Page:Arthur Machen, The Secret Glory, 1922.djvu/227

The Secret Glory exalted into the fellowship of that Tavern of which the old poet writes: Mihi est propositum in Taberna mori!"

There were few English people in the Château de Chinon— indeed, it is doubtful whether there was more than one—the ménage Lupton excepted. This one compatriot happened to be a rather remarkable man—it was Carrol. He was not in the vanguard of anything; he knew no journalists and belonged to no clubs; he was not even acquainted in the most distant manner with a single person who could be called really influential or successful. He was an obscure literary worker, who published an odd volume every five or six years: now and then he got notices, when there was no press of important stuff in the offices, and sometimes a kindly reviewer predicted that he would come out all right in time, though he had still much to learn. About a year before he died, an intelligent reading public was told that one or two things of his were rather good; then, on his death, it was definitely discovered that the five volumes of verse occupied absolutely unique ground, that a supreme poet had been taken from us, a poet who had raised the English language into a fourth dimension of melody and magic. The intelligent reading public read him no more than they ever did, but they buy him in edition after edition, from large quarto to post octavo; 211