VI

BROTHER AZARIAS

Of Tacitus, the Roman historian, it is related that on the occasion of Agricola's death, he comforted the bereaved family by recalling to their minds the noble deeds and wise sayings of the dead hero; and he entreated them to contemplate his intellectual and moral portrait, thus outlined, rather than to spend their time in gazing on his statue in marble or bronze. "For," said he, "marble and bronze are perishable, but the great qualities of the soul are everlasting." To many since Agricola's death can this noble tribute be justly paid, but to none more deservedly than to the gentle scholar whose moral and intellectual portrait is but faintly outlined in this brief sketch.

The simple story of Brother Azarias' life is soon told. Patrick Francis Mullany, known to the religious, literary, and educational world of two continents as Brother Azarias, was born in Ireland in 1847. He came to this country when a child, and at the age of fifteen entered the novitiate of the Brothers of the Christian Schools. In 1866 he was appointed professor of mathematics and English literature at Rock Hill College in Maryland, where his brilliant mental qualities soon attracted the attention of his superiors, who thereafter afforded him every opportunity for study and intellectual improvement. In 1877 he went to Europe. There in a short time his studious habits made him as familiar a figure in the Bibliothèque Nationale and the British Museum as he was later in the Astor Library. While abroad his scholarly pursuits brought him into the company of many of the literary and intellectual leaders of France and England, the most distinguished of whom was Cardinal Newman. Returning to America, he was made president of Rock Hill College in 1879, and held the position until 1886, when he went abroad once

more. This time however it was in search of health, which the exacting duties of a college presidency, combined with his ceaseless labors as a student and writer, had well-nigh shattered. During the next three years, spent in Italy, France, and England, he gave himself little time to restore his wasted energies, and the libraries of Milan, Florence, and Rome became as well known to him as were those of Paris, London, and New York. In 1889 he was appointed professor of English literature in the De la Salle Institute, New York City, which position he held until his death.

Brother Azarias was one of the founders and trustees of the Catholic Summer School of America, in which institution he was a member of the Board of Studies, and also held the office of Moderator. At its first session in New London in 1892, he was one of its lecturers. In July, 1893, he delivered a course of five lectures, entitled "Educational Epochs," before the same body at Plattsburgh. These were the last lectures he delivered; for at their conclusion he contracted the illness. which ended his life. Never of a robust constitution, and weakened by years of severe study and unremitting labor, he had little or no reserve of physical strength to resist an insidious attack of pneumonia. He was removed to the Hotel Champlain, where he lingered for several days. Lying on his bed, and conscious to the last, he could see from his window the limpid waters of Lake Champlain rippling against the broad acres of fertile meadow and picturesque woodland, the home of the Catholic Summer School of America, with whose success his name will be hereafter inseparably connected. He died on August 20. His funeral obsequies were celebrated in St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York, and seldom has that magnificent temple held a more notable gathering of ecclesiastics, teachers, and writers, both Catholic and Protestant, than those who on that day had come together to pay their last tribute to the humble Christian Brother, whose educational labors and researches had won for him from foreign critics a reputation for scholarship in his chosen field that was second to none in America.

A careful study of the works of this distinguished scholar, whose future seemed so full of promise, would require more space than can be given here. All that can be attempted within the limits of the present article is to glance for a moment at the results of his literary and educational labors, and to indicate briefly the varied skill and manifold excellences of his delicate and fertile mind.

When the circumstances under which Brother Azarias wrote are considered, the quantity of his purely literary work is very great. His daily duties as a religious and a teacher claimed by far the larger portion of his time. Only in the few remaining hours after these duties were fulfilled, or during the leisure enforced on him by ill health, did he find time to devote to the work which won for him his brilliant reputation as an educator and man of letters. In addition to his five volumes, Aristotle and the Christian Church (London, 1887), Development of Old English Thought (third edition, New York, 1889), The Philosophy of Literature (sixth edition, New York, 1890), Books and Reading (third edition, New York, 1891), Phases of Thought and Criticism (Boston, 1892), numerous articles from his versatile pen are to be found scattered throughout the leading magazines and reviews of this country and England.

To solve the problem of life was the aim of most of his literary labors; not an easy task when we consider man's numerous and complex relations with humanity, with himself, and with God. Prizing principle far above form or method, his work was marked by a simplicity and an earnestness characteristic of the man himself. As a critic, his writings were impressed with the same qualities. Criticism with him was always of the higher, constructive kind. To him a book was a real thing, the image of its author, possessing a soul as well as a body, for each of which the author was alike responsible. To such a man the mere negations of criticism were tasteless and barren. The law of criticism, as he formulated it, was "to know what is best in thought and style, and to make thereof a criterion, whereby to judge literary work according to the

degree of its approach to the ideal standard. The basis of criticism is knowledge, its object is truth."

Of Charles Lamb it has been said that the most striking note of his literary criticism was his veracity. In addition to a quick discernment and a cultivated taste, there was in Brother Azarias a literary instinct that rarely erred. Unlike most of our critics, he busied himself less about form and method than he did in searching for the underlying idea of a poem or a book. Brushing aside its mere surface qualities, his disciplined mind sought the central thought of the author, and when once its purport, "the soul that lurks beneath the printed page of every great book," was grasped, he straightway proceeded to examine and discuss it, face to face, with his readers. He presents the ideal of the author, and notes how far he has surpassed or fallen short of it. He measures the actual importance of the subject-matter, and teaches how to read. and interpret what we have read, thus illuminating many a page that before had been dim and blurred. Lastly, he endeavors to assign to the production its rightful place in literature. Never was his criticism superficial; and when the reader had laid down his polished essay or finished criticism, he possessed a juster appreciation of the author discussed, which often led him to read his works with renewed pleasure and greater profit. Such were the methods Brother Azarias employed; and in this way has he dealt with George Eliot, with Tennyson, with Browning, with Dante, with Thomas à Kempis.

His Aristotle and the Christian Church was originally an essay which he was requested to prepare for the Concord School of Philosophy. In this work Brother Azarias endeavored to explain to the English reader the vexed question of the true attitude of the Church toward the Aristotelian philosophy during the period of its condemnation in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; and to prove that while the influence of Aristotle was everywhere apparent in the works of the Schoolmen, yet the inner spirit and guiding principle of the system of philosophy evolved by them was distinct from