i64 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



It will be said that Jefferies is prolix, and so he is, and 

 most so in his best work, for prolixity is part of the result 

 of the divine impetus which took him to his highest levels. 

 Nor is it wholly a fault, since to uproot it would be to 

 take away much good that is inseparable from it. It is a 

 fault which he shares with three other countrymen, all 

 poets, Drayton, and Wither, and William Browne of 

 Tavistock ; and he shares, too, their hearty sweet- 

 ness. 



In ' Bevis : The Story of a Boy ' the child has grown to 

 be twelve or fourteen years old. There is little or none of 

 the fancy in it which fills ' Wood Magic ' ; there is no 

 dwelling with pathos or humour or condescension on 

 boyhood, but a reconstruction of great tracts of it ; the 

 man who grew out of Bevis is revealed only in half a dozen 

 passages, where he describes at length some state of mind 

 from which the child speedily emerged, or where an adult, 

 artistic attitude has lured him into the picture of old 

 ' Jumps,' and into some landscape touches a little out of 

 keeping with the blitheness of the main part. Though his 

 business is with the adventures of the boys, Bevis and 

 Mark, he cannot help showing that his return to the 

 period of childhood is not due simply to the fact that he 

 has two children of his own. He has begun to weigh the 

 significance of early impressions, to connect them with 

 later ones. Except that he has given Coate Farm and 

 its owner an advance to greater size and riches, the 

 surroundings are those of Jefferies' own boyhood. The 

 boy Mark is his younger brother, Harry Jefferies, a robust 

 and daring boy, who afterwards went to America and 

 stayed there. Bevis, masterful, petulant, impatient, and 

 dreamy, is Jefferies in the main. 



In the first chapter Bevis is making a raft out of a 

 packing-case ; having made it, he and Mark take turns 

 in poling it about the stream ; then, tiring of it, they 

 discover the New Sea : 



' " Let's go round the Longpond," said Bevis ; " we 

 have never been quite round it." 



