| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: love of letters, and even some artistic conscience. But he will find
not one of the models of his type (I say nothing of mere imitators of
it) below the rank that looks at the middle class, not humbly and
enviously from below, but insolently from above. Mr Harris himself
notes Shakespear's contempt for the tradesman and mechanic, and his
incorrigible addiction to smutty jokes. He does us the public service
of sweeping away the familiar plea of the Bardolatrous ignoramus, that
Shakespear's coarseness was part of the manners of his time, putting
his pen with precision on the one name, Spenser, that is necessary to
expose such a libel on Elizabethan decency. There was nothing
whatever to prevent Shakespear from being as decent as More was before
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Vailima Prayers & Sabbath Morn by Robert Louis Stevenson: Our beloved in the far parts of the earth, those who are now
beginning the labours of the day what time we end them, and those
with whom the sun now stands at the point of noon, bless, help,
console, and prosper them.
Our guard is relieved, the service of the day is over, and the hour
come to rest. We resign into thy hands our sleeping bodies, our
cold hearths, and open doors. Give us to awake with smiles, give
us to labour smiling. As the sun returns in the east, so let our
patience be renewed with dawn; as the sun lightens the world, so
let our loving-kindness make bright this house of our habitation.
ANOTHER FOR EVENING
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: puts leaven into his dough.
The sum-total contained by all heads put together consists of a
certain quantity of antiquated notions; a few new inflections brewed
in company of an evening being added from time to time to the common
stock. Like sea-water in a little creek, the phrases which represent
these ideas surge up daily, punctually obeying the tidal laws of
conversation in their flow and ebb; you hear the hollow echo of
yesterday, to-day, to-morrow, a year hence, and for evermore. On all
things here below they pass immutable judgments, which go to make up a
body of tradition into which no power of mortal man can infuse one
drop of wit or sense. The lives of these persons revolve with the
|
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 The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy: renewed inquiry was received with a laugh of appreciation.
The woman whispered; she was imploring and anxious: "Come,
come, it is getting dark, and this nonsense won't do. If
you don't come along, I shall go without you. Come!"
She waited and waited; yet he did not move. In ten minutes
the man broke in upon the desultory conversation of the
furmity drinkers with. "I asked this question, and nobody
answered to 't. Will any Jack Rag or Tom Straw among ye buy
my goods?"
The woman's manner changed, and her face assumed the grim
shape and colour of which mention has been made.
The Mayor of Casterbridge |
