Page:Facts and Fancies about Our "Son of the Woods", Henry Clarence Kendall and his Poetry (IA factsfanciesabou00hami).pdf/46

40 Mrs. Tree, and the Misses Tree, and Master Gum Tree, and Miss Wattle. He would come in and tell them the news that "the old Grandpa Gum Tree was felled the other day, leaving poor old Grandma Tree a widow." He used to like to think of these very old trees having grown old together, and he used to talk of those old trees, especially, to his eldest children, Fred and Frank. He would look up at the trees and call them "grand old trees"; and for those decayed with age he had a great veneration. He used to say: "They do not care what anyone says about them. They grow their own way, and laugh at the opinion of man." He gloried to see those old trees in their purely natural form. This reminds me to quote, as apposite, an extract from one of the words of George Elliot, which always came to my mind when reading, years ago, the various essays, reviews and criticisms published on the life and poetry of Henry Kendall, where, instead of confining themselves to doing full justice to the poet, they, in some cases, exercised all their skill and licence as critics of literature, to injure the reputation of the character of the man, in same cases giving praise (which they were obliged to do), as it seemed to me, "grudgingly and of necessity" as regards his work as a poet, but so intermingling the praise which reflections on his personal character as "a man among men" (as they interpreted it from the few comparatively defective portions among his manly excellent pieces, admittedly, even by them, as "perfect of their kind,") that the result was, the general reader took often the inspiration of Kendall being a failure as a poet, because his career, in a wordly sense, was, in a measure, a failure. This I have known of, and where they, therefore, did not trouble to read his poems and judge for themselves.

Besides, many of the townsfolk, and the then rising young population of the cities, knew little of the characteristic features of Australian bush scenery, and therefore would not, perhaps, have recognised the wonderful faithfulness and vivid portrayal of our woodland beauties, in Henry Kendall's descriptions, without some true connoisseur in art to point out how the facile imagination