St. Francis of Assisi : Lectures Delivered in Worcester Cathedral.
By Canon Knox-Little. (Isbister and Co.)—eanon Knox-Little had evidently taken so much pains in preparation for these lectures, by reading both the original authorities and the latest monographs, that it was hardly to be expected he should refrain from printing them. And yet the fact is that what, we doubt not, were very successful lectures make a very dull book. To begin with, the style in which it is written is preaching style, and terribly diffuse at that, the sentences being padded out with every conceivable form of conventional qualifying phrase ; and then the moralising reflections are so frequent, so lengthy, and, it must be added, so commonplace, that we are astonished the learned Canon should have thought many of them worth paper and ink. There are few people, one would hope, incapable of formulating for them- selves such a truth as, "There always have been and there always must be ups and downs in the history of the Church." Still, the reader who has well-developed powers of skipping, will find the middle lectures give him a very sympathetic study of St. Francis.
Previous page
