16(; 



the memory of manners and customs : for uniting mankind in one 

 common bond of brotherhood ; for awakening in him pure and 

 hallowing remembrances of home and friends ; and, I will also add, 

 for educating him in all that is virtuous and good and noble, there 

 is no more powerful agency than song. 



I am not now speaking of all songs : the place of light may be 

 assumed by darkness, and evil may usurp the character of good ; 

 and I know that all that is lewd, licentious, and demoralizing has 

 at times been garbed in the measure of a song. 



But, as a rule, our own countrymen do not labour under that 

 imputation. I have told you how Relph, the first Cumbrian poet, 

 died. He died with his pupils around him, exhorting them to 

 remember his teachings, and to devote their lives to that which 

 was honourable, and dutiful, and good. And his poetry, beside 

 being the reflex of the dialect and manners of those amongst whom 

 he lived, is also a reflex of purity and simplicity. The same thing 

 may be said of Sanderson, of Wilkinson the Yanwath poet of 

 Westmorland, and others; and they have thus as it were embalmed 

 the customs and the dialect of their native counties, and given 

 home words and home memories to our hills and valleys, which 

 may serve as a name and a memory to those that come behind. 



I do not claim for them any high place of poetic excellence — for 

 the quiet and unobtrusive manner in which they placed their 

 writings before the public, when they did place them before the 

 public at all, shows it was the very last claim they themselves would 

 have thought of making. Their writings seem in many instances 

 to be but the natural outcome of their position and circumstances. 

 The quiet teacher and student relieving his studies by translating 

 into his native dialect the songs of Horace, or the pastorals of his 

 favourite Virgil and Theocritus. The blind fiddler describing in 

 the dialect the scenes of uproarious merriment to which he himself 

 had given the key-note. The keen huntsman at the close of a 

 hard day's hunting, taking the pen he was using for hunting 

 appointments, and dashing off, "D'ye ken John Peel?" till John 

 Peel is known from the hills of Cumberland to the woods of Tas- 

 mania. 



