Books
Clark, Edwin & O'Sheel, Shaemas & Graham, Gladys & Phelan, Gerald B. & Hayes, Carlton J. H.
COMMONWEAL THE December 25, 1929 BOOKS Modern Italy A History of Italy, z87z-z9z5, by Benedetto Croce; trans- lated by Cecilia M. Ady. Oxford: Clarendon Press. $5.o0. C ROCE has...
...It is from the Malehyde edition that Mr...
...I t was onty to be expected, therefore, that Fenianism would refuse to melt under the frown of Cardinal CuUen...
...The author is a rare soul...
...New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company...
...John ONE cannot hope to qualify as a well-read, up-to-date conDevoy's favorite justification of the Fenian strategy was always versationalist unless one can quote glibly a phrase or two the admission by Gladstone---cited again in these pages--that it was "the intensity of Fenianism" alone which moved him to disestablish the Irish Protestant Church...
...The format-probably the finest trade edition of the year--puts it among the most desirable of gift books...
...Salpeter has faithfully reported in engrossing detail...
...CARLTON J. H. HAYES...
...Despite the and sober sage compared with the Wise Man of Darmstadt...
...He has nizes the danger to peace and liberty which inheres in the written of the great Fenian conspiracy of the I86O'S, its inner exalting of force and in its attendant militarism and imperial- workings, its leaders, and the reasons why its final military ism--he calls it "Bismarckism"--and declares that "it was strokes were so feeble--a record invaluable as history and repugnant to the Italian spirit...
...But this is overstatement...
...The total result seems to have been that a few prospective Fenians were lost to the organization and a good many had their confessions postponed...
...John B. Watson and his disciples to bolster up his own theory of Behaviorism...
...Salpeter reviews the high point of Johnson's life, with a nice use of anecdotes...
...Salpeter COMMONWEAL THE 234 7" EEK The conversations between President Hoover and Premier Macdonald have centered the interest of a world struggling toward universal peace on the London conference on naval limitation...
...as it was, no one seems to have lost the Faith, and the Fenian organization was not damaged nor weakened...
...He denounced the idea of forgiving one's enemy, and was voluble in exalting Tir-nan'Og over heaven...
...There is mystery as well as adventure--buried-treasure mystery with maps and caves and tombs and smoke screens and the other paraphernalia of the best tradition...
...After the hero leaves England on a whaling trip, the book goes Treasure Island--and right good Treasure Island at that...
...B.ALTMAN & CO FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK GENTLfiMEN'S OUTFII'I'ERS Special models of our selections represent the prevalent styles in hats of proven quality...
...Apparently Professor Tinker's study of Boswell was a turning-point in the personal reputation of the man...
...He practises, as well as preaches, the difficult art of synthesizing, in fine literary form, the political, economic and intellectual tendencies of his time and place...
...Croce is an Italian patriot, a patriot of the liberal, humanitarian, idealistic sort, an avowed foe of jingoism and nationalist strutting...
...I put the same request to my readers, this time, with this difference only, that I wish the book to be read in this way only, when taken up for the first time...
...Salpeter wants Boswell to receive his belated recognition...
...5.oo...
...Perhaps, however, there is not in reality such a wide gulf between liberal patriotism and forceful nationalism speech of thousands of followers, or the "Seanfhearr" to those as is usually imagined...
...The from Keyserling...
...The Pagan" claimed to believe that the fine barbaric qualities of the ancient Irish had been ruined by Christianity...
...C ROCE has philosophized about his country and has produced a historical narrative of prime importance...
...Repudiation of the Fenian Oath was made a condition for absolution--examination of the oath makes it difficult to understand why...
...The number of pages in Creative Understanding and The Recovery of Truth, together, totals I,I47, not including the thirty-five pages of prefaces...
...If you have read anything of Keyserling you will realize what wealth of sonority and pomposity that presages...
...He is himself a liberal of a confessedly dwindling school--he clings "to the ideal of liberty, not as a barren will to power, but as the power to will, or the moral consciousness"--and he leaves no doubt of his hostility toward the dominant thought and action in present-day Italy...
...I his T Professor WAS during Chauncey the first Tinker years published of this present Young decade Boswell...
...The Recovery of Truth...
...evidence of the d6b~cle of 1867, it is made plain that Fenianism The Count entertains no doubt of the importance of his birthcame very close to success...
