in fiction of
'the way of a man with a maid.' Shakspere gave us one in 'Romeo and
Juliet,' but then Shakspere gave us everything. Charles Reade, in 'Hard
Cash,' has shown us a pure girl growing into pure passion--a bit of
truth and beauty which alone might make a sterling and enduring name for
him. And Meredith in 'Feverel' has given us scenes of young courtship
which are beyond the praises of a writer like myself. The two young
people on their magic island are amongst the real-ideal figures which
haunt my mind with sweetness. Nature on either side is virginal. It
flames and trembles with natural passion both in boy and girl, and
they are as pure as a pair of daisies. Any workman in the school
of Namby-Pamby could have kept their purity. Any writer of the
Roman-candle-volcanic tribe could have heaped up their fires, after
a fashion. But for this special piece of work God had first to make a
gentleman, and then to give him genius.

One peculiarity in Meredith is worthy of notice. He makes known to us
the interior personality of his characters; he does this so completely
that we are persuaded that we could predict their line of conduct in
given circumstances; and then a set of circumstances occur in which
they do something we should never have believed of them, and we have
to confess that their maker is just and right, and that there is no
disputing him.

There are inconsistencies in his pages more glaring than anything we
can imagine outside real life. The average artist, dealing with these
manifestations, is a spectacle for pity, as the average man would be
on Blondin's tight rope. The faintest deviation, the most momentary
uncertainty of footing, a doubt, even, and it is all over. But Meredith
never falters. He proves the impossible true by the mere fact of
recording it.

He has no cranks or crazes or 'isms. He sees human nature with an eye
which is at once broad and microscopic. What seem the very faults of
style are virtues pushed to an extreme. He says more in a page than
most men can say in a chapter. Modern science can put the nutritive
properties of a whole ox into a very modest canister. Meredith's best
sentences have gone through just such a digestive process. He is not
for everybody's table, but he is a pride and a delight to the pick of
English epicures.

From Meredith to Hall Caine is from the study of the analyst to the
foundry of the statuary; from art in cold calm to art in stormy fire.
Here, too,