Down at Caxton's 9

Down at Caxton's 9

While the author will not concede that mere literary form is the all

in all that our modern masters claim, yet he would not be found in the

ranks of M. de Bonniers, who declares that an author need not trouble

himself about his grammar; let him have original ideas and a certain

style, and the rest is of no consequence. The author of “Phases of

Thought,” believes first in the possession of ideas, for without them

an author is a sorry spectacle. He also believes that an attractive

style will materially aid in the diffusion of these ideas. Many good

books fall still-born from the press, for no other reasons than their

slovenly style. Readers now-a-days will not plod along poor roads,

when a turnpike leads to the same destination. The grammar marks the

parting of ways. Brother Azarias rightfully holds that good grammar is

an essential part of every great writer’s style. Classics are so, by

correct grammar as well as by original ideas. This easy dictum of the

slipshod writers—that if an idea takes you off your feet you must not

trouble yourself about the grammar that wraps it, is but a specious

pleading for their ignorance of what they pretend to despise.

 

The great difference between this book and the many on similar subjects

is in the manner of treatment. It starts from a solid basis; that

basis the creed of the Catholic Church. The superstructure of lofty

thought reared on this basis is in a style at once pellucid and crisp.

The author is not only a thinker rare and original; he is a scholar

broad and masterly.

 

Believing that his Church holds the keys of the “kingdom come,” and as

a consequence, a key to all problems moral and social that can move

modern society, he grapples with them, after the manner of a knight of

old, courteously but convincingly. His teaching is that, outside the

bosom of the Catholic Church jostle the warring elements of confusion

and uncertainty. In her fold can man find that rest, that sweet

peace promised by the Redeemer. Her philosophy is the wisdom worth

cherishing, the curing balm that philosophers vainly seek outside her

pale. To the weary and thought-stricken would this great writer bring

his often and beautifully taught lesson, that the things of this world

are not the puppets of chance, nor lots of the pantheistic whole, but

parts of a well-ordered system, governed by a paternal being, whom

we, His children, address in that touching prayer, “Father, who art

in Heaven.” From that Father came a Son, not mere man, not only a

great prophet, not only a law-giver, but the true Son of God, equal

to the Father, from all eternity, whose mission was, to teach all men

that would listen, the way that leads to light. That this identical

mission is, and will be continued to the consummation of the ages by

the Catholic Church. That in the truth of these things, all men, who

lovingly seek, will be confirmed, not that mere intellect alone could

be the harbinger of such truths, for, as he has so well put it:—“Human

reason and human knowledge, whether considered individually or

collectively in the race are limited to the natural. Knowledge of the

supernatural can come only from a Divine Teacher.”

 

One may be convinced of every truth of revealed religion, and yet not

possess the gift of faith. That gift is purely gratuitous. If, however,

the seeker humbly and honestly desires the acquisition of these truths,

and knocks, the door of the chamber of truth shall be opened unto him,

for this has the Saviour promised. That door once opened, the Spirit of

God breathes on the seeker, it opens the eyes of the soul, it reveals

beyond all power of doubt or cavil, or contradiction, the supernatural

as a fact, solemn, universal, constant throughout the vicissitudes of

the age. While the author fashions these lofty truths on the anvil of

modern scholarship, the reader finds himself, like the school children,

in Longfellow’s poem, looking in through the artist’s open door full

of admiration, fascinated by burning sparks. Pages have been written

about the ideal, defining it, in verbiage fatiguing and elusive.

 

It is a trick of pretended scholarship, to hide thought with massive

word-boulders. What a difference in the process of this rare scholar?

 

A flying spark from his anvil lights up the dullest intellect. It is

a stimulus to the weary brain, after wading through essays as to what

constitutes an ideal, to have the gentle scholar, across the blazing

pine logs, on a winter’s night, say: “A genius conceives and expresses

a great thought. The conception so expressed delights. It enters men’s

souls; it compels their admiration. They applaud and are rejoiced that

another masterpiece has been brought into existence to grace the world

of art and letters. The genius alone is dissatisfied. Where others

see perfection, he perceives something unexpressed; beyond the reach

of his art. Try as best he may, he cannot attain that indefinable

something. Deep in his inner consciousness he sees a type so grand and

perfect that his beautiful production appears to him but a faint and

marred copy of that original. That original is the ideal; and the ideal

it is that appeals to the aesthetic and calls forth men’s admiration.”

What a divining power has this student, in plummeting the vagaries of

modern culture!

 

“Every school of philosophy has its disciples, who repeat the sayings

of their masters with implicit confidence, without ever stopping to

question the principles from which those sayings arise or the results

to which they lead.” These chattering disciples will affect to sneer

at the Christian belief, while they lowly sit at the feet of one of

their mud gods singing “thou art the infallible one.” They will not

question their position simply because “these systems are accepted not

so much for truth’s sake as because they are the intellectual fashions

of the day.” Such men change their philosophy as quickly as a Parisian

dressmaker his styles. It may yet be shown by some mighty Teuton that

vagaries in philosophy and dress are closely allied, and that the

synthetic philosophy of Herbert Spencer is responsible for the coming

of crinoline. What a delightful thrust at that school of criticism

that singles out an author or a book as the very acme of perfection,

seeing wisdom in absurdities and truth in commonplace fiction, is given

in these lines: “Paint a daub and call it a Turner, and forthwith

these critics will trace in it strokes of genius.” With a twinkle in

his eye he asks, “Think you they understand the real principles of

art criticism?” You will be easily able to answer that question when

you have mastered this pithy definition of true criticism, be it of

literature or of art, “that it is all-embracing.” It has no antagonism

to science so long as she travels in her rightful domain. When “science

has her superstitions and her romancings as unreal and shadowy as those

of the most ephemeral literature, then it is the duty of criticism to

administer the medicine of truth and purge the wayward jade of her

humors.”

