148 THE EULOGY OF RICHARD JEFFERIES. 



It is a book which any publisher's reader, 

 after glancing at the pages, would order to be 

 returned instantly, without opinion given or 

 explanation offered ; it is a book which a 

 young man of such real promise, with such 

 a splendid career before him, ought somehow 

 to have been prevented from publishing. Two 

 reviews of it are preserved in a certain book of 

 extracts one from the Athenaum, and one 

 from the Graphic. The story was also made 

 a peg by a writer in the Globe for some un- 

 kind remarks about modern fiction generally. 

 It is only mentioned here because we would 

 not be accused of suppressing facts, and because 

 there is no author who has not made similar 

 false starts, mistakes, and attempts in lines 

 unsuited to his genius. It is not much blame 

 to Jefferies that his first novel was poor; it 

 was his misfortune that no one told him at the 

 outset that a book of which the author has 

 to pay the expense of production is probably 

 worthless. It is, perhaps, wonderful that the 

 author could possibly think it good. There 

 are, one imagines, limits even to an author's 

 illusions as regards his own work. But it is 



