These pages are full of sentences, graciously praising Sussex, in themselves small and perfect poems, as for example the praises of Arun, "which, when a man bathes in it, makes him forget everything that has come upon him since his eighteenth year--or possibly his twenty-seventh," and again, "Arun in his majesty, married to salt water, and a king."
We should be doing an injustice to _The Four Men_ did we give the impression that it is nothing but a graceful and pleasant poem written about Sussex. We have said that it is grave and deep and informed with emotion. We will quote one passage, Grizzlebeard's farewell:
There is nothing at all that remains: nor any house; nor any castle, however strong; nor any love, however tender and sound; nor any comradeship among men, however hardy. Nothing remains but the things of which I will not speak, because we have spoken enough of them already during these four days. But I who am old will give you advice, which is this--to consider chiefly from now onward those permanent things which are, as it were, the shores of this age and the harbours of our glittering and pleasant but dangerous and wholly changeful sea.
Of such stuff is the basis of this book: on this basis, which is poetic, a spiritual motive, the whole creation is raised, and the book is destined to be more than an occasional account of travel or an amusing but trivial display of wit and fancy. It is a poem, and a poem, as we think, which will endure.
It is, in truth, the poetic instinct which animates all his activities and particularly his travel. The poetic instinct consists of two itches, the first to comprehend fully in all dimensions the reality which we see before us, the second to express it again in words, paint, clay or music. This instinct in its pure and proper form has regard to no kind of profit, either in money or esteem. It moves the poet to the doing of these things for the sake only of doing them.
But by a very wise dispensation it is also the mainspring of all material usefulness in the world. We have sought to show, in this chapter as in others, how you can find the poetic, the disinterested motive, whenever you try to discover what gives their value to Mr. Belloc's studies in actuality. Particularly this is so in the accumulation of knowledge which he has acquired in his travels and in the use he makes of it. It seems as though this passion to see and to understand must sharpen his wits and his vision: it gives that life and energy to his writings on this matter without which poetic composition is worthless and journalism fails to convince.