Sitting in my garden amid the evening scent of roses, I have read through Walton's Life of Hooker; could any place and time have been more appropriate? Almost within sight is the tower of Heavitree church--Heavitree, which was Hooker's birthplace.In other parts of England he must often have thought of these meadows falling to the green valley of the Exe, and of the sun setting behind the pines of Haldon.Hooker loved the country.Delightful to me, and infinitely touching, is that request of his to be transferred from London to a rural living--"where I can see God's blessing spring out of the earth." And that glimpse of him where he was found tending sheep, with a Horace in his hand.It was in rural solitudes that he conceived the rhythm of mighty prose.What music of the spheres sang to that poor, vixen-haunted, pimply-faced man!
The last few pages I read by the light of the full moon, that of afterglow having till then sufficed me.Oh, why has it not been granted me in all my long years of pen-labour to write something small and perfect, even as one of these lives of honest Izaak! Here is literature, look you--not "literary work." Let me be thankful that I have the mind to enjoy it; not only to understand, but to savour, its great goodness.
