essed the stars, you shall sing the epic of man, and as of old it
shall be of the deeds I have done.

HERBERT.

IX

FROM DANE KEMPTON TO HERBERT WACE

3A, QUEEN'S ROAD, CHELSEA, S.W.
December 28, 19--.

The curtain is rung down on an illusion, but it rises again on another,
this time, as before, with the look of the absolute Good and True upon
it. It is because we are at once actor and spectator that we find no
fault with blinking sight and slothful thought. We are finite branded
and content, except during the shrill, undermining moments when the
orchestra is tuning up. "Thus we half-men struggle."

I follow your letter and wonder whether your illusions have qualities of
beauty which escape me. I give you the benefit of every doubt which it
is possible for me to harbour with regard to my own system of illusions.
You glorify the crowd practical. You attach yourself to the ranks that
carried thought into action. You inspire yourself with rugged strength
by dwelling on the achievements of ruggedness, forgetting that the
progress of the world is not marshalled by those who work with line and
rule. It was not his crew, but Columbus, who discovered America. The
crew stood between the Old and the New, as indeed the crew always does.
Between the idealist and his hope were hosts of practical enemies whom
he had to subdue before he reached land. But I must not fall into your
mistake of dividing men into categories. Men are not either intellectual
or emotional; they are both. It is a rounded not an angular development
which we follow. Feeling and thinking are not mutually exclusive, and
the great personality feels deeply because he thinks highly, feels
keenly because he sees widely. Common sense is not incompatible with
uncommon sense, evil does not of necessity attend beauty, nor weakness
the strength of genius.

I shall sing of the deeds you have done if your deeds are worthy of
song. I shall sing a Song of the Sword, too, should the sword "thrust
through the fatuous, thrust through the fungous brood." Whatever helps
the races to better life sings itself into racial lore, and I alone
shall not refuse the tribute. When you come to see that the Iliad is as
great a gift to the race as the doings of Achilles, that the Iliads are
more significant than the doings they celebrate, you will cease to
classify men into doers and singers. You will cease to dishonour
yourself in the eyes of the singers with the hope that in