154 THE EULOGY OF RICHARD JEFFERIES. 



promise at all. The thing cannot be wholly 

 explained. It is a phenomenon in literature. 



It is best, I say, to acknowledge these limi- 

 tations fully and frankly, so that we may go 

 on with nothing, so to speak, to conceal. Let 

 us grant all the objections to Jefferies as a 

 story-teller that anyone may choose to make. 

 In the ordinary sense of the word, Jefferies 

 was not a novelist; in the artistic sense of the 

 word, he was not a novelist. This fully 

 understood and conceded, we can afterwards 

 consider his later so-called novels as so many 

 storehouses filled with priceless treasure. 



I have in my hands certain letters which 

 Jefferies addressed to Messrs. Tinsley Brothers 

 on the subject of his MSS. They are curious, 

 and rather saddening to read. They begin in 

 the year 1872 with proposals that the firm 

 should publish a work called " Only a Girl," 

 " the leading idea of which is the delineation 

 of a girl entirely unconventional, entirely un- 

 fettered by precedent, and in sentiment always 

 true to herself." He writes a first letter on 

 the subject in May. In September he reopens 

 the subject. 



