oesies erotiques, tant des anciens que des
modernes, livres impies ou corrupteurs, Ovide, Tibulle, Properce, pour ne
nommer que les plus connus, Dante, Petrarque, Boccace, tous ces auteurs
Italiens qui deja souillaient les ames et ruinaient les moeurs, en creant
ou perfectionnant la langue_. {2} Blameworthy carelessness at the least,
which can class the _Vita Nuova_ with the _Ars Amandi_ and the
_Decameron_! And among many English Catholics the spirit of poetry is
still often received with a restricted Puritanical greeting, rather than
with the traditionally Catholic joyous openness.

We ask, therefore, for a larger interest, not in purely Catholic poetry,
but in poetry generally, poetry in its widest sense. With few
exceptions, whatsoever in our best poets is great and good to the non-
Catholic, is great and good also to the Catholic; and though Faber threw
his edition of Shelley into the fire and never regretted the act; though,
moreover, Shelley is so little read among us that we can still tolerate
in our Churches the religious parody which Faber should have thrown after
his three-volumed Shelley; {3}--in spite of this, we are not disposed to
number among such exceptions that straying spirit of light.

* * * * *

We have among us at the present day no lineal descendant, in the poetical
order, of Shelley; and any such offspring of the aboundingly spontaneous
Shelley is hardly possible, still less likely, on account of the defect
by which (we think) contemporary poetry in general, as compared with the
poetry of the early nineteenth century, is mildewed. That defect is the
predominance of art over inspiration, of body over soul. We do not say
the _defect_ of inspiration. The warrior is there, but he is hampered by
his armour. Writers of high aim in all branches of literature, even when
they are not--as Mr. Swinburne, for instance, is--lavish in expression,
are generally over-deliberate in expression. Mr. Henry James,
delineating a fictitious writer clearly intended to be the ideal of an
artist, makes him regret that he has sometimes allowed himself to take
the second-best word instead of searching for the best. Theoretically,
of course, one ought always to try for the best word. But practically,
the habit of excessive care in word-selection frequently results in loss
of spontaneity; and, still worse, the habit of always taking the best
word too easily becomes the habit of always taking the most ornate word,