{"product_id":"2940013680302","title":"Narture in Downland","description":"In a letter to me, of December 10, 1916, Hudson, speaking of the\u003cbr\u003eappreciative reviews of the American edition of Green Mansions, adds,\u003cbr\u003e\"Not a gleam of the critical faculty in anything!\" And, on turning\u003cbr\u003eover the few critical obituary notices that appeared after Hudson's\u003cbr\u003edeath, one felt a certain disappointment. Excluding the papers written\u003cbr\u003eby Mr. H. J.  Massingham [Footnote: _The Nation_, August 26, 1922.]\u003cbr\u003eand Mr. John Galsworthy [Footnote: _The Evening Post_, New York,\u003cbr\u003eSeptember 16, 1922.] there was nothing said in point of insight that\u003cbr\u003eapproached the sharp felicity of Mr. Conrad's tribute: \"You can't tell\u003cbr\u003ehow this fellow gets his effects. He writes as the grass grows.\" Our\u003cbr\u003eprofessional literary guides spoke in terms eulogistically vague or\u003cbr\u003emagisterial.  Mr. J. C. Squire's estimate of Hudson's creative\u003cbr\u003eachievement [Footnote: _The Observer_, August 20, 1922.] certainly had\u003cbr\u003ea judicial ring. But, without the taste for Hudson's quality, a\u003cbr\u003ecritical appraisement suggests a game of blind man's buff. Let me\u003cbr\u003equote a passage: \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor Mr. Hudson's English very seldom failed. The style being the man,\u003cbr\u003ethe style had limitations. The man's love for nature burned with a\u003cbr\u003esteady and equable radiance; he drank, if you like, perpetually from\u003cbr\u003ethat fountain, but never to intoxication. He seldom felt like\u003cbr\u003erhapsodising: he never came near swooning with sesthetic delight nor\u003cbr\u003ewas taken up in religious exaltation. Spirit and sense were always\u003cbr\u003eawake in him, but temperate in their enjoyments. Add his general lack\u003cbr\u003eof humour and his proclivity towards retrospection and regret, and you\u003cbr\u003eget naturally something like a dead-level of writing. For a man who\u003cbr\u003ewrote so much and so well he produced very few \"memorable pages.\" The\u003cbr\u003eanthologists who hunt for purple passages of prose will find that he\u003cbr\u003econstantly baffles them; one page is so like another, and when they\u003cbr\u003elike two sentences they will not want the third, which will very\u003cbr\u003elikely change the subject. He had the defects of his qualities and the\u003cbr\u003equalities of his defects. He wrote carefully; his constructions are\u003cbr\u003eclear and his epithets accurate. Beyond that the deliberate artificer\u003cbr\u003edid not often go. He was preoccupied with his matter; he wrote about\u003cbr\u003ecertain things in a certain mood, and took no pains to play upon the\u003cbr\u003eeyes and ears of his readers. One looks through his style as through\u003cbr\u003eglass--slightly-tinted glass--at the objects behind it; and his\u003cbr\u003eloveliest passages as a rule are simply those in which the loveliest\u003cbr\u003eobjects are mentioned. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe tone here is of magisterial finality, but these restricted\u003cbr\u003eencomiums do not seem to have got the range either of Hudson's spirit,\u003cbr\u003eor of his masterpieces, or of his literary art. They cannot be\u003cbr\u003estretched to apply, on the one hand, to _Idle Days in Patagonia,\u003cbr\u003eNature in Downland, Hampshire Days, A Shepherd's\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLife_, or, on the other, to _The Purple Land, El Ombu, Green\u003cbr\u003eMansions_. Mr. A. Glutton Brock, in his moving tribute to Hudson,\u003cbr\u003e[Footnote: _Times Literary Supplement_, August 24, 1922.] comprehends,\u003cbr\u003eindeed, what Mr. Squire failed to grasp, the passionate depth of\u003cbr\u003eHudson's nature, the breadth of his outlook and its spiritual beauty,\u003cbr\u003eas when he writes: \"He seemed to be of no particular age and of no\u003cbr\u003esex, but rather a wonderful experiencing spirit, at once impartial and\u003cbr\u003epassionate, giving out beauty like the sea under a sunset and\u003cbr\u003eheightening it by deep and calm reflection.\" But when he discusses\u003cbr\u003eHudson's style Mr. Brock has nothing to say but the following:","brand":"WDS Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47079649837296,"sku":"2940013680302","price":2.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013680302_p0.jpg?v=1763583900","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013680302","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}