Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-05-13
THE pARSoN IN RATJyPE

THE PARSON IN LITERATURE.
However it may have been with the
world IN general, says writer in the
call literary has always found the parson
interesting. AS a parsonage he has dis
covered sharp contrasts to the rest of
humanity, and has not been without
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 ridIoule and sarcasm fail, the
clergyman remains an ever-present re-
source. AS a rule, we do not find him
in the drama except IN caricature; 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 clerical character,
from the improvident Vicar of Wake
field, in whom Goldsmith reflected SO
much of his own personality, to the
Dean Maitlands and Reverend Apostates,
the Robert Ellsmeres, and John Wards,
of our own day. No one would think
of accusing Hawthorne of churchy in
olinations, and yet the fact remains
that no human product seems to
have had the fascination for his mind
which he found in that unique individual,
the New England minister of a century
ago. Even George Eliot, with her secu-
larist tendencies, rarely failed, in q
novel, to pay her respects to profession
which must have appealed to her only
upon the literary side; nor was her singu-
larry Catholic mind wanting in genuine
and tender appreciation of the difficult
ties as well as the ideal aspects of the
minister's work. How, too, Trollope
delighted in olergymen, reveling in the
petty details of curate existence as if he
shared that ABSORPTION in their person
anu function which is ascribed TO women
of uncertain prospects and a sentimental
turn of mind! And what q hopeless
figure that same novelist would have
made in a new world like ours, withou
any religious establishment, and socia,
life conditioned in its mild monotoniesI
In the field OF actual literary achieve
ment also should we not miss that gentle
lover of the fields, Gilbert White, of Sell
Dorne, who knew so well how to serve
men in the double capacity Of naturalist
aud pastorf George Crabbe may not be
great poet, but it is pleasant to think
of him, after his safe anchorage in
the church, as solacing his own life, if
not compelling the attention of after
ages, with the respectable mediocrity of
his verse. who does not like to take the
road with preaching, fghting, gypsying
George Borrow, whose heart always
spoke in Romany whatever language
might be on his lipsl Few have done
more 10 euliven our literature than Dean
Swift and Sydney Smith, to say nothing |
of that laughter-loving Mr.. Ingoldsby,
who was known in the pulpit as Rev.
Richard H. Barham. Not every one re-
calls that the best two drinking songs In |
the language were written by clergymen
1.-THE Brown Jug" By Rev. Francis |
Fawkes, and that 90 Drinking Song, - by |
J ohm Still, bishop of Bath and Wells in
the Sixteenth century, which Wharton
calls the FIRST chanson a boire Of any
merit in the English tongue. What q /