seldom unequal to the deed: the
achievement is often leagues in rear of the inspiration; the attempt at
completeness is too laboured and too manifest--the feat is done but by a
painful and ungraceful process. There _is_ genius, but there is _not_
felicity: that, one is inclined to say, is the distinguishing note of Mr.
Meredith's work, in prose and verse alike. There are magnificent
exceptions, of course, but they prove the rule and, broken though it be,
there is no gainsaying its existence. To be concentrated in form, to be
suggestive in material, to say nothing that is not of permanent value,
and only to say it in such terms as are charged to the fullest with
significance--this would seem to be the aim and end of Mr. Meredith's
ambition. Of simplicity in his own person he appears incapable. The
texture of his expression must be stiff with allusion, or he deems it ill
spun; there must be something of antic in his speech, or he cannot
believe he is addressing himself to the Immortals; he has praised with
perfect understanding the lucidity, the elegance, the ease, of Moliere,
and yet his aim in art (it would appear) is to be Moliere's antipodes,
and to vanquish by congestion, clottedness, an anxious and determined
dandyism of form and style. There is something _bourgeois_ in his
intolerance of the commonplace, something fanatical in the intemperance
of his regard for artifice. 'Le dandy,' says Baudelaire, 'doit aspirer a
etre sublime sans interruption. Il doit vivre et dormir devant un
miroir.' That, you are tempted to believe, is Mr. Meredith's theory of
expression. 'Ce qu'il y a dans le mauvais gout,' is elsewhere the
opinion of the same unamiable artist in paradox, 'c'est le plaisir
aristocratique de deplaire.' Is that, you ask yourself, the reason why
Mr. Meredith is so contemptuous of the general public?--why he will stoop
to no sort of concession nor permit himself a mite of patience with the
herd whose intellect is content with such poor fodder as Scott and
Dickens and Dumas? Be it as it may, the effect is the same. Our author
is bent upon being 'uninterruptedly sublime'; and we must take him as he
wills and as we find him. He loses of course; and we suffer. But none
the less do we cherish his society, and none the less are we interested
in his processes, and enchanted (when we are clever enough) by his
results. He lacks felicity, I have said; but he has charm as well as
power, and, once his rule is