[About Newman.] ... I have thought many times of what you said about Newman, and perhaps you are right ... he might not affect me now, and I never read now any books; haven't read twenty in twenty years; it was different when I was fifteen of sixteen, and he taught me so much I do mind - things that will never be out of me. In an age of sofas and cushions he taught me to be indifferent to comfort; and in an age of materialism he taught me to venture all on the unseen, and this so early that it was well in me when life began, and I was equipped before I went to Oxford with a really good panoply, and it has never failed me; so if this world cannot tempt me with money or luxury, and it can't, or honours, or anything it has in it's trumpery treasure house, it is most of all because he said it in a way that touched me - not scolding nor forbidding nor much leading - walking with me a step in front. So he stands for me as a great image and symbol of a man who never stopped, and who put all this world's life in one splendid venture, that he knew, as well as you or I, might fail, but with a glorious scorn of everything that was not his dream - of course it touched me - I wanted to go to Oxford because of him, but when I got there, I saw nothing like I had left in the grimy streets of Birmingham - so I wanted to go and be shot in the Crimea very much indeed - D. D. said a funnily true thing when she said I should have been knocked over in a forlorn hope - I used to think a great deal how nice it would be to be in a forlorn hope - but at that point I was unworthy of my teacher, for he made obedience the great virtue, and I should have like to lead the forlorn hope: but I smiled when she said that for it was true enough. ...