To know a thing too well is by worlds removed from not to know it at all, and Anatole France does not elsewhere similarly attempt to indulge the illusion of unbroken innocence.  He who refused to put a mark of interrogation after ‘What is God,’ in defiance of his mother, because he knew, now has to restrain himself from putting one after everything he writes or thinks.  ’Ma pauvre mere, si elle vivait, me dirait peut-etre que maintenant j’en mets trop.’  Yes, Anatole France is wise, and far removed from childish follies.  And, perhaps, it is precisely because of his wisdom that he can so exactly discern the enchantment of his childhood.  So few men grow up.  The majority remain hobbledehoys throughout life; all the disabilities and none of the unique capacities of childhood remain.  There are a few who, in spite of all experience, retain both; they are the poets and the grands esprits.  There are fewer still who learn utterly to renounce childish things; and they are the wise men.

’Je suis une autre personne que l’enfant dont je parle.  Nous n’avons plus en commun, lui et moi, un atome de substance ni de pensee.  Maintenant qu’il m’est devenu tout a fait etranger, je puis en sa compagnie me distraire de la mienne.  Je l’aime, moi qui ne m’aime ni ne me hais.  Il m’est doux de vivre en pensee les jours qu’il vivait et je souffre de respirer l’air du temps ou nous sommes.’

Not otherwise is it with us and Anatole France.  We may have little in common with his thought—­the community we often imagine comes of self-deception—­but it is sweet for us to inhabit his mind for a while.  His touch is potent to soothe our fitful fevers.

[APRIL, 1919.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Modern poetry, like the modern consciousness of which it is the epitome, seems to stand irresolute at a crossways with no signpost.  It is hardly conscious of its own indecision, which it manages to conceal from itself by insisting that it is lyrical, whereas it is merely impressionist.  The value of impressions depends upon the quality of the mind which receives and renders them, and to be lyrical demands at least as firm a temper of the mind, as definite and unfaltering a general direction, as to be epic.  Roughly speaking, the present poetical fashion may, with a few conspicuous exceptions, be described as poetry without tears.  The poet may assume a hundred personalities in as many poems, or manifest a hundred influences, or he may work a single sham personality threadbare or render piecemeal an undigested influence.  What he may not do, or do only at the risk of being unfashionable, is to attempt what we may call, for the lack of a better word, the logical progression of an oeuvre.  One has no sense of the rhythm of an achievement.  There is an output of scraps, which are scraps, not because they are small, but because one scrap stands in no organic relation to another in the poet’s work.  Instead of lending each other strength, they betray each other’s weakness.