Arts and Manners

A Spiritual Aeneas

The most lively of men is dead, a clergyman who taught those of his own faith, a master of English who enriched that richest of all languages, a man who enriched our lives. He represented not only Catholicism, but all our Hellenic and Western traditions. Instinct rightly led him to call the story of his early life A Spiritual Aeneid: with Virgil he sailed to Rome, and with St. Peter found it. A classical scholar and brilliant author, he became an Anglican clergyman. Later, as a Catholic convert, he continued his pastoral work, writing, preaching and debating, work which was rewarded with the title of Monsignor. Then, though none of these activities was interrupted until the day, last week, of his death, he crowned his efforts with a supreme, fifteen-year labor of Biblical translation and commentary, learned, literary, and with that mark on it of genius which cannot be analyzed. And beneath and around all these major landmarks of his life rippled the quips, satires, detective novels and limericks—effortlessly produced, and endlessly—which endeared him to all who knew him.

GW

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Garry Wills

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A Spiritual Aeneas

The most lively of men is dead, a clergyman who taught those of his own faith, a master of English who enriched that richest of all languages, a man who enriched our lives. He represented not only Catholicism, but all our Hellenic and Western traditions. Instinct rightly led him to call the story of his early life A Spiritual Aeneid: with Virgil he sailed to Rome, and with St. Peter found it. A classical scholar and brilliant author, he became an Anglican clergyman. Later, as a Catholic convert, he continued his pastoral work, writing, preaching and debating, work which was rewarded with the title of Monsignor. Then, though none of these activities was interrupted until the day, last week, of his death, he crowned his efforts with a supreme, fifteen-year labor of Biblical translation and commentary, learned, literary, and with that mark on it of genius which cannot be analyzed. And beneath and around all these major landmarks of his life rippled the quips, satires, detective novels and limericks—effortlessly produced, and endlessly—which endeared him to all who knew him.