...But for all the work's being primarily a breezy and fascinating tale, Mr...
...As the reputations of Dryden and Ben Jonson live on their position as literary dictators as well as on the quality of their work so Johnson without Boswell, would have lived--slightly dimmed, but a giant on the horizon of literary history...
...A longer continuance of the struggle might have caused anti-clericalism to take root in Ireland...
...11111 I have called this work a "symphony in thought...
...COMMONWEAL THE 23 2 The philosophy of Fenianism was succinctly stated by the organizer of the movement, James Stephens--whom Devoy helped to rescue from Richmond Prison, Dublin--in the coneluding words of his speech from the dock: "I deliberately and Recovery of Truth, by Count Keyserling...
...As he develops the growing familiarity between the twenty-twoyear-old Boswell and the almost elderly Johnson, he makes a prodigious effort to avoid the popular habit of drawing Boswell in caricature...
...Airman Stetsons priced from . . . $8.50 to $15.00 Johnson and His Shadow Dr...
...The candor of this recital of the relations of two eccentrics is equaled by the delicacy with which it has been written...
...ALTMAN HATS This new study of the relationship of Boswell and Johnson BY STETSON MEN'S HATS-FIRST FLOOR If there is any objection to be found in his account of two =w i I men who have remained ever fascinating--and about whom we know more than we do of our own grandparents--it rests on some too-enthusiastic generalizations...
...A further fact, not generally known, is that it is due to Professor Tinker's search that we now have the gorgeous new edition of Boswell's private papers printed by Ralph Isham...
...New York: conscientiously repudiate the existence of that [British] law Harper and Brothers...
...But when he was stripped for prison garb the scapular was found around his neck...
...Again: "Nobody will really understand The Recovery tative fashion, the preliminaries of Easter Week, bring to a of Truth unless he has read Creative Understanding...
...As an introduction to my public lectures," he says (Creative Understanding) "I generally ask my listeners on no account to assume the discussive attitude, on no account to begin thinking while listening...
...power of the writing...
...Dealing now with politics and now with philosophy, relying alike upon acts of government and expressions of literature, Croce traces with consummate skill the transition from the romantic idealism of the period of Italy's unification to the prosaic positivism and realism of the two decades which followed, and thence to the disillusionment and scepticism which marked the close of the last century and against which the Nietzschean "will to power" of our century, whether extolled by a left-wlng Socialist like Mussolini, or by an aesthetic Nationalist llke D'Annunzlo, has been a protest...
...He looks upon the Papacy as "nothing else than the survivor of the ancient Roman empire, transformed into a spiritual empire," and regards the "internal" settlement of the Roman question, by means of the Law of Guarantees of 1871, as having been "in conformity with the idea of a modern state and with the dignity of Italy...
...Briefly, Mr...
...This work, he says, "has its precursors ovJy in music, but none in philosophic literature...
...he detests D'Annunzio...
...Lest I should be credited with coining this doubtfully apt epithet, I hasten to state that the Count's own words were my inspiration...
...Croce remains in Italy, retains a sweet reasonableness and a sense of humor, and explains remorselessly, almost gaily, how his own ideals have been overborne by historical events, how in the land of Mazzini and Cavour the rise of Mussolini has been rendered possible and, indeed, almost inevitable...
...The new version is but another answer to the criticism that the Catholic Church discourages the reading of the Bible . . . . AN AMERICAN LUXEMBOURG is an apt description of the new home for exhibiting art which has not yet been sealed with the approval of several generations and so we find James W. Lane writing in commendation of the establishment of the new Museum of Modern Art which was recently opened in New York City . . . . In addition there will also be the usual departments of editorials, communications, the play, poetry and book reviews...
...Nor is his liberalism tinged with offensive anti-clericalism...
...Yet, despite the author's manifest subjectivity, despite some errors of factual detail, the book before us is a singularly convincing interpretation and critique of the evolution of modern Italy, and displays on every page an underlying knowledge of an extremely wide range of very precise data...
...Morley's pen across his pages...
...Salpeter has drawn much of the material which affords refreshing interest...
...Thrale, Hannah More and The Club, with the opinions of Reynolds, Burke and Goldsmith, sufficient to make any reputation a living memory...
