LITERARY WORK IN DEVONSHIRE. 29 r 



years' wanderings through the wide field of natural history," 

 he wrote in March, i860, "I have always felt toward it 

 something of a poet's heart, though destitute of a poet's 

 genius. As Wordsworth says : — 



" ' To me the meanest flower that blows can give 

 Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.' " 



In The Poetry of Natural History (a title afterwards 

 changed to The Romance) he sought to paint a series of 

 pictures, the reflection of scenes and aspects in nature, 

 selecting those which had peculiarly the power of 

 awakening admiration, terror, curiosity, and pleasure in 

 his own breast. To the composition of this volume he 

 gave unusual care, and it remains, perhaps, the nearest 

 approach to an English classic of any of Philip Gosse's 

 writings. When the author repeats the experiences of 

 others, the style is sometimes a little otiose ; but where 

 he dwells on what has personally pleased or moved him, 

 where he narrates his own experiences and chronicles his 

 personal emotions, the pages of this first series of The 

 Romance of Natural History preserve a charm which may 

 never wholly evaporate. The editions of this book have 

 been very numerous, and after a lapse of thirty years I 

 believe that it is still in print, and enjoys a steady sale. 



One chapter of this book, the final one, attracted more 

 notice than all the rest put together, and excited, indeed, a 

 positive furore. This was the chapter entitled "The 

 Great Unknown," in which Philip Gosse started the 

 suggestion that the semi-mythic marine monster, whose 

 name was always cropping up in the newspapers, the 

 famous sea-serpent, was perhaps a surviving species allied 

 to the gigantic fossil Enaliosauria of the lias, and, in short, 

 a marine reptile of large size, of sauroid figure, with turtle- 

 like paddles. He judged it to be a sort of plesiosaurus, 



