CIHM Microfiche Series (l^onographs) ICMH Collection de microfiches (monographies) CMMdiir, InstituM (or Hittorical MIcrortproductiont / Institut Canadian da microraproductiont Mttoriquaa 1996 Technical and Bibliographic Notes / Notes technique et bibliographiques The Institute has attempted to obtain the best original copy available for filming. Features of this copy which may be bibiiographically unique, which may alter any of the images in the reproduction, or which may significantly change the usual method of filming are checl,iS Rochest«r, New York U609 USA ''SS (716) 482 - 0300 - Phone ^S (^1^) 288 - 5989 - Fox !Ej0aag0 tin ^iIatl;oltr ^\tt BY THOMAS O'HAGAN M.A.. Ph.D., Ult. O. (Unl) Member of the American Catholic Historical Society, The Irish-American Historical Society, The Catholic Scientific Congress of Europe, The Irish Text Society of Lon- don (England) , The Celtic Society of Montreal (Canada), and Honorary Member of the /lUiance Francaise of Detroit (Mich.) JOHN MURPHY COMPANY PUBUSBEKS 200 W. LOMBABD ST. BALTIMORE, MD. }2 ( jlco CorYRIGHT 191' BY THOMAS O'HAGAN PRESS OF JOHN MURPHY COMPANY. Baltimori To the RIGHT REVEREND THOMAS J. SHAHAN S. T. D., J. U. L. Bishop of Germanicopolis and Rector of The Catholic Univereity Washington, D. C. 48000 WORKS BY THE SAME ADTHOK Studies in Poetry Canadian Essays r^,-*-. Essays: Literary, ileriiit and Historical Ciiats by the Fireside In the Heart of the Mer.dow Songs ol Heroic Days I PREFACE I i Of the ten essays in this volume, seven have already appeared in various Catho- lic periodicals. The opening paper, on ihe Influence of Religious HomeTrain- ing," was read at the International Eu- charistic Congress held in Montreal, Can- ada, September, 1910. The papers on The Relation of the Catholic Journal to Catholic Literature," and "The Relation of the Catholic School to Catholic Liter- ature," were read, respectively, at the Catholic Press Convention at Columbus Ohio, August, 191 1, and the Americaii Catholic Educational Convention held at Pittsburgh, Pa., July, 191 2. Of the re- maining seven papers, "The Office and Function of Poetry," "The Irish Dra- matic Movement" and "Catholic Intel- lectual Activities," first appeared in the Magnificat. "Catholic Journalists and Journalism" and "A Week in Rome" were written for the Rosary Magazine; "What Is Criticism?" for The Colum- biad, and the "Catholic Element in Eng- lish Poetry," for the American Catholic Quarterly Review, and the courtesy of the publishers of these periodicals for per- mission to reprint in book form the seven essays is hereby gratefully acknowledged. It might be well to add that the paper on "A Week in Rome" was written in 1902, while Pope Leo the Thirteenth, of bles- sed memory, was yet gloriously reigning. The ten essays bear the book title of "Essays on Catholic Life," inasmuch as the point of view in every essay is Catho- lic and the subjects discussed in nearly every instance are of particular and vital concern to Catholics. Thomas O'Hagan. May ist, 1916. CONTENTS THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGIOUS HOME '"" TRAINING THE OFFICE AND FUNCTION OF POETRY. ... .« A WEEK IN ROME j THE IRISH DRAMATIC MOVEMENT „ CATHOLIC JOURNALISTS AND JOURNALISM. 74 THE RELATION OF THE CATHOLIC JOURNAL TO CATHOLIC LITERATURE ,« WHAT IS CRITICISM? ,„, THE RELATION OF THE CATHOLIC SCHOOL TO CATHOLIC LITERATURE ,„ CATHOLIC INTELLECTUAL ACTIVITIES ,35 THE CATHOLIC ELEMENT IN ENGLISH VO- ETRY ,,, THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGIOUS HOME TRAINING [A Paper Read at the International Euchariatic Congreii, Montreal, September, 1910.] The Church, the Home and the School —these are the trinity that mould our lives, fashion our character and fit us for the knighthood of heaven and the knight- hood of earth. Each of this trinity has its great work to do. The Church pours upon the new-born the regenerating wa- ters of baptism and makes it a child of God and heir to the Kingdom of Heaven; the home represented in the father and mother keeps watch over the seedlings of grace implanted at baptism in the garden of the infant heart and nourishes those seedlings, while the school trains will and heart and mind to follow the precepts of truth and hearken to the voice and admo- nitions of God. Now, the nearest representative of God in regard to the child is the Church, but H lo Essays on Catholic Life. the Church during the first five years of the child cannot exert her care directly over It, so that the life of grace implanted through baptism must remain without nourishment unless the parents-unless father and mother watching over the seedlings of grace implanted by holy bap- tism in the heart of the child, foster by piety, precept and prayer the tender buds of faith and love that later will bear beau- teous blossoms in the full summertide of the garden of life. Father Becker, the well-known Jesuit writer, in his admirable work, "Christian Education," likens the soul of a child after baptism to the bud of a sunflower, and he asks what is necessary that this bud be developed to the full splendor of blossom? Nothing, Father Becker an- swers, except that parents, especially the mother, direct this bud again and again to the light and warmth of religion If she does not understand this, then the Essays on Catholic Life. II tender bud, the soul, the heart of the child will waste away and die. It is, as you all no doubt know, the opin- ion of some of the greatest adepts in ped- agogics that as the child is in its sixth or seventh year, so it will remain. Indeed, we have proof of this before us in the lives of the saints. From very tenderest childhood these holy men and women were directed by pious mothers, who in- stilled in their hearts a love of prayer, a devotion to Jesus and Mary, a practice of the sweet duties of religion. Susanna and Tobias are examples in the Old Testa- ment, and in the Christian Era we have a St. Louis, of France, a St. Aloysius and a St. Stanislaus. Yes, assuredly, as the child is in its sixth and seventh years, through the care of parents, so it will re- main. Is it not true that we hear today com- plaints on every side of the alarming in- crease of crime committed in early child- hood and youth, crimes of every descrip- 12 Essays on Catholic Life. tion down to dastardly suicide. We boast of our civilization, of our progress, of our intellectual advancement, but whence comes this frightful increase in the num- ber of juvenile criminals ? Has the influ- ence of religious home training ceased? Are our mothers ceasing to be mothers? Are the altars of our homes adorned with naught but Dead Sea fruit? Philanthropists who study and note this alarming increase of crime among the youth of our land attribute it to a lack of education during early childhood. They hold that greater pains should be taken with the education of children while they are small; that more attention should be given to the kindergarten training, hold- ing-and in this they are right-that a more lasting impression can be made on the character of every man before he has reached the sixth year of his life than in ail subsequent years together. Th kindergarten is, indeed, very, very good, provided, as Father Becker says it Essays on Catholic Life. 13 be pervaded with the light and warmth of the one true religion which the Divine Lover of children has instituted. But, after all, is not the parental home the best kindergarten, and is not a pious mother in this garden the best gardener? Who will watch more carefully the budding flower of virtue in the heart of the child than the mother? Who Wiil tend so as- siduously this flower, breathing into its petals the warmth of piety and faith and nursing it with the sunshine of prayer as the mother? Oh, my friends, let us not be mistaken. It is from the mother that radiates all or well-nigh all the influence ot religious home training. From the fa- ther the child, indeed, acquires wisdom and that strength of mind and discipline of the will which come from ready and cheerful obedience, but it is on the moth- er's lap — in the mother's arms, that the child receives that moral impress which fashions its life for time and accompanies it even into eternity. 14 Essays on Catholic Life. No matter what your priests may do, say? the eloquent Bishop Cowgill, of Leeds, England, no matter how zealous the sisters and the teachers may be, par- ents have a duty to their little ones which no one else can discharge. They must al- ways remain the first teachers and instruc- tors of their offspring. This is the law of nature, the law of religion, the order of Divine Providence, the will of God. It is, continues the Bishop of Leeds, on the mother's lap that the little child should learn to lisp its first prayer, to praise God, its Maker, to bless God, its Saviour, to love Jesus of the Manger, Jesus of Cal- vary, Jesus of the Tabernacle. It is from the father's lips it must learn its first lesson of wisdom. These lessons will never be forgotten. This primary duty of parents is such that, unless it be observed, priests and nuns and teachers will labor in vain. Unless parents co- operate with them it is not possible to give children a proper training. What is built 1 Essays on Catholic Life. 15 up in school or in Church, if not support- ed or strengthened by home teaching, sooner or later, must fall to ruin. Hence the duty of parents is to provide their children with a Christian home. And now let me ask what is a Chris- tian home? It is a fortress built by the hand of God founded and instituted at His command, sanctified by His Divine love. It is, as the good Bishop of Leeds says, a home in which religion holds the first place, in which the name of our Lord is a familiar sound and where the parents govern themselves and rule their children by the principles of a Christian life. The Christian home is easily discovered. The very walls of the house will tell you at a glance who it is that holds the first place in the minds and hearts of its inmates. If on looking around the eye rests on em- blems of our holy faith, if you find in every room the crucifix or the image of Our Lady, or a religious picture; if you see the holy water stoup well replenished. '6 Essays on Catholic Life. along with other tokens of faith then fh. ^e-y appearance of the house wiJUffoJd presumptive evidence that Ou r n What ,s a Christian home? Is it nof one modeled on the Holy Home at nL .pmh,. childhood, Hi, boyhSnd W Our Divine T nr^ ,?^ ^'* wisdom "-.«.-et?ti"?tfrj.t^; Essays on Catholic Life. i; children will lack religious home train- ing, for your lives will, like that of Mary and Joseph, be a daily lesson in piety and prayer, and your children, subject to you, will grow through fond obedience, as did Our Divine Lord, in every virtue and grace. You remember that our late Holy Father Pope Leo XIII, of blessed mem- I cry, in his Encyclical on the Pious Asso- I ciation of the Holy Family, sets forth j clearly how the Holy Family of Nazar- eth is a model for evc^y Christian family of today. "In St. Joseph," says the late Holy Pontiff, "the iather of a family has a wondrous example of parental solici- tude and care; in the Most Holy Virgin Mother of God, mothers find a perfect model of love, of modesty, of resignation and of perfect faith ; and in Jesus, who 'was subject to them,' children have a di- vine pattern of obedience for their admi- ration, their devotion and their imitation. Those who are highly born will learn 1 8 Essays on Catholic Life. from this family of royal blood how to be modest in prosperity and dignified in ad- versity. Ths rich will be taught how vir- tue must be preferred to riches. Those who are engaged in labor, and all who, especially in our times, are so strongly tempted to dissatisfaction and impatience by straitened circumstances and the hard- ships which they and theirs have to suffer need only cast their eyes upon these holy members of a uoly household, and they will find reasons rather for rejoicing than for murmuring at the lot which has fallen to them. Like the Holy Family, they la- bor; like the Holy Family, they have to provide for their daily bread ; like Joseph, they must live by what they earn; and if they work with their own hands, so also did Jesus before them. But let me be clearly understood here The very center of the radiating influence of religious home training is the mother. She is the spiritual sun of the household, giving light and warmth to its every nook Essays on Catholic Life. 19 and corner, filling with an atmosphere of love and joy and the eternal sunshine of heaven. But j'ou will ask who and what is a Christian mother? Let me answer you in the words of Rev. Bertrand L. Conway, the Paulist father: "A Christian mother Is one who makes of maternity a priest- hood and pours the faith of Christ into the very veins of her child as she nurses it at her breast. One who teaches its little hands to join in prayer and its little lips to lisp the sweet name of Jesus and Mary. She is the mother who knows how to caress and how to punish, how to be self-sacrificing and how to resist her child's whims. She is the woman who later on will be glad to sacrifice the claims of vanity and the desire for pleasure to give her whole time and attention to her growing children; who will prefer the voluntary .Uavery of home duties to the capricious liberty of the world. Such a mother will be well able to instill into m 20 Essays on Catholic Life. her daughter modesty and dcvotedness, and to teach her son the manly virtues and the noble passion of duty." S h, my friends, is the portrait of the good Christian mother limned for us by Father Conway in his interciiing work, "The Christian Family." Both Father Conway and Father Becker, it will be ob- served, emphasize for us the work of the Christian mother. Why? Because, after all, it is to our mothers we owe our chief gifts — indeed, our whole happiness, intel- lectual and moral. It is they who create the moral atmosphere of the home, fix its decalogue, tend the flame upon its spirit- ual altar and lead us by the hand along the path which duty has marked for our footsteps. There is not one in this hall today that does not realize in his life the influence of a good mother. There is not one in this hall today whose memory does not reach back in childhood to a good mother perhaps now dwelling with the Saints of God. To me, next to the sacra- Essays on Catholic Life. 21 mcnts of God's Church and the teaching of her divinely appointed pastors, I owe more to the memory of a good and pious mother m keeping my stumbling footsteps along the path of light and duty, than to any other influence. Through the mists of years I see now this good anu pious mother gathering her little family around her in her humble abode in sweet converse with God in even- ing prayer. Hers was the simple faith of childhood : "Not learned live in gradout houiehold wayt. Not perfect, nay, but full of tender v/anti, No angel, but a dearer being, all dipt In angel initioeti breathing Paradiie. Interpreter between the gods and ™en. Who look'd all native to her place and yet On tiptoe ieem'd to touch upon a sphere Too groii to tread and all male mind, perforce Sway'd to her from their orbitt ai they mov'd And girdled her with music Happy he With such a mother I faith in woman kind Beats with his blood and trust in all things high Come, easy to him, and tho he trip and fall, ' He shall not blind his soul with clay." ;as. 22 Essays on Catholic Life. I am sure, then, that it is evident to every one of us that in the home the moth- er is the very altar dispensing from tapers of purity, faith, devotion and truth, the light which illumines each Christian household. Nay, her sweet soul is the lily on the altar symbolizing the Lily Maid of Israel clad with blue mantle— the Mother of Our Divine Lord. If, then, we would have religious home influences safeguarding the lives of our children, we must first of all have good n:others. You know full well that what children see makes a far deeper impres- sion on them than what they hear. What will it avail parents, I ask, if they enjoin upon their children to attend mass on Sundays and say their morning and even- ing prayers, if they fail in these duties themselves? There can be no Christian home unless parents practice what they preach, for it is the careful observance of religious duties and the constant remem- brance of God's presence that give the Essays on Catholic Life. 23 home its Christian character. We arc careful to guard them against the germs of disease. Are we careful to guard them against the germs of sin ? Are diseases of of the soul less dangerous, less fatal than diseases of the body? We send our chil- dren to school that they become learned in the wisdom of this world, but we oft for- get to instruct them in the wisdom of God. They are rich in all languages but the language of the soul. They shine with all light save the light of God. I feel certain that many of the losses to the Church may be traced to the lack of religious home training. We ar^; not be- reft of our faith in a moment. It is usu- ally a process of many years. The par- ents who fail to discharge their duties to their children as practical Catholics, who do not safeguard their tender and innocent souls, who do not instruct them in our holy faith, who yield to human respect and bow down before the fashions and 24 Essays on Catholic Life. lnT^''^\?