Goldsboro semi-weekly argus., 1909-05-29
PASSING OF MEREDITH.

PASSING DE MEKEU1IHs
To Those Who Had Grown Familiaf.
Both With His Language and With
His Mode of Thought, Meredith Re-
mains One of the Strongest IndiEid-
nal Figures i'm the Literature of His
Time.
George Meredith's death leaves very
few survivors among English men OF
letters of high rank. He was almost
the last of the long list that made the
literary history of the Victorian age
ilIustrous, and the new century has
not yet developed their successors.
Meredith, who was poet and critic
before he was novelist, developed
naturally in the period dominated by
Thackeray and Browning, but his i'm
mediate predecessor, the particular
influence most evident in his personal
bent. is Thomas Love ePacock, whose
daughter he married. He was him.
self in turn the master of Stephenson,
of Hardy and of James, and these last
| two, one of them of New England ori-
gin, are almost the only two remain
| ing who can be considered in his
class.
Meredith was never a popular nov
elist He said himself that "the Eng
lish people know nothing about me;
there always has been something anti
pathetic between them and me-" And
yet his recognition has constantly
grown and widened through the half
century that has passed since the pub
lication of his first novel, and there
is no longer any question of his in
f1uence or of his enduring fame. The
popular "antipathy" was due not only
to the of9scurity of his grabbed style,
mental attitude. His deep philoso-
phic observation and analysis, his
subtle humor. had in them something
of the sardonic that made the gen
eral reader uneasy, when he was not
mere puzzled The general reader, in
England especially, does not like an
author who has so little respect for
the conventions, either literary or So
cial, and Merediths analysis of the
average human character is too
searching and often cruel to eHcour-
age his readers self-complacence.
To those Swho had grown familiar
both with his language and with his
mode of thought, Meredith remains
one of the strongest individual figures
in the literature of his time. Refec-
ton, feeling and experience-the triad
as he has said, which gives a healthy
utterance to Wisdom'-afe embodied
in his greater novels as in the work of
none of his contemporaries. There is
intensity of life and passion, too,
though the tragedy be that of charac-
ter and not of external incident. There
is Royhere in English fiction a more
convincing creation than that Of Sir!
Willoughby PatterHe, nor, in differ
ent class, a more fascinating thanI
Harry Richmond, to name only a few
out of long list that live in the mem
ory, to which each reader will add for
himself And through all the often
involved description and srypt1c utter
ance ruBs the Imagination Of the poet
and the keen wit of the sententious
philosopher.
1t may be that Meredith's talent for
biting epigram has had most to do
both with the antagonism of some
readers and the enthusiasm Of others.
Both in this and ip his discursiye
psychology he has had a host OF ipli-
tators, who-like the imitatOrs of
Browning-have caught the superb
cial manner rather than the wisdom
and the purpose under it. Whatever
the popular estimate of him, Meredith
has been distinctively the authors au-
thor of this generation, and he is one
of the few noyelists who. having no
ephemeral vogue to lose, are reasona-
bly, assured of a lasting reputation
af ftar death