ling that he is a great man using the fiction form for
purposes broader than that of telling a story.

Because of this ample personal testimony in his books it should
be easy to state his Lebensanschauung, unless the opacity of his
manner blocks the way or he indulges in self-contradiction in
the manner of a Nietzsche. Such is not the case. What is the
philosophy unfolded in his representative books?

It will be convenient to choose a few of those typical for
illustration. The essence of Meredith is to be discovered in
such works as "The Ordeal of Richard Feverel," "Evan
Harrington," "Harry Richmond," "The Egoist," "Diana of the
Crossways." If you know these, you understand him. "Lord Ormont
and his Aminta" might well be added because of its teaching; but
the others will serve, with the understanding that so many-sided
a writer has in other works given further noble proof of his
powers. If I allowed personal preference to be my sole guide,
"Rhoda Fleming" would be prominent in the list; and many place
"Beauchamp's Career" high, if not first among his works;--a
novel teeming with his views, particularly valuable for its
treatment of English politics and certainly containing some of
his most striking characterization, in particular, one of his
noblest women. Still, those named will fairly reflect the
novelist and speak for all.

"Richard Feverel," which had been preceded by a book of poems,
the fantasia "The Shaving of Shagpat" and an historical
novelette "Farina," was the first book that announced the
arrival of a great novelist. It is at once a romance of the
modern type, a love-story and a problem book; the tri-statement
makes it Meredithian. It deals with the tragic union of Richard
and Lucy, in a setting that shifts from sheer idyllic, through
worldly and realistic to a culmination of dramatic grief. It
contains, in measure heaped up and running over, the poetry, the
comedy and the philosophy, the sense of Life's riddle, for which
the author is renowned. But its intellectual appeal of theme--aside
from the incidental wisdom that stars its pages--is found
in the study of the problem of education. Richard's father would
shape his career according to a preconceived idea based on
parental love and guided by an anxious, fussy consulting of the
oracles. The attempt to stretch the son upon a pedagogic
procustean bed fails disastrously, wrecking his own happiness,
and that of his sweet girl-wife. Love is stronger than