of the best Double Firsts in classics and mathematics ever known. He had a
Fellowship in Balliol College, was Emeritus Professor later, and
considered to be one of the most promising, brilliant men at his
University. Many thought his intellect superior to that of his better-
known brother. Many thought also, later on, that, as I have said, all his
life he was more or less overshadowed by the fame of that elder brother.

Francis Newman never took his M.A. degree, and for this reason: he felt he
could not conscientiously sign the Thirty-nine Articles, in which all had
to profess belief. He could not reconcile this signing with his inner
convictions. Rather than do violence to them he preferred being without
the degree. No one could say of him that all his life long he did else
than bear his convictions boldly emblazoned on his shield. There could
never be any doubt of what he thought. He could not beat about the bush in
his beliefs--he would not keep them secret--he did not care for
unpopularity in the least. His great aim was to fight--at whatever odds--
for whatever he felt by dogged conviction. He was often wrong; but never
cowardly, never philandering, never vacillating. "I am anti-everything,"
as he said humorously of himself. And so he was. He _was_, in a sense,
"anti-everything," and though, sometimes through the training of previous
environments, sometimes through other reasons, he was "anti" things that
were right and of good report, he was never against social reform--never
against "the cause that needs assistance"; never against the oppressed
wherever and whenever they crossed his path. Newman thus gave up his
Balliol Fellowship, and with it--more or less--his chances of a brilliant
worldly career.

Briefly stated, these are the chief events of the years that followed the
taking of the Double First at Oxford. In 1827 he met Maria Rosina Giberne,
who was to strongly influence his life for the next six years. In 1828 he