The Song of Deborah is, then, commonly judged —and on good grounds—to be contemporary with the event which it celebrates. At moments of intense feeling, poetry not too burdened by rules, far from being an artificial, is, on the contrary, a most natural form of expression ; certainly at such times it comes readily to the lips of spontaneous peoples such as the Semites. As the occasion, so is the form ; David’s grief, for example, over the death of Saul and Jonathan produces his poetical lament as given in 2 Samuel 1. 19 ff. A most interesting parallel to the occasion and form of the Song of Deborah is provided by an incident which occurred only some thirty years ago at Madaba, a village a few miles east of the Dead Sea. The Arab tribe of the ‘Azeizât which had settled at Madaba was attacked by another Arab tribe, the Beni Sakher. The ‘Azeizât had hardly succeeded in repelling the attack before their women had composed odes to honour those who had braved, and to stigmatize those who had shirked, the perils of the fight.

It is something of that kind that we have here. It is not an epic poem depicting the exploits of bygone heroes, nor simply a song of thanksgiving for some former striking divine intervention. The poet praises and blames, blesses and curses, and he does so because the objects of his blessings and of his cursings are there before him acting on him ; he sings because he must.

Throughout the month of July, and until August 8th, the Bishops in communion with the Sees of Canterbury and York will sit in conference at Lambeth. The War which has given the English-speaking peoples, for good or evil, a paramount influence in international politics will therefore add a more than transient spiritual weight to a conference of Bishops discussing world problems in the English tongue.

Even without the gravity which comes to it from the world’s greatest war this Lambeth Conference has a significance almost unique. It is no mere local council. Its Bishops are from all parts of the world. His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury in asking Dr. F. B. Meyer, the President of the Free Church Council, for the prayers and sympathy of the Free Churches, could say :

“The Lambeth Conference will, so far as we can at present tell, include 107 Bishops from the Dioceses in the Dominions, and the Mission Field, 72 Bishops from the United States of America and about 100 Bishops whose work lies in the British Isles.”

In his article on the recent Lambeth Conference Father Vincent McNabb, O.P., deprecated the acerbities of controversy, and adopted, for his part, a more pacific and sympathetic attitude towards our Anglican brethren. Naturally enough, this discordant note was somewhat disconcerting to those who are engaged in the war of controversy. And some would seem to fear that the adoption of this friendly line by Catholic writers might have the effect known as giving comfort to the enemy, by encouraging them in maintaining their false position. These alarmists may well remind us of the Government censorship in war time. It seemed only reasonable that the newspapers should be forbidden to publish any information that might be helpful to the enemy. But, not content with this natural precaution, our official censors suppressed the announcement of any progress made by the Germans. It seemed as if they were fearful lest this news might come round to the knowledge of the enemy, who would thus be made aware of his own achievements. And similar fears seem to be aroused when a Catholic writer frankly recognizes the progress made by Anglicans.

The receipt of a bill from a Midland bookseller from whom I had made some purchases first drew my attention to this subject. The details in his bill of the books which had been ordered were written in a beautiful penmanship, and when the receipt arrived it was a pleasure to notice that the terms of acknowledgment were written in the same lettering as the printed name and address of the bookseller at the top of the sheet. Apparently the fount of type had been designed from his handwriting. This delighted me so much that I wrote a letter saying that I had not supposed it possible for anyone to add to the pleasure of an ordinary receipt, until my creditor had done so by presenting me with a distinguished example of penmanship. Thereupon the following letter arrived. It deserves to be quoted as a rare example of a simple, commercial transaction beautifully done. Readers, however, must be content with the substance which, stripped of its beautiful form, reads as follows :

“Dear Sir,

“Accept my thanks for your kind letter and remittance. Your words of praise gave me great pleasure, and I thank you for them. Caligraphy has been my delight since childhood, and is still my greatest joy and consolation. I get plenty of scribbling now, since I am almost alone in this little book-business, yet compared to the output of authorship my efforts are tiny in comparison.”

We write no longer as we did in pre-war days. We express ourselves more drastically, go straighter to the point than before. If art has lost something in the process, truth has, on the whole, gained. Flung in lean years upon reality, we ourselves nave grown in some ways harder and more brutal, in others, simpler and more sincere. The moving spirit of the times has made us impatient of devious ways in life, of compromise. We take short cuts to our meaning when we have a meaning at all. Weak work, “pretty” work, mawkish work, is frankly disregarded by all but the most incompetent or immature critic. The price of paper, the expense of transport and the increased rates of library subscriptions make us chary of accumulating purely ephemeral stuff. There is, I suppose, in the hearts of most of us, some sense of shortened time, of lessened opportunity, to make us instinctively value what seems powerful and strong in these uncertain hours which Bolshevism or some other power may lay waste when we know not.

Writers who once held us through cheap means, or whose work had nothing to recommend it but some trick of graceful phrasing, have either learned to think, or dropped out of the widened literary circle altogether, because they could not meet the demands it made upon them. The writers of the past who still move us to-day are men who always had something to say that was worth hearing, and said it with a certain virility and strength.

