The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1893-04-01
A POET-PRELATE.
Bishop Spalding, Of Peoria, is the
Only Poet in the Catholic
Hierarchy.
GREAT THINKER AND WRITER
Education and the Higher Life
and the Poem America" are
His Productions.

d4u IA0 EO0u Al0Ilcd dT0 Sfs
His Productions.
A tendency to poetry in priest is not
looked upon with approval by philistines.
That may be one reason why there are
so few poets among clergymen of the
Catholic Church. There are, no DOUBT,
Miitons among them, but they are mute
and inglorious, because the pursuit of
poetry has been hitherto looked on as in
some way against the singleness of the
priest]y ideal. The late Duke of Yelling
ton, very stupid man, sometimes tried
to write sonnets in young women's al
buns. Among the misguided were some
who begged him to publish them; he ex-
pressed great horror -"What, sonnet
writing duke!!" 1t was derogatory to q
man who had done nothing except per-
NIT himself to inherit title to do what
Petrarca and Dante and Sidney and
Shakespeare had done. The example of
the present pope, Leo XIII, has had it's
effect on the opinion that the clergyman
who writes verse is bound "to go to the
bad" The pope wrote and is writing
poetry, and very good poetry; he is proud
of it tuo-all which shows the LACK Of
philistinism in the Italian nature.
1t is not so we'll known, however, that
one of the strongest prelates in the Cath
olic Church is poet of a very high or
der, says writer in the Chicago Post.
John Lancaster Spalding, Bishop of Pc
oria, is prose writer Of greet power and
art. His "Education and the Higher
Life" has all that we find in the best of
Emerson's essays, with 81 stronger grasp
of realities than Emerson had. It settled
s:palding's position as thinker and wri-
ter. Its tone is clear and assured, it
contains none of those offenses against
good taste which clergymen of every de-
nomination commit when they consider
vital subjects from their special point of
view, and it is firm and gentle at the
same time. It is book for all chris
tians and all Americans.
A writer who dev ties himself with
equal skill to b ,th poetry and prose
must suffer the pain of choosing in the
end on which his fame will rest. Milton
wrote great prose and it is forgotten;
Bacon wrote verse, which is happily
never read, and Dryden's prose is as
great as his poetry; Longfellow's poems
have dwarfed his prose, and it is ques-
tion whether Bishop SpaIding's poetry
will not at last be forgotten because his
prose is at least equally good. The vote
at present is largely in favor of his prose,
which IS 50 practical that we, in reading
it, get both the essence of verse and the
body of the more commonplace form.
Of late Bishop Spalding signs his own
name to his poems. He has received
what some literary mon regard as ST.
preme honor-admission to the Authors
Club of New York, The Century has
opened it's pages to him, and his violets
OF poetry are more aud more showing
their heads among the last years leaves
of his prose. When he first wrote it was
under the name of Henry. Hamilton. It
will be news to many of the bishops ad-
mirers that Henry Hamilton, author of
America" and "The POETS Praise" is
that eminently practical master the
prose of literature and life, the bishop of
Peoria. The Magazine of Poetry lately
put his statue in that niche which Whit
tier left empty. But that niche is not
for Bishop Spalding, who is poet of re-
fection, and who seems by an odd inver-
sion to put his strongest feelings into his
prose and his deepest reflections into his
poetry.
"America" and the "Poet's Praise
were published by G. p. Putnam's Sons
several years ago. America" was SO
we'll received that the ''Poet's Praise
soon followed it. Sir Walter Scot held,
by sort of mental reservation, that an
author was justified in denying book,
of which he was accused, on the ground
probably that no man is bound publicly
TO criminate himself. Bishop Spalding
has neither announced nor denied that
he is "Henry Hamilton, but it is an open
secret.
OF the two books, "America" is by far
the stronger. "The Poets Praise, which
consists of hymns. as it were, in honor of
all the finer things of life, and which is
an attempt to restore the poet to bis
rightful place among the great, might
have been written in the clover fields on
sunny June days; the America could
have been written only by strong man
at the end Of summer, with the thought
not the fearof winter storms before