In the south aisle of Westminster Abbey is a monument by Flaxman, with a long and sonorous inscription in the manner of the time, to the memory of Pasquale de Paoli, the Garibaldi of the eighteenth century. In Upper Seymour Street, Portman Square, and in South Audley Street, we may see the homes in which General Paoli lived as an honoured exile. And in old St. Pancras Churchyard, the sexton will point out the spot where his remains long rested, until in our own day they were taken back to his beloved Corsica.

Our English Catholic forefathers, who heard Mass in the Sardinian and the other Embassy Chapels, must often have looked with interest at this foreigner of singularly noble bearing who shared in their devotions; and no one was more welcome than he at the meetings of the famous Literary Club, presided over by Dr. Johnson. Reynolds, Garrick, Gibbon, Goldsmith, Burke were his admiring friends. George III never signed a warrant for a government pension with greater willingness than that which bore the name of Paoli.

As the General walked the quiet London streets, what memories were his ! His early days in his native Corsica, his hatred of the Genoese oppressors of the island, his friendship and his rivalry with the Bonaparte family (some have it he was Napoleon’s godfather at baptism), his exile and military education in Naples, his return to Corsica, his nomination as Dictator and Generalissimo, his terrible struggle first with Genoa, then with France; his wise rule and excellent laws, the birth of a nation his own work; the years of splendid guerilla warfare, the expulsion of the foreigner, the final terrible battle, the cutting his way through the flower of the French troops, the refuge found on a British frigate; the enthusiastic welcome in London, the kindly words of George III.

‘One must never lie, of course,’ said Padre Innocento in English, ‘but there are an amount of people here in Italy we allow to deceive themselves. The gentry on the frontier, for instance, when it is a question of tobacco; and the dazieri who sit at the receipt of custom over there,’ and he waved lavishly at the toy roofs and towers of Borgo Sant’ Ignoto, five kilometres off in the valley. ‘There is a story of old Monsignor Scalabrin and how he outwitted the customs of his own town and took in duty-free the sausage of the Countess Villani. He had no bad intention, the good Monsignor. There was no sin. It was almost, you might say, the act of Providence. Besides, the Monsignor is in Venice and the Countess at Treviso; and the dazieri, though they are still at the same barrier, do not understand English. So if you like to write the story down, there will be no harm done; and it will be a page or two more for your book.’ I hastened to assure the good Father—who had frequently enjoyed the sweets of vicarious authorship through the inadequate medium of my pen and was, between ourselves, longing to see himself at one remove in print again—that I would make it my business to write out and publish the story of Monsignor Scalabrin as soon as I got back to England. So as we swung down the vine-screened cart-track that led from the mountain where he had said and I had heard Mass at the chapel of a mutual friend, he recounted the legend in the raciest English he could muster.

There are some poetical personalities who disdain the heroic equipment to such an extent that to all but a few intimates who care to penetrate below the mask, they must remain imcomprehensible, and therefore, in an age that has no use or time for reticence, uninteresting. A Hugo or a Wilde catch the eye of the crowd, a Lionel Johnson never.

He was an Epicurean in the finer meaning of the word, and if it were not common knowledge now that Pater drew his hero from R. C. Jackson one might be tempted to imagine that he took for model his most distinguished pupil. Not an Epicurean in the popular sense of ‘Cueillez dès aujourd’hui les roses de la vie/ but one to whom ‘les roses’ meant all that survives of what was finest in Mediaeval art and life in our age. In the cool-shadowed cloisters of Winchester and Oxford he found his natural environment, and brought to such an environment a white passion for the literature of Greece and Rome, and that ‘native instinct for devotion’ which finally found a resting place in the Catholic Church.

When taking up such a work as Father Joyce’s Principles of Natural Theology a Thomist naturally turns to the chapters on ‘The Divine Intelligence’ (Chap, xi), and on ‘Conservation and Concurrence’ (Chap. xvi). These chapters spoil an otherwise most excellent book : a perusal of them will show that Fr. Joyce abandons the doctrine of St. Thomas and chooses to follow a doctrine which had its beginnings in the middle of the sixteenth century. But Fr. Joyce does not embrace this new doctrine entirely,—he is eclectic. He does not adhere to the doctrine as expounded by the Spanish Jesuit, Molina, nor to that as expounded by Suarez. He admits a scientia media but is unwilling to admit the explanation that Molina, who originally published it, gives, and correctly refutes the explanation of Suarez. The position of the author consists in this that scientia media must be admitted, but he frankly confesses his inability to give any explanation of it (pp. 357 and 360). God knows future conditioned free acts antecedently to, and independently of any decree of His will: this knowledge is called scientia media; but, he argues, it is impossible for the human mind to throw any light on the manner in which God, by this knowledge, knows our future conditioned free acts: pre-determination of any free act is destructive of freewill. But pre-determination implies necessarily an act of God’s will, or His decree,—therefore a free act must be independent of God’s decree : God therefore cannot know a future conditioned free act in His decree. His knowledge, therefore, of a future conditioned free act must be antecedent to and independent of His decree :—this knowledge is called scientia media.

