IBRARY ) 
 
 iVERSlTY OF 
 ASJFCRNIA 
 <\N DIEGO
 
 s5~<3 
 
 G-7
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH
 
 V-^\
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 NOVELIST POET 
 REFORMER 
 
 BY 
 
 M. STURGE HENDERSON 
 
 WITH A FRONTISPIECE 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1907
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. Introduction . . . 
 
 II. Outline of Life and Literary Career. 
 
 III. The Shaving of Shagpat, and Farina . 
 
 IV. The Ordeal of Richard Feverel 
 
 V. Evan Harrington and The Empty Purse 
 
 VI. Modern Love . . . . 
 
 VII. Sandra Belloni and Vittoria 
 
 VIII. Rhoda Fleming . . . . 
 
 IX. Meredith as Reviewer and Critic 
 
 X. The Adventures of Harry Richmond . 
 
 XI. Beauchamp's Career and Meredith's Politi 
 cal Views 
 
 XII. An Essay on Comedy, The Sage Enamoured 
 and The Egoist 
 
 XIII. The Tragic Comedians 
 
 XIV. The Poems— "The Joy of 
 XV. The Poems— Nature 
 
 XVI. The Poems— Man 
 XVII. The Poems— Meredith as 
 
 man 
 XVIII. Diana of the Crossways 
 XIX. One of our Conquerors 
 
 AND HIS AMINTA 
 
 XX. The Amazing Marriage 
 
 XXI. The Short Stories 
 
 XXII. Minor Characteristics and Conclusion 
 
 Index ...... 
 
 Earth" 
 
 Artist and Crafts 
 
 and Lord Ormont 
 
 PAGE 
 I 
 
 9 
 17 
 
 33 
 
 48 
 60 
 
 75 
 
 94 
 
 101 
 
 114 
 
 121 
 
 147 
 172 
 182 
 196 
 212 
 
 230 
 259 
 
 270 
 285 
 301 
 
 309 
 3i9
 
 PREFACE 
 
 CHAPTERS XIV to XVII of this book, in which 
 Meredith's Poetry is considered, are the work of 
 my friend Mr. Basil de Selincourt. 
 
 To Miss Anne Douglas Sedgwick I am deeply grate- 
 ful for the encouragement she has given me, and for 
 the material underlying one of my chapters. My 
 brother, Mr. Charles Sturge, has kindly provided me 
 with an index. My thanks are due to Colonel Maxse 
 for information regarding Beauchamfs Career, and to 
 Miss G. Osier, Mrs. B. de Selincourt, and the Reverend 
 James McKechnie for assistance in various ways. Last, 
 as first, must stand my indebtedness to Mr. Meredith, 
 of which this book, inadequate as it is, is the only 
 possible acknowledgment. 
 
 The frontispiece is from a photograph by Mr. F. 
 Hollyer.
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 NOVELIST POET REFORMER 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 " T ~\ THEN at the conclusion of your article on my 
 V V works you say that a certain change in public 
 taste, should it come about, will be to some extent due 
 to me, you hand me the flowering wreath I covet. For 
 I think that all right use of life and the one secret of 
 life, is to pave ways for the firmer footing of those who 
 succeed us ; and as to my works I know them faulty, 
 think them of worth only where they point and aid to 
 that end. Close knowledge of our fellows, discernment 
 of the laws of existence, these lead to great civilisation. 
 I have supposed that the novel exposing and illustrat- 
 ing the history of man may help us to such sustaining 
 roadside gifts." These words, from a private letter of 
 George Meredith's to the author of an article in the 
 Harvard Monthly, contain the creed on which the whole 
 of his voluminous writing has been based. Imagina- 
 tively developed in the Introduction to Diana of the 
 Crossways and elsewhere, it is his plea for a kind of 
 fiction which, in prose and in verse, he may almost be 
 said to have brought into existence. 
 
 B
 
 2 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 But Meredith is not an author only : he is also a 
 critic, and a critic of an unusually penetrative kind. The 
 Essay on Comedy is universally recognised as a lasting 
 contribution to literature ; but from his articles in the 
 Fortnightly Review, for the year 1868 alone, the truth 
 may be gleaned as to the quality and range of his 
 literary judgment. He had suffered too acutely him- 
 self at the hands of reviewers to be in any danger of 
 dismissing young writers' work on the grounds of mere 
 personal distaste. His criticism is singularly sympa- 
 thetic and appreciative, but it is more. It is related to 
 the possibilities of his art and its whole body of achieve- 
 ment : it abounds in illustrations drawn from the 
 masters of literature. From these writings it is obvious 
 that Meredith possesses a very delicate power of 
 literary discrimination, and any consideration of his 
 achievement must be based on a recognition of this, in 
 spite of the fact that he has laid himself open to the 
 charge of being prolix and uneclectic in his work. The 
 truth is that his great and multiform activity has 
 obscured the single-mindedness of his impulse, and it is 
 this single-mindedness which needs to be recognised 
 afresh by those who would estimate his power. Inter- 
 mittently, Meredith is a great artist ; primarily and 
 consistently, he is a moralist — a teacher. He has 
 pondered on man and his destiny till his insight has 
 perceived whole regions and vistas of human possibility 
 that as yet are untenanted, and he has made it the 
 object of his existence to nerve his fellows to seize and 
 enter on the fulness of their inheritance. It may ap- 
 pear paradoxical that pages which would not have been 
 published by lesser writers, should have found favour 
 with an artist towering head and shoulders above any 
 but the masters, but the explanation is simple enough. 
 It is to be found in Meredith's conviction that he has a
 
 INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 message to deliver and in his willingness to sacrifice 
 all other considerations to its delivery. 1 " The Empty 
 Purse" he says in a letter to the author, "is not poetry. 
 But I had to convey certain ideas that could not find 
 place in the novels." 
 
 Unwavering sincerity is his passport to attention. 
 And we shall be guilty of a fundamental misconception 
 if we do not recognise from the outset that, even where 
 he seems most obscure, he is always attempting to 
 express a clear idea, never decoying us into a mere 
 morass of words. His writing may at times come 
 close to the ridiculous by overcrowding of its content, 
 but it never comes within sight of bombast or preten- 
 sion because its author has never experienced the 
 smallest desire to make much out of little. His poems 
 and novels are glossaries on his reading of life, and for 
 Meredith every department of life is teeming with im- 
 port. His intense and detailed interest in political and 
 international development is elsewhere dealt with ; here 
 it is sufficient to note that his dramas move on great 
 backgrounds. Life, and the interplay of art upon 
 life, is his business, the development of the soul his 
 
 theme. 
 
 How from flesh unto spirit man grows, 
 Even here on the sod under sun. 
 
 " It is," he has said, "the conscience residing in thought- 
 fulness I would appeal to," and again, " Narrative is 
 nothing. It is the mere vehicle of philosophy. The 
 interest is in the idea which action serves to illustrate." 
 Man thinks he has seen the spiritual and material 
 forces of the world at war with each other ; sentimental 
 romance and so-called realism have been the fruits of 
 this vision. Meredith sees spirit and matter unified, 
 and, in consequence, it is his avowed aim as a novelist 
 
 1 My Theme.
 
 4 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 to eschew the " rose-pink " of sentiment and the " alter- 
 native dirty-drab" of the realist. These two tendencies, 
 running off now at right angles, " fortified by philoso- 
 phy," he says, will unite in an art that is worthy the 
 name — " honourable fiction, a fount of life, an aid to 
 life, quick with our blood " — a representation of man's 
 nature as it is, " real flesh, a soul born active, wind- 
 beaten, but ascending." This then is Meredith's ideal. 
 But it is an ideal he shares with others. His desire to 
 state facts as they are, and thereby further man's pro- 
 gress, is not unique. Its uniqueness is in the strength 
 that is at work behind it. The distinction between one 
 idealist and another lies in the degree of active and 
 creative force with which each is able to identify his 
 aspirations. Meredith's qualifications for his under- 
 taking — what he has perceived and what he has ex- 
 pressed — we shall hope to analyse as this book proceeds, 
 and there can be no object in forestalling what is to 
 come. It is only necessary here to call attention to his 
 clear and reiterated statements of general purpose, and 
 to recognise a few of the more obvious difficulties his 
 method presents. 
 
 The most distinctive peculiarity of his style is his 
 constant, and, as it were, everyday employment of 
 metaphor. Where other writers nail a train of thought 
 or a series of statements in mind with a single compari- 
 son, Meredith indicates a dozen images which, taken in 
 flying succession, combine, not merely to express his 
 conclusion, but to reproduce the passage of his thought. 
 Occasionally, image may be piled upon image fantas- 
 tically, but this is very seldom the case. Usually his 
 manner is recognisably spontaneous and a direct out- 
 come of his matter. His imagination plays over every 
 object he handles, but the point to be specially noted is 
 that it is even more vivid in presenting generalisations
 
 INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 than instances, more scintillating in abstract regions 
 than in concrete. His torches of metaphor are used to 
 light the obscurity of unaccustomed paths. He is a 
 psychologist, though embodying his psychology in 
 poetic and not in scientific form ; a poet's mind is 
 penetrating caverns and recesses of thought, and the 
 pathway behind it is aflame. To take an example : in 
 the fourth division of Modern Love he turns abruptly 
 from narration to philosophic analysis and disquisition. 
 He enumerates truths that would be valuable and 
 striking even if stated abstractly ; but they are not so 
 stated. Imagery is, if anything, more abundant than in 
 the earlier portions of the poem ; every line is meta- 
 phorical ; every generalisation is pictorialised. And the 
 result, for a reader capable of following the story, is a 
 marvellous simplification of subtle and complicated ideas. 
 Not only the experience of the husband in Modern Love, 
 but his own, and that of all men whose theories are at 
 war with their passions, appears clarified — converted 
 from something vaguely apprehended to concrete and 
 tangible truth. The philosopher's gold has been put 
 into circulation ; Meredith has coined it, and presented 
 it to his fellows ; freed it from its overlaying of techni- 
 calities and given it a recognisable aspect. More than 
 this is impracticable ; it is not coin of the market-place, 
 and only those among his readers are likely to discern 
 its validity whom intellect has enabled or circumstances 
 compelled to dive beneath the surface of things, and to 
 realise departments of existence in which the accepted 
 currency has no purchasing power. 
 
 But, apart from the merely unintelligent, two formid- 
 able classes of Meredith's critics remain. The first 
 consists of those who in no way underestimate the 
 pressing importance of the problems with which 
 Meredith sets himself to deal, but demand that their
 
 6 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 philosophy and fiction shall be served to them in 
 separate dishes. The novel, say they, is nothing if not 
 a form of art ; as such it is quite unsuited to be a 
 channel of direct ethical teaching. To say this is, in 
 Meredith's view, to sign the death-warrant of fiction — 
 "to demand of us truth to nature, excluding Philosophy, 
 is really to bid a pumpkin caper." A transcript oO 
 /modern life, to be in any way credible, must exhibit 
 Jthe inner as well as the outer. It is an epoch when the" 
 minds of men are busy ; probing, mining, testing them- 
 selves and all they meet upon the onward path, groping, 
 individually and collectively, in search of new ideals 
 and inspirations on the nebulous border-lands of know- 
 ledge, apprehending laws of existence that have, as yet, 
 no formulae. The intuitive discoverers — the poets — 
 ahead of all the rest, transcribe now and again some 
 phrase of pure melody to be sung in the ranks of their 
 fellows, but these isolated fragments are apt to be re- 
 garded as objets d'art, adorable specimens for museums, 
 rather than vital revelations. Meanwhile the rank and 
 file are infected to-day with those blank misgivings, 
 those obstinate questionings, which but yesterday were 
 the exclusive possession of the poet; and in conse- 
 quence we have "problem" novels from the rear, 
 realistic chroniclings of the mud left by humanity in 
 its train. How bridge the gulf between these ruts of 
 mire and the "shining table-lands" afar, except in the 
 work of a novelist who unites the poet's vision with 
 sturdy sense of social and political growth, who takes 
 humanity with " the stem, the thorns, the roots, and the 
 fat bedding of roses" that in so doing he may envisage 
 and reveal her flower ? 
 
 The second class consists of readers who, while sym- 
 pathising with Meredith's themes and his attitude 
 towards them, are alienated by obscurities of style that
 
 INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 seem unworthy and even perverse. Why, they ask, 
 should the writer of Modern Love and the Sonnets miss 
 out connectives and relative pronouns, invert conditional 
 clauses, use adjectives as substantives, or substantives 
 as adjectives? The answer consists, partly, in the fact 
 that Meredith, failing in the best years of his life to win 
 an adequate public for his work, took to writing for 
 himself — to addressing his own intelligence — and, in 
 doing so, overestimated the alertness of other people's 
 minds. Small opportunity was given him for judging 
 what degree of swiftness average intelligences could 
 bear, and, his own mind being abnormally impatient of 
 the obvious, it was of this opportunity that he stood 
 peculiarly in need. His compression and omission of 
 inessentials is carried too far ; and his habit of seizing 
 the essence of one metaphor to give a single aspect of 
 his subject, and neglecting it instantly to snatch a con- 
 tribution from another, is apt to rank the comparisons 
 rather than the object compared in the forefront of his 
 reader's mind. But in the main, these are the defects 
 of his excellences. Effort may be required for tracking 
 his thoughts, their exactitude is seldom apparent super- 
 ficially ; but, if we are capable of understanding his 
 writings at all, of the best of them at least it may be 
 said that their vigorous atmosphere — their poetic ex- 
 altation and vitality — are with us from the beginning. 
 Certain difficulties have to be overcome ; but these are 
 by no means so varied as they seem at first sight, they 
 group themselves quickly under recognisable headings. 
 This matter of obscurity has been in fact a good deal 
 overrated. In much of Meredith's work there is no 
 obscurity at all, and the key to the novels and poems 
 which are obscure is supplied by his simpler writings. 
 For the reader who is without that preconceived an- 
 tagonism to his themes (which he encountered in his
 
 S GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 contemporaries) other obstacles will prove unenduring. 
 And, in regard to the few that exist, he is his own 
 best interpreter ; "Mrs. Mountstuart," he says, "detested 
 the analysis of her sentence. It had an outline in 
 vagueness and was flung out to be apprehended, not 
 dissected," and of Dudley Sowerby he writes: "The 
 internal state of a gentleman who detested intangible 
 metaphor as heartily as the vulgarest of our gobble- 
 gobbets hate it, metaphor only can describe ; and 
 for the reason that he had in him just something 
 more than is within the compass of the language of 
 the meat-markets. He had — and had it not the 
 less because he fain would not have had — sufficient 
 stuff to furnish forth a soul's epic encounter between 
 Nature and Circumstance : and metaphor, simile, analy- 
 sis, all the fraternity of old lamps for lighting our 
 abysmal darkness, have to be rubbed, that we may get 
 a glimpse of the fray."
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 OUTLINE OF MEREDITH'S LIF£ AND 
 LITERARY CAREER 
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH is of Irish and Welsh 
 descent. He was born in Hampshire on February 
 1 2th, 1828, and was sent early to a Moravian school at 
 Neuwied in Germany, where he remained till he was 
 fifteen. On his return to England he began studying 
 law, but very soon abandoned it for literature. For 
 seven or eight years, in the late fifties and beginning of 
 the sixties, he contributed regularly to the Ipswich 
 Journal and wrote social and literary articles for the 
 Morning Post. He acted as correspondent for the 
 Morning Post during the Austro-Italian war of 1866, 
 and stayed for some time in Venice. Towards the end 
 of the year 1867 he undertook the charge of the 
 Fortnightly Review while his friend Mr. John Morley was 
 absent in America. He was for many years reader and 
 literary adviser to Messrs. Chapman & Hall and, in 
 this capacity, is said to have discovered The Story of 
 an African Farm and its writer. He has been twice 
 married; his second wife died on September 15th, 
 1885, and is buried close to his present home at Box 
 Hill ; his first wife was a daughter of Thomas Love 
 Peacock. 
 
 There seems little object, at this distance of time, in 
 dwelling on the curious fact that the papers on which 
 Meredith began his career as a journalist were organs 
 
 9
 
 io GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 of the Conservative party, or on his heated defence of 
 Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis at the expense 
 of Lincoln and Grant. His opposition to the Manchester 
 School, and Cobden and Bright in particular, will be 
 considered elsewhere. The really noteworthy point is 
 the very unusual degree of attention he devoted to the 
 interests of women in the editorials and notes it was 
 his weekly task to provide. 
 
 His first volume, entitled Poems by George Meredith} 
 appeared in the year 185 1. It is now very rare, but 
 practically the whole of its contents appear in the 
 thirty- first volume of Messrs. Constable's Library 
 Edition of his works under the title of Poems written 
 in Early Youth?- The verses are boyish and immature, 
 and give small promise of the measure of achievement 
 which is to follow ; fine lines occur in The South- 
 West Wind in the Woodland, and the first pale sketch 
 for Love in the Valley is present, but the general level 
 of workmanship is amazingly inferior to that of the 
 volume containing Modern Love and The Ode to the 
 Spirit of Earth in Autumn — the Poems of 1862. How 
 slight is the hint in these earliest verses of what was to 
 follow may be gleaned from the fact that two of their 
 reviewers, W. M. Rossetti in The Critic for November 
 1 3th, 1 85 1 , and Charles Kingsley in Erasers Magazine for 
 December of that year, refer to their author as peculiarly 
 influenced by Keats. Rossetti's review is distinctly 
 encouraging, but otherwise it contains little or nothing 
 of interest ; Charles Kingsley's, on the other hand, is in 
 every way notable and even prophetic. He strikes at 
 once in his opening sentences to the heart of the 
 matter. " Health and sweetness," he says, " are two 
 
 1 Dedicated "To Thomas Love Peacock, Esq., with the profound 
 admiration and affectionate respect of his son-in-law." Wey bridge, May, 
 
 1851. 
 
 2 One poem only, Should thy love die, has here been omitted.
 
 OUTLINE OF MEREDITH'S LIFE n 
 
 qualities which run through all these poems. They are 
 often overloaded — often somewhat clumsy and ill- 
 expressed — often wanting polish and finish, but they 
 are all genuine, all melodiously conceived, if not 
 always melodiously executed. Mr. Meredith's Pastorals 
 too are more like real pastorals than those of any 
 young poet whom we have had for many a year. 
 
 . . . ' See on the river the slow-rippled surface 
 
 Shining ; the slow ripple broadens in circles ; the bright surface 
 smoothens ; 
 
 Now it is flat as the leaves of the yet unseen water-lily. 
 
 There dart the lives of a day, ever-varying tactics fantastic. 
 
 There, by the wet-mirrored osiers, the emerald wing of the king- 
 fisher 
 
 Flashes, the fish in his beak 1 there the dab-chick dived, and the 
 motion 
 
 Lazily undulates all thro' the tall standing army of rushes. 
 
 Joy thus to revel all day, till the twilight turns us homeward ! 
 
 Till all the lingering, deep-blooming splendour of sunset is over, 
 
 And the one star shines mildly in mellowing hues, like a spirit 
 
 Sent to assure us that light never dieth, tho' day is now buried.' 
 
 Careless as hexameters, but honest landscape painting ; 
 and only he who begins honestly ends greatly." We 
 who are accustomed to the astonishing reality and 
 incisiveness which is the leading characteristic of 
 Meredith's poetry, find the promise of it in these 
 earliest verses hard to discover. The greater in con- 
 sequence should be our tribute to a critic who on so 
 slight a body of writing, could detect this vital sincerity 
 of vision, " the living seed of poetry, certain to grow 
 and develope." 
 
 In 1856 came the Shaving of Shagpat, followed in 
 1857 by Farina, and in 1859 by the Ordeal of Richard 
 Feverel. George Eliot's enthusiastic estimate of Shagpat 
 is noted elsewhere, and The Times, on the appearance 
 of Richard Feverel, published a review 1 with which the 
 most ardent of Meredith's admirers would find it difficult 
 
 1 October 14th, 1859.
 
 12 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 to quarrel. Meredith's champions in laying stress on 
 his very real grievance against his reviewers and the 
 public have been apt to leave these notices and 
 Kingsley's appreciation of genius in his earliest efforts 
 a little too much out of count. In reading the general 
 run of contemporary reviews of The Ordeal of Richard 
 Feverel it is impossible not to feel that its writer had 
 the gravest grounds for complaint. The Athenceinris 
 summary verdict is that the book is unpleasant, the 
 Saturday Review — more long-winded but not more 
 encouraging — laments that Mr. Meredith has " written 
 a didactic novel to teach us so little" and, "by trifling 
 with a moral question, produced entirely a man's book," 
 concluding with the judgment " its author is still in the 
 imitative stage, and sits at the feet of Charles Reade." 
 But against these must be set the extraordinarily 
 lengthy and painstaking review in The Times. Nearly 
 fifty years have elapsed since the notice was written, 
 but the general conclusions reached by the reviewer are 
 those of the fair-minded critic of to-day. " Mr. Mere- 
 dith," he says, " is an original writer, and his book is a 
 powerful book, penetrative in its depth of insight and 
 rich in its variety of experience." Carefully he makes 
 good his contention against the final catastrophe, by 
 which, as he justly remarks, nothing is proved or dis- 
 proved in regard to the " System." The work, he 
 decides, is strangely imperfect, but " so crystalline and 
 brilliant in its principal passages, there is such purity 
 mingled with its laxness, such sound and firm truth in 
 the midst of its fantastic subtleties " that its greatness 
 is not to be questioned. And with page after page of 
 quotation he makes that greatness apparent, turning at 
 last to the challenge underlying the protests of almost 
 all the objectors. " This book," he concludes, " has been 
 charged with impurity, and tabooed, as we hear, in some
 
 OUTLINE OF MEREDITH'S LIFE 13 
 
 quarters by the over-fastidious. It certainly touches a 
 delicate theme, and includes some equivocal situations, 
 but of impurity, in the sense of any corrupting ten- 
 dency, we see not a trace." This quality of apprecia- 
 tion was not likely to be common, and another twenty 
 years were to elapse before James Thomson could write 
 in his Diary i 1 " Athenaeum advertisement of Egoist: 
 cordial praise from Athcnczuw, Pall Mall, Spectator, 
 Examiner. At length encouragement ! A man of 
 wonderful genius and a splendid writer may hope to 
 obtain something like recognition after working hard 
 for thirty years, dating from his majority ! " 
 
 Words such as these, from one in the thick of the 
 fight, are reasonable enough, but surely there is cause 
 for complaint in the corresponding attitude of many of 
 Meredith's later admirers, implying, as it does, an in- 
 sistence on their hero's discomfort at the want of a 
 more universal appreciation of his work. No man is 
 better able to estimate the facts of the case than is 
 Meredith. He wrote from the first, and determined to 
 write, in advance of his age ; and to suppose that his 
 maturer years have been spent in cavilling at the 
 price his youthful idealism was willing to pay, is no less 
 than absurd. His modern adherents, in natural resent- 
 ment at any neglect of his genius, have been inclined 
 to take half-truths for the whole, and certain words of 
 his own have given colour to reports of his misan- 
 thropy. " My way," he says, " is like a Rhone island 
 in the summer drought, stony, unattractive and difficult 
 between the two forceful streams of the unreal and the 
 over-real. My people conquer nothing, win none ; they 
 are actual yet uncommon. It is the clockwork of the 
 brain that they are directed to set in motion, and — 
 poor troop of actors to vacant benches — the conscience 
 
 1 November 8th, 1S79.
 
 14 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 residing in thoughtfulness which they would appeal to ; 
 and if you are there impervious to them, we are lost; back 
 I go to my wilderness, where, as you perceive, I have 
 contracted the habit of listening to my own voice more 
 than is good." 1 And he is represented as lately as 
 July, 1904, as replying to an interviewer: "The English 
 people know nothing about me. There always has 
 been something antipathetic between them and me. 
 With book after book it was always the same outcry of 
 censure and disapproval. The first time or two I 
 minded it. Since, I have written to please myself." 2 He 
 has even been represented as like his Diana, "writing 
 his best in perverseness." Some such spirit is to be 
 detected in the lines that prefaced the first edition of 
 Modern Love, in 1862 : — 
 
 This is not meat 
 
 For little people or for fools, 
 
 and in the Note, refuting allegorical intention, pre- 
 faced, in 1865, to the second edition of Shagpat ; but 
 it is far indeed from representing his permanent atti- 
 tude to his public. His maturer taste is of a quality 
 that would make any brandishing of superiority impos- 
 sible to him, but the change is even deeper-rooted than 
 that. His faith in democracy has grown firmer and 
 brighter with years, 3 and his latest poems, such as The 
 Empty Purse and, most notably, Foresight and Patience, 
 are steeped in a passionate feeling for his kind. 
 
 The truth seems to be that Meredith's work was 
 appreciated from the first by the critics capable of ap- 
 preciating it. The names of George Eliot, Kingsley, 
 and James Thomson have been cited already; and 
 Carlyle's comment on Richard Feverel, "This man's 
 
 1 Bcauchamp's Career. 
 
 a Henry W. Nevinson in the Daily Chronicle, July 5th, 1905. 
 
 3 'ate Letter to Dorking Women 's Liberal Association, May, 1904.
 
 OUTLINE OF MEREDITH'S LIFE 15 
 
 no fule!" must, even at the time, have outweighed the 
 remarks of a hundred reviewers. For fame, Meredith 
 had, as those of his calibre always have had, to wait. 
 But " If," as Mr. Trevelyan adroitly remarks, " the gods 
 showed their love for Shelley by causing him to die 
 young, they have shown their love for Mr. Meredith 
 in a more satisfactory manner, by leaving him to re- 
 ceive from us in old age the homage that was due to 
 him from our grandfathers," 1 and for thirty years at 
 least fame has now been his portion. His popularity, a 
 demand for his books at the circulating libraries, did 
 not indeed begin until 1885, with the publication of 
 Diana, and it has been the fashion with certain of his 
 aforesaid admirers to comment on this in bewilderment. 
 It was not, say they, to be expected that The Egoist 
 would be enthusiastically received, but Evan Harring- 
 ton and Rhoda Fleming — surely these were as well fitted 
 as Diana of the Crossways to appeal to popular favour ? 
 The contention as to the relative merits of the earlier 
 novels is too obvious to need support, yet the circum- 
 stance the critics exclaim at is not, in fact, an enigma. 
 Evan Harrington and Rhoda Fleming had made their 
 appearance some twenty years earlier, when the Time 
 Spirit as yet was not ripe ; and Diana, moreover, was 
 known to be founded on a substratum of sensational 
 incident which, even if the book had been comparatively 
 worthless, would have ensured its notoriety with the 
 novel-reading public. And such notoriety, though not 
 in itself to be taken very seriously, may well, as in this 
 case it did, serve as an introduction to the many who are 
 able to appreciate elements of more substantial and en- 
 during worth. And Meredith is far too great not to 
 rejoice in the widespread appreciation that is now his 
 fortune. He would, without doubt, have held on his 
 
 1 The Poetry and Philosophy of George Meredith.
 
 16 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 way, however lonely that way might have proved ; 
 though to say this is not to suppose him indifferent to 
 misconception and apathy. His work is the fruit of a 
 rare combination of sensitiveness and strength. In his 
 early days it was inevitable that sensitiveness should be 
 uppermost ; it was no less inevitable that it should be 
 quickly subdued to its place ; no man, living or dead, 
 has waged such war on Self- Pity as he. To fail to 
 recognise this, and by sentimental enthusiasm to come 
 within sight of attributing to Meredith a belittling of 
 the admiration he receives, is to offer an offence instead 
 of a tribute to his work.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE SHAVING OF SHAGPAT, 
 AND FARINA 
 
 GEORGE ELIOT, writing in The Leaders January, 
 1856, speaks of The Shaving of Shagpat as "a 
 work of genius," precious " as an apple tree among 
 the trees of the wood." The author himself styled it 
 An Arabian Entertainment, and prefaced the second 
 edition of 1865 with a note professing to disclaim for 
 it any allegorical intention. When we consider the 
 bias of George Eliot's mind, there is something a little 
 conflicting in the descriptions, but the difficulty may 
 disappear when we are face to face with the author's 
 pronouncement : " It has," he says, "been suggested to 
 me by one who has no fear of Allegories on the banks 
 of the Nile," and, proceeding to recite not very ade- 
 quate or illuminating suggestions as to his meaning, 
 he ends with the assertion : " Allegories to be of any 
 value must be perfectly clear, and when perfectly clear, 
 are as little attractive as Mrs. Malaprop's reptile." 
 With a writer much less subtle than Meredith, the key 
 in which the opening sentence of the disclaimer is 
 pitched might have sounded a warning to arrest the 
 reader's attention, and set him on his guard against 
 being beguiled. 
 
 The root idea of the allegory is plain enough. It 
 c 17
 
 i8 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 is suggested in a rhyme on the third page of the 
 
 ' Thou that dreamest an Event, 
 
 While circumstance is but a waste of sand, 
 Arise, take up thy fortunes in thy hand 
 And daily forward pitch thy tent. 
 
 The young barber, Shibli Bagarag, goes through many 
 toils and vicissitudes but he achieves his purpose of 
 shaving Shagpat, and is crowned with the proudest of 
 titles, " Master of an event." His experience, and its 
 fruitfulness for others, are summed up at the close of the 
 book, again in rhyme : — 
 
 Ye that nourish hopes of fame ! 
 
 Ye who would be known in song ! 
 Ponder old history, and duly frame 
 Your souls to meek acceptance of the thong. 
 
 Lo ! of hundreds who aspire 
 
 Eighties perish — nineties tire ! 
 They who bear up, in spite of wrecks and wracks, 
 Were season'd by celestial hail of thwacks. 
 
 Fortune in this mortal race 
 
 Builds on thwackings for its base ; 
 Thus the All-Wise doth make a flail a staff, 
 And separates his heavenly corn from chaff. 
 
 Shibli Bagarag, we perceive, stands for a reformer ; 
 Shagpat is the abuse with which he is to contend. So 
 much is plain to us all. But beyond this point most of 
 the meaning of the allegory is so enwrapped in the 
 incidents that it has waited half a century for an inter- 
 preter. Within the past year the task has been essayed 
 by the Reverend James McKechnie, 1 and performed 
 with striking success. He has included all that was, 
 within the limits of one short lecture, possible to include, 
 and the special merit of his treatment is the way in 
 which he has confined himself to an elucidation of the 
 main issues of the story. Shagpat, he tells us, is to be 
 
 1 George Meredith's Allegory, The Shaving of Shagpat, interpreted by 
 James McKechnie. James M'Kelvie and Sons : Greenock.
 
 THE SHAVING OF SHAGPAT 19 
 
 interpreted freely, as any established evil, any baneful 
 superstition, any tyranny of lies. He calls our atten- 
 tion to Meredith's understanding of the nature of a 
 genuine reformer. Shibli Bagarag is no iconoclast ; the 
 shave he proposed at first was no root-and-crop destruc- 
 tion, but the removal merely of certain gross and 
 obvious abuses ; a cleansing in the interests of health 
 and decency. But the world's Shagpats never consent 
 to a friendly shave, they are blind to the friendliness of 
 it, and " thwack " the would-be operator. This thwack- 
 ing process proves too much for the great majority of 
 budding reformers, who relapse to their native obscurity 
 forthwith. Only the chosen few, the men of true great- 
 ness, remain. Shibli Bagarag sustains the ordeal, and 
 proves his mettle by betrothing himself to Noorna-bin- 
 Noorka, the ugliest member of the family of the Duties, 
 spite of the fact that it is through following Noorna's 
 suggestions that some at least of his thwackings have 
 come. " Duty when betrothed becomes Ambition," and 
 that is the name by which to Shibli Bagarag Noorna is 
 henceforth to be known ; it is her true title. The youth 
 does not yet love her, but he is loyal to her, and his 
 loyalty is rewarded by radiant flashings through the 
 veil of her ugliness, tokens and promises of a beauty 
 that is to be. " Ugly Noornas are the blood-royal of 
 Heaven. Heaven awaits those who betroth them." 
 Fired and elevated with ambition, Shibli Bagarag de- 
 velops within himself amazing resources. By concen- 
 tration of aim he becomes larger and wiser, and gets 
 the grip of his own greatness. We hear much of 
 magical aid in his enterprise, but it should be noted 
 that his spirit-bride, Noorna-bin-Noorka, the " sorceress 
 ensorcelled," does not bestow the three spells on him ; 
 she merely puts him in the way of securing them for 
 himself. The first, Water from the Well of Paravid, was
 
 20 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 only to be obtained by a fearless plunge into an ap- 
 parently bottomless well from which the diver emerged 
 with blood on the hand that was holding his treasure. 
 The well is the Well of Truth, and its waters have 
 power to make things animate and inanimate reveal 
 their true natures. Possession of the Phial signifies the 
 gift of Insight, the seeing eye and the understanding 
 heart. The second is Three Hairs from the Tail of the 
 horse Garaveen, who is to be brought to Shibli 
 Bagarag's side by the Call of Battle, to be caught 
 by being struck on the fetlock with a Musk Ball, and 
 to be tamed by having the figure of the Crescent 
 traced upon his forehead. Garaveen symbolises En- 
 thusiasm ; and the three actions are the three hairs or 
 strands that go to make up the spell. The Call to 
 Battle is the merely instinctive enthusiasm, the war- 
 rior's delight, the pugilist's fervour; the Musk Ball is 
 sensuous glamour, passionate activity, conscious joy in 
 creation ; the Crescent — the power to tame Garaveen, 
 to yoke him to the plough, to give him capacity for 
 drudgery — is religion. Third and last of the charms is 
 the Lily of the Lovely Light, the Lily of the Enchanted 
 Sea. This is the Soul's Ideal, its vision of the kingdom 
 that should be on the earth. There are ideals rooted 
 only in the intellect and serviceable merely for purposes 
 of criticism ; Shibli Bagarag's was not of this kind, it 
 had for root a living, palpitating heart and compelled 
 him to action. Shibli Bagarag and his bride were 
 carried to the Well of Paravid by the evil genie Karaz 
 in the form of an enchanted ass, " Men see the right 
 by the assistance of the wrong. They are carried to 
 truth on the back of falsehood. Error plays the ass 
 and helps the reformer." Shibli is now equipped with 
 the three essentials for his enterprise, " Insight — accu- 
 rate knowledge of things as they are ; Idealism — clear
 
 THE SHAVING OF SHAGPAT 21 
 
 vision of things as they ought to be ; Enthusiasm — 
 strength to change things as they are into things as 
 they ought to be," but nothing is yet achieved. He has 
 the spells but he has not used them : he is not master 
 of an event. It is time for him to press forward. 
 Noorna points him to the signal of his approach 
 flaming on the mountains of Aklis and tells him that 
 the sword which is being sharpened there, the sword for 
 the shaving of Shagpat, awaits his arrival. But Shibli 
 Bagarag is weary ; that passion for reality which has 
 singled him out from his fellows, for the time being is 
 spent. He loses grip of his will, allows his mind to be 
 unemployed, and passes into the realm of Rabesqurat, 
 Queen of Illusions, the realm of drifting. This place 
 had proved fatal to many, if not to most, of the 
 searchers for the sword, and Shibli Bagarag might, 
 " for any self-control he was exercising, have plunged 
 into some tank of temptation, and wallowed there until 
 return to cleanness and strength was impossible. But 
 his fair heredity, his wholesome instincts — the self 
 within the self saved him." And now we come to 
 Aklis. " Shagpatism represents life in its institutional 
 aspect, full of errors, superstitions and wrongs. The 
 Quest of the Spells represents life in its aspiring and 
 disciplinary aspect, a school wherein, by much effort 
 and hardship, man may learn wisdom. The Realm of 
 Rabesqurat represents life in its frivolous, pleasure- 
 loving, superficial aspect. Aklis represents life in what 
 may be called its legal aspect, using that word not in 
 its institutional but its cosmic sense. This devil's 
 lottery of existence, this chaotic tossing and tumbling 
 of things — see it through the eye of Aklis and all is 
 order, law, government. ' No aid or friendliness in 
 Aklis.' No chance or injustice in Aklis. Here the un- 
 seen powers keep shop. All manner of merchandise,
 
 22 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 suiting every taste, is to be got in exchange for spells. 
 But without spells, appointed and of proportionate 
 value, nothing is to be got, for the unseen powers are 
 strict merchant-men and no dispensers of charity." 
 Aklis is the realm, not of efforts, but of results, and to 
 linger there is disastrous. Men destined for greatness 
 must pass through it quickly, claiming whatever 
 weapons their spells can procure. But Shibli Bagarag 
 finds himself greeted there as famous, the foremost man 
 of his age, possessed of the three mighty Spells ; he is 
 tempted to rest awhile on his laurels. He is snared by 
 the Duping Brides. " He is represented in the Allegory 
 as a benumbed and pathetic piece of statuary, sitting on 
 a throne from which he could not move, crowned with a 
 crown of bejewelled asses' ears. Wanted immediately 
 a shower of lusty thwacks — thwacks with a sting in 
 them to be applied for the awakening of Shibli 
 Bagarag. Alas ! the world has no thwacks for Shibli 
 Bagarag. Ear-tickling, soothing flatteries are its gift 
 to him now. Praise God, man can come to his own 
 rescue. Man can thwack himself. As he sat on that 
 benumbing throne the memory of his Noorna, his duty 
 and his ambition, came mightily and reproachfully on 
 the youth. He laughed the thinkers laugh — the bitter 
 laugh of self-criticism — potent to break all bonds of 
 evil magic, to set all captives free. What was that 
 laugh but Shibli Bagarag thwacking himself? Self- 
 inflicted thwacks hurt most and heal most when there is 
 humour in the administering of them. The man who 
 cannot laugh at himself is in bondage to himself. The 
 man who cannot see over his own shoulders will never 
 grow taller. Self-criticism is the chief saving-grace of 
 life ; had Shibli Bagarag not possessed it his career 
 would certainly have closed in that Hall of the Duping 
 Brides. As it was he arose in chastened mood to
 
 THE SHAVING OF SHAGPAT 23 
 
 seek the sword." The Sons of Aklis, sharpeners of the 
 sword, represent the Time-Spirit, and they have the 
 weapon in waiting for Shibli. The Sword is the em- 
 blem of destruction ; Shagpat's opportunity for survival 
 by submission to a friendly, conservative cleansing is 
 past. But before it is placed in Shibli's hands he is 
 required to surrender his spells to Gulrevez, the milk- 
 white antelope. " Masters of events, saviours of the 
 world, have necessarily escaped from cramping and 
 betraying personal motives. They are men who reso- 
 lutely sacrifice themselves, and who hold the sword at 
 the price of sacrifice. By finally abandoning self- 
 seeking, by sinking himself and all that he had in his 
 cause, Shibli Bagarag became a mighty and a con- 
 secrated power. The sword of the Lord was in his 
 hands." But so great a power is dangerous to wield. 
 Shibli had learned the lightning-like qualities of the 
 sword, and as he recrossed the stream that divides 
 Aklis from the world, he was evilly tempted to flash it 
 in order to discover the features of the Veiled Figure 
 ferrying the boat. The sight froze and paralysed his 
 limbs. Hideously he laughed like one insane. " In her 
 nameless nature he saw Rabesqurat Queen of Illusions. 
 Shibli Bagarag had seen Rabesqurat before. He had 
 examined her by the light of the lily, and seen a ' sight 
 to blacken the earth and all bright things with its 
 hideousness,' but strange to say, so little did the sight 
 affect him that almost immediately he was on good 
 terms with the Queen again. What the flashing of the 
 sword showed him, though scarcely worse in itself, had 
 an immeasurably worse effect on him. It blighted him, 
 drove strength and sunshine from him, well-nigh 
 paralysed him for life. There behold the terrible 
 privilege of earnestness. Dilettantish pessimists have 
 been known to number themselves among those sad
 
 24 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 initiates, those wisdom-blighted ones who have looked 
 behind the Veil and seen the nameless sight. They 
 have, at most, seen Rabesqurat by the light of the 
 lily — something vastly different from seeing her by the 
 flashing of the sword." At last Shibli Bagarag's 
 training was complete, and he was equal to his task. 
 He is cautious now in his daring, calm in his impulse. 
 His enemy is taken unawares ; in the hour of his 
 triumph the sword of Aklis descends. Fearful was 
 the struggle that ensued, genii and men taking part 
 in it, but at its end " day was on the baldness of 
 Shagpat." 
 
 It has seemed the best, and in fact the only adequate, 
 method of paying just tribute to Mr. McKechnie's 
 achievement to give this short abstract of his lecture 
 uninterrupted by interpolation or comment. His limit 
 of time was severe, and the success of his undertaking 
 is largely due to rigid exclusion of side issues and 
 complexities ; moreover, the Afterword he has added to 
 his interpretation makes it quite clear that the delicate 
 and elusive qualities of the work have in no way 
 escaped his attention. The Genie Karaz is, perhaps, a 
 little too summarily dismissed. His power is immense, 
 and Noorna in telling Shibli Bagarag of her past re- 
 calls his terrific schemes for the perversion and destruc- 
 tion of mankind and his influence in her life. He 
 would seem to stand for the perverted and misdirected 
 forces of the world which the wise man must en- 
 counter and subdue in order to mould them to his ends. 
 When Noorna first summons the genie she replies to 
 her father's objections to making use of him — 
 
 It is the sapiency of fools 
 
 To shrink from handling evil tools, 
 
 and, through much danger and difficulty, she subdues 
 him to the shape of an ass and renders him otherwise
 
 THE SHAVING OF SHAGPAT 25 
 
 serviceable to her bidding. There is kinship between 
 this idea and the fact that the Waters of Paravid 
 include in their virtue the kind of insight required for 
 the comprehension and management of men. On his 
 return from the Well, Noorna welcomes her lover with 
 the words, " 'Tis achieved, the first of thy tasks ; for 
 mutely on the fresh red of thy mouth, my betrothed, 
 speaketh the honey of persuasiveness." She replies to 
 Shibli's question as to how he is to find his way unaided 
 to the City of Oolb, with the reminder that a drop 
 from his phial will endow the very herbage, stones, and 
 sand of the desert, with powers of speech ; yet two 
 pages later we come on the injunction, "Where men 
 are, question not dumb things," as the only response to 
 be elicited from a city fountain questioned by Shibli. 
 This is a characteristically Meredithian touch. No man 
 ranks the magic of natural things higher than he, 
 but it is to be studied chiefly as a means to an end, 
 and that end the comprehension of ourselves and our 
 fellows. His seer is one who "hither, thither fares, 
 close interthreading nature with our kind," 1 and he 
 condemns the out-of-door enthusiast in the last of his 
 novels for "studying abstract and adoring surface 
 nature too exclusively to be aware of the manifesta- 
 tion of her spirit in the flesh." 2 
 
 We have quoted Mr. McKechnie's excellent com- 
 ments on the laugh of self-criticism that released 
 Shibli from the Hall of the Duping Brides. But it is 
 not at this point only that the Allegory insists on the 
 uses of laughter ; the idea is elsewhere recurrent. The 
 men enslaved by the evil magician Goorelka, and 
 changed into birds piping at her pleasure, are freed 
 and restored as soon as Noorna has succeeded in keep- 
 ing them laughing uninterruptedly for the space of an 
 
 1 Earth? s Secret. 2 The Amazing Marriage ^ chapter xxv.
 
 26 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 hour ; and the full virtue and valour of that cleansing 
 laugh in the Hall is only revealed to us as we consider 
 the nature of the experiences that preceded it. From 
 the Realm of Rabesqurat, with all its appeal to the 
 senses, Shibli Bagarag had made his escape. Conse- 
 quently, here in Aklis, he has been immune from 
 temptations offered by the fountains of jewels, the 
 scented halls, and the marvels of the feast. It was 
 only to the blandishments of the seven-and-twenty 
 damsels, robed in the colours of the rising and setting 
 sun, and waiting to hail and crown him as their king, 
 that he ultimately succumbed. He had taken the pre- 
 caution, moreover, to hold the Lily to the faces of the 
 maidens and to wet their lips with water from the 
 Phial, and no change had taken place in their beauty 
 or their bearing, except that they each broke into luting 
 and singing of verses descriptive of their various tem- 
 peraments. One, light as an antelope on the hills, with 
 timid, graceful movements, sang : — 
 
 Swiftness is mine, and I fly from the sordid ; 
 
 another, with arrows of fire in her eyes, and voiced like 
 the passionate bulbul in the shadows of the moon, 
 sang, clasping her hands : — 
 
 Love is my life, and with love I live only, 
 Give me life, lover, and leave me not lonely ; 
 
 whilst one came straight up to Shibli, took him by the 
 hand and pierced him with her glance, singing : — 
 
 Were we not destined to meet by one planet ? 
 Can a fate sever us ? can it, ah ! can it ? 
 
 Shibli succumbs, and he is crowned and enthroned in a 
 small inner chamber ; crowned, as he is presently to 
 discover, with asses' ears and glued to his throne. His 
 charmers depart ; the door of his chamber is shut ; and 
 he is left in thick darkness, alone. He cannot get free
 
 THE SHAVING OF SHAGPAT 27 
 
 of his throne, but his agonised efforts avail to move it, 
 as he sits, out into the Hall of the Brides. There the 
 doors of ninety-eight recesses stand open, and ninety- 
 eight other dupes, solemn and motionless on their 
 thrones, are displayed to his sight. There seems small 
 hope of freedom for Shibli ; many of these monarchs 
 are old, and all appear to have been long in their 
 places. Yet the sight of fellow dupes may give him 
 an opening for mirth. But Shibli does not laugh, he 
 does not even smile, till his eyes light on a mirror that 
 reflects the crown on his forehead. Then, not at the 
 sight of the ludicrous appearance of others, but at 
 his own idiotic predicament, he shakes the Hall with 
 his laughter. 
 
 Great stress is laid by Mr. McKechnie on the fact 
 that when Shibli has peered through the veil of the 
 Ferrying Figure, he does not say what he has seen. 
 " Rabesqurat," says Mr. McKechnie, " in her nameless 
 nature, it is forbidden to speak of her. God seals the 
 lips of those whom he lets peer behind the Veil." Is 
 not this interpretation at once too definite and too 
 vague ? Shibli himself gasps the name " Rabesqurat," 
 but it is clear that what he sees cannot be the Queen of 
 Illusions as she was shown to us earlier. Sensuous 
 enticements cannot befool him now, it must be im- 
 possible therefore to terrify him with revelations of 
 their illusion. The change in standpoint is subtle, but 
 it is essential. Of old, the Queen pitted her immediate 
 satisfactions of sense against the life of the spirit, and 
 for a while she prevailed. " The soul of Shibli Bagarag 
 was blinded by Rabesqurat in the depths of the 
 Enchanted Sea. She sang to him, luting deliriously ; 
 and he was intoxicated with the blissfulness of his for- 
 tune, and took a lute and sang to her love-verses in 
 praise of her, rhyming his rapture. Then they handed
 
 28 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 the goblet to each other, and drank till they were on 
 fire with the joy of things." Temptation, then, took a 
 comparatively elementary form ; illusions were mis- 
 taken for realities. The matter is vastly different now ; 
 and the key to the difference is to be found in the title 
 of the Ferrying Figure. This last and latest tempta- 
 tion is the very converse of the earlier wiles of Rabes- 
 qurat. The reformer aflame with his mission is suddenly 
 confronted with the visage of Death, and every health- 
 ful and natural instinct of his nature, for the time being, 
 is paralysed. He loses hold on reality, he sees Life 
 itself as an Illusion. His sense of values is lost, he 
 ceases to be interested in his existence, and it is due to 
 the friendship of Abarak and the bracing affection of 
 Noorna that the ashes of his spirit are ever rekindled. 
 If there are any who require to be convinced either of 
 the greatness of the Allegory, or of Meredith's under- 
 standing of human life, they cannot do better than turn 
 to these three chapters, " The Veiled Figure," " The 
 Bosom of Noorna," and " The Revival," some eleven 
 pages in all. The Reformer has been trained, tested, 
 and fully equipped for his task ; his spells are surren- 
 dered, his life is dedicate, when this final disaster over- 
 takes him. Connecting the experience with Rabesqurat, 
 we see it as merely the swing of the pendulum, the old 
 incapacity for separating illusion from reality, seen on 
 its reverse side. The truth seems simple enough now 
 it is revealed, but the discovery is Meredith's and not 
 ours. For in life, as in Shagpat, the two forms of 
 seduction lie far apart. The first is obvious and depends 
 upon man's ignorance. The second is subtle and 
 avails itself of his knowledge ; it is the temptation of 
 the spiritually minded, of those who are learning to 
 " sit lightly to the world," and loose the tenacity of 
 their grasp on tangible and material concerns. An
 
 FARINA 29 
 
 ascetic has claimed that no genuine Contemplative 
 forgets or neglects the details of his or her organisation 
 or Order, and he instances the extraordinary capacity 
 for detail of such minds as St. Catherine's. On this 
 point at least Meredith and he would find themselves 
 in agreement. But there is in existence a pseudo- 
 mysticism far from uncommon, which allows its semi- 
 philosophic emphasis on transiency and mortality to 
 paralyse the only means of expression of which man's 
 spirit is assured. The familiar " We will eat and drink, 
 for to-morrow we die" of the courtiers of Rabesqurat 
 is complicated now. " To-morrow we die " stands at 
 the beginning of the aphorism, and in the shadow of it 
 all human organisation and effort sink to the level of 
 eating and drinking. 
 
 It is curious that, amid the chorus of more or less 
 intelligent appreciation by which George Meredith in 
 his old age is surrounded, no voice should have been 
 raised to comment on the fact that last year — 1906 — 
 marked the jubilee of his advent as a novelist. The 
 explanation probably is that even among the small 
 number of readers acquainted with The Shaving of 
 Shagpat and Farina very few are aware how long ago 
 it is that they were written. No mark of age is borne 
 by their contents, and it is almost impossible to regard 
 them as two generations old, at least till they are seen 
 in their original dress. Some strangeness there cer- 
 tainly is about the rough pea-green cover and coarse 
 gilt lettering of the Farina of 1857 — a strangeness 
 shared by the tone of the criticism which greeted it. 
 The Saturday Review cavilled at the redundance of its 
 language, attributing the fault to the influence of " Mr. 
 Ruskin, who has taught young writers to lay on their 
 colours too bright and too thick." The Athenceum is 
 more appreciative of Meredith's powers in general, but,
 
 30 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 in regard to this book in particular, the reviewer 
 inclines to take with one hand what he has given with 
 the other. " Farina" he says, " is a full-blooded speci- 
 men of the nonsense of genius." 
 
 The main motive is a well-sustained renderiner of 
 romantic adventure in a medieval setting. The story 
 tells how Farina, a youth of Cologne, who has all the 
 courage of his companions without their barbarous 
 methods of showing it, wins the city's cynosure, 
 daughter of the wealthiest burgess, for his wife. The 
 purity of his love and the perfection of his courage 
 are shown to be interdependent, and the method 
 by which his bride is won introduces the " second 
 subject." Farina accompanies Monk Gregory, who has 
 an appointment with the Devil, to the summit of the 
 Drachenfels. With the youth as his witness, Gregory 
 encounters the Evil One. The Devil, feigning the 
 monk his conqueror, disappears to the nether regions 
 by way of Cologne. But the smell of his exit makes 
 the city uninhabitable ; and the Kaiser, who is en- 
 camped outside, cannot come into it. Farina is a 
 Chemist, and he escorts the Kaiser, conquers the 
 stench with the " Eau de Cologne " he has invented, 
 and receives his bride in reward. 
 
 As to Margarita's willingness there has for long been 
 no question. For she is of the order of beings that 
 Meredith loves ; a girl with many boy-like characteris- 
 tics, who uses her eyes and her brain for the purpose of 
 finding realities and living in the light of them. The 
 key to her character is given in her reply to Lisbeth's 
 warnings against her natural depravity, " Where I see 
 no harm, Aunty, I shall think the good God is, and 
 where I see there's harm, I shall think Satan lurks." 
 Siegfried is her hero ; courage and tenderness are the 
 qualities she asks in a lover, and as soon as she finds
 
 FARINA 31 
 
 them in Farina, she loves him directly, openly, and 
 with her whole heart. We see her first in the vineyards, 
 dressed in a short, blue gown with a scarlet bodice ; her 
 hair like ripe corn, and in it a saffron crocus stuck bell 
 downwards. Her blue eyes smile frankly, but some- 
 thing as yet unstirred is in their depths — a sleeping 
 dragon — which because Margarita "has not dallied with 
 heroes in dreams" will spring up at need, will handle a 
 sword in the den of the robbers, and face death un- 
 afraid. Wedded to her, Farina, when warehouses of 
 false Farinas displaying flasks like his own rise round 
 him on all hands, is able to laugh at "the back-blows of 
 Sathanas." " Fame and fortune," he mused, " come 
 from man and the world. Love is from heaven. We 
 may be worthy and lose the first. We lose not love 
 unless unworthy. Would ye know the true Farina? 
 Look for him who walks under the seal of bliss ; whose 
 darling is for ever his young, sweet bride, leading him 
 from snares, priming his soul with celestial freshness. 
 There is no hypocrisy can ape that aspect." 
 
 Though the tale — included now in Chloe and other 
 Stories — is short, it contains many of the elements of 
 Meredith's later work and amply enough portrays his 
 special faculty for uniting pageant and problem in the 
 reading of life. Its chief interest for us lies in the ex- 
 tent to which it takes on the clothing we recognise to- 
 day as characteristic of Meredith's thought, though to 
 say this is not to neglect the fact that it possesses a 
 rarity and value of its own. The frank contrast 
 between the monk, who by renouncing the joy of life 
 fell a prey to spiritual pride and its destruction, and 
 Farina, who by his fearless welcome of all life gave, 
 achieved the very conquest claimed by the ascetic, is 
 the keynote of the whole. 
 
 So far Meredith's essays in fiction consist of two ex-
 
 32 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 periments, two imitations of definite styles of romance. 
 Neither may appeal to our taste ; we may object to 
 both of his models ; but we can hardly question his skill 
 as a copyist, or refuse to admit that his dramas have a 
 vitality unobscured by the mannerisms in which they 
 are clothed. It is evident, too, that he has views of his 
 own to express ; views serious, though not always 
 stated with the obvious seriousness the Englishman is 
 apt to demand. Social reformation, for instance, is typi- 
 fied by a shave ; " thwacking " epitomises the long 
 spiritual discipline the reformer has to undergo ; and 
 the natural fragrance of a life that overcomes the 
 ascetic's slur upon humanity is symbolised by the in- 
 vention of Eau de Cologne. He has shown unusual 
 agility in catching the idioms of alien languages ; he is, 
 we suspect, training himself to speak in his own. Yet 
 at the outset, the Wagging Tongue 1 and "the spell that 
 tieth every faculty except the tongue, the spell of vain 
 longing," have been held up to our scorn. He has not 
 yet found his voice ; but when he speaks, he will, we 
 feel, speak to the purpose. 
 
 1 " The Story of Khilpil the Builder." Shaving of Shagpat.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL 
 
 THIS, the first of George Meredith's novels, ap- 
 peared in 1859, two years after Farina, and three 
 from the Shaving of Shagpat. There is no affectation of 
 frivolity, no cloaking of earnestness here ; The Ordeal 
 of Richard Feverel is red-hot from the first page to the 
 last. It does not contain the noblest of Meredith's 
 creations, and the emotional pitch is not so evenly sus- 
 tained as in Sandra Belloni, but in its fusion of intellect 
 and feeling it is perhaps the greatest of his works. The 
 thought is vitally related to the subject, and in com- 
 parison with most of Meredith's novels, the book is 
 free from side issues and intellectual excursions. The 
 Feverels are brilliant, and in their mouths aphorisms 
 are not out of place. Sir Austin Feverel, moreover, is 
 just the kind of person who would commit his reflections 
 to paper and publisher ; and, in availing himself of this 
 likelihood, Meredith has obtained his background of 
 disquisition and comment with unusual adroitness. 
 "Who rises from Prayer a better man, his prayer is 
 answered." " When we know ourselves fools, we are 
 already something better." " For this reason so many 
 fall from God who have attained to Him; that they cling 
 to Him with their Weakness, not with their Strength." 
 "Nature is not all dust, but a living portion of the 
 spheres. In aspiration it is our error to despise her, 
 
 d 33
 
 34 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 forgetting that through Nature only can we ascend." 
 Those who are familiar with Meredith's thought through 
 his subsequent works recognise these sayings as ex- 
 pressions of his most individual conviction, but in 
 Richard Fever el they appeared woven into the fabric of 
 the plot and related to the character of Sir Austin. 
 
 I find it impossible to agree with Mr. Le Gallienne in 
 his preference for Richard Feverel in its earliest form. 
 Little of value has disappeared from the later editions, 
 and the dramatic intensity of the work is greatly 
 enhanced by the pruning of exuberant details. Far 
 from being regrettable, those alterations appear to me 
 the best of witnesses to Meredith's power of self- 
 criticism. 1 Detailed accounts of the many lady admirers 
 of " The Pilgrim's Scrip," Sir Austin's progenitors, Sir 
 Miles Papworth's convictions and appearance, even 
 Richard's babyhood and earliest birthdays, and Ripton 
 Thompson's invitation to Raynham and arrival there, 
 were surely beneath the dignity of the book. But to 
 say this is not of course to deny value to the existence 
 of the original edition ; the only question is as to the 
 nature of that value. Many of us feel that we could 
 spare little that Meredith has given ; but, over and above 
 this consideration, the original edition of the story is 
 valuable in familiarising us with the earlier stages of the 
 author's thought in reference to some of his characters. 
 They have gained, become more vital and unified in 
 later presentment ; but, granting that fact, we may yet, 
 in the case of Sir Austin at least, glean a good deal 
 from the earlier and less vigorous portrait. We hear 
 more of his popularity before the date of his lady's 
 
 1 The history of the poem In the Woods affords another striking 
 example of this power. It appeared in The Fortnightly for August, 1870, 
 and consisted of nine stanzas. Of these nine, three only, now known as 
 Whimper of Sympathy, Woodland Peace, and Dirge in Woods have been 
 reprinted, and these are amended remarkably.
 
 ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL 35 
 
 defection ; we see him from that time, when Richard is 
 four years of age, fussy and over-anxious, even super- 
 stitious in his guardianship ; and we realise a fact 
 which, though really completely stated in subsequent 
 editions, may be missed by readers unfamiliar with the 
 general trend of Meredith's thought — that the baronet's 
 calamity, instead of making a philosopher of him as he 
 supposed, had led him to dwell on " The Ordeal " of the 
 Feverels, and regard his experience as unique. Here 
 too we have the explanation of what to many of us was 
 puzzling — how Sir Austin, with his instinct for noble- 
 ness, could have elected Adrian, rather than Austin, as 
 Richard's preceptor. "Austin had offended against the 
 Baronet's main crotchet, that to ally oneself randomly 
 was to be guilty of a crime before Heaven greater than 
 the offence it sought to extinguish." 1 Later editions 
 merely inform us that Austin Wentworth does not live 
 with his wife, and that he is reproached for being 
 " barren to posterity while knaves are propagating" ; but 
 in this, the earliest, his uncle's attitude is presented with 
 considerably greater explicitness. " Think, Madam," the 
 baronet says to Lady Blandish, " think that he, a young 
 man of excellent qualities, has madly disinherited his 
 future. I do not forgive him. The nobler he, the worse 
 his folly. I do not forgive him." Benson's curious and 
 somewhat offensive position in the household is ex- 
 plained also, and on similar grounds ; the butler had 
 been the victim of a connubial misfortune, and was 
 known to share Sir Austin's view of women. In short, 
 the degree of emphasis laid on this particular subject in 
 the first edition of the book is tasteless, and in later life 
 Meredith has been quick to realise the fact. To us it 
 is valuable only as bringing out the truth that Sir 
 Austin, while he supposes himself detached and judicial, 
 
 1 1859 Edition. Vol. i, page 54.
 
 36 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 in reality is singularly warped by his suffering. His 
 " Pilgrim's Scrip " is a mine of much wisdom, and 
 written, we are told, " from the Triad which gives 
 a healthy utterance to wisdom — reflection, feeling, and 
 experience," but pride and self-pity prevent him from 
 turning his knowledge to account. " The direct applica- 
 tion of an aphorism," we are told, " was unpopular at 
 Raynham." Yet, in spite of his System, Sir Austin is 
 by no means a fool ; Meredith describes him, at the 
 crucial moment of his relationship to Richard, as " a 
 fine mind, and a fine heart, at the bounds of a nature 
 not great." That he is cognizant of his own total lack 
 of humour is stated explicitly, and for such cogni- 
 zance real intellect is necessary ; a belief in their per- 
 ception of the comic being one of the most deeply 
 rooted prejudices of unimaginative minds. It is ad- 
 mirable also to keep a brave face to the world — when 
 one is injured to refuse to whimper — and in this task 
 Sir Austin is only too successful. Above the common 
 run of men in character, he emerges triumphant from 
 the common testings of conduct ; he is cruelly deceived, 
 but deception does not make him wrathful or vindictive. 
 In the normal relations of life his bearing is blameless, 
 but he aspires to something greater than these, and, in 
 aspiring, encounters his Ordeal. He attempts to play 
 Providence to Richard, and to stand to Lady Blandish 
 for wisdom incarnate. His early misfortune has taught 
 him something of mankind, but little or nothing of 
 himself. When Richard breaks from his control, he 
 questions, not the nature of that control, but the sound- 
 ness of humanity ; when Lady Blandish pleads for 
 Richard's forgiveness he imagines himself great-minded 
 in the maintenance of a rigid superiority. "By the 
 springs of Richard's future, his father sat : and the 
 devil said to him : ' Only be quiet : do nothing : reso-
 
 ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL 37 
 
 lutely do nothing : your object now is to keep a brave 
 face to the world, so that all may know you superior to 
 this human nature that has deceived you.' Further he 
 whispered, ' And your System — if you would be brave 
 to the world, have courage to cast the dream of it out 
 of you : relinquish an impossible project ; see it as it is 
 — dead : too good for men ! ' ' Ay ! ' muttered the 
 baronet, ' all who would save them perish on the Cross ! '" 
 " How," comments Sir Austin's creator, " are we to 
 distinguish the dark chief of the Manichaeans when he 
 talks our own thoughts to us ? " Chiefly, perhaps, by 
 this tendency to lay the blame for our peculiar griefs on 
 humanity's shortcomings ; above all, by any inclination 
 to seek great parallels for our private experiences, and 
 in debasing words of high and holy association, betray 
 our ignorance of spiritual values. 
 
 " Expediency is man's wisdom, doing right is God's." 
 On this truth, apprehended intellectually by Sir Austin, 
 his nephew Austin Wentworth intuitively acts. We 
 hear of him as socially condemned, not for the sin of his 
 youth but for its atonement — " ' Married his mother's 
 housemaid/ whispered Mrs. Doria," — and as a friend of 
 the poor. But we first see him in his interview with 
 Tom Bakewell and his subsequent conversations with 
 Richard. Unlike the rest of the Feverels, he is not 
 brilliant or even quick-witted. He avoids preaching at 
 Richard ; but the avoidance is instinctive rather than 
 reasoned ; for he falls into the intellectually equivalent 
 error of attempting to bring realities home to the boy 
 by picturing to him Tom Bakewell's discomfort in prison. 
 Richard's sense of the ludicrous is infinitely keener than 
 Austin's, and reminders of poor Tom's loutishness do 
 not help on the argument. Nevertheless, Austin's pur- 
 pose is achieved. Richard sets forth in his company to 
 make confession to the farmer, and the scene is typical
 
 38 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 of the way in which Austin Wentworth's single-minded- 
 ness serves to brush brain-spun obstacles like cobwebs 
 from his path. Lucy's admirers, half-hearted and whole- 
 hearted alike, hesitate and manoeuvre for months as 
 to how she is to be brought into her father-in-law's 
 presence ; Austin returns from five years' absence in the 
 tropics to learn Lucy's address and the outline of her 
 story from a chance meeting with Adrian in Piccadilly, 
 and by nightfall she and her child are with him at 
 Raynham. " I have brought Richard's wife, sir," with a 
 joking question as to his own exact relationship to the 
 baby, serve as their introduction ; and when the new- 
 comers are accepted and borne off to sleeping-apart- 
 ments, " A person you take to at once " is his only 
 rejoinder to the Baronet's favourable comment on 
 Lucy's appearance. It is he who brings Bessie Berry's 
 long-truant husband to her feet. It is his presence Lady 
 Blandish entreats when Lucy lies dead in the French 
 cabaret ; the tragedy has darkened beyond human aid, 
 but she feels that Austin's presence may rekindle charity 
 and faith in its spectators. He moves in and out of the 
 foreground as an influence none the less potent for his 
 complete lack of assumption ; where Austin is, we feel 
 all will go well, just as where Adrian is all will go wrong. 
 The fact that his actual appearances are short and 
 infrequent would be more regrettable were it not for our 
 consciousness that he survives as a permanent ideal in 
 the mind of his author. We find ourselves moved to 
 particular sympathy with Bessie Berry's parting re- 
 minder to Lucy on that strange night of their arrival 
 at Raynham : " And now let us pray blessings on that 
 simple-speaking gentleman who does so much 'cause he 
 says so little," but we feel that the actual terms of the 
 description cover not Austin Wentworth alone, but a 
 whole family of Meredith's masculine characters.
 
 ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL 39 
 
 It is, as Mr. Le Gallienne has pointed out, by the 
 very strangest of mistakes that Adrian Harley has been 
 confused with Meredith's ideal and even with himself. 
 It is indeed a cardinal point of his teaching that intellect 
 is the true guide of the spiritual man, and that feeling, 
 however sweet and pure it may be, is an insufficient 
 director of conduct. But in all such teaching it is need- 
 ful to make certain assumptions, and that the capacity 
 for emotion is an essential of human equipment is a fact 
 on which he has supposed it needless to insist. Adrian 
 is an excellent piece of characterisation ; he is the 
 wittiest person in the book, and all the Feverels are 
 witty. To Austin's plea of urgency when Richard is 
 implicated in the rick-burning, " The boy's fate is being 
 decided now," he yawns out the retort, " So is every- 
 body's, my dear Austin," and to Richard's repeated 
 assertions that Lucy had done all in her power to put 
 off their marriage, he rejoins, " Not all ! not all. She 
 could have shaved her head for instance." But in 
 spite of Adrian's cleverness, Meredith allows us no 
 manner of doubt as to his baseness of nature. " Adrian 
 Harley," he tells us, " had mastered his philosophy at the 
 early age of one-and-twenty. Many would be glad to 
 say the same at that age twice-told ; they carry in their 
 breasts a burden with which Adrian's was not loaded. 
 Mrs. Doria was nearly right about his heart. A singular 
 mishap (at his birth, possibly, or before it) had unseated 
 that organ and shaken it down to his stomach." Lucy, 
 when his name is mentioned, inquires whether he is 
 good. " Good ? " says Richard. " He's very fond of 
 eating, that's all I know about Adrian." He is in the 
 habit of making jokes " delicately not decent, though so 
 delicately so that it was not decent to perceive it." He 
 is a person to be reckoned with on account of his quick- 
 wittedness ; but he is detestable, and it would hardly be
 
 40 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 possible for him to be more heartily detested than he is 
 by his author. 
 
 Richard's cousin Clare is one of the least satis- 
 factory features of the book ; her death is intended to 
 heighten the tragedy, but in effect it is not convincing. 
 We are told in connection with Richard's home-coming 
 after his long separation from his friends that the duel 
 to take place on the morrow made the worth of each 
 human relationship clear to him, "the thought of the 
 leaden bullet dispersed all unrealities." This, we feel, 
 is as it should be, and as it actually is. But it cuts at 
 the root of the story of Clare. She has decided to die ; 
 she has even taken the potion ; yet she writes on, in her 
 diary, of love and longing for Richard, writes till 
 bodily torment is revealed in the penmanship, and till 
 the friends into whose hands the pocket-book falls must 
 be convinced of her suicide. Even allowing for a strong 
 vein of morbidity, this is not life as we know it. Clare 
 with her unassuming generous nature would probably 
 not have written so at all ; but, if she had, it is certain 
 that, in the presence of death, she would have destroyed, 
 she would not have prolonged her record. The diarist's 
 is the action not of the person who commits suicide 
 but of the person who talks of committing it. 
 
