Ossian Collection > Aspects of poetry

XV.] CARDINAL NEWMAN. 461
loose in more sweeping periods, than he generally used
in Oxford. But these, though high eloquence, do not
seem to contain such true poetry as the earlier sermons.
Yet therer'is one passage in the University Sermons well
known (probably tO many here, which I cannot close
with^tit referring/ to. He is speaking of music as an
outward and earthly economy, under which great wonders
unknown are typified. ■>
* There are seven notes in the scale,' he says ; ' make them
fourteen ; yet what a slender outfit for so vast an enterprise !
What science brings so much out of so little ? Out of what poor
elements does some great Master in it create his new world !
Shall we say that all this exuberant inventiveness is a mere
ingenuity or trick of art, like some game or fashion of the day,
without reality, without meaning ? We may do so ; and then,
perhaps, we shall account the science of theology to be a matter
of words ; yet, as there is a divinity in the theology of the Church,
which those who feel cannot communicate, so is there also in the
wonderful creation of sublimity and beauty of which I am speaking.
To many men the very names which the science employs are
utterly incomprehensible. To speak of an idea or a subject seems
to be fanciful or trifling, to speak of the views it opens upon us to
be childish extravagance ; yet is it possible that that inexhaustible
evolution and disposition of notes, so rich yet so simple, so intri-
cate yet so regulated, so various yet so majestic, should be a mere
sound, which is gone and perishes ? Can it be that those myste-
rious stirrings of heart, and keen emotions, and strange yearnings
after we know not what, and awful impressions from we know not
whence, should be wrought in us by what is unsubstantial, and
comes and goes, and begins and ends in itself.'' It is not so, it
cannot be. No ; they have escaped from some higher sphere ;
they are the outpouring of eternal harmony in the medium of
created sound ; they are echoes from our Home, they are the voice