ir like a
cathedral. He would, I take it, have experimentalised in repentance to
the extent of elaborating his creations and chastising his style; and, it
may be, he would have contrived but to beggar his work of interest and
correct himself of charm. A respectable ambition, no doubt; but how much
better to be the rough-and-ready artist of Darby the Beast and Micky
Free, the humane and charming rattlepate to whom we owe Paul Goslett and
the excellent and pleasing Potts!

JEFFERIES

His Virtue.

I love to think of Jefferies as a kind of literary Leatherstocking. His
style, his mental qualities, the field he worked in, the chase he
followed, were peculiar to himself, and as he was without a rival, so was
he without a second. Reduced to its simplest expression, his was a mind
compact of observation and of memory. He writes as one who watches
always, who sees everything, who forgets nothing. As his lot was cast in
country places, among wood and pasturage and corn, by coverts teeming
with game and quick with insect life, and as withal he had the hunter's
patience and quick-sightedness, his faculty of looking and listening and
of noting and remembering, his readiness of deduction and insistence of
pursuit--there entered gradually into his mind a greater quantity of
natural England, her leaves and flowers, her winds and skies, her wild
things and tame, her beauties and humours and discomforts, than was ever,
perhaps, the possession of writing Briton. This property he conveyed to
his countrymen in a series of books of singular freshness and interest.
The style is too formal and sober, the English seldom other than homely
and sufficient; there is overmuch of the reporter and nothing like enough
of the artist, the note of imagination, the right creative faculty. But
they are remarkable books. It is not safe to try and be beforehand with
posterity, but in the case of such works as the _Gamekeeper_ and _Wild
Life_ and with such a precedent as that established by the _Natural
History of Selborne_ such anticipation seems more tempting and less
hazardous than usual. One has only to think of some mediaeval Jefferies
attached to the staff of Robin Hood, and writing about Needwood and
Charnwood as his descendant wrote about the South Downs, to imagine an
historical document of priceless value and inexhaustible interest. And
in years to be, when the whole island is one vast congeries of streets,
and the fox has gon