Cardinal Newman and the Autobiographers

In literature mere egotism is delightful. It is what fascinates us in / the letters of personalities so different as Cicero and Balzac, Flaubert / and Berlioz, Byron and Madame de Sevigne. Whenever we come across it, / and, strangely enough, it is rather rare, we cannot but welcome it, and / do not easily forget it. Humanity will always love Rousseau for having / confessed his sins, not to a priest, but to the world, and the couchant / nymphs that Cellini wrought in bronze for the castle of King Francis, the / green and gold Perseus, even, that in the open Loggia at Florence shows / the moon the dead terror that once turned life to stone, have not given / it more pleasure than has that autobiography in which the supreme / scoundrel of the Renaissance relates the story of his splendour and his / shame. The opinions, the character, the achievements of the man, matter / very little. He may be a sceptic like the gentle Sieur de Montaigne, or / a saint like the bitter son of Monica, but when he tells us his own / secrets he can always charm our ears to listening and our lips to / silence. The mode of thought that Cardinal Newman represented -- if that / can be called a mode of thought which seeks to solve intellectual / problems by a denial of the supremacy of the intellect -- may not, cannot, / I think, survive. But the world will never weary of watching that / troubled soul in its progress from darkness to darkness. The lonely / church at Littlemore, where 'the breath of the morning is damp, and / worshippers are few,' will always be dear to it, and whenever men see the / yellow snapdragon blossoming on the wall of Trinity they will think of / that gracious undergraduate who saw in the flower's sure recurrence a / prophecy that he would abide for ever with the Benign Mother of his / days -- a prophecy that Faith, in her wisdom or her folly, suffered not to / be fulfilled. Yes; autobiography is irresistible. -- _The Critic as / Artist_.