Halleck's New English LiteratureHalleck, Reuben Post
History
Halleck's New English Literature
Halleck, Reuben Post
English literature -- History and criticism
Next, the traveler may go by coach to Bude (of which Tennyson
remarked, "I hear that there are larger waves at Bude than at any
other place. I must go thither and be alone with God") and to unique
Clovelly and Bideford (Kingsley), by rail to Ilfracombe, by coach to
Lynton (Lorna Doone), and the adjacent Lynmouth (where Shelley passed
some of his happiest days and alarmed the authorities by setting
afloat bottles containing his _Declaration of Rights_), by coach to
Minehead, by rail to Watchet, driving past Alfoxden (Wordsworth) to
Nether-Stowey (Coleridge) and the Quantock Hills, by motor and rail to
Glastonbury (Isle of Avalon, burial place of King Arthur and Queen
Guinevere), by rail to Wells (cathedral), to Bath (many literary
associations), to Bristol (Chatterton, Southey), to Gloucester (fine
cathedral, tomb of Edward II), and to Ross, the starting point for a
remarkable all day's row down the river Wye to Tintern Abbey
(Wordsworth), stopping for dinner at Monmouth (Geoffrey of Monmouth).
After a start similar to the foregoing, the traveler should begin to
make an itinerary of his own. He will enjoy a trip more if he has a
share in planning it. From Tintern Abbey he might proceed, for
instance, to Stratford-on-Avon (Shakespeare); then to Warwick,
Kenilworth, and the George Eliot Country in North Warwickshire and
Staffordshire.
Far natural beauty, there is nothing in England that is more
delightful than a coaching trip through Wordsworth's Lake Country
(Cumberland and Westmoreland). From there it is not far to the Carlyle
Country (Ecclefechan, Craigenputtock), to the Burns Country (Dumfries,
Ayr), and to the Scott Country (Loch Katrine, The Trossachs,
Edinburgh, and Abbotsford). In Edinburgh, William Sharp's statement
about Stevenson should be remembered, "One can, in a word, outline
Stevenson's own country as all the region that on a clear day one may
in the heart of Edinburgh descry from the Castle walls."
If the traveler lands at Southampton, he is on the eastern edge of
Thomas Hardy's Wessex, Dorchester in Dorsetshire being the center. The
Jane Austen Country (Steventon, Chawton) is in Hampshire. To the east,
in Surrey, is Burford Bridge near Dorking, where Keats wrote part of
his _Endymion_, where George Meredith had his summer home, and where
"the country of his poetry" is located.
In London, it is a pleasure to trace some of the greatest literary
associations in the world. We may stand at the corner of Monkwell and
Silver streets, on the site of a building in which Shakespeare wrote
some of his greatest plays. Milton lived in the vicinity and is buried
not far distant in St. Giles Church. In Westminster Abbey we find the
graves of many of the greatest authors, from Chaucer to Tennyson.
London is not only Dickens Land and Thackeray Land, but also the
"Land" of many other writers. We may still eat in the Old Cheshire
Cheese, where Johnson and Goldsmith dined.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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