“Alas! What are we doing all through life, both as a necessity and as a duty, but unlearning the world’s poetry, and attaining to its prose!”

EDITORIAL PREFACE 3 “AlAs! whAt Are we doing All through life, both As A necessity And As A duty, but unleArning the world’s poetry, And AttAining to its prose!”1 Readers of John Henry Newman’s The Idea of a University have usually focused their attention on the first part, which consists of his discourses on “University Teaching,” while neglecting the second part, which includes various lectures on “University Subjects.” There is a historical precedent for such a separation, insofar as the two parts were originally published separately and only merged, when Newman was preparing a uniform edition of all his writings.2 Moreover, the topics treated in the second part are a patchwork—ranging from discussions of the relationship of Christianity and Science, through discussions of English Catholic Literature and University Preaching, to a lecture on “Elementary Studies,” whose title is not particularly attractive and whose content seems less so:Grammar,Composition,Latin Writing, and General Religious Knowledge. In introducing these “Elementary Studies,” Newman described the development of an infant’s learning process, which “gradually converts a calidoscope into a picture”3 —though eventually “unlearning the world’s poetry, and attaining to its prose”: This is our education, as boys and as men, in the action of life, and in the closet or library; in our affections, in our aims, in our hopes, and in our memories.And in like manner it is the education of our intellect; I say, that one main portion of intellectual education, of the labours of both school and university, is to remove the original dimness of the mind’s eye; to strengthen and perfect its vision; to enable it to look out into the world right forward, steadily and truly; to give the mind clearness, accuracy, precision; to enable it to use words aright, to understand what it says, to conceive justly what it thinks about, to abstract, compare, analyze, divide, define, and reason, correctly.4 Newman,of course,managed all of these mental tasks extraordinarily well:he deeply stirred the minds and warmed the hearts of his congregations through his sermons; he perceptively provided a program for “the education of our intellect” in The Idea of a University; he assuredly enkindled the“memories”and enlivened the“hopes”of his contemporaries in his Apologia Pro Vita Sua; he adroitly demonstrated his 1 Newman, The Idea of a University, 331–332; hereafter cited: Idea; available at: http://www.newmanreader.org/works/idea/article4.html. 2 For a succinct publication-history, see The Idea of a University, edited with an Introduction and Notes by Martin J. Svaglic (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982), xiii–xv; for details about the various editions, see: Vincent Ferrer Blehl, John Henry Newman: A Bibliographical Catalogue of His Writings (Charlottesville: Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, University Press of Virginia, 1978), 38–39. 3 Idea, 331. 4 Idea, 332. NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL 4 capacity “to abstract, compare, analyze, divide, define, and reason, correctly” in his Grammar of Assent; in sum, he attained a mastery of English prose but without “unlearning the world’s poetry”—as evidenced by his memorable “Lead, Kindly Light” and “Dream of Gerontius.” contents This issue’s quartet of essays considers four different facets of Newman’s thought. M. Katherine Tillman’s essay examines Newman’s views about “worldly wisdom” in both a practical and a philosophical sense and then discusses “holy wisdom”as contemplative and transcendent. Next,Brendan Case classifies Newman’s contrast between “notions” and “things” in his Grammar of Assent as an adverbial distinction, rather than an adjectival distinction. C. Michael Shea then compares and contrasts the thought of Newman and Bautain in respect to their understanding of faith, reason, and development. The fourth essay proposes that the three types of inference—formal, natural, informal—that Newman delineated in his Grammar of Assent provide three different paradigms for understanding religious conversion. This issue also presents three innovative studies: first, Edward Jeremy Miller’s “word study” indicates that Newman, both as an Anglican and as a Roman Catholic, used “superintend” and its cognates in a variety of contexts: educational and ecclesiastical, theological and epistemological, as well as personal and parental...