s may be
involved in an absent look? Is she thinking of starlit nights on some
distant lake, or of the old bygone days on the hills? All her former
life is told there, and yet but half told, and he longs to become
possessed of all the beautiful past that she has seen. Here is a
constant mystery to him, and there is a singular and wistful attraction
for him in those still deeps where the thoughts and dreams of an
innocent soul lie but half revealed. He does not see those things in the
eyes of women he is not in love with; but when in after years he is
carelessly regarding this or the other woman, some chance look, some
brief and sudden turn of expression, will recall to him, as with a
stroke of lightning, all the old wonder-time, and his heart will go nigh
to breaking to think that he has grown old, and that he has forgotten so
much, and that the fair, wild days of romance and longing are passed
away forever.

RICHARD DODDRIDGE BLACKMORE

(1825-)

The literary success of Blackmore came late in life. He was born in
Longworth, Berkshire, England, in 1825, was graduated at Exeter College,
Oxford, and afterwards studied law in the Middle Temple, practicing his
profession as a conveyancer.

But his heart was in an outdoor life. Like his own John Ridd, the hero
of 'Lorna Doone,' he is a man of the moors and fields, with a fresh
breeze blowing over him and a farmer's cares in his mind. In 1854-5 he
published several volumes of poems under the pen-name of "Melanter."
'The Bugle of the Black Sea' and a complete translation of Virgil's
'Georgics' appeared in 1871.

Other volumes of verse followed, of which it may be said that he is a
poet more sensitive to influence than fertile in original impulse;
although some of his prose, in which even rhythm is observed in what
seems to be an unconscious manner, displays high original quality. It is
therefore fair to say of him as a poet that while his works did not gain
him the reputation that has placed him among the foremost literary men
of the day, the subtle influence rural nature exerts on man, and the
part it bears in the sweet harmonies of life, are told in passages that
are resonant with melody.

The poet's delight is in the prosperity of the fields, as if they were
his friends, and in the dumb loving motherhood with which all nature
seems, to his eyes, to surround him.

As the precursor of a summer that yielded such a mellow harvest, the
spring of Mr. Blackmore's