“The style of the book is throughout clear and modest, the descriptions are full of vigour, and the interest of the subject is of the highest.”
+ + Spec. 96: 503. Mr. 31, ’06. 490w.
Rawnsley, Rev. Hardwicke Drummond. Months at the lakes. $1.75. Macmillan.
“Canon Rawnsley gives the impressions he has derived from his study for twenty years of ‘the changes in the face and mood of Nature.’” (Ath.) “Although the Canon devotes a chapter to every month, the dazzling colors in which he sees them prevent us from realizing which stage of the year we have reached, and the individual features of plant and tree are wholly lost in a shower of light. If there are any dark days they are cheered by ‘Bands of hope meetings, parish room concerts, magic lantern entertainments, and tea drinkings.’ In December, finally, we feel that we have passed a very innocent and brightly coloured year, although we are not quite sure that we have been at the lakes.” (Lond. Times.)
“Canon Rawnsley is an amiable observer of men and manners; he has an eye for natural beauty, and an ear for every echo of folk-tale or tradition that lingers in the dale; but he seems to be almost incapable of expressing himself in precise and straightforward English.”
+ – Acad. 70: 595. Je. 23, ’06. 800w.
“If we are inclined to ‘skip’ some of his descriptive matter, we read with pleasure every word concerning local tradition and custom, of which the Canon is evidently a master.”
+ – Ath. 1906, 1: 637. My. 26. 110w.
“The Canon’s style, moreover, starred as it is with a great variety of pretty words, and fashioned into innumerable conceits, seems, if not impertinent, at least irrelevant when you remember the respect with which Wordsworth subordinated his pen to the truth.”