J.H.Newman and others: Lyra Apostolica, 1879; transcription from a copy in the Congregational Library, London.
Title page, 1879
Preface to original edition (1836)
Preface ("Postscript"), 1879
[Title page, 1879]
NEW EDITION
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RIVINGTONS
WATERLOO PLACE, LONDON
Oxford and Cambridge
MDCCCLXXIX
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The following compositions have been reprinted from the "British Magazine," where they had the advantage of originally appearing, in the humble hope that they may be instrumental in recalling or recommending to the reader important Christian truths which are at this day in a way to be forgotten. The publication, having no other object but this, would, according to the original intention, have been strictly anonymous; but one of the writers, in whom the work originated, having been taken from his friends by death, it seemed desirable so far to depart from it, as to record what belonged to him, while it was possible to do so; and this has led to a general discrimination of the Poems, by signatures at the end of each.
Very little has to be added now to what was stated above when these short Poems were first collected into a volume. They were contemporaneous, on their first appearance in 1833, with the "Tracts for the Times," and the "Church of the Fathers," being contributions month by month, as were the papers called the "Church of the Fathers," to the "British Magazine". All three had one object, that of enforcing what the authors considered to be Apostolic or Primitive Christianity, at a time when its principles, doctrines, discipline, usages, and spirit seemed, in the length and breadth of the Anglican Communion, to be well-nigh forgotten. The "Lyra Apostolica," on the whole, took the ethical side of Christianity; the Tracts, the theological and controversial; while the "Church of the Fathers" was mainly historical.
Neither the Lyra nor the Tracts were written with the profession of being finished compositions, but with the simple purpose of startling, of rousing, of suggesting thought, and of offering battle, in the cause of the Ancient Church. As to the Lyra, the motto in its titlepage shows the frame of mind in which it was begin at Rome: "We borrowed from M.Bunssen, a Homer," I have said elsewhere, "and Froude chose the words in which Achilles, on returning to the battle, says, `You shall know the difference, now that I am back again'." And I recollect saying to Froude or to some other intimate friend at the time, "We must not mind roughness or awkwardness of versification; we are but bringing out ideas in metre." But as Dr Pusey, on joining the Tract writers, changed the character of their work by the example he set them of his scholarlike mind, so when Keble and Mr Williams gave their beautiful pices to the Lyra, they invested it with a claim to be considered a book of Poetry, which it never would have had without them. However, their valuable aid did not lead to the exclusion of the earlier and less artistic contributions, when the volume appeared in 1836.
It is only necessary to record here the names of the authors of the separate poems. The signature [*alpha] belongs to Mr J.W.Bowden of Trinity College, at that time a Commissioner of Stamps and Taxes; [*beta] to the Rev. Richard Hurrell Froude, Fellow of Oriel; [*gamma] to the Rev.John Keble, Fellow of Oriel; [*delta] to the Rev. John Henry Newman, Fellow of Oriel; [*epsilon] to the Rev. Robert Isaac Wilberforce, sometime Fellow of Oriel; [*zeta] to the Rev.Isaac Williams, Fellow of Trinity.
[* The source book has single lower-case Greek letters for the coded signatures of the original authors. Since the Greek alphabet is not readily available in most HTML implementations, the names of the letters have been spelled out here.]
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