"To become as a little child—along with the Master of Corpus." Obviously that is one of the points at which one exclaims: "Upon my soul, what a writer!" One aspect of the genius of Llewelyn Powys, the Voltairean aspect, is lit by the blinding flash which issues from that astounding juxtaposition. I have murmured the phrase over and over to myself—"Along with the Master of Corpus, along with the Master of Corpus"—and each time that I have murmured it I have seemed to hear all the stained-glass windows of fashionable Christendom rattle as in an earthquake. It is necromantic—no less.
Mr. Powys revolted from the ministrations at his sickbed. He did not wish to die—still less did he wish to spend the residue of his days, long or short, in preparing his genial spirit for the shroud. Life clamored within him that it is better to be anything alive—a midget, a mud-eating lobworm, a white-bellied beetle—than a "dead" stone. At first he was stung into sharp rebellion by what he mistook for the exceptional character of his fate. He felt an extraordinary mental activity. "I became," he declares, "like one drunken with wine. A torrent of words issued from my mouth." He dramatized his situation and railed at God. But he didn't expect to be heard. He didn't even believe with any "realizing sense" in the reality of his fate. "My head became completely turned, and I chittered at Death like a little gray squirrel who is up in a fir tree out of harm's way."
It was in a high-class sanatorium in Switzerland that coolness returned to Mr. Powys and self-collection became possible, and he began to shake off the mortuary consolations of English parish Christianity, and to reconstruct his personal philosophy on a realistic basis.
