LITERA TURE OF FIELD AND HEDGERO J^V 7 
love of a Gilbert White ; it was their ‘ fine effluence ’ that was 
his guest, “ and what the sceptical reader cannot help feeling is 
often merely the reflection of Thoreau’s own too prominent per- 
sonality. 
“ Ah ! I have penetrated to those meadows on the morning of 
many a first spring day, jumping from hummock to hummock.” 
. . . . (it was fine weather, and “ all things must live in such 
alight.”) .... “ O death, where was thy sting ? O grave, 
where was thy victory then ? ” 
“ I am glad to have drunk water so long, for the same reason 
that I prefer the natural sky to an opium-eater’s heaven.” 
“ I have been thrilled to think that 1 owed a mental perception 
to the commonly gross sense of taste, that I have been inspired 
through the palate, that some berries which I had eaten on a 
hill-side had fed my genius.” 
“ I have found repeatedly, of late years, that I cannot fish 
without falling a little in self-respect.” 
This is not natural history, it is Thoreau. And even when he 
gets away from himself he often strikes an unnatural note, as 
when he compares mountains to “ rosy-cheeked schoolboys.” 
Jefferies in his boyish struggles after style was equally forced; 
but he was forced on conventional lines, and one feels the young 
writer, as when he says ; “ To me music is like a spring of fresh 
water in the midst of the desert to the wearied Arab.” In its 
maturity, however, the style of Jefferies is not forced and does 
not strike one as egotistic. No wordy tricks are plastered on to 
common-places in order to give them a beauty and interest not 
properly their own. Take away his peculiar language and you 
take away all he wishes to tell you. And take away his references 
to himself and the human interest goes. You miss the companion 
who has you by the hand, who drags you after him over hedge 
and ditch, determined you shall share all his enjoyment. Jefferies 
is a man first — Jefferies afterwards. Thoreau is always Thoreau, 
— a man determined to be exceptional. Contrast the singular 
simplicity of White, whose personality disappears entirely 
behind his intense, overwhelming interest in nature. One can 
forgive him for appearing to take no thought about the slave trade, 
or about labouring life in his own county. “No rumour of the 
revolt of the American colonies seems to have reached him. 
‘The natural term of an hog’s life’ has more interest for him 
than that of an empire All the couriers in Europe 
spurring rowel-deep make no stir in Mr. White’s little Char- 
treuse ; but the arrival of the house martin a day earlier or later 
than last year is a piece of news worth sending express to all his 
correspondents.” (See some delightful paragraphs on White by 
Lowell in “ Under my Study Windows,” pp. i and 2.) 
We have seen the delight these men took, each in his own 
neighbourhood, and we have compared their style. Now, as 
members of field clubs, let us look at their entries in their rough 
diaries, and then educate ourselves by keeping similar note books. 
