' AMARYLLIS AT THE FAIR ' 285 



for the robin, too ; " God listens to those who pray to 

 Him. Let us eat, and drink, and think of nothing ;" 

 beheve me, the plain plenty, and the rest, and peace, and 

 sunshine of an old farmhouse, there is nothing like it in 

 this world ! 



' " I never saw anything hke it. Nothing done ; 

 nothing done ; the morning gone and nothing done ; and 

 the butter's not come yet !" 



* Homer is thought much of ; now, his heroes are always 

 eating. They eat all through the " Iliad," they eat at 

 Patroclus' tomb ; Ulysses eats a good deal in the 

 " Odyssey " : Jupiter eats. They only did at Coombe 

 Oaks as was done on Olympus.' 



Such a mixture never was : the man from Fleet Street 

 playing Mozart, Iden making his immortal gate, lovely 

 Amaryllis tending the sick Amadis, the labourers at their 

 work or drinking the good ale, the apple-bloom falling, 

 the buttercups high in the meadow, the shadow of the 

 bailiff still in possession. 



Next after ' The Story of My Heart ' comes ' Amaryllis ' 

 as a complete, expressive book, full of Jefferies himself 

 and of the world as he saw it. In the autobiography he 

 was overflowing with the inspiration which he had been 

 receiving in solitude for the first thirty years of his life, 

 and its proper expression was the solemn, swift, joyful, 

 but mirthless ecstasy of that book. In ' Amaryllis ' 

 there is no speed, no sweep of thought like the long line 

 of the sculptured, houseless Downs, but, instead, the 

 crowded criss-cross lines of the ridgy hamlet, with gable, 

 and roof, and chimney, and rick, and elm, and the vast 

 honeycomb of London itself. Yet it is just as much a 

 whole, full as it is of unconventional masterly transitions, 

 breathing one spirit. Here Jefferies' rebelliousness comes 

 down from heaven to the street : the church, charity, 

 architecture, London, everything as it is, makes a butt 

 for laughter, scorn, and hate — everything save the hearts 

 of men. Sometimes he has a large ripe sadness, which 

 is not the wasteful, fatal sadness at all, as when he worships 



