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The Treasure of the Humble
content to leave most of his questions. 'The time has not yet come,' he says with an engaging candour, 'when we can speak lucidly of these things.' One thinks of Sir Thomas Browne's quaint fancy. 'A dialogue between two infants in the womb concerning the state of this world might handsomely illustrate our ignorance of the next, whereof methinks we yet discourse in Plato's den, and are but embryon philosophers.' Maybe M. Maeterlinck is but an embryon philosopher, one who discourses in Plato's den. But I think we must all recognise the native distinction of his mind, the fastidious delicacy of his taste, his abiding and insatiable love of beauty. What he says, exquisitely enough but perhaps too liberally, of every man—'to every man there come noble thoughts that pass across his heart like great white birds'—is certainly true of himself. Wherefore one may venture to invite people to his book as Heraclitus welcomed guests to his kitchen: 'Enter boldly, for here also there are gods.'
A. B. W.
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