RECAPITULATION 323 



a holy feast, face flushed, head crowned. He was dis- 

 contented to some purpose with our age, with modernity, 

 and not merely discontented, for he unsealed a new 

 fountain of rehgious joy, and in the books that followed, 

 whether he wrote of men or of Nature, he gave a rich, 

 sensuous, and hearty pleasure, lofty delights of the spirit, 

 a goad to a bolder, more generous life in our own inner 

 deeps and in our social intercourse ; he pointed to an 

 everlasting source of truth and joy ; he created a woman, 

 Felise, whom it is a divine inspiration to know, and others, 

 men and women, scarred, mournful, but undespairing, 

 whose ordinary humanity, as in ' Amaryllis,' was drawn 

 with such minuteness and love that we enjoy while we 

 suffer, and rise ourselves with a useful discontent and an 

 impulse towards what is more beautiful and true. ' The 

 Story of My Heart ' gathered up into itself all the spiritual 

 experiences which had been dimly hinted at in the early 

 novels and outdoor books. As an autobiography it is 

 unsurpassed, because it is alone. It is a bold, intimate 

 revelation of a singular modern mind in a style of such 

 vitality that the thoughts are as acts, and have a strong 

 motive and suggestive power. ' The Dewy Morn,' which 

 followed, embodied the passion of the autobiography in 

 the form of woman, beautiful and young and passionate. 

 Jefferies' thinking was symptomatic of the age rather 

 than original ; it is stimulating because it is personal. 

 ' He beginneth not with obscure definitions, which must 

 blur the margent with interpretations, and load the 

 memory with doubtfulnesse ; but he commeth to you with 

 words set in delightful proportion, . , . and with a tale, 

 forsooth, he commeth unto you, with a tale which holdeth 

 children from play, and old men from the chimney-comer.' 

 His asserted lack of tradition, his rebuke of the past, his 

 saying that the old books must be rewritten, is a challenge 

 to the present to take heed of itself. There is no real 

 lack of a sense of the past in one who has a sense of 

 co-operation with the future, which adds to the dignity 

 of life, gives a social and eternal value to our most solitary 



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