CA.RMINA MARIANA.*

WE have already had occasion to praise Mr. Orby Shipley in this journal for his efforts to make religious poetry better known by his Annus Sanctus. In the present volume he has used the same industry and pious care to produce a fairly complete collection of verses in special honour of the Virgin Mary. The task was more difficult. Its limits were at once narrower, yet with further-reaching aims than his hymnal. In his choice of subject, be he ever so little inclined to cons troversy, he necessarily affronts considerable prejudice. He chooses a theme inwoven with the highest mystery, and the initial dogma of the Christian's creed. It is a theme, more- * Carmina Mariana: an English linthologn in Verse in Honour of, or in Relit. tion to, the Blessed Virgin Mary. Selected and arranged by Orby Shipley, M.A. London; Spotticwoode and Co, 1893.

over, that, belonging as it does to the higher realms of imagination, can only be interpreted fitly by the eagles of song, the high priests of art, or by simple and childlike souls who have claim to our sympathy with their faith, rather than with their expression of it.

" Poetical merit," says the compiler, " has not been made the first nor the main qualification for admission to this anthology." Perhaps that may be right, and for solid reasons ; but the result is that we do not examine this volume as we should a literary monument. It has other and greater interest, as it expresses the sentiment of many centuries. It is important as a witness to the mar- vellous agreement, through vast periods full of change, in recognition of the mother of Christ. Readers of Catholic prayer. booksare sometimes startled by the varied epithets applied to her. This book is witness that in none of them sanc- tioned in Catholic practice is there novelty of respect. It seems certain that the Christian Church of East and West accepted, rather than imposed, the cult which the common reverence of Catholics spontaneously and logically offered. As we have said, much of the poetry in these lauds of Mary has the lisp of infantine utterance, and the simplicity of intuitive certainty Proper to the unlearned. It was felt by souls eager to believe that the Virgin of Nazareth is the guardian for all time of the doctrine of the Divine incarnation. She is the visible sign of that union between the creature and the Creator which is the "desire of all nations," and the fountain of all mysticism bl all ages. Seeing this with his half-inspired eyes, Dante has made St. Bernard the chief votary of Mary, and put on the Saint's lips the sublime invocation with which Dante's final vision of God is prefaced.

The stern Florentine is noblest of leaders, yet he is but leader in the multitudinous voices which unite in praise of the second Eve. It has been Mr. Shipley's aim to give as full an echo of the chorus as might be. The names of Petrarch, Chaucer, Wordsworth, Scott, and even Shelley, are not absent ; yet possibly it is the "babes and suck. rings " who perfect the sum of human praise. We would not suggest that Mr. Shipley has admitted any care- less verses, or any unworthy, at least in purpose. The level he has attained is a high one throughout his very multifarious collection. He has chosen a singularly good translator of St. Bernard's hymn in Father Russell, S.J. ; his specimens of Chaucer are well modernised; but we wish he had used a more adequate rendering of " Stabil mater dolorosa," and given us the companion poem which describes the Virgin's joy as mother of the infant Saviour.

It is certainly instructive to see names as unexpected as those, for instance, of Mr. and Mrs. Browning, at the foot of exquisite praise to the Virgin. The poem entitled "The Virgin Mary to the Child Jesus" at p. 70, by Mrs.

Browning, sanctions, though it may not express, the fullest Catholic cult, and Mr. Browning puts in the mouth of Valence

in" Colombe's Birthday," a speech which is indeed an irre- sistible argument for it, and might serve as a motto for this

volume ;--.

"There is a Vision in the heart of each

Of justice, mercy, wisdom, tenderness To wrong and pain, and knowledge of its cure ; And these embodied in a Woman's Form That best transmits them, pure as first received, From God above her to mankind below."

It may be questioned whether Shelley's magnificent opening address in " Epipsychidion applies to Mary, but his employ-

ment of epithets distinctively consecrated to her by centuries of Use makes it difficult to dissociate from her his "Seraph of Heaven." He must be counted among the many who are oinviocluntarily, rather than willingly, led to her feet as symbol f

sweet benediction in the eternal curse." Led by the in- stincts of our race; hemay have claimed her, whatever her place in the Christian creed, as the realisation of human ideals, whether they are found on Olympian heights or in Egyptian or Indian legend. Two stanzas by Miss Bowles, published by Mr. Shipley, embody the thought that may have been in though SholleY's mini, thou still we think it was to the Madonna alone his words apply„

"Thou art the 'mighty mAher'° f the Greeks, Thy womb the earth unfolds;

Thy flesh the germ of life ; '

From the mind of God Athon leaping

Armed for the deathless strife :

Thou art Demeter, when she seeks

Her child among the doomful holds : Mother of harvests, sheaves of souls still reaping, Ave Maria, joying, weeping. Then dreamt they thee 0 bright and moon-crowned Maid,.

As Huntress of the Chastiser of the proud; Thy light from all base earthly churls concealing, The false-tongued, loose-lifed crowd; But in the fresh and hidden shade, To hearts still undefiled, Thy heavenly moon-bright face revealing.

Ave Maria: Name of healing.”

