| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: and in the end, in spite of the critics, we may hesitate to give
the preference to either. The one may ask more genius - I do not
say it does; but at least the other dwells as clearly in the
memory.
True romantic art, again, makes a romance of all things. It
reaches into the highest abstraction of the ideal; it does not
refuse the most pedestrian realism. ROBINSON CRUSOE is as
realistic as it is romantic; both qualities are pushed to an
extreme, and neither suffers. Nor does romance depend upon the
material importance of the incidents. To deal with strong and
deadly elements, banditti, pirates, war and murder, is to conjure
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Coxon Fund by Henry James: things in. I can find a place for them: we might even find a
place for the fellow himself." I myself should have had some fear-
-not, I need scarcely say, for the "things" themselves, but for
some other things very near them; in fine for the rest of my
eloquence.
Later on I could see that the oracle of Wimbledon was not in this
case so appropriate as he would have been had the polities of the
gods only coincided more exactly with those of the party. There
was a distinct moment when, without saying anything more definite
to me, Gravener entertained the idea of annexing Mr. Saltram. Such
a project was delusive, for the discovery of analogies between his
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Love Songs by Sara Teasdale: I heard a cry in the night,
A thousand miles it came,
Sharp as a flash of light,
My name, my name!
It was your voice I heard,
You waked and loved me so --
I send you back this word,
I know, I know!
The Lamp
If I can bear your love like a lamp before me,
When I go down the long steep Road of Darkness,
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson: over-seas for Ardshiel and his poor bairns. What was it ye
called it, when I told ye?"
"I called it noble, Alan," said I.
"And you little better than a common Whig!" cries Alan. "But
when it came to Colin Roy, the black Campbell blood in him ran
wild. He sat gnashing his teeth at the wine table. What! should
a Stewart get a bite of bread, and him not be able to prevent it?
Ah! Red Fox, if ever I hold you at a gun's end, the Lord have
pity upon ye!" (Alan stopped to swallow down his anger.) "Well,
David, what does he do? He declares all the farms to let. And,
thinks he, in his black heart, 'I'll soon get other tenants
Kidnapped |
