contagion caught from Hurrell Froude. ‘There are a few singularly beautiful lines, added by Newman after Hurrell Froude’s death, to the exquisite poem called “Separation of Friends,” written in 1833; and these sufficiently prove the tenderness of Newman’s friendship for Hurrell Froude, and the intimacy of the relation between them. The poem, as it was first written, on the separation of friends caused by death, ran thus: ‘“Do not their souls, who neath the altar wait Until their second birth, The gift of patience need, as separate From their first friends of earth? Not that earth’s blessings are not all outshone By Eden’s angel flame, But that earth knows not that the dead has won That crown which was his aim. For when he left it, ’twas a twilight scene About his silent bier, A breathless struggle Faith and Sight between, And Hope and sacred Fear. Fear startled at his pains and dreary end, Hope raised her chalice high; And the twin-sisters still his shade attend, Viewed in the mourner’s eye. So, day by day, for him, from earth ascends As dew in summer even, The speechless intercession of his friends, Towards the azure heaven.” ‘This was an abrupt close. Nearly three years later, it appeared that the true close had but been reserved till the friend with whom, in his illness, Newman had been travelling, had left him alone here to offer this “speechless intercession” on behalf of him who had departed. Then, after Froude’s death on February 28, 1836, Newman added the final lines: ‘“Ah, dearest! with a word he could dispel All questioning, and raise Our hearts to rapture, whispering all was well, And turning prayer to praise. And other secrets, too, he could declare, By patterns all divine, His earthly creed retouching here and there, And deepening every line. Dearest! he longs to speak, as I to know, And yet we both refrain. It were not good: a little doubt, below, And all will soon be plain.” ‘Such was Newman’s feeling for the friend (already suffering from the commencement of the consumption of which he died three years later) with whom he visited the Mediterranean between December, 1832, and April, 1833, when they separated at Rome…. They visited Ithaca, but in his poems written “off Ithaca” Newman never mentions the name of Ulysses, though in passing Lisbon he had recalled that strong pagan figure, in the lines which he headed “The Isles of the Sirens”: ‘“Cease, stranger, cease those piercing notes, The craft of siren choirs; Hush the seductive voice that floats Upon the languid wires. Music’s ethereal fire was given Not to dissolve our clay, But draw Promethean beams from heaven, And purge the dross away.