IV

The points of affinity between Thoreau and Jefferies are sufficiently

obvious; and yet no two writers who have loved the Earth, and found their

greatest happiness in the life of the woods and fields, as did these two

men, have expressed this feeling so variously. Thoreau, quiet, passive,

self-contained, has seized upon the large tranquillity of Nature, the

coolness and calm, "the central piece subsisting at the heart of endless

agitation." Interspersed with his freshly observed comments on the

myriad life about him are moral reflections, shrewd criticism of men and

things, quaint and curious illustrations from his scholarly knowledge.

But although he may not always talk of the Earth, there is the flavour of

the Earth, the sweetness and naturalness of the Earth, about his finest

utterances.

Jefferies, feverish, excitable, passionate, alive to the glorious

plenitude of the Earth, has seized upon the exceeding beauty, and the

healing beauty of natural things. No scholar like Thoreau, he brings no

system of thought, as did the American, for Nature to put into shape.

Outside of Nature all is arid and profitless to him. He comes to her

with empty hands, and seeks for what she may give him. To Thoreau the

Earth was a kind and gracious sister; to Jefferies an all-sufficing

mistress.

The reader who passes from Thoreau to Jefferies need have no fear that he

will be wearied with the same point of view. On the contrary, he will

realize with pleasure how differently two genuine lovers of the Earth can

express their affection.

In Jefferies' song of praise, his song of desire--praise and desire

alternate continually in his writings--there are two aspects of the Earth

upon which he dwells continually--the exceeding beauty of the Earth, and

the exceeding plenitude of the Earth. Apostrophes to the beauty have

been quoted already; let this serve as an illustration of the other

aspect:--

"Everything," {157a} he exclaims, "on a scale of splendid waste.

Such noble broadcast, open-armed waste is delicious to behold. Never

was there such a lying proverb as 'Enough is as good as a feast.'

{157b} Give me the feast; give me squandered millions of seeds,

luxurious carpets of petals, green mountains of oak leaves. The

greater the waste the greater the enjoyment--the nearer the approach

to real life. Casuistry is of no avail; the fact is obvious; Nature

flings treasures abroad, puffs them with open lips along on every

breeze; piles up lavish layers of them in the free, open air, packs

countless numbers together in the needles of a fir tree. Prodigality

and superfluity are stamped on everything she does."

This is no chance passage, no casual thought. Again and again Jefferies

returns to the richness and plenty of the Earth. And his style, suiting

itself to the man's temperament, is rich and overflowing, splendidly

diffuse, riotously exulting, until at times there is the very incoherence

of passion about it.

Thus, in looking at the man's artistic work, its form of expression, its

characteristic notes, something of the man's way of thinking has

impressed itself upon us.

V

It may be well to gather up the scattered impressions, and to look at the

thought that underlies his fervid utterances. Beginning as merely an

interested observer of Nature, his attitude becomes more enthusiastic, as

knowledge grows of her ways, and what began in observation ends in

aspiration. The old cry, "Return to Nature," started by Rousseau, caught

by the poets of the "Romantic Revival" in England, and echoed by the

essayists of New England, fell into silence about the middle of last

century. It had inspired a splendid group of Nature poets; and for a

time it was felt some new gospel was needed. Scientific and

philosophical problems took possession of men's minds; the intellectual

and emotional life of the nation centred more and more round the life of

the city. For a time this was, perhaps, inevitable. For a time Nature

regarded through the eyes of fresh scientific thought had lost her charm.

Even the poets who once had been content to worship, now began to

criticize. Tennyson qualified his homage with reproachings. Arnold

carried his books of philosophy into her presence. But at last men tired

of this questioning attitude. America produced a Whitman; and in England

William Morris and Richard Jefferies--among others--cried out for a

simpler, freer, more childlike attitude.

"All things seem possible," declared Jefferies, "in the open air." To

live according to Nature was, he assured his countrymen, no poet's fancy,

but a creed of life. He spoke from his own experience; life in the open,

tasting the wild sweetness of the Earth, had brought him his deepest

happiness; and he cried aloud in his exultation, bidding others do

likewise. "If you wish your children," says he, "to think deep things,

to know the holiest emotions, take them to the woods and hills, and give

them the freedom of the meadows." On the futility of bookish learning,

the ugliness and sordidness of town life, he is always discoursing. His

themes were not fresh ones; every reformer, every prophet of the age had

preached from the same text. And none had put the case for Nature more

forcibly than Wordsworth when he lamented--

"The world is too much with us."

