Fascinating short piece on accounting for the oddness of The Wind in the Willows, a book which has always perplexed me a great deal.

https://blog.oup.com/2010/08/wind-in-the-willows/

I wrote my own rather (massively) less well-informed speculation a few years back, without having read the link above.

http://danielonions.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/untitled.html