used to observe that it would occupy a man forty years. thoroughly to explain and estimate the beauties of the northern lake scenery." I have recourse again to H. Coleridge: "He taught his pencil, too, as he taught his children, to speak the truth. His landscapes convey a direct corporeal perception in its very picture, circumstance, and complexion of the instant. He was not the man to belie the magnificent world for the credit of his craft, he loved the truth too well." Green, as his friend Otley informs us,* "depicted the varied scenery of this interesting region with an ability and industry, seldom united in one person." His capacity for work seems inexhaustible, and his veneration for nature never slackened. In his Guide of 1819 he says "the author would sell the accumulated and progressive study of seventeen past summers, to be enabled to draw and paint out of doors in all seasonable weather for three successive years from the present!"

We form now an idea of the labours and characteristics of this remarkable man, whose perseverance, single-mindedness, and lovable disposition endeared him to all contemporaries who were brought into contact with him. Especially loved was he by Christopher North, who calls him "the most sober and industrious of God's creatures," and Hartley Coleridge became one of his most attached admirers; while Wordsworth, his close neighbour, appreciated him both as a man and an artist.

The number of his productions is immense and his diligence astounding. One can only guess at the amount of work he performed, for most of it was eagerly bought up in his lifetime by visitors drawn to the annual exhibitions he had established. His name became celebrated;

* See Otley's Guide to the Lakes, second edition, 1825, Keswick, p. 80.

his landscapes dispersed, and now it is impossible to furnish a catalogue of the subjects produced by him at Ambleside. There is little to be found in the British Museum, still less in the provincial libraries, and one has to go to private collectors for examples of his brush and, pencil. This is why the merits of his work are so little known. I have drawn up a provisional list, chronologically arranged, of some of his work now extant. According to a rough calculation he must have produced considerably more than a thousand subjects, ranging from the finished pencil drawing, the outline engraving, etching, mezzotint, coloured print, to the water-colour painting, in various sizes and styles, from the small seven inches by four inches to thirty inches by twenty-one inches. I will only indicate a few of his subjects. His "Sixty Studies from Nature," 1808-1810, thirty inches by twenty-one inches, are exquisite; his "Seventy-eight Studies from Nature," 1809, were noticed by John Landseer in the New London Review,* subjected to examination in detail, and pronounced creditable to the artist. The "Series of Sixty+ Coloured Plates of the Lakes of Lancashire, Cumberland, and Westmorland" are gems, sui generis; his "Coloured Prints of the Principal Lakes,” 1819 and 1820, are no less striking; his "Etchings of Buildings, &c., in Ambleside and Keswick," 1819 and 1821, show his perfection of etching; his work was by the same hand; so were the sets preparatory to the production of his coloured plates. Only when his daughters were

* See Sixty Studies of Nature, 1810, Description of same. For an examination of these, in two volumes, 4to, am indebted to Councillor Henry Plummer, who greatly appreciates Green, and has one of the most extensive collections of books relating to the lake district. I am also grateful to Mr. Middleton, of Ambleside, for much valuable assistance on different points.

grown up did he receive assistance in the technical work and gain time for new enterprises. To such a degree had he injured his eyes* by his unremitting attention to fine engraving that his intention of increasing the series of small prints to three hundred, had to be abandoned, his sight "disabling him to any great amount from making more."

He planned the preparation of a new guide to the lakes. He had often begun it, but urgent work interfered. What induced him to undertake it was a sense of duty to his adopted county and not a desire to write. He considered the welfare of the dalesfolk as his own, and did everything in his power to open up the lake district as a popular resort. Het tells us "that he has no ambition to be thought a bookmaker, he is fond of extracts, likes poetry, has read a little formerly, less latterly, nor has he time for the perusal of books, he has expended more time on the production of this manual than he first intended to be given to it, but having set his hand to the plough, it is not his wish to look back until it is complete."

It was begun at the close of 1816. To collect material for the Guide a number of journeys had to be made to the great inconvenience of his practice as an artist. He was fifty-six years old. The preparation for the letterpress became very irksome. The correction of the proof-sheets, all done by himself, who was not a literary man; the delay of transmission, and communication with Kendal, where they had to be posted, delayed its publication to 1819. The book itself, though over-laden with second-hand antiquarian references, abounds in illustrations and observations of high artistic value; gems

* See Guide, vol. i., p. 68.

† Ibid, vol. i., 185.

of penwork are scattered over its pages. He appeals not so much to the ear, but to the eye. Christopher North speaks with enthusiasm of the book, and calls the compact two volumes a labour of love, in which he has said a few kind words of almost every acre in the three counties: "How fondly," he exclaims, he speaks of the cottages, how affectionately of the trees; the passionate painter is ever loth to leave the vision, and in every valley in the county there is somewhat of melancholy solemnity." His friend Otley says, Green's Guide will long remain a monument of the assiduity with which he pryed into the arcana of the mountains. Wordsworth terms the book a complete magazine of minute and accurate information.

He was earnestly concerned in the cultivation of forest and soil, and wrote "a few observations with respect to the mode in which plantations ought to be conducted,"* in the local development of Ambleside he took a lively interest, and made practical suggestions to the Guardians. He was beloved by the statesmen and shepherds, for whom he had the kindliest feelings of sympathy.

When Briggs visited him in the summer of 1820, “he was for the first day in 20 years obliged to abstain from his sedentary employment through ill-health by the first symptoms of a worn-out constitution." At this occasion Green tells him "I intend," says he, "if I live to publish a series of the neighbourhood of Kendal, having the Castle for the leading subject, another series for Lancaster, having the Castle for the first, another series at Preston, with the old Priory for the head." This was never to be done. He had prior work in hand, which was cut short by his death. Although possessed of a vigorous frame,

* See 78 Studies, 1809, pp. 13 to 20.

the constant strain of body and mind, the exposure, at all seasons, told at last. The family Bible, still in possession of his grandson, bears an entry in his wife's own handwriting: "my beloved husband died after a lingering illness on 29 April 1823 at 18 minutes past 4 o'clock in the morning, & was buried 3 May 1823, if he would have lived to the 25 August he would have been 63 years old."

He left a large family, four daughters and six sons. The exhibitions at Ambleside and Keswick were continued by his widow and daughter for some years, when, as Wilson remarks, his etchings could be got almost paper-cheap.

Jane (born 1800), the constant companion and assistant of his labours, died at the age of twenty-eight, and sleeps close to her father and her brother William. His wife, Ann, survived him ten years, and died at Ambleside, 15th January, 1833, and is buried at Grasmere. His eldest daughter, Elizabeth (born 1799), married Mark Mayson, of Keswick, in 1819, and her son, a grandson of Green's, an eminent violin-maker, still lives in Manchester. Sarah (born 1801) and Mary Ann (born 1808) lived for some years in Liverpool, where they had an art depository. Joshua (born 1803) was lost at sea. Bernard Hartley (born 1806) became, I am told, a tutor and a proficient in languages; while George Frederick (born 1812) emigrated to Australia. He is said to have taken with him an early portrait of his father, when still a surveyor in Manchester, as a young man in wig and pigtail and silver shoe-buckles. William Henry (born 1814) married Phoebe Adams at the Manchester Collegiate Church in 1840, and became a wine merchant; and Thomas Walter, his last born child (born 1817), was with Graves, an engraver, in London. These names and dates are copied from the