The bard whose “lucky rhymes to him were scrip and share” indeed, while more than one of his publishers dropped off “flaccid and drained,” was able later on to build himself a retreat on the Sussex wilds of Blackdown, in a sense even further “from noise and smoke of town.” But he still spent part of the year at Farringford; and much of his poetry is coloured by the Isle of Wight scenery, notably _Maud_, that “pet bantling” of his to which early critics were so unkind. Enoch Arden, too, might be thought to have hailed from this shore, but that hazel nuts do not flourish in the Island, unless in the half fossilized form of “Noah’s nuts” found in Compton Chine; also, on critical consideration, there appears no long street climbing out of Freshwater, whose “mouldered church,” moreover, has been quite masked by rebuilding--but these are poetical properties readily inserted into any picture, such as one that could be taken from a hundred villages on our coast-- Long lines of cliff breaking have left a chasm; And in the chasm are foam and yellow sands; Beyond, red roofs about a narrow wharf, In cluster; then a moulder’d church, and higher, A long street climbs to one tall-tower’d mill; And high in heaven behind it a grey down With Danish barrows; and a hazelwood, By autumn nutters haunted, flourishes Green in a cup-like hollow of the down. Often from these downs, the poet must have watched-- Below the milky steep Some ship of battle slowly creep, And on through zones of light and shadow Glimmer away to the lonely deep. From his own window, he could catch-- The voice of the long sea-wave as it swelled, Now and then in the dim-gray dawn. And often his steps were turned to that finest scene within an hour’s stroll-- The broad white brow of the Isle--that bay with the coloured sand--Rich was the rose of sunset there, as we drew to the land. On such points of vantage, he was inspired with loyalty and patriotism very different from the feelings of his predecessor in the laureateship, who “uttered nothing base,” but who was certainly disposed to frown, when, from the Island cliffs, he saw a British fleet sailing forth against the soon clouded dawn of liberty in France.