If we examine critically into the merits and demerits of this accomplished theologian and controversialist, we shall find three points in particular which mark him off from other men, and which render him, as we have said, unique. First, he had the capacity of uniting extensive learning with a lightness, even a gayety, of style; weaving scores of quotations into a few pages of easy writing, without ever for a moment becoming dull. He played and he toyed with any number of quotations, as though he had them all at his fingers’ ends; and he “brought them in” in such a way that, instead of cumbering his pages, they made them more diverting and light. Let it be asked whether this one particular art is not worthy of universal imitation? Nine out of every ten of even good polemical writers “drag their quotations in by the head and shoulders,” or hurl them down upon the pages as though they had been carted with pitch-forks and had to be uncarted in similar fashion. A lightness and a tripping ease in the introduction of quotations is one of the most captivating of gifts; for it takes the weight off the learning, the drag off the style, the “bore” off the effort of controversy. It would be very easy to name half a score of good books, vastly learned and admirably fitted for the shelves, which are simply rendered unreadable by that after-dinner sleepiness which comes from too heavy a table. Now, is it not desirable that even wise men should make a study of this art of trippingly weaving quotations?—for, as a matter of fact, a quotation badly used might just as well not be used at all. Dr. Marshall made quotations a grace of his style, instead of an interruption of his text; and so neatly did he “Tunbridge-ware” them into his pages that they fitted without joint and without fissure. This is, we think, a great merit; and if Dr. Marshall had done nothing more than suggest to learned writers that it is possible to quote immensely yet trippingly, he would have rendered a service to all polemics. He has been, perhaps, “an original” in this respect; or, if not an original, he has at least been unique in the excellence of the practice of the art.
The second feature in his writings which strikes us as admirable is an individuality in the neatness of expression. Short sentences, quite as pithy as short, with a calm grace of defiant imperturbability, make his writings equally caustic and gay. Scholarly those writings certainly are; they have all the honeyed temperance of art and much of the perfection of habit. No one could write as Dr. Marshall could write unless he had made writing his study. No doubt style “is born, not made”; but most styles are better for education, and we could name but few writers of whom we could say that their style was apparently more natural than it was acquired. Of Dr. Newman it might be said “the style is the man,” for there is a personal repose in his writings; and we could imagine Dr. Newman, even if he had not been a great student, still writing most beautifully and serenely. “The perfection of Dr. Newman’s style is that he has no style” was a very good remark of a learned critic; but then we cannot talk of such very exceptional men as giving a rule for lesser writers. Now, Dr. Marshall had a very marked style. It was ease, with equal art and equal care. The care was as striking as the ease. This, it will be said, proves at once that Dr. Marshall was not what is called “a genius.” Well, no one ever pretended that he was. A man may be both admirable and unique without having one spark of real genius; and a man may have graces of style, with highly cultured arts of fascination, and yet be no more than just sufficiently original to attract a marked popular attention. Few men attain even to this standard; and certainly, as writers of controversy, very few men even approach to it. What we assert is that to be “controversially unique” a writer must be exceptional in certain ways, and especially in the two ways we have particularized—namely, light quoting and light writing. We return, then, to the opinion that for neatness of phraseology; for the “art,” if you will, of suave cuttingness; for the clever combination of the caustic with the calm, of the profoundly indisputable with the playful, Dr. Marshall was really remarkable. He could say a thing quietly which, if robbed of its quietness, would have been, perhaps, a veritable insult. Perhaps it was the more pungent because quiet; and here we touch the third and last of the literary characteristics which we propose to notice briefly at this time.
