Lyra Apostolica

Lyra Apostolica (1836). This collection of hymns contained 179 poems and hymns, which had been previously printed in the British Magazine, a high-church periodical founded in 1832 to counter liberal forces arguing for the reform of the church. It was an ostentatiously Tractarian publication, with an epigraph chosen by John Henry Newman* taken from Homer, ‘You shall know the difference now that I am back again’. This suggested that Newman saw the time as one of battle: the quotation is from Achilles’ speech in the Iliad, here referring to Newman's absence abroad in 1832-33. There were 179 poems: Newman contributed 109, John Keble* 46, Isaac Williams* 9, Hurrell Froude 8, John William Bowden...