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PREFACE

FTER reading the interesting study of British

genius made by Mr. Havelock Ellis, and finding Norfolk and Suffolk in a fairly assured position at the head of a table of the English counties valued according to their production of men and women of marked intellectual ability, a writer proposing to treat of some of the literary associations of East Anglia is tempted to introduce his subject with some comment on this instructive result of a careful and laborious investigation. Local patriotism, which I hold to be a very good thing, notwithstanding that the bias of it is, in the opinion of Mr. Ellis, "always a sign of intellectual ill-breeding," naturally urges a man to emphasize such intellectual predominance as pertains to his native neighbourhood or homeland, and when it is proved to him that the county of his birth produced during the nineteenth century a larger amount of ability in proportion to the number of its inhabitants than any other county, and that an adjoining county, in which he happens to reside, has, according to Sir Conan Doyle, a "quite phenomenal " record for intellectual productivity, it is hardly surprising if he be strongly inclined to dwell on these facts and make the most of them.

A little consideration, however, compels him to admit

that he can find no immediate justification for adopting such a course; for although he may be satisfied that a goodly number of the more or less famous persons he intends to present to his readers were true East Anglians, wise men and women of the East, he cannot ignore the fact that Norfolk and Suffolk owe some of their most interesting literary associations to celebrities to whom other counties have the first claim because they happen to have been born there; while yet other notable folk, though born in one or another of our two easternmost counties, can hardly be considered genuine East Anglians, seeing that their parents, and perhaps their ancestors for several generations, were more closely connected with other parts of the country. That so many of them should have shown so marked a partiality for East Anglia may perhaps be taken as evidence of their appreciation of the exceptional merit of its inhabitants; but as to affirm this would be to support Mr. Ellis's statement in respect to the bias of local patriotism I will not do so.

Another very good reason why I should not enter upon the subject of this book with more than this brief reference to the native ability of East Anglia is that in the following chapters no pretence is made to deal with anything like all the famous men and women of letters who have been associated with Eastern England-to attempt to do so would be to essay the impossible. Indeed, it is very doubtful whether the book will have a single reader who will not be disappointed by the omission of some writer who in that reader's opinion-probably a very just one-ought not to have been neglected. But to do anything like justice to the

literary associations of East Anglia is a task for some one whose intellectual equipment is up to the high standard of East Anglian merit, and whose acquaintance with the literature of the district and the lives of its literary celebrities, whether native or not, is far wider and more intimate than my own. All I can claim to have done is to have gathered together a number of facts, anecdotes, and incidents, together with certain opinions and impressions of East Anglia; to have connected them as nearly as possible with the places they in a greater or lesser degree belong to; and to have tried to give some sort of form to a rather rambling subject by dealing with it in certain topographical divisions into which it seems naturally to distribute itself. Through the adoption of this arrangement the book may prove to be of some use as a guide to the literary associations of Norfolk and Suffolk. My excuse for having made a considerable number of quotations from various sources is, that it seems to me very much better that in a book of this kind the men and women introduced should speak for themselves wherever possible, than that the author should attempt to express their opinions and feelings for them.

At the end of the book a list is given of the works which have been consulted during the writing of it. I must, however, express my special indebtedness to Mr. W. Aldis Wright and Messrs. Macmillan & Co. for their kind permission to quote from the "Letters of Edward FitzGerald;" to Mr. Thomas Wright for a like kindness in respect of his "Life of Edward FitzGerald ;" and to Mrs. Barham Johnson and Messrs. Methuen & Co. for allowing me to quote from "William Bodham Donne and

his Friends." Messrs. Macmillan have also been kind enough to let me use certain anecdotes appearing in the late Dr. Gordon Hake's "Memoirs of Eighty Years."

For assistance in securing some of the photographs that are reproduced I am indebted to Miss Metcalfe (Beccles), the Rev. G. A. Crossle (Broome Rectory), Mr. F. J. S. Rippingall (Langham), Mr. J. Loder (Woodbridge), Mr. H. Birkbeck (Eaton), Mr. Bertram Hall (Blundeston), and Mr. T. H. Warren (East Dereham).

W. A. D.