Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/100

74 THE AMBITIONS OF SIR JAMES BATIRTE old loyalists, who have mounted each succeeding Bar- ricade, know perfectly well that it does. We have always realized that long ago, at the outset of his career, Barrie's own character split into two — the one half a solemn aspirant, tremendously aware of the dignity of Letters, worshipping portraits of Great Writers with all the grim Scotch ambitiousness and taking as his motto Cowley's What shall I do to be for ever known And tnake the age to come my otvn ? — the other half an incurable lover of the pretty and the prankish, who kept using the pen that hoped for such power as a mere agent for indulging in games. To and fro behind his sentences these two have always chased and tussled ; Lost Identities is but the shadow- show they cast. Sometimes the serious artist holds the stage defiantly ; oftener the other ego pops up and makes him laugh; sometimes the small mocker, weary of make-believe, can be heard pattering forlornly through the pages crying pathetically for his brother. And there is a touch of tragedy in the situation : genius is a cruel gift. To grow down when half your dreams have been of growing gigantic, to dwindle when you long passionately to tower, to find your feet per- versely trotting off to the Round Pond to play with children when you had ordered them to mount the granite staircase that leads to lasting Fame — this must often have made Gavin Ogilvy feel he was succeeding by his failures and weakly being ridiculous instead of sublime. Doubtless he struggled — indeed, we can see he fought desperately — but his pen was bewitched. He wanted to enter the Woods of Westermain, and they only winked at him. He began the Auld Licht Idylls earnestly and they ended lighter than levity; The Windoio in Thrums became a casement opening