THROUGH THE YEAR 153 



the mastering scene, too, in " A Pair of Blue Eyes " 

 of the slip and rescue by a woman's wit on the cliff 

 without a name, where the man, hanging on a 

 thread between time and eternity, strikes up a weird 

 fellowship with the fossils of the rock. 



In the best literature of all ages and countries 

 there is a humanising of Nature. It is perfectly 

 safe to make birds, beasts, insects and flowers and 

 trees characters in stories either for children or 

 grown-up people, if it is done with skill and charm. 

 Let these things talk in the language of human 

 beings. The masters in literature can always be 

 trusted to do this in a way that will put false ideas 

 of the actual life and motives and passions of wild 

 life into the minds of nobody. No reader of '* The 

 Light that Failed " will get the idea that yellow 

 poppies actually enter with zest into the love 

 affairs of people who walk about the sea cliffs, or 

 that yellow poppies nod their approval of a first kiss. 

 There is no danger of any reader of " The Return of 

 the Native " taking the grim personality of Egdon 

 Heath in unimaginative earnest. The yellow poppy's 

 nod helps us to a vivid realisation of the scene 

 that is its value ; and it is the same with all these 

 fine figurative touches. 



But there is a way of humanising Nature which, 

 I agree with Mr. Roosevelt, is treacherous and mis- 

 chievous. I have not for a moment any particular 

 writer in thought in saying this, but from time to time 

 one does in literature find birds and other animals 

 presented in a human dress, and in a way that is 

 L 



