should be permeated with honest hard thinking; and it was one happiness of his declining years to believe that he had succeeded in creating a taste which could appreciate this kind of writing. And for him "the brain-stuff of fiction is internal his

tory." His own words exactly express the goal of his endeavour as a novelist-he is avowedly a subjective writer; the narrative is only to be an explanation of the idea underlying it. But, working upon this conception, he often falls into the disastrous fault of giving the idea a wholly disproportionate place. He will even begin with the thesis, which he lays before you in the first chapter, and the story merely follows to prove it. But, if the novel is to be a picture of life as an experience, the only valid method seems to be to tell your story and leave the reader to discover the meaning. Meredith virtually says-Given a certain problem of life, I will show how art solves it, or, at least, in some degree explains it. His practice is, surely, not only an artistic mistake, but invalid from the point of view of the novel?

The faults which spring from Meredith's diffuse wealth of genius have been noted already. His intellectualisms, his involutions of style, his tricks of phraseology, his insequent chapters and contorted plot, grow into a hardened contempt for that poor creature-the gentle reader. "This is

not meat," he said once, "for little people or for fools." And, if this displays a want of tolerant sympathy, it can only be admitted that Meredith belonged to that large class who find it difficult to suffer fools gladly..

Two great poets of the last century illustrate and embody, for forty years or more, the scientific, social, religious, and artistic thought of their time. Taken together, they provide us with a very complete reflex of the thought of the world in which they lived. Their art and their thought differ, but they deal very largely with the same range of ideas. George Meredith was a little younger than Tennyson or Browning. He too was a poet, but the quantity of his poetical work was small compared with his prose. But whether in his poetry or his prose, we find the same unswerving, hopeful, full-blooded and buoyant outlook upon human life. He is less academic than Tennyson, less theological than Browning, and in artistic theory and philosophy of life he is more original than either. In saying this, no comparison of ultimate values, which would be absurd, is intended. But Meredith essentially reflects the trend of artistic and social ideals from the middle of the last century; and to neglect him, if it is nothing more, is, at least, to refuse one of the great sources of intellectual culture of our day.

THE NOVELS OF MEREDITH.

The Shaving of Shagpat, 1855; Farina, 1857; The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, 1859; Evan Harrington, 1861; Sandra Belloni (first called Emilia in England), 1864; Rhoda Fleming, 1865; Vittoria, 1866; The Adventures of Harry Richmond, 1871; Beauchamp's Career, 1876; The Egoist, 1879; The Tragic Comedians, 1880; Diana of the Crossways, 1885; One of our Conquerors, 1891; The Tale of Chloe and Other Stories (first printed 1877–79), 1895 ; Lord Ormont and His Aminta, 1894; The Amazing Marriage, 1895; Celt and Saxon (unfinished), 1910.

CHAPTER XVI

THOMAS HARDY (1840).

THE great contemporary comparison between Dickens and Thackeray was repeated in different terms for many years by two later novelists, George Meredith and Mr. Thomas Hardy. George Meredith's long life drew to its close, and Mr. Hardy lives his solitary life, the more isolated now that he alone remains of the great writers who belong to the Victorian era, that great period in the history of English literature. A few years since there might have been room for discussion of the place and relative rank of living English novelists, but only after all had agreed to the primary conjunction of George Meredith and Mr. Hardy as facile principes. The union of their names as living writers is no longer possible; and few will dispute the primacy of Mr. Hardy among English men of letters. Dissentient critics of George Meredith's work have always been many; and many others, less confident in criticism, have confessed that, despite the brilliance of his wit and genius, he is not for them; but few will be found among

the faithless and doubting in any estimate of Mr. Hardy's work as a novelist. In some aspects, in the austere dignity with which he represents the tragedy and comedy of obscure life, and in his constructive art, all other English novelists, "since the goodly art of novel-writing began," suffer by comparison with Mr. Hardy. And meanwhile, till some new and greatly original writer appears, to quote Professor Saintsbury:—

"Meredith. . . and Mr. Thomas Hardy . . not merely supply the most remarkable examples in different kinds of English novel-work during the last half-century, but almost what may be called its palette. That is to say, almost all later novelists either follow them as models, more or less directly, or blend their characteristics with such other admixture of individuality as may in each case have been found possible."

The sphere and method of work of George Meredith and Mr. Hardy are distinct, and a contrast of their broader characteristics is illuminating and significant. Both men have written poetry possessing great qualities of a wholly different order; Meredith's is full of light and colour, overflowing with imagery and metaphor, and fired with the joy of life; Hardy's poems are comparatively cold, a stern melancholy pervades their thought and diction, the magic of words is not