Masefield may not recognise himself in our mirror, but we will content
ourselves with recording our conviction that in spite of the almost
heroic effort that has gone to its composition _Reynard the Fox_ lacks
all the qualities essential to durability.

[JANUARY, 1920.

_The Lost Legions_

One day, we believe, a great book will be written, informed by the
breath which moves the Spirits of Pity in Mr Hardy's _Dynasts_. It will
be a delicate, yet undeviating record of the spiritual awareness of the
generation that perished in the war. It will be a work of genius, for
the essence that must be captured within it is volatile beyond belief,
almost beyond imagination. We know of its existence by signs hardly more
material than a dream-memory of beating wings or an instinctive, yet all
but inexplicable refusal of that which has been offered us in its stead.
The autobiographer-novelists have been legion, yet we turn from them all
with a slow shake of the head. 'No, it was not that. Had we lost only
that we could have forgotten. It was not that.'

No, it was the spirit that troubled, as in dream, the waters of the
pool, some influence which trembled between silence and a sound, a
precarious confidence, an unavowed quest, a wisdom that came not of
years or experience, a dissatisfaction, a doubt, a devotion, some
strange presentiment, it may have been, of the bitter years in store, in
memory an ineffable, irrevocable beauty, a visible seal on the forehead
of a generation.

'When the lamp is shattered.
The light in the dust lies dead--
When the cloud is scattered
The rainbow's glory is shed.
When the lute is broken,
Sweet tones are remembered not...'

Yet out of a thousand fragments this memory must be created anew in a
form that will outlast the years, for it was precious. It was something
that would vindicate an epoch against the sickening adulation of the
hero-makers and against the charge of spiritual sterility; a light in
whose gleam the bewildering non-achievements of the present age, the art
which seems not even to desire to be art, the faith which seems not to
desire to be faith, have substance and meaning. It was shot through and
through by an impulse of paradox, an unconscious straining after the
impossible, gathered into two or three tremulous years which passed too
swiftly to achieve their own expression. Now, what remains of youth is
cynical, is successful, publicly exploits itself.