io8 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



^Yild life. His notes on the rook, for example, are in the 

 spirit of the plainest passages in Jefferies' ' Wild Life.' 

 They state matters of fact of no great significance in a 

 manner showing that he has enjoyed observing them him- 

 self : yet he can attract few not specially interested in 

 birds. His affection does not involve the whole man, 

 but is in the nature of a hobby, however much time it 

 may have filled. St. John (who knew Wiltshire as a boy, 

 and trapped wheatears on the Downs) is an intelligent, 

 healthy, outdoor man, fond of scenery, and with an eye 

 for such things as a party of Gaels bringing bright fish to 

 the piny shore of a Highland lake under the moon. His 

 enjoyment was probably great, but it is not a great ele- 

 ment in his book, how^ever much we may import into it 

 from our liking for him. He is a fine man, but he is not 

 an artist, and the reader does half the work of producing 

 his admirable effects. His ' Short Sketches of the Wild 

 Sports and Natural History of the Highlands ' appeared 

 in 1846. In the next year came Edward Jesse's 

 ' Favourite Haunts and Rural Studies.' This author 

 would like to give the cottagers ' a stake in this country 

 worth fighting for.' He likes to see them on Sunday 

 having tea in the garden ; and there is real satisfaction 

 in his picture of the interior of a cottage, the flitch of 

 bacon on the rack, the dried pot-herbs and string of onions, 

 the warming-pan shining in the corner. His ' Month of 

 May — a Rural Walk,' with his mowers and haymakers 

 and birds singing, is one of the earliest pieces of the kind 

 in prose ; but if it sprang from a real delight in the country, 

 no soul or blood has suffused the words, and they are 

 dead. Two years later, in 1849, appeared Knox's 

 ' Ornithological Rambles in Sussex.' He is an ornitholo- 

 gist and sportsman. There is a careless charm, not in- 

 comparable to that of Jefferies' earlier work, about his 

 descriptions of shooting in the Weald, and of the lane from 

 Petworth to Parham, and of the wild open country, the 

 nightingales in the little copses of blackthorn and dwarf 

 oak, the common which provides the best sport a man 

 could desire ' on this side of Tweed.' Buckland, whose 



