Old Stuff

Blessed John Mason Neale

Perhaps he will be beatified one day - "ut unum sint!". Meanwhile, this is poetry I can understand. I have a deep affection for Father Neale and I'm thankful for his preservation and "handing on" of the treasures of antiquity in beautiful English verse.

Here's an amusing anecdote in the charming Anglican tradition of "ecclesiastical gossip." Seems like the Anglicans relish these sorts of family stories. Anglican-turned-Catholic Father George Rutler's book of hymns Brightest and Best is chock-full of such things.

John Mason Neale had his lighter side, too, as evidenced by a joke he once played on John Keble. As related by Neale's associate G. Moultrie and quoted in A. G. Lough, The Influence of John Mason Neale (London, SPCK 1962, p. 95):

[Neale] was invited by Mr. Keble and the Bishop of Salisbury to assist them with their new Hymnal, and for this reason he paid a visit to Hursley Parsonage [Keble's residence]...[Keble] related that having to go to another room to find some papers he was detained a short time. On his return, Dr. Neale said, "Why Keble! I thought you told me that the Christian Year was entirely original!" "Yes," he answered, "it certainly is." "Then how comes this?" And Dr. Neale placed before him the Latin of one of Keble's hymns for a Saint's day - I think it was for St. Luke's. Keble professed himself utterly confounded. There was the English, which he knew that he had made, and there too no less certainly was the Latin, with far too unpleasant a resemblance to his own to be fortuitous. He protested that he had never seen this "original," no, not in all his life! etc. etc. After a few minutes, Neale relieved him by owning that he had just turned it into Latin in his absence.