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THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE 227 
ing the personality of the poet in more vehement 
and sweeping action even than the poems, and afford- 
ing specimens of soaring vaticination and impassioned 
appeal impossible to match in the literature of our 
time. The only living author suggested is Carlyle; 
but so much is added, the presence is so much more 
vascular and human, and the whole page so saturated 
with faith and love and democracy, that even the 
great Scotchman is overborne. Whitman, too, radi- 
ates belief, while at the core of Carlyle’s utterances 
is despair. The style here is eruptive and complex, 
or what Jeremy Taylor calls agglomerative, and 
puts the Addisonian models utterly to rout, —a 
style such as only the largest and most Titanic 
workman could effectively use. A sensitive lady of 
my acquaintance says reading the “Vistas” is like 
being exposed to a pouring hail-storm, — the words 
fairly bruise her mind. In its literary construction 
the book is indeed a shower, or a succession of 
showers, multitudinous, wide-stretching, down-pour- 
ing, — the wrathful bolt and the quick veins of poetic 
fire lighting up the page from time to time. I can 
easily conceive how certain minds must be swayed 
and bent by some of these long, involved, but firm 
and vehement passages. I cannot deny myself the 
pleasure of quoting one or two pages. The writer is 
referring to the great literary relics of past times: — 
‘For us, along the great highways of time, those 
monuments stand,— those forms of majesty and 
beauty. For us those beacons burn through all the 
nights. Unknown Egyptians, graving hieroglyphs; 
