e world where beautiful happenings come
together, Mr. Cabell argues, incomparably the richest is in the
consciousness of a poet who is also a scholar. There are to be found the
precious hoarded memories of some thousands of years: high deeds and
burning loves and eloquent words and surpassing tears and laughter.
There, consequently, the romancer may well take his stand, distilling
bright new dreams out of ancient beauty. And if he adds the heady tonic
of an irony springing from a critical intelligence, so much the better.
When Mr. Cabell wishes to represent several different epochs in _The
Certain Hour_ he chooses to tell ten stories of poets--real or
imagined--as the persons in whom, by reason of their superior
susceptibility, the color of their epochs may be most truthfully
discovered; and when he wishes to decant his own wit and wisdom most
genuinely the vessel he normally employs is a poet.

If the poets and warriors who make up the list of Mr. Cabell's heroes
devote their lives almost wholly to love, it is for the reason that no
other emotion interests him so much or seems to him to furnish so many
beautiful happenings about which to write perfectly. Love, like art, is
a species of creation, and the moods which attend it, though illusions,
are miracles none the less. Of the two aspects of love which especially
attract Mr. Cabell he has given the larger share of his attention to the
extravagant worship of women ("domnei") developed out of chivalry--the
worship which began by ascribing to the beloved the qualities of purity
and perfection, of beauty and holiness, and ended by practically
identifying her with the divine. This supernal folly reaches its apogee
in _Domnei_, in the careers of Perion and Melicent who are so uplifted
by ineffable desire that their souls ceaselessly reach out to each other
though obstacles large as continents intervene. For Perion the most
deadly battles are but thornpricks in the quest of Melicent; and such is
Melicent's loyalty during the years of her longing that the possession
of her most white body by Demetrios of Anatolia leaves her soul
immaculate and almost unperturbed. In this tale love is canonized:
throned on alabaster above all the vulgar gods it diffuses among its
worshipers a crystal radiance in which mortal imperfections perish--or
are at least forgotten during certain rapturous hours.

Ordinarily one cynical touch will break such pretty bubbles; but Mr.
Cabell, himself a ma