Pushing on in this mood, dark with the mystery of death and the soul, Myself comes at last to the platform over Barl’ton, where to the east stretch the Downs and to the south lies the sea. Brooding over the communion of man and his fields, Myself thinks of the children on the plain below just coming into the world he must soon depart. Putting pencil to paper, he gropes toward poetic expression of the chaos within him, and as his emotions are incarnated in verse a song of hope emerges. The Dead do not die. They remain, if only to people the land of their birth as ghostly influences from beyond the grave. And on this note of doubtful affirmation, the book ends almost as mysteriously as it began. What is one to make of this strangely moving work? Considered artistically, the book is almost a literary curiosity, not only when viewed in the context of the Bellocian corpus, but even when situated in the larger field of English letters. There is nothing quite like it in modern literature, and Belloc’s farrago cannot be judged by standards appropriate to the novel or indeed to any other _genre_ familiar to contemporary criticism. On one level _The Four Men_ is clearly patterned after the medieval allegory. The personages depicted are archetypes. Grizzlebeard is symbolic of the wise man of the folk, full of ancient lore, singing dirges of the race and of the passing of youth. He is the custodian of the household gods, and philosophy is not unknown to him. He stands for order, historical continuity, and he views existence with a realism born of age and wisdom. Grizzlebeard is the tribal count, the feudal baron, the landed squire: he is Tradition incarnate. The Sailor represents man’s communion with the physical universe: he is the eternal adventurer, the spirit of romance. Although attached to Sussex, his eyes are in love with sudden landfalls and distant hills. He is the wanderer in all men. The Poet, lean in body and ragged in appearance, is a man whose visions trip him up; he is not at home in this world, but he belongs to that company of Eternal Poets, the Seers of Western Tradition, that reach back to Plato. These Three are archetypes of Man, as Las Vergnas has pointed out,[7] and Belloc succeeds in maintaining their physical separation _visually_ by delineating sharply distinct physical types, indicating distinct spiritual or psychological types. And yet the whole movement of action throughout the four days clearly indicates that these three must become one. On one level they are distinct men. On a deeper level they are Myself, and Myself is clearly Hilaire Belloc.[8] _The Four Men_ is thus more than a mere allegory; it presents itself to us as a complexity of meaning: the three men are companions necessary to the welfare and happiness of Myself; they are Archetypes of Man, particularly Western Man; they are dimensions of the personality of Myself.