CHAPTER XI 



•WOOD MAGIC AND 'BEVIS' 



Twice again before he left Surbiton Jefferies returned 

 to his native place in books : ' Wood Magic ' appeared in 

 1881, ' Bevis ' in 1882. In ' Wood Magic ' the little boy 

 Bevis talks with the birds, the animals, and the butter- 

 flies, with the wind also ; and they answer him, often in 

 a manner implying that they have many experiences, 

 interests, and ideas in common with him. Bevis, petu- 

 lant, adventurous, impatient, and yet dreamy, in the 

 fields about Coate Farm, is a very real child ; and to some 

 it is a shock to pass from him to the kingdoms of the 

 animals, with their human ways, their councils, their 

 scandals, their plots, their wars and loves. Perhaps it 

 is a little surprising that Jefferies should apparently have 

 made so little effort to present the lively and fascinating 

 inhumanity of the animals, and some hint of the difference 

 between their motives and their gods and ours. It is less 

 surprising when we remember that he is writing for chil- 

 dren and as a child. He does not wantonly condescend to 

 the child, but returns naturally to the values which animals 

 had in the mingled real and fantastic of his own child- 

 hood. It may be due as much to education as to nature, 

 but it is true that the child is heartily anthropomorphic. 

 I have heard a child say, like Lucretius before him, that 

 the sun in the desert spaces of the sky feeds upon the 

 blue. The beasts appear to be changelings, emancipated, 

 to their gain as well as loss, from some human necessities. 

 It is in their four-leggedness, or their wingedness, or their 

 habit of staying out all day and all night, that they seem 



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