146 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



of local lore, it is as eas}' to read as a hedge of hazel and 

 oak and thorn and maple and dogwood and brier is to be 

 walked along ; and ' A Farmer of the Olden Times,' for 

 example, a picture of Uncle Jonathan at the Idovers, 

 about 1810, is a picture easy and mellow in treatment, 

 fine in detail, which makes it absurd to speak with any- 

 thing but respect of Jefferies' eye and feeling for humanity. 

 When in 1887 he lay dying, and writing — dictating, I 

 should say — his introduction to the ' Natural History 

 of Selborne,' he regretted that Gilbert White had left 

 the human life of his parish almost untouched. Against 

 Jefferies no such charge can be brought, and I cannot 

 think that White would have left us a more lively and 

 various scene had he taken the time for painting it 

 out of his long placid life. In these four books, from 

 ' The Gamekeeper ' to ' The Great Estate,' for almost 

 the first time in English literature a pure countryman 

 who is nothing but a countryman reveals his life and 

 neighbourhood. No man could be neglected who had 

 so much knowledge which it is impossible to acquire 

 by effort and time alone ; his power of showing the 

 joy in things, and of making them a means to joy, gives 

 him still higher claims. Thus, at his best, he writes as if 

 his hand had in it part of that spirit which builds the 

 hills and lights the stars over them ; in his veins are the 

 saps of oak and ash and elm, the blood of things that run 

 and fly and creep. Like Constable, he might have said : 

 ' I love every stile and stump and lane in the village ; 

 as long as I am able to hold a brush I shall never cease 

 to paint them.' 



Though published in 1884, ' Red Deer ' belongs to the 

 same class as these four books. In June, 1882, Jefferies 

 was on Exmoor, watching the red-deer, trout-fishing, and 

 walking by Exe and Barle. ' Red Deer ' and some of 

 the essays in ' The Life of the Fields ' and * Field and 

 Hedgerow ' were among the results. He seems not to 

 have gone farther to fulfil his youthful dream of Arthurian 

 Cornwall. Jefferies himself says of the book that ' it is 