In our previous article we discussed the ninth chapter of Fr. Joyce’s book. Another chapter, which in our opinion spoils an otherwise most excellent work, is chapter xvi on ‘Conservation and Concurrence.’ In this chapter Fr. Joyce again abandons the teaching of the Angelic Doctor for a modern theory which is wholly inconsistent with the teaching of Augustine and Thomas and indeed of the Holy Scripture. The problem here concerned has to do with the Divine Causality and the freewill. If God is the cause of all being and all modes of being, how comes it that the will is free in its choices? St. Thomas has a very definite doctrine on this point: God premoves the will to its choice, yet so supereminent and so transcendent is the Divine motion that the will is not necessitated in its act, for the Divine motion, so efficacious, premoves the will to determine itself (by deliberation) to this rather than to that. Hence the determination of the will comes not only from God but also from the will.

Both Molina and Suarez refuse to subscribe to this doctrine : for them predetermination is wholly destructive of freewill. Briefly, their doctrine comes to this : ‘The Divine motion is not prior to the action of the freewill; the motion therefore is not received into the will; on the contrary it is received into the will’s effect or action in order to effect what is proper to God alone, namely the being of the action; hence, it is said, God simultaneously concurs with the will as a partial cause to produce the will’s action: this partial causality is to be understood on the part of the cause (ex farte causæ) and not on the part of the effect (ex parte effectus), because the effect is wholly produced by God as the First Cause and wholly by the will as secondary cause.

It has not been the least of the minor factors in the Anglo-Irish tragedy that the old Catholic families of England have almost all been strongly opposed by tradition to the claims of Irish nationalism. This constant divergence of views and sympathies between the Catholics of the two countries has in recent years produced incidents that will not easily be forgotten on either side. Irish Catholics can scarcely be expected ever to admit any excuse for the amazing action of the Duke of Norfolk when he played a conspicuous part in the mass meeting of the Unionist party at Blenheim on July nth, 1912, which gave its solemn benediction to Sir Edward Carson on the eve of his departure for Belfast to organise the Orange Volunteers. It may be thought probable indeed that, were he still alive, the Duke of Norfolk would even in his extreme old age have repudiated the deliberate campaign of political anarchy and religious hatred to which he then gave his approval, although he was the leading Catholic peer in England. His successors in the leadership of the English Catholic Unionists have generally accepted the subsequent verdict of the world’s opinion upon the Ulster campaign, and upon the savage outrages against the Catholic minority in East Ulster which it provoked. But his public support of the Ulster campaign was an incident that will live in history. Had the attitude of the Duke of Norfolk and of the large number of influential Catholic families in England who always thought much as he did, been less narrow in regard to Irish nationalist aspirations, it can scarcely be doubted that their influence could have at once checked the extreme violence of the Unionist campaign before the war, and simultaneously assisted towards a less bitter view of English Unionism on the part of Irish Catholics.

The publisher’s announcement of this work lays some stress on the fact that its author, Mr. M. J. Nicolson, is ‘the son of the well-known writer of the “Indian Love Lyrics,” “The Garden of Kama,” etc.,’ and that ‘if heredity counts for anything, (he) stands a chance of possessing literary gifts.’ Many critics will be inclined to hesitate before granting that the popularity of the ‘The Indian Love Lyrics’ is due to their literary merit. Their appeal is based to a minor extent upon their exotic flavour and Eastern fragrance. They appeal rather to sensuality than sense. It was only when a few of them were exalted into a song-cycle that they won popular esteem, and this, surely, for the charm of the musical setting, rather than for any literary quality of their own. So that on the grounds of heredity alone, Mr. Nicolson’s claim to ‘literary gifts’ would appear to be extremely doubtful. He certainly does possess these gifts. But they are not just those ascribed to the ‘Garden of Kama.’

The only cumbrous thing about his lyrical drama is its title. Presumably it would have been against the interests of the play to have called it simply ‘The Death of Prince Hassan.’ But that is what its title should have been, as it will be in the minds of those who have read it. The argument that it would have ‘given the show away’ is more commercial than artistic. It is often more interesting to see a man die than live. As a compromise, with ‘Julius Cæsar’ in mind, ‘Prince Hassan’ might have been sufficient.

