Pièce 5a - Letter from John Masefield to R. C. Trevelyan

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Wolverhampton Art and Industrial Exhibition, 1902, Gresham Chambers, Lichfield Street, Wolverhampton. - Thanks Trevelyan for lending him a second batch of books: he already has copies of the Balzac and "Aucassin [and Nicolette]", but has never seen the Cervantes and Rousseau before. Asks if Trevelyan knows any of the Sagas; he has been reading "Burnt Njal" and "Laxdaela" and feels they are closer to the 'red clay' than anything else he has read. Yeats' "The Folly of Being Comforted" is 'a very lovely little thing'; he quotes line 8 as 'Time cannot make her beauty over again' and compares it to something in William Morris's "Earthly Paradise". Thinks Yeats' novel will be very good; has read many chapters of it; the first chapter has a passage about 'an old sow grubbing on the sea-shore eating starfish', perhaps 'a Celtic symbol of the spirit of the Nineteenth Century'.