| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: associates. His features were separately striking almost to
grotesqueness, and the whole face left a deep impression on the
memory. The forehead bulged out into a double prominence, with a
vale between; the nose came boldly forth in an irregular curve,
and its bridge was of more than a finger's breadth; the eyebrows
were deep and shaggy, and the eyes glowed beneath them like fire
in a cave.
While Robin deliberated of whom to inquire respecting his
kinsman's dwelling, he was accosted by the innkeeper, a little
man in a stained white apron, who had come to pay his
professional welcome to the stranger. Being in the second
The Snow Image |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: its explanation. When many lines diverge from each other in
direction so slightly as to confuse the eye, we know that we
have only to produce them to make the chaos plain: this is
continually so in literary history; and we shall best
understand the importance of Victor Hugo's romances if we
think of them as some such prolongation of one of the main
lines of literary tendency.
When we compare the novels of Walter Scott with those of the
man of genius who preceded him, and whom he delighted to
honour as a master in the art - I mean Henry Fielding - we
shall be somewhat puzzled, at the first moment, to state the
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Royalty Restored/London Under Charles II by J. Fitzgerald Molloy: journey to England. A yacht was therefore sent to Dieppe to
convey her, and presently she was received at Whitehall by the
lord treasurer, and her arrival celebrated in verse by Dryden.
Moreover, that she might have apartments in the palace, the king
at once appointed her a maid of honour to her majesty, this being
the first of a series of favours she was subsequently to receive.
Evelyn, writing in the following October, says it was universally
reported a ceremonious espousal, devoid of the religious rite,
had taken place between his majesty and Mademoiselle Querouaille
at Lord Arlington's house at Euston. "I acknowledge," says this
trustworthy chronicler "she was for the most part in her undresse
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) by Dante Alighieri: That writes but to cancel, think, that they,
Who for the vineyard, which thou wastest, died,
Peter and Paul live yet, and mark thy doings.
Thou hast good cause to cry, "My heart so cleaves
To him, that liv'd in solitude remote,
And from the wilds was dragg'd to martyrdom,
I wist not of the fisherman nor Paul."
CANTO XIX
Before my sight appear'd, with open wings,
The beauteous image, in fruition sweet
Gladdening the thronged spirits. Each did seem
The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) |