^ l'^'' "' '"^•''"g possible and probable these losses to our holy faith Are we not, too, living in an age most dangerous to the practice of Cath- olic faith, and if so, should we not in a special manner safeguard the little ones in our homes, instruct them in the truths of Holy Church, and, if possible, preserve unsullied their baptismal robes. But let me repeat again, this is largely the divine work of the mother. The spiritual care of the child in the home is assuredly her task and blessed is that task if she fulfil it well In a monthly publication there re- cently appeared those beautiful words: Ihe child that learns the Our Father on the lap of its mother; that learns from the hpg of Its mother the stories of the pa- triarchs and the lovable narrations about the little Christ-Child, possesses a living source of religious faith in its soul whi^h cannot be wholly effaced, neither by the ^orching sun nor by the storms of life The profound and sweet impressions in- Essays on Catholic Life. stilled by a mother remain still fresh and green when every other recollection with- ers and dries up ; yet the death agony it- self cannot destroy them." Our convents are doing a great work to fashion Christian women to tend the altar of home, but our convents cannot do every- thing. The tyrannical exactions of socie- ty and the false ideals of home, which so largely obtain today, well-nigh nullify the counsels and precepts of the good re- ligious in our convents, and, as a conse- quence, the influence of religious home training is often a negligible quantity in many of the Catholic homes of our land. The fires of faith are allowed to arn down and young children whose hearts should be nourished with the glow and ardor of piety and devotion, grow up in- different, careless, and even wicked. Fur- thermore, my good friends, is not the habit or custom of family prayer going out? How many Catholic families are there who never gather at eventide to re- 26 Essays on Catholic Life. "irenoffaith. We h ve lo.^?.*" *'" Vision „, childhood. T™,! o'odT' for the simple faith of childhood : Essays on Catholic Life. 27 Heart! oft bow before itrange idoli Strength of life and breath of fame, And, forgetful of life's morning, Dream of noontide's gilded name; But the idol that I cherish Knows no glory e'en in part, Tis the simple faith of childhood Long grown strong within my heart. In the darkest hour of sorrow. When each star has veiled it face, Turn I fondly to my idol. Full of heavenly light and grace; Then my step grows firm and steady, Down the mystic path of night; For the simple faith of childhood Guides me, leads me ever right. This is the faith, my friends, that over- cometh the world. It is the faith that has brought this magnificent Congress to our city. It is the faith which makes of each Christian home a treasury of grace. It is the faith which links heaven and earth in the sacrament of the altar where Christ, Our Divine Lord, is tabernacled as our Guest, inviting, entreating the fathers and mothers and children to share in His Di- vine Banquet of Love. Mm 28 Essays on Catholic Life. THE OFFICE AND FUNCTION OF POETRY fJ""^? " '^""^'^ '"™ that poetry has and function have ceased to be under stood by the people. No longer does '4 s' ttTe^r^.^ ""^' ^'^^ 'olden Lr voura?itf:Lri;e?'r^'"^^^ niir A "* *"ar- Men and women of our day worship at other shrines where burn dimmer but more alluring trpers Not only has the breath of joy^left o"r meadows and the subsoil of pUe been turned up and sown with the Led of science and harrowed into .harp ridLs of every-day facts, but the great tempTe of song wi,h i, glorious symbolic w'ntw and Its crowning turrets, its altars of truTh and light Its carved niches of grace "ts figures and forms of heaven spfaS to the heart of each devotee, stands sill^f by the wayside with scarce a pilgrim , I Essays on Catholic Life. 29 its door or a worshiper bowed before its altar lamps. The poet has, indeed, fallen upon barren times. Yet this is all but a phase of civiliza- tion, or rather a psychological index of the attitude of the world of today towards the idealism of the soul. We are living in an eminently material and practical age. The dreams of the artist have given way before the imperious sweep of science and invention ; genius in our day is more con- cerned with the conquest of the air and the subjugation of land and sea and all material forces to the will and purpose of man, than in bodying forth in lofty rhyme or glorifying on canvas or in Carrara marble "the light that never was on sea or land" — that vision which comes to the soul in moments of inspiration as the gift and dower of God. Still the old gray earth is not wholly without dreamers. From time to time great souls arise to bear aloft the torch and light up the avenues of life and labor. 30 Essays on Catholic Life. nobler vistas Tu • . P^*"" ^nd 4 Sw^r"^''" °' civi,i^a,i„„, for ■°o*ar^e,r *rb„?;f'•'"«°■'"• 'o Whom have bentvrd ^"™ "' "c snail not look down toward n ™pataofspiri,„aId™rw„rMrSir Essays on Catholic Life. 31 in earthly allurement; otherwise the greatest of gifts may prove but a curse to mankind. The mission of the poet is the ennoblement of the soul through its dower of faculties; the mission of God's priest at the altar is salvation through the gift of divine grace. Now as all art eludes definition, seeing that in the last analysis a definition is a thing of logic, poetry, in many respects the greatest of all the arts, evades, too, any defining term. Matthew Arnold, if I remember correctly, defines poetry as the happiest thoughts of the happiest mo- ments. Yet it is much more than this. Wordsworth defined it as "the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge and the im- passioned expression which is in the coun- tenance of all science." But it is, too, much more than this. It is life keyed to the finest and most subtle whisperings of the soul, full of vision, full of imagina- tion, full of fire, yes, fire from the altar of true inspiration, borne by thurifers of 3' Essays on Catholic Life. God who ,„ J „5_ ,. r=« lemplt of ,«, """ O"^ '" 'he •»l=ad„.oJ*i'*?hr'' ''"'"'■'''« .™ch.d„or„.,!^,lf^'---i.h" Js no step uDwarH no ♦ ='^"^«a. i here breathe line air »„H ■ "^ .*' ='"'' ""'' thing of the io«, „i,ich , „ ? ""=" -' lower i^ '^,X The"n God'" "!? -P-e.e,he,p,e„d.-3'vislro°ht.:,;i; Essays on Catholic Life. 33 and His Divine love, which now perme- ates all things, will then blossom and flame as a golden rose in the eternal kingdom. For ifr..-nortality reaches through all great art, and the song of the reaper at sunset amid the golden sheaves has in it a note of as permanent value, and smites the ear of Heaven with a like joy and harmony as does that of the lark as he pours out in mid air his molten, liquid notes. Yes, truly, poetry is one of the greatest of the arts— in its capacity, as Hamilton Mabie says, to receive, express and convey thought, emotion and experience. It is not solely dependent upon the intellectual in man, but resides more largely in the emo- tions. The drama has its root and being in action, the epic in recital, and the lyric in feeling. A poem to have any artistic value must be a unit, whether it deals with a deep emotion, a world-event or the ob- jective presentation of life in action. Now there is an approach to every poem of supreme value to t' ,• interpreter. :m' 34 Essays on Catholic Life. For art is not haphazard in its develop- mcnt, but follows both a norm and a plan. It does not develop by tangents, but grows from the center outwards. In this it fol- lows nature, whose flower and fruitage grows through the seasons as art feels its way and ripens through the centuries. The primary purpose of art is to min- ister to the soul and crown life with the deepest felicities of the spirit. The poet, the painter, the sculptor, the musician, is neither of yesterday nor today, for he holds the centuries as a scroll in his hands. Where Phidias struck his chisel and Ra- phael dreamed and Wagner told the mu- sic legend of Parsifal in sacred notes, there is neither time nor age, nor winter, nor summer. All is youth and the perpe- tuity of youth. But we must go to the poets if we would, indeed, understand what poetry means. They have touched it ; they have felt it ; they have dreamed it. They know well what is the making of a poet— his Essays on Catholic Life. 35 relation to eternal truth, his fealty as a knight-errant of the race, his worship of beauty in every form, his rapt ecstacy of love, his unbroken pursuit of the divine gleam. They know by intuition and dower of God's gifts what our blind eyes cannot uncover through the most assidu- ous labor. Listen, then, to Tennyson as he tells us of the birth, mission and influ- ence of "The Poet" : The po«t in a golden clime wai born, With golden itari above; Dowerd with the hate of hate, the Korn of icorn. The love of love. He law thro- life and death, thro' good and ill, He law thro' hii own loul. The marvel of the everlaiting will, An Jen Kroll, Before hirr lay: with echoing feet he threaded The lecretest wallet of fame: The viewless arrows of his thoughts were headed And wing'd with flame. Like Indian reeds blown from his silver tongue, And of so fierce a flight, From Caipe unto Caucasus they sung, Filling with light 36 Essays on Catholic Life. So many minds did eird th.;, .. . ^7 Essays on Catholic Life. "" wisdom"'"'""'"' •""" "" •""'• " «=">* WISDOM, a name to shake All evil dream, of power,-a sacred ..„.t.. And vphen she spake, Her words did gather thunder as they ran And a, the lightning to the thunder Which follows It, riving the spirit of man, Makmg earth wonder. So was their meaning to her words. No .word Of wrath her right arm whiri'd, But one poor poet's scroll, and with hi. word She took the world. And Browning, too, the greatest psy- chological poet of the centuries, draws for us his true poet," whom he knows if oth- ers do not These two great poets. Brown- ing and Tennyson, looked upon the office of poetry as sacred-something akin to worship. Because of this the author of !f «T xf '""^ ^^^ ^°°^" «"d the author of In Memoriam" waxed strong in the gifts of Heaven, even when old age would warrant that the fires of inspiration had died upon the hearth. When Browning gave to the world his last poem, "Asolan do, he was fast approaching foursmre 38 Essays on Catholic Life. years, while Tennyson was In his eighty- third year when he published his drama, "The Foresters." Both poems show no lack of mental grip or poetic vision. Such continued youth in genius is not always found among the poets. But both Brown- ing and Tennyson were poets of whole- some moral life and living. Browning was a strong, vital, cheery, breezy man, while Tennyson possessed a noble poise, revealing in his life and living the strong virtues of an English home. We are always safe, then, in turning to the great poets if we wish to learn what is the significance and worth of poetry, v/hat is its office and function. How lit- tle, too, did the great masters of poetry care for the mere adulation or condem- nation of the multitude! As artists they realized that they were and would be mis- understood. Spiritual seers and teachers of mankind are always misunderstood. For the world is too busy with little things to hearken to the voice from above. Often Essays on Catholic Life. 39 "God's glow-worm" is not seen of men. The fisher on the coast of ancient Tyre who fished up the purple-yielding murex remained, too, unheeded; but soon the value of the murex stirred the traders of the market, and then, as Browning says, the small dealers "put blue into their line" and outbade each other for popularity, and as a result fared sumptuously, while he who fished the murex up remained unrecognized. How well all this is set forth in Browning's "Popularity" I Stand atill, true poet that you are I I know you ; let me try and draw you. Some night you'll fail us: when afar You rise, remember one man saw you, Knew you and named a star! My star, God's glow-worm! Why extend That loving hand of His which leads you, Yet locks you safe from end to end Of this dark world, unless He needs you, Just saves your light to spend? His clenched hand shall unclose at last, I know, and let out all the beauty: My poet holds the future fast. Accepts the coming ages' duty, Their present for the past. 40 Essays on Catholic Life. That day the earth's feaBt-maiter'i brow Shall clear to God the chalice raising; "Others give best at first, but thou Forever set'st our table praising, Keep'st the good wine till now I" Meantime, I'll draw you as you stand. With few or none to watch and wonder: I'll say— a fisher on the sand By Tyre the old, with ocean-plunder, A netful, brought to land. Who has not heard how Tyrian shells Enclosed the blue, that dye of dyes Whereof one drop worked miracles, And colored like Astarte's eyes Raw silk the merchant sells? And each bystander of them all Could criticise and quote tradition How depths of blue sublimed some pall— To get which pricked a king's ambition; Worth sceptre, crown and ball. Yet there's the dye, in that rough mesh, The sea has only just o'er-whisperedl Live whelks, each lip's beard dripping fresh. As if they still the water's lisp heard Through foam the rock-weeds thresh. Enough to furnish Solomon Such hangings for his cedar-house, That when gold-robed he took the throne In that abyss of blue, the Spouse Might iwear his presence shone Essays on Catholic Life. 41 Most like the centre-spike of gold Whijh burns deep in the blue-bell's womb What time, with ardors manifold, The bee goes singing to her groom, Drunken and overbold. Mere conchsl not fit for warp or woof! Till cunning come to pound and squeeze And clarify, — refine to proof The liquor filtered by degrees. While the world stands aloof. And there's the extract, flasked and fine. And priced and salable at last And Hobbs, Nobbs, Stokes and Nokes combine To paint the future from the past, Put blue into their line. Hobbs hints blue — straight he turtle eats: Nobbs prints blue, — claret crowns his cup: Nokes outdares Stokes in azure feats, — Both gorge. Who fished the murex up ? What porridge had John Keats? Again, it should not be forgotten that much of our best poetry is expressed un- der the form of a symbol. This is largely the method of art, and is found embodied in it under every form of expression. Bet- ter far, too, in art is it to suggest than ex- press. Art that must be translated by the 4^ EssAys ON Catholic Life y°"wiilWo"tS',fP«"y.and sjon under the form T? ""'^^ exf)res- Comedy be if it weTr„o. h \"'' ' ^'^^"« and aJlegoricaJ? Qn ^^'^ symbolical ^''en, indeed [he anis^^^'^- "« « great spiritual truth 1 ''" '° ^"'^^ Pr«ses it under the fol r''''*'^^'=^- or symbol. For the .n^ ^^ '" "^^^^^^-y tfte star-sown sky oUyZ ^ r""' '"''^' "«^Jy its lisping J 'r ^*"«Pint- ^°™of'tsexprefsio„"'"^^^-*^«<^-ine created tde?thTfo™' ?