How shall we say it? It is not that he makes a parade of arcane knowledge. The word 'parade' does injustice to his indubitable integrity. But we seem to detect behind his superfluity of technical, and at times archaic phrase, an unconscious desire to convince himself that he is saturated in essential Englishness, and we incline to think that even his choice of an actual subject was less inevitable than self-imposed. He would isolate the quality he would capture, have it more wholly within his grasp; yet, in some subtle way, it finally eludes him. The intention is in excess, and in the manner of its execution everything is (though often very subtly) in excess also. The music of English place-names, for instance is too insistent; no one into whom they had entered with the English air itself would use them with so manifest an admiration.
Perhaps a comparison may bring definition nearer. The first part of Mr Masefield's poem, which describes the meet and the assembled persons one by one, recalls, not merely by the general cast of the subject, but by many actual turns of phrase, Chaucer's _Prologue_. Mr Masefield's parson has more than one point of resemblance to Chaucer's Monk:--
'An out-ryder, that loved venerye; A manly man to ben an abbot able....'
But it would take too long to quote both pictures. We may choose for our juxtaposition the Prioress and one of Mr Masefield's young ladies:--
'Behind them rode her daughter Belle, A strange, shy, lovely girl, whose face Was sweet with thought and proud with race, And bright with joy at riding there. She was as good as blowing air, But shy and difficult to know. The kittens in the barley-mow, The setter's toothless puppies sprawling, The blackbird in the apple calling, All knew her spirit more than we. So delicate these maidens be In loving lovely helpless things.'
'But for to speken of hir conscience, She was so charitable and so pitous, She wolde weepe if that she sawe a mous Caught in a trappe, if it were ded or bledde. Of smalle houndes had she, that she fed With rosted flesh, or milk, or wastel bread, But sore wepte she if oon of hem were ded Or if men smote it with a yerde smerte: And all was conscience and tendere herte.' Ful semely hir wympel pynched was; His nose tretys; hir eyen greye as glas; Hir mouth full small, and thereto soft and red, But sikerly she hadde a fair forhed.'