no THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



Jefferies himself ; and the rooks at the acorns, the steep 

 Downs, and the rusthng of the grass over the Chisledon 

 graves, the epitaph and the silence, the ticking of the 

 clock, gave, perhaps, a new kind of pleasure to newspaper 

 readers in 1876, but are memorable only as a beginning. 

 One of the most interesting parts of the essay is that on 

 the days of the handicrafts, when ' men put their souls 

 into their works,' and it was not their object ' to turn 

 out a hundred thousand all alike ' — when the Aldbourne 

 bell-founder, for a local fame, ' worked as truly, and in as 

 careful a manner, as if he had known his bell was to be 

 hung in St. Peter's at Rome.' We know all about that 

 now, but in 1875 it was an achievement for the Swindon 

 journalist to announce that ' this was the true spirit of art.' 

 He always kept this love of handicrafts, though he might 

 have made more use of his local knowledge of them, just 

 as he might have done with the folk-songs and dialect 

 of North Wiltshire had he recognized their value. In 

 ' The Midsummer Hum,' which, unlike the other two, is 

 signed ' R. Jefferies,' there is a cheerful sketch of ' Uptill- 

 a-thorn ' of later days. Lucy Lockett and Absalom 

 Brown are lovers ; Mr. Martin, a gentleman, admires the 

 girl in the hayfield, but in the end secretly gives the Vicar 

 twenty pounds for Absolom and Lucy when they are 

 married — Lucy, with ' small nose, slightly retrousse and 

 impertinent,' is ' a laughing, thoughtless, impulsive 

 creature, full of life, and joyous as the sunshine — like the 

 young June with its opening roses.' She is a shadow, only 

 a shadow, of one of Jefferies' beautiful animated women. 

 His village mason sings a version of ' When Joan's ale 

 was new ' : 



' Zo, he flung his hammer agen the wall, 

 An' prayed as the church an' the steeple might fall, 

 An' thus med be work for masons all 

 When Jones' ale was new.' 



Other slender essays of this kind might probably be 

 found in the newspapers of about 1876, but it was not 

 until the Surbiton days that Jefferies found how easy it 

 was to put down his country lore in this form. 



