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In a Green Shade.
A Country Commentary.
By Maurice Hewlett.
London
G. Bell and Sons
1920
All of these Essays, with two exceptions, have been publishedperiodically. All, without exception, have been revised and corrected.My thanks for hospitality afforded to them en route are due to theWestminster Gazette, Daily News, and Daily Chronicle; to theNew Statesman; to the Cornhill Magazine, Fortnightly Review,Anglo-French Review, and London Mercury.
BROADCHALKE, 22 Jan. 1920.
PAGE
NOTE v
ROUND ABOUT A PREFACE ix
CHANGE AND THE PEASANTRY 1
A HERMITAGE IN SIGHT 6
DORIAN MODES 11
CHURCH AND THE MAN 16
BESSY MOORE 20
THE MAIDS 31
POETRY AND THE MODE 35
POLYOLBION 45
THE WELTER 50
CATNACHERY 54
LANDNAMA 60
"WORKS AND DAYS" 64
THE ENGLISH HESIOD 72
FLOWER OF THE FIELD 83
UNDER THE HARVEST MOON 87
LA PETITE PERSONNE 91
A FOOL OF QUALITY 99
SHERIDAN AS MANIAC 105
A FOOTNOTE TO COLERIDGE 119
THE CRYSTAL VASE 132
NOCTES AMBROSIANÆ 147
SKELETONS AT A FEAST 151
A COMMENTARY UPON BUTLER 156
THE COMMEMORATION 164
THE QUAKER EIRENICON 168
The title has become equivocal, since there are more green shades inemployment now than were dreamed of by Andrew Marvell. Science is agreat maker of homophones, without respect for the poets. There is,for instance, the demilune of lined buckram borne by the weak-eyed ontheir foreheads, the phylactery of the have-beens—I lay myself opento be believed a cripple, or to look an old fool. A vivacious reviewerin Punch's "Booking Office," will have a vision of me as a babblingelder peering at society from below a green pent. However—I mustrisk it. It says exactly what I mean; and what I have written I havewritten.
The point is that, having worked hard for a good many years, I can nowconsider my latter end under conditions favourable to leisurely andextended thought, sometimes in a garden made, if rightly made, in myown image, sometimes in a house which was built aforetime, in a daywhen men wrought for posterity as well as for themselves. In suchseed-plots it is impossible that one's thoughts should not take colouras they rise. Whithersoever I look I see as much permanency as is goodfor any sojourner upon earth; I see embodied tradition, respect forNature's laws, attention to beauty, subservience to use; all thiswithin doors. Outside, the trees, the flowers are my calendar;the birds chime the