 

To such a mind as that of the author of “Phases of Thought,” with its

thorough knowledge of the art of criticism and its perfect equipment,

the separating of the chaff from the meal of an author becomes not

only a pleasure but a duty. This is best seen by a perusal of Chapter

III, dealing with Emerson and Newman as types. With a few masterly

strokes the real Emerson, not the phantom or brain figment of Burroughs

and Woodberry and the long line of fad disciples, passes before us.

Not an inch is taken from his stature. His intellectual beauties and

defects, so strongly drawn, but confirm the reader in the truth of the

portraiture. One catches not only a glimpse of the man, but the springs

of his soul-struggles. Emerson in his hungry quest for intellectual

food, ranged through the philosophies of the east and west, purposely

ignoring that of the Catholic Church. This sin cost him whole worlds of

thought hidden from his vision. Newman had the same hunger to appease,

but where Emerson turned away Newman, ever in search for truth, kept

on, and found it in the Catholic Church. The analysis of these two

minds is done in a masterly way. Azarias has no prejudices. If he puts

his fingers on defects and descants on their nature and treatment, he

will, no less, point out beauties and lovingly linger among them. He is

a knight in the cause of truth, and would not herd with the carping

critics. He will tell you that Emerson’s mind was like an Æolian harp.

“It was awake to the most delicate impressions, and at every breath

of thought it gave out a music all its own,” and that the reading of

him with understanding “is a mental tonic bracing for the cultured

intellect as is Alpine air for the mountaineer.” The pages of this book

teem with thought clothed in language whose sparkling beauty is all the

author’s own. From such a book it is difficult to select. Emerson has

well said, “No one can select the beautiful passages of another for

you. Do your own quarrying.” I abide by this quotation, and should ask

every lover of the beautiful and true to buy this fecund book.

 

Patrick Francis Mullaney, better known as Brother Azarias, was born

in Killenaule County, Tipperary, Ireland, June 29th, 1847. Like the

majority of eminent men that his country has given birth to, he came

of its noble peasantry. The old tale was here enacted. The parents

left the land of their birth in search of a home in our better land.

This found, Azarias joined them. At the age of fifteen he joined the

Christian Brothers. That great Order gave free scope to his fine

abilities. In 1866 he was chosen professor of mathematics and English

literature at Rock Hill College, Maryland. He continued in this

position for ten years. At the expiration of his professorship he

travelled a year through Europe, collecting materials and writing his

“Development of Old English Thought.” On his return he became president

of Rock Hill College, holding that position until recalled to Paris by

his Superior in 1866. After an absence of three years Brother Azarias

returned to the States as professor of English literature at the De

La Salle Institute, New York. This is not only an important position,

but it gives leisure, and that ready access to the great libraries, so

prized by literary men.

 

 

 

 

WOMEN.

 

 

 

 

KATHERINE ELEANOR CONWAY.

 

 

“Next room to that of Roche’s,” said the dear O’Reilly, showing me his

nest of poets, “is a gentle poetess.”

 

The door was wide open. It is a question with my mind if the room ever

knew a door. Be this as it may, there sat, with her chair close drawn

to her desk, a frail, delicate-looking woman. The ordinary eye might

see nothing in a face that was winsome, if not handsome; yet, let the

dainty mouth curve in speech, and at once a subtle attraction, lit up

by lustrous eyes, permeated the face. One characteristic that made

itself felt, in the most sparse conversation with this woman, was her

humility, a rare virtue among American literary women. I have known

not a few among that irritable class who, no sooner had they sipped the

most meagre draught of fame, than they became intoxicated with their

own importance, and for the balance of life wooed that meretricious

goddess, Notoriety. In fiery prose and tuneful song they told of the

dire misfortunes that had been heaped upon their sex by that obstinate

vulgar biped, man. Their literature—for that is the name given to

the crudest offspring of the press in these days—is noisy, and, says

a witty writer, a noisy author is as bad as a barrel organ,—a quiet

one is as refreshing as a long pause in a foolish sermon. Clergymen,

who have listened to a brother divine on grace, will be the first to

see the point. Our authoress—(a female filled with the vanity that

troubled Solomon says I should write female author)—is a quiet and

unobtrusive writer. Of the tricks that catch and the ways that are

crooked in literature, she knows nothing, and what is better, no amount

of tawdry fame could induce her to swerve a jot from the hard stony

road that leads to enduring success, the only goal worth striving for

in the domain of letters. I am well aware that in the popular list of

women-writers mouthed by the growing herd of flippant readers that have

no other use for a book than as a time-killer,—a herd to whom ideas

are as unpalatable as disestablishment to an English parson—you will

fail to find the name of Katherine Conway. The reason is simple. She

has no fads to air in ungrammatical English, no fallacies to adduce

in halting metre. It was a Boston critic who echoed the dictum of

the French critic—that grammar has no place in the world of letters.