IN ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26605, 15 December 1951, Page 3

IN ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND

JESUIT’S LABOURS AND ADVENTURES (Reviewed by L.GAV.)

John Gerard. Translated from the Latin by Philip Caraman. Longmans, Green. 287 pp.

In the reign of Queen Elizabeth some of the most tragic episodes of English history arose from the religious conflicts of the time. The Queen and her admirers aimed to make the English Church an institution that embraced very wide differences of belief, both Catholic and Protestant. The Puritans would have none of this compromise, neithei* would the Roman Catholics. The latter were supported in their dissent by the Jesuits. Priests of this famous order came to England secretly to support the , Roman Catholics in their faith and practice. The Jesuits were regarded as martyrs to their religion by the partisans of the Papacy, but the English Government and many Englishmen regarded the Roman missionaries and their supporters as traitors to their country. Father Gerard’s autobiography, here presented m English dress by .the Rev. P. Caraman, is a record of a Jesuit’s endeavours to maintain and expand the influence of the Roman Church in a country where such labours were punished by torture and often by a cruel death.

® er ? r f! s home was in Derbyshire, ? nd nt the age of 12 he went to Exeter College, Oxford. There he stayed less than a year, returning home because he could not remain at the University unless he conformed to the o^. ges °X t l he English Church, and reo*y Communion according to the Anglican Rite. - A year or two later ne went to France in order, ostensibly, to study tne language of that country. He returned to England to dispose of his property, but set sail for France again without the permission of his parents or with a licence to travel. His ship was forced into Dover by adverse winds. Here he was arrested. After some months he was released on bail, made his way to France, and thence to Rome, where he was admitted to the Jesuit Order in 1588. With three other priests he managed to return to England.

The greater part of the book is taken up with the record of Gerard’s labours for the maintenance and spread of the so-called “recusant” cause in his native country. It is a thrilling story of heroism which can appeal to any man, of f ?J th^ r . no faith - When he had done all that was humanly possible, he escaped to France by travelling in the lte o° f t h e Marquis of St. Germain, the Spanish Ambassador, and Baron Hobach, the Ambassador of the Netherlands. The autobiography ends three years later, when he took the four vows of the Society of Jesus. He died at Rome at the age of 73 in 1637.

POETRY

Classical Influences on English Poetry. By J. A. K. Thompson. Allen and Unwin. 271 pp. Professor Thomson has already written a study of “Shakespeare and the Classics” and an excellent survey, “The Classical Background of English Literature.” His new book is a sequel to the latter, which seeks to amplify his broad statement of the classical influences on English literature with illustrative examples. The subject bei. -» so large, he has restricted himself to j poetry, with the intention of doing the isame thing for prose at a later date. 1 Students of English literature who are not classical scholars will find his book extremely useful. It deals with the epic, didactic poetry, tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, elegiac poetry, the pasI toral, satire, and the epigram. In each case, a masterly exposition of the classical form is followed by a discussion of the English poets who drew upon the Greek and Latin models. Professor Thomson has no unscholarly bias against either ancient or modern. He points out where Uryden’s satires are superior to those of Juvenal, and he makes it quite clear that Milton’s heroic attempt to make out of the English language, an epic style as good as Virgil’s had its magnificent successes as well as its failures. For the chapters on Homer, Virgil, and Milton alone, every lover of poetry will find this lucid and learned work invaluable, and throughout the book he will discover helpful information and authoritative critical judgments. NEW ZEALAND POETRY YEARBOOK, 1951 (A. H. and A. W. Reed. 96 pp.) is the first issue of a con-i templated annual collection of New i Zealand verse under the editorship of | Louis Johnson. The purpose is to make I the volume as representative as possible. Thirty-two poets (the term in-1 eludes embryo-poets and versifiers) appear in the first section, each with one or two contributions; four poets I are presented for closer view, with I more numerous contributions, in’ the second section. Although the editor makes the claim that he is bringing the best of the year’s work together, one or two names are conspicuous by their absence—notably those of Basil Dowling and Eileen Duggan. The emphasis appears to be on the younger and less established writers. The four poets given special attention are admittedly "chosen more or less at random.” The critical article by 'E. Schwimmer which introduces these poets is too full of critical jagon that is both pretentious and, for the most part, meaningless. Mr Schwimmer discourses of Hubert Witheford, W. H. Oliver and Pat Wilson as if they were much greater poets than they are—Mr Wilsons poetry, he says, "is somewhat unapproachable in much the same way as the early Edith Sitwell.” And in the case of Mr Charles Spear, a poet of more marked individuality than any other represented in this book, he confuses the reader by attempting to divide the poems into “some . . . based on New Zealand and others on foreign places.” The poems, in fact, belong to a world of the imagination into which it is ridiculous to obtrude the distinctions of a narrow nationalism. Although some of the poems in this collection are good, particularly those of Keith Sinclair and the one unassuming selection from Alistair Campbell, the volume as a whole gives rise to the reflection that New Zealand poets—contrary to their own claims—are generously treated by their publishers, sometimes more generously than their undeveloped talents seem to warrant. NORFOLK ISLAND (Pegasus Press. 41 pp.) by Merval Connelly, with illustrations by Gordon McAuslan, is a! series of verses about the discovery, settlement, history and scenery of Norfolk Island, suitably subtitled “A Brief Background.” A brief visit and a brief -investigation into the island’s past appear to have brought the series into being. The verse is often very near prose: Here then came Captain Cook Computing longitude and latitude Positioned the isle as Norfolk on his charts Warily landed men and made a shrewd Survey of the island’s assets: The author’s chief interest is in the convict settlement of Norfolk Island but even in her descriptions of these horrors there is flatness and unreality. I The reader is left unmoved even though informed that “cruelty’s crescendo reached its climax.”

THE PASSIONATE POET (Museum Press. 239 pp.), by Julia Mannering, may please the reader who likes his literary biographical novel to bear little relation to fact. It is a sentimental travesty of the life of Byron. The author picks and chooses the episodes that appeal to her, allowing herself complete licence to sandwich the events of several years into a few pages (as she does in the affair with Teresa Guicciolo) or to elaborate other incidents quite disproportionately Byron’s character is made to look ridiculously melodramatic pathetic and noble by turns. The author is as’ incapable of plumbing the real depths of his character as she is of recording the irony of his later years.

“The Church Maintenance Manual,” by Roger C. Whitman (Doubleday), has a section on how to get bats out ,of a belfry. You bum a sulphur candle.