another good man on the popular side was Francis William Newman, the brother of the Cardinal, not a man of the same high genius, but a man of culture and fine thought, with excellent sympathies and intentions, but, as it seemed to me, hesitating in action and always appearing to doubt if his accepted course had been really right in politics. He, I used to think, ought to have stooped under the yoke of the Roman Church, and John Henry to have stood upright as a leader of progress, which he might have been.
As professor of Latin literature his methods were in marked contrast to those of Henry Malden, the professor of Greek; he succeeded in awaking interest in his subject rather than in promoting depth of study; his prelections, always without notes, were bright and vivid. He introduced the Italian mode of pronouncing Latin.
General
Now I have read “The Soul,” and shall bless you for it, with thanks I cannot speak, so long as I have a Soul that lives. Nothing that I have ever read—unless some scattered thoughts of Pascal’s—has come so close to me, and so strengthened a deep but too shrinking faith…. Your book is not one that I can criticise, and where I cannot heartily assent I feel more inclined to doubt myself than it. The chief thing that affects me with a certain obscure dissatisfaction is your sharp distinction between the several powers of human nature and your absolute isolation of the Soul as the region of exclusive communication with God.
No work contributed more than Mr. Newman’s “Phases of Faith,” to force upon me the conviction that little progress can be hoped either for religious science or charitable feeling till the question of Biblical authority shall have been placed upon a sounder footing, and viewed in a very different light.
Professor Newman’s reputation as a linguist was already made when he began to translate Greek and Latin Poetry. If his translations add nothing to that reputation, surely they can take nothing away. They belong to the domain of taste, and not to that of scholarship. His “Odes of Horace,” which are translated into meters partially akin to those of the original, have been well received. Not so his translation of the “Iliad” into a compromise between the ballad measure and a peculiar metre of his own. The result is neither poetry nor prose. And this result is one which human nature never can endure.
There is a turn or twist of some kind in his nature and intellect which always seems to mar his best efforts at practical accomplishment. Even his purely literary and scholastic productions are marked by the same fatal characteristic. All the outfit, all the materials are there in surprising profusion. There is the culture, there is the intellect, the patience, the sincerity. But the result is not in proportion to the value of the materials. The blending is not complete, is not effectual. Something has always intervened or been wanting. Francis Newman has never done and probably never will do anything equal to his strength and his capacity.
Poor Mr. Francis Newman must be aged now and rather weary of the world and explanations of the world. He can hardly be expected to take in much novelty. I have a sort of affectionate sadness in thinking of the interest which, in far-off days, I felt in his “Soul” and “Phases of Faith,” and of the awe I had of him as a lecturer on mathematics at the Ladies’ College. How much work has he done in the world which has left no deep, conspicuous mark, but has probably entered beneficially into many lives.
Prof. Newman’s diction, polished ad unguem, is the very acme of simplicity and clearness; but how the colorless diamond blade flashes as he brandishes it on the battlefield of controversy. Ask the ghost of poor Kingsley [?], if you doubt its edge.
