The next volume was a "Family History of the Goddards of North Wilts." Now, if the Goddards were anxious to have their history written, they might have paid for it. Perhaps they did pay for the work, but I find no record of their doing so. Perhaps they thought that Swindon would rally round the Goddard flag, and eagerly buy the book. I have not read the work; but it had the honour of getting a notice from the _Athenaeum_, which the author heroically cut out and preserved. The plain truth was spoken in that notice, and the most was made of a very unfortunate mistake of a place, a date, and a poet, concerning which the curious may consult the _Athenaeum_ for the year 1873. The results of publishing at his own expense were, we suppose, so satisfactory that Jefferies in 1874 brought out his first novel--"The Scarlet Shawl"--on that delightful method. It is always in vain that one assures a young writer that works which publishers with one consent refuse must be commercially worthless; it is always in vain that one preaches, exhorts, and implores the inexperienced not to throw away their money in the vain hope of getting it back with profit of gold and glory. They will do it. There are always publishing houses of a kind which are ready to print young writers' crude and foolish works at their own risk, and to talk vaguely beforehand of enormous profits to be shared. Poor wretches! they never get any profits. Nobody ever buys any copies. There is never for the unfortunate writer any gold or any glory, but only sure, certain, and bitter disappointment. As yet, Jefferies still clung to his old ideas, and had learned none of the lessons which the _Times_ letters should have taught him. Therefore he brought out three novels in succession (see Chapter VI.), never getting any single advantage or profit out of them except the pain of shattered hopes, the loss of money, and the most contemptuous notices in the reviews. We are in the year 1874. Apparently, Jefferies has had his chance, and has thrown it away. He is six-and-twenty years of age--it is youth, but this young man has only twelve more years of life, and none of his work has yet been done. Why--why did no one tear him away from his vain and futile efforts? See, he toils day after day, with an energy which nothing can repress--a resolution to succeed which sustains him through all his disappointments. He covers acres of paper, and all to no purpose; for no one has told him the simplest law of all--that Art is imitation. One must not close the shutters, light the lamp, and then paint a flower one has never seen, as the painter thinks it ought to have been. Yet this is what Jefferies was doing. The young country lad, who knew no other society than that of the farm and the country town, was wasting and spoiling his life in writing about people and things whom he imagined. He was painting the flower he had never seen as he thought it ought to be.