The Book as Literature.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 52, 25 December 1902, Page 2

The Book as Literature.

Apart from the unscrupulous fraud of the author of • Priests and People in Ireland ' in deceiving the Protestant public by posing as a Catholic, the whole get-up of the work brings home the fact that it was made to sell — and it will sell

both itself and the people who buy it. The London 'Times'— an authority which no one will question— refers to the book, as a literary production, in the following terms :-~ - t•■ ' Mr M'Carthy's new book is, like its predecessor, an untidy and clumsily composed volume j its style is. poor and 1 pretentious, and on a rough calculation the book .has about as many split infinitives as there are priests in Ireland.. The dominating idea, which is again the evil character of ecclesiastical authority in Ireland, gives "Priests and People in Ireland a sort of intellectual unity, but materially it is slipshod and incoherent.' The Dublin ' Leader/ after referring to Mr M'Carthy's weak and uncertain English, closes with the cruel remark that, 1 as an illustration of what anti-Catholic education can do, his book should rank as a classic'; and that is really all that need be said about the matter.