but the
line was drawn at a book of sonnets by the late squire. Nobody wanted
it, and so without more qualms I put it in my pocket, and have it before
me now, opened at page 63, on which appears, without a headline, the
sonnet I first read, and which I quote:--

How beautiful are birds, of God's sweet air
Free denizens; no ugly earthly spot
Their boundless happiness doth seem to blot.
The swallow, swiftly flying here and there,
Can it be true that dreary household care
Doth goad her to incessant flight?
If not How can it be that she doth cast her lot
Now there, now here, pursuing summer everywhere?
I sadly fear that shallow, tiny brain
Is not exempt from anxious cares and fears,
That mingled heritage of joy and pain
That for some reason everywhere appears;
And yet those birds, how beautiful they are!
Sure beauty is to happiness no bar.

This has a fault that doth offend the reader of modern verse, and there
are many of the eighty sonnets in the book which do not equal it in
merit. He was manifestly an amateur; he sometimes writes with
labour, and he not infrequently ends with the unpardonable weak line.
Nevertheless he had rightly chosen this difficult form in which to
express his inner self. It suited his grave, concentrated thought, and
each little imperfect poem of fourteen lines gives us a glimpse into a
wise, beneficent mind. He had fought his fight and suffered defeat, and
had then withdrawn himself silently from the field to die. But if he
had been embittered he could have relieved himself in this little book.
There is no trace of such a feeling. He only asks, in one sonnet, where
can a balm be found for the heart fretted and torn with eternal cares;
when we have thought and striven for some great and good purpose, when
all our striving has ended in disaster? His plan, he concludes, is to go
out in the quiet night-time and look at the stars.

Here let me quote two more sonnets written in contemplative mood, just
to give the reader a fuller idea not of the verse, as verse, but of the
spirit in the old squire. There is no title to these two:--

I like a fire of wood; there is a kind
Of artless poetry in all its ways:
When first 'tis lighted, how it roars and plays,
And sways to every breath its flames, refined
By fancy to some shape by life confined.
And then how touching are its latter days;
When, all its strength deca