ness and intimacy of the awful and
benignant powers of nature; but this sense, once sufficient for the
making of poetry, is interpenetrated, in this modern poet, by an almost
scientific consciousness of the processes of evolution. Earth seen
through a brain, not a temperament, it might be defined; and it would be
possible to gather a complete philosophy of life from these poems, in
which, though 'the joy of earth' is sung, it is sung with the wise,
collected ecstasy of Melampus, not with the irresponsible ecstasy of
the Maenads. It is not what Browning calls 'the wild joy of living,' but
the strenuous joy of living in perfect accordance with nature, with the
sanity of animals who have climbed to reason, and are content to be
guided by it. It is a philosophy which may well be contrasted with the
transcendental theories of one with whom Meredith may otherwise be
compared, Emerson. Both, in different ways, have tried to make poetry
out of the brain, forgetting that poetry draws nourishment from other
soil, and dies in the brain as in a vacuum. Both have taken the
abstract, not the concrete, for their province; both have tortured words
in the cause of ideas, both have had so much to say that they have had
little time left over for singing.

Meredith has never been a clear writer in verse; _Modern Love_ requires
reading and re-reading; but at one time he had a somewhat exasperating
semblance of lucidity, which still lurks mockingly about his work. A
freshman who heard Mallarme lecture at Oxford said when he came away: 'I
understood every word, but not a single sentence.' Meredith is sometimes
equally tantalising. The meaning seems to be there, just beyond one,
clearly visible on the other side of some hard transparency through
which there is no passage. Have you ever seen a cat pawing at the glass
from the other side of a window? It paws and paws, turns its head to the
right, turns its head to the left, walks to and fro, sniffing at the
corner of every pane; its claws screech on the glass, in a helpless
endeavour to get through to what it sees before it; it gives up at last,
in an evident bewilderment. That is how one figures the reader of
Meredith's later verse. It is not merely that Meredith's meaning is not
obvious at a glance, it is, when obscure, ugly in its obscurity, not
beautiful. There is not an uglier line in the English language than:

Or is't the widowed's dream of her new mate.

It is almost impossibl