To embody ideals is in itself a great mission, but the many- voiced tribute in this volume amply shows the practical and :risible value of the " Woman" in the Christian creed as an object of reverence. She is inwoven in it, and possibly no other item of that "great alms to a great poverty" has had larger success than the presence of Mary by the Cradle and by the Crops. Jewish monotheism had but dimly guessed her coming. Greek philosophy and Roman law had no conception of what those familiar figures of Christian vision, Madonna. and her Child, should do for human progress.

We are apt to dislike what seems exaggeration in some of the titles allowed by the Catholic Church for the use of the faithful ; yet it is difficult to over-estimate the office of Christ's mother in securing affection for him, and in maintaining its continuity through the ages, be they of barbarism, or of renais- sance, or of schism. In these varied poems, the dominant note is tenderness of love. The greater writers are boldest in their homage ; the lesser, and more modern, are weaker on the wing, and visibly labour in their flight through doubt- laden air. It would seem that a certain confidence in honouring Mary goes with poetic genius ; and certainly, of living poets, Mr. de Vera and Mr. Patmore shine in their treatment of the great theme. Sympathy, rather than dogma, wins for Mary her position, though it is more correct, perhaps.

to say sympathy based on dogma ; and art has nobly fed that sympathy. Mr. Shipley has done well to include some poems inspired by Raphael's and Murillo's version of her whom they deemed the highest of creatures, that-

" Knot of the cord

Which binds together all, and all unto their Lord," as Mr. Patmore, following in Dante's track, finely said of the mother of Christ. Better than any form of language, the Madonna di San Sisto enables us to conceive fitly of the figure whom Raphael recognised as the-

" Extreme of God's creative energy; Last culmination of intelligence."

Of Murillo's great picture of the "Immaculate Conception," Mr. de Vere writes :—

" The painter's hand

Wrought well. You robe glitters, a pearl of dawn, Yon purple scarf blown back by her advance Is dark with dews and shades of vanquished night ; The raised hands, upwards pointing from that breast, Are matutinal with some heavenlier beam Than streaks our east. That sunless mist behind her Wins but from her its glow."

In the same spirit Mr. Alfred Gurney writes a fine stanza on RaphaePs great picture, and emphasises the world-wide value of its testimony to the Divine uses of Love :— •

"But more the mother knows, and more she sees

Than soaring angel, or than climbing saint; Her heart familiar grown with mysteries Of God's own working under love's constraint, The remedy she knows for man's complaint-- The clouds are all beneath her, and above The light of life, the radiancy of Love."

The greatest pictures of the world are surely important witnesses of Catholic co-operation with our stumbling human race in its struggle forwards. This volume has a value, apart

from the merit of its literary contributions, by its evidence of that co-operation. From St. Ephrem, of the fourth century, to Mr. Lewis Morris of our eclectic present, it echoes testimony to that fact. The Tuscan legend of "Madonna and the Rich Man," the " colloquy " by Jacopone da Todi, the simple hymns of fishermen and shepherds, are linked in one chain with the scholarly and exquisite sonnets of Mr. de Vere and with the "Mother out of sight" of Keble, who says of Mary's place in the world's reconciliation what Fra Angelico would have painted in a representation of the glorified Woman :—

" Oh awful station, to no seraph given,

On this side touching sin, on the other, Heaven."

Many readers outside the Latin Church may fail to subscribe

to much of the doctrine that underlies this volume, but it is im- possible to deny how great a cloud of witnesses its editor has summoned from the realm of poetry, and how strikingly they assert the human value of Mary in such lines as, for instance, that of Mr. Patnaore's :— "Our only Saviour from an abstract Christ ;" or Wordsworth's,— " Our tainted nature's solitary boast ;" or possibly Shelley's,— " Thou Harmony of Nature's art."

With this testimony, borne by the highest imaginations to the human craving for familiarity with the Creator, how futile appears the word " Mariolatry," which was much in use even fifty years ago. No one will lightly dare to call this ample testimony superstitious, or fail to see its historical place in European civilisation. From a utilitarian point of view, it is difficult not to acknowledge the practical "rights of women," which are secured by it along the high-level mark of past centuries. Not, indeed, woman's right to equality in masculine labour, but her right to a large share in the direction of that labour towards ideals sought for by mankind in its best moods. Whatever be the source of our tradition of the Eden which lies in the dim distance of time, Eden is a reality now as then; and we are haunted by reminiscence of it, deny its historical existence as we may. We love to see the felix culpa of Eve forgiven in Mary.

Long as is the list of contributors to Mr. Shipley's Carmina, we doubt not that their number might be largely increased. We wish that some examples of the homage ren- dered by the great Eastern Church could have been added among the translations. We cannot give unqualified praise to the arrangement of the poems, though certainly it was difficult of adjustment. We should have preferred a plan based on historical sequence to any other. It is interesting to observe the developments of human worship, as they corre- spond with the ebb and flow of what we trust is continuous general advance. The learning and true Catholicity shown by the compiler of these Cambia deserves full recognition. All that tends to prove the wide humanity of Christian ideals— the common outcome of divine and human love—is, we think, of high value.

It is impossible to judge this bulky volume by literary measures ; to examine its doctrine would be to ransack the universe of theology. We can but take it as a mass of evidence how close is the union of art with religion, and how instructive the desire for beauty, of which poetry is the literary expression.