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.: -:.?,'. '., '.;', : : : ; ; -^; '-"-^ -" LIBRARY uMivr fi.->ITY OF DIEGO MABEL T. STOUT - "GRAY- LA* HARRIMAN, * Y. a GEORGE MEREDITH SOME EARLY APPRECIATIONS GEORGE MEREDITH SOME EARLY APPRECIATIONS SELECTED BY MAURICE BUXTON FORMAN NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 153-157 FIFTH AVENUE 1909 PREFACE THE twenty-three articles contained in this volume have been chosen from a collection of over one hundred as worthy of preservation in a form more accessible than that in which they originally ap- peared. For various reasons it has been necessary to withhold several interesting papers which I should like to included but those have ; gathered here fairly represent critical judgment on George Meredith's writing from the year 1851, when his first book was published, till 1883, when he issued his " Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth," the volume which immediately preceded "Diana of the Cross- " and it will that these ways ; hardly be disputed papers from a select band of Meredith's early admirers will help the Meredith student of to-day towards a better understanding of the last of the great Victorians. James Thomson, summarizing George Meredith's position in a review of the second edition of "The Ordeal of Richard Feverel," in May, 1879, spoke of "about thirty years' high-minded and miserably appreciated labour," and again, a few months later, v Preface " referred to William Ernest Henley's article on The " * " Egoist in The Athenceum as "the first clear light he had seen, the first public utterance on Meredith " evincing the critic's familiarity with all the writer's " works." Had the author of that lurid poem The " City of Dreadful Night and the magnificent ottava " " rima story of Weddah and Om-El-Bonain gone a little further afield in his search for what had been written about Meredith between 1851 and 1879, he could not have failed to be pleased on encounter- ing other notable Victorians who, like himself and Meredith, combined the offices of poet and critic. He would have discovered Richard Garnett, author " of lo in Egypt, and Other Poems," setting out to " " " criticize Emilia in England thus : The an- nouncement of a new work by Mr. George Meredith is necessarily one to provoke much curiosity and expectation," an assertion which, coming from a man of Dr. Garnett's position in the world of letters, clearly indicates that George Meredith had even then his band of admirers, in spite of the " undoubted fact that his books were caviare to the general." The admirable "B. V." would have found in that band such practitioners of both prose and verse as William Michael Rossetti (still happily active among us), Marian Evans, gone before her timej and that supreme master of song-craft, Algernon Charles Swinburne, who so lately finished his splendid career with stately utterances in prose on * November I, 1879, p. 555. Extracts from this review are " printed in Views and Reviews," First Series, 1890. vi Preface "The Age of Shakespeare," and immediately pre- ceded Meredith to join the band of the immortals. From the nature of the present compilation it necessarily happens that the pleasant duty of acknow- ledging obligations extends to a considerable number of friends and correspondents. It will perhaps suffice to name specifically those who have done me the courtesy to accede to my request for authority to reprint the several papers in which copyright still exists and I thank for this ; accordingly heartily courtesy, Mr. W. M. Rossetti, Mr. Theodore Watts- Dunton as representative of the late Mr. Swinburne, Mr. Robert Singleton Garnett as his father's repre- sentative, Miss Elizabeth M. Roscoe and Mr. J. St. Loe Strachey in respect of the late Richard Holt Hutton's article, Mr. Bertram Dobell, Mr. William Reeves, and the Directors of Cope Brothers and Company, Limited, in regard to the essays of James Thomson ("B.V."), the editors of The Times, The Saturday Review, TJte Morning Post, The Daily News, and The Academy, and last, but not least, the proprietors of TJie Athenceum, without whose kind permission I must have omitted two papers which it seemed very desirable to include. To Mr. William Maxse Meredith, who has authorized me to reprint the poems by his father quoted in this volume, I have also to express my thanks. MAURICE BUXTON FORMAN. vn CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE v I. WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTI ON POEMS : 1851 3 II. CHARLES KINGSLEY ON POEMS : 1851 . 14 III. GEORGE ELIOT ON THE SHAVING OF SHAGPAT, IN THE LEADER ... 25 IV. GEORGE ELIOT ON THE SHAVING OF SHAGPAT, IN THE WESTMINSTER REVIEW 38 V. GEORGE ELIOT ON FARINA .... 43 VI. THE TIMES ON THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL 51 VII. JAMES THOMSON ON THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL 71 VIII. THE SATURDAY REVIEW ON EVAN HAR- RINGTON 89 IX. ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE ox MODERN LOVE 99 X. RICHARD GARNETT ON EMILIA IN ENGLAND 107 XI. THE SATURDAY REVIEW ON RHODA FLEMING 119 XII. THE MORNING POST (MR. HUME) ON RHODA FLEMING 129 ix Contents PACK XIII. THE SATURDAY REVIEW ON VITTORIA . .137 XIV. GERALDINE ENDSOR JEWSBURY ON VITTORIA 146 XV. THE DAILY NEWS ON THE ADVENTURES OF HARRY RICHMOND 153 XVI. RICHARD HOLT HUTTON ON THE ADVEN- TURES OF HARRY RICHMOND 157 XVII. JAMES THOMSON ON BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER, IN COPE'S TOBACCO PLANT 171 XVIII. JAMES THOMSON ON BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER, IN THE SECULARIST 173 XIX. WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY ON THE EGOIST 191 XX. JAMES THOMSON ON THE EGOIST . 194 XXI. JOSEPH JACOBS ON THE TRAGIC COMEDIANS 209 XXII. THE DAILY NEWS ON THE TRAGIC COMEDIANS 216 XXIII. MARK PATTISON ON POEMS AND LYRICS OF THE JOY OF EARTH 221 POEMS: 1851 I WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTI ON POEMS: 1851 [This article appeared in The Critic; vol. x, no. 255, pp. 539~S4O, November 15, 1851, initialled W. M. R.] THE full poet is a thoroughly balanced compound of perception and intellect. By the first faculty he sees and feels to the inmost the vividly, ; by second, he understands deeply and largely, and applies with a subtle searching breadth. The power of expression is correlative of both it a ; but belongs more im- mediately to the first. Though Tennyson had not " been the author in posse of In Memoriam," he might equally have produced such perfect word-painting " " find in a of as we Mariana ; but want that per- ception which constitutes the essence of the latter would have made the former more faint from first to last. Of the perceptive poet we have had no other such complete example as Keats. It is the delight in what he sees, the sympathy with what he narrates, that endows him with his marvellous power of expression. To him everything was an opportunity. 3 B 2 William Michael Rossetti Yet he saw nature and emotion as rather suggestive as the than typical ; exciting thoughts outwards, not leading them inwards. His poems have but little of the unconscious simile, (to be found so largely in those of Tennyson for instance), the implication in description of an inner essence and ulterior meaning. Keats portrays his object with keen, exquisite picturing, but which aims only at the fact or else he makes use of phenomenal ; the simile direct. His enthusiasm was less an inner fire than a visible lambent halo. He saw loveliness in nature, or found it the incentive to lovely thoughts. He " rested in the effect. A thing of beauty is a joy for ever." Mr. Meredith seems to us a kind of limited Keats. He is scarcely a perceptive, but rather a seeing or sensuous poet. He does not love nature sense as Keats did but in a wide ; nature delights and appeals closely to him. In proportion, however, as his sympathies are less vivid, excitable, and diffusive, he concentrates them the more. He a section of as it were appropriates nature, ; and the love which he bears to it partakes more of affection. Viewing Mr. Meredith as a Keatsian, and allowing for (what we need not stop to assert) the entire superiority of the dead poet, we think it is in this point that the most essential phase of difference will the two and it is one be found between ; which, were the resemblance in other respects more marked and more unmixed than it is, would suffice to divide Mr. Meredith from the imitating class. The love of 4 on Poems : 1851 Keats for nature was not an affectionate love : it was minute, searching, and ardent, but hardly personal. He does not lose himself in nature, but contemplates her and utters her forth to the delight of all ages.* Indeed, if we read his record aright, he was not, either in thought or in feeling, a strongly affectionate man and the which ate into him at the last ; passion was a mania and infatuation, raging like disease, a symptom and a part of it. It is otherwise with Mr. Meredith. In his best moments he seems to sing because it comes naturally to him, and silence would be restraint, not through exuberance or inspi- ration, but in simple contentedness, or throbbing of heart. There is an amiable and engaging quality in the poems of Mr. Meredith, a human companion- ship and openness, which make the reader feel his friend. But, perhaps, it is chiefly in the impressions of love that our new poet's likeness and unlikeness at " " " " once to the author of Endymion and Lamia are to be recognized. We are told that women felt pique at Keats for treating them in his verses scarcely otherwise than flowers or as ifiers perfumes ; beaut and the object of tender and pleasurable emotion, a charm of life.

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