YOUTH AND EARLY WRITINGS 55 



durable than iron. Yonder hang the heavy helmets of a 

 forgotten generation. Who remembers the wearers ? 

 None but the genealogist, and he only after much cogita- 

 tion.'* 



It is well to have written thus, provided that no trace 

 of having done so remains. For the rest, he informs, 

 moralizes several times, is jocular, but hardly rises above 

 the competence expected in such journalism. The 

 writing is nearly always adequate, but there is nothing yet 

 that is Jefferies' own, and he finds fault with Aubrey for 

 troubling about just the local peculiarities which he him- 

 self was afterwards to chronicle. The matter was not 

 digested, and it showed little more than the docility of 

 mind of the young journalist. Some of the material he 

 used later ; most evaporated. 



' When about eighteen,' he says in ' Nature and Books, 'f 

 he began to read translations from the literature of 

 Greece and Rome : first came Diogenes Laertius' ' Lives 

 of the Philosophers,' next Plato, then Athenaeus ; and he 

 adds that between seventy and eighty of the ' hundred 

 best books ' had been his companions almost from boy- 

 hood, ' those lacking to complete the number being chiefly 

 ecclesiastical or Continental.' He could forget all else 

 that he had read, ' but it is difficult to forget these ' 

 [Greeks] ' even when I will.' Mrs, Harrild sent him books. 

 William Morris, editor and proprietor of the Swindon 

 Advertiser, himself a hardy spirit, widely and genially 

 versed in local lore, and a racy writer, used to lend him 

 books, among them ' Les Miserables.' 



Except books, art had little to offer him at Swindon 

 or Coate. He heard some music, and his letters twice 

 refer to his enjoyment of the organ at the Crystal Palace ; 

 in his books he mentions music definitely, but seldom — 

 ' Madame Angot ' once, and the singing of such ballads 

 as ' The Bailiff's Daughter of Islington ' more than once. 

 It is remembered that he criticized some village music 



* Jefferies' Land, edited by Grace Toplis. 

 •f Fidd and Hedgerow. 



