• AFTER LONDON ' 255 



the general plan of a book almost instantaneously, but I 

 can see every little detail of it from the first page to the 

 last. The mere writing — the handwriting — is the only 

 trouble ; it is very wearying. At this moment I have several 

 volumes complete in my mind. Scarce a day goes by 

 that I do not put down a fresh thought. I have twelve 

 notebooks crammed full of ideas, plots, sketches for 

 papers, and so on.' 



He continues : 



' What you say about publishing too often has no doubt 

 some truth in it, but I have no choice in that respect until 

 the publisher gives me a larger sum for the MS. These 

 trifling sums are of little value in the nineteenth and ex- 

 pensive century. I should not expose my possessions or 

 affairs to anyone else, but I believe I may be perfectly 

 sure of you. I have wanted to talk to you about these 

 things for some time, but my health has been so very 

 indifferent that I have not been able to get about.' 



Notwithstanding his productiveness, his new book was 

 an excellent piece of writing, with some spht infinitives, a 

 slip in construction, the use of ' assist ' for ' help,' and a few 

 other tokens of his usual indifference to trifles. Originally, 

 it was perhaps much longer than we know it now, for he 

 said that it was ' in three volumes.' It sprang, perhaps, 

 from the calm that followed the excitement of ' The Story 

 of My Heart,' ' The Dewy Morn,' and essays hke 'The 

 Pageant of Summer,' and ' Sunny Brighton ' ; and of the 

 ideas in those books there is hardly a trace, Haviug 

 described the relapse of England into barbarism, and the 

 loss of everything characteristic of nineteenth-century 

 civihzation, one so dogmatic and prophetic as Jefferies 

 might have been expected to make use of this oppor- 

 tunity, and to show us a Utopia. Instead of which, 

 the doings of the house of Aquila, a family which 

 has survived the relapse, are a continuation of the 

 games of Be vis. Here Be vis is grown a man and called 

 Felix Aquila ; Mark is now a big, proud soldier, called 

 Oliver ; the ' Governor ' — James Jefferies — is the Baron 



