COMPOSITION BY DOVETAILING
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I, together, doubtless, with very many other of your readers, was greatly interested in Mr. S. K. Ratcliffe's article on J. H. Shorthouse. In that article Mr. Ratcliffe com- mented upon the fact that large sections of John Inglesard, on closer inspection, reveal " a miracle of ingenious dove- tailing."_ He concludes that " here is a technique of com- position belonging, so far as We know, to the author of John Inglesant alone." I write to suggest that the far more famous Imitatio Christi of Thomas a Kempis is perhaps an illuStration of the same type of echnposition, mutatis mutandis. A good commentator of this very great book says : " The Imitation ' was a new work, a book born. into immortality,' and yet it contains hardly an invented phrase. This is indeed the very virtue of the work. No phrase that time had not proved to be a living force in the instinctive spiritual life of man was allowed any place in it " (Thomas a Kempis. His Age and Book, by J. E. G. de Montmorency, B.A., LL.B.). Here is another book by a mystic which was in fact a mosaic of older and beautifully expressed ideas worked into a marvellously artistic whole.—
I am, Sir, &c.,' EDWARD E.. H.AYWARD. Bethany School, Goudhurst, Kent.
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