his thought, reflecting in
prose, as does Matthew Arnold in verse, the deeper
thought-currents of the time; and because too of the personal
quality which for lack of a better word one still must call genius,
Thomas Hardy is sure to hold his place in the English fiction of
the closing years of the nineteenth century and is to-day the
most distinguished living novelist using that speech and one of
the few to be recognized and honored abroad. No writer of
fiction between 1875 and 1900 has more definitely had a strong
influence upon the English Novel as to content, scope and choice
of subject. If his convictions have led him to excess, they will
be forgiven and forgotten in the light of the serene mastery
shed by the half dozen great works he has contributed to English
literature.

II

Once in a while--a century or so, maybe,--comes an artist who
refuses to be classified. Rules fail to explain him: he makes
new rules in the end. He seems too big for any formula. He
impresses by the might of his personality, teaching the world
what it should have known before, that the personal is the life-blood
of all and any art. Some such effect is made upon the
critic by George Meredith, who so recently has closed his eyes
to the shows of earth. One can find in him almost all the
tendencies of English fiction. He is realist and romanticist,
frank lover of the flesh, lofty idealist, impressionist and
judge, philosopher, dramatist, essayist, master of the comic and
above all, Poet. Eloquence, finesse, strength and sweetness, the
limpid and the cryptic, are his in turn: he puts on when he
will, like a defensive armor, a style to frighten all but the
elect. And they who persist and discover the secret, swear that
it is more than worth the pains. Perhaps the lesson of it all is
that a first-class writer, creative and distinctive, is a
phenomenon transcending school, movement or period. George
Meredith is not, if we weigh words, the greatest English
novelist to-day--for both Hardy and Stevenson are his superiors
as artists; but he is the greatest man who has written fiction.

Although he was alive but yesterday, the novel frequently
awarded first position among his works, "The Ordeal of Richard
Feverel," was published a good half century ago. Go back to it,
get its meaning, then read the latest fiction he wrote--(he
ceased to produce fiction more than a decade before his death)
and you appear to be in contact with the same personality