FIRST COUNTRY BOOKS 127 



Next to this passage one of the most significant things 

 in the book is the claim of reason for animals, and that 

 also is made first by the keeper. If that interesting 

 chapter is ever written on the influence of the unlearned 

 — the Thurtells and the rest — on literature, through 

 their friendships with writing men, Haylock of Burderop 

 must not be omitted. Altogether the book may be said 

 to be the first revelation of matters which hundreds of 

 countrymen have known for centuries. In Jefferies all 

 the keepers, and poachers, and bird-scarers, and farmers 

 become articulate — as, for example, when he records 

 that ' the rabbit-burrow here at my elbow is not silent ; 

 it seems to catch and heighten faint noises from a dis- 

 tance. ... So that in all probability to the rabbit his 

 hole must be a perfect " Ear of Dionysius," magnifying 

 a whisper.' But to return to his youth meant a return 

 also to the ideas of his youth and of his environment. 

 He is the farmer's son and gamekeeper's friend, not only 

 in his heartiness and woodcraft, but in his callousness 

 and his careless acceptance of things as they are. For 

 the time being his attitude towards life is that of the 

 gamekeeper. With characteristic docility, having to 

 write about the gamekeeper, he becomes one ; and in 

 his crude abuse of poachers and veneration of the hunt 

 and the great house, in his genuine satisfaction at the 

 fact that in rabbiting ' the young gentlemen tip freely,' 

 and that the keeper ' is one of those fortunate individuals 

 whom all the world tips,' he even overdoes his part. 

 Simply because a labourer now and then kills a hare in 

 his allotment, he must sneer at the ' kindly talk uttered 

 over allotments '; and the keeper is so deified that he 

 and his ground-ash stick appear to be equal to all the 

 ingenious and robust mechanics of Swindon town. Yet 

 a keeper, it seems, may be contaminated * without 

 volition of his own ' by contact with the bad men who 

 have not the luck to be keepers ! If it were not for the 

 poacher's own wit and knowledge that come out in half of 

 the best passages, the reader might be excused for di.^gust 



