When Newman and his friends first became seriously alarmed in 1833
over what they felt to be attacks upon the traditional position of the Church
of England, they decided that they were in duty bound to alert their fellow
clergy and the interested public. One immediate result of this decision was,
of course, the inauguration of the Tracts for the Times.
Presently, early in 1836, another less well-known decision was taken: to
give expression to their views in an old Church of England monthly, the
British Critic.[1]
In 1826 this magazine, which had been founded in 1793, was
incorporated into the Quarterly Theological Review, and
continued from 1827 as The British Critic, Quarterly
Theological Review and Ecclesiastical Record, until its abrupt
cessation in 1843. In February, 1836, Newman wrote to Keble, "I have
bargained to supply Boone [the editor] with four sheets quarterly for the
'British Critic.'"[2] James Shergold
Boone soon found his new colleagues too Catholic for his taste, and
Newman's friends likewise were distrustful. By April 2nd, S. F. Wood, a
former pupil and close friend, was writing, "I still find
a feeling of uneasiness at your joining, as people call it, with Boone. . . .
I do not say this at all as if I had changed my own mind about its being the
best thing that could have been done to use that Review as an
instrument, but merely to point out the desirableness of
placing
your own articles in
contrast with theirs as soon as possible,
instead of any attempt at harmonizing."
[3] By December, Wood was warning
Newman that "Boone is immensely disgusted with your Wiseman article,
and declares that, if another of the same kind is sent, he will throw up the
editorship (they say you make Wiseman a peg to hang your attacks on
Protestantism on)" (
Letters, II, 218). In such an event, Wood
continued, Newman might well feel compelled to take it on himself. This
is what eventually happened. After Boone resigned in November, 1837, S.
R. Maitland took over, but apparently he edited only the issue of January,
1838, for "his official relation
to the Archbishop made a difficulty, and he resigned."
[4] The
British Critic
then
"practically passed into Mr. Newman's hands . . . and in July 1838 he
became formally the Editor."
[5]
Among the Newman papers at the Oratory at Birmingham is a small
collection of manuscripts which deal first of all with this gradual transfer
to Newman, then with his own editorship, and finally with that of his
successor down to the termination of the British Critic with
the
October issue in 1843.[6] While these
papers have been labeled by Newman "British Critic—Letters to T.
Mozley, as Editor, 1841-1843,"
they actually include a number of items that have to do directly with
Newman's own editorship.
These begin with some pages evidently torn from a journal, the
earliest date being January 30, 1838, and the latest, May 7th, of the same
year. Here in the form of brief notes is the record of his plans for the
review. Following the pages from the journal is a sheet headed "Writers"
on which various categories are specified, together with the names of the
men Newman hoped would contribute to them. The next sheet contains an
enumeration of subjects, again specifying in many cases the desired
contributors, and in some cases marked "done." A third is entitled
"Contents of Numbers, July, 1838," and shows that Newman's plans were
taking definite shape, for it identifies the subject and author of each of the
nine articles which appeared in the July issue, as well as six articles
destined for later numbers.
Apparently a good many years afterward, probably in the fall of
1875, Newman drew up a table of contents, first identifying the
contributions of his group under the editorship of Boone, and then giving
almost complete lists of articles and their authors during the period of his
own editorship. The table of contents appears in two forms, one of which
seems to me to have been a tentative or working list, which has been
subject to correction and verification in the preparation of the other.[7] It is in Newman's own hand. The
other
might be described as a "fair copy," made, perhaps, as Father Dessain
suggests, by Father William Neville, but in any event submitted to
Newman's scrutiny and annotated by him. At Pusey House in Oxford is
another listing of contents and contributors, tucked into the final volume of
their set of the British Critic. It is closely related to those at
the
Oratory and bears the same superscription as the fair copy at the
Oratory. This list, which appears to be in Newman's hand, has been
corrected or queried occasionally, probably by the same person responsible
for a series of markings in the Pusey House set.[8] Where there does not seem to be
any
significant difference in the three lists, I shall merely cite the Newman lists.
Otherwise I shall refer to these manuscripts as the autograph list, the fair
copy, and the Pusey House list. The fair copy is headed quite formally
"British Critic" and is introduced by the
comment, "Boone being the editor, we supplied four sheets, 64 pages,
gratis." It starts with the issue of January, 1836, in which it identifies only
one article, a review of Blanco White by Hurrell Froude. Up to the time
when he took over himself, Newman lists some 21 articles which he
considered contributions from his group. Beginning with the issue of April,
1838, and continuing through that of April, 1841, he attempts to make a
complete set of identifications. There remain, however, some blanks and
some question marks, which is hardly surprising when one considers the
lapse of time and the tremendous preoccupations both of the period itself
and of the intervening years. And yet, where the lists have been checked
against reprints, contemporary letters of his own or of his friends, and the
memoirs of other members of the Oxford Group, their accuracy has, in
general, been sustained.
The years 1838-1841 were busy and momentous ones for Newman
and his fellow Anglicans. In addition to their regular professional duties,
they were translating for The Library of the Fathers and writing
Tracts for the Times as well as reviews for the British
Critic; and there is a general air of excitement and optimism in
Newman's letters. Years afterward, he spoke of June, 1838, as "the zenith
of the Tract movement," but added that by August there was "the beginning
of a change of fortune."[9] Criticism
was gathering force both among the bishops and among the Evangelicals,
and Newman was tempted in November to give up the Tracts
and the British Critic, to which he was pledged "only to the
end
of this year" (Letters, II, 269, 273). The storm then seemed
to
pass off. "In the spring of 1839," he wrote later in the
Apologia, "my position in the Anglican Church was at its
height"; and he turned again with renewed
energy and confidence to the Fathers, the Tracts, and to the
British Critic. But by September a heavy blow had fallen,
"the
first real hit from Romanism which has happened to me."[10] This hit, it will be remembered,
was
delivered by Nicholas Wiseman in the Dublin Review for
August, 1839. It was he who planted a suspicion in Newman's mind that
the Anglican Church might be in schism. "This was such a shock to me that
I at once made arrangements for giving up the editorship of the
British
Critic."[11] And yet again he
hesitated, bestirring himself to a new burst of activity,
fighting desperately to stave off his doubts, and writing for the number of
January, 1840, his article on "The Catholicity of the English Church." "It
is written," he told his sister, "in answer to the article of Dr. Wiseman"
(
Letters, II, 298). He also began the examination of the
Thirty-nine Articles which was to culminate on February 27, 1841, in
Tract 90.
