He loved the English country-side;
The wine-leaved bramble in the ride,
The lichen on the apple-trees,
The poultry ranging on the lees,
The farms, the moist earth-smelling cover,
His wife's green grave at Mitcheldover,
Where snowdrops pushed at the first thaw.
Under his hide his heart was raw
With joy and pity of these things...'
That 'raw heart' marks the outsider, the victim of nostalgia. Apart from
the fact that it is a manifest artistic blemish to impute it to the
first whip of a pack of foxhounds, the language is such that it would
be a mistake to impute it to anybody; and with that we come to the
question of Mr Masefield's style in general.
As if to prove how rough indeed was the provisionally accepted
distinction between substance and form, we have for a long while already
been discussing Mr Masefield's style under a specific aspect. But the
particular overstrain we have been examining is part of Mr Masefield's
general condition. Overstrain is permanent with him. If we do not find
it in his actual language (and, as we have said, he is ridding himself
of the worst of his exaggerations) we are sure to find it in the very
vitals of his artistic effort.
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