flowers. Pierrot of the
glass, with the hours dripping away in fine, gold rain. That was the
genius of poets like Dowson, and pierrot was the master of them all.

HENRY JAMES ON RUPERT BROOKE

Henry James on Rupert Brooke! Here is certainly a very wide interval,
separated, artist and subject, by the greatest divergence of power,
and one may be even amazed at the contrast involved. He is surely,
James, in all his elaborateness, trying to square the rose and compute
the lily, algebraical advances upon a most simple thesis. Brooke--a
nature so obvious, which had no measure at all for what the sum had
done to him, and for all that about him, or for those stellar
ecstasies which held him bound with fervour as poet, planetary
swimmer, and gifted as well with a fine stroke for the sea, and runner
of all the beautiful earth places about the great seas' edge.

For me, there is heaviness and over-elaboration paramount in this
preface to the Letters from America, excess of byword, a strained
relationship with his subject, but that would of course be Jamesian,
and very naturally, too. It is hardly, this preface, the tribute of
the wise telling of beautiful and "blinding youth", surely more the
treatise of the problemist forging his problem, as the sculptor might;
something too much of metal or stone, too ponderous, too severe let
one say, for its so gracing and brightening theme, something not
springing into bloom, as does the person and personality of the young
subject himself. Only upon occasion does he really come upon the young
man, actual, forgetful of all but him.

There is no question, if the word of those be true who had relation
however slight or intimate with Brooke, that he was an engrossing
theme, and for more than one greater than himself, as certainly he was
for many much less significant than James. It is distinguished from
the young poet's point of view that he was impressed, and that as
person to person he really did see him in a convincing manner, as
might one artist of great repute find himself uncommonly affected by
the young and so living poet with more than a common gift for
creation. It seems to me however that James is not over certain as to
how poetic all things are in substance, yet all the while treating
Brooke coolly and spaciously as an artist should.

I did not know Brooke, and I know nothing of him beyond various photos
showing him one way, quite manly and robust, and I feel sure he was