Part 28

Two really great masters of literature we had in America during the nineteenth century, Poe and Hawthorne. Because of our New England schoolmasters, as it seems to most of us, Poe has never come into his own proper appreciation in this country. The French consider him the great master of the short story, and that has come to occupy such a prominent place in our so-called literature in America, that one might look for an apotheosis of Poe. He is the one writer whose works in both prose and verse have influenced deeply the literary men of other countries besides our own. No other American writer has been given the tribute of more than a perfunctory notice in the non-English-speaking countries. In spite of this Poe's name was kept out of the Hall of Fame at New York University, {456} which was meant to enshrine the memory of our greatest thinkers and literary men, though we had generally supposed that the national selection of the jury to decide those whose names should be honored, would preclude all possibility of any narrow sectional influence perverting the true purpose of the institution. Poe has never been popular in New England, nor has he been appreciated at his true worth by the literary circles of New England. Their schoolmasterly influence has been pervasive enough to keep from Poe his true meed of praise among our people generally, though all our poets and literary men look up to him as our greatest poetic genius.

As for Hawthorne, there is no doubt that he is our greatest American writer in prose. He was the one man in New England with a great message. His writings came from deep down in the human heart, from the very wellsprings of human passion, and had their origin not far from where soul touches body in this human compound. The English, usually supposed to be slow of recognition for things American, acknowledged his high worth almost at once. Some of us here in America, indeed, have had the feeling that to a great extent our people have had to learn the lesson of proper appreciation for Hawthorne from the English-speaking people across the water. To Americans, for years, he was little more than a story-writer, not so popular as {457} many another writer of stories, and his really great qualities were to a great extent ignored. Because Puritan New England was out of sympathy with the mystical spirit of his writings only a late and quite inadequate appreciation of the value of his work was formed by his countrymen. Something of this unfortunate lack of appreciation crept into the schoolmastering of the country, and Hawthorne is probably not as highly valued in his native land as he is in England, though France and Germany have learned to look up to him as our greatest of American literary men--the one of our writers who, with Poe, attracts a world audience.

When there is question of anything else besides literature, of course, New England has no claims at all to make, and she has stood for many unfortunate austere tendencies in American life. For anything like public spirit for art or music or aesthetics in any department the Puritan soul had no use. Consequently our artistic development was seriously delayed as a nation by the influence that New England had as the schoolmaster of the country. The consequence was that our churches were bare and ugly, our homes lacking in the spirit of beauty and our municipalities mere places to live and make money in, but with no provision for the enjoyment of life. It is in this that New England has doubtless done us most harm and it is for this reason that many people will re-echo that expression of a {458} descendant of the Puritans who declares that it would have been "an awfully good thing when the Puritans landed on Plymouth Rock if only Plymouth Rock had landed on the Puritans." It would have saved us an immense deal of inhibition of all the art impulses of this country, which were almost completely choked off for so long by the narrow Puritanism so rampant in New England and so diffusively potent in our educational system.

In conclusion one feels like recalling once more Lowell's "Essay on a Certain Condescension in Foreigners." Surely the daughter New England, consciously or unconsciously, has treated the rest of the country very much like Mother England used to treat nascent English America long ago. There are many of us who in recent years have come to know New Englandism and its proneness to be condescending, who have felt very much like paraphrasing, with the addition of the adjective "new" here and there, certain of Lowell's best-known sentences. The new version will make quite as satisfactory a bit of satire on our Down East compatriots as Lowell's hits on the mother country and our English cousins across the water. Very probably there are more people who will appreciate the satire in this new application of the great American essayist's words than they did in its original form: "It will take (New) England a great while to get over her airs of patronage toward us, or even passably {459} to conceal them. She has a conviction that whatever good there is in us is wholly (New) English, when the truth is that we are worth nothing except so far as we have disinfected ourselves of (Neo-) Anglicanism."

[Additional Material]

THE POPES AND SCIENCE--The story of the Papal Relations to Science from the Middle Ages down to the Nineteenth Century. By James J. Walsh, M. D., Ph. D., LL. D. 440 pp. Price. $2.00 net.

Prof. Pagel, Professor of History at the University of Berlin: "This book represents the most serious contribution to the history of medicine that has ever come out of America."

Sir Clifford Allbutt, Regius Professor of Physic at the University of Cambridge (England): "The book as a whole is a fair as well as a scholarly argument."

_The Evening Post_ (New York) says: "However strong the reader's prejudice * * * * he cannot lay down Prof. Walsh's volume without at least conceding that the author has driven his pen hard and deep into the 'academic superstition' about Papal Opposition to science." In a previous issue it had said: "We venture to prophesy that all who swear by Dr. Andrew D. White's History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom will find their hands full, if they attempt to answer Dr. James J. Walsh's The Popes and Science."

_The Literary Digest_ said: "The book is well worth reading for its extensive learning and the vigor of its style."

_The Southern Messenger_ says: "Books like this make it clear that it is ignorance alone that makes people, even supposedly educated people, still cling to the old calumnies."

_The Nation_ (New York) says: "The learned Fordham Physician has at command an enormous mass of facts, and he orders them with logic, force and literary ease. Prof. Walsh convicts his opponents of hasty generalizing if not anti-clerical zeal."

_The Pittsburg Post_ says: "With the fair attitude of mind and influenced only by the student's desire to procure knowledge, this book becomes at once something to fascinate. On every page authoritative facts confute the stereotyped statement of the purely theological publications."

