e 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_:--

"The inner slope of the green fosse is inclined at an angle pleasant
to recline on, with the head just below the edge, in the summer
sunshine. A faint sound as of a sea heard in a dream--a sibilant
"sish-sish"--passes along outside, dying away and coming again as a
fresh wave of the wind rushes through the bennets and the dry grass.
There is the happy hum of bees--who love the hills--as they speed by
laden with their golden harvest, a drowsy warmth, and the delicious
odour of wild thyme. Behind, the fosse sinks and the rampart rises
high and steep--two butterflies are wheeling in uncertain flight over
the summit. It is only necessary to raise the head a little way, and
the cod breeze refreshes the cheek--cool at this height, while the
plains beneath glow under the heat."

This, too, from _The Life of the Fields_:--

"Green rushes, long and thick, standing up above the edge of the
ditch, told the hour of the year, as distinctly as the shadow on the
dial the hour of the day. Green and thick and sappy to the touch,
they felt like summer, soft and elastic, as if full of life, mere
rushes though they were. On the fingers they left a green scent;