i86 THE EULOGY OF RICHARD JEFFERIES. 



Again, this is not, one sorrowfully owns, a 

 country which buys books. My compatriots 

 will buy everything and anything, except 

 books. They will lavish their money in 

 every conceivable manner, except one they 

 never commit extravagances in buying books. 

 For the greater part, the three-guinea subscrip- 

 tion to the library is the whole of the family 

 expenditure for the greatest, the only unfailing, 

 delight that life has to offer them. 



Again, in the case of Richard Jefferies, the 

 demand for his books was confined to a com- 

 paratively small number of readers. I do not 

 suppose that his work will ever be widely 

 popular, and yet I am certain that his reputa- 

 tion will grow and increase. Of all modern 

 writers, I know of none of whom one can 

 predict with such absolute certainty that he 

 will live. He will surely live. He draws, as 

 no other writer has done, the actual life of rural 

 England under Queen Victoria. For the very 

 fidelity of these pictures alone he must live. 

 No other writers, except Jefferies and Thomas 

 Hardy, have been able to depict this life. And, 

 what is even more, as the hills, and fields, and 