 The first edition of The Ordeal contained, as has been 
 said, a good deal that was tasteless ; but what is remark- 
 able to note is that the portions, now so wisely discarded, 
 concerned only subsidiary matters. The infantine 
 Richard, Mrs. Doria, Sir Austin's admirers, Benson, 
 Ripton Thompson, the old doctor, and Mrs. Grandison, 
 were the characters affected. The heart of the tale, its 
 heights and depths, were all as we now know them. 
 Nothing has been taken from the scene of Richard's 
 meeting with Lucy, and nothing has been added to it. 
 The river that opened out to the founts of the world
 
 ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL 41 
 
 was the same as it is now, magical with the genuine 
 magic of dawn. Gleam of water and earth, glint of 
 heron and kingfisher, song of sky-lark and blackbird, 
 with scent of the meadows — these things were caught, 
 exquisite and unmarred, from the first. The Idyll of 
 young Love, with its background of midsummer flowers, 
 came from the hand of the author perfect as now. 
 " Golden lie the meadows : golden run the streams ; red 
 gold is on the pine-stems. The sun is coming down to 
 earth, and walks the fields and the waters. The sun is 
 coming down to earth, and the fields and the waters 
 shout to him golden shouts. He comes, and his heralds 
 run before him, and touch the leaves of oaks, and planes 
 and beeches lucid green, and the pine-stems redder 
 gold ; leaving brightest foot-prints upon thickly-weeded 
 banks, where the foxglove's last upper-bells incline, and 
 bramble-shoots wander amid moist rich herbage. The 
 plumes of the woodland are alight ; and beyond them 
 over the open, 'tis a race with the long-thrown shadows ; 
 a race across the heath and up the hills, till, at the 
 farthest bourne of mounted eastern cloud, the heralds 
 of the sun lay rosy fingers, and rest. Sweet are the shy 
 recesses of the woodland. The ray treads softly there. 
 A film athwart the pathway quivers, many-hued, against 
 purple shade fragrant with warm pines, deep moss-beds, 
 feathery ferns. The little brown squirrel drops tail and 
 leaps ; the inmost bird is startled to a chance tuneless 
 note. From silence unto silence things move." 
 
 " With its background," did I say ? The phrase is 
 strangely superficial. Speech or action of the lovers 
 occupies the least part of the pages in which the 
 marvel of their love is revealed. The greater part is 
 devoted to the pageant of earth, the glorious proces- 
 sion of the hours. It is customary to believe that 
 whatever else Meredith may have done or left undone,
 
 42 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 he has accomplished in The Egoist that which he came 
 to do. But that book, brilliant as it is, appears hardly 
 more than a sketch — a study in temperaments — when 
 compared with the full-blooded, passionate wealth of 
 some of his other works. The intellectual subtleties, 
 of which he is so renowned a master, are his snare ; 
 they lead him constantly into error in estimation and 
 treatment of detail. For the genius of his work lies 
 not in its artistic perfection, nor even in its intellectual 
 subtlety, but rather in its greatness of original outline 
 and conception. Richard Feverel, Sandra Belloni, and 
 Harry Richmond are not artistically perfected, they 
 contain subsidiary characters and events that are quite 
 out of drawing. Classic they are, not in their form — 
 that, compared with Turgenev's for instance, is im- 
 mature and uncouth — but by virtue of their power. 
 The modern novelist's gift of manipulation, though 
 exercised only upon puppets, is not despicable ; but we 
 feel in Lucy and Sandra and Roy, that the dust of 
 humanity has been breathed on by a creator. Meredith 
 views the elemental forces at the roots of our being in 
 the light of a great poetic conception of life and its 
 background. His dramas are not episodes merely ; 
 they include a horizon, they allow for the unuttered 
 part of our speech ; and this is probably the truth that 
 has been aimed at in the comparison of his works with 
 Shakespeare's. The flame of sunrise and sunset mingles 
 inextricably with the love-making of Richard and 
 Lucy. Meredith has given us later and more intellectual 
 statements of kinship between Earth and her children ; 
 but here is its spontaneous artistic expression, broad in 
 appeal because grounded in the commonest human ex- 
 perience — an expression moreover of which prose in no 
 other hands has proved itself capable. " The tide of 
 colour has ebbed from the upper sky. In the west the
 
 ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL 43 
 
 sea of sunken fire draws back ; and the stars leap forth, 
 and tremble, and retire before the advancing moon, 
 who slips the silver train of cloud from her shoulders, 
 and, with her foot upon the pine-tops surveys heaven. 
 'Lucy, did you never dream of meeting me?' 'O 
 Richard ! yes ; for I remembered you.' ' Lucy ! and 
 did you pray that we might meet ? ' 'I did ! ' Young 
 as when she looked upon the lovers in Paradise, the 
 fair Immortal journeys onward. Fronting her, it is 
 not night but veiled day. Full half the sky is flushed. 
 Not darkness ; not day : but the nuptials of the two. 
 1 My own ! my own for ever ! You are pledged to me ? 
 Whisper ! ' He hears the delicious music. ' And you 
 are mine ? ' A soft beam travels to the fern-covert 
 under the pine-wood where they sit, and for answer he 
 has her eyes : turned to him an instant, timidly flutter- 
 ing over the depths of his, and downcast ; for through 
 her eyes her soul is naked to him. ' Lucy ! my bride ! 
 my life ! ' The night-jar spins his dark monotony on 
 the branch of the pine. The soft beam travels round 
 them and listens to their hearts." 
 
 When we consider the age of its author, this maturity 
 of workmanship seems striking enough, and no less so 
 in the chapter entitled " Nursing the Devil," psychologi- 
 cally one of the finest in the book. But on the tragic 
 heights of the story the art is equally supreme ; above 
 all in Richard's wandering, when he has just learned of 
 his fatherhood, and in that great scene where the high- 
 water mark of novelistic passion is reached — his last 
 meeting and parting with Lucy. Richard, when Austin 
 arrives and alludes to the birth of his boy, is in Nassau 
 with Lady Judith Felle, his sentimentalist friend. The 
 news scatters his vapours and brings him to life. He 
 starts out by himself when a storm is impending ; and 
 mountain and forest, breathless silence, and rush and
 
 44 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 thunder of tempest, serve as ministers and accompani- 
 ments to his awakening spirit. " A father ... a child." 
 In spite of his anguished repentance, alone there amid 
 the grandeurs and mysteries of storm, he, the sole 
 representative of humanity, feels himself greater than 
 they. In conflict with the elements " his spirit rose, 
 and marched, and exulted, let it be glory, let it be ruin ! 
 Lower down the lightened abysses of air rolled the 
 wrathful crash : then white thrusts of light were darted 
 from the sky, and great curving ferns, seen steadfast in 
 pallor a second, were supernaturally agitated, and van- 
 ished. Then a shrill song roused in the leaves and the 
 herbage. Prolonged and louder it sounded, as deeper 
 and heavier the deluge pressed. A mighty force of 
 water satisfied the desire of the earth. Even in this, 
 drenched as he was by the first outpouring, Richard had 
 a savage pleasure. Keeping in motion he was scarcely 
 conscious of the wet, and the grateful breath of the 
 weeds was refreshing. Suddenly he stopped short, lift- 
 ing a curious nostril. He fancied he smelt meadow- 
 sweet ; he had never seen the flower in Rhineland — 
 never thought of it ; and it would hardly be met with 
 in a forest. He was sure he smelt it fresh in dews. 
 His little companion wagged a miserable wet tail some 
 way in advance. He went on slowly, thinking in- 
 distinctly. After two or three steps he stooped and 
 stretched out his hand to feel for the flower, having, he 
 knew not why, a strong wish to verify its growth there. 
 Groping about, his hand encountered something warm 
 that started at his touch, and he, with the instinct we 
 have, seized it, and lifted it to look at it. The creature 
 was very small, evidently quite young. Richard's eyes, 
 now accustomed to the darkness, were able to discern 
 it for what it was, a tiny leveret, and he supposed that 
 the dog had probably frightened its dam just before he
 
 ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL 45 
 
 found it. He put the little thing on one hand in his 
 breast, and stepped out rapidly as before. The rain 
 was now steady ; from every tree a fountain poured. 
 So cool and easy had his mind become that he was 
 speculating on what kind of shelter the birds could 
 find, and how the butterflies and moths saved their 
 coloured wings from washing. Folded close they might 
 hang under a leaf, he thought. Lovingly he looked 
 into the dripping darkness of the coverts on each side, 
 as one of their children. Then he was musing on a 
 strange sensation he experienced. It ran up one arm 
 with an indescribable thrill, but communicated nothing 
 to his heart. It was purely physical, ceased for a time, 
 and recommenced, till he had it all through his blood, 
 wonderfully thrilling. He grew aware that the little 
 thing he carried in his breast was licking his hand 
 there. The small rough tongue going over and over 
 the palm of his hand produced this strange sensation 
 he felt. Now that he knew the cause, the marvel 
 ended ; but now that he knew the cause, his heart was 
 touched and made more of it. The gentle scraping 
 continued without intermission as on he walked. What 
 did it say to him ? Human tongue could not have said 
 so much just then. A pale grey light in the skirts of 
 the flying tempest displayed the dawn. Richard was 
 walking hurriedly. The green drenched weeds lay all 
 about in his path, bent thick, and the forest drooped 
 glimmeringly. Impelled as a man who feels a revelation 
 mounting obscurely to his brain, Richard was passing 
 one of those little forest-chapels, hung with votive 
 wreaths, where the peasant halts to kneel and pray. 
 Cold, still, in the twilight it stood, raindrops pattering 
 round it. He looked within, and saw the Virgin holding 
 her Child. He moved by. But not many steps had 
 he gone ere his strength went out of him, and he
 
 46 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 shuddered. What was it ? He asked not. He was in 
 other hands. Vivid as lightning the Spirit of Life 
 illumined him. He felt in his heart the cry of his 
 child, his darling's touch. With shut eyes he saw them 
 both. They drew him from the depths ; they led him 
 a blind and tottering man. And as they led him he 
 had a sense of purification so sweet he shuddered again 
 and again. When he looked out from his trance on 
 the breathing world, the small birds hopped and 
 chirped ; warm fresh sunlight was over all the hills. 
 He was on the edge of the forest, entering a plain 
 clothed with ripe corn under a spacious morning sky." 
 
 And this scene, moving though it be, is but as an 
 antechamber to the scene where Richard has returned to 
 his wife, the scene where the light in Lucy's eyes is like 
 the light on a moving wave — changeful, yet constantly 
 radiant — and Richard, again and again asking if his 
 confession has been understood, receives one answer 
 only, and that in its turn no answer but a question : 
 " ' But you love me? Richard ! My husband ! you love 
 me ? ' ' Yes, I have never loved, I never shall love, 
 woman but you.' ' Darling ! Kiss me.' ' Have you 
 understood what I have told you?' ' Kiss me,' she said. 
 He did not join lips. ' I have come to you to-night to 
 ask your forgiveness.' Her answer was still : ' Kiss me.' 
 1 Can you forgive a man so base ? ' ' But you love me, 
 Richard ? ' ' Yes : I can say that before God. I love 
 you, and I have betrayed you, and am unworthy of 
 you — not worthy to touch your hand, to kneel at your 
 feet, to breathe the same air with you.' Her eyes shone 
 brilliantly. 'You love me! you love me, darling!' And 
 as one who has sailed through dark fears into daylight, 
 she said, ' My husband ! my darling ! you will never 
 leave me ? We shall never be parted again ? ' " Of the 
 immediate blighting of her hopes, of the terror of part-
 
 ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL 47 
 
 ing, and the tragic outcome of it all, nothing can here 
 be told. These events belong on a level where there is 
 no place for language that is not inspired. Robert 
 Louis Stevenson calls the parting scene between 
 Richard and Lucy the strongest written in English 
 since Shakespeare, and, though we may question the 
 artistic justifiability of events so cruelly heart-rending, 
 there can be no question as to the grandeur and exalta- 
 tion of style in which they are treated. We are 
 reminded of the comment of James Thomson's friend 
 on another work of Meredith's : " Here truly are words 
 that if you pricked them would bleed." 
 
 The Ordeal of Richard Feverel is not a wholly satis- 
 factory book. It is blotted by a certain kind of ugliness, 
 already suggested in connection with Clare, and exem- 
 plified further in Ripton's drunkenness after the wedding, 
 the details of the picnic at Richmond, and in Mrs. 
 Mountfalcon's relation to Richard. The writer's sense 
 of the tragedy of human existence is so intense that it 
 borders on cruelty ; self-slain — his characters seem not 
 the less almost hounded to ruin. But to realise the 
 greatness of the work, we have only to reflect how in- 
 tolerable the tale would become, shrunk to the canvas 
 of an inferior writer. We may not think the story 
 likeable, but we cannot, unless we are idiots, read and 
 be blind to its power. In view of this the first of his 
 novels we may question whether the author's outlook 
 on life will grow broad-based enough to support his 
 burden of feeling ; but we know him already as a poet 
 and not a transcriber — one who is not boxed in with 
 his characters but sees them against a great background 
 of earth and of air.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 EVAN HARRINGTON AND THE EMPTY 
 
 PURSE 
 
 PVAN HARRINGTON, which made its appear- 
 *^ - " ance as a serial in Once a Week for the year i860, 
 is the most entertaining of Meredith's stories. That 
 it possesses qualities raising it high above the level 
 of ordinary serials it is not necessary to state ; but, 
 nevertheless, it more nearly makes the appeal of the 
 popular novel than does any other of Meredith's works. 
 Readers unacquainted with his writings are usually 
 advised to begin upon Evan Harrington, and the 
 advice, generally speaking, is sound. Yet it needs 
 qualification in reference to the reader's nature and 
 aim ; for it must be borne in mind that Evan Harring- 
 ton, though easy to read and vastly diverting, cannot 
 be compared with Richard Feverel, for instance, in the 
 reward it offers. It is, of course, tender and wise in 
 its playfulness, serious enough too in some places, but 
 not with the elemental seriousness and wisdom that 
 The Ordeal inwinds with the very springs of our being. 
 And the root of the difference lies in the subject. 
 Tested by the ordinary standards of fiction Evan 
 Harrington would merely be noted as a striking success, 
 but in relation to Meredith's novels it is necessary to 
 add a remark as to the level on which that success 
 is obtained — the level of circumstance and incident. 
 These accidents Meredith of course moulds to his ends; 
 
 48
 
 EVAN HARRINGTON 49 
 
 he emphasises distinctions in social position to reveal 
 similarities in nature ; but, nevertheless, his realities, 
 his spiritual situations, depend upon these distinctions 
 for their interest and strength. 
 
 The story is of a tailor's son, who, with the instincts 
 and upbringing of a gentleman, finds himself, at his 
 father's decease, bound to the business by debt. His 
 mother — a remarkable woman enough — comes of the 
 professional classes, but Evan Harrington's distinction 
 descends to him from his father. When the story 
 opens, the Great Mel is no longer living ; but the 
 whole atmosphere of the book is pervaded by his pre- 
 sence. Though neither his vice nor his virtue are on 
 quite so heroic a scale, Melchisedec Harrington is Roy 
 Richmond's forerunner ; they meet in a common dis- 
 dainfulness of money combined with requisition of the 
 society and circumstance it brings : " Mr. Melchisedec 
 had been at once the sad dog of Lymport and the 
 pride of the town. He was a tailor, and he kept 
 horses ; he was a tailor, and he had gallant adventures ; 
 he was a tailor, and he shook hands with his customers. 
 Finally, he was a tradesman, and he was never known 
 to have sent in a bill." Throughout his life he had 
 managed to preserve an attitude of respect to his wife ; 
 but the task had been difficult, owing to her sordid 
 concern with matters of business and her practice of 
 picking up the pence as he squandered the pounds. 
 His four children — three daughters and a son — had 
 been removed in their youth from the taint of the shop 
 so far as that was possible ; and, when the story begins, 
 all the daughters are assured of social position by 
 marriage, while, under their tutelage, Evan, a lad of 
 seventeen, waiting an army commission, spends the 
 hours " not devoted to his positive profession — that of 
 gentleman — " in his brother-in-law's brewery, " toying 
 
 E
 
 50 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 with big books and balances " ; and is soon to be in- 
 veigled into false and ludicrous positions by his sister 
 Louisa, who has obtained a Portuguese Count for her 
 husband. 
 
 The vulgarity of the Countess de Saldar de Sancorvo 
 — as by the end of the book she has come to style her- 
 self — is too exaggerated to be real ; but the very fact 
 that she possesses no psychological significance, is not 
 indeed a credible character, leaves us free to ignore 
 the depths of her coarseness and enjoy her endless 
 manoeuvres to the full. To these we are first intro- 
 duced when, in company with Evan and her husband, 
 who is a refugee, she attaches herself to a diplomatist's 
 party returning from Lisbon to the metropolis. The 
 Government sloop is boarded in the Thames by Goren, 
 a tailor, who brings Evan news of his father's death. 
 " I'm going down to-night," he proclaims, " to take care 
 of the shop. He's to be buried in his old uniform. 
 You had better come with me by the night-coach, 
 if you would see the last of him, young man." The 
 Countess is sincerely affected, but the word " shop " 
 may have been overheard, and it must be retrieved. 
 After a moment's strained silence the situation is saved 
 by her outcry, " In his uniform ! " Melchisedec had 
 been in the Militia ! She is a master of intrigue, and 
 on her own ground it is not possible to outwit her, but 
 she is, of course, outwitted in the end by the one factor 
 she has no means to deal with — disinterested affection. 
 Her failure, however, teaches her nothing but a change 
 of tactics. And the book ends with a letter she writes 
 to her sister from Rome : " Let the postmark be my 
 reply to your letter received through the Consulate, 
 and most courteously delivered with the Consul's com- 
 pliments. We shall yet have an ambassador at Rome — 
 mark your Louisa's words. Yes, dearest ! I am here,
 
 EVAN HARRINGTON 51 
 
 body and spirit ! I have at last found a haven, a refuge, 
 and let those who condemn me compare the peace 
 of their spirits with mine. You think that you have 
 quite conquered the dreadfulness of our origin. My 
 love, I smile at you ! I know it to be impossible for 
 the Protestant heresy to offer a shade of consolation. 
 Earthly- born, it rather encourages earthly distinctions. 
 It is the sweet sovereign Pontiff alone who gathers all 
 in his arms, not excepting tailors. Here, if they could 
 know it, is their blessed comfort ! . . . " 
 
 The Countess, Jack Raikes, the Great Mel, and Tom 
 Cogglesby are to be conceived as a Dickens-like back- 
 ground, throwing into prominence the reality and 
 naturalness of Rose. Yet, in one aspect only ; for, col- 
 lectively, these eccentrics, and not Rose or her lover, 
 form the outstanding feature of the book. Tom 
 Cogglesby's birthday celebration at the Green Dragon 
 is a scene memorable enough ; but it is in Tom with 
 Andrew at the Aurora, interviewing Lady Jocelyn, 
 schooling Jack Raikes, that Meredith finds play for not 
 the least significant of his powers. His Comic Spirit, 
 for the moment, is embodied, to lie in wait for every 
 impostor ; and Raikes, " who represented one who was 
 rehearsing a part he wished to act before the world, and 
 was not aware he took the world into his confidence," 
 gives its ingenuities full play. Cogglesby's mind teem s 
 with whimsical notions for the exposure and correction 
 of pretenders ; notions not in any way vindictive, but 
 outspoken and salutary ; birth of a child heart and full- 
 grown intelligence, and proof, if indeed any such proof 
 were required, that Cogglesby's creator is in intimate 
 touch with the Spirit of Comedy. And nowhere 
 perhaps in the whole of Meredith's writing is his read- 
 ing of life, his faith in Earth's meaning for those who 
 are teachable, those who are fools but for a season,
 
 52 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 better expressed than it is here in its earliest form. 
 Love-sick and engrossed in his sorrow, Evan comes on 
 a woman in extremity by the side of the road. " A 
 misery beyond our own," comments his author, " is 
 a wholesome picture for youth, and though we may not 
 for the moment compare the deep with the lower deep, 
 we, if we have a heart for outer sorrows, can forget 
 ourselves in it. Evan had just been accusing the 
 heavens of conspiracy to disgrace him. Those patient 
 heavens had listened, as is their wont. They had 
 viewed, and had not been disordered by his mental 
 frenzies. It is certainly hard that they do not come 
 down to us, and condescend to tell us what they mean, 
 and be dumbfounded by the perspicuity of our argu- 
 ments — the arguments, for instance, that they have not 
 fashioned us for the science of the shears, and do yet 
 impel us to wield them. Nevertheless, they to whom 
 mortal life has ceased to be a long matter perceive that 
 our appeals for conviction are answered — now and then 
 very closely upon the call. When we have cast off 
 the scales of hope and fancy, and surrender our claims 
 on mad chance, it is given us to see that some plan is 
 working out : that the heavens, icy as they are to the 
 pangs of our blood, have been throughout speaking to 
 our souls ; and, according to the strength there exist- 
 ing, we learn to comprehend them. But their language 
 is an element of Time, whom primarily we have to 
 know." 
 
 Meredith's criticism of his poem The Empty Purse, 
 A Sermon to Our Later Prodigal Son, has been quoted 
 already. As a poem it is not possible to rank it highly, 
 yet, as a deliberate avowal of ideas which are implicit in 
 much of his writing, it has great value. Published in 
 1892, over thirty years after Evan Harrington, it is con- 
 cerned with a similar theme. A penniless and destitute
 
 EVAN HARRINGTON 53 
 
 youth is discovered on a wayside bank, his empty purse 
 
 lying beside him for symbol of his material prospects, 
 
 " quenched youth " the term by which he is addressed. 
 
 His pitiable condition wins him no peace ; a moralist is 
 
 at hand who urges the desperation of the prodigal's 
 
 case as a pretext for instant probing of his past. The 
 
 youth's history, he says, must at once be questioned, 
 
 his whole life summoned and reviewed. Memory's 
 
 fullest aid is invoked, and it is found that a pampered 
 
 childhood was succeeded by a season of passion in 
 
 which, on account of his wealth, the world presented 
 
 itself to the youth as a feast for his appetites. Hints 
 
 and beckonings of loveliness had indeed visited him in 
 
 boyhood, but none of the discipline needful for long and 
 
 delicate quests had been his. Moreover, any support 
 
 he might have received from conventional moralities 
 
 was early withdrawn from him by the most insidious of 
 
 corruptions: — _ ., 
 
 c Some one said 
 
 (Or was it the thought into hearing grew ?) 
 
 Not thou as commoner men ! 
 
 Thy stature puffed and it swayed, 
 
 It stiffened to royal-erect ; 
 
 A brassy trumpet brayed ; 
 
 A whirling seized thy head ; 
 
 The vision of beauty was flecked. 
 
 Note well the how and the when, 
 
 The thing that prompted and sped. 
 
 Much pains is spent in demonstrating to the prodigal 
 that the homage of his satellites which served to foster 
 this belief was given, not to himself, but to his well- 
 stored purse. The hideous reality of the " carnivorous, 
 cannibal " thing that he was is pictured with brutal dis- 
 tinctness. His wealth provided the weapons of prey ; 
 he has preyed disgracefully on his fellows, men and 
 women alike, and it is his riches which are the source of 
 the evil — riches which have been the ruin of him, and 
 will be the ruin of others after him. For this is the
 
 54 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 burden of the poem, that circumstances which shelter 
 from conflict and foster any assumption of superiority 
 to his fellows are the greatest curse a man can carry. 
 The sole wealth earth has to offer lies in knowledge won 
 from experience. And thus this poverty, this naked- 
 ness that have descended on the youth — these indeed 
 are not his ruin, but his golden opportunity, his first 
 real chance in life. Hitherto he has been enchained, 
 imprisoned, walled off by his riches from comradeship 
 with his fellows. The Sorcerer Gold has had him in his 
 
 S n P '• But now from his cavernous hold, 
 
 Free may thy soul be set, 
 As a child of the Death and the Life, to learn, 
 Refreshed by some bodily sweat, 
 The meaning of either in turn, 
 
 What issue may come of the two : — 
 A morn beyond mornings, beyond all reach 
 Of emotional arms at the stretch to enfold : 
 A firmament passing our visible blue. 
 
 Inexperienced youth, in Meredith's view, represents 
 little but energy, potentiality, either for good or for 
 evil. He says of Evan, at the opening of his career : 
 " He has little character for the moment. Most youths 
 are like Pope's women ; they have no character at all." 
 And in regard to another of his heroes he is even more 
 explicit : " Wilfrid was a gallant fellow, with good stuff 
 in him. But, he was young. Ponder on that pregnant 
 word, for you are about to see him grow. He was less 
 a coxcomb than shamefaced and sentimental ; and 
 one may have these qualities and be a coxcomb to 
 boot, and yet be a gallant fellow ; and harsh, exacting, 
 double-dealing, and I know not what besides, in youth. 
 The question asked by nature is, ' Has he the heart to 
 take and keep an impression ? ' For, if he has, circum- 
 stances will force him on and carve the figure of a brave 
 man out of that mass of contradictions." a But at what 
 
 1 Sandra Belloni, chap. XIII.
 
 EVAN HARRINGTON 55 
 
 cost? At the price commonly of all the things he 
 holds dearest on earth ; whereat he reproaches nature 
 his creator, and circumstance his sculptor, forgetful that 
 their sole duty was to make him a man. It is clear at 
 the close of Evan Harrington that this duty is per- 
 formed. Of the hero's honesty and manliness there is 
 no longer a question ; he has clearly " struck earth " ; 
 that is, he has grounded his efforts and ambition on 
 the reality of his circumstance and character. And the 
 necessity of this " saving grasp in the stern-exact " is the 
 fundamental belief of the creator of General Ople and 
 Clotilde von Riidiger. A man or woman whose aspira- 
 tions are not rooted in fact, the primary fact being the 
 limitations of their own character, is, in Meredith's eyes, 
 useless and worse. A man must see himself as he is, 
 divested of all false and adventitious aids, and recognise 
 exactly the nature of the raw material with which he 
 has to work, before he can begin to weave the fabric of 
 a life. In early days the shuttle may seem to cross and 
 recross at a furious pace ; but, until a pattern has been 
 chosen and the threads selected and controlled to some 
 determined end, there will be no issue upon the loom. 
 For the possibilities of self-deception, of unreality, of 
 confusion between sentiment and emotion, are almost 
 unlimited. Evan reclining in his chariot, on his way 
 to his father's funeral, believing himself to be meditating 
 upon Love and Death, sees a halo cast about Tailor- 
 dom and is able to despise the opinion of the world 
 that looks down on it. Yet presently, when he finds he 
 has not money enough for his postillion's tip, and sees 
 himself consequently lowered in one man's estimation, 
 his pride is up in arms. " To be asked for what he does 
 not possess, to be seen beggared, and to be claimed a 
 debtor — alack ! " Yet the Fates that are at work on 
 the moulding of Evan find that he can " take an im-
 
 56 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 pression." He has been deceiving himself and attitud- 
 inising before Rose Jocelyn, and this experience with 
 the postillion gives him a first glimpse of the truth : 
 " From the vague sense of being an impostor, he awoke 
 to the fact that he was likewise a fool." None the less, 
 arrived at his destination, he informs his father's 
 creditors in the lordliest manner that their accounts 
 will be paid to the last farthing, without pausing to 
 estimate, either their number, or the nature and degree 
 of sacrifice of himself that are involved. Evan has 
 shown himself capable of taking an impression, of 
 self-criticism : the severer task of learning to keep it, 
 to remodel his habits upon it, lies before him still. 
 Yet his lesson is learned and with swiftness. And the 
 reason of that swiftness Meredith would have us inquire. 
 In part, of course, it is due to favourable predispositions 
 in Evan's nature, but it is due, in the main, to the weight 
 of the sculptor's hand upon him ; to the fact that his 
 conditions are the very opposite of those of the gilded 
 youth of the poem. 
 
 Even the hero of The Empty Purse is to prove him- 
 self manly at last ; but Meredith would have us believe 
 that throughout he might have been a good fellow 
 enough, had it not been for 
 
 Grandmotherly Laws 
 Giving rivers of gold to our young, 
 In the days of their hungers impure. 
 
 In this connection Mr. Trevelyan has already quoted 
 the diatribe of the democratic German professor who 
 calls Harry Richmond to account for the intellectual 
 sluggishness of his class. The true place for youth in 
 our present conflict of parties and interests is, Meredith 
 believes, on the side of social progress and experiment, 
 
 As a Tentative, combating Peace, 
 Our lullaby word for decay.
 
 EVAN HARRINGTON 57 
 
 But inheritance of wealth, he says, almost invariably 
 leads the inheritor to rank himself with the defenders 
 of privilege, the opponents of change and reform. This 
 Prodigal, who is now about to take his right place 
 in the fray, in the days of his wealth has been 
 
 A conservative youth ! who the cream bowl skimmed, 
 Desiring affairs to be left as they are. 
 
 Life, he will find, is an art ; and much remains yet to be 
 learned ; but, 
 
 Rubbing shoulder to shoulder, as only the book 
 Of the world can be read, by necessity urged, 
 
 at last the conditions of learning are his ; and more- 
 over — for The Empty Purse is more than a variation 
 of Meredith's constant theme of the necessity of self- 
 knowledge and self-discipline — this special experience 
 of his must be held as a trust for his kind. This youth 
 condemned to disaster by parental stupidity is called on 
 to testify against the mistake from which he has suffered, 
 to inveigh against the laws that protect 
 
 Men's right of bequeathing their all to their own 
 (With little regard to the creatures they squeezed) 
 
 as relics of a non-spiritual past and the childhood of the 
 race. But the task will not be easy ; for hitherto 
 the most idealistic of men have considered that money 
 should be one item at least of their children's inherit- 
 ance ; and the mass of mankind make hoarding for their 
 successors one of the chief aims of their lives. But con- 
 tumely is not to be dreaded ; 
 
 'Tis the portion of them who civilize, 
 Who speak the word novel and true. 
 
 Courage and persistence needful for the task are to 
 be drawn from a comprehensive vision. Measuring the 
 present degree of civilisation against the savage infancy 
 of our race, the day when " our forefather hoof did its
 
 58 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 work in the wood," we shall cease to be distrustful 
 of change, we shall press forward to a time when man's 
 soul shall have conquered his brutishness and brain rule 
 supreme over force. Much has been accomplished by 
 our ancestors, but true reverence for their efforts must 
 be shown in accepting our responsibility for further 
 development, and pressing on towards ideals as yet 
 unachieved. And when we have compassed this real 
 understanding of the past, it will blossom in passionate 
 feeling for the future and the lives yet to be. Man has 
 confused pleasure and luxury till he has come to look 
 upon them as identical. But the sources of pleasure 
 are, in fact, common and inexhaustible, and when these 
 are exalted to their true place and preferred to luxuries 
 only attainable by the few, money at last will assume 
 its real and comparatively elementary significance. 
 That day will bring to mankind joys that are now 
 unimagined and unimaginable. The goal is afar ; but 
 meanwhile — and it is one of Meredith's chief claims as 
 an idealist on our attention that he always has a mean- 
 while — if we are to lift Earth heavenwards, we must 
 look to the foundations on which our structure is to be 
 reared. And to this end he urges on individuals the 
 need for closer contact with the hearts of their fellows 
 and a deeper intimacy with nature ; urges it in terms 
 not merely didactic but with something at least of the 
 emotional stimulus of poetry. 
 
 The God in the conscience of multitudes feel, 
 And we feel deep to Earth at her heart, 
 We have her communion with men, 
 New ground, new skies for appeal. 
 
 Yield into harness thy best and thy worst ; 
 
 Away on the trot of thy servitude start, 
 
 Through the rigours, and joys and sustainments of air. 
 
 If courage should falter, 'tis wholesome to kneel. 
 
 Remember that well, for the secret with some, 
 
 Who pray for no gift, but have cleansing in prayer,
 
 EVAN HARRINGTON 59 
 
 And free from impurities, tower-like stand. 
 
 I promise not more, save that feasting will come 
 
 To a mind and a body no longer inversed. 
 
 The sense of large charity over the land, 
 
 Earth's wheaten of wisdom dispensed in the rough, 
 
 And a bell ringing thanks for a sustenance meal 
 
 Through the active machine : lean fare, 
 But it carries a sparkle ! 
 
 It is, however, in the last stanza of all that the 
 characteristically penetrative analogy — the truly Mere- 
 dithian quality — is apparent. Who but Meredith, it 
 may justly be asked, would have attempted this lengthy 
 political exposition in verse? But who else, it may 
 as justly be answered, could crown such complicated 
 sermonising with an image so culminating and incisive? 
 
 Our season of drought is reminder rude : — 
 
 No later than yesternoon, 
 
 I looked on the horse of a cart, 
 
 By the wayside water-trough. 
 How at every draught of his bride of thirst 
 His nostrils widened ! The sight was good : 
 
 Food for us, food, such as first 
 
 Drew our thoughts to earth's lowly for food.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 MODERN LOVE 
 
 JK/T ODERN LOVE appeared in 1862, eleven years 
 after the Poems, and three years after the 
 publication of Richard Feverel. Mr. Swinburne's letter 
 in reply to the Spectators adverse review of the 
 poem has long been renowned. But half a century 
 has passed, and a plea that the work is of complex 
 delicacy, demanding serious and considerate estima- 
 tion, is apt to fall flat on the ears of a generation 
 which knows little of the battles by which its heritage 
 was won. Yet Mr. Swinburne's challenge has a vigour 
 and generosity characteristic of him, and some at least 
 of his words time has not staled : " A more perfect 
 piece of writing no man alive has ever turned out than 
 the sonnet beginning, * We saw the swallows gathering 
 in the sky ' " ; and again : " Work of such subtle strength, 
 such depth of delicate power, such passionate and 
 various beauty ; in some points, as it seems to me, a 
 poem above the aim and beyond the reach of any 
 but its author." 
 
 In the last forty years the literary critics at any rate 
 have come round to Mr. Swinburne's opinion. They 
 have decided also to follow him in the minor, but in 
 its effect very important, matter of nomenclature. A 
 painter, speaking to painters, may call red blue, taking 
 it for granted that the dominant quality is as apparent 
 to his hearers as himself; and a poet may speak of the 
 
 60
 
 MODERN LOVE 61 
 
 sections of Modern Love as if they were sonnets. 
 Nor is it necessary to cavil at a master-poet's employ- 
 ment of the term in a journal whose readers may be 
 supposed acquainted with literary forms, in order to 
 protest against it as misleading to a general and undis- 
 criminating public. Mr. Le Gallienne, indeed, after 
 discussing the question at length, comes to an opposite 
 conclusion. But the value of the conclusion is impaired 
 by a strange supposition that underlies his argument. 
 He writes throughout as though it had been suggested 
 that Meredith could not have written Modern Love 
 in a series of sonnets if he would. In face of the fact 
 that Meredith has produced elsewhere sonnets worthy 
 to rank among the greatest in our language, we may be 
 allowed to dismiss this supposition as irrelevant. The 
 truth is, that in using the word sonnet we are obscuring 
 rather than exalting the refinement of the work. The 
 fifty divisions of Modem Love contain sixteen lines 
 each, and these lines are divided into quatrains ; the 
 first and fourth, and the second and third lines of each 
 quatrain rhyming. All that these separate sections 
 have in common with the sonnet is the length of their 
 lines and the pithiness of their expression ; they have 
 nothing of its complexity or finality of structure. In 
 many cases, notably in XVIII and XIX, XXI and 
 XXII, xxill and XXIV, the last four lines of one 
 section might quite well be placed above the first four 
 of the next. In part the poem is pure narrative, and 
 the treatment of the theme is necessarily continuous. 
 The divisions are roughly comparable to chapters, 
 serviceable in allowing for alterations of scale or 
 changes of aspect, but sometimes merely divisions. 
 For the author's object in simplifying and modifying 
 the sonnet-form has been to secure, with the advantage 
 of divisional variety, a flowing, almost a processional
 
 62 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 continuity of dramatic effect ; a continuity which would 
 have been destroyed by greater complexity in structure. 
 A distinction is to be drawn in Meredith's writing 
 between avoidable and unavoidable obscurities. Of 
 poems in which the obscurities are almost wholly of the 
 latter kind no better example is to be found than 
 Modern Love. In phrasing it is not obscure, the 
 wording is perfectly straightforward and direct ; the 
 difficulty lies in the matter and not in the manner. 
 What, we should ask ourselves, exactly is the theme ? 
 It is concerned certainly with " the usual three," 
 husband and wife and lover, and their acts are, on the 
 whole, of a regrettably commonplace order. But these 
 acts and deeds are not the subject of the poem ; they 
 form merely a groundwork generally taken for granted. 
 The subject is the mental atmosphere and experience 
 arising from these, the fruit of knowledge and insight 
 coming out of elements earthly enough in themselves. 
 The difficulty of comprehension lies in the fact that 
 the poems of Modem Love give, not a narrative, but a 
 running commentary on a narrative, which is told by 
 implication only; and the difficulty is increased by the 
 fact that a large number of the poems, even in isolation, 
 are singularly beautiful ; separate elevations, so satisfy- 
 ing to the reader's vision, that he is apt to rest content 
 with their acquaintance without complying with the 
 demand on his imagination for a ground-plan which 
 shall relate and solidify the whole. Yet, because that 
 demand on the reader is real, any true exposition of 
 the poem may not escape from an attempt to provide 
 it. The task is by no means alluring, because its aim 
 must be to supply the unexalted and non-poetic 
 elements which are without place in the poem. There 
 is a danger, too, in the undertaking ; for it was no part 
 of Meredith's object in dealing with the most intricate
 
 MODERN LOVE 63 
 
 and intimate of human problems to provide placards 
 that whoso runs may read, or garbage for persons 
 nosing in the mire. Yet it is necessitated, because 
 he has presumed more than the imagination of 
 ordinarily intelligent readers has proved itself able to 
 afford. 
 
 Meredith's achievement lies in the fact that he has 
 exalted to poetical heights the surroundings and 
 effects of a calamity in the life of every day. His 
 commentary on the situation raises it to tragedy, 
 and makes us slow to discover that it is hardly tragic 
 in itself. Yet this is a truth to which the most mag- 
 nificent and poetic of the sonnets bear witness. For 
 they invariably escape from the bounds of the narrative 
 to comments and conclusions which transcend the 
 circumstances. The philosophy and the workmanship 
 of Modern Love are worthy of the writer's maturity ; 
 the underlying story — the skeleton — is inadequate, the 
 offspring of his youth, an inadequacy for which he, 
 surely, has atoned most generously in prefacing the 
 second edition (1892) with a poem laying stress on 
 the spiritual and immaterial issues, and in adding The 
 Sage Enamoured and the Honest Lady to the volume. 
 It is only necessary to consider the first poem and the 
 last of the great series in order to recognise the in- 
 adequacy of the plot, not only to Meredith's later 
 and maturer thought, but to its original purpose. 
 
 I 
 
 By this he knew she wept with waking eyes : 
 That, at his hand's light quiver by her head, 
 The strange low sobs that shook their common bed, 
 Were called into her with a sharp surprise, 
 And strangled mute, like little gaping snakes, 
 Dreadfully venomous to him. She lay 
 Stone-still, and the long darkness flowed away 
 With muffled pulses. Then, as midnight makes
 
 64 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 Her giant heart of Memory and Tears 
 
 Drink the pale drug of silence, and so beat 
 
 Sleep's heavy measure, they from head to feet 
 
 Were moveless, looking through their dead black years, 
 
 By vain regret scrawled over the blank wall. 
 
 Like sculptured effigies they might be seen 
 
 Upon their marriage-tomb, the sword between ; 
 
 Each wishing for the sword that severs all. 
 
 Thus piteously Love closed what he begat : 
 The union of this ever-diverse pair ! 
 These two were rapid falcons in a snare, 
 Condemned to do the flitting of the bat. 
 Lovers beneath the singing sky of May, 
 They wandered once ; clear as the dew on flowers : 
 But they fed not on the advancing hours : 
 Their hearts held cravings for the buried day. 
 Then each applied to each that fatal knife, 
 Deep questioning, which probes to endless dole. 
 Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul 
 When hot for certainties in this our life ! — 
 In tragic hints here see what evermore 
 Moves dark as yonder midnight ocean's force, 
 Thundering like ramping hosts of warrior horse, 
 To throw that faint thin line upon the shore ! 
 
 Might we not fairly have supposed from these that 
 the intervening poems would be concerned, not with 
 deception on the part of one of the actors and petty 
 jealousy and retaliation on the part of the other, but with 
 some tragedy of inevitable loss, of wholly dreaded and 
 only half-merited pain, of loneliness outlasting love? 
 The truth is that in these and many similar poems in 
 the series the writer outsoars the conception he has 
 formulated, and moves on a plane in which some at 
 least of the antics he describes elsewhere 1 can find no 
 place. 
 
 For, in the tale as it actually is, " he," the husband, is 
 maddened by discovering that his wife is spiritually 
 unfaithful to him, and in love with another man. The 
 
 1 See xv, xxxvi, xlv.
 
 MODERN LOVE 65 
 
 story is told throughout by the husband, who describes 
 his reactions of feeling beneath the mask of a polite 11 
 demeanour — how at one moment he is enraged by 
 his wife's grace of manner and bearing into regard- 
 ing her as the vilest spot on a blackened earth, at 
 another strives in reactionary gentleness for magnani- 
 mity, while, in remorse for the sterner feeling, he learns 
 the bitterness of his pain. From thought of his wife 
 he turns to "the man," her would-be lover, first to in 
 call him negligible — a worm to be trodden under foot 
 — then to writhe at perceiving him irradiated by her 
 gaze. The power of that look to glorify what it falls 
 upon drives him to half curse the beauty that holds him 
 bound, and in the same breath to question why he 
 foregoes its sweetness — " It cannot be such harm on her 
 cool brow to put a kiss?" But no! He has been 
 deceived. The object of his love exists no longer — 
 "The hour has struck, though I heard not the bell!" 
 He attempts to turn for relief to other interests, but iv 
 life has gone out of them all. Illusion or diversion 
 lasts for a moment only, and his agony revives the 
 fiercer for its lull. But he is not a sensational being 
 merely ; half the poignancy of his suffering lies in the 
 fact that he is at war with himself, that his intellect has 
 a standard to which his senses prevent his actions from 
 conforming. Into his wife's interest in household 
 affairs he reads hypocrisy and scheming. He sees v 
 her using her beauty as a net to ensnare him, and the 
 acute temptation of allurements by which he is almost 
 beguiled increases his bitterness. But she is befooled 
 too. Her eyes have been trained for shining, not for 
 use ; and they have not enough penetration to discover 
 the existence of a force that avails to restrain the 
 impulse she is appealing to. A chance endearment 
 of his is met, not with womanly shame, but in a vi
 
 66 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 way only suggesting that her love has cooled. With 
 sounds of midnight sobbing in his ears, knowing her 
 feeling to be intensely alive and only the object of 
 it changed, he stings himself with thoughts of her 
 wantonness and the title her conduct might warrant 
 him in using. But all the while this agony is beneath 
 the surface, an under-current at the fireside where 
 they sit — " she laughing at a quiet joke " ; for the 
 decencies and appearances of their outward life are 
 being strenuously upheld. Her radiant beauty pursues 
 him continually, driving him to believe that her faith- 
 lessness is the more criminal for having avoided the 
 
 vii most obvious expression, and taunting him from 
 
 vin one extreme of feeling to the other. At times he is 
 
 passionately pitiful, caring more for her lost loyalty 
 
 ix than his own pain, at others marvelling that the 
 
 wild beast within him does not seek its brute revenge. 
 
 x Where, and what, he asks, is the nature of the crime 
 
 that has brought this wretchedness upon him ? Merely 
 
 that he has slept and wakened ; and waking, refused 
 
 to act upon the impulse of a dream. The beauty 
 
 xi of earth and returning spring serve only to intensify 
 
 his consciousness of loss. In imagination, he points 
 
 his wife to the golden west, where "in an amber 
 
 cradle near the sun's decline" is lying the infant love 
 
 xii that she has slain. But the greatest of her crimes 
 is not that she has stripped him of the future ; she 
 has robbed him of the past. For it is a reality no 
 longer, though the shadow of its mockery goes with 
 
 xin him for ever. And here again the contrast of man's 
 life with nature's makes itself felt. Why, he asks, 
 can we not learn of her whose care is for Seasons 
 not Eternities, and who bestows no regret upon her 
 fading flowers ? Life lived only in the present, without 
 memory or desire — that surely must be the way of
 
 MODERN LOVE 67 
 
 escape ? And yet the analogy is not complete ; for the 
 human rose — love rooted and renewed in sense — is a 
 flower of surpassing loveliness. 
 
 A fourth actor in the drama is now introduced. The 
 husband turns for solace to a friend, known through- xiv 
 out the rest of the poem as " My Lady," in distinc- 
 tion from " Madam," his wife. The immediate result 
 is that contempt for " Madam " is aroused by signs in 
 her of a veering fit and jealous renewal of affection. 
 This new element of scorn is perhaps intended to serve 
 as excuse for the next poem, surely one of the most xv 
 unpleasant in the series, in which he awakes his wife 
 from sleep or from pretence of sleep, to show two 
 letters both in her own handwriting, one written long 
 ago to himself, the other lately : " The words are very 
 like : the name is new." Meanwhile, they still appear 
 to the world as the happiest of couples. His wife shines 
 as a hostess and his guests are excellently enter- xvii 
 tained — " they see no ghost." This game of Hiding 
 the Skeleton has a certain zest, and the players begin to 
 admire one another's acting. The husband at times 
 is tempted to envy the uncomplicated lives of the xvm 
 country bumpkins dancing on the green, till he reflects 
 upon the sources of their enjoyment. Torn by conflict- 
 ing impulses towards gentleness and cruelty — reflect- xix 
 ing that to escape from inconstancy to one person 
 by forging vows to another is the road by which love 
 drifts into the market-place — he concludes that the 
 only really enviable condition must be that of the 
 village idiot. His attempt to view the situation im- 
 partially is further complicated by the discovery of xx 
 "a wanton-scented tress" in a long-unused desk of his 
 own, which serves as reminder of deeds for which he, 
 on his side, stands in need of forgiveness. One even- 
 ing a friend, who has scoffed at lovers hitherto, xxi
 
 68 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 stands with them on the lawn and begins the tale of 
 his " most wondrous she " and," convinced that words of 
 wedded lovers must bring good," entreats their blessing. 
 Forgetful for an instant of his presence, their eyes meet 
 in horror. Then, recovering themselves quickly, they 
 give what he requires. But a moment later the wife 
 falls fainting to the ground, and the irony of the by- 
 stander's probable reading of the event flashes through 
 her husband's mind. Soon it becomes evident to him 
 that she is hovering on the brink of some confession ; 
 
 xxn her movements are irresolute and tentative, and once 
 she stands before him in tears. But words do not 
 come. Her husband will not question, and a gulf that 
 seems impassable yawns between them. Christmas 
 
 xxni arrives, and they are together at a country-house 
 overflowing with guests ; they share an attic bed- 
 room, and from the accident that brings them thus 
 together, learn how wide the estrangement, how deep 
 the mortification that divides them. The husband sets 
 himself to freeze with the freezing cold outside : it is 
 more than his wife can bear. But he steels his heart 
 
 xxiv against tokens of her suffering. Her offence he 
 knows is only against love ; but he persuades himself 
 that a grosser sin would have been easier to forgive. 
 He will not be propitiated by signs of her unhappiness, 
 though he has to call loudly on his sense of dignity 
 in order to dismiss his longing. He questions her 
 ironically as to her distaste for a French novel she is 
 xxv reading. Why does she pronounce it unnatural ? 
 because the heroine is compelled to choose between 
 her husband and her lover, and chooses as a woman 
 should? — unromantic possibly, but true to life ! 
 Musing on the serpent which has taken love's place in 
 
 xxvi his heart, any consciousness of his own shortcoming 
 forsakes him, and he thinks only of the wrong which
 
 MODERN LOVE 69 
 
 has been done to him. It is, he believes, still possible 
 to pardon the doer of it, if she will fling her cowardice 
 to the winds and make frank and free confession ; but 
 he has no help to lend her : " You that made love bleed, 
 you must bear all the venom of his tooth." 
 
 Nervous and unstrung, he determines to fall in 
 with his doctor's prescription, and seek distraction xxvn 
 wherever it may offer. He is inclined to be on good 
 terms with the devil, who proves friendly when no 
 other helper is at hand, and he begins a period of 
 dalliance with "My Lady" in a spirit of pure devilry xxvm 
 and cynicism. But because in the past he has had 
 true feeling for this friend, his flirtation develops into 
 something more vital, and the reality of his outcry xxix 
 on what the relation is not bears witness to his having 
 discovered exactly what it is. In the light of this know- 
 ledge he begins to generalise on the growth and nature 
 of love. But though his words are brilliant, his xxx 
 estimate is cynical, and amounts to little that he has 
 not formulated earlier in the poem. Love is a dream — 
 an illusion — and, when it crumbles, man does best to 
 recognise himself as an animal with animal desires, and 
 employ his intelligence in satisfying them scientifically. 
 He will act on his theory, and, instead of sentimental 
 romancing, a relentless statement of fact shall form his 
 sonnet to his lady's eyes. But she is intelligent and 
 capable of facing realities ; she has " that rare gift xxxi 
 to beauty, Common Sense," and in their intercourse 
 his spirit begins to revive. Relationship with her has 
 unique qualities. He insists repeatedly on this, trying 
 hard to persuade himself that it embraces and super- 
 sedes the old. He dwells on the charms that his 
 Lady adds to her intelligence, and yet the truth xxxn 
 will out. The episode is unreal ; he knows that his 
 wife's place has not been taken ; he is inwardly torn
 
 70 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 and fretted by living memories, " a dying something, 
 never dead." He begins to suspect that the cure for 
 the wound his wife has dealt does not lie with any 
 other member of her sex. But his nerves are all on 
 edge, and he extracts a certain cynical pleasure from 
 the thought of her bewilderment should she chance 
 
 xxxm to spy upon his letters to his friend ; he writes in 
 one of the inevitable soiling to a man's soul incurred 
 in a hand-to-hand tussle with the devil. The wife, 
 meanwhile, has determined on a discussion of the 
 
 xxxiv whole situation, in the hope that some understand- 
 ing between them may be reached. But his interval of 
 cynical enjoyment and would-be detachment from emo- 
 tion has left him in no mood for passionate interviews, 
 so he freezes her with commonplaces and conventional 
 courtesies, and " Niagara, or Vesuvius, is deferred." 
 xxxv Yet he is a little uneasy under the muteness he 
 has again compelled, and, later, the feeling is in- 
 creased by his wife's suggestion, under cover of a 
 game of forfeits, that the game they play is hardly 
 worth the cost. The action of the next two poems 
 maintains the conventional level on which he has in- 
 
 xxxvi sisted. "My Lady" and " Madam" are introduced, and 
 their probing of one another's deficiencies, under cover 
 of appreciative comment, affords amusement to the 
 man who stands between them. The actors are next 
 seen merged in a company of persons promenading a 
 
 xxxvn garden terrace before dinner. In the harmonious 
 and discreet atmosphere that surrounds them all 
 violence seems far off and unreal. Though within 
 sound of his wife's voice and, in the course of his 
 pacings with his partner, catching constant glimpses 
 of his Lady, the husband questions the existence of a 
 problem : " Our tragedy," he asks, " is it alive or dead?" 
 But the reality of conflict and of feeling is quickly re-
 
 MODERN LOVE 71 
 
 asserted when, in evident compunction, his friend urges 
 him to return to his wife. For in one of the finest 
 poems of the series he implores his Lady to allow xxxvm 
 him to retain in her his one spiritual anchorage; the 
 bond with his wife is broken past mending, and the 
 only remaining choice for him is between love and vile- 
 ness. The Pity of which she speaks has, he says, no 
 place ; his wife is like a child, who merely values a 
 thing because it is destroyed and is no longer to be 
 had. To counsel him to return to her is to drive 
 him to evil. To his argument and his passion his 
 Lady yields, and there follows one golden hour of xxxix 
 moonlight and of song in which at last his " bride of 
 every sense" seems found. Once more his spirit is 
 attuned to harmonies of earth and air, and the lovers 
 stand half-dreaming beside a rippling brook. They 
 are in shadow when a man and woman appear. In- 
 truders! who are they? he asks, little thinking what 
 the answer is to be. " The woman bears my name and 
 honour. Their hands touch ! " Headlong, all the old 
 riot and confusion have returned ; in a frenzy of feeling 
 the husband is once more helplessly adrift. xl 
 
 Peace is not to be attained by recourse to one " in- 
 flammable to love as fire to wood," yet his new ecstasy 
 is paralysed by fear that his old love is vital still. 
 The ground rocks under his feet ; he can be certain 
 of nothing — only he recognises that the episode with 
 "My Lady" has solved nothing, and indirectly half 
 perceives his wife's worth through the eyes of her lover, xli 
 At any rate, some attempt at reconciliation is im- 
 perative ; beyond that he cannot see, but so far he is 
 determined. The attempt is made, but, unblest by xlii 
 love, their kisses drive them further apart. And in xliii 
 the cruel east wind of the next morning he wanders 
 on the seashore, imagining the meeting-ground of wind
 
 72 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 and wave as the burial-place of love defiled. Where 
 or whose the fault he cannot tell, but the evil he so 
 dreaded has come upon him. His bitterness has gone, 
 but he is linked to his wife henceforth by pity, not 
 xliv by love. He does his best to hide the change, 
 but she perceives it and will not rest content. The 
 price of love she feels has been paid, and she has not 
 insight enough to find the key to a new and deeper 
 estrangement. To her mind the sole explanation of 
 her husband's coldness lies in the existence of her 
 rival ; he gathers a rose, and she asks him for it to 
 xlv grind it underfoot, convinced that it is in some 
 way associated with his forbidden love. And so the 
 days go on, until at last the awful silence is broken by 
 an unexpected incident. Unable one morning to find 
 his wife, he goes half-involuntarily to seek her in the 
 copse which was the scene of their courtship. He 
 finds her there with her lover and, going forward, offers 
 her his arm, ignoring the presence of a third. She 
 accepts it without embarrassment, and her lover passes 
 shadow-like and unnoticed from their view. He feels 
 that his wife is on the brink of explanatory speech, 
 and, before the words can be framed, he declares his 
 full confidence in her. The storm and stress of their 
 conflict is over, and for a moment at least their lives 
 
 xlvii are irradiated by an afterglow of their passion. While 
 the swallows are gathering in the evening air, they 
 stand together surrounded by an atmosphere of gentle- 
 ness and peace. The husband is able at last to speak 
 with honesty and openness ; all that is to be said 
 
 xlviii they say. But, alas for woman's nature ! his wife 
 cannot perceive his meaning ; her judgment and her 
 sensations are too closely intertwined, and, when he 
 introduces his Lady's name, she is deaf to all else. 
 She breaks away from him, fixed in her idea that she
 
 MODERN LOVE 73 
 
 must set him free to seek her rival. Argument is 
 useless, but none the less he follows and finds her on 
 the seashore. She takes his hand and seems xlix 
 amenable to his control, happy too in his solicitude, 
 though less vital than her wont. Some change has 
 come over her ; midnight brings the key. She calls 
 her husband and asks for his embrace. She has taken 
 poison. 
 
 An analysis intentionally restricted to the actualities 
 the poem presupposes, can give no conception of its 
 beauty and scope. And even in regard to the drama 
 itself a distinction should be drawn between the 
 spiritual atmosphere of the last ten divisions and that 
 of the preceding forty. In XLV and XLVI there are 
 momentary reactions to a lower level, but, on the whole, 
 the story, in these concluding poems, touches and 
 moves on a higher plane. The characters make real 
 efforts at disentanglement, and their hopes for recon- 
 ciliation are baffled by forces deeper and more compli- 
 cated than wilfulness. The language of metaphor 
 rises in beauty and power with the theme, till it cul- 
 minates in an image embodying the conflicting majesty 
 and futility of human endeavour, and the poet sets the 
 crown upon his vision of mortality. In this closing 
 quatrain thought and metaphor are matched, and both 
 are at their zenith. And the poem which forms at once 
 the resting-place and the bridge, between the passion of 
 the past and the pitifulness of the future, is of an ex- 
 quisite, almost magical, reflectiveness : 
 
 We saw the swallows gathering in the sky, 
 
 And in the osier-isle we heard their noise. 
 
 We had not to look back on summer joys, 
 
 Or forward to a summer of bright dye : 
 
 But in the largeness of the evening earth 
 
 Our spirits grew as we went side by side. 
 
 The hour became her husband and my bride. 
 
 Love that had robbed us so, thus blessed our dearth !
 
 74 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 The pilgrims of the year waxed very loud 
 
 In multitudinous chatterings, as the flood 
 
 Full blown came from the West, and like pale blood 
 
 Expanded to the upper crimson cloud. 
 
 Love that had robbed us of immortal things, 
 
 This little moment mercifully gave, 
 
 Where I have seen across the twilight wave 
 
 The swan sail with her young beneath her wings.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 SANDRA BELLONI AND VITTORIA 
 
 OANDRA BELLONI, published in 1864 as Emilia 
 in England, posesses an intensity of theme which 
 fuses the leading characteristics of Meredith's thought, 
 and shows us the springs of his feeling at their source. 
 Emilia is a revelation, an unveiling, as it were, of an 
 ideal ; and all the persons she directly touches, Tracy 
 Runningbrook, Merthyr, Wilfrid, Lady Charlotte, even 
 Mr. Pole and Mr. Pericles, are lit with her fire. With 
 her as the pivot, they move within the radius of 
 Meredith's genius, the central circle of feeling in which 
 his touch never errs. But the characters outside this 
 circle are many ; and so lengthy is the treatment 
 accorded to some of them, we cannot but suspect they 
 were meant to be inside it. The sisters Pole, in spite 
 of the complexity with which they are analysed, 
 belong to the same class as the Ladies Culmer and 
 Busshe — the large class of Meredith's unvitalised char- 
 acters ; they are not individuals, they form collectively 
 the middle distance between the real persons and the 
 background. Viewed thus, as representing the " fine 
 shades," the " nice feelings," they are excellent ; but 
 long before Mrs. Chump offers Emilia a sovereign for 
 information as to who pairs with who and what the 
 sisters are meaning, we weary of their manoeuvres as 
 well as of their author's efforts to make us think of 
 them separately. And though some of Mrs. Chump's 
 
 75
 
 76 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 doings, notably the scene in which Braintop is employed 
 in writing her letter to the Poles, are extremely funny, 
 she is not on the whole very credible, and her departed 
 husband mere caricature. Edward Buxley and Sir 
 Twickenham Pryme, even Captain Gambier and Pur- 
 cell Barrett, are little more than lay figures. Yet in 
 view of the heart of the story, we begin to question 
 whether this want of vitalisation has not a use. House- 
 maids allege that sunshine puts their fires out ; Emilia 
 reduces these persons to shadows, and glows among 
 them like a star. 
 
 It is not easy to understand why devotees of "The 
 Pilgrim's Scrip," and admirers of Meredith's teaching, 
 do not more commonly particularise Sandra Belloni as 
 among the richest mines of his wisdom. Nowhere are 
 the gems of his insight more lavishly scattered. There 
 is sparkling literary criticism and comment, only not 
 dwelt upon here because it has place in a subsequent 
 chapter. Beyond this, and over and above an abund- 
 ance of comparatively isolated aphorisms, there is the 
 Philosopher's running exposition of Wilfrid as " A 
 Rider on Hippogriff," one who, because he travels to 
 Love by the road of Sentiment, finds he is bestriding 
 a power extraneous to himself. " The sentimentalist," 
 the Philosopher says, "goes on accumulating images 
 and hiving sensations, till such time as (if the stuff be 
 in him) they assume a form of vitality and hurry him 
 headlong. This is not passion, though it amazes men 
 and does the madder thing." It is Hippogriff' s practice 
 to catch up his rider into mid-air, not however in order 
 to make him cup-bearer among the celestials, but merely 
 to remove him from all influences save the voice of his 
 desire, and to secure a sea of vapour for his plungings. 
 " Another peculiarity of this animal gifted with wings 
 is, that around the height he soars to he can see no
 
 SANDRA BELLONI 77 
 
 barriers or any of the fences raised by men. And here 
 again he differs from Passion, which may tug against 
 common sense, but is never in a great nature divorced 
 from it." True Passion, the Philosopher says, is " Noble 
 Strength on Fire" ; it violates no law ; it is sane. Con- 
 stantly just to itself, it does not when it is thwarted 
 turn and rend its possessor. " Constantly just to itself, 
 mind ! This is the quality of true passion. Those who 
 make a noise, and are not thus distinguishable are upon 
 Hippogriff." Hippogriff is "the foal of Fiery Circum- 
 stance out of Sentiment." Passion and Sentiment — it 
 is, Meredith tells us, his Philosopher's purpose to work 
 out the distinction between them. " All I wish," he 
 humorously adds, " is that it were good for my market. 
 What the Philosopher means, is to plant in the reader's 
 path a staring contrast between my pet Emilia and his 
 puppet Wilfrid. It would be very commendable and 
 serviceable if a novel were what he thinks it : but all 
 attestation favours the critical dictum that a novel is to 
 give us copious sugar and no cane. . . . Such is the 
 construction of my story, however, that to entirely deny 
 the Philosopher the privilege he stipulated for when 
 with his assistance I conceived it, would render our per- 
 formance unintelligible to that acute and honourable 
 minority which consents to be thwacked with aphorisms 
 and sentences and a fantastic delivery of the verities. 
 While my Play goes on, I must permit him to come for- 
 ward occasionally. We are indeed in a sort of partner- 
 ship, and it is useless for me to tell him that he is not 
 popular and destroys my chance." 
 
 This frank avowal of the intrusion of theory cannot, 
 we feel, have been very difficult to Emilia's creator, who 
 must have been perfectly aware that he had given to 
 her and to Wilfrid vitality enough to fill and overflow 
 the Philosopher's formulae. Wilfrid, as opposed to
 
 78 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 Emilia, may serve for a sentimentalist, but the man who 
 charged with a ball-riddled white umbrella in the battle 
 of Novara, and suffered degradation and insult in saving 
 Emilia and her husband from their enemies, is some- 
 thing greater and nobler than that. Meredith's earliest 
 plea for our patience with his hero has been quoted 
 already. 1 It is reiterated even more solemnly later, 
 when the struggle between Wilfrid's love and his self- 
 interest has really begun. " The two men composing 
 most of us at the outset of actual life," he says, " began 
 their deadly wrestle within him, both having become 
 awakened. If they wait for circumstance, that steady 
 fire will fuse them into one, who is commonly a person 
 of some strength ; but throttling is usually the custom 
 between them, and we are used to see men of murdered 
 halves. These men have what they fought for: they 
 are unaware of any guilt that may be charged against 
 them, though they know that they do not embrace Life ; 
 and so it is that we have vague discontent too universal. 
 Change, O Lawgiver ! the length of our minority, and let 
 it not end till this battle is thoroughly fought out in 
 approving daylight." The whole family of Poles, includ- 
 ing their father, are in some degree imaginative and 
 therefore, consciously or unconsciously, subject to what 
 in this connection Meredith terms the " poetic " power. 
 Wilfrid is most markedly so, and it is indeed this com- 
 bination of susceptibility to beauty, with want of unifica- 
 tion and endurance of feeling, which marks him out as 
 the Philosopher's prey. His susceptibility to beauty is 
 evident enough. Emilia is the antithesis of his precon- 
 ceived ideal ; yet from their first moment of meeting she 
 is able to be at her best, to breathe and expand, in his 
 presence. From the day of her arrival at Brookfield he 
 is her constant and kindly companion, pitiful even when 
 
 1 Chapter v, page 54.
 
 SANDRA BELLONI 79 
 
 his sentiment is disturbed by revelation of her past, and 
 he has to listen to thrifty regrets in regard to her father's 
 misuse of potatoes, the staple food of her family. More 
 delicate tenderness makes itself felt on their walk to 
 Brookfield together, after the fight between Hillford and 
 Ipley, when he shows himself as capable as Emilia of 
 being attuned to the loveliness of earth. " A pillar of 
 dim silver rain fronts the moon " as they hurry over the 
 common away from the riot. Emilia's head is bowed, 
 and Wilfrid still grasps the hand by which he has drawn 
 her from under the tent. To get her out of the fray 
 and to persuade her to forsake the ruins of her harp, 
 Wilfrid has informed her that he, and not Mr. Pericles, 
 was its donor, and that he will give her another. But 
 when they have come for some distance and he sees 
 that Emilia is in tears, he proposes that she shall wait in 
 a cottage near by while he returns for the remains of 
 the instrument. It is, he says, possible that it can be 
 mended. " Emilia lifted her eyes. ' I am not crying 
 for the harp. If you go back I must go with you.' 
 ' That's out of the question. You must never be found 
 in that sort of place again.' ' Let us leave the harp,' 
 she murmured. ' You cannot go without me. Let me 
 sit here for a minute. Sit with me.' She pointed to a 
 place beside herself on the fork of a dry log under 
 flowering hawthorn. A pale, shadowy blue centre of 
 light among the clouds told where the moon was. Rain 
 had ceased, and the refreshed earth smelt all of flowers, 
 as if each breeze going by held a nosegay to their 
 nostrils." A marked change has come over Emilia ; 
 " her voice now, even in common speaking, had that 
 vibrating richness which in her singing swept his nerves." 
 " How brave you are!" she presently exclaims, and all his 
 efforts to persuade her that there was no danger in the 
 recent struggle prove unavailing. Wilfrid falls back on
 
 80 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 the statement that the right place for girls is at home. 
 " ' I should always like to be where . . . ' Her voice 
 flowed on with singular gravity to that stop." Is it 
 possible she can have been going to say like always to 
 be where he, Wilfrid, was ? The question is put more 
 from curiosity than anything else ; for as yet his 
 emotions are languid. " To her soft ' Yes,' he continues 
 briskly, and in the style of condescending fellowship : 
 ' Of course we're not going to part ! ' 'I wonder,' said 
 Emilia. There she sat, evidently sounding right through 
 the future with her young brain, to hear what Destiny 
 might have to say." Touched, but conscious that he 
 has now heard more than is justifiable, Wilfrid makes a 
 last effort to return to a commonplace level. He 
 reminds Emilia that she has an exaggerated notion of 
 the fight in the booth, and that what honours there were 
 in her rescue he shares with Captain Gambier. " ' I did 
 not see him,' said Emilia. ' Are you not cold ? ' he 
 asked, for a diversion, though he had one of her hands. 
 She gave him the other. He could not quit them 
 abruptly : nor could he hold them both without being 
 drawn to her. 'What is it you say?' Wilfrid whispered. 
 ' Men kiss us when we are happy. Is that right ? and 
 are you happy?' She lifted a clear, full face, to which 
 he bent his mouth. Over the flowering hawthorn the 
 moon stood like a wind-blown white rose of the heavens. 
 The kiss was given and taken. Strange to tell, it was 
 he who drew away from it almost bashfully, and with 
 new feelings." Down green lanes and through dim 
 meadow paths their way is continued, till they come to 
 a stream distant but two or three fields from Brookfield. 
 Emilia has just been confessing that, earlier in the 
 evening, she had been arranging with Captain Gambier 
 to take her to Italy. The brook is crossed by a plank, 
 and as they come to it Wilfrid has asked her when she
 
 SANDRA BELLONI 81 
 
 is starting, adding, in reply to her look, " with Captain 
 Gambier, I mean." Emilia gives him her hand to 
 be led over, and answers, as she comes near to him, 
 " I am never to leave you." Her trustfulness subdues 
 him completely, and he vows that she shall not. But 
 Brookfield is coming in sight, and to confront it he feels 
 the need for Emilia's fascination to be fully exerted. 
 He bids her sing. She stops, and gathers breath twice, 
 but each time her voice breaks on the note. She 
 cannot. But in fear of his anger she takes his hand to 
 beg for forgiveness. "Wilfrid locked her fingers in a 
 strong pressure, and walked on, silent as a man who has 
 faced one of the veiled mysteries of life. It struck a 
 full human blow on his heart, dragging him out of his 
 sentimental pastures precipitately. He felt her fainting 
 voice to be the intensest love-cry that could be uttered. 
 The sound of it coursed through his blood, striking a 
 rare illumination of sparks in his not commonly brilliant 
 brain." Elsewhere Wilfrid is spoken of as one of the 
 many who find it easier to pledge themselves to eternity 
 than to what is immediate. To-night he and Emilia 
 hasten onwards to Brookfield, and " To-morrow morn- 
 ing " is all he can say at their parting. 
 
