90 IDLEHURST : 



Hampstead Heath as out of the Isles of Greece, or 

 Camelot, or any mortal place." 



"People don't seem to realize," I answer, "how 

 much all true poetry leans on mere natural pheno- 

 mena. Modern poets crowd into London, and so 

 miss their small chance of doing decent work. 

 Think how meaningless a deal of Tennyson or 

 Shelley must be to an ordinary London intellect." 



" Yes," says Gervase ; " but even down here in 

 Sussex a man could not honestly set up to write 

 pastorals or meditate the Country Muse. Honestly, 

 what heart could one have to versify about the 

 landscape while you can hear the Brighton expresses 

 at five-minute intervals, and know that only a few 

 miles away there is the embankment, and your 

 scarecrow station and the advertisements in the 

 meadows Buggin's Bile Bolus and Sigger's Scari- 

 fying Soap and the rest of it ? " 



I resent this attack on our rurality. "There's no 

 railway on that side," I point out. 



" No ; only a view of a lovely corrugated iron roof, 

 and the Major's other improvements to his buildings 

 for the new tenant. Then there's the brook there- 

 it ought to have pound trout in it ; but the Tisfield 

 gasworks run their filth into it, and there isn't a fish 

 in it these five miles. And there's a jolly little 



