cond class all are good; and a volume composed of
"Christopher at the Lakes," "A Day at Windermere," "Christopher on
Colonsay" (a wild extravaganza which had a sort of basis of fact in a
trotting-match won on a pony which Wilson afterwards sold for four
pounds), and "A Saunter at Grasmere," with one or two more, would be a
thing of price. The best of the third class beyond all question is the
collection, also redacted by the author for the _Recreations_, entitled
"The Moors." This last is perhaps the best of all the sporting and
descriptive pieces, though not the least exemplary of its authors
vagaries; for before he can get to the Moors, he gives us heaven knows
how many pages of a criticism on Wordsworth, which, in that place at any
rate, we do not in the least want; and in the very middle of his
wonderful and sanguinary exploits on and near Ben Cruachan, he
"interrupts the muffins" in order to deliver to a most farcical and
impertinent assemblage a quite serious and still more impertinent
sermon. But all these papers are more or less delightful. For the
glowing description of, and the sneaking apology for, cat-worrying which
the "Sporting Jacket" contains, nothing can be said. Wilson deliberately
overlooks the fact that the whole fun of that nefarious amusement
consists in the pitting of a plucky but weak animal against something
much more strongly built and armed than itself. One may regret the P.R.,
and indulge in a not wholly sneaking affection for cock-fighting,
dog-fighting, and anything in which there is a fair match, without
having the slightest weakness for this kind of brutality. But, generally
speaking, Wilson is a thoroughly fair sportsman, and how enthusiastic he
is, no one who has read him can fail to know. Of the scenery of loch or
lake, of hill or mountain, he was at once an ardent lover and a
describer who has never been equalled. His accustomed exaggeration and
false emphasis are nowhere so little perceptible as when he deals with
Ben Cruachan or the Old Man of Coniston, with the Four Great Lakes of
Britain, East and West (one of his finest passages), or with the glens
of Etive and Borrowdale. The accursed influence of an unchastened taste
is indeed observable in the before-mentioned "Dead Quaker of Helvellyn,"
a piece of unrelieved nastiness which he has in vain tried to excuse.
But the whole of the series from which this is taken ("Christopher in
his Aviary") is in his least happy style, alternately