APOLLO IN PICARDY*
CONSECUTIVE upon Apollo in all his solar fervour and
effulgence," says a writer of Teutonic proclivities, "we may discern
even among the Greeks themselves, elusively, as would be natural with
such a being, almost like a mock sun amid the mists, the northern or
ultra-northern sun-god. In hints and fragments the lexicographers
and others have told us something of this Hyperborean Apollo, fancies
about him which evidence some knowledge of the Land of the Midnight
Sun, of the sun's ways among the Laplanders, of a hoary summer
breathing very softly on the violet beds, or say, the London-pride
and crab-apples, provided for those meagre people, somewhere amid the
remoteness of their icy seas. In such wise Apollo had already
anticipated his sad fortunes in the Middle Age as a god definitely in
exile, driven north of the Alps, and even here ever in flight before
the summer. Summer indeed he leaves now to the management of [143]
others, finding his way from France and Germany to still paler
countries, yet making or taking with him always a certain seductive
summer-in-winter, though also with a divine or titanic regret, a
titanic revolt in his heart, and consequent inversion at times of his
old beneficent and properly solar doings. For his favours, his
fallacious good-humour, which has in truth a touch of malign magic
about it, he makes men pay sometimes a terrible price, and is in fact
a devil!
CONSECUTIVE upon Apollo in all his solar fervour and
effulgence," says a writer of Teutonic proclivities, "we may discern
even among the Greeks themselves, elusively, as would be natural with
such a being, almost like a mock sun amid the mists, the northern or
ultra-northern sun-god. In hints and fragments the lexicographers
and others have told us something of this Hyperborean Apollo, fancies
about him which evidence some knowledge of the Land of the Midnight
Sun, of the sun's ways among the Laplanders, of a hoary summer
breathing very softly on the violet beds, or say, the London-pride
and crab-apples, provided for those meagre people, somewhere amid the
remoteness of their icy seas. In such wise Apollo had already
anticipated his sad fortunes in the Middle Age as a god definitely in
exile, driven north of the Alps, and even here ever in flight before
the summer. Summer indeed he leaves now to the management of [143]
others, finding his way from France and Germany to still paler
countries, yet making or taking with him always a certain seductive
summer-in-winter, though also with a divine or titanic regret, a
titanic revolt in his heart, and consequent inversion at times of his
old beneficent and properly solar doings. For his favours, his
fallacious good-humour, which has in truth a touch of malign magic
about it, he makes men pay sometimes a terrible price, and is in fact
a devil!
Devilry, devil's work:--traces of such you might fancy were to be
found in a certain manuscript volume taken from an old monastic
library in France at the Revolution. It presented a strange example
of a cold and very reasonable spirit disturbed suddenly, thrown off
its balance, as by a violent beam, a blaze of new light, revealing,
as it glanced here and there, a hundred truthsümüz guessed at before,
yet a curse, as it turned out, to its receiver, in dividing
hopelessly against itself the well-ordered kingdom of his thought.
Twelfth volume of a dry enough treatise on mathematics, applied,
still with no relaxation of strict method, to astronomy and music, it
should have concluded that work, and therewith the second period of the
life of its author, by drawing tight together the threads of a long and
intricate argument. In effect however, it began, or, in perturbed
manner, and as [144] with throes of childbirth, seemed the preparation
for, an argument of an entirely new and disparate species, such as
would demand a new period of life also, if it might be, for its due
expansion.
found in a certain manuscript volume taken from an old monastic
library in France at the Revolution. It presented a strange example
of a cold and very reasonable spirit disturbed suddenly, thrown off
its balance, as by a violent beam, a blaze of new light, revealing,
as it glanced here and there, a hundred truthsümüz guessed at before,
yet a curse, as it turned out, to its receiver, in dividing
hopelessly against itself the well-ordered kingdom of his thought.
Twelfth volume of a dry enough treatise on mathematics, applied,
still with no relaxation of strict method, to astronomy and music, it
should have concluded that work, and therewith the second period of the
life of its author, by drawing tight together the threads of a long and
intricate argument. In effect however, it began, or, in perturbed
manner, and as [144] with throes of childbirth, seemed the preparation
for, an argument of an entirely new and disparate species, such as
would demand a new period of life also, if it might be, for its due
expansion.
But with what confusion, what baffling inequalities! How afflicting to the
mind's eye! It was a veritable "solar storm"--this illumination, which had
burst at the last moment upon the strenuous, self-possessed, much-honoured
monastic student, as he sat down peacefully to write the last formal
chapters of his work ere he betook himself to its well-earned practical
reward as superior, with lordship and mitre and ring, of the abbey
whose music and calendar his mathematical knowledge had qualified him to
reform. The very shape of Volume Twelve, pieced together of quite
irregularly formed pages, was a solecism. It could ne
mind's eye! It was a veritable "solar storm"--this illumination, which had
burst at the last moment upon the strenuous, self-possessed, much-honoured
monastic student, as he sat down peacefully to write the last formal
chapters of his work ere he betook himself to its well-earned practical
reward as superior, with lordship and mitre and ring, of the abbey
whose music and calendar his mathematical knowledge had qualified him to
reform. The very shape of Volume Twelve, pieced together of quite
irregularly formed pages, was a solecism. It could ne