as The House of Souls.
I have mentioned The Chronicle of Clemendy, calling it a classic, and something further should be said about that astonishing book. It is the Welsh Heptameron, a chronicle of amorous intrigue, joyous drunkenness, and knightly endeavor second to none in the brief muster of the world’s greatest classics. In it there is the veritable flavour of mediaeval record. Somewhat less outspoken than Balzac in his Droll Stories, and less verbose than Boccaccio, Machen proves himself the peer of either in gay, irresponsible, diverting, unflagging invention, while his diction is lovelier than that of any of his forerunners, including the nameless authors of those rich Arabian tapestries which were the parent tales of all mediaeval and modern facetiae.
The day is coming when a number of serious charges will be laid against us who live in this generation, and some severe questions asked, and the fact that we will be dead, most of us, when the future fires its broadside, has nothing at all to do with the case.
We are going to be asked, post-mortem, why we allowed Ambrose Bierce to vanish from our midst, unnoticed and unsought, after ignoring him shamefully throughout his career; why Stephen Crane, after a few flamboyant reviews, was so quickly forgotten at death; why Richard Middleton was permitted to swallow his poison at Brussels; why W. C. Morrow and Walter Blackburn Harte were in our day known only to the initiated, discriminating few; their fine, golden books merely rare “items” for the collector. Among other things, posterity is going to demand of us why, when the opportunity was ours, we did not open our hearts to Arthur Machen and name him among the very great.
1 I have let this last assertion stand as part of the original article, although Mr. Machen writes me that I am in error. “I never read a line of Baudelaire,” he says, “but I have read deeply in Poe, who, I believe, derives largely from Baudelaire.” Of course, it is the other way round, Baudelaire derives from Poe, but my own assumption is rendered clear.—V. S.
THE REMEMBRANCE OF THE BARD
In the darkness of old age let not my memory fail:
Let me not forget to celebrate the beloved land of Gwent.
If they imprison me in a deep place, in a house of pestilence,
Still shall I be free, remembering the sunshine upon Mynydd Maen.
There have I listened to the song of the lark, my soul has ascended with the song of the little bird:
The great white clouds were the ships of my spirit, sailing to the haven of the Almighty.
Equally to be held in honour is the site of the Great Mountain.
Adorned with the gushing of many waters—sweet is the shade of its hazel thickets.
There a treasure is preserved which I will not celebrate;
It is glorious and deeply concealed.
If Teils should return, if happiness were restored to the Cymri,
Dewi and Dyfrig should serve his Mass; then a great marvel would be made visible.
O blessed and miraculous work! then should my bliss be as the joy of angels.
I had rather behold this offering than kiss the twin lips of dark Gwenllian.
Dear my land of Gwent: O quam dilecta tabernacula.
Thy rivers are like precious golden streams of Paradise, thy hills are as the Mount Syon.
Better a grave on Twyn Barlwm than a throne in the palace of the Saxons at Caer-Ludd.
THE PRAISE OF MYFANWY
O gift of the everlasting:
O wonderful and hidden mystery.
Many secrets have been vouchsafed to me,
I have been long acquainted with the wisdom of the trees;
Ash and oak and elm have communicated to me from my boyhood,
The birch and the hazel and all the trees of the greenwood have not been dumb.
There is a caldron rimmed with pearls of whose gifts I am not ignorant;
I will speak little of it; its treasures are known to the Bards.
Many went on the search of Caer-Pedryfan,
Seven alone returned with Arthur, but my spirit was present.
Seven are the apple-trees in a beautiful orchard;
I have eaten of their fruit which is not bestowed on Saxons.
I am not ignorant of a Head which is glorious and venerable;
It made perpetual entertainment for the warriors, their joys would have been immortal;
If they had not opened the door of the south, they would have feasted for ever,
Listening to the song of the fairy Birds of Rhiannon.
Let not anyone instruct me concerning the Glassy Isle;
In the garments of the saints who returned from it were rich odours of Paradise.
All this I knew, and yet my knowledge was ignorance.
For one day, as I walked by Caer-rhiu in the principal forest of Gwent,
I saw golden Myfanwy as she bathed in the brook Tarogi,
Her hair flowed about her; Arthur’s crown had dissolved into a shining mist.
I gazed into her blue eyes as it were into twin heavens,
All the parts of her body were adornments and miracles.
O gift of the everlasting:
O wonderful and hidden mystery:
When I embraced Myfanwy a moment became immortality.
THE HOUSE OF SOULS: AN INTRODUCTION
It was somewhere, I think, towards the autumn of the year 1889 that the thought occurred to me that I might perhaps try to write a little in the modern way. For, hitherto, I had been, as it were, wearing costume in literature. The rich, figured English of the earlier part of the seventeenth century had always had a peculiar attraction for me. I accustomed myself to write in it, to think in it; I kept a diary in that manner, and half-unconsciously dressed up my every day thoughts and common experiences in the habit of the Cavalier or of the Caroline Divine. Thus, when in 1884 I got a commission to translate the Heptameron, I wrote quite naturally in the language of my favourite period, and, as some critics declare, made my English version somewhat more antique and stiff than the original. And so “The Anatomy of Tobacco” was an exercise in the antique of a different kind; and “The Chronicle of Clemendy” was a volume of tales that tried their hardest to be mediæval; and the translation of the “Moyen de Parvenir” was still a thing in the ancient mode.
It seemed, in fine, to be settled that in literature I was to be a hanger on of the past ages; and I don’t quite
