“In my choice of poems I have been governed entirely by the literary quality and popular appeal of the material which lay at my disposal.”

Merit and welcome, not linguistic rarity, decide inclusion · Preface, Yorkshire Dialect Poems

• Literature
• Readers
• Taste

“At first my object was purely philological, but soon I came to realise that men and women were more interesting than words and phrases, and my attention was attracted from dialect speech to dialect speakers.”

A scholar of folk-speech turning from vocabulary to the lives of the speakers · Preface, Songs of the Ridings

• Humanity
• Language
• Poetry

“Our English poets, from Old English times onwards, have lived nearer to Nature than those of any other nation of modern Europe.”

English verse as a long companionship with the outer world · Essay, The Interpretation of Nature in English Poetry

• England
• Nature
• Poetry