' WOOD MAGIC ' AND ' BEVIS ' 157 



chiefly to differ from children. Wings, feathers, fur, tails, 

 must often seem as mere disguises ; the lack of English 

 speech a mere lack, as it were an accident. In ' Wood 

 Magic ' Jefferies, or Bevis, makes good this deficiency. 

 If he is very far from saying the truest things about 

 this immeasurable commonwealth of various life in which 

 we have yet to learn our offices, he does give animal lives 

 a human reality. He has fallen, in fact, into just such 

 an ambuscade as awaits the allegorist, and it may be 

 said of his birds and beasts, as a rule, what was said by 

 Coleridge of some of the characters in ' Pilgrim's Pro- 

 gress ' — that they are ' real persons with nicknames.' 

 More could not be expected if the treatment of the dogs 

 at Coate Farm was like that of Pan, the spaniel, in 

 * Wood Magic '; it is not exceptionally brutal, but it is 

 callous and off-hand. 



To all who can return to the attitude of the folk-story 

 towards animals, regarding them as curious, often clever, 

 sometimes malicious, diminutive human beings, the book 

 is full of delight. The names of the birds — Kapchack, 

 the magpie ; Tchink, the chaffinch ; Choo Hoo, the wood- 

 pigeon ; Cloctaw, the jackdaw ; Te-te, the tomtit — are 

 charming, and it was a stroke of genius to make the 

 starlings the royal couriers. Prettily, too, are the charac- 

 teristic notes of the birds introduced into their speeches : 



' " I too-whoo should like to know if Tchack-tchack is 

 coming," said the wood-pigeon. . . . 



' " I think, think, the owl is very stupid not to begin," 

 said the chaffinch.'* 



Nor is the book really misleading. It does not, at 

 least, underestimate the animal's intelligence and interest 

 in life. If it humanizes, it also throws many a flash 

 upon Nature's independence of humanity ; and it has 

 the great merit that for the time being a large tract of 

 country, hill and wood and field and water, is the property 

 of magpies, jays, wood-pigeons, hawks, rooks, and missel- 

 thrushes, of weasel, squirrel, fox, and rat, instead of 



♦ IVood Maj^c. 



