To those who knew and loved St Francis before M. Sabatier's Life gave such an impulse to Franciscan literature in England, the satisfaction which they feel in the saint's immense popularity is somewhat alloyed by the regret that this literature should run in so narrow a groove. Evenin M. Sabatier's book, the light is concentrated too exclusively on the saint and his immediate disciples. We are indeed reminded, here and there, that the ordinary friar of the next generation was already of a very different type; but the story seldom passes beyond that first small group, and everyone seems to avoid the more complicated and laborious question: “What manner of man was the ordinary friar of the second generation?” And yet, until this question is at least approximately answered, we cannot really understand certain traits in the Founder's own character. Scientific history can never admit Goethe's poetic plea:

It is the sower's business to look well, not only to his seed, but to his soil; for soil will give the increase only by strict natural law, and a man's disciples are, in a sense, only his own thoughts and deeds writ large.

The medieval reaction of the last seventy years in England is, in many ways, a very curious phenomenon. In spite of the number of fine intellects which have led it, it has been far more a matter of sentiment than of logic.