IN LITERATURE 9 



dentally as essayists, biographers, and romancers ; and 

 even when their passion for the country has run away 

 with their pens, their rural digressions are most readily 

 forgiven them. The country is become a stock theme 

 with literary professionals although their individual 

 experiences may have lain among bricks and mortar ; 

 although their ornithological observations may have 

 been mainly confined to the street sparrows ; and 

 although they would be sorely puzzled by the call 

 of the partridge, and mystified by the cry of the land- 

 rail. They have practised writing of these things 

 because they know they take ; and if they write with 

 talent, Cockneys as they may be, their country episodes 

 may be far from unsuccessful. Take Dickens, for 

 example. Is there anything much better in the inimit- 

 able " Pickwick Papers " than the day with the part- 

 ridges on Sir Geoffrey's land, when Mr. Pickwick 

 followed the sport in the wheelbarrow, though the 

 author's evident inexperience crops out everywhere ? 

 or the spring morning among the rooks, at the bright 

 Kentish homestead, where Mr. Winkle so nearly 

 " does for old Tupman " ? But the standard books 

 are of course by men who have taken naturally to 

 themes with which they are familiar, or by men who 

 have been driven to change the gun for the pen by the 

 depth and intensity of their own enjoyment ; who in 

 the geniality of their natures have felt irresistibly im- 

 pelled to communicate the pleasures that came so keenly 

 home to them. 



We might go to work on an interminable catalogue 



