SOURCE: "Newman The Writer," in Mid-Victorian Studies, by Geoffrey and Kathleen Tillotson, The Athlone Press, 1965, pp. 239-58.

In the essay that follows, Tillotson contends that Newman has been undervalued for his literary abilities—his clarity, attention to detail, and use of imagery.

When a great author writes mainly 'prose of thinking' there is the danger that his writing may come to belong too much to its special field and too little to literature as a whole. Pusey, let us say, was a theologian; his writings are prose of thinking; but the literary critic, for reasons I shall imply later in speaking of Newman, is quite willing to leave both him and his writings to theologians and ecclesiastical historians. With Newman, however, it must always be different. Some of his works are very much read. I recall that when books were scarce in the late war a bookseller in...