GEORGE MEREDITH.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 6823, 20 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-Dickensian novel. Liko Stevenson and Hardy he in his younger days wrote lasting and memorable verso. With Swinburne, Bessette and Thackeray he dabbled in the journalism of sixty years ago, but at an early age found his true metieri and has since been regarded as tho most notable master of English fiction. Meredith's -first novel proper. "Tho Ordeal of Richard Foverel,” was published in 1859, and though its great merits -wero soon recognised by tho 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 fintet novels ever penned, took its tide place in the general estimation ot literature. Tho 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 aro evident on almost every -page he. wrote. An a -satirist of the snob ho rivalled Thackeray, and -as a delineator of woman ho created successors to Portia and Olivia. - Among his sayings ; frequently recalled is the caustic aphorism: ■‘Woman will probably bo tho last thing civilised by man.’’ .

George Meredith has published -about twenty-five books, prose and verse, and has taken such, a grip on the life of his time ns few authors of any age have been able to do. Not to know this man’s work is to confess one’s self deaf to one of the most eloquent voices of modern literature —and more, 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. "The best of me is in my books,” he. 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 bo educated as a ward in chancery. Little has been told about those parents. Mrs M. E. F. Gilman, who in 1888 prepared a volume of selections from Mr Meredith called "The Pilgrim’s Scrip.” and who therein collected move data about his life than anv 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 homelv characters are drawn.” He received his early education in Germany, where he remained until he was fifteenI’years 1 ’years old. 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. .Ho soon found that he had chosen a difficult course. His life in London for many years, says Mrs Gilman, was a hand-to-hand strugg h with poverty in its harshest forms. He was hampered' with* a load of debts of others’ making/ For a whole rear he lived on a diet" of oatmeal. 1n'1866 lie wont to the A'ustro-Italian war as a correspondent for the London "Morning Post.'” That experience gave him material for his novel "Vittoria.” His first wife -was a daughter of Thomas Love Peacock, author of "Headlong Hail,” . "Melinoourt.” "Maid Marian,” and other novels. They had one son. Mr Meredith’s' second wife died m 1886. Mr Meredith’s greatest achievement as a literary artist has been his successful handling'of the problems of 1 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, hearing, words, flounders'about inextricably in a, slough of despond: he 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 scones are among the best things he has given us; indeed, they are among the best things in all literature. To create characters that live, said Alphonse Baudot, that is the .business of the novelist, rather ithan 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 poems: 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 thecomplete unfolding of the creature,, not in the nipping of his passions. An outrage to nature helps to extinguish his 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,, he has worked out his own' salvation; and he has shown that "it is possible to rise above the temporal and personal, however dark and painful it may be. and to live wholly, and even joyfully, in the Universal and Eternal.” This philosophical novelist and poet has been as great a preacher as Thomas Carlyle or . Matthew Arnold, but a saner mind than either, with a wider sympathy and a greater liberality.