^ ''''' P°«-« sonie of our most sit ^ ' P'"''°'' ^ut Jyrics that burn and i^'r''''°"P°'='"s, ''^uls with deepest f.!r'' '"'^ "'^ «"'• ^^■ght. are expres ej fn f"^ '"' '^^'^"^t ^''iWealr'adJtid'r^'^y'"''''^- y said, It IS through the Essays on Catholic Life. 43 symbol that the artist te- rh« ethical truths will " "' S'""* ^^«wa, he doing, the great god Pan Down .„ the reed, by the river? Spreading ruin and «:a«ering ban Splashing and paddling with hJ* r An^S«a.ingthego,df„2X°^^'^« With the dragon-fly on the river? He tore out a reed, the great god Pan From the deep, cool bed of tLriv"' And the broken lilie. a-dying ay And the dragon-fly had fled ata^f Ere he brought it out of the river Ti.i there wa. no, ■ f *' P"'"« ««<• 44 Essays on Catholic Life. He cut it ihort, did the great god Pan, (How tall it itood iii the river I) Then drew the pith lilce the heart of a man Steadily from the outiide ring, Then notched the poor, dry, empty thing In holes at he late by the river. "Thii ii the way," laughed the great god Pan. (Laughed while he itae by the river I) "The only way linee gods began To make sweet music, they could succeed." Then dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed. He blew in power by the river I Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan, Piercing sweet by the river I Blinding sweet, O great god Pan I The sun on the hill forgot to die. And the lilies revived and the dragon-Hy Came back to dream on the river. Yet half a beast is the great god Pan To laugh as he sits by the river, Making a poet out of a man. The true gods sigh for the cost and the pain— For the reed that grows never more again As a reed with the reeds of the river. Yes, verily, the true gods do sigh for the cost and pain in making a poet out of a man. He shall henceforth see all things not through a colored glass, darkly, but with that inner eye, which, to the material Essay;, on Catholic Life. 45 and gross is sealed, but which is full of vision to the inspired and chosen few. His soul henceforth shall be in touch with both the lowly and Divine, for the func- tion and office of poetry is to interpret un- to man the glory of God in the universe. ^ « 46 Essays on Catholic Life. A WEEK IN ROME No other city in Europe holds such in- terest for the tourist and scholar as Rome It IS a city which speaJcs to the soul through the lips of well-nigh three thou- sand years. Such a dramatic note runs through its life. Theancient and the mod- ern world here unite. The Coliseum, with Its tragic memories, salute .icross the cen- turies beneath the paling si..rs of morn the glorious dome that crowns the Mother Church of Christendom — St. Peter's Every monument within the City of the Seven Hills speaks eloquently of the past and marks the marchof civilization Now It is the tomb of an emperor, now it is a triumphal arch, now it -s the buried re- mains of a church of the fifth century. Ood s finger has written across the face of the Eternal City. Well might Byron write: ^ m« Vn'"!' *%?°"'""" «""« 'hall ..and, When fall, the CoIi.eum Rome •hall fall. And when Rome fall.— the world I" Essays on Catholic Life, 47 I remember well the evening that I ar- rived in Roma Immortalis. It was Sat- urday, August 31, 1900. Sunday morn- ing at an early hour I issued from my room in the Hotel Laurati, that I might hear my first mass in the Eternal City and get a peep into the glories of Rome. There is access to every art gallery and museum in Rome on Sundays without money and without price. You know, gentle reader, that Italy is a land of art, and Florence and Rome are its centers. And the peoplel There are no such men and women in the world as in Rome. Modern Roman civi- lization must, indeed, be refining, tlse how account for the fact that in no other part of the world will you meet such beautiful types of cultured men and wo- men. Italy did more than preserve and hand down to the modern world Greek and Roman culture. She fashioned the most polished life of the Europe of the Middle Ages and filled the courts and 48 Essays on Catholic Life. universities of foreign lands with diplo- mats, scholars and artists. What a wonderful city Florence must have been in the Middle Ages-so demo- cratic yet so artistocratic! Just think of the fact that Florence produced a greater number of eminent men, starred the world with more genius during one century of the Middle Ages than did great metro- politan, throbbing London, with its teem- ing multitudes, in three hundred years Italy was the shrine of the Middle Ages, and has retained its pilgrimages to the present day. If Erasmus visited Naples, Bologna and Rome, and found inspiration in the land of Virgil and Dante, so did Germany's great but pan- theistic poet, Goethe, sojourn in this land of art and inspiration. And so this po- etic pilgrimage has continued— now By- ron, now Shelley, now Browning-, finding new themes, new thought, new fire, fresh desire in the land whose shores are lapped by the blue Mediterranean Essays on Catholic Life. 49 But the greatest fact in the life and his- ^n^ of Rome is the Pope. Here the White Shepherd of mankind has worn, and vicissitude - - mankind has worn through every fortune „... ,...„„, since St. Peter was crucified for his M as- er, the tiara. Rome is, indeed, a city of far-reachmg and linked memories. It was great before the Goths, Huns and Van- dals swept down from the North; it was hlTp u.l?"'''"'^"^ had fashioned h.s Frankish kingdom; it was great be- fore the Greeks dreamed out their Em- P-re on the shores of the Bosphorus- it was great before Columbus, standing at the port of Palos, , Sp,;,, turned his piercing gaze tov^.ru ... undiscovered continent in the West. It is great todav, not in commerce, not in the goodly gif'ts of earth not in the work of man, but in he work of God. The Apostolic Mis- realized but through the eye of faith Not St. Peter's, not St. Paul's without the walls, not Santa Maria Maggiore, but the -M- 50 Essays on Catholic Life. tomb of the Apostles under the altar of St. Peter's draws all Christian hearts to Rome. The feeble old man who, leaning upon a staff, lights up the gardens of the Vatican with his benign smile and directs with finger of conscience the wayward nations must inevitably soon sleep in dull, cold marble," but the "lumen in coelo" will not disappear-i,t will but blaze brighter as the higher and better things of the twentieth century enfold the life of man. A week in Rome is a short span of time for sightseeing. Yet to a New World pil- grim It reveals much that deepens interest m the historic and artistic past; in life- dramas enacted when the centuries were young; in the dreams and aspirations of Roman genius rocked and nurtured under Italian skies. I shared my attention while in Rome with the living and the dead, with the past and the present. The archsologist need not hunger for material in Rome. He has Essays on Catholic Life. 51 enough for a lifetime if that lifetime cov- ered ten centuries. Excavation always goes on. It was reported when I was there that the tomb of Romulus had been found, but my guide, Augusto Benincasa, after I had broken a bottle of vino bianco with him, assured me in great confidence that It was not really the tomb of the foun- der of the Roman Empire. A wise skep- ticism is a good thing to have about you in Rome. It will serve you much better than Wordsworth's "wise passiveness." I would not say that your Roman is dishon- est, but he is a very clever casuist. In- deed, it must be said that your Roman is very enterprising, and I should not pause to say that if there was any money in it he would not hesitate to dig up the bones of his grandfather. But let me turn from the ancient quar- ter of Rome— from the Coliseum, where Nero and Domitian disported themselves from the columnal remains of the Forum which was once wont to echo with Latin 52 Essays on Catholic Life. N-^i- oratory from Trajan's column, which marked the victory of Roman arms and turn to the glory of Italian art as we find It in the Vatican picture galleries. The Popes in every age have been the patrons —sometimes munificent patrons, as in the case of Leo X, one of the Florentine Me- dicis— of the arts and sciences. But art must have a conscience— without moral tone, aspiration, infinitude, art is of the earth earthy. So vile, coarse photogra- phy—sensual veritism without idealiza- tion, has never found a home or housing in the Vatican. As is well known, one of the greatest painters of all times is Raphael. He was the culmination of the Christian school of Italian painters, which was Byzantine HI its origin. To it belong such well- known names as Fra Angelico, Perugino and Bartolommeo. If you would study the work of the great Florentine painter, Raphael, go to Rome— go to the Vatican' Some of Raphael's great paintings are Essays on Catholic Life. 53 "The Sistine Madonna," "The Transfig- uration," "The Dispute Upon the Holy Sacrament," "The School of Athens," The Encounter of St. Leo the Great with Att,la/' All these are in the Vatican, ex cept the "Sistine Madonna," which is in the Dresden Art Gallery. It is worth noting here that the artistic gemus of England in painting tends to hnd expression in water colors, the artis- ic genius of France in pastel, and the ar- tistic gemus of Italy in fresco. Leonardo da Vinci s great painting, "The Last Sup- per, IS fresco work. As to the great churches of Rome, and 5T/^"''"*^^"y ^^^ *='ty of churches, the Mother Church of Christendom, St peters, does not impress you when you first visit it. You require to study it day by day-yes, I might say week by week before its architectural greatness grows upon you Its harmony of detail is so marked that you do not for some time re- ahze Its size. It will be remembered that 54 Essays on Catholic Life. its foundation stone was laid in 1506 and it reached its completion in 1629. But let me here tum from St. Peter's to the great Father of Christendom — our Holy Father Pope Leo XIII— and briefly present him to my readers as I saw His Holiness in the summer of 1900. During my stay in the r'^ternal City I learned that the Holy Father was in a few days to grant an audience, or perhaps it would be more correct to say, give his benediction in St. Peter's to the thousands of pilgrims who were flocking into the city. Now my problem was to smuggle myself into St. Peter's as a pilgrim, and this I did with the assistance of my guide and a very gen- erous "tip." Here is the ticket that ad- mitted me, in good Dantean Italian: ANTICAMERA PONTIFICIA AL VATICANO. Biglietto d'ammiisiane alia Baailica Vaticana per ricevere la Benedlzione di Sua Santita nel giorno Giovedi 6 Settembre 1900 alle ore 11%. II Mntro di Camera di Sua Santita, Cagiano de Azevedo. Essays on Catholic Life. 55 It is said that forty thousand pilgrims gathered in St. Peter's to receive the Pope's benediction. It was a cosmopoli- tan crowd, with, of course, the Italian— the Sicilian Italian predominating. I stood to the right of the railing which surrounds the tomb of the Apostles and chatted in brief Italian sentences with those around me while awaiting the arri- val of the Holy Father. Suddenly the whisper was passed along the line, "Here comes the Holy Father," and, borne in his sedan above the heads of the pilgrims by six stalwart Swiss guards, the successor of St. Peter, clad in white, wearing the papal tiara, passed up the aisle blessing the huge multitude with uplifted hand and dispensing such a sweet and kindly smile as could only have found lodgment in the great and noble soul of the Vicar of Christ. Pope Leo XIII is one of the great Popes of a distinguished and illustrious line of Popes. His sovereignty deals not m m; 56 Essays on Catholic Life. with earthly statutes. He is, indeed, the true father of the faithful— the central fact of our intellectual and moral world. For crowns may crumble, scepters may smash, thrones may tumble, but the suc- cessor of St. Peter reigns in the Eternal City, the Viceregent of Christ and dispen- ser of His heavenly treasures, gifts and blessings to man. Essays on Catholic Life. 57 THE IRISH DRAMATIC MOVE- MENT What are the conditions which give rise to the creation of a national drama? Corneille and Racine and Moliere appear in France, and a glorious and fruitful dramatic era is ushered in; Lope de Vega and Calderon light up the literary firma- ment of Spain and the Spanish theatre is enriched for all time; Henrik Ibsen in our own day, by the subtle and searching dramatic gifts of his soul, gives the Nor wegian theatre a place in the great world of drama— and we think immediately of this great Scandinavian, not, indeed, as a Shakespeare, but rather as a nineteenth century prober of society whose dramas are but so many clinic reports, rehearsed upon the stage It must be confessed that it is impossible to explain the advent of genius. Shake- speare came after the Morality and Mys- M .t/fV 58 Essays on Catholic Life. IJ tcry Plays had lost their hold on the Eng- lish people and the human mind was reaching out for conquest and discovery. His dramatic genius, while representa- tive of the Anglo-Saxon mind, is as uni- versal as humanity. He scanned the mountain tops of the Middle Ages and caught the glow of a new sun lighting up their summits. As we read Shake- speare's plays we feel the vital freshness of a new dawn. If ten silent centuries speak through the lips of Dante, the grent awakened mind of the Middle Ages, with its prophetic, scientific and humanistic heart-throbbings, finds fit utterance in the dramas of Shakespeare. His genius truly incarnates a new order of things. It is, perhaps, too early as yet to meas- ure the character and worth of the Irish dramatic movement, which within recent years has attracted so much attention. But we may here indicate its purpose and trend and, analyzing it as a reflection and exponent of Irish life and character, state Essays on Catholic Life. 59 frankly its merits and limitations, or let us rather say its defects. It is worth noting that, while the Irish Gaelic Revival and the Irish Dramatic Movement are not exactly co-radical, they have largely sprung from the same im- pulse and are really the fruit of the same dewy morn. And this dewy morn marks a rebirth of the Irish soul which for cen- turies has been prisoned or a wanderer among the alien nations of the earth. I know nothing so pathetic as a man who has lost his nationality. Though rich in the goods of the world, he is poor indeed, for his very soul has been stripped to the bone. He is practically an outcast among men, going about apologizing for the accident of his birth. Alas! this has been the fate of the Irishman for cen- turies. Will it continue? Let us hope not. As a well-known Irish writer of today says, "There is some- thing, be It instinct or the living subcon- scious tradition of an almost dead civili- 6o Essays on Catholic Life. zation, that says to nearly every Irish heart, 'Thou shah be Irish : thou shalt not be English.' " To this end the Gaelic League of Ire- land, with its