rning his
lingering at table with appetite apparently unappeasable:

"'When do you think you will have done, Master Gammon?'

"'When I feels my buttons, Ma'am.'"

Or hear John Thrasher in "Harry Richmond" dilate on Language:

'There's cockney, and there's country, and there's school.
Mix the three, strain and throw away the sediment. Now
yon's my view.'

Has any philologist said all that could be said, so succinctly?
His lyric outbursts in the face of Nature or better yet, where
as in the moonlight meeting of the lovers at Wllming Weir in
"Sandra Belloni," nature is interspersed with human passion in a
glorious union of music, picture and impassioned sentiment,--these
await the pleasure of the enthralled seeker in every book.
To encounter such passages (perhaps in a mood of protest over
some almost insufferable defect) is to find the reward rich
indeed. Let the cause of obscurity be what it may, we need not
doubt that with Meredith style is the man, a perfectly honest
way of expressing his personality. It is not impossible that his
unconventional education and the early influence of German upon
him, may come into the consideration. But in the main his
peculiarity is congenital.

Meredith lacked self-criticism as a writer. But it is quite
inaccurate to speak of obscure thought: it is language, the
medium, which makes the trouble when there is any. His thought,
allowing for the fantasticality of his humor in certain moods,
is never muddled or unorganized: it is sane, consistent and
worthy of attention. To say this, is still to regret the
stylistic vagaries.

One other defect must be mentioned: the characters talk like
Meredith, instead of in their own persons. This is not true
uniformly, of course, but it does mar the truth of his
presentation. Young girls show wit and wisdom quite out of
keeping; those in humble life--a bargeman, perhaps, or a
prize-fighter--speak as they would not in reality. Illusion is by
so much disturbed. It would appear in such cases that the thinker
temporarily dominated the creative artist.

When all is said, pro and con, there remains a towering
personality; a writer of unique quality; a man so stimulating
and surprising as he is, that we almost prefer him to the
perfect artist he never could be. No English maker of novels can
give us a fuller sense of life, a keener realization of the
dignity of man. It is natural to wish for more than we have--to
desi