Page:A Voice from the Nile, and Other Poems. (Thomson, Dobell).djvu/51

 own suggestion. George Meredith, to whom I sent a copy, wrote me a very flattering because very high-minded letter. He has seen the 'City;' and though by no means sanguine with such a public as ours, he thinks it should float a volume. The admiration of so many excellent literary judges really surprises me All this about myself because I have nothing else to write about, going nowhere and seeing no one."

July 1, 1880, he writes:—

"Last Tuesday I spent with Meredith; a real red-letter day in all respects. He is one of those personalities who need fear no comparisons with their best writings."

Here is a passage from a letter dated January 5, 1881:—

"With Mr. Wright and Percy I went to George Eliot's funeral. It was wretched tramping through the slush and then standing in the rain for about three-quarters of an hour, with nothing to see but dripping umbrellas. I was disappointed by there being any chapel service at all. At the grave old Dr. Sadler mumbled something, of which only two or three words could be distinguished by us only a couple of yards behind him."

During the last two years of his life Thomson was frequently at Leicester, where he had many good friends, of whom Mr. J. W. Barrs was perhaps the most zealous. Here he was comparatively happy, as the following extract from a letter dated June 21, 1881, will show:—

"We are here four miles from Leicester, with railway station a few minutes off, in a pleasant villa surrounded