But we seem to detect behind his superfluity of technical,
and at times archaic phrase, an unconscious desire to convince himself
that he is saturated in essential Englishness, and we incline to think
that even his choice of an actual subject was less inevitable than
self-imposed. He would isolate the quality he would capture, have it
more wholly within his grasp; yet, in some subtle way, it finally
eludes him. The intention is in excess, and in the manner of its
execution everything is (though often very subtly) in excess also. The
music of English place-names, for instance is too insistent; no one into
whom they had entered with the English air itself would use them with so
manifest an admiration.
Perhaps a comparison may bring definition nearer. The first part of Mr
Masefield's poem, which describes the meet and the assembled persons one
by one, recalls, not merely by the general cast of the subject, but by
many actual turns of phrase, Chaucer's _Prologue_. Mr Masefield's parson
has more than one point of resemblance to Chaucer's Monk:--
'An out-ryder, that loved venerye;
A manly man to ben an abbot able.
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