(the antithesis
of Climping) was found one day by accident in a bed of nettles.

[Sidenote: JEFFERIES IN SUSSEX]

A good eastern walk from Littlehampton takes one by the sea to Goring,
and then inland over Highdown Hill to Angmering, and so to Littlehampton
again or to Arundel, our present centre. Goring touches literature in
two places. The great house was built by Sir Bysshe Shelley, grandfather
of the poet; and in the village died, in 1887, Richard Jefferies, author
of _The Story of My Heart_, after a life of ill-health spent in the
service of nature. Many beautiful and sympathetic descriptions of Sussex
are scattered about in Jefferies' books of essays, notably, "To
Brighton," "The South Down Shepherd," and "The Breeze on Beachy Head" in
_Nature near London_; "Clematis Lane," "Nature near Brighton," "Sea, Sky
and Down," and "January in the Sussex Woods" in _The Life of the
Fields_; "Sunny Brighton" in _The Open Air_, and "The Country-Side,
Sussex" and "Buckhurst Park" in _Field and Hedgerow_. Jefferies had a
way of blending experiences and concealing the names of places, which
makes it difficult to know exactly what part of Sussex he is describing;
but I think I could lead anyone to Clematis Lane. I might, by the way,
have remarked of South Harting that the luxuriance of the clematis in
its hedges is unsurpassed.

John Taylor, the water poet, has a doggerel narrative entitled "A New
Discovery by Sea with a Wherry from London to Salisbury," 1623, wherein
he mentions a woful night with fleas at Goring, and pens a couplet
worthy to take a place with the famous description of a similar
visitation in _Eothen_:--

Who in their fury nip'd and skip'd so hotly,
That all our skins were almost turned to motley.

[Sidenote: JOHN TAYLOR AND THE CONSTABLE]

Taylor gives us in the same record a pleasant picture of the Sussex
constable in 1623:--

The night before a Constable there came,
Who asked my trade, my dwelling, and my name,
My businesse, and a troupe of questions more,
And wherefore we did land vpon that shore?
To whom I fram'd my answers true and fit,
(According to his plenteous want of wit)
But were my words all true or if I ly'd
With neither I could get him satisfi'd.
He ask'd if we were Pyrats? We said No,
(_As if we had we would haue told him so_)
He said that Lords sometimes would enterprise
T' escape and leaue the Kingdome in d