CONTEMPLATIVE

By Fr, BROCARD SEWELL, 0.Carm.
T. F. POWYS by H. Coombes (Borne and Rockliff, 18s.).
THE Reverend Charles Francis Powys (b. 1843) had eleven children, of whom the most famous are the writers John Cowper, Llewellyn, and Theodore Francis Powys. Most of the brothers and sisters reacted strongly from their Evangelical upbringing, Theodore being as heterodox as any of them.
None became a Catholic but John Covimer's son Littleton Alfred Powys was ordained in the Church of England and became a Catholic priest of the diocese of Clifton, where his zeal and holiness are still remembered.
Their friend Louis Wilkinson once proposed to write a book on the three "great" Powyses to be called "Three Christian Brothers." The title would not have been without justification. though "Three Religious Rebels" would have been nearer the mark.
Enjoyment
FOR all his heterodoxy the one most deserving the title of Christian was Theodore. who read the lessons in East Chaldon church for nearly forty years, and spent long hours meditating in the church outside service time.
This mystified his friends and relatives; but though not orthodox he was a profound's.' religious man. He enjoyed going to church; and his son views his later churchgoing as having been a kind of preparation for death.
his Catholic sister-in-law, Elizabeth Myers, sass in a letter to John Cowper that Theodore "was a beautiful person and meeting William Blake must have been like meeting Theodore, so wise, so gentle. and courteous, so humorous and all-seeing". Writing to Theodore himself she says: "You are a Blake man and a Traherne man and a Jacob Bochme man as well as being a Mr. Weston, Mr. Pim, and those other gentry whose shy and wise and unholy and delicious mugs peer from their lasting places in the Gallery of English Letters."
Allegorical
TF. POWYS was a contem
• plativc; all his writings are meditations on the great mysteries: God, life, and death. His writing. as Mr. Coombes says, has the kind of force one finds in Langland. Bunyan. and Swift. His masterpiece iS the allegorical novel "Mr. Weston's Good Wine" more than once reprinted in Penguin Books.
Mr. Coombes's altogether admirable survey and study should win new readers for his other, less well-known books. To quote Elizabeth Myers again; "I love him like anything. Some people positively hate his books; I enjoy them; there is a reason for every word he writes, even the parts where he describes dreadful cruelty."
Mr. Coombes twice refers to an article on T. F. Powys written by Mr. Louis Wilkinson for the "Aylesford Review". This will appear in due course in a number of that magazine along with other articles on he creator of Mr. Wes
ton and Me•Jar. by Neville Braybrooke, John Cowper Powys, Theodore's son Mr. Francis Powys, and Mr. Coombes himself.
Catholics who enjoy the writings of Bunyan, Thomas Hardy, and Georges Bernanos will enjoy the books of Theodore Powys. Others had better keep clear. But anyone who is interested in unusual personalities and in questions of English style and language will find Mr. Coombes book well worth reading for its own sake.
THE TRIAL OF ROGER CASEMENT (William Hodge, 18s.). THOSE interested in Roger Casement can now obtain the record of the trial and appeal in the "Notable British Trials" series. Mr. H. Montgomery Hyde contributes a lengthy, valuable. and scrupulously fair introduction
to set the scene. 3l.B.
MEDITATIONS ON THE LOVE OF GOD, by Pere Grou (Burnes Oates, 12s. 6d.). THIS is the latest volume in the Orchard series. The late Abbot Cuthbert Butler's foreword reminds us that this great Jesuit spiritual writer has a special interest for us, in that he spent his last years in this country and is buried in Lulworth church, For those who like their spirituality in the form of retreat notes, this work will specially appeal, for it is in effect an eight-day retreat.
M.B.