(5) Poems of Nature and Life. By David R. Williamson. (Blackwood.)
(6) Guilt. Translated from the German by J. Cockle, M.D. (Williams and
Norgate.)
(7) The Circle of Seasons. By K. E. V. (Elliot Stock.)
(8) Songs of Adieu. By Lord Henry Somerset. (Chatto and Windus.)
(9) Immortelles. By Cora M. Davis. (G. P. Putnam's Sons.)
SOME LITERARY NOTES--IV
(Woman's World, April 1889.)
'In modern life,' said Matthew Arnold once, 'you I cannot well enter a
monastery; but you can enter the Wordsworth Society.' I fear that this
will sound to many a somewhat uninviting description of this admirable
and useful body, whose papers and productions have been recently
published by Professor Knight, under the title of Wordsworthiana. 'Plain
living and high thinking' are not popular ideals. Most people prefer to
live in luxury, and to think with the majority. However, there is really
nothing in the essays and addresses of the Wordsworth Society that need
cause the public any unnecessary alarm; and it is gratifying to note
that, although the society is still in the first blush of enthusiasm, it
has not yet insisted upon our admiring Wordsworth's inferior work. It
praises what is worthy of praise, reverences what should be reverenced,
and explains what does not require explanation. One paper is quite
delightful; it is from the pen of Mr. Rawnsley, and deals with such
reminiscences of Wordsworth as still linger among the peasantry of
Westmoreland. Mr. Rawnsley grew up, he tells us, in the immediate
vicinity of the present Poet-Laureate's old home in Lincolnshire, and had
been struck with the swiftness with which,
As year by year the labourer tills
His wonted glebe, or lops the glades,
the memories of the poet of the Somersby Wold had 'faded from off the
circle of the hills'--had, indeed, been astonished to note how little
real interest was taken in him or his fame, and how seldom his works were
met with in the houses of the rich or poor in the very neighbourhood.
Accordingly, when he came to reside in the Lake Country, he endeavoured
to find out what of Wordsworth's memory among the men of the Dales still
lingered on--how far he was still a moving presence among them--how far
his works had made their way into the cottages and farmhouses of the
valleys. He also tried to discover how far the race of Westmoreland and
Cumberland farm-folk--the 'Matthews' and the 'Michaels' of the poet, as
described by him--were real or fancy pictures, or how far the characters
of the Dalesmen had been altered in any remarkable manner by tourist
influences during the thirty-two years that have passed since the Lake
poet was laid to rest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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