completely as those of benevolence." His vanity had been gratified at too early
an age, and, like all premature pleasures, they had caused indifference, until he
despaired of creating any fresh association of pleasure with any objects of
human dire. Meanwhile, dejected and melancholy as he was through the winter,
he went on mechanically with his tasks; thought he found in Coleridge the first
description of what he was feeling; feared the idiosyncrasies of his education had
made him a being unique and apart. "I asked myself if I could or if I was bound
to go on living, when life must be passed in this manner. I generally answered to
myself that I did not think I could possibly bear it beyond a year." But within
about half that time, in reading a pathetic page of how a mere boy felt that he
could save his family and take the place of all they had lost, a vivid conception
of the scene came over him and he was moved to tears. From that moment, his
burden grew lighter. He saw that his heart was not dead and that he still had
some stuff left of which character and happiness are made; and although there
were several later lapses, some of which lasted many months, he was never
again as miserable as he had been.
These experience left him changed in two respects. He had a new theory of life,
having much in common with the anti-consciousness theory of Carlyle. He still
held happiness the end of life, but thought it must be aimed at indirectly and
taken incidentally. The other change was that for the first time he gave its proper
place to internal culture of the individual, especially the training of the feelings
which became now cardinal. He relished and felt the power of poetry and art;
was profoundly moved by music; fell in love with Wordsworth and with nature,
and his later depressions were best relieved by the power of rural beauty, which
wrought its charm not because of itself but by the states and feelings it aroused.
His ode on the intimations of immortality showed that he also had felt that the
first freshness of youthful joy was not lasting, and had sought and found
compensation. He had thus come to a very different standpoint from that of his
father, who had up to this time formed his mind and life, and developed on this
basis his unique individuality.
Jefferies, when eighteen, began his "Story of My Heart,"[31] which he said was
an absolutely true confession of the stages of emotion in a soul from which all
traces of tradition and learning were erased, and which stood face to face with
nature and the unknown.