Jefferies then presents to my mind all the characteristics of the Vagabond, his many graces and charms, his notable deficiencies, especially the absence of emotional stability. This trait is, of course, more pronounced in some Vagabonds than in others; but it belongs to his inmost being. Eager, curious, adventurous; tasting this experience and that; his emotions share with his intellect in a chronic restless transition. More easily felt than defined is the lack of permanence in his nature; his emotions flame fitfully and in gusts, rather than with steady persistence. Finally, despite the tenderness and kindliness he can show, the egotistic elements absorb too much of his nature. A great egotist can never be a great lover.
This may seem a singularly ungracious prelude to a consideration of Richard Jefferies; but whatever it may seem it is quite consistent with a hearty admiration for his genius, and a warm appreciation of the man. Passion he had of a kind, but it was the rapt, self-centred passion of the mystic.
He interests us both as an artist and as a thinker. It will be useful, therefore, to keep these points of view as separate as possible in studying his writings.
II
Looking at him first of all as an artist, the most obvious thing that strikes a reader is his power to convey
sensuous impressions. He loved the Earth, not as some have done with the eye or ear only, but with every nerve of his body. His scenic pictures are more glowing, more ardent than those of Thoreau. There was more of the poet, less of the naturalist in Jefferies. Perhaps it would have been juster to call Thoreau a poetic naturalist, and reserved the term poet-naturalist for Jefferies. Be that as it may, no one can read Jefferies—especially such books as Wild Life in a Southern County, or The Life of the Fields, without realizing the keen sensibility of the man to the sensuous impressions of Nature.
Again and again in reading Jefferies one is reminded of the poet Keats. There is the same physical frailty of constitution and the same rare susceptibility to every manifestation of beauty. There is, moreover, the same intellectual devotion to beauty which made Keats declare Truth and Beauty to be one. And the likeness goes further still.
The reader who troubles to compare the sensuous imagery of the three great Nature poets—Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats, will realize an individual difference in apprehending the beauties of the natural world. Wordsworth worships with his ear, Shelley with his eye, Keats with his sense of touch. Sound, colour, feeling—these things inform the poetry of these great poets, and give them their special individual charm.
Now, in Jefferies it is not so much the colour of life, or the sweet harmonies of the Earth, that he celebrates, though of course these things find a place in his prose songs. It is the “glory of the sum of things” that diffuses itself and is felt by every nerve in his body.
Take, for instance, the opening to Wild Life in a Southern County:—