" of nails they
wear are therefore the visible badge of the place they fill,
the lowest in the commonwealth. But this place still
shares the common honour, and if it wants one advantage,
glory or public fame, makes up for it by another, ease of
mind, absence of care; and these things are symbolised
by the gold and the iron garlands. (O, once explained,
how clear it all is!) Therefore the scene of the poem is
laid at evening, when they are giving over work and one
after another pile their picks, with which they earn their
living, and swing off home, knocking sparks out of mother
earth not now by labour and of choice but by the mere
footing, being strong-shod and making no hardship of hard-
ness, taking all easy. And so to supper and bed. Here
comes a violent but effective hyperbaton or suspension, in
which the action of the mind mimics that of the labourer--
surveys his lot, low but free from care; then by a sudden
strong act throws it over the shoulder or tosses it away as
a light matter. The witnessing of which lightheartedness
makes me indignant with the fools of Radical Levellers.
But presently I remember that this is all very well for
those who are in, however low in, the Commonwealth and
share in any way the common weal; but that the curse of
our times is that many do not share it, that they are out-
casts from it and have neither security nor splendour;
that they share care with the high and obscurity with the
low, but wealth or comfort with neither. And this state
of things, I say, is the origin of Loafers, Tramps, Corner-
boys, Roughs, Socialists and other pests of society. And
I think that it is a very pregnant sonnet, and in point
of execution very highly wrought, too much so, I am
afraid. ... G.M.H.'

43. 'HARRY PLOUGHMAN. Dromore, Sept. 1887.' Autograph
in A.--Autograph in B has several emendations written
over without deletion of original. Text is B with these
corrections, which are all good.--line 10, _features_ is the
verb.--13, _'s_ is _his_. I have put a colon at _plough_, in
place of author's full stop, for the convenience of reader.--
15 = _his lilylocks windlaced_. 'Saxo cere- comminuit
-brum.'--17, _Them. These_, A.--In the last three lines
the grammar intends, 'How his churl's grace governs the
movement of his booted (in bluff hide) feet, as they are
matched in a race with the wet shining furrow overturned
by the share'. G. M. H. thought well of this sonnet and
wrote on Sept. 28, 1887: 'I h