Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/219

THE YELLOW PATCH 193 Daffodil Fields (as this golden plot is called) would in any case indeed have first attention ; for it has been the success of the season — crowds flock towards it still — workers from every corner of the colony are still studying it : not only is it more popular than even the new Kipling, it is also far fuller of technical omens than Auguries. Everywhere else, as it happens, the main work done has been autumnal : collected poems from A. E., collected poems from Mr. Kipling, collected poems from Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer, a late last sheaf, very delicate — autumn, alas, indeed — from the once so fertile field of Mr. Symons : a general gleaning instead of a breaking of new ground ; and in the midst of all this tidiness, these confirmations and composures, this sudden gush of April sings out well. But apart from this mere accident, it has its high importance. It does light up the whole landscape rather oddly. For it is the work of a man intensely typical of our time, a man who stands, to his own hurt, precisely at the point where two traditions — one ascending, one alighting — cross their strains ; and to assay this patch of gold is to discover a formula as medicinal as any mountain-view — and one that explains, above everything, why it is that you always write ugliness when you spell Beauty with a capital B. II And first, as to its subsoil. For not only do the leaves of a man's early books make a kind of mould from which the later ones spring ; but they often tell us the instinctive bent of his mind — their very imitativeness betrays his native ideals. Now Masefield's books form four strata. The top layer is the series of long narrative poems of which The Daffodil Fields is the last. Below these is the stretch of prose novels and plays, from Nan to The Street of To-day, Below Men of Letters. "tA