Mr. Estlin Carpenter wrote lately to me to say that he does not know of any evidence to prove that Newman and Martineau were "acquainted, or at least intimate," before the former became tutor of Manchester College. He says their correspondence ended in 1892, and he imagines that Newman's "declining health during the last two or three years made further writing impossible," but that their warm regard for each other, up to the very end, was unalterable. CHAPTER VI FRANCIS NEWMAN AS A TEACHER Francis Newman was certainly one of the greatest mathematical and classical scholars of his day. So that when the authorities of University College secured him for their staff, they knew that they could have obtained no better man for their purpose. As a teacher he showed an infinite fertility of method in dealing with the young men who, there for the purpose of learning, yet did not always _want_ to learn! He had, in especial, that rather vague and narrow definition of genius--"an infinite capacity for taking pains." He "took" them always with any scholar who had failed to grasp his meaning in some one of his instructions. He could put the whole matter in some absolutely new light--take it from an utterly different point of view; so that, while giving another chance to the slow-witted, he did not keep his whole class waiting. The quality of teaching is not strained. It is doubtful if it is capable of being learnt, if not in the first instance, in some measure, innate. Lying dormant in a man's being--even if, perhaps, its presence is unrecognized by its owner--it can certainly be developed by him when he is conscious of it. But if the power in embryo be absent, it is a difficult matter indeed to attain by effort any capacity of which one has not already the beginnings in oneself. Indeed, a famous writer of another age has written the word "impossible" against this attempt.