By James V. Schall, S. J. Recently, Brent Barnes, a friend from Houston, gave me three handsomely bound volumes from a London edition of Samuel Johnson’s essays in The Rambler. Already in 1801 this edition was the fourteenth in this famous series. Barnes found these...
By James V. Schall, S. J. In The Tolkien Reader is found his famous essay “On Fairy-Stories.” At the end of the essay, we find some explanatory “Notes” listed according to letters—A, B, C, and so on. The Note listed as “H” is the one that interests me here. Note “H”...
James V. Schall, S. J. “There is no substitute for strength of character, and in boys, or men, this requires two things increasingly rare in our time: knowledge of the past and a vision of the future. Of the former much has been written, and no compleat gentleman will...
James V. Schall, S. J. David Yost mentioned a famous essay of Robert Louis Stevenson, “Aes Triplex.” He said that it was a favorite of Chesterton and assumed that I had read it. I had not. But the better-late-than-never doctrine certainly holds in this case. It...
James V. Schall, S. J. Heywood Broun’s very short story, The Fifty-First Dragon, was published in 1921 by Harcourt Brace. It concerns a medieval school for the formation of knights. Matriculating in this school is an apparently inept candidate by the ironic name of...
James V. Schall, S. J. The second essay of Samuel Johnson’s entries in The Rambler was published on Saturday, March 24, 1750. The essay begins with what must be called a general experience of all mankind, thus including one’s own self-knowledge: “The mind of man is...
Harvey Mansfield’s Long Dissent
@AdamKissel on "Where Harvard Went Wrong: Fifty Years of Commentary That Fell on Deaf Ears" by Harvey C. Mansfield. @EncounterBooks
Hebraic Ideas at the Founding
Daniel James Sundahl on "Jewish Roots of American Liberty: The Impact of Hebraic Ideas on the American Story," Edited By Wilfred McClay and Stuart Halpern.
@EncounterBooks
