INTRODUCTION 



struggle indeed almost superhuman than these 

 last few years of JefFeries, in which through intense 

 suffering he produced his wonderfully beautiful essays, 

 unsurpassed as prose-poems by anything in the Eng- 

 lish language. 



This is the brief outline of JefFeries' life. For 

 a more complete and fuller account the reader 

 is referred to The Eulogy of Richard 'Jejferies by 

 Walter Besant, and to Mr. H. S. Salt's compre- 

 hensive Study. There are no further incidents of 

 interest to record, save those of work and illness. 

 He was always a silent man, always a man of few 

 friends, always a man of simple habits, in all weathers 

 delighting to be out of doors. We are told that 

 he worked, he walked, he wrote, he walked again, 

 he read, he watched, and observed, and thought. 

 That was his life until the terrible malady fell 

 upon him. 



He changed his residence several times. From 

 Surbiton he went, in 1882, to West Brighten; 

 thence, in 1884, to Eltham. Then, evidently 

 with an irresistible yearning for some place more 

 solitary, he moved again to a cottage near Crow- 

 borough Hill, the highest spot in Sussex. Again 

 he stayed for a few weeks on the Quantock Hills, 

 Somerset, his suffering increasing and his strength 

 failing. Lastly he moved to a house called "Sea 

 View," at Goring, where he died in his thirty-ninth 



