knees.
Newman seems to me in that book to have torn out his beating and
palpitating heart, and set it in a crystal phial for all the world to gaze
upon. And further, did Newman really not know that this was what he always
desired to do and mostly did--to confide in the world, to tell his story as
a child might tell it to a mother? It is clear to me that Newman was a man
who did not only desire to be loved by a few friends, but wished everybody
to love him. I will not say that he was never happy till he had told his
tale, and I will not say that artist-like he loved applause: but he did
_not_ wish to be hidden, and he earnestly desired to be approved. He
craved to be allowed to say what he thought--it is pathetic to hear him say
so often how 'fierce' he was--and yet he hated suspicion and hostility and
misunderstanding: and though he loved a refined sort of quiet, he even more
loved, I think, to be the centre of a fuss! I feel little doubt in my own
mind that, even when he was living most retired, he wished people to be
curious about what he was doing. He was one of those men who felt he had a
special mission, a prophetical function. He was a dramatic creature, a
performer, you know. He read the lessons like an actor: he preached like an
actor; he was intensely self-conscious. Naturally enough! If you feel like
a prophet, the one sign of failure is that your audience melts away."

Father Payne paused a moment, lost in thought.

"But," I said, "do you mean that Newman calculated all his effects?"

"Oh, not deliberately," said Father Payne, "but he was an artist pure and
simple--he was never less by himself than when he was alone, as the old
Provost of Oriel said of him. He lived dramatically by a kind of instinct.
The unselfconscious man goes his own way, and does not bother his head
about other people: but Newman was not like that. When he was reading, it
was always like the portrait of a student reading. That's the artist's
way--he is always living in a sort of picture-frame. Why, you can see from
the _Apologia_, which he wrote in a few weeks, and often, as he once
said, in tears, how tenderly and eagerly he remembered all he had ever done
or thought. His descriptions of himself are always romantic: he lived in
memories, like all poets."

"But that gives one a disagreeable sense of unreality--of pose," I said.

"Ah, but that's very short-sighted," said Father Payne. "Newman's was a
beautiful spirit--wonderfully tende