Hopkins and Newman: Two Disagreements

Abstract

Gerard Manley Hopkins rarely recorded disagreements with statements published works John Henry Newman. The small number cases are extant probably highlights his normal agreement with Newman or an inhibition toward dissenting from a revered figure who had facilitated his reception into the Catholic Church. This lack expressed differences did not arise from an incomplete or experience Newman's work which he knew well during a period some twenty-five years, from his days at Highgate to his death Dublin. (1) During the years after 1864 he remained, Newman's words 1888, among the cardinal's friends and well wishers (Hopkins, Further Letters Gerard Manley Hopkins 414; Newman, Letters and Diaries 31:246). Five instances disagreement, possibly all are recorded, date from 1878 to 1887. Three these concern literary matters. The first is a blunder Hopkins decried a letter to Canon Richard Dixon: Newman's instancing the gain smoothness and correctness versification Robert Southey showed over John Milton (Hopkins, Correspondence 13). (2) In the second incident, which he mentioned a letter to A. W. M. Baillie, Hopkins found Newman guilty of a usage clearly mistaken when employing the word scope (Further Letters 284). Seven months later he paradoxically informed Coventry Patmore Newman did not know what writing prose (Further Letters 380). These differences opinion, incidental remarks letters, are presented atone varies from philological precision, charming disbelief, and rhetorical analysis. Hopkins maintains his certitude each case, but there is always an implied regret about disagreeing with so great a literary figure and so respected a person. The two remaining disagreements, which are the subject this essay, are more intellectually serious and personally meaningful for both authors, who have had an abiding influence on the nineteenth century's understanding Christianity and literature. These two disagreements are interrelated, not least all, by the circumstance Hopkins addressed both them to Coventry Patmore, a recognized older poet and, like Hopkins, a convert from Anglicanism. Their friendship had begun 1883 and acquired a level understanding made for greater frankness discussing Newman who, after his long career, was the revered veteran the Roman Catholic cause Great Britain. Hopkins, because the values he shared with Patmore, was less inhibited criticizing Newman's opinions, which Hopkins treated more cautiously with his two other correspondents: the agnostic Baillie and the Anglican Canon Dixon. Another element the criticisms Hopkins forwarded to Patmore was his uncertainty the positions he found wanting Newman were actually the ones Newman espoused. After all, Hopkins could be certain his argumentation but hesitant after twenty years reading and reflecting on presentations Newman had made before Hopkins had been born. These had never been systematically revised although often reprinted. Hence, the two disagreements to be examined, the debate is not always with Newman but rather with a position seems to be present his writings. Hopkins knew from experience how the understanding a moral or philosophical issue might change by degrees the transitions both he and Newman had made the course their experiences as Anglicans and Catholics. An Intolerable Doctrine The doctrine Hopkins unequivocally rejected concerned a moral principle which, if Newman did not actually countenance, he left Hopkins with the superficial impression doing so (Hopkins, Further Letters 341-42). This assertion on Hopkins's part seems, at its strongest, to defend Newman on the grounds he expressed himself inadequately on a moral issue, which led to intolerable conclusions the practical order. Hopkins locates the offensive doctrine Newman in his well known sermon about Demas and concludes it implicitly maintains that a man may somehow mortally by no particular mortal sin Hopkins's citation the source presumably was adequate for his correspondent, Coventry Patmore, and for other contemporaries 1883, even though it does not indicate the title the sermon or the collection which it appeared. …