patriotic and gifted leader, Dr. Douglas Hyde, is laboring, and it has already accomplished much. To this end, too, have the members of the Irish Dra- matic Movement, Lady Gregory, William Butler Yeats, Lennox Robinson, William Boyle, T. C. Murray and the late John Millington Synge labored. Whatever be the defects of their Irish dramas as por- trayals of Irish life and character, the sincerity of their patriotism cannot well be questioned. Of course, we must not forget that Irish character has been evolved or de- lineated for centuries by dran . tists, nov- elists and actors. It has been the work of the Elizabethan playwrights, Shake- speare, Ben Johnson, Dekker and Ford; and later of Smollett, Sheridan, Thack- eray, Maria Edgeworth, George Mere- Essays on Catholic Life. 6i dith, Farquhar, Lover, Lever, Carleton, Dion Boucicault and Bernard Shaw; and the actors, Chauncey Olcott and Andrew Mack in America. But much of all this has been caricature. Few, if any, of all these have touched the soul of Ireland What is most significant in Irish life has been passed over. They have known Ire- land, and represented her from the out- side, but not from the inside. They never once touched the hem of her spiritual roh., and this spiritual robe has been si'K i the days of Saint Patrick Ireland's evjry-day garment. Let it be said here, too, that the Irish aramatists of today are neither aliens nor visitors to Ireland. They were born and bred on its soil, and should, therefore, know Ireland fromwithin as well as from' without. Yeats, Synge and Robinson passed their youth among their fellow- countrymen and had, therefore, every op- portunity of knowing the inner life of the Irish people. They were nursed amid 62 Essays on Catholic Life. the faith and traditions of the people. There seems, however, to be an Ireland, as Charles Bewley points out in the Dub- lin Review for January, 1913, that these playwrights do not know, an Ireland which is not bounded by the four seas, but by history, religion and tradition. Now it is a well-known fact that among the Celts, whether of Ireland, Scotland, Wales or Brittany, are to be found today traces of Pagan life that existed before their conversion to Christianity. Of course, these Pagan primitive habits of thought and action will, to some extent, be found among the people of all Euro- pean countries. But perhaps these primi- tive habits have persisted stronger and longer among the Celts than among any other people of Europe. You have but to visit Brittany, in France, and attend some of the fetes of the people to be as- sured of this. The Celt holds so strongly to the past and is so full of imagination that superstition has ever a strong hold Essays on Catholic Life. 63 on his mind. He is a creature of super- naturalism and never a child of the dull earth. Fascinated by traces of this old Pagan life, with its touches of superstition and its rough and passionate outbursts, both Yeats and Synge have virtually built their literary work upon this ancient Pagan Gseldom and labeled it Irish drama. But this is no more Irish drama representing Irish life and Irish character of today than would a drama by Pinero dealing with the savage deeds of the Anglo-Sax- ons before the coming among them of Saint Augustine be representative of English life and English character of to- day. Yeats and Synge found, or thought they found, certain dramatic stuff among the peasantry of Ireland and forthwith proceeded to build up Irish dramas representative of Ireland of to- day. Both went to London and Paris for their ideals of drama, and then went to Ireland to find the elements of character '-i m ^1k.! 64 Essays on Catholic Life. and incidents upon which to construct their dramas; and when they could not find the characters they wanted they in- vented them. "The favorable compari- sons," says Francis Bickley in his study of Synge, "between Irish women and the women of England or Scotland in the matter of chastity, was a trump card in the hands of the Nationalists. Here was a writer who seemed to call it in question. Such a thing was impolitic, if no worse. It goes without saying that Synge had no desire to lower his compatriots in the eyes of the world. But if he had only found one unchaste woman in the four Prov- inces and had thought her the right stuff for drama, he would have dramatized her, or if he had found none he would have invented one had his purpose re- quired it." Now the work of the dramatist is to represent life, idealized if you will, but full of truth. Synge's purpose in build- ing up or creating his Irish dramas Essays on Catholic Life. 65 should be to represent Irish life, ideal- ized if you will also, but full of truth. How, I would ask Mr. Bickley, can this be done if Synge departs so far from truth as to create an unchaste Irish ^yoman in a country where feminine chas- tity is supreme, and then hold such a wo- man up— represent her on the stage as typical of the women of Ireland? Let us remember, too, that while we are permitted for dramatic purposes both to idealize and exaggerate, the basis of both idealization and exaggeration must be truth. See, for instance, how admir- ably Shakespeare observes this in his splendid dramatic creations. Nor would Shakespeare, we may well suppose, were he to write a drama representative of Irish life today, leave out its most impor- tant element, the element of religion. Let us see whst the greatest of all dramatists does in this respect. He finds an Italian tale telling of the tragedy of a pair of "star-crossed lovers," and he builds up 66 Essays on Catholic Life. I'' ' under the fair skies of Verona a drama truly representative, if idealized, of Ital- ian life in a mediaeval city. Does he leave out the spiritual? Not at all. The good old friar is most sympathetically drawn. He gives us a tragedy of the North, with all its coarse carousal in Hamlet, but re- ligion finds a voice, though that voice comes from the purging chambers of Purgatory. Unfortunately, John Millington Synge lacked the spiritual constitution of a great dramatist. Yet he had many gifts, and not the least of these was his excellent dramatic technique. His knowledge of Gaelic, too, gave him that splendid com- mand of Irish dialect which fills his lines with a certain rich Irish flavor and savor not found in the work of any other Irish dramatist. Irish dialect is not a mouth- ing of e's and a's, as some writers would have us believe, but rather the Irish turn of thought as set forth in the Gaelic lan- guage and translated faithfully into the Essays on Catholic Life. 67 English tongue. Synge, too, was quick to catch the accent of the Irish heart in its deepest and saddest tragedies. His hu- mor at times is as bewildering as that of Cervantes. He has left the "Playboy of the Western World" as an enigma to mankind. He who would interpret the significance of this drama must needs en- ter the inner chamber of the genius of John Millington Synge. To my mind, while it is well constructed, it is of all Synge's plays the least happy as a por- trayal of Irish character. There are many successful elements in it, but Synge has put into this creation too much of the improbable and fictitious. Sometimes, too, some of its lines approach blasphemy, and this synthesis of irreverence, to use a mild expression, is so marked a charac- teristic of the whole drama that after witnessing its performance a feeling of disgust, mingled with anger, fills the n: ind. In this play Synge, to use his own 68 Essays on Catholic Life. term, "collaborated" too well, using his favorite elements too lavishly. One thing Synge often forgets, too, as a playwright, and that is that the abnor- mal element alone will not yield us a great drama. Side by side with it we must have the normal. Shakespeare never forgets this. There is not a play of the great dramatist in which the abnormal is not set off by the normal. The "Play- boy of the Western World" is a very riot- ing of the abnormal. How joy can issue out of it, though keyed as a comedy, I cannot see. It is altogether too prepos- terously abnormal. It is easy to discern the strength and defects of Synge in his drama. Wher- ever it is a question of the primitive pas- sions of the Celt and the psychology of his ancient racial beliefs surviving in even the slightest form in the Ireland of today, Synge as a creator and portrayer is strong and a master of his work. Wit- ness for instance his marvelous one-act Essays on Catholic Life. 69 tragedy, "Riders to the Sea." Here our playwright is dealing with two elements that are entirely, dramatically speaking, in harmony with his genius: the ruthless and all-devouririg element of the sea and that wistful "second sight" of the Celt which lies on the borderland between prophecy and predestination. For me this terrible tragedy is by far the greatest thing that Synge has done, nor do I know of any one-act drama that moves along with :>jch swiftness and in- tensity or fills the stage from the very out- set with such an atmosphere of impend- ing tragedy as "Riders to the Sea." This is surely Synge's masterpiece, and it is his masterpiece because it reveals best Synge's dramatic grasp of the materials and elements of the tragedy. But pray notice how little of the spiritual element there is in this tragedy. Forsooth, because Synge was little concerned with the part religion played in the tragedy. With the exception of a slight evidence of Chris- 70 Essays on Catholic Life. '% [sill ' I 1 ' ! tian faith, this tragedy might have been written when the Druid kings held sway in Ireland. It is true that, at the close, Maurya gives utterance to a Christian resignation something higher than Pagan fatalism. The trouble with Synge was that in his study and portraiture of Irish character he emphasized certain qualities that are either absent altogether in the Iiish or are but minor attributes. In every instance he stressed the abnormal, with no thought of its normal accompani- ment. As a result of this we have savag- ery, irreverence and blasphemy and a flouting of the sacrament of marriage as characteristic of the Ireland of today. Is it any wonder, then, that every self-re- specting Irishman holds such a drama as the "Playboy of the Western World" as a parody and perversion of Irish peasant life, a libel on Irish national character, and immoral both in language and plot? Let us consider here for a moment how Synge's plays are viewed by impartial Essays on Catholic Life. 71 scholars and critics. M. Bourgeois, of Paris, France, has probably published the best and most exhaustive study of the work of John Millington Synge yet given out. Here is what he says in his "J. M. Synge and the Irish Theatre," touching the un-Irish character of Synge' plays : "A more distinctly un-Irish element in Synge's plays is his non-religious view of life. Doubtless that had an artistic cause: the desire to return to the relentless sav- agery of ancient Paganism. But Synge's archaic quest of the older Gaelic civiliza- tion made him blind to the profounder spirit of modern Ireland. In a way the ancient heathendom may be said to sur- vive in the uncontrollable temperament and passionate outbursts of the average Irish peasant of today; but this is only a superficial appearance; at bottom he is an ardently religious being whose whole life is colored by faith and belief— espe- cially Catholic faith. This aspect of Irish mind is simply ignored in Synge ; it ■m- 72 Essays on Catholic Life. has no place in his works; and on this score his fellow-countrymen are justified in finding fault with his plays." Of course, we know very well that the dramatist is not compelled to treat exclu- sively of the normal in his works. The abnormal certainly has a place upon the stage — it is both suggestive and interest- ing. But if dramatists treat of the abnor- mal they must treat it as abnormal. For instance, Shakespeare's Macbeth is abnor- mal, and when presented to the public is regarded as abnormal. The murder of Duncan shocks every audience, and as Mr. Bewley says in the Dublin Review, "Shakespeare's indictment in this play is against an individual and not against a nation. In Synge's hands the story would have taken a very different 'jhape: Mac- beth would openly exult in his murder, and Banquo and Macduff vie with one another in an ecstasy of enthusiastic loy- alty to the murderer: retribution would ili Essays on Catholic Life. 73 only follow when it was discovered that Duncan was not dead after all." Yet, however faulty may be many of the plays of Synge, Yeats, Lady Gregory and others of the Irish dramatists, they mark a decided renaissance in the liter- ary life of Ireland. With this stirring and awakening of the soul of Ireland and the dawning of new national life among the people, we may, indeed, look some day in the near future for a true repre- sentative Irish drama. y 74 Essays on Catholic Life. mil. I' CATHOUC JOURNAUSTS AND JOURNALISM Let me begin this paper by saying that the Catholic press of America is not very creditable as an expression or reflection of Catholic life. Not, indeed, but that our Catholic editors are a noble band of toiling, struggling, self-sacrificing men. They are all that. Yet, somehow or other, our Catholic journalism in America is weak. It does not by any means measure up to that of other countries. In a word, it is not worthy of our members as a Cath- olic people in this country. Nor is the writer of this paper alone in this opinion. In a recent number of The Rosary Magazine the editor, com- menting on the "yellow" journalism of our day, points out the need of a better Catholic press in this country in the fol- lowing timely and pertinent paragraph : Essays on Catholic Life. 75 "There is imperative need of a Catho- lic awakening in the matter of the public press. It is high time that the eighteen millions of Catholics in America came to a realization of their responsibility and made effective protest against the present intolerable conditions. Other countries less Catholic, numerically, than our own, support a vigorous and efficient daily Catholic press, and periodical literature receives in them the encouragement it so richly deserves. Here in America, where religion is unhampered, no English Cath- olic daily exists, and periodical literature is so poorly supported that many excel- lent magazines have been forced to sus- pend publication. The situation is by no means a creditable one for American Catholicity, and the sooner it is remedied the better it will be both for the Church and the nation." These are plain words, but not too plain or too strong. The truth is that not only have we not as yet a single English 76 Essays on Catholic Life. Catholic daily paper in America, but the great body of our English Catholic week- lies are poor affairs. Why is this? Well, to my mind, it is due to several causes. In the first place, the Catholics of this country have not yet become a reading people. They are fully satisfied with the material world around them and are hardly yet alive to the needs of the King- dom of Heaven. They study so closely the needs of the kingdom of this earth that the needs of faith and the higher things of the mind and soul count not. When you look out upon the field of American Catholic journalism, you are really amazed at the little that we have accomplished in this direction. Why, even Australia, with less than a million Catholics, has a better Catholic press than we have. Little Switzerland, with less than one-third of its population Cath- olic, has a much better Catholic press than we have; while Holland, with al- most a like proportion of Catholics, with Essays on Catholic Life. 77 its fifteen Catholic dailies, seventy-six Catholic weeklies and seventy monthlies, is far in advance of what we may hope to