Brief Notices: The Art of Newman’s “Apologia”

The Art Of Newman’s “Apologia” by Walter E. Houghton. Yale University Press. $2.50.

This dry and able essay is written with the painstaking objectivity That one would expect of a former colleague of Mr. Matthiessen. While it pretends to no brilliance of style, insight or reasoning, it is sensible and thorough, and can be read through with absorption. From my reading on the subject, I should say that it is easily the best, and almost the only good thing of its kind. There are a few defects. Although Mr. Houghton makes the most of an extended comparison with Mill’s Autobiography, one wishes that other comparisons had been at least implied. A number of such lost chances indicate that the writer is an academic, rather than a creative, critic. However, the book’s weakness is in a certain intellectual apathy, which results in an overemphasis on purple passages and a simplification of Newman’s conversion to the generalities of “human drama.”