assify him
(according to his own category) with those "masculine" poets whose power
lies in a beautiful utterance of the truth, rather than in a truthful
utterance of the beautiful.

We propose, however, to occupy ourselves with the matter rather than the
mode of Patmore's utterance; with that truth which he conceived himself
to have apprehended in a newer and clearer light than others before him;
and this, because he does not stand alone, but is the representative and
exponent of a certain school of ascetic thought whose tendency is
diametrically contrary to that pseudo-mysticism which we have dealt with
elsewhere, and have ascribed to a confusion of neo-platonic and
Christian principles. This counter-tendency misses the Catholic mean in
other respects and owes its faultiness, as we shall see, to some very
analogous fallacies. If in our chapter on "The True and the False
Mysticism," it was needful to show that the principles of Christian
monasticism and contemplative life, far from in any way necessarily
retarding, rather favour and demand the highest natural development of
heart and mind; it is no less needful to assign to this thought its true
limits, and to show that the noblest expansion of our natural faculties
does not conflict with or exclude the principles of monasticism. I think
it is R.H. Hutton who remarks that it is not "easy to give us a firm
grasp of any great class of truths without loosening our grasp on some
other class of truths perhaps nobler and more vital;" and undoubtedly
Patmore and his school in emphasizing the fallacies of neo-platonic
asceticism are in danger of precipitating us into fallacies every whit
as uncatholic. It is therefore as professedly formulating the principles
of a certain school that we are interested in the doctrine of which
Patmore constitutes himself the apostle.

Lights are constantly breaking in upon me [he
writes] and convincing me more and more that the
singular luck has fallen to me of having to write, for
the first time that any one even attempted to do so
with any fulness, on simply the greatest and most
exquisite subject that ever poet touched since the
beginning of the world.

The more I consider the subject of the marriage of
the Blessed Virgin, the more clearly I see that it is the
_one_ absolutely lovely and perfect subject for poetry.
Perfect humanity, verging upon, but never entering the
breathless region of the Divinity, is the re