er and of grove
And moving things in field and stall
And night birds' whistle shall be all
Of the world's speech that we shall hear."

WILLIAM MORRIS.

"The poetry of earth is never dead."

KEATS.

I

The longing of a full, sensuous nature for fairer dreams of beauty than
come within its ken; the delight of a passionate soul in the riotous
wealth of the Earth, the luxuriant prodigality of the Earth; the
hysterical joy of the invalid in the splendid sanity of the
sunlight--these are the sentiments that well up from the writings of
Richard Jefferies.

By comparison with him, Thoreau's Earth-worship seems quite a stolid
affair, and even Borrow's frank enjoyment of the open air has a strangely
apathetic touch about it.

No doubt he felt more keenly than did the Hermit of Walden, or the
Norfolk giant, but it was not so much passionate intensity as nervous
susceptibility. He had the sensitive quivering nerves of the neurotic
which respond to the slightest stimulus. Of all the "Children of the
Open Air" Jefferies was the most sensitive; but for all that I would not
say that he felt more deeply than Thoreau, Borrow, or Stevenson.

Some people are especially susceptible by constitution to pain or
pleasure, but it would be rash to assume hastily that on this account
they have more deeply emotional natures. That they express their
feelings more readily is no guarantee that they feel more deeply.

In other words, there is a difference between susceptibility and passion.

Whether a man has passion--be it of love or hate--can be judged only by
his general attitude towards his fellow-beings, and by the stability of
the emotion.

Now Jefferies certainly had keener sympathies with humankind than
Thoreau, and these sympathies intensified as the years rolled by. Few
men have espoused more warmly the cause of the agricultural labourer.
Perhaps Hodge has never experienced a kinder advocate than Jefferies. To
accuse him of superficiality of emotion would be unfair; for he was a man
with much natural tenderness in his disposition.

All that I wish to protest against is the assumption made by some that
because he has written so feelingly about Hodge, because he has shown so
quick a response to the beauties of the natural world, he was therefore
gifted with a deep nature, as has