 Merthyr Powys is Meredith's favourite Welshman ; 
 in praise of his character nothing further needs to 
 be said. His solicitude for Emilia is portrayed in 
 some of the loveliest incidents of the book. He is, he 
 says, never at a loss in his reading of Cymric and 
 Italian natures, and Emilia, he boasts to his sister 
 Georgiana, on her mother's side is Welsh. Emilia says 
 to Georgiana, whose standard of behaviour she often 
 fails to satisfy, " Merthyr waits for me," adding in reply 
 to Georgiana's question as to why she did not earlier 
 break her promise to Wilfrid, " I could not see through 
 it till now." And in this statement Merthyr's bearing 
 
 G
 
 82 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 throughout Sandra Belloni and Vittoria is epitomised. 
 In his long task of wooing Emilia back to life and 
 self-confidence, after she is recovered from starvation 
 and despair, his tenderness is unfailing. He plans her 
 dresses, takes her to balls, flatters her, even, to awake her 
 pride. Services of this kind, however, are but the mere 
 surface expression of his feeling. His true service and 
 inestimable gift to Emilia is his understanding of the 
 range and possibilities of her nature, and his refusal 
 to respond to anything but her best. She has been 
 told by Georgiana that Merthyr loves her intensely; 
 she is agitated at the prospect of an interview with 
 Wilfrid — the first since she was ill— and she craves a 
 word of sustainment from Merthyr. He is her tutor, 
 and Wilfrid's knock is heard just as their lessons are 
 at an end. Emilia moves to the door and makes an 
 effort to go, but fear overcomes her; she turns back to 
 Merthyr and kneels at his feet murmuring, " Say some- 
 thing to me." Merthyr takes her hand and lets his 
 eyes dwell upon hers. "The marvel of their not 
 wavering or softening meaningly kept her speechless. 
 She rose with a strength not her own ; not comforted, 
 and no longer speculating. It was as if she had been 
 eyeing a golden door shut fast, that might some day 
 open, but was in itself precious to behold." 
 
 In Tracy Runningbrook Meredith allows himself a 
 luxury, albeit a luxury that is delightful to his readers. 
 Having created Emilia, he wishes to free himself of the 
 limitations of prose, and convey the impression she 
 makes on the sensitiveness of a poet. Merthyr invites 
 Tracy to stay with them at Monmouth, and be Emilia's 
 companion when she is recovering from an illness caused 
 by the shock of Wilfrid's desertion. From Monmouth 
 Tracy writes letters about her. " As to ill-health," he 
 replies to Wilfrid's inquiries, " Great Mother Nature
 
 SANDRA BELLONI 83 
 
 has given a house of iron to this soul of fire. The 
 windows may blaze, or the windows may be extin- 
 guished, but the house stands firm. When you are 
 lightning or earthquake you may have something to 
 reproach yourself for ; as it is, be under no alarm." 
 And Tracy's intense sympathy for Emilia is the 
 medium through which we are shown that noteworthy 
 scene in the woods on a night of frost in May, when 
 Emilia proves that she has regained her voice. 
 
 Lucy Feverel has been described as an early Victorian 
 heroine. The description is inadequate, but the measure 
 of its truth may be perceived in studying her successor. 
 In Emilia, Meredith has given us his greatest of soul. 
 Close to Nature, elemental — a force rather than a 
 character — to give a picture of Emilia in any way com- 
 plete would be to rewrite her story ; she can only be 
 revealed in her effect upon others. In touch with 
 poetry and passion at their source, she will only make 
 them consciously her own and realise their interplay upon 
 life, when she has seen herself in isolation from them. 
 Her difficulties are the opposite of Wilfrid's, by whom 
 the loyalty and oneness of feeling which are hers by 
 nature are to be acquired only through much pain and 
 sacrifice ; power of soul, and the capacity to concen- 
 trate the whole of her physical and mental vigour upon 
 a single emotion, are Emilia's from the first. She has 
 the first essential of artistic achievement, whole-hearted- 
 ness. She knows nothing of dallying rivulets or shel- 
 tered harbours ; she sails in mid-stream in the hour of 
 stress as well as in the hour of triumph. Her force 
 is expansive, but has she the power of vision to control 
 it? When the story opens, the task has not been 
 attempted. In her interview with Mr. Pole in his office 
 we are introduced to what Meredith terms Emilia's 
 " first conflict with her simplicity, out of which it is not
 
 84 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 to issue clear, as in foregone days " ; she must attempt 
 to see the character of him she is speaking to, envisage 
 his standpoint as a means to an end, and her con- 
 sciousness of the necessity marks " a quality going and 
 a quality coming," the loss and the gain both being 
 a law of her growth. And her author comments on a 
 transition, even more marked, at the point when, for- 
 saken by her lover, she is in terror of losing her voice. 
 She stands before the mirror studying her dress and 
 her face, questioning their attractiveness and wondering 
 how it may be enhanced. " The one Emilia, so un- 
 questioning, so sure, lay dead ; and a dozen new spirits, 
 with but a dim likeness to her, were fighting for posses- 
 sion of her frame, now occupying it alone, now in 
 couples ; and each casting grim reflections on the other. 
 Which is only a way of telling you that the great 
 result of mortal suffering — consciousness — had fully set 
 in ; to ripen ; perhaps to debase ; at any rate, to prove 
 her." Meredith's philosophy possibly allows too little 
 for the virtue of natures who, " where no misgiving is," 
 rely upon their unanalysed instincts. However that 
 may be, the women to whom his admiration is given, 
 one and all, win to their spiritual independence and 
 rectitude through consciousness of the conditions which 
 in a man-made civilisation their womanhood involves. 
 Emilia, humiliated, craves to see herself of worth in her 
 friend's eyes. The question, as Meredith sees it, is — 
 will she employ her merely feminine and mercantile 
 advantages, trade on her appearance, or will she deter- 
 mine to be valuable in her own eyes, model herself 
 from within outwards? It is answered in Tracy 
 Runningbrook's letters to Wilfrid after her illness, 
 in which Emilia is described as perceiving herself, and 
 even her power of love, as materials to be moulded to 
 beauty, instruments to be tuned and harmonised. And
 
 SANDRA BELLONI 85 
 
 this, with the controlling and garnering of emotion 
 implied in it, is the keynote of Emilia's development, 
 sustained till the close of Vittoria, where Meredith can 
 say of his heroine, " Rarely has a soul been so subjected 
 by its own force. She certainly had the image of God 
 in her mind." 
 
 As has already been said, the main outlines of 
 Emilia's character will not lend themselves to descrip- 
 tion. But minor qualities with which Meredith endows 
 her enable us to learn much of his views. It is, he 
 says, characteristic of the Fine Shades, the Nice 
 Feelings, to ignore the importance of money ; con- 
 sideration of it seems to them to savour of inferior 
 circles from which they have emerged. Emilia, on the 
 contrary, thinks its value real. On the arrival of her 
 harp she exclaims to the sisters, " I can't guess what it 
 cost," and, showing it to Wilfrid, "See what Mr. 
 Pericles thinks I am worth!" And this attitude is 
 not a mere result of her poverty ; she maintains it to 
 the end of the book. She writes in her letter to Merthyr, 
 when she is starting for Milan, that payment has bound 
 her to Pericles for three years to come. " I would," she 
 writes, " break what you call a Sentiment. I broke my 
 word to Wilfrid. But this money has a meaning that 
 I cannot conquer ! You would not wish me to." And 
 if the petty actions of the story too much hinge on 
 questions of money, the subject is more than redeemed 
 by this final transaction of Emilia's, coupled as it is 
 with her new understanding that her love is to be judged 
 by her acts. On her coming to Brookfield we are told 
 she " maintained a simple discretion." Wilfrid may 
 hear all he cares to hear of her life, but she is by no 
 means willing to volunteer information to his sisters. 
 And this quality is estimated highly by her author, 
 who substitutes it in her character for conventional
 
 86 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 rules or pretences. The Italian patriot Marini says of 
 Emilia : " She is half man. She is not what man has 
 made of her sex," and Meredith emphasises the point. 
 She is not, for instance, at all overcome by Pericles' 
 proposals or information as to his relations with women. 
 In one sense she is quite at his mercy ; yet, when he 
 attempts familiarity in action, her reply is fiery enough 
 to compel his artistic appreciation. And in that most 
 remarkable scene between Mr. Pole and Emilia, with 
 its masterly study of nervous collapse, her childishness 
 and power, her bluntness and delicacy, find fullest ex- 
 pression. She goes up to town to Mr. Pole's office to 
 plead for herself and for Wilfrid. Mr. Pole supposes 
 she has come on his daughter's behalf to induce him to 
 consult with a doctor. The result is that the tragedy 
 of the situation is heightened by one of those humorous 
 confusions Meredith delights in. Emilia differs so 
 widely from woman as Mr. Pole knows her that he 
 finds her incalculable, and is alternately beguiled and 
 enraged by her words. Her passion is intense, and she 
 thinks in images to which his physical sensitiveness 
 cannot be deaf — prospect of division from Wilfrid goes, 
 she says, like frost through her bones ; her heart jerks 
 as if it had to pull her body from the grave each time 
 that it beats ; if he slaughters her love and his son's, 
 what chance has he of rest, what pity, what mercy, 
 shall his sufferings anywhere find. The boon Emilia 
 demands, it is out of Mr. Pole's power to grant ; but so 
 great is her influence he is compelled to confess to her the 
 secret he guards as his life. And, finally, in the meeting 
 with Wilfrid at Wilming Weir, Emilia's spiritual destiny, 
 her place in the innermost of feeling, is revealed. Rank- 
 ing with the lyric loves of Richard and Lucy, rapturous 
 as those earliest hours, " By Wilming Weir " is penetrated 
 with a further, a still more delicate beauty. Emilia and
 
 SANDRA BELLONI 87 
 
 Wilfrid are older in experience than Richard and Lucy, 
 and, though Emilia is immature and uncomplex, this, 
 with her as with Carinthia, is due rather to the slow 
 development of a great nature than to dainty innocence 
 or ordinary simplicity ; for she has known hardship and 
 hunger and come into contact with evil. The influence 
 which possesses her, as she watches from the darkening 
 meadow the moon-rays widening on the churning 
 waters of the fall, is as poignant with foreboding as 
 with ecstasy. " The fair Immortal " shone on Richard 
 and Lucy " young as when she looked upon the lovers 
 in Paradise"; now her tide is at the flood, red-gold 
 with the power and passion of centuries. Sound and 
 movement encompass Emilia, till her art once more 
 dominates and possesses her soul. Later, when she 
 has agreed to abandon Italy and her profession, for 
 Wilfrid, she says to him, " Do you know when we were 
 silent just now, I was thinking that water was the 
 history of the world flowing out before me, all mixed 
 up of kings and queens, and warriors with armour, and 
 shouting armies; battles and numbers of mixed people; 
 and great red sunsets, with women kneeling under them ? 
 Do you know those long, low sunsets ? I love them. 
 They look like blood spilt for love." And throughout 
 the scene her personal passion is in touch with some- 
 thing wider and more universal than itself. Wilfrid, 
 who is at the threshold only of love, is engaged in 
 questioning whether his courage can compass the 
 ordinary human endeavour and claim for his wife the 
 girl whom he recognises as coming nearer super- 
 human nature than anything he knows. Emilia, on 
 the other hand, already has sight of a more command- 
 ing ideal. She is to write a year later when she is 
 leaving England for Milan, " May no dear woman I 
 know ever marry the man she first loves." The atmo-
 
 88 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 sphere of this scene at Wilming Weir has much in 
 common with the forty-seventh poem of Modern Love, 
 with which its imagery presents an interesting parallel. 
 In discussing his insistence on philosophical and 
 ethical meanings in Sandra Belloni, Meredith suggests 
 a distinction in method between that book and its 
 sequel Vittoria. Let us, he pleads, be true to time 
 and place. " Here in our fat England, the gardener 
 Time is playing all sorts of delicate freaks in the hues 
 and traceries of the flower of life, and shall we not 
 note them? If we are to understand our species, and 
 mark the progress of civilisation at all, we must." 
 But when Emilia is in Italy, the Philosopher promises 
 to retire altogether, — " for there is a field of action, of 
 battles and conspiracies, nerve and muscle, where life 
 fights for plain issues, and he can but sum results." If 
 we accept Sandra Belloni and Vittoria as our examples, 
 it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the field of 
 complex, and not that of " plain," issues, is the field of 
 Meredith's genius. He seems not to possess the power 
 of exclusion and selection required for a novel of in- 
 cident ; life, as he reads it, appears too involved and 
 discursive for events to preserve their necessary se- 
 quence. As a tale the book is ill-constructed, or rather 
 it is not constructed at all. It contains passages of 
 narrative and description which Meredith has never 
 surpassed, but it is not a story. It is a poet's account 
 of a great movement of which, though a poet, he has 
 the detailed and intimate knowledge of an historian, 
 love for Italy and democratic sympathies having, in 
 his case, been stimulated by special experience. Vittoria 
 made its appearance in the Fortnightly Review for 
 1866, and it has already been mentioned that at that 
 time Meredith was acting as war -correspondent in 
 Venice. The first chapter introduces us to Vittoria
 
 SANDRA BELLONI 89 
 
 in conclave with half a dozen leaders of the movement 
 for Italian Independence, and their Chief. She is 
 conceived as a devoted patriot destined by Mazzini 
 to give the signal for the rising in Milan. Yet she 
 immediately bewilders us by inconsequent actions. Is 
 it, we ask ourselves, credible that the Vittoria whom we 
 saw half an hour ago dedicating her life to her country, 
 should be scattering letters and messages betraying 
 the plan of the Rising? Vittoria, too, is Emilia 
 matured, and these actions have nothing in common 
 with what we know of Emilia. She, it has been ad- 
 mitted, could be unmindful of others in concentration 
 on her central emotion ; Lady Charlotte's feelings, for 
 instance, hardly existed for her in relation to Wilfrid. 
 But this fault is at the opposite pole from the fault 
 in Vittoria. What other matters she may or may not 
 recall in the days intervening between the scene on the 
 mountain and the 15th in Milan, we would not venture 
 to say ; that she can be thrown out of her course in 
 respect to the crowning event is incredible. 
 
 The life of Vittoria is not in its story, but in its most 
 noble dramatisation of certain personages and events. 
 Foremost among these are the descriptions of Mazzini, 
 which, reprinted in The Secularist and elsewhere, under 
 the title of "Portrait of Mazzini" and " Mazzini and Italy," 
 remain unrivalled. "He was," writes Meredith, "a man 
 of middle stature, thin, and even frail ; with the com- 
 plexion of the student, and the student's aspect. The 
 attentive droop of his shoulders and head, the straining 
 of his buttoned coat across his chest, the air as of one 
 who waited and listened, which distinguished his figure, 
 detracted from the promise of other than contemplative 
 energy, until his eyes were fairly seen and felt. That 
 is, until the observer became aware that those soft and 
 large, dark meditative eyes had taken hold of him. In
 
 90 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 them lay no abstracted student's languor, no reflex 
 burning of a solitary lamp ; but a quiet, grappling force 
 engaged the penetrating look. Gazing upon them, you 
 were drawn in suddenly among the thousand whirring 
 wheels of a capacious and vigorous mind, that was both 
 reasoning and prompt, keen of intellect, acting through- 
 out all its machinery, and having all under full com- 
 mand : an orbed mind, supplying its own philosophy, 
 and arriving at the sword-stroke by logical steps, — a 
 mind much less supple than a soldier's ; anything but 
 the mind of a Hamlet. . . . He saw far, and he grasped 
 ends beyond obstacles ; he was nourished by sovereign 
 principles ; he despised material present interests ; and, 
 as I have said, he was less supple than a soldier. If 
 the title of idealist belonged to him, we will not im- 
 mediately decide that it was opprobrious. The idealised 
 conception of stern truths played about his head 
 certainly for those who knew and who loved it. Such 
 a man, perceiving a devout end to be reached, might 
 prove less scrupulous in his course, possibly, and less 
 remorseful, than revolutionary Generals. His smile 
 was quite unclouded, and came softly as a curve in 
 water. It seemed to flow with, and to pass in and 
 out of, his thoughts, — to be a part of his emotion and 
 his meaning when it shone transiently full. For as 
 he had an orbed mind, so he had an orbed nature. 
 The passions were absolutely in harmony with the 
 intelligence." And this great portrait, surpassing in 
 fidelity the work of professed historians of the move- 
 ment, is equalled in insight by the closing lines of the 
 Opera which Meredith puts into the mouth of his 
 heroine in the great scene at La Scala. Vittoria has 
 taken Milan by storm ; throughout this last act her 
 power has been culminating ; the opera house is hushed 
 as for a veritable death scene, while she gives voice
 
 SANDRA BELLONI 91 
 
 to the lines which embody the creed of Young Italy's 
 
 c~* v» * c 
 
 Our life is but a little holding, lent 
 
 To do a mighty labour : we are one 
 
 With heaven and the stars when it is spent 
 
 To serve God's aim : else die we with the sun. 
 
 Allusion has already been made to the fact that 
 Vittoria abounds in descriptions of natural scenery that 
 are among the most beautiful in Meredith's writing. 
 The energy and movement of the duel in the Stelvio 
 Pass command universal admiration. And Vittoria in 
 the mountains with Merthyr, bringing the whole force 
 of her character to hold herself poised between the past 
 and the future, may hardly be spoken of in words other 
 than Meredith's own. Here, at the close of the book, 
 the conflicting elements no longer remain. We are face 
 to face with the commanding ideal, the great destiny, 
 foreshadowed in Sandra Belloni; and in it everything else 
 is absorbed. Separation between Vittoria's love for her 
 husband and her love for her country has now become 
 impossible. Circumstances provided these conditions 
 for the novelist, but he, it should be remembered, pro- 
 vided the woman to match them. He set out in 
 Emilia to balance and combine an idealist and an 
 artist, and make both perfect in a woman ; he has 
 merely availed himself of circumstances the most likely 
 to unite and inflame them. Vittoria in pursuing an 
 ideal has not had to turn her back on her art or her 
 personal relations. The ideal embraced and demanded 
 them both ; it gathered together and made daily de- 
 mands on all parts of her being. It was high, but it 
 was not remote. And response to these daily demands 
 has met with its highest reward. She has learned the 
 meaning of those words of Mazzini she sang as Camilla, 
 " There is an end to joy ; there is no end to striving." 
 She has contracted the habit of surrender ; she cannot
 
 92 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 be robbed. Merthyr and she are in the mountains 
 seeking her husband, and they are likelier to find him 
 dead than alive : — " Vittoria read the faces of the 
 mornings as human creatures have tried to gather 
 the sum of their destinies off changing surfaces, — 
 fair not meaning fair, nor black black, but either the 
 mask upon the secret of God's terrible will ; and 
 to learn it and submit, was the spiritual burden of 
 her motherhood, that the child leaping with her heart 
 might live. Not to hope blindly, in the exceeding 
 anxiousness of her passionate love, nor blindly to fear ; 
 not to let her soul fly out among the twisting chances ; 
 not to sap her great maternal duty by affecting false 
 stoical serenity, — to nurse her soul's strength, and suckle 
 her womanly weakness with the tears which are poison 
 when repressed ; to be at peace with a disastrous world 
 for the sake of the dependent life unborn ; by such pure 
 efforts she clung to God. Soft dreams of sacred nuptial 
 tenderness, tragic images, wild pity, were like phantoms 
 encircling her, plucking at her as she went ; but they 
 were beneath her feet, and she kept them from lodging 
 between her breasts. The thought that her husband, 
 though he should have perished, was not a life lost if 
 their child lived, sustained her powerfully. It seemed 
 to whisper at times almost, as it were Carlo's ghost 
 breathing in her ears : ' On thee ! ' On her the further 
 duty devolved ; and she trod down hope, lest it should 
 build her up and bring a shock to surprise her fortitude: 
 she put back alarm. The mountains and the valleys 
 scarce had names for her understanding ; they were but 
 a scene where the will of her Maker was at work. 
 Rarely has a soul been so subjected by its own force. 
 She certainly had the image of God in her mind." 
 " Not to let her soul fly out among the twisting 
 chances," to Meredith that achievement is the end and
 
 SANDRA BELLONI 93 
 
 aim of man's discipline. Not to lose the capacities for 
 desire and aspiration, but to control and subdue them 
 to the plot of earth that is ours, instead of being 
 dragged in their wake — such is his reading of the lesson 
 of life, though it involves to him as to Vittoria, a dis- 
 burdening of Hope as well as of Fear.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 RHODA FLEMING 
 
 ID HO DA FLEMING, published in 1865, is a "plain " 
 tale, concerned primarily with persons in humble 
 life. From his choice and treatment of the subject one 
 might imagine that Meredith had determined to confute 
 the readiest generalisation of his critics, a generalisation 
 that has indeed been suggested in the preceding chapter. 
 At any rate he has proved here, past all dispute, his 
 mastery over the simpler chords of human emotion, his 
 power to reveal tragic heights in an everyday story 
 without any loosening of hold upon reality. Mr. Le 
 Gallienne alludes to Rhoda Fleming as written in "Saxon 
 simple as song," and certainly such chapters as "Dahlia's 
 Frenzy," and " When the Night is Darkest," for directness 
 and intensity of feeling and expression would be by no 
 means easy so rival. Rhoda and Dahlia Fleming are 
 the daughters of a Kentish working farmer, and the 
 opening of the book is devoted to a description of their 
 mother's skill in gardening, and their early days on the 
 farm. Reduced to its framework, the story, after this, is 
 an account of Dahlia's visit to London, her seduction 
 and desertion there by the nephew of the squire of her 
 village, and Rhoda's consequent suffering. A good deal 
 of course is told of Edward Blancove — Dahlia's lover — 
 and almost as much of his cousin Algernon, and of their 
 friends. Algernon Blancove, a typical idiot of his 
 class, is indeed wearisome, and it is difficult not to wish 
 
 94
 
 RHODA FLEMING 95 
 
 that we had heard less of his exploits. But these per- 
 sons of superior social position have no rivalry with 
 Dahlia and Rhoda ; the interest is centred in the 
 sisters and in their experiences throughout. 
 
 Though Rhoda Fleming gives its title to the book, it is 
 her sister's tragedy that is the supreme event. Our first 
 insight into Dahlia's character is gained from her letters. 
 The first is to Edward Blancove, when unexpectedly 
 finding Rhoda at her lodgings, she has dismissed her 
 lover without explanation from the window. The letter 
 is delivered to Edward next morning at his Inn Chambers 
 by a porter who says that two young ladies have left it. 
 The writer's abandonment to passion acquires its sig- 
 nificance from what it reveals of the intensity of her 
 normal relationship to Rhoda. We do not question her 
 outcries — she has wept through the whole of the night, 
 she moves like a ghost, her life is unreal till she hears of 
 Edward's forgiveness — but it is the simple background 
 of fact she recounts that make these what they are: " In 
 my bed there lay my sister, and I could not leave her, 
 / love her so. I could not have got downstairs after 
 seeing her there ; I had to say that cold word and shut 
 the window." The second letter is written some months 
 later to Rhoda, who has returned to the farm. Dahlia 
 says she is leaving England that day, and continues, 
 " I must not love you too much, for I have all my love 
 to give to my Edward, my own now, and I am his trust- 
 ingly for ever. But he will let me give you some of it — 
 and Rhoda is never jealous. She shall have a great 
 deal. Only I am frightened when I think how immense 
 my love is for him ; so that anything — everything he 
 thinks right is right to me. I am not afraid to think so. 
 ... I am like drowned to everybody but one. We 
 are looking on the sea. In half an hour I shall have 
 forgotten the tread of English earth. I do not know
 
 96 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 that I breathe. All I know is a fear that I am flying, 
 and my strength will not continue. That is when I am 
 not touching his hand. There is France opposite. I 
 shut my eyes and see the whole country but it is like 
 what I feel for Edward — all in dark moonlight. Oh! I 
 trust him so ! I bleed for him. I could make all my 
 veins bleed out at a sad thought about him. And from 
 France to Switzerland and Italy. The sea sparkles 
 just as if it said 'Come to the sun': and I am going. . . . 
 Here is Edward. He says I may send his love to you. 
 Address : — Mrs. Edward Ayrton, Poste Restante, Lau- 
 sanne, Switzerland. P.S. — Lausanne is where -but 
 
 another time, and I will always tell you the history of 
 the places to instruct you, poor heart in dull England. 
 Adieu ! Good-bye, and God bless my innocent at home, 
 my dear sister. I love her. I never can forget her. 
 The day is so lovely. It seems on purpose for us. Be 
 sure you write on thin paper to Lausanne. It is on a 
 blue lake : you see snow mountains, and now there is a 
 bell ringing — kisses from me ! we start. I must sign. 
 — Dahlia." In spite of her lover's disloyalty and Mrs. 
 Lovell's machinations, it is impossible to think of the 
 writer of these letters as being argued, or arguing 
 herself, into the thought of marriage with anyone but 
 Edward. But one of the most masterly traits of the 
 book is the use to which Meredith puts his understanding 
 of illness in Dahlia's history. What physical energy 
 remains to her after her fever spends itself in the mere 
 remembrance and revival of feeling ; she has no surplus 
 of strength to formulate arguments or to refute them. 
 At moments she flames with her passion ; but normally 
 she is frozen and incapable in her sister's hands. Rhoda 
 has always been the stronger in character ; now she 
 determines what position is to be taken, and takes it for 
 Dahlia.
 
 RHODA FLEMING 97 
 
 Noble and convincing as Rhoda's character undoubt- 
 edly is, is it not difficult to accept the whole of her 
 action in compelling Dahlia's marriage with Sedgett? 
 It is hardly possible not to feel that her love for Dahlia 
 would have revealed the situation in its true and not its 
 conventional aspect, given her at least the degree of 
 misgiving Robert experiences. Her conviction that 
 Dahlia at all costs must be "saved" is indeed atone with 
 her father's. But the view in his case is convincing 
 mainly because it is masculine. Our credulity too is 
 strained by the choice of a double-dyed villain for the 
 bridegroom, even though his courtship is kept adroitly 
 out of sight, and we are not called on to see him with 
 Dahlia. He stands to the Flemings as he was of 
 course intended to stand, for a principle ; nevertheless, 
 we must include in our estimate of Mrs. Lovell's 
 character her knowledge of Sedgett, and, in judging 
 Edward, we have to remember that he had a suspicion 
 at least of the identity of the man into whose hands he 
 was willing that Dahlia should fall. 
 
 It is usual to remark that Meredith's novels owe a 
 good deal to Richardson's. But the suggestion is not 
 commonly explained or expanded, and, though Sir 
 Charles Grandison is recalled by name in The Ordeal of 
 Richard Feverel, it is not in a very serious connection. 
 The immense differences between Richardson's novels 
 and Meredith's need not be dwelt on, nor need we add 
 that any likeness suggested must be qualified by seeing 
 them in relation to their periods. It is said that 
 Richardson came to recognise variety of mind among 
 women from his early experiences of the divergent 
 desires of those who employed him to write their letters. 
 However this may be, his women are more worked from 
 within outwards, than those of any other writer of his 
 time. Richardson had the temerity to question the 
 
 H
 
 98 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 prevailing conception of the sex, and at least to attempt 
 an answer to Mowbray's astonished outcry over Love- 
 lace's grief for Clarissa : " She was but a woman, and 
 what was there in one woman more than another ? " It 
 was, in fact, only because Richardson's feeling for 
 Clarissa had exalted her to such an exceptional position 
 that his readers were induced to look on Lovelace's 
 offer of reparation as anything but quixotic. And 
 Clarissa in spite of its sermonising has much in com- 
 mon with Rhoda Fleming. Lovelace's anguish when he 
 realises that Clarissa's soul has escaped his grasp, that 
 it is " out of his power any way in the world to be even 
 with her," is closely parallel with Edward's. He writes 
 to his friend of Clarissa, who is dying, and refuses to see 
 him or to entertain his offers of marriage : " Has not 
 her triumph over me, from first to last, been infinitely 
 greater than her sufferings from me? Would the 
 sacred regard I have for her purity, even for her personal 
 as well as intellectual purity, permit, I could prove this 
 as clear as the sun. Hence it is that I admire her more 
 than ever, and that my love for her is less personal, as I 
 may say more intellectual, than ever I thought it could be 
 to woman." And Meredith tells us of Edward when, 
 after Dahlia's recovery from attempted suicide, he is 
 urging her to marry him : " He had three interviews 
 with Dahlia ; he wrote to her as many times. There 
 was but one answer for him ; and when he ceased to 
 charge her with unforgivingness, he came to the strange 
 conclusion that beyond our calling a woman a Saint 
 for rhetorical purposes, and esteeming her as one for 
 pictorial, it is indeed possible, as he had slightly dis- 
 cerned in this woman's presence, both to think her 
 saintly and to have the sentiments inspired by the 
 over-earthly in her presence." A certain makeweight 
 of circumstance — rank, abduction, delicacy of health —
 
 RHODA FLEMING 99 
 
 is thrown into the scale with Richardson's heroine ; but 
 this was necessary ballast at a time when women, what- 
 ever they may be to-day, were most certainly " shamefully 
 outweighed," 1 and it scarcely lessens his achievement. 
 Clarissa, disowned and cast out by her family, unmarried, 
 dying, is spiritually triumphant and supreme. In 
 Rhoda Fleming the climax is similar, though, in keeping 
 with her circumstances, Dahlia's final feeling for her 
 lover is more delicate than Clarissa's. She does not 
 proffer Christian charity and prayers for Edward's 
 amendment ; all that she has is his. But her life has 
 been robbed of capacity for love or joy. In Clarissa's 
 case death is the final note ; the tragedy could go no 
 farther. In Dahlia's it would have been inadequate, an 
 evasion of the tragedy. Her story, more delicate, more 
 poignant, asks death in life as its end. " She lived 
 seven years her sister's housemate, nurse of the growing 
 swarm. She had gone through fire, as few women 
 have done in like manner, to leave their hearts among 
 the ashes ; but with that human heart she left regrets 
 behind her. The soul of this young creature filled its 
 place. It shone in her eyes and in her work, a lamp in 
 her little neighbourhood ; and not less a lamp of cheer- 
 ful beams for one day being as another to her. When 
 she died she relinquished nothing. Others knew the loss." 
 Farmer Fleming, the impassive countryman, appar- 
 ently incapable of passion and not responsive to any 
 ordinary stimulus, is in one sense the greatest character 
 in the book. In his wife's lifetime he was indeed shown 
 capable of that small degree of feeling required to nurse 
 a grievance. He thought of her as extravagant (for 
 which he may be pardoned, since she was so), and 
 bitterly resented her suggestion that he should give up 
 the farm, on which he was losing, and join her in con- 
 
 1 The Sage Enamoured.
 
 ioo GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 verting her flourishing flower-garden (she requisitioned 
 manure from the farmyard) into a commercial under- 
 taking. But his dumbness was such that, except in 
 regard to this unimportant practical change, she 
 managed him to the end, and died unaware of his 
 resentment. Yet from the moment Dahlia's letter 
 arrives announcing her marriage, but giving no sur- 
 name, he is roused and implacable. We see him only 
 in occasional and isolated acts, but we feel the weight 
 of the force that operates in him. Instincts and tradi- 
 tions of generations are finding a voice. The " respect- 
 ability " Dahlia has forfeited, and which is miraculously 
 offered to her again, is to him a thing as little to be 
 questioned as the forces of nature. He epitomises the 
 awfulness of stupidity, blind impulse not amenable to 
 reason. But he is a figure none the less heroic because 
 pitiless and cruel — a figure representing much more 
 than itself, and the very keynote of the tragedy. For 
 Meredith's insight makes clear to us here, as in One of 
 our Conquerors, that the force Dahlia and Nataly oppose 
 has accumulated through ages, and though it appears to 
 find its earliest expression in their criticism by others, 
 has its final stronghold in the instincts of the rebels 
 themselves. Thus the colossal proportions of the 
 power with which the individual is at war demand for 
 their artistic embodiment something approaching an 
 heroic background, and in contemporary life this is 
 most easily obtainable in a drama set amid primitive 
 people. The same forces operate in higher grades of 
 society, but there they are so differentiated and divided 
 against themselves that they produce their impression 
 only fragmentarily and in separated voices. And here, 
 perhaps, is the reason why in this respect One of our 
 Conquerors, with all its subtlety and beauty, sinks by the 
 side of Rhoda Fleming to little more than a tractate.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 MEREDITH AS REVIEWER AND CRITIC 
 
 THE Essay on Comedy, while it assures Meredith's 
 position in the front rank of literary critics, has 
 tended inevitably to dwarf the importance of his other 
 critical work. His articles in the Fortnightly Review for 
 1868 have been alluded to already, and it may be 
 valuable to consider these in some detail ; for they are 
 eminently characteristic of his sympathetic and pains- 
 taking attitude towards comparatively unknown authors 
 among his contemporaries. 
 
 In the January number of the Review he warmly 
 hails Myers' Saint Paul as a noble poem, worthy of its 
 theme and strikingly in contrast with the common run 
 of religious verse ; he examines the foundations of its 
 success, and pays a high tribute to its workmanship. 
 In February he reviews the Countess of Brownlowe's 
 Reminiscences from 1802 to 1815, a book which in one 
 sense is not literature and contributes nothing to history, 
 but is full of vivid human impressions of personages 
 and events, and therefore, it need hardly be said, 
 valuable in Meredith's eyes. Its chief interest for us is 
 that it affords its reviewer an opportunity to reply to 
 some of the author's strictures on Frenchwomen and 
 their manners. It appears that the Countess of 
 Brownlowe was in Paris with Lady Castlereagh when 
 that lady received a ceremonial visit from the Duchesse 
 de Courlande and her daughter, Madame de Perigord, 
 
 101
 
 102 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 afterwards Duchesse de Dino and Talleyrand's right 
 hand in London. The Countess describes Madame de 
 Perigord as highly rouged and dressed in a pink gown, 
 with roses on her head, and this in spite of the fact that 
 she is, so Lady Castlereagh is informed by the mother, 
 in grief for the loss of her child ; all of which makes 
 clear to the Englishwomen that these ladies are no 
 better than they should be, and causes them to moralise 
 on the curious company those who move in diplomatic 
 circles are sometimes obliged to keep. Meredith com- 
 ments : " Madame de Perigord was simply fulfilling 
 what she conceived to be a public duty. She had to 
 pay a visit, and she did not choose — for it is not the 
 habit of the country — to affect the eyes of others by 
 presenting herself sombrely clad. Frenchwomen are, to 
 say the least, as tender-hearted mothers as English- 
 women. She may have been Hen triste for the loss of 
 the child in spite of her rouge ; nay, coming of a 
 provident race, she may even on that occasion have 
 thought it advisable to lay on an extra dab of her 
 artificial bloom, not supposing that she violated any 
 laws of decency, but supposing quite the reverse. Why 
 should she wear a suffering heart on her sleeve? 
 Frenchwomen hold our obtrusion of heavy mourning 
 into society to be an offence, a selfish insistence on 
 private grief, evincing absolute want of consideration 
 for others ; in short, a piece of our national bad 
 breeding." Although this is not literary criticism, it 
 seemed pardonable in view of Meredith's well-known 
 admiration for France and French literature, to note in 
 passing a championship so characteristic of its author. 
 In May, he reviews Mcrivales Translation of the Iliad 
 into English Rhymed Verse, and estimates it highly. It 
 is, he says, " a rendering capable of declamation, as 
 every true version of Homer must be." In June, he
 
 CRITIC AND REVIEWER 103 
 
 provides, in the form of a fifteen-page review of Robert 
 Lyttoris Poems, what is practically an essay on verse- 
 writing. Lytton, he remarks, occupies a position far 
 enough removed from the eminence of Tennyson and 
 Browning on the one hand, and the fledgling author on 
 the other, to be a fit subject for criticism and advice ; 
 and it should be the reviewer's object to discover and 
 reveal to the public the nature of any promise of great 
 and good work in writers who have achieved this mid- 
 way position. He protests against summary methods 
 which too often dispose of young writers' work on mere 
 grounds of distaste. " We have not," he exclaims, " so 
 many men of genius or of cleverness who are anxious 
 to build up a name in letters that it is necessary to turn 
 an amazed frown on them when they produce an 
 ambitious book not quite after the prevailing fashion ; 
 nor is our modern literature so rich in good things that 
 we can afford to leave its growth to the fatness of 
 the soil, and cherish only what delights a dilettante 
 appetite. Goethe held, even in Germany, that art 
 should be cultivated. The defenders of such literary 
 gateways as we possess resemble too often the old 
 Austrian out-station gendarmes, who frequently used to 
 examine a passport by reading it upside down, and 
 then declare it imperfect and unsatisfactory." Never- 
 theless Meredith frankly bewails the number and speed 
 of Lytton's verse publications. All hasty publication 
 he regards as an evil, but an evil in which there are 
 recognisable degrees. " Prose," he writes, " is always 
 ready to satiate the appetite for labour : prose travels 
 to limbo without a shriek. The road is wide for it in 
 that direction. Prose strengthens the hand. It does 
 not of necessity call up fictitious sentiments to inflate 
 a conception run to languor. I allude especially to the 
 habit of producing numberless minor poems of purely
 
 104 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 sentimental subjects. A large and noble theme has a 
 framework that yields as much support as it demands. 
 Lyrics yield none ; and when they are not spontaneous 
 they rob us of a great deal of our strength and 
 sincerity. If they are true things, coming of a man's 
 soul, they are so much taken from him ; if the reverse, 
 they hurry him. There should not be such a thing as 
 the habit of lyrical composition. This effusion of song 
 is not natural to us. The greatest of lyrists have the 
 power but rarely, and if they published songs and odes 
 and snatches only, their works would be remarkably 
 contracted. In a stimulating season, when prompted by 
 the passions of youth or of a generous sympathy, they 
 give abundance, but that abundance does not make 
 volumes — at least, not publishable volumes. A great 
 lyrist (and we have one among us), inflamed by the 
 woes of an unhappy people throbbing for fullness of 
 life and freedom, sings perforce ; but he has a great 
 subject, and we do not see that it is his will which 
 distinctly predominates in his verses. Shelley's lyrical 
 pieces are few, considering the vigour of his gift of 
 song ; and so are those of Burns and of Campbell and 
 Hood. Heinrich Heine added a new element to his 
 songs and ballads : an irritant exile breathed irony into 
 them and shaped them into general form and signifi- 
 cance. He is the unique example of a man who made 
 himself his constant theme, and he pursued it up to the 
 time he was rescued from his ' mattrass grave.' By 
 virtue of a cunning art he caused it to be interesting 
 while he lived. I feel the monotony of it begin to grow 
 on me often now when I take up the Buck der Lieder y 
 the Neuer Friihling, and the Romanzero. Goethe's 
 songs were the fruits of a long life. He tells us how 
 they sprang up in him, and I do not doubt of his sing- 
 ing as the birds sing ; but without irreverence it may
 
 CRITIC AND REVIEWER 105 
 
 be said that in many cases this was merely a self- 
 indulgent mood to which German verse allured the 
 highest of German poets. I love the larger number of 
 them for his sake, not for their own. The Tuscan 
 Giusti, one of the finest of modern lyrists, published 
 very little. Alfred de Musset's songs, all of them 
 exquisite, might be comprised in half a dozen pages of 
 this review. In fact, it is from observation or medita- 
 tion that poetry gets sinew and substance, and the 
 practice of observing or meditating soon tames in poets 
 the disposition to pour out verses profusely." 
 
 As it obviously is impossible to quote more than 
 a paragraph here and there from Meredith's critical 
 writings, it has appeared most to the purpose to select 
 such as bear recognisably on his own practice, or on 
 theories he has formulated elsewhere. In April, 1880, 
 he wrote to James Thomson : " My friends could tell 
 you that I am a critic hard to please. They say that 
 irony lurks in my eulogy." And he has lately said 1 
 that he thinks reviewers, even those of The Times 
 Literary Supplement, are becoming slightly too urbane, 
 and has observed regretfully, " Almost all men imagine 
 they can write a novel." Yet Meredith's intense 
 interest in the work of young writers and journalists 
 is a constant subject of remark with his friends, and 
 wherever and whenever he discovers force and reality 
 his praise is unstinted. Proof of a fact so generally 
 acknowledged is unnecessary, but, if it were needed, 
 attention might be drawn to his review of Mrs. Mey- 
 nelVs Essays? and the remainder of the letter to James 
 Thomson. " I am not," he continues, " frequently 
 satisfied by verse. But I have gone through your 
 volume, and partly a second time, and I have not found 
 
 1 Daily Chronicle, July 5th, 1904. 
 
 2 The National Review, August, 1896.
 
 106 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 the line I would propose to recast. I have many pages 
 that no other English poet could have written. No- 
 where is the verse feeble, nowhere is the expression 
 insufficient ; the majesty of the line has always its full 
 colouring and marches under a banner. And you 
 accomplish this effect with the utmost sobriety, with 
 absolute self-mastery. I have not time at present to 
 speak of the City of Melancholia. There is a massive 
 impressiveness in it that goes beyond Durer, and takes 
 it into the upper regions where poetry is the sublima- 
 tion of the mind of man, the voice of our highest."- 
 
 But enlightening as a summary of Meredith's re- 
 views and critical writings undoubtedly would be, 
 standing alone it must fail to reveal the heart of the 
 matter ; for the most delightful and penetrating of his 
 criticism is scattered incidentally in the pages of 
 his novels. This, it need hardly be said, is modified to 
 some extent by the characters who voice it, but it 
 carries always an undercurrent at least of its writer's 
 opinion. His first contains that noteworthy passage in 
 which Lady Blandish gives Sir Austin her impressions 
 of the authors he has asked her to study. " I cannot," 
 she says, " get on with Gibbon. I dislike the sneering 
 essence of his writings. I keep referring to his face, 
 until the dislike seems to become personal. How 
 different is it with Wordsworth ! And yet I cannot 
 escape from the thought that he is always solemnly 
 thinking of himself (but I do reverence him). But this 
 is curious ; Bryon was a greater egotist, and yet I do 
 not feel the same with him. He reminds me of a 
 beast of the desert, savage and beautiful ; and the 
 former is what one would imagine a superior donkey 
 reclaimed from the heathen to be, a very superior 
 donkey, I mean, with great power of speech and great 
 natural complacency, and whose stubbornness you must
 
 CRITIC AND REVIEWER 107 
 
 admire as part of his mission. The worst is that 
 no one will imagine anything sublime in a superior 
 donkey, so my simile is unfair and false." 1 To the last 
 sentence we may add as a footnote that most naive and 
 delightful of Meredith's self-criticisms : " This simile 
 says more than I mean it to say, but those who under- 
 stand similes will know what is due to them." 2 We 
 quoted earlier Meredith's famous championship of 
 metaphor in relation to the character of Dudley 
 Sowerby. 3 His distinctions between one kind of meta- 
 phor and another are most illuminating. In Diana of 
 the Crossways Lady Dunstane is made to object to the 
 auctioneer's advertisement of her ancestral home as 
 phrased in " the plush of speech " ; and insists on its 
 withdrawal. In describing the situation of the house, 
 Meredith has himself just spoken of the smoke above 
 London in the distance as " the ever-flying banner of 
 the metropolis." " Withdraw we likewise," says Mere- 
 dith, " ' banner of the metropolis.' That ' plush of 
 speech ' haunts all efforts to swell and illuminate citizen 
 prose to a princely poetic." 4 Alvan in the Tragic 
 Comedians speaks of the Jews as a " parable people," a 
 race that has no dislike of metaphor : " Provided 
 always that the metaphor be not like the meta- 
 physician's treatise on nature : a torch to see the sun- 
 rise ! " 5 
 
 Diana of the Crossways contains an exhaustive ex- 
 position of Meredith's theories of his art : the opening 
 chapter on " Diaries and Diarists " is mainly a defence of 
 them. " Be wary of the dis-relish of brain-stuff. You 
 must feed on something. Matter that is not nourishing 
 
 1 The Ordeal of Richard Fever el, chapter xxiii. 
 
 2 Sandra Belloni, chapter xvm. 
 
 3 One of Our Conquerors, chapter XXVI. 
 
 4 Diana of the Crossways, chapter I. 
 
 5 The Tragic Comedians, chapter I v.
 
 io8 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 to brains can help to constitute nothing but the bodies 
 that are pitched on rubbish heaps. Brain-stuff is not 
 lean stuff; the brain-stuff of fiction is internal history, 
 and to suppose it dull is the profoundest of errors." 1 
 Diana, the novelist, in attempting to describe Percy 
 Dacier to Emma, says, " I may tell you his eyes are 
 pale-blue, his features regular, his hair silky, brownish, 
 his legs long, his head rather stooping (only the head), 
 his mouth commonly closed : these are the facts, and 
 you have seen much the same in a nursery doll. Such 
 literary craft is of the nursery. So with landscapes. 
 The art of the pen (we write on darkness) is to rouse 
 the inward vision, instead of labouring with a Drop- 
 scene brush, as if it were to the eye ; because our flying 
 minds cannot contain a protracted description. That 
 is why the poets, who spring imagination with a word 
 or phrase, paint lasting pictures. The Shakespearian, 
 the Dantesque, are in a line, two at most." 2 But in the 
 Tragic Comedians a claim is made for fiction, shorter, 
 but even more powerful, than anything to be found in 
 Diana. Alvan asks Clotilde what she has been reading : 
 " Oh, light literature — poor stuff," is her reply. " When 
 we two read together," he says, " you will not say that. 
 Light literature is the garden and the orchard, the 
 fountain, the rainbow, the far view ; the view within us 
 as well as without. Our blood runs through it, our 
 history in the quick. The Philistine detests it, because 
 he has no view, out or in. The dry confess they are 
 cut off from the living tree, peeled and sapless, when 
 they condemn it. The vulgar demand to have their 
 pleasures in their own likeness — and let them swamp 
 their troughs ! they shall not degrade the fame of 
 noble fiction. We are the choice public, which will 
 
 1 Diana of the Crossways, chapter I. 
 
 2 /did., chapter XV.
 
 CRITIC AND REVIEWER 109 
 
 have good writing for light reading. Poet, novelist, 
 essayist, dramatist, shall be ranked honourably in my 
 Republic. I am neither, but a man of law, a student 
 of the sciences, a politician, on the road to government 
 and statecraft : and yet I say I have learnt as much 
 from light literature as from heavy — as much, that is, 
 from the pictures of our human blood in motion as from 
 the clever assortment of our forefatherly heaps of 
 bones. Shun those who cry out against fiction and 
 have no taste for elegant writing. For to have no 
 sympathy with the playful mind is not to have a mind : 
 it is a test." 1 To Alvan, the reformer, poetry, though 
 he aspires to take it seriously, is as light as any other 
 kind of literature. The closing sentence of the letter 
 to James Thomson quoted above, and our chapters on 
 the poems, will suggest that Meredith himself took 
 a different view of it. But there is a passage in Sandra 
 Belloni in which, through the mouth of his heroine, he 
 makes a criticism of one of the lighter aspects of the 
 Ars Poetica. " You do not care for verse," says Sir 
 Purcell to Emilia. "Poetry?" she replies; "no, not 
 much. It seems like talking on tiptoe ; like animals in 
 cages ; always going to one end and back again. . . ." 
 " And making the same noise when they get at the end 
 — like the bears." Sir Purcell slightly laughed. " You 
 don't approve of the rhymes ? " " Yes, I like the 
 rhymes ; but when you use words — I mean, if you are 
 in earnest — how can you count and have stops, and — 
 no, I do not care anything for poetry." 2 Emilia's prob- 
 lem is certainly far-reaching. 
 
 In the Essay on Comedy Meredith has proved to the 
 full his power of forming complete and delicate literary 
 estimates. Elsewhere his allusions to the masters of 
 
 1 The Tragic Comedians, chapter vi. 
 
 2 Sandra Belloni, chapter xxxvm.
 
 no GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 literature are chiefly of the kind that " spring imagina- 
 tion with a word or phrase." Richmond Roy's most 
 excellent fooling with " Great Will " 1 falls in its place 
 in a subsequent chapter. In The Tragic Comedians 
 Clotilde introduces herself to Alvan in a discussion on 
 Hamlet. Her view is "mad from the first"; Alvan's 
 " he was born bilious ; he partook of the father's consti- 
 tution, not the mother's. High-thoughted, quick-nerved 
 to follow the thought, reflective, if an interval yawned 
 between his hand and the act, he was by nature two- 
 minded : as full of conscience as a nursing mother that 
 sleeps beside her infant : — she hears the silent beginning 
 of a cry. Before the ghost walked he was an elemen- 
 tary hero ; one puff of action would have whiffed away 
 his melancholy. After it he was a dizzy moraliser, 
 waiting for the winds to blow him to his deeds — or out. 
 The apparition of his father to him poisoned a sluggish 
 run of blood, and that venom in the blood distracted 
 a head steeped in Wittenberg philosophy. With meta- 
 physics in one and poison in the other, with the outer 
 world opened on him and this world stirred to con- 
 fusion, he wore the semblance of madness, he was 
 throughout sane ; sick, but never with his reason de- 
 throned." 2 Alvan's talk with Clotilde is of statesmen, 
 of European politics, of literatures ancient and modern. 
 They capped verses of " the incomparable Heinrich — 
 lucid metheglin, with here and there no dubious flavour 
 of acid, and a lively sting in the tail of the honey. 
 Sentiment, cynicism, and satin impropriety and scabrous, 
 are among those verses, where pure poetry has a recog- 
 nised voice; but the lower elements constitute the 
 popularity in a cultivated society inclining to wanton- 
 ness out of bravado as well as by taste." 3 The marked 
 
 1 Harry Richmond, chapter II. 
 
 2 The Tragic Comedians, chapter IV. 
 
 3 Ibid., chapter IV.
 
 CRITIC AND REVIEWER in 
 
 influence of Carlyle on Meredith's social and political 
 opinion, and still more on his methods of thought, gives 
 a special interest and value to a passage in Beanchamfts 
 Career. " His (Beauchamp's) favourite author," we are 
 told, " was one writing of Heroes, in a style resembling 
 either early architecture or utter dilapidation, so loose 
 and rough it seemed ; a wind-in-the-orchard style, that 
 tumbled down here and there an appreciable fruit with 
 uncouth bluster ; sentences without commencements 
 running to abrupt endings and smoke, like waves 
 against a seawall, learned dictionary words giving a hand 
 to street-slang, and accents falling on them haphazard, 
 like slant rays from driving clouds ; all the pages in a 
 breeze, the whole book producing a kind of electrical 
 agitation in the mind and the joints." This, it is 
 true, is Rosamund Culling's impression, and needs as 
 its background the general enthusiasm for Carlyle im- 
 plicit in Meredith's writings. In The Essay on Comedy 
 the justice of some of Carlyle's conclusions touching 
 history and society are indeed questioned, but an 
 immortal tribute is paid to his humour. " Finite and 
 infinite," it is said, " flash from one to the other with 
 him, lending him a two-edged thought that peeps out 
 of his peacefulest lines by fits, like the lantern of the 
 fire-watcher at the windows, going the rounds at night." 
 In regard to their style it is sometimes contended that 
 Meredith and Carlyle drew from common stock in Jean 
 Paul Richter. It is probable, however, that too much 
 stress has been laid on German influences in Meredith's 
 writings ; his boyhood certainly was spent in Germany, 
 but before he was sixteen he had returned to England. 
 At any rate, it is clear, in regard to ideas, that the 
 nucleus of the conception of Earth, the stress laid upon 
 "the stern-exact," the belief in the saving power of work, 
 are shared by Meredith with Carlyle.
 
 ii2 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 And last, but not least, among these quotations one 
 must be included from Sandra Belloni, in which we have 
 Meredith's apologia for a feature commonly condemned 
 in his work. Cornelia has objected to Tracy Running- 
 brook as a novelist on the ground that " he coins 
 words." Mr. Barrett replies. " A writer," he says, " who 
 is not servile and has insight, must coin from his own 
 mint. In poetry we are rich enough ; but in prose also 
 we owe everything to the licence our poets have taken 
 in the teeth of critics. Our simplest prose style is 
 nearer to poetry with us, for this reason, that the poets 
 have made it. Read French poetry. With the first 
 couplet the sails are full, and you have left the shores 
 of prose far behind. Mr. Runningbrook coins words and 
 risks expressions because an imaginative Englishman, 
 pen in hand, is the cadet and vagabond of the family — 
 an exploring adventurer — whereas to a Frenchman it all 
 comes inherited like a well-filled purse. The audacity 
 of the French mind, and the French habit of quick 
 social intercourse, have made them nationally far richer 
 in language. Let me add, individually as much poorer. 
 Read their stereotyped descriptions. They all say the 
 same things. They have one big Gallic trumpet. 
 Wonderfully eloquent : we feel that : but the person 
 does not speak. And now, you will be surprised to 
 learn that, notwithstanding what I have said, I should 
 still side with Mr. Runningbrook's fair critic rather than 
 with him. The reason is, that the necessity to write as 
 he does is so great that a strong barrier — a chevaux-de- 
 frise of pen-points — >must be raised against every newly- 
 minted word and hazardous coiner, or we shall be 
 inundated. So it has been with our greatest, so it must 
 be with the rest of them, or we shall have a Trans- 
 atlantic literature. By no means desirable, I think. 
 Yet, see : when a piece of Transatlantic slang happens
 
 CRITIC AND REVIEWER 113 
 
 to be tellingly true — something coined from an absolute 
 experience ; from a fight with elements — we cannot 
 resist it : it invades us. In the same way poetic rash- 
 ness of the right quality enriches the language. I would 
 make it prove its quality." 1 
 
 1 Sandra Belloni, chapter vni.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 THE ADVENTURES OF HARRY RICHMOND 
 
 THE reader who falls under the spell of one after 
 another of Meredith's novels finds himself obliged 
 to be on his guard against claiming more than one of 
 them as the greatest. The range of characterisation is 
 so immense, the inequalities within the same book are so 
 marked, that a summary estimate of each, and a com- 
 parison of each with all the rest, are singularly difficult 
 to make. If Harry Richmond might be divided into 
 two halves, of the first it would be easy to say: " Here is 
 the greatest of Meredith's novels." This portion, which 
 comprises Harry's boyhood with his father and grand- 
 father, his stay at the farm, his journey with Kiomi, 
 and his voyage with Captain Bulstead and travels in 
 Germany, is one of the most remarkable feats in our 
 literature. The first page plunges us into the very 
 heart of the story. That midnight tussle between old 
 Squire Beltham and Roy Richmond for possession of 
 the child is as stirring as anything in our fiction. And 
 it provides the most skilful of backgrounds for the 
 fantasy of Harry's after life. A lesser novelist might 
 have moved the child and his father through a no-man's 
 land that was delightful enough ; but the wonder of 
 Meredith's exploit is that their life appears perfectly 
 credible, woven against this most typically British of 
 backgrounds. The alternation between fantasy and 
 sanest prose is maintained throughout. When Shylock's 
 
 114
 
 HARRY RICHMOND 115 
 
 descendant walks off with Roy Richmond, Harry is 
 conveyed to a homestead smelling of butter and cheese; 
 while Roy is diverting a German principality with his 
 freaks, Harry is at the most realistic of schools; Kiomi's 
 people are camped at the very gate of his typically 
 English home, but Kiomi is " fresh of the East, as the 
 morning when her ancient people struck tents in the 
 track of their shadows." And not the least result of 
 this delicate counterpoise is the reader's sensation that 
 the "cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces," with 
 which the novelist's fancy surrounds him, have their 
 likeness in his own experience ; life, fitful and tragic, 
 is before him, though never exhausted or defined. 
 
 Yet, no sooner is this tribute paid to the first half of 
 the book than we find ourselves hastening to remark 
 upon the subtle and delicate interests of the last. There 
 Harry, true son of his father, is the fairy prince within 
 sight of his goal ; but no more than within sight of it, 
 because he is his father's son. There are persons in life 
 who through their impressional susceptibility, and by a 
 gift of passionate appreciation, may take rank for a time 
 with those who are greatly their superiors ; and it is not 
 the smallest of Harry Richmond's distinctions that the 
 Princess Ottilia lives for us through him, and that, in 
 spite of his own variableness, he makes clear to us what 
 would otherwise be inchoate in her. For if Ottilia is 
 not the greatest of Meredith's heroines, it is because his 
 characterisation of her is too elusive, because the atmo- 
 sphere she breathes in is too rarefied for the reader. 
 Ottilia never formulates or expresses any decision 
 against marriage with Harry; the barrier revealed to 
 us between them, though not less enduring than rank, 
 is much less tangible. Not to be removed or under- 
 mined, it might have been surmounted ; but a giant 
 such as Alvan would have been needed for the task : it
 
 u6 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 was ludicrously impossible for a youth whose delicacy 
 and insight had not the ordinary Englishman's endur- 
 ance to back them up. 
 
 " Poetry," Meredith has said, " is the everlastingly and 
 embracingly human ; without it your fictions are flat 
 foolishness" ; and again, "When we let romance go we 
 change a sky for a ceiling." These sentences might 
 serve as mottoes for Harry Richmond, a book by the 
 side of which most of our fictions are flat foolishness 
 indeed. A comparison between Richard Feverel and 
 The Egoist, much to the advantage of the former, was 
 suggested in an earlier chapter; and surely, if any further 
 proof were needed of the contention that Meredith's 
 genius lies in poetic greatness of design rather than in 
 intellectual analysis, Harry Richmond would supply it. 
 As it originally appeared in The Cornhill (1870-71), 
 the book was sixty chapters in length ; its length has 
 since been reduced slightly, but it is still the longest of 
 the novels. In the space at our disposal an analysis of 
 the story, or even of the characters, is out of the ques- 
 tion, the range of incident and characterisation being 
 immense. There is, however, one personage in the book, 
 beside whom all the others sink into comparative 
 obscurity. Roy Richmond is one of the greatest, per- 
 haps the very greatest, of Meredith's creations. He is 
 the tragic comedian, unrivalled in fiction. Excepting 
 the essentials, he possesses all the equipment of a hero. 
 His affections are strong, his feeling in matters of taste 
 is delicate ; he is fearless and marvellously energetic 
 and resourceful. But morally he is an outlaw, and uses 
 the weapons of outlawry. To Squire Beltham, whose 
 daughter he married, he stands for all that is outrageous 
 and low. To his son, in childhood, and to the women 
 who love him, he is without equal on earth. Harry is 
 little more than a baby when his father carries him off
 
 HARRY RICHMOND 117 
 
 from his grandfather's country home to live in " a street 
 where all the house-doors were painted black and shut 
 with a bang " — a street haunted by milkmen " and no 
 cows anywhere ; numbers of people, and no acquaint- 
 ances among them." But " my father," he tells us, 
 " could soon make me forget that I was transplanted ; 
 he could act dog, tame rabbit, fox, pony, and a whole 
 nursery collection alive. . . . When he was at home I 
 rode him all round the room and upstairs to bed. 
 I lashed him with a whip till he frightened me, so real 
 was his barking. If I said ' Menagerie,' he became a 
 caravan of wild beasts ; I undid a button of his waist- 
 coat, and it was a lion that made a spring, roaring at 
 me ; I pulled his coat-tails, and off I went tugging at 
 an old bear that swung a hind leg as he turned, in the 
 queerest way, and then sat up, and beating his breast 
 sent out a mew-moan. Our room was richer to me 
 than all the Grange while these performances were 
 going forward. His monkey was almost as wonderful 
 as his bear, only he was too big for it, and was obliged 
 to aim at reality in his representation of this animal by 
 means of a number of breakages ; a defect that brought 
 our landlady on the scene." The Sundays of the pair 
 are devoted to quieter but not less enthralling enter- 
 tainments. '"Great Will ' my father called Shakespeare, 
 and ' Slender Billy,' Pitt. The scene where Great Will 
 killed the deer, dragging Falstaff all over the park 
 after it by the light of Bardolph's nose, upon which 
 they put an extinguisher if they heard any of the 
 keepers, and so left everybody groping about and 
 catching the wrong person, was the most wonderful 
 mixture of fun and tears. Great Will was extremely 
 youthful, but everyone in the park called him ' Father 
 William ' ; and when he wanted to know which way 
 the deer had gone, King Lear (or else my memory
 
 n8 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 deceives me) punned, and Lady Macbeth waved a 
 handkerchief for it to be steeped in the blood of the 
 deer ; Shylock ordered one pound of the carcase ; 
 Hamlet (the fact was impressed upon me) offered 
 him a three-legged stool ; and a number of kings and 
 knights and ladies lit their torches from Bardolph ; 
 and away they flew, distracting the keepers and leaving 
 Will and his troop to the deer. That poor thing died 
 from a different weapon at each recital, though always 
 with a flow of blood and a successful dash of his 
 antlers into Falstaff; and to hear Falstaff bellow! 
 But it was mournful to hear how sorry Great Will 
 was over the animal he had slain. He spoke like 
 music. I found it pathetic in spite of my knowing 
 that the whole scene was lighted up by Bardolph's 
 nose. When I was just bursting out crying — for the 
 deer's tongue was lolling out and quick pantings were 
 at his side, he had little ones at home — Great Will 
 remembered his engagement to sell Shylock a pound 
 of the carcase ; determined that no Jew should eat 
 of it, he bethought him that Falstaff could well spare 
 a pound, and he said the Jew would not see the 
 difference : Falstaff only got off by hard running, and 
 roaring out that he knew his unclean life would make 
 him taste like pork and thus let the Jew into the trick." 
 Roy Richmond's irresponsibility and foolishness are well- 
 nigh incredible; yet he has us by the heart-strings. In 
 that great scene towards the close of the book, "Strange 
 Revelations," in which Squire Beltham carries out his 
 threat " to strip him stark till he flops down shivering 
 into his slough a convicted, common swindler, with his 
 dinners and balls and his private bands," and brings 
 home to him the whole tale of his sins, we see him, 
 not with the eyes of the old man who has truth and 
 justice on his side, but with those of the high-bred
 
 HARRY RICHMOND 119 
 
 woman who, in the midst of this outburst, avows that 
 Richmond has had her lifelong devotion and that he 
 retains it still. 
 
 In the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth chapters of 
 the book, England is revealed to us as she appears 
 to German eyes, a country of pioneers, invaluable 
 to the progress of humanity in past time, but to-day 
 money-grabbing, " mindless and arrogant, and neither 
 in the material or spiritual kingdom of noble or 
 gracious stature : " condemned, as Ottilia, quoting and 
 endorsing her professor, tells Harry, " to be overthrown 
 and left behind, there to gain humility from the only 
 teacher she can understand, poverty." The professor 
 himself, Dr. Julius von Karsteg, develops the subject 
 at length. What, he asks Harry abruptly, is his 
 scheme of life? and makes use of his reply to tear 
 his ioeals to shreds. The wealthy English, he says, 
 are an insufferable, unwarrantable class, without their 
 parallel in Europe. Harry speaks vaguely of his 
 dream of doing some good ; the dream is dashed aside 
 as common to every prince and millionaire that ever 
 lived. Attempting to defend his country, Harry 
 mentions our conquest and occupation of India : is 
 not that something ? " ' Something,' " the professor 
 snaps out, " ' for non-commissioned officers to boast 
 of, not for statesmen. However, say that you are fit 
 to govern Asiatics, go on.' ' I would endeavour to 
 equalise ranks at home, encourage the growth of 
 ideas. . . . ' ' Supporting a non-celibate clergy, and 
 an intermingled aristocracy? Your endeavours, my 
 good young man, will lessen like those of the man 
 who employed a spade to uproot a rock. It wants 
 blasting. Your married clergy and merchandised 
 aristocracy are evils : they are the ivy about your 
 social tree : you would resemble Laocoon in the
 
 120 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 throes, if one could imagine you anything of a heroic 
 figure/ " 
 
 The book is life itself, many-sided, complex, digres- 
 sive ; but it is art also. The whole is rounded to its 
 conclusion in the scene in which Harry returns to the 
 Grange with Janet Ilchester, the girl long ago chosen 
 by his grandfather to be his wife. As they approach, 
 the sky is seen to hang reddened over Riversley, and, 
 when the house comes in view, it is enveloped in flames; 
 " fire at the wings, fire at the heart," no vestige of 
 the home of generations of Belthams is to be savdd. 
 Roy Richmond, failing and broken, but true to his 
 character to the last, has been making preparation to 
 receive Harry and his bride — " lamps, lights in all the 
 rooms, torches in the hall, illuminations along the 
 windows, stores of fireworks, such a display as only he 
 could have dreamed of." Once more the price of his 
 foolishness is to pay. But the comedian himself is not 
 forthcoming. In his solicitude for Dorothy Beltham, 
 his lifelong benefactress, he has refused to leave the 
 house. Roy Richmond has laid down his life.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER AND MEREDITH'S 
 POLITICAL VIEWS 
 
 IT is well known that Beauchamp's character was 
 modelled upon that of the late Admiral Maxse. 
 From boyhood till his death in 1900, Admiral Maxse 
 was one of Meredith's most intimate friends. The 
 volume Modern Love, and Poems of the English Road- 
 side of 1862 is "affectionately dedicated to Captain 
 Maxse, R.N. " ; Modern Love, a reprint ; to which is 
 added The Sage Enamoured and The Honest Lady is 
 inscribed in 1892 "To Admiral Maxse, in constant 
 friendship." In the year 1868 Frederick Maxse stood 
 as Radical candidate for Southampton and was de- 
 feated. Meredith went through the campaign with his 
 friend, and directly the election was over wrote Beau- 
 champ's Career in his home ; x Dr. Shrapnel, Carpendike, 
 Oggler, even Tomlinson, and Algy Borolick are 
 taken from life. The original of "Mount Laurels" 
 is Holly Hill on the Hamble River, Southampton 
 Water, which was at this time the Maxses' family 
 home. The actuality of the story lends an added 
 interest to this, Meredith's single political novel. 
 To a man of his stature, political activity must be 
 at the summit, or almost the summit, of human 
 endeavour, and the range of his characters necessi- 
 
 1 It appeared in The Fortnightly Review from August, lS74, to Decem- 
 ber, 1875, inclusive. 
 
 121
 
 122 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 tates political allusions in most of his books. But 
 details of Harry Richmond's candidature, or even of 
 Sigismund Alvan and Diana Warwick's opinions, do 
 not constitute a political novel. National interests, 
 in these cases, are attributes of the characters, they are 
 not the pivot on which the characters turn. Beauchamp's 
 personal and private relations, on the other hand, are 
 little but platforms by which we may mount to the 
 startling conception of an Englishman passionately 
 moved by abstractions. This tale, Meredith writes, 
 is of one " born with so extreme and passionate a love 
 for his country, that he thought all things else of mean 
 importance in comparison. This day, this hour, this 
 life, and even politics, the centre and throbbing heart of 
 it, must be treated of: men, and the ideas of men, 
 which are actually the motives of men in a greater 
 degree than their appetites : these are my theme." 
 And this statement as to the theme and its nature is 
 answer to the dissatisfaction we may feel with Beau- 
 champ in his relation to Cecilia and even to Jenny. 
 With Ren6e in Venice he is whole-hearted indeed ; but 
 his career has not then opened ; we have only, as it 
 were, the material on which his idealism is to work. 
 And even here we may, if we will, have a foretaste of 
 what is to be, in that great scene on the Adriatic 
 when Beauchamp has had the boat put about, and re- 
 fuses to allow Rente's brother to turn it again towards 
 Venice. For, even in that passionate moment, Beau- 
 champ's mind is accessible to fact. The lover's dream 
 of a world subservient to his wishes has been his for an 
 hour ; but Rosamund Culling's reminder of his financial 
 dependence on his uncle " strikes his hot brain with a 
 bar as of iron." And later, it is with Renee, when she 
 has fled to him from her husband, that Beauchamp 
 sets his conviction of " the world's dues, fees, and
 
 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER 123 
 
 claims " to confront his agonised longings and subdue 
 them. " Beauchampism," Meredith writes, " may be 
 said to stand for nearly everything which is the obverse 
 of Byronism, and rarely woos your sympathy, shuns 
 the statuesque pathetic, or any kind of posturing. . . . 
 His faith is in working and fighting." No one is better 
 qualified than Meredith to expose a youth, attempting 
 the reformation of his elders, in ludicrous light. In 
 Beauchamp's case he betrays no such desire, and the 
 reason for this he gives at the outset of the story. 
 Proud of his fire and good looks, his uncle Everard 
 would have spoiled Nevil Beauchamp in his childhood, 
 had not the boy's "veneration of heroes living and 
 dead kept down his conceit." Nevil is a hero-worshipper, 
 " possessed by reverence for men of deeds," and in- 
 capable therefore of esteeming himself — who has done 
 nothing — highly. Destined by his uncle for the navy, 
 to which he is to be despatched at fourteen, as that 
 age approaches he expresses a desire to stay longer at 
 school. " The fellow would like to be a parson ! " 
 Everard Romfrey exclaims in disgust. " I'd rather 
 enlist for a soldier," says Nevil, in repudiation of the 
 charge and in despair of explaining his true motive. 
 But to his uncle's housekeeper, his dear friend Rosa- 
 mund Culling, he confides that, in one particular, 
 parsons are enviable — they have time to read history 
 and decide which party was right in our civil war. He 
 hates bloodshed, and, to his uncle Everard's mind, 
 comes dangerously near "the cotton-spinner's babble" 
 in speaking of it. He even seems to have got hold of 
 some Manchester sarcasms touching Glory. ; ' He said : 
 ' I don't care to win glory ; I know all about that ; I've 
 seen an old hat in the Louvre.' And he would have 
 Rosamund to suppose that he had looked on the cam- 
 paigning head-cover of Napoleon simply as a shocking,
 
 i2 4 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 bad, bald, brown-rubbed old tricorne, rather than as the 
 nod of extinction to thousands, the great orb of dark- 
 ness, the still-trembling gloomy quiver — the brain of 
 the lightnings of battles." But, Meredith explains, 
 " this boy nursed no secret presumptuous belief that 
 he was fitted for the walks of the higher intellect ; 
 he was not having his impudent boy's fling at 
 superiority over the superior." His shrinking from the 
 career before him amounted almost to terror ; all the 
 same, he returned from his first voyage — as his uncle 
 said he would — a gallant sailor lad. And a year or 
 two later during the Crimean War, Everard Romfrey 
 finds himself obliged, by reports of Nevil's turn for over- 
 doing his duty, to write to him : " Braggadocioing in 
 deeds is only next bad to mouthing it. Remember that 
 we want soldiers and sailors, not suicides? As Nevil's 
 great - aunt Beauchamp sagely points out, much 
 trouble would have been spared if the lad had stayed 
 at school and gone on to college. Probably in an 
 atmosphere of words he would have been bled of his 
 plethora of ideas. As it was, they accumulated to un- 
 wieldy proportions. But it is one of Meredith's favourite 
 distinctions between the great and the small-natured, 
 that the former reverence and the latter despise what is 
 unfathomable to them; and it was Nevil's safeguard that 
 he was always finding, in books and in his fellows, more 
 than he found in himself. His early choice of Carlyle 
 as his favourite author was largely based on the obscurity 
 of his diction. He " liked a bone in his mouth to gnaw 
 at," he said. Beauchamp is without rival among Mere- 
 dith's masculine characters. His author has avoided 
 the danger of running him into his favourite heroic 
 mould. Gallant and upright as Wentworth and Whit- 
 ford and Weyburn, Beauchamp has far more complexity. 
 Meredith has written elsewhere : " Men who have the
 
 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER 125 
 
 woman in them without being womanised, they are the 
 pick of men," l and we suspect the generalisation has 
 basis at least in his knowledge of Beauchamp. A 
 lover of all that is graceful and gracious — ■" Beauty," 
 we are told, " plucked the heart from his breast" — he 
 took up arms for his fellows, " drank of the questioning 
 cup, that which denieth peace to us, and which projects 
 us on the missionary search of the How, the Wherefore, 
 and the Why not, ever afterward. He questioned his 
 justification, and yours, for gratifying tastes in an ill- 
 regulated world of wrong-doing, suffering, sin, and 
 bounties unrighteously dispensed — not sufficiently dis- 
 persed. He said by-and-by to pleasure, battle to-day." 
 In Beauchamp's character, a type of youth happily not 
 unfamiliar — the best type of our day — is portrayed with 
 absolute success ; one in which disregard of means to 
 ends, and consequent want of effectiveness, are due, not 
 to conceit or impatience, but to an over-enthusiastic 
 belief in the immediate capacity for amendment of 
 men and of things. 
 