...If he prefers the sweet reasonableness of the dassics, he will not be likely to lend an appreciative ear to this impressionistic medley of philosophical vagaries...
...The characters are the type that one wants in a "Yo-ho-ho-and-a-bottle-of-rum" novel...
...For instance: "Nobody can know what table vanities and personal ambitions split and palsied the I stand for as a philosopher unless he has read The Ethical American organization, Stephens completely lost the power of Problem, and The Religious Problem in The Recovery of decisive actioia, and the opportunity was missed...
...It is to be said for Cardinal Cullen that, having been out of Ireland for thirty-five years, and present in Rome during 1848, he honestly believed that the Fenian leaders were allied with the Carbonari...
...I t must be because he is blinded by patriotism that Croce, otherwise so well informed, imputes to Austria and Germany the "intention" of provoking a general European war in July, 1914...
...It is ridiculous to think of him as lost without Boswell...
...The Fenian plot was an integral part of that seven-centuried resistance to foreign rule which Augustin Thierry noted as "perhaps the most extraordinary and the greatest example that a people has ever given...
...Croce's history is actually history, and neither a eulogy nor a diatribe...
...5.00...
...New York: Gaelic American Publishing Company...
...December 25, 1929 Symphonic Philosophy Creative Understanding, by Count Keyserling...
...However, it makes one feel better than the clearer but drearier pessimism of Spengler...
...All in all, Mr...
...A few years ago The Story of ling hero of romantic fiction ever had more adventurous lives Philosophy was a best seller...
...He excuses the activity of extreme Italian irredentists in the Tyrol as "due to a defect by no means ignoble, to the feelings of pity and humanity which animated Italy...
...I imagine that must be a very comforting religion but rather difficult to preach to the poor and unsophisticated, the ignorant and unlettered...
...He has a vogue in America today...
...We have crossed the Atlantic with so many bored heroes whose only idea of change consists in substituting a European oaf6 for an American speakeasy that it is both a relief and a pleasure to get aboard the Tropic Bird in Baltimore harbor and do thirty-five days of fairly dirty weather before the mast while the old I6O-ton sailing vessel battles every inch of its way to dock in one of Liverpool's great marine basins...
...3.50...
...In other words one must "wait until the complete reading of the book has thoroughly befuddled the wits before trying to see through the bluff...
...At any rate the present work offers who have the Gaelic, John Devoy gave over the active editing numerous examples of how a liberal patriot, in the ardor of of the Gaelic American and found time, before death came last his patriotism, may identify himself with specific developments, year, to set down his recollections of a long life filled with the general trend of which in the long run gives aid and com- adventure and toil, endurance and achievement in the high fort to the forceful nationalist...
...Perhaps its greatest quality is the entire absence Truth entitled My Own Belief but he has not yet discovered of bitterness or any controversial note...
...Macaulay's label has long stuck, though Boswell has been recognized as the greatest biographer in English...
...He praises added an account, even more valuable historically, of the her increase of armaments and explains that "necessary forces" machinations leading up to the insurrection of 1916, as viewed enabled her to be "less hesitating and more enterprising" in from the standpoint of the Americans who participated, diforeign policy...
...He is both an idealist philosopher and an erudite scholar...
...He laments the illiberal sectarianism of Italian Freemasonry and insists that anti-Catholicism was never really popular in Italy and was constantly waning among its political leaders...
...but it is to be said for those leaders that, barring the fact that John O'Leary sometimes missed Mass, they gave in all circumstances and to the ends of their lives, the most exemplary demonstrations of their Catholicism...
...z33 COMMONWEAL THE December 25, I929 I' '11111...
...One of the most striking passages in the book is the brutal impressment of sailors in a tavern...
...And there are some good salty names to call them by...
...As a patriot and as a liberal, he earnestly upholds the ideal, as well as repeats the phrase, of "a free church in a free state...
...Boswell, by Harry 8alpeter...
...This essay in biography by Harry Salpeter is another contribution to Johnsonlan writing which emphasizes Boswetl's right to consideration as a personage of importance in his own right, and not merely as a reflector of the importance of others...
...The Archbishop of Tuam, however, and the Bishop of Cloynes, as well as the Jesuits, omitted to promulgate or be guided by the Cardinal's declarations...
