17 NOVEMBER 1917, Page 8

CANTERBURY PILGRIMS AND • OTHERS..

TERME is no way mush pleasauter of forgetting for a while the strain and anxieties of the war than to travel leisurely, in the pages of some book, through the countryside on a pilgrimage to an historic or literary shrine. In Canterbury Pilgrims and their 1Vays. Mr. Francis Watt invites us to go with him on that famous and ever.attractive journey along the route of the Canterbury Pilgrims, reconstructing for us conditions as they existed in mediaeval times. We cross London Bridge, then but a primitive wooden structure lined with houses and booths, pausing perhaps to buy some article for the journey, into the busy high street of Southwark, stepping aside at the fishing villages of Deptford and Greenwich, on to Dartford and Rochester by the apple orchards and oorn-fields of Kent, halting at favourite shrines to refresh the spirit and at equally favourite inns to refresh the body, and so reaching Harbledown and dropping into the famous city of Canter- bury. Mr. Watt also describes a modern pilgrimage over this same route. There is plenty of historic interest still to be found along it, but civilization in a most ungracious aspect has so trans- formed it that it requires an enthusiasm and imagination equal to Mr. Watt's own to discover much romance or beauty, at any rate till the pilgrim has loft the great City many leagues behind. In addition to the main route, Mr. Watt takes us along the equally well-known and perhaps more enjoyable route from Winchester to Canterbury. Much has been written of this road, but those who have had the delightful experience of tracking the old Pilgrims' Way over the Surrey Downs through Kentish villages and along Kentish uplands are always ready to repeat the journey in the company of some other enthusiastic explorer, and to those who do not know it Sir. Watt's description will act as a pleasant intro- duction. But Mr. Watt's book is not confined to the various routes taken by the Canterbury Pilgrims. He describes the road taken by the knights who—according to the remorseful Henry—so tragically misinterpreted Henry's complaint that -none will deliver me from this troublesome low-born priest." From Saltwood Castle, through Lymne and along the ancient Stone Street, they rode, and Mr. Watt reconstructs the dramatic events of Tuesday, December 29th, 1170, when an Archbishop was murdered and a martyr created. He has something to say also of famous pilgrimages other than those to Canterbury, and incidentally we are told that it took between six and eight weeks to go from Venice to Jerusalem, and that the journey there and back cost from £150 to £200 of to-day's money. Guido-books existed for the benefit of pilgrims, and we wish that Mr. Watt had given us some extracts from the " mediaeval Murray or 13aertokes " which, we can readily believe, makes " sufficiently quaint reading."

The late Mr. Edward Thomas in A Literary Pilgrim in England 'dis- cusses: the environment of some of England's prominent poets and writers, and its connexion with, and influence (if any) upon, their writings. In many of the studies, as, for example, of Scott and Wordsworth, Tennyson and Thomas Hardy, he of necessity covers ground already familiar, but in the case of lose-known writers his information will possibly enable enthusiasts to link up an itinerary of a pilgrimage to some new shrine or shrines. In the course of the studios Mr. Thomas occasionally becomes the critic, and we can only say that we prefer him as pilgrim. When writing of George Crabbe, though he somewhat grudgingly admits that Crabbe's "drab monotonous verse " sometimes approaches sublimity, he concludes: "lie is thecensor of mankind. He weighs them in the balance, and. seems 0Y011 to award their punishment—what punishment could be greater than a dozen of his grey Rhadamanthine couplets 1" On Herrick, too, for whom he has a somewhat patronizing admiration, he makes the remarkable and, to us, enigmatical comment " Perhaps he was short-sighted, for he seams to see very clearly little things which he could not have seen at all without special attention." Where, however, his sympathies are apparently unhampered, Mr. Thomas pursues his pilgrimage and his criticism in a most attractive manner, of which the essays on John Clare and W. H. Hudson are two conspicuous examples.