46 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



'"All?" 



' " All," said Bevis, looking round, and pointing with an 

 arrow in his hand. " All the trees, and all the stones, 

 and all the flowers " ' 



' The magic of the past,' he wrote, ' always had a 

 charm for me. I had learned to know the lines ... so 

 that the " gips " could tell me nothing new.'* Then there 

 was ' Koenigsmark the Robber.' ' Pilgrim's Progress ' 

 was given to him by his Uncle and Aunt Harrild in 1858. 

 Not much later came the many translations from the 

 poets and others which Felise read — ' the beautiful 

 memoirs of Socrates, some parts of Plato, most of the 

 histories, and the higher and purer poets.' He mentions 

 also Sophocles, Diogenes Laertius' ' Lives of the Philo- 

 sophers,' Athenaeus and Aristotle. As early as 1867 he 

 quoted Rabelais, David Lindsay, and several chroniclers. 

 From a book or from his father, and from his nights out of 

 doors, he learned to know the stars as he did the hamlet 

 houses and elms. 



The first attraction of books for him was that of the 

 unusual, the adventurous, the antique. ' Ulysses,' he 

 says, ' was ever my pattern and model. 'f He gloated 

 over the poisons of Culpeper. He arranged fights on * The 

 Plain,' and had ' The Pathfinder ' in his mind. His 

 father told him, too, of his adventure twenty years ago. 

 Upon the Downs he felt the call of the sea. He had, too, 

 adventurous friends, boys not at all dreamy, but full of 

 noise and energy. One of these lived over the way at 

 Snodshill Farm — his cousin, James Cox. And one day 

 they were missed together. Jimmy was the elder, and 

 had started work in the Great Western Railway Works 

 at Swindon, and could save a little money ; so they crossed 

 the Channel into France, with Moscow dimly desirable 

 and accessible over the hills and rivers and plains. But 

 the French he learned at Swindon did not take Jefferies 

 far, and they returned in a short time to England. Next 



* Amateur Voac her. t Ibid. 



