Religious Trends in English Poetry. Volume III: 1780–1830: Romantic Faith by Hoxie Neale Fairchild (review)

108 BOOK REVIEWS plicated by the ambiguous character .of the word " is " which can inhabit either the logical or ontological universe of discourse. But unlike contemporary purists, Gilson does not repudiate common sense because it is sometimes vague and even ambiguous. He wishes to probe it for its latent metaphysics, purifying it when necessary and accepting it when it is true. Gilson's final chapter is entitled" Existence and Philosophy." Here, while appealing to philosophy to recognize the rights of existence, he also asks it to stop at the ultiiDate and, in spite of the torment to conceptualize, to refrain from the attempt to deduce the ultimate from something even more ultimate which is beyond being. There are also admonitions against the so-called " copy " theory of truth which turns the mind into a mirror rather than accepts it as a vital agent in the cognitive process. This book, when its full meaning is thought through and when it has been read and reread with the attention it invites, may well be judged as a high-water mark in the twentieth century rise of Scholasticism. Like every great book, if thinkers are only attentive to it, it will have its coriunentators and even its commentaries. When a heavy hammer strikes the anvil, there are sparks in many directions. For instance, the historical arrows in the book should be followed down to contemporary conceptualism and the emphasis on logic. The whole problem of mechanism could be. treated in the light of what Gilson has said on essentialism. The problem of our knowledge of existence should be clarified even if not conceptualized. Gilson's thesis should be applied to the conflict of voluntarism versus intellectualism in the history of thought· and on the contemporary scene. The problem of the intelligibility of creatures in affording knowledge of God can be further probed. The problem of the analogy of being can be pointed up in Gilson's framework and applied to the history of thought as Gilsonhas applied the doctrine on existence. This book should be of interest to all philosophers. It is " must " reading for the Scholastic. For Gilson is not only a good chronicler of the past; his genius is also as a teacher for the present. Loretto Heighu OoUege, DenveT, Colorado. VINCENT EnwARD SMITH. Religious Trends in English Poetry. Volume ffi: 1780-1830: Romantic Faith. By HoxiE NEALE FAIRCHILD. New York: Columbia University Press, 1949. Pp. 559; with index. $6.75. Professor Fairchild leaves us in no doubt about his attitude toward romanticism. He sees that at its best and in spite of its early contributions to man's happiness, it is self-worship; at its worst it is a selfish pride and a iust f()r power, "the same force which actuates the foes of democracy." BOOK REVIEWS 109 This third volume of Religioua Trends in English, PoetT'JI, then, is m~re than a careful piece of scholarship about the religious beliefs of the great nineteenth century poets; it has a value which comes from Professor Fairchild's knowledge of the possibility of an exaggeration at the present moment of the romantic philosophy of life, a philosophy which the Romantic Movement in literature represents at the cuhnination of one point of its development. This work belongs to a series of five volumes which proposes to trace " the trends of religious thought and feeling through English poetry from the beginning of the eighteenth century to the present." In the preface the author points out that the scope and method of the present volume differ markedly from the plan of the two. earlier books, for instead of examining the work of a great number of second and third (or lower) rate writers, here he limits himself to a detailed investigation of seven distinguished poets of the Romantic period: Burns, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron, and Keats. This change will, no doubt, ease many of Professor Fairchild's readers who have found that volumes I and II required weary plodding through much dull and uninteresting verse. By means of a religious frame of reference, the author analyzes romanticism as exhibited in its most well-known exponents. He justifies his position by numerous...