"The desire of the moth for the star,"
as Shelley expresses it, and in this line of poetry the mood finds
imperishable expression.
But the melancholy that visits the Idealist--the Worshipper of Beauty--is
not by any means a mood of despair. The moth may not attain the star,
but it feels there is a star to be attained. In other words, an intimate
sense of the beauty of the world carries within it, however faintly,
however overlaid with sick longing, a secret hope that some day things
will shape themselves all right.
And thus it is that every Idealist, bleak and wintry as his mood may be,
is conscious of the latency of spring. Every Idealist, like the man in
the immortal allegory of Bunyan, has a key in his bosom called Promise.
This it is that keeps from madness. And so while Jefferies will
exclaim:--
"The whole and the worst the pessimist can say is far beneath the
least particle of the truth, so immense is the misery of man." He
will also declare, "There lives on in me an impenetrable belief,
thought burning like the sun, that there is yet something to be
found, something real, something to give each separate personality
sunshine and flowers in its own existence now."
It is a mistake to attach much importance to Jefferies' attempts to
systematize his views on life. He lacked the power of co-ordinating his
impressions, and is at his best when giving free play to the instinctive
life within him. No Vagabond writer can excel him in the expression of
feeling; and yet perhaps no writer is less able than he to account for,
to give a rational explanation of his feelings. He is rarely
satisfactory when he begins to explain. Thoreau's lines about himself
seem to me peculiarly applicable to Jefferies:--
"I am a parcel of vain strivings tied
By a chance bond together,
Dangling this way and that, their links
Were made so loose and wide
Methinks
For milder weather.
"A bunch of violets without their roots
And sorrel intermixed,
Encircled by a wisp of straw
Once coiled about their shoots,
The law
By which I'm fixed.
"Some tender buds were left upon my stem
In mimicry of life,
But ah, the children will not know
Till Time has withered them,
The woe
With which they're rife."
Jefferies was a brave man, with a rare supply of resolution and patience.
His life was one long struggle against overwhelming odds. "Three great
giants," as he puts it--"disease, despair, and poverty." Not only was
his physical health against him, but his very idiosyncrasies all
conspired to hinder his success. His pride and reserve would not permit
him to take help from his friends. He even shrank from their sympathy.
His years of isolation, voluntary isolation, put him out of touch with
human society. His socialistic tendencies never made him social. His
was a kind of abstract humanitarianism. A man may feel tenderly,
sympathize towards humanity, yet shrink from human beings. Misanthropy
did not inspire him; he did not dislike his fellow-men; it was simply
that they bewildered and puzzled him; he could not get on with them. So
it will be seen that he had not the consolation some men take in the
sympathy and co-operation of their fellows. After all, this is more a
defect of temperament than a fault of character, and he had to pay the
penalty. Realizing this, it is impossible to withhold admiration for the
pluck and courage of the man. As a lover of Nature, and an artist in
prose, he needs no encomium to-day. In his eloquent "Eulogy" Sir Walter
Besant gave fitting expression to the debt of gratitude we owe this
poet-naturalist--this passionate interpreter of English country life.
What Borrow achieved for the stirring life of the road, Jefferies has
done for the brooding life of the fields. What Thoreau did for the woods
at Maine and the waters of Merrimac, Jefferies did for the Wiltshire
streams and the Sussex hedgerows. He has invested the familiar scenery
of Southern England with a new glamour, a tenderer sanctity; has arrested
our indifferent vision, our careless hearing, turned our languid
appreciation into a comprehending affection.
Ardent, shy, impressionable, proud, stout-hearted pagan and wistful
idealist; one of the most pathetic and most interesting figures in modern
literature.
VII
WALT WHITMAN
"So will I sing on, fast as fancies come;
Rudely the verse being as the mood it paints."