LATER ESSAYS 219 



He is indeed despicable who cannot look onwards to the 

 ideal life of man. Not to do so is to deny our birthright 

 of mind.'* 



But the part in Jcffcries' work is usually much less 

 than the whole. He has something like the abundance of 

 earth itself. Now and then there is a phrase like ' The 

 curved moon hung on the sky as the hunter's horn on 

 the wall,' or ' The storm passes and the sun comes out ; 

 the air is the sweeter and the richer for the rain, like 

 verses with a rhyme '; but it is not in such, were they twice 

 as numerous, that the merit of a piece consists. The 

 writing has the abundance of Nature ; the poetry resides 

 in the passionate level of the whole. To this passion 

 the words are truly subservient. No word astonishes ; 

 at their best the words are quietly effective ; they fall 

 now and then to the ungainly or commonplace. He did 

 not refer his periods to his ear ; also, he often wrote in 

 haste and pain. It is rare for him to produce a large 

 picture except by accident : when he does, he has his 

 eye on physical objects and attempts to render them by 

 accumulation and selection of details, and may be said 

 to compete with the effects of the brush in such a piece 

 as this from the ' Notes on Landscape Painting ': 



* The earth has a M^ay of absorbing things that are 

 placed upon it, of drawing from them their stiff individu- 

 ality of newness, and throwing over them something of 

 her own antiquity. As the furrow smooths and brightens 

 the share, as the mist eats away the sharpness of 

 the iron angles, so, in a larger manner, the machines 

 sent forth to conquer the soil are conquered by it, become 

 a part of it, and as natural as the old, old scythe and 

 reaping-hook. Thus already the new agriculture has 

 grown hoar. 



' The oldest of the modern implements is the threshing- 

 machine, which is historic, for it was once the cause of 

 rural war. ... It is as natural as the ricks : things grow 

 old so soon in the fields, 



* The Life of the Fields. 



