FICTION, EARLY AND LATE. 149 



not so wonderful that Jefferies should at this 

 time, when he was still quite young and 

 ignorant of the world, write a worthless book, 

 as that he should at any time at all write 

 a book which had not the least touch of 

 promise or of power. 



Consider, however. What is the reason 

 why a young author so often shows a com- 

 plete inability to discover how bad his early 

 work really is ? It is that he is wholly unable 

 to understand no young writer can under- 

 stand the enormous difference between his 

 powers of conception and imagination which 

 are often enormous and those of execution. 

 If it were worth while, I think it would be 

 possible to extricate from the crude pages of 

 " The Scarlet Shawl " the real novel which 

 the writer actually had in his mind, and fondly 

 thought to have transferred to the printed page. 

 That novel would, I dare say, have been sweet 

 and wholesome, pure and poetical. The thing 

 which he submitted to the public was a work 

 in which all these qualities were conspicuously 

 wanting. The young poet reads his own 

 verses, his mind full of splendid images, 



