his characteristic good humour, only poked fun at him[1] It was reserved for a poet of our own day to look below the technical jargon of the schools, and to descry something of this wealth of new interest which the landscape derives from a knowledge of the history of its several parts. But Tennyson only entered a little way into this enlarged conception of nature. There remains a boundless field for some future poetic seer, who letting his vision pierce into the past, will set before the eyes of men the inner meaning of mountain and glen.
And thus, while we recognize the potent influence which the scenery of the country has exerted on the progress of our literature, we can look forward to a fresh extension of this influence as the outcome of geological investigation. Already the result of this widening of the outlook has made itself felt alike in prose and verse. The terrestrial revolutions of which each hill and dale is a witness; the contrasts presented between the present aspect and past history of every crag and peak; the slow silent sculpturing that has carved out all this marvellous array of mountain-forms—appeal vividly to the imagination, and furnish themes that well deserve poetic treatment. That they will be seized upon by some Wordsworth of the future, I cannot doubt. The bond between landscape and literature will thus be drawn closer than ever. Men
- ↑ 'Some rin up hill and down dale, knapping the chucky stanes to pieces wi' hammers, like sae mony roadmakers run daft—they say it is to see how the warld was made.'—Meg Dods loq. in 'St. Ronan's Well,' chap. ii.
