Irish Jesuit Province

A Cheerful Ascetic and Other Essays by James J. DalyReview by: J. C. J.The Irish Monthly, Vol. 61, No. 717 (Mar., 1933), pp. 193-194Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20513495 .

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BOOK REV'iIEWS 193

Fr. Diecklihoff by competent native speakers. Every word is expressed phonetically by means of a code constructed for the benefit of the average reader. For the sake of greater clearness there has been placed side by side with this code that of the Association Phonetique commonly used in linguistic science. A useful appendix deals with the Gaelic form of proper names.

J. H.

St. Francis and the Blessed Eucharist. Father Augustine, O.M.Cap. (London: Sands & Co. 100 pp. 2/6.)

The author is assured of a popular reception for this work by the theme he has set himself-the connection of this most lovable of Saints with the Sacrament of Love. We should have liked a larger book with larger chapters-in the 100 pages of this booklet we have 24 chapters, and though the author omits little that even the fastidious might regard as relevant, the general impression left at the end is one of being hurried from chapter to chapter when one would have lingered if allowed. Unity however is preserved by grouping under the various heads the events of Francis's life that would illustrate each phase of the central theme, as, for instance, his love for the Mass, his reverence for priests, his love for France, " then the friend of the Eucharist," etc. The frontispiece is Murillo's beautiful portrait, and there are seven other illustrations excellently reproduced.

A Cheerful Ascetic and Other Essays. By Rev. James J. Daly, S.J. (Bruce Publishing Co., Milwaukee. Pp. 147. $ 1.75.).

This volume of Essays from the Professor of English, the University of Detroit, one of the most appreciated literary critics in America, makes altogether delightful reading. The cheerful ascetic is Francis de Cardona, a Spanish Jesuit, son of a Spanish duke, whose ingenuity in securing for himself occasions of humiliation leads him to amusing adventures

worthy of the Fioretti. The incidents of his life are taken from Louis de Ponte's great biography of Father Balthasar

Alvarez and make sanctity very cheerful and charming, though his superiors had to keep an eye to Francis as to

Brother Juniper. Francis was one day driving pigs home from the market. " On the way home one of the little pigs

went lame; and, in the words of the chronicler, ' Father Francis took it up by the feet and put it on his shoulders in the position given to the sheep carried by the Good

Shepherd.' Grandeeism groaned that day in Spain, as this curious cortege moved across the landscape in a cloud of dust."' There is another excellent story of Francis and his bandaged

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194 THE IRISH MONTHLY

donkey: but get it and read it. The next across the stage is Charles Waterton, the Naturalist. Here too there are great things and whimsical things and perhaps the whimsical are not the least great: they are in the tradition of joyous Christianity. The third is Sir Thomas More: another of the same ilk and at the same time grand things from his " Dialogue of Comfort " and infinite pathos in the scene with Meg, his passionately devoted daughter, on the way to the Tower. Joyce Kilmer is a modern representative of the same wedding of joy and simplicity, and last, but not least, Father Francis Shaw, S.J., a poet of Our Lady whom many of us knew well, and for this essay-we dare not call it study -we, his friends, owe Fr. Daly a great debt of gratitude. His simplicity, whimsical humour, and life long and most intense devotion to Our Lady, finding expression in beautiful sonnets, make a living picture of the friend we knew. Sir John Day, and Lord Charles Russell, are studies of another kind to show that fearless Catholicism can triumph over obstacles to great fame and remain fearless. In contrast with all these varying types of admirable and amiable Christian character-the great little children of Our Lord-we have two different types in the essays on Yeats and Emerson. They meet with courtesy and courteous but efficient castiga tion in perfect English expressing sound literary judgment.

Credit is given where due but pomposity and verbiage and unreality meet with what the small boy gets when he deserves it-again with perfect propriety.

We should like to quote whole pages from this book; but that may not be. It will have a healthy influence in literary circles and do much for that greater glory which is the author's aim.

J. C. J.

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