To the Lincolnshire folk, his dialect poems, written in the dialect which was current in his youth at Spilsby and in the country about it (and still used there, I am glad to say, though not so universally or so markedly as of yore), give genuine pleasure, and are full of humour and of character, and it is a tribute to his accurate ear and memory that, after an absence of some twenty-seven years, he should have got the Lincolnshire so correct. He did it all right, but for fear he might have forgotten and got wrong, he asked a friend to look at it and criticise; unfortunately the friend lived in the north of the county and knew not the dialect of “Spilsbyshire,” so he altered it all to that which was spoken about Brigg, which is more like Yorkshire, and it had to be put back again. But some of the northern dialect has stuck, and in “The Northern Farmer Old Style” the ‘o’ is seen in ‘moind,’ ‘doy,’ ‘almoighty,’ etc., where the Spilsby sound would be better rendered by using an ‘a.’ This ‘o’ is never found in any of his subsequent dialect poems, and in a note to the text in the “Northern Cobbler” the poet points out that the proper sound is given by ‘ai.’ [Sidenote: FAMILIAR QUOTATIONS] One sign of the remarkable way in which our Lincolnshire poet has made himself the poet of the English-speaking race is the extraordinary number of familiar quotations which he has given us. For the last fifty years in book and newspaper, in speech and sermon, some line or some phrase of his has constantly occurred which the user felt certain that his hearer or readers would recognise, until our literature has become tessellated with Tennysonian expressions, and they have always given that satisfaction which results from feeling that in using his words we have said the thing we wished to say in a form which could not be improved upon. In this respect of “daily popularity and application,” I think Shakespeare alone excels him, though Pope and Wordsworth may run him close. [Illustration: _Little Steeping._] CHAPTER XXXII ROADS FROM SPILSBY Road to Louth—Partney—Dr. Johnson—His letter on Death of Peregrine Langton—Dalby—Langton and Saucethorpe—View from Keal Hill with Boston Stump—“Stickfoot Stickknee and Stickneck”—The Hundleby Miracle—Raithby—Mavis Enderby—Lusby—Hameringham—The Hourglass Stand—Winceby—Horncastle—The Horse Fair—The Sleaford Road—Hagnaby—East Kirkby—Miningsby—Revesby Abbey—Moorby—Wood Enderby—Haltham—Tumby Wood—Coningsby—Tattershall—Billinghay—Haverholme Priory.