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 myseK 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; 



