lery_.]

Life.--George Meredith was the only child of a Welsh father and an
Irish mother. He was born in 1828 over his grandfather's tailor shop
in Portsmouth, Hampshire. The father proved incompetent in handling
the excellent tailoring business to which he fell heir; and he soon
abandoned his son. The mother died when the boy was five years old,
and he was then cared for by relatives. When he was fourteen, he was
sent to school in Germany for two years; but he did not consider his
schooling of much benefit to him and he was forced to educate himself
for his life's work.

On his return to England, he was articled to a London solicitor; but
by the age of twenty-one, Meredith had abandoned the law and had begun
the literary life which was to receive his undivided attention for
nearly sixty years. The struggle was at first extremely hard. Some
days, indeed, he is said to have lived on a single bowl of porridge.

While following his work as a novelist, he tried writing for
periodicals, served as a newspaper correspondent, and later became a
literary adviser for a large London publishing firm. In this capacity,
he proved a sympathetic friend to many a struggling young author.
Thomas Hardy says that he received from Meredith's praise sufficient
encouragement to persevere in the field of literature.

Meredith's marriage in 1849 was unhappy and resulted in a separation.
Three years after his wife's death, which occurred in 1861, he married
a congenial helpmate and went to live in Flint Cottage, near Burford
Bridge, Surrey, where most of his remaining years were spent.

Not until late in life were the returns from his writings sufficient
to relieve him from unceasing daily toil at his desk. He was widely
hailed as a literary master and recognized as a force in fiction
before he attained financial independence. After the death of
Tennyson, Meredith was elected president of the Society of British
Authors. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, his reply to the
_Who's Who_ query about his recreations was, "a great reader,
especially of French literature; has in his time been a great walker."
During his last sixteen years of life, he suffered from partial
paralysis and was compelled to abandon these long walks, which had
been a source both of recreation and of health.

He died in 1909 at the age of eighty-one and was laid beside his wife
in the Dorking cemetery. The following words from his novel,
_Vittoria_, are on his to