FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26  
27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   >>   >|  
that by the nature of his publication and presentment that he is doing something he thinks worthy of the time and place in which he lives and of the people to whom he belongs, then if he does not construct he is negligible. Yet, I say, the great mass of men to-day do not attempt it in the English tongue, and the proof is that you can discover in their slipshod pages nothing of a seal or stamp. You do not, opening a book at random, say at once: "This is the voice of such and such a one." It is no one's manner or voice. It is part of a common babel. Therefore in such a time as that of our decline, to come across work which is planned, executed and achieved has something of the effect produced by the finding of a wrought human thing in the wild. It is like finding, as I once found, deep hidden in the tangled rank grass of autumn in Burgundy, on the edge of a wood not far from Dijon, a neglected statue of the eighteenth century. It is like coming round the corner of some wholly desolate upper valley in the mountains and seeing before one a well-cultivated close and a strong house in the midst. It is now many years--I forget how many; it may be twenty or more, or it may be a little less--since _The Wallet of Kai Lung_ was sent me by a friend. The effect produced upon my mind at the first opening of its pages was in the same category as the effect produced by the discovery of that hidden statue in Burgundy, or the coming upon an unexpected house in the turn of a high Pyrenean gorge. Here was something worth doing and done. It was not a plan attempted and only part achieved (though even that would be rare enough to-day, and a memorable exception); it was a thing intended, wrought out, completed and established. Therefore it was destined to endure and, what is more important, it was a success. The time in which we live affords very few of such moments of relief: here and there a good piece of verse, in _The New Age_ or in the now defunct _Westminster_: here and there a lapidary phrase such as a score or more of Blatchford's which remain fixed in my memory. Here and there a letter written to the newspapers in a moment of indignation when the writer, not trained to the craft, strikes out the metal justly at white heat. But, I say, the thing is extremely rare, and in the shape of a complete book rarest of all. _The Wallet of Kai Lung_ was a thing made deliberately, in hard material and completely successful. It was mean
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26  
27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

effect

 
produced
 
Burgundy
 

coming

 
hidden
 
opening
 
Therefore
 

achieved

 

finding

 

statue


wrought
 

Wallet

 

intended

 

endure

 
friend
 
destined
 

exception

 

established

 

completed

 
important

attempted
 

Pyrenean

 

discovery

 

category

 
unexpected
 

memorable

 

justly

 
strikes
 

indignation

 
writer

trained
 

extremely

 

material

 

completely

 

successful

 
deliberately
 

complete

 

rarest

 

moment

 
newspapers

relief

 

moments

 

affords

 

defunct

 
memory
 

letter

 

written

 
remain
 

Blatchford

 

Westminster