ure as no other novelist has done the rapturous vision of a boy
in love. He knew that a boy in love is not mainly a calf but a poet. _Love
in a Valley_ is the incomparable music of a boy's ecstasy. Much of
_Richard Feverel_ is its incomparable prose. Rapture and criticism,
however, make a more practical combination in literature than in life. In
literature, criticism may add flavour to rapture; in life it is more than
likely to destroy the flavour. One is not surprised, then, to learn the
full story of Meredith's first unhappy marriage. A boy of twenty-one, he
married a widow of thirty, high-strung, hot and satirical like himself;
and after a depressing sequence of dead babies, followed by the birth of a
son who survived, she found life with a man of genius intolerable, and ran
away with a painter. Meredith apparently refused her request to go and see
her when she was dying. His imaginative sympathy enabled him to see the
woman's point of view in poetry and fiction; it does not seem to have
extended to his life. Thus, his biography is to a great extent a
"showing-up" of George Meredith. He proved as incapable of keeping the
affection of his son Arthur, as of keeping that of his wife. Much as he
loved the boy he had not been married again long before he allowed him to
become an alien presence. The boy felt he had a grievance. He
said--probably without justice--that his father kept him short of money.
Possibly he was jealous for his dead mother's sake. Further, though put
into business, he had literary ambitions--a prolific source of bitterness.
When Arthur died, Meredith did not even attend his funeral.

Mr. Ellis has shown Meredith up not only as a husband and a father, but as
a hireling journalist and a lark-devouring gourmet. On the whole, the poet
who could eat larks in a pie seems to me to be a more shocking "great man"
than the Radical who could write Tory articles in a newspaper for pay. At
the same time, it is only fair to say that Meredith remains a sufficiently
splendid figure in. Mr. Ellis's book even when we know the worst about
him. Was his a generous genius? It was at least a prodigal one. As poet,
novelist, correspondent, and conversationalist, he leaves an impression of
beauty, wit, and power in a combination without a precedent.

(2) THE OLYMPIAN UNBENDS

Lady Butcher's charming _Memoirs of George Meredith_ is admittedly written
in reply to Mr. Ellis's startling volume. It seems to me, however, that it