 Rosamund Culling is one of the most delightful 
 persons in the book and in the whole of Meredith's 
 work. Widow of a distinguished military officer, she 
 is a gentlewoman in every sense of the word, and a 
 woman of the world into the bargain. Consequently, 
 the fact that many of the chief incidents of the plot 
 gather round the scandal occasioned by her social 
 position as Everard Romfrey's housekeeper, and that 
 even Beauchamp, who has loved her from childhood, 
 looks on his uncle's marriage with her as a mesalliance, 
 appears to our eyes very strange. Mr. Trevelyan has 
 remarked that when Meredith is out of touch with the 
 thought of this generation it is usually because he is 
 ahead of it. In matters of fundamental importance 
 
 1 The Tragic Comedians, chapter VII.
 
 126 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 this is undoubtedly true. In matters of detail certain 
 changes have taken place. Minor social distinctions are, 
 happily, not so marked as they were. And ideas as to 
 age have altered remarkably. Lady Charlotte Chilling- 
 worth's contemplation of marriage is hastened by the 
 fact that, for her, the " thirty fatal bells have struck " ; 
 when Diana Warwick, disciplined and experienced, is 
 allowed to fall back at last on the mature business-man 
 of the book, a man whom we of the present day would 
 guess to be fifty at least, the reader is astounded to 
 learn that he is thirty-three years of age ; and Renee 
 de Croisnel, on the eve of her marriage with the Marquis 
 de Rouaillout, is but just seventeen. 
 
 Renee is French, and Nevil, who has saved her 
 brother's life in the war, meets her in Venice. Nevil is 
 wounded, and his days are spent with Ren6e and Roland 
 gliding in and out of the canals in an open gondola, 
 which Renee has decorated in imitation of Carpaccio's 
 glories. " A brunette of the fine lineaments of the 
 good blood of France, she chattered snatches of Vene- 
 tian caught from the gondoliers, she was like a delicate 
 cup of crystal brimming with the beauty of the place, 
 and making one of them drink in all his impressions 
 through her." In her is centred Meredith's strong feel- 
 ing for Venice, which, apparent in much of his work, 
 finds fullest expression in Beauclianifs Career. Renee 
 adroitly sums up one aspect of the place, when Beau- 
 champ reminds her that in study of Ruskin she is 
 missing the scenes. " ' The scenes,' " she exclaims, 
 " ' are green shutters, wet steps, barcaroli, brown women, 
 striped posts, a scarlet night-cap, a sick fig-tree, an old 
 shawl, faded spots of colour, peeling walls. They 
 might be figured by a trodden melon/ " But the poig- 
 nant beauty of Venice so encompasses Ren6e and 
 Nevil that the intensity of their relation seems never
 
 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER 127 
 
 quite recaptured in the stormier scenes at Tourdestelle. 
 Venice has been the French girl's dream, and at first 
 the reality disenchants her. She is petulant with the 
 present, and hungry for the past, " for the flashing 
 colours and pageantries, and the threads of desperate 
 adventure crossing the rii to this and that palace door 
 and balcony, like faint blood streaks ; the times of 
 Venice in full flower." Fascinated as he is by her 
 whimsical grace, it is impossible to Nevil to perceive her 
 wrongheadedness without attempting to right it. He 
 reads Ruskin, and she reasons against him. That 
 period of faith and stone-cutting must, she insists, 
 have been " Huguenot — harsh, nasal, sombre, insolent, 
 self-sufficient." If the Venice of her love was indeed 
 the Venice of the decadence, it should not bear the 
 whole of the blame. " ' We are known by our fruits, 
 are we not ? and the Venice I admire was surely the 
 fruit of these stone-cutters chanting hymns of faith ; it 
 could not but be : and if it deserved, as he says, to die 
 disgraced, I think we should go back to them, and ask 
 them whether their minds were as pure and holy as he 
 supposes.' Her French wits would not be subdued. 
 Nevil pointed to the palaces. ' Pride,' said she. He 
 argued that the original Venetians were not responsible 
 for their offspring. ' You say it ? ' she cried, ' You, of 
 an old race ? Oh, no ; you do not feel it ! ' and the 
 trembling fervour of her voice convinced him that he 
 did not, could not. Renee said, ' I know my ancestors 
 are bound up in me by my sentiments to them ; and so 
 do you, M. Nevil. We shame them if we fail in courage 
 and honour. Is it not so? If we break a single 
 pledged word we cast shame on them. Why, that 
 makes us what we are, that is our distinction : we dare 
 not be weak if we would. And therefore when Venice 
 is reproached with avarice and luxury, I choose to say
 
 128 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 — what do we hear of the children of misers? and I 
 say that I am certain that those old cold Huguenot 
 stone-cutters were proud and grasping. I am sure they 
 were, and they shall share the blame.' " She and Nevil 
 stand together to gaze on setting Venice in the stern of 
 the boat in which, under Rosamund Culling's protec- 
 tion, they spend their last night before the arrival of 
 Renee's elderly marquis. " The faint red Doge's palace 
 was like the fading of another sunset north-westward 
 of the glory along the hills. Venice dropped lower and 
 lower, breasting the waters, until it was a thin line in 
 air. The line was broken, and ran in dots, with here 
 and there a pillar standing on opal sky. At last the 
 topmost campanile sank." Nevil sleeps on deck, and 
 wakes with the light to behold the peaks at the head of 
 the gulf — a vivid host above the snow-fields — kindled 
 one by one to crimson flame. " Nevil's personal rapture 
 craved for Renee with the second long breath he drew ; 
 and now the curtain of her tent-cabin parted, and 
 greeting him with a half-smile, she looked out. The 
 Adriatic was dark, the Alps had heaven to themselves. 
 Crescents and hollows, rosy mounds, white shelves, 
 shining ledges, domes and peaks, all the towering 
 heights were in illumination from Friuli into farthest 
 Tyrol ; beyond earth to the stricken senses of the 
 gazers. Colour was steadfast on the massive front 
 ranks : it wavered in the remoteness, and was quick and 
 dim as though it fell on beating wings ; but there too 
 divine colour seized and shaped forth solid forms, and 
 thence away to others in uttermost distances where the 
 incredible flickering gleam of new heights arose, that 
 soared, or stretched their white uncertain curves in sky 
 like wings traversing infinity. It seemed unlike morn- 
 ing to the lovers, but as if night had broken with a 
 revelation of the kingdom in the heart of night. While
 
 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER 129 
 
 the broad, smooth waters rolled un lighted beneath that 
 transfigured upper sphere, it was possible to think the 
 scene might vanish like a view caught out of darkness 
 by lightning. Alp over burning Alp, and around them 
 a hueless dawn ! " 
 
 Our next chapter contains a summary of Meredith's 
 treatment of Egoism in the Prelude to The Egoist. Of 
 a survivor of that " grand old Egoism " which " afore- 
 time built the House" no better example than the 
 Hon. Everard Romfrey is to be found. He comes of 
 a long race of fighting earls, " a savour of North Sea 
 foam and ballad pirates" about their earliest history, 
 chivalrous knights later, and leaders in the field ; " good 
 landlords, good masters, blithely followed to the wars. 
 Sing an old battle of Normandy, Picardy, Gascony, 
 and you celebrate deeds of theirs." At the time the 
 story opens the Earls of Romfrey from their topmost 
 towers " spied few spots in the wide circle of the 
 heavens " that were not their own. The Hon, Everard 
 (Stephen Denely Craven) Romfrey, third son of the 
 late Earl, with a good prospect of inheriting the title, 
 in mind is a mediaeval baron. He had been at one 
 time "a hot Parliamentarian, calling himself a Whig, 
 called by the Whigs a Radical, called by the Radicals 
 a Tory, and very happy in fighting them all round." 
 He stood for King, Lords, and Commons ; " Commons 
 he added out of courtesy." His real interest is the 
 preservation of his game. Beside this, all other matters 
 sink to insignificance, and it is on the question of his 
 fellows' attitude to the Game Laws that his partialities 
 or antipathies turn. Childless and a widower, he 
 adopted his sister's son, Nevil Beauchamp, in his baby- 
 hood. Throughout, his affection for Nevil is deep, but 
 he and Shrapnel ally themselves with poachers, and are 
 therefore, incontestably, mad. Everard Romfrey is, in 
 
 K
 
 i 3 o GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 the old sense of the word, a gentleman ; his instincts 
 are everything that Willoughby Patterne's are not. 
 Indeed, Romfrey's nature differs so widely from Wil- 
 loughby's that we cannot but question whether Meredith 
 does not intend the Patternes' comparatively recent 
 acquisition of wealth and estates to account for Wil- 
 loughby's mean-mindedness. Everard Romfrey is as 
 chivalrous to his dependants as to his equals ; slightly 
 more so perhaps, from the tradition that service consti- 
 tutes a bond. Rosamund Culling dares, without fear of 
 offence to her ears, probe him as to the grounds of the 
 fight on her behalf between the boy Nevil and his cousin 
 Cecil Baskelet, " sure that he would at all costs protect 
 a woman's delicacy, and a dependant's, man or woman." 
 When Nevil is Radical candidate for Bevisham, Romfrey 
 almost succeeds in decoying him into driving into the 
 town side by side with the Conservative candidate who 
 is to be sprung upon him. Yet the idea of disinheriting 
 the lad for his opinions hardly occurs to his uncle. When 
 Rosamund Culling is his wife and Countess of Romfrey, 
 she compels him, for her sake and in thought of their 
 child, to go and apologise to the man he has horse- 
 whipped ; the task is intensely repugnant to him ; but, 
 when at last he is persuaded to it, he goes without a 
 thought of reminding her of her responsibility for his 
 original action. He arrives at Dr. Shrapnel's house 
 deeply prejudiced against him and all his belongings ; 
 nevertheless, he treats the doctor's niece, Jenny Denham, 
 as though she were Cecilia Halkett, and recognises in 
 her a distinction that even Cecilia does not possess. 
 The struggle between Romfrey and Beauchamp runs 
 through the book ; throughout Romfrey perceives the 
 quality of his antagonist, and appreciates it most when 
 he has to acknowledge himself beaten. At the close 
 of the story Nevil, who has been for weeks at death's
 
 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER 131 
 
 door, is struggling to life. News of his engagement to 
 Jenny Denham reaches the Earl and his wife. Rosa- 
 mund, with her passionate attachment to Beauchamp, 
 is shocked to find that the girl is hardly in love. " She 
 asked the earl's opinion of the startling intelligence, 
 and of the character of that Miss Denham, who could 
 pen such a letter, after engaging to give her hand to 
 Nevil. Lord Romfrey laughed in his dumb way. ' If 
 Nevil must have a wife — and the marquise tells you so, 
 and she ought to know — he may as well marry a girl 
 who won't go all the way downhill with him at his pace. 
 He'll be cogged.' ' You do not object to such an 
 alliance ? ' ' I'm past objection. There's no law against 
 a man's marrying his nurse.' ' But she is not even in 
 love with him ! ' 'I dare say not. He wants a wife : 
 she accepts a husband. The two women, who were in 
 love with him, he wouldn't have.' Lady Romfrey 
 sighed deeply : ' He has lost Cecilia ! She might still 
 have been his : but he has taken to that girl. And 
 Madame de Rouaillout praises the girl because — oh ! 
 I see it — she has less to be jealous of in Miss Denham, 
 of whose birth and blood we know nothing. Let that 
 pass. If only she loved him ! I cannot endure the 
 thought of his marrying a girl who is not in love with 
 him.' ' Just as you like, my dear.' ' Oh, what an end 
 of so brilliant a beginning ! ' 'It strikes me, my dear,' 
 said the earl, ' it's the proper common-sense beginning 
 that may have a fairish end.' ' No, but what I feel 
 is that he — our Nevil — has accomplished hardly any- 
 thing, if anything.' ' He hasn't marched on London 
 with a couple of hundred thousand men : no, he hasn't 
 done that,' the earl said, glancing back in mind through 
 Beauchamp's career. ' And he escapes what Stukely 
 calls his nation's scourge, in the shape of a statue 
 turned out by an English chisel. No : we haven't had
 
 132 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 much public excitement out of him. But one thing 
 he did do : lie got me down on my knees /' Lord Rom- 
 frey pronounced these words with a sober emphasis 
 that struck the humour of it sharply into Rosamund's 
 heart, through some contrast it presented between 
 Nevil's aim at the world and hit of a man: the im- 
 mense deal thought of it by the Earl, and the very little 
 that Nevil would think of it — the great domestic 
 achievement to be boasted of by an enthusiastic devotee 
 of politics ! She embraced her husband with peals of 
 loving laughter : the last laughter heard at Romfrey 
 Castle for many a day." 
 
 Dr. Shrapnel, Beauchamp's political mentor and the 
 mouthpiece of his ideals, talks like Carlyle ; and in his 
 semi-chaotic forms of expression Meredith finds a con- 
 genial channel of thought. Extracts from Shrapnel's 
 letters to Beauchamp figure also in the book, often 
 lengthy and discursive, but almost always notable. 
 "Professors, prophets, masters," he writes, "each hitherto 
 has had his creed and system to offer, good mayhap 
 for the term ; and each has put it forth for the truth 
 everlasting, to drive the dagger to the heart of time, 
 and put the axe to human growth — so where at first 
 light shone to light the yawning frog to his wet ditch, 
 there, with the necessitated revolution of men's minds 
 in the course of ages, darkness radiates." " In our 
 prayers we dedicate the world to God, not calling Him 
 great for a title, no — showing we know Him great in a 
 limitless world, Lord of a truth we tend to, have not 
 grasped. . . . We make prayer a part of us, praying 
 for no gifts, no interventions ; through the faith in 
 prayer opening the soul to the undiscerned. And take 
 this, my Beauchamp, for the good in prayer, that it 
 makes us repose on the unknown with confidence, makes 
 us flexible to change, makes us ready for revolution —
 
 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER 133 
 
 for life then ! He who has the fountain of prayer in 
 him will not complain of hazards. Prayer is the recog- 
 nition of laws; the soul's exercise and source of 
 strength." And Shrapnel talks as he writes. One 
 evening, while Nevil is convalescent, he is starting 
 for Bevisham. Jenny Denham reminds him that Cap- 
 tain Beauchamp is not as yet strong enough to receive 
 deputations, and Nevil himself adds : " No, no deputa- 
 tions ; let them send Killick, if they want to say 
 anything." "Wrong!" cries the doctor, "wrong! wrong! 
 Six men won't hurt you more than one. . . . Trust me, 
 Beauchamp, if we shun to encounter the good, warm 
 soul of numbers, our hearts are narrowed to them. 
 The business of our modern world is to open heart and 
 stretch out arms to numbers. In numbers we have 
 our sinews ; they are our iron and gold." Shrapnel's 
 opinions are almost undilutedly Meredith's; it need 
 not be remarked, therefore, that they are excellent. 
 But so colossal is the range of opinion he expresses 
 that his author leaves little room for his personal 
 characteristics. Seymour Austin's excellent summary 
 of Shrapnel's shortcomings is the more noteworthy 
 in that it is partially applicable to Beauchamp also, 
 though in Beauchamp's case social tact and quick 
 intuitions are his safeguard from an equal degree of 
 uncouthness. "Dr. Shrapnel," says Austin, "is the 
 earnest man, and flies at politics as uneasy young 
 brains fly to literature, fancying they can write because 
 they can write with a pen. He perceives a bad adjust- 
 ment of things ; which is correct. He is honest, and 
 takes his honesty for a virtue : and that entitles him 
 to believe in himself: and that belief causes him to 
 see in all opposition to him the wrong he has perceived 
 in existing circumstances : and so in a dream of power 
 he invokes the people: and as they do not stir, he
 
 134 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 takes to prophecy. This is the round of the politics of 
 impatience. The study of politics should be guided 
 by some light of statesmanship, otherwise it comes to 
 this wild preaching. These men are theory-tailors, not 
 politicians." 
 
 Allusion has been made in one of the earlier chapters 
 of this book to Meredith's antagonism to the Manchester 
 School of politicians. The existence of Bcaucliamfs 
 Career makes an explanation of this antagonism less 
 necessary than otherwise it might have been. For 
 Beauchamp sets out, accepting his uncle's attitude to 
 Cobden and Bright, and, later, comes to rank himself 
 on their side. He keeps, however, one reservation 
 throughout ; his feeling for the Army and Navy is 
 part of his birthright. When his opponents remind him 
 that the Liberals and Radicals grudge money for 
 armaments, his only reply is that in this respect the 
 Conservatives are hardly better. That is, while his 
 intellect accepts the humanitarian doctrines of progress, 
 his class instincts revolt against certain immediate 
 applications of them. And this brings us to a point 
 that is better admitted at once. Both Meredith and 
 Beauchamp refer, at times, to the middle and mercantile 
 classes as a strength to the country. They force them- 
 selves to a concession and feel their duty done. But 
 the only sentiment they possess is for the classes above 
 and below the commercial. The one appeals to their 
 tastes, the other is the field of their idealism. The 
 intermediate region represents little more, to their 
 minds, than a dead-weight of obstruction. Material 
 wealth degenerating towards materialism is the curse 
 of their country ; for its crying need is permeation with 
 ideas. Among those at the top of the ladder, those 
 satiated with the good things of this world, there are 
 many indeed whose minds are difficult enough to
 
 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER 135 
 
 enkindle, but, partly because their life is more cos- 
 mopolitan, these persons look upon intellectual brilliancy 
 as a social requisite. And those at the bottom of the 
 scale, those who are starving, are open enough to ideas. 
 " Tall talk," says Everard Romfrey, " is their jewelry : 
 they must have their dandification in bunkum " ; they 
 listen agape to all who profess to prescribe for their 
 needs. The stronghold of intellectual sluggishness, 
 then, is the prosperous but untraditioned middle 
 class. In short, the rise of the manufacturing politician 
 appeared to betoken the rapidly increasing national 
 influence of mere wealth divorced from tradition. And 
 the fact that the " cotton-spinner's " voice first made 
 itself heard in the interests of Peace was likely to 
 obscure for Meredith and Beauchamp the points of 
 similarity in their creeds. England's bungling into the 
 Crimean war occurred, in Meredith's view, because 
 " we really had been talking gigantic nonsense of peace, 
 and of the everlastingness of the exchange of fruits 
 for money, with angels waving raw-groceries of Eden 
 in joy of the commercial picture," and the " George 
 Foxite" speech of Manchester was easy to mistake 
 for the trade-at-any-price cry, " the cry of the belly," 
 wishful to dominate the intellect and muscle of the 
 country. 
 
 Even if it were in no other way interesting or valu- 
 able, Beauchamp 's Career would claim attention for its 
 re-creation of the political atmosphere of two genera- 
 tions ago, with its unlikeness and likeness to that of our 
 time. When the story begins, France is still the here- 
 ditary enemy of England, and terror of French inva- 
 sion a living thing. This is augmented by distrust of 
 Louis Napoleon and just indignation at his cowing of 
 Paris by the massacre of unarmed citizens ; and these 
 feelings have been stirred by Lord Palmerston and
 
 136 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 The Times into a panic. The country is told that it 
 may wake any morning to find that fifty thousand 
 Frenchmen have landed on its shores in the night. 
 The panic grows to ludicrous proportions ; the Militia 
 Bill is passed ; and the death and funeral of the Duke 
 of Wellington aid in turning the minds of the pro- 
 moters of the Great Exhibition to war and warlike 
 exploits. 1 Meanwhile Russia has aided Austria to 
 crush Kossuth and Hungaria, and by so doing has 
 induced an anti-Russian alliance between the humani- 
 tarian and jingo sentiment in England. The powder 
 is stored : Russia crosses the Preuth, and the match is 
 alight. Meredith pays tribute to " the dauntless Lan- 
 castrian who thundered like a tempest over a gambling 
 tent, disregarded," and to the three Quakers who, on the 
 eve of the war, made a pilgrimage to the Czar beseech- 
 ing him to give way " for piety's sake " ; but is he, we 
 wonder, aware that facts connected with this mission 
 provide the strongest possible justification for his anti- 
 Press fulminations? 2 
 
 It is necessary, however, to guard against giving the 
 impression that Beauchamp's Career is devoted to 
 political and abstract considerations at the expense of 
 more personal interests. Any such notion would be 
 far from the truth. Beauchamp's opinions are forceful 
 by virtue of the fire and intensity of the nature holding 
 them. Their depth is made clear to us in chapters 
 such as " The Trial of Him " and " The Two Passions," 
 where we see his convictions withstanding an almost 
 overmastering desire to regard the horror of Renee's 
 
 1 See Mr. Morley's Life of Richard Cobden, Vol. II, chap. v. " The 
 Invasion Panic." 
 
 2 The three Friends— Robert Charlton, Henry Pease, and Joseph 
 Sturge — were waiting in St. Petersburg, at the Czar's request, for his 
 final decision, when certain issues of The Times arrived, which by their 
 insulting and inflammatory articles put an end to negotiations for peace.
 
 POLITICAL VIEWS 137 
 
 situation and the hopelessness of his own — their 
 common unhappiness — as a reason for social revolt. 
 Renee is before him, maturer but no less exquisite than 
 at their first meeting in Venice ; her courage is proved 
 by her flight ; she has riches, and she takes their 
 journey to Italy or Greece, and their life there together, 
 for granted. " What," Nevil's spirit cries out, " has the 
 world done for us, that a joy so immeasurable should 
 be rejected on its behalf? And what have we suc- 
 ceeded in doing, that the childish effort to move it 
 should be continued at such a cost ? " It is against 
 temptation intense and subtle as this that love for his 
 country and Shrapnel's teaching prevail. 
 
 From Beauchamp's Career we may readily and natur- 
 ally pass to the political opinions of its author's later 
 life. Meredith's political utterances have been numer- 
 ous, and they are all noteworthy. They cover a wide 
 range of topics, and find expression in poetry as well as 
 in prose. Foresight and Patience^ is a masterly philo- 
 sophic statement of his general outlook, particulars of 
 which may be found in his novels and in the columns of 
 the daily press. His Irish sympathies, for instance, 
 expressed with much clearness in Diana, provide two 
 articles in reference to the Home Rule controversy of 
 1886. The first, A Pause in the Strife? deals with 
 Mr. Gladstone and his Bill, and is prophetic as well as 
 illuminating. Mr. Gladstone, Meredith says, " has not 
 been defeated. The question set on fire by him will 
 never be extinguished until the combustible matter has 
 gone to ashes. But personally he meets a sharp rebuff. 
 The Tories may well raise hurrahs over that. Radicals 
 have to admit it, and point to the grounds of it. Be- 
 tween a man's enemies and his friends there comes out 
 
 1 A Reading of Life. Published in the National A'evitw, 1894. 
 a The Pall Mall Gazette, July 9th, 1886.
 
 138 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 a rough painting of his character, not without a resem- 
 blance to the final summary, albeit wanting in the 
 justly delicate historical touch to particular features. 
 On one side Mr. Gladstone is abused as the ' one man 
 power,' lauded on the other for his marvellous intuition 
 of the popular will. One can believe that he scarcely 
 wishes to act dictatorially, and full surely his Egyptian 
 policy was from step to step a misreading of the will of 
 the English people. He went forth on this campaign 
 with the finger of Egypt not ineffectively levelled 
 against him a second time. Nevertheless he does read 
 his English ; he has, too, the fatal tendency to the 
 bringing forth of Bills in the manner of Jove big with 
 Minerva. He perceived the necessity, and the issue of 
 the necessity ; clearly divined what must come, and 
 with a higher motive than the vanity with which his 
 enemies charge him, though not with such high counsel 
 as Wisdom at his ear, fell to work on it alone, produced 
 the whole Bill alone, and then handed it to his Cabinet 
 to digest, too much in love with the thing he had laid 
 and incubated to permit of any serious dismemberment 
 of its frame. Hence the disruption. He worked for 
 the future, produced a Bill for the future, and is wrecked 
 in the present. Probably he can work in no other way 
 than from the impulse of his enthusiasm solitarily. It 
 is a way of making men overweeningly in love with 
 their creations. The consequence is likely to be that 
 Ireland will get her full measure of justice to appease 
 her cravings earlier than she would have had so much 
 from the United Liberal Cabinet, but at a cost both to 
 her and to England. Meanwhile we are to have a 
 House of Commons incapable of conducting public 
 business ; the tradesmen to whom The Times addressed 
 pathetic condolences on the loss of their season, will 
 lose more than one; and we shall be made sensible that
 
 POLITICAL VIEWS 139 
 
 we have an enemy in our midst, until a people, slow to 
 think, have taken counsel of their native generosity to 
 put trust in the most generous race on earth." The 
 second article, Concessions to the Celt, was published 
 in the Fortnightly Review for October, 1886, and the 
 whole situation is reviewed at length in it. 
 
 A letter of Meredith's addressed to the Dorking 
 Women's Liberal Association 1 is of paramount import- 
 ance for its definition of the ideals of the party to which 
 he belongs : — " We who believe in Liberalism," he says, 
 " do not doubt that as women's intellects expand and 
 sharpen they will join with the party of progress, which, 
 without rejecting such wisdom as was given by our 
 forefathers, aims at a condition of things in harmony 
 with the wider and deeper knowledge we have won, the 
 nobler ambition, the more human interest in the welfare 
 of our fellows." To suggest that the chief interest of 
 the letter lies in this definition is not to imply that 
 Meredith's voice in regard to women's participation in 
 public affairs is uncertain in tone. He is a staunch 
 believer in Women's Suffrage, and, spite of his grave 
 consciousness of feminine emotionalism and timidity, 
 he would grant it at once. What is meant is rather 
 that Meredith's championship of women in his novels 
 and poems has been too detailed and explicit to need 
 rehearsal, too fundamental and delicate to be summar- 
 ised. And this brings us face to face with a difficulty. 
 There are persons, in our Colonies at least, who only 
 know Meredith's name in connection with a suggestion 
 in the newspapers of a ten years' or limited contract for 
 marriage. The letter containing this suggestion, which 
 appears to have been commented on wherever English 
 is spoken, appeared in September, 1904. The key to 
 its existence is found in words towards the close of it : 
 
 1 May, 1904.
 
 i 4 o GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 " This subject is kept too much in darkness. Air it ! 
 Air it ! " To those acquainted with Meredith's works, 
 or method of thought, this tocsin was harmless enough. 
 As an appeal to an ignorant and far wider circle it can- 
 not but be regretted. For the man who perhaps of all 
 living writers has the deepest conviction of the subtlety 
 and complexity of the interests that marriage involves 
 has appeared to treat them with levity. For close on 
 fifty years he had been speaking of the question with 
 the caution and delicacy it demands, and without much 
 effect ; for once he was betrayed into a manner of 
 speech to which his countrymen attended, not much to 
 their credit. To attempt to wipe out the effect of the 
 letter by isolated quotation from Meredith's works 
 would be to fall into similar error. But for the benefit 
 of any who may have viewed the demonstration con- 
 tained in it as a serious manifesto, it may well be com- 
 pared with a letter in Beauchamp's Career in which Dr. 
 Shrapnel dismisses individualistic conceptions of mar- 
 riage. " Society," he says, " is our one tangible gain, 
 our one roofing and flooring in a world of most uncer- 
 tain structures built on morasses. Towards the laws 
 that support it men hopeful of progress give their 
 adhesion. If it is martyrdom, what then? Let martyr- 
 dom be. Contumacy is animalism. The truer the 
 love, the readier for sacrifice ! Rebellion against Society 
 and advocacy of humanity run counter" 
 
 As the last of our quotations from newspaper con- 
 tributions, space must be found for a letter written to 
 the Croydon electors on the eve of the last election, 
 proof enough in itself that Meredith's seventy-eight 
 years have not robbed his hand of its cunning. " We 
 view," he writes, " a stormy sea of the disruption of 
 parties, and Conservatives will own, as promptly as 
 Liberals perceive, that the mover of this turbulent state
 
 POLITICAL VIEWS 141 
 
 is the life of it. His supporters, as a righting body, are 
 swallowed up in his person. Mr. Joseph Chamberlain 
 was once a light of the Radical ranks ; he is now 
 enrolled among the Tories ; he was a Free-trader ; he 
 has become a Protectionist, and he has been thought- 
 lessly called a renegade. He is merely the man of a 
 tremendous energy acting upon one idea. Formerly 
 it was the Radical and Free-trade ; now it is the Tory 
 and Protectionist idea ; and he is quite in earnest ; 
 altogether at the mercy of the idea animating him. 
 You see it in his lean, long head and adventurous nose. 
 Men of such a kind are dangerous to their country. 
 They are usually, as he is, adroit debaters ; persuasive 
 speakers ; energised, as he is, by petrol within to drive 
 swift and defiant of opposition to a mark in view. 
 Mr. Chamberlain is one of the motor-men occasionally 
 let loose on us to stir convulsion. The motor-man of 
 Highbury is assured that he can persuade the working- 
 man that by accepting a tax on his loaf he will have 
 in return full employment and higher wages — that is 
 to say, the reward of a promise in the clouds for a 
 positive dead loss. He would persuade the country 
 that Protection leads to no war of Continental tariffs, 
 nor to the encouragement of monopolies, nor to the 
 renewal of the times of Will Watch the bold smuggler, 
 nor to the various chicaneries practised before the days 
 of repeal. It would be a demented country that be- 
 lieved him. It cannot be that Croydon will consent to be 
 ranked as one of the crazy, for, if Mr. Chamberlain wins, 
 the country is on its downward way at motor speed." 
 
 In outlining Meredith's political opinions, it would 
 obviously be ridiculous to confine our references to 
 Great Britain or even to British dominions. "The 
 world," he has said, "is being visibly universalised. 
 To deny us this larger citizenship is the worst pro-
 
 142 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 vincialism." His memorial to the struggle for Italian 
 Independence has been considered already; Harry Rich- 
 mond contains, in the Professor's indictment of England, 
 and Ottilia's training and character, a magnificent tribute 
 to German culture and idealism ; Alvan's account of 
 his interview with Ironsides in The Tragic Comedians 
 is a masterly presentation of Ferdinand Lasalle's atti- 
 tude to Bismarck and his party. And, in these latter 
 days, Meredith's interest in Russia has been evinced in 
 practical forms. But among the nations of Europe 
 France holds the largest place in his heart. In regard 
 to his magnificent poem, France, December, i8yo} 
 we cannot do better than refer the reader to Mr. 
 Trevelyan, 2 who quotes and enlarges on lines such as 
 these, of questioning and dismay, written in the very 
 month when France was laid low : — 
 
 We look for her that sunlike stood 
 
 Upon the forehead of our day, 
 
 An orb of nations, radiating food 
 
 For body and for mind alway. 
 
 Where is the Shape of glad array ; 
 
 The nervous hands, the front of steel, 
 
 The clarion tongue ? Where is the bold, proud face ? 
 
 We see a vacant place ; 
 
 We hear an iron heel. 
 
 and these of tribute and thanksgiving for her lead in 
 
 I 7°9« O she that made the brave appeal 
 
 For manhood when our time was dark, 
 And from- our fetters drove the spark 
 Which was as lightning to reveal 
 New seasons, with the swifter play 
 Of pulses, and benigner day ; 
 She that divinely shook the dead 
 From living man ; that stretched ahead 
 Her resolute forefinger straight, 
 And marched toward the gloomy gate 
 Of earth's Untried. . . . 
 
 1 The Fortnightly Review, January, 1871. Republished in Odes in 
 Contribution to the Song of French History, 1898. 
 
 2 The Poetry and Philosophy of George Meredith. G. M. Trevelyan.
 
 POLITICAL VIEWS 143 
 
 A constant reader of French literature, both con- 
 temporary and classic, Meredith has scattered apprecia- 
 tive references to France and her people up and down 
 the pages of his books. Rente's features had " the soft 
 irregularities which run to rarities of beauty as the 
 ripple rocks the light ; mouth, eyes, brows, nostrils, 
 and bloomy cheeks played into one another liquidly ; 
 thought flew, tongue followed, and the flash of meaning 
 quivered over them like night lightning." She was not 
 so beautiful a woman as Cecilia, but " on which," we are 
 asked, "does the eye linger longest? which draws the 
 heart ? a radiant landscape, where the tall, ripe wheat 
 flashes between shadow and shine in the stately march 
 of Summer, or the peep into dewy woodland on to dark 
 water?" Alvan compares Clotilde with Paris, "his 
 beloved of cities — the symbolised goddess of the light- 
 ning brain that is quick to conceive, eager to realise 
 ideas, impassioned for her hero, but ever putting him to 
 proof, graceful beyond all rhyme, colloquial as never the 
 Muse ; light in light hands, yet valiant unto death for 
 a principle ; and therefore not light, anything but light in 
 strong hands, very steadfast rather : and oh ! constantly 
 entertaining." The French people avoid the " malady of 
 sameness, our modern malady" : they are entertaining, 
 they are complex ; and perhaps it is for this latter quality 
 that Meredith, not uncharacteristically, admires them 
 most. " They are the most mixed of any European nation, 
 so they are packed with contrasts : they are full of senti- 
 ment, they are sharply logical, free-thinkers, devotees ; 
 affectionate, ferocious, frivolous, tenacious ; the passion of 
 the season operating like sun or moon on their qualities ; 
 and they can reach to ideality out of sensualism. Below 
 your level, they are above it: a paradox is at home with 
 them.'" 1 "The most mixed of any European nation," 
 
 1 One of our Conquerors, chapter XI.
 
 H4 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 that, from Meredith, is the choicest of compliments ; 
 for he entertains the firmest belief in the beneficial 
 effects of international marriages. He almost always 
 requires that the English blood of his heroines shall be 
 vivified by a strain of Irish or Welsh ; Emilia's is of 
 course half Italian, and Aminta's is enlivened by an 
 admixture of Spanish. Moreover, his often-expressed 
 belief in the fast-arriving supremacy of the United 
 States among English-speaking peoples, is largely based 
 on their cosmopolitanism and mingling of nationalities. 
 It is well known that Meredith, among other media, 
 has turned also to poetry for the expression of his 
 political ideals. In the space at our disposal it would 
 be impossible to make anything approaching a complete 
 survey of his political poems ; but The Empty Purse 
 has elsewhere received attention, and mention at least 
 must be made here of the sonnet To J. M.} of the 
 Lines to the same in the Fortnightly Review? and 
 the sonnets At the Close* and Hawardenf the Odes 
 in Contribution to French History, and last, and most 
 important of all, the poem Foresight and Patie?ice b 
 already alluded to. Meredith has declared his con- 
 viction that our present hope is in Liberalism, but 
 that Liberalism cannot hold together except on an 
 animate and animating principle. In one sense he 
 always has been, and always will be, a fighter : he is 
 firmly persuaded that " submission to evil is a distinct 
 evil in itself"; but no man living more despises jingo- 
 Imperialism, or more heartily detests its manifestations 
 in the Press. His personal inclination being towards 
 French journalism with its more delicate methods of 
 controversy, he finds some of the developments of our 
 
 1 To John Morley. Poems and Lyrics. ~ December, 1867. 
 
 3 On the South African War, written in October, 1899. A heading 
 of Life. 
 
 4 A Reading of Life. ° A Reading of Life.
 
 POLITICAL VIEWS 145 
 
 latter-day newspapers singularly difficult to bear. He 
 said in conversation with Mr. W. T. Stead, in March, 
 1904, " I hold as strongly as ever I did to the reality of 
 the general onward sweep of the human race ; but as 
 to whether the English are keeping pace in that move- 
 ment I have my doubts. Some thirty years ago I began 
 to feel this, and mentioned it to a great friend of mine, 
 one of our modern statesmen, but he would not hear of 
 it. The other day when I repeated my fears to him, he 
 sighed heavily, and said he feared it was too true, and 
 that our fatal lack of imagination was at the bottom of 
 it all." In Foresight and Patience he has made clear 
 to us that his trust in Liberalism, his faith in democracy, 
 is no facile optimism based on blinking or ignorance 
 of facts. He sees the millions as they are, and Fore- 
 sight — the spirit of progress in his dialogue — expresses 
 what he sees : — 
 
 Their field of tares they take for pasture grass. 
 How waken them that have not any bent 
 Save browsing — the concrete indifferent ! 
 Friend Lucifer supplies them solid stuff: 
 They fear not for the race when full the trough. 
 They have much fear of giving up the ghost ; 
 And these are of mankind the unnumbered host. 
 
 Admit some other features : Faithless, mean ; 
 Encased in matter ; vowed to Gods obscene; 
 Contemptuous of the impalpable, it swells 
 On Doubt ; for pastime swallows miracles. 
 
 Patience, admitting the truth of the indictment, points 
 out to Foresight that our age's special task is the broad- 
 ening and strengthening of foundations, and that this 
 work has already begun. Foresight listens reproved, 
 and rejoins : — 
 
 That rings of truth ! More do your people thrive ; 
 
 Your many are more merrily alive 
 
 Than erewhile when I gloried in the page 
 
 Of radiant singer and anointed sage.
 
 146 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 Greece was my lamp : burnt out for lack of oil ; 
 Rome, Python Rome, prey of its robber spoil ! 
 All structures built upon a narrow space 
 Must fall, for having not your hosts for base. 
 
 And aided by Patience, the spirit of Progress is enabled 
 to close the dialogue and the poem thus : — 
 
 Advantage to the Many : that we name 
 
 God's voice ; have there the surety in our aim. 
 
 This thought unto my sister do I owe, 
 
 And irony and satire off me throw. . . . 
 
 Now let the perils thicken : clearer seen, 
 
 Your Chieftain Mind mounts over them serene. 
 
 Who never yet of scattered lamps was born 
 
 To speed a world, a marching world to warn, 
 
 But sunward from the vivid Many springs, 
 
 Counts conquest but a step, and through disaster sings.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE IDEA OF COMEDY, THE SAGE 
 ENAMOURED, AND THE EGOIST 
 
 MEREDITH'S Essay on Comedy, though not pub- 
 lished in book form till 1897, appeared first in 
 The New Quarterly Magazine twenty years earlier, 
 having previously been delivered as a lecture at the 
 London Institution on the 1st of February in the same 
 year. It is presumable that the Comic Spirit presided 
 in person at this lecture ; and conjecturable that no 
 audience was summoned beyond a score of historic 
 notables, headed by Aristophanes himself, now assem- 
 bled to hear their contributions to the well-spring of 
 human laughter distinguished and appreciated as they 
 had never been before. Possibly the chief nations of 
 the modern world sent representatives also ; but clearly 
 these were not expected and, if they came, must in 
 most cases have enjoyed the lecture less. We can 
 believe that the company seldom, if ever, joined in the 
 collective laugh, except for one grand outburst at the 
 expense of an unhappy Arab, evidently admitted by 
 mistake. The general aspect was of an intellectual 
 banquet, a feast of the sly smile. 
 
 The ten years now elapsed since the final publication 
 of the lecture have given the world opportunity to take 
 the flavour of a dish, which, when first offered, touched 
 the common palate with so tempered, so refined a 
 subtlety, that its lasting qualities must have been 
 missed. To read the essay once is to be stimulated and 
 
 147
 
 148 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 entertained ; but it is only after many readings that a 
 normal mind can hope to comprehend the completeness, 
 the precision, the finality of what is said. Not only is 
 the nature of the Comic itself defined, but the various 
 emotions which may enter into it and transform it are 
 distinguished and interrelated with consummate skill, 
 and in language of which the only difficulty is the diffi- 
 culty inherent in the subject. A more exhaustive 
 treatment is unimaginable. Satire, Irony, Humour are 
 perfectly delineated in all their grades, with a hint for 
 each as to its true place in literature and in life. " The 
 Satirist is a moral agent, often a social scavenger, work- 
 ing on a storage of bile. The Ironeist is one thing or 
 another, according to his caprice ; Irony is the humour 
 of Satire ; it may be savage as in Swift, with a moral 
 object, or sedate, as in Gibbon, with a malicious. . . . 
 The stroke of the great humourist is world-wide, with 
 lights of Tragedy in his laughter." The picture is com- 
 pleted by a criticism of the literature of Comedy, which, 
 for buoyancy and brilliancy of writing, for delicacy and 
 depth of understanding, equals the more abstract por- 
 tions of the work. The inspiration of the Comic Muse 
 herself is recognisable most clearly in passages reflect- 
 ing upon some symptoms of Dullness in modern life. 
 " If the Comic idea prevailed with us, and we had an 
 Aristophanes to barb and wing it, we should be breath- 
 ing air of Athens. Prosers now pouring forth on us 
 like public fountains would be cut short in the street 
 and left blinking, dumb as pillar-posts, with letters 
 thrust into their mouths." One thing, at least, is cer- 
 tain — that if the Comic idea does not prevail among us, 
 the reason is not that we lack a leader. 
 
 The main purpose of the Essay is to define the 
 spirit which Meredith considers to be the tutelary 
 genius of civilisation ; the touchstone of worth to
 
 THE IDEA OF COMEDY 149 
 
 which, of necessity, he has brought the characters of his 
 novels to be tried. To his understanding, the meaning 
 and justification of individual experience and suffering 
 is each man's possibility of raising into full and con- 
 scious existence the God-like qualities that are latent 
 within him. But no other writer has so fully perceived 
 and so relentlessly expressed the immensity of the task. 
 The main theme of his novels, and indeed of many of 
 his poems, is the purification of rebellious and intem- 
 perate youth : a purification which to his mind can only 
 be effected by experience in the main painful to the 
 natural Ego ; by an Ordeal which he invariably con- 
 ceives as fiery. On a friend's judgment in regard to 
 Meredith's first great novel, James Thomson wrote to 
 him : " Neither she or any other woman, and scarcely 
 any man, will ever forgive you the cruel, cruel ending." 
 In this verdict on Richard Feverel many of Meredith's 
 readers must at times have been tempted to agree, and 
 certainly the only justification of being called on to 
 watch a nature like Lucy Desborough's broken on the 
 wheel is a reinforced conviction of the educative value 
 of blood and tears. That this is provided by Meredith's 
 writing in general, no student of his novels or his poems 
 can deny. Yet at times his insight becomes so 
 oppressed with the laboriousness of the discipline, so 
 jealous of youth's energy expended in the mastering 
 of mere brutishness, that from the burden he has been 
 encouraging his fellows to undertake even his giant 
 shoulders rebel : 
 
 Not till the fire is dying in the grate 
 Look we for any kinship with the stars. 
 Oh, wisdom never comes when it is gold, 
 And the great price we pay for it full worth. 
 We have it only when we are half earth. 
 Little avails that coinage to the old. 1 
 
 1 Modem Love.
 
 150 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 But— and here is the connection with the Comic Spirit 
 — it is, in some measure at least, because we neglect the 
 help that is at hand, that our period of stumbling and 
 unfruitfulness becomes so prolonged. For hovering 
 above us is a mentor, offspring of man's accumulated 
 experience, who is ready to be the individual's guardian 
 and guide in the new epoch on which mankind is enter- 
 ing. Humanity's watchword henceforth is Community; 
 and the prime test of her children's effectiveness is to 
 be voluntary adaptation to, and co-ordination in, their 
 environment. Or rather, it is in co-ordination that the 
 adaptation hereafter required of them is to consist. " If 
 you believe that our civilisation is founded in common 
 sense (and it is the first condition of sanity to believe 
 it), you will, when contemplating men, discern a Spirit 
 overhead ; not more heavenly than the light flashed up- 
 ward from glassy surfaces, but luminous and watchful; 
 never shooting beyond them, nor lagging in the rear; so 
 closely attached to them that it may be taken for a 
 slavish reflex, until its features are studied. It has the 
 sage's brows, and the sunny malice of a faun lurks at 
 the corners of the half-closed lips drawn in an idle 
 wariness of half tension. That slim feasting smile, 
 shaped like the long-bow, was once a big round satyr's 
 laugh, that flung up the brows like a fortress lifted by 
 gunpowder. The laugh will come again, but it will be 
 of the order of the smile, finely tempered, showing sun- 
 light of the mind, mental richness rather than noisy enor- 
 mity. Its common aspect is one of unsolicitous obser- 
 vation, as if surveying a full field and having leisure to 
 dart on its chosen morsels, without any fluttering eager- 
 ness. Men's future upon earth does not attract it ; 
 their honesty and shapeliness in the present does ; and 
 whenever they wax out of proportion, overblown, 
 affected, pretentious, bombastical, hypocritical, pedantic,
 
 THE IDEA OF COMEDY 151 
 
 fantastically delicate; whenever it sees them self-deceived 
 or hoodwinked, given to run riot in idolatries, drifting 
 into vanities, congregating in absurdities, planning short- 
 sightedly, plotting dementedly; whenever they are at 
 variance with their professions, and violate the unwritten 
 but perceptible laws binding them in consideration one 
 to another ; whenever they offend sound reason, fair 
 justice ; are false in humility, or mined with conceit, 
 individually, or in the bulk — the Spirit overhead will 
 look humanely malign and cast an oblique light on 
 them, followed by volleys of silvery laughter. That is 
 the Comic Spirit." 
 
 Oh ! wad some power the giftie gie us 
 To see oursel' as ithers see us. 
 
 Burns saw the truth and stood in need of it. Never, 
 until by Meredith, has it been perfectly worked out. 
 His conception is of a spirit revealing to the individual 
 a standard of fitness and proportion in conduct, the 
 fruit of many minds ; an ideal of character, in which 
 aspiration unrelated to action is exposed as burlesque. 
 He sees it hovering above us continually, most apparent 
 to the eyes of others when least visible to our own. 
 Its object is to give the individual a vision of "reality," 
 a part and place in society which shall cure him of in- 
 clination to posturing and pretence. But because the 
 Spirit is intellectual, a fruit of man's brain, she cannot 
 speak to him through the senses. When these are 
 uppermost, and even temporarily have " usurped the 
 station of their issue, mind," only one avenue is open to 
 her. The victim must be exposed to the ruder buffetings 
 of his fellows, allowed to run unchecked on his course, 
 till the antagonism by which he is surrounded awakens 
 him to consciousness of the spectacle he presents. 
 
 Perhaps the most masterly, and certainly the easiest 
 presentation of the thought, is in the Prelude to The
 
 152 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 Egoist. The world, we are told, is possessed of a cer- 
 tain big book, so inclusive that it might almost be 
 called the Book of Earth, in which, since writing first 
 began, the generations of men have registered their 
 deeds. This is the Book of Egoism. It has grown 
 now so large as to be useless to mankind except under 
 some form of condensation. Where shall we seek for a 
 method of vision by which to extract wisdom from the 
 book — "in essence, in chosen samples, digestibly?" 
 Transcription, the realistic method, is useless, being 
 itself already, in the main, responsible for the " malady 
 of sameness, our modern malady." If we appeal to 
 Science it points backward to our ancestry, and in the 
 matter at issue we can learn little from apes. " Art is 
 the specific. The chief consideration for us is, what 
 particular practice of Art in letters is the best for the 
 perusal of the Book of our common wisdom ; so that 
 with clearer minds and livelier manners we may escape, 
 as it were, into daylight and song from a land of fog- 
 horns. Shall we read it by the watchmaker's eye 
 in luminous rings eruptive of the infinitesimal, or 
 pointed with examples and types under the broad 
 Alpine survey of the spirit born of our united social 
 intelligence, which is the Comic Spirit ? " The tale now 
 about to be told is of an English gentleman, offspring 
 and representative of a great House. That House, like 
 all others, was raised to its eminence upon Egoism — a 
 grand old Egoism that by some force of will or of 
 character outstripped its fellows to found what we mean 
 by a Eamily. But as centuries have passed and the 
 characteristics of the rank and file of men have 
 changed and refined, ever new and more complex forms 
 of superiority are demanded of the representatives of 
 such a House, if its exaltation and prominence is not 
 to become merely fictitious. And above all it is neces-
 
 THE EGOIST 153 
 
 sary that there shall be no reversion, under a modern 
 veneer, to the old policy of brute-dominion and grab ; 
 no masquerading of a Norman baron in the guise of a 
 gentleman of the nineteenth century. In past time the 
 Comic Spirit was reverent of Egoism, sober, socially 
 valuable, nationally serviceable; but now that its day is 
 over and it lurks only in disguises and under feigned 
 names, she hunts it mercilessly as her prey. " She 
 watches over sentimentalism with a birch-rod," analys- 
 ing much that is commonly termed love, showing 
 it merely to be projection of self at a new angle, a 
 seeking of the first person in the second. Sir 
 Willoughby Patterne returns to Patterne Hall after 
 a three-years' absence from England. His constant 
 and adoring friend Laetitia Dale is the first of his 
 acquaintances he meets. He springs from his carriage. 
 " ' Laetitia Dale ! ' he said. He panted. ' Your name is 
 sweet English music ! And are you well ? ' The 
 anxious question permitted him to read deeply in her 
 eyes. He found the man he sought there, squeezed him 
 passionately, and let her go." 
 
 It must be conceded that Sir Willoughby Patterne 
 is an extreme type of the Comic Spirit's prey ; he is in 
 fact the Egoist even among Meredith's characters. 
 And to Meredith Egoism is what Original Sin was 
 to our forefathers, an initial condition common to 
 all and only to be outgrown by much prayer and 
 fasting. In the incident of Lieutenant Patterne's visit, 
 and in Sir Willoughby's letters from America, we see 
 him already immersed in his egoism. Yet it is almost 
 entirely in connection with his love affairs that the 
 Comic Spirit's chase and exposure of him is to be 
 displayed. For Meredith conceives of " love " as the 
 crucial experience of his characters. Richard, Alvan, 
 Evan, Weyburn, Fleetwood, Wilfrid Pole, this is the
 
 154 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 Ordeal of them all. The day of his captured ideal, 
 the hour when that which hitherto has been winged 
 and aspiring, seems stationed, held, nay even handed to 
 his grasp in the person of his beloved, to Meredith 
 is the test of a man's worth. Men of insight and 
 intelligence will not normally fall into posturing or 
 exaggeration ; but this ordeal is fiery ; and, undergoing 
 it, even a Sage at times will bear " hard likeness to the 
 toilful apes of youth." It is, he perceives, infinitely 
 more difficult for a man to recognise the nature of his 
 desires when he can claim that the well-being of 
 another and dearer self is involved in their attainment. 
 For the individual is tempted then to suppose that 
 he can work for his friend's good, in separation from 
 the welfare of his friends' friends and the world at 
 large, in a way in which he has long ago learnt that 
 it is impossible to strive for his own — if indeed he is 
 capable of learning anything at all. Meredith sees the 
 Devil in ambuscade from the moment of our incorpora- 
 tion of a second person in the unit of our interest. 
 Even the dullest of us, finding himself single-handed 
 against the world, is apt to suspect that possibly there 
 is something amiss with his bearing; but the mock- 
 heroic of a world well lost for love is common enough 
 yet. There may appear something alien and almost 
 bloodless in the restraint and consideration for others 
 of the Whitworths, and Weyburns, and Wentworths, 
 "the practised in self-mastery," who are Meredith's 
 heroes ; but in Willoughby's claim — " We two have an 
 inner temple where the worship we conduct is actually 
 an excommunication of the world. We abhor that beast 
 to adore that divinity. This gives us our oneness, our 
 isolation, our happiness. This is to love with the soul" 
 — one is forced to recognise a theory that is far from 
 uncommon, though it be suicidal.
 
 THE EGOIST 155 
 
 The conviction of the crucible nature of this 
 experience, implicit in his earliest novels, Meredith 
 states explicitly in The Egoist. " The love-season," he 
 says, " is the carnival of Egoism, and it brings the 
 touch-stone to our natures. I speak of love, not of the 
 mask, and not of the flutings upon the theme of love, 
 but of the passion ; a flame having, like our mortality, 
 death in it as well as life." He makes it quite clear, 
 moreover, that what he is disclosing of the savagery 
 of Sir Willoughby's nature beneath the veneer of his 
 civilisation is applicable " to thousands of civilised 
 males." It is not only of the courtship of Clara 
 Middleton that he is speaking when he says in relation 
 to women, " It is the palpable and material of them 
 still which they are tempted to flourish wherewith 
 to invite and allay pursuit : a condition under which 
 the spiritual, wherein their hope lies, languishes. The 
 capaciously strong in soul among women will ultimately 
 detect an infinite grossness in the demand for purity, 
 infinite, spotless bloom. Earlier or later, they will see 
 they have been victims of the singular Egoist, have 
 worn a mask of ignorance to be named innocent, have 
 turned themselves into market produce for his delight, 
 and have really abandoned the commodity in minister- 
 ing to the lust for it, suffered themselves to be dragged 
 ages back in playing upon the fleshly innocence of 
 happy accident to gratify his jealous greed of possession, 
 when it should have been their task to set the soul 
 above the fairest fortune, and the gift of strength 
 in women beyond ornamental whiteness." Meredith 
 points out in the Essay on Comedy that there is, 
 and always must be, an intimate connection between 
 the position of women and the Comic Spirit's existence 
 and effectiveness. Comedy, as he conceives it, is less 
 concerned with men's actions than with tendencies and
 
 156 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 tastes that are subtle and interfused in their being. 
 And since a true interplay upon life between men and 
 women is only possible from a common vantage- 
 ground of ideas, women, poorer on the whole in 
 experience, can only raise themselves to this wider out- 
 look by a strenuous use of their wits, and above all, by 
 cultivation of their common sense. In swelling the 
 ranks of the sentimentalists, woman has everything to 
 lose and nothing to gain ; her hope is in increasing 
 clearness of vision, fuller disentanglement of thought 
 
 and sensation — We share the primal curse : 
 Together shake it off, say we. : 
 
 The essential impurity of the masculine identification 
 of innocence and ignorance in women it has been 
 one of Meredith's chief tasks to expose. In The Ballad 
 of Fair Ladies in Revolt, in abstract terms, he has 
 done it inimitably. In The Sage Enamoured and the 
 Honest Lady he has fearlessly dared, and sustainedly 
 exalted, the statement of both sides of the most inti- 
 mate and intricate of human questions, in a way no 
 other living writer could have paralleled. In this poem 
 the Sage's ultimate position is the very antithesis of the 
 Egoist's ; he is at one end of the scale while Willoughby 
 is at the other ; but the subject and treatment of the 
 theme on which they are both to discourse is similar 
 enough in essentials to justify their interrelation. 
 The Sage, a man of many-sided powers and interests, 
 finds himself drawn to a woman by her graciousness 
 and beauty, in a manner and degree that even in his 
 hot-blooded youth he should have imagined impossible. 
 She reciprocates the feeling sufficiently to find herself 
 constrained to put an end to his passion. In order to 
 do this she must tell him the story of her life. But 
 the task is not easy. Attempting honest speech, she 
 
 1 A Ballad of Fair Ladies in Revolt.
 
 THE SAGE ENAMOURED 157 
 
 finds that a mental habit of glossing and clothing 
 compromising facts has affected her choice of words. 
 She wishes the truth to be conveyed, but desires her 
 friend's image of her to remain unaffected by it. The 
 picture she sketches is of two young and passionate 
 lovers hurled by outraged society into a yet closer em- 
 brace, pledged more deeply to one another by the 
 imminent danger of forced severance. They err, and 
 in the world's eyes are ruined ; but they make their 
 appeal to the Court of Love, and are able to esteem 
 their gain above their loss — 
 
 invoke an advocate 
 In passion's purity, thereby redeemed. 
 
 The Sage, her lover, now become her judge, remains 
 mute and unresponsive. He envelops her in an icy 
 silence that freezes her burning plea ; and in her bitter- 
 ness she sees him as a leader of the male herd stoning 
 the women they abase. But her words reverberate, as 
 it were, in the emptiness, and, hearing them, she recog- 
 nises their hollowness. 
 
 She no longer glosses her offence, but grasps at its 
 ugliest, its scriptural, title. Thereupon natural repul- 
 sion in her hearer gives place to something higher and 
 
 nobler — Crimson currents ran 
 
 From senses up to thoughts, 
 
 enabling him to realise in the valiancy of this sacrifice 
 for his enlightenment a flower more delicate than any 
 rosebud of guileless maidenhood, and to grasp some- 
 thing of the need of understanding involved in the 
 effort necessary to such a confession. 
 
 He gave her of the deep well she had sprung ; 
 And name it gratitude, the word is poor. 
 But name it gratitude, is aught as rare 
 From sex to sex ? And let it have survived 
 Their conflict, comes the peace between the pair, 
 Unknown to thousands husbanded and wived :
 
 158 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 Unknown to Passion, generous for prey : 
 Unknown to Love, too blissful in a truce. 
 Their tenderest of self did each one slay ; 
 His cloak of dignity, her fleur de luce ; 
 Her lily flower, and his abolla cloak, 
 Things living, slew they, and no artery bled. 
 A moment of some sacrificial smoke 
 They passed, and were the dearer for their dead. 
 
 The bulk of the poem now deals with the Sage's 
 treatment of the issues raised by the personal situation, 
 to the heart of which we have been introduced. And 
 this method, call it scientific or inartistic if you will, 
 like it or leave it, is eminently characteristic of Mere- 
 dith's work. Again and again in his novels he looks 
 over his own shoulder, as it were, to comment on his in- 
 veterate habit of proceeding from the particular to the 
 general, and in the possibility of so doing he has seen 
 the main claim of the particular upon our attention. 
 His anticipation of criticism in this case takes the 
 form of a statement in regard to the Sage's treatment 
 of his friend : — 
 
 He passed her through the sermon's dull defile, 
 
 and the statement in one sense is an apology. No one, 
 he would say, deplores a tendency to dullness and ser- 
 monising on the part of his characters more deeply 
 than their creator. But the subject under consideration 
 appears to him too profoundly important for the discus- 
 sion of it to be limited by any claims extraneous to its 
 own. An artistic setting, a certain vitalising of the 
 problem in particular human experience, was essential 
 to its presentment ; but to limit it to these would be to 
 beg the points of interest, to neglect to draw attention 
 to the elements within it that really are obscure. Mere- 
 dith's Sage, regrettably, may be dull ; but none the less 
 his claim to the title that he bears is based on his capa- 
 city for classifying and relating the phenomena of his
 
 THE SAGE ENAMOURED 159 
 
 life to a world that is outside itself: for passing quickly 
 from purely personal discomfort to a vision of the truly 
 grievous elements the tale he has heard contains. 
 Passionate human love, a force that garnered and 
 cherished should have been serviceable for a lifetime, 
 by recklessness has been reduced to 
 
 These few last 
 Hot quintessential drops of bryony juice, 
 Squeezed out in anguish : all of that once vast ! 
 
 Nevertheless he holds no brief for a hypocritical 
 world, preserving its so-called purity at the price of 
 gross injustice, visiting punishment for a joint deed on 
 only one of the participators. There exist two oppos- 
 ing camps in this matter, but neither of them can claim 
 to have reached a solution reconciled with the facts : 
 one lops off a limb, a piece of life itself, the other rebels 
 against the consequences issuing from indulgence of its 
 instincts. By one school Nature is accounted devilish, 
 by the other divine. But the intellectual impasse 
 reached by both is the same ; both 
 
 accept for doom 
 The chasm between our passions and our wits. 
 
 It is the old story — Nature misread, taken as synony- 
 mous with the instincts of the flesh, separated from 
 the idealisation of the spirit. The only solution is to 
 recognise that man's mind and man's laws, whatever 
 their crudity, are not alien and opposing products 
 but are, no less than his body, outcome of Nature's 
 chastening discipline ; the one way of escape from in- 
 dividualistic rebellion being to conceive the collective 
 mind of man as " child of her keen rod," his earliest laws 
 
 developing as ,.,._, 
 
 r ° the blind progressive worm 
 
 That moves by touch, and thrust of linking rings, 1 
 . 1 Cf. The World's Advance.
 
 160 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 his later and more complex aims demanding and neces- 
 sitating a deliberate weighing of the present with the 
 future, the immediate with the remote. Self-satisfac- 
 tion, happiness, there are no more fixed centres of these 
 than there is a finite stable compound of qualities to be 
 termed Human Nature. Man's conception of pleasure 
 is changing and developing with his character. And 
 wherever he has attempted to substitute an ideal end 
 for an immediate satisfaction, it follows that he has dis- 
 cerned, afar and flickering, but still discerned, the beacon 
 of some higher joy. In a humanity thus developing, 
 many desires fall away and are superseded. The 
 problem raised by sexual passion is unique, because, 
 being the channel of Life itself, its continuance is 
 essential. The question of its ultimate place in society 
 is insistent, and refuses to be shelved or set aside. 
 Clearly its blind assertiveness must be checked and 
 controlled by ideals touching the welfare of the race to 
 be. But how and in what manner ? The answer must 
 be comprehensive, and to frame it man and woman, 
 
 the twain beside our vital flood, 
 Now on opposing banks, the twain at strife 
 
 must face the problem considerately, and in unison ; 
 
 Instruct in deeper than Convenience, 
 In higher than the harvest of a year. 
 
 In Meredith's hands, the Sage's power of abstract 
 judgment betokens more, and not less, capacity for 
 sympathy and emotion. The era he has been fore- 
 seeing, when man and woman shall meet to mate as 
 peers, has not yet arrived. And meanwhile, in such a 
 situation as the present, abstractly considered, a tender- 
 ness deeper than philanthropy appears to him the 
 
 step to right the loaded scales 
 Displaying woman shamefully outweighed.
 
 THE SAGE ENAMOURED 161 
 
 By his fearless treatment of the problem of sex and the 
 long discipline needful to its solution, the Sage has 
 released his companion from the prison-house of her 
 isolation, put her once more into step with her fellows, 
 taught her to hear again the heart-beat of the world. 
 She no longer shrinks from, or slurs over, the fact of her 
 experience ; she accepts it as the road to her awakened 
 understanding of comradeship and of law, the ground- 
 work of her new feeling for the tranquil and impersonal : 
 
 The peace, the homely skies, the springs that welled ; 
 Love, the large love that folds the multitude. 
 
 His own reward is present too, in his quickened and 
 deepened conception of loveliness ; the old outward 
 attraction is still obvious, but it shrinks to insignificance 
 before the beauty of spirit he has now apprehended : 
 
 Soul's chastity in honesty, and this 
 With beauty, made the dower to men refused. 
 And little do they know the prize they miss ; 
 Which is their happy fortune ! Thus he mused. 
 
 The prospect open to these lovers is widely different 
 from that of the lady's youthful desires or the Sage's 
 preconception. Not vivid in colour, or striking in out- 
 line, it is strangely fair to view. No splendid and 
 triumphant dawn is theirs ; only daybreak on a quiet 
 
 day '• He needed her quick thirst 
 
 For renovated earth : on earth she gazed, 
 With humble aim to foot beside the wise. 
 Lo, where the eyelashes of night are raised 
 Yet lowly over morning's pure grey eyes. 
 
