A NEW MASTER OF ENGLISH PROSE 21 



have written his flamboyant if futile chapter on Neo-Paganism. Mr. 

 Dickinson does not attempt "merely to revive the pagan idea of a simple 

 and rational self-completion." Rather, he looks for the tide of noblest 

 spiritual progress where the lustrous and rapturous river from the pagan 

 springs of Love and Beauty and Wisdom meet the more sober stream of 

 ideals from the fountain of Christianity. The last speaker in the Sym- 

 posium, who "expressed himself in a style too intellectual for lovers of 

 poetry, too metaphorical for lovers of philosophy," voices the thought in 

 this glowing deliverance uttered in the glamor of the dawn : 



It is only in the soil of Paganism that Christianity can come to maturity. And 

 Faith, Hope, Charity, are but seeds of themselves till they fall into the womb of 

 Wisdom, Beauty, and Love. Olympus lies before us, the snow-capped mountain. 

 Let us climb it, together, if you will, not some on the corpses of the rest; but climb 

 at least, not fester and swarm on rich meadows of equality. We are not for the 

 valley, nor for the forest or the pastures. If we be brothers, yet we are brothers in 

 a quest, needing our foremost to lead. Aphrodite, Apollo, Athene, are before us, 

 not behind. Majestic forms, they gleam among the snows. March, then, men 

 in Man ! 



If we add this half-mystic flight to the formal statement essayed above, 

 we shall probably draw as near to the inner sanctum as our philosopher- 

 priest cares to allow the profane to approach without longer service; 

 and even those who cannot accept his religion and worship in his spirit 

 must feel their hearts quickened and their lives enlarged from visiting the 

 courts of the temple by his side. 



From his views on art and hterature there will be fewer dissenters. 

 Where can we find anything on letters more exquisite than the sentiments 

 of our Chinese official ? 



Our poets and literary men have taught their successors, for long generations, 

 to look for good, not in wealth, not in power, not in miscellaneous activity, but in 

 a trained, a choice, an exquisite appreciation of the most simple and imiversal rela- 

 tions of life. To feel, and in order to feel to express, or at least to understand the 

 expression of all that is lovely in Nature, of all that is poignant and sensitive in man, 

 is to us in itself a sufficient end. A rose in a moonlit garden, the shadow of trees on 

 the turf, almond bloom, scent of pine, the wine cup and the guitar; these and the 

 pathos of life and death, the long embrace, the hand stretched out in vain, the moment 

 that glides forever away, with its freight of music and light, into the shadow and hush 

 of the haunted past, all that we have, all that eludes us, a bird on the wing, a perfume 



