And in
September of the same year, "Thank you for your new edition of _St.
Magnus_. On what occasion did he march? I know Bishops were warlike in
the middle ages. However, whenever it was, his march is very popular
here, and it went off with great _eclat_." Then he wrote to his
correspondent in April, 1880, who talked about not being "skilled,"
"Why should you not qualify yourself to deserve the title of a
'skilled musician?' 'Skilled' is another word for 'grammatical' or
'scholarlike.'"

When an Oratory organist in the early days was shown a hymn with tune
and accompaniment all composed by Dr. Newman himself (for insertion in
the printed Birmingham Oratory Hymn Book), unaware of the authorship
he at once corrected some of the chords. The Father Superior noticed
this, and asked him why he had made the changes. The organist
proceeded to advert to some consecutive fifths in the harmony. But,
urged the Father, Beethoven and others make use of them. "Ah," came
the answer, "it's all very well for those great men to do as they
like, but that don't make it right for ordinary folk to do as they
like." Dr. Newman therefore learned that musically he was only an
ordinary folk, and he would have been the first to laugh down the
notion that he was anything else; for a modest estimate of himself in
many things was a very marked characteristic with him, and made him
call his beautiful verse "ephemeral effusions" to Badeley, and write
in May, 1835, _apropos_ of a suggested uniform edition of his revised
Latin plays, "I have not that confidence in my own performance to
think I can compete with a classical Jesuit" (_i.e._ Father Jouvency).
In 1828 he had contemplated writing an article on music for the
_London Review_, along with one on poetry. The latter, in the event,
alone saw the day; the former "seems to have remained an idea
only."[40] He is apologetic in the _Idea of a University_, when about
to descant so eloquently upon music: "If I may speak," he says, "of
matters which seem to lie beyond my own province;"[41] but in very
early Oratory days at Edgbaston, he essayed some lectures on music to
some of the community in the practice-room. And at the opening of the
new organ there in August, 1877, he "preached a most beautiful
discourse [taken down at the time], upon the event of the day; and on
music, first as a great natural gift, then as an instrument in the
hands of the Church; its special prominence in the history of St.
Phil