of
Mary his wife to a greater length, since from this point their legend is
full of impossible events, and seems to put on the semblance of the
stories of the Graal. It is certain, indeed, that in this world they
changed their lives, like King Arthur, but this is a work which no
chronicler has cared to describe with any amplitude of detail. Darnell,
it is true, made a little book, partly consisting of queer verse which
might have been written by an inspired infant, and partly made up of
'notes and exclamations' in an odd dog-Latin which he had picked up
from the 'Iolo MSS.', but it is to be feared that this work, even if
published in its entirety, would cast but little light on a perplexing
story. He called this piece of literature 'In Exitu Israel,' and wrote
on the title page the motto, doubtless of his own composition, '_Nunc
certe scio quod omnia legenda; omnes historiae, omnes fabulae, omnis
Scriptura sint de ME narrata_.' It is only too evident that his Latin
was not learnt at the feet of Cicero; but in this dialect he relates the
great history of the 'New Life' as it was manifested to him. The 'poems'
are even stranger. One, headed (with an odd reminiscence of
old-fashioned books) 'Lines written on looking down from a Height in
London on a Board School suddenly lit up by the Sun' begins thus:--

One day when I was all alone
I found a wondrous little stone,
It lay forgotten on the road
Far from the ways of man's abode.
When on this stone mine eyes I cast
I saw my Treasure found at last.
I pressed it hard against my face,
I covered it with my embrace,
I hid it in a secret place.
And every day I went to see
This stone that was my ecstasy;
And worshipped it with flowers rare,
And secret words and sayings fair.
O stone, so rare and red and wise
O fragment of far Paradise,
O Star, whose light is life! O Sea,
Whose ocean is infinity!
Thou art a fire that ever burns,
And all the world to wonder turns;
And all the dust of the dull day
By thee is changed and purged away,
So that, where'er I look, I see
A world of a Great Majesty.
The sullen river rolls all gold,
The desert park's a faery wold,
When on the trees the wind is borne
I hear the sound of Arthur's horn
I see no town of grim grey ways,
But a great city all ablaze
With burning torches, to light up
The pinnacles that shrine the C