In reading these reminiscences we are reminded of Goldsmith’s classical criticism of a third-rate work : ‘This book is easier to write than to read.’ But to enclose Dr. McDonald’s book in an epigram we should have to say : ‘This book is better to read than to write.’ To speak our mind quite frankly, we must be allowed to think that of all forms of literature the Apologia pro vita sua, though sometimes the most literary is seldom the most excusable. No man is at his best when he is seeking to show his moral uprightness or his intellectual consistency. The pharisee reminds us that our best apology before the ultimate tribunal of God is : ‘Lord, be merciful to me a sinner.’ And the wise man was never wiser than when reminding us that our claim to intellectual consistency should be tempered by the conviction that ‘the number of fools is infinite.’

But whilst we should have counselled the Professor of Maynooth not to write his so-called Reminiscences, we cannot counsel his fellow Catholics, and especially his fellow priests, not to read what he has written. It need hardly be said that a book so hot from the heart of a Celt fighting for intellectual freedom must be read with discrimination. Dr. McDonald’s bringing-up was so provincial that he does not recognise how often his sæva indignatio is over little more than the politics of the village pump. Even the O’Hickey case, which might seem to centre round the fate of a dead or a dying language, almost dwindles down to a melodrama on an income of, say, £400 or £500 a year.