It has been a secret growth, not an educational
programme. The Boer War, I think, revealed its presence, and the
war we are now waging has testified to its mature strength. It has
come partly by organisation, and still more through the workings of
a more generous and self-sacrificing ideal. In any case it is a
great and noble harvest; and I rejoice with all my heart that it
has thus ripened and borne fruit, in courage and disinterestedness,
and high-hearted public spirit.
XIII
AUTHORSHIP
1
The essay which stands next in this volume, "Herb Moly and
Heartsease," was the subject of a curious and interesting
experiment. It seemed to me, when I first thought of it, to be a
suggestive subject, a substantial idea. One ought not to write a
commentary on one's own work, but the underlying theme is this: I
have been haunted all my life, at intervals, sometimes very
insistently, by the sense of a quest; and I have often seemed to
myself to be searching for something which I have somehow lost; to
be engaged in trying to rediscover some emotion or thought which I
had once certainly possessed and as certainly have forgotten or
mislaid. At times I felt on the track of it, as if it had passed
that way not long before; at times I have felt as if I were close
upon it, and as if it were only hidden from me by the thinnest of
veils. I have reason to know that other people have the same
feeling; and, indeed, it is that which constitutes the singular and
moving charm of Newman's poem, "Lead, kindly Light," where all is
summed up in those exquisite lines, often so strangely
misinterpreted and misunderstood, which end the poem:
"And with the morn those angel faces smile,
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.
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