We are too supine, too indifferent, too forgetful of the duty we owe to the Church, and of the blessed privilege of laboring to promote her interests. Let us look across the water to England, and to France, and ask ourselves if we have not reason to blush at the little we do. It really seems to us, that, unless it be some portions of Spanish America, there is at this moment no part of the globe where the great body of the Catholic laity, and especially those in easy circumstances, are so little intent upon the interests of their religion, where they have so little mental activity and energy, as in this free and happy country of ours. May it be so no longer; but may we all pray God to grant us the grace necessary to perform our share in the great work now going on.

ART. VIII. The Vision of Sir Launfal.

ELL. 27.

The Vision of Sir Launfal. By J. R. LowCambridge George Nichols. 1848. 16mo. pp.

THOSE of our readers who have not read this beautiful little volume from the University Press, Cambridge, will be able to form some idea of its general purpose and character from the author's Note," which we copy, as its most appropriate introduction.

"NOTE. According to the mythology of the Romancers, the San Greal, or Holy Grail, was the cup out of which Jesus partook of the last supper with his disciples. It was brought into England by Joseph of Arimathea, and remained there, an object of pilgrimage and adoration, for many years, in the keeping of his lineal descendants. It was incumbent upon those who had charge of it to be chaste in thought, word, and deed; but one of the keepers having broken this condition, the Holy Grail disappeared. From that time it was a favorite enterprise of the knights of Arthur's court to go in search of it. Sir Galahad was at last successful in finding it, as may be read in the seventeenth book of the Romance of King Arthur. Tennyson has made Sir Galahad the subject of one of the most exquisite of his poems.

"The plot (if I may give that name to any thing so slight) of the following poem is my own, and, to serve its purposes, I have enlarged the circle of competition in search of the miraculous cup in such a manner as to include, not only other persons than the heroes 34

NEW SERIES.

VOL. III. NO. II.

of the Round Table, but also a period of time subsequent to the date of King Arthur's reign."

Mr. Lowell may be right in calling the Holy Grail the cup from which our Lord communicated his disciples at the last supper, but, properly speaking, the Holy Grail, or San Greal, was not the cup, but the blood, Sanguis realis, from the side of our Lord, when on the cross, which the legend asserts was received into the cup, and preserved in it. The name is a corruption of the Latin Sanguis realis, or of the French Sang réel. Mr. Lowell has materially changed the character of the old legend. In the original legend, the knight, after performing his devotions and preparing himself for the search, went forth in pursuit of the Holy Grail, and the poet simply narrated his adventures, and his success or his failure. Mr. Lowell dispenses with the devotions, with the actual pursuit and adventures, and contents himself with making his knight see a vision. This alteration is characteristic of the difference be

tween the early Romantic Age and our own. The old knights of romance, whatever the defects of their lives, and they were rarely perfect models, - were always devout, always retained and loved the faith, and, if they sinned, were ready to do penance,

the next best thing to not sinning; and they really did go abroad, were active, ready, and able to encounter danger and to endure fatigue. They lived and acted in the open world, out of doors, among real objects. But the moderns stay for the most part in-doors, repose on soft couches, and dream. Their adventures all pass in their sentimental reveries; their heroic deeds, and knightly conduct, are visions.

Mr. Lowell has not only modernized the external character of the old legend, but he has entirely changed its internal character. The moral of the old legend was the merit of chastity, in thought, word, and deed; and chastity, not merely in relation to one passion, but in relation to all the passions, — chastity of the entire body and soul. Mr. Lowell dispenses with this as with the devotion, as foreign to the ideas and habits of the moderns, and more likely to offend than to interest. He makes the moral turn, not on the motives from which, but on the feelings with which, one acts. Thus he sings,

"As Sir Launfal made morn through the darksome gate,
He was ware of a leper, crouched by the same,

Who begged with his hand and moaned as he sate;
And a loathing over Sir Launfal came,

The sunshine went out of his soul with a thrill,

The flesh 'neath his armour did shrink and crawl,
And midway its leap his heart stood still

Like a frozen waterfall;

For this man, so foul and bent of stature,
Rasped harshly against his dainty nature,
And seemed the one blot on the summer morn, —
So he tossed him a piece of gold in scorn.

"The leper raised not the gold from the dust:
'Better to me the poor man's crust,

Better the blessing of the poor,

Though I turn me empty from his door;

That is no true alms which the hand can hold ;
He gives nothing but worthless gold

Who gives from a sense of duty;
But he who gives a slender mite,
And gives to that which is out of sight,

That thread of the all-sustaining Beauty

Which runs through all and doth all unite,-
The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms,
The heart outstretches its eager palms,
For a god goes with it and makes it store

To the soul that was starving in darkness before."

