No other constructive force that has come into English literature during the nineteenth century is nearly so important as the Catholic spirit. By this I mean the Catholic way of living and of looking upon life; the understanding of the Christian traditions of European civilization, the acceptance of the principles upon which those traditions were based, and confidence in their efficacy in modern life and letters. Of necessity this spirit is concerned with the Middle Ages from which modern England broke away, but its concern is not limited to lucarnes, alchemists, and Knights Templars. It is worth noting that a man may refuse (though it happens unfrequently) to recognize the supremacy of the Pope and still possess the Catholic spirit; that he may recognize that supremacy without having the spirit. What cannot be dispensed with is a sense of fellowship with the religious force which built up Europe from the ruins of Rome, which maintained certain principles of human liberty and dependence on God, and which taught the Truth without which Beauty is either a corpse or an evil spirit. It will be the purpose of this little book to indicate how the Catholic idea gained power in England and how it went about using that power in literary art. The achievement to be considered is really too large for adequate treatment in so small a space, but I shall make no long apology for that.
In fact, the surprising thing is the general indifference which has been manifested in critical circles to this really phenomenal wealth of energy. It is, I suppose, sheer inability to understand an alien point of view which has led the author of a popular manual to assert that Newman's conversion was the result of a feverish interest in ritual, and which has inspired the strangely myopic section on the Cardinal in the "Cambridge History of English Literature." I believe that the time has come when the reading public generally will find useful a franker and more coordinated statement of the workings of the Catholic spirit than it has been able to find. People go far in their inspection of principles nowadays, and will not be inclined to discountenance as narrow a tradition that was once broad enough to create the manifold reality of Europe and that has meant much to the England and America of our time. Catholics, of course, have an especial motive for knowing more of the expression given to their views by literary genius. In school and out of it there ought to be for them a way of getting a bird's-eye view of the situation.
I have tried to work in the spirit of filling this demand. The present book is devoted to the public rather than to the scholar and aims to convey a general impression rather than to enumerate a wealth of minute, if erudite, details. A good many books on literature, it often seems, are quite unliterary. Whenever possible an attempt has been made to give an idea of an author's personality and work without aiming directly at criticism; but proportion and common-sense both require some consideration of the relative importance of writers. Mistakes have undoubtedly occurred. Well, let them stand while we go to the business of a survey of modern Catholic letters, frankly, with no view of partisanship, and above all, with Pascal, on our knees.