The expert knowledge which Hudson has of Nature
gives to all his work backbone and surety of fibre, and to his
sense of beauty an intimate actuality. But his real eminence and
extraordinary attraction lie in his spirit and philosophy. We
feel from his writings that he is nearer to Nature than other
men, and yet more truly civilized. The competitive, towny
culture, the queer up-to-date commercial knowingness with which
we are so busy coating ourselves simply will not stick to him. A
passage in his Hampshire Days describes him better than I can:
"The blue sky, the brown soil beneath, the grass, the trees, the
animals, the wind, and rain, and stars are never strange to me;
for I am in and of and am one with them; and my flesh and the
soil are one, and the heat in my blood and in the sunshine are
one, and the winds and the tempests and my passions are one. I
feel the 'strangeness' only with regard to my fellow men,
especially in towns, where they exist in conditions unnatural to
me, but congenial to them.... In such moments we sometimes feel
a kinship with, and are strangely drawn to, the dead, who were
not as these; the long, long dead, the men who knew not life in
towns, and felt no strangeness in sun and wind and rain.
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