999

— pp. 12, 13.

This giving of alms from a sense of duty will not do. The vision continues.

"For Christ's sweet sake, I beg an alms';

The happy camels may reach the spring,

But Sir Launfal sees nought save the grewsome thing,
The leper, lank as the rain-blanched bone,
That cowered beside him, a thing as lone
And white as the ice-isles of Northern seas
In the desolate horror of his disease.

"And Sir Launfal said, - I behold in thee
An image of Him who died on the tree;
Thou also hast had thy crown of thorns,
Thou also hast had the world's buffets and scorns,
And to thy life were not denied

The wounds in the hands and feet and side:
Mild Mary's Son, acknowledge me;
Behold, through him, I give to thee!'

"Then the soul of the leper stood up in his eyes

And looked at Sir Launfal, and straightway he

Remembered in what a haughtier guise

He had flung an alms to leprosie,

When he caged his young life up in gilded mail
And set forth in search of the Holy Grail.
The heart within him was ashes and dust;
He parted in twain his single crust,

He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink,
And gave the leper to eat and drink;

'T was a mouldy crust of coarse brown bread,
'T was water out of a wooden bowl, -

Yet with fine wheaten bread was the leper fed,

And 't was red wine he drank with his thirsty soul.

"As Sir Launfal mused with a downcast face,

A light shone round about the place;

The leper no longer crouched at his side,
But stood before him glorified,

Shining and tall and fair and straight.

As the pillar that stood by the Beautiful Gate, -
Himself the Gate whereby men can

Enter the temple of God in Man.

"His words were shed softer than leaves from the pine, And they fell on Sir Launfal as snows on the brine, Which mingle their softness and quiet in one

6

With the shaggy unrest they float down upon;

And the voice that was calmer than silence said,

Lo, it is I, be not afraid!

In many climes, without avail,

Thou has spent thy life for the Holy Grail:
Behold, it is here, this cup which thou
Didst fill at the streamlet for me but now;

This crust is my body broken for thee,
This water His blood that died on the tree;
The Holy Supper is kept, indeed,

In whatso we share with another's need,
Not that which we give, but what we share,
For the gift without the giver is bare;
Who bestows himself with his alms feeds three, -
Himself, his hungering neighbour, and me.'

"Sir Launfal awoke, as from a swound :— 'The Grail in my castle here is found! Hang my idle armour up on the wall, Let it be the spider's banquet-hall; He must be fenced with stronger mail Who would seek and find the Holy Grail.'" -Pp. 23-26.

Here is the moral: no matter what we give, if we give from a sense of duty, we merit nothing; we are truly charitable and meritorious in our alms only when we give with them our feelings, or rather when we give them without motive, from the simple impulse of love. Mr. Lowell is either a bad psychologist or a bad moralist. Love, as distinguished from the sense of duty, is an affection of the sensible instead of the rational nature. He who acts from a sense of duty acts from the highest and noblest love of which man is capable; he who acts only from what we may term sensible love acts from his lower nature,—that which he possesses in common with many animal tribes. For our own convenience and pleasure in acting, it is always desirable that our emotions should harmonize with our sense of duty; but for the meritoriousness of our actions, it is not at all necessary. He who performs a duty which is repugnant to his nature, and which demands great self-denial and self-command, is far more meritorious than he who performs an act, in itself considered, of equal worth, to which he feels no repugnance. To throw an alms in scorn to a beggar is, indeed, not meritorious, because there is no virtuous intention, and because scorn of a brother man, however low, or however loathsome his appearance, is always wrong. But it is clear, from the author's comment, that the "scorn" he charges upon Sir Launfal, was simply giving from a sense of duty, and therefore no scorn at all.

"He gives nothing but worthless gold
Who gives from a sense of duty."

In fact, the author shows through his whole poem, that he has never made his philosophy, and is ignorant of the first principles of ethical science. This detracts from his merit as a poet no less than from his merit as a moralist. The poet aims, and should aim, at the expression of the beautiful; but the beautiful is the form of the true, and cannot be found where the true is wanting. We are not so unreasonable as to ask of the poet a system of metaphysics or a code of ethics; we do not ask the artist to leave his own proper department, and to enter that of science; we understand the distinct sphere of art, and highly appreciate it, more highly, perhaps, than we get credit for; but we do contend that no man can be a true poet, or artist, who has in his mind a false speculative system. His mind must be informed with ideal truth, or he can never apprehend or express true beauty of form; and all ideal truth pertains to the department of speculative science. The poet must know as well as feel, and know principles, the eternal verities of things, in their