 The Egoist is usually considered to be the most 
 characteristic of Meredith's utterances. Certainly it 
 affords the best possible proof that it is natural to him 
 to evolve his stories from an abstract rather than a 
 dramatic foundation. At the present moment, such a 
 method is unfashionable, and the statement may be taken 
 as implying disparagement of his gifts as an artist- 
 
 M
 
 1 62 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 Any such conclusion would be unjust. Many of us may 
 prefer novels in which we are not presented at the out- 
 set with the author's thesis and preconception, favoured 
 with the prospect of an exercise on an already enunci- 
 ated problem ; but, if we are open-minded, accentu- 
 ation of our distaste for the method is likely in this case 
 to end in amazement at the dramatic and imaginative 
 power which has exalted and impassioned it. That 
 Meredith knows all that is to be known of Comedy in 
 the abstract, readers of the Essay do not need to be 
 convinced. As a reviewer of other men's comedies he 
 is supreme. But the qualifications necessary to a literary 
 critic, erudition and ingenuity and balance of sympathy, 
 belong in themselves to the "watchmaker's" equipment 
 rather than the dramatist's, and might easily prove a 
 burden too clogging and cumbrous for an " Alpine 
 survey." The book is long ; the story proper occupies 
 a few days only, yet its chronicle runs to near upon five 
 hundred pages. The dialogue is brilliant, but occasion- 
 ally its brilliancy and complexity prove overwhelming. 
 There are scenes towards the close where five or six 
 persons, each labouring under a separate misconception, 
 attempt to converse, and the effect on a reader, not 
 always informed which character is speaking, is bewilder- 
 ment. In the process of Willoughby's efforts to shield 
 himself at his neighbour's expense, the ground beneath 
 the actors is mined in every direction, and blunder is 
 heaped upon blunder ; yet the delicacy and inter- 
 threading of motive is sufficient to prevent the result 
 from being farcical. It is less so, indeed, as the story 
 develops, than in the earlier, more psychological part of 
 the book, where the reader was called on to witness 
 Willoughby's more tedious and less credible self-revela- 
 tions. Certain critics have assumed that because his 
 exposure convinces us, and is meant to convince us,
 
 THE EGOIST r 6 3 
 
 anew of our egoism, we are each called on to acclaim in 
 Willoughby a counterpart of ourselves. To do this is 
 to introduce a standard of realism disavowed by the 
 author, and to miss his conception of Comedy as a 
 " stillatory "— a condenser. The aim of the book is 
 Comic drama in the style of Moliere, exposition of a 
 single typical character ; and within these limits it must 
 be judged. The limits are severe, and afford little or no 
 scope for the tragic intensity of which the author of 
 Richard Feverel and Sandra Belloni is capable— a fact 
 of which Meredith himself is fully aware : 
 
 For this the Comic Muse exacts of creatures 
 Appealing to the fount of tears ; that they 
 Strive never to outleap our human features 
 And do right reason's ordinance obey, 
 In peril of the hum to laughter nighest. 
 But prove they under stress of action's fire 
 Nobleness, to that test of Reason highest 
 She bows ; she waves for them the loftier lyre. 
 
 Nevertheless, if we turn, in so far as such division is 
 practicable in a work that is united and organic, from 
 the central study to the subsidiary characterisations of 
 the book, we shall find them sufficient to have served 
 an ordinary novelist for half a dozen novels at least. 
 Clara, Vernon, Dr. Middleton, Crossjay, De Craye, even 
 Laetitia herself, have a vital and developing existence. 
 They are compelled in certain directions, of course, by 
 the fact that they are members of the Egoist's house- 
 hold ; but they have also a full life of their own, over and 
 above that which is required for the exposure of Wil- 
 loughby's errors. With the arrival of Dr. Middleton 
 and his daughter at Patterne Hall, and the overt battle 
 between the claim of Clara's pledged word to Sir 
 Willoughby and her growing distaste for the prospect 
 of its fulfilment, vivid characterisation may be said to 
 begin. The imminence and inevitability of Clara's
 
 k>i GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 ■Imi'm-Ii- h.is been conveyed to US previously, chiefly 
 through the eye, of her contemporaries. Crossjay, 
 • illei hi . lii. I sighl ol her, had run to Lajtitia with 
 HOWS of B lady with a merry face and a liking for 
 
 the n. ivy ; Vernon Whitford suggested a delicate and 
 peculiar gifl of responsiveness, while Willoughby pro- 
 tested slightly overmuch in regard to her youth and 
 inexperience. Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson, in insist- 
 ence on the justice of her phrase, " a dainty rogue in 
 porcelain," had given Clara's lover moments of uneasi- 
 ness. 
 
 '" Why rogue?' he asked. 
 I ••.lid in porcelain,' she replied. 
 
 ' Rogue perplexes me.' 
 
 ' Porcelain explains it.' 
 
 ' She has the keenest sense o\ honour.' 
 
 ■ 1 .mi sure she is .1 paragon o( rectitude.' 
 'She has .1 beautiful bearing.' 
 
 ■ The carriage of .1 young princess.' 
 
 ' 1 find hei pei feet' 
 
 ' V.nl still she may be a dainty rogue in porcelain." 
 ' Ak- you judging by '.he mind or the person, ma'am?' 
 
 • Both.' 
 
 " And which is which ? ' 
 
 • [fare's no - v. on.' 
 
 ' Rogue ess of Patterne do not go together.' 
 
 \\ h\ no: } She will be 1 Ity to our neighbour- 
 
 the JL' 
 
 1 match with ■ 
 
 • r« ... 
 
 V ce . 
 
 1 c -._; .inv.ise- 
 
 ". . .' . ■■ ' . . ■".....;; ::.:: :h; 
 
 ■
 
 THE EGOIST 165 
 
 ated then, because fully convinced that his decision to 
 exalt Clara Middleton to the position of his bride was 
 founded on the assurance of her being " essentially- 
 feminine, a parasite and a chalice " ; unassisted later, 
 from preoccupation with endeavour to instil his ideas, 
 and correct small tendencies on the part of his be- 
 trothed to think of her mind as her own. On one side, 
 irritation too incredulous of the possibility of revolt to 
 acknowledge itself as uneasiness ; on the other, a blind 
 hopefulness that the man she saw and was attracted to 
 at first must reassert himself in her lover ; such is the 
 position between Willoughby and Clara when the drama 
 begins. 
 
 But already, in its earliest beginnings, it has had an 
 observant spectator, and Clara is conscious of his 
 scrutiny. Since her engagement, Willoughby's cousin 
 and dependant, Vernon Whitford, has been on a visit 
 to her father. He has obviously avoided being alone 
 with her, but he has subjected her fitfully during meals 
 to an uncomfortable, penetrating gaze. At their first 
 meeting she had liked his eyes, but lately their look 
 has recalled the mingled brooding and apprehension 
 of a parent bird on the nest. After a certain conversa- 
 tion with Willoughby on the subject of widowhood — 
 their last interview before the removal to Patterne— she 
 had been conscious of actual relief in Vernon's absence 
 and the fact of not being obliged to encounter that 
 look. For the rest she had seen him chiefly with 
 Crossjay, and thought that his tutorly sharpness con- 
 trasted unfavourably with Willoughby's quasi-paternal 
 indulgence. But her judgment on this subject is 
 to be modified by learning incidentally from Crossjay, 
 almost immediately on her arrival at Patterne, that 
 Vernon Whitford pays for, as well as teaches, him ; 
 and by Vernon's manifest anxiety to get the lad away
 
 1 66 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 from the place before he is spoiled. At Patterne 
 it is inevitable that Vernon should sometimes be 
 thrown in her path. He is merely a scholarly adjunct 
 of the household, liable at any moment to be called 
 on to act as Clara's retainer in Willoughby's absence. 
 And with him she feels no need for restraint ; he 
 is devoid of graces, an execrable dancer, and an 
 indifferent horseman. As a writer of letters to the 
 Press he is useful to Willoughby, and his eminence 
 as a scholar and controversialist adds a distinction 
 to Patterne parallel in kind to its reputation for 
 Parisian cooking. He goes on his way without the 
 smallest pretension, and Clara notes, half regretfully, 
 that he never dissents strongly from Sir Willoughby 
 in speech. If it had been possible for her to see him 
 with the eyes of a reader familiar with Meredith's 
 other creations, she might, from the outset, have been 
 more fully aware of Vernon's significance. For she 
 learns, in their first interview, that he has been walking 
 off irritation with Crossjay, and has been nine and 
 a half hours on foot ; and she surprises him, at their 
 second, asleep beneath the double-blossom wild cherry, 
 to which Willoughby has previously half-mockingly 
 alluded as " Vernon's holy tree." " She had a curiosity 
 to know the title of the book he would read beneath 
 those boughs, and, grasping Crossjay's hand fast, she 
 craned her neck, as one timorous of a fall in peeping 
 over chasms, for a glimpse of the page; but im- 
 mediately, and still with a bent head, she turned her 
 face to where the load of virginal blossom, whiter than 
 summer-cloud on the sky, showered and drooped and 
 clustered so thick as to claim colour and seem like 
 higher Alpine snows in noon sunlight, a flush of white. 
 From deep to deeper heavens of white her eyes 
 perched and soared. Wonder lived in her. Happiness
 
 THE EGOIST 167 
 
 in the beauty of the tree pressed to supplant it, and 
 was more mortal and narrower. Reflection came, 
 contracting her vision and weighing her to earth. Her 
 reflection was : ' He must be good who loves to lie and 
 sleep beneath the branches of this tree ! ' Clara would 
 rather have clung to her first impression : wonder so 
 divine, so unbounded, was like soaring into homes 
 of angel-crowded space." 
 
 She, the wild white cherry, a tree, 
 Earth-rooted, tangibly wood. 
 Yet a presence throbbing, alive, 1 
 
 gleams elsewhere in Meredith's writing with more than 
 mortal beauty as banner and beacon of the highest. 
 And she is Vernon's guardian angel now ; for Rabes- 
 qurat, Queen of Illusions, is at hand. Half-dozing, he 
 has seen Clara's head above him, framed in dazzling 
 whiteness ; and he is tempted to dwell on the vision, 
 after it has disappeared, as being of spiritual significance, 
 instead of what his wakened wits declare it, the mere 
 outcome of a young lady's inquisitiveness. The sharp 
 struggle that ensues gives scope for subtle analysis, in 
 which Meredith reveals certain characteristics of men he 
 believes to be earth's foremost. Of the cherishing 
 and dallying with any such fancy as that which Vernon 
 dismisses, he says: "Just outside reality, it illumines, 
 enriches, and softens real things ; and to desire it in 
 preference to the simple fact, is a damning proof of 
 enervation. Such was Vernon's winding up of his brief 
 drama of fantasy. He was aware of the fantastical 
 element in him and soon had it under. Which of us 
 who is of any worth is without it ? He had not much 
 vanity to trouble him, and passion was quiet, so his task 
 was not gigantic. Especially be it remarked, that he 
 was a man of quick pace, the sovereign remedy for the 
 
 1 A Faith on Trial.
 
 168 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 dispersing of mental fen-mist. He had tried it, and 
 knew that nonsense is to be walked off." After this 
 the reader may desire to be told of Vernon's part in 
 the unfolding of Clara Middleton's romance ; but of 
 his bearing and influence in life he will not need to be 
 informed. 
 
 It has been said of Dr. Middleton that he belongs to 
 the families of Crotchet Castle and Gryll Grange. The 
 dedication of his earliest volume of poems bears witness 
 to Meredith's reverence and admiration for his father-in- 
 law ; and to Peacock's influence on Meredith's work we 
 have the testimony of no less astute a critic than James 
 Thomson. Yet, though a relationship certainly exists, 
 it is collateral rather than in the direct line of descent. 
 Dr. Middleton unites with Dr. Folliott in his respect for 
 the classics, and his esteem for good cooking. Their 
 not very consistent ideas of women's nature and edu- 
 cation, if we allow for certain modifications of custom, 
 are also almost identical. The sentence in which 
 Folliott solves the question whether ladies shall be ex- 
 cluded from his resuscitated Athenian theatre among 
 the number of citizens disgraced by their ignorance of 
 Greek, for style and sentiment is worthy of Dr. 
 Middleton himself:" Every man may take in a lady, and 
 she who can construe and metricise a chorus, shall, if she 
 so please, pass in by herself." But though the men and 
 manners of Patterne have lost in robustness, compared 
 with those of Crotchet, they have developed in other 
 directions, and on Meredith's theory that women are 
 what their menkind make of them, the substitution of 
 Mrs. Mountstuart, and Laetitia, and Clara, for Mrs. 
 Folliott, Miss Crotchet, and Miss Clarinda, is no mean 
 testimony to growing masculine enlightenment. More- 
 over, Dr. Middleton is best and most convincing where 
 the issues under consideration are subtlest. The incident
 
 THE EGOIST 169 
 
 of "An Aged and a Great Wine " is delightful farce, but 
 it does not compete in characterisation with the Doctor's 
 criticism of Willoughby's snappishness to De Craye on 
 their way to the party at Mrs. Mountstuart's, or his 
 dialogue with the ladies Eleanor and Isabel, and 
 Laetitia's father. It is on a lower plane too than his 
 delicacy in relation to Vernon and their most excellent 
 fooling, " In Assignation's name he assignats." Sym- 
 pathising as he probably would with Folliott's manner 
 of correcting Eavesdrops un mannerliness, Dr. Mid- 
 dleton, nevertheless, relegates such rough and ready 
 methods to the service of Crossjay and his comrades, 
 and excels in the subtler means of rebuke he commands 
 for his peers. 
 
 Horace De Craye is the most delightful of Meredith's 
 Irishmen. As soon as his baggage comes in sight, a 
 breeze begins to stir the rarefied atmosphere at Pat- 
 terne, and the promise of refreshment is not belied on 
 his arrival. Accident has favoured him with an intro- 
 duction to Clara, and she has already acknowledged his 
 charm; for their acquaintance has quickened to intimacy 
 within the space of an hour, and Laetitia Dale has been 
 scandalised by the changed aspect of one who, so 
 shortly before, appeared to be overwhelmed with 
 despair. " Clara bathed in mirth : a boy in a summer 
 stream shows not heartier refreshment of his whole 
 being." She is quickly to realise that De Craye is not 
 the sustaining strong man of her dreams, ideal for 
 anchorage — that he is, in fact, but "a holiday character." 
 But, out-wearied as she is by iterations of deaf mis- 
 understanding, she is ready to estimate highly a gift 
 for responsiveness and accordant chiming : over-highly, 
 perhaps ; yet there is a delicacy and elasticity in De 
 Craye's sympathy with her changes of mood not easy 
 to over-estimate. His instinctive actions for sparing
 
 170 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 her pain are almost invariably right. He can under- 
 stand and appreciate her directness in formulating the 
 nature of her influence over Crossjay, and realise that 
 her accent on the word " marriage," within a few weeks 
 of her own, betokens some more abstract desire than 
 an exchange of lovers. And all this in spite of the 
 fact that he professes small faith in disinterestedness. 
 His gay tactfulness is delightful in contrast with 
 Willoughby's stiffness, and also to some extent in 
 relation with Vernon Whitford's seriousness. For, 
 though there can be no question that in Whitford, and 
 Redworth, and Weyburn, Meredith draws his ideal type, 
 he keeps a warm place in his heart for worldlings 
 wanting in the rectitude and steadfastness of his heroes, 
 if only they possess a keen sense of fitness and social 
 obligation in matters of detail. They may not be of the 
 Kingdom exactly, but they are secured, at any rate, 
 from his Outer Darkness by the fact that their intelli- 
 gence is habitually playing and responding over an area 
 of feelings and interests unrelated to their own. They 
 may not be great ; but the windows of what souls they 
 possess stand open to life and its lessons. 
 
 Clara is without Meredith's prime virtue of courage ; 
 she wavers and vacillates till what is little more than 
 a fortunate accident puts her on to the right track. 
 She belongs to Cecilia's family ; but she is capable 
 of robuster growth — not so much of developing strength 
 of her own, as of learning to recognise her weakness 
 and desire its corrective. She longs to be rescued from 
 Willoughby ; yet she is not represented as accepting the 
 " spiritual lift out of circumstances " his first rival offers 
 her. We are given to understand that her allegiance to 
 Vernon comes of her recognition that she is at fault in 
 character as well as circumstance, and that his guidance 
 and control are her true means of development. She
 
 THE EGOIST 171 
 
 achieves the self-knowledge and humility which for 
 Meredith are the groundwork of aspiration ; and her 
 misdemeanours are pardoned. Certainly no member 
 of the opposite sex would have been granted quite so 
 ready an escape. The reader's attention would have 
 been called to the fact that flight from one form of de- 
 pendence to another is but postponement of conflict. We 
 light here on an inconsistency in our author, at which 
 we may be pardoned for smiling. In relation to women, 
 Meredith's chivalry is allowed to override the relent- 
 lessness of his logic. Women, he says, are the creations 
 of men ; they are hardly accountable for weakness and 
 cowardice induced by their master's demands. The 
 marvel is that they show any spirit at all. Vacillating 
 desires for freedom and righteousness are the most 
 a fair-minded masculine critic finds himself able to 
 demand of them, and these are sufficient ; for they are 
 an earnest of that which one day is to be. Clara, in her 
 resistance of Willoughby and De Craye, and her ap- 
 preciation of Vernon, has shown some courage and 
 considerable insight. She has shown all that can be 
 expected of her, and her creator forbears to read his 
 severer homiletic. He gives her into the hands of a 
 man who possesses the perception and sympathy that 
 she needs, and will not dream of sentimental question- 
 ings as to the superior weight of his judgments and 
 finality of his decisions.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 THE TRAGIC COMEDIANS 
 
 THE difficulty of deciding as to the relative merits 
 of Meredith's novels is largely due to the extra- 
 ordinarily wide range of his sympathies, and to the fact 
 that he seldom explores the same region twice over. 
 Many, perhaps most, of his stories have a foundation 
 in actual events, though these events are adapted to 
 purposes of his own. In The Tragic Comedians^ he 
 has taken a theme, the incidents of which are them- 
 selves so notorious that he is confined to " the bare 
 railway line of the story." The story is that of Ferdi- 
 nand Lassalle and Helene von Donniges ; nothing, 
 Meredith says, has been added to it, nothing invented. 
 Nor does this literalness apply merely to the incidents ; 
 an account of the episode written in after life by the 
 heroine of it 2 is the source of most of the dialogue. 
 The title of the book, The Tragic Comedians, might in 
 itself provide subject-matter for an essay. The char- 
 acters of few men, says Meredith, are of " a stature and 
 a complexity calling for the junction of the two Muses to 
 name them"; the character of Ferdinand Lasalle, known 
 in the story as Sigismund Alvan, is of this stature. 
 Yet, in one direction, his acts are " lividly ludicrous," 
 and he meets a lurid end. He is of the tragic come- 
 dians, those men whose histories reveal some huge 
 
 1 Published in the Fortnightly Review, October, 1 880, to February, 
 1881. 
 
 2 Meine Beziehungen zu Ferdinand Lasalle, by Frau von Racowitza. 
 
 172
 
 THE TRAGIC COMEDIANS 173 
 
 discrepancy between their powers and their fortunes — 
 the which, if it be not interrogated, " to distinguish 
 where character strikes the note of discord with life," 
 will make Nature appear a harridan and man the play- 
 thing of circumstance. The prologue — one of Meredith's 
 most brilliant bits of writing — opens with a discussion 
 of the much-abused word " fantastical," and a declara- 
 tion of its fitness to " that wandering ship of the 
 drunken pilot, the mutinous crew, and the angry captain, 
 called Human Nature." Alvan and his lady " will pass 
 under this word as under their banner and motto. 
 Their acts are incredible ; they . . . drove their bark 
 in a manner to eclipse historical couples upon our 
 planet. . . . The last chapter of them is written in red 
 blood, and the man pouring out that last chapter was 
 of a mighty nature, not unheroical, a man of the active, 
 grappling, modern brain, which wrestles with facts to 
 keep the world alive, and can create them to set it 
 spinning. A Faust-like legend might spring from him ; 
 he had a devil. He was the leader of a host, the hope 
 of a party, venerated by his followers, well hated by 
 his enemies, respected by the intellectual chiefs of his 
 time, in the pride of his manhood and his labours when 
 he fell. And why this man should have come to his 
 end through love, and the woman who loved him have 
 laid her hand in the hand of the slayer, is the problem 
 we have to study, nothing inventing, in the spirit and 
 flesh of both." 
 
 Clotilde von Riidiger (Helene von Donniges) is a 
 member of the smaller German aristocracy, by which 
 Sigismund Alvan is abhorred as a demagogue and a 
 Jew. But the period (1862-4) is "revolutionary in 
 society by reflection of the state of politics," and 
 Clotilde is renowned as the most original of her set. 
 Young as she is, her reputation for brilliancy is great in
 
 174 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 all the circles she touches, whether in Germany, Italy, 
 or the French Riviera. But her flights of daring are 
 almost wholly confined to intellectual regions, and her 
 family — consisting of father, a gouty general ; mother, a 
 faded beauty ; and negligible sisters — willingly minis- 
 ters to her self-esteem. Her reading, Meredith tells us, is 
 " an interfusion of philosophy skimmed, and realistic 
 romances deep-sounded," but she belongs to a country 
 where literature is seriously esteemed and widely appre- 
 ciated, where there is a real traffic in ideas. Her talk 
 of Plutarch and " Pompeius " with her partner at the 
 ball in Berlin is perfectly genuine, though it would be 
 difficult to imagine an Englishwoman indulging in it. 
 And this fact of her intellectual attainment needs to be 
 borne strenuously in mind, because, except in the 
 scenes where he shows her with Alvan, Meredith is 
 guilty of a prejudice in his treatment of Clotilde, an 
 over-analysis of motive, which almost obscures her 
 positive qualities. It is, of course, part of his purpose 
 to show her strong in Alvan's presence, weak when she 
 is alone ; and history is with him here. But there is the 
 further fact to be reckoned with that, long before they 
 have met, Alvan hears of her as his match, and after 
 wards, in spite of the clearest vision of her failings, 
 feels her consistently a prize worth winning. Meredith's 
 attitude to Clotilde is the reverse of his ordinary atti- 
 tude to women, the magnanimous attitude just spoken 
 of in reference to Clara, and in reference to Diana still 
 more marked. Clotilde has far more forcible opposition 
 to contend with, yet little or nothing is allowed to her 
 fears ; she is labelled a craven at almost her first signs 
 of instability. The reason is not far to seek. Meredith 
 is in love with Alvan exactly as he is in love with Diana. 
 He sees in them both, or attributes to them, a power of 
 passion that raises them high above their fellows, and
 
 THE TRAGIC COMEDIANS 175 
 
 he scorns those who, having been in presence of this 
 power, fail to cling to it as divine. Diana's lover is 
 required to recognise it as covering an offence against 
 the deepest mutual interest of their lives ; Alvan's 
 girlish bride-elect, fortified by her memory of it, must 
 turn from bewilderment at the inconsistency of her 
 lover's actions, and immediately develop a power he 
 knows her not to possess, by which to surmount the 
 brutal opposition of her parents. Is not this, combined 
 with their author's continued insistence on the relative 
 inferiority of Dacier and Clotilde, something very like 
 special pleading ? No one could lay more emphasis than 
 Meredith has elsewhere laid on the fact that it is the 
 task of love worthy the name to translate itself into 
 considerate and imaginative action ; moreover, he has 
 written a poem entitled The Burden of Strength. In 
 The Egoist and in Diana of the Crossways, Meredith 
 is in love with his heroines and despises their lovers ; 
 here he is in love with Alvan and Alvan alone, and his 
 antagonism to Clotilde has been increased by her 
 attempt at self-justification. The characters are of 
 course historical, and it is not intended to suggest 
 there can be any doubt which was the greater of 
 nature ; yet Meredith's tribute to Lasalle would have 
 been higher, if he had abstained from pressing the 
 points so severely against the woman of his choice. 
 We may remark that, although Helene's conduct is not 
 justified either by her own or any other version of the 
 story, these agree in laying more stress than Meredith 
 does on Lasalle's earlier relations with women, on the 
 treachery of his friends, and on the degree of Helene's 
 physical collapse under her father's brutality. 1 
 
 1 There are numerous German authorities on the subject, but a fair 
 summary of the case is given in English in Ferdinand Lasalle and Helene 
 von Donniges ; A Modern Tragedy, by Elizabeth E. Evans.
 
 176 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 Except, however, for the interests of historical 
 justice, what Meredith has left undone in The Tragic 
 Comedians is not of much moment ; what he has done 
 is so great. It is among the best of his novels ; the 
 theme calls for that poetic treatment in which he is 
 most himself. The characters and incidents ready to 
 his hand were vivid ; his task was to provide the 
 atmosphere in which they moved. And in this he has 
 succeeded to perfection in his drawing of Alvan ; 
 " Behind the veil of our human conventions," says Alvan 
 to Clotilde, " power is constant as ever, and to perceive 
 the fact is to have the divining-rod — to walk clear of 
 shams. ... It is the soul that does things in this life, 
 the rest is vapour " ; and Meredith has made us realise 
 him as one whose grasp on life and reality compelled 
 submission. Of his place in European politics little is 
 said. But the facts are part of his background, only 
 subdued, that the man himself may be seen greater than 
 anything he has done. He appears first in the fourth 
 chapter of the book, a scene which sets the pace for the 
 whole story, and it is the pace that kills. Alvan and 
 Clotilde have been matter of surmise to one another 
 for a year ; at last they are in the same room, in Berlin. 
 Clotilde introduces herself with a contradiction as to 
 the character of Hamlet, elsewhere quoted. Alvan 
 shakes off his masculine companions as other men 
 might shake off a fly. In the midst of a crowd they 
 are alone. " ' Hamlet in due season,' " said he. . . . ' I 
 shall convince you.' She shook her head. ' Yes, yes ; 
 an opinion formed by a woman is inflexible ; I know 
 that : the fact is not half so stubborn. But at present 
 there are two more important actors ; we are not at Elsi- 
 nore. You are aware that I hoped to meet you ?' 'Is 
 there a periodical advertisement of your hopes? — or do 
 they come by intuition ? ' ' Kollin was right ! The
 
 THE TRAGIC COMEDIANS 177 
 
 ways of the serpent will be serpentine. I knew we 
 must meet. It is no true day so long as the goddess of 
 the morning and the sun-god are kept asunder. I 
 speak of myself, by what I have felt since I heard of 
 you.' ' You are sure of your divinity ? ' ' Through my 
 belief in yours ! ' They bowed smiling at the courtly 
 exchanges. 'And tell me,' said he, 'as to meeting 
 me ? . . .' She replied : ' When we are so like the rest 
 of the world, we may confess our weakness.' ' Unlike ! 
 for the world and I meet and part : not we two.' 
 Clotilde attempted an answer : it would not come. She 
 tried to be revolted by his lording tone, and found it 
 strangely inoffensive. His lording presence and the 
 smile that was like a waving feather on it compelled her 
 so strongly to submit to hear, as to put her in danger 
 of appearing to embrace this man's rapid advances. 
 She said : ' I first heard of you at Capri. And I was 
 at Capri seven days after you had left.' ' You knew my 
 name then ?' 'Be not too curious with necromancers. 
 Here is the date, March 15th. You departed on the 
 8th.' ' I think I did. That is a year from now.' ' Then 
 we missed : now we meet. It is a year lost. A year is 
 a great age ! Reflect on it and what you owe me. How 
 I wished for a comrade at Capri ! Not a " young lady," 
 and certainly no man. The understanding Feminine 
 was my desire — a different thing from the feminine 
 understanding, usually. I wanted my comrade young 
 and fair, necessarily of your sex, but with heart and 
 brain ; an insane request I fancied, until I heard that 
 you were the person I wanted. In default of you I 
 paraded the island with Tiberius, who is my favourite 
 tyrant.' " He describes the passages between him and 
 Tiberius, who, at his suggestion, attacks the patricians, 
 while a plebeian demagogue chronicles the struggle in 
 which he, Alvan, is destined to fall. Clotilde enters 
 
 N
 
 178 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 into the extravagance and comments, " You died 
 bravely?" He replies that bodily death by that sap- 
 phire sea and under that sapphire sky was easier to 
 meet than the second death of missing, by so few days, 
 a gold-haired Lucretia. He questions her abruptly : 
 " Tell me frankly — the music in Italy ? " " Amorous 
 and martial, brainless and monotonous." " Excellent ! " 
 his eyes flashed delightedly, " O comrade of comrades ! 
 that year lost to me will count heavily as I learn to 
 value those I have gained. Yes, brainless ! There, 
 in music, we beat them, as politically France beats 
 us. No life without brain ! The brainless in Art 
 and in Statecraft are nothing but a little more ob- 
 structive than the dead. It is less easy to cut a 
 way through them. But it must be done, or the 
 Philistine will be as the locust in his increase, and 
 devour the green blades of the earth. You have 
 been trained to shudder at the demagogue ? ' I do 
 not shudder,' said Clotilde." 
 
 Much of the skill of the scene lies in its interthread- 
 ing of the near and the far, its mingling of abstract and 
 personal. The " you and I " of ordinary lovers would 
 have been ludicrously inadequate here ; yet an over- 
 weight of intellect would have injured the effect of 
 intensity, which is the keynote of the whole. Alvan, 
 pouring forth his thoughts, checks himself at the close of 
 one of his outbursts with the remark : " ' You leave it to 
 me to talk.' ' Could I do better ? ' ' You listen sweetly.' 
 1 It is because I like to hear.' ' You have the pearly little 
 ear of a shell on the sand.' ' With the great sea sounding 
 near it.' " Alvan drew closer to her. " ' I look into your 
 eyes and perceive that one may listen to you and speak 
 to you. Heart to heart, then ! Yes, a sea to lull you, 
 a sea to win you — temperately, let us hope ; by storm, if 
 need be. My prize is found!'" The giant, who
 
 THE TRAGIC COMEDIANS 179 
 
 heretofore has conquered all hearts, his own untouched, 
 trembles in the hands of this girl — his " golden-crested 
 serpent," his " red fox," his " shining-haired Lucretia." 
 Their skimming discussions are " like swallow-flights 
 from the nest beneath the eaves to the surface of the 
 stream." Their talk is of Heine, with whom Alvan 
 has lived ; of politics, of Paris, of Italy, of wine, and of 
 Shakespeare ; and last, but not least, of Alvan himself. 
 He vivifies all that he touches. " There was a bell 
 in everything for him ; Nature gave out her cry and 
 significance was on all sides of the universe. . . . Where 
 Clotilde had really thought, instead of flippantly tap- 
 ping at the doors of thought, or crying vagrantly for an 
 echo, his firm footing in the region thrilled her ; and 
 where she had felt deeper than fancifully, his wise 
 tenderness overwhelmed." 
 
 The surrounding guests realise that the love god 
 is at work among them — a presence irresistible. Alvan's 
 love affairs are caught up to the plane of his politics. 
 His love is volcanic, and the sun and moon and stars 
 are pressed into its service. The hours race onward 
 to the morning : Alvan will conduct Clotilde to her 
 home. " He laughed to hear her say, in answer to 
 a question as to her present feelings : ' I feel that I 
 am carried away by a centaur ! ' The comparison 
 had been used to him before." Their eclipse is afar, 
 but it is as if a shadow crept to the edge of their 
 sun. "' No,' said he, responding to a host of memories 
 to shake them off, ' no more of the quadruped man ! ' 
 You tempt him, may I tell you that ? Why now, this 
 moment, at the snap of my fingers, what is to hinder 
 our taking the short cut to happiness, centaur and 
 nymph? One leap and a gallop, and we should be into 
 the morning, leaving night to grope for us, parents and 
 friends to run about for the wits they lose in running.
 
 180 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 But no ! no more scandals. That silver moon invites 
 us by its very spell of bright serenity to be mad ; just 
 as when you drink of a reverie, the more prolonged it 
 is, the greater the readiness for wild delirium at the end 
 of the draught. But no ! ' his voice deepened—' the 
 handsome face of the orb that lights us would be well 
 enough were it only a gallop between us two. Dearest, 
 the orb that lights us two for a lifetime must be taken all 
 round, and I have been on the wrong side of the moon : 
 I have seen the other face of it — a visage scored with 
 regrets, dead dreams, burnt passions, bald illusions, and 
 the like, the like ! — sunless, waterless, without a flower ! 
 It is the old volcano land : it grows one bitter herb : if 
 ever you see my mouth distorted, you will know I am 
 revolving a taste of it ; and as I need the antidote you 
 give, I will not be the centaur to win you, for that is the 
 land where he stables himself ; yes, there he ends his 
 course, and that is the herb he finishes by pasturing on.' " 
 No determination could, we feel, be wiser or more finely 
 expressed, yet it brings us in sight of the rock on which 
 these two are to founder. Alvan, irresistible while he 
 holds straight on his course, sacrifices his single-minded- 
 ness in the desire to win social advantages over and 
 above his bride. Accredited good citizenship becomes his 
 ambition for the first time in his life. He is deeply in love 
 with Clotilde ; but he desires increasingly to have, with 
 her, a wife and a marriage unexceptionable in the eyes of 
 the world. In the effort to compass his desire he comes 
 to his death, and the world mourns at his tomb. He is 
 killed in a duel, and much of the fault, Meredith would 
 say most of it, is Clotilde's. Yet so godlike a figure 
 is he, that to have been claimed for his mate makes 
 her immortal. And, after all, we may consent to 
 let " the woman," " poor Clotilde," serve as his scape- 
 goat ; for has not Meredith himself, in another
 
 THE TRAGIC COMEDIANS 181 
 
 context, detected and exposed identically the same 
 error as Alvan's, where of Beauchamp with Renee 
 he says : " He committed the capital fault of treating 
 her as his equal in passion and courage, not as metal 
 ready to run into the mould under temporary stress 
 of fire"?
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 THE POEMS— "THE JOY OF EARTH" 
 
 WE usually conceive of poetry as a power whose 
 essential function is to release the mind from 
 the tyranny of fact and transport it into a new world, 
 in which, earth-bound no longer, it rises freely on the 
 wings of aspiration, and finds, in dream, a haven of 
 forgetfulness far from the harsh realities of the waking 
 world. According to this conception, part of the value 
 of poetry is that it creates a dissatisfaction with com- 
 mon life ; it is the revelation of the things that are not, 
 those things for which the Soul searches in vain this 
 narrow prison-house of mortality, where is no place for 
 the happiness for which she longs : 
 
 Ah Love ! could you and I with Him conspire 
 To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire, 
 Would we not shatter it to bits, and then 
 Remould it nearer to the heart's desire ? 
 
 The idea is noble ; and it is true that not a little of 
 the greatest poetry derives its power from a refusal to 
 accept the established order with mean complacency 
 merely because it is established, from a determination 
 to assert the soul's highest claims whether there be any- 
 thing in the world to answer them or no, — a defiance of 
 all mechanical limitation, a sublime assertion of the in- 
 exhaustible self-sufficiency of spiritual riches. It is a 
 noble conception, but a conception fraught with danger. 
 
 182
 
 THE POEMS— "THE JOY OF EARTH" 183 
 
 For however poor, however unsatisfying-, a thing life in 
 its common conditions may appear to be, it is with 
 these conditions that all men for all time are primarily 
 concerned. And to revolt against them, to turn the 
 mind away from them to a supposed more perfect 
 world of its own devising, serves only to bring out in 
 them more clearly the qualities against which revolt is 
 made, and to increase, by contrast, the illusion of their 
 barrenness. In other words, the very essence and spirit 
 of poetry — its passionately exalted temper — tend to 
 give it a disintegrating, one might almost say a de- 
 moralising, influence. For it divides experience into 
 two halves and, by the very fact of the division, intro- 
 duces an element of unreality into both. Aspiration 
 is indeed an infinite thing, and the goal of desire is 
 never reached ; but in much high poetry, this infinitude, 
 this insatiability of the soul (being made, as it were, a 
 focus for thought, instead of an assumption), is so treated 
 as to appear for what it is not, namely as a reaching 
 out after things whose very nature is to be unreachable, 
 a concentration of desire not upon an end conceived as 
 constantly developing, but upon endlessness itself: — 
 
 The Desire of the Moth for the Star. 
 
 Much high poetry is certainly involved in this error, 
 an error arising from a fallacy in transcendental think- 
 ing, very plain when pointed out. But there is a still 
 greater bulk of poetry which, not based itself upon so 
 insecure a foundation, yet tends to set up in the mind 
 of all but the most philosophic readers an error at least 
 analogous ; the man who views life poetically is for 
 them the man who ignores what are for the mass of 
 his fellows the only recognisable facts of life, and 
 devotes all his attention to certain shadowy appear- 
 ances, seldom apparent to any but himself, and in any
 
 1 84 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 case, when detached, as he is wont to detach them, from 
 the solid fabric of life itself, insignificant and unreal. 
 Poetry comes in this way to be supposed too tender, 
 too fragile, a thing to bear the rough and tumble of a 
 working world, in which men speak with firmness and 
 with candour, meaning what they say. There is the 
 tendency to treat it, much as men treat women, as if it 
 were something too delicate to breathe the air of truth, 
 in whose presence the mind deferentially draws down 
 a protective veil against the inroad of reality and pre- 
 pares to be amused and edified by exquisite impossi- 
 bilities. This is an insolent attitude, fatal to the 
 dignity of both parties concerned in it. Far worthier 
 is the action of those, who, believing that they can 
 trace in poetry the attempt to set up a fraudulent 
 relation, to baffle and to subdue the intellect, treat it 
 as an altogether negligible part of life. They dignify 
 it — with the candour of their contempt ; they show 
 that at least they expected from it a genuine and manly 
 utterance, and, finding themselves disappointed, will 
 take for substitute no sop, however sweet. 
 
 Naturally a great poet — a man in whom the spirit of 
 poetry is predominant — cannot be expected to take 
 cognisance of misapprehension or misinterpretation of 
 either kind. His vision is not a matter that he is the 
 least interested to defend or to discuss. He has an 
 inward conviction of truth as it is revealed to him, and 
 is concerned with nothing but its expression. But one 
 who is only secondarily a poet, primarily a moralist 
 and a thinker, but who, as a thinker, recognises that to 
 misconceive of poetry or banish it from the mind is to 
 cripple thought itself and take from life its noblest 
 medium of expression, such an one, even in his poetical 
 work, will keep the continuity of life with poetry per- 
 petually in view. He will be strenuously alert against
 
 THE POEMS— "THE JOY OF EARTH" 185 
 
 offering the least temptation to any reader to treat the 
 enjoyment of poetry as a mere indulgence of the mind. 
 He will wish to show that poetry is poetry not by virtue 
 of vagueness or as a thing removed, fostering or minis- 
 tering to emotions to which life makes no response, but 
 because, with an accuracy as perfect for its purpose as 
 that of science itself, it looks upon the whole of life and 
 sees its various parts in true proportion. 
 
 Though a rich vein of poetic imagery appears in 
 everything he writes, Meredith cannot be called pri- 
 marily a poet ; for through almost all his poetic work 
 there runs a purpose, to the writer's apprehension more 
 vital than the perfection of the work itself. This work, 
 he would say, taken as pure poetry, may or may not be 
 unimpeachable ; but there is one impeachment which it 
 shall never have to bear. No one shall say of it that it 
 denies the facts of life or exists merely as a misty phan- 
 tom afloat upon the breeze ; its foundations at least 
 shall be secure, it shall be rooted in the solid ground. 
 Thence rising, if but fitfully, into the upper air, it shall 
 exercise, not a disintegrating, but a reconciling influence 
 upon life and thought ; it shall give beauty and fruitful- 
 ness to what at first seemed common, by showing it an 
 essential part of a larger plan, a wider unity, in which 
 each element is necessary to all the rest and the dis- 
 tinction between low and high vanishes and is forgotten. 
 For the worth and dignity of the so-called higher mem- 
 bers belongs to them, not in their own right, but as the 
 outcome of a true relation to the so-called lower mem- 
 bers, both lower and higher being equally in their 
 degree the expression of the principle or spirit of 
 life that pervades the whole. And poetry, the recog- 
 nition of that pervading principle, the expression 
 of the spirit animating high and low alike, far from 
 denying fact, shall be shown the only means by
 
 1 86 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 which the ultimate and eternal fact can find state- 
 ment at all. 
 
 This continuity, this immanence of the spirit in every 
 part, is indeed the main theme of all Meredith's poetry. 
 According to his conception, poetry consists, not in the 
 creation of a new world, but in the recognition of the 
 true nature of the world that is, seen from the most 
 comprehensive, the most exalted standpoint. In every 
 piece the same attitude is taken up, and, in many, forms 
 the main part of the poetic material. And to those 
 familiar with his writing he sums the whole in a single 
 word — a word which he chooses because of its utter 
 familiarity, because in common life it stands for the tan- 
 gible, the prosaic, the commonplace, but into which he 
 infuses the breath and finer spirit of all his knowledge, 
 and takes for the only limit of a limitless aspiration — 
 the word " Earth." To understand this word as Meredith 
 understands it is to possess a key to the most secret 
 chambers of his mind ; to think of Earth and feel towards 
 Earth as he does is to be heir to the new inheritance 
 conferred by his poetry upon human life and thought. 
 
 Not solitarily in fields we find 
 
 Earth's secret open, though one page is there ; 
 
 Her plainest, such as children spell, and share 
 
 With bird and beast ; raised letters for the blind. 
 
 Not where the troubled passions toss the mind, 
 
 In turbid cities, can the key be bare. 
 
 It hangs for those who hither thither fare, 
 
 Close interthreading nature with our kind. 
 
 They, hearing History speak of what men were 
 
 And have become, are wise. The gain is great 
 
 In vision and solidity ; it lives. 
 
 Yet at a thought of life apart from her, 
 
 Solidity and vision lose their state ; 
 
 For Earth, that gives the milk, the spirit gives. 1 
 
 The book of Nature is but one page of the book 
 of Earth, a page itself inexhaustible, as all her pages 
 
 1 Earttts Secret,
 
 THE POEMS— " THE JOY OF EARTH" 187 
 
 are, but easy reading when compared with those that 
 follow it. The conception of Earth starts at a far 
 humbler level than that of Nature and, as in the para- 
 ble of the banquet, hears continually the call, " Friend, 
 come up higher," to enter at last into the place prepared 
 for the master of the revels, to become the presiding 
 genius at the feast. Stoop down and gather up the 
 grains of dust trodden beneath your feet ; here already 
 you have Earth ; here you have something which forms 
 at once the foundation and the crown of life. 
 
 For he who the reckoning sums 
 Finds nought in his hand save Earth. 
 Of Earth are we, stripped or crowned. l 
 
 Or consider that infinite, starry universe which, with 
 the moral sense in man, remained the mystery of 
 mysteries to the great mind of Kant. Here also, in 
 this sublimest pageant, is a revelation of the same 
 spirit, the same order, that animates the dust. And 
 this spirit, this order, man recognises even among the 
 stars, because he is himself its child. 
 
 The fire is in them whereof we are born ; 
 The music of their motion may be ours. 2 
 
 Conceiving thus of himself and of the stars above him, 
 he sees Earth with new eyes. 
 
 A wonder edges the familiar face : . . . 
 
 Half strange seems Earth, and sweeter than her flowers. 
 
 The dust can never again be mere dust to him, because, 
 entering into it, proceeding from it, he has perceived the 
 Law which in himself he knows as Reason, the Life 
 which in himself he feels as Love. And he has per- 
 ceived these things, not as properties of a higher life 
 grafted upon a lower — they have not come to him as 
 
 1 A Faith on Trial. ' Meditation under Stars.
 
 1 88 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 messengers from some ethereal region to which he 
 looks himself to be translated one happier day, — he has 
 perceived them to be the foundation, the essence of 
 Life as he actually lives it, equally manifested in the 
 conditions to which his life responds and in the active 
 principle which responds to those conditions and trans- 
 forms them. From this perception is born the love of 
 Earth. 
 
 It will have been observed already that the entire 
 range of human nature is included by Meredith in the 
 Earth conception ; as he himself says of it : — 
 
 Earth was not Earth, before her sons appeared. 1 
 
 Man is a part of Earth, and neither Earth nor Man are 
 rightly understood till seen in true relation one to 
 another. The outlines of that relation are indicated by 
 Meredith in one of his noblest poems — a poem sculp- 
 turesque in style, magnificent in the scale and propor- 
 tion of the shaping thought, its contour cut with the 
 terseness and finality proper to great work in stone, 
 " a monument more durable than brass." It would be 
 hard to find a better means to suggest the range of the 
 Earth conception, than by unravelling the more impor- 
 tant of the ideas expressed in this great ode. 
 
 On her great venture, Man, 
 Earth gazes, while her fingers dint the breast 
 Which is his well of strength, his home of rest, 
 And fair to scan. 
 
 Demeter, the eternal Mother, watches and wonders at 
 her child ; for motherly embrace she gives him the 
 fields, the woods, the hills, the valleys, with their 
 beauty and their shelter ; for milk, the riches of her har- 
 vest. She can do no more ; his strength he drew from 
 her ; time alone can show how he will use it. Use it he 
 must, for strife is the watchword of his being ; his 
 
 1 Appreciation.
 
 THE POEMS-" THE JOY OF EARTH- 189 
 
 life is to be a battle and, if he shirks the fight, that 
 force, which she has given him for mastery of his foe, 
 will turn upon its possessor to destroy him. But already 
 the battle is for something more than meat ; his 
 goes deeper than the surface ; voices from the heart of 
 his Mother sound upon his ear ; and a new spirit 
 animates the fray. His desires still drive him on ; but 
 he is more anxious to satisfy than to understand them ; 
 and he retards his advance by a cumbrous machinery 
 that obscures the end for which he planned it. Caught 
 in his own toils, he pictures life itself as a mere snare ; 
 his nature, his origin, his destiny baffle him, and his 
 perplexity becomes a lurid mask hiding from him the 
 serenity of his Mother's face. Like a child upon the 
 breast, dissatisfied, he appeals fretfully he knows not to 
 what, because his Mother will not give him what he may 
 not have. He had supposed she existed to gratify his 
 whims and, finding it not so, he is afraid, and turns 
 from her as from a phantom mocking him ; or again, in 
 revulsion of feeling, endows her with the shallow beauty 
 of the dream-enchantress, only to see it wither before 
 his waking eyes. It was the same in the old days when 
 he worshipped her as a god. No offering made her less 
 terrible in exacting the uttermost fulfilment of her law. 
 She punishes and yet she fascinates, and he is for ever 
 striving to fathom the mystery of her attraction ; and 
 his failure to fathom it he takes for another mystery : 
 though the last has a simple solution, — that his wits are 
 still too weak. Meantime the relentless rule goes on : — 
 
 He may entreat, aspire, 
 
 He may despair, and she has never heed. 
 
 She, drinking his warm sweat, will SOOthe his need, 
 
 Not his desire. 
 
 He finds his impulse to happiness nut, from very child- 
 hood, by the menace of the tomb, and he wonders that
 
 190 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 he is not himself Earth's chosen, and that she has given 
 the better place to better men ! to men who have the 
 endowment she requires, who, by choice or instinct, live 
 nearest to her law. And though it is his gradual ap- 
 proximation to Earth's law which has lifted Man above 
 the brute and already made him a being whose life, in 
 part at least, is ruled by thought, yet the wisdom and 
 virtue of this law is darkened in him by the perverting, 
 cramping tyranny of Self. Tied to his own sensations, 
 clinging to every prospect of indulgence, recoiling from 
 a world which seems to put a term to his enjoyment 
 and to him, he robs his life at once of all its dignity and 
 all its purpose. 
 
 Behold his wormy home ! 
 
 And he the wind-whipped anywhither wave, 
 
 Crazily tumbled on a shingle-grave 
 
 To waste in foam. 
 
 The very pathos of such an end revolts him ; it cannot 
 be. This stern rule is a delusion ; he can evade it, he 
 can rise above it. What he sees is so mysterious, so 
 baffling, he will fortify himself against it with the greater 
 mystery of what he cannot see. The power that made 
 Nature meant to make something else : he is certain of 
 it : he has faith : or if not faith, this miracle, that denies 
 Nature, shall give him a conviction just as good. His 
 life is more precious than it seems, it is as precious as he 
 himself would have it be. " Take me from Earth," he 
 prays, " dear Lord, take ME" He disowns his Mother, 
 but she does not disown her son. Without him, half 
 her faculty must have remained blind, unfruitful, and 
 her beauty without a flower. Take man's achievements 
 from her, rob her of order and of decency, of art and 
 language, thought and love, and Earth were barren 
 indeed. Therefore, even while he disowns her, she 
 listens to his words with pride, grieving only for the
 
 THE POEMS— " THE JOY OF EARTH" 191 
 
 blindness which parts him from her and is the cause 
 of grief in him. For this clamorous appeal of his 
 to the Above is but an outpouring of the life he 
 drew from Earth under his feet, and all his aspirations 
 are hers. Sin and the shadow of Death she hates not 
 less than he does, 
 
 And her desires are those 
 For happiness, for lastingness, for light. 
 'Tis she who kindles in his haunting night 
 The hoped dawn-rose. 
 
 The gleam, the aspiration, the ideal that beckons him, 
 are from the throbbing of her pulse, and this is their true 
 interpretation — that the life he is now living, the Earth 
 on which now he stands, are the life of the Spirit and the 
 Spirit's abode : that Spiritual Order, which he prays for 
 and pictures to himself as far away, closes him in al- 
 ready upon every side ; heaven lies about him, only that 
 he is in his infancy, and that the eyes of the mind are 
 locked and he cannot rend the veil aside and see. One 
 day he will open them, and that is the day on which his 
 Mother's heart is set. The veil of Self will wither under 
 a fiery ordeal, and of the fire shall be born light and 
 vision. The divine life will reveal itself, the mist that 
 obscured it will be rolled away: he will see Earth 
 irradiated in heavenly brightness, and learn, like her, to 
 live, not for himself, but for his kind, for the generations 
 yet to be. Thus will he bring the future life into the 
 present, and found it upon a rock. He will better 
 understand those tales of angel and of devil, heaven and 
 hell ; he will gain a new idea of faith. Because he re- 
 joices in what is, he will be able to trust what is to come. 
 But until this day has dawned, until the earthly life 
 and the spiritual life are one, until towards the goal to 
 which his Mother calls him he strives with all the powers 
 she gave, he has not entered into his inheritance, he
 
 .-,• GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 < iimol truly be Called her Child. Meantime she watches, 
 
 wonders: his destiny waits to be decided, and not his 
 
 alone but hers; the generations of men pass like 
 
 autumn leaves i her hope is in humanity, in the spring 
 
 .iikI l he vii I ne <>l Ihe tree 
 
 To conclude this chapter, B word must be added in 
 connection with an idea presupposed in the idea of 
 Earth, li will have been observed that a considerable 
 part "i Earth and Man is devoted to the exposure of 
 .1 fallacy, which Meredith regards as very grievous, in- 
 herent in the common understanding of religion and 
 it; relation to the resl of life. Religion, as the thought- 
 less, and even as some thoughtful persons, profess it, is 
 apt to be taken, as it were, for a home or refuge, to 
 
 which those whom Earth's discipline has wearied, may 
 flee foi consolation, The disobedient child defies the 
 ichoolmastei if, in the last resort, he can find shelter 
 undei his mother's win?. And mankind, believing the 
 laws oi life, as Earth upholds them, to be too severe, 
 tails back on I kind o( petticoat protectorate, where to 
 
 vague talk of Mercy, Grace, and I ove is joined a com- 
 fortable sense that out present state, so far as it exacts 
 I more elaborate, more fibrous, and if the word may be 
 allowed, rathei less sensational scheme of virtues, may 
 be treated with condescension as merely temporary, 
 
 and set aside as unadapted to evoke 01 Satisfy the 
 
 deepei needs o: the soul, And thus the human race. 
 
 having come to be what it is by obedience to Earth's 
 
 law save • the hope of ig that higher 
 
 devt lent to which she continue- to summon it It 
 
 on this at that Mere* .'.-. views the influence of 
 
 i nmonhj understood, with great distrust 
 
 He - ceivt - ■ mountain-climb . cy 
 
 bj endv mce malt swaj not painlessly, and 
 
 w ..... v .secstV. mi £ gorge and the
 
 THE POEMS— "THE JOY OF EARTH" 193 
 
 far light ; — and then, it seems to him that religion comes 
 to man as a temptation of soul, offering him wings that 
 cannot lift his body from the ground and persuading 
 him that there is no virtue in his conflict and his per- 
 severance. The true spirit of religion, Meredith believes, 
 is something totally different. To approach the matter 
 first intellectually, 1 he recognises that his conception of 
 Earth as spiritual and Man as the developing expression 
 of that Spirit, implies the existence of a presiding and 
 unifying Mind, in which the ideal that Earth and Man 
 together aim at is present already. To identify itself 
 with the Divine purpose, to be more and more a con- 
 scious vehicle for the expression of that Reason, which 
 is the will of God, here is the object of all human 
 endeavour. But Meredith hardly ever speaks of this 
 unifying Mind, this Divine purpose, in the large. Few 
 of his more exalted poems pass without implied refer- 
 ence to it, 2 but he has little otherwise to say of it, for 
 one grand and conclusive reason : that he believes our 
 present life, with its sin, sorrow, and suffering, and this 
 harsh Earth, with her relentless, inevitable law, to be 
 both in their essence and in all that may appear their 
 accidents, God's revelation of himself to Man : for that 
 there is only one Divine order, and this is everywhere 
 present and everywhere the same. It is for this reason 
 
 1 Mr. Trevelyan will, I hope, acquit me of any ungenerous sentiment 
 towards his helpful and delightful exposition of Meredith's practical 
 philosophy, if I feel forced to record my conviction that in denying to it 
 a systematic idealist foundation he has placed a grievously obscuring veil 
 between his author and the public. As poet or novelist it was no part of 
 Meredith's business to parade a system. His object was to relate it to 
 many-sided human life. But there is no reason in supposing that because 
 Meredith's philosophy is consistent with sanity and common sense, the 
 name of philosophy should be denied to it. No one has shown more con- 
 cern than Meredith to maintain the prestige and dignity of philosophic 
 thought. And it would be hard to point to any writer in the history of 
 our literature — outside professional philosophers — by whom they have been 
 maintained more worthily. 
 
 8 See conclusion to A Faith on Trial, and Hymn to Co/our.
 
 194 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 that he can speak of the human ideal as shared or even 
 as inspired by Earth. Man is, as it were, the climax of 
 a continuous creative process, a process guided from 
 the beginning by an implicit purpose ; he is the child of 
 his conditions ; but those conditions are themselves the 
 manifestation of the Spirit, of whose working his own 
 life makes him conscious. He is not yet what he shall 
 be : but he can only realise all that he has it in him to 
 become, by placing himself in harmony with the great 
 scheme of development : he must build his future upon 
 his past. This being Meredith's position intellectually, 
 his religious outlook, the attitude of heart and mind 
 united, with which, as a man, he views man's hope and 
 destiny, is wholly conformable to it. The future is in 
 His hands who made the present, and calls the present 
 good. Man's hankering for a Heaven in which Life 
 shall be easier and sweeter for him than here on Earth 
 is so much lust and cowardice. The eternal conditions 
 of true living are placed before him now. The question 
 is the same, whether his life lasts a short or a long time, 
 or whether it is everlasting. And the question is, will 
 he meet them, and as a child of the Spirit in which he 
 and they unite, will he meet them with courage and 
 with joy ? Will he face the facts of life ? Will he bend 
 heart and mind to see what they require of him, and 
 when he sees, will he give what they require in pride 
 and exultation ? Meredith is not the first of the great 
 sons of Earth who has fought the good fight with a 
 manful pride grounded upon this faith that is humility. 
 History knows other names. But perhaps he is the 
 first in whom the courage and joy have themselves 
 blossomed in a spiritual rapture. He sings seldom. 
 Much of his verse amounts to little more than a concise 
 statement of belief, poetic only by reason of the earnest- 
 ness and conviction with which he utters it. He has
 
 THE POEMS— "THE JOY OF EARTH" 195 
 
 striven to sing ; but if he has often failed, sometimes he 
 has succeeded. And he has achieved what he desired. 
 For man has heard a voice which, heard once, can never 
 be forgotten. A son of Earth has seen and known the 
 Mother, and of his joy in her has made a living, an im- 
 mortal thing.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 THE POEMS— NATURE 
 
 IT must always be a main part of the criticism of 
 every poet to define his attitude to Nature. The 
 growing complexity and artificiality of modern life 
 tend to produce in many minds the illusion that man 
 is sufficient to himself. There is, of course, a great 
 deal of talk about the " country," and of the virtues 
 arising from the simple life to be found there ; but, for 
 the most part, this is talk and nothing more : and those 
 whose tongues move fastest on the subject are probably 
 those who care about and understand it least. Even 
 among serious-minded men there are not a few whose 
 political or social duties are too engrossing to allow 
 them due occasion to consider what is man's real 
 relation to the world he lives in ; they are occupied 
 wholly with adjusting the relations of men to one 
 another. And so to these, as to the others, the world 
 of Nature becomes a mere recreation ground. They 
 may appreciate it vaguely for its beauties or for the 
 advantages it has to offer, to some of exercise, to others 
 of retirement ; but there is little or nothing in their 
 mental and moral outfit which they recognise as a 
 direct inheritance bequeathed to them by the powers 
 of earth or sea or sky. And thus arises the tendency to 
 
 196
 
 THE POEMS— NATURE 197 
 
 imagine that poetry deals with these things because it 
 is poetry ; that is, to be candid, because being a far less 
 serious thing than the practical life, it affects to be the 
 more serious of the two, and hopes to impress society 
 with its seriousness by flying high. 
 
 In Persia, wine, the rose, and the nightingale became 
 stock subjects for poetry, and whoever wished to in- 
 dulge in a dignified sentimentality had them ready to 
 his hand. It was not that there was anything more 
 poetical in these than in any other subjects ; it was 
 merely that dilettante writers had learned the trick of 
 using them : literary convention had built them a shrine 
 apart ; through them was the only approach to the 
 sacred enclosure of the Muses. Now it is a general 
 suspicion — latent, if not overt — in the minds of many 
 English readers that Nature plays for our poets, in 
 a style more impressive only because it is more 
 complicated, just such a tune as was played for their 
 Persian brethren by wine, the nightingale, and the 
 rose. The consequence of this suspicion is that the 
 attempt to define a poet's conception of Nature becomes 
 a singularly thankless task. It is as if the critic were 
 required to explain how yet another superannuated 
 child played with the toys earth held out to him, and 
 was deluded into supposing that these toys could be 
 the serious concern of grown-up men. Yet it remains 
 a fact that the delusion is shared by all true poets, and 
 certainly the critic of George Meredith is the last who 
 can afford to pass it by. The truth about the matter 
 seems to be this — that poets, though often unpractical, 
 and ignorant or careless of much that is desirable or 
 even necessary in civilised life, have yet on the whole a 
 view both simpler and juster than that which commonly 
 obtains, as to the foundational realities on which the 
 complex structure, known as civilisation, rests; and
 
 198 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 therefore, in their account of the mind of man, which is 
 the main product of that civilisation and the principal 
 subject of their art, they occupy themselves largely 
 with influences which seem to be trivial or external, 
 because they believe they can trace in them a sustain- 
 ing framework necessary to the mind's development 
 and health, and deprived of which, if we can imagine, it 
 deprived of them, not only must it fail to rise, it would 
 not for one moment maintain the level it has reached 
 already. Chief among these influences is Nature, the 
 " changeful, visible force " of mother Earth. Now 
 Meredith, though poet, is yet a man whom the apostles 
 of practical efficiency cannot afford to overlook. The 
 Shaving of Shagpat, with which he opened his career, 
 has efficiency, one may say, for its watchword. 
 
 Lo ! of hundreds who aspire 
 Eighties perish, nineties tire. 
 
 He has done neither. Yet we find that he is at 
 
 one with all other poets in writing of trees, birds, 
 
 clouds, flowers, as if the knowledge and understanding 
 
 of them played an important part, not merely in the 
 
 adornment of life, but in its sanity and stability ; as 
 
 if they were necessary ingredients, so to speak, of 
 
 truth and righteousness. In one of his most striking 
 
 poems he describes how, at a moment of deepest 
 
 personal sorrow, he walked over the hills and through 
 
 the woods, turning to the familiar sights and sounds of 
 
 earth to restore to him his strength and courage, and 
 
 not failing to find a response in them to his need. 
 
 Even at such a time as this he does not think it an 
 
 irrelevance to tell us what the leaves or the birds are 
 
 doing. _„ , „ , , , 
 
 Weak out of sheath, downy leaves 
 
 Of the beech quivered lucid as dew, 
 
 Their radiance asking — who grieves ? 
 
 For nought of a sorrow they knew :
 
 THE POEMS— NATURE 199 
 
 No space to the dread wrestle vowed, 
 
 No chamber in shadow of night. 
 At times as the steadier breeze 
 
 Flutter-huddled their twigs to a crowd . . - 1 
 
 Here, clearly, is a poet whose " attitude to Nature " 
 is something genuine and vital, no ornamental play- 
 thing, but a matter about which he is profoundly in 
 earnest. Yet why, we ask, are we to consider it a 
 point of deep emotional significance how beech-leaves 
 behave before the wind, or what the song of a bird is 
 like ? To this question Meredith has taken care that 
 his poetical work shall provide the clearest possible 
 answer. 
 
 In one of his lesser poems, a lyric called Outer and 
 Inner, written in a style and method peculiarly charac- 
 teristic of its author, he makes it his central aim to 
 explain and justify his "attitude to Nature." The 
 scene is in the woods on a sultry afternoon in August. 
 Stillness reigns, and when a motion of the air stirs 
 faintly the lighter leaves, it is as if the earth were 
 breathing. Stronger than ever is the poet's conviction 
 that there is a life in the world of Nature which is akin 
 to his own. But how is he to reach this central heart of 
 things, how feel the rhythmical pulsation and win for 
 himself something of its strength and constancy ? The 
 reply is not what we should expect a poet to give : by 
 observation, by curbing the reins of fancy, by self- 
 forgetfulness. He chooses, one by one, delicate points 
 of detail that catch his eye, and describes them in 
 a succession of broken sentences whose accuracy of 
 image is their charm : the movement of the spider, 
 the scent of the leaves, the sound of the flies that rise 
 in a swarm from the path as he goes by, the iridescent 
 light upon a cobweb stretched in a cool, dark corner 
 where the dew lingers still. 
 
 1 A Faith on Trial,
 
 200 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 My world I note ere fancy comes, 
 
 Minutest hushed observe : 
 What busy bits of motioned wits 
 
 Through antlered mosswork strive. 
 
 (Though the woods are asleep, the ants are working 
 
 '"' But now so low the stillness hums, 
 
 My springs of seeing swerve, 
 For half a wink to thrill and think 
 The woods with nymphs alive. 
 
 He puts the point at first half humorously, perhaps 
 partly for fear the ants might be disturbed by it, 
 partly that he may take the reader at unawares and 
 give him without offence what he has most at heart to 
 give him, and what is, after all, a moral ; — how should 
 it be anything else ? 
 
 I neighbour the invisible 
 
 So close that my consent 
 Is only asked for spirits masked 
 
 To leap from trees and flowers. 
 And this because with them I dwell 
 
 In thought, while calmly bent 
 To read the lines dear Earth designs 
 
 Shall speak her life on ours. 
 
 In a final stanza he amplifies this in connection with a 
 still deeper vein of thought, which has been made the 
 subject of the preceding chapter. 
 
 Consider Meredith's practice as exemplified in any 
 other of the poems in which he goes direct to Nature 
 for his subject — Hard Weather, The South- Wester, 
 The Thrush in February, A Night of Frost in 
 May — and you will feel no doubt that he has given 
 in Outer and Inner the secret of his poetic method. 
 And we may say at once that, so far as he fails as a 
 Nature poet, it is because he has written according to a 
 theory, and, so far as he succeeds, he succeeds because 
 his theory has so much in it of the vitality and fruit- 
 fulness of truth. It will be interesting to analyse
 
 THE POEMS— NATURE 201 
 
 in some detail a poem in which Meredith applies his 
 
 theory with astounding mastery — The Lark Ascending. 
 
 For the opening verses nothing short of quotation can 
 
 suffice : — 
 
 He rises and begins to round, 
 
 He drops the silver chain of sound 
 
 Of many links without a break, 
 
 In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake, 
 
 All intervolved and spreading wide, 
 
 Like water-dimples down a tide 
 
 Where ripple ripple overcurls 
 
 And eddy into eddy whirls. 
 
 A more exquisitely suggestive and yet more exqui- 
 sitely literal description, whether of song of lark or of 
 any other object, is probably nowhere to be found, 
 unless, indeed, Meredith himself has produced it; 1 it is 
 as if the lark himself were singing ; and the description 
 continues, tireless as the lark himself, for a matter of 
 sixty lines or more ; losing nothing of its force, shower- 
 ing one image after another, all felicitous and some 
 supremely so, leaving the reader at last with the con- 
 viction that he never before knew what song of lark 
 could be, that he has heard it now for the first time. 
 And if he has now heard it, if he has listened to the 
 song indeed, he will be ready to ask and to understand 
 what its meaning is and why he delights in it. Briefly, 
 the lark is a fountain overflowing with the joy of life ; 
 he is the child of Earth, and whatever is glad and kindly 
 in the works of Nature is of his kin. 
 
 He sings the sap, the quickened veins, 
 The wedding song of sun and rains 
 He is, the dance of children, thanks 
 Of sowers, shout of primrose banks. 
 
 This and much more besides is to be found in him by 
 such as are content to remember that he is still no more 
 
 1 The singing of the nightingales in A Night of Frost in May is perhaps 
 even greater as a tour de force, but it has not the same naturalness.
 
 202 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 than a little feathery bird. A bird he is — no spirit — 
 and a bird he must remain : the gladness and madness 
 of the poet are different from anything he knows : 
 they are at once greater and less. For the lark is 
 indeed all a lark, but even the poet is still only half 
 a man. 
 
 Was never voice of ours could say 
 
 Our inmost in the sweetest way, 
 
 Like yonder voice aloft, and link 
 
 All hearers in the song they drink : 
 
 Our wisdom speaks from failing blood, 
 
 Our passion is too full in flood ; 
 
 We want the key of his wild note 
 
 Of truthful in a tuneful throat, 
 
 The song seraphically free 
 
 Of taint of personality. 
 
 And here there is a question raised that cannot be left 
 without an answer. It seems that the lark has a secret 
 which mankind has missed. Who, then, among men 
 comes nearest to the discovery of it ? Whom shall we 
 most fitly liken to the lark ? To look for him among 
 mere singers would be a superficiality ; the resemblance 
 must be sought in some deeper aspect of their common 
 relation to Mother Earth. The value of the lark's song 
 is the wholeheartedness of rapture it expresses, the spon- 
 taneous assurance contained in it that life is good. He 
 has learned to live according to Earth's ordinance, and 
 from the material which Earth has offered him he has 
 produced a harmony. The same wholeheartedness of 
 rapture is not yet compassable by man : for man's life 
 is not yet harmonious ; but surely, in the meantime, those 
 men are nearest to the lark who are laying now the 
 foundations of a grander harmony in the future ; 
 
 Whose lives, by many a battle dint 
 Defaced, and grinding wheels on flint, 
 Yield substance, though they sing not, sweet 
 For song our highest heaven to greet.
 
 THE POEMS— NATURE 203 
 
 These are the true singers, the true soarers ; and it is 
 only because here and there he sees such an one among 
 us, that a poet, worthy the name, can sing at all. 
 
 Wherefore their soul in me, or mine 
 
 Through self forgetfulness divine 
 
 In them, that song aloft maintains, 
 
 To fill the sky and thrill the plains 
 
 With showerings drawn from human stores. 
 
 Thus, finally, the lark ascending grows to a symbol of 
 
 all human progress, progress that comes of effort in 
 
 obedience to the laws of life. It was by such obedience, 
 
 given instinctively, that the lark learned to soar and 
 
 sing ; and man, who has indeed other things to learn, 
 
 cannot learn them in any other way. Only let him 
 
 begin with that, and there is no limit we can set to the 
 
 possibilities of his achievement. As we follow him in 
 
 his ascent, the earth itself, because it is his dwelling, 
 
 seems to grow more spacious, more august. Up and 
 
 up he goes, with earth still broadening beneath him, till 
 
 at last we can follow him no more ; for, like the lark, he 
 
 is lost to us, 
 
 Lost on his aerial rings 
 In light ; and then the fancy sings. 
 