But the plan to resign the editorship took definite form by November,
1840, when he told Bowden: "As to the 'British Critic,' I give it up to T.
Mozley in the summer. This I have always wished to do. I shall have had
it three years. I shall write for it, I suppose, as much as heretofore, and I
hope our friends will not desert him" (Letters, II, 314-315).
Thomas Mozley had been a pupil of Newman's at Oriel, and was never
quite able to throw off a faint feeling of inferiority in relation to his famous
teacher, even after they became brothers-in-law; and, indeed, Newman
seems to have had a way of imposing upon him with a slightly paternal
condescension, which Mozley must have occasionally found annoying. On
the transfer of the direction of the British Critic into his own
hands, he remarks that Newman "then proposed to me to take the
editorship, which, I need scarcely say, would in such a case be better
described by sub-editorship, though I am sure this was not Newman's
intention."[12]
Mozley, who had for some time been regretting that the magazine
was too limited in scope, and who complained that "when Newman took it
up there seemed still more sameness and tediousness," soon found that
"editing a Review is a very different thing from criticising it"
(Reminiscences, II, 207, 218). Very early did his troubles
begin— first with Oakeley and Ward. Since it appeared to him "quite
impossible either that any great number of English Churchmen would ever
go so far, or that the persons possessing authority in the Church would fail
to protest, not to say more," he tried to bring their articles within safer
lines. But Ward, and perhaps Oakeley too, ran off "instantly to Newman
to complain of my gratuitous impertinence" (Reminiscences,
II,
225).
Very early, too, did Newman begin to have qualms about having
confided the British Critic to his brother-in-law. With the
appearance of Mozley's first number, containing as it did not only a
slashing attack on Bishop Jewel and the Reformers by Oakeley but also an
article by the editor himself ridiculing Dr. Faussett, the Margaret Professor
of Divinity, in very personal terms, Newman scented danger.
He wrote twice to Keble in the month of July, urging him to take a general
control over the magazine privately, and admitting that "we were all rather
hasty with T. M. . . . The question is whether it is not
more
possible to put T. M. under control than to
extinguish the
Review
itself."
[13] In the
event it was not so much a question of keeping Mozley under control as of
Mozley being unable to keep his two most prolific and insistent contributors
under control, Frederick Oakeley and W. G. Ward. (It is significant that by
far the larger part of the "Letters to T. Mozley" included in these
manuscripts is from these two, proffering articles, opposing editorial
suggestions, or accepting them reluctantly and appealing to
Newman.)
In the end it was they more than anyone else who did extinguish the
Review, bringing down upon their heads the devastating pamphlet by
William Palmer of Worcester, A Narrative of Events Connected with
the Publication of the Tracts for the Times. Palmer, one of the
original group who had come together in 1833 "for the purpose of resisting
Latitudinarian attempts against the established doctrine and discipline, and
of defending the principles of the Church,"[14] was now in 1843 very desirous
indeed of
avoiding any accusation of Roman sympathies by proclaiming himself a
staunch and scandalized Anglican. He opened his prefatory remarks thus:
"It is the design of the following pages to clear those who uphold Church
principles from the imputation of approving certain recent tendencies to
Romanism" (p. 87). Where those tendencies were to be found was made so
abundantly clear that in spite of its title Palmer's pamphlet could scarcely
be viewed as other
than an attack upon the British Critic. "Under no conceivable
circumstances . . . can the tone adopted by the British
Critic,"
wrote Palmer, "since it passed from the editorship of Mr. Newman in 1841,
be excused" (p. 179). Its writers avowedly set aside the interests of the
Church of England, and the Review "has for two years been under the
influence of those who are uncertain in their allegiance" to
the
Church (pp. 155-156). Indeed, Palmer goes so far as to hint that these
writers "are secretly convinced of the duty of uniting themselves to Rome,
and . . . are waiting the moment to declare themselves, while in the mean
time they are labouring to insinuate their own persuasion amongst the duped
and blinded members of the English Church" (p. 179). The attack on
Oakeley and Ward was too clear to be ignored,
and the latter immediately replied in his
Ideal of a Christian Church
. . . A Defence of Certain Articles in the 'British Critic' . . . In Reply to
. . . Mr. Palmer's 'Narrative' (1844).
Again, as in 1833, Palmer banded together in conference with
friends. They waited, he recollected in 1883, upon Mr. F. Rivington, who
agreed "to suspend the publication of a periodical which had given such
general offence." So the Church was delivered from the quarterly attacks
of a magazine which had become "virtually a Roman Catholic organ under
Church of England colours. The relief . . . at the termination of this
unceasing sore was indescribable" (pp. 242-243). Thus was the
British
Critic extinguished, partly because of the excesses and indiscretions
of some of its contributors; even more fatal, however, to its continuance
was the underlying fear of Rome that was gripping the minds of
Englishmen in those momentous years.
But before its abrupt termination, it had published, in the five years
under the editorship of Newman and Mozley, a distinguished series of
essays by a distinguished group of men.
