there is ready for her the tripod of Delphi. Eye her not askance if she
seldom sing directly of religion: the bird gives glory to God though it
sings only of its innocent loves. Suspicion creates its own cause;
distrust begets reason for distrust. This beautiful, wild, feline
Poetry, wild because left to range the wilds, restore to the hearth of
your charity, shelter under the rafter of your Faith; discipline her to
the sweet restraints of your household, feed her with the meat from your
table, soften her with the amity of your children; tame her, fondle her,
cherish her--you will no longer then need to flee her. Suffer her to
wanton, suffer her to play, so she play round the foot of the Cross!

There is a change of late years: the Wanderer is being called to her
Father's house, but we would have the call yet louder, we would have the
proffered welcome more unstinted. There are still stray remnants of the
old intolerant distrust. It is still possible for even a French
historian of the Church to enumerate among the articles cast upon
Savonarola's famous pile, _poesies erotiques, tant des anciens que des
modernes, livres impies ou corrupteurs, Ovide, Tibulle, Properce, pour ne
nommer que les plus connus, Dante, Petrarque, Boccace, tous ces auteurs
Italiens qui deja souillaient les ames et ruinaient les moeurs, en creant
ou perfectionnant la langue_. {2} Blameworthy carelessness at the least,
which can class the _Vita Nuova_ with the _Ars Amandi_ and the
_Decameron_! And among many English Catholics the spirit of poetry is
still often received with a restricted Puritanical greeting, rather than
with the traditionally Catholic joyous openness.

We ask, therefore, for a larger interest, not in purely Catholic poetry,
but in poetry generally, poetry in its widest sense. With few
exceptions, whatsoever in our best poets is great and good to the non-
Catholic, is great and good also to the Catholic; and though Faber threw