Page:Americans (1922).djvu/348

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Browne, for whom Oblivion scattered her poppy in vain, and Cudworth rising from his tomb in The True Intellectual System of the Universe, and pale John Norris of Bemerton, wafted thither by a passion of loneliness from his dim prison in The Theory of an Ideal World. There is no sound of greeting; but the five silent figures commune together in perfect felicity on That Which Endureth Forever. They speak not a word, yet they understand one another by a mere interpenetration of their beings. . . . And when the Northern Waggoner has set his sevenfold team behind the steadfast star, and Chaunticlere warns erring spirits to their confines, "P. E. M." rouses himself from his deep trance, and says to himself, softly under his breath, "Hodie vixi—to-day I have lived!"

After two cups of coffee and a bit of toast, he goes to his desk and, without haste or rest, sets to work upon—what? A man who keeps such company and lives such an internal life should write his memoirs, a new Biographia Literaria, a philosophical autobiography. Such a book from Mr. More, delivering in his pure grave style a continuous narrative of the travels and voyages of his spirit from Shelburne, New Hampshire, by way of India to ancient Athens, making all ports which for storm-tossed sailors trim their lamps,—such a narrative, plangent through all its reserves with nostalgia for the infinite, would be of unique interest and value to us, complementing the spiritual adventures of