3o6 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



It is wonderful that he does not meet such a fate as that 

 of Faustus, with such senses as he had, feehng ' a sense 

 of blue as he faces the strong breeze . . . wind-blue, not 

 the night-blue or heaven-blue, a colour of air.'* Sitting 

 among the hops in the oast-chamber until his mind ' was 

 full of fancy, imagination, flowing with ideas,' a ' sense 

 of lightness and joyousness ' lifted him up ; he * wanted 

 music, and felt full of laughter.'f He seems to see every- 

 thing, and to endeavour to record everything clearly, even 

 when it is of little artistic or scientific value. Thus, he 

 notes that the colour of the old oak-leaves ' is too brown 

 for buff ; it is more like fresh harness.' He notes, among 

 the wind's labours, the ruffling of the mole's velvet back. 

 Wonderful it is that he should write at all, after this 

 restless roving with the winds and diving in the waters, 

 this care for all the business of the earth as if truly it 

 could not go on without him, as if he had 



' The cloudy winds to keep 

 Fresh for the opening of the morning's eye.' 



That he is an artist so often is hardly less surprising 

 than it would be had James Luckett Jefferies been one, 

 or Uncle Jonathan at the Idovers. In ' An English Deer- 

 Park,' J and such papers, he sometimes appears to be 

 expressing a view like theirs — the view of a man who 

 has a plenty of country lore in his heart, so that calm and 

 beautiful old things flow naturally from his pen. Some 

 of this has only reached the form of gossip, as in ' The 

 Countryside : Sussex,' * Country Places,' ' Buckhurst 

 Park,'§ ' Summer in Somerset,' but incomparable gossip, 

 often to be valued as a vivid record of a certain time and 

 place, and having a great charm for the to\\Tisman and 

 the sportsman. By this abundance and confusion as of 

 Nature he shows his birth out of the soil, with which, 

 indeed, he seems still to maintain an irrefragable connec- 

 tion. But what gives life and significance to them, and 



* 'Winds of Heaven,' Field attd Hedgerow. 

 t ' The Countryside : Sussex,' ibid. 

 X Ibid, § Ibid. 



