| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Mistress Wilding by Rafael Sabatini: is he, man?"
"Sh, sir! He's asleep in the library. You'll wake him, you'll wake
him!"
But Trenchard never paused. He crossed the hail at a bound, and flung
wide the library door. "Anthony!" he shouted. "Anthony!" And in the
background Walters cursed him for a fool. Wilding leapt to his feet,
awake and startled.
"Wha... Nick!"
"Oons!" roared Nick. "You're choicely found. I came to send to
Bridgwater for you. We must away at once, man."
"How - away? I thought you were in the fight, Nick."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: you; but had you, perchance, fallen upon a hypocrite, a scoffer,
one whose books may be melancholy but whose life is a perpetual
carnival, you would have found as the result of your generous
imprudence an evil-minded man, the frequenter of green-rooms,
perhaps a hero of some gay resort. In the bower of clematis where
you dream of poets, can you smell the odor of the cigar which
drives all poetry from the manuscript?
But let us look still further. How could the dreamy, solitary life
you lead, doubtless by the sea-shore, interest a poet, whose
mission it is to imagine all, and to paint all? What reality can
equal imagination? The young girls of the poets are so ideal that
Modeste Mignon |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Othello by William Shakespeare: Oh Balmy breath, that dost almost perswade
Iustice to breake her Sword. One more, one more:
Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee,
And loue thee after. One more, and that's the last.
So sweet, was ne're so fatall. I must weepe,
But they are cruell Teares: This sorrow's heauenly,
It strikes, where it doth loue. She wakes
Des. Who's there? Othello?
Othel. I Desdemona
Des. Will you come to bed, my Lord?
Oth. Haue you pray'd to night, Desdemon?
Othello |
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 Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: through my hands; and I still retain some of the heat of
composition. Yet it may serve as a text for the last remark
I have to offer. To Pepys I think I have been amply just; to
the others, to Burns, Thoreau, Whitman, Charles of Orleans,
even Villon, I have found myself in the retrospect ever too
grudging of praise, ever too disrespectful in manner. It is
not easy to see why I should have been most liberal to the
man of least pretensions. Perhaps some cowardice withheld me
from the proper warmth of tone; perhaps it is easier to be
just to those nearer us in rank of mind. Such at least is
the fact, which other critics may explain. For these were
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