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day. And these allied him on one side with the confessors and with the men of genius.

All this must be remembered in trying to think of him as he really was. The estimate of kindly but undiscerning public opinion will not suffice. We must add to it

'All the world's coarse thumb

And finger failed to plumb.'

And these lines of Browning are followed by others which give truly the same aspect of Wyndham's nature— the aspect that told of genius and made for tragedy. Of Wyndham, if of anyone, it is true that he was haunted by a crowd of thoughts and hopes which in the nature of the case could never have been realised, and which yet stamped him as something apart from the many:

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Fancies that break through language and escape.
All I could never be,

All men ignored in me;

This was I worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.'

While then the Press has pictured him as the gallant knight, graceful, brilliant, accomplished, I prefer to think of that side of him-a very real side-which allies him with those who have worked and suffered for great causes, the extent and quality of whose labour has been only half recognised, who have seen enough to know sadly how little actual life fulfils the highest dreams which come to men in moments of illumination. Let this thought be set down in his own words which stand before me in his own handwriting. They are headed 'Illumination,' and they run thus :

'To have known this once: and so to take our part With the great masters who have left behind

No miniature perfections of their art;

But one vast work, unfinished and unsigned,
That should have told the secret of their heart,
And tells of hands grown old, and eyes gone blind.'

But a record of one who loved Browning's brave boast

that he would greet the Unseen with a cheer,' must not conclude on such a note as this, though it is the deepest and truest. To the end Wyndham was full of hope, full of purpose. If he stumbled it was to rise again and work in new fields. And I will conclude by quoting words of keenness as to the future, written only a month before he was taken away. His newly inherited property gave him a congenial field of work. And here the whole instrument was under his own control, as it could never be in the political field of a democracy. For the moment he dreamed of it as giving him full scope for the future, while the possibilities of his beautiful library fed his literary imagination. It is not at all likely that he would have given up politics as his letter hints. But his habit of absorbing himself in what he worked at probably made it a necessity to think of the task directly before him as the one thing that was worth while and was to occupy his future time.

'For myself-apart from politics, finance, and the round of duty-I am absorbed in two subjects: Rural England and my library. "We know what we are, but we know not what we may be." I may, perhaps, take office again. But I doubt it. Inveni portum.' My work, I am almost persuaded, must be to tackle the problem of Rural England; and my play, I am convinced, to finish my library. The two together would give me happy and useful employment for twenty years.

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'I am attacking "Rural England" (1) by action, based on study of the past-from Domesday Book onwards-and on modern science-" so-called." I think best in action and experiment. So I have given the go-by to theory and have already pumped water several miles over considerable hills; built cow-sheds; bought a motor-trolley to supersede four cart-horses, and done much else which will, I believe, put back this bit of England to where it stood in the seventeenth century and afford working models to [those] who lack my capital and imagination. It is jolly work.

'(2) But I attack "Rural England" also with my pen and have written a "private" essay that has been "highly commended" by Lansdowne and Milner.

...

'As for my play. . . . I have finished the structure of the library and nearly filled it with books.

for people who mean business. Merton, San Marco at Florence, etc. Vol. 219.-No. 436.

Y

There are six desks

It is inspired by Wells,
But [it] will be a place

at the top of the house in which you and X. and I and others can read and write. Party Politics leave me cold. But the country-side of England and the literature of Europe make me glow. . . .

...

'Incidentally to the two main purposes of my life, I am finishing a chapel in the basement.

'It is exhilarating to make things yourself. The carpenter and I, without architect or contract, have made the library, the chapel, the new cow-farm and much else. When I told X. a few weeks ago that this would be my work and not party politics, he was shocked. But after seeing what I was at he came round to my view. Some people inherit an estate and go on as if nothing had happened. I can't do that. My father never told me anything about this place. I lived and worked in Cheshire and Ireland; suddenly I find myself responsible for farming myself 2400 acres, and for paying sums that stagger me by way of weekly wages and repairs. So I ask myself, "What are you going to do?" I mean to use all my imagination and energy to get something done that shall last and remind.'

W. W.

ENCE

PUBLIC

LIBRARY

THE

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

No. 437.

PUBLISHED IN

OCTOBER, 1913.

PENGE PUBLIC LIBRARY

LONDON:

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.

1913.

GENERAL INDEX TO THE QUARTERLY REVIEW.

No. 401, forming Volume CCI., and containing a General Index to the volumes from CLXXXII. to CC. of the QUARTERLY REVIEW, is Now Ready.

The QUARTERLY REVIEW is published on or about the 15th of
January, April, July, and October.

Price Twenty-four Shillings per Annum, post free.

LONDON:

Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, Limited,
Stamford Street, S.E., and Great Windmill Street, W.

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