THE POETIC SPIRIT 189 



coming back to his village "just to have a look 

 round." One of the saddest things in this perpetual 

 going and coming is that a great many men, young 

 and in the prime of life, return after contracting 

 miner's disease, usually in Africa ; and though it is 

 known to every one that they are doomed men, they 

 marry and live just long enough to leave a child or 

 two before they are gathered to their fathers. 



To return to the main point. Is this surprising 

 dearth of the creative faculty, or of genius, in art and 

 literature a good criterion does it justify us in saying 

 that the people are devoid of imagination ? 



For an answer one can only go to the people them- 

 selves not to those of good birth who are in a sense 

 foreigners, or different racially as we have seen, but 

 to the true natives who remain from generation to 

 generation on the land. We are told so often and so 

 insistently by persons who speak with authority that 

 the Celts are an imaginative people that we come to 

 regard it as an established fact, beyond controversy, 

 as true, for instance, as that the blood of a dark-haired 

 person is heavier than the blood of a blonde. It 

 consequently came to me as a great surprise to find 

 that a people so markedly Celtic as the Cornish were 

 the most prosaic I had ever known. At first I could 

 not quite believe that it was so : it was only that I 

 was a stranger among them and had not yet found 

 the way to the hidden romantic vein and poetic spirit 

 in them. Gradually it was borne in on me that the 

 vein was not there, that it had no existence that my 

 wish and no secret living spring or hidden treasure in 



