"Steadily Contemplating the Object of Faith": Newman, The Apologia, And Romantic Aesthetics‪.‬

Critics who have observed Newman's indebtedness and, in some cases, aversion to Romantic thought have pointed either to his few remarks on the Romantics in the Apologia Pro Vita Sua or to his implied preference for the imagination and the subjection of reason to the Illative Sense in An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. For example, Merritt Lawliss and Alvan Ryan have argued that although Newman was nurtured on the Romantics, he gradually outgrew their influence. Lawliss asserts, focusing primarily on the imagination, that when Newman sets aside poetry to engage moral and religious issues, he becomes less Romantic and more Neoclassic. When he turns to the more important "theological and philosophical discourse," he relies "mostly on reason" (77, 80). Alvan Ryan contends that the Newman of the early Aristotle essay is not the same Romantic in The Idea of a University. "It is clear," he claims, that "Newman was on the side of the Romantic writers in his search for a warmer, deeper view of man," a view missing among contemporary writers; "yet Newman did not rest long within the camp of Romanticism" (136). The difficulty in pinning Newman down, in attempting to situate him within a literary tradition, stems from the fact that he possessed a comprehensive view of things. Thus, although his tradition remains essentially Romantic, one could as convincingly negotiate for his Neoclassicism. Still, Lewis Gates argues, not only was Newman's "youth and most impressionable years" nurtured on the Romantics, but he "took colour and tone from his epoch to a degree that has often been overlooked"; and his writings, which are "a genuine ex-pression of the Romantic spirit," can be understood only when examined in rela-tionship to that period (112). Thomas Vargish concurs, insisting that the intellectual affinities between Wordsworth and Newman "deserve our extended attention because they illustrate most clearly the degree to which Newman assimilated for Christian orthodoxy a vision of the mind's powers characteristic of Romanticism" (100). And, says John Beer, Newman cannot be understood unless we take "some account of the Romanticism which dominated the artist and intellectual world of his youth" (193).