GEORGE MEREDITH.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2510, 25 May 1909, Page 6

GEORGE MEREDITH.

A GREAT NOVEL WRITER

SKETCH OF HIS CAREER

With the passing of George Meredith the world has lost the greatest exponent of the post-JDickensian novel. Like Stevenson and Hardy he in his younger days wrote lasting and memorable verse. With Swinburne, Ilossette and Thackeray lie dabbled in the journalism of sixty years ago, but at an early age found bis true metier, and lias since been regarded as the most notable master of English fiction. Meredith’s first novel proper, “The Ordeal of Richard Foverel,” was published in 1859, and though its great merits were soon recognised by the best critics of that day it was not until the author had made name and fame by other works that this,' perhaps one of the finest novels ever penned, took its true place in the general estimation of literature. The publication of ‘‘Evan Harrington” and “Rhoda Fleming” converted the study of his writings into a scientific cult, which, received stimulus by “.Beauchamp’s Career” and “The Egotist.” Meredith’s idiosyncrasies are evident on almost every page ho wrote. As a satirist, of the snob he rivalled Thackeray, and as a delineator of woman he created. successors to Portia and Olivia. Among' his sayings frequently recalled is the caustic aphorism: “Woman will probably be the last thing civilised by man.” George Meredith,,has published about -twenty-five books, prose and verse, and lids taken such a grip on the life of his -time as few authors of any ago have lieen able to do. Noj/to. know this man’s -work is to confcss‘'one/£\se 1 f deaf to of tlm mocU of mo<!orn literature —a ini move. to deprive

one’s self of a great store of mental pleasure of a rare kind. Available, facts for a biography of the man are meagre. He never sought, or was willing to permit, personal publicity. “Tho best of me is in my. books,” lie said to one inquirer. Though of Welsh and Irish blood, he was born in Hampshire, England, on February 12th, 1828. Both his parents died when he was a small child, leaving him to be educated as a ward in chancery. Little has been told about those parents. Mrs M. R. F. Gilman, who in 1888 prepared a volume of selections from Mr Meredith called “Tho Pilgrim’s Scrip,” and who therein collected more data about his life than any other, says that “the blood of working ancestors flows in Meredith’s veins, and perhaps this accounts for the sympathetic insight with which many of his homely characters are drawn.” He received his early education in Germany, where ho remained until he was fifteen years Then his guardian recalled him to England and set him to studying law. This never appealed to his tastes, however, and as soon as he became his own master he abandoned it for journalism and literature. He soon found that he had chosen a difficult course. His life in London for many years, says Mrs Gilman, was a hand-to-hand struggle with poverty in its harshest forms. , He was hampered with a load of debts of others’ making. For a whole year ho lived on a diet of oatmeal. In 1866 ho went to the Austro-Italian war as a correspondent for tho London “Morning Post.” That experience gave him material for liis novel “Vittoria.”

His first wife, was a daughter of Thomas Love Peacock, author of “Headlong Hall,” “Melincourt,” “Maid Marian,” and other novels. They had one son. Mr Meredith’s second wife died in 1886.

Mr Meredith’s greatest achievement as a literary artist has been his successful handling of the problems of sex, the treatment of love. There is the mark of the master. The ordinary novelist when he comes to the presentment of his lovers, their actions, bearing, words, flounders about inextricably in a slough of despond; ho fails at the crucial test. Mr Meredith’s marvellous insight enabled him to meet that test triumphantly. He knew the hearts of his women as well as those of his men. His love scenes are among the best things he lias given us; indeed, they are among the best things of literature. To create characters that live, said Alphonse Daudet, that is the business of the novelist, rather than to write fine prose. It was Mr Meredith’s distinction to have done both. The teaching of his novels is the same as that of his poenis: The life of the spirit is the only life. Disregard death. “Training ourselves to live in the Universal, we rise above the individual. And “the way to spiritual life lies in the complete unfolding of the creature, not in the nipping of his passions. An outrage to nature helps to extinguish liis light.” His own life has been the proof of the efficacy of his teaching. He has been a great lover, not alone of nature and of nature’s God, but his fellow men. Contemptuous of traditional creeds and their belittling tendencies, lie has worked out his own salvation; and he has shown that “it is possible to rise above tlio temporal and peisonal, however dark and painful it mav be, and to live wholly, and even joy ail ly, in the Universal and Eternal. ' This philosophical novelist and poet has been as "reat a preacher as Thomas Carlyle or Matthew Arnold, but a saner mmd than either, with a wider sympathy and a greater liberality.