forget everything that has
come upon him since his eighteenth year--or possibly his
twenty-seventh," and again, "Arun in his majesty, married to salt water,
and a king."

We should be doing an injustice to _The Four Men_ did we give the
impression that it is nothing but a graceful and pleasant poem written
about Sussex. We have said that it is grave and deep and informed with
emotion. We will quote one passage, Grizzlebeard's farewell:

There is nothing at all that remains: nor any house; nor any
castle, however strong; nor any love, however tender and sound; nor
any comradeship among men, however hardy. Nothing remains but the
things of which I will not speak, because we have spoken enough of
them already during these four days. But I who am old will give you
advice, which is this--to consider chiefly from now onward those
permanent things which are, as it were, the shores of this age and
the harbours of our glittering and pleasant but dangerous and
wholly changeful sea.

Of such stuff is the basis of this book: on this basis, which is poetic,
a spiritual motive, the whole creation is raised, and the book is
destined to be more than an occasional account of travel or an amusing
but trivial display of wit and fancy. It is a poem, and a poem, as we
think, which will endure.

It is, in truth, the poetic instinct which animates all his activities
and particularly his travel. The poetic instinct consists of two itches,
the first to comprehend fully in all dimensions the reality which we see
before us, the second to express it again in words, paint, clay or
music. This instinct in its pure and proper form has regard to no kind
of profit, either in money or esteem. It moves the poet to the doing of
these things for the sake only of doing them.

But by a very wise dispensation it is also the mainspring of all
material usefulness in the world. We have sought to show, in this
chapter as in others, how you can find the poetic, the disinterested
motive, whenever you try to discover what gives their value to Mr.
Belloc's studies in actuality. Particularly this is so in the
accumulation of knowledge which he has acquired in his travels and in
the use he makes of it. It seems as though this passion to see and to
understand must sharpen his wits and his vision: it gives that life and
energy to his writings on this matter without which poetic composition
is worthless and journalism fa