CHAPTER XVIII 



^ FIELD AND HEDGEROW AND OTHER ESSAYS- 

 DEATH 



' Field and Hedgerow ' was published in January, 1889, 



and consists largely of Jefferies' latest essays, composed 



during his last illness at Sea View, Goring, together with 



some of considerably earlier date — ' Nature in the Louvre,' 



for example, having been written early in 1884, while 



' Field Sports in Art ' was published in 1885. Other 



essays of the same and earlier dates were piinted in the 



posthumous ' Toilers of the Field ' of 1892. Some that 



were printed in the magazines have not been reprinted. 



Their subjects are taken from the neighbourhood of Coate, 



of Surbiton, of Brighton, of Crowborough, and from 



London, Exmoor, and the Quantocks. Some of these 



have already been touched on ; some, like ' An Extinct 



Race,' ' Orchis Mascula,' ' The Golden-crested Wren,' and 



' House Martins,' are too slight to be valuable except to 



the complete lover of Jefferies ; others belong to the same 



class of irregular, patchwork essays as several, heretofore 



mentioned, in ' The Life of the Fields ' and ' The Open 



Air.' Such are, for example, ' Country Places,' ' April 



Gossip,' ' The Time of Year,' and ' Mixed Days of May 



and December.' The rest fall into the other two classes — 



of essays, first, dealing more or less systematically with a 



definite subject, as in ' Nature and Books,' * Locality and 



Nature,' ' Field Sports in Art,' * After the County 



Franchise,' and the introduction to White's ' Selborne '; 



and, second, of essays which have a structure made at 



least as much by the emotions as by the intellect, and 



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