PERSONAL 131 



which he introduced quotations from his favourite 

 authors into his writing was quite remarkable. It 

 seemed almost impossible for him to write even 

 an ordinary letter without making use of inverted 

 commas. A line from a Latin classic, a passage 

 from Shakespeare, a saying of Mr. Thornhill's, or 

 of some other character from his old friend the 

 u Vicar of Wakefield," a sentence of Sir Walter 

 Scott's with these, and such as these, his writings 

 abounded. 



In many ways his style reflected his own simple 

 and rustic tastes. Even such a thing as his quiet 

 appreciation of hearth and home is occasionally 

 made clear to us in what he wrote. Thus in the 

 descriptions he gives in his " History of British 

 Birds " of the flight and song of the Sky- Lark, which 

 I will presently quote for another purpose, he ends 

 one of his passages in a way that opens out to us 

 something of his thoroughly English feeling on 

 this head. 



At times his language bore evident traces of haste. 

 Now and again, when thoughts seemed to come 

 more quickly than he could formulate and tran- 

 scribe them, the sentences and parentheses tumbled 

 over one another in such a way that the original 

 construction of the opening part of the sentence 

 became well-nigh lost in the apparent confusion. 

 Thus, for instance, when describing a visit to 

 Northamptonshire in search of the " Purple Em- 

 peror" in his " History of British Butterflies," he 

 finds himself landed in the following involved 



