It is often asked why the Catholic Church, for some centuries past, has apparently ceased to be the Mother of Poets—why, in Francis Thompson’s phrase, whilst retaining the palm of Sanctity, she has foregone the laurel of Song? The fact is scarcely in dispute : one could easily count upon the fingers of a hand the outstanding Catholic poets of the last three hundred years. All the greatest names are either pagan or heretic. Is there an explanation of this lamenable condition? For it was not always so. Time was when the courts of the Temple outsang the groves of Parnassus, and all the sons of God made joyful melody like birds in the woods of a spring morning.

‘Poetry,’ says Thompson, ‘sinned, Poetry fell: and instead of reclaiming her, Catholicism cast her forth from the door, to follow the feet of her pagan seducer.’ This is true : Poetry became the instrument of evil—the very lovely and effective instrument of a worldly and sensuous philosophy. She lost her good name, and her very beauty only made her the more an object of suspicion.

But how came it that poetry fell from grace? The Protestant Reformation has been rightly blamed for many evils: it must take the blame for this too. Previously, Christendom had been one—not only in faith, but in life also, and in genius. The same warm, vital stream flowed freely through every part of her. But, in an evil hour, the poison of heresy got into that life-stream, causing atrophy here, paralysis there, and everywhere inducing fever and delirium.

It was a happy thought of the Holy Father to associate the present Jubilee Year with a Missionary Exhibition in the Vatican grounds, for among the modem activities of the Church the foreign missionary movement undoubtedly holds a conspicuous place. The initiative of the Holy Father, however, in convoking the Vatican Exhibition, was not the mere official action of the Holy See rightly guaging, with true statesmanlike instinct, the pulse of the times; it was something of a much more personal nature : the natural prompting of an intense personal interest, which has already gained for him in some measure the reputation of being the ‘Missionary Pope.’

Apart from the general scheme of the Exhibition, it was the Holy Father’s express desire that the picturesque element should not be excluded, in order to make it no mere ‘dry as dust’ statement of statistics, but rather a stirring and pictorial record of missionary enterprise that would attract and arrest the interest of the ordinary visitor. So well have the various Congregations concerned in the work—whose response to his appeal far exceeded all anticipation—succeeded in carrying out his wishes that the attractiveness of the exhibition admits of no gainsaying. It has indeed achieved in no small degree the desirable result of conveying matter of high educational value in a manner so attractive that it can scarcely fail to impress even the least intellectual visitor. Especially is this the case with regard to the realistic oil paintings, statuary of remarkable beauty, and particularly the numerous groups of life-size wax figures which illustrate the national habits, costumes and characteristic surroundings of the many races of the globe, from the frozen north to the torrid zone.

Neither the Luddite fires kindled by starving operatives nor the fires that blazed in southern England twenty years later were of Cobbett’s making. He understood the provocation and cried aloud against the wickedness that drove the English labourer to violence ; but always was Cobbett for constitutional reform. Were his writings inflammatory? His enemies said so; and Cobbett, for his part, hoped and believed they ‘really were inflammatory; for they inflamed the people against the corruption, bribery, fraud, and perjury, which had been the great cause of all their miseries.’

But no revolutionary was William Cobbett. Always he took his stand on the old things, which he loved, and railed fiercely against the new, which he detested. Never till his death could he be persuaded to turn republican, though no man assailed more sharply the occupant of the throne. It was enough for Cobbett that monarchy belonged to the old England of the ages of faith. The Commonwealth, with its prohibition of mince pies, its puritanism and its cant of ‘godliness,’ was the only republic England had known, and to Cobbett the reign of Cromwell was a nightmare.

‘I knew my countrymen well,’ Cobbett wrote; and his boast was justified. He knew them well. His very prejudices were theirs. He is as English as Dickens in his hatred of charity schools and all that pertained to the new commerce.

