II Early English Literature 25 



chest was really seriously touched, or the difference 

 between the lines of " The Arrow " and " The Pearl " 

 — and the link was broken. And when I looked 

 again at the burning beech logs which had formed 

 the basis of my dream, the dark purple valleys and 

 the crimson - flushed summits which I had been 

 dreaming among were gone, and nothing but mere 

 wintry crests of snowy gray were left in their place. 

 I never could dream on when those gray, death-like 

 ashes took the place of the glowing light of the 

 wood fire ; I always began to think about potash 

 and soda, and how on earth I should ever be able 

 to get my bones well out of this botheration when 

 the last trump sounded.' 



There is still in existence a vast mass of the 

 notes which he made for the popular book and the 

 catalogue ; and many of these notes, it may be men- 

 tioned, relate to Thomas Lodge, ' poet, dramatist, 

 gentleman adventurer [under Cavendish], and doctor 

 of medicine ' — a man for whom he seems to have 

 cherished an especial fondness. But these fragments 

 were never welded together ; in truth, the magic 

 spell of the rivers, the woods, and the moorlands 

 was ever upon him, and his heart might have echoed 

 the words of the outlaw of his brother's ballad : — 



' . . . I wadna be a clerk, mither, to bide aye ben, 

 Scrabbling ower the sheets o' parchment with a wear)', weary 



pen; 

 Looking through the lang stane windows at a narrow strip o' sky 

 Like a laverock in a withy cage, until I pine away and die. 



