| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: your misfortunes and forced sale of property, added to the revenue
of some thirty-odd thousand on the Grand-livre which these cats
already possess.
The endorsement of your wife was not needed; for this morning the
said Sieur Lecuyer came to offer me a return of the sum I had lent
you in exchange for a legal transfer of my rights. The vintage of
1825 which your mother-in-law keeps in the cellars at Lanstrac
will suffice to pay me.
These two women have calculated, evidently, that you are now upon
the ocean; but I send this letter by courier, so that you may have
time to follow the advice I now give you.
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Rescue by Joseph Conrad: doubt before that stern and enquiring gaze. "Aha!" thought
Carter. "This has startled him"; and feeling that his shyness had
departed he pursued his advantage. "For the fact of the matter
is, sir, that, whatever happens, unless I am to be your man you
will have no officer. I had better tell you at once that I have
bundled that respectable, crazy, fat Shaw out of the ship. He was
upsetting all hands. Yesterday I told him to go and get his
dunnage together because I was going to send him aboard the
yacht. He couldn't have made more uproar about it if I had
proposed to chuck him overboard. I warned him that if he didn't
go quietly I would have him tied up like a sheep ready for
The Rescue |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: this period, the chief was unquestionably Mr. Cary's.[59] For a
man born and brought up in the most unpoetical of centuries, Mr.
Cary certainly made a very good poem, though not so good as
Pope's. But it fell far short of being a reproduction of Dante.
The eighteenth-century note rings out loudly on every page of it.
Like much other poetry of the time, it is laboured and
artificial. Its sentences are often involved and occasionally
obscure. Take, for instance, Canto IV. 25-36 of the "Paradiso":
[59] This work comes at the end of the eighteenth-century period,
as Pope's translation of Homer comes at the beginning.
"These are the questions which they will
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
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 Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: by--his prudence had triumphed: as it was, he was determined to have his
revenge.
Small curses, Dr. Slop, upon great occasions, quoth my father (condoling
with him first upon the accident) are but so much waste of our strength and
soul's health to no manner of purpose.--I own it, replied Dr. Slop.--They
are like sparrow-shot, quoth my uncle Toby (suspending his whistling) fired
against a bastion.--They serve, continued my father, to stir the humours--
but carry off none of their acrimony:--for my own part, I seldom swear or
curse at all--I hold it bad--but if I fall into it by surprize, I generally
retain so much presence of mind (right, quoth my uncle Toby) as to make it
answer my purpose--that is, I swear on till I find myself easy. A wife and
|
