6 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



furzy descent into Ogbourne St. George. Ogbonme, 

 thatched and irregular, with a bridge over the summer-dry 

 bed of the winterbourne, is in an ash-tree country ; and 

 most beautiful in late sunlight, against a calm, rich sky, 

 are the green breasts of the westward hills, or in a still, 

 cold summer night under a full moon amidst little, hard 

 white clouds like rice. Winding with the River Og, the 

 road forsakes the Roman way and enters Marlborough 

 town, with its dormered and gabled High Street, long, 

 wide, and discreet, and, though genial, obviously an entity 

 which the visitor can know little of. It has been a royal 

 residence ; it stood a siege in the Civil War ; its prehistoric 

 existence seems announced by the sarsen stone that stands 

 at one end of the High Street. It is the ' Overboro ' and 

 ' Fleeceborough ' of Jefferies. The Kennet runs through, 

 to be joined at Mildenhall by the Og. The Downs and 

 Savemake Forest dominate the town. It is but a place 

 at the edge of the forest. Though its nearest (northern) 

 edge is not much less than ten miles from Coate, the 

 forest was well within Jefferies' reach ; he often walked 

 there and back, spending the whole summer day out of 

 doors, liking the place for its beauty, its solitude, and its 

 many uncertain memories. It was the subject of some 

 of his earliest description ; it reappears in several books. 

 Once, it seems that in a severe winter the stags broke out 

 of the forest and roamed north, and one was shot in his 

 own immediate country. From Mildenhall, south-east- 

 wards along the Roman road or the course of it, to 

 Crofton is six miles, and it is almost all forest, so that 

 its mere size — if it needed such an auxiliary — makes 

 Savernake respectable. Its trees are finely grown and 

 grouped, large and numerous enough to make it venerable ; 

 heroic, too, and able to sustain without injury the tremen- 

 dous trifling column to the glory of a Marquis of Ailesbury, 

 of Lord Bute, and of God. I say heroic, because the 

 muscular, smooth beeches, moulded like the flanks and 

 limbs of immortal beauty, and the oaks that perform great 

 feats in holding out long, snaky, horizontal branches, 