...In A LOCARNO OF THE SEA, Adam Day discusses the problems which will be presented at the English capital and the underlying causes which will determine the attitudes of the patti&paring nations...
...Though he probably minimizes Catholic influence and certainly overemphasizes the virtue of such "liberals" as Crispi and Giolitti, he scoffs less at "clericals" than at "anti-clericals" and positivists and sceptics...
...and when some of his comrades made him ill by putting something in his tea, he promptly sent for a priest...
...Airman shows numerous soft felt shapes for town or country as well as bowler hats in the new proportions...
...Should the reader happen to belong to that esoteric group of listeners who can make head or tail of Stravinski or Scriabine, he (or she) will probably enjoy Keyserling...
...Of course the Count does not aim at being understood...
...Croce as philosopher recog- cause of patriotism and the service of his native land...
...Even the repetitions "have the significance of rhythmic recurrences of the same themes in music...
...Behind the writing of Young Boswell was a great deal of research, which resulted in Professor Tinker's tracing and finding the private papers of Boswell, lost for years...
...Morley writes so well and is so expert with the exact phrase for the exact picture that even the reader with little taste for adventure will not be likely to lay the book down before the end, because of his sheer enjoyment in the descriptive and narrative On the whole, however, it would be both inappropriate and ungracious to criticize East South East as anything but a remarkably entertaining yarn of the sea, spun for that particular purpose and admirably fulfilling its intended function...
...When Mr...
...Mr...
...GLADYS GRAHAM...
...translated by Cecilia M. Ady...
...that As the book of a scholar and a brilliant writer on eighteenthcentury England, Young Boswell was influential in establishing a fresh estimate...
...It is these papers, discovered in the possession of a distant relation of the Boswell family, which have furnished the material, the proof, that Boswell was more than Johnson's shadow...
...Day believes that the greatest problem of world affairs is that commonly known as the "freedom of the seas...
...Joseph Keating, S.J., in an article, THE WESTMINSTER VERSION, terms the new Catholic bible "a cosmopolitan enterprise, the character of which has been somewhat disguised by its local title...
...begins with Boswell patiently waiting for the doctor to visit Tom Davies's bookshop...
...Arms were the need, and it was day...
...Salpeter has written an informative and pleasing book...
...the implication is clear that he must deprecate Mussolini...
...Frank B. Whalen in THE GLORIFIED AMOEBA, takes issue with the Watsonians and demonstrates the fallacy of the arguments derived from such a specious type of experimentation . . . . Rev...
...Now, I know a man --and the autobiography of one who through a long life put who has read all this--he even went so far as to reread several aside human love, comfort, wealth and fame, to dedicate his life times the last chapter of self-revelation in The Recovery of to Ireland...
...It is illustrated with some of the less familiar pictures and the printing is a thing of joy...
...I N already THE he grey had and been gentle the days "Old of Man" his age, in when the affectionate for years 231 in Abyssinia and rejoices over their success in Tripoli...
...Doubtless Mr...
...Croce does not like positivism...
...In every case you will find an unlimited supply of sonorous passages from which you may make a judicious selection...
...New York: Goward-McCann, Incorporated...
...With the new facts, he stresses the relationship of Boswell to Voltaire and Rousseau and the vast amount of writing which he is now discovered to have done besides the famous biography...
...the English translation, faithful and idiomatic, deserves wide popularity abroad...
...But Croce as patriot seems fascinating as adventure...
...And it comes from the pen of probably the most detached and most profound of contemporary Italian thinkers...
...But Mr...
...The case of the renowned "Pagan" O'Leary, who though active was not a leader, is of course a case apart...
...The book as a whole is not written from a Catholic standpoint, but it affords a welcome relief from the bitterly anti-Cathollc histories of modern Italy with which we have been too plentifully supplied in the past...
...He repudiates the "atheistic Catholicism" of D'Annunzio, accuses Fogazzaro and the other Modernists of "sensualism," and endorses their condemnation by ecclesiastical authorities...
...Small wonder that its success than James J. O'Kelly, O'Donovan Rossa, Captain John tempted others to try their luck...
...what Keyserling stands for as a philosopher nor what significance attaches to either of the books in question...
...When the inevi- symphony of thought...
...Durant is a staid McCafferty and others of these fighting men...
