Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/222

196 196 THE YELLOW PATCH on memories and ideas until he compressed them into small bright cusps and crystals, and of then setting these pellets rhythmically circling in a little silvery setting of sound. But who (e) was sometimes pre- vented, by veneration for his medium, from giving full expression to his eagerness by heating up and hammering down with all his power. Ill And such a man would naturally abandon verse for prose. His instincts would dumbly urge it — for this reverence balked them. And his theory of an elevating vulgarity would provide a prompt excuse — for prose, with its familiarities and universal right of entry, can offer many advantages to an artist bent on being Whitmanly. Theoretically, therefore, A Mainsail Haul (the first prose-book — a series of sketches in sailor slang, a sort of simpler Sailors Three) may be said to represent an upright attempt to fulfil the terms of that " Consecration " contract more completely. But practically it turned out very different. Instincts are not so easily battened down. Nature will have her way. And this attempt to pay honour to the slang of the sea was unconsciously but a covert way of catching a new literary device, of bringing a new beauty into prose music, and of providing Masefield's mind with a mode of utterance, absolutely new, perfectly fitted to his intensely personal vision. It is one of the most interesting pieces of involun- tary self -discovery in recent letters. It is even more impressive than Synge's "call" to Aran. Watch it working in these two examples : — Now close by where he stood there was a sort of a great store, kept by a Johnny Dago. And if I were to tell you of the things they had in it, I would need nine tongues and an oiled hinge to each of them. But Billy walked into this store, into the space