uccess of a writer, and
probably a novelist, in the public eye. His possessions were the
fruits of his wandering, his self-chosen books and a sensitive,
solitary temperament. He might have been described as a clever
young man, well-informed, a little independent, not first-rate at
shorthand, and yet possibly too good for his place; and the
description would have been all that was possible to anyone not
intimate with him, and there was no one intimate with him but
himself. He had as yet neither a manner nor a matter of his own.
It is not clear from anything remaining that he had discovered
that writing could be something more than a means of making party
views plausible or information picturesque. In 1867, at the age of
nineteen, he opened a description of Swindon as follows:

'Whenever a man imbued with republican politics and
progressionist views ascends the platform and delivers an
oration, it is a safe wager that he makes some allusion at least
to Chicago, the famous mushroom city of the United States, which
sprang up in a night, and thirty years ago consisted of a dozen
miserable fishermen's huts, and now counts over two hundred
thousand inhabitants. Chicago! Chicago! look at Chicago! and see
in its development the vigour which invariably follows
republican institutions.... Men need not go so far from their
own doors to see another instance of rapid expansion and
development which has taken place under a monarchical
government. The Swindon of to-day is almost ridiculously
disproportioned to the Swindon of forty years ago....'

Eight years later Jefferies rewrote 'The Story of Swindon' as it is
given in this book, and the allusion to Chicago was reduced to this:

'The workmen required food; tradesmen came and supplied that
food, and Swindon rose as Chicago rose, as if by magic.'

Yet it is certain that in 1867 Jefferies was already carrying about
with him an experience and a power which were to ripen very slowly
into something unique. He was observing; he was developing a sense
of the beauty in Nature, in humanity, in thought, and the arts; and
he was 'not more than eighteen when an inner and esoteric meaning
began to come to him from all the visible universe, and undefinable
aspirations filled him.'

In 1872 he discovered part of his power almost in its perfection. He
wrote several letters to the _Times_ about the Wiltshire labourer,
and they were lucid, simple, moderate, founded