CHAPTER VII 



FIRST COUNTRY ESSAYS 



Three short essays in the Graphic of 1875 and 1876 have 

 nothing in them to be compared with the best parts of 

 the early novels, but are interesting because they are a 

 beginning even more important than the earlier letters to 

 the Times. They are ' Marlborough Forest,' ' Village 

 Churches,' and ' The Midsummer Hum.' Of a length to 

 meet the needs of a weekh' paper, they have alreadv the 

 form and observation and sentiment of the essays which 

 afterwards went to make ' The Gamekeeper at Home,' 

 ' Wild Life in a Southern County,' ' Nature near London,' 

 and most of the later books. In them Nature and country 

 things are described from the point of view of one who 

 is not merely a sportsman, or a naturalist, or an agri- 

 culturist, or an archaeologist, though he may play all 

 those parts ; but of a human being, sensuous, observant, 

 reflective, who enjoys ' doing nothing ' out of doors. 

 Jefferies had many predecessors. Gilbert White, an un- 

 fertile literary genius and an all-round countryman, in 

 the course of his incomparable letters to Pennant and 

 Barrington, had come, as it always appears, by accident 

 or divine grace, to express with perfect felicity his experi- 

 ence and enjoyment of life in the country. But his 

 book has to carry with it a considerable dead-weight of 

 what is or was only matter of fact. He was in the first 

 place a naturalist ; and it was improbable that, if he had 

 any contemporary influence, it would be felt except by 

 naturalists. Few of his successors approach him in 

 literary importance. Waterton, a gentleman of good 

 family, whose ' Essays on Natural History ' appeared in 

 1838, had the charm of a genuine zeal and affection for 



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