| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Royalty Restored/London Under Charles II by J. Fitzgerald Molloy: of this work, which he opened carelessly at first, until he met
some passages which struck him with surprise and filled him with
admiration: observing which the honest bookseller besought him
to speak in favour of the poem, for it lay upon his hands like so
much waste-paper. My lord bought a copy, carried it home, read
and sent it to Dryden, who, in due time returning the volume,
expressed his opinion of its merits in flattering terms. "The
author," said he, "cuts us all out--aye, even the ancients too."
Such instances as these were, however, few in number. That the
work did not meet with wider appreciation and quicker sale is not
surprising when it is called to mind that from 1623 to 1664 but
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: with a stony wonder, for in this my last hour nothing seemed to
escape my notice, I saw that a strange play was being played about
us. Some hundreds of paces away the attack on the palace of Axa,
where the Spaniards were entrenched, raged with fury. Bands of
warriors were attempting to scale the walls and being driven back
by the deadly fire of the Spaniards and the pikes and clubs of
their Tlascalan allies, while from the roofs of such of the
neighbouring houses as remained unburned, and more especially from
the platform of the great teocalli, on which I must presently give
up the ghost, arrows, javelins, and stones were poured by thousands
into the courtyards and outer works of the Spanish quarters.
Montezuma's Daughter |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Anabasis by Xenophon: March 399 B.C.
PREPARER'S NOTE
This was typed from Dakyns' series, "The Works of Xenophon," a
four-volume set. The complete list of Xenophon's works (though
there is doubt about some of these) is:
Work Number of books
The Anabasis 7
The Hellenica 7
The Cyropaedia 8
The Memorabilia 4
The Symposium 1
Anabasis |
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 Cratylus by Plato: daimones--good men are well said to become daimones when they die, because
they are knowing. Eros (with an epsilon) is the same word as eros (with an
eta): 'the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair;' or
perhaps they were a species of sophists or rhetoricians, and so called apo
tou erotan, or eirein, from their habit of spinning questions; for eirein
is equivalent to legein. I get all this from Euthyphro; and now a new and
ingenious idea comes into my mind, and, if I am not careful, I shall be
wiser than I ought to be by to-morrow's dawn. My idea is, that we may put
in and pull out letters at pleasure and alter the accents (as, for example,
Dii philos may be turned into Diphilos), and we may make words into
sentences and sentences into words. The name anthrotos is a case in point,
|
