| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Research Magnificent by H. G. Wells: Prothero had been examined enough. Now he must be entertained. She
told stories about the village people in her brightest manner. The
third story she regretted as soon as she was fairly launched upon
it; it was how she had interviewed the village dressmaker, when Sir
Godfrey insisted upon her supporting local industries. It was very
amusing but technical. The devil had put it into her head. She had
to go through with it. She infused an extreme innocence into her
eyes and fixed them on Prothero, although she felt a certain
deepening pinkness in her cheeks was betraying her, and she did not
look at Benham until her unhappy, but otherwise quite amusing
anecdote, was dead and gone and safely buried under another. . . .
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Poems of William Blake by William Blake: I
The daughters of Mne Seraphim led round their sunny flocks,
All but the youngest: she in paleness sought the secret air.
To fade away like morning beauty from her mortal day:
Down by the river of Adona her soft voice is heard;
And thus her gentle lamentation falls like morning dew.
O life of this our spring! why fades the lotus of the water?
Why fade these children of the spring? born but to smile & fall.
Ah! Thel is like a watry bow, and like a parting cloud,
Like a reflection in a glass: like shadows in the water
Like dreams of infants, like a smile upon an infants face.
Poems of William Blake |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: is the test. There is nothing that has not in it suggestion or
challenge.
ERNEST. But is Criticism really a creative art?
GILBERT. Why should it not be? It works with materials, and puts
them into a form that is at once new and delightful. What more can
one say of poetry? Indeed, I would call criticism a creation
within a creation. For just as the great artists, from Homer and
AEschylus, down to Shakespeare and Keats, did not go directly to
life for their subject-matter, but sought for it in myth, and
legend, and ancient tale, so the critic deals with materials that
others have, as it were, purified for him, and to which imaginative
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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 The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: contrived a double or a treble debt to pay, and is at once an
ornament in its place, and a pillar in the main design.
Nothing would find room in such a picture that did not serve,
at once, to complete the composition, to accentuate the
scheme of colour, to distinguish the planes of distance, and
to strike the note of the selected sentiment; nothing would
be allowed in such a story that did not, at the same time,
expedite the progress of the fable, build up the characters,
and strike home the moral or the philosophical design. But
this is unattainable. As a rule, so far from building the
fabric of our works exclusively with these, we are thrown
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