ic
degeneration.

There is truth in this, but it damages neither Mr. Meredith nor Mr.
Hardy on the whole; though it may supply a not altogether wholesome
temptation to some readers to admire them for the wrong things, and may
interpose a wholly unnecessary obstacle in the way of their full and
frank enjoyment by others. The intellectual power and the artistic skill
which have been shown in the long series that has followed _The Ordeal
of Richard Feverel_; the freshness and charm of the earlier, the
strenuous workmanship and original handling of the later, novels of the
author of _Far from the Madding Crowd_ and of _Tess of the
D'Urbervilles_, simply disable off-hand the judgment of the critic--and
in fact annul his jurisdiction--if he fails to admire them; while in
some cases universal, in many general, in all considerable and not
trivial delight has been given by them to generations of novel readers.
Above all, it may be said of both these veterans that they have held the
standard high, that--in Mr. Meredith's case more specially and for a
longer preliminary period, but virtually in both--they have had to
await the taste for their work: and that in awaiting it they have never
stooped for one moment to that dastardly and degrading change of sail to
catch the popular breeze, which has always been the greatest curse of
politics and of literature--the two chief worldly occupations and ends
of the mind of man--that they have been and are artists who wait till
the world comes to them, and not artisans who haunt the market places to
hire themselves out to the first comer who will pay their price, or even
bate their price to suit the hirer. If it were possible to judge the
literary value of a period by its best representatives--which is
exactly what is _not_ possible--then the period 1870-1908 might, as far
as novel-writing is concerned, point to these two names and say, "These
are mine; what does it matter what you choose to say against me?"

The foregoing remarks were actually written before Mr. Meredith's death:
and I have thought it better to leave them exactly as they then stood
with hardly any correction; but it may justly be expected that they
should now be supplemented. The history of Mr. Meredith's career and
reputation, during the half century which passed between the appearance
of _Richard Feverel_ and his death, has a certain obvious resemblance to
that of Browning's, but with some differences. His work at once ar