wrote many poems,
but his chief work was his _Diary_, an original authority for the period,
written with much naivete, and revealing a singularly attractive
personality. M., who for his part in Church matters, had been banished to
England, _d._ at Berwick on his way back to Scotland.

MELVILLE, SIR JAMES (1535-1617).--Historian, _s._ of Sir John M., of
Hallhill, was a page to Mary Queen of Scots at the French Court, and
afterwards one of her Privy Council. He also acted as her envoy to Queen
Elizabeth and the Elector Palatine. He was the author of an autobiography
which is one of the original authorities for the period. The MS., which
lay for long hidden in Edin. Castle, was discovered in 1660, and _pub._
1683. A later ed. was brought out in 1827 by the Bannatyne Club. The work
is written in a lively style, but is not always to be implicitly relied
upon in regard either to facts or the characters attributed to
individuals.

MEREDITH, GEORGE (1828-1909).--Novelist and poet, _b._ at Portsmouth,
_s._ of Augustus M., a naval outfitter, who afterwards went to Cape Town,
and _ed._ at Portsmouth and Neuwied in Germany. Owing to the neglect of a
trustee, what means he had inherited were lost, and he was in his early
days very poor. Articled to a lawyer in London, he had no taste for law,
which he soon exchanged for journalism, and at 21 he was writing poetry
for magazines, his first printed work, a poem on the Battle of
Chillianwallah, appearing in _Chambers's Journal_. Two years later he
_pub._ _Poems_ (1851), containing _Love in the Valley_. Meantime he had
been ed. a small provincial newspaper, and in 1866 he was war
correspondent in Italy for the _Morning Post_, and he also acted for many
years as literary adviser to Chapman and Hall. By this time, however, he
had produced several of his novels. _The Shaving of Shagpat_ had appeared
in 1856, _Farina_ in 1857, _The Ordeal of Richard Feverel_ in 1859, _Evan
Harrington_ in 1861, _Emilia in England_ (also known as _Sandra Belloni_)
in 1864, its sequel, _Vittoria_, in 1866, and _Rhoda Fleming_ in 1865. In
poetry he had produced _Modern Love and Poems of the English Roadside_
(1862), generally regarded as his best poetical work. These were followed
by _The Adventures of Harry Richmond_ (1871), _Beauchamp's Career_
(1875), said to be the author's favourite, _The Egoist_ (1879), which
marks the beginning of a change in style characterised by an even greater
fastidiousness in t