Note 707 — Chapter V · THE DIFFERENCING ELEMENTS OF COMMUNAL POETRY (continued 2)

Chappell, II. 580. See his quotation from Tusser. Even here, in the Eastern states of America, middle-aged men have watched the passing of the “wealthy farmer,” who now exists only in newspapers, and even there is kept at long range,—“of Indiana,” “of Texas.” Yet we knew him in our boyhood. The communal farmer occurs in old English novels, and in some new ones; but he is passing rapidly into tradition. See a paper on “England’s Peasantry,” by the Rev. Dr. Jessopp, in the Nineteenth Century and After, January, 1901; he tells of the communal conditions which once prevailed, of the change to the present, and is “inclined to doubt seriously whether before another century has ended there will be any such thing as an agricultural labourer to know.”