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68 Vere. Newman's appeal was to the past, to Patristic evidences, to the unity (including, of course, the development) of primitive Christian faith. Father Hecker's appeal was to the present: to the natural laws upon which the supernatural rest, to that "heart's hunger and soul's thirst" which vital Catholic truth alone can satisfy. But Aubrey de Vere was conscious of no past or present in religious experience. In theology, as in all departments of thought, he was a psychological critic. His appeal was to the intuitive sense and "spiritual discernment" first of all and then, because Catholicity included these, to authority and to human nature. And in his prose, no less than in his verse, he regarded life and art from a standpoint equally soulful.

His own spiritual nature, and long habits of analytic thought, necessitated this. We find him making fine and delicate distinctions in words (which are always at the same time distinctions of thought), as between reasoning and reason, pleasure and enjoyment; we find him pointing out how "in Coleridge's poetry the reasoning faculty is chiefly that of contemplation and reflection, in Wordsworth's the meditative and discursive prevail"; again we find him weighing the Elizabethan drama by psychological standards, where Ruskin would have used ethical, and Matthew Arnold æsthetic values. And throughout his entire critical work the moral and artistic elements constantly interpenetrate. Man, however minutely studied, became a symbol of mankind, and all minor verities, whether of sense or intellect, resolved themselves into one immutable and comprehensive Truth. De Vere has observed that the Greek knew no landscape, although he delighted in detached objects of natural beauty. He himself saw all details as part of some harmonious whole;