for the moment style and music. One asked oneself again and again, 'Why
is not this man an artist, a man of genius, a creator of some kind?' The
other day under the influence of memory, I read through his one book, a
life of Owen Roe O'Neill, and found there no sentence detachable from its
context because of wisdom or beauty. Everything was argued from a
premise; and wisdom, and style, whether in life or letters come from the
presence of what is self-evident, from that which requires but statement,
from what Blake called 'naked beauty displayed.' The sense of what was
unforeseen and obvious, the rolling backward of the gates had gone with
the living voice, with the nobility of will that made one understand what
he saw and felt in what was now but argument and logic. I found myself in
the presence of a mind like some noisy and powerful machine, of thought
that was no part of wisdom but the apologetic of a moment, a woven thing,
no intricacy of leaf and twig, of words with no more of salt and of
savour than those of a Jesuit professor of literature, or of any other
who does not know that there is no lasting writing which does not define
the quality, or carry the substance of some pleasure. How can one, if
one's mind be full of abstractions and images created not for their own
sake but for the sake of party, even if there were still the need, find
words that delight the ear, make pictures to the mind's eye, discover
thoughts that tighten the muscles, or quiver and tingle in the flesh, and
stand like St. Michael with the trumpet that calls the body to
resurrection?




IV