Page:MU KPB 016 Arthur Rackham's Book of Pictures.pdf/41

 as I paddled in a canoe down Shake­speare’s Avon, through the Forest of Arden, which is Stoneleigh Park, in Arden of Warwickshire.)

For imaginative men, since the beginning of the world, each tree conceals a spirit, as Ariel was held in the cloven pine; nor can you pull up one of these roots but something almost human cries out at the laceration, as Polydorus screamed from the root of the cornel when Æneas tugged at it. In drawing after drawing within these covers you may detect this “tree-spirit” striving to liberate or to declare itself; and it takes human form exquisitely (to my thinking) in Nos. 40, The Fairy Wife, and 12, A Dryad.

But in these Mr. Rackham has travelled far away from the children,