( 215) 



COUNTRY LITERATURE, 



I. — The Awakening. 



FouK hundred years after the first printed book was 

 sent out by Caxton the country has begun to read. 

 An extraordinary reflection that twelve generations 

 should pass away presenting the impenetrable front 

 of indifference to the printing-press ! The invention 

 which travelled so swiftly from shore to shore till the 

 remote cities of Mexico, then but lately discovered, 

 welcomed it, for four centuries failed to enter the 

 English counties. This incredible delay must not be 

 supposed to be due to any exceptional circumstances 

 or to inquisitorial action. The cause is found in the 

 agricultural character itself. There has never been 

 any diflSculty in obtaining books in the country other 

 than could be surmounted with patience. It is the 

 peculiarity of knowledge that those who really thirst 

 for it always get it. Books certainly came down in 

 some way or other to Stratford-on-Avon, and the great 

 mind that was growing there somehow found a means 

 of reading them. Long, long before, when the printed 

 page had not been dreamed of, the Grecian student, 

 listening at the school, made his notes on oyster-shells 

 and blade-bones. But here the will was wanting. 



