Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/254

228 228 C. E. MONTAGUE when it yields that produces the only passage that leaves unconviction behind it. And the other doubt (which does recur, as you read — with stopped ears) is whether this Pre-Raphael- ite absorption in detail, this greedy extraction of every ounce of its colour, isn't perhaps being in- dulged in at the cost of the whole design. The answer to that is the cry of delight that the reader gives when he turns at the end and looks back. For since the joys have always sprung from the actual, the proportions have kept the measure of life ; the tick of that metre is the pulse of reality ; the architecture is always the earth's. It is not at all a " literary novel," that is to say ; it is a book for farmers and sailors and lovers and pioneers and (perhaps) the muter members of the Alpine Club. It ought to be read on Great Gable, stung by storm, gale, and sun, with the becks below crying up whenever the wind droops. And it is perfectly awful to think (what will certainly be true) that it will be pounced on as their special perquisite by the dilettanti, by the connoisseurs and aesthetes and auditors. And that they will get in the way of that climb up the Dent Rouge with their talk about trochees and dactyls. Blame the spray in our eyes ! Manchester Guardian, 1913,