CARMINA MARIANA.
[To THZ EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR,"]
SIR,—I venture to appeal to your courtesy and sense of justice to allow me to supplement one statement in your recent "short notice" of "Carmine Mariana" (Spectator, Novem- ber 1st) which is wanting in exactitude. I ask this favour the more confidently of your reply, as it is a pleasure to me to admit that your concluding words of kindly appreciation of the book could not be exceeded. In the years which I have devoted to the quest of these "Carmine," it has been one main object of my search, as a Catholic, to discover and reproduce poetical tributes to our Blessed Lady from the works of non-Catholics. The homage within the Church is undoubted. The veneration outside the Church is comparatively unknown, and deserves recogniticn. I allowed myself to think I had done something in this way. Certainly from writers of the seventeenth and later centuries I have found a long and valued catena of verse, never previously collected, the concluding portion of which will appear in the third series of the "Carmine." The present volume has a fair share of poetry from non-Catholic sources. I was therefore surprised to read the following words in the notice in question :—" It is an interesting and significant sign of the times we live in that this collection includes one or two poems by writers avowedly not Roman Catholics, and several by writers of undefined theological position which only a strained interpretation can construe as Laud of the mother of Christ." These words convey to the average reader a wholly inadequate statement of the case, and need to be supplemented by more exact figures. Before I read them I was unaware of the relative numbers of contributors, Catholic and non-Catholic respectively, to the " Carmina." After reading them, I find that, in round numbers, out of an aggregate of upwards of two hundred and forty con- tributors to the "Carmine," nearly fourscore are "writers avowedly not Roman Catholics," and that they fill, perhaps, one-third of the contents of a volume of upwards of five hundred pages. Of these eighty, it may be convenient to omit all the writers of allegorical and mystical verse, either mentioned or alluded to by the reviewer, which are included in the "Carmine" on hypothetical grounds questioned by him, and not accepted by others. Yet there will still remain a goodly company of more than forty authors non-Catholic who have contributed verse, bond-fide "in honour of, or in relation to," the Blessed Virgin Mary. These authors are all more or less acknowledged as writers of poetry. Your space will not allow of the enumeration of them all. But I hope to be permitted to say that, omitting the names of several standard poets of the last and earlier centuries, and all those from America, the list of non-Catholic contributors contains, amongst others, the following names :--Sir E. Arnold, Mathilde Blind, George Borrow, R. Buchanan, Arthur Clough, J. Dennis,
R. W. Dixon, Sebastian Evans, Dora Greenwell, Arthur Hallam, Laurence Housman, Esme Howard, Selwyn Image, J. W. Mackail, Dean Milman, two Lords Houghton, W. Morris, F. W. Mrers, Roden Noel ,V ictor Plarr, Mary Robinson, Rennell Rodd, Christina and W. M. Rossetti, John Ruskin, Lord Strangford, J. Addington Symonds, S. Waddington, and Richard Wilton. This roll, Sir, I think, can hardly with justice be minimised, as the reviewer has minimised it by the words," one or two poems by writers avowedly not Roman Catholics." Illness has prevented my writing earlier.—I am, Sir, &c.,
[The meaning of the passage which Mr. Orby Shipley quotes as "wanting in exactitude" undoubtedly lends itself to misunderstanding owing to carelessness of construction and punctuation. What we intended to convey was that in '• Carmina Mariana" there are many poems "which only a strained interpretation can construe as loud of the mother of Christ," and that, of these, one or two are by writers "avowedly not Roman Catholics," and "several by writers of undefined theological position."—ED. Spectator.]
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