Such a man as Jefferies, with his necessities of fresh air and solitude, should have been adopted and tenderly nursed by some rich man; or he should have been piloted by some agent who would have transacted all his business for him, placed his articles in the most advantageous way, procured him the best price possible for his books, and relieved him from the trouble of haggling and bargaining--a necessary business to one who lives by his pen, but to one of his disposition an intolerable trouble. It would, again, one thinks, have proved a profitable speculation if some publisher had given him a small solid income in return for having all his work. Consider: for the truly beautiful papers on the country life which Jefferies wrote, there were the magazines in which they might first appear, both American and English, and there was the volume form afterwards. Would four hundred pounds a year--to Jefferies it would have seemed affluence--have been too much to pay for such a man? I think that from a commercial point of view, even including the year when he was too ill to do any work, it might have paid so to run Jefferies. As it was, he had no one to advise him. He drifted helplessly from publisher to publisher. His name stood high, and rose steadily higher, yet he made no more money by his books. The value of his work rose no higher--it even fell lower. This curious fact--that increase of fame should not bring increase of money--Jefferies did not and could not understand. It constantly irritated and annoyed him. He thought that he was being defrauded out of his just dues. On this point I will, however, speak again immediately.