joyment, the
case was very different. It is not too much to say that, as the result
of Catholic training, teaching, intuition, and association, the least
instructed of his Madrid audience more easily understood Calderon's
allusions, than the great majority of those who, reared up in totally
different ideas, are able to do, even after much labour and sometimes
with considerable sympathy. Mr. Tennyson says that he counts--

"The gray barbarian lower than the Christian child",

because the almost intuitive perceptions of a Christian child as to the
nature of God and the truths of Revelation, place it intellectually
higher than even the mature intelligence of a savage. I mean no
disrespect to Sir F. H. Doyle, but I think that Calderon would have
found at Madrid in the middle of the seventeenth century, and would find
there to-day, in a Catholic boy of fifteen, a more intelligent and a
better instructed critic on these points, than even the learned
professor himself. I shall make no further comments on Sir F. H.
Doyle's Lecture, but give his remarks on Calderon's Autos to the end.

"At the same time", says Sir F. H. Doyle, "Dr. Lorinzer's knowledge of
his subject is so profound, and his appreciation of his favourite author
so keen, that for me, who am almost entirely unacquainted with this
branch of literature, formally to oppose his views, would be an act of
presumption, of which I am, as I trust, incapable. I may, however,
perhaps be permitted to observe, that with regard to the few pieces of
this kind which in an English dress I have read, whilst I think them not
only most ingenious but also surprisingly beautiful, they do not strike
me as incomprehensible at all. We must accept them, of course, as
coming from the mind of a devout Catholic and Spanish gentleman, who
belongs to the seventeenth century; but when once that is agreed upon,
there are no difficulties greater than those which we might expect to
find in any system of poetry so remote from our English habits of
thought. There is, for instance, the Divine Philothea, in other words,
our human spirit considered as the destined bride of Christ. This
sacred drama, we may well call it the swan-song of Calderon's extreme
old age, is steeped throughout in a serene power and a mellow beauty of
style, making it not unworthy to be ranked with that Oedipus Colonaeus
which glorified the sun-set of his illustrious predecessor: but yet,
Protestant as I am, I cannot di