If there can be said to be such a thing as a Victorian 'frame of mind', it must be a broad category indeed to contain two such different representatives as John Henry Newman and James Fitzjames Stephen. They shared a distrust of reform and democracy, a love of England, and a penchant for getting into controversy in print. Otherwise, they strike one as chalk and cheese, or 'dog and fish', as Newman put it, à propos of their one encounter, in 1864, when Stephen attacked the 'dangerous sophistry' of Newman's Apologia pro Vita Sua. These two biographies of the two men are also strikingly at opposite extremes of the genre's possibilities. Ker's life of Newman is massive, expansive, reverential towards its subject, while Smith's life of Stephen is terse, matter-of-fact, and unblinkingly critical of its subject's failings.

LRB 16 February 1989 | PDF Download