Page:Footprints of former men in far Cornwall.djvu/10

 attempt has been made in the notes to assist such a comparison by indicating some of the more obvious parallels. In the prose, as in the poems, there is the same deep and peculiar love of symbol and miracle and superstition, but the prose further reveals, what might not be suspected from the poems alone, that Hawker was a humourist as much as a mystic.

Hawker won his literary reputation as a ballad-writer, but his prose also deserves a share in his fame. He has the gift of style. Like his handwriting, which makes a manuscript of his a thing of beauty in itself, it is bold and clear, free from prettiness or affectation, but with the massive grace of his native rocks, and made distinctive by a characteristic touch of archaism. The rugged scenery of his abode had its influence upon his work. He was a hewer of words, as Daniel Gumb was a hewer of stone, and his language has the strength of rough masonry wrought in a broad and homely manner out of solid granite. The sea, and the great spaces of lonely moorland that surrounded him, gave to his work a sense of breadth and freedom. He is always at his best in describing his own dearly loved Cornwall, and in particular the wild coast by which all his years were spent. Perhaps the finest passage of this kind is that which concludes the legend of Daniel Gumb, and which forms