Los Angeles herald., 1909-07-19
George Meredith

In speaking of George Meredith
whose death recently occurred in Eng
land. the Chicago Post quotes two per-
sonal impressions, each bearing out
the idea of his extraordinary native
genius.
1.-THE first is from an exceedingly
clever article by Mr.. Henry Copley
Greene, in the Atlantic Monthly. He
Is citing an interview given to a
Frenchman by Meredith:
ITO this Jew, the Marcel Schwob of
Stevenson's letters Mr.. Meredith came
out one day from the study where he
had been lost in work He was broad
shouldered, strongly built, gray, his
face clear fine and dominating, his
eyes deep blue" And of these eyes
Schwob writes: During the first mo-
ments of his talk with me they were
literally drunk with thought"
Leading me toward his CELL
schwob goes on. Mr.. Meredith re-
marked, They say that the brain
grows weary. Believe never a word
of 1t! You cannot tire the brain; it
is the stomach that we overwork';
and he added smiling, mine has been
bad from BIRTH
"In Mr.. Merediths cell Schwob
notes that the writing table stood un-
der a window opening into a dark
pine copse. The brain must have twi
nSnl IOT ItS llOuSHlS 10 BuSH anu
fow,' explained Mr.. Meredith. And
watching a bird as it flew hither and
thither tirelessly across the sky, DO
you see that bird?' said he. 1T inter-
ests me immeasurably it fits all day,
with never rest, never stop. We
call it the swift; and every time / see
1t think of it's endless motion, just
like the fitting of the BRAIN
"Mr. H. w. NeVinson, the English
radical rppnr6C annthar if11nrnGcfOf1.
His is the head of an orator-a
Greek orator, like Pericles. The great
mouth opens almost foursquare. 1t is
an Attic mask. A spirit seems to be
speaking not with 1t, but through 1t,
and on a broad scale of sound comes
the voice, full, unhesitating and dis
tinct to the last letter. We feel that,
as Mendelssohn said of Goethe, "he
could shout like a hundred warriors
There is no effort about the language;
the great sentences are thrown out
with the careless opulence of nature.
Metaphors, wit, epigrams, come OF
themselves, as water follows water
from a spring. He thinks in pictures
and symbols. A comely and mature
lady appears to him at once as "a
calm autumn day-and in the morn
Ing" In thinking of the conversation
of society, he sees a flock of sheep
jumping a ditch in turn; a burst of
laughter makes gap; there is a
pause; then the rest come hurrying
over-"Some of them following short,
their hind feet struggling to reach the
edge."'
with these glimpses of the great
novelist himself one may end. That
he is dead the splendid and inspiring
mortal, Is a loss to his kind. But his
spirit lives, and will live, so long as
man needs friend and mentor"
"The Kingdom of Earth"
A thrilling adventure story of a high
order, with characters of marked and
noble personality, is "The Kingdom of
Earth" by Anthony Partridge, author
of "Passers-by' and THE Distribu-
tors"
John Valentine, crown prince of
Bergeland, kingdom on the border of
Germany, is the hero of the novel, He
Is a man of such patriotic love for his
country and her people that he secretly
stirs up a bloodless revolution for the
direct purpose of giving a republican
government to the badly ruled sub
jects who have for years been oppressed
under the reign of a sinful brainless
king.
The actions of the crown prince are
almost too quixotic for reasonable ac-
ceptance, but his bravery, unselfishness
and manly love for a beautiful girl
make a splendid story of intense in
terest which wins the sympathetic APP
probation Of the reader.
The heroine, Grace Pellsier, is in |
every way a match in grandeur for the