Theodore Watts-Dunton: Poet, Novelist, Critic

'ASSUREDLY,' says Mr. Watts-Dunton, in his essay on Thoreau, 'there is no profession so courageous as that of the pen.' Well, in coming to the end of my task--a task which has b...

AS the first review which Mr. Watts-Dunton contributed to the 'Athenaeum' has been so often discussed, and as it is as characteristic as any other of his style, I have determine...

I have been allowed to enrich this volume with photographs of 'The Pines' and of some of the exquisite works of art therein. But it is unfortunate for me that I am not allowed t...

Thou knowest that island, far away and lone, Whose shores are as a harp, where billows break In spray of music and the breezes shake O'er spicy seas a woof of colour and tone, W...

BUT the interesting subjects touched upon in the last four chapters have led me far from the subject of 'The Renascence of Wonder.' In its biographical sketch of Mr. Watts-Dunto...

IN my article on Mr. Watts-Dunton in Chambers's 'Cyclopaedia of English Literature' I devoted most of my space to 'The Coming of Love.' I put the two great romantic poems 'The C...

The way in which this meeting came about has been familiar to the readers of an autobiographical romance (not even yet published!) wherein Borrow appears under the name of Dereh...

IT was during the famous evenings in Dr. Marston's house at Chalk Farm that Mr. Watts-Dunton was for the first time brought into contact with the theatrical world. I do not know...

"MY DEAR MR. DOUGLAS,--The selections from my critiques must really be left entirely to yourself. They are to illustrate your own critical judgment upon my work, and not mine. O...

AND now a word upon the imaginative power of 'Aylwin.' Very much has been written both in England and on the Continent concerning the source of the peculiar kind of 'imaginative...

I feel that my hasty notes about Mr. Watts-Dunton's literary friendships would be incomplete without a word or two upon his American friends. There is a great deal of interest i...

SECOND in importance to 'The Coming of Love' among Mr. Watts-Dunton's poems is the poem I have already mentioned--the poem which Mr. Swinburne has described as 'a great lyrical...

SOME time ago I was dipping into the 'official pictorial guides' of those three great trunk railways, the Midland, the Great Northern, and the Great Eastern, being curious to se...

AND now begins the most difficult and the most responsible part of my task--the selection of one typical essay from the vast number of essays expressing more or less fully the g...

"As the storm-wind is the cause and not the effect of the mighty billows at sea, so the movement in question was the cause and not the effect of the French Revolution. It was no...

IT is natural after writing about Rossetti to think of William Morris. In my opinion the masterpiece among all Mr. Watts-Dunton's 'Athenaeum' monographs is the one upon him. Bet...

WHATEVER may have been those experiences with the gryengroes which made Groome, when speaking of the gypsies of 'Aylwin,' say 'the author writes only of what he knows,' it seems...

Theodore Watts-Dunton. From a painting by Miss H. Frontispiece B. Norris Reverie. Crayon by D. G. Rossetti at 'The Pines' 1 The Ouse at Houghton Mill, Hunts. (From a Water 28 Co...

ONE of my special weaknesses is my delight in forgotten records of the nooks of old England and 'ould Ireland'; I have a propensity for 'dawdling and dandering' among them whene...

AND now as to the real inner meaning of 'Alwyin,' about which so much has been written. "'Aylwin,'" says Groome, "is a passionate love-story, with a mystical idee mere. For the...

MRS. CRAIGIE has recently protested against the metropolitan fable that London enjoys a monopoly of culture, and has reminded us that in the provinces may be found a great part...

ONE thing seems clear to me: having fully intended to make Winifred the heroine of 'Alwyn' round whom the main current of interest should revolve, the author failed to do so. An...

IT is impossible within the space at my command to follow Mr. Watts-Dunton into Wales, or through those Continental journeys described by Dr. Hake in 'The New Day.' I can best s...

BETWEEN Mr. Watts-Dunton and the brother who came next to him, before mentioned, there was a very great affection, although the difference between them, mentally and physically,...

IT was at this period that, like so many young Englishmen who were his contemporaries, he gave attention to field sports, and took interest in that athleticism which, to judge f...

LONG before Mr. Watts-Dunton printed a line, he was a prominent figure in the literary and artistic sets in London; but, as Mr. Hake has said, it was merely as a conversationali...

THE character of Mrs. Gudgeon in 'Aylwin' stands as entirely alone among humourous characters as does Sancho Panza, Falstaff, Mrs. Quickly or Mrs. Partridge. In my own review of...

been possible, even for Mr. Watts-Dunton, had it not been for the luck of 'chamomiles' and 'isles,' 'chamomiles' giving the picture of the flowers, and 'isles' giving the false...

ALTHOUGH an East Midlander by birth it seems to have been to East Anglia that Mr. Watts-Dunton's sympathies were most strongly drawn. It was there that he first made acquaintanc...

"So far as regards Rhona Boswell's story," says Mr. Watts-Dunton, "'The Coming of Love' is a sequel to 'Aylwin.' If the allusions to Rhona's lover, Percy Aylwin, in the prose st...

as described in the novel. Although he never wrote poetry, he translated, I believe, a good deal from the Spanish and Portuguese poets. I remember that he was an extraordinary a...

"'The renascence of wonder,' to employ Mr. Watts-Dunton's appellation for what he justly considers the most striking and significant feature in the great romantic revival which...

THE reaching of a decision as to what article to select as typical of what I may call 'The Renascence of Wonder' essays gave me so much trouble that when I came to the still mor...