large-hearted and poetic spirits in that age found their most congenial
atmosphere in these awful renunciations? Why did he who loved where all
men were blind, seek to blind himself where all men loved? Why was he a
monk, and not a troubadour? These questions are far too large to be
answered fully here, but in any life of Francis they ought at least to
have been asked; we have a suspicion that if they were answered, we
should suddenly find that much of the enigma of this sullen time of ours
was answered also. So it was with the monks. The two great parties in
human affairs are only the party which sees life black against white,
and the party which sees it white against black, the party which
macerates and blackens itself with sacrifice because the background is
full of the blaze of an universal mercy, and the party which crowns
itself with flowers and lights itself with bridal torches because it
stands against a black curtain of incalculable night. The revellers are
old, and the monks are young. It was the monks who were the spendthrifts
of happiness, and we who are its misers.

Doubtless, as is apparent from Mr. Adderley's book, the clear and
tranquil life of the Three Vows had a fine and delicate effect on the
genius of Francis. He was primarily a poet. The perfection of his
literary instinct is shown in his naming the fire "brother," and the
water "sister," in the quaint demagogic dexterity of the appeal in the
sermon to the fishes "that they alone were saved in the Flood." In the
amazingly minute and graphic dramatisation of the life, disappointments,
and excuses of any shrub or beast that he happened to be addressing, his
genius has a curious resemblance to that of Burns. But if he avoided the
weakness of Burns' verses to animals, the occasional morbidity, bombast,
and moralisation on himself, the credit is surely due to a cleaner and
more transparent life.