Hallecks New English Literature | Page 4

places to be
visited; for when the opportunity for the trip finally comes, there is
usually insufficient time for such preparation as will enable the traveler
to derive the greatest enjoyment from a visit to the literary centers in
which Great Britain abounds.
Whenever an author is studied, his birthplace should be located on the
literary map. Baedeker's Great Britain will be indispensable in making
an itinerary. The Reference List for Literary England is sufficiently
comprehensive to enable any one to plan an enjoyable literary
pilgrimage through Great Britain and to learn the most important facts
about the places connected with English authors.
The following suggestions from the author's experience are intended to
serve merely as an illustration of how to begin an itinerary. The
majority of east-bound steamships call at Plymouth, a good place to
disembark for a literary trip. From Plymouth, the traveler may go to
Exeter (a quaint old town with a fine cathedral, the home of Exeter
Book,) thence by rail to Camelford in Cornwall and by coach four miles
to the fascinating Tintagel (King Arthur), where, as Tennyson says in
his _Idylls of the King_:--
"All down the thundering shores of Bude and Bos, There came a day as
still as heaven, and then They found a naked child upon the sands Of
dark Tintagil by the Cornish sea, And that was Arthur."
Next, the traveler may go by coach to Bude (of which Tennyson

remarked, "I hear that there are larger waves at Bude than at any other
place. I must go thither and be alone with God") and to unique Clovelly
and Bideford (Kingsley), by rail to Ilfracombe, by coach to Lynton
(Lorna Doone), and the adjacent Lynmouth (where Shelley passed
some of his happiest days and alarmed the authorities by setting afloat
bottles containing his _Declaration of Rights_), by coach to Minehead,
by rail to Watchet, driving past Alfoxden (Wordsworth) to
Nether-Stowey (Coleridge) and the Quantock Hills, by motor and rail
to Glastonbury (Isle of Avalon, burial place of King Arthur and Queen
Guinevere), by rail to Wells (cathedral), to Bath (many literary
associations), to Bristol (Chatterton, Southey), to Gloucester (fine
cathedral, tomb of Edward II), and to Ross, the starting point for a
remarkable all day's row down the river Wye to Tintern Abbey
(Wordsworth), stopping for dinner at Monmouth (Geoffrey of
Monmouth).
After a start similar to the foregoing, the traveler should begin to make
an itinerary of his own. He will enjoy a trip more if he has a share in
planning it. From Tintern Abbey he might proceed, for instance, to
Stratford-on-Avon (Shakespeare); then to Warwick, Kenilworth, and
the George Eliot Country in North Warwickshire and Staffordshire.
Far natural beauty, there is nothing in England that is more delightful
than a coaching trip through Wordsworth's Lake Country (Cumberland
and Westmoreland). From there it is not far to the Carlyle Country
(Ecclefechan, Craigenputtock), to the Burns Country (Dumfries, Ayr),
and to the Scott Country (Loch Katrine, The Trossachs, Edinburgh, and
Abbotsford). In Edinburgh, William Sharp's statement about Stevenson
should be remembered, "One can, in a word, outline Stevenson's own
country as all the region that on a clear day one may in the heart of
Edinburgh descry from the Castle walls."
If the traveler lands at Southampton, he is on the eastern edge of
Thomas Hardy's Wessex, Dorchester in Dorsetshire being the center.
The Jane Austen Country (Steventon, Chawton) is in Hampshire. To
the east, in Surrey, is Burford Bridge near Dorking, where Keats wrote
part of his Endymion, where George Meredith had his summer home,
and where "the country of his poetry" is located.
In London, it is a pleasure to trace some of the greatest literary
associations in the world. We may stand at the corner of Monkwell and

Silver streets, on the site of a building in which Shakespeare wrote
some of his greatest plays. Milton lived in the vicinity and is buried not
far distant in St. Giles Church. In Westminster Abbey we find the
graves of many of the greatest authors, from Chaucer to Tennyson.
London is not only Dickens Land and Thackeray Land, but also the
"Land" of many other writers. We may still eat in the Old Cheshire
Cheese, where Johnson and Goldsmith dined.
Those interested in literary England ought to include the cathedral
towns in their itinerary, so that they may visit the wonderful "poems in
stone," some of which, _e.g_., Canterbury (Chaucer), Winchester
(Izaak Walton, Jane Austen), Lichfield (Johnson), have literary
associations. For this reason, all of the cathedral towns in England have
been included in the literary map.
REFERENCE LIST FOR LITERARY ENGLAND:
Baedeker's Great Britain (includes England and Scotland).
Baedeker's London and its Environs.
Adcock's Famous Houses and Literary Shrines of London.
Lang's Literary London.
Hutton's Literary Landmarks in London.