Goring touches literature in two places.

The great house was built by Sir Bysshe Shelley, grandfather of the poet; and in the village died, in 1887, Richard Jefferies, author of _The Story of My Heart_, after a life of ill-health spent in the service of nature.

Many beautiful and sympathetic descriptions of Sussex are scattered about in Jefferies' books of essays, notably, "To Brighton," "The South Down Shepherd," and "The Breeze on Beachy Head" in _Nature near London_; "Clematis Lane," "Nature near Brighton," "Sea, Sky and Down," and "January in the Sussex Woods" in _The Life of the Fields_; "Sunny Brighton" in _The Open Air_, and "The Country-Side, Sussex" and "Buckhurst Park" in _Field and Hedgerow_.

Jefferies had a way of blending experiences and concealing the names of places, which makes it difficult to know exactly what part of Sussex he is describing; but I think I could lead anyone to Clematis Lane.

I might, by the way, have remarked of South Harting that the luxuriance of the clematis in its hedges is unsurpassed.
John Taylor, the water poet, has a doggerel narrative entitled "A New Discovery by Sea with a Wherry from London to Salisbury," 1623, wherein he mentions a woful night with fleas at Goring, and pens a couplet worthy to take a place with the famous description of a similar visitation in _Eothen_:-- Who in their fury nip'd and skip'd so hotly, That all our skins were almost turned to motley.
[Sidenote: JOHN TAYLOR AND THE CONSTABLE] Taylor gives us in the same record a pleasant picture of the Sussex constable in 1623:-- The night before a Constable there came, Who asked my trade, my dwelling, and my name, My businesse, and a troupe of questions more, And wherefore we did land vpon that shore?
To whom I fram'd my answers true and fit, (According to his plenteous want of wit) But were my words all true or if I ly'd With neither I could get him satisfi'd.
He ask'd if we were Pyrats?
We said No, (_As if we had we would haue told him so_) He said that Lords sometimes would enterprise T' escape and leaue the Kingdome in disguise: But I assur'd him on my honest word That I was no disguised Knight or Lord.
He told me then that I must goe sixe miles T' a Justice there, Sir John or else Sir Giles: I told him I was lothe to goe so farre, And he told me he would my journey barre.
Thus what with Fleas and with the seuerall prates Of th' officer, and his _Ass_-sociats We arose to goe, but Fortune bade us stay: The Constable had stolne our oares away, And borne them thence a quarter of a mile Quite through a Lane beyond a gate and stile; And hid them there to hinder my depart, For which I wish'd him hang'd with all my heart.
A plowman (for us) found our Oares againe, Within a field well fil'd with Barley Graine.
Then madly, gladly, out to sea we thrust, 'Gainst windes and stormes, and many a churlish Gust, By _Kingston_ Chappelle and by _Rushington_, By _Little-Hampton_ and by _Middleton_.
[Sidenote: THE MILLER AND SWEET DEATH] Highdown, above Goring, is a good hill in itself, conical in shape, as a hill should be according to the exacting ideas of childhood, with a sweeping view of the coast and the Channel; but its fame as a resort of holiday makers comes less from its position and height than from the circumstance that John Oliver is buried upon it.