| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Child of Storm by H. Rider Haggard: other. And if Saduko is fond of her--well, after all, there are other
beautiful women in Zululand. I know one or two of them myself whom I
will mention to Saduko--or rather to Nandie. Really, as things were, I
am not sure but that he is well rid of her."
"But what do you think of the matter as her father?" I asked, for I
wanted to see to what length his accommodating morality would stretch.
"As her father--well, of course, Macumazahn, as her father I am sorry,
because it will mean talk, will it not, as the Masapo business did?
Still, there is this to be said for Mameena," he added, with a
brightening face, "she always runs away up the tree, not down. When she
got rid of Masapo--I mean when Masapo was killed for his witchcraft--she
Child of Storm |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: Greek" as a sneer, whereas it occurs in an unmistakably sincere eulogy
of Shakespear, written after his death, and is clearly meant to
heighten the impression of Shakespear's prodigious natural endowments
by pointing out that they were not due to scholastic acquirements.
Now there is a sense in which it is true enough that Shakespear was
too little esteemed by his own generation, or, for the matter of that,
by any subsequent generation. The bargees on the Regent's Canal do
not chant Shakespear's verses as the gondoliers in Venice are said to
chant the verses of Tasso (a practice which was suspended for some
reason during my stay in Venice: at least no gondolier ever did it in
my hearing). Shakespear is no more a popular author than Rodin is a
|
