d on a real incident in English
history of Meredith's time. Diana Warwick was drawn from Caroline
Norton, one of the three beautiful and brilliant granddaughters of
Sheridan, author of _The School for Scandal_. Her marriage was
disastrous, and her husband accused her of infidelity with Lord
Melbourne, Prime Minister at the time. His divorce suit caused a great
scandal, but it resulted in her vindication. Then later she was
accused of betraying to a writer on the TIMES the secret that Sir
Robert Peel had decided to repeal the corn laws. This secret had been
confided to her by Sidney Herbert, one of her admirers. Meredith's
novel, in which the results of Diana's treachery were brought out,
resulted in a public inquiry into the charge against Caroline
Norton, which found that she was innocent. But the fact that Meredith
used such an incident as the climax of his story gave _Diana of the
Crossways_ an enormous vogue, and did much to bring the novelist into
public favor.

[Illustration: FLINT COTTAGE, BOXHILL, THE HOME OF GEORGE
MEREDITH--HIS WRITING WAS DONE IN A SMALL SWISS CHALET IN THE
GARDEN]

No more brilliant woman than Diana has ever been drawn by Meredith,
but despite the art of her creator it is impossible for the reader to
imagine her selling for money a great party secret which had been
whispered to her by the man she loved. She was too keen a woman to
plead, as Diana pleaded, that she did not recognize the importance of
this secret, for the defense is cut away by her admission that she was
promised thousands of pounds by the newspaperman at the very time that
her extravagances had loaded her with debts.

Space is lacking here to do more than mention three or four of
Meredith's other novels that are fine works of art. These are _Rhoda
Fleming_, _Sandra Belloni_, _Evan Harrington_ and _The Egoist_. Each
is a masterpiece in its way; each is full of human passion, yet tinged
with a philosophy that lifts up the novels to what Meredith himself
called "honorable fiction, a fount of life, an aid to life, quick with
our blood." The novel to him was a means of showing man's spiritual
nature, "a soul born active, wind-beaten, but ascending."

A score of novels Meredith wrote in his long life. The work of his
later years was not happy. _The Amazing Marriage_ and _Lord Ormont and
His Aminta_ are mere shadows of his earlier work, with all his old
mannerisms intensified. But if you like Richard and Diana, then you