Miss Mozley thus comments on this inciting of a new literary activity in Newman. ‘There is nothing in the papers before [me] to show that any ground whatever, in fact, existed for the novel Froude here talks of. In the Postscript to _Callista_, the author speaks of being stopped at the fifth chapter “from sheer inability to devise personages or incidents.” Was the attempt to express the feelings and mutual relations of Christians and heathens in early Christian times already an idea in the author’s mind?’ The intrinsic evidence is certainly strong against the likelihood of Newman’s earlier story, _Loss and Gain_, or anything remotely resembling it in subject or framework, being contemplated in 1835. Attentive readers of that very Oxonian book will recall, incidentally, that Devonshire becomes the home of the Redings, and may even, without being too fantastic, detect some faint irregular adumbration of Hurrell Froude, Froude deduced as Newman would fain have him, in the phantom figure, so illusive and attractive, of Willis.[242] Perhaps ‘the novel,’ the plot of which Froude was so pleased to divulge, was but an original inspiration of his own. He had long before formed a critical, if rather despiteful interest in fiction, as the unwelcome supplanter of poetry in a decadent age; and perhaps he had invited Newman to write a story as Newman had invited him to dream of the Indian Bishopric: all _ad majorem Dei gloriam_. At any rate, five weeks before, Froude had mentioned what is apparently the same ‘novel’ as his own affair, in a letter to Newman printed in the _Remains_ but not in the Newman _Correspondence_. ‘My ideas about the novel,’ he says, ‘are but cloudy, as I have no books of reference to get details out of. Would that the stars may let me return to Oxford before long, to work at things,[243] and rub up my intellects!’ It would be pleasant, were there any sure grounds for it, to associate the profound spiritual passion, as Mr. R. H. Hutton calls it, of _Callista_, with the emulating and holy friendship of John Henry Newman and Hurrell Froude. Newman had been bringing forward in print something very dear to both: the monastic ideal. With his usual scrupulousness, he had begun to fear that he was laying too great a burden upon his well-wishers in leaving them to accept and defend a thesis so inexpedient, because so hostile to the spirit of the time; and Hurrell strikes out against the expressed misgiving before ending the letter of July 31 just quoted. His father, as ever, was his standard of wise moderation.