- Francis William Newman
Francis William Newman (
June 27 ,1805 –October 7 ,1897 ), the younger brother of Cardinal Newman, was anEnglish scholar and miscellaneous writer.Life
Born in
London , Newman and his brother were both educated atEaling , and subsequently at Oxford, where he had a distinguished career, obtaining a double first class in 1826Fact|date=October 2008. He was elected fellow of Balliol in the same yearFact|date=October 2008. Conscientious scruples respecting the ceremony ofinfant baptism led him to resign his fellowship in 1830Fact|date=October 2008, and he went toBaghdad as assistant in the faith mission ofAnthony Norris Groves . In 1833 he returned to England to procure additional support for the mission, but rumours of unsoundness in his views on the doctrine ofeternal punishment had preceded him, and finding himself generally looked upon with suspicion, he gave up the vocation ofmissionary to become classical tutor in an unsectarian college atBristol . His letters written home during the period of his mission were collected and published in 1856.Newman's views matured rapidly, and in 1840 he became
Professor ofLatin inManchester New College , the celebratedUnitarian seminary long established atYork , and the parent ofManchester College, Oxford . In 1846 he quit this appointment to become professor inUniversity College, London , where he remained until 1869. During all this period he was assiduously carrying on his studies inmathematics and oriental languages, but wrote little until 1847, when he published anonymously a "History of the Hebrew Monarchy", intended to introduce the results of German investigation in this department of Biblical criticism. In 1849 appeared "The Soul, her Sorrows and Aspirations", and in 1850, "Phases of Faith, or Passages from the History of my Creed", the former a tender but searching analysis of the relations of the spirit of man with the Creator; the latter a religiousautobiography detailing the author's passage fromCalvinism to puretheism . It is on these two books that Professor Newman's celebrity will principally rest, as in them his intense earnestness has kept him free from the eccentricity which marred most of his other writings, excepting his contributions to mathematical research and oriental philology.Newman's work covered many spheres: he wrote on
logic ,political economy , English reforms, Austrian politics, Roman history, diet,grammar , the most abstruse departments of mathematics, Arabic, the emendation of Greek texts, and languages as out of the way as the Berber and as obsolete as the dialect of theIguvine inscriptions. In treating all these subjects he showed ability, but, wherever the theme allowed, an incurable crotchetiness crept in. In his numerous metricaltranslation s from the classics, especially his version of the "Iliad ", he betrayed an insensibility to the ridiculous which would almost have justified the irreverent criticism ofMatthew Arnold , had this been conveyed in more seemly fashion. His miscellaneous essays, some of much value, were collected in several volumes before his death. His last publication, "Contributions chiefly to the Early History of Cardinal Newman" (1891), was generally condemned as deficient in fraternal feeling. He was far from possessing his brother's subtlety of reasoning.His character is vividly drawn by Carlyle in his life of Sterling, of whose son Newman was guardian: a man of fine attainments, of the sharpest-cutting and most restlessly advancing intellect and of the mildest pious enthusiasm. It was his great misfortune that this enthusiasm should have been correlated, as is not unfrequently the case, with an entire insensibility to the humorous side of things.
After his retirement from University College, Francis W. Newman continued to live for some years in London, subsequently removing to Clifton, and eventually to
Weston-super-Mare , where he died in 1897. He had been blind for five years before his death, but retained his faculties to the last. He was twice married.Read on
*T. G. Sieveking: "Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman" (1909).
External links
*gutenberg author|id=Francis_William_Newman|name=Francis William Newman
**TheProject Gutenberg e-text of " [http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/12056 Phases of Faith, or Passages from the History of my Creed] " (1850).
*" [http://www.fwnewman.org The Francis Newman Society] "References
*1911
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