Madrid is a very modern city. There are, doubtless, ancient things in it, and certainly its palaces, its churches, and its squares are harshly called modern by a colonial visitor. But for all that, Madrid is, I repeat, a modern city. You feel it so. True, you have not to wait long to see an ox-cart pass across the Puerto del Sol and block the traffic of electric cars and automobiles, and there are folk in the Buen Retiro whose souls plainly belong to mediaeval Spain ; but still for all that Madrid is modern. You may be very lonely in Madrid, and that is the real hallmark of a modern city. I do not see how anyone could feel lonely in Toledo or Cordoba, for their very stones cry out, and there are thin ghost voices in the wind, and their bridges and walls are haunted. But it is not so in Madrid. Therefore shall I go to Madrid again for but two things and a third : to visit the Prado once more ; to feast my eyes on the sword of Pizarro ; and to leave with speed for Toledo, Cordoba, and the warm-scented South.

Now of the Prado I do not find that I can write. It is, of course, one of the great European galleries, and I love Spain. Moreover, it is a homely picture-gallery, and there are sixty-seven Velasquez pictures admirably and chronologically hung in one room. But enough : Cook’s Handbook of Spain is written so.

It is much to be hoped that the revival of The Beggar's Opera will do neglected justice to the reputation of John Gay, and that the numerous patrons of the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, will study the text of the opera. The songs and the dialogue are excellent testimony to his gifts as a lyrist and a wit, and invite the discriminating reader to make closer acquaintance with his essays on “Dress” and “Reproof and Flattery” (which appeared in The Guardian, Nos. ii and 149, 1712-13), and with his ballads and verse in other pieces beside the popular Fables. It is odd that, though Gay has found friendly critics and devoted editors in John Underhill and Mr. Austin Dobson, neither speaks of his reputation without much apology nor gives any convincing reasons for the original success of The Beggar's Opera. For example, John Underhill attributes the success of the opera to “two causes ; the opera was the first specimen of a new species of composition, and it was well stored with satire. The satire, moreover, was not merely general : it was personal and particular. No one could fail to see that Robin of Bagshot—alias Whiff Bob, alias Carbuncle, alias Bob Booty—was designed to represent Sir Robert Walpole’s unrefined manners, convivial habits, and alleged robbery of the public. Macheath was provided in the play with both a wife and a mistress, to indicate to the public that Lady Walpole had a rival in Miss Skerrett.”

Having gained permission from the Editor of BLACKFRIARS to contribute an article on Mrs. Meynell’s prose that should, as it were, balance Mr. Osbert Burdett’s recent article on her poetry, I find it well to set myself a wide and easy limit, and not attempt to appraise critically her writing, nor to discuss its technique, and only incidentally to settle the question of her “preciosity.” I am of Francis Thompson’s persuasion and do not know the body of her writing from its soul, and could love it for its very faults—if such were proved in it—so deeply have the beauties of its virtues ensnared me.

My subject, then, is not the prose of Mrs. Meynell, but Mrs. Meynell in her prose, who is its style.

In Miss Winifred Lucas’s Fugitives (1899) there are some lines which may have been intended for their writer’s friend, Mrs. Meynell, and which shall serve me as a text for this paper.

Since in the paths of mental liberty A finished saint,
To such as you ‘twere death to be A moment free Of thought’s restraint.

“Jack, be quiet,” cried Mrs. Beeby to her husband. “Can’t you see I’ve got an idea !” She was sketching rapidly and intently the first rough outlines of a drawing. All Mrs. Beeby’s drawings were exquisite.

The Professor sniggered.

“You never had an idea in your life, my sweet,” he said. “Given an idea, you wouldn’t be a woman—much less the adorable woman that I love.”

The Professor was wrong, as professors frequently are. But the excitement of a brilliant course of lectures in metaphysics was still upon him, and he was unconsciously soothing himself by making playful (and erroneous) application of things he had read and thought and spoken about of late, copiously and in the orthodox abstract professorial way.

He said much more, and his wife, for all her industrious drawing, contradicted him cleverly. Yet their pretty war of words is of no more concern to us here than the prettier truce of hearts of which it was a graceful camouflage. For this, good reader, by your leave, is not a love story. It is a solemn attempt to discuss, in a practical and homely way, some of the very big things professors expound grandiloquently and in moods not always consonant with common sense.

A few years ago, to speak of the progress of the Royal Academy would have been a contradiction in terms ; but a perusal of this year’s exhibition shows that the apparently impossible has happened. As I had not visited the Academy for six or seven years, the improvement was probably more apparent to me than it would have been to those who consider a regular attendance to be part of their duty as Englishmen. The stirring to life of this stagnant institution is partly due to the enlightenment of its members ; but to a greater extent to a series of accidents.

