By George E. Dartnell. 78 



several short stories appeared under the signature of " Geoffrey " (a 

 very transparent disguise) in the Norih Wills Herald. They were 

 somewhat of the " Penny Dreadful " type, and are hardly worth 

 considering even as curiosities. But a better and more ambitious 

 piece of work — The Wsiory of Mahnesbiiry — soon followed, under 

 the same nom de guerre. This great work (which Mr. Besant is 

 probably alluding to, when he speaks of a story called " Malmesbury") 

 was in twentj'-one chapters, the first of which appeared in the issue 

 of "iOth April, 1867. It was indeed a " task," and when we consider 

 that the writer was then only in his nineteenth year, the wonder is 

 that he " performed " it as well as he did. In the opening chapters 

 the old monkish records were a storehouse from which he drew very 

 largely, but when he came down to more recent times everything 

 had to be hunted out and examined personally. In his search after 

 a certain book founded on a local legend, he tells us in one of his 

 letters that he had walked fifty miles to no purpose. One such 

 search of his was afterwards described in Bound About a Great Estate. 

 Of course the style is hardly above the ordinary level of a country 

 paper, though here and there a paragraph rises to something 

 better. A large show is made of his erudition, and allusions to 

 Homer and Plato, Ahriman and Ormusd, Faust and Don Quixote, 

 are lavishly scattered about. As a compilation it is not at all a bad 

 piece of work ; and it contains much that is interesting — indeed, 

 with a few necessary corrections as regards names and dates, it might 

 be worth reprinting. 



About this lime he began working at a similar History of Swindon, 

 allusions to which will be found among his letters for the next five 

 years. The materials ready to his hand were apparently so scanty 

 that he made little or no progress with the work, some portions of 

 which eventually appeared as the Goddard Memoir. In 1872 his 

 great opportunity came, but he failed to take advantage of it. The 

 Times printed three long letters of his, upon the subject of the 

 Wiltshire labourer from a tenant-farmer's point of view, which 

 attracted widespread attention. Several years after his death they 

 were reprinted, with other early uncollected work, in the Toilers 

 of the field volume. Had he followed up this hit, his after-life 



