'And always I ask and wonder
(Though often I do not know it)
Why does this water not smell like water?...'
To leave the question of reminiscence aside, how the delicate vision of
Mr de la Mare has been coarsened, how commonplace his exquisite
technique has become in the hands of even a first-rate ability! It
remains to be added that Mr Squire is an amateur of nature,--
'And skimming, fork-tailed in the evening air,
When man first was were not the martens there?'--
and a lover of dogs.
Mr Shanks, Mr W.J. Turner, and Mr Freeman belong to the same order. They
have considerable technical accomplishment of the straightforward
kind--and no emotional content. One can find examples of the disastrous
simile in them all. They are all in their degree pseudo-naives. Mr
Turner wonders in this way:--
'It is strange that a little mud
Should echo with sounds, syllables, and letters,
Should rise up and call a mountain Popocatapetl,
And a green-leafed wood Oleander.'
Of course Mr Turner does not really wonder; those four lines are proof
positive of that.
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