Page:Literary studies by Joseph Jacobs.djvu/62

 "smiling," and you think these companions in labour must be as bright and cheerful as the picture to which they give animation. Approach nearer, and you will certainly find that haymaking time is a time for joking, especially if there are women among the labourers; but the coarse laugh that bursts out every now and then, and expresses the triumphant taunt, is as far as possible from your conception of idyllic merriment. That delicious effervescence of the mind which we call fun has no equivalent for the northern peasant, except tipsy revelry; the only realm of fancy and imagination for the English clown exists at the bottom of the third quart-pot.'

This passage certainly shows observation, but for all one can tell it may merely be the scientific observation of the psychologist, not the sympathetic reproduction of the artist. As yet it lacks the concretising touch. Similarly, when the writer goes on to remark, 'It is quite true that a thresher is likely to be innocent of any adroit arithmetical cheating, but he is not the less likely to carry home his master's corn in his shoes and pocket,' we have no warranty that this could be expanded into the Ben Tholoway of Adam Bede. And even when George Eliot notices the custom of distinguishing cousins by refer-