hem, though I had actually
seen one, in these first school years of mine the machinery I had for
seeing the usually unseen was eclipsed; my recondite self was fast in
his _cachot_--and I didn't know that he was there! But one may imagine
fairies enough out of one's reading, and going beyond that, using it
as a spring-board, advance in the work of creation from realising to
begetting. So it was with me. The _Faerie Queen_ was as familiar as
the Latin Primer ought to have been. I had much of Mallory by heart--a
book full of magic. Forth of his pages stepped men-at-arms and damsels
the moment I was alone, and held me company for as long as I would.
The persons of Homer's music came next to them. I was Hector and held
Andromache to my heart. I kissed her farewell when I went forth to
school, and hurried home at night from the station, impatient for her
arms. I was never Paris, and had only awe of Helen. Even then I dimly
guessed her divinity, that godhead which the supremest beauty really
is. But I was often Odysseus the much-enduring, and very well
acquainted with the wiles of Calypso. Next in power of enchantment
came certainly Don Quixote, in whose lank bones I was often encased.
Dulcinea's charm was very real to me. I revelled in her honeyed name.
I was Don Juan too, and I was Tom Jones; but my most natural
impersonation in those years was Tristram. The luxury of that
champion's sorrows had a swooning sweetness of their own of which I
never tired. Iseult meant nothing. I cared nothing for her. I was
enamoured of the hero, and saw myself drenched in his passion. Like
Narcissus in the fable, I loved myself, and saw myself, in Tristram's
form, the most beautiful and the most beloved of beings.

Chivalry and Romance chained me at that time and not the supernatural.
The fairy adventures of the heroes of my love swept by me untouched.
Morgan le Fay, Britomart, Vivien, Nimue, Merlin did not convince me;
they were picturesque conventions whose decorative quality I felt,
while so far as I was concerned they were garniture or apparatus. And
yet the fruitful meadows through which I took my daily way were as
forests to me; the grass-stems spired up to my fired fancy like great
trees. Among them I used to minish myself to the size of an ant and
become a pioneer hewing out a pathway through virgin thickets. I had
my ears alert for the sound of a horn, of a galloping horse, of the
Questing Beast and hounds in full cry. But I never loo