124 BIRDS 



are not in Wordsworth's manner. But I believe every 

 word of detail he does give is absolutely accurate. See 

 his description of a green linnet and its song, of a blue-tit, 

 of the staring eyes of the celandine after it is too old to 

 shut its flowers when the sun goes in. The intense 

 truth of detail, the power to bring the picture before the 

 reader's eyes in few words, and the large imaginative 

 insight make his guide book to the Lakes, unlike most 

 others, as interesting as a novel. 



H. E. LITCHFIELD. 

 March 24, 1906. 



NOTE. Another correspondent (Rose Turle) writes to 

 the same effect. Mr. Litchfield's apology, like Words- 

 worth's knowledge of Nature, is true to the spirit rather 

 than the letter. For Wordsworth is by no means always 

 a sound ornithologist. Did he not give the stock-dove a 

 song, that yokel bird with his Yorkshire accent coo-oop, 

 coo-oop ? He says of the skylark : ' ' thy nest which thou 

 canst drop into at will." The skylark would be affronted 

 at so unjust a reflection upon his wiliness in concealing 

 the whereabouts of his nest. And did not the nightin- 

 gale also ' ' chaunt . . . welcome notes . . . among Arabian 

 sands "? No, what Wordsworth did was to declare in 

 vision what a hundred years later science has revealed by 

 laborious investigation. Wordsworth was a prophet of 

 modern scientific truth ; he has shown posterity that the 

 truth of poetry and the truth of science are the same 

 truths ; though reached by different paths. Shall we not 

 be content with so glorious an achievement ? As an 

 observer he is not to be compared with his contemporary, 

 John Clare, the greatest poet-observer who ever lived. 



