It is infinitely more important to have felt that flaming
enthusiasm for an idol who will be cast down than to have felt what we
ought to feel for Shakespeare and Homer. The gates of heaven are opened
by strange keys, but they must be our own.
Within six months Masefield had gone the way of all flesh. In a paper on
_The Shropshire Lad_ (May, 1913), curious both for critical subtlety and
the faint taste of disillusion, Sorley was saying: 'His (Masefield's)
return (to the earth) was purely emotional, and probably less
interesting than the purely intellectual return of Meredith.' At the
beginning of 1914, having gained a Scholarship at University College,
Oxford, he went to Germany. Just before going he wrote:--
'I am just discovering Thomas Hardy. There are two methods of
discovery. One is when Columbus discovers America. The other is when
some one begins to read a famous author who has already run into
seventy editions, and refuses to speak about anything else, and
considers every one else who reads the author's works his own
special converts.
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