ch of his best work was
published and apparently forgotten he slowly won the leading place in
English fiction. We are still too near him to speak of the permanence of
his work, but a casual reading of any of his novels suggests a comparison
and a contrast with George Eliot. Like her, he is a realist and a
psychologist; but while George Eliot uses tragedy to teach a moral lesson,
Meredith depends more upon comedy, making vice not terrible but ridiculous.
For the hero or heroine of her novel George Eliot invariably takes an
individual, and shows in each one the play of universal moral forces.
Meredith constructs a type-man as a hero, and makes this type express his
purpose and meaning. So his characters seldom speak naturally, as George
Eliot's do; they are more like Browning's characters in packing a whole
paragraph into a single sentence or an exclamation. On account of his
enigmatic style and his psychology, Meredith will never be popular; but by
thoughtful men and women he will probably be ranked among our greatest
writers of fiction. The simplest and easiest of his novels for a beginner
is _The Adventures of Henry Richmond_ (1871). Among the best of his works,
besides the two mentioned above, are _Beauchamp's Career_ (1876) and _The
Egoist_ (1879). The latter is, in our personal judgment, one of the
strongest and most convincing novels of the Victorian Age.

HARDY. Thomas Hardy (1840-) seems, like Meredith, to belong to the present
rather than to a past age, and an interesting comparison may be drawn
between these two novelists. In style, Meredith is obscure and difficult,
while Hardy is direct and simple, aiming at realism in all things. Meredith
makes man the most important phenomenon in the universe; and the struggles
of men are brightened by the hope of victory. Hardy makes man an
insignificant part of the world, struggling against powers greater than
himself,--sometimes against systems which he cannot reach or influence,
sometimes against a kind of grim world-spirit who delights in making human
affairs go wrong. He is, therefore, hardly a realist, but rather a man
blinded by pessimism; and his novels, though generally powerful and
sometimes fascinating, are not pleasant or wholesome reading. From the
reader's view point some of his earlier works, like the idyllic love story
_Under the Greenwood Tree_ (1872) and _A Pair of Blue Eyes_ (1873), are the
most interesting. Hardy became noted, however, when he published _