f the worthlessness of contemporary praise and blame. There
have been very few men who have been able to combine so strong a faith
with a thorough distrust of both logic-chopping and emotional
excitement, and who, while denying themselves these aids to conviction,
have been able to say, calmly and without petulance, that with them it
is a very small thing to be judged of man's judgment.

'What (he asks) can increase their peace who believe and
trust in the Son of God? Shall we add a drop to the ocean,
or grains to the sand of the sea? We pay indeed our
superiors full reverence, and with cheerfulness as unto the
Lord; and we honour eminent talents as deserving admiration
and reward; and the more readily act we thus, because these
are little things to pay.'[89]

Such unworldliness as this, in the well-chosen words of R.H. Hutton,
'stands out in strange and almost majestic contrast to the eager turmoil
of confused passions, hesitating ideals, tentative virtues, and groping
philanthropies, amidst which it was lived.'

Another mark of greatness is unbroken consistency and unity of aim in a
long life. There are few parallels to the neglect of his own literary
reputation by Newman. Higher interests, he thought, were at stake; and
so he had no dream of building for himself 'a monument more durable than
brass,' and of claiming a pedestal among the great writers of English
prose and verse. He accepted long years of literary barrenness; he wrote
historical essays for which he had no special aptitude, and dogmatic
disquisitions which even his genius could not save from dulness; he even
descended into mere journalism. The 'Apologia' would probably not have
been written but for the accident of Kingsley's attack. It has, no
doubt, been said with truth that Newman showed great dexterity in
choosing opponents with whom to cross swords--Kingsley, Pusey,
Gladstone, and his old Anglican self. But this does not alter the fact
that a man who must have been conscious of rare literary gifts made no
attempt to immortalise himself by them. It was for the Church, and not
for himself, that he wrote as well as lived.

That his life is for the most part a record of sadness and failure is no
indication that he was not one of the great men of his time.
Independence is no passport to success in a world where, as Swift said,
climbing and crawling are performed in much the same attitude. And if we
are right in our v