II. SONNET-TO ST. CECILIA. .

III. THE SLAUGHTER OF Tthe First-Born.
IV. JOOST VAN DEN VONDEL. .

V. THE DOCTOR'S FEE.
VI. "DUDE" METAPHYSICS.
VII. THE DAYS OF GENESIS.

Rev. Henry A. Brann, D.D.
Rev. Clarence A. Walworth.

Louis B. Binsse

577

635

641

645

658

II.

St. George Mivart.

695

Rev. M. W. M.

710

713

Rev. J. Talbot Smith.
Rev. William Stang.

VIII. SOLITARY ISLAND. Concluded.
IX. EMPEROR MAXIMILIAN I. .
X. ELEVEN GENERAL ELECTIONS OF The Reign of VICTORIA.

XI. THE METAMORPHOSES OF IRISH NAMES.
XII. THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE. .
XIII. A TOUR IN CATHOLIC TEUTONIA.
XIV. ISLAM.

XV. NEW PUBLICATIONS.

Carols for a Merry Christmas and a Joyous Easter-Life of St. Philip
Benizi, of the Order of the Servants of Mary, 1233-1285-The Chair of
Peter-On the Study of Languages-The Defender of the Faith-The
Nativity Play-The Mad Penitent of Todi-Decreta Quatuor Concili-
orum Provincialium Westmonasteriorum, 1852-1873-Sixth Centenary
of St. Philip Benizi-Fabiola-Der Hausfreund-The Catholic Direc-
tory, Ecclesiastical Register, and Almanac for the Year of our Lord
1886-Lives of the Saints and Blessed of the Three Orders of St. Fran-
cis-Sadliers' Catholic Directory, Almanac, and Ordo for the Year of
our Lord 1886-Clotilde-Mary Burton-Lost-Little Dick's Christmas
Carols-Odile.

THE CATHOLIC

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1886.]

THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE.

685

THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE.

"When such a one as she, such is her neighbor."

-As You Like It.

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 Judgment, 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