Theodore Watts-Dunton: Poet, Novelist, Critic

Transcribed from the 1904 Hodder and Stoughton edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
POET NOVELIST CRITIC
BY JAMES DOUGLAS
WITH TWENTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
27 PATERNOSTER ROW
1904
What power is this ? what witchery wins my feet To peaks so sheer they scorn the cloaking snow , All silent as the emerald gulfs below , Down whose ice-walls the wings of twilight beat ? What thrill of earth and heaven — most wild , most sweet — What answering pulse that all the senses know , Comes leaping from the ruddy eastern glow Where , far away , the skies and mountains meet ? Mother , ’ tis I reborn : I know thee well : That throb I know and all it prophesies , O Mother and Queen , beneath the olden spell Of silence , gazing from thy hills and skies ! Dumb Mother , struggling with the years to tell The secret at thy heart through helpless eyes .
‘It was necessary for Thomas Hood still to do one thing ere the wide circle and profound depth of his genius were to the full acknowledged: that one thing was—to die.’—Douglas Jerrold.
Although in the inner circle of English letters this study of a living writer will need no apology, it may be well to explain for the general reader the reasons which moved me to undertake it.
These citations from students of Mr. Watts-Dunton’s work, written before his theory of the ‘Renascence of Wonder’ was exemplified in ‘Aylwin’ and ‘The Coming of Love,’ show, I think, that this book would have had a right to exist even if his critical writings had been collected into volumes; but as this collection has never been made, and I believe never will be made by the author, I feel that to do what I am now doing is to render the reading public a real service. For many years he has been urged by his friends to collect his critical articles, but although several men of letters have offered to relieve him of that task, he has remained obdurate.