NOTES

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LI, Issue 50, 17 December 1924, Page 34

NOTES

Dickens and Thackeray Michael Sadlcir objects to the custom of mentioning Dickens and Thackeray as if they were synonyms for Victorian fiction. He points out that the connotation is meaningless. Not only are they completely different from each other in almost every respect, but they are no more representative of the Victorian novel than are Wells and Conrad of that of to-day. Thetruth of this is evident if one but recalls the work of George Eliot, of Trollope, and of Charlotte Bronte, the first-named of whom many good judges will put on a higher plane than either Dickens or Thackeray, while it may well be contended that for delicate and convincing presentation of a woman's soul the author of "Jane Eyre" has no equal. And, in spite of the dead level of his stories and of the redundance of quiet detail in the telling of them, critics regard Trollope as the master of both Dickens and Thackeray in his handling of the evolution of character. -J A Contrast Dickens, according to Michael Sadleir, was the great proletarian who raised himself to supremacy by his power of work, by his untiring and humorous observation, by his instinctive feeling for the miseries and laughabilities of the life of the people. He was not, (conventionally speaking) an "educated" man; he was not even a person of sensitive mentality; his understanding of the psychology of the well-to-do, and his sympathy with the evanescent subleties of (for example) young-womanhood or with the changing moods of abnormal sensibility, were of the bluntest and most elementary kind. Consequently his books arc crowded panoramas, of which the figures live in the mind for ever in so far as they are simple, comic, or ruffianly, but are forgotten forthwith when they pretend to represent such blends of good and bad, of strength and weakness, of nobility and frailty, as were the great majority of ordinary folk then as now. Thackeray, on the other hand, is the embittered gentleman. He hates his kind as passionately as his great contemporary loved tho class from which he sprang. Fastidious, sneering, and essentially stylistic, Thackeray's fiction is in most respects in violent contrast, to the genial, uncritical hurly-burlies that are Dickers novels. But in one respect (as Mr Beresford perceives) the two are similar. Dickens, by his genius for reducing scattered individuals to a symbol, ridiculous or terrible; Thackeray, determined to express his loathings and cursed with a mind of caustic brilliance—fell, both the one and the other, into the habit of ''ctunting" a character from the first page of a novel to the last. Simplified Spelling Students of Gaelic who have not the advantage of a teacher derive considerable help from the simplified spelling in which the lan-

guage is written. One of the authors of the system is an Australian priest, Dr. Daly. It now appears that many English literary men consider that the spelling of English words is a hindrance to the popularity of the language among foreigners. For the sake of ST-hool children also, they desire a great reformation in spelling. A society has been formed and a Reader in'Simplified Spr.U'ui-ii has been issued. Everyone has one or more correspondents who, without knowing it, are eligible for membership! The opponents of the great membership! The opponents of the great revolution in spelling amuse themselves over the selections for the young. One example will suffice:

"Gerlz and boiz, Rum out too plai, The moon duz shyn As bryt az dai." The literary founders of the society must have learned their system from the infants. Many of us have 1 heard a four-year-old elocutionist recite to a family gathering, or when "we had company," the famous lines of Longfellow about the '•lives of great men." Thus: "Liza Grape men allry niindus Weaken maka Liza Blinie, Andy Parting Lee IS. Hindus Footprints Johnny Sands a time."

Adrian Fortercue A life of this scholarly priest has recently appeared. His hooks on the Eastern Churches and cognate matters had shown him to 1)? deeply versed in the history of the Liturgy. We now learn that he was a linguist who knew French, German, and Italian as perfectly as his mother-tongue, and who was skilled in the chief Oriental languages, He was of a retiring disposition, his love of study attaching him to his own library or the public libraries of Europe. His work on the Holy Mass in the Roman Liturgy shows extensive research and n profound knowledge of many rites. The simple name without any title ''Adrian Fortoscue" left his readers puzzled as to his life or occupation. As the author of a book on ceremonies he is better known than as the author of a book on the Eastern Churches. In the more popular book he aimed at giving Baldeschi-Dale what he considered a muchneeded rest. In the Introduction to this work lie levels his gun against both the wellknown (''rrcnwniere and his translator, keepnig the left barrel for the latter because he had allowed mistakes to run through so many editions. Dr. Fortescue's book has replaced in manv sacristies the purple-bound Baldeschi which had done service, apparently, from time immemorial.

Definitions—Old and New One, Professor Wright, D.D., thinks he is qualified to formulate a good definition of religion. Here is how he does it: """Sf "Religion is the endeavor to secure 'the conservation of socially recognised values through specific actions that are believed to evoke some agency different from the, ordinary ego of the individual or from other merely human beings and that imply a feeling of dependence on their agency." -

We can imagine the run on aspirin his class went home and sat down to thmk out that nice little professorial effort at clearness. A definition ought to make clearer the thing it defines. But would the learned doctor not have done far better and far more wisely had he merely said: "Religion is religion." By doing so he would at any rate have raised no fog in the minds of his students, and he would not have left them more stupid than they were before he set forth to teach them. How badly this up-to-date product of our enlightened educational schemes fares when compared with the dear old schoolmen of the Middle Ages who were satisfied to tell us that religion is a moral virtue which inclines us to give to God the worship which is due to Him! That definition does define. You learn from it a lot of things: first, that religion is a virtue; second, that it is a moral virtue, not a theological virtue; and third, that it is the particular moral virtue which inclines us to give God His due worship. The comparison is enlightening. It is another proof that whereas the old education taught men to think and to think clearly, the new schemes are fruitful only in inability to think along straight lines. We should like to hear ..Pro* fessor Wright define time, or place, or Jflie soul. It would be interesting to compares his babbling on such difficult subjects with the concise and luminous definitions of the ancient pagan Aristotle, who knew more about education than Herbert Spencer, the German Herbart, Pestilozzi, Montessori, and' could say more in five words than the whole lot of them could deliver themselves of .in a lifetime.