Newman may be said to have handled England's prose as Shakespeare handled her verse. His language was wrought up little by little to a finish and refinement, a strength and a subtlety, thrown into the form of eloquence, beyond which no English writer of prose has gone. Nor is his excellence that of mere art in form; he possesses not only skill, which he calls an exercise of talent, but power--a second name for genius--which itself implies personality and points to inspiration. His mind was large, logical, profoundly thoughtful, imaginative, intense, sincere, and above all, spiritual; his soul was keen, delicate, sympathetic, heroic; and his life, at once severe and tender, passionate and self-controlled, alone and unlonely, stands out in its loftiness and saintliness, a strange, majestic contrast to the agitation and turmoil of "confused passions, hesitating ideals, tentative virtues, and groping philanthropies" amidst which it was lived. Both by word and work did Newman lead forth his generation on the long pilgrimage to the shrine of Truth, and England of the nineteenth century has no surer claim to holiness and genius for her great sons than that set upon John Henry Newman. He was born in London, 1801; studied, taught, and preached at Oxford; became the chief promoter of the Tractarian Movement of 1833; entered the Catholic Church in 1845; founded the Oratory at Birmingham, 1848; was created Cardinal by Pope Leo XIII 1879; died at Edgbaston, 1890. Any attempt to choose from the writings of Newman what seems most desirable for brief class studies is certain to be woefully embarrassed by the very wealth of matter; and apology for risking the choice would be due, were it not lost sight of in the desire to see a literary model so pure, varied, animated, forceful, luminous--"a thing of light and beauty"--given to our students. What is more significant of the Life Book of the saintly Oxford Scholar than his self-written epitaph: "Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem?" APPRECIATIONS Newman's best essays display a delicate and flexible treatment of language, without emphasis, without oddity, which hardly arrests the attention at first,--the reader being absorbed in the argument or statement,--but which, in course of time, fascinates, as a thing miraculous in its limpid grace and suavity. --_Edmund Gosse's History of Modern English Literature._ The work of Newman reveals him as one of the great masters of graceful, scholarly, finished prose. It is individual, it has charm, and this is the secret of its power to interest. No writer of our time has reflected his mind and heart in his pages as has Newman. He has light for the intellect and warmth for the heart. --_A. J. George's Types of Literary Art._ Newman towers, with only three or four compeers, above his generation; and now that the benignity of his great nature has passed from our sight, its majesty is more evident year by year. --_Scudder's Modern English Poets._