He had
not learned the slogans of the day. But, seeing that the slogans were
only a disguise for the undefined desires which inspired them he lost
little and gained much thereby. The years at Oxford in which he would
have taken a temporary sameness, a sameness in the long run protective
and strengthening, were spared him. In his letters we have him
unspoiled, as the sentimentalists would say--not yet with the
distraction of protective colouring.
One who knew him better than the mere reader of his letters can pretend
to know him declares that, in spite of his poems, which are among the
most remarkable of those of the boy-poets killed in the war, Sorley
would not have been a man of letters. The evidence of the letters
themselves is heavy against the view; they insist upon being regarded as
the letters of a potential writer. But a passionate interest in
literature is not the inevitable prelude to a life as a writer, and
although it is impossible to consider any thread in Sorley's letters as
of importance comparable to that which joins the enthronement and
dethronement of his literary idols, we shall regard it as the record of
a movement of soul which might as easily find expression (as did
Keeling's) in other than literary activities.
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