ildhood 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.

Yet the organic progression for which we look, generally in vain, is not
peculiar to poetic genius of the highest rank. If it were, we might be
accused of mere querulousness. The rhythm of personality is hard,
indeed, to achieve.