be within the next half century. Ever England, with its handful of Catholics, has two Catholic weeklies — the Catholic Times, of Liverpool, and the Tablet, of London, which are of a very superior order and character. I make no ref- erence here to the magnificent and mas- terly Catholic press of Germany, decid- edly the most vigorous in all Europe, so creditably represented by such able journals as the Cologne Folkszeitung, the Berlin Germania and the Allgemeine Rundschau of Munich, nor to the Catho- lic press of France, which during the last few years, owing to the persecution of the Church in the land of Ste. Genevieve, has developed a strength and vigor credit- able, indeed, to the Catholics of that country. Had this Catholic journalistic renaissance marked the France of twenty- five years ago, it is probable that no ex- 78 Essays on Catholic Life. ploiting church-despoilers would have ever appeared ipon the scene. Now, according to Rev. Father Spil- lane, S. J., in an article, "The Catholic Press in Europe and America," contrib- uted to America some two years ago, there are in the United States in all one hundred and twenty-eight Catholic pa- pers, of which fourteen are dailies and one hundred and fourteenweeklies. These one hundred and twenty-eight papers rep- resent journals printed in English, Ger- man, French, Polish, Bohemian, Italian, Slavonic, Maygar, Dutch, Croatian, Spanish and Indian. Of the dailies, seven are French, four Polish, two German and one Bohemian. Does it not seem astounding that up to the present no English Catholic daily has been launched in the United States? I do not know what proportion of the sixteen million Catholics are English- speaking, but suppose we put it at eight million. The other eight million, speak- Essays on Catholic Life. 79 ing a foreign tongue, maintain fourteen dailies. But, perhaps, you will say that the fact that they are foreigners, speaking an alien tongue, binds them together in support of their own dailies, This, to an extent, is true. But is it possible that language has a more unifying force than religion? It certainly does not speak Well for the English-speaking Catholics of our country, if the needs of faith are not higher than those of language. I have said that the Catholic people of this country are not a reading people, and I am quite sure of this fact. Perhaps you will say that they read the daily secu- lar press. But even that would not con- stitute them a reading people. Reading is a good deal more than a pastime. It is a serious act of the mind, implying the presence of an intellectual hunger that must be satisfied. Now, this intellectual hunger is not the result of culture, or col- lege training, but is present in every nor- mal mind, as sure and constant as the ap- 8o Essays on Catholic Life. petite for three daily repasts. It is true that the appetite for eating is imperious, while the appetite for reading may be flouted without any danger to bodily life. But the appetite of the mind neglected has also its evil results. For as the body will weaken, emaciate and lose all life- power without proper nourishment, so the mind shrivels, narrows and withers, unless sustained by a fit and proper diet of thought, which, by the way, is largely supplied through the medium of whole- ■ some reading. Of course, we have many, many Catho- lics in this country who are careful and serious readers. This we know very well. Yet, the fact remains that the great bulk of them are not. Would you not think that where such activity is shown by our "courts" and "councils" in organizing "box socials," "smokers" and "vaude- villes," and all that belongs to chasing the flitting hours with tripping feet, some in- terest might be cultivated, too, in the for- Essays on Catholic Life. 8i tunes of the Catholic press? Would it or should it be too much to expect that Cath- olic families that willingly pay homage to the exactions qf "society," in the out- lay of time and money, would, too, sub- scribe for the Catholic paper, whose edi- tor, is ever battling for their rights— a sentinel in the watch-towers of faith, a warrior with buckler and shield, parry- ing, defending and advancing? Of what use is all this society bluff and bubble, if we Catholics do not march un- der intellectual orders? We speak with pride of the increase in our numbers, but does the character and quality of our Catholic life keep pace with this in- crease? Are there not thousands of Cath- olic homes in our land today emptj' of Catholic ideals, destitute of that quicken- ing life which comes through the fires of faith, lit up by the torch of Catholic intel- ligence? How then, I ask, can our Cath- olic people be intelligent if they neither read nor think, and, alas! how many thou- 82 Essays on Catholic Life. w sands of them do neither? I often won- der what becomes in after life, in the lists of knightly struggle, amid the lar- gesses that are showered from the world's hands, of the innumerable young men and women who annually garland the gradu- ating stages of our Catholic colleges and academies. Presumably, they have been drinking in for years, under careful guid- ance and direction, the best there is in Catholic life and literature. Have they proved true to the principles imbibed, or have they hearkened to the tempter and looked down towards Camelot, weaving into the web of life not the spiritual beau- ty of Catholic truth and faith, but the shadow of sin and falsehood that falls athwart their path on every side in a world whose morality is oft based not upon God's decalogue, but upon the shift- ing judgments of humanity, with all its caprices of fashions and passions? Is it, I ask, too much to expect that these young graduates, full of the flush Essays on Catholic Life. 83 and optimism of a ribbon-tied diploma or degree, should, when they go out into the world, be able to do something for the furtherance of Catholic journalism and Catholic letters? And the question that besets us here is: Are they doing it? But, you will probably ask here, what has this to do with Catholic journalists and journalism? I answer, a great deal. We may have our Dr. Brownsons, our Frederick Lucases, our Louis Veuillots, but if our Catholic people, one and all, are not alive to the needs and tiie value of an able and vigorous Catholic press, and are not willing to do everything in their power to support it, your Brown- sons, your Veuillots, your Lucases will labor and toil and make sacrifice in vain. Of course, it will be alleged— and with a great deal of truth— that a great many of our Catholic papers in this country are poorly edited and do not interest the Catholic reader. Unfortunately, this charge and contention has a basis of fact. 84 Essays on Catholic Life. I But, if the Catholic journals of this coun- try are not well edited, pray, who is to blame? You cannot expect one man to do the work of three; and that is what most of the Catholic editors of this coun- try are doing. However, doing the work of three would not be so bad if the Cath- olic editor was not expected to do this work for half the salary that should be at- tached to it. Is it too much, I ask, to ex- pect that the Catholic journalist, whose scholarship has entailed long years of study and very great expense, and whose reputation as a writer is firmly estab- lished, should at least receive as much salary as the business manager of a Cath- olic journal, whose intellectual equipment is generally inferior to that of the editor, and whose occupation is divided between looking after his subscription list and in- structing his advertis'ng agents? We wonder, some times, why we have not bet- ter Catholir journals in this country. It is, indeed, plain to anybody that we can Essays on Catholic Life. 85 never have in this country first-class Cath- olic joumah until we concede to the Catholic editor his place, and not reduce him financially to the position of a liter- ary tramp. Let me say that, if this state- rnent is challenged, I shall go further into the matter .nd publish the salaries of the editors of twenty of our leading Catholic Touching the question of the salary of Catholic editors, Mr. A. M. Raybould in an able paper on "The Apostolate of h .T/ ^°"*"buted to a recent num- ber of The Rosary Magazine, says: The laborer is worthy of his hire, and the best work should command the best pay- I he man who is devoting his life and talents to the furthering of Catholic Idea s through good journalism is doing a valuable work for the Church, and de serves not only a wage by which to live, but also that support and encouragemen wid^out which the bes^ work muftulti- mately fail. 86 Essays on Catholic Life. "If the Catholic press is to meet the needs of the times, if it is to reach the level of the non-Catholic press, it must be able to secure the best jour lalistic effort and to pay for it as it i^ paid for else- where. Owing to the comparative pov- erty of the Catholic body, and perhaps also to the higher aims of Catholic jour- nalism which militate against its financial success, this is impossible without the co- operation of the whole Catholic com- munity. If the Catholic press is to be that mighty power for good which it might be and which the times demand, it must be raised by the generosity of the public to that standard of excellence which carries with it the assurance of success." But we will never have "that standard of excellence" till we have strong and scholarly Catholic editors behind the edi- torial pens. It does not follow that the Catholic editor, in order to be a success, should be an academician or a poet or a Essays on Catholic Life. 87 savant, but he should be a scholar of both deep and broad information, possessing a profound and accurate knowledge of Catholic truth, having a clear perception of the life and policy of the Catholic Church in every age, and especially in our own age, and be able to detect error in a moment, whether under a social eco- nomic or art form. In a word, he should possess, above all, the Catholic instinct. But, you will ask, can such editors be found? Decidedly so. You will find them on the great Catholic papers of Eu- rope; and they can be grown here in America, if we will but make the condi- tions of their growth favorable. We have had our McMasters, our Hickeys, our Boyle O'Reillys, our Father Lamberts and our Father Cronins. Surely, we do not despair of finding their successors amid the golden journalistic grain now being sown in the Catholic furrows of America. But we must iearn to treat our Catholic journali!=ts with sympathy I'^J k 88 Essays on Catholic Life. and justice. It is true that we arc living in a hard, material age, when the ideal- ism of Catholic journalism is unevenly matched with the realism of selfishness and greed, and honor is well-nigh an empty name in the household and econo- my of the business relations of life. But this, nevertheless, should not shut out from our vision and realization the duty we owe our Catholic journalists and those who hold aloft the torch that illumines and leads to higher and nobler planes of life and living. Several of our Catholic colleges have recently established departments of jour- nalism where young men can equip them- selves for journalistic work, where they can gain not only the necessary knowl- edge of the general principles of journal- ism, but acquire, too, what is far more essential, a feeling of the moral responsi- bility that rests upon them as Catholic journalists. Essays on Catholic Life. 89 It is well, indeed, that these chairs of journalism have been established in our Catholic colleges, but if the Catholic press in America has nothing better to offer in a pecuniary way than is now in its keeping, if it looks upon the Catholic editor as solely a kind of an adventitious necessity for the exploitation of the busi- ness end of the paper, these young Catho- lics, with all their fine journalistic ethics in their college handbags, will, after their graduation from the department of jour- nalism, betake themselves straightway to the offices of our daily secular papers, where their work will meet with due rec- ognition and fair compensation. Here their Catholic principles will assuredly suffer a shock, for they will find that the moral journalistic code of the office is sometimes no higher than the dividends of the paper or the veneered respecta- bility of society. Now, what is the burden of my arraign- ment of the Catholic press of this country If MICDOCOrY RESmUTION TEST CHART (ANSI ind ISO TEST CHART No, 2) ^ /APPLIED irvHGE Inc ^^ 1653 East Main Streel 0^S Rochester. Ne« York 14609 USA ^= (716) 482 - t!00 - Phone == (716) 288 - 5969 - Fax 90 Essays on Catholic Life, today? First, that it is weak and entirely inadequate to the needs of the Catholic people of this country. Secondly, that this weakness is due chiefly to two causes : lack of moral and financial support on the part of our Catholic people, who are wanting intellectually in an appreciation of the value of a Catholic journal and its need as a defender and exponent of Cath- olic principles, and the further fact that we lack as yet in this country a great corps of strong, scholarly, vigorous and well- informed Catholic journalists, ready to cope with any question that may arise. Note well, too, I pray you, that in the whole history of Catholic journalism in this country there has not been one single Catholic journal that has achieved great- ness save through the greatness of its edi- tor. This is really a truism and, there- fore, needs no demonstration — no proof. It was a McMaster who made the New York Freeman's Journal, and the pen of a Father Lambert who again gave it a pow- Essays on Catholic Life. 91 erful resurrection. It was the journalis- tic genius of a Boyle O'Reilly who made the Boston Pilot at one time the greatest Catholic paper in America. It was a Father Cronin's facile and polished pen that made the Catholic Union and Times, of Buffalo, N. Y., a welcomed visitor everywhere. Some of our Catholic editors of today seem to be afraid of making their paper too literary. This is a mistake. Does it, I ask, weaken your argument in discussing a moral or economic question to set it forth in polished or ornate language? Know, too, that the higher things of the soul are not found on the earth measured by the yard. There is a touch of heaven in everything that is good, and this touch of heaven the Catholic journalist would do well to put into his paper. Now, as to the manner or method of editing a Catholic paper: this is alto- gether a matter of indivdual judgment and taste, and must depend upon the ideal f i 92 Essays on Catholic Life. and gifts of the editor himself, and what he wishes specially to emphasize in his work. Nearly all great Catholic jour- nals have some special commendable fea- tures. It is, therefore, the height of fol- ly, if not the height of discourtesy, to lec- ture and schoolmaster a brother journal- ist as to how he should conduct or better his paper. Of course, we may at all times discuss the general principles of jouranl- ism without any violation of journalistic courtesy. At the first convention of the American Catholic Press Association, held in Co- lumbus, Ohio, in August, 191 1, the writer of this paper, referring to the method of editing a Catholic paper, said: "As to the work of Catholic journalism, I do not think that there is any best way to conduct a Catholic journal. We all pos- sess individual gifts. Let each develop his own through the columns of his paper. One journalist is a good paragrapher, an- other a good feature writer, still another Essays on Catholic Life. 93 has the news Instinct. Let us, then, give our respective journals the stamp of our own individuality." In this connection, too, it will be re- membered that one member of the Cath- olic Press Association inferentially held that only official Catholic papers could safely and successfully do the great work of Catholic journalism. Now, touching this, I would say that any Catholic jour- nalist who realizes his position as a Cath- olic journalist should at all times wi. ag- ly sit at the feet of HolyChurch and learn of her wisdom, for assuredly a Church possessed of the wisdom of nineteen hun- dred years must know a good deal more than the individual. Yet the difference between voluntarily drinking in this wis- dom at the feet of the Church and mak- ing of a Catholic paper a mere episcopal echo, is very great. As a species of Cath- olic journalism I do not think that the lat- ter has ever proved a success. 