Books
Kendall, James A Emery, George Dangerfield, Katherine Bregy, Boyd-Carpenter, Patrick J Healy, Margar
BOOKS Beguiling Simplicity The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge. New York: The Cosmopolitan Book Corporation. $1.00. PERHAPS no autobiographer may tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but...
...But I should like to...
...Coolidge's interesting revelations but one of the bonds that hold this quiet and firm New Englander in the abiding respect of so great a number of his fellow-citizens, whose faith is not yet the victim of the complexities that torture our self-confessed intellectuals...
...It does not occur to the sceptical or the indifferent that such an attitude is not only one of Mr...
...William A- Maguire is a commander in the chaplain corps of the United States Navy...
...Lord Lansdowne's position and mental attitude towsrd the question of peace, which found partial explosion in his "peace letter" to the London Daily Telegraph, from which it appears that he had an interview with the London Times before approaching the Telegraph and had already, previous to chat, approached high government officials on the subject...
...his national political career, including the Presidency, within fifty...
...Coolidge claims for himself is that he was continuously prepared for a higher step...
...Boas honorably does no violence to it...
...Everything from masks to ticket-sellers is somehow sandwiched in...
...The world may have to wait another 500 years for the possible arrival of another George Moore, before it has fresh news of the Browning marriage...
...Revivalistic Synthesis The Lord of Life: A Fresh Approach to the Incarnation, by H. T. Andrews, Vernon Bartlett, F. C. Bryan, A. T. Cadoux, G. E. Darlaston, D. Miall Edwards, H. H. Farmer, John Lewis, Malcolm Spencer...
...The book will not be numbered among the great biographies of history, but it presents a remarkably interesting and suggestive picture of a unique political figure...
...Boyd-Carpenter...
...His friendships are deep and lasting...
...He has likewise supplied full corroborative notes which the reader will find he may consult with profit...
...Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company...
...FROM Elizabeth Barrett to Elizabeth Browning is more than a mere change of name...
...As for the subsidiary malts, they are but a sorry sort of sordid morons...
...It differs from the older Protestantism in finding apparently no doctrinal values in the Bible...
...The chief protagonist, Gileret the tutor, finding that the object of his desire is not only the village laundress but also the village prostitute, goes more or less mad and disfigures the girl for life in a vicious attack-after which he wantonly murders a helpless old man on the street corner...
...New Yotk: Harper and Brothers...
...to tell the lights that are reflected from outside...
...Rev...
...Above the bulb you may perceive a hyacinth...
...This is too much for one of our foremost American biographers, to whom "the attitude is simply that of the Christian, not to say fundamentalist, orthodoxy of the nineteenth century or earlier...
...8.50...
...Indeed Lord Lansdowne and his biographer display but little interest in the philosophy or mental changes of succeeding periods...
...Any man who has been placed in the White House cannot feel that it is the result of his own exertions or his own merit...
...The complications sought and desired by his critics do not exist...
...The silence grew intense till Lord Crewe realized that his attempt to pass and talk with another peer had stopped the debate, so he retreated to his former seat...
...but Mrs...
...He knows the average man and he appeals to him because he met and overcame the difficulties that make up so much of an average man's struggle...
...translated by Randolph T. Weaver...
...Rev...
...On the other hand, he clearly perceived the causal forces of his own growth and development...
...Sick in body, but with her vast intellect and very feminine imagination unimpaired, she shut herself up in a perfect hothouse of a room...
...Letters from Lord Sanderson and Colonel House are enclosed which place the peace letter in a somewhat different angle, so that it can be seen that the press and the public were divided...
...I haven't time to cut it open...
...Of the three other women involved, one is a procuratrix whose curiosity is even greater than her cupidity, and the second (Gueret's wife) is a rather pathetic, rather fatuous drudge...
...The doctrines of the inerrancy of the Scriptures, the Divinity of Christ, and Authority in Religion are traditionally and necessarily associated with belief in the Incarnation...
...12.50...
...Perhaps no chapter of his work is more revealing as to his methods of thought and expression than that in which he explains why he refused to enlarge that much-discussed statement...
...Coolidge's mental processes are simple and direct...
...Katherine Brijgy...
...Very seldom has any group of writers written of Christ with greater reverence or a deeper sense of dependence, but it seems a travesty of Christianity to present the life of Christ as merely a standard by which "religious experience" may be gauged...
...New York: The Mac-millan Company...
...2.50...
...Lord Lansdowne was addressing the House of Lords upon Mr...
