target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_e366c235-7020-51e6-aef7-ba2cca3a3dac">68 ‘a new foundation’. The reference is to 2 Corinthians 5:17 and Galatians 6:15.
69 In his letter to Arthur Greeves of 14 February 1920 (CL I, p. 475), Lewis wrote: ‘When a thing is explained it loses half its nastiness, “tout comprende [sic] c’est tout pardonner.”’ The expression comes from Madame de Staël (1766–1817), who said in Corinne (1807), book 18, ch, 5, ‘Tout comprendre rend très indulgen’ (‘To understand everything makes one very indulgent’). The first expression used by Lewis, ‘tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner’ (‘to understand everything is to forgive everything’) is also attributed to Madame de Staël, while ‘tout pardonner c’est tout comprendre’ means ‘to forgive everything is to understand everything’.
70 Robert William Chapman (1881–1960), secretary to the delegates of Oxford University Press, 1920–42, was the editor of The Allegory of Love. He took a First in Literae Humaniores from Oriel College, Oxford, in 1906, after which he began working for the Clarendon Press. He was the editor of Jane Austen’s novels and letters, and his many distinguished books include Jane Austen—A Critical Bibliography (1953) and an edition of The Letters of Samuel Johnson with Mrs Thrale’s Genuine Letters to Him, 3 vols. (1952).
71 The Allegory of Love, p. 336. The reference is to Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III, vii, 29.
72 ibid., p. 331: ‘Acrasia’s two young women (their names are obviously Cissie and Flossie) are ducking and giggling in a bathing-pool for the benefit of a passer-by: one does not need to go to fairy land to meet them.’
73 Scott, Waverley. ch. 6: ‘The laird was only rejoiced that his worthy friend, Sir Everard Waverley of Waverley-Honour, was reimbursed of the expenditure which he had outlaid on account of the house of Bradwardine…A yearly intercourse took place, of a short letter and a hamper or a cask or two, between Waverley-Honour and Tully-Veolan, the English exports consisting of mighty cheeses and mightier ale, pheasants, and venison, and the Scottish returns being vested in grouse, white hares, pickled salmon, and usquebaugh.’
74 Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, trans. John W. Harvey (London: Oxford University Press, 1923; 7th impression, 1936).
75 René Guénon (1886–1950), Sufi and founder of the Traditionalist School. The ‘ex-pupil’ was Martin Lings, a member of Guénon’s household in Egypt and a convert to Traditionalism. See Martin Lings in the Biographical Appendix, and Lings’ essay, ‘René Guénon’, Sophia: The journal of the Traditional Studies, I, no. 1 (Summer 1995).
76 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aids to Reflection (1825), Aphorism VIIIb: ‘Understanding is discursive; Reason is fixed. The Understanding in all its judgments refers to some other faculty as its ultimate authority; The Reason in all its decisions appeals to itself as the ground and substance of their truth.
Understanding is the faculty of reflection; Reason [the faculty] of contemplation.’
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (1817), ch. 13: ‘The primary imagination I hold to be the living power and prime Agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. The secondary imagination I consider as an echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of Its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation…Fancy, on the contrary, has no other counters to play with but fixities and definites. The fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space; and blended with, and modified by that empirical phenomenon of the will which we express by the word choice’.
77 The medieval term for ‘poetry’.
78 Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Part I, Question 1, Article 9, ‘Whether Holy Scripture Should Use Metaphors’: Objection 1. ‘It seems that Holy Scripture should not use metaphors. For that which is proper to the lowest science seems not to befit this science, which holds the highest place of all. But to proceed by the aid of various similitudes and figures is proper to poetry, the least of all the sciences. Therefore it is nut fitting that this science should make use of such similitudes.’ Reply: ‘Poetry makes use of metaphors to produce a representation, for it is natural to man to be pleased with representations. But sacred doctrine makes use of metaphors as both necessary and useful.’ ibid., Part I, Question 115, Article 5: ‘We know by experience that many things are done by demons, for which the power of heavenly bodies would in no way suffice: for instance, that a man in a state of delirium should speak an unknown tongue, recite poetry and authors of whom he has no previous knowledge.’
79 ‘poetry is the art of speaking in verses. Question 1: Whether rhythm is a type of verse.’
80 ‘by its activity, through contact, as from its appearance’. These are the criteria St Thomas Aquinas uses in the Summa Theologica, Part I. Question 75, Article 1 to discuss whether the soul has a body.
81 ‘through the path of the will’. This was a standard concern of the Church Fathers.
82 Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Part II, Question 27, Article 5.
83 John 1:12.
TO JOAN BENNETT (L):1
[Magdalen College]
13 January 1937
A foul copy of an essay (which now that I re-read it doesn’t seem as good as I had hoped) is a poor return for the delightful, the champagne holiday you gave me. But you asked for it and here it is.2
What splendid talk goes on in your house!—and what a wonderful thing…your English Faculty is. If only we and you could combine into a single teaching body (leaving out your freaks and nonentities) we could make ‘English’ into an education that would not have to fear any rivalries. In the meantime we have lots to exchange. I am sure you practise more ‘judgement’; I suspect we have more ‘blood’. What we want is to be well commingled.
The Lucas book proves disappointing as you go on.3 His attack on Richards4 for splitting up poetic effects which we receive as a unity, is silly; that is what analysis means and R. never suggested that the products of analysis