GEORGE MEREDITH'S STRENUOUS LIFE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13491, 18 May 1907, Page 1 (Supplement)

GEORGE MEREDITH'S STRENUOUS LIFE.

' '"■'■■■ ' ' ' ..■'■."■. ■"■■" ' •: ":■'■■ -'' I Mr. George Meredith has entered upon, his eightieth year, and it is particularly fortunate that he has lived long enough to see the popular triumph of his genius, for there are few writers of equal merit who had a more unfortunate experience in their early and even, their mature years.-. . It is almost sixty years since lie first appeared in print—with a copy of verses contributed to Chambers' Journal—and a little more than half a century since he issued his first prose . work, the unique .' '" Shaving of Shagpat/' which still holds its own as the one absolutely successful ittempt to reproduce the atmosphere of the •'" Arabian Nights" in any European language, for even Vathek" and " Zadig" ire essentially; Western in their spirit. I The greater part of Mr. Meredith's iterary achievement was completed before le was sixty years old it is,., indeed, loubtful whether anything published since hat date has materially added to. his recitation. Yet it is only within the memory if the present generation that he has been ;enerahy re-cognised as worthy of a place unongst the seven or eight "greatest of British novelists, with Fielding and Scott, .'hackeray, and Dickens. Men of half his age can still recall the ime when hardly a critic of any note bought it worth while to speak as length i his books, and when, as Stevenson some?here says, so wonderful a tragedy as Rhoda Fleming" i; had ,to be sought for t bookstalls) like a rare Aldine. It was not until the appearance ;'■ of Diana of the Crosswayx," in 1885, that Jr. Meredith s name became at all familiar ) u».e general reader. If Mr. Meredith ad died at the age of Thackeray or Scott f Dickens he would have entirely failed > reap such a reward. Like Browning. Mr. Meredith never deberately aimed at popularity, never wrote r the reader who regarded a book in the eht of a cigar, as. a convenient method passing an idle Hour. His extreme inyiduality of style, which earned him **>e mo reproach of obscurity as Mr. . Bmell id to defend Browning "from, did i':ueh militate against the immediate -cess bis work ; now it serves as" an antiseptic, i it is nc longer fashionable to say that e cannot understand him, though the mous first chapter of " Diana" can neverl called easy reading,', -v * .J