l
shape and become classic and typical it is not that Mr. Meredith has
forgotten anything in his composition but rather that there are certain
defects of form, certain structural faults and weaknesses, which prevent
you from accepting as conclusive the aspect of the mass of him. But the
Moliere of the future (if the future be that fortunate) has but to pick
and choose with discretion here to find the stuff of a companion figure
to Arnolphe and Alceste and Celimene.

In Metre.

His verse has all the faults and only some of the merits of his prose.
Thus he will rhyme you off a ballad, and to break the secret of that
ballad you have to take to yourself a dark lantern and a case of jemmies.
I like him best in _The Nuptials of Attila_. If he always wrote as here,
and were always as here sustained in inspiration, rapid of march, nervous
of phrase, apt of metaphor, and moving in effect, he would be delightful
to the general, and that without sacrificing on the vile and filthy altar
of popularity. Here he is successfully himself, and what more is there
to say? You clap for Harlequin, and you kneel to Apollo. Mr. Meredith
doubles the parts, and is irresistible in both. Such fire, such vision,
such energy on the one hand and on the other such agility and athletic
grace are not often found in combination.

The Fashion of Art.

This is the merit and distinction of art: to be more real than reality,
to be not nature but nature's essence. It is the artist's function not
to copy but to synthesise: to eliminate from that gross confusion of
actuality which is his raw material whatever is accidental, idle,
irrelevant, and select for perpetuation that only which is appropriate
and immortal. Always artistic, Mr. Meredith's work is often great art.

BYRON

Byron and the World.

Two obvious reasons why Byron has long been a prophet more honoured
abroad than at home are his life and his work. He is the most romantic
figure in the literature of the century, and his romance is of that
splendid and daring cast which the people of Britain--'an aristocracy
materialised and null, a middle class purblind and hideous, a lower class
crude and brutal'--prefers to regard with suspicion and disfavour. He is
the type of them that prove in defiance of precept that the safest path
is not always midway, and that the golden rule is sometimes unspeakably
worthless: who set what seems a horrible example, create an apparen