| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Under the Red Robe by Stanley Weyman: enough, therefore, to make up your mind which it is to be. Am I
to go with my news to the captain, or am I to come with you?'
'Give me the pitcher,' she said harshly.
I did so, wondering. In a moment she flung it with a savage
gesture far into the bushes.
'Come!' she said, 'if you will. But some day God will punish
you!'
Without another word she turned and entered the path through the
trees, and I followed her. I suppose that every one of its
windings, every hollow and broken place in it had been known to
her from childhood, for she followed it swiftly and unerringly,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: arms: he was a gentleman resuming what he conceived to be his natural
position as soon as he gained the means to keep it up.
This Side Idolatry
There is another matter which I think Mr Harris should ponder. He
says that Shakespear was but "little esteemed by his own generation."
He even describes Jonson's description of his "little Latin and less
Greek" as a sneer, whereas it occurs in an unmistakably sincere eulogy
of Shakespear, written after his death, and is clearly meant to
heighten the impression of Shakespear's prodigious natural endowments
by pointing out that they were not due to scholastic acquirements.
Now there is a sense in which it is true enough that Shakespear was
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: histories, Roman histories, Egyptian histories, Eastern histories,
inscriptions, national epics, legends, fragments of legends--in the
New World as in the Old--all tell the same story. Not the story
without an end, but the story without a beginning. As in the Hindoo
cosmogony, the world stands on an elephant, and the elephant on a
tortoise, and the tortoise on--what? No man knows. I do not know.
I only assert deliberately, waiting, as Napoleon says, till the
world come round to me, that the tortoise does not stand--as is held
by certain anthropologists, some honoured by me, some personally
dear to me--upon the savages who chipped flints and fed on mammoth
and reindeer in North-Western Europe, shortly after the age of ice,
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Lair of the White Worm by Bram Stoker: was, or shall be. When the Master of Evil took Christ up on a high
place and showed Him all the kingdoms of the earth, he was doing
what he thought no other could do. He was wrong--he forgot ME. I
shall send you light, up to the very ramparts of heaven. A light so
great that it shall dissipate those black clouds that are rushing up
and piling around us. Look! Look! At the very touch of my hand
that light springs into being and mounts up--and up--and up!"
He made his way whilst he was speaking to the corner of the turret
whence flew the giant kite, and from which the runners ascended.
Mimi looked on, appalled and afraid to speak lest she should
precipitate some calamity. Within the niche Lady Arabella cowered
Lair of the White Worm |
