RECAPITULATION 325 



beauty of Nature and humanity. Ideas, images, allusions, 

 a rhythm here, a thought there, recurring hke a burden, 

 produce an extraordinarily opulent effect, whether the 

 subject is a fashionable crowd, a railway-station, or a 

 midsummer hedge. This brilliancy can be hectic and 

 end in languor, perhaps, but ultimately it is bracing, and 

 the north-west wind blows more often than the south. 



There followed ' After London,' ' Amaryllis,' and many 

 of the essays in ' Field and Hedgerow.' The exuberance 

 of colour and fancy in the preceding period was slowly 

 settling down. In ' Amaryllis ' there is none of the glory 

 of ' The Dewy Morn.' There is even an appearance, in 

 some of this later work, of a return to the style of ' The 

 Poacher,' though that simple lucidity and ease was 

 refined and enriched by the poetic years between. 

 ' Amaryllis ' was as new and individual as the auto- 

 biography. It tells no tale, and its construction is 

 obviously unusual, as well as strong and inartificial ; 

 but it gives a picture of a small English farmhouse, and 

 of a farmer and his family, which is humorous, pathetic, 

 and intensely alive. Restless and sad and gay and 

 wonderfully kind was the humanity that saw the Idens 

 and the Flammas thus ; that painted them stroke by 

 stroke, correcting or enhancing earlier effects, until the 

 whole thing breathed. ' Wild Flowers,' ' My Old Village,' 

 ' Hours of Spring,' and many more were from the same 

 source. They have the same minute observation, the 

 same maturity of comment, the same atmosphere laden 

 with opposites. They are pieces of impassioned prose, in 

 which the writer, expressing his thoughts and recollec- 

 tions, moulded the form of the essay into something as 

 original as it was in the hands of Hazlitt or Lamb. Both 

 in their mingling of reflection and description, and in 

 their abundant play of emotion, they stand by them- 

 selves and enlarge the boundaries of this typical form 

 of English prose. 



Few men have put themselves into words with such 

 unconsidered variety. He expressed the whole range of 



