Sorley first appears before us radiant with the white-heat of a
schoolboy enthusiasm for Masefield. Masefield is--how we remember the
feeling!--the poet who has lived; his naked reality tears through 'the
lace of putrid sentimentalism (educing the effeminate in man) which
rotters like Tennyson and Swinburne have taught his (the superficial
man's) soul to love.' It tears through more than Tennyson and Swinburne.
The greatest go down before him.
'So you see what I think of John Masefield. When I say that he has
the rapidity, simplicity, nobility of Homer, with the power of
drawing character, the dramatic truth to life of Shakespeare, along
with a moral and emotional strength and elevation which is all his
own, and therefore I am prepared to put him above the level of these
two great men--I do not expect you to agree with me.'--(From a paper
read at Marlborough, November, 1912.)
That was Sorley at seventeen, and that, it seems to us, is the quality
of enthusiasm which should be felt by a boy of seventeen if he is to
make his mark.
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