Ossian Collection > Aspects of poetry

CARDINAL NEWMAN. 439
each other, were more independent of each other's
influence, were less appreciative of each other's gift.
What Carlyle thought of Wordsworth we know too
well, from the brief notice in the Reinmiscences, in which
Carlyle speaks out his ' intelligent contempt ' for the
great poet — a contempt which does not prove his own
superiority. And Wordsworth, if he did not return the
contempt, was, we have reason to believe, in no way
an admirer of Carlyle, or of any of his works ; and, when
they met, turned but a cold side towards him.
There is no reason to think that Carlyle and Cardinal
Newman knew much or anything of each other's works ;
certainly they never met. For High Church doctrine
Carlyle expresses nothing but scorn, whenever he alludes
to it, and cannot preserve either equanimity or good
manners in presence of anything that looked like sacer-
dotalism.
Had they ever met, we can well imagine the refined
Cardinal Newman turning toward the rough Scot that
reticence and reserve which none knew better how to
maintain, in presence of the uncongenial. Then, as to
Wordsworth and Cardinal Newman, while the old poet
knew and appreciated The Christian Year, and used to
comment on it, there is nowhere any evidence that
Cardinal Newman's works had ever reached, or any
way affected him. And as for the younger of these
two, it was only this time last year that he told one in
Oxford, that he was quite innocent of any familiarity