Again, he did not understand, so to speak, stage management. When he had got a lot of puppets in his hands, he could not make them act. And he was too self-contained to be a novelist; he could never get rid of his own personality. When he succeeds in making his reader realize a character, it is when that character is either himself, as in "Bevis," or a part of himself, as Farmer Iden in "Amaryllis." The story in his earlier attempts is always imitative, awkward, and conventional; it is never natural and never spontaneous. In his later books he lays aside all but the mere pretence of a story. The individual pictures which he presents are delightful and wonderful; they are like his short essays and articles--they may be read with enormous pleasure--but the story, what is the story? Where is it? There is none. There is only the promise of a story not worked out--left, not half untold, but hardly begun, as in "After London" and in "Amaryllis at the Fair." You may put down any of his so-called novels at any time with no more regret than that this scene or that picture was not longer. As the writer never took any interest in his own characters--one understands that as clearly as if it was proclaimed upon the house-tops--so none of his readers can be expected to feel any interest. It is the old, old story. In any kind of art--it matters not what--if you wish your readers to weep, you must first be constrained to weep yourself. Many other reasons might be produced for showing that Jefferies could never have been a successful novelist; but these may suffice. Meantime, the wonder remains. How could the same hand write the coarse and clumsy "Scarlet Shawl" which was shortly to give the world such sweet and delicate work, so truthful, so artistic, so full of fine feeling? How could that be possible? Indeed, one cannot altogether explain it. Collectors of Jefferies' books--unless they are mere collectors who want to have a complete set--will do well to omit the early novels. They belong to that class of book which quickly becomes scarce, but never becomes rare. There are limitations in the work of every man. With such a man as Jefferies, the limitations were narrower than with most of those who make a mark in the history of literature. He was to succeed in one way--only in one way. Outside that way, failure, check, disappointment, even derision, awaited him. In the "Eulogy of Richard Jefferies" one can afford to confess these limitations. He is so richly endowed that one can well afford to confess them. It no more detracts from his worth and the quality of his work to own that he was no novelist than it would be to confess that he was no sculptor.