Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/217

THE YELLOW PATCH A CHRONICLE OF MR. JOHN MASEFIELD This Chronicle is being written (or at any rate begun) on the top of a hill — on one of those skulls of scalped rock, abrupt faces of stone, that start up in the north to look south, over England, over the dinted, tinted, patterned spread of turf and town ; — and though it was only accident that brought me here, yet (like all accidentals, really, if one had only luck and sense to live sincerely) the place has an absolute aptness — for it is up to just such a peak that such a Chronicle ought to swing the imagination of the reader — giving him a glimpse of the kingdoms of poetry in a few moments of time : the gleaming fields, the fresh allot- ments, the little hurrying, eager figures ; the swathe of colour twisting and biting into the moorland beyond ; the threads of traffic that suck its brightness to the cities. Such a Chronicle ought to seek to do this not simply for the sake of giving a reader the hang of the whole thing, of showing him how the fields fit and interlock; but rather for the purpose of bringing out the brisk diversities and making him realize the poets as a lot of independent, mortal units. He ought to see them as specific specks, as mere hard-working humans ; we want immensely to flatten out Parnassus. For Poetry has been looked up to far too long; it is time the reader looked down on it : nothing is doing