and the rest? A
palate or an appetite so jaded that it cannot appreciate thought put
before it plainly, or so sluggish that it requires to be stung or
puzzled into thinking, may derive some advantage. But are these exactly
the tastes and appetites that should be accepted as arbiters?

Again, partly through this perpetual mirage and steam-cloud of style,
partly by other methods, Mr. Meredith manages, with consummate
cleverness no doubt, to colour his whole representation of character and
story in the same extra-natural way. Take the rick-burning at the
beginning of _Feverel_; take the famous wine scene (a very fascinating
one, though I never heard anywhere else, in some researches on the
subject, of port that would keep ninety years) in _The Egoist_. The
things may have happened this way in some Georgium Sidus, where the
Comic Spirit has arranged the proper Fourth Dimension: but that is not
the way they happen here. The Wise Youth, Diana, Edward Blancove, Roy
Richmond--but why begin a list which would never end?--are inhabitants
of the same region. They are not impossible: they could be translated
into actual tellurian beings, which the men and women of the bad
novelist never can be. But at present they are not translated: and you
must know a special language, in a wide sense, in order to translate
them. I do not say that the language is impossible or even very hard to
learn: but it is required. And Meredithians say you ought to learn it.
An extremely respectable book of reference before me rebukes "those who
lack the intelligence and sensibility that can alone admit them to the
charmed circle of appreciative readers" and who "have not patience to
apply themselves to the study of the higher fiction with the same ardour
that they think necessary in the case of any other art."

Now "Fudge!" is a rude word: but I fear we must borrow it from
Goldsmith's hero, and apply it here. As for "charmed circles" there is
uncommonly good company outside them, where, as Beatrice says, we may
"be as merry as the day is long," so that the Comic Spirit cannot
entirely disdain us. And as for art--the present writer will fight for
its claims as long as he has breath. But the proof of the art of the
novelist is that--at first hand or very shortly--he "enfists,"
absorbs, delights you. You may discover secrets of his art afterwards
with much pleasure and profit: but the actual first-hand delight is the
criterion. There ought to be no need of s