Page:The Criterion - Volume 4.djvu/356

134 he drifts into the chronicles of a later age, like a derelict galleon into an anchored fleet of comparatively modern warships, his abilities as an Arch-Medicine Man are neither random nor generalised. They are architectural, draconian and calendrical, for, as Spenser and Geoffrey testify, he was one having authority over the sun and the moon, the night and the day. In other words, he was a calendar maker, the earliest native embodiment of Old Moore's Almanac, and as such was following in the steps of Osiris of the lunar calendar and the later Pharoahs of the solar dynasties. His main preoccupations were with stone-working, agriculture (through irrigation and the watery empire of the dragon) and the heavenly bodies, and these elements are a triangular formula for the archaic civilisation. Metallurgy is lacking, but that is the only flaw in his character. I admit it is a serious one.

Observe, too, his psychological discontinuity with the other actors in the romances and chronicles. He has no stake in the stories; cut him out and they make a distinct gain in homogeneity. He is a waif, an alien, a man born after his time and among punier men than he, a Rip van Winkle who awakes into a new world after a sleep of hundreds of years, still trailing clouds of faded glory and escorted by dreams of the past. He 1s a king's daughter's son, but without aristocratic much less princely rank. He is not even a salaried court-magician, but a king's councillor without a portfolio. In the grand style and with a wealth of symbolism drawn from his specialised draconian lore, he makes rapt prophesies about events that have already occurred. Evidently, he has journeyed so far upon his time-machine that his line of communications is broken, and he halts the car when he has passed the stage of phenomena concerning the coming of which he delivers so impressive an oration. Could there be