New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1904-01-30
GARDEN AND WOOD.
Shakespeare's FIo10ers and Forest
Tragedies.

sHAKEsPEAREs, &c GARDEN n By ,n Harvey
Company.
MY DEVON YEAR, By Eden PhiIlpOtts. limo.
PIP. 229 The Macmillan Company.
HAMPSHIRE DAYS. BY w. H. Hudson. svo. pp.
sz4. Longmans Green q Coz
The Star Of Poets delighted. no doubt, IN
a goodIy garden during his elderly retirement
at Stratford. In the minds eye we, too. can
delight in that quaint and formal nook of fruit
trees, vegeta bles and flowers set about and
comprised in with arbours" of woodbine and
sweetbriar, wherein "our gentle Shakespeare"
sat of summer afternoons. a part Of it. in the
mode Of the day, was. we know. the 'nosegaie
garden" filed with March violets and Provence
"gillohowers" with "canterburie bels,' mug
wort lilies" and the like fragrant and beauti-
full blossoms used to make nosegaies and gar
lands off, and on the other side the gar
den for herbes of good smeI'-the 'rosemarie."
the "lavandar'' and all their wholesome COM
pany. The poets love for the garden did not
begin in his later years. however, for his plays
show that an intimate knowledge of English
trees, herbs and flowers must have been his in
boyhood. His most enchanting garden is that
enshrined in his poetry, and this is the garden
which Parson Bloom celebrates in his pretty
little volume. Its chapters cast in the form
Of a calendar. and are filled with much quaint
forth in immortal beauty by Shakespeare. Per-
haps may find the good parson little fan
tastic in accuracy. as when he notes as Con
trary to truth" the climbing of the musk rose
"a species cultivated not native to England
above Titania's wild thyme bank. Her fairy
lord certainly knew what he was talking about
when he described that bank to Puck the Wan
derer. Away with botanical precision in this
case at leastl And let that most lovely bank
OF wild thyme and the nodding violet be
canopied
With sweet musk roses and with Byzantine"
And. by the way, Mr.. Bloom is inaccurate him
self when he writes Of this exquisite passage as
"a song
Mr.. Eden Phipotts a novelist is some
times than tolerable: several of his stories
deserve cordial praise. The landscapes in which
now and again he sets his characters have suf-
fcient form and color. But the author OF a
nature book" he is less welcome to US. He
writes therein by intention and out of a mint
Of phrases not spontaneously from an over
flowing sympathy and love for the things of
Nature. Many literary qualities such a chroni-
Gle Of the year should have. but style IN these
matters is in peculiar sense the handmade Of
inspiration Well meant, but forced and oc-
casionally affected. these sketches are in truth
tedious. 1t is only when the human interest
comes in that we chance upon something bet
ter-as in the pages devoted to Herrck, upon
whom, the author reminds US. many a cockney
critic throws the shadow Of his own ignorance"
Ancient stones there be in Dean Prior church.
yard where Herrick rests. but none marks his
grave. That is as the singer would have 1t. and
his own injunction makes a space of musical
melancholy on the pages of My Devon Year:
Laid out for dead. let thy last Kindnesse be
enc enc, WINE the w -nmphs my cold corps inter.
E EeT, ERBi a1a fb in TFG5g Peft Write this
Mr.. Hudson's Hampshire Days" is a fas-
cinating book-one which transports the reader
on the instant from the limbo of Mr. Phil
potts's academic study into a glorious wood
land filled with delighted wildings of earth and
air. with "lttel fowles' nesting and on the
wing; with spotted venomous snakes dwelling
IN married kindness; with fairy white spiders
dancing and coquetting on clustered wild bloom.
with thousand wonders waiting for that fort
innate being who knows as Mr. Hudson does
how TO look for them. lie was in the New
Forest "a secret green, out-of-t he-world place.
that many of these observations were made.
Strange little dramas of animal life revealed
themselves there day by day. and are described
in most beguilng fashion. One point in bird
history Mr.. Hudson has settled conclusively-
lne CUCKOO does deposit It's egg IN the robins
nest. and the young cuckoo, shortly after It is
Matched. does manage, in extraordinary way
TO throw out Of the nest any remaining robins
eggs or baby robins Matched at the same time
The instinct OF the intruder is natural enough
but less so seems the conduct OF the mother
robin as observed. by the author:
When the young cuckoo throws out the nest
lings from nests in trees, hedges, bushes and
reeds, the victims, a rule, fall some distance
TO the ground or in the water and are no more
seen by the old birds. Here the young robin
when elected fell distance of but five or six
Inches. and rested on a broad, bright green leaf
where it was an exceedingly conspicuous OBJ
Ject. and when the mother robin was on the
nest-and at this stage she was on 1t a greater
part or the ume-warming that black skinned.
toadlike, spurious babe OF hers, her bright in
tellgent eyes were looking full at the other
one Just beneath her and never once
ola she pay the least attention TO the outcast
lying there so close to her. There, on its green
lear IL remained, growing colder by degrees
hour oy hour, motionless, except when IL lifted
its head as If TO receive food. then dropped il
again, and when at intervals II twitched its
body as IL trying 70 move During the EVENING
even these slight motions ceased though thai
feeelest flame OF life was not yet extinguished.
put In the morning IT was dead and cold and
sim, and just above II, her bright ewes on IN
the mother robin on the nest as before
warming her cuckoo @'
Another odd thing seen in the Forest was
the weasels huntins-the way in which by grim
ming and chattering at the wild birds ana sn;,