The Call of the Downs
Richard Jefferies was not a pioneer in quite so definite a form as the young Davidson; but he made what may be called romantic pictures of the country scene attractive to " those whom towns immure," especially to editors and publishers. He was, I think, more popular in the town than the country. His own Wiltshire contemporaries thought him lazy and a moaner ; and the idea that authorship is a lazy job is not extinct. Mr. George, whose Wheelwright's Shop was a pioneer book, opening a new form of literature, says ungenerously in his preface that he was growing lazy and averse from genuine work and so took to writing. As if writing were easy ! Few men are heroes in their own village ; but how- ever that may be,. Jefferies soon had readers in all parts of the country. He expressed, sometimes very clumsily, in prose what the Lake poets had expressed fifty years earlier. He filled the scene with emotion. He was finally utterly subdued to that he worked in. Communion with wind and sea and down quite mastered his thoughts ; and it is here that his supremacy lies in comparison with other and later writers who excelled him in language and in knowledge. The publication of a singularly well-chosen anthology, Jefferies' England (Constable, 8s. 6d.), should help to establish his
reputation. * * *
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