But the plea for saner ways of living cannot be urged too often, and if

Jefferies in his enthusiasm exaggerates the other side of the picture,

pins his faith over much on solitudes and in self-communion, too little

on the gregarious instincts of humankind, yet no reformer can make any

impression on his fellows save by a splendid one-sidedness.

The defect of his Nature creed which calls for the most serious criticism

is not the personal isolation on which he seems to insist. We herd

together so much--some unhappily by necessity, some by choice, that it

would be a refreshing thing, and a wholesome thing, for most of us to be

alone, more often face to face with the primal forces of Nature.

The serious defect in his thought seems to me to lie in his attitude

towards the animal creation. It is summed up in his remark: "There is

nothing human in any living Animal. All Nature, the Universe as far as

we see, is anti- or ultra-human outside, and has no concern with man."

In this statement he shows how entirely he has failed to grasp the secret

of the compelling power of the Earth--a secret into which Thoreau entered

so fully.

Why should the elemental forces of Nature appeal so strongly to us? Why

does the dweller in the open air feel that an unseen bond of sympathy

binds him to the lowest forms of sentient life? Why is a St. Francis

tender towards animals? Why does a Thoreau take a joy in the company of

the birds, the squirrels, and feel a sense of companionship in the very

flowers? Nay, more: what is it that gives a Jefferies this sense of

communion? why, if the Earth has no "concern with man," should it soothe

with its benison, and fire his being with such ecstatic rapture? If this

doctrine of a Universal Brotherhood is a sentimental figment, the

foundation is swept away at once of Jefferies' Nature creed. His sense

of happiness, his delight in the Earth, may no doubt afford him

consolation, but it is an irrational comfort, an agreeable delusion.

And yet no one can read a book of Jefferies without realizing that here

is no sickly fancy--however sickness may have imparted a hectic colouring

here and there--but that the instinct of the Artist is more reliable than

the theory of the Thinker. Undoubtedly his Nature creed is less

comprehensive than Thoreau's. Jefferies regarded many animals as "good

sport"; Thoreau as good friends. "Hares," he says, "are almost formed on

purpose to be good sport." The remark speaks volumes. A man who could

say that has but a poor philosophic defence to offer for his rapt

communion with Nature.

How can you have communion with something "anti- or ultra-human"? The

large utterance, "All things seem possible in the open air" dwindles down

rather meanly when the speaker looks at animals from the sportsman's

point of view. Against his want of sympathy with the lower forms of

creation one must put his warm-hearted plea for the agricultural poor.

In his youth there was a certain harsh intolerance about his attitude

towards his fellows, but he made ample amends in _Hodge and his Master_,

still more in _The Dewy Morn_, for the narrow individualism of his

earlier years.

One might criticize certain expressions as extravagant when he lashed out

against the inequalities in society. But after all there is only a

healthy Vagabond flavour about his fling at "modern civilization," and

the genuine humanitarian feeling is very welcome. Some of his

unpublished "Notes on the Labour Question" (quoted by Mr. Salt in his

able study of Jefferies) are worthy of Ruskin. This, for instance, is

vigorously put:--

"'But they are paid to do it,' says Comfortable Respectability (which

hates anything in the shape of a 'question,' glad to slur it over

somehow). They are paid to do it. Go down into the pit yourself,

Comfortable Respectability, and try it, as I have done, just one hour

of a summer's day, then you will know the preciousness of a vulgar

pot of beer! Three and sixpence a day is the price of these brawny

muscles, the price of the rascally sherry you parade before your

guests in such pseudo-generous profusion. One guinea a week--that is

one stall at the Opera. But why do they do it? Because Hunger and

Thirst drive them. These are the fearful scourges, the whips worse

than the knout, which lie at the back of Capital, and give it its

power. Do you suppose these human beings, with minds, and souls, and

feelings, would not otherwise repose on the sweet sward, and hearken

to the song-birds as you may do on your lawn at Cedar Villa?"

Really the passage might have come out of _Fors Clavigera_; it is

Ruskinian not only in sentiment, but in turn of expression. Ruskin

impressed Jefferies very considerably, one would gather, and did much to

open up his mind and broaden his sympathies. Making allowance for

certain inconsistencies of mood, hope for and faith in the future, and

weary scepticism, there is a fine stoicism about the philosophy of

Jefferies. His was not the temperament of which optimists are made. His

own terrible ill-health rendered him keenly sensitive to the pain and

misery of the world. His deliberate seclusion from his fellow-men--more

complete in some ways than Thoreau's, though not so ostensible--threw him

back upon his own thoughts, made him morbidly introspective.

Then the aesthetic Idealism which dominated him made for melancholy, as

it invariably does. The Worshipper at the shrine of Beauty is always

conscious that

". . . . In the very temple of Delight

Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine."