Historically, Newman dedicated this essay (1858) to his friend William Monsell who was an Irish parliamentarian in County Limerick, recently converted to Roman Catholicism (1850) and later to become Lord Emly, Baron of Tervoe (1874). As Newman himself states in his Advertisement, "An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent" is largely gathered from lectures and essays he delivered while he was rector of the Catholic University of Ireland, which he helped to found (1854). Content-wise, this work attempts to study the modes of language, or "grammar", in which the intelligibility of faith can be expressed. - Summary by M.S.C. Lambert, LC