318 THE EULOGY OF RICHARD JEFFERIES. 



the book, which has only one fault it is 

 three times as long as it should have been. 

 The conception is delightful. In the execu- 

 tion the author has not known when to stay 

 his hand. Perhaps one of those limitations of 

 which I have spoken already was an imperfect 

 faculty of selection. For boys, the story 

 should have been compressed into one volume. 

 One cannot understand, indeed, how his pub- 

 lishers consented to put forth the book in 

 three-volume novel form. Nobody, after the 

 first chapter, ' could possibly accept it as a 

 three-volume novel. But it contains many 

 very striking and beautiful and poetic pages. 

 For instance, Bevis watches the sunrise : 



" The sun had not yet stood out from the 

 orient, but his precedent light shone through 

 the translucent blue. Yet it was not blue, 

 nor is there any word, nor is a word possible 

 to convey the feeling unless one could be built 

 up of signs and symbols like those in the book 

 of the magician, which glowed and burned to 

 and fro the page. For the blue of the precious 

 sapphire is thick to it, the turquoise dull: 



