Green Mansions [antikvár]

I take up pen for this foreword with the fear of one who knows that he cannot do justice to his subject, and the írembling of one who would not, for a good deal, set down words unpleasing to the eye of him who wrote "Green Mansions " "The Purple Land " and all those other books which have meant so much to me. For of all living authors-now that Tolstoi has gone-I could least dispense with W. H. Hudson. Why do I lőve his writing so? I think because he is, of living writers that I read\ the rarest spirít, and has the clearest gift of conveying to me the nature of that spirit. Writers are to their readers little new worlds to be explored; and each traveller in the realms of literature must needs have a favourite hunting ground9 which> in his good will-or perhaps merely in his egoism-he would wish others to share with him. The great and abiding misfortunes of most of us writers are twofold: We are, as worlds, rather common tramping ground for our readers, rather tame territory; and as guides and dragomans thereto we are too superficial, lacking clear intimacy of expression; in fact¦-liké guide or dragoman-we cannot let folk into the real secrets, or show them the spirit, of the land. Now Hudson, whether in a pure románcé like this "Green Mansions " or in that romantic piece of realism, "The Purple Land " or in books like "Idle Days in Patagonia " "Afoot in England"The Land's End " "Adventures Among Birds " "A Shepherd's Life" and all his other nomadic records of communings with men, birds, beasts, and Nature, has a supreme gift of disclosing not only the things he sees but the spirit of his vision. Without apparent ejfort he takes you with him into a rare> free, natural world, and always you are refreshed, stimulated, enlarged, by going there.