“Milk and gall are not a pleasing combination,” observed a gentleman—who was an Anglican at the time—after reading Our Protestant Contemporaries. He added that he did not care for milk—he was too old to find it sufficiently stimulating—but he objected to gall, at least when it was directed against some favorite convictions of his own mind. Most persons will agree with this old gentleman, who, however, became a convert to the church. Yet it may be said that there are two apologies which may be offered for this defect—if defect, indeed, it be—of “milk and gall.” First, let it be remembered that the keen perception of the ridiculous, which is generally a characteristic of superior minds, finds its richest exploration in what, from a certain point of view, may be regarded as those immense fields of folly which are popularly denominated English Protestantism. To the humorous mind there is nothing so humorous as the mental gymnastics of Protestants. To suppress this humorous sense becomes impossible to any writer who does not look on gloom as a duty. Dr. Newman only suppresses it in this way: that his huge mind works above the mere playground, or avoids it as too provocative of games. He descended into it once in Loss and Gain, and he became fairly romping towards the close; now and then, too, we can detect the laughing spirit which only veils itself, for decorum, in his grave writings; but he feels probably that his weapons are too sharp to need satire, for he is not a controversialist, but a reasoner. When he does, for the moment, write satire, he shows what he could do, if he would; but we are glad that the normal attitude of his mind is rather didactic than playful.
Of lesser writers we cannot expect that their discrimination should be hampered by a grave sense of doctorship; it is not necessary that they should sit in professors’ chairs; they are writing for the million, whose perceptions of what is true must be aided by their perceptions of what is false. Moreover, the English mind, not being normally humorous—which is a great national loss in all respects—requires to be jolted and jerked into an attitude which would be most useful for the intelligence of truth. If we could only get Englishmen to see the comedy of heresy, they might soon want the gravity of truth; but they are constitutionally dull in apprehending those fallacies which southern peoples can see through in a moment. Now, a writer who can teach Englishmen to laugh at their Protestantism, to appreciate its anomalies and its shams, to see the difference between a parson and a priest, between ten thousand opinions and one faith, and generally to get rid of morbid sentiment and prejudice, and to look at things in a thoroughly healthful way, has “taken a line” which is as salutary for feeble souls as is bright mountain air for feeble bodies. Dr. Marshall used to laugh with Protestants at their shams much more than he used to laugh at the victims. But it is true that there was sometimes an acerbity in his remarks which gave offence to those who loved not the humor. Could this be helped? Be it remembered that acerbity, in the apparent mood of expression, is often more intellectual than it is moral; it is simply an attitude of conviction, or it is the natural vexation of a profound religious faith which cannot calm itself when protesting against folly. Nor do we think it at all probable that, if there were no gall in controversy, more converts would be made to the truth. And, after all, what do we mean by the word “gall”? Is humor gall? Is satire gall? Is even acerbity, when it is obviously but vexation, a fatal undoing of good? Much will depend on the mood of the reader. Some readers like spice and cayenne even in their “religious” opponents. Most readers know that mere literary temperament cannot make a syllogism out of a fallacy. All readers distinguish between caprices of temperament and the attitude of the reason and the soul. It is only on account of the mental babes among Protestants that it is to be regretted that all Catholics are human. For the ordinary, strong reader a good dash of human nature is much better than is too much of “the angel.” Take mankind for what they are, and we like the honesty of the irritation which sometimes puts the gall into the milk. It might be desirable that our first parent had not fallen. If he had not fallen we should not have had controversy. But since he has fallen, and since we must have controversy, we must also of necessity have gall.[[183]]
We have only to express regret that so useful a writer as Dr. Marshall has passed away out of the ranks of controversialists. As a speaker, too, Dr. Marshall was most delightful; indeed, he spoke quite as well as he wrote. At the time when he was in the United States it was thought by some persons that Dr. Marshall was quite the model of a speaker; for he was at once gentle and commanding, refined yet highly pungent, scholarly yet most easy to be understood. These praises were allowed by every one to be his due. We have, then, to lament the loss of a really richly-gifted Catholic, who, though an Englishman, was cosmopolitan. And when we remember that such men as Dr. Marshall (with Dr. Faber, or Mr. Allies, or Canon Oakeley) were born Protestant—intensely Protestant—Englishmen, we can appreciate what was involved in their conversion to the church, both in the intellectual and in the purely social sense. Conversion means more than a change of conviction to such Englishmen as have been born of Protestant parents; it means the revolution of the whole life of the man, as well as of the whole life of the Christian. Such men seem to be born over again. When they have passed away we can say for them, with as much hope as charity, Requiescant in pace.
