Much bending over the folio does not make the better part of
poetry or of prose. It inheres as much in the physiological
condition that results from the swinging of the legs, which
movement quickens heart action and stimulates the brain by
supplying it with blood charged with the life-giving principle
of the open air.
In spite of his club-foot, Byron, one of the most fecund, if
not the most moral, of poets, managed to walk about in the open
to an extent that should shame the verse-writer of to-day,
clinging to his strap in the trolley-car. Wordsworth walked
all over the Cumberland district and the neighboring country.
Wherever he happened to be he poked into every secret corner.
Shelley, we are told, rambled everywhere. Despite all unseemly
cavil as to Tennyson’s drinking habits, I should say that he
drew more inspiration from his walks than from his wine. Goethe,
who during his lifetime required fifty thousand bottles of the
vintner’s best to sweeten his imagination, found his extensive
walks about Weimar a source of great inspirational profit.
(Text.)--BAILEY MILLARD, _The Critic_.
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