 But, following the lark, we have risen somewhat above 
 the level of the subject immediately before us. Ac- 
 cording to Meredith's conception, if we were able to 
 follow him so far, the reason was that we were willing 
 first to see him and be content with him for what he 
 was. For to see Nature poetically is not to read into 
 her a meaning, an emotion supplied arbitrarily by the 
 observer ; rather it is to clear the mind of all disturbing 
 passion, to refuse to turn to the world about us as to a 
 mirror of our personal feelings, or choose in it only 
 what is in accordance with the passing mood, to come
 
 204 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 before Nature with heart and mind alike unprejudiced, 
 unclouded, ready to see, not what we want to see, but 
 what is there ; anxious not to give rein to promiscuous 
 emotion, but to respond sensitively, truly, adequately to 
 whatever there is in the scene Earth offers to kindle 
 mind and heart. There is a well-known passage in 
 Coleridge's great Ode Dejection which appears at 
 first sight, at least, to have a contrary significance ; 
 and with a view to defining Meredith's position with 
 greater clearness, we shall do well to quote it. The 
 words are among the most beautiful, the most passion- 
 ate in our language : — 
 
 O Lady ! we receive but what we give 
 And in our life alone does nature live : 
 Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud ! 
 
 And would we aught behold of higher worth 
 Than that inanimate cold world, allowed 
 To the poor, loveless, ever-anxious crowd, 
 
 Ah ! from the soul itself must issue forth 
 A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud 
 
 Enveloping the earth. 
 
 And the name of this glory and of this light is joy. 
 Coleridge is stating here, with all the fervour of a poet, 
 a truth on which the whole philosophy of idealism is 
 founded. But there is nothing in Meredith's philosophy 
 which is opposed to it ; in fact, what chiefly concerns 
 him is the statement of the same truth, only that he 
 states it from a different point of view and, in particular, 
 attaches no importance to his feelings about the truth, 
 except so far as he believes them to accord with it. 
 With Coleridge it is otherwise. In spite of the spon- 
 taneous grandeur, the irresistible melody of his verse, 
 the reader who considers closely the attitude of mind 
 lying behind it will detect this flaw : that the poet, 
 though professing to exalt that creative joy which 
 makes the universe intelligible, and praying the gift
 
 THE POEMS— NATURE 205 
 
 of it for his lady, is, nevertheless, acquiescing in, 
 
 and by his acquiescence augmenting, that mental 
 
 condition in himself which he knows to be destructive 
 
 of it :— 
 
 A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear, 
 A stifled, drowsy, unimpassion'd grief, 
 Which finds no natural outlet, no relief, 
 In word, or sigh, or tear, — 
 
 and on this account even the joy of which he speaks 
 later loses a part of the exhilarating influence it ought 
 to exercise, because the enthusiasm with which he 
 speaks of it is seen partly to depend upon the contrast 
 it offers to his present state ; he is praising it and 
 magnifying it as a thing that he has not got ; and in 
 the meantime he is giving a giant's power, not to 
 recovering it, but to lamentation for its loss. Now, 
 for Meredith also, the key to understanding of the world 
 is a kind of joy ; but, strangely enough, it is a kind 
 of joy that comes through grief, not, indeed, through 
 a drowsy, but what might rather be called a disciplinary, 
 grief. He thinks it is the general tendency of in- 
 dividual men — and a tendency not always overcome 
 even by poets — to set more than due store by their 
 sensations ; and that therefore the kind of joy in 
 which their nature overflows, though it may have the 
 charm of spontaneity, yet tends to be something self- 
 centred and narrow — a quite different kind of joy from 
 that which leads them to understand the beauty of the 
 world and to delight in it. To attain to this latter 
 joy, a man must first get a just appreciation of the 
 meaning of his own existence, of which a leading fact 
 is that he is merely one man among many. And so 
 inevitable is the tendency of young blood to overrate 
 itself and to regard the satisfaction of its impulses as 
 a right, that this just self-appreciation and the true joy
 
 206 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 based upon it are, he thinks, seldom to be had except 
 as the price of a sobering experience. 
 
 Not ere the bitter herb we taste, 
 Which ages thought of happy times, 
 To plant us in a weeping waste, 
 Rings with our fellows this one heart 
 Accordant chimes. 1 
 
 Meredith, then, knows, not less than Coleridge, that it 
 is through the individual's power to think and feel that 
 the world becomes a living thing, a revelation to him of 
 beauty and order ; but he more clearly recognises, or at 
 least is far more careful to state, that thought and 
 feeling, if they are left to themselves, are not at all to be 
 relied on to bring the individual into touch with the 
 transcendent beauty and splendour of the universe ; and 
 as to the mist that issues from them, too often, Meredith 
 thinks, it cannot be called either "fair" or " luminous," 
 but must rather be thought of as a dense fog, in which, 
 groping, the individual loses all idea of the actual relations 
 of things outside him, and sees nothing but an enlarged 
 and distorted shadow of himself. To see truly, to attain 
 to a vision of the world as it is, is a creative act, and no 
 man can achieve it, unless, with whatever strength he has 
 of love and joy, he has submitted to a discipline which 
 may compel him to love what things are indeed lovely 
 and to rejoice where joy is due. In short, the creative 
 joy, to be creative, to be the source of a true revelation 
 of nature and of man, must be founded on a certain 
 kind of humility and self-abnegation ; and this, in the 
 individual's relation to his fellows, appears as sympathy, 
 and involves his taking the claim of mankind upon him, 
 rather than his claim on mankind, as the centre of his 
 spiritual gravity; and, in his relation to Nature, similarly 
 demands that he shall cease to regard his own emotions 
 as the source of beauty in the world, and recognise 
 
 1 The Lesson of Grief.
 
 THE POEMS— NATURE 207 
 
 rather that it is the beauty of the world, if only he will 
 rightly attend to it, which evokes and nourishes and 
 sustains in him that power of emotion which is his life, 
 He cannot indeed see the world truly except through 
 emotion, or through joy; but emotion, though there is no 
 true vision without it, will not, merely by its presence, 
 make his vision true. For there is such a thing as 
 spiritual, as well as physical, intoxication, a state of 
 spurious ecstasy that clouds rather than clears the 
 mind. 
 
 To approach Nature thus is to approach her in a 
 spirit similar to that first made familiar to the world by 
 Wordsworth, with whom Meredith, in spite of radical 
 differences of temperament and outlook, has much in 
 common. Indeed you may find passages here and 
 there in Meredith's poetry which, except in point of 
 diction, might have been written by Wordsworth 
 himself. Perhaps the most notable example is from 
 The Thrush in February, where, describing his own 
 practical ideal and the benefit he has of it, Meredith 
 
 ' ' So mine are these new fruitings rich 
 
 The simple to the common brings ; 
 I keep the youth of those who pitch 
 Their joy in this old heart of things. 
 
 Attempting to indicate the true attitude of Man to 
 Nature, Wordsworth spoke of a " wise passiveness." 
 The problem left by him unsolved was how that wisdom 
 in passivity was to be attained. Meredith, by a refer- 
 ence to his " disciplined habit to see," shows that in 
 him at least the secret of this wisdom was not innate, 
 or rather that he was not content to leave it as he 
 found it. It is to be remarked that throughout his 
 Nature poetry his main effort is to achieve the emo- 
 tional unity essential in a poem without sacrificing 
 fidelity of observation, and that he is readier to forego
 
 2o8 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 unity than truth. The obscurity of many of his descrip- 
 tive passages is, curiously enough, the result of this very 
 desire for accuracy. It may be worth while to note 
 that a poetic description is not addressed, as a scientific 
 description is, to those who are unfamiliar with the 
 object, with a view to enable them to recognise it at 
 first sight ; in a poetic description knowledge of the 
 object is always assumed, and except to those who 
 possess such knowledge the description is generally 
 valueless. Meredith's range of observation is un- 
 usually wide ; he has made himself familiar with 
 many subtleties of natural phenomena which poets 
 ordinarily leave unexplored ; and he is apt to postu- 
 late in his readers the familiarity which he himself 
 possesses. It will be interesting to take a few ex- 
 amples of clearness passing to obscurity — due mainly 
 to this cause. 
 
 Or, where old-eyed oxen chew 
 
 Speculation with the cud, 
 Read their pool of vision through 
 
 Back to hours when mind was mud. 1 
 
 Of course there is more here than description ; but, 
 taken merely for its descriptive value, the passage must 
 rank high, and no one could miss the force of it who 
 had ever looked into the face of a cow. 
 
 The foxgloves drop from throat to top 
 A daily lesser bell.- 
 
 This is exquisitely felicitous ; yet, in a land where fox- 
 gloves were unknown, what meaning would be con- 
 veyed by it? 
 
 There chimed a bubbled underbrew 
 With witch-wild spray of vocal dew. 3 
 
 Who, that knows it, can deny the appropriateness of 
 this to what might be called the " passage work," the 
 
 1 The Woods of ' Wesiermain. 2 Outer and Inner, * Night of Frost in May.
 
 THE POEMS— NATURE 209 
 
 more troubled and yet less vital, less melodious parts, 
 of the song of the nightingale? Yet upon those 
 who have not attended to the song and analysed it 
 the suggestiveness of the words is lost. The piece 
 known as The South-Wester might be quoted entire 
 in illustration of this same point. Here are the 
 opening lines : — 
 
 Day of the cloud in fleets ! O day 
 Of wedded white and blue, that sail 
 Immingled, with a footing ray 
 In shadow-sandals down our vale ! — 
 And swift to ravish golden meads, 
 Swift up the run of turf it speeds, 
 Thy bright of head and dark of heel ; 
 To where the hill-top flings on sky, 
 As hawk from wrist or dust from wheel, 
 The tiptoe scalers tossed to fly. 
 
 The poetic value of this passage is its fidelity, both of 
 thought and feeling, to the chosen theme. All through 
 the poem Meredith keeps eye and mind focussed upon 
 the object, with a view to make his verse the vehicle, not 
 of a vague rapture, but precisely of those images, ideas, 
 emotions roused in his mind, particularly in the South 
 of England, on a day when the wind is blowing from 
 the south-west ; and the intelligibility of the poem 
 to one or another reader depends primarily on the 
 extent to which he has entered into the experiences on 
 which it is based. 
 
 Of course, the final poetic achievement would be 
 to combine this accuracy of focus with a sustained 
 emotional exaltation — such, for example, as every one 
 recognises in the choric passages of the Prometheus 
 Unbound. This kind of exaltation is for the most part 
 accepted by poets and by their readers as an end in 
 itself, and the attaining it, at whatever sacrifice of objec- 
 tive truth, the touchstone of true poetry. Meredith, 
 however, is never satisfied with it. Admit that it is, on
 
 210 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 the whole, a fault in his poetry that the element of 
 passion, the only reliable source of artistic unity, takes 
 too often a secondary place, the explanation, if not the 
 justification, of this fault is to be found in his firm 
 resolve never to allow passion to become lawless and 
 unbridled, or to substitute itself for the object as centre 
 of interest or as formative principle guiding the narra- 
 tion. His ideal is to have passion for a servant, not a 
 master. He is not content to be a mere poet, one 
 in whom passion leads. He must have an equality 
 of thought and passion, passion and thought made one. 
 He looks to an ideal state, ahead of Plato's, in which the 
 philosophers are poets and the poets philosophers. 
 And his contribution to the attainment of the ideal is a 
 kind of poetry, in which the emphasis is constantly 
 laid upon the actuality that underlies each thought and 
 image, in which the poetic content is not the emotion 
 kindled by earth or sea or sky, but earth, sea, sky 
 themselves as revealed to thought by the emotion they 
 enkindle. Perhaps he approaches nearest to perfect 
 fulfilment of his aim in the Hymn to Colour. There is 
 hardly a line or a phrase in this sublime allegory of 
 Life and Death and Love but recalls with exactitude 
 some living feature of colour, outline, or atmosphere, to 
 enhance the splendour of that vision of the dawn, 
 of which the allegory is a spiritual interpretation. So 
 keen is Meredith in his loyalty to the inspiring object, 
 that there are passages even in the Hymn to Colour 
 where the observer is allowed momentarily to usurp the 
 poet's place. The lines — 
 
 But Love remembers how the sky was green, 
 And how the grass-blades glimmered lightest blue, 
 
 may be quoted as an example of this. But the poet, 
 even at the moment of supreme rapture, maintains
 
 THE POEMS— NATURE 211 
 
 still his " disciplined habit to see," and becomes im- 
 measurably greater as a poet on that account. 
 
 Love saw the emissary eglantine 
 Break wave round thy white feet above the gloom ; 
 Lay finger on thy star ; thy raiment line 
 With cherub wing and limb ; wed thy soft bloom, 
 Gold-quivering like sun-rays in thistle-down, 
 Earth under rolling brown. 
 
 This indeed is the sunrise as Love sees it ; it is 
 Nature, as revealed to that poetic vision before which 
 the veil is withdrawn, and the Spirit of Earth appears 
 clothed in that same strength and beauty which man 
 himself aspires to and which, whenever he recognises 
 them, he worships.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 THE POEMS— MAN 
 
 IN the two preceding chapters we have attempted to 
 analyse and define, first, the conception which is 
 the inspiring source of the whole of Meredith's mature 
 poetic work, the conception of Earth as a great 
 spiritual unity, embracing both Nature and Man ; and, 
 secondly, the message which he believes that Nature, 
 the simpler and more primitive expression of the life of 
 Earth, has to offer to Man, her latest born. Meredith 
 is the poet of evolution. According to his idea, the 
 value to Man of the study of Nature is that in Nature 
 he finds the conditions out of which he has himself 
 emerged ; or, to put it more accurately, from which he 
 neither has emerged nor ever can ; to which, rather, he 
 still is and always must be required to accommodate 
 himself, if he is to continue the evolutionary process and 
 grow to a closer unity with the Creative Mind. This 
 idea, which is more or less directly stated or implied in 
 all the more important poems, becomes itself the theme 
 of one of the most charming of the lighter pieces — 
 that named Melampus. Melampus, the physician- 
 naturalist of an earlier day, becomes in Meredith's 
 hands a type of those who, by love and observation of 
 Earth's younger children, spring a deep source of wisdom 
 
 212
 
 THE POEMS— MAN 213 
 
 applicable to the most far-reaching problems of the 
 life of man — 
 
 For him the woods were a home and gave him the key 
 
 Of knowledge, thirst for their treasures in herbs and flowers. 
 The secrets held by the creatures nearer than we 
 
 To Earth he sought, and the link of their life with ours : 
 And where alike we are, unlike where, and the veined 
 
 Division, veined parallel, of a blood that flows 
 In them, in us, from the source by man unattained 
 
 Save marks he well what the mystical woods disclose. 
 
 Here, precisely, is the question before us in this chapter. 
 We have followed Meredith through his identification 
 of Man and Nature ; but we have not yet given specific 
 attention to his conception of Man himself, to his 
 analysis of those mental and moral qualities which are 
 peculiar to mankind ; qualities by no means unnatural, 
 still less antinatural ; but natural in a wider and 
 more comprehensive sense, and possessed by man 
 alone, simply because he has risen by understanding 
 to a height which the animals have not had wits to 
 attain. 
 
 The leading facts of human life as Meredith inter- 
 prets it are, perhaps, reducible to three. First, you 
 have the animal in man and the animal's energies ; that 
 is, you have man in that condition in which he differs 
 from the animal mainly in that he has a mind better 
 equipped to get for him what his body wants. Next, 
 you have the soul and the soul's activities ; that is, you 
 have man in that condition in which his body has be- 
 come merely an instrument trained to follow and fulfil 
 the mind's desires. And, last, you have the never- 
 ceasing process by which the animal rises to the 
 spiritual man. It is upon this process that Meredith 
 keeps his eyes continually fixed. What are the prin- 
 ciples, again and again he asks himself, by which man's 
 actions must be guided if he is to reach the plenitude
 
 214 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 of his spiritual stature? His first task clearly is to 
 
 introduce order into his instincts ; to take the natural 
 
 force, the pulse of life within him, and tune it for 
 
 achievement of the highest purposes of which it is 
 
 capable. But if you are to attune this force, you must 
 
 preserve it. The spiritual life can be built only upon 
 
 a basis of animal energy ; waste, despise it at your 
 
 peril; it is this that gives you the bricks, the rough 
 
 material, without which there is no edification. The 
 
 theme is one upon which Meredith is never tired of 
 
 harping. Is there, he asks, the east wind cutting 
 
 through him, 
 
 Meaning in a day 
 When this fierce angel of the air, 
 Intent to throw, and haply slay, 
 Can, for what breath of life we bear, 
 Exact the wrestle ? 
 
 And, with set teeth, he replies : — 
 
 Look in the face of men who fare 
 
 Lock-mouthed, a match in lungs and thews 
 
 For this fierce angel of the air, 
 
 To twist with him and take his bruise. 
 
 That is the face beloved of old 
 
 Of Earth, young Mother of her brood : 
 
 Nor broken for us shows the mould 
 
 When muscle is in mind renewed. 1 
 
 It is hardly necessary to add that the distinctive quality 
 of Meredith's poetical work depends for a large part of 
 its value on the incisiveness, the clean, hard hitting, the 
 invigoration, the grit, which are to be associated with the 
 emphasis he thus lays upon the need for a firm founda- 
 tion of vital energy to be the driving force, the horse- 
 power, of the soul. Vital energy, however, is in itself 
 quite formless, and the value of man's life depends upon 
 his power to use it reasonably. Achievement is im- 
 
 1 Hard Weather.
 
 THE POEMS— MAN 215 
 
 possible except through muscle, and yet mere muscle can 
 play no part at all in the evolution of man : muscle 
 must be united to, must be guided by, mind. No one 
 who has so much as glanced at any work of Meredith's 
 will need to be told of his perpetual insistence upon 
 the saving power of intellect, reason, of " the sighting 
 brain." He uses the word Mind almost like a charm, 
 and it seldom fails to bring beauty, and even a breath of 
 tenderness, to the passages in which he consciously gives 
 it its full meaning : — 
 
 Let it but be the lord of Mind to guide 
 Our eyes. 1 
 
 Melting she passed into the mind 
 Where immortal with mortal weds. 2 
 
 Oh ! but hear it ; 'tis the mind. 1 
 
 It were well that we should not let that breath of tender- 
 ness escape us ; for, until we recognise it, we can find no 
 adequate reply to those who, at this point, will insist 
 against us that Meredith's view of life gives intellect a 
 preponderance fatal to the spirit of poetry. It is un- 
 deniable, indeed, that he carries his brain-worship too 
 
 far— 
 
 "Never," he says, "is Earth misread by brain." 4 
 
 a statement susceptible, to say the least, of sad misin- 
 terpretations. It needs to be remembered, therefore, 
 that the brain he worships is not the analytical instru- 
 ment that " peeps and botanises," it is the power of 
 thought strengthened and, as it were, warmed by the 
 pulsations of the heart. Those same pulsations which, 
 divorced from thought, are merely animal, united to it 
 raise it to a power to which the word Thought remains 
 
 1 Meditation tinder Stars. l The South- Wester. 
 
 3 The Woods of Westermain. 4 Hard Weather.
 
 216 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 inadequate, irradiating it with the deeper glow of that 
 spiritual warmth and light, to meet which at last Love 
 rises like a flower that opens to the sun. 
 
 Love born of knowledge, love that gains 
 
 Vitality as Earth it mates, 
 The meaning of the Pleasures, Pains, 
 
 The Life, the Death, illuminates. 1 
 
 It is this kind of irradiated thought to which it will 
 be found Meredith's worship is, in the last resort, always 
 directed : thought, that is, fused with emotion, and in 
 this state of fusion termed reason or soul or spirit, 
 everywhere recognisable by the harmonious nature of 
 the action in which it is expressed. 
 
 Man's action as we know it is seldom thus harmonious, 
 only intermittently does it express the spirit. Therefore 
 Meredith devotes the best part of his activity to dis- 
 covering and explaining the principles by which it is to 
 be spiritualised. The idea of harmony, applied to social 
 life, passes at once into the idea of fellowship. The life 
 of the spirit is thus essentially the life that holds men 
 together ; and opposed to this the life described above 
 as the animal life, the life of the senses, is the life which 
 holds men apart. The true function of the senses is to 
 put you in touch with a world outside yourself, a world 
 which you share with mankind. But if, misunderstanding 
 their intention, you value not the object revealed by 
 them, but the feeling which accompanies the revelation, 
 you are identifying yourself with something which be- 
 longs to yourself alone, and the spiritual life, the life of 
 fellowship, is shut out. You are a prisoner, and your 
 own senses have imprisoned you. Narrowness, confine- 
 ment, is the essence of the sensual life, and to this 
 Meredith traces it, as well in its most obvious, as in its 
 
 1 The Thrush in February^
 
 THE POEMS— MAN 217 
 
 most subtle forms, including all in the one idea of 
 
 " selfishness." 
 
 But that the senses still 
 
 Usurp the station of their issue Mind, 
 
 He would have burst the chrysalis of the blind : 
 
 As yet he will ; 
 
 As yet he will, she prays, 
 
 Yet will, when his distempered devil of Self; — 
 
 The glutton for her fruits, the wily elf 
 
 In shifting rays ; — 
 
 That captain of the scorned ; 
 The coveter of life in soul and shell, 
 The fratricide, the thief, the infidel, 
 The hoofed and horned ; — * 
 
 only when this distempered devil is cast out of him, 
 
 can he burst from the chrysalis and be free. The 
 
 natural function of the senses, then, is to be roads by 
 
 which the mind may travel towards the attainment of 
 
 truth. The danger is that they may get converted into 
 
 mere conduits of pleasure. Thus converted they fly in 
 
 the face of Nature, and Nature's retribution follows in 
 
 due course. You have asked Pleasure of an instrument 
 
 not, in the main, planned to give it you : you get, what 
 
 you least wanted, Pain. At least, that is how it works 
 
 out in the long run. For the individual who aims at 
 
 securing private satisfaction is aiming at something 
 
 which it is no interest of Nature's that he should have. 
 
 Her whip descends upon him, causing in him much 
 
 horror at Nature's cruelty, much pity for himself; and 
 
 at times he will fly for refuge to the defences of the 
 
 cynic or the sentimentalist. Only, let wisdom lie but a 
 
 little deeper in him than the skin, and the recurring 
 
 stroke points him at last to the fundamental error, and 
 
 teaches him to change his aim. 
 
 So flesh 
 Conjures tempest-flails to thresh 
 Good from worthless. 2 
 
 1 Earth and Man. 2 The Woods of Westermain.
 
 218 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 As the social and intellectual life develops and grows 
 more complicated, more subtle, the same error is liable 
 to recur, cropping up to suit the subtler environment, 
 in subtler, more elusive forms. To meet and counteract 
 them a subtler corrective is required. Nature, express- 
 ing herself now in the developed consciousness of 
 society, rebukes the offender with a touch from the 
 gentlest, yet keenest, most searching of her weapons — 
 she smiles. It is a touch only; but woe betide him 
 if he is too dense to be aware of it. The touch is a 
 reminder, the smile a smile of security. Attention is 
 called to an amusing discrepancy between facts as 
 he sees them and the facts as they are. More than 
 a suggestion is not necessary; for the true fact needs 
 no championing, it can be trusted to assert itself in due 
 time. Meanwhile, if he is wise, he takes the smile for 
 his punishment, and avoids the more disastrous school- 
 ing which waits for those who disregard it. The 
 discovery, analysis, revelation of the idealist impulse in 
 Comedy, is probably one of the most characteristic 
 of Meredith's achievements. Man, he suggests, having 
 risen from the animal, has a certain innate tendency to 
 revert to ancestral impulses. The objection to these 
 impulses as they assert themselves in man is that they 
 are out of date. In their day they were of value, went 
 side by side with a certain unconscious upward striving; 
 but their value is at a discount now, because man's 
 striving, grown more conscious, is directed to ends in 
 which they have no longer a place. The consciousness 
 of these ends is become no less innate than the tendency 
 to animal reversions. And in the conflict between the 
 two a further tendency is developed, the tendency to 
 cover the animal impulse under a consecrating name. 
 This tendency — apt as we are to be blind to it in our- 
 selves — we are much on the look out for in others, and
 
 THE POEMS— MAN 219 
 
 when we see them indulging in it, we laugh. So very 
 sure are they of their reward, so wholly incapable of 
 deceiving nature even if they deceive themselves, there 
 can be no occasion to take their posturing seriously. 
 And as it is their aim to be taken seriously, to impose 
 on others as upon themselves, the clear-sighted smile of 
 the Comic Spirit cuts like steel. 
 
 Sword of Common Sense ! — 
 
 Our surest gift : the sacred chain 
 
 Of man to man . . . 
 
 Thou guardian issue of the harvest brain ! . . . 
 
 Bright, nimble of the marrow-nerve 
 
 To wield thy double edge, retort 
 
 Or hold the deadlier reserve, 
 
 And through thy victim's weapon sting : 
 
 Thine is the service, thine the sport 
 
 This shifty heart of ours to hunt 
 
 Across its webs and round the many a ring 
 
 Where fox it is, or snake. . . . 
 
 Once lion of our desert's trodden weeds ; 
 
 And, but for thy straight figure at the yoke, 
 
 Again to be the lordly paw, 
 
 Naming his appetites his needs 
 
 Behind a decorative cloak. 1 
 
 With the increasing complication of society the 
 animal reversions, like hunted foxes, increase in 
 wariness and cunning ; and the Comic Spirit, to be even 
 with them, puts a finer edge upon his tools and has 
 recourse to a higher delicacy of handling. But he 
 stands from first to last for intellect in view of truth, in 
 view, that is, of the object that brings men's minds 
 together, watching their aberrations, secure of conquest, 
 content to recall them to the straight track with a smile. 
 It will be seen that Meredith's theory of the uses of 
 the Comic Spirit is an outcome of his brain-worship, 
 his belief in the unifying power of intellect. Applied 
 to practice, the theory seems to have this hitch in it, 
 
 1 Ode to the Comic Spirit.
 
 220 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 that almost as much brains are required to see a joke 
 as to make one, and that, as a rule, those who most need 
 schooling under the Comic muse are the least susceptible 
 of her methods. Of course, one of the funniest things 
 in the world is to see fun itself miss fire — as when 
 Mr. Le Gallienne narrowly misses being converted 
 by the last stanza of Jump-to-Glory Jane — yet it is 
 hard to see where the practical value of this kind of 
 fun comes in : there may even be something a little 
 comic in expecting comedy to be so practical. And 
 perhaps of intellect, as of comedy, it may be said truly, 
 that it ought to exercise more influence than it does ; 
 more influential it undoubtedly would be, if there were 
 more of it, if it were more a force that could be counted 
 on. And Meredith's view is, that the chief hope for the 
 future lies in making more of it. His firm belief in 
 intellect as a reconciling influence, tending to harmony 
 between man and man, is perhaps the most interesting, 
 most significant aspect of his practical attitude to life. 
 His own social creed, his enthusiastic Liberalism, his 
 sense of the brotherhood of man, his faith in progress, 
 his denial of any possibility of progress without a broad 
 foundation laid for it in the aspirations of the masses 
 of the people — these, and his other ruling sympathies, 
 he has himself reached by an intellectual process, and his 
 aim has been to inspire others to repeat that process 
 
 Till brain-rule splendidly towers. 1 
 
 We are prone to think of the democratic creed as 
 springing primarily from the heart, to regard ideals of 
 brotherhood as the offspring of love rather than of logic. 
 Meredith lays all his emphasis on the other side of the 
 matter. Man cannot determine, by impulse, what the 
 line of his advance shall be : all movement is not for- 
 
 1 The Empty Purse.
 
 THE POEMS— MAN 221 
 
 ward movement, however generous the intentions guid- 
 ing it. There is only one road along which true progress 
 can be made. Man's problem is to find it. It is an 
 intellectual problem. And truth being the same for all, 
 and the ideal of manhood, the complete development 
 and triumphant expression by man of all that he has 
 it in him to become, being realisable only when this uni- 
 versality is understood and acted on, the more numerous 
 the seekers, the greater the likelihood of their discover- 
 ing the right course and making an appreciable 
 headway. The isolated thinker, even if he rightly 
 divined it, could have no power to advance. The hope 
 of the present age, in Meredith's eyes, is that for the 
 first time in history the voice of the people is making 
 itself heard, that the life-force of the people has ap- 
 peared at last as the chief factor to be reckoned with 
 by those whose work it is to forecast the future of the 
 race. 
 
 Thus Meredith, by an intellectual process, comes to 
 a result which the majority of those who reach it reach 
 more intuitively. The unity of man, arising from a 
 common relationship to the Creative Spirit, in whom 
 he " lives and moves and has his being," was perceived 
 two thousand years ago and became the inspiration of 
 a life, immortal in human memory as the truth it mani- 
 fested. By an intellectual process, Meredith arrives at the 
 Christian principle of universal fellowship and endorses 
 it. Such intellectual endorsement can never be super- 
 fluous. Yet it is a question whether a vital principle of 
 this kind can remain wholly independent of the process 
 by which it is arrived at ; at the least, it seems that 
 Meredith's method of approach to it has given him a 
 certain prejudice in his presentment of it to the world. 
 The stress he lays upon the need for a unified nature — 
 blood, brain, spirit, working harmoniously — is hardly
 
 222 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 sufficient to carry or to justify the degree of insistence 
 with which he speaks of the moral claims of the in- 
 tellect. Human nature, he says, ideally is one : its parts 
 have not their true character except as unified one with 
 another ; and undoubtedly the force of Meredith's moral 
 teaching is mainly due to his recognition of this truth, 
 or rather to his unrivalled power of tracing and reveal- 
 ing the various forms in which it manifests itself in the 
 wide field of human conduct. True human action, 
 whatever the sphere in which it is to operate, is the 
 action of the fully developed, the naturally balanced 
 man : to Meredith, this is not theory, but a fact which 
 the whole of his observation is summoned to endorse. 
 This perfect, complete, unified action he calls reasonable, 
 spiritual. It is the ideal. But in his analysis of it, and 
 in his descriptions of the method by which a man may 
 attain to it, a certain fundamental fact seems either to 
 elude or, at the least, to occupy too little of his attention. 
 He speaks of the forces of body and mind, of sense 
 and intellect, not only as being — what undoubtedly they 
 are when viewed thus in the abstract — elements of 
 antagonism ; but as if they exhausted between them 
 the elements into which the action of the still imperfect 
 man is reducible. The more popular analysis includes, 
 from the first, another element, which we may call the 
 element of emotion. And there seems to be a reason for 
 thus including and recognising it, from the first, as a 
 disparate element, co-ordinate with sense and intellect ; 
 for, from the first, it puts us in possession of a principle 
 showing recognisable affinities with each of the other 
 more obviously antagonistic elements. 1 If normal human 
 
 1 I am not unaware that Meredith speaks often of a triad of elements. 
 
 Blood and brain and spirit, three, 
 Say the deepest gnomes of earth, 
 Join for true felicity. 
 
 But where is the distinction between the third member of the
 
 THE POEMS— MAN 223 
 
 nature were indeed rightly analysable into mere blood 
 and brain, it is impossible to see how there should ever 
 be cessation of the war between them — in which one of 
 the two might well be victorious, yet without overcoming 
 their essential antagonism or securing a true unity. 
 And Meredith, while he never wearies of inculcating 
 unity, the harmonious nature, as the test of spiritual 
 achievement, seems to acknowledge no neutral ground 
 to which he can point the combatants for adjustment 
 of their differences. For the irradiated thought we 
 spoke of earlier appears in his system as the result of 
 victory, whereas what we need is a light to fall upon 
 the battlefield, a suspension of hostilities in which the 
 enemies may have view of their common humanity. 
 Just such a light, just such a neutral ground the emo- 
 tional nature can supply, ground rightly to be called 
 neutral because raised above the scene of conflict. 
 There are all kinds of emotion — good, bad, and in- 
 different — as there are all kinds of thought. But just 
 as the last fact about the thinking nature, the begin- 
 ning and the end of thought, is its power to put the 
 mind in touch with the real and the true, so, of the 
 emotional nature (in spite of all its pitfalls), the last fact 
 about it is its power to place Truth itself before the 
 soul as a kindred element, as something which, how- 
 ever vaguely apprehended in its separate manifesta- 
 tions, is, by its natural affinity with man's nature, 
 everywhere trusted and desired. To reach it, to realise 
 in conscious life and action his unity with the Spirit of 
 Truth, this, man's fundamental impulse, the root of his 
 emotional nature, provides his life — however crudely 
 manifested — with the germ of a spiritual principle from 
 
 triad, called "spirit," and the union of the three, called "spirit," 
 also ?
 
 224 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 the first, and, long before the battle between sense and 
 intellect is fought out, wakens in him a desire for unity 
 with his fellows and gives him a foretaste of that 
 inward spiritual unity, which is the perfected man. I 
 should have forborne to venture upon this criticism, 
 except for the fact that Meredith, coming to the demo- 
 cratic principle as the climax of his system, seems 
 almost to challenge comparison with the established 
 religion of democracy. You are to view the individual 
 as a unit in the human family. To develop and maintain 
 so vast a family connection would be impossible without 
 delicatest mechanical interplay ; and for machinery you 
 must have wits. It is impossible to insist too strenu- 
 ously upon the need of them, provided it remains clear 
 that there is a still deeper need implied. For the de- 
 velopment of the idea of unity, and conscious progress 
 towards the realisation of it in practice, are unattainable, 
 unless the desire for it is an essential part of human 
 nature. Here, surely, is the ultimate fact. And it is 
 the strength of Christianity that it takes its stand upon 
 the universality of that desire. 
 
 It would have been absurd, where space is limited, to 
 have spent so disproportionate an amount of it to a nega- 
 tive result, were it not that the student of human nature 
 may turn to other chapters of this book and find ample 
 exposition of Meredith's detailed treatment of it in the 
 novels. Only the briefest survey of its main outlines has 
 been possible in this. But, in conclusion, it seems desir- 
 able to deal with a charge which has been laid against 
 Meredith's conception of human life in its relation to 
 poetry and of the part in which the poetic impulse has 
 to play in human life. Meredith's so-called poetic 
 vision amounts, we are told, merely to this ; that facts 
 are facts, and that man possesses no higher faculty than 
 the common sense that perceives and confesses them to
 
 THE POEMS— MAN 225 
 
 be so. In a very noble poem, the Ode to Youth in 
 Memory, Meredith himself admits the charge : — 
 
 "This," he says, "the truistic rubbish under heel 
 Of all the world, we peck at and are filled." 
 
 and the object of the Ode, as a whole, is to comment 
 upon one aspect of the universal gospel of fact, fact as 
 it must appear to those for whom the greater part of 
 their life lies behind them. In what spirit, Meredith 
 asks, will the wise man, when he is old, look back upon 
 the tireless, the impulsive days of youth? 
 
 Days, when the ball of our vision 
 Had eagles that flew unabashed to sun ; 
 When the grasp on the bow was decision, 
 And arrow and hand and eye were one. 
 
 Will he try to turn his age into a spoiled copy of them ? 
 
 Will he still be harking back to the memory of what is 
 
 lost, striving to flap wings and soar in the old ecstasy 
 
 of freedom ? If so, he has that in him which will remind 
 
 him " facts are facts." „,. . , , 
 
 This is decreed 
 
 For age that would to youthful heavens ascend, 
 
 By passion for the arms' possession tossed ; 
 
 It falls the way of sighs and hath their end ; 
 
 A spark gone out to more sepulchral night. 
 
 Good if the arrowy eagle of the height 
 
 Be then the little bird that hops to feed. 
 
 Then, in one of the boldest and happiest of his similes, 
 
 he pictures the old as time-worn willows stationary 
 
 beside the stream of life. 
 
 They now bared roots beside the river bent ; 
 
 Whose privilege themselves to see ; 
 
 Their place in yonder tideway know ; 
 
 The current glass peruse ; 
 
 The depths intently sound ; 
 
 And, sapped by each returning flood, 
 
 Accept for monitory punishment 
 
 Those worn, roped features under crust of mud, 
 
 Reflected in the silvery smooth around : 
 
 Not less the branching and high singing tree, 
 
 A home of nests, a landmark and a tent, 
 
 Until their hour of losing hold on ground.
 
 226 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 Over and above the beauty and exquisite appropriate- 
 ness of its imagery, there is a measured and lofty 
 eloquence in this passage, which might of itself enable 
 the reader to see something of a new light dawning 
 behind the supposed matter-of-factness of the world to 
 which Meredith would introduce him. For, after all, 
 there is no reason why poetry should suffer for recog- 
 nising facts ; the poet, if he will, may call his spade a 
 spade ; provided, that is, he has a plot of ground worth 
 digging in — and if he has not, it matters little what he 
 calls it. What sort of a life is it to which he makes his 
 facts contribute ? Can he so speak of the facts and the 
 life together as to make them poetically real ? That is 
 all we need to ask of him. 
 
 But to return to Youth in Memory. The problem 
 set by Earth to Age for its solution is the accurate 
 adjustment of desire to the continually decreasing 
 possibilities of fulfilling it. 
 
 Who cheerfully the little bird becomes, 
 Without a fall, and pipes for peck at crumbs, 
 May have her dolings to the lightest touch. 
 
 Nor is it common sense alone that requires this acqui- 
 escence : poetry, if age shall have its poetry, requires 
 it also. Those 
 
 cravings for an eagle's flight, 
 
 To top white peaks and serve wild wine 
 
 Among the rosy undecayed, 
 
 Bring only flash of shade 
 
 From her full throbbing breast of day in night. 
 
 By what they crave are they betrayed. 
 
 But the poetry of age, if it asks acquiescence in failing 
 powers, asks something more ; a merely negative atti- 
 tude is not enough. There must also be a positive 
 attitude to life and to the joy of life. Age, then, draws 
 its inspiration from the faculty it has of living anew by 
 sympathy in the life of the young. And to attain this
 
 THE POEMS— MAN 227 
 
 sympathy and make it serviceable, its first necessity is 
 to have accepted the whole of its experience, to have 
 looked without flinching at the lessons of its past — 
 
 To feel that heaven must we that hell sound through. 
 
 Rightly to understand the book of memory, we must 
 leave no page of it unread. Among the rest, there will 
 be pages that it will be an act almost of heroism not to 
 skip. Skip them, and the whole turns to a meaning- 
 less farrago of sentiment and self-indulgence. Read 
 them, accept whatever they have to record of error or 
 of disgrace, and memory becomes a living possession, 
 a principle of wisdom fitted to inspire and guide the 
 future, and in the present a true sifter of grain from 
 
 chaff. 
 
 Solidity and bulk and martial brass, 
 
 Once tyrants of the senses, faintly score 
 
 A mark on pebbled sand or fluid slime ; 
 
 But present in the spirit, vital there, 
 
 Are things that seemed the phantoms of their time — 
 
 Eternal as the recurrent cloud, as air 
 
 Imperative, refreshful as dawn dew. . . . 
 
 True of the man, and of mankind 'tis true. 
 
 Did we stout battle with the shade, Despair, 
 
 Our cowardice, it blooms ; or haply warred 
 
 Against the primal beast in us, and flung ; 
 
 Or cleaving mists of Sorrow, left it starred 
 
 Above self-pity slain ; or it was Prayer 
 
 First taken for Life's cleanser ; or the tongue 
 
 Spake for the world against this heart ; or rings 
 
 Old laughter, from the founts of wisdom sprung; 
 
 Or clap of wing of joy, that was a throb 
 
 From breast of Earth, and did no creature rob ; 
 
 These quickening live. But deepest at her springs^ 
 
 Most filial, is an eye to love her young. 
 
 And this is the final test. For only that Age is truly 
 sane and sweet which, loving life and Earth the source 
 of life, recognises that there is a time approaching when, 
 without regret, the torch must be passed on to other 
 bearers. As the Earth-given life nears its conclusion,
 
 228 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 the temptation will increase to regard death as the 
 threshold of a life to be renewed elsewhere. Meredith 
 thinks that experience gives no warrant for such a 
 belief. The last word for Age, as in a different sense 
 for Youth also, is self-effacement ; and the life that has 
 been lived truly will not pass utterly away ; it will 
 remain as an inspiring memory to those that come after 
 it. And this is a true immortality ; for to live in Love's 
 memory is to live indeed. 
 
 With us for guides, 
 Another step above the animal, 
 To views in Alpine thought are they helped on. 
 Good if so far we live in them when gone ! 
 
 The Ode to Youth in Memory is thus a singularly 
 characteristic product of Meredith's poetic genius. 
 Poetry, he everywhere says, is not dreams and vague 
 desires ; poetry is truth ; it is desire accepting necessity, 
 and by acceptance transforming it. And he says here, 
 it is not merely life at overflow that makes poetry ; 
 age has it still ; poetry may be the final word of life 
 as it departs. It is his achievement in the Ode to 
 Youth in Memory to have shown how this may be. 
 He looks calmly upon Death and along the road to 
 Death, and shows that to the last step flowers still 
 spring on either side. 
 
 Life fails, then : Age is Age : but for Age, as for 
 Youth also, there is still one gospel only — the gospel 
 that facts are facts. Wishing cannot change them. 
 Life would be but a poor cloud castle if it could. Yet, 
 if the world we live in be indeed bounded 
 
 by the high 
 Uno'erleapcd mountains of necessity, 
 
 the rule to which we are subject is no iron despot's 
 rule. It is true that, if we attempt to throw our wills 
 against it, the force of our rebellion recoils upon our
 
 THE POEMS— MAN 229 
 
 head, and we are ground down. But, if we will, we may 
 devote our minds to understanding it ; we have the 
 power to make of ourselves instruments working con- 
 sciously in its service. It is those who recognise this 
 power and use it, who hold the secret of all human pro- 
 gress ; they are the guardians of the future, the only 
 true prophets of what the future holds in store. Theirs 
 is the true vision, be they young or old ; the vision for 
 which life attains to truth as it attains to poetry, poetry 
 being the final expression of man's joy in the harmoni- 
 ous laws of life.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE POEMS. MEREDITH AS ARTIST AND 
 CRAFTSMAN 
 
 IT is generally accounted bad criticism to treat a 
 poet's subject-matter as separable from his manner 
 of presenting it. Such a treatment, however, provided 
 it makes no claim to be taken for criticism of the com- 
 pleted work, is perfectly justifiable : nor could any right 
 estimate of the work of the greatest poets be obtained, 
 unless it were possible to consider the content of their 
 poetry in abstraction from its form. In poetry the 
 form and the content are indissolubly united ; but to 
 assert this unity is something quite different from 
 asserting that a poem is always to be looked at in both 
 aspects at once. Nothing, for example, could be 
 simpler than to abstract from such a poem as the 
 Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam the philosophic theory 
 of life which it expresses ; a part of the writer's aim 
 was to give expression to such a theory ; and it must be 
 a part of every reader's to understand it and estimate 
 its value. But the inadequacy of the theory, if it be 
 found inadequate, will only bear remotely on the ques- 
 tion (which is indeed no question) of the excellence of 
 the Rubaiyat as a work of art ; and this will call for 
 separate assessment. It is particularly necessary in 
 Meredith's case to abstract the matter of his poetry 
 from the form ; for the ideas of which the matter is 
 
 230
 
 THE POEMS— ARTIST cV CRAFTSMAN 231 
 
 constituted, though the world is fast growing familiar 
 with thern, are still, on the whole, strange. Now, a poet 
 who is also an original thinker is an uncommon pheno- 
 menon. A poet is generally content to reflect the 
 thoughts of others ; the very fact that others share his 
 thought gives life and enthusiasm to his apprehension 
 of it, and enables the thought to flow from him in a 
 form in which its life is naturally preserved. And thus 
 it comes about that, in approaching poetry, we custom- 
 arily pay more attention to the form than to the ideas, 
 as though hardly expecting the ideas to be other than 
 we could have ourselves supplied. Meredith, however, 
 twenty, thirty, and forty years ago, sought to give 
 poetical expression to ideas which are only now dawn- 
 ing upon the general consciousness, and which will 
 only be common property twenty, thirty, forty years to 
 come. And therefore the task of the aesthetic critic, 
 the task of determining how far he has succeeded in 
 finding a living expression for those ideas, is only to be 
 undertaken upon a basis of familiarity with those ideas 
 themselves and a complete understanding of them. 
 Just because in true poetry form and content are indis- 
 solubly united, it is impossible, while we remain in 
 ignorance of the exact nature and bearing of the con- 
 tent, to pass any final judgment upon the form or to 
 decide whether the required unity has been achieved. 
 Thus it has been no inversion of the true order of 
 things to begin by asking attention to the ideas ex- 
 pressed by Meredith in his poetry, and only now pro- 
 ceed to consider what is the intrinsic merit of the poems 
 themselves. For, rightly understood, this second and 
 final consideration implies the first. 
 
 But here, at the very outset of our last endeavour, we 
 are called upon to deal with a formidable difficulty, to 
 face the question whether our author is entitled to take
 
 232 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 rank as a poet at all. " Is he accepted of Song ? " The 
 question has been asked so frequently that the attempt 
 to blink it would be an affectation. But there is a class 
 of questions to which — provided you make it clear to 
 those who put them that they have reached you — 
 silence is the best reply. Thus, in regard to the formid- 
 able question just referred to, we may point out that 
 these chapters presuppose it answered, and answered 
 not in word but in deed. Meredith has won his place 
 among the great poets of our literature ; and we may 
 content ourselves here with the remark that his writing 
 was, from the first, seen to possess certain characteristics 
 which mark the poet born. When first he introduced 
 himself to the world with a small volume of verses, his 
 work was at once pronounced by eminent critics to be 
 simple, sensuous, and passionate : they turned to 
 Herrick, Keats, and Tennyson for a parallel to it. 
 Meredith and Tennyson ! but, above all, Meredith and 
 Keats ! The very idea, the mere memory of such a 
 comparison, takes the breath away. But in 185 1 
 Mr. W. M. Rossetti thought well to devote several 
 paragraphs to the exposition of differences between 
 them. The fact is significant, and there is this inference 
 to be drawn from it — that Meredith's maturer manner 
 presupposes the existence in its author of powers which, 
 because he has not wished them to be conspicuous, he 
 has been supposed not to possess. 
 
 Reverting now to these early lyrics, and comparing 
 them with better-known examples of Meredith's mature 
 work, we should be tempted to say that there was less 
 of poetry in the work than in the man. His first themes 
 were of a comparatively trifling nature, and he failed, as 
 Charles Kingsley pointed out, to give them the necessary 
 perfection of form. " If the hounds are running hard, 
 it is no shame to any man to smash a gate instead
 
 THE POEMS— ARTIST & CRAFTSMAN 233 
 
 of clearing it ; forward he must get, by fair means if 
 possible, if not, by foul. But if, like the idyllist, any 
 gentleman " larks " his horse over supererogatory leaps 
 at the cover-side, he is not allowed to knock all four 
 hoofs against the top-bar." There are not a few of 
 Meredith's later pieces, before which the suspicion is 
 aroused, in the minds of even his most enthusiastic 
 admirers, that it was, from the artistic point of view, a 
 work of supererogation on his part to write them. There 
 is The Empty Purse — the supererogatory nature of 
 which he has himself affirmed — and one or two other 
 moral pieces and disturbing moral passages are to be 
 placed in the same class with it ; on the other hand, and 
 more to our immediate purpose, there is Phaethon, 
 written in the Galliambic measure, and presented to the 
 public as " one of those exercises of the writer, which 
 readers may be invited to share," in face of which 
 admission it becomes pertinent to ask how many of the 
 poems are to be classed among such exercises ; or there 
 is Phoebus with Admetus, not admittedly a metrical 
 exercise, and yet, for all its charm, infected with a trace 
 of the artificiality of practised craftsmanship or, shall we 
 say ? of the craftsman practising. The finished product 
 has a hundred beauties, a rare naivete of idea most 
 delicately dovetailed into harmony with the strange lilt 
 of the verse, but the delight it gives us is not quite of 
 that kind we look for in a poem. Here is a stanza, 
 describing how Apollo's presence brings prosperity to 
 the farm : — 
 
 Many swarms of wild bees descended on our fields : 
 
 Stately stood the wheat-stalk with head bent high : 
 Big of heart we laboured at storing mighty yields, 
 
 Wool and corn, and clusters to make men cry ! 
 Hand-like rushed the vintage ; we strung the bellied skins 
 
 Plump, and at the sealing the Youth's voice rose : 
 Maidens clung in circle, on little fists their chins ; 
 
 Gentle beasties through pushed a cold long nose.
 
 234 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 We are to suppose a ploughman speaking : and if for 
 a ploughman he is over-accomplished and his sympathies 
 too wide, as a poet he is perhaps too playful in his 
 attitude to the theme ; not that we could forego the 
 playfulness, but that the poetic illusion somehow is im- 
 paired. And then there is the refrain : 
 
 God ! of whom music 
 And song and blood are pure, 
 The day is never darkened 
 That had thee here obscure. 
 
 The mingled simplicity and uncouthness of this, and the 
 studied metrical contrast offered in it to the unusual 
 metre of the preceding verse, suggest that our horseman 
 is " larking " at a very high gate indeed, and, although 
 there is no doubt he clears it, we think we catch the 
 rattle of his hoofs as he goes over. 
 
 This element of conscious craftsmanship or experi- 
 mentation, recognisable in Meredith's poetical work 
 from the beginning, needs to be noticed, because it is 
 undoubtedly a weak spot in his poetic armour. No 
 recognition of his greatness as a poet can be un- 
 assailable unless based on frankest admission of his 
 defects. And his principal defect — if we have divined 
 it rightly — is a very grave defect indeed, nothing less 
 than the absence of instinctive security in the matter of 
 form. The hexameters, published in 1851, are indeed 
 worse as hexameters than the Fragments of the Iliad in 
 translation published fifty years later ; but the true spirit 
 of the verse appears in neither. Again, the Cageing of 
 Ares, except for the early Shipwreck of Idomcneus, 
 the only piece of blank verse Meredith has produced, 
 must be described simply as a failure so far as the 
 handling of the rhythm is concerned. Meredith is a 
 master in literature; but in the Cageing of Ares you 
 may find a passage twenty-three lines in length where
 
 THE POEMS— ARTIST & CRAFTSMAN 235 
 
 in twenty-two cases there is a pause at the end of the 
 line ; and this is not the writing of a master. The 
 insecurity to which these errors point is to be traced in 
 some, even, of the pieces in which the greatness of 
 poetic achievement is least disputable. The Meditation 
 under Stars rises in the fourth stanza to a splendour 
 and measured weight of diction for which we should 
 need to look to Milton for a parallel ; but it opens quite 
 unconvincingly, with hardly more effect, so far as the 
 form is concerned, than a well-written exercise. 
 
 What links are ours with orbs that are 
 So resolutely far ? 
 
 It is a weak first line, an unhappy note to strike in 
 prelude to a theme both itself so sublime and to be so 
 sublimely handled. And the fact that there is an inten- 
 tion in its weakness, — that it is used consciously to 
 suggest the hesitancy which might have prompted the 
 question, — this does not strengthen it. In recognising 
 the artifice, we recognise the intrusion of a piece of in- 
 congruous realism. The only effect, artistically con- 
 sidered, of this succession of jerky monosyllables is, 
 as it were, to set the mind on stilts (not a right attitude 
 for any kind of profitable star-gazing), and all through 
 the first stanza, despite the harmonious beauty of the 
 greater number of the verses composing it, the memory 
 of this stilted motion is never quite obliterated ; the 
 irregularity of the rhyme, a slight faultiness perhaps 
 of language, perhaps of association, in one or two 
 expressions, suffice to prolong the opening sense of dis- 
 comfort. And then a second check is given in the 
 changed construction of the second stanza. 
 
 These visible immortals beam 
 Allurement to the dream : 
 Ireful at human hungers brook 
 No question in the look.
 
 236 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 The change is intelligible enough. We are to throw 
 down our stilts ; the sentimentalist is warned, with 
 terse severity, to stifle fantastic aspirations. But, again, 
 there is something mechanical in the execution of the 
 idea ; the form is over-elaborate ; the changes are' not 
 felt instinctively ; they seem, if anything, to be offered 
 as a substitute, in this introductory section of the Ode, 
 for a pure poetic conception ; with the result that they 
 are poetically unconvincing, and our relief is indescrib- 
 able when the poet at last sails away into the larger 
 atmosphere where trivialities are forgotten, and in which, 
 retaining all the asperities and obscurities of his style, 
 he uses them as instruments subservient to a grand 
 symphonic harmony. 
 
 The spirit leaps alight, 
 
 Doubts not in them is he, 
 The binder of his sheaves, the same, the right : 
 Of magnitude to magnitude is wrought, 
 To feel it large of the great life they hold : 
 In them to come, or vaster intervolved, 
 The issues known in us, our unsolved solved : 
 That there with toil Life climbs the self-same Tree, 
 Whose roots enrichment have from ripeness dropped. 
 So may we read and little find them cold : 
 Let it but be the lord of Mind to guide 
 Our eyes ; no branch of Reason's growing lopped ; 
 Nor dreaming on a dream ; but fortified 
 By day to penetrate black midnight ; see, 
 Hear, feel, outside the senses ; even that we, 
 The specks of dust upon a mound of mould, 
 We who reflect those rays, though low our place, 
 
 To them are lastingly allied. 
 
 You may not know what this means when you read it 
 for the first time ; but you cannot read it without know- 
 ing at once that it is poetry, and poetry of the most 
 exalted kind. 
 
 Among Meredith's lighter efforts none enjoys greater 
 popularity than Love in the Valley. This is un- 
 fortunate : not that the poem does not deserve to be
 
 THE POEMS— ARTIST & CRAFTSMAN 237 
 
 popular, but that its merits are not, on the whole, those 
 that are most characteristic, most essential in its author, 
 while yet it so far exemplifies certain characteristic 
 defects as to create or make way for a prejudice in the 
 minds of readers who turn to it as an introduction 
 to Meredith's poetical work. For even Love in the 
 Valley, with all its exquisite melodiousness, is some- 
 what over-studied, somewhat precious, somewhat un- 
 real. Just because you have, not merely a flowing, but 
 a rippling, rhythm, with every ripple differently shaped 
 and every least difference calculated for its effect, it 
 becomes almost an annoyance to find here and there 
 a verse that violates the very laws on recognition of 
 which the whole significance of the melody depends. 
 Rightly to scan the lines you must understand that, in 
 addition to the ordinary long and short accented or un- 
 accented syllables, you have to deal with a further long 
 accented syllable equivalent in value to the normal long 
 and short combined ; that is, the measure being trochaic, 
 you are liable at any point in the line to have the 
 trochee replaced by a single long accented syllable. 
 Very piquant and unusual, very beautiful also are the 
 effects that Meredith obtains by this expedient. In 
 
 Large and smoky red the Sun's c61d disk drops 
 
 he uses four in succession, onomatopceically. In 
 
 Up lanes, woods thr6ugh, they troop in joyful bands, 
 
 he does the same, even more boldly, at the beginning 
 of the line. In 
 
 Streaming like the flag-rded South Wdst bl6wn 
 
 we have five, leading us in a triumphal progress to the 
 conclusion. And the success, the true metrical effect, 
 of these lines depends upon the fact that the accent im- 
 poses itself; the reader is asked to be more than usually
 
 238 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 attentive to degrees of stress, but, granted this attentive - 
 ness on his part, the writing is such that there can 
 be no question what the stresses are or where they fall. 
 But to arouse sensitive attention of this kind is to 
 incur a responsibility; you must respect what you'have 
 aroused. Thus, in the couplet, 
 
 No, she is athirst and drinking up her wonder, 
 Earth to her is young as the slip of the new moon, 
 
 the second line, with its inversion of accents in the last 
 four words, instead of an unnoticeable laxity becomes a 
 serious stumbling-block ; and in 
 
 Cows flap a slow tail knee-deep in the river, 
 
 since the sense telling me that slow tail are long accents 
 tells me that knee-deep are the same, the poet who 
 relied upon it in the first case has no right to violate 
 it in the second. To write in such a metre is itself a 
 tour de force; the subtler, the more delicate the grada- 
 tions you employ for your effect, the more critical the 
 spirit of poesy becomes, till, in the end, the least flaw 
 seems an unpardonable crime, as revealing the artifice 
 of the whole. 
 
 It would seem a mere perversity of criticism to 
 suggest that Meredith, who has written some of the 
 most delightful rhythmical studies in the language (even 
 Phaethon, of which we spoke above disrespectfully, is a 
 magnificent tour de force), spoils the quality of his work 
 by metrical deficiencies : nor is it intended to deny that 
 here and there he writes melody as spontaneous as it is 
 beautiful. What we would suggest is that, in the mass 
 of his work, he is either conscious of rhythm and in 
 danger of artificiality, or forgetful of it and in danger 
 of roughness. It would seem to be to the latter fault 
 that two of his noblest efforts — A Faith on Trial and
 
 THE POEMS— ARTIST c> CRAFTSMAN 239 
 
 The Day of the Daughter of Hades — owe a certain 
 loss of bloom. The latter opens, indeed, with a melody 
 as perfect and unreflective as the song of any bird ; it is 
 like a blackbird carolling ; but the promise of calm 
 water, of smooth, flowing narrative, with which the 
 lovely first stanza tempts us on, is unfulfilled. 
 
 He who has looked upon Earth 
 Deeper than flower and fruit, 
 Losing some hue of his mirth, 
 As the tree striking rock at the root 
 Unto him shall the marvellous tale 
 Of Callistes more humanly come 
 With the touch on his breast than a hail 
 From the markets that hum. 
 
 You might imagine the most beautiful poem in any 
 language beginning so. But the note is imperfectly 
 maintained ; only here and there in the course of the 
 poem do we regain this mingled depth and radiance 
 of tone ; the rhythm keeps us for the most part riding 
 uneasily, and the roughness in the swing of it impairs 
 our appreciation of the accuracies of detail by which 
 this roughness is produced. 
 
 The best part of Meredith's poetic achievement seems 
 to be included in those works in which the form chosen 
 is at once simple and restrictive, or in which discursive- 
 ness or irregularity of form is balanced by a restrictive 
 influence from the subject-matter and the deep serious- 
 ness with which he approaches it. Thus, of the two 
 poems just referred to The Day of the Daughter 
 of Hades and A Faith on Trial — we may suggest 
 that A Faith on Trial loses in significance, artistically, 
 as a result of its irregularity, or want of principle, in 
 the scheme of the rhyme ; not that there is virtue 
 inherent in any scheme for its own sake, not that 
 it matters whether the lines rhyme in alternation or 
 in pairs ; but that the haphazard system employed in
 
 240 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 A Faith on Trial emphasises whatever complexity 
 there is in its structure, whatever want of clearness in 
 the presentment of the thought. And perhaps it is not 
 a mere coincidence that the most beautiful passage in 
 the poem is also the most regular and the simplest : — 
 
 I bowed as a leaf in rain ; 
 
 As a tree when the leaf is shed 
 
 To winds in the season at wane : 
 
 And when from my soul I said, 
 
 May the worm be trampled : smite, 
 
 Sacred Reality ! power 
 
 Filled me to front it aright. 
 
 I had come of my faith's ordeal. 
 
 Again, of all Meredith's really conspicuous efforts, 
 perhaps the least successful, from the point of view 
 from which we are now regarding him, are the Odes in 
 Contribution to the Song of French History. That they 
 are full of brilliant writing, that they show a masterly 
 imaginative grasp of character and situation, need not 
 be said. And the earliest written, that called France, 
 December, i8jo, has a recognisably spontaneous flow of 
 feeling. The opening of the Ode Napoleon, which Mr. 
 Trevelyan quotes, is among the best things Meredith 
 has done. If Napoleon had been a poet, he might have 
 written it himself. But the Odes, as a whole, fail of 
 effect, not merely for lack of a clear framework whether 
 of rhyme or rhythm, but also because their theme, 
 though kindling all the author's enthusiasm, is of a 
 kind not in itself calculated to guide or govern the 
 energies it has aroused ; which in consequence surge 
 forth for the most part in somewhat barbarous fashion 
 and vent themselves, almost volcanically, like lava 
 streams. Or, again, to compare two of the finest of his 
 works, Modern Love is greater than The Sage Enamoured, 
 not because the conception is greater, but because the 
 method of presentment in isolated pictures, which
 
 THE POEMS— ARTIST & CRAFTSMAN 241 
 
 Meredith has chosen for it, elicits from him — demands 
 of him, one might almost say — the decisive outline, the 
 almost epigrammatic exactitude of phrase, in which he 
 is at his best. 
 
 How many a thing which we cast to the ground, 
 When others pick it up becomes a gem ! 
 We grasp at all the wealth it is to them ; 
 And by reflected light its worth is found. 
 
 It could not have been more simply, more perfectly said. 
 
 Mark where the pressing wind shoots javelin-like 
 Its skeleton shadow on the broad-backed wave ! 
 Here is a fitting spot to dig Love's grave ; 
 Here where the ponderous breakers plunge and strike 
 And dart their hissing tongues high up the sand. 
 
 It would be impossible to imagine a description truer to 
 the object, raising at the same time so admirably all the 
 menacing associations which the theme requires. The 
 repeated " k," what pitiless keenness it has in it, what 
 bitter concentration ! And there is hardly a word the 
 sense of which is not reduplicated in the sound, as if they 
 had every one been coined to fill their places. Passages 
 like this — Modern Love is full of them — show a mastery 
 which staggers praise. Here is another, and one of the 
 most beautiful the poem contains : — 
 
 My tears are on thee, that have rarely dropped 
 As balm for any bitter wound of mine : 
 My breast will open for thee at a sign ! 
 But, no : we are two reed-pipes, coarsely stopped : 
 The God once filled them with his mellow breath ; 
 And they were music till he flung them down, 
 Used ! used ! Hear now the discord-loving clown 
 Puff his gross spirit in them, worse than death. 
 
 It is certainly not the least merit of passages like these 
 that they seem to renew the vitality, to enhance the 
 dignity of the language in which they are written. 
 Meredith, it appears, is among those rare performers, 
 
 R
 
 242 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 under whose touch the instrument grows richer, nobler 
 than it was before. But we may note that the perfect 
 success of the imagery is partly due to its detachment. 
 In Modern Love, with each completed section the chain 
 of metaphor breaks, and there is a fresh start made ; 
 the writer is thus protected against one of his worst 
 temptations, — if such a phrase may be permitted, — 
 the over-elaboration of cross-reference in the use of 
 metaphor, and the reader (though he may not always 
 follow the story) artistically at least knows his bearings, 
 and does not lose the force of a passage in preliminary 
 attempts to discover where he is. Now it is exactly 
 here that The Sage Enamoured suffers, from the absence, 
 that is, of these regular recurrent breaks in its 
 metaphorical system. There is equal, in fact there is 
 greater, depth of thought ; there is the same fecundity 
 and felicity of image and of phrase ; but, the narrative 
 being continuous, much of the writing seems to miss 
 fire, because it has not been confided to the reader 
 what object is being aimed at. To be understood, it 
 must be read twenty times at least. From the first 
 you come upon single lines and isolated passages, 
 sufficient in themselves to compel attention to the whole 
 in which they occur : — 
 
 Slave is the open mouth beneath the closed. 
 
 He gave her of the deep well she had sprung. 
 
 But at first the impression they give is of floating spars 
 in rough water, relics of a good ship foundered. 
 
 Are they parted, then expect 
 Some one sailing will be wrecked ! 
 
 Parted they are, and the wreck no longer in the future. 
 At least that is the inference. It is a mistake, however. 
 No shipwreck has occurred. The fact is, that there is a 
 problem to solve; and the reward for solving it is the
 
 THE POEMS— ARTIST c> CRAFTSMAN 243 
 
 delight which springs — not, as some allege, from self- 
 congratulation and relief that solved it is — but from 
 what perhaps seems the discovery, and is, at least, the 
 recognition, of a noble, if a faulty, poem. And the 
 faultiness would seem to consist in this, that the subject 
 being of similar nature and equal complexity with that 
 treated in Modern Love, the style is not rightly ac- 
 commodated to the different method chosen for its 
 presentment. Here and there an aspect of the situa- 
 tion is caught and pictured with marvellous vividness 
 and force : but the effect of the whole is blurred for 
 want of that clear articulation of the parts, which 
 the method of continuous narration imperatively 
 demands. 
 
 She turned to him, and, "This you seek is gone ; 
 
 Look in," she said, as pants the furnace, brief, 
 
 Frost-white. She gave his hearing sight to view 
 
 The silent chamber of a brown curled leaf : 
 
 Thing that had throbbed ere shot black lightning through. 
 
 No further sign of heart could he discern : 
 
 The picture of her speech was winter sky ; 
 
 A headless figure folding a cleft urn, 
 
 Where tears once at the overflow were dry. 
 
 There is nothing finer in Modern Love itself: it is a 
 passage which "gives hearing sight" indeed! Every 
 metaphor illuminates, and the swift transition from one 
 to another image is effected with perfect clearness. 
 This swiftness of transition in the use of metaphor is a 
 characteristic of Meredith's style to which all his critics 
 pay their tribute. The keenness of vision and exuber- 
 ance of intellectual power which make it possible are 
 certainly essential parts of his literary genius. But in 
 his finished work — particularly in his poems — the effect 
 he produces by it must often be considered faulty from 
 the artistic point of view. For the artistic value of a 
 metaphor surely depends upon the clearness with which
 
 244 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 the image is related to the theme. A quotation will 
 
 explain the point : — 
 
 Young captain of a crazy bark ! 
 Oh, tameless heart in battered frame ! 
 Thy sailing orders have a mark, 
 And hers is not the name. 1 
 
 The word " bark " is commonly used in verse as a mere 
 synonym for a boat or ship : but when we see it used 
 as Meredith here uses it, we cannot fail to recollect that 
 bark is a substance of which some boats are made, and 
 we instinctively combine the two meanings of the word, 
 or rather the two words, in one ; adding to our idea of 
 ship those qualities of fragility and unseaworthiness in 
 bark which are consequent upon its being, what after 
 all a ship is, a hollow and somewhat brittle shell. In 
 fact, the word draws from its context all the charm and 
 stimulus of a metaphor, and is itself a metaphor in 
 epitome. But there is a further point. It is useless to 
 call a man's heart a ship, unless side by side with the 
 image the root idea instinctively presents itself, concen- 
 trating attention upon certain characteristics of the 
 emotional life to which navigation really presents a 
 parallel. And the word bark is so placed and so used 
 in this stanza as to summon up all these analogies with 
 perfect clearness. Once the image is thus in perfectly 
 clear relation to the theme, it is a matter of taste 
 and convenience merely, how long the use of any par- 
 ticular image is maintained ; the metaphor of the 
 " bark," just quoted, dominates the entire poem it 
 occurs in ; but the images may succeed to one another 
 like lightning flashes, provided their common relation 
 to the central theme is clear. Now Meredith habitually 
 writes in lightning flashes : but it is his tendency to 
 omit all reference to that central theme, which in their 
 combination the flashes are intended to illumine. This 
 
 1 I he Last Contention.
 
 THE POEMS— ARTIST <V CRAFTSMAN 245 
 
 is apt in his hands to become, as it were, the x> the 
 unknown quantity, presupposed in every metaphor, and 
 only discoverable from the sequent images by a process 
 of deduction. The result is a kind of obscurity which 
 seems to violate recognisable principles of artistic 
 workmanship, and much of the writing in The Sage 
 Enamoured is open to severe criticism in this regard. 
 
 No longer colouring, with skips 
 At tangles, picture that for eyes in tears 
 Might swim the sequence, she addressed her lips 
 To do the scaffold's office at his ears. 
 
