by James V. Schall, S. J. | Apr 21, 2019
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. | Feb 10, 2019
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”...
by James V. Schall, S. J. | Dec 9, 2018
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...
by James V. Schall, S. J. | Oct 7, 2018
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...
by James V. Schall, S. J. | Sep 2, 2018
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...
by James V. Schall, S. J. | Jun 10, 2018
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...
