The Lady Poverty. Translated and edited by Montgomery CarmichaeL (John
Murray. Ss.)—This is a very pleasing trans- lation of a religious allegory written in the thirteenth century. Its authorship is unknown, but it is evidently the work of an early Franciscan. The conjectural date given here is 1227. Besides the translation of the allegory, there is the Prayer of St. Francis. Mr. Carmichael does not believe it to be the work of the Saint himself, yet he builds upon it a curious argument as to the stigmata. The prayer says : " She (Poverty) did not eves make sufficient male for Thy wounds but furnished three only." But the Saint had a stigma in each hand and in each foot. Therefore they could not have been the results of subjective causes. Why? " Whether St. Francis wrote the prayer or not, we may take this to have been his opinion, for it seems to have been the common opinion of the thirteenth century." Was there ever looser reasoning? " We may take this to have been his opinion," because a good many other people thciught so; "therefore it becomes impossible tineattabilte the phenomena," ei:c. There is a chapter also- on "The Spiritual Significance of Holy Poverty" by Father Cuthbert, 0.S F.C. It is written with much skill; but it leaves us unsatisfied. It is simply impossible to roll back the world, and bring again the mendicancy which it was once a merit to relieve, and a still greater merit to practise. No society could exist where this was the ideal of life. And is it not a curious centradiction to have this " Praise of Poverty" in an ed.tion de luxe, with hand made paper, broad • margins, type sumptuously large,. and an elaborately ornamented cover ? In its way it is as strange as a community vowed to poverty with a banking account.
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