 In view of such a passage as this — admirably pointed 
 as it is when you have grasped the hang of it — it can 
 be no matter for surprise that simple persons consider 
 Meredith's mastery confined to phantasmagoria, and 
 discover in his style, not the revelation springing from 
 poetic insight, but a shifting kaleidoscopic shiftlessness. 
 It was suggested earlier that Meredith's highest 
 achievement as a poet was to be looked for, either in 
 pieces conceived in a form both simple and restrictive, 
 or else in pieces in which, whatever their form, the 
 tendency to discursiveness or freaks of intellect, on the 
 one side, and to experimental craftsmanship on the 
 other, was controlled by a high seriousness in his attitude 
 to their subject-matter. Among these many of the 
 Sonnets and the bulk of the great Odes x are to be 
 included, with the Hymn to Colour at their head. 
 Some of Meredith's least poetic traits appear in them : 
 they are didactic : they are obscure. But side by side 
 with Modern Love and the best of the novels — and 
 so far as any part of Meredith's achievement can be 
 
 1 The Ode to the Spirit of Earth in Autumn must be excepted. Of 
 extreme interest as a forecast of Meredith's later achievement, as his first 
 serious attempt to utter the note by which he will be known to posterity, 
 containing also in the opening paragraphs much splendid imagery, the 
 Ode, for all its power and passion, seems to fail of the sustained dignity 
 and exaltation necessary to an artistic presentment of the theme.
 
 246 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 separated from what is after all his greatest achieve- 
 ment, the mass, the cumulative effect of his work as a 
 whole — they represent the climax of his power ; it is in 
 these that he is most himself; they contain at once the 
 most perfect and the most characteristic of all 'his 
 utterances. At the great iron foundries one of the 
 sights offered to the amazement of the curious is the 
 steam-hammer — framed to flatten a ton of iron at a 
 blow — delicately cracking nuts. The task is performed 
 with perfect accuracy, but it leaves a sense of discomfort 
 behind it in the matter of adaptation of means to ends. 
 Much of Meredith's lighter poetry, accomplished as it 
 always, exquisite as it often is, produces a somewhat 
 similar effect. We may quote for example the daintiest, 
 and one of the loveliest also, of his pure lyrics — 
 
 O briar scents, on yon wet wing 
 
 Of warm South-west wind brushing by, 
 
 What could be nearer to perfection than these two 
 opening lines ? Why! they have the very weight of the 
 sweetness in them, the lingering, reviving sweetness 
 carried, caught away, on that soft, moist breath of air. 
 We must hear them again : — 
 
 O briar scents, on yon wet wing 
 Of warm South-west wind brushing by, 
 You mind me of the sweetest thing 
 That ever mingled frank and shy : 
 When she and I, by love enticed, 
 Beneath the orchard-apples met, 
 In equal halves a ripe one sliced, 
 And smelt the juices ere we ate. 
 
 That apple of the briar-scent, 
 Among our lost in Britain now, 
 Was green of rind, and redolent 
 Of sweetness as a milking cow. 
 The briar gives it back, well-nigh 
 The damsel with her teeth on it ; 
 Her twinkle between frank and shy, 
 My thirst to bite where she had bit.
 
 THE POEMS— ARTIST &» CRAFTSMAN 247 
 
 In the third line the "mind" is faintly disconcerting, 
 and the charming effect of alliteration, linking the "mind" 
 to the " mingled," hardly makes it less so. Then the 
 phrase " beneath the orchard-apples " — perhaps because 
 of its over-compression — seems just to miss the lyrical 
 note, and prepares the mind for the second line of the 
 second stanza with its patent revelation of the giant 
 hammer nut-cracking. Spite of the delightful theme 
 and the delightful execution of it, the poem is a freak, 
 and to say that it was not intended to be more, even if 
 that were true, would still leave certain inconsistencies 
 of association in the language unexplained. A similar 
 criticism might be advanced against the majority of the 
 lyrics, strictly so called, perhaps even against Woodland 
 Peace, the most characteristic and profoundest of them 
 all. A touch of affectation appears in its simplicity and 
 even in its completeness. And if it were not that the 
 simplicity verges here and there upon obscurity, one 
 might say it was too perfect. 
 
 Sweet as Eden is the air, 
 
 And Eden-sweet the ray. 
 No paradise is lost for them 
 Who foot by branching root and stem, 
 And lightly with the woodland share 
 The change of night and day . . . 
 
 It is a lovely thing: but there is something a little 
 disquieting in the vision it gives us of the giant subdu- 
 ing his powers. Meredith touches the height of his 
 artistic greatness when his power is not subdued, but 
 taxed to the uttermost. It is not that his language be- 
 comes simplified under the strain ; — that is far from 
 being the case ; — it is that the peculiarities of construc- 
 tion, the bizarrete of occasional words and expressions, 
 the ruggedness of style, the very severity of the claim 
 he makes upon the intellectual apprehension of his 
 reader, have here a strictly artistic value as bearing
 
 248 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 recognisably upon the size and sublimity of the theme, 
 and as expressing the artist's fervour and enthusiasm 
 in presenting it. Here, for example, is a part of his in- 
 vocation of the Spirit of Comedy — 
 
 Thou, of the highest, the unwritten Law 
 We read upon that building's architrave 
 In the mind's firmament, by men upraised 
 With sweat of blood when they had quitted cave 
 For fellowship, and rearward looked amazed, 
 Where the prime motive gapes a lurid jaw — 
 Thou, soul of wakened heads, art armed to warn, 
 Restrain, lest we backslide on whence we sprang, 
 Scarce better than our dwarf beginning shoot, 
 Of every gathered pearl and blossom shorn ; 
 
 or here again, a passage still nobler, more majestic, as 
 concerned rather with the forward than the rearward 
 glance, and thus more central in the mind of the author 
 and dearer to his heart : the quotation is from The Test 
 of Manhood : — 
 
 This gift of penetration and embrace, 
 
 His prize from tidal battles lost or won, 
 
 Reveals the scheme to animate his race : 
 
 How that it is a warfare but begun ; 
 
 Unending ; with no Power to interpose ; 
 
 No prayer, save for strength to keep his ground, 
 
 Heard of the Highest ; never battle's close, 
 
 The victory complete and victor crowned : 
 
 Nor solace in defeat, save from that sense 
 
 Of strength well spent, which is the strength renewed. 
 
 In manhood must he find his competence ; 
 
 In his clear mind the spiritual food : 
 
 God being there while he his fight maintains ; 
 
 Throughout his mind the Master Mind being there, 
 
 While he rejects the suicide despair ; 
 
 Accepts the spur of explicable pains ; 
 
 Obedient to Nature, not her slave : 
 
 Her lord, if to her rigid laws he bows ; 
 
 Her dust if with his conscience he plays knave, 
 
 And bids the Passions on the Pleasures browse. 
 
 It is no impeachment of the poetic quality of such a 
 passage as this to say that it is a sermon ; what is rele- 
 vant to observe is that the sermon is the life of the
 
 THE POEMS— ARTIST &> CRAFTSMAN 249 
 
 preacher, and that it is couched in language which has 
 the living qualities proclaiming it to be so. " For there 
 might be a poetry," says Jowett, " which would be the 
 hymn of divine perfection, the harmony of goodness 
 and truth among men : a strain . . . which should bring 
 back the ages when the poet was man's only teacher 
 and best friend : . . . which might elicit the simple 
 principles, . . . the essential forms, of truth and justice 
 out of the variety of opinion and the complexity of 
 modern ..cciety, . . . which should be based not on vain 
 longings or faint imaginings, but on a clear insight into 
 the nature of man." 1 This is the poetry which Mere- 
 dith has made it his central aim to write, this the 
 theme which evokes from him the poetic passion in its 
 purest form. It is in those poems in which he is dealing 
 directly with the nature and destiny of man — and with 
 these we must include some others, such as Hard 
 Weather, The Thrush in February, The Lark Ascend- 
 ing, and, most notable of all, the Hymn to Colour, 
 in which he sees the life of man reflected in the 
 life of nature — in short, it is in those poems whose 
 theme is at once the widest and profoundest which can 
 present itself to human intelligence, that Meredith 
 rises to his full poetic stature ; and he rises to it, both 
 because they require it of him, and because, his stature 
 being what it is, there is no lesser theme to which he can 
 surrender himself whole-heartedly. 
 
 No doubt it is the absence of complete whole- 
 heartedness which gives the bulk of his poetical work 
 its experimental flavour. There are very few of his 
 pieces which do not contain as much poetic insight, as 
 much fidelity, and often as much beauty, of phrase as 
 any poet of the nineteenth century could have given 
 them. But they lack inevitableness : he made them 
 
 1 Introduction to Ptato's Republic.
 
 250 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 more because he chose to make them than because he 
 must. Their tone, their atmosphere, their controlling 
 medium, is determined from without, not from within. 
 And this kind of external determination never faijs to 
 betray itself; for the true poetic atmosphere is imitable 
 by no artifice, and there is nothing capable of produc- 
 ing it but the emotional stimulus from which it flows 
 spontaneously. Goethe's lighter poetry has been sub- 
 jected to a somewhat similar criticism. But the fault 
 of Goethe's lyrics, if indeed they have a fault, was 
 that his natural instinct for form — that instinct in which 
 we believe Meredith to be deficient — ran away with 
 him, and allowed him to make light of his matter. This 
 Meredith never does : he never lightly indulges or 
 trifles with his emotion, and if his lyrics are unconvinc- 
 ing it is not because they are not genuinely felt, but 
 because incongruous elements are thrust into them from 
 a weight of intellect behind, for which the feeling, per- 
 fectly genuine as it is, can provide no adequate vehicle. 
 But Meredith's magnificent intellectual equipment, 
 though it baffles the artist in him except in face of the 
 few subjects on which his whole nature is engaged, 
 enables him nevertheless to combine observation and 
 allegory — as notably in the Woods of Westermain — 
 with a mastery of artifice which, if not art according 
 to our central understanding of the term, must yet, in a 
 subsidiary sense, be acknowledged to be both art and 
 art of an extremely delightful kind : and the same 
 intellectual power, though frequently injuring the 
 poetic quality of his compositions, puts his verses — 
 considered not only with a view to literary ingenuity, 
 but with a view also to a hundred other traces of a 
 master hand displayed in them — among the most 
 fascinating that have ever been produced. It would be 
 a pleasure to examine in detail one of the most perfect
 
 THE POEMS— ARTIST & CRAFTSMAM 251 
 
 of these lesser pieces, and I would suggest turning for 
 this purpose to The Orchard and the Heath, both 
 because it is — resembling in this, alas ! the whole of 
 Meredith's poetry — less known than it deserves to be, 
 and also because, without being in the least abstruse, it 
 shows the author's versatility, the many-sidedness of 
 his genius, in a remarkable degree. It is a description 
 of two parties of children, one rich, one poor, whom 
 the poet passes in the course of a day's walk in the 
 country, seen, both of them, in the light of a spiritual 
 brotherhood typified in the blue sky, their common 
 canopy. The first, among the apple trees, are those to 
 whom life is kind — 
 
 I could have watched them till the daylight fled, 
 Their pretty bower made such a light of day. 
 
 A small one tumbling sang, " Oh ! head ! " 
 
 The rest to comfort her straightway 
 Seized on a branch and thumped down apples red. 
 
 There is a charm in this that positively exhilarates. 
 The beauty, the sympathy, of the first two lines, the 
 same sympathy expressed in shorthand and with just 
 the suggestion of a twinkle from the Comic or some 
 kindred Spirit in the third, the realism of the last, with 
 its heavy fall of apples to the ground, it is all admirable; 
 and yet one may question whether a poet has the right 
 to change his mood so rapidly, to crowd so much into 
 so small a space. Right or wrong, no one but Meredith 
 could have done it, and its delightfulness when done is 
 past dispute. 
 
 My footpath left the pleasant farms and lanes, 
 
 Soft cottage smoke, straight cocks a-crow, gay flowers ; 
 
 Beyond the wheel-ruts of the wains 
 
 Across a heath I walked for hours, 
 And met its rival tenants, rays and rains. 
 
 The masterful felicity of all this is revealed in the last 
 three words of the stanza, where artifice plainly appears.
 
 252 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 You have the whole atmosphere of the village and the 
 environs of the village given you in two lines, — includ- 
 ing one phrase, "straight cocks a-crow," which is a com- 
 plete picture in itself, — by the end of the third ,line, 
 though you will hardly divine the cause of it, the open 
 heath is all about you. The gipsy encampment next 
 comes in view. 
 
 Here, too, were many children, quick to scan 
 
 A new thing coming ; swarthy cheeks, white teeth : 
 
 In many-coloured rags they ran, 
 
 Like iron runlets of the heath. 
 Dispersed lay broth-pot, sticks, and drinking-can. 
 
 The details are so chosen as to suggest whatever they 
 do not actually express : the scene is before you in its 
 entirety, the animal alertness, the human neglect, the 
 natural picturesqueness of it all. And now you are 
 to watch a race, with the Spirit of Comedy for referee — 
 
 Three girls . . . 
 (if the boys had raced, it would not have been half so 
 
 ' ' . . . with shoulders like a boat at sea 
 
 Tipped sideways by the wave (their clothing slid 
 
 P'rom either ridge unequally), 
 
 Lean, swift, and voluble, bestrid 
 A starting-point, unfrocked to the bent knee. 
 
 The next verse intimates why the boys were wiser; 
 
 there was a fire lighting, and a pot to boil. As their 
 
 observer leaves them, the whole party are awaiting the 
 
 supreme moment, circle-wise, they lying flat while their 
 
 dog sits upright in their midst. Going, he gives the 
 
 touch of exquisite suggestion by which these children 
 
 of the barren soil are united with those others at play 
 
 among the apples. 
 
 I turned and looked on heaven awhile, where now 
 The moor-faced sunset broadened with red light ; 
 
 Threw high aloft a go/den bough, 
 
 And seemed the desert of the night 
 Far down with mellow orchards to endow.
 
 THE POEMS— ARTIST c> CRAFTSMAN 253 
 
 Take it merely as a description, — the significance of the 
 one word " moor-faced," the beauty both in expression 
 and in idea of the whole verse, and particularly of its 
 central thought and phrase, — here are things which for 
 pure poetry it would be hard to match ; and for full 
 appreciation of the stanza you have still to consider its 
 wealth of allegorical suggestion, to which hardly a word 
 fails to contribute. And yet, for all its many beauties, 
 its sustained penetrativeness, its astounding concentra- 
 tion, the general effect of The Orchard and the Heath 
 is not of a poem, so much as of brilliant and highly poeti- 
 cal verse perpetually touching poetry. And perhaps 
 the cause of this is to be traced to what might be called 
 the negative attitude of the poet. Meredith's faithful- 
 ness to the object, his stern, unyielding self-effacement, 
 defeat their end — so far, that is, as poetry, pure and 
 simple, was their end. One after another the impres- 
 sions are caught, held, and presented in their essence ; 
 but fully to weld them together there was needed a 
 determining, a contributive element of personal emotion, 
 the feeling of the observer not checked, but overflowing ; 
 and this he will not give. No doubt, in Meredith's eyes, 
 the poetic unity of the piece — the root idea towards 
 which his emotion, checked in its apprehension of the 
 separate images, spontaneously directs itself — is found 
 in reference to the all-embracing spiritual unity of 
 Nature or Earth, and the charm of the theme is in the 
 linking two different manifestations of the single Spirit. 
 But then there is a point of view — and there is reason 
 for thinking that it is a view the poet shares — from 
 which we may say that the theme of all his poems is 
 the same ; and if we take the piece as a composition 
 complete in itself to be judged individually, we are 
 compelled to admit that this ultimate emotional unity 
 is presupposed rather than expressed in it. And after
 
 254 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 all it is by what it expresses, not by what it pre- 
 supposes, that a work of art has to be judged. Thus 
 of The Orchard and the Heath we may say with justice, 
 what may be said more or less justly of almost all 
 Meredith's compositions, that its true poetic quality 
 only appears when the whole of his poetical work is 
 made its background. Meredith's work lacks tone, 
 lacks atmosphere, because, while he seems to be asking 
 attention to a series of separate episodes, he is really 
 labouring all the time at one vast canvas, seeing every 
 detail in relation to a central subject, and relying upon 
 the same vision in his reader. 
 
 But let us indicate some other among those fascinat- 
 ing traits already alluded to as springing from Mere- 
 dith's intellectual supremacy and mastery of his craft. 
 Putting his pretensions as a poet on one side, viewing 
 him merely as a great literary executant, what wealth 
 and diversity of achievement do we not find in his 
 verse ! There is The Ballad of Fair Ladies in Revolt, as 
 pointed a discussion of the burning question of the hour 
 as any one would wish to see, the whole cloaked in a 
 delicate veil of irony and humour, an assumed serious- 
 ness in the form giving their full effect to both, a genuine 
 seriousness in the matter held always in reserve and 
 making itself indisputably felt at last — who but Meredith 
 could have reared so complicated a structure, or devised 
 so superb a combination of trickery and wisdom? 
 There is Jump~to-Glory Jane, in which the more fan- 
 tastic element runs riot (a certain spasmodic impulsive- 
 ness peculiar to some kinds of religious proselytism 
 represented emblematically). There is The Last Con- 
 tention, where wit winks under the mask of dignity, 
 the Comic Spirit inculcating temperance. There is 
 The Empty Purse, in which, having adopted the 
 criminal role of preacher, by confessing his crime the
 
 THE POEMS— ARTIST & CRAFTSMAN 255 
 
 author would fain escape the penalty of it, and dodges 
 condescension, half by his perpetual waggery, half by 
 fastening upon an object who, being himself admittedly 
 descended to the last rung of the ladder, puts the very 
 idea of condescension out of count. There is The 
 Nuptials of Attila, summarising in itself so nobly all 
 those rare powers of cut and thrust and thunderous 
 assault, the fighting qualities of Meredith's style, that 
 the weapons of critical theory go down before it and 
 it acclaims itself triumphantly for a true poem, unassail- 
 able. Then again, in lesser works, the same incisive 
 powers find sculpturesque employment, carving statues 
 of Bellerophon, Periander, or bracing, now a great 
 politician, now a general, to still more strenuous en- 
 deavour, whether in the cause of patriotism or the 
 wider cause of humanity and truth. Add to these the 
 many pieces where the same clean, crisp handling is 
 combined with a mood nearer to tenderness — as in 
 Earth and a Wedded Woman — or — as in The Ap- 
 peasement of Demeter — becomes servant to laughter; 
 consider the many sonnets in which it is used, some- 
 what as Milton used it, either to drive disregard of 
 misunderstanding contemptuously home, or to stigma- 
 tise with sharp satire some false or imperfect view of 
 life or way of living, contrasting it with the true ; and 
 finally — for it is time to approach the most difficult, 
 most presumptuous part of our task : having set out to 
 estimate Meredith's poetical achievement, we have yet 
 to sound that note of true appreciation, on which for 
 the time being criticism may worthily and fitly rest — 
 finally, then, recall to mind that in tracing this wide 
 diversity of accomplishment, we have confessed our- 
 selves mere wanderers upon the outskirts of the poet's 
 heart and mind. 
 
 Turning the preceding pages, the reader may reflect
 
 256 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 with astonishment how many are the disparaging words 
 which they contain ; and the reflection must bring not 
 only astonishment to the reader of them, but shame 
 upon their author, were it not for his consoling intuition 
 that there are some spirits whom it is at least less pre- 
 sumptuous to blame than to praise. In concluding, 
 let us quote a poem before which the detractor remains 
 
 mute : — 
 
 I 
 
 Last night returning from my twilight walk 
 
 I met the grey mist Death, whose eyeless brow 
 
 Was bent on me, and from his hand of chalk 
 
 He reached me flowers as from a withered bough : 
 
 O Death, what bitter nosegays givest thou ! 
 
 II 
 
 Death said, I gather, and pursued his way. 
 Another stood by me, a shape in stone, 
 Sword-hacked and iron-stained, with breasts of clay, 
 And metal veins that sometimes fiery shone: 
 O Life, how naked and how hard when known ! 
 
 Ill 
 
 Life said, As thou hast carved me, such am I. 
 Then memory, like the nightjar on the pine, 
 And sightless hope, a woodlark in night sky, 
 Joined notes of Death and Life till night's decline : 
 Of Death, of Life, those inwound notes are mine. 
 
 Here the atmosphere is flawless, and it is an atmosphere 
 with which Meredith has done little to familiarise us, 
 the atmosphere of personal regret : a regret measured, 
 grave, and, as Meredith always must be, watchful of truth : 
 but a regret which, just because of the truth it rests on, 
 extends from the past to the future, and puts both under 
 a common veil of sadness. The warrior has laid his 
 shield and sword aside, and, in an interval of that heroic 
 contest in which his mightier self stands revealed, for 
 once the lesser self speaks and speaks perfectly. In
 
 THE POEMS— ARTIST c> CRAFTSMAN 257 
 
 criticism of Meredith's first published verses, we sug- 
 gested that there was less of poetry in the work than in 
 the man. And perhaps we may best grasp the sum of 
 his achievement by reflecting that there is a sense in 
 which that has always been true. The greatness of his 
 achievement is inseparable from the greatness of his 
 aim. If his command of the poetry which looks to 
 words for its expression has seemed too conscious, too 
 mechanical, the reason is that his life has been devoted 
 to a great creative act, with which the spontaneous ex- 
 pression of passing emotion, even such expression as 
 that which he allows himself in the noble lines just 
 quoted, must often have been at variance. His aim 
 has been not merely to find a fair form for personal 
 impressions, but rather — fronting truth, and subduing 
 before it the misgiving, the reluctance, of the weaker 
 natural man — to create in himself, and, having created in 
 himself, to express and so hand on to others, that form 
 of emotional response to it, which, whether expressed in 
 thought or word or deed, contains and summarises the 
 ultimate artistic ideal, shows truth clothing itself in 
 beauty. And thus that conscious effort which appears 
 in his works seen separately is the result, as we have 
 said, of resolute self-obliteration before wider horizons, 
 and it is only by sympathetic understanding of this wide 
 range of view that any just estimate of Meredith's poetic 
 achievement can be attempted. His work, we believe, 
 is greatest when he is most directly dealing with Nature 
 and Man in the light of the Spirit which unites them ; 
 and the greatness of his work as a whole is in the 
 gathered, the cumulative weight of living conviction, 
 with which there rises from it the sense of this spiritual 
 unity and of all that it implies. We saw in an earlier 
 chapter that for those familiar with his thought there is 
 one symbol, the word Earth, in which this life and truth 
 s
 
 258 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 are summarised : to have found that symbol, to have 
 endowed it with the meaning, which — since Meredith 
 has written — it must carry as long as English lasts, this 
 is of itself an achievement in pure poetry which places 
 him among the greatest of the sons of men.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 DIANA OF THE CROSSWAYS 
 
 CHAPTERS I-XXVI of Diana of the Crossways 
 appeared in the Fortnightly Review for 1884. The 
 whole, consisting of forty-three chapters, was published, 
 and three editions of it exhausted, in the following 
 year. Diana Warwick's history is founded on that of 
 Caroline Norton, one of the three beautiful grand- 
 daughters of Sheridan, immensely admired in the 
 society of her day, and popular as poet and novelist. 
 Caroline Norton's marriage was unhappy, and her 
 husband brought a divorce suit against her in connec- 
 tion with Lord Melbourne, who was Prime Minister 
 at the time. This action was not successful. She 
 was later accused of having betrayed to The Times 
 a secret confided to her by Sidney Herbert, one of her 
 most ardent admirers, to the effect that Sir Robert 
 Peel had resolved on the repeal of the Corn Laws ; the 
 premature disclosure of this resolve led to a Cabinet 
 crisis. After Diana of the Crossways was published, 
 the charge was examined and proved to be false, and 
 Meredith has prefaced the 1890 and subsequent 
 editions of the book by the following note : " A lady 
 of distinction for wit and beauty, the daughter of an 
 illustrious Irish house, came under the shadow of a 
 calumny. It has lately been examined and exposed as 
 baseless. The story of Diana of the Crossways is to be 
 read as fiction." 
 
 259
 
 2 6o GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 Diana of the Crossways is the most popular of Mere- 
 dith's novels. Why it should stand first with the 
 student of Meredith's writings it is difficult to perceive. 
 The reason of its wider popularity may be discovered 
 more readily. First, there is its connection with the 
 well-known story just referred to ; secondly, it is, in 
 relation to the rest of the novels, conventional, and 
 clever rather than profound. When the story opens, 
 Diana is nineteen — beautiful, brilliant, and already 
 with a great reputation for wit inherited from her 
 Irish father. We see her first at a ball in Dublin, 
 where she and an old General, the hero of the evening, 
 form the centre of interest ; the General says of 
 her, " She makes everything in the room dust round 
 a blazing jewel." Here she meets her childhood's 
 friend, Lady Dunstane, who, with her husband, Sir 
 Lukin, has been in the General's suite in India. The 
 Dunstanes introduce a Mr. Redworth to Diana. He 
 falls straightway in love with her, but, being of a 
 practical mind, at once begins to calculate whether his 
 income would be sufficient to support this bird of 
 paradise, and decides in the negative. Diana goes on 
 a round of visits, and her beauty causes her to be pur- 
 sued by unwelcome attentions ; even at Copsley, when 
 she is visiting Emma Dunstane, the inflammable Sir 
 Lukin has to make acquaintance with the " sheaf of 
 arrows in her eyes." She leaves the house, and soon 
 after announces to Lady Dunstane her engagement to 
 a certain Mr. Warwick ; Emma suspects that she has 
 rushed into a loveless match. Mr. Redworth's railway 
 speculations are prospering, and at the moment of the 
 announcement he finds himself in a position to have 
 provided for her adequately. Mr. and Mrs. Warwick 
 arrive on a visit to Lady Dunstane at Copsley ; he is a 
 " gentlemanly official " without sense of humour, and
 
 DIANA OF THE CROSSWAYS 261 
 
 Diana's friend can in no way account for the marriage. 
 Presently there are rumours of dissension, and Diana's 
 name is coupled with that of the elderly Lord Dannis- 
 burgh, an eminent member of the Cabinet. The 
 friendship has been encouraged by Mr. Warwick for the 
 sake of its worldly advantages ; but he is jealous, and 
 Diana reckless and imprudent. He takes legal pro- 
 ceedings for a divorce, and Diana, longing to be free, 
 prepares to leave the country. Lady Dunstane, by her 
 emissary Mr. Redworth, intercepts her at the Cross- 
 ways, her Sussex home, and persuades her to face the 
 prosecution. The suit is dismissed ; the plaintiff has 
 not proved his charge. But there are signs that Mr. 
 Warwick is about to put the law in motion to reclaim 
 his wife. To avoid his advances Diana travels with some 
 friends. On the Nile she meets the Hon. Percy Dacier, 
 a nephew of Lord Dannisburgh and a rising politician ; 
 Mr. Redworth, who is now in Parliament, joins their 
 party for a time. At Rovio, later in the year, she and 
 Percy Dacier, in an early morning on the mountains, 
 come within sight of a passion new in the lives of both. 
 On her return to London Diana begins novel-writing. 
 Her first book runs through many editions ; on the 
 strength of it she sets up an extravagant establishment 
 and shines as a hostess ; her dinner parties, at which 
 Percy Dacier is a constant guest, are famous for wit 
 and wine. Lord Dannisburgh dies ; Diana, in fulfil- 
 ment of his wish, watches for a night beside his body, 
 and is joined during her vigil by Percy Dacier. The 
 name of the beautiful Mrs. Warwick is once more in 
 the gossips' mouths, and when the hero of Diana's 
 second novel, "The Young Minister of State," is recog- 
 nised as Mr. Dacier, tongues begin to wag about the 
 friendship between him and the authoress. She is dis- 
 appointed in the pecuniary results of the book (the
 
 2 6 2 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 success of the first was due mainly to Mr. Redworth's 
 advertisement of it); she is living far beyond her 
 income, and begins to speculate wildly in gold mines. 
 Mr. Warwick is said to be dying: to escape his de- 
 puted solicitations Diana goes to a little French water- 
 ing-place near Caen. She is followed by Percy Dacier, 
 who now openly declares his passion for her. She 
 checks him, and forces him to consider the scandal 
 his visit may occasion ; but his action has revealed 
 to her the true state of her own feelings. She 
 returns to London and sets to work on a third novel, 
 but her financial entanglements are bewildering : 
 perfect dinners are swamping her income. Dacier 
 comes to her constantly for counsel ; she becomes 
 his right hand in his work ; she believes that she 
 has her feelings under control. Dacier hears that 
 Mr. Warwick is actually taking legal proceedings to 
 secure the restoration of his wife. He comes to Diana, 
 and begs her to throw in her lot with his : he is sure 
 of her love. After a struggle she agrees to meet him 
 and start the following evening for France. Her 
 boxes are at the door when Mr. Redworth appears, and 
 tells her she must come with him at once to Lady 
 Dunstane, whose life hangs in the balance. Dacier 
 waits at the station, sure of Diana. Till within a few 
 minutes of the starting of the train his confidence does 
 not waver. The train starts, and he has been fooled. 
 On inquiry at Diana's house he learns the cause of her 
 absence. He follows her to Copsley, but no allusion 
 is made by either to the foiled project. When Emma 
 Dunstane recovers, Diana makes full confession of it 
 to her. After some time Diana returns to London 
 and attempts to take up her old literary life. She and 
 Dacier meet on their former terms of good-fellowship : 
 his admiration for her is greater than ever. Redworth
 
 DIANA OF THE CROSSWAYS 263 
 
 watches their friendship clear-eyed : he thinks well of 
 Dacier. After one of Diana's most brilliant evenings 
 Percy Dacier returns to her late and alone. He has 
 ostensibly come to confide to her a great political 
 secret which will not be published for a month. Diana 
 is excited by the news : Dacier seizes his moment and 
 embraces her. She keenly resents the liberty he has 
 taken and upbraids him. He attempts to win her 
 consent to a date for their union ; he leaves her smart- 
 ing with a sense of dignity lost. Mr. Tonans, a famous 
 newspaper editor, has sometimes taunted her with over- 
 estimating her knowledge of political intrigue. She is 
 in urgent need of money. She sells her secret to 
 Tonans. Dacier has gone home in a whirl of rap- 
 turous feeling. He wakes in the morning to read his 
 chief's confidence in the daily paper ; and he has been 
 trusted, and no other. They must have been over- 
 heard. In bewilderment he goes to Diana. She has 
 sold the secret without being aware that it was of any 
 value ! Dacier leaves her, and shuts the door on his 
 connection with Diana. " To her it was the plucking 
 of life out of her breast." Dacier's reflections cause 
 him to engage himself the same day to Miss Asper, an 
 heiress who has been piously constant to him. Diana's 
 husband dies two days before the marriage. Under 
 the blow of Dacier's desertion Diana has herself 
 come near to death. Emma Dunstane wins her back 
 to life and to a renewal of her former interests. Red- 
 worth has never faltered in feeling : " He believed in 
 the soul of Diana." She rewards him for his long, 
 patient waiting by giving him her hand. 
 
 It has been necessary to recapitulate the main events 
 of the story as a basis for comment. In enumerating 
 them it would have been as little to the point to include 
 Meredith's explanation of them as our own criticism.
 
 264 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 We may now clear the ground by recording an inter- 
 pretation of Diana's story, which, if obviously extrava- 
 gant, must at least arrest attention by its originality. 
 We have been fortunate enough to hear of an ardent 
 Meredithian who believes that he and Meredith alone 
 have the key to the story. Diana, he says, is the 
 feminine Egoist ; and, with a subtlety never for one 
 moment approached in the book of that name, she 
 is painted as such without a flaw. We would submit 
 that the artist's work is revealed, by this criticism, less 
 in its intention than in its result. Diana is brilliant, 
 but can it be denied that she is self-centred ? The 
 object of her marriage with Mr. Warwick is to escape 
 from unpleasant attentions : it is not suggested that 
 she loves him. After his lawsuit it is natural she 
 should object to return to him ; but what sign does she 
 show of being able to forego conventional advantages? 
 She begins, after a brief trial of life in lodgings, to 
 entertain lavishly and make herself the centre of a 
 circle. At this point of our work it is not necessary to 
 dwell on Meredith's views as to the right relation be- 
 tween effort and expenditure ; but Diana, his favourite, 
 oversteps the limits of her income from the first, and 
 is represented as largely employed in juggling with 
 debit and credit. When Dacier asks what possible 
 object she could have had in selling him to Tonans, she 
 pleads her dire need of money. Does Meredith really 
 intend us to think that a woman of Diana's intellect 
 could have placed the friend, in whose interests she was 
 entertaining, in such a position ? Here we touch the 
 central falsity of the tale. We are not concerned in 
 discussing whether Diana would have been right or 
 wrong to go away with Dacier. The point is, she was 
 saved fortuitously from carrying out her intention. At 
 their next meeting Meredith adroitly takes advantage
 
 DIANA OF THE CROSSWAYS 265 
 
 of the fact that Emma Dunstane is in danger of her 
 life ; it is right, at such a moment, that their plans 
 should recede into the background. But what is 
 not right is that Diana should have made confession to 
 Emma of her salvation from sin, and assume, on her 
 return to Dacier, a superiority to which no action of 
 her own has entitled her. It is at least a proof of 
 Dacier's love, which Meredith would represent as 
 worthless, that he reinstates her in his regard and 
 esteems her even more highly than before his humilia- 
 tion. And now we come to the point at which 
 Meredith attempts to justify his heroine. He has laid 
 much stress on the beauty of Diana's aloofness. He 
 suggests that Dacier returns late at night with his great 
 political news, half in the hope that her excitement may 
 break down her defences. He tells his news and pleads 
 his right to a caress ; he gives it unallowed. " They 
 were speechless. ' You see, Tony, my dearest, I am 
 flesh and blood after all.' ' You drive me to be ice and 
 door-bolts ! ' Her eyes broke over him reproachfully. 
 ' It is not so much to grant,' he murmured. ' It changes 
 everything between us.' ' Not me. It binds me the 
 faster.' ' It makes me a loathsome hypocrite.' ' But, 
 Tony ! is it so much ? ' ' Not if you value it low.' ' But 
 how long do you keep me in this rag-puppet's state of 
 suspension ? ' 'Patience.' ' Dangling and swinging day 
 and night ! ' ' The rag-puppet shall be animated and 
 repaid if I have life. I wish to respect my hero. Have 
 a little mercy. Our day will come ; perhaps as wonder- 
 fully as this wonderful news. My friend, drop your 
 hands. Have you forgotten who I am ? I want to 
 think, Percy ! ' ' But you are mine.' ' You are abusing 
 your own.' ' No, by heaven ! ' ' Worse, dear friend ; 
 you are lowering yourself to the woman who loves 
 you.' ' You must imagine me superhuman.' ' I worship
 
 266 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 you — or did.' ' Be reasonable, Tony. What harm ? 
 Surely a trifle of recompense ? Just to let me feel I 
 live ! You own you love me. Then I am your 
 lover.' ' My dear friend Percy, when I have consented 
 to be your paramour, this kind of treatment of me will 
 not want apologies.'" Is it not difficult to adopt the 
 position Meredith requires in this matter, in regard to 
 a woman who has never gone back on her consent to 
 an immediate and lifelong alliance with the man she 
 addresses ? Diana's husband is dying, and any forcing 
 of the situation at the moment is naturally repugnant 
 to her. But it is hard to see how morality or good 
 taste can so suddenly be called into question. Con- 
 sideration of the former would have necessitated a clear 
 statement from Diana as to her error in the past and 
 her ideas for the future ; the latter, a modification of 
 her public intimacy with Dacier. Moreover Dacier's 
 fault should be viewed in the light of the emotional 
 strain to which Diana has been subjecting him. 
 Meredith's suggestion of grossness in his action is 
 surely the flimsiest of excuses for Diana's subsequent 
 betrayal. 
 
 And in regard to the actual betrayal of the secret, 
 we should not wish to suggest that it is an incident 
 which Meredith might not have incorporated convinc- 
 ingly, but rather that, in its context, it destroys the foun- 
 dation on which his whole structure is reared. It has 
 been Meredith's contention throughout that Diana's 
 powers and intellect are exceptional, that uncongenial 
 marriage restraints and the barriers of conventional 
 routine are intolerable where she is concerned. He 
 would have us believe that she is capable of desiring 
 comradeship rather than love-making. A lover comes to 
 her, believing in her power to appreciate political issues, 
 and confides to her a secret of great national import-
 
 DIANA OF THE CROSSWAYS 267 
 
 ance. We are not now concerned with the purity of 
 Dacier's motives, but merely with Diana's capacity to 
 understand the nature of the gift he has brought. She 
 uses it as a trinket to be toyed with and sold. There 
 are moments indeed when, in comparing the thirty- 
 first chapter, " Political News," with the thirty-fourth, we 
 are tempted to believe the latter a practical joke, not 
 excluding its title, " How the Criminal's Judge may be 
 Love's Criminal." Set side by side with each other, the 
 discrepancies between Diana's statements, made but 
 twenty-four hours apart, are too much of a strain on 
 the reader. In the first scene she exclaims: "'And you 
 were charged with the secret all the evening and be- 
 trayed not a sign ! . . . The proposal is ? No more 
 compromises!' 'Total!' Diana clapped hands; and 
 her aspect of enthusiasm was intoxicating. ... ' We 
 two are a month in advance of all England. . . .'" In 
 the second she pleads : " ' You did not name it as a 
 secret. I did not imagine it to be a secret of immense, 
 immediate importance.' " And in reply to his amazed 
 shout of " What ? " goes on to say : " ' I had not a sus- 
 picion of mischief. ... I thought it was a secret of 
 a day. I don't think you — no, you did not tell me to 
 keep it secret. A word from you would have been 
 enough. I was in extremity ! ' Step by step she re- 
 cedes before Dacier's interrogation : ' I did not imagine 
 he would use it — make use of it — as he has done. . . . 
 No exact sum was named ; thousands were hinted.' " 
 May we not fairly demand of our author a choice be- 
 tween two alternatives ? Either Diana is a fool, passing 
 even the " ordinary woman " in her folly (she can enter- 
 tain the idea of being paid thousands of pounds for 
 information of negligible importance), or she is prov- 
 ing beyond all refutation that the political basis of her 
 intercourse with Dacier is a sham. Diana, Meredith
 
 268 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 admits, has made a mistake ; but he harps on the in- 
 sufficiency of her lover's affection, and when Dacier 
 goes out and closes the door on Diana, turns from her 
 intensity to Constance Asper's glacial fidelity, we are 
 given to understand that his error in the eyes of his 
 author is unforgiveable. Worldly-wise and narrow- 
 minded he certainly was, but why should this ex- 
 perience with Diana Warwick be expected to have 
 enlarged his horizon ? A reversion to Constance Asper 
 appears to us the only natural outcome of it. 
 
 It need not be said, since Diana is a Celt and one of 
 her author's favourites, that she is a mouthpiece for much 
 of Meredith's insight. Her sallies deserve the fullest 
 quotation ; the Introductory chapter alone is a treasure- 
 house of wit and of wisdom. But it has seemed best 
 to set aside in this summary all considerations not bear- 
 ing on what in this case has appeared to us of primary 
 importance, the consistency of the plot. It is clear, 
 of course, that Meredith means us, as was suggested in 
 an earlier chapter, to conceive of his heroine as Red- 
 worth conceives of her : " Redworth believed in the 
 soul of Diana. For him it burned, and it was a 
 celestial radiance about her, unquenched by her shift- 
 ing fortunes, her wilfulness, and, it might be, errors. 
 She was a woman and weak ; that is, not trained for 
 strength. She was a soul ; therefore perpetually point- 
 ing to growth in purification." This is what is intended, 
 but is it what is achieved ? We think not. The events 
 and the psychology of the book appear to us, not only 
 not interwoven, but spun of materials so different in 
 texture that they could not combine. The historical 
 figure Meredith chose for his heroine had a tear in her 
 dress. Every machine in his factory is set in motion 
 to provide a patch for it. But the new material, com- 
 pounded of philosophical speculation and championship
 
 DIANA OF THE CROSSWAYS 269 
 
 of wider opportunities for women, rich and rare though 
 it be, is a misfit ; " the rent is made worse." 
 
 Diana's charming personality, her recklessness, her 
 passion for Dacier, her life-history, including the selling 
 of the secret, were elements well within Meredith's power 
 to combine without injuring our love for his heroine. 
 But to this end the reader should have been caught by 
 the heart, not by the head. To start, and continue to 
 harp, on the note of Diana's wit and insight, her scorn 
 of sentiment and sentimental romance, her clear vision 
 of the needs of her sex, her political views — in short, 
 her philosophy — was to set a tune with which the 
 incidents could not be harmonised. To have prefaced 
 The Tragic Comedians with a championship of valiancy 
 in women, with Clotilde as sole embodiment of the 
 virtue, would have been to attempt a parallel task.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS AND LORD 
 ORMONT AND HIS AMINTA 
 
 WHENEVER he is dealing with problems con- 
 nected with marriage, Meredith assumes the 
 existence of the strongest prejudice against unconven- 
 tional action in the mind of his public. To the present- 
 day reader he appears to over-estimate its force, and to 
 be led to undue lengths in combating it. Much may 
 yet need to be done " to right the loaded scales " ; but 
 women refusing the conditions which Mr. Warwick, 
 Lord Ormont, or Fleetwood attempt to impose on their 
 wives, would not be regarded as social rebels to-day. 
 So far at least circumstances have changed, and we may 
 think that Meredith, to whom much of the improvement 
 is due, should be fully aware of it. However this may 
 be, the many desirable changes which the last fifty years 
 have worked in public opinion have brought one effect 
 with them that Meredith would certainly wish to ignore. 
 A type of mind has arisen which, reacting against life- 
 less constraints, looks on all social convention and 
 contract as tyrannical, and wishes to regard each 
 individual and occurrence as something unique, to be 
 judged on its private and personal merits. This type 
 has no place in the " honourable minority" whom Mere- 
 dith addresses. In them a social consciousness, a staunch 
 belief in society, is presumed, in addition to personal sus- 
 
 270
 
 LORD ORMONT 271 
 
 ceptibilities ; otherwise the possessors of those sus- 
 ceptibilities stand marked as the Comic Spirit's prey, 
 Byron-like, "illuminated to the general eye as the 
 very object of chase and doomed quarry of the thing 
 obscure to them." In other words, if we can see nothing 
 to be said for the claims of Willoughby, Lord Ormont, 
 and Fleetwood, if, because Clara, Aminta, and Carinthia 
 are superior to their lords, we do not feel they have 
 incurred heavy obligation by their vows, we are not 
 among those for whom Meredith has been writing. For, 
 if we do not grant, what he, as a root supposition, is 
 granting, the existence of real obstacles to his heroines' 
 freedom, it follows inevitably that in exposing the un- 
 worthiness of his heroes he should seem to be over- 
 weighting his case. The art and the labour he expends 
 to justify an exception presuppose the existence of a 
 rule. At the moments when he asks unconventional 
 action of his characters, its effectiveness depends upon 
 the rarity of its occurrence. " When we find," he 
 writes of one of the finest and most lovable of them, 
 "a man, who is commonly of the quickest suscepti- 
 bility to ridicule as well as to what is befitting, careless 
 of exposure, we may reflect on the truthfulness of 
 feeling by which he is drawn to pass his own guard 
 and come forth in his nakedness." 1 We may feel 
 that, in the face of Willoughby's persistent refusal to 
 deal with a situation that has been pressed on his at- 
 tention, Vernon might honourably have come to some 
 understanding with Clara before she is formally released 
 from her engagement. But in Meredith's hands, Ver- 
 non's honour makes a still more strenuous demand. 
 Clara is at last released, cast by her father into her 
 true lover's arms, yet he refuses to forget that their joy 
 is founded on failure, and that its price must be paid. 
 
 1 The Tale of Chloe.
 
 272 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 " It was hard for him, for both, but harder for the man, 
 to restrain their particular word from a flight to heaven 
 when the cage door stood open and nature beckoned, 
 but he was practised in self-mastery." 1 And it is be- 
 cause the word is not spoken then, that the meeting of 
 two lovers, some months later, on the slopes of Lake 
 Constance, is looked on by the Comic Muse with soft 
 and friendly eyes. No problem indeed could exist for 
 Clara, Aminta, and Carinthia, were it not for their 
 recognition of a standard that is abstract and non- 
 individual : and this standard Weyburn, in vowing 
 himself to Aminta, openly expresses : " With a world 
 against us," he says, " our love and labour are constantly 
 on trial ; we must have great hearts, and if the world is 
 hostile we are not to blame it. In the nature of things 
 it could not be otherwise. My own soul, we have to see 
 that we do — though not publicly, not insolently — offend 
 good citizenship. But we believe — I with my whole 
 faith, and I may say it of you — that we are not offend- 
 ing Divine Law. You are the woman I can help and 
 join with ; think whether you can tell yourself that I 
 am the man. So then our union gives us powers to 
 make amends to the world." " Make amends to the 
 world " ; the first note, and the last, is this of good 
 citizenship. This is the court of appeal, the test to 
 which individualistic action is referred. It is therefore 
 significant that practically the whole of Meredith's after 
 treatment of the pair is concerned with their devotion 
 to their great school and its striking success. Quick 
 changes in feeling come of the blood, not of the brain, 
 and Meredith has small tenderness for these. The 
 union of Matey and Aminta is long delayed, it is 
 to be brought to the test and approved ; nevertheless, 
 even here, a note of warning is struck. " Neither of 
 
 1 The Egoist.
 
 LORD ORMONT 273 
 
 them quite perceived what it was which coloured reason 
 to beauty, or what so convinced their intellects when 
 passion spoke louder." 
 
 Lord Ormont and his Aminta, published in 1894, ls 
 much simpler in style than One of our Conquerors ; but, 
 the two books having obvious affinities of theme, it has 
 seemed natural to treat them together. That of Lord 
 Ormont is based on the career of the great Earl of 
 Peterborough, who won wide fame as a soldier at 
 Valencia, but was recalled by his country in 1707 on 
 account of his high-handed temper. Privately married 
 to the famous singer Anastasia Robinson in 1722, he 
 did not publicly acknowledge her as his wife till shortly 
 before his death, and many years after their marriage. 
 
 It is a commonplace of Meredith's critics that he is 
 without rival in his drawing of boys, a commonplace 
 perhaps too readily acceded to. As to the degree of 
 his success in the representation of the boys' school 
 with which Lord Ormont opens, there may certainly be 
 difference of opinion. It is not, in any case, a realistic 
 representation ; but then, neither is the magnificent 
 swimming scene at the close of the book realistic, and 
 we must at once allow that, if actuality be demanded of 
 Lord Ormont and his Aminta, the book will be found 
 full of flaws. Is it, for instance, credible that Weyburn 
 could have been in Lord Ormont's house for days with- 
 out recognising Aminta? Is it possible, even setting 
 her husband's tastes and character aside, that Aminta 
 herself would have gone on bearing with Mrs. Pag- 
 nell's vulgarity? And then, in regard to a leading 
 motive of the book, Weyburn's great international 
 school rests on the shaky foundation of a tacit pretence. 
 He and Aminta believe themselves justified in the step 
 they have taken ; Aminta's husband is ultimately satis- 
 fied, if not approving. But all this, though it exonerates
 
 274 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 them individually, falls wide of the mark, so far as the 
 matter of the school itself is concerned. The boys and 
 their parents must inevitably think of Weyburn and 
 Aminta as married ; and thus, though the righteousness 
 of their situation is arguable in the abstract, it cannot, 
 in the nature of the case, be argued with the persons 
 concerned : the pair must quickly have found them- 
 selves in an intolerably precarious position. 
 
 The story begins to live with the description — when 
 Weyburn goes as secretary to Lord Ormont — of the 
 unknown Aminta's gaze. " They were large dark eyes 
 of Southern night. They sped no shot ; they rolled 
 forth an envelopment." There is pathos in this vision 
 of the unknown lady with the cloud upon her ; and the 
 whole scene of Weyburn and Aminta's meeting is 
 charmingly conceived, their old memories breathing 
 through present obscurity. The tale centres in this 
 cloud over Aminta, and Weyburn's consciousness and 
 penetration of it are very skilfully developed. The 
 smirchings from Lady Charlotte's rattle drop away in 
 Aminta's presence, but the cloud is still there. Lord 
 Ormont's share in the matter is only to be understood 
 by realising that, although the original error is his, it 
 is as a result of her own action that Aminta is in the 
 position in which Weyburn finds her. Lord Ormont, 
 like many other of Meredith's characters, has lost, if 
 indeed he ever possessed it, the power of regarding any 
 woman as an individual, to be detached from his general 
 view of her sex. His attitude to the woman he has 
 taken as his wife, though it differs in degree, does not 
 differ in kind from the attitude he has adopted to 
 others. Yet a delightful sidelight is thrown on the 
 six years of marriage previous to the opening of the 
 story, by their occasional reversions to the old nick- 
 names, the " Xarifa " and " Knight Durandarte " of the
 
 LORD ORMONT 275 
 
 days of their wanderings. They were married at 
 the Embassy in Madrid (Aminta is partially Spanish), 
 and have roamed about Europe together ever since. 
 Having been censured for high-handedness in his con- 
 duct of affairs in India, Lord Ormont was, and still 
 is, completely at loggerheads with his country, and 
 consequently at loggerheads also with his most inti- 
 mate relation, the one person who is not to be deceived 
 by his would-be contempt for his judges. He is the 
 most gallant of comrades, and his love for Aminta real ; 
 but the last thing he had expected her to demand 
 was the dullness and decorum of conventional English 
 society, and he has regarded it as part of the tacit 
 understanding between them, that she should be in- 
 cluded in his self-inflicted banishment from the land of 
 his birth. But Aminta, mainly at her aunt's instigation, 
 has now begun to press for settlement in England and 
 open acknowledgment of her position as Countess of 
 Ormont. The Earl, hardly more in annoyance than 
 amusement, sees that to submit to his wife's tactics 
 would involve coming to terms with his country, and, 
 if the game of Pull and Pull is to be played, he is 
 ready for his part in it. When the story opens, Aminta 
 has so far prevailed that they are living in London ; but 
 to all her hints and suggestions in regard to Steignton, 
 the Earl's country seat, he replies imperturbably that it 
 is let and that he is well enough satisfied with his tenant. 
 Aminta's aunt, Mrs. Nargett Pagnell (her character is 
 to be inferred from her name, and from her pronuncia- 
 tion of it, Naryett Pagnell), is staying in the house, and 
 daily grows more clamorous in her effort to secure 
 public acknowledgment for her niece. Behind this 
 situation looms Lady Charlotte Eglett, Lord Ormont's 
 sister already referred to, publicly incredulous of the 
 idea that her brother has given Aminta his name: into
 
 276 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 it, Aminta's old schoolboy lover and Lord Ormont's 
 adorer, Matey Weyburn, is precipitated, and the, story 
 moves to its end. 
 
 Aminta is very gracefully drawn ; her bewilderment 
 and fluctuations of feeling, the whirlpool sucking to 
 contemplate the dangerous passion Morsfield offers her, 
 and the sweet, sunny contrast of her love for Weyburn, 
 it is all excellent. Weyburn too is really a very plea- 
 sant fellow, and though Meredith makes him talk like 
 a prig occasionally (partly by reason of his effort to 
 prevent his doing so), there is no strain of priggishness 
 in his nature. The scene by the death-bed of Wey- 
 burn's mother is enriched with some of the choicest 
 flowers of Meredith's thought. " His prayer was as a 
 little fountain, not rising high out of earth, and in the 
 clutch of death ; but its being it had from death, his 
 love gave it food." " Prayer is power within us to com- 
 municate with the desired beyond our thirsts." "We do 
 not get to any heaven by renouncing the mother we 
 spring from ; and when there is an eternal secret for us, 
 it is best to believe that Earth knows, to keep near 
 her, even in our utmost aspirations." And some of the 
 adroitest of Meredith's sayings, such as of Friendship, — 
 " If it is not life's poetry, it is a credible prose; a land 
 of low undulations instead of Alps ; beyond the terrors 
 and deceptions ", — are to be found in the book. But 
 its power culminates in the two splendid climaxes — 
 Aminta's flight from Steignton, and the scene in which, 
 in Lady Charlotte's presence, her farewell letter reaches 
 Lord Ormont. In the first, the description of the 
 country flying by as they drive is one of Meredith's 
 triumphantly living landscapes ; the second is among 
 the greatest things he has written. Meredith seldom 
 appeals to tears ; he does so here. Owing to Aminta's 
 pursuit by unworthy admirers, Lord Ormont has been
 
 LORD ORMONT 277 
 
 slowly coming to see that his secrecy as to their mar- 
 riage has placed her in an impossible position ; and 
 without her knowledge he is preparing amends on the 
 scale of his character. After a long and wearisome 
 tussle, he has at last secured from his sister the family 
 jewels, which till now she had resolutely refused to give 
 up. Lady Charlotte comes to see him, being in anxiety 
 about his health. She expresses relief at his appear- 
 ance, and alludes to reviving appreciation of his worth. 
 " ' The country wants your services,' she says. ' I have 
 heard some talk of it. That lout comes to a know- 
 ledge of his wants too late. If they promoted and 
 
 offered me the command in India to-morrow ' My 
 
 lord struck the arm of his chair. ' I live at Steignton 
 henceforth : my wife is at a seaside place eastward. 
 I take her down to Steignton two days after her return. 
 We entertain there in the autumn. You come?' 'I 
 don't. I prefer decent society.' ' You are in her house 
 now, ma'am.' ' If I have to meet the person you mean, 
 I shall be civil. The society you've given her I won't 
 meet.' ' You will have to meet the Countess of Ormont 
 if you care to meet your brother.' ' Part then on the 
 best terms we can. I say this, the woman who keeps 
 you from serving your country, she's your country's 
 enemy.' ' Hear my answer. The lady who is my wife 
 has had to suffer for what you call my country's treat- 
 ment of me. It's a choice between my country and 
 her. I give her the rest of my time.' ' That's dotage.' 
 ' Fire away your epithets.' ' Sheer dotage. I don't 
 deny she's a handsome young woman.' ' You'll have 
 to admit that Lady Ormont takes her place in our 
 family with the best we can name.' ' You insult my 
 ears, Rowsley.' ' The world will say it when it has the 
 honour of her acquaintance.' ' An honour suspiciously 
 deferred.' ' That's between the world and me. . . .'
 
 \ 
 
 278 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 Letters of the morning's post were brought in. The 
 earl turned over a couple and took up a third, saying : 
 ' I'll attend to you in two minutes,' and thinking once 
 more : ' Queer world it is where, when you sheathe the 
 sword, you have to be at play with bodkins.' Lady 
 Charlotte gazed on the carpet, effervescent with retorts 
 to his last observation, rightly conjecturing that the 
 letter he selected to read was from ' his Aminta.' " The 
 time seems endless to her before his reading is done. 
 Lord Ormont's appearance is strange. " ' No bad news, 
 Rowsley?' The earl's breath fell heavily. Lady 
 Charlotte left her chair and walked about the room. 
 1 Rowsley, I'd like to hear if I can be of use.' ' Ma'am,' 
 he said, and pondered on the word ' use,' staring at her. 
 ' I don't intend to pry. I can't see my brother look 
 like that and not ask.' The letter was tossed on the 
 table to her." She read the lines dated from Felix- 
 stowe. It is final and it is long, dealing with details 
 of administration and housekeeping, of drawers and 
 labelled keys, and where the Ormont jewels have been 
 left. " ' The woman is cool,' Lady Charlotte ejaculates ; 
 and, 'will she be expecting you to answer, Rowsley?' 
 ' Will that forked tongue cease hissing ! ' he shouted, 
 in the agony of a strong man convulsed both to render 
 and conceal the terrible, shameful, unexampled gush of 
 tears. Lady Charlotte beheld her bleeding giant. She 
 would rather have seen the brother of her love grimace 
 in woman's manner than let loose those rolling big 
 drops down the face of a rock. The big sob shook 
 him, and she was shaken to dust by the sight. Now 
 she was advised by her deep affection for her brother 
 to sit patient and dumb behind shaded eyes. . . . 
 Neither opened mouth when they separated. She 
 pressed and kissed a large nerveless hand. Lord 
 Ormont stood up to bow her forth. His ruddied skin
 
 ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 279 
 
 had gone to pallor, resembling the berg of ice on the 
 edge of Arctic seas, when sunlight has fallen away 
 from it." This crumbling of brother and sister, how 
 touching, terrible, beautiful it is ! 
 
 One of Our Conquerors is among the greatest of Mere- 
 dith's novels, and is without doubt the most exasperating; 
 his mania for analogy, metaphor, epigram, runs riot in 
 it ; the first half of the book is so difficult to penetrate 
 that it is little a matter for surprise how few readers 
 are familiar with the beauties contained in the second. 
 Possibly, as was hinted in an earlier chapter, Meredith 
 has attempted an impracticable task in treating Society 
 — Public Opinion — as one of his characters ; the in- 
 numerable host of the Radnors' visitors presents too 
 many facets to be susceptible of a real synthesis by the 
 reader. The difficulties inherent in the subject are 
 increased by constant introduction of middle-distance 
 characters, some of them, Colney Durance and Simeon 
 Fenellan, worse than useless to the story ; others, like 
 Skepsey, Priscilla, and Mr. Pempton the clergyman, 
 diverting its force by the undue space they occupy in 
 it. Yet the book contains some of the most dramatic 
 and moving scenes in the whole of Meredith's work, 
 and, throughout, it is the most subtle study of social 
 forces and their wrecking of the man who would at once 
 ignore them and have them on his side. 
 
 " We are distracted, perverted, made strangers to our- 
 selves by a false position " ; this, of Nataly, is the key- 
 note of the book. That fall of Victor's on London 
 Bridge — the description of which has been a stumbling- 
 block to many — sets us at once on the track of the 
 central Idea of his character. How subtle is the would- 
 be bonhomie of his recovery with its instant reinstate- 
 ment of the Victor he knows, only to be overturned 
 again mentally by sight of smudges on his waistcoat,
 
 28o GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 and by an artisan's misunderstanding of his character ! 
 It epitomises his position to the world. The Radnors, 
 we are to learn, " walk on a plank across chasms," but 
 Victor's equilibrium is as a rule so successfully pre- 
 served, that he is wont to look on It as the pattern of 
 stability in a world of fluctuations. It is impossible to 
 miss the glamour of the man, spite of the fact that he 
 is tricked out in Meredith's most obscuring vocabulary. 
 In his actions and effect upon others, he is entirely 
 convincing; and he is finally drawn and put before us 
 in his daughter's feeling of his charm, the inspiriting 
 quality that rushes others, just as it rushes himself, past 
 criticism or doubt : " There is no grasping of one who 
 quickens us." Everything that Victor puts his hand to 
 is successful ; wherever he is, he rises head and shoulders 
 above his comrades. The error on which he is to be 
 shipwrecked is of no obvious kind. " Victor had yet 
 to learn that the man with a material object in aim is 
 the man of his object ; and the nearer to his mark, 
 often the further he is from a sober self: he is more the 
 arrow to his bow than the bow to his arrow. This we 
 pay for scheming : and success is costly ; we find we 
 have pledged the better half of ourselves to clutch it; 
 not to be redeemed with the whole handful of our prize." 
 " He is more the arrow to his bow than the bow to his 
 arrow " ; could Victor's efficiency, covering everything 
 except the essentials of the situation he is placed in, 
 be better expressed than in that image? He is one of 
 Meredith's triumphs in creation. 
 
 The description of Nataly's attitude to Victor is also 
 consummately successful. She does not dare analyse 
 him, for that might be to condemn him and herself — 
 the past through the present. " And if we are women, 
 who commonly allow the lead to men, getting it for 
 themselves only by snaky cunning or desperate adven-
 
 ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 281 
 
 ture, credulity — the continued trust in the man — is 
 the alternative of despair." That paints poor tortured 
 Nataly's position ; to escape despair she hoodwinks her- 
 self, perverts herself, and distracts herself. Meredith 
 has never drawn a more wonderful picture of natural 
 beauty and nobility thwarted, prostrated, twisted, and 
 writhing ; beauty and nobility forced to a grimace of 
 pain, and at last almost to ugliness, when she wildly 
 suspects Nesta of not discriminating between herself 
 and the world's Mrs. Marsetts, and touches the worst 
 abyss of false self-scorn. Nataly's position towards 
 Victor, towards Nesta, and towards the world, is the core 
 of the book. The problem is felt mainly through her 
 attitude towards it. With the exception of Chloe, she 
 is the most lovable of Meredith's women — as beautiful 
 and fragile as a flower. Her author has said of her 
 surrender to Victor : " This might be likened to the 
 detachment of a flower on the river's bank by swell of 
 flood : she had no longer root of her own ; away she 
 sailed, through beautiful scenery, with occasionally a 
 crashing fall, a turmoil, emergence from a vortex, and 
 once more the sunny whirling surface " ; and could the 
 terror in her mind, running as an undercurrent to such 
 sailing, be more completely expressed than in this 
 sentence : " alarms, throbbing, suspicions, like those of 
 old travellers through the haunted forest, where whis- 
 pers have intensity of meaning, and unseeing we are 
 seen, and unaware awaited." The throb of Nataly's 
 breaking heart and the throb of Victor's " punctilio 
 bump " are the leitmotifs of the book ; the heart crack- 
 ing at the end and the brain dissolving. One of the 
 finest chapters is " Nataly in Action," a chapter which 
 for beauty, pathos, insight, Meredith has hardly ever 
 surpassed. Nataly's dreamy, feminine thoughts above 
 her anguish, in the train, her love of Dartrey sliding
 
 282 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 insensibly from the maternal to the lover's, till she sees 
 herself in Nesta's place, how beautiful they are ! Apart 
 from its subtlety of drama the chapter is full of ex- 
 quisite description. After fainting, " unreflectingly, she 
 tried her feet to support her, and tottered to the door, 
 touched along to the stairs, and descended them, think- 
 ing strangely upon such a sudden weakness of body, 
 when she would no longer have thought herself the 
 weak woman." How we see her in that " touched 
 along" ! Again, " that doing of the right thing, after a 
 term of paralysis, cowardice — any evil name — is one of 
 the mighty reliefs, equal to happiness, of longer dura- 
 tion " : and again, when she reaches the station where she 
 is to meet Dudley Sowerby and perform her terrible 
 task, " Slowness of motion brought her to the plain piece 
 of work she had to do, on a colourless earth, that 
 seemed foggy; but one could see one's way. Resolution 
 is a form of light, our native light in this dubious world." 
 
 Nesta is less perfectly delineated. In all descriptions 
 of her — smiling, singing, courageously upright, the 
 " blue butterfly," or the Britomart, she is most charming, 
 but she is apt to be tiresome in her talk. The episode 
 of Mrs. Marsett is finely contrived to test Nesta and 
 Nataly, to give poor Nataly's heart its most terrible 
 twist (" It's the disease of a trouble to fly at com- 
 parisons") : but its significance is over-emphasised, and 
 it is distasteful to see so genuine and attractive a girl as 
 Nesta showily shoved up into the saddle of one of 
 Meredith's hobbies. Her love for Dartrey Fenellan is 
 beautiful, and the silent love scene between them is one 
 of the love scenes of literature. 
 
 The book abounds in beauty and Meredith's best 
 wisdom. Dudley Sowerby's mind, in the state of battle 
 it presents after Nataly's communication, is admirably 
 portrayed ; " he had been educated in his family to
 
 ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 283 
 
 believe that the laws governing human institutions are 
 divine— until History has altered them. They are 
 altered to present a fresh bulwark against the infidel." 
 Was ever a more splendid landscape painted than in 
 Victor's vision of the Alps : " Lo, the Tyrolese lime- 
 stone crags with livid peaks and snow lining shelves and 
 veins of the crevices ; and folds of pine-wood undula- 
 tions closed by a shoulder of snow large on the blue ; 
 and a dazzling pinnacle rising over green pasture-Alps j 
 the head of it shooting aloft as the blown billow, high 
 off a broken ridge, and wide-armed in its pure white 
 shroud beneath ; tranced, but all motion in immobility, 
 to the heart in the eye ; a splendid image of striving, up 
 to crowned victory." And this, in another vein, is hardly 
 less delightful : " We are indebted almost for construction 
 to those who will define us briefly : we are but scattered 
 leaves to the general comprehension of us until such a 
 work of binding and labelling is done. And should the 
 definition be not so correct as brevity pretends to make 
 it at one stroke, we are at least rendered portable ; thus 
 we pass into the conceptions of our fellows, into the 
 records, down to posterity." Then there is the portrait 
 of Mr. Barmby, a clerical aspirant to Nesta's hand : " he 
 was a worthy man, having within him the spiritual 
 impulse curiously ready to take the place where a 
 material disappointment left vacancy." And of all 
 these cameos the most beautiful, perhaps, is this of 
 Dudley and Nesta : " One day, treating of modern 
 Pessimism, he had draped a cadaverous view of our 
 mortal being in a quotation of the wisdom of the 
 Philosopher Emperor : ' To set one's love upon the 
 swallow is a futility.' And she, weighing it, nodded, and 
 replied : ' May not the pleasure for us remain if we set 
 our love upon the beauty of the swallow's flight ? ' " 
 Meredith's philosophy is in Nesta's reply.
 
 284 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 Almost every current of modern ethical theory is 
 touched on in 0?ie of our Conquerors ; teetotalism, vege- 
 tarianism, simplicity of life, the place of art in English 
 society, the status of women (" it is undecided still 
 whether they do of themselves conceive principles, or 
 should submit to an imposition of the same upon them 
 in terrorem " !), the Salvation Army and its effect on the 
 masses 1 — these and innumerable other kindred topics 
 are lengthily discussed. No one, in fact, who has not 
 read the book can be fully aware of the keenness or of 
 the scope of Meredith's interests. What may be urged 
 against the book under this head is that it is a scrap- 
 bag of reflections, reflections which the fact that they 
 are Meredith's and among his best is not enough to 
 unify. But its claim to greatness rests on a surer 
 foundation. In the later chapters, at least, the story 
 is developed with marvellous art. The subtlest ven- 
 geance social forces can take has been wreaked on the 
 Radnors, when Nataly sees herself divided from her 
 child and ranked on the side of convention. And in 
 that closing scene in the house where Nataly and 
 Victor met, with its blue satin curtains, its gilt chairs, 
 its Louis Quatorze clock, and Mrs. Berman dying in 
 their midst, how supreme is the magic which reveals 
 the vague, malevolent spectre, that has hung over Nataly 
 and Victor's life, as a woman who has had nothing but 
 her craving for vengeance to go with her through the 
 years ! 
 
 1 It may be of interest to note that Jump-to-Glory Jane appeared in 
 the Universal Review the year previous to the publication of One of our 
 Conquerors.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 THIS, the latest of George Meredith's novels, in 
 creative energy and vitality equals, if indeed it 
 does not surpass, any of its predecessors. He has re- 
 turned in it to his earlier and simpler manner, though 
 the matter is as varied and complex as ever. The fire 
 of Sandra Belloni unites with the subtlety of The 
 Egoist, with the result that both are more humane : 
 neither claims mastery ; both are content to serve a 
 single purpose. In matters of detail the old artifices are 
 present ; the first chapter is entitled " Dame Gossip as 
 Chorus," and quotations are many from the old Buc- 
 caneer's " Maxims for Men." Moreover, the story does 
 not really begin till the opening of the fourth chapter, 
 when Chillon John and Carinthia set out from their 
 home in Bavaria on a journey to England. Yet the 
 previous chapters contain much in the way of medita- 
 tion that most of us would be unwilling to spare ; much 
 too is suggested of the great-heartedness of the old 
 Buccaneer and the valiant aristocracy of the woman he 
 so tenderly loved, that contributes to our conception of 
 their daughter Carinthia. Indeed, these prefatory chap- 
 ters so strongly colour our view of the main situation, 
 that we shall need to modify our instinctive criticism of 
 the part Carinthia's husband plays in it, by the recol- 
 lection that we have knowledge which he cannot share. 
 
 285
 
 286 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 Where he thought confusedly of the Old Buccaneer as 
 one who had outraged the laws of society and was there- 
 fore presumably of the undisciplined, the reader has 
 been allowed clear view of one who " never had failed 
 in an undertaking without stripping bare to expose 
 himself where he had been wanting in Intention and 
 Determination." 
 