PAPAL ELECTIONS.
II.
In the twelfth century the cardinals of the Holy Roman Church were in full and undisputed possession of the right of electing the Sovereign Pontiff; and although the exercise of this right is commonly attributed to the Sacred College, only from the passing of the famous decree of the Third Council of Lateran, in 1179, beginning Licet de vitanda discordia in electione Romani Pontificis (cap. vi. de Elect.), it rather supposes the cardinals to be already the sole papal electors, and merely determines what majority of their votes shall constitute a valid election.[[184]] Factious and semi-ignorant persons have often protested against this exclusive right of the cardinals to elect the visible head of the church. Of such a kind was Wycliffe, whose diatribe, Electio Papæ a cardinalibus per diabolum est introducta, was condemned by the Council of Constance (artic. xl. sess. viii.); and Eybel, whose errors were exposed by Mamacchi, under his poetical name of Pisti Alethini, as a member of the Academy of the Arcadians.[[185]]
In early times, when the pope died at Rome the cardinals met to elect a successor in the Lateran or the Vatican basilica, or in the cathedral of any other city in which they might have determined to hold the election. Conclave is the term used exclusively for many centuries for the place in which the cardinals meet in private to elect a pope; but it was used in the early middle ages of any room securely shut,[[186]] just as, among the ancient Romans, conclave was a covered and enclosed apartment or hall that could be fastened with a lock and key—cum clavi. Long before the pontificate of Gregory X. the cardinals who assembled for a papal election met in some part of a large and noble building—generally the sacristy of a cathedral—where they transacted the business of the day, and returned after each session to their private abodes. The gloss Nullatenus, on the decree of Alexander III., says that if two-thirds—the majority required—of the cardinals will not agree upon a candidate, they should be closely confined until they do—includantur in aliquo loco de quo exire non valeant donec consenserint—and mentions several popes elected after the cardinals had been subjected to a reasonable duress. This is precisely the conclave. It was not, however, until the year 1274 that the mode of procedure in a papal election was settled—after the incursions of the barbarians and the many vicissitudes to which the Holy See then became subject had deranged the earlier and apostolic manner—and the rules and regulations of the modern conclave were published. After the death of Clement IV. in Viterbo, on Nov. 22, 1268, the eighteen cardinals composing the Sacred College met there to elect his successor; but not agreeing after a year and a half, although the kings of France and Sicily, St. Bonaventure, General of the Franciscans, and many influential, learned, and holy men came in person to urge them to compose their differences and relieve the church of her long widowhood, they were all got together one day, by some artifice, in the episcopal palace, which was instantly closed upon them and surrounded with guards. Even this imprisonment did not change their temper, and after some further delay the captain of the town, Raniero Gatti, took the bold resolution of removing the entire roof and otherwise dilapidating the edifice, in hopes that the discomforts of the season, added to their confinement, might break the stubbornness of the venerable fathers.[[187]] This move succeeded, and a compromise was effected among the discordant cardinals on the 7th of September, 1271, in virtue of which the papal legate in Syria, Theobald Visconti, Archdeacon of Liege, was elected. This was not the first time that extraordinary and almost violent measures had been taken to bring the cardinals to make a prompt election. At Viterbo the captain of the town coerced their liberty; at Naples the commandant of the castle bridled their appetite when, after the death of Innocent IV., in 1254, he diminished day by day the quantity of food sent in to them—cibo per singulos dies imminuto—until they agreed upon a worthy subject.[[188]]