...The third, a rich married woman embittered by boredom, finds sinister pleasure in striking her child and finally-having first befriended, then betrayed the tutor-ends the tangle of her life in the manner of Hedda Gabler...
...Lyle W. Cooper is professor of economics in Marquette University...
...For it is a book "no family should be without...
...and failing, wanders the roads distraught until in the misty dawn she finds deliverance beneath a merciful cart-wheel...
...Coolidge sententiously remarks: "He was never hurt by what he did not say...
...Undoubtedly the particular obsessions of these people are revealed with an objective realism and subjective analysis so intense as to be almost physically exhausting...
...Like Maurice Emmanuel's Antique Greek Dance it is one of those prime art history specialties which only the French can concoct...
...The authors discuss Ritschl and Ritschlianism, but they are silent about the neo-Ritschlians and the logic of both Ritschlianism and neo-Ritschlianism which led to the theories of Karl Barth...
...Margaret Kendall is an American artist, and a member of the Society of Miniature Painters...
...But he was considerably embarrassed by a cryptic thing he did say: "I do not choose to run...
...Elizabeth Barrett, her life and times-here is the material for a profound and illuminating ballet-melodrama, tragedy, comedy, wit, burlesque, compelled to unity by an entirely beautiful something we still obscure with the epithet Victorian...
...This is one link which connects it with the modern drama, although it may be termed primarily a section of the bridge back to Plautus and the Roman comedy...
...One looks forward expectantly and with pleasure to the publication of the second volume...
...New York: The John Day Company...
...It finds in religion no doctrinal content, though it sustains its argument by an elaborate and abstruse apparatus drawn from the recent developments in science and philosophy...
...For he must continue among his contemporaries and the tale of his relations with others finds a difficult balance between embarrassing frankness and tactful reticence...
...Boas flavors her account of these and subsequent events with occasional rapid and clever sketches, one i-, particular of the adorable Miss Mitford...
...It is, itself, one long temptation to rightdoing, as we understand that term from Mrs...
...It is the part of the book which most invites reflection...
...Nomads The Dark Journey, by Julian Green;Hranslai?d from the French by Vyvyan Holland...
...OF THE original version of his story, known in France as Leviathan (reviewed in The Commonweal, August 21, 1929) Mr...
...Instantly Lord Lansdowne ceased speaking but remained rigidly erect with a slight bending forward as if to indicate that he was anticipating a remark from Lord Crewe...
...Yet its very simplicity appears to confound the Freudian critic, seeking complicated motives for an uncomplicated mind and character...
...Then and then only did Lord Lansdowne recommence by saying, "As I was saying, my Lords, when the noble earl opposite sought distraction in exercise...
...The work is so well done that it must sooner or later come into the hands of everybody who is studying the period in question...
...The translator, whose work is first rate, induced M. Duchartre to amend the text...
...The implications of such a change and of the circumstances in which it would occur, are exciting enough...
...The Goddess of Ghosts...
...PERHAPS no autobiographer may tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth...
...From it, England's greatest poetess continued to pour forth her delightful correspondence and a quantity of romantic verse, herself unseen save by a few particular friends who, oblivious to the atmosphere, would sit with her for hours "conversing brilliantly...
...Green's style, also his subject-matter, frequently recall the author of Madame Bovary...
...and Gospel and Citizen...
...Boyd-Carpenter, a writer on European politics, is a professor in the department of political philosophy of Fordham University...
...New York: the Macmillan Company...
...Without them it is impossible to sustain belief in Christ as The Lord of Life...
...I am not going to purchase twenty -or more-copies for distribution in the many households where I know they would be of inestimable use...
...CONTRIBUTORS Frank O'Hara is professor of economics in the Catholic University of America, and editor of Catholic Rural Life...
...Who will leave Elizabeth Browning alone, and write a really good book all about Elizabeth Barrett...
...James A. Emery...
...The unfortunate girl herself, who is understandable although never very vivid or appealing, tries to save him from arrest...
...New York: Columbia University Press...
...Some power outside and beyond him becomes manifest through him...
...In sum, however, it is little more than early Methodistic revivalism and present-day Holy Rollerism expressed in the form of a philosophic synthesis...
...Luncheon changed from thrushes and chianti to mutton chops...
...To the thoughtful analyst it supplies all the wellsprings of the autobiographer's salient characteristics...
...Politics is the art of moving large numbers of people in a given direction, without the aid of physical force...
...But there is little of constructive passion-even in the sense of happiness or activity or self-fulfilment-in its material...