 Carinthia has a mysterious kinship with the moun- 
 tains and the dawn. We see her first on a twelve-foot 
 leap from a window of her dark and dismantled home, 
 going before daybreak with her brother to a mountain- 
 top to renew their past in the childish game of "calling 
 the morning." Nowhere else in his prose description 
 has Meredith surpassed his picture of dawn as Carinthia 
 and Chillon saw it that day ; to the heroine of this, his 
 last novel, he has lent his poet-vision at its intensest — 
 the parallel with the Hymn to Colour being indeed 
 curiously close : " Dawn in the mountain-land is a 
 meeting of many friends. The pinnacle, the forest- 
 head, the latschen-tufted mound, rock-bastion and 
 defiant cliff and giant of the triple peak, were in view, 
 clearly lined for a common recognition, but all were 
 figures of solid gloom, unfeatured and bloomless. 
 Another minute and they had flung off their mail 
 and changed to various, indented, intricate, succinct 
 in ridge, scar and channel ; and they had all a look 
 of watchfulness that made them one company. The 
 smell of rock-waters and roots of herb and moss grew 
 keen ; air became a wine that raised the breast high to 
 breathe it ; an uplifting coolness pervaded the heights. 
 . . . The plumes of cloud now slowly entered into the 
 lofty arch of dawn and melted from brown to purple- 
 black. The upper sky swam with violet ; and in a 
 moment each stray cloud-feather was edged with rose, 
 and then suffused. It seemed that the heights fronted
 
 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 287 
 
 East to eye the interflooding of colours, and it was 
 imaginable that all turned to the giant whose forehead 
 first kindled to the sun : a greeting of god and king. 
 . . . The armies of the young sunrise in mountain- 
 lands neighbouring the plains, vast shadows, were 
 marching over woods and meads, black against the edge 
 of golden ; and great heights were cut with them, and 
 bounding waters took the leap in a silvery radiance of 
 gloom ; the bright and dark-banded valleys were like 
 night and morning taking hands down the sweep of 
 their rivers. Immense was the range of vision scud- 
 ding the peaks and over the illimitable Eastward plains 
 flat to the very East and sources of the sun." 
 
 Changefulness of aspect is among the many subtle 
 resemblances between Carinthia and her mountain 
 home. Chillon scrutinising her face for some warrant 
 of her fortune, finds himself forced to the conclusion 
 that she is plain, or at any rate unhandsome, though 
 her features are expressive enough ; " at times he had 
 thought them marvellous, in the clear cut of the animat- 
 ing mind." Woodseer sees deeper, but his phrases — " A 
 haggard Venus," " A beautiful Gorgon," are too neat 
 and epigrammatic to serve as descriptions. He is 
 happier in his less ambitious suggestions of a particular 
 quality that comes and goes : " A panting look," " A 
 look of beaten flame," " From minute to minute she is 
 the rock that loses the sun at night and reddens in the 
 morning." On his first meeting with Carinthia, Fleet- 
 wood finds good breeding and " something more than 
 breeding " stamped on her features ; Livia and Henri- 
 etta acknowledge, in calling her plain, that animation 
 changes the character of her face. But it is among the 
 greatest of tributes to Meredith's art that, without any 
 direct statement on his part, other than these half- 
 hearted commendations of her contemporaries, his
 
 288 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 readers are in no way astonished by Henrietta's 
 account of Carinthia's appearance at the Ducal Ball 
 at the Schloss. " Chillon, she was magical ! you cannot 
 ever have seen her irradiated with happiness. Her 
 pleasure in the happiness of all around her was part of 
 the charm. One should be a poet to describe her. It 
 would task an artist to paint the rose- crystal she 
 became when threading her way through the groups to 
 be presented. This is not meant to say that she 
 looked beautiful. It was the something above beauty — 
 more unique and impressive — like the Alpine snow- 
 cloak towering up from the flowery slopes you know so 
 well and I a little." By the time age is reached loveli- 
 ness of this quality will, to some extent at least, have 
 stamped itself on the features : but in youth it comes 
 and goes, flaming at its intensest in moments of stress, 
 when a sudden and unaccustomed call is made upon 
 action. It is part of the perfection of Meredith's work- 
 manship in this matter that he never asks us to realise 
 Carinthia's face in quiescence. The vision of her after 
 her marriage lives for most of us in two scenes — her 
 farewell to her husband on the day of her wedding, 
 and her final conversation with him, a year or two 
 later, in Wales. In the first, Fleetwood, who except 
 on the top of the coach has not been alone with her 
 since the ceremony in the church, comes to announce 
 to Carinthia that he is leaving her for an indefinite 
 period of time. She has had no preparation for his 
 news; when he finds her in the inn sitting-room, "She 
 was seated ; neither crying, nor smiling, nor pointedly 
 serious in any way, not conventionally at her ease 
 either. . . . She spoke without offence, the simplest of 
 words, affected no solicitudes, put on no gilt smiles, 
 wore no reproaches : spoke to him as if so it happened 
 — he had necessarily a journey to perform. One could
 
 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 2S9 
 
 see all the while big drops falling from the wound 
 within. One could hear it in her voice. Imagine a 
 crack of the string at the bow's deep stress. Or im- 
 agine the bow paralysed at the moment of the deepest 
 sounding. And yet the voice did not waver. She had 
 now the richness of tone carrying on a music through 
 silence. . . . Her brown eyes were tearless, not alluring 
 or beseeching or repelling ; they did but look, much like 
 the skies opening high aloof on a wreck of storm. Her 
 reddish hair — chestnut, if you will — let fall a skein over 
 one of the rugged brows, and softened the ruggedness 
 by making it wilder, as if a great bird were winging 
 across a shoulder of the mountain ridges. No longer 
 the chalk-quarry face, — its paleness now was that of 
 night Alps beneath a moon chasing the shadows." 
 To some, this suggestion of a whole by means of 
 flickering images, half-defined, will seem the sole means 
 by which Meredith can achieve the end which he has in 
 view — that end being not the portrayal of something 
 polished and complete, but the adumbration of a per- 
 sonality instinct with loveliness as yet unrealised. 
 Others will complain of heaped and unrelated meta- 
 phor, by its very variety and inconstancy rendered 
 meaningless. Of these it may fairly be demanded that 
 they add to their recollection of what has been said of 
 Meredith's use of metaphor in general a consideration 
 of the particular task he has proposed to himself here. 
 As, in his abstract treatment of life, he moves on the 
 horizon of thought, sallying forth to identify some 
 blurred and meaningless presence, and, by gleams 
 flashing from hither and thither, set it, in poetry or 
 prose, revealed to his fellows for the thing that it is, so 
 in the heroine of his last novel he has given dramatic 
 presentation and shape to an ideal of beauty, winged 
 and transforming, which, while it hovered on the border- 
 u
 
 2 go GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 land of our consciousness, had hitherto hovered un- 
 caught. 
 
 While Chillon and Carinthia are crossing the moun- 
 tains to Baden, Gower Woodseer and Lord Fleetwood, 
 each baulked in his search for solitude, are making 
 friends on the shores of the neighbouring lake. Fleet- 
 wood is tied to the district by the presence of the 
 beautiful Henrietta Fakenham, of whose devotion to 
 Chillon, Carinthia, by a sight of her portrait and letters, 
 has already been assured. On the relationship of this 
 strangely assorted pair, " the young man who fancied 
 he had robed himself in the plain homespun of a natural 
 philosopher at the age of twenty-three," and the young 
 lord who " was not by nature a dreamer, only dreamed 
 of the luxury of being one," Meredith's subtlest powers 
 have been exercised. There is much in common in 
 their temperaments ; and circumstance supplies the 
 contrast that provides their relation with the piquancy 
 they require of it. Readers of The Empty Purse will 
 not find it difficult from the outset to predict that, of 
 the two theorists, he who replies to the wealthy Lord 
 Fleetwood's — " May I ask which of the Universities?" — 
 with a panegyric of his schooling on the Open Road, 
 and the statement — " I have studied in myself the old 
 animal having his head pushed into the collar to earn a 
 feed of corn " — will be the earliest to " strike earth " and 
 effectiveness. But even though the final harbourage of 
 his nature is foreseen, there are hints from the first that 
 Woodseer's impressionable personality will be involved 
 in back-eddies and tides, before anchorage is secured. 
 On the threshold, Meredith's old danger signal is hung 
 out. Woodseer's insight is real, his penetration un- 
 doubted, but he labours under the disadvantage common 
 to men who have developed amongst their intellectual 
 inferiors. Having evolved certain theories of life on
 
 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 291 
 
 his own account, he is unable to hold them with sufficient 
 relativity, or to grasp the complexity of the interests 
 against which he inveighs. Dragons that have power 
 to slay strong men, he imagines, may be dismissed in an 
 epigram. His philosophy cries scorn at the thought of 
 any possible allurement in the green tables at Baden, 
 or submission to a personal attraction not based on 
 reason and mental similarity. In consequence, before 
 he turns from the tables, the purse of another as well as 
 his own is emptied, and in submission to Livia's fascina- 
 tion he betrays the trust of a dying man, and is forced 
 to realise that — " indeed below the roadway of ordinary 
 principles hedged with dull texts, he had strangely 
 fallen." Meredith comments characteristically on the 
 somewhat lofty tone in which Woodseer explains that, 
 being without money to lose or inclination to gain, he is 
 free of all temptation to gamble. " They were no doubt 
 good reasons and they were grand morality. They were 
 at the same time customary phrases of the unfleshed in 
 folly." Equally characteristic is his comment at the 
 moment previous to Woodseer's submission to Livia's 
 temptation. " Not only is he no philosopher who has 
 an idol, he has to learn that he cannot think rationally ; 
 his due sense of weight and measure is lost, the choice 
 of his thoughts as well." 
 
 When Fleetwood and Woodseer meet for the first time, 
 they are led to a ready mutual understanding by the 
 fact that Fleetwood has found Woodseer's notebook 
 lying open on an inn bench and read it through. The 
 latest entries refer to the writer's glimpse of Carinthia, 
 and Woodseer finds himself amazed at Fleetwood's 
 power of visualisation on the meagre basis they afford- 
 A more experienced person would have perceived the 
 young lord's malady, recognised that " here was one 
 bitten by the serpent of love, and athirst for an image of
 
 292 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 the sex to serve as a cooling herb"; but Woodseer at- 
 tributes the sympathy to a curious imaginative fellow- 
 ship between himself and Fleetwood, and proceeds to 
 talk of Carinthia more and more in the abstract. A 
 difference of opinion between them as to the title — 
 whether " girl " or " gorgon "—by which she can best be 
 described, induces coolness and even some danger of a 
 quarrel. In a common determination to sleep near the 
 mountain-top, and to avoid the city, their friendship to 
 some extent is renewed ; but it is with a reserve. On 
 the point under dispute neither is prepared to give way. 
 For in their differing positions, and with differing pos- 
 sibilities of exercising the tendency, the temper of both 
 is tyrannical. Up to this point and for some time after, 
 notably in his visit to the tailor at Carlsruhe, his escapade 
 at the gaming-table, and his adoration of the Countess 
 Livia, Woodseer shows as Lord Fleetwood's inferior — 
 in abstract intellectuality his equal, but from lack of 
 experience his inferior in action. Why, and at what 
 point then we may ask, does the young Welshman over- 
 take and begin to outstrip his friend ? Half through the 
 book, Fleetwood himself is astounded to realise that, 
 instead of idolising the Countess Livia, Woodseer is now 
 her master, and has not the smallest desire to fall in with 
 his lordship's scheme for their marriage ; that, in fact, 
 he has asked and won the love of Carinthia's waiting- 
 maid and friend, a girl in many points closely re- 
 sembling her mistress ; and, though Fleetwood possesses 
 the grace and insight to recognise progress in these 
 changes, he is a good deal at a loss to understand how 
 they occurred. For the reader who has looked into 
 Woodseer's mind, explanations are not far to seek. The 
 development, as already suggested, is partially at- 
 tributable to his circumstances, the fact that he is not 
 walled off by wealth from the realities of life; but beyond
 
 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 293 
 
 this he has an advantage the reverse side of which has 
 already been stated. He has been seen, from lack of 
 social knowledge and experience, to take his own con- 
 victions somewhat too seriously, but they were genuine 
 convictions worthy the name. He has not toyed with 
 his intellect or learned to divorce his thoughts from his 
 action. It was inevitable that his inexperience should 
 be overpowered by Livia's fascination and beauty, in- 
 evitable perhaps that at first he should succumb to any 
 temptation she coupled with intimacy and mutual 
 understanding. What was not inevitable, what is in fact 
 peculiar to himself and his kind, " men with a passion 
 for spiritual cleanliness," was his power of recognising, 
 immediately and unprompted, the nature of the deed he 
 had done. He hears his father speculating as to the 
 conduct of Carinthia's husband and responds to his 
 demand, " Can you imagine the doing of an injury by a 
 man to a woman like her ? " " Yes, I can imagine it, 
 I'm doing it myself. I shall be doing it till I've written 
 a letter and paid a visit." The confession made, " He 
 took a meditative stride or two in the room, thinking 
 without revulsion of the Countess Livia under a simili- 
 tude of the bell of the plant henbane, and that his 
 father had immunity from temptation because of the 
 insensibility to beauty. Out of which he passed to the 
 writing of the letter to Lord Fleetwood, informing his 
 lordship that he intended immediately to deliver a 
 message to the Marchioness of Arpington from Admiral 
 Baldwin Fakenham, in relation to the Countess of Fleet- 
 wood. A duty was easily done by Woodseer when he 
 had surmounted the task of conceiving his resolution to 
 do it ; and this task, involving an offence to the Lady 
 Livia and intrusion of his name on a nobleman's recol- 
 lection, ranked next in severity to the chopping off of 
 his fingers by a man suspecting them of the bite of rabies."
 
 294 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 Courage certainly would be required for such an ampu- 
 tation ; but when it is remembered that the amputator in 
 this case acknowledged no bite, knew only of what he 
 had hitherto supposed was a life-giving experience, the 
 insight that went to his diagnosis and instant detection 
 of poison is felt to be rarer. 
 
 Fleetwood's errors are subtler, as his circumstances 
 are more involved. Like Woodseer, and almost every 
 one else in the book worth speaking to, he is partially 
 Welsh. What this involves Meredith, here and else- 
 where, has been at some pains to inform us. During 
 Victor Radnor's concert in One of Our Conquerors, a 
 German visitor listens to comments that cause him to 
 ask whether the English care in the least for music, or 
 indeed for anything other than material good. Mere- 
 dith replies to the question in person. They care, he 
 says, more than appears ; moreover, in speaking of 
 them as a nation, it should be realised how largely 
 in matters of Art the whole is now leavened and in- 
 spirited by the Welsh, Irish, and Scotch. In Sandra 
 Belloni pride in his race is more ardently and less tem- 
 perately expressed. He alludes to " peculiar Welsh 
 delicacy," and says : " All subtle feelings are discovered 
 by Welsh eyes when untroubled by any mental agita- 
 tion. Brother and sister were Welsh, and I may 
 observe that there is human nature and Welsh nature." 
 In reference to Woodseer and Fleetwood, he reminds us 
 that a Welshman is excitable, ready at all times to start 
 on a quest, a wild-goose chase even, but that, though 
 his quarry may be vague and immaterial to the eyes of 
 his neighbours, it will be clear to his own. Unlike the 
 Teuton, the Welshman, we are told, never kindles the 
 fire of his present on the ashes of his past. Loved or 
 hated, that which once has been lives animate behind 
 the shroud, quick at a word, a scent, a sound, to re-
 
 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 295 
 
 assert itself in the present. This last trait gives us the 
 key to much that is puzzling in Fleetwood's career. 
 For in many natures at war with themselves it is a 
 characteristic of their want of unity to be able to 
 think and act in their best moments in forgetfulness 
 of their worst. But Fleetwood is dogged throughout 
 by memories of actions so alien to his feeling in the 
 present, seemingly so little emanations of himself, that 
 he sinks back on the idea of fatality. He is roused to 
 a peculiarly keen consciousness of this in the scene 
 where he parts from his wife by the graveyard of the 
 very church in which they had been married. After 
 long separation he comes to the house he has appor- 
 tioned her, determined, whatever it may cost him, to 
 arrive at some understanding. Hearing he is to come, 
 she goes to stay with some friends who live near by. 
 He accompanies her in the late afternoon on her walk 
 to their house. " Up the lane by the park they had 
 open lands to the heights of Croridge. ' Splendid 
 clouds,' Fleetwood remarked. She looked up, thinking 
 of the happy long day's walk with her brother to the 
 Styrian Baths. Pleasure in the sight made her face 
 shine superbly. ' A flying Switzerland, Mr. Woodseer 
 says,' she replied ; ' England is beautiful on days like 
 these. For walking, I think the English climate very 
 good.' He dropped a murmur : ' It should suit so good 
 a walker,' and burned to compliment her spirited easy 
 stepping, and scorned himself for the sycophancy it 
 would be before they were on the common ground of a 
 restored understanding. But an approval of any of her 
 acts threatened him with enthusiasm for the whole 
 of them, her person included ; and a dam in his breast 
 had to keep back the flood. ' You quote Woodseer to 
 me, Carinthia. I wish you knew Lord Feltre. He can 
 tell you of every cathedral, convent, and monastery in
 
 296 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 Europe and Syria. Nature is well enough ; she is, as 
 he says, a savage. Men's works, acting under divine 
 direction to escape from that tangle, are better worthy 
 of study, perhaps. If one has done wrong, for example.' 
 1 1 could listen to him,' she said. ' You would not need 
 — except, yes, one thing. Your father's book speaks of 
 not forgiving an injury.' ' My father does. He thinks 
 it weakness to forgive an injury. Women do, and they 
 are disgraced, they are thought slavish. My brother is 
 much stronger than I am. He is my father alive in 
 that.' ' It is anti-Christian, some would think.' ' Let 
 offending people go. He would not punish them. 
 They may go where they will be forgiven. For them 
 our religion is a happy retreat : we are glad they have 
 it. My father and my brother say that injury forbids us 
 to be friends again. My father was injured by the 
 English Admiralty : he never forgave it ; but he would 
 have fought one of their ships and offered his blood 
 any day, if his country called to battle. . . .' The 
 dwarf tower of Croridge village church fronted them 
 against the sky, seen of both. ' You remember it,' he 
 said. And she answered : ' I was married there.' ' You 
 have not forgotten that injury, Carinthia ? ' 'I am a 
 mother.' ' By all the saints ! you hit hard. Justly. 
 Not you. Our deeds are the hard hitters. We learn 
 when they begin to flagellate, stroke upon stroke ! 
 Suppose we hold a costly thing in the hand and dash 
 it to the ground — no recovering of it, none ! That 
 must be what your father meant. I can't regret you 
 are a mother. We have a son, a bond. How can I 
 describe the man I was!' he muttered, — ' possessed ! sort 
 of werewolf ! You are my wife?' 'I was married 
 to you, my lord.' ' It's a tie of a kind.' ' It binds me.' 
 1 Obey, you said.' ' Obey it. I do.' ' You consider it 
 holy ? ' ' My father and mother spoke to me of the
 
 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 297 
 
 marriage-tie. I read the service before I stood at the 
 altar. It is holy. It is dreadful. I will be true to it.' 
 ' To your husband ? ' 'To his name, to his honour.' 
 ' To the vow to live with him ? ' ' My husband broke 
 that for me.' ' Carinthia, if he bids you, begs you to 
 renew it? God knows what you may save me from.' 
 ' Pray to God. Do not beg of me, my lord. I have 
 my brother and my little son. No more of husband 
 for me ! God has given me a friend, too, — a man of 
 humble heart, my brother's friend, my dear Rebecca's 
 husband. He can take them from me : no one but 
 God. See the splendid sky we have.' With those 
 words she barred the gates on him ; at the same time 
 she bestowed the frank look of an amiable face brilliant 
 in the lively red of her exercise, in its bent-bow curve 
 along the forehead, out of the line of beauty, touching, 
 as her voice was, to make an undertone of anguish 
 swell an ecstasy. So he felt it, for his mood was now 
 the lover's. A torture smote him, to find himself 
 transported by that voice at his ear to the scene of the 
 young bride in thirty-acre meadow. ' I propose to call 
 on Captain Kirby-Levellier to-morrow, Carinthia,' he 
 said. 'The name of the house?' ' My brother is not 
 now any more in the English army,' she replied. ' He 
 has hired a furnished house named Stoneridge.' ' He 
 will receive me, I presume?' 'My brother is a courteous 
 gentleman, my lord.' ' Here is the church, and here 
 we have to part for to-day. Do we ? ' ' Good-bye to 
 you, my lord,' she said. He took her hand and dropped 
 the dead thing. ' Your idea is, to return to Esslemont 
 some day or other? ' ' For the present,' was her strange 
 answer. She bowed, she stepped on. On she sped, 
 leaving him at the stammered beginning of his appeal 
 to her. Their parting by the graveyard of the church 
 that had united them was what the world would class
 
 298 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 as curious. To him it was a further and a well-marked 
 stroke of the fatality pursuing him. He sauntered by the 
 graveyard wall until her figure slipped out of sight. It 
 went like a puffed candle, and still it haunted the corner 
 where last seen. Her vanishing seemed to say, that 
 less of her belonged to him than the phantom his eyes 
 retained behind them somewhere." Standing by the 
 wall of the graveyard till Carinthia is out of sight, 
 Fleetwood finds himself fingering a pocket-pistol he 
 has begged from the relative of one of his satellites, 
 who lately used it to speed himself to the unknown. 
 He gazes on tombstones duller than those of Feltre's 
 communion, but none the less marking the resting- 
 places of men released from the strife. He reflects 
 that, if this church were Roman, it would be possible 
 to enter and cleanse the stained soul in confession. 
 The path to which the Romanist is pointing meanders 
 across the horizon ; he says, two sexes created at war 
 with each other must abjure their sex before they can be 
 at peace. Woodseer, on the other hand, is for regaining 
 — outside the Church — the right to be numbered among 
 the world's fighting men, " the act penitential-youth 
 put behind us, the steady course ahead." The ideas 
 conflict, but Fleetwood's friendship for both men is 
 sincere, and consequently he is waking, between the 
 two of them, to the claims of others, " youth's infant 
 conscience." With the rest of his intimates, and es- 
 pecially in his relation to women, he has been handi- 
 capped by his wealth. Having been, as Henrietta 
 exclaims, " accustomed to buy men and women," he 
 early lost faith in their ingenuousness. 
 
 Since the day of his meeting with Woodseer in the 
 Bavarian highlands, he has travelled fast and far. His 
 whimsical feeling for Carinthia darkened to bitterness 
 almost before their engagement, and from the morning
 
 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 299 
 
 of their marriage they never met again, overtly, till the 
 struggle between them began. In this struggle he has 
 had real cause for complaint, for Carinthia has been 
 strangely unimaginative. He begins to suspect that 
 she is not aware of the degree in which she was thrust 
 on her lord; none the less, by her unsolicited champion- 
 ship and pursuance of her husband she has placed him 
 in situations so ridiculous that any man with a keen 
 social sense must have found them difficult to forget 
 and forgive. For the long neglect, and the kidnapping, 
 and for an offence deeper and darker than these, 
 Carinthia's pardon has to be sought. And now Fleet- 
 wood's love has developed, the reader is forced to recog- 
 nise that his feeling is more subtle and, in some ways, 
 too delicate for that of his wife. In fact, given the main 
 outlines of character, whimsical subtlety and sensitive- 
 ness on one side, and heroic simplicity and literalness 
 on the other, the situation is comprehensible enough. 
 But what Fleetwood failed to grasp till too late, and 
 what goes far to justify Carinthia's unimaginativeness, 
 is the heroic scale on which her nature is built. Devoid 
 of subtlety of perception, it is devoid also of small- 
 mindedness or shadow of turning. She has nothing in 
 common with the familiar type of character which dis- 
 claims attention to other people's foibles while demand- 
 ing excessive sympathy for its own. In her unques- 
 tioning acceptance of Fleetwood's silence and inaction 
 from the night of the Ball till the day of their wedding 
 there is foolishness certainly, but there is also a grandeur, 
 outlining and mirroring her own conception of con- 
 stancy, that gives her rank with the greatest. To 
 every woman worthy the name, a passionate love lends 
 some access of single-mindedness and courage ; to such 
 as Carinthia and Nesta, in whose hearts these virtues are 
 native, there can in love's presence be no counting of
 
 300 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 costs. " They sink back upon no breast of love " : they 
 grasp at a flaming sword, but — a sword, and no play- 
 thing — its work may be to carve the way out of a fool's 
 paradise ; and if he was a mock-hero who was the 
 bringer of it, there will be no escape for him from the 
 ordeal of the uplifted blade. 
 
 Mere reaction of feeling is hasty, but change embrac- 
 ing the whole of a character is slow. It is, for Meredith, 
 an integral part of Carinthia's greatness that she should 
 move to her final position step by step and unwillingly. 
 Overleaping of fences is not Carinthia's title to con- 
 sideration any more than it is Nesta's or Aminta's ; the 
 qualities of all three are stable and independent of 
 circumstance. The difference between a wise man and 
 a fool seems to lie less in the smaller number of mistakes 
 made by the former, than in the fact that he does not 
 fall into the same mistakes twice over. Is it not impos- 
 sible to conceive of Nataly or Countess Fanny, Aminta 
 or Carinthia, as repeating their experiences? In every 
 case, indeed, the exact reverse is stated of them. Their 
 freedom is achieved as a means to an end. And in this 
 — the fact that their quest is for righteousness and wis- 
 dom, not for any renewal of sensation, however exalted 
 — is the secret of what Mr. Le Gallienne has termed 
 " a certain coldness about these young Dianas," the 
 secret also of their peculiar and permanent beauty.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 THE SHORT STORIES 
 
 HT^HE House on the Beack, The Case of General Ople 
 and Lady Camper, and The Tale of Chloe, all 
 now included with Farina in one volume under the 
 title of Short Stories, appeared in the New Quarterly 
 Magazine for January, 1877, July, 1877, an( ^ July. 
 1879, respectively. That is, they belong to the period 
 which produced The Essay on Comedy \ and, in subtlety 
 of thought and delicacy of workmanship, they are 
 not far from its level. The stories appear at first 
 sight readily divisible into comic and tragic, but on 
 further acquaintance they prove less easy to classify. 
 Relatively to the profoundly tragic Tale of Chloe, 
 the other two stories are certainly comedy; but in 
 The House on the Beach, at any rate, the loftier 
 muse follows close in her sister's wake. The inter- 
 mingling of laughter and tears in this story is only to 
 be fully appreciated in view of the coarseness of instru- 
 ment from which such gradation of tone is obtained ; 
 for The House on the Beach is a study of lower 
 middle-class persons in a lower middle-class setting. 
 Tinman, its central character, is the mean-minded ex- 
 tradesman, but now socially aspiring Bailiff, of the 
 Cinque Port of Crikswich. He is almost without a 
 redeeming quality, and, in strains of the mock-heroic 
 well suited to his pretensions, Meredith plays with him 
 as a cat plays with a mouse. He is revealed as even 
 
 301
 
 3 02 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 more sordid than his surroundings, though we are told 
 in reference to his house on the beach, " Sea de- 
 lighted it not, nor land either. Marine Parade fronting 
 it to the left, shaded sickly eyes under a worn, green 
 verandah from a sun that rarely appeared, as the 
 traducers of spinsters pretend those virgins are ever 
 keenly on their guard against him that cometh not. 
 Belle Vue Terrace stared out of lank glass panes with- 
 out reserve, unashamed of its yellow complexion.' A 
 gaping public-house, calling itself newly hotel, fell 
 backward a step. Villas with the titles of royalty and 
 bloody battles claimed five feet of garden, and swelled 
 in bow windows beside other villas which drew up 
 firmly, commending to the attention a decent straight- 
 ness and unintrusive decorum in preference. . . . Shaven- 
 ness, featurelessness, emptiness, clamminess, scurfiness, 
 formed the outward expression of a town to which 
 people were reasonably glad to come from London in 
 summer-time, for there was nothing in Crikswich to 
 distract the naked pursuit of health." Tinman, at the 
 time of his friend Van Diemen Smith's return from 
 Australia, is absorbed in a scheme for taking advantage 
 of his official position as bailiff of Crikswich to present 
 a congratulatory address to the Queen on the occasion 
 of the marriage of one of her daughters. To this end 
 he attitudinises daily in a court suit before the glass. 
 And Van Diemen Smith, arriving at Crikswich late in 
 the evening, walks into a hired mirror which, on account 
 of its unsatisfactory powers of reflection, is being moved 
 out of Tinman's house and returned to its owner. 
 
 Van Diemen is large-minded and warm-hearted in 
 character. It is strange to think that there can ever 
 have been a genuine relationship between him and 
 Tinman. But he has been long in Australia, and in 
 these years his passionate attachment to the land of his
 
 THE SHORT STORIES 303 
 
 birth has wound itself inextricably with the thought of 
 the only acquaintance that remains to him there. More- 
 over, Tinman's existence has enabled him partially to 
 explain to himself his craving for England. Van Diemen 
 arrives. He has wealth and a daughter. He has, more- 
 over, a secret known to Tinman. Tinman covets his 
 daughter and his wealth, and uses his knowledge of the 
 secret as a means to secure them. Van Diemen's extra- 
 ordinary clinging to belief in Tinman, in the face of 
 these developments, is due, partly, to the tendency of 
 a frank and generous nature to credit others with its 
 own qualities, but even more to the fact that the "crime" 
 of his youth remains on his nerves — he will not look it 
 in the face. Terror of it, and its penalties, is the under 
 side of the quality by means of which he retains his 
 affection for Tinman. But this trait in Van Diemen's 
 character — this heroic tenacity of grip on things as 
 they were in the past — is harmonious with the life he 
 has lived. He has been where men are absorbed in 
 wrestling with nature for necessities, and there is little 
 or no field for the exercise of imagination on subtleties 
 of civilisation or character. Sentiment, moreover, tends 
 to stereotype in the exile's mind the features of the 
 England he last looked on. Most of Van Diemen's 
 life has been spent in Australia, and his mixture of 
 elementary emotion and unusual good sense is part of 
 the present colonial equipment. The broad humour 
 of a situation which places the giant-like Van Diemen 
 in the hands of a pigmy is visible plainly enough, but 
 Meredith would have us realise that there is material 
 for tragedy too. And this lies in Van Diemen's unintel- 
 lectualised power of feeling. Vulnerable at one point 
 only, his obsession on this point brings him within sight 
 of a genuine crime ; under sway of his nerves, he comes 
 very near to delivering his daughter over to Tinman.
 
 3 o 4 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 The tragedy is averted, and a true lover's way made 
 plain, by a furious gale which engulfs the house on the 
 beach. Tinman feels his house rocking on the night of 
 the outburst, and, terrified for his property and stung by 
 non-success in his pursuit of Annette, he writes and 
 addresses to the military authorities his long-threatened 
 charge against Van Diemen. The task is accomplished, 
 but sleep is impossible ; " black night favoured the 
 tearing fiends of shipwreck." To distract himself From 
 the terrors of the storm, he goes to his wardrobe and 
 draws out his suit. He puts it on, and his mind plays 
 round memories of the great occasion on which he 
 wore it, till he is sheltered from thought of the tempest 
 in imagination of the day of his splendour. He wraps 
 himself in his dressing-gown, lies down, and sleeps. 
 When he wakes the next morning, waves crash through 
 his house, its walls are falling, and he is cut off from the 
 land. This material embodiment of the spiritual forces 
 which have long battered against Tinman's delusions 
 and falseness is eminently characteristic of Meredith's 
 method. His matter may be whimsical or even fan- 
 tastic, but the angle at which it is set ensures certain 
 lights falling upon it. Crikswich may occupy the 
 centre of the stage, but round and about it is the sea. 
 
 Of The Case of General Ople and Lady Camper, 
 it is sufficient to say that it is, perhaps, the flower of 
 Meredith's humour, and that it gives the main tenets of 
 its author's philosophy in miniature. The exquisite 
 humour of the tale lies in Lady Camper's compulsion 
 of General Ople from sins of omission to those of com- 
 mission, the swiftness with which she drives him along 
 the lines of his tendencies to their goal. And the 
 subtlety with which the General's self-stripping is con- 
 trived may be judged from the opening of the second 
 chapter, where Meredith, while apparently deprecating
 
 THE SHORT STORIES 305 
 
 the gibbeting of his hero, recalls in the ebb of his sentence 
 almost as much as he concedes in its flow. " General 
 Ople was modest, retiring : humbly contented ; a 
 gentlemanly residence appeased his ambition." " He 
 was one of us ; no worse, and not strikingly or peril- 
 ously better ; and he could not but feel, in the bitter- 
 ness of his reflections upon an inexplicable destiny, 
 that the punishment befalling him, unmerited as it 
 was, looked like absence of Design in the scheme of 
 things Above." 
 
 It is, however, in The Tale of Chloe that the high- 
 water mark of these short stories is reached. The 
 beginning of the tale is not easy reading, but as a whole 
 it is perfected artistically in a way very rare in Mere- 
 dith's work. Chloe's character is one of the pro- 
 foundest of Meredith's creations, the subtlety and in- 
 tensity of its conception being the more wonderful for 
 its slightness of outline. The scene of the story is an 
 eighteenth-century health-resort, presided over by a 
 certain Mr. Beamish, "our first, if not only, philoso- 
 phical beau," who by rigid laws and conventions raises 
 the manners of the society under his care to an un- 
 usual pitch of decorum. Beamish undertakes, for a 
 month, responsibility for the rustic girl-wife of a middle- 
 aged duke, whom her husband desires to see something 
 of the fashionable world without running the least risk 
 of contamination. Beamish has no fear of not being; 
 able to meet the conditions, and he welcomes the 
 Duchess Susan, and provides as her personal attendant 
 a lady of good birth, who is known as Chloe. The 
 confidence Mr. Beamish reposes in Chloe is almost un- 
 limited. Years ago she sacrificed the whole of her 
 estate to a faithless lover, and since his departure she 
 has lived penniless at the Wells. She has "died for 
 love," and where love is concerned she is " a ghost, an 
 x
 
 -io6 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 apparition, a taper." Yet her spirit is the flame of the 
 Wells ; she has heart for all its affairs — " the wit and 
 sprightliness of Chloe were so famous as to be con- 
 sidered medical. She was besieged for her company : 
 she composed and sang impromptu verses, she played 
 harp and harpsicord divinely, and touched the guitar 
 and danced — danced like the silvery moon on the 
 waters of the mill-pool." She is a perpetual cordial, 
 and, though the outline of her story is known, no one 
 dreams of pitying her. The strength of her love in the 
 past is revealed to us in the uncrippled rising of her 
 spirit above the wreck of her hopes. A fountain of 
 good to her comrades, in the midst of her last bitter 
 ordeal she appears " as the gayest of them that draw 
 breath for the day and have pulses for the morrow." 
 Superior to the frailties common around her, Chloe is 
 yet throbbing with every pulse of humanity; she is so 
 simply and warmly human that even Susan has only 
 rare glimpses of something that overawes. Romantic 
 and rational, solitary and social, indomitable in purpose, 
 Chloe has won to her marvellous insight through feeling 
 so sword-edged and keen that it has pierced every 
 obstruction. The rarity of her nature lies in its com- 
 bination of exquisite and invigorating vitality with 
 singular aloofness of spirit — " she became the comrade 
 of men without forfeit of her station among sage sweet 
 ladies . . . she seemed her sex's deputy, to tell the 
 coarser where they should meet, as on a bridge above 
 the torrent separating them, gaily for interchange of the 
 best of either, unfired and untempted by fire, yet with 
 all the elements which make fire burn to animate their 
 hearts." 
 
 The Duchess Susan is of good heart and practical 
 common sense, but she is rebellious against the rules of 
 the Wells and " all for nature," as promising most en-
 
 THE SHORT STORIES 307 
 
 joyment. She puts her intelligence to sleep, and relies 
 on Chloe for the alarum. She has no mind to exchange 
 her glowing material charms and her blushes "to be 
 the light which leads ... to don the misty vesture of 
 an idea . . . very powerful but abstruse, unseizable." 
 Caseldy, Chloe's faithless lover, returns to the Wells, 
 not, as Mr. Beamish and others suppose, to claim Chloe, 
 but in pursuit of the Duchess Susan. Chloe, from the 
 first moment, sees how matters stand, but her love for 
 Caseldy is intense, and she allows herself one month of 
 " strongly-willed delusion," increasing her care of her 
 charge, though never allowing Susan or any one else to 
 be aware of her solicitude ; never failing in affectionate 
 warmth to Susan or in gentleness to Caseldy, and break- 
 ing out into scorn of Mr. Camwell, her ardent young 
 lover, when he dares to put the facts she knows into 
 words, and inform her of arrangements for Susan's 
 elopement with Caseldy. 
 
 Chloe's knowledge of every plan and counter-plan, 
 her resolved suicide, her conquest of personal suffering, 
 endow her with an almost unearthly serenity — " every- 
 thing assured her that she saw more clearly than 
 others ; she saw when it was good to cease to live." 
 Her imagination enables her to sympathise with the 
 woman who supplants her and the man who deceives. 
 " She made her tragic humility speak thankfully to the 
 wound that slew her. ' Had it not been so, I should 
 not have seen him,' she said. Her lover would not 
 have come to her but for his pursuit of another woman. 
 She pardoned him for being attracted by that beautiful 
 transplant of the fields : pardoned her likewise. ■ He, 
 when I saw him first, was as beautiful to me. For him 
 I might have done as much.'" There is no smallest 
 taint of rivalry in Chloe's decision to die; she vows 
 herself to her course to save a younger woman from
 
 3 o8 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 ruin. " Far away in a lighted hall of the West, her 
 family raised hands of reproach. They were minute 
 objects, keenly discerned as diminished figures cut in 
 steel. Feeling could not be very warm for them, they 
 were so small, and a sea that had drowned her ran 
 between ; and looking that way she had scarce any 
 warmth of feeling save for a white rhaiadr leaping 
 out of broken cloud through blanched rocks, where she 
 had climbed and dreamed when a child. The dream 
 was then of the coloured days to come ; now she was 
 more infant in her mind, and she watched the scattered 
 water broaden, and tasted the spray, sat there drinking 
 the scene, untroubled by hopes as a lamb, different 
 only from an infant in knowing she had thrown off life 
 to travel back to her home and be refreshed. She 
 heard her people talk ; they were unending babblers 
 in the water-fall. Truth was with them, and wisdom. 
 How, then, could she pretend to any right to live?" In 
 this, Chloe's farewell to earth, the delicate atmosphere 
 of detachment which pervades the whole of the story 
 is wrought to perfection. The artificialities surround- 
 ing the drama, the smallness of its stage, are used with 
 consummate art to make it more poignant. That 
 group of tiny figures waving impotent arms in the 
 West, is clear and afar, actual and remote, as a scene 
 in some ancient metal reflector.
 
 \ 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 MINOR CHARACTERISTICS AND CONCLUSION 
 
 MEN, who, by the abundance of their power and 
 by their habit of concentrating it upon the 
 leading issues of life, have attained to something of a 
 superhuman stature, are seldom deficient in redeeming 
 human weaknesses, partialities not based upon the 
 sterner dictates of reason, but to be viewed rather as 
 flowers of the illogical affections, creatures of mere 
 casual association. Except to their possessors they are 
 of little value in themselves ; for they are accidental ; 
 but they have a derivative value, both as being the 
 accidents of greatness and as providing lesser minds 
 with a certain assurance of community ; tending thus to 
 bring the larger achievement into range with more 
 normal effort ; showing it not merely colossal but of 
 tried, determinate proportion, a feat which the common 
 man may do something more than gape at ; from which 
 — since flesh and blood like his own have accomplished 
 it — he may at least learn method, if he cannot hope to 
 show rivalry in his results. Meredith's nature abounds 
 in these lovable and sometimes illogical partialities, 
 and his work is the more charming that he has made 
 little effort to conceal them. A book might easily be 
 written upon the inessentials, the by-products, of his 
 genius ; for his main stream of purpose is perpetually 
 in flood, perpetually overflowing and ready to dance 
 away and to seek delight and give it along the narrower 
 
 309
 
 3 io GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 side-channels of life and thought. The present chapter 
 aims at indicating a few of these side-channels, and may- 
 set the reader whom they interest upon the track of 
 others. 
 
 Like the poet of an earlier day, Meredith has a word 
 of high praise for water. The cart-horse at the road- 
 side trough appeals to an instinctive sympathy in him 
 with the whole human family and with simple shareable 
 desires : " Well-spring is common ground." 1 But, like 
 the same earlier poet, he adds a qualifying particle to 
 his praise. " Water," he says, " on the one hand, is best." 
 There is, on the other hand, a further consideration, to 
 consult which is to find that wine is better. Meredith's 
 wine chapters are so famous that it is enough, here, to 
 have named them. Alvan and Clotilde rise to one of 
 their highest peaks of rapture in adoration of the 
 national " grape-juice," and the final compliment to 
 Diana is, that, though a woman, she can distinguish a 
 good from an inferior vintage and gives her guests the 
 good. In a teetotal and a democratic age we may best 
 secure sympathy for the intricacies and comicalities of 
 Meredith's wine-worship by pointing to the root of it in 
 his deep-seated aristocracy of sentiment. 
 
 To deal with partialities is, as has been suggested, to 
 deal with the disconnected and illogical ; and this being 
 the nature of our subject, we must rely upon the reader's 
 leniency if a want of method appears in our treatment 
 of it. Whether it were best to pass from wine to a con- 
 sideration of the elaborate and sometimes surely rather 
 over-stimulated wits — wits of brilliant ladies or cynical 
 epicureans, or of the hundred other articles of human 
 jewellery that flash over our author's pages — or, turning 
 to more natural sources of invigoration, to speak of 
 Meredith's peculiar feeling for the south-west wind, is 
 
 1 Melaiiipiis.
 
 MINOR CHARACTERISTICS 3" 
 
 a problem for solution of which there seems no principle 
 
 to be found. 
 
 Not long the silence followed : 
 The voice that issues from thy breast, 
 
 O glorious South-west, 
 Along the gloom-horizon holloa'd ; 
 Warming the valleys with a mellow roar 
 Through flapping wings ; 1 
 
 Meredith's devotion to the south-west wind is due, 
 first, to the fact that we have so much of it, that it 
 is the determinant feature of our English climate. 
 Redworth, in Diana of the Crossways, says that if you 
 consult the old calendars you may find they give south- 
 west weather an average of seven months in the year. 
 This to Meredith would alone be a sufficient ground for 
 friendliness. But the manly strength of the south- 
 west, its womanly variableness, the perennial freshness 
 that accompanies it in earth and sky, are the qualities 
 that most endear it to him, and his delight in them may 
 be traced from the first of his novels to the last. When 
 the south-west is blowing Meredith tells you the time 
 by consulting the heavens, not his watch : " They passed 
 out of Esslemont gates together at that hour of the late 
 afternoon when south-westerly breezes, after a summer 
 gale, drive their huge white flocks over blue fields fresh 
 as morning, on the march to pile the crown of the 
 sphere, and end a troubled day with grandeur." It is 
 from The Amazing Marriage ; and here, from The Ordeal 
 of Richard Feverel, is his description of that grandeur 
 in which the trouble ends. " The wind had dropped. 
 The clouds had rolled from the zenith, and ranged in 
 amphitheatre with distant flushed bodies over sea and 
 land : Titanic crimson head and chest rising from the 
 wave faced Hyperion falling. There hung Briareus 
 with deep-indented trunk and ravined brows, stretching 
 
 1 Ode to the Spirit of Earth in Autumn.
 
 3 i2 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 all his hands up to unattainable blue summits. North- 
 west the range had a rich white glow, as if shining to 
 the moon, and westward, streams of amber, melting into 
 upper rose, shot out from the dipping disk." 
 
 This last, in the close parallel it affords with one of 
 the most noteworthy passages in Meredith's South- 
 Wester, suggests another of our author's character- 
 istics. He has no scruple about using the same im- 
 pression more than once. Indeed, what cause of scruple 
 could there be where the impressionable surface is so 
 vast ? At the same time the manner of rehearsal, as 
 pre-eminently in the case just referred to, is often close 
 enough to be interesting. That remarkable expression 
 in the Hyj/in to Colour, " We came where woods 
 breathed sharp," is recollected from The Ordeal of 
 Richard Feverel, and the equally remarkable expression 
 which immediately succeeds it in the Hymn echoes 
 a passage in Farina. " Bright with maiden splendour 
 shone the moon, and the old rocks, cherished in her 
 beams, put up their horns to blue heaven once more." 
 No one well acquainted with the novels can read the 
 poems without feeling that they are describable, in one 
 aspect, as the novels themselves in distillation. Who 
 doubts that Love in the Valley was composed by 
 Richard for Lucy, or that the nightingales singing in 
 that marvellous Night of Frost in May are the same as 
 those with which Emilia matched herself? That there 
 would be a poem on walking, and a tribute therein to 
 the sweetening influences of that exercise, no prophet 
 would have been needed to predict ; though wonder 
 might well have arisen as to why Meredith kept the 
 world so long waiting for it. 1 The same prediction 
 would probably have included swimming, yachting, 
 climbing ; and certainly it is strange that they do not 
 
 1 The Night Vl'alk; published with A Reading of Lift, 1901.
 
 MINOR CHARACTERISTICS 313 
 
 occupy more prominent places in the poems than they 
 do. That the Hymn to Colour is a hymn not of dawn 
 only, but dawn among the mountains, is felt in the 
 spirit of it, though the mountains themselves are only 
 once directly spoken of. The Last Contention is enough 
 in itself to show Meredith's intimacy with shipping and 
 the sea, and one may have heard of readers who took it 
 as the description of an incident at the regatta. As to 
 swimming, the climax of Lord Ormont has all the 
 poetry of it, and where was the need for versification ? 
 Swimming is a type of pure pleasure to Meredith, the 
 pleasure which can combine the sanity so desirable in 
 our pleasures with that so necessary delirium ! 
 
 Enter these enchanted woods, 
 
 You who dare. 
 Nothing harms beneath the leaves 
 More than waves a swimmer cleaves. 1 
 
 When the pleasures, like waves to a swimmer, 
 Come heaving for rapture ahead. 2 
 
 In the novels there is a tendency to overwork the 
 image. Nothing could be apter than Clara Middleton's 
 dive in view of the looming breaker of Willoughby's 
 embrace. Our allusion naturally is not to metaphorical 
 masterpieces of this calibre, but to the more obvious 
 parallelisms for which the simple word is pressed into 
 service wherever a gliding buoyancy is to be conveyed. 
 That bold and beautiful expression near the close of 
 Love in the Valley is unassailable in itself; the only 
 criticism it is open to is that its author has given us too 
 many associations that clash with it. If the image 
 of your lady is to ' swim ' to you, while your tears flow, 
 it seems a pity that the smell of hot meats at your 
 banquet should be permitted to do the same. But to 
 
 1 The Woods of Westermain. 2 Ode to Youth in Memory.
 
 3H GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 revert; swimming, yachting, climbing, walking, are 
 certainly Meredith's main hobbies, and, to hazard a con- 
 jecture, we should say that they were recommended 
 to him by the opportunity they offer for immediate 
 contact with, and strife against, the elements. They 
 enable a man to take stock of his strength, and to 
 gain the inspiration and the thews of the fighter from 
 the instinctive pleasure he feels in meeting an opposing 
 force and overcoming it. 
 
 His breath of instant thirst 
 Is warning of a creature matched with strife, 
 To meet it as a Bride l 
 
 The particularity of Meredith's nature study has been 
 noted elsewhere. So keen an observer has, of course, 
 his favourite birds and flowers. Among the former, 
 lark, thrush and nightingale need not be more than 
 named ; the tits come in for a fair share of attention ; 
 and among less common species one or two recur in 
 characteristic attitudes : the nightjar is generally to be 
 seen sitting on a pine-branch with a star over his head, 
 and the great green woodpecker is snapshotted as he 
 breaks from cover, uttering his melodious cry. Among 
 flowers, after that of the wild cherry tree, the first place 
 must be given to the pale purple crocus. Its earliest 
 appearance is in Farina, when Margarita wears it, the 
 bell downward, in her hair; and both in Diana of the 
 Crossways and The Amazing Marriage, Meredith 
 makes allusion to the beauty of its effect in mass. 
 Carinthia, standing with Chillon in the marvellous dawn 
 of that morning farewell to their home, sees " straight- 
 grown flocks of naked, purple crocuses in bud and blow 
 abounding over the meadow that rolled to the level of 
 the house ; and two of these she gathered." Proper 
 
 1 Earth and Man.
 
 MINOR CHARACTERISTICS 315 
 
 appreciation of the flower, and, Diana would add, of 
 wild flowers in general, necessitates this temperance in 
 the matter of picking them. It is a different crocus, but 
 still a crocus, which, at the end of The Thrush in 
 February, provides Meredith with one of the most 
 perfect images in the whole range of his poetry. 
 
 We turn from a minor to what must certainly be 
 considered nearer to a major characteristic of our 
 author in alluding to his love of what we may call the 
 element of the chorus in fiction. It has two sides, one 
 graver, which we shall allude to presently, one lighter, 
 which we may be allowed to touch on here. The chorus 
 was a stately element in the old Greek Tragedy, and 
 the circumstances of its introduction were such as to 
 allow it to preserve dignity while indulging in an almost 
 unlimited sententiousness. Now Meredith, though a 
 reformer, will not be a preacher. The reformer, he feels, 
 to be effective, must go to work more warily, and take 
 the disinclination of his audience into account ; which, 
 as the Psalmist has it, hates to be reformed. If, then, 
 the flavour of your Fiction is incomplete without a 
 spice of aphorisms, so that to write a Novel excluding 
 Philosophy is " really to bid a pumpkin caper," — which 
 nothing but the most piquant sauce could do, — it fol- 
 lows, an acute and honourable minority consenting, that 
 you must introduce this exceptionable yet necessary 
 element by sleight of hand. You will seldom make 
 improving remarks in propria persond, but clearly there 
 will be no objection to representing some grey-headed 
 senior, whose moral seriousness impels him to compose 
 proverbs, and who is without the modesty that might 
 prevent him publishing them ; and then, of course, once 
 published they will be common property, and may be 
 quoted to occasion by the other characters in the book : 
 or, if no such scapegoat is forthcoming for the sacrifice,
 
 316 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 you may discover the hitherto neglected manuscript of 
 an unknown author, as Carlyle did in his Sartor ; and 
 Meredith has discovered many. Altogether it seems 
 there is no expedient but is worth a trial to escape the 
 horrid imputation of moralising. 
 
 Throughout this book it has been the author's effort 
 to make clear in what direction Meredith's inspiration 
 mainly lies. Even when his inspiration fails him, his 
 writing is so brilliant, that brilliance and versatility of 
 intellect have been generally supposed his chief title to 
 fame. It argues no lack of appreciation of this rich 
 intellectual endowment to say that, when Meredith's 
 achievement is estimated as a whole, it occupies a 
 secondary place. His inspiration appears to lie in his 
 poetic grasp, the intensity of realisation with which he 
 holds to the main issue and keeps it living, in defiance 
 of the tangles of complexity he is for ever weaving 
 every side of it, and which might have been expected 
 to prove fatal to the life within. Again and again you 
 may put your finger on speeches which come neither from 
 character nor situation, but are plainly forced upon both 
 by a critical reaction on the part of their author ; and 
 yet the effect of the character itself will not be ap- 
 preciably marred. It is, in fact, just because the central 
 life is so convincingly represented, that it becomes pos- 
 sible to detect these superficial inconsistencies. And 
 what is true of the characters is equally true of the 
 composition in its wider aspects. In spite of all its 
 twists and turns, its pausing by the way, its return for 
 analysis and counter-analysis, the underflow of passion 
 asserts itself irresistibly, and, once the reader will con- 
 sent to trust to it, carries him triumphantly along. And 
 it should be remarked that it is in connection with
 
 CONCLUSION 317 
 
 the minor characters and the comparatively extraneous 
 issues that mistakes most frequently occur. Where 
 Meredith's genius falters — and it falters only in situa- 
 tions that put no tax upon it — his judgment is not 
 always in readiness to give support. It is where his 
 ground is treacherous that he is most secure. Reference 
 was made in our Introduction to Meredith's favourite 
 thesis as to a fiction that should be revived by philoso- 
 phy, and we have just indulged in an allusion to this 
 thesis in one of its lighter aspects. We must attempt 
 to view it more gravely before we close. " Philosophy," 
 says Meredith, " is required to make our human nature 
 creditable and acceptable. Fiction implores you to heave 
 a bigger breast and take her in with this heavenly pre- 
 servative helpmate, her inspiration and her essence." 
 We spoke earlier of Meredith's partiality for choruses 
 and of one attribute of the chorus in Greek Tragedy. 
 But what, after all, was the main value of the old chorus, 
 if not that it provided, as well by the dignity as by the 
 detachment of its utterances, a spiritual atmosphere, in 
 which the significance of events passing upon the stage 
 could be realised in their relation to a truth outliving 
 them : that it called upon spectators of the tragedy to 
 view the actors and incidents presented to them, not 
 only in their particular, but in their universal aspect, 
 and "heave a bigger breast"? In short, the chorus 
 points us to a high post of vantage at which the visions 
 of poet and philosopher coalesce ; and it is Meredith's 
 greatness in his novels that he so often attains to it.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Allegory ( The Shaving of Shagpat), 
 
 17-29 
 Amazing Marriage, The, 25, 285- 
 
 300, 311, 314 
 American Civil War, the, 10 
 Appeasement of Demeter, The, 255 
 Arabian Entertainment, An {The 
 
 Shaving of Shagpat), 17 
 Aristophanes, 148 
 Athenanm, The, 12, 13, 29 
 At the Close, 144 
 Austria, 136 
 Austro-Italian War of 1866, 9 
 
 B 
 
 Ballad of Fair Ladies in Revolt, A, 
 
 i5 6 » 2 54 
 Beauchamp's Career, 14, ill, 121- 
 
 137, HO 
 Bismarck, 1 42 
 Box Hill, 9 
 Browning, Robert, 103 
 Brownlowe, Countess of, 101, 102 
 Buch der Lieder (Heine), 104 
 Burns, Robert, 104, 151 
 Byron, Lord, 106 
 
 Cageing of Ares, The, 234 
 
 Campbell, Thomas, 104 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 14, 15, III, 132 
 
 Case of General Ople and Lady 
 
 Camper, The, 301, 304, 305 
 Castlereagh, Lady, 101, 102 
 Chamberlain, Joseph, 141 
 Chapman and Hall, Messrs., 9 
 Charlton, Robert, 136 
 Chloe and Other Stories, 31 
 City of Melancholia, The (James 
 
 Thomson), 106 
 Clarissa (Richardson), 98, 99 
 Cobden, Life of Richard (Morley), 
 
 136 
 Coleridge, S. T., 204-7 
 Comedy, Essay on, 2, 101, 109, in, 
 
 147. *49i 155. l62 » 301 
 — the idea of, 147-152, 162, 163, 
 
 218-220 
 Comic Spirit, Ode to, 219 
 Concessions to the Celt, 1 39 
 Constable, Messrs., 10 
 Cornhill Magazine, 1 16 
 Corn Laws, Repeal of, 259 
 Courlande, Duchesse de, 101 
 Critic, The, 10 
 Crotchet Castle (T. L. Peacock), 
 
 168 
 Croydon Electors, Letter to the, 140, 
 
 141 
 Czar Nicholas I, the, 136 
 
 319
 
 320 
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 D 
 
 Daily Chronicle, The, 14, 105 
 Day of the Daughter of Hades , Tht ■ • , 
 
 238, 239 
 Dejection: An Ode (S. T. Coleridge), 
 
 204 
 Democracy, 14, 145, 220, 221, 224 
 Diana of the Crossways, 1,15, 107, 
 
 io3, 137, 174. 175.259-269,311, 
 
 314 
 Dino, Duchesse de (Madame de 
 
 Perigord), 101, 102 
 Dirge in Woods, 34 
 Donniges, Helene von (Frau von 
 
 Racovvitza), 172-175 
 Dorking Women's Liberal Associa- 
 tion, Letter to, 14, 139 
 
 Earth and a Wedded Woman, 255 
 Earth and Man, 217,314 
 Earth's Secret, 25, 186 
 Egoist, The, 13, 15, 42, 116, 129, 
 152-155, 161-171, 175, 272, 285 
 Egypt, 138 
 Eliot, George, 1 1, 14, 17 
 
 Emilia in England (Sandra Bel- 
 
 loni), 75 
 Empty Purse, The (A Sermon to 
 
 our Later Prodigal Son), 3, 4, 52- 
 
 54. 56-59. 144. 22Q, 233 
 Essay on Comedy, 2, ioi, 109, m, 
 
 147, 1 19. 155, 162, 301 
 Essays, Mrs. Ahync/Ps, 105 
 Evan Harrington, 15, 4N-52, 55, 56 
 Evani, Elizabeth E., 175 
 / aniiner, 'The, 13 
 
 Faith on Trial, A, 167, 187, 193, 
 2 3 8 . 239, 240 
 
 Farina, n, 29-32, 33, 301, 312, 
 
 314 
 Foresight and Patience, 14, 137, 
 
 144, 145, 146 
 Fortnightly Revietv, The, 2, 9, 34, 
 
 88, 101-105, 121, 139, 142, 172, 
 
 259 
 PVance and the French : General, 
 
 142-144 
 
 Literature, 102, 112, 142 
 
 Manners, 101, 102 
 
 France, December, iSjo, 142, 240 
 
 Free Trade, 141 
 
 Trench History, Odes in contribution 
 
 to the Song of, 142, 144, 240 
 Eraser's Magazine, 10 
 
 Germany, boyhood in, 9 
 Germany and the Germans: culture 
 and idealism, 142 
 
 — influence on Meredith, m 
 
 — views of English characteristics, 
 119, 120, 142, 249 
 
 Gibbon, Edward, 106, 148 
 Giusti, 105 
 
 Gladstone, W. E., 137, 138 
 Goethe, 103, 104, 105, 250 
 Gryll Grange (T. L. Peacock), 
 168 
 
 II 
 
 Hamlet, on, no 
 
 Hard Weather, 200, 214, 215, 
 
 249 
 Harry Richmond, 42, no, 1 14- 
 
 120 
 Harvard Monthly, 'The, 1 
 Hawarden, 144 
 
 1 leine, 104, 110, 179 
 Herbert, Sidney, 259
 
 INDEX 
 
 121 
 
 Herrick, 232 
 
 Holly Hill, 121 
 
 Home Rule, 137-139 
 
 Hood, Thomas, 104 
 
 House on the Beach, The, 301- 
 
 304 
 
 Hungaria, 136 
 
 Hymn to Colour, 193, 21 0, 21 1, 245, 
 249. 2S6, 312, 313 
 
 I 
 
 i (Merivale's Translation), 102 
 — (Meredith's Translations of frag- 
 ments), 234 
 Imperialism, on, 145 
 International Marriages, on, 144 
 //; the l!\\\:'s, 34 
 Ipswich Jernmal, The, 9 
 Ireland, on, 1 37-1 39 
 Italian Independence, S9, 142 
 
 J 
 /. .1/., Lines to, 144 
 
 /. M., To, 144 
 
 Journalism, on, 144, 145 
 Jowett, B., 249 
 
 /w:/-:c-L-.'.' v '.:•:. , 220, 254. 2S4 
 
 Kant, 1S7 
 
 Keats, 10, 233 
 
 Kingsley, Charles. 10, 14, 232. 233 
 
 Kossuth, Louis, 136 
 
 Lark As t t m d img, The, 2CC-203, 249 
 Lasalle, Ferdinand, 142, 172-175 
 
 Ftrdimmmd A Modem TV . 
 
 (Elizabeth E. Evans), 175 
 Y 
 
 Lasa'U, Meine Bezichungen sit 
 
 Ferdinand [Fxau von Racowitza), 
 
 172 
 Last Contention, The, 254, 313 
 
 .•';■>■, 75k, 17 
 Le Gallienne, Richard, 34, 39, 61, 
 
 94, 220, 300 
 Letter to the Croydon electors, 140, 
 
 141 
 Letter to the Dorking Women's 
 
 Liberal Association, 14, 139 
 Liberalism, 139, 144, 145, 220 
 Lines to J. M., 144 
 Lord Ormcnt .: >:d bis Aminta, 273- 
 
 279. 313 
 Love in the Va.'.'ey, 10, 236, 237, 
 
 Lytton, Robert, 103 
 
 M 
 
 Manchester School, the, 10, 134, 
 
 Marriage, on, 139, 140, 144, 270- 
 
 •73 
 
 Maxse, Admiral, 121 
 
 Mazzini, S9-91 
 
 McKecbnie, Rev. James (on The 
 
 Si.:z :'<:g of Sh.:gr~:\ 1S-24, 25, 
 
 27, 28 
 
 .;.':'.••.• undo Starr, 187, 215. 
 
 235, 23 6 
 
 .'.'...- ./us, 212, 213, 310 
 
 Melbourne, Lord, 259 
 
 Meredith, George : birth, 9 ; child- 
 hood in Germany, 9 : .-:... lies 
 law, 9 ; abandons law for litera- 
 ture, 9 ; war correspondent in 
 Italy, o ; reception of early 
 writings, 10-15 
 
 Meredith's Wm ■'.', LiVraiy Edition 
 of, 10
 
 322 
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 Merivale's Translation of The Iliad, 
 102 
 
 Metaphor, use of, 4, 5> 8, 107, 242- 
 
 245, 289, 290 
 MeynelVs Essays, Mrs., 105 
 Milton, John, 255 
 Modern Love, 5, 10, 14, 60-74, *49> 
 
 240-243, 245 
 Moliere, 163 
 
 Morley, John, 9, 136, 144 
 Morning Post, The, 9 
 Musset, Alfred de, 105 
 Myers, F. W., 101 
 My Theme, 3 
 
 N 
 Napoleon, 240 
 
 National Review, The, 105, 137 
 Nature-poet, Meredith as, 196-21 1, 
 
 314, 315 
 
 Neuer Friihling (Heine), 104 
 
 Nevinson, H. W. , 14 
 
 New Quarterly Magazine, The, 147, 
 
 301 
 Nicholas I, Czar, 136 
 Night of Frost in May, A, 200, 
 
 201, 312 
 Night Walk, The, 312 
 Norton, Caroline, 259 
 Nuptials of Attila, The, 255 
 
 Obscurity of language in Meredith's 
 
 writings, 7, 62, 244, 245 
 Ode to the Comic Spirit, 219 
 
 — to the South- Wester, 200, 209, 
 215, 312 
 
 — to the Spirit of Earth in Autumn, 
 io, 245, 3 11 
 
 — to Youth in Memory, 225-229, 
 313 
 
 Odes in contribution to the Song 
 of French History, 142, 144, 
 240 
 
 Omar Khayyam, 230 
 
 One of our Conquerors, 100, 107, 
 143, 270-273, 279-284, 294 
 
 Once a Week, 48 
 
 Orchard and the Heath, The, 2^1- 
 
 254 
 Ordeal of Richard Feverel, The, II, 
 
 12, 14, 33-47, 48, 60, 97, 107, 
 
 116, 149, 163, 311, 312 
 Outer and Inner, 199 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette, The, 13, 137 
 
 Paris, city of, 143 
 
 Pastorals, 11 
 
 Pause in the Strife, A, 137 
 
 Peace, on, 134, 135, 144 
 
 Peacock, Thomas Love, 9, 10, 
 168 
 
 Pease, Henry, 1 36 
 
 Peel, Sir Robert, 259 
 
 Perigord, Madame de (Duchesse de 
 Dino), 101, 102 
 
 Peterborough, Earl of, 272 
 
 Phaethon, 233, 238 
 
 Phoebus with Admetus, 233 
 
 Pitt, William, 117 
 
 Plato, 210 
 
 Poems and Lyrics, 144 
 
 Poems by George Meredith, 10, 60 
 
 Poems of 1862 {Poems of the Eng- 
 lish Roadside), IO 
 
 Poems, political, 144-146 
 
 Poems written in Early Youth, 
 10 
 
 Poetry and Philosophy of George 
 Meredith, The(G. M. Trevelyan), 
 15, 142
 
 INDEX 
 
 323 
 
 Political views, Meredith's, 9, 10, 
 14, 121, 122, 137-146, 219- 
 223 
 
 Prometheus Unbound (Shelley), 
 
 209 
 Protection, 141 
 
 Quakers, 136 
 
 R 
 
 Racowitza, Frau von (Helene von 
 
 Donniges), 172 
 Reade, Charles, 12 
 Heading of Life, A, 137, 144, 312 
 Reminiscences from 1802 to iSij 
 
 (Countess of Brownlowe), 101, 
 
 102 
 Repeal of the Corn Laws, 259 
 Republic, Introduction to Plato's 
 
 (Jowett), 249 
 Reviewers, on, 105 
 Rhoda Fleming, 15, 94-100 
 Richardson, Samuel, 97-99 
 Richter, Jean Paul, 11 1 
 Robinson, Anastasia, 273 
 Romanzero (Heine), 104 
 Rossetti, W. M., 10, 232 
 Rubaiyat, The (Omar Khayyam), 
 
 230 
 Ruskin, John, 29 
 Russia, 136, 142 
 
 Sage Enamoured and the Honest 
 Lady, The, 63, 99, 156-161, 240, 
 242-245 
 Saint Paul (F. W. Myers), 101 
 Salvation Army, on the, 284 
 
 Sandra Belloni, 33, 42, 54, 75-88, 
 91, 107, 109, 112, II3, 163,285, 
 294 
 
 Saturday Review, The, 12, 29 
 
 Schreiner, O., 9 
 
 Secularist, The, 89 
 
 Self-criticism, Meredith's, 34, 107 
 
 Sermon to Our Later Prodigal Son, 
 A {The Empty Purse), 52 
 
 Shakespeare, 42, no, 117, 118 
 
 Shaving of Shagpat, The, II, 14, 
 
 17-29. 33 
 Shelley, 15, 104 
 Sheridan, R. B., 259 
 Shipwreck of Idomeneus, The, 
 
 234 
 Short Stories, 301-308 
 Should Thy Love Die, 10 
 Sonnets, 7, 60, 61, 245, 255 
 South African War, on the, 144 
 South-Wester, Ode to the, 200, 209, 
 
 215, 312 
 South- West Wind in the Woodland, 
 
 The, 10 
 Spectator, The, 13, 60 
 Spirit of Earth in Autumn, Ode 
 
 to the, 10, 245, 311 
 Stead, W. T., 145 
 Stevenson, R. L., 47 
 Story of a South African Farm, 
 
 The (Schreiner), 9 
 Sturge, Joseph, 136 
 Style, Meredith's, 4, 5, 6-8, 107, 
 
 230-258, 289, 290, 312, 313, 
 
 315, 3*6 
 Swift, Dean, 148 
 Swinburne, 60 
 
 Tale of Chloe, The, 271, 301, 305- 
 
 308 
 Talleyrand, 102
 
 3^4 
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 Tennyson, 103, 232 
 
 Test of Manhood, The, 248 
 
 Thomson, James, 13, 14, 47, 105, 
 
 109, 149, 168 
 Thrush in February, The, 200, 207, 
 
 216, 249, 315 
 Times, The, 12, 136, 138, 259 
 — Literary Supplement, 105 
 To J. M., 144 
 Tragic Comedians, The, 107, 10S, 
 
 109, no, 142, 172-181, 269 
 Trevelyan, G. M., 15, 57, 125, 
 
 142, 193, 240 
 Turgenev, 42 
 
 U 
 
 Universal Review, The, 284 
 
 V 
 
 Valencia, 272 
 Venice, 9, 88, 126-129 
 Vittoria, 82, 85, 88-93 
 
 W 
 
 Wellington, Duke of, 136 
 Whimper of Sympathy, 34 
 Woodland Peace, 34, 247 
 Woods of Westermain, The, 215, 
 
 217, 250, 313 
 Wordsworth, W., 106, 207, 208 
 World's Advance, The, 159 
 
 Youth in Memory, Ode to, 225-229, 
 313 
 
 
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