94 Essays on Catholic Life. But, however much Catholic editors may differ in their methods of journal- ism, they should be one in the bonds of amity, good will and the proclamation oi Catholic truth. In no other place can there be better revealed Christian charity and greatness of soul than behind an edi- torial pen. The true Catholic editor must needs divest himself, if he would do God's work, of all pettiness and all peevishness, all jaundice and jealousy. He stands at all times for Catholic truth and all the Christian charity implied in Catholic truth. His mission is from God, and he must remember at all times the Great Captain under Whom he serves. He should remember, too, that the household of the faith is made up of many races and that in the eyes of his Captain and Master there is no best race. And, therefore, neither by insinuation nor inference-will he attack any race or set one in its virtues or merits above another. They are all God's children, and a true Catholic jour- Essays on Catholic Life. 95 nalist, a knight of God in the service which he renders, will know no race, yet all. 96 Essays on Catholic Life. THE RELATION OF THE CATH- OUC JOURNAL TO CATHOUC LITERATURE lA paper read at the Catholic Preis Convention, Colum- bus, Ohio, Auguat, 1911.I Let me say at the outset that it is in no c-.nventional manner that I express the great pleasure it aflFords me to be present here today and share in the program of the papers, discussions 'ind deliberations of this convention. I wish, however, to modify the title of my paper somewhat from what it appears on the printed program, for I am not so much concerned in the good fortune of secular literature as I am in the promo- tion of Catholic literature, and I there- fore desire the title of my subject to read: "The Relation of the Catholic Journal to Catholic Literature." As you know, I have been assigned a most important subject — one which links Essays on Catholic Life. 97 together, so to speak, the intellectual hero- ism of Catholicity, for assuredly it needs heroism today to carry on the great work of Catholic journalism, and a still greater heroism to devote oneself to the promo- tion of Catholic letters where in both in- stances the pecuniary rewards are so small and disheartening. You remember that in the spiritual de- velopment of the Church in the Middle Ages there appeared two great Orders of Mendicant Friars who, by their zeal and virtues, changed the spiritual face of Eu- rope. These two great Orders were marked, respectively, by two great char- acteristics or virtues— courage, or mili- tancy, if you will, and poverty. May I liken Catholic journalism to the work of St. Dominic, which was essentially a work of courage or militancy, for I regard the first essential of a Catholic journalist to be courage— militancy; and may I liken the work of the Catholic author to the work of the great and humble brown- 98 Essays on Catholic Life. hooded friar of Assisi, whose chicfest vir- tue was poverty. Then note well, too, that these two great saints of God worked together, aided each other, admired each other, loved each other. So may we hope that Catholic journalism and Catholic au- thorship will work hand in hand in this our country, admiring each other, aiding each other, loving each other. For, in- deed, we scarcely know which the more to admire— a McMaster, a John Boyle O'Reilly, a Father Cronin,a Father Lam- bert, a Charles J. O'Malley of Catholic journalism, or in the domain of Catholic letters, a Dr. Brownson, towering in mas- sive thought above his fellows, a Father Hecker devoting his life to a setting forth of the fact that there is perfect harmony between Catholic teaching and the spirit of republican institutions, a great Arch- bishop Spalding giving us his magnificent historical essays, a Brother Azarias, an humble follower of St. de la Salle, the Essay in Catholic Life. 99 founder of modern pedagogy, with fine poise, deep insight and broad literary sympathies, giving us in essay form his splendid literary judgments. These are, indeed, some of the glorious names— Catholic names— that are an in- spiration to us todav. These giants of Catholic truth and teaching have be- queathed to us their mantles. We justly hold their memories dear. I am sure their spirit has still an abiding place in this assemblage: "Not here I Oh, yes, our hearts their presence feel; Viewless, not voiceless, from the ilistant shells on mem- ory's shore, Harmonious echoes steal and names which In the days Gone by were spells, are blent with that soft music. If there dwells the spirit here our country's fame to spread. While every breast with joy and triumph swells And earth reverberates to our meaured tread. Banner and wreath should own our reverence for ,;be dead." And SO we do own our reverence for the dead, and to their memory is erected an altar of gratitude in every heart. 100 Essays on Catholic Life. It is evident to every thinking man that the Catholic journal is not only a powrcr for the propagation and defense of Catho- lic truth, but a potent instrument to spread and, indeed, nurture a Catholic literature. Surely if, as the great Bishop Von Kettc- ler of Mayence once said, "Were St. Paul, the Apostle, once more to visit the earth and mingle in its strenuous affairs, he would most likely become a journalist," weCatholicjournalists cannot set too high a value upon the work— the task intrusted to us, nor can we too fully realize or ap- preciate the magnificent responsibilities as Catholic editors that are placed in our hands. We are quite aware that the task of building up a Catholic literature in this country is a difficult one; that the Cath- olic author has to contend with many things; that in this material and skeptical age, when negation of faith and a blind worship of earthly conquest fill the soul of man on every side, it seems a very spcr Essays on Catholic Life, ioi cies of heroism for the Catholic writer with faith in his heart and upon his lips! to enter the literary lists and share in its J"usts and tournaments. Yet, thank God, we hav*^ Catholic men and women of this mould -Catholic men and women who, whether the applause be deafening or scant, the bouquets rained upon them many or few, are ready tr up- hold Catholic truth and Catholic p .,ci- ples in the literary lists and so contend for that heavenly prize which is not of the gift of kings. But the question arises here, are we Catholic journalists doing our duty to- ward these heroic Catholic writers who contending with adverse circumstances,' are laboring to create and build up in this country a veritable Catholic literature? I fear very much that we give them seldom either bouquets or applause. Now I hold most firmly to the conten- tion that we Catholics must not only ere- ate and support our own Catholic educa- ^'' 102 Essays on Catholic Life. u tional institutions, but we must also cre- ate, nurture and maintain our own Catho- lic literature. This is clearly evident to any one who realizes our position as a Catholic people. What part, think you, then, should the Catholic journalist take in the mainte- nance of this Catholic literature— in its dissemination, nay, I was going to say, in its popularization? Assuredly, a great and significant part. Indeed, the Catho- lic journal should be a leading factor in the fostering of a Catholic literature. It should, through its columns, be an inspi- ration itself to all that is highest and best in Catholic art and literature, and should constantly familiarize its readers with the great Catholic literary masterpieces of every land. If the Catholic journal does not do this, pray where will our Catholic youth find it? Behold how our Catholic schools and academies have multiplied during the past twenty-five years! What splendid Essays on Catholic Life. 103 opportunity there is in them for the fur- thering of Catholic literature. Our Cath- o he journal that finds its way into these cloisters of prayer and meditation-into these halls and sanctuaries of study- should It not be a guide, an inspiration, an unerring voice to these good religious n their studies, in their daily readings, in their literary causeries with their pupils? In the last analysis, then, the Catholic purnal is the greatest factor in our coun- try for the promotion of Catholic litera- ure and, through the medium of Catho- olic truth"'^'^°' tJ^e propagation of Cath- No Red Cross knight in the Holy Land was ever more vigilant of his duties than should be the Catholic journalist in his relation to every phase of Catholic life around him. Catholic literature is but the expression of Catholic life, and to preserve its sanctity should be the aim and purpose of every true Knight of God Now as to the work of Catholic jour- 1 , m I04 Essays on Catholic Life. nalism, I do not think there is any best way to conduct a Catholic journal. We all possess individual gifts. Let each de- velop his own through the columns of his paper. One journalist is a good para- grapher, another a good editorial writer, another a good feature writer, still an- other has the news instinct. Let us then give our respective journals the stamp of our own individuality. There is, however, one thing we can cultivate, and that is amity and good will. As the unity of the Church proves its divine mission, so let the unity of Catholic journalism prove our divine mission as Catholic journalists. Catholic journals may differ in non-essentials, but in one thing we must and should be a unit in the proclamation of Catholic truth. Catholic truth should inform every page, column and line of a Catholic journal. For it would be base and cowardly to be- tray the standard of Christ under which we serve. Essays on Catholic Life. 105 WHAT IS CRITICISM? The role of the critic, it will readily be admitted, is a difficult and delicate one He cannot very well be universally popu- lar, for the popular man is he who likes every thing, has no severe canons of taste IS easily satisfied and is most elastic and accommodating in his judgments. It is Ruskin who says that a strong critic is every man's adversary. It is felt that his business is to seek out the foibles and lay bare that which lacks the virtues of soul and intellect, summing up fear- lessly the man and his work. Yet critics we must have. They are a necessity. What would art and literature be if we had no critics to appraise the work of pen and brush— to extol or con- demn, to differentiate between what is of value and what is worthless? Before we are satisfied that a poem or painting is io6 Essays on Catholic Life. i : f 3 f'i great we like to have the opinion of con- noisseurs as to its value and merit. But there are critics and critics, and to- day our intellectual life is so full of ve- neer and pretension that not everyone who offers judgments on art and litera- ture should be regarded as qualified or acceptable to fill the role of critic. In fact, while the creative gift in art and lit- erature here in America is not at all con- spicuous today, I am not quite sure but that it exceeds the critcal gift amongst us. This is largely owing to the fact that the intellectual parvenu has gained and holds such a prominent place in the limelight. I think we can well say of the true crit- ic, as we say of the poet, "nascitur non fit." That is, the true critic is born with the en- dowment of a critic — with taste, insight, fine natural discrimination, sense of beau- tj', and judicial poise. Of course, all these are developed by study and wide reading, b'U the faculty must be already there, Essays on Catholic Life. 107 otherwise all study and reading will be in vain. Matthew Arnold sets down disinterest- edness as the one great rule of criticism, and in this I think he is entirely right. No partisan, however sincere may be his convictions, can be a good critic, for he has but one viewpoint, and that he has taken as a partisan or interested judge. Friendship and cliquism are death to true and valuable criticism, for both imply partisanship and exclude an impartial judgment. Both render a criticism nar- row and biased, for they shut out all con- sideration of literary or artistic merit, save within the radius of a chosen few. Witness to this fact is found in the hun- dreds of criticisms that fill the pages of our reviews and journals revealing on their very face the partisan spirit of the reviewer. Yet it is extremely difficult to avoid as a critic the literary, art, religious, or po- litical influence of one's birth, environ- io8 Essays on Catholic Life. ment and education. Look, too, at what an important part race plays in our judg- ments. For an Anglo-Saxon to under- stand Latin genjus or Latin institutions seems to me well-nigh impossible. And you might reverse this and be also close to the truth. Just read, for instance, Vol- taire's judgment on Shakespeare, or Taine's valuation of the poet Tennyson. So every school, too, of political thought, as well as every school of art and litera- ture, has its gospel and ten command- ments, and if you would hope to have your work proclaimed or fairly criticised, it would be well that you would enroll yourself first as a member of the esoteric circle. It is hard te get absolute justice and stand outside the door of the temple. No wonder, then, that the nineteenth century, especially its first half, was char- acterized by a continuous war among the critics, who fired from behind the ram- parts of an Edinburgh Review, a Black- wood's Magazine, a Quarterly Review or Essays on Catholic Life. 109 a London Times. Nor was it any better within the literary fortifications of Paris The winged shaft that the Frenchman shoots ,n literary anger is sure to have much poison on its point, though directed with a death-dealing Gallic grace as it reaches and rankles in the heart of an op- ponent. For the first half of the nine- teenth century was undoubtedly not only an age of religious controversy, but an age of literary controversy as well. Here in America we have commercial- ized criticism as we have commercialized well-nigh everything. If the reviewer can see any dollars ahead, with a hint from the business manager, he will read- ily find complimentary adjectives for the work under review and speak of the promise and potency in this young ris- ing author." Nay, more, he will fnsert in the literary columns a cut-and-dried review of a book sent by its publisher, though the puffery should give this green goods" author a place beside the iio Essays on Catholic Life. great literary immortals — all this, of course, provided there is any money in it for his journal. Bliss Perry, for some years editor of that literary and sane magazine, the At- lantic Monthly, ha.