THE POETIC SPIRIT 187 



Nevertheless, it cannot be said that Cornwall has 

 contributed absolutely nothing to literature. I have 

 already sung the praises of Richard Carew's work ; 

 but he was a prose writer he failed pitifully when he 

 attempted verse ; he therefore stands on a lower level, 

 with perhaps two or three more who have written 

 good prose William Scawen and Borlase, the anti- 

 quary, may be mentioned. But there is Thomas 

 Carew, the lyrist, and friend of Donne, Suckling and 

 Ben Jonson if he may be called a Cornishman. His 

 name is not included in Boase and Courtney's monu- 

 mental Bibliotheca Cornubiensis, in the preface of which 

 work they courageously say, " The writers of Corn- 

 wall bear no inconsiderable place in the literature of 

 their country." But if we take it that this Carew was 

 a Cornishman, though born out of the county, we 

 must admit that Cornwall has produced one good 

 poet. He does not count for very much, however 

 this one poet who lived three centuries ago and wrote 

 half a dozen little things that sparkle like diamonds 

 seeing that he was of that class which is never native, 

 of the soil. Even in those old days men of birth did 

 not spend their lives at home ; they attended the 

 court and went forth wide in the world wonders for 

 to see, and intermarried with families outside of their 

 own class, so that, like the Jews among us, they were 

 and always are, racially as well as socially, a distinct 

 people among the people. Norman and Saxon and 

 Dane are we, says the poet truly enough, and he might 

 have added Celt, but the mixing process has been 

 infinitely greater in the upper ranks. The Cornish 