...Coolidge than he writes of himself...
...The Difficult Commandment...
...This is readable, but it is not biograph and it is not adequate to Elizabeth Barrett...
...2.50...
...and Historical Christianity and the Social Question...
...C. C. Martindale, S. J., writer, preacher and lecturer, is the author of The Life of R. H. Benson...
...Briefer Mention The Italian Comedy, by Pierre Louis Duchartre...
...Coolidge's commentaries upon the presidential office, its practical relations to the Congress, his own means of acquiring information and influencing the course of legislative policy, upon the composition and procedure of the Senate, and upon the popular relations of the chief executive to the people, are at once interesting and informing...
...Boas, however, is like one who unearths a rare bulb and says: "Here is the leaf mold-observe is color and peculiar smell...
...THIS excellent and imposing volume, commented upon editorially in this issue, is an examination of ecclesiastical writings which throw light upon the early history of Ireland...
...It is quite true that Mr...
...But many agreed that the letter tended to focus opinion again on the objects and conditions of the war...
...He thus avoids the original sin of most modern autobiography and biography-bulk-and indicates why his alma mater conferred its Doctor's degree upon its most distinguished son for, among other reasons, "adequate brevity...
...The rich collection of texts and illustrations is a veritable marvel, which would be interesting for its own sake if one cared not so much as a straw for the improvisations which post-Renaissance Harlequins and Pantaloons showered upon their audiences...
...Everywhere is first delirium, then devastation...
...It is incredible to those of little faith that, in the midst of so much theological collapse, Mr...
...Reticent by nature, he is frank about the personal and educational influences that played upon his boyhood and youth...
...Remote and infrequent echoes of Geoffrey Scott suggest an attempt at something more important than a mere account...
...This late Victorian statesman had the characteristics of his age, but in his own case slightly accentuated because his mother was of French descent, a fact which Lord Lansdowne betrayed strongly in his innate courtesy and ceremonious manners, both of which were incomprehensible to many modern politicians of the democratic school...
...and Witch Girl and Other Poems...
...Its basis is subjective: its method pragmatic...
...He condenses the whole statement of his life within less than two hundred and fifty pages...
...THIS volume disclose...
...From first to last these pages carry messages and counsels of which one would not have a word left out or changed...
...And the quotations from papers and essays written by children, and older girls, show how inspiriting have been the class discussions in which most of them had their origin...
...2.50...
...To Elizabeth Browning, yes, for of her there is practically nothing new to tell...
...Cabot's introduction, in which she says, "The aim of this book is to bring together from actual experience the principal attractions to good living-in other words, the ideas, affections, interests and activities that make us prefer the right and reject the wrong...
...It draws its arguments largely from the conclusions of the experimental psychologists...
...Far from being cold and unemotional, the fine reverence and affection for his father presents a continuing relationship too infrequently found in the modern family...
...Robert was permitted to read Sonnets from the Portuguese...
...Not always a moral theatre (indeed it was sometimes even looser than the age it entertained) the Commedia dell' Arte had many a brush with civil and ecclesiastical authority...
...The metamorphosis was complete...
...The Sources for the Early History of Ireland: Volume I, by James F. Kenney...
...They are but a step from insanity, and oftener than not the step is taken before the stricken eye of the reader's mind...
...It is an inverted metamorphosis, where the nymph is chased out of, not into, an almost fabulous retreat...
...Coolidge retains so much...
...The book is full of the evidences of his orderliness of mind, his acute interest in that study of such lasting importance to the public man-human nature...
...When opportunity knocked, he was at the door...
...He does not say so, but the testimony of his associates, even of the humblest among the village intimates of his boyhood, counteract the common notion of his lack of warmth in personal relations...
...Hence, after a lengthy and fascinating parley, Robert Browning dragged her into sunlight and strength...
...And rightly...
...But is there any use denying the morbidity of the whole exploit- the fact that his people are so hideously warped and neurotic that their reactions are only remotely related to normal human experience ? In fact, may there not be a very real use in pointing out quite simply that the gifted Julian Green's pictures of provincial French life are just about as universal as Eugene O'Neill's pictures of provincial America or D. H. Lawrence's of provincial England...
...To expect intimate self-interrogation and continuous analysis of emotions, motives and mental struggles, is to expect something entirely foreign to his nature...
...He exhibits his characteristic conciseness...
...There was the elopement, the journey to Italy, the sudden return to health...
...The Life of Bernard Vaughn, S. J...
...THIS work is a well-compacted effort to find a Metaphysic for emotionalism in religion...
