Vol. XLII. No. 251. THE CATHOLIC WORLD A MONTHLY MAGAZINE FEBRUARY 1886 XI. THE METAMORPHOSES OF IRISH NAMES. XIII. A TOUR IN CATHOLIC TEUTONIA. XIV. ISLAM. XV. NEW PUBLICATIONS. I. A PROTECTORY FOR PRODIGAL SONS. II. SONNET-TO ST. CECILIA. . III. THE SLAUGHTER OF THE FIRST-BORN. IV. JOOST VAN DEN VONDEL. Agnes Repplier. V. THE DOCTOR'S FEE. VI. "DUDE" METAPHYSICS. Rev. Henry A. Brann, D.D. VIII. SOLITARY ISLAND. Concluded. THE CATHOLIC Price 35 Cents; $4 per Year. . DEALERS Louis B. Binsse Louis Mallory. A. F. Marshall. R. M. Johnston. NEW YORK: PUBLICATION (P. O. Box 2039) No. 9 BARCLAY STREET. 577 588 589 SOCIETY CO 595 608 Carols for a Merry Christmas and a Joyous Easter-Life of St. Philip 635 641 645 658 666 674 685 695 710 713 LONDON: BURNS & OATES, 28 ORCHARD STREET, W. Entered at the Post-Office as Second Class Matter. SUPPLIED BY THE AMERICAN NEWS COMPANY. N. B.-The postage on "THE CATHOLIC WORLD" to Great Britam and Ireland, France, Belgium, Italy, and Germany is 5 cts. 1886.] THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE. THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE. "When such a one as she, such is her neighbor." 685 THE faculty of composing interesting concretes, whether in verse or in prose, out of the discordant elements of this lower life was bestowed by the Almighty for benign purposes. In this lower life good and evil, their actions and results, are often so confounded that the industrious and the honorable often seem to fail of their reward, while the indolent and the vicious triumph over and mock at them. In addition to the consoling hope of immortality, in which good and evil are to be separated for ever, God has imparted a supplemental. Next and subsidiary to the preacher, whose office is to remind us constantly of the Last Judg ment, is the poet, who leads our minds, inconstant enough to need such aids, to trustful expectation of that Judgment by creating from among the inhabitants of this present world those of his own in which justice is administered in ways at least approximating the justice of eternity. For this purpose, less exalted, indeed, than that of the priesthood, we believe that poesy was bestowed upon mankind. The novelist is a poet as well as the maker of verses. In these new creations the jarring elements of human life are so joined as to appear to harmonize in some degree, or made to cease their conflict by the triumph of the good even on this side of the grave. This is the leading, legitimate purpose of fiction-to show us a more excellent way than the present in which we travel, and so to hold us from discouragement for the irregularities and failures that we continually witness and experience. We have made these observations prefatory to some reflections upon satire, particularly as exhibited in the works of Mr. Thackeray. Suggestive were the motives that impelled the first of the satirists of Greece. What might have been done by Archilochus of Paros but for the accidents in his earliest ambition we cannot say, knowing so little of his youth. But it was his lot to love the fair Neobule, daughter of Lycambes. The maid returned his passion, and her father at first gave consent to their union, but, having ascertained that the mother of the youth had been a slave, withdrew it. Thereupon the lover gave vent to his disap |
