a while and to return, knowing well that it has here a treasure laid up
for ever.

All this may be expressed in two words: the Classical Spirit. That is
Classic of which it is true that the enjoyment is sufficient when it is
terminated and that in the enjoyment of it an entity is revealed.

When men propose to bequeath to their fellows work of so supreme a kind
it is to be noticed that they choose by instinct a certain material.

It has been said that the material in which he works affects the
achievement of the artist: it is truer to say that it helps him. A man
designing a sculpture in marble knows very well what he is about to do.
A man attempting the exact and restrained rendering of tragedy upon the
stage does not choose the stage as one among many methods, he is drawn
to it: he needs it; the audience, the light, the evening, the very slope
of the boards, all minister to his efforts. And so a man determined to
produce the greatest things in verse takes up by nature exact and
thoughtful words and finds that their rhythm, their combination, and
their sound turn under his hand to something greater than he himself at
first intended; he becomes a creator, and his name is linked with the
name of a masterpiece. The material in which he has worked is hard; the
price he has paid is an exceeding effect; the reward he has earned is
permanence.

Jose de Heredia was an artist of this kind. The mass of the verse he
produced, or rather published, was small. It might have been very large.
It is not (as a foolish modern affectation will sometimes pretend)
necessary to the endurance or even the excellence of work that it should
be the product of exceptional moments; nor is it even true (as the wise