...to appraise without elaboration the exact relation of the whole to its infinite variety of parts: such a process might be applied to Elizabeth Barrett...
...The most that Mr...
...The volume indicates no comparison between politics and political life in 1860-1870 with 1910-1920...
...George Dangerfield is an English critic and poet now residing in New York...
...The reviewer once witnessed, in the British House of Lords, an incident which will serve to indicate the cutting severity of his manner...
...Katherine Bregy is a critic and poet, and the author of The Poet's Chantry...
...IT IS curious that this book was not translated sooner...
...George Dangerfield...
...Prepared for modern magazine publication, we possess already the critical evidence that its "lack of self-revelation" is not only resented but irritates some who believe they could write much better and more satisfactorily of Mr...
...Dorothy Leonard contributes poetry to current magazines Rev...
...To a number of critics, perhaps the most disconcerting revelation of this "unrevealing" volume is the unwavering faith of Calvin Coolidge...
...New York: Longmans, Green and Company...
...The fact that English politics have passed from the control of the leisured and cultured classes to the types that demand position and then attention for personal reasons finds no mention in the volume...
...Patrick J. Healy...
...Grace Hazard Conkung is associate professor of English in Smith College and the author of Wilderness Songs...
...A Victorian Statesman Lord Lansdowne, by Lnrd Newton...
...The short chapter called Friends is possibly richest in such illustration...
...Lloyd George's budget, when suddenly Lord Crewe passed between the speaker and his (opposition) audience...
...Dorothy Day is the author of several novels...
...Patrick J. Healy is dean of the faculty of theology in the Catholic University of America...
...He has no delusions of grandeur: "It is a great advantage to a President and a major source of safety to the country, for him to know that he is not a great man...
...It is true indeed, that he does consummately well what he sets out to do...
...To create an image like a smooth and imperfect crystal...
...THIS book is happily named...
...Charlotte Kellogg is a member of the National Research Council, the author of Women of Belgium, and the translator of Madame Curie's Pierre Curie...
...Nymph in a Retreat Elizabeth Barrett Browning, by Louise Schutz Boas...
...One striking feature of the book is that though it represents a phase or development of German theological thought or speculation, it does not present that thought in its most recent manifestation...
...to show the veins inside...
...Green declared the intention had been to "show the activity of passion, capable at once of good and of evil": surely one of the most challenging and awesome themes in literature...
...He holds strong political convictions and expresses them...
...Afternoons in April...
...He is the author of The Valerian Persecution...
...This is the bulb...
...Who shall do the choreography...
...Coolidge escapes both these difficulties by an undocumented statement so closely confined to the immediate circumstances of his origin and development that, beyond his own family and his college instructors, he refers, and but casually, to very few of the great number of individuals with whom he must have had social and political contact...
...Margaret Kendall...
...The polite world, gently perspiring in an Indian summer of romance, observed this stifling retreat with delighted reverence: it concealed England's greatest poetess...
...Born into an utterly horrid household, her own inclination to morbidness was increased by the early death of the only brother she cared for...
...Coolidge possesses it to an extraordinary degree...
...and Poets and Pilgrims...
...These magnets I call Temptations to Rightdoing in contrast to the better-known term, 'temptations to wrongdoing.' " The anecdotes are beautifully chosen...
...The process, however, is an intensely difficult one-through painstaking critical and social research, one arrives at the exact domain of pure imagination and insight...
...Mrs...
...The thought of these English scholars was expressed more cogently a generation ago by German writers, and, in the interval German thought has been molded afresh under the impact of science and social change...
...He frankly confesses, at each stage of his upper journey, that he prayed for help and got it...
...It is possible to write a biography of a person without insisting upon the details of that person's work...
...Standards, and Skilful Criticism, also are noteworthy...
...Sound Counsel Temptations to Rightdoing, by Ella Lyman Cabot...
...James A. Emery is a Washington lawyer...
...He contemplated the workings of his great office and came "to realize, with an increasing sense of humility, that he is but an instrument in the hands of God...
...He returns from the pinnacle of political power to live in a small town and a small house, all of which makes the average man feel that he is very much akin to himself...
...2.50...
...il has a romantic perfume, and quite a variety of important and eccentric bees have been attracted to it...
...Duchartre's book is, of course, not so much a history of the Commedia dell' Arte as a running commentary on the actors, scenarios and costumes of a vanished stage...
...He occupied the highest position in the gift of the people without loss of his simplicity...
Vol. 11 • February 1930 • No. 17
