Seeming, Observing and Observance

Literature is a treasury of likenesses and unlikenesses. Much is to be learned about the various ways ‘like’ and ‘as’ function from a comparison of how the kestrel is ‘worded’ by Hopkins and how the peregrine is addressed by John Alec Baker. Hopkins writes predominantly as a poet preoccupied with peculiarities or what I call ‘quaints’. Although much of the log of Baker’s observations of the peregrine is written in poetic prose out of love for the bird, much of it is driven by a concern for the increase of scientific knowledge. This difference is marked by the distinction between ‘as if’ and ‘if then’. That is to say, the appeal to Baker in this chapter facilitates an overview of the strategic design of the book as a whole. Located at the beginning of the book’s second part, this chapter heralds a turn toward the application to natural and human science of the logical and ontological lessons learned in the book’s first part. This emphasis on the scientific leads Baker’s readers to notice that allusions to the Creator are almost totally absent from The Peregrine, whereas Hopkins’ ‘The Windhover’ is dedicated ‘To Christ our Lord’. Hopkins’ observations are made in praise of the Creator. Baker’s are made in service to science. Together they announce the hope that adherence to an institutional religion is not a necessary condition of anyone’s finding the reading of Hopkins and (may I say?) this study a rewarding experience. But the field of institutional religions is not the same as that of the religious.