| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle: wetting the palms of his hands ever and anon, and rolling the cord upon
his thigh. Near by sat Allan a Dale fitting a new string to his harp.
Quoth Robin at last, "Methinks I would rather roam this forest in
the gentle springtime than be King of all merry England. What palace
in the broad world is as fair as this sweet woodland just now,
and what king in all the world hath such appetite for plover's
eggs and lampreys as I for juicy venison and sparkling ale?
Gaffer Swanthold speaks truly when he saith, `Better a crust
with content than honey with a sour heart.' "
"Yea," quoth Little John, as he rubbed his new-made bowstring
with yellow beeswax, "the life we lead is the life for me.
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: him accosted?
[3] {to arkhein}. Cf. "Cyrop." passim.
[4] "A private person."
[5] Lit. "by like expenditure of power."
[6] {arkhomai soi}. Lit. "I'll begin you with quite commonplace
examples." Holden cf. Shakesp. "Merry Wives," i. 4. 97, "I'll do
you your master what good I can"; "Much Ado," ii. 3. 115, "She
will sit you." For the distinction between {paradeigmaton} =
examples and {upodeigmata} = suggestions see "Horsem." ii. 2.
Or again,[7] let us suppose that both should have occasion to
pronounce a panegyric. Whose compliments will carry farther, in 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 Menexenus by Plato: orations, are more liable to suspicion than others; those, again, which
have a taste of sophistry in them, or the ring of a later age, or the
slighter character of a rhetorical exercise, or in which a motive or some
affinity to spurious writings can be detected, or which seem to have
originated in a name or statement really occurring in some classical
author, are also of doubtful credit; while there is no instance of any
ancient writing proved to be a forgery, which combines excellence with
length. A really great and original writer would have no object in
fathering his works on Plato; and to the forger or imitator, the 'literary
hack' of Alexandria and Athens, the Gods did not grant originality or
genius. Further, in attempting to balance the evidence for and against a
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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 Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard: to call him in South Africa. He told it to me one evening when I was
stopping with him at the place he bought in Yorkshire. Shortly after
that, the death of his only son so unsettled him that he immediately
left England, accompanied by two companions, his old fellow-voyagers,
Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good, and has now utterly vanished into the
dark heart of Africa. He is persuaded that a white people, of which he
has heard rumours all his life, exists somewhere on the highlands in the
vast, still unexplored interior, and his great ambition is to find them
before he dies. This is the wild quest upon which he and his companions
have departed, and from which I shrewdly suspect they never will return.
One letter only have I received from the old gentleman, dated from a
Long Odds |