^ recently touched upon this point in an article dealing with criti- cism and reviews. Mr. Perry has further pointed out that a large amount of the re- viewing done on our American periodi- cals and journals is the work of young writers who lack both adequate scholar- ship and training for the task. I am not surprised, however, that the work of literary criticism here in Amer- ica is so inferior. The truth is, we are all in too great a hurry to gain distinction in anything. We will not wait for the seed to spring up, grow strong and ripen. Everything is haste, criticism amongst others. If we do not know a subject, let us pretend we do. Have we not stock phrases supplied to us in art and litera- ture? Who will then dare to prevent us Essays on Catholic Life. in feamcd?"^ *^«e Phrases and thus appear But, weak as is the secular press of America in its literary criticism and re- views, the Catholic press of this country IS still weaker. With the exception of a few Catholic journals, such as America, whose literary notes and book reviews are generally scholarly and discriminating, the literary critiques found in American Catholic journals and, indeed, in some of the American Catholic magazines, are not very creditable, revealing sometimes narrowness, sometimes absolute lack of literary judgment, and occasionally per- sonal spleen. ^ It is not very long ago since a Catholic magazine of this country, in reviewing a volume of poems, some of which it had praised highly a few years before, carved the volume as a dish fit for the gods The critic may have been some half-baked academy graduate, whose whole knowl- edge of literature was gained in a regents' I' I 112 Essays on Catholic Life. examination. In truth, this supposition is strengthened by the fart that the reviewer in question confounded in the critique the poets of England with those of America, showing thereby even a lack of elemen- tary knowledge of the well-known writers of our day. It is true that our Catholic journalists r e very busy — indeed, very often they do the work of three. By the very nature of things, these Catholic writers must be a kind of "Johannes Fac- totum" — editorial writers, knights of the scissors, paragraphers, moral instructors, proofreaders and book reviewers. We well know, then, what kind of book reviews we may expect. To begin with, the overworked Catholic editor may have but a limited knowledge of books. His time does not permit him to read. And so we get what? Exactly this result: no- tices of books frequently that have no value as guides to what is worth reading. These notices, or shall we call them re- views, help the publisher, it is true, for ESSAVS ON CAfHOUC LiPE. ,,3 day >h,ef,"""« '■'"■'''-tha, i, .„ry and,f,L""7 "■'.' i"""«.ual ,a„i,^ a.«„.i„„„„,i..„i„„;'2-^,^^-. porting with our monev-to L T worthv nf o .,i» • '"""'^y— to the works cZ'chT'T' ^°T '^'' '^' Catholic '-lurch ,s being fashioned, human Iv peaking by that silent intelle'ctualwoi' bette- °- "° ^ '^°"''^ not be r, too, ,f we substituted thoughtful 114 Essays on Catholic Life. literary criticism for some of the vapid stuff which chokes the columns of our Catholic journals, such as items witrcss- ng to the trills of Kathleen O'Brien's voice at a Knights of Columbus smoker, or that Rear Admiral Peregrine Mait- land, of the British fleet, attended mid- night Mass on Christmas Day in Rome, or that a set of vestments was presented to the Rev. Timothy O'Halloran, curate of Cahircivecn, County Kerry, Ireland. It strikes me as a valuator of things that touch us nearly and arc significant in our life and contribrte to our intellectual and moral welfare that in our Catholic jour- nalism we would do well to give more at- tention to what is really informing, more attention to the creation of a great, strong Catholic aristocracy of intellect, capable of sustaining a Catholic literature that will reflect truly Catholic lift, art and faith in this New World. It if well, in- deed, that Kathleen O'Brien sings so charmingly, but her highest and most p Essays ON Catholic Life. 1,5 graceful notes have an interest only for her fan,,, ,„d .^^^^.^^^ y for ^ct too that Rear Admiral Peregrine Maitland attended Christmas MdSglt Mass ,s of chiefest interest in connectfon J. h the ^e fare of his own soul, and is a flat and uninteresting fact of no value whatever to Patrick Dwyer, living on the fa -way banks of the Mississippi or Sas- katchewan, while 9« tn fK- » . a sef nt „ .Z: *"* presentation of a set of vestments to a venerable curate iT/-/" *""r-'°"'^d and beloved I S"fy"""^''^^'°^^''«CathoHc Sat^^frtXoTa'^irr"'^''^ s^intheCityof"T:rott!:To1 San Francsco. Yet our Catholic jourtl week i^nr T ^''^'^'"^ °^ ^P^"^ ^h "g m nds of th """'^ T' ""^''^ '^' Catholi? m nds of their readers looking for some- hing better starve because of the lack of tonic thought. ^ "* cuhl'"^' I^*"^'" °^ '^' ^*« that it is diffi- cult to get critics who represent a partic- 11 6 Essays on Catholic Life. ular school of thought to do justice to those who are not of their esoteric circle. The tendency is to magnify the merits of a work because it expresses our own gos- pel of thought. And this is equally true in the political, philosophical, religious and art world. We need not in criticism subscribe to a man's principles or tenets in either the literary, religious or art or- der, and yet despite this we should be able as critics to do absolute justice to his work. The greatest mistake that the Catholic critic sometimes makes is to attack and reduce to dust everything in literature and art that does not grow out of Catholic faith. We all know that the schism of the sixteenth century in England dark- ened the stream of English literature that overflowed its banks and filled the fields of thought with the seeds of false philos- ophy from which have blossomed heresies in life and literature and the corrupting flowers of passion in the soul. But Genius Essays on Catholic Life. 117 does not select its altar, for it may lure the soul of a Homer or Virgil among Pa- gan gods, anoint the eyes of a pantheistic Goethe or touch with fire the lips of a Catholic Dante. If Chaucer and Pope were Catholics, Wordsworth and Tennv- son wereAnglicans and Browning a Non- conformist. We cannot as Catholics ac- cept entirely the philosophical tenets or teachings in the poems of a Wordsworth a Tennyson, or a Browning, but we can admire their splendid poetic creations and as critics give them a just and worthy appraisement as great artists and inspired stngers. ^ It is true that all great art should min- ister to truth, for it is at the altar of Cath- olic truth that it lights its torch, but Na- ture, too, has a temple, and the lights upon Its altar are grateful also to the po- etic soul, albeit that its beauty is but a re- flection of the Divine Beauty which is the source of all beauty and truth •• ^**' .1 :l ii8 Essays on Catholic Life. Then again we should have a care as to the fitness of the critic who offers us his judgments. The man with poetic endow- ment can tell us most and best about po- etry, the metaphysician can tell us most and best about philosophy and the con- clusions of the scientist will be safest wJ^nin the domain of science. In truth, I should be unwilling to accept the judg- ments of a philosopher in poetry, or the judgments of a poet in philosophy. That is why I would not care to take the opin- ion of even the great Dr. Brownson in a discussion of the poetry of Wordsworth or Emerson, for he only sees and values these poets as thinkers, but poets are much more than thinkers. They are thinkers, plus the artist and dreamer, and the pur- ple of their dreams is much finer and more glorious than the subtle-woven tap- estry of their thinking. I would rather go to an Aubrey de Vere for his judg- ments on the poetic work of Wordsworth, for he was a kindred poetic soul, possess- Essays on Catholic Life. 119 ing in abundance the precious gift of Catholic faith. fh.^^^°^ '^*. '"°'* interesting things in the history of criticism is the contradic- tory character of the judgments that have beendehveed. Greene, a contemporary dramatist, called Shakespeare "an upstarl crow beautified with our feathers"; D Johnson wrote of Milton's "Lycidas"- tain LhT" " ^u'^' "^^ '^y"^'' ^^^"- tain and the numbers unpleasing"- Hor ace Walpole compared Dante to I Meth- odist parson in Bedlam"; Byron once Icata/^'^^";^""^"-''^"-^^^^^^^ acal Calvinist and coddled poet" ; the Ed- Ode to the Daisy," that it was "flat and !lf h /'^^ M^'^ ^^^-..«m, after Car y had published his "French Revo- iution wrote the author down "as a blockhead and strenuous f ailu re » divine fire of genius in their souls, have been meted out such criticism-such 120 ESSAYS ON Catholic Life. harsh treatment, the young writer should take courage and neither wince nor lose heart if at times he comes under the lash, remembering well that criticism is not al- ways the conscience of art. Essays on Catholic Life. 121 THE RELATION OF THE CATHO- UC SCHOOL TO CATHOUC UTERATURE [A paper read before the American Catholic Educational Aiiociation, Pittsburgh, Pa., July, 1911.] When the invitation was extended to me by the Catholic Educational Associa- tion to read a paper on "The Relation of the Catholic School to Catholic Litera- ture," I must confess that I readily and eagerly accepted it, feeling that it is a subject fraught with the very deepest im- port to our Catholic life and progress. For I have long held to the opinion that we Catholics in this country must not only create and sustain our own Catholic educational institutions, but we must also create and nourish with the sunshine and dews of sympathy and practical support our own Catholic literature; and the best and fittest place— the largest soil and the '■■IS h, :i 3 122 Essays on Catholic I^ife. surest of production for this literary sow- ing is unquestionably the Catholic school. Here every Catholic bent of the child mind makes for the sturdiness of Catholic faith in after years. If life is a warfare of the soul, how can we better equip our boys and girls for this warfare than by putting in their hands the weapons of Catholic truth, forged and fashioned by our great Catholic thinkers — our great Catholic authors? Up to the present we Catholics have been so busy with our material tasks in this country— constructing cities, project- ing railroads, clearing forests, developing mines, that literary culture with us has been a secondary thought; but now that these worthy and gir-ntic tasks have been well-nigh accomplished, may we not turn aside at times to follow with Sir Galahad the "Gleam" and fashion in lofty rhyme or turret bold the dreams of our soul. And if this noble work is to be done, if we are to set our ideals of life to the di- Essays on Catholic Life. 123 vine orchestration of heaven and make every art the handmaid of God— an aco- lyte at His altar, we must begin the work and sow the seed in the humble, but be- neficent parochial school. I firmly believe that to a great extent we have neglected this phase of our Cath- olic education in the past— that we have forgotten that we have Catholic writers who are toiling and have toiled in the lit- erary vineyard of God, generously giving of their gifts to advance His kingdom and so fill our hearts and homes with the aro- ma and beauty of Catholic truth and teaching. Look around you today, I pray you, and see what the influence of pernicious and vicious literature is doing among the youth of our land. How can we Catho- lics, I ask, fold our arms or shut our eyes and say this question concerns us not? It does concern us; it must concern us. If there is unrest today, it is because so- called teachers of humanity are false to U' ' 'r ^11 t'^iiJMI 124 Essays on Catholic Life. the great truths of God. Distrust and discontent and a false doctrine of morals have driven out of the hearts of the peo- ple peace and the wisdom of God; and the secular press and the teacher from his chair in the secular college have to a cer- tain extent co-operated in bringing about this lamentable condition of things. Because of these influences at work the literature of our day is full of poison — full of false principles. Never in the his- tory of Christianity has the evil one sown so many tares among the wheat of truth. Not alone in things of faith, which direct- ly concern the soul, but in government economics, social life — in every phase of human activity this poison has entered and vitiated life and withered and de- stroyed as with a killing frost its crown- ing fruitage. But how, you ask, shall we Catholics meet this sad condition of things? It must be met as every moral evil is met with the sword of God's truth, and this ig-f^tfl-iM Essays on Catholic Life. 125 must be wielded early in the Catholic school. The Catholic Church will be the Church of this country if we see to it that the faith of our children is safeguarded in their early school days. But to accom- plish this, to make sure that their early footsteps in learning are not erring foot- steps, we must see to it that our children have free access to our great Catholic au- thors, whose works stand for truth and are verily an inspiration and a guide. We know, indeed, that the stream of English literature for three hundred years has been darkened somewhat— that the blind philosophy of man di- vorced from God and His divine truth has trickled through the pages 01 even what the world is pleased to term lit- erary masterpieces. Men in their pride have forgotten the great truth so beauti- ' fully expressed by Dr. Maurice Francis Egan in one of his sonnets, that "Art is true art when art to God is true." h:A f 126 Essays on Catholic Life. And so we Catholics are face to face with the problem: What shall we do to counteract — to neutralize all this? There is but one course for us — one way, and that is create and maintain our own Cath- olic literature. We sometimes forget the literary wealth we have in our household and, forgetting this, we do little or nothing in our Catho- lic schools and colleges to place in the hands of our boys and girls the precious masterpieces of Catholic literary art that are epochal in the significance of their truth and creation — mountain tops in the great continent of world thought. We wait till non-Catholic scholars and critics proclaim Catholic Dante the great- est epic poet of all times before we erect a literary shrine to the sad Florentine singer in our homes; we are flattered when a Dr. Dawson declares Newman's "Dream of Gerontius" the most subtle spiritual poem since the "Divine Come- dy" was given to the world, yet we hesi- ->Shai ^^'^ these Catholic Reading Clubs were springing up in even; large parish, has become dim med and shorn of its splendid promise. to get the mind of our Catholic young people to realize the need of intellectual il 148 Essays on Catholic Life. growth outside of their school days. Many are simply indifferent, carried away by the whirl of social life. In a cer- tain Canadian city which contains some fifty thousand Catholics, a very able and scholarly priest had advertised, not long since, a series of evening lectures on phil- os ^ phy for Catholic young people. Five or six constituted the audience. Where were all the young Catholics? In billiard rooms, chattering drawing rooms or dance halls. That same evening a Browning Club conducted by the only Unitarian Church in the city had eighty or one hun- dred earnest young men and women dis- cussing the meaning and philosophy of this enigmatic poet of England. Such in- dications show why we have as yet no Catholic literature in this country. In discussing Catholic intellectual ac- tivities we should not forget that splendid movement which had birth some twenty years ago, known as the Catholic Summer School. It has done much and is doing Essays on Catholic Life. 149 a few con ' P'°P'*'- ^^«^""'"8 ^''h ?>.Z. ["!'" ^'^^"^ ^y distinguished Catholic scholars and authors in New London, Conn, in the summer of 1892 t has establ shed a permanent home upon the shores of beauteous Lake Champkin otnh' 't'^"'^"^ '' ^^^^'« "P°n phi?