is a supplement rather than a reply. Mr. Ellis was not quite fair to
Meredith as a man, but he enabled us to understand the limitations which
were the conditions of Meredith's peculiar genius. Many readers were
shocked by the suggestion that characters, like countries, must have
boundaries. Where Mr. Ellis failed, in my opinion, was not in drawing
these as carefully as possible, but in the rather unfriendly glee with
which, one could not help feeling, he did so. It is also true that he
missed some of the grander mountain-peaks in Meredith's character. Lady
Butcher, on the other hand, is far less successful than Mr. Ellis in
drawing a portrait which makes us feel that now we understand something of
the events that gave birth to _The Egoist_ and _Richard Feverel_ and
_Modern Love_. Her book tells us nothing of the seed-time of genius, but
is a delightful account of its autumn.

At the same time it helps to dissipate one ridiculous popular fallacy
about Meredith. Meredith, like most all the wits, has been accused of
straining after image and epigram. Wit acts as an irritant on many people.
They forget the admirable saying of Coleridge: "Exclusive of the abstract
sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of
aphorisms; and the greatest of men is but an aphorism." They might as well
denounce a hedge for producing wild roses or a peacock for growing tail
feathers with pretty eyes as a witty writer for flowering into aphorism,
epigram and image. Even so artificial a writer as Wilde had not to labour
to be witty. It has often been laid to his charge that his work smells of
the lamp, whereas what is really the matter with it is that it smells of
the drawing-room gas. It was the result of too much "easy-goingness," not
of too much strain. As for Meredith, his wit was the wit of an abounding
imagination. Lady Butcher gives some delightful examples of it. He could
not see a baby in long robes without a witty image leaping into his mind.
He said he adored babies "in the comet stage."

Of a lady of his acquaintance he said: "She is a woman who has never had
the first tadpole wriggle of an idea," adding, "She has a mind as clean
and white and flat as a plate: there are no eminences in it." Lady Butcher
tells of a picnic-party on Box Hill at which Meredith was one of the
company. "After our picnic ... it came on to rain, and as we drearily
trudged down the hill with cloaks and umbrellas, and burdened with ou