Nevertheless, his most popular poems perceive rural realities through the pleasantly tinted sunglasses of Australian pastoral and folk-ballad conventions and simultaneously assist in the making of those conventions. The tinge of authenticity in his romantic and comic bush mythology permitted the eager and patriotic reader of the 1890s to accept his ideal as "real."
Paterson's class background, as well as his youthful rural experiences, conditioned his perspective and his mythmaking. He conceded this influence in his own comparison between his writing and that of his rival and colleague Henry Lawson, whose upbringing was rural and proletarian. Poverty in Paterson's writing is more often caused by the loss of wealth than it is inherent in the struggle to survive: whereas Lawson's "mateship" may emphasize hardship, mutual support, and the sharing of experience under duress, Paterson tends to focus more specifically on the loner or the group than on the pair.
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