concrete illustrating the abstract, the Gospels themselves have, of late years, taken on a new significance. Even on the hypothesis that Jesus was not the son of God, on the hypothesis that he never so much as existed, the value of the factual, tangible legend as a symbol of the selfdedication of the creative imagination to the cause of God, of humanity, of posterity, of art, of the immortality of the soul, of what you will, and of its ultimate triumph over matter, is incalculable. Says Chaucer, at the end of "Troilus and Cressida":"Go litel booke, go litel myn tragedie, ther God thy maker yet.”

I will conclude this letter by quoting a passage from Donne's "Sermons," a passage which I discovered through the courtesy of A. H. Bullen, who told me that he had never met a literary man who had ever heard of it. I quote it partly as a curiosity, most of it being but a single sentence and covering a whole single-column page of a large folio; partly because it is to my mind the noblest, the most majestic and terrible passage in orchestral style and thought throughout the whole range of English prose literature outside the Bible. But its astounding eloquence is not my principal reason for quoting it. It seems to me to throw a fierce and quite undogmatic light upon the ultimate and widest meaning of poetic art—not to preach or to edify, but to reveal God, and so draw men into the company of God. The sermon is called "He that believeth not shall be damned":

"When all is done, the hell of hells, the torment of torments is the everlasting absence of God and the everlasting impossibility of returning to his presence; Horrendum est, sayes the Apostle, it is a fearfull thing

to fall into the hands of the living God. Yet there was a case, in which David found an ease, to fall into the hands of God, to scape the hands of men; Horrendum est, when God's hand is bent to strike, it is a fear full thing to fall into the hands of the living God; but to fall out of the hands of the living God, is a horror beyond our expression, beyond our imagination.

That God should let my soule fall out of his hand, into a bottomlesse pit, and roll an unremoveable stone upon it, and leave it to that which it finds there (and it shall finde that there, which it never imagined, till it came thither), and never thinke more of that soule, never have more to doe with it; that of that providence of God, that studies the life of every weed, and worme, and ant and spider and toad, and viper, there should never, never any beame flow out upon me; that that God, who looked upon me when I was nothing, and called me when I was not, as though I had been, out of the womb and depth of darknesse, will not look upon me now, when, though a miserable, and a banished, and a damned creature, yet I am his creature still, and contribute something to his glory, even in my damnation; that that God, who hath often looked upon me in my foulest uncleannesse, and when I had shut out the eye of the day, the Sunne, and the eye of the night, the Taper, and the eyes of all the world, with curtaines and windowes and doores, did yet see me, and see me in mercy, by making me see that he saw me, and sometimes brought me to a present remorse, and (for that time) to a forbearing of that sinne, should so turne himself from me, to his glorious Saints and Angels, as that no Saint, nor Angel, nor Christ Jesus himself, should ever pray him to looke

towards me, never remember him, that such a soule there is; that that God, who hath so often said to my soule, Quare morieris? Why wilt thou die? and so often sworne to my soule, Vivit Dominus, as the Lord liveth, I would not have thee die, but live, will neither let me die, nor let me live, but die an everlasting life and live an everlasting death; that that God, who, when he could not get into me, by standing and knocking, by his ordinary meanes of entering, by his Word, his mercies, hath applied his judgments, and hath shaked the house, this body, with agues and palsies, and set this house on fire, with fevers and calentures, and frighted the Master of the house, my soule, with horrors, and heavy apprehensions and so made an entrance into me; that that God should frustrate all his owne purposes and practices upon me, and leave me, and cast me away as though I had cost him nothing; that this God, at last, should let this soule goe away, as a smoake, as a vapour, as a bubble, and that then this soule cannot be a smoake, a vapour, nor a bubble, but must lie in darknesse as long as the Lord of light is light itselfe, and never sparke of that light reach to my soule; what Tophet is not Paradise, what Brimston is not Amber, what gnashing is not a comfort, what gnawing of the worme is not a tickling, what torment is not a marriage bed to this damnation, to be secluded, eternally, eternally, eternally from the sight of God?"

Comment is an impertinence; but I cannot help wondering what that popinjay, the Earl of Carlisle, before whom the sermon was preached, can have thought of it.

The nation that produced Shakespeare and the Jaco

bean translators of the Bible may seem to have mortgaged its inheritance to the usurers of materialism. It may encumber but it cannot abolish its racial memory. For what has been may perhaps be again.

XXIV

CREATIVE FORM

MY DEAR X,

I well remember the first time I saw a collection of Dürer's drawings, woodcuts, and portraits. It was, I assure you, a hair-raising experience. I went to bed very late that night, and all I had to say in the early hours of the morning was: "Yes, after all, even if civilization is skin deep, Man is the image of God as clearly as he can be the image of Satan." The astounding reconciliations! A divine inspiration seeking the divine through an agony that almost sweats tears, and an earthly tenderness that does not forget St. Jerome's carpet slippers. A bodiless spirituality consorts with a riotous fancy; a mob of swirling figures is gathered into one. Average life realized with luminous ease, detachment and fidelity becomes life transfigured into another dimension altogether. The extremes of wrath and terror mate with humility and compassion; torment with the security of bliss; passion with quietude; a lover more holy than an angel is hovered over by an angel even more companionable than one of Cowper's hares; here are humanity and divinity, art and morality inseparably one! Man is disparadised, but Eden's soil is on his feet. Dürer-the