The fragment, of which a facsimile is given after page 92, is the draft of what appears to be an attempt to explain how an artist has not free-will in his creation. He works out his own nature instinctively as he happens to be made, and is irresponsible for the result. It is lamentable that Gerard Hopkins died when, to judge by his latest work, he was beginning to concentrate the force of all his luxuriant experiments in rhythm and diction, and castigate his art into a more reserved style. Few will read the terrible posthumous sonnets without such high admiration and respect for his poetical power as must lead them to search out the rare masterly beauties that distinguish his work.
NOTES
p. 4, l. 21. rove over. This expression is used here to denote the running on of the sense and sound of the end of a verse into the beginning of the next; but this meaning is not easily to be found in the word.
The two words reeve (pf. rove,—which is also a pf. of rive—) and reave (pf. reft) are both used several times by G. M. H., but they are both spelt reave. In the present context rove and reaving occur in his letters, and the spelling reeve in 'The Deutschland', xii. 8, is probably due to the copyists.
There is no doubt that G. M. H. had a wrong notion of the meaning of the nautical term reeve. No. 39 line 10 (the third passage where reeve, spelt reave, occurs, and a nautical meaning is required—see the note there—) would be satisfied by splice (nautical); and if this notion were influenced by weave, wove, that would describe the interweaving of the verses. In the passage referred to in 'The Deutschland' reeve is probably intended in its dialectal or common speech significance: see Wright's 'English Dialect
