nique in English. Not one of our authors has just that
frame of mind, just that method of expressing it.

We do not know whether Mr. Belloc wrote down those two paragraphs in hot
haste or considered their periods with delicate cunning. In the end it
is all the same: it is a reasonable prose, it is the expression of a
thought which is common in the human mind. Consider in relation to it
that notorious piece of Pater, that reflection of the essential don upon
a picture which is possibly a copy and certainly not very pleasant to
look upon, the _Mona Lisa_. Pater builds up his words with as grave a
care, with as solemn an emotion, but how different is the result. Pater
sought for an effect of strangeness and cracked his prose in reaching at
it: his rhythm is false, his images are blurred. But Mr. Belloc,
translating into words a deep and tender mood, has had no care save
faithfully to render a thought so common and so hard to imprison in
language. His writing here rings true as a bell, it is as sweet and
normal as bread or wine.

An even better example is the essay called _Mowing a Field_ which is
printed in _Hills and the Sea_. The centre of this essay (which has also
decorations in the way of anecdotes and reflections) is a true and
faithful account of the procedure to be observed in the mowing of a
field of grass. Here you can see a most extraordinary power of conveying
information in a pleasing manner. It would not be a bad thing to read
this essay first if one had the intention of engaging in such exercise,
for the instruction seems to be sound. Mr. Belloc touches hands very
easily with the old Teachers who wrote their precepts in rhyme: such
teachers, that is, as had good doctrine to teach, not such as the
sophisticated Vergil, whose very naif _Georgics_ are said to lead to
agricultural depression wherever men follow the advice they contain.

Take this passage from that delicate and noble essay:

There is an art also in the sharpening of a scythe and it is worth
describing carefully. Your blade must be dry, and that is why you
will see men rubbing the scythe-blade with grass before they whet
it. Then also your rubber must be quite dry, and on this account it
is a good thing to lay it on your coat and keep it there during all
your day's mowing. The scythe you stand upright, with the blade
pointing away from you, and you put your left hand firmly on the
back of the blade, grasp