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And then we, the Jesuit and the Buddhist, began to follow the windings and turnings of that wondrous poem, the most mystic and spiritual thing that has been written since St. Teresa laid down her pen. What the other member of the examining board thought of it all I never heard. But I think I acquired a satisfactory answer to that question so often put to me: Can the Japanese really grasp a spiritual truth? Do they really get at the meaning of Christianity? This, of a race that has produced more martyrs than any other nation since the fall of Rome and that kept the Faith for two centuries without a visible symbol or document!
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Or, perhaps, not ecclesiastical enough. Like most good retorts Taylor's had more wit than truth. He was obsessed by the notion, prevalent among a certain class of literary critics, that Francis Thompson's fame was the artificially stimulated applause of a Catholic coterie, whose enthusiasm could hardly be shared by readers with no particular curiosity about Catholic ideas or modes of religion. It was probably this obsession which prompted that able critic, Mr. H. D. Traill, to write to Mr. Wilfrid Meynell when the
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Hound of Heaven first appeared:
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I quite agree with you in thinking him a remarkable poet, but, if he is ever to become other than a 'poet's poet' or 'critic's poet'--if indeed it is worth anyone's ambition to be other than that--it will only be by working in a different manner. A 'public' to appreciate the 'Hound of Heaven' is to me inconceivable. Mr. William Archer, an experienced judge of popular likes, was of the same opinion.
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Yet, Francis Thompson's biographer tells us,
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When the
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Hound of Heaven is selected for study, and explained in words of one syllable, by a young Japanese student in the Tokyo Imperial University almost thirty years after the poem was published, one can hardly maintain that it calls for certain ecclesiastical affiliations before it can be understood and felt, or that its
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The Ebb-Tide, when he began suddenly to discourse on Divine Grace to the amazement of Herrick and his crew of scoundrels from the stolen _Farallone_.
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Oh, exclaimed the unspeakable Huish, when they had recovered breath,
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Oh, look 'ere, turn down the lights at once, and the Band of 'Ope will oblige! This ain't a spiritual séance. It had something akin to the madness of poor Christopher Smart when he fell into the habit of dropping on his knees and praying in the crowded London streets. There was incongruity, verging on the indecent, in this intrusion of religion into art, as if an archangel were to attend an afternoon tea in Mayfair or an absinthe session in a Bohemian cafe. It was, in Dr. Johnson's phrase,
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Poems, published in 1893;
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Sister Songs, in 1895; and
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New Poems, in 1897. The first of these volumes contained the
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Hound of Heaven ; though it staggered reviewers at large, they yielded dubious and carefully measured praise and waited for developments. The pack was unleashed and the hue-and-cry raised on the coming of
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Sister Songs and
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New Poems. Andrew Lang and Mr. Arthur Symons led the chorus of disapproval. It is amusing to read now that Francis Thompson's
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Another critic of the poet declares that
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A prominent literary periodical saw, in the attempt to foist Thompson on the public as a genuine poet, a sectarian effort to undermine the literary press of England. In the course of a year the sale of
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Sister Songs amounted to 349 copies. The
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New Poems