when all the arts were at their lowest ebb in England, and the most
middling of the middle-classes ruled with the Bible in one hand and the
Riot Act in the other.

Meredith was an uncompromising Radical, and--what is singular--he
remained so in his old age. He called Mr. Joseph Chamberlain's nose
"adventurous" at a time when Mr. Joseph Chamberlain's nose had the
ineffable majesty of the Queen of Spain's leg. And the _Pall Mall_
haughtily rebuked him. A spectacle for history! He said aloud in a
ballroom that Guy de Maupassant was the greatest novelist that ever lived.
To think so was not strange; but to say it aloud! No wonder this
temperament had to wait for recognition. Well, Meredith has never had
proper recognition; and won't have yet. To be appreciated by a handful of
writers, gushed over by a little crowd of thoughtful young women, and kept
on a shelf uncut by ten thousand persons determined to be in the
movement--that is not appreciation. He has not even been appreciated as
much as Thomas Hardy, though he is a less fine novelist. I do not assert
that he is a less fine writer. For his poems are as superior to the verses
of Thomas Hardy as "The Mayor of Casterbridge" is superior to "The
Egoist." (Never in English prose literature was such a seer of beauty as
Thomas Hardy.) The volume of Meredith's verse is small, but there are
things in it that one would like to have written. And it is all so fine,
so acute, so alert, courageous, and immoderate.

* * * * *

A member of the firm which has the honour of publishing Meredith's novels
was interviewed by the _Daily Mail_ on the day after his death. The
gentleman interviewed gave vent to the usual insolence about our own
times. "He belonged," said the gentleman, "to a very different age from
the _modern_ writer--an age before the literary agent; and with Mr.
Meredith the feeling of intimacy as between author and publisher--the
feeling that gave to publishing as it was its charm--was always existent."
Charm--yes, for the publisher. The secret history of the publishing of
Meredith's earlier books (long before Constables had ever dreamed of
publishing him) is more than curious. I have heard some details of it. My
only wonder is that human ingenuity did not invent literary agents forty
years ago. Then the person interviewed went grandly on: "In his manner of
writing the great novelist was very different from the _modern_ fashion.
He wrote with