-' osophy, history, literature and art cover some ten weeks and are often so pregnin with thought and scholarship and the thT(^^rH^''"^l^^^''^^<='™^.tha the Chff Haven Catholic Summer School course may be now well regarded as grad- uate studies m the curriculum of our best universities. ' Let us say in conclusion that it is clear- ly evident that the intellectual standing of Catholics in this country is of their own cut^f • ^"If'!' '^P*="^"y Catholic crumi/K' 'ut'^' P°^"' ^ g^"t ful- crum with which to more the masses and ecure for those who possess it the advan- tages and birthrights of a people. It i, 'it. I50 Essays on Catholic Life. not as Matthew Arnold would have it, an altar for worship, but it makes the face of Catholic truth more beautiful and links the soul more closely to the wisdom of God. The Catholics of this country are reaching out for this culture, and he is truly an apostle of Catholic life and faith who aids them to realize and attain it. Essays on Catholic Life. 151 THE CATHOLIC ELEMENT IN ENGUSH POETRY The subject of the Catholic element in English poetry is, indeed, a vast and ex- tended one. It involves an investigation as to how far Catholic truth has pervaded the great body of English poetry from the days of Chaucer to our own. It will be found, too, that many English poets, while not professing the Catholic faith, have di- rectly or indirectly been inspired by its teachings and guided by its sane and loftv tenets. Because a great and true poet, no matter at what altar he may kneel, works towards the ideal of Catholic truth. For all great Christian poetry is but the flow- ering of Catholic truth. The schism of the sixteenth century darkened the stream of English literature, bu : did not entirely cut off the vision of the poet from that eternal beauty whose abode is the bosom of God. Glints of 152 Essays on Catholic Life. Catholic truth, then, will be found run- ning through all English poetry. Aristotle says that all great poetry has a philosophy. Y^s, ana poetry, being one of the greatest of the arts, stands also for an ideal. This ideal embodies the soul of the people, whether that people be Ori- ental, Greek, Roman, mediaeval or mod- ern. To understand a poem properly we must re-create it in the times and under the skies which yielded their nurturing dews. How can we expect to understand Aristophanes if we do not know Greek life, or Horace if we do not know Roman life, or yet Dante if we have not studied mediaeval life? To know the times is to re-create the poem. Every race or people, then, stand for an ideal. In the East it was fatalism, in Greece it was beauty, in Rome under the Caesars it was the majesty of law. Today in German literature the dominant note is the philosophical, in English literature it is individualism, in French literature it is Essays on Catholic Life. 153 the social in Italian the artistic, and in Spanish the chivalric. In ancient Pagan days all art minis- tered to the senses, but the primary pur- pose of Christian art is to minister to the soul. With the adrent of Christ a new meaning was breathed into art. It took ten silent centuries" to give the world a Dante, the first great poetic flower nur- tured in the gardens of Catholic truth It took as many centuries to give us the "Summa" of St. Thomas Aquinas. All art IS a centuiy plant, with its roots deep in the past. What are the "Canterbury Tales but a reflection of medieval Engl M f "^^'"'^ ^'^ C^^holic. Nothing could be so absurd as to doubt the Catho ^city of Chaucer. The late distinguished Chaucerian scholar. Professor Lounsbur^: of Yale University, settled forever this and Dante puts a Pope in hell. Notwith standing this, both are orthodox Catho- 154 Essays on Catholic Life. '1' lies. Chaucer belonged to a rival order of the monks, the military order, and the Ghibbeline Dante makes his damned talk politics in hell. Surely, this sufficiently explains the reason for the attitude of these two poets. Both Dante and Chaucer died in the bosom of the Catholic Church. To understand fully what part Catho- lic truth has played in English poetry we must realize that it has been from the al- tar of Catholic truth that the spiritual torch of poetry has gone forth and been handed down the centuries. From Chau- cer across those twilight years when Eng- land was more concerned in the affairs of war than in the arts of peace to Spenser, and from Spenser to that myriad-minded dramatist, William Shakespeare, whose mind has been likened to an ocean whose waves touched .11 the shores of human thought, and upon whose bosom played all the sunshine and tempest of passion; and from Shakespeare to that chief of English epic writers, who trod the heav- Essays on Catholic Life. 155 ens shod in the rainbow light of epic glory, John Milton, and from Milton across the dry Popeian period to that high priest of nature, William Words- worth, whose altar lamp had burned un- heeded during the reign of the correct school of poets, and from Wordsworth down to the poets who seemed to have passed away but yesterday— to Rosetti and Tennyson and Browning. It is worthy of noting that the value of art depends upon the spiritual endow- ment of its age or epoch. It is the Olym- pian and pantheistic Goethe who tells us that "The epochs in which faith prevails are the marked epochs of human history, full of heart-stirring memories and sub- stantial gains for all after times. The epochs in which unbelief prevails, even v/hen for the moment they have put on the semblance of glory and success, inev- itably sink into insignificance in the eyes of posterity, which will not waste its 156 Essays on Catholic Life. I! nfc thoughts on things barren and untruth- ful." If we take, for instance, the three peri- ods in literature represented by Dante, Spenser and Shelley — that is, the Middle Ages, the English Renaissance and the Age of Revolution — it will be seen at a glance that the time of Dante, which is known as the Ages of Faith, is because of its great spiritual endowment the greatest art epoch of the three. Take, for instance, the representative poems of these three periods— "The Divine Comedy," "The Fairie Queene" and "Prometheus Un- bound." As Miss Vida Scudder points out In her scholarly work, "The Life of the Spirit in the Modern English Poets," when you compare the representative works of these three poets, there is no doubting which is the greatest age and which is the greatest poem. "The Divine Comedy" was completed in 1321, the "Fairie Queene" in 1596 and "Prome- theus Unbound" in 1819. The age of 1 Essays on Catholic Life. 157 Dante was an age of contemplation, the age of Spenser an age of adventure, and the age of Shelley an age of revolution. The problems in these three poems reflect the spirit of the times. With Dante the problem is the purification of the soul; with Spenser, the routing of the powers of wrong, and with Shelley, the liberation of the soul. Miss Scudder sums up her estimate of the two protagonists in "Pro- metheus Unbound" and "The Divine Comedy" in these words "Prometheus is an abstraction, Dante is a summary. Pro- metheus is a man as dreamed by a poet, Dante is a man as created by God. And the thought of God proves the greater." It will thus be seen that poetry is never greater than the spiritual endowment of the age in which it takes form. In truth, it derives its very accent from this spirit- ual endowment. All art reflects the times in which it has birth, but it draws its nourishment from the past. Its roots strike deeply down. 158 Essays on Catholic Life. Take, for instance, Shakespeare. While he belongs to the Elizabethan age of lit- erature, his genius has been fed and en- riched by the centuries of Catholic faith in England, when men's souls joyed in the things of God, when the shrine of the Blessed Virgin stood by the wayside and the mystery and morality plays of Chester and York touched and stirred men's souls. Yet it is very doubtful if there is any satisfactory evidence that Shakespeare was in any way attached to the Catholic Church. It is pretty certain that his fa- ther and mother were Catholics. But this was an age in England of the disin' tegration of the ancient faith. No doubt Shakespeare had a warm place in his heart for the Church of his fathers. In no instance does he ridicule her tenets in his masterly dramas. However, from this fact we cannot conclude that Shakespeare was a Catholic. Great art demands Cath- olic truth, and Shakespeare would not be the great dramatist that he is had he Essays on Catholic Life. 159 stooped to the ridiculing of the tenets of the Catholic Church in his dramatic crea- tions. This fidelity to fact and truth of life, this sympathy with the spiritual ten- ets of the soul, marks the work of the su- preme artist in every age. We know full well that there are many scholars and writers who hold that Shake- speare was a Catholic. I must say that I cannot accept this judgment or conclus- ion. Shakespeare lived at a time when to my mind religion touched very lightly the souls of the English people. Many of the dramatists of the tin.c were profligates, and profligacy and the practices of the Catholic faith do not go very well to- gether. Men of genius, unfortunately, a re often not very religious. They realize better far than ordinary mortals what a part the spiritual plays in the growth of the soul and in the profession and growth of character, but often in proportion as God has dowered them with vision be- yond men, they are dragged down by the i6o Essays on Catholic Life. 'i' tyranny of the flesh. But if Shakespeare was not a Catholic, he certainly in his plays, as Carlyle says, voices the Catholic- ity of the Middle Ages. Queen Eliza- beth, by Act of Parliament, destroyed the ancient Church in England, but her de- cree could not touch the Catholic life of England in the past, for the Catholic Church is the most immortal of things, and her life and the fruit of her life in art live on forever. It was this Catholic life that inspired Shakespeare and in many instances gave him plot and story. If we appeal to Shakespeare for inter- nal evidence to prove that he was a Cath- olic, we but weaken and make ridiculous our position, for every dramatist must be true not only to the setting of his drama, but to the psychology of his characters. It is no proof, then, to cite the case of Hamlet's father coming from purgatory to tell his son of his "murder most foul" that Shakespeare believed in purgatory. The tragedy of Hamlet belongs to a time Essays on Catholic Life. i6i in Denmark when all its people professed the Catholic faith, and, besides the need of bringing Hamlet's father from purga- tory for dramatic purposes, Shakespeare was compelled by the very setting of his drama to touch its life in the unfolding with the chrism of the ancient faith. Let us suppose that three centuries hence a discussion arose as to the religion of the poet Longfellow. We can imagine some one citing passages in his touching idyll of "Evangeline"-the one, for in stance, describing the heroine's beautiful countenance, "whenafter confession home- ward serenely she walked with God's ben- ediction upon her," or that beautiful and sympathetic picture of Father Felician the village priest, whom all the children greeted as he passed down the street, and who with uplifted hand reverently blessed them. Surely, too, these passages, so full of Catholic life and color, might be well cited to prove that Longfellow was a (.atholic. They are certainly as convinc- i 1 62 Essays on Catholic Life. ing as the Ghost in "Hamlet." But the truth is that neither affords any evidence of the religion of Shakespeare or Long- fellow. When we pass from Shakespeare to John Milton, we pass to a poet not only entirely devoid of Catholic sympathy, but a poet whose rigid Puritanism deprived his epic art of those Catholic symbols and Catholic legends and Catholic traditions which give color and life and artistry to the highest dreams of the soul. Milton's great epic, "Paradise Lost," is but a torso. It lacks artistic unity. It is only great in passages or patches. Unlike to the "Di- vine Comedy," which has all the artistic unity of Catholic truth, this splendid English epic, though rioting in imagery and the supernatural, lacks this artistic unity, and, lacking this, falls below as a work of art the supreme achievement of the great Florentine poet. Passing from Milton to Alexander Pope, the culmination of the Correct ! i. Essays on Catholic Life. 163 School of Poetry, we are face to face with a truth well worth observing. It is this : A poet may lire a Catholic and die a Catholic, and yet put nothing of his faith into his work. Pope is certainly a case in pointy Pope professed and practiced the Catholic religion, and yet you will look in vain for any evidence of it in his T.17". ^"^ '"'"•'^ *° b*= ""der the spell of the false philosophy of Lord Boling- whh th;«" '''''* ^°"" •'""^ '^'"'^'*=^ Now William Wordsworth, the head of the School of Nature and Romance, is a case in point where a poet may not pro- fess the Catholic faith and yet teach Catholic truths-nay, give evidence in his work that the beautiful truths, teachings and dogmas of the Catholic Church may mipire at times the soul of the poet no matter at what altar he kneels. I remember that when I visited the Wordsworth Land in the summer of 190, I was fortunate enough to meet a vener- 164 Essays on Catholic Life. able octogenarian who had been an inti- mate friend of the Wordsworth family. In our conversation touching Wordsworth I elicited from him the fact that, while the poet was an Anglican, there was not anything of the Ritualist in him. He was rather what might be termed a Broad Churchman today. In view of this, Wordsworth's beautiful sonnet on the Blessed Virgin, where he pays tribute and homage to the Mother of God as "Our tainted nature's solitary boast," is, indeed, remarkable. Despite the fact of Words- worth's anti-Catholic prejudice, which is revealed in some of his ecclesiastical son- nets, this High Priest and Viceregent of Nature pays homage to the Mother of God in lines that might have been penned by a Cardinal Newman or a Father Faber. When we turn to the poets of our own time — to the poets at whose graves we seemed to stand, as it were, but yesterday: Dante, Gabriel Rosetti, Robert Browning Essays on Catholic Life. 165 and Alfred Tennyson— we seewhat a large part Catholic truth has played in their best work. It was Rosetti that restored to English poetry the mediaval temper of wonder, and this is peculiarly a charac- teristic of the Ages of Faith. In reading Rosetti's poetry you feel something of the mystery that lurks in the dim aisles of a Gothic Cathedral. Browning was of Nonconformist ori- gin, and in many a poem does grievous wrong to the Catholic Church, yet his most considerable poem, that massive epic, "The Ring and the Book," which is essentially Catholic in theme, if not whol- ly so in treatment, bears witness to the fact that the great monologuist was at his best when he was most sincere and faith- ful in his portrayal of Catholic character. Tennyson went to a Catholic subject to build up what he regarded as his best and noblest poem, "The Idylls of the King." No need to say that this is essentially Catholic. It has its setting in Catholic i66 Essays on Cathouc Life. times, and you will do well not to read i: through the glasses of twentieth-century doubt and skepticism. Even Tennyson's splendid elegy, "In Memoriam," though regarded by many as a poem of doubt, beats and pulses in many a passage to the divine music of Catholic truth. When the sorrow in it sinks or passes from the sensuous to the sanctified, we feel the truth of Dante's words, "In sua volonia e nos- tra pace." Surely, indeed, the Catholic element in English poetry is very consid- erable. id )t, ie :n le ch j- ic 1-