Page:The Poet's Chantry pg 119.jpg

Rh volume is probably the most illuminating criticism upon natural and divine love which Patmore (or any other modern) has given us. It is the essence of his poetic philosophy, thrown out with virile sparks of mystical insight.

There is about Coventry Patmore's work a supreme, almost an infallible, rightness of spirit: but not infrequently an extravagance and perversity of literal expression. Two explanations are at hand—the fact that much of his writing was "special pleading," and the exalted, autocratic nature of his genius. "My call is that I have seen the truth, and can speak the living words which come of having seen it," he asserted; and his shafts were driven home with the instinct of a born fighter. Yet there can be no question of the constructive value of his teaching, of the overwhelming reality with which it reveals the doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Real Presence and the sacrament of Holy Matrimony. All his life he was, in his own words, trying "To dig again the wells which the Philistines had filled"—building up the supernatural upon the basis of natural good, bowing down before the divine weakness and nearness of God in Christ, rather than before His primal infinity. It is all symbolised in that cryptic Tomb at Lymington: the obelisk of Egypt (Nature) and the Lion of Judah, rising upon the three steps of the Trinity; the Cross, the Host, the Virgin's lilies; and for a text that stupendous promise, My covenant shall be in your flesh.