"There has never been a newer, bolder thinker than Coventry Patmore (or one who was a greater artist at the same time), and he has done more than anyone else to open, finally, the immense domains of Religion to Art."--Paul Claudel

Published just a year before his death, these essays and aphorisms were the final flowering of Coventry Patmore's extraordinary vision.

The writers of the 19th-century Catholic Literary Revival, of whom Patmore was an outstanding representative, were in search of the whole of reality, and awoke a renewed appreciation of the importance of symbols as a vehicle...