UTO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR. "]
SIR,—In your article, " Nature Study and Modern Verse," in last week's issue, you accuse Wordsworth of being "occasion- ally quaintly mistaken on matters of common knowledge." Your instance is unfortunate, fer it is the fact that wrens sleep during the winter in the nest they were brought up in. I knew a verandah in Surrey where as many as eight or nine might be seen creeping in at dusk to the old nest. I extremely doubt whether any mistakes of detail can be laid to Words- worth's charge. Such phrases as Tennyson's
"With that he turn'd and look'd as keenly at her As careful robins eye the delver's toil " are not in Wordsworth's manner. But I believe every word of detail he does give is absolutely accurate. See his description of a green linnet and its song, of a blue-tit, of the staring eyes of the celandine after it is too old to shut its flowers when the sun goes in. The intense truth of detail, the power to bring the picture before the reader's eyes in few words, and the large imaginative insight make his guide-book to the Lakes, unlike most others, as interesting as a novel.—I am,
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