This attempt to exalt Jefferies at the expense of De Quincey and Coleridge seems to me unfortunate. Enough has been said already in the remarks on De Quincey to show that the dreams of De Quincey were no mere opium dreams. De Quincey was a born dreamer, and from his earliest days had visions and ecstatic moods. The opium which he took (primarily at any rate to relieve pain, not, as Dr. Jones suggests, to excite sensuous imagery) undoubtedly intensified the dream faculty, but it did not produce it.
I confess that I do not know quite what the Doctor means by preferring the "purer delight" of the Jefferies exaltation to the vision that produced _Kubla Khan_. If he implies that opium provoked the one and that "the pure breath of Nature" (to use his own phrase) inspired the other, and that the latter consequently is the purer delight, then I cannot follow his reasoning.
A vision is not the less "pure" because it has been occasioned by a drug.
One of the sublimest spiritual experiences that ever happened to a man came to John Addington Symonds after a dose of chloroform. Nitrous oxide, ether, Indian hemp, opium, these things have been the means of arousing the most wonderful states of ecstatic feeling.
Then why should _Kubla Khan_ be rated as a less "pure" delight than one of the experiences retailed in _The Story of my Heart_? Is our imagination so restricted that it cannot enjoy both the subtleties of Coleridge and the fuller muse of Jefferies?
The healing power of Nature has never found happier expression than in _The Story of my Heart_. In words of simple eloquence he tells us how he cured the weariness and bitterness of spirit by a journey to the seash.o.r.e.
"The inner nature was faint, all was dry and tasteless; I was weary for the pure fresh springs of thought. Some instinctive feeling uncontrollable drove me to the sea. . . . Then alone I went down to the sea. I stood where the foam came to my feet, and looked out over the sunlit waters. The great earth bearing the richness of the harvest, and its hills golden with corn, was at my back; its strength and firmness under me. The great sun shone above, the wide sea was before me. The wind came sweet and strong from the waves. The life of the earth and the sea, the glow of the sun filled me; I touched the surge with my hand, I lifted my face to the sun, I opened my lips to the wind. I prayed aloud in the roar of the waves-my soul was strong as the sea, and prayed with the sea"s might. Give me fulness of life like to the sea and the sun, and to the earth and the air; give me fulness of physical life, mind equal and beyond their fulness; give me a greatness and perfection of soul higher than all things; give me my inexpressible desire which swells in me like a tide-give it to me with all the force of the sea."
Those who know Jefferies only by his quieter pa.s.sages of leisurely observation are surprised when they find such a swirl of pa.s.sionate longing in his autobiography.
IV
The points of affinity between Th.o.r.eau 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. Th.o.r.eau, quiet, pa.s.sive, 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 ill.u.s.trations 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, pa.s.sionate, alive to the glorious plenitude of the Earth, has seized upon the exceeding beauty, and the healing beauty of natural things. No scholar like Th.o.r.eau, 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 Th.o.r.eau the Earth was a kind and gracious sister; to Jefferies an all-sufficing mistress.
The reader who pa.s.ses from Th.o.r.eau 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 ill.u.s.tration of the other aspect:-
"Everything," {157a} he exclaims, "on a scale of splendid waste.
Such n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sage, 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 pa.s.sion 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 att.i.tude 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 wors.h.i.+p, 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 att.i.tude. America produced a Whitman; and in England William Morris and Richard Jefferies-among others-cried out for a simpler, freer, more childlike att.i.tude.
"All things seem possible," declared Jefferies, "in the open air." To live according to Nature was, he a.s.sured 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 refres.h.i.+ng 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 att.i.tude 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 Th.o.r.eau 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 Th.o.r.eau take a joy in the company of the birds, the squirrels, and feel a sense of companions.h.i.+p 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 Th.o.r.eau"s. Jefferies regarded many animals as "good sport"; Th.o.r.eau 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 att.i.tude 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 pa.s.sage 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 Th.o.r.eau"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 Wors.h.i.+pper at the shrine of Beauty is always conscious that
". . . . In the very temple of Delight Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine."
He realizes the tragic ineffectuality of his aspiration-
"The desire of the moth for the star,"
as Sh.e.l.ley expresses it, and in this line of poetry the mood finds imperishable expression.
But the melancholy that visits the Idealist-the Wors.h.i.+pper 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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. Th.o.r.eau"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 grat.i.tude we owe this poet-naturalist-this pa.s.sionate interpreter of English country life.