in the
substantials of story-making and of life-view. The only notable
change is to be found in the final group of three stories, "One
of Our Conquerors," "Lord Ormont and His Aminta" and "The
Amazing Marriage." The note of social protest is louder here,
the revolt against conventions more pronounced. Otherwise, the
author of "Feverel" is the author of "The Amazing Marriage."
Much has occurred in the Novel during the forty years between
the two works: realism has traveled to an extreme, neo-idealism
come by way of reaction, romanticism bloomed again, the Novel of
ingenious construction, the Novel of humanitarian meaning, the
Novel of thesis and problem and the Novel that foretells the
future like an astrologer, all these types and yet others have
been practised; but Meredith has kept tranquilly on the tenor of
his large way, uninfluenced, except as he has expressed all
these complexities in his own work. He is in literary evolution,
a sport. Critics who have tried to show how his predecessors and
contemporaries have influenced him, have come out lamely from
the attempt. He has been sensitive not to individual writers,
but to that imponderable yet potent thing, the time-tendency in
literature. He throws back to much in the past, while in the van
of modern thought. What, to illustrate, could be more of the
present intellectually than his remarkable sonnet-sequence,
"Modern Love"? And are not his women, as a type, the noblest
example of the New Woman of our day--socially, economically,
intellectually emancipated, without losing their distinctive
feminine quality? And yet, in "The Shaving of Shagpat," an early
work, we go back t the Arabian Nights for a model. The satiric
romance, "Harry Richmond," often reminds of the leisured episode
method of the eighteenth century; and while reading the unique
"Evan Harrington" we think at times of Aristophanes.

Nor is much light thrown on Meredith's path in turning to his
personal history. Little is known of this author's ancestry and
education; his environment has been so simple, his life in its
exteriors so uneventful, that we return to the work itself with
the feeling that the key to the secret room must be here if
anywhere. It is known that he was educated in youth in Germany,
which is interesting in reference to the problem of his style.
And there is more to be said concerning his parentage than the
smug propriety of print has revealed while he lived. We know,
too, that his