San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1890-08-26
THE PARSON IN LITERATURE.
A Character Not at All Neglected
by the NOyelists.

by the Novelists.
However it may have been with the
world in general, says writer in the
Atlantic, that part of it which we call
literary has always found the parsop
interesting. AS a parsonage he has
discovered sharp contrasts to the rest
of humanity, and has not been with
out contradictions in himself which
are available for purposes of the
novelist's art. Nearly every great
writer of fiction has used him as foil;
and when other subjects of ridicule
and sarcasm fail, the clergyman re-
mains an ever-present resource. AS
q rule, we do not find him in the
drama except in carricature; even
Shakespeare creating only the great
prelate, the ecclesiastic on the side of
his relations to the State. But since
the novel has driven the drama out
of the literary field, fiction has held
the mirror up to every phase of cleri.
cal character, from the improvident
Vicar of Wakefield, in whom Gold.
smith reflected so much of his own
personality, to the Dean Maitlands
and Reverend Apostates, the Ro-
bert Elsmeres and John Wards
of our own day. No one
would think of accusing Haw-
thorne of churchy incllnations, and
yet the fact remains that no human
product seems to have had the fascin-
alton for his mind which he found in
that unique individual, the New Eng
land minister of a century ago.
Even George Eliot, with her secu-
larist tendencies, rarely failed in a
novel, 10 pay her respects to profess
sion which must have appealed to
her only upon the literary side; nor
was her singularly catholic mind
wan ting in a genuine and tender APP
probation of the difficulties as well
as the ideal aspects of the min
ister's work. How, too, Trollope de-
lighted in clergymen, reveling in the
petty details of curate existence as if
he shared that ABSORPTION in their
person and function which is as
cribed to women of uncertain Pros
poets and a sentimental turn OF mind!
And what hopeless figure that same
novelist would have made in a new
world like ours, without any religious
6SUdUlieuLutut, anu q SOCidl llt0 Coh-
ditioned in its mild monotonies!
In the field of actual literary
achievement, also, should we not miss
that gentle lover of the fields, Gilbert
White, of Selborne, who knew so
we'll how to serve men in the double
capacity of naturalist and Iastor?
George Crabbe may not be
great poet, but it is pleasant to
think of him after his safe anchor
age in the church, as solacing his own
life, if not compelling the attention of
after ages with the respectable medi-
ocrity of his verse. Who does not
like to take the road with preaching,
fighting, gypsying George Borrow,
whose heart always spoke in Romany,
whatever language might be on his
lips Few have done more to enliven
our literature than Dean Swift and
Sydney Smith, to say nothing of that
laughter-loving Mr.. Ingoldsby, VIII o
was known in the pulpit as the Rev.
Richard H. Barham. Not every one
recalls the best two drinking songs
in the language were written by cler-
gymen-"The Brown Jug" by the
Rev. Francis Fawkes, and that
"Drinkink Song" by John Still,
Bishop of Bath and Wells In the six
teenth century, which Wharton calls
the first chanson bore of any merit
in the English tongue.
What saving quality of reaction
there is in the humOr and playful
abandon of such divInes as Mather
Byles, Norman Mcleod and James
Harrington, as if, uncompromising
and devoted as they are, their very
seriousness made them capable of
boyishness denied to the rest of man.
kind! One hopes, moreover, that I'M
der the Ieveling conditions OF democ-
racy the type may not be losing some
what of Its variety, and becoming
less picturesque and interesting to
the nnnraiudice nhserYar