Prof. Welch, of Johns Hopkins, quoting Martial, said: "It is pleasant indeed to drink at the living fountain-heads of knowledge after previously having had only the stagnant pools of second-hand authority."

Prof. Piersol, Professor of Anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania, said: "I have been reading the book with the keenest interest, for it indeed presents many subjects in what to me at least is a new light. Every man of science looks to the beacon--truth--as his guiding mark, and every opportunity to replace even time-honored misconceptions by what is really the truth must be welcomed."

_The Independent_ (New York) said: "Dr. Walsh's books should be read in connection with attacks upon the Popes in the matter of science by those who want to get both sides."

MAKERS OF ELECTRICITY--By Brother Potamian, F. C. S., Sc. D. (London), Professor of Physics in Manhattan College, and James J. Walsh, M. D.. Ph. D.. Litt. D.. Dean and Professor of the History of Medicine and of Nervous Diseases at Fordham University School of Medicine, New York. Fordham University Press, 110 West 74th Street Illustrated. Price, $2.00 net. Postage. 15 cents extra.

_The Scientific American:_ "One will find in this book very good sketches of the lives of the great pioneers in Electricity, with a clear presentation of how it was that these men came to make their fundamental experiments, and how we now reach conclusions in Science that would have been impossible until their work of revealing was done. The biographies are those of Peregrinus, Columbus, Norman and Gilbert, Franklin and some contemporaries, Galvini, Volta, Coulomb, Oersted, Ampere, Ohm, Faraday, Clerk Maxwell, and Kelvin."

_The Boston Globe:_ "The book is of surpassing interest"

_The New York Sun:_ "The researches of Brother Potamian among the pioneers in antiquity and the Middle Ages are perhaps more interesting than Dr. Walsh's admirable summaries of the accomplishment of the heroes of modern science. The book testifies to the excellence of Catholic scholarship."

_The Evening Post:_ "It is a matter of importance that the work and lives of men like Gilbert, Franklin, Galvini, Volta, Ampere and others should be made known to the students of Electricity, and this office has been well fulfilled by the present authors. The book is no mere compilation, but brings out many interesting and obscure facts, especially about the earlier men."

_The Philadelphia Record:_ "It is a glance at the whole field of Electricity by men who are noted for the thoroughness of their research, and it should be made accessible to every reader capable of taking a serious interest in the wonderful phenomena of nature."

_Electrical World:_ "Aside from the intrinsic interest of its matter, the book is delightful to read owing to the graceful literary style common to both authors. One not having the slightest acquaintance with electrical science will find the book of absorbing interest as treating in a human way and with literary art the life work of some of the greatest men of modern times; and, moreover, in the course of his reading he will incidentally obtain a sound knowledge of the main principles upon which almost all present-day electrical development is based. It is a shining example of how science can be popularized without the slightest twisting of facts or distortion of perspective. Electrical readers will find the book also a scholarly treatise on the evolution of electrical science, and a most refreshing change from the 'engineering English' of the typical technical writer."

CATHOLIC SUMMER SCHOOL PRESS SERIES

The highest value attaches to historical research on the lines you so ably indicate, especially at the present time, when the enemies of Holy Church are making renewed efforts to show her antagonism to science and human progress generally. I shall have much pleasure in perusing your work entitled "The Thirteenth Greatest of Centuries."

Wishing you every blessing, I am, Yours sincerely in Xt., R. Card. Merry Del Val.

Rome, January 18th, 1908. Jas. J. Walsh, Esq., New York.

THE THIRTEENTH GREATEST OF CENTURIES --By James J. Walsh. M. D., Ph. D., Litt. D.. Dean and Professor of Nervous Diseases and of the History of Medicine at Fordham University School of Medicine; Professor of Physiological Psychology at Cathedral College, New York. Catholic Summer School Press. 110 West 74th Street, N. T., Georgetown University Edition. Over 100 additional illustrations and twenty-six chapters that might have been, nearly 600 pages. Price, $3.50, post free.

Prof. William Osler, of Oxford, delivering the Linacre Lecture before the University of Cambridge, said: "That good son of the Church and of the profession, Dr. James J. Walsh, has recently published a charming book on The Thirteenth as the Greatest of Centuries. He makes a very good case for what is called the First Renaissance."

_The Saturday Review_ (of London): "The volume contains a mass of interesting facts that will start a train of profitable thought in many readers' minds."

_The Educational Review_ said: "The title of Dr. Walsh's book, The Thirteenth Greatest of Centuries, will startle many readers, but we respectfully commend to the open-minded his presentation of that great epoch. A century that witnessed such extraordinary achievements in architecture, in arts and crafts, in education, and in literature and law, as did the Thirteenth, is not to be lightly dismissed or unfavorably compared with periods nearer our own."

_The Pittsburg Post_ said: "Dr. Walsh writes infused with all the learning of the past, enthusiastic in modern research, and sympathetic, in true scholarly style, with investigation in every line. One need only run over a few of the topical headings to feel how plausible the thesis is. The assemblage of the facts and the elucidation of their mutual relations by Dr. Walsh shows the master's skill. The work bristles on every page with facts that may be familiar to many, but which were never before so arranged in just perspective with their convincing force so clearly shown."

Cardinal Moran, of Sydney, Australia: "Just the sort of literature we want for English readers at the present day."

End of Project Gutenberg's Education: How Old The New, by James J. Walsh