...I ask them to pay as little attention to the contents and facts as such, but simply to let the intrinsic power of spiritual truth act upon them...
...Belloc has no compeer in his presentation of brilliant and nourishing thought about the Catholic Church and his present study of the various forces hostile to the Church is finely analyzed by Father Riggs . . . . The experiments of Pavlov have been bodily adopted by Dr...
...Long ago Macaulay, pictorial but unjust, established Boswell as a boor and a fool...
...and the chapters recounting, in authori- ing...
...No swashbuck- to get a crop of charlatans...
...2.50...
...You fitting close a book that is at once history, adventure, biography must buy both books or remain ignorant...
...The romantic sentiments of Boswell, whether toward elegant ladies or oppressed peoples, Mr...
...S I~AEM.AS O'SHEEL...
...of adventure Frank Vigor which Morley stirs very has refreshingly the fictional atmosphere grown heavy of late with introspection and analysis...
...EDWIN CLARK...
...In the first chapter "most of the leading tunes are sounded, almost every subsequent theme is touched upon, but none is worked out...
...but the mitder pursuits of a draper's apprentice in Liverpool at the same period are needed to round out the picture, and are given with equal enthusiasm...
...The contents of this voluminous work--for the two books are just separate volumes of the same work--range from metaphysics to psychoanalysis, over a territory of very disputable philosophy of history, to conclude with a profession of faith in the creed called optimism by which "man, reconverted to the masculine spirit, the 'Logos Spermatikos' within him, out of the spirit of the ultimate religious depth and with its powers to uplift his soul, yet personally centered in pure ethos, will achieve the perfection of the work, the performance of which is the whole and only meaning of his pilgrimage on the earth...
...To this, leaping the years, he has to be proud of Italy's achievements through force...
...It matters little whether you choose your quotations from The Travel Diary of a Philosopher, from The World in the Making, from America Set Free or from either of the two books under review here...
...It is far and away the best account now available in English of the national development of Italy from the unification of the country in I87I tO its participation in the world war in I9I 5. The book in the original Italian has had a prodigious sale at home...
...Father T. Lawrason Riggs, a member of The Commonweal editorial council and Chaplain of the Catholic Club in Yale University, reviews Hilaire Belloc's new book, SURVIVALS AND NEW ARRIVALS...
...December 25, I929 writes: "Without Boswell, we should be wondering by what accident, by what freak of chance, a man by the name of Samuel Johnson happens to be lying in Westminster Abbey," there is nothing to do but object...
...Life at Liverpool and life at sea in 18o6 spread from Mr...
...There is, however, ample indication of the author's views...
...With a patriotism that surely rises superior to any misgiving about Fascism, he writes of his fellow-countrymen that they "are still one of the sanest among European nations, the least emotional and morbid in feeling, and with the greatest tendency toward clearness and simplicity of thought...
...5.00...
...The Fenians Recollections of an Irish Rebel, by John Devoy...
...Adventure East 8outh East, by Frank Vigor Morley...
...GERALD B. PH~LArI...
...I N whipped HIS East up a South strong East, breeze Mr...
...COMMONWEAL THE December 25, 1929 BOOKS Modern Italy A History of Italy, z87z-z9z5, by Benedetto Croce...
...Johnson and Mr...
...Of the Catholic Church and of Catholic thought in Italy, the book gives no extended discussion...
...He condemns the intransigeance of Plus IX, but handsomely characterizes that Pontiff as "the man whom Italians loved in spite of everything, the large-hearted, hot-tempered, profoundly honest man...
...in Ireland--its right or even its existence in Ireland...
...Many of the Fenian leaders were men notable for scholarship as well as for that depth of patriotic feeling which requires expression in militant action...
...It moves rapidly, and is full of stories within stories, told on deck and at the bar...
...The sketches of these men as If philosophy is to become a popular pastime we may expect Devoy knew them make fascinating reading...
...He apologizes for the failure of Italian arms rectly or indirectly, in that insurrection...
...Incidentally, the book will appeal to boys, and is one that supervising parents should be glad to hear of...
...He tells his readers as much in several keys within this to America that Stephens looked for arms...
...Yet he is no Salvemini...
...For there is evidence in the memoirs of Mrs...
...Not until Truth" this from the introduction to Creative Understand1916 did it come again...
Vol. 11 • December 1929 • No. 8
