Beroalde de Verville's Moyen de Parvenir, and the Memoirs of Casanova—, flowered in The Three Imposters, nouvelles in the manner of the old Arabian authors. This work is not so well-known as The Dynamiter, which it somewhat resembles, but it deserves tobe. Through it threads the theme, that of nearly all his tales, of the disintegration of a soul through an encounter with the mysteries which we are forbidden to know, the Sabbatic revels, the two-horned goat, alchemy, devil-worship, and the eternal and indescribable symbols. The problem is always the same, that of facing the great God Pan and the danger that lurks for the man who dares the facing.
And one wonders, Peter continued, his eyes dilating with an expression which may have been either intense curiosity or horror, one wonders what price Machen himself has paid to learn his secret of how to keep the secrets! He must have encountered this horror himself and yet he lives to ask the riddle in lowing prose! What has it cost him to learn the answer? Popularity? Perhaps, for he is an obscure reporter on a London newspaper and he drinks beer! That is all any Englishman I have asked can tell me about him. Nobody reads his books; nobody has read them . . . except the few who see and feel, and John Masefield is one of these. This master of English prose, this hierophant, who knows all the secrets and keeps them, this delver in forgotten lore, this wise poet who uplifts and in
