FROM that other world of transfiguring thought wherein he
sang the joy of earth revealed through "blood, brain, and
spirit," one returns to his everyday existence. One returns to
an overworked, underpaid, and as yet little appreciated author,
struggling to support his ever more expensive family, dis-
comforted by bradypepsia, and progressively deprived of
exercise by his spinal affliction. This, and not much else, is
what one finds in his letters of the early eighties. One thing
which brought him pleasure was the institution, at the end of
1879, by Leslie Stephen, of the Sunday Tramps, a fellowship
whose twenty-mile walks took them several times a year to the
Box Hill country, where Meredith, though unable to share
their exertions, delighted to join them for a beer-and-sausage
lunch, and to entertain them at his home. In the list of
members one finds the names of several of his most valued
friends, Cotter Morison, Frederick Pollock, and R. B. Haldane
among them. One also notes the names of Robert Bridges,
W. Robinson, the famous gardener, and W. P. Ker, the eminent
historian and dry wit. In the spring of 1882 he writes of them,
"They are men of distinction in science or literature; tramping
with them one has the world under review, as well as pretty
scenery." But at that time he was in no condition for tramping.
"The doctor interdicts writing. I just manage to do my
morning's work. Any little in addition finishes me; for the
seat of the malady is the pen." In September of that year he
wrote to Leslie Stephen that he was "a bit stronger, less nerve-
shaken after holding the pen in earnest for a couple of hours."
He was trying to make progress with Diana of the Crossways,
which, he hoped, would be serialized in The Cornhill.

If things go well I shall have the story ready by the Spring,
but I dare not forecast hopefully. I begin rather to feel that I
shall write when I try--that is, in a manner to please myself,

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