The chief sign of grace in the Hanging Committee is shown in a definite attempt to exhibit pictures so that they may be seen ; and to limit the number of exhibits to that end. The old way was to stop hanging only when the last inch of wall-space had been covered. Let us hope that the Committee will carry this practice of selection a step further in the future. Before the war the average number of exhibits exceeded 2000 ; this year there are 1477, of which a number cannot be seen properly, and a larger number no one wishes to see. The Augean stables are only very partially cleansed. The exhibition might with advantage be considerably reduced if more good work were not sent in. Rather should the good pictures be spread thinner, than that space should be filled for the amusement of that type of vulgar mind which delights in drunken monks and mawkish sentimentality.

The recently published Life of Sister Mary of St. Philip who at her death in 1904 had for nearly fifty years been the moving spirit of the great work of the Notre Dame Training College at Liverpool, has been described as “incidentally the history of Catholic education in this country from the days of Catholic Emancipation.” In his Introduction, the late Archbishop of Liverpool illustrates this by saying that

It is not, however, on the book as a record of Catholic education that these lines are written ; they are limited to its introductory chapters. These contain much that is of interest concerning the life of English Catholics during the period between Catholic Emancipation (1829) and the Restoration of the Hierarchy (1850)—five years before Sister Mary of St. Philip began her great work; and this notice, like the chapters on which it is based, may be regarded as introductory to the biography itself.

It is essential to remember at the outset that . . . just as in material affairs, things that are the merest commonplaces of daily life or have already become obsolete, were then unheard of and unknown, so two of the most important factors of English Catholic life as we now know it were in 1829 practically non-existent.

English Catholics are not generally credited with much interest in the Old Testament. Their preference for the Imitation of Christ, say, as spiritual reading is easily intelligible. At the same time one would think that, considered merely as the early history of that unique nation, the Jews, the Old Testament would have a certain claim on the interest of educated people. But it also happens that the history of that nation is equally, for several thousand years, the history of Revelation.

At first sight it is perhaps surprising that in presence of the revelation of the Son of God the religious history of Israel should still keep some element of value. The inevitable tendency to scrap, as far as Christians were concerned, the story of that nation naturally crystallized in a very determined effort. It was made, about the middle of the second century, by that acute heretic, Marcion. Marcion’s theory, says Professor Burkitt in one of his stimulating lectures on The Gospel History and its Transmission “ is a theory of catastrophe : a new God comes down from nowhere, and proclaims true religion for the first time. And closely allied with Marcion’s rejection of the Old Testament history as being in any sense the history of true religion was his denial of the reality of our Lord’s body as being in any sense true flesh and blood.” It is a matter of faith that the Old Testament contains true revelation. “ The Church was determined to maintain its claim to be the true heir of the promises of the Old Testament, the promises made of old to the fathers.

In this very full and trustworthy account by an Anglican clergyman of the notable doings of a group of Church of England men in the nineteenth century two things, in especial, are of interest to Catholics to-day : (i) The movement called Christian Socialist. (2) The self-governing workshop.

(1) It was at the time of the first stirrings of the Second Spring in England—a time when Protestant “society” felt its very foundations shaken by the conversion of Newman and by “Roman aggression,” and believed all law and order about to be overturned by revolutionary Chartists—that the Christian Socialists, whose antecedents may be traced to Carlyle, Coleridge, and Southey, came to the front. Shocked at the horrors perpetrated on men, women, and children by triumphant and unrestrained capitalism, at the sweating, the insanitary dwellings of the poor, at the widespread misery in a land where vast riches were conspicuous, the Christian Socialists, of whom F. D. Maurice, Charles Kingsley, and J. M. Ludlow were the chiefs, declared that the social question must not be left to freethinkers for its solution, and that the Christian people of God must take their part against “the unsocial Christians and the unchristian socialists.” The word Socialism has always been used loosely in this country, and the inability to agree upon a common and exact definition has provoked a vast amount of irrelevant controversy.

The first advertisement didn’t attract much attention. It was quite unclassified, and the advertisement editors, after a single glance, immediately put it down under Theatre Engagements. It ran simply, “Look out for The New Sin: Professor Laileb’s remarkable discovery: Satisfaction Guaranteed.” Naturally, the public merely supposed it to be the title of a new revue, and—already somewhat jaded—awaited the appearance of Press notices. But the next was far more formidable, appearing in the most expensive pages of the daily Press, and in very large letters all over the underground stations : “Professor Laileb’s Great Discovery. On Tuesday, September 27 (the date was about a month and a half ahead), Professor Laileb will lecture in the Albert Hall at 3 p.m. on The New Sin, recently discovered by him and now for the first time brought to the notice of the public. All seats free.” The mention of free seats and the Albert Hall made it clear that the Professor had money behind him, and was a person to be reckoned with; he was also a generous advertiser, and the leading daily papers lost no time in fishing out all they could in the way of information and writing him up as a Silly Season column. The public, though gravely afraid (from the use of the word “lecture”) that this particular form of transgression must be a System, needing (like the Physical Development and Memory-training Systems) stern months of self-discipline for its acquisition, nevertheless pricked up its ears, and was ready to know all about Professor Laileb that there was to be known.