322 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



only of the author where he is explicitly autobiographical, 

 though we may exercise our fancy about him in an 

 irrelevant way. Many had seen Nature just so, though 

 he was alone in so writing of it. In the later he was 

 more and more a singular man, a discoverer of colours, 

 of moods, of arrangements. This was the landscape of 

 sensuous, troubled men ; here were most rare, most deli- 

 cate, most fleeting things. The result was at once por- 

 traiture and landscape. Perhaps the mystic element in 

 Jefferies, unintentionally asserted, gave its new serious- 

 ness to this work. Except in the last words of ' The 

 Poacher,' there had been little sign of it ; but now, in 

 the fanciful narrative of ' Wood Magic ' and the auto- 

 biographical story of ' Bevis,' the mystic promise was 

 clear in those passages where the child Bevis talked to 

 the wind or felt with his spirit out to the stars and to 

 the sea. For a long time Jefferies must have been im- 

 perfectly conscious of the meaning of his mystic com- 

 munion with Nature. It was as a deep pool that slowly 

 fills with an element so clear that it is unnoticed until it 

 overflows. It overflowed, and Jefferies wrote ' The Story 

 of My Heart ' in a passion. 



Here for the first time was the whole man, brain, heart, 

 and soul, the body and the senses, all that thought and 

 dreamed and enjoyed and aspired in him. At every 

 entrance the universe came pouring in, by aU the old 

 ways and by ways untrodden before. The book is the 

 pledge of the value of Jefferies' work. It reveals the 

 cosmic consciousness that had become fully developed in 

 him soon after he turned thirty. Such acute humanity 

 as is to be found in * The Story of My Heart ' gives us 

 confidence that what its possessor did in his prime, before 

 and after it, is not to be neglected of those who are 

 touched by mortal things. To past, present, and future 

 he offers a hand that is not to be denied. Having tasted 

 of physical, mental, and spiritual life, and aware of the 

 diverse life of the world, in man, in beast, in tree, in 

 earth, and sky, and sea, and stars, he comes to us as from 



