“I rejoice to hear of your success,” he writes, August 21, 1843. “As to St. Grimball, of course we must expect such deficiencies; where matter is found, it is all gain, and there are plenty of Lives to put together, as you will see, when you see the whole list. “I am rather for _inserting_ (of course discreetly and in way of selection) the miracles for which you have not good evidence. (1) They are beautiful, you say, and will tell in the narrative. (2) Next you can say that the evidence is weak, and this will be bringing credit for the others where you say the evidence is strong. People will never go _so far_ as your narrative. Cut it down to what is true, and they will disbelieve a part of _it_; put in these legends and they will compound for the true at the sacrifice of what may be true, but is not well attested.” I confess I cannot quite follow. If a man like Newman believed in these saints and their miracles, his pleading would become intelligible, but it seems from this very letter that he did not, and yet he tried to persuade his young friend to go on and not to gather the tares, “lest haply he might root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest.” I do not like to judge, but I doubt whether this kind of teaching could have strengthened the healthy moral fibre of a man’s conscience and have led him to depend entirely on his sense of truth. And yet this was the man who at one time was supposed to draw the best spirits of Oxford with him to Rome. This was the man to whom some of the best spirits at Oxford confessed all they had to confess, and that could have been very little, and of whom they spoke with a subdued whisper as the apostle who would restore all faith, and bring back the Anglican sheep to the Roman fold.