One cannot altogether pardon the greatest fault of all Sir Walter made, the punishment of Constance in “Marmion.” But his theory of artistic effect was something like Macaulay’s idea of rhetorical effect. If picturesqueness or dramatic effect interfered with historical truth, the latter suffered the necessary carving to make it fit. It must be remembered, too, that Sir Walter Scott was not in a position to profit by modern discoveries which have forced all honorable men to revise many pages of the falsified histories of their youth and to do justice to the spirit of the Church.
Sir Walter Scott is always chivalrous and pure-minded. How he would have detested Froude’s brutal characterization of Mary Stuart, or Swinburne’s vile travesty of her! If his friars are more jolly than respectable, it is because he drew his pictures from popular ballads and old stories never intended in Catholic times to be taken as serious or typical. His Templars are horrible villains, but he never seems to regard them as villanous because they are ecclesiastics; he does not intend to drag their priesthood into disgrace; they are lawless and romantic figures, loaded with horrible accusations by Philippe le Bel, and condemned by the Pope—ready-made romantic scoundrels fit for purposes of fiction. He does not look beyond this.
Scott shows much of the nobility of Dryden’s later work. He does not confuse good with evil; he is always tender of good sentiments; he hates vice and all meanness; in depicting so many fine characters who could only have bloomed in a Catholic atmosphere, he shows a sympathy for the “old Church” at once pathetic and admirable to a Catholic. There is no novel of his in which the influence of the Church is not alluded to in some way or other. And how delightful are his heroines when they are Catholic! How charmingly he has drawn Mary Stuart! And the man that does not love Di Vernon and Catherine Seton has no heart for Beatrice or Portia. And then there is the grand figure of Edward Glendenning in “The Abbot.”
Dryden and Scott both owed so much to the Church, were so naturally her children, that one feels no ordinary satisfaction in the conversion of the one, and some consolation in the fact that the last words of the other were those of the “Dies Irae.”
Brownson and Newman are two authors more talked about than read in this country. In England Newman’s most careful literary work is known; Brownson’s work has only begun to receive attention. Newman has gained much by being talked and written about by men who love the form of things as much as the matter, and who, if Newman had taught Buddhism or Schopenhauerism, would admire him just as much. As there is a large class of these men, and as they help to form public opinion, it has come to pass that he who would deny Newman’s mastery of style would be smiled at in any assembly of men of letters. Brownson has not had such an advantage. He gave his attention thoroughly to the matter in hand; style was with him a secondary consideration. Besides, he wrote from the American point of view, and sometimes—at least it would seem so—under pressure from the printer. Newman was never hurried; Horace was not more leisurely, Cicero more exact. It would be absurd to compare Newman and Brownson. I simply put their names together to show that they should be read, even if other writers must be neglected, by Catholic Americans. I take the liberty of recommending three books as valuable additions to the home shelf:—Brownson’s “Views,” and the “Characteristics” of Wiseman and Newman.
Every young American who wants to understand the political position of his country among the nations should read three books—Brownson’s “American Republic,” De Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” and Bryce’s “American Commonwealth.” But of these three writers the greatest—incomparably the greatest—is Brownson: he defines principles; he clarifies them until they are luminous; he shows the application of them to a new condition of things. There have been Catholics—why disguise the fact, since they are nearly all dead or imbecile?—who fancied that our form of government was merely tolerated by the Church. Brownson gave a death-blow to those ancient dragons of unbelief. Certain parts of this great work ought to be a text-book in every school in the country. And it will now be easier to build a monument to this profound thinker, as there is a well-considered attempt to popularize such portions of his books as must catch the general attention, for there are many pages in Brownson’s works which are hidden only because they suffered in their original method of publication.
Open a volume of his works at random, and you will find something to suggest or stimulate thought, to define a term or to fortify a principle. Read, for instance, those pages of his on the Catholic American literature of his time and you will have a standard of judgment for all time. And who to-day can say what he says as well as he said it? As to those parts of his philosophy about which the doctors disagree, let us leave that to the doctors. It does not concern the general public, and indeed it might be left out of consideration with advantage.
Brownson’s works are mines of thought. In them lie the germs of mighty sermons, of great books to come. Already he is a classic in American literature, and there is every reason why he should be a classic, since he was first in an untilled ground; and yet it is a sad thing to find that of all the magnificent material Brownson has left, the “Spirit Rapper,” that comparatively least worthy product of his pen, seems to be the best known to the general reader.
If one of us would confine himself to the reading of four authors in English—Shakspere, Newman, Webster, and Brownson—he could not fail to be well educated. The “Idea of a University” of Newman is a pregnant book. It goes to the root of the subtlest matters; its clearness enters our minds and makes the shadows flee. It cannot be made our own at one reading. There are passages which should be read over and over again—notably that on literature and the definition of a classic. If any man could make us grasp the intangible, Newman could. How sentimental and thin Emerson appears after him! Professor Cook, of Yale, has done the world a good turn by giving us the chapter on “Poetry and the Poetics of Aristotle” in a little pamphlet; and John Lilly’s “Characteristics” is a very valuable book. Any reader or active man who dips into the chapter on the “Poetics” will long for more; and, if he does, the “Characteristics” will not slake his thirst; he will desire the volumes themselves and drink in new refreshments with every page.
I have known a young admirer of “Lead, Kindly Light”—which, by the way, has only three stanzas of its own—to be repelled by the learned title of “Apologia Pro Vita Sua,” but, in search of the circumstances that helped to produce it, to turn to certain pages in this presumably uninteresting work. The charm began to work; Newman was no longer a pedant to be avoided, but a friend to be ever near.