It was a cruel fate that drove Lord Balfour from the well-guarded security of the Holy Land, where the public expression of popular opinion has long been smothered by means of armoured cars and effective military supervision, to the freer atmosphere of Syria where he had such a rude awakening from his idealistic dreams. If we know anything of the sentiment of our continental neighbours with regard to the Zionist experiment (as it is euphemistically called) now being carried on in Palestine under the armed protection of the British Government, we can imagine how Europe must have rocked with laughter at the sight of that philosophical statesman flying for dear life from Damascus and the wrath of the Arabs. We cannot resist the temptation to remark that he missed a great opportunity. If only he had had the presence of mind to be let down from the walls of Damascus in a basket! But after all there is something of a parable in the fact that Paul, the friend of the Gentiles, escaped from his Jewish enemies in a basket, while Balfour, the friend of the Jews, escaped in a motor. Saint Paul fled from the Jews and took refuge in Arabia; but Lord Balfour would find the whole country of the Arabs too narrow after his recent experience of Arab opinion in Damascus.

Such a ludicrous ending to his pilgrimage has changed indignation into pity, not unmingled with amusement. For a week we read patiently of his triumphal progress through the Jewish settlements as he was shepherded from one to the other, and listened with resignation to the much-repeated assertion that the supposed antagonism of Jews and Arabs was a myth; then came the anti-climax of his exodus from Damascus, which gave the lie to this assertion once and for all.

Our modern literature has become so self-conscious, analytic, subjective, conventional, and, invariable concomitant of the last, licentious in the true meaning of that word, that it would be an interesting experiment to see if any of the old accomplishment were still possible to it. Owing to our unfortunate acquisition of ‘temperaments,’ ‘view-points’ (loathsome word) and subjective theories of all sorts we have become singularly skilled in distorting language from its proper use as principally to make it the means of telling various kinds of lies which are no more true because they fall into the artistic heresy of subjective sincerity. (And, O Sincerity, what crimes are committed in thy name.)

From a psychological point of view these things are doubtless very interesting; and we ought to be very grateful to most of our modern authors for showing us so very instructively how many things can be used for purposes which their Maker never intended : how the English language can be tortured into a parody of German or Greek, and the fine gold of our verbal heritage transmuted, by a devil’s alchemy, into the base tokens of our common speech. But, in the intervals of our scientific raptures, some of us would like, occasionally, to read a little poetry, and, even more, a little prose. The air is full of neologisms unbeautiful, and twisted syntax inexpressive of thought, and not less opaque of feeling . . . ‘But that large utterance of the early Gods,’ where is it?

‘Dukie, dear, I think Zania most suitable.’ Lady Trevor tactfully withdrew after delivering the blow. With one ingratiating look behind that might be interpreted,’ Well, just think it over quietly,’ she swept out of the room.

Of course his mother had said much more than that. She had talked for half an hour and enjoyed herself enormously. Like the experienced general she was, she had given no indication that this was to be a great offensive. Lady Trevor began with a little preliminary skirmish round the pages of a Sunday paper, and closed in suddenly on the Society column. Wasn’t this photograph of Miss Zania Wilkins just too sweet! Dukie must really look at it, and read what nice things they said about dear Zania. Sweet girl, of course she deserved every word of praise they could find to say about her. And they said it so cleverly, too. ‘This charming débutante’ and ‘this beautiful blonde’ . . . what happy phrases, that hit off darling Zania too perfectly. Didn’t he think so? Of course he had met her several times recently (yes, she came out at the Wen-ham’s dance, and what a sensation she created too!', and he would be meeting her constantly through the season. If only Providence had blessed Lady Trevor with a daughter, she would have wished her to be like Zania, so fair and frolicsome, full of such high spirits, and bubbling over with life. It was wonderful how the dear child kept it up so well. Lady Trevor supposed it was youth, beautiful youth, and sighed.

It was at this point in the monologue that the big attack began to develop. Mother wanted to talk seriously to her big, bad boy. Well, he wasn’t really bad at all, but the best big baby on earth.