t from Tuesday
till Friday evening they took up the chief share of his thoughts. And
then there were the books that he wrote, novels, pamphlets, history
lectures, scientific essays, on which he largely depended to support his
wife and family. Besides this he kept up an extensive correspondence
with friends and acquaintances. Many wrote to consult him about
political and religious questions; from many he was himself trying to
draw information on the phenomena of the science which he was trying to
study at the time. Among the latter were Geikie, Lyell, Wallace, and
Darwin himself, giants among scientific men, to whom he wrote with
genuine humility, even when his name was a household word throughout
England. His books can sometimes be associated with visits to definite
places which supplied him with material. It is not difficult to connect
_Westward Ho!_ with his winter at Bideford in 1854, and _Two Years Ago_
with his Pen-y-gwryd fishing in 1856. Memories of _Hereward the Wake_ go
back to his early childhood in the Fens, of _Alton Locke_ to his
undergraduate days at Cambridge. But he had not the time for the
laborious search after 'local colour' with which we are familiar to-day.
The bulk of the work was done in his study at Eversley, executed
rapidly, some of it too rapidly; but the subjects were those of which
his mind was full, and the thoughts must have been pursued in many a
quiet hour on the heathery commons or beside the streams of his own
neighbourhood.

About his books, his own judgement agreed with that of his friends.
'What you say about my "Ergon" being poetry is quite true. I could not
write _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ and I can write poetry:... there is no denying
it: I do feel a different being when I get into metre: I feel like an
otter in the water instead of an otter ashore.' The value of his novels
is in their spirit rather than in their artistic form or truth; but it
is foolish to disparage their worth, since they have exercised so marked
an influence on the characters and lives of so many Englishmen,
especially our soldiers and sailors, inspiring them to higher courage
and more unselfish virtue. Perhaps the best example of his prose is the
_Prose Idylls_, sketches of fen-land, trout streams, and moors, which
combine his gifts so happily, his observation of natural objects, and
the poetic imagination with which he transfuses these objects and brings
them near to the heart of man. There were very few men who co