ST. FRANCIS.
[To THE Horror. or Two "SrEcr.vrox.91 Sne,—Far be it from me to challenge your judgment of my "Italian Fantasies " ; indeed, considering how many shocks my
"narrow and prejudiced point of view" must have given your genial latitudinarianism, I am grateful for being let off so handsomely. But I really must beg to protest against your informing your readers (who are not likely to be mine) that I handle St. Francis with "unintelligent contempt." Even the passage you cited, with its reference to his "spiritual genius," should have shown where the unintelligence lay. As a matter of fact, I expressly associate myself with his "adoration," speak with my habitual floridity of "the morning light of innocence" and "the perfume of holiness" that lies on his legend, and even say that in his sympathy with all creation "modern thought is with St. Francis and his Hindu universal- ism." All I refuse to do is to swallow St. Francis whole, as a spiritual nutriment for to-day.
A novelist or dramatist is the last person to need reminding that every figure must be envisaged in its proper setting in Space and Time. But there is the intellectual standard as well as the artistic or chronological ; there is the judgment sub specie xternitatis. Is our man "of the centre " P By this canon St. Francis shows even more provincial than Dante, whom Mr. Shaw has ventured to call "one of the greatest fools that ever lived." If I cannot quite follow our con- temporary saint and mystic in this intolerance towards his media3val predecessors, I prefer it to the literary obscurantism which would prolong the Dark Ages artificially.
But, after all, you yourself say, "St. Francis upon certain sides of his character is only intelligible when viewed in the light of mediwval ideas." So where is the difference between us P—I am, Sir, &c., ISRAEL ZANGWILL. Far End, East Preston, Worthing.
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