ioo Life and Times of " The Druid." 



' Bentley ' ; and his powers knew no decay. 



He was quite die prose poet of Nature, and 



no man that I ever met was so keenly alive 



to her beauties, and could word-paint them 



so well. Edlington Wood, which seldom 



fails to produce a fox, when the Fitzwilliam 



hounds give it a call, was one of his especial 



haunts when he was well and vigorous. He 



seemed to know the haunt of every badger, 



the name and the note of every bird, and the 



genus of every wild flower that grew on its 



banks and glades. He liked to wander away 



from Doncaster ' when the mavis and the 



merle were singing,' and, regardless of the 



prosaic days in which his lot was cast, take 



his dinner with him and ' have a word with 



the woods.' Weaving an old legend into 



shape pleased him best. The deserted hut, 



where a poacher had lived and died, a very 



lord of the soil to the last, seemed to conjure 



up in his mind a network of dark romance ; 



and Sherwood Forest and Merrie Barnsdale 



were themes which never palled. 



11 His racing writings were very numerous, 

 but as he rarely left Doncaster, he was too 

 often compelled to take his description second 



