28 DECEMBER 1934, Page 26

Beatitudes

The Pattern of Courtesy. An Anthology. Made and Edited by Gerald Bullett. (Dent. as.) Ma. GERALD BuLLErr's recent anthology of the religious spirit, The Testament of Light, was greeted with enthusiasm by many critics. His new compilation has an attractive title and is similar in its quality and design- Undoubtedly, the rhaps- odists of the popular Press will hasten to add it to that ever increasing stack of their favourite bed-books, over which they climb nightly to their well-earned repose.

Mr. Bullett thinks little of theology, " that science of the unknowable," and he tells us that a friendly ecclesiastical critic of his previous anthology remarked that his conception of religion might be fairly called " religion without God." He takes up the argument cheerfully and provides a running com- mentary in preface and notes. He is chiefly interested in " that beatitude of which something we must call love is perhaps the cause and certainly the effect" He calls poets, mystics and novelists to his aid in search of that mysterious something. Owing to the fact that his least common multiple is indefinable, Mr. Bullett can blithely assemble saints, sceptics, rationalists and pietists. Here can be found Mr. G. K. Chesterton and D. H. Lawrence, St. Francis of Assissi and Montaigne, Rupert Brooke, John Stuart Mill, Christina Rossetti, Cervantes and Professor Herbert Read. In his vivacious notes Mr. Bullett spends much of his time in washing the theological dye out of religious extracts and in turning dogmatic lions into emotional lambs, perpetrating sundry " howlers." In a couple of sentences he can reconcile eastern and western notions. He quotes from the Chinese sage known as Mencius, the optimistic maxim that " man's nature is good as water flows down." He has no difficulty in equating this with a saying of the mediaeval English mystic, Julian of Norwich : " We have verily of kinde to haten sin, and we have verily of grace to haten sin." But the context of the Christian saying involves the doctrine of the Fall and the question of supernatural grace, which Mr. Bullett begs.

Coming to modem times we may quote another example of Mr. Bullett's desire to smooth out all displeasing difficulties and dispense happiness at the cost of accuracy. In this case he reconciles the antinomian William Blake with Fr. Hopkins, " a priest of the Roman Church." He tells us that Gerald Manly Hopkins repudiated " the false antithesis of spirit and sense " in the following lines :

" Man's spirit will be flesh-bound when found at beat,

But uneumbered."

Mr. Bullett's method of selecting the guests at his beatific banquet is sometimes a trifle ingenuous. It is surprising, for instance, to discover George Moore as one of the preachers of spiritual love. The extract is taken from the Storyteller's Holiday, which the author designed as an Irish Decameron. Mr. Bullett does not tell his readers that this admirable passage is purely relative and an example of dramatic irony. This is certainly an outitanding case of a courtesy title.