This is a remarkable play by a young poet who is, undeservedly, little known. As the title indicates, it deals with the character of Judas, but it finds very unusual motives for his betrayal. Judas is not the mean and miserable wretch of tradition, nor does he betray his Master through greed of gold. The play is built on the conviction that he betrayed Him solely with the idea of forcing Him, through the stress of danger, to show that He was the all-powerful God, and of precipitating, in this manner, his triumphant vindication.

The Judas of tradition would naturally not suit that motive. He is abandoned in favour of a Judas who is a dreamer and a thinker, a man far removed from the rest of the disciples.

‘Judas is not of us,’ says Simon the Leper,
‘For he is learned, wise in many tongues,
And dwells apart from men;.’

He is a man who has thought over the problems of existence in a profound manner, and who is deeply concerned with the obvious physical suffering of mankind. In his thinking he is constantly seeking a remedy to this state of affairs. He is an idealist, for he has always in his mind the vision of what man could make of the world, but his state when the action of the play commences is one of despair at man’s impotence and indifference. He has abandoned hope in

After an interval of sixteen years, Mr. A. E. Housman has given us a sequel to A Shropshire Lad. During that time one might naturally have expected the Lad of 1896 to have arrived at manhood’s estate; expected, perhaps, from the poet a hero with a different philosophy of life, and an experience ripened by almost a score of years. Mr. Housman could so easily have made his character grow up, see with new eyes, and speak with a new tongue. That is what would have happened in the case of any other poet who was not the supreme artist Mr. Housman has proved himself to be. For in Last Poems (absit omen !) he is still in the same mood as in A Shropshire Lad, and has thus demonstrated the artistic unity of his work.

That is the crowning triumph of his poetry. The hundred and five poems that make up these two volumes, and that represent, say, twenty years work, are really just one poem looked at and presented in one hundred and five different ways. Just as one person may have a hundred striking experiences in two decades of life without losing his individuality, or breaking up his personality into little pieces; or an air may have a hundred variations; so one rich mood of imagination has sufficed for Mr. Housman to enrich our literature with a hundred poems. He struck one precious seam of gold and worked it faithfully to the end.

Dr. Fortescue was not a born parish priest, but he was a far better one than many people who think they understood him suspect. The work was often against the grain—it offended the extreme reticence which was the key-note of his character—but he never shirked a duty. His visits to the poor and the sick were paid with the most scrupulous regularity, no matter how busy he might be, and he was never known to refuse to see any caller, however inconvenient it might be for him to interrupt his work to receive him. That reticence of his, and his horror of humbug, as well as his impatience with stupidity, and his absolute inability to grasp the difficulties of untrained minds and to make excuses accordingly, often caused temporary misunderstandings between him and his parishioners. There is no harm in saying—because everyone knows it—that he had a quick and very acid wit. Often—but not nearly so often of late years—he wounded the feelings of inoffensive people without, apparently, being able to realise that he was cruel. When he did realise it, he gave himself no peace until he had made amends. He would catch you up on his bicycle in the town, jump off, and without any preliminary good-mornings (he hated ceremony, and would never shake hands): ‘Look here,’ he would say, let’s be friends. I’ve been a beast to you. When are you coming to tea with me? Come next Monday.’

The circumstances of the Epistle to the Galatians are these :—

1. St. Paul had preached to the Galatians. He had taught them that Gentile converts need not be circumcised (Jewish converts would be already circumcised); and that the neo-Christians were not bound to observe the Law. ‘Behold I Paul tell you that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing’ (v. 2).

2. A group of Christians, probably quoting the authority of St. James, Bishop of Jerusalem, took advantage of St. Paul’s absence from Galatia to teach that circumcision was necessary for the convert Gentiles. ‘. . . they will have you to be circumcised’ (vi. 13), ‘. . . a little leaven’ (v. 9), ‘. . . some that trouble you would pervert the gospel of Christ’ (i. 7).

3. It is therefore a matter of dispute between one apostle (Paul) and at least the followers of another (James).

In such a dispute the most important element is the tribunal of appeal, without which no agreement between the parties disagreeing can be found.

The appeal—explicit or implicit—seems to have been to the authority or practice of St. Peter.

4. But St. Peter was claimed by both sides. The Iovδaιoι from Jerusalem could claim that St Peter had allowed St. James’s view to determine his own-course of action. ‘Before that some came from James he (Peter) did eat with the Gentiles. But when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself’ (ii. 12).

St. Paul does not deny (a) the authority of St. Peter or (b) the alleged fact. He does not say ‘Peter’s action is of no authority.’