George Meredith like many of his predecessors has suffered much from the thumb-nail criticism of the day. His judges are apt to insist upon his mannerisms and to insist on nothing else. The generality of readers hearing so much about the “mereditherambic style” rest under the belief that this writer is a tripod of frenzied incoherence; that he lacks, especially as a poet, both style and substance. That this is far from being the truth about Meredith’s verse anyone who has read it with attention well knows. Not only does much of it fulfil the requisites of orthodox style, but it contains, even more than his novels, the vital convictions of his mind. Indeed, it is in his verse we come nearest the real teacher, as we come nearest the man in his relation to life at large—to the general scheme of things. A realization of George Meredith’s poetical virtues by the reader of real literature is due a writer who has proved his claim to genius in a monumental series of novels, a writer who, while not acceptable to all, has yet many admirers that regard him as one of the strongest towers of modern thought. One can, however, scarcely hope for more than a limited acceptance of his poems; that he should be popular in the ordinary meaning of the word, as some poets are taken to heart by the sons of men, is indeed scarcely conceivable. Such popularity, which is after all an equivocal tribute for the most part, Mr. Meredith has never aimed to secure. His has been a life of remoteness from profane ambitions, a life steadfast to the standard early set for himself—a standard of the highest kind. And yet, while Mr. Meredith may not exercise the attraction of many other poets for the general reader, few will deny that in his fruits of song one tastes the flavor of an original, deep-seeing mind; that there is in the character of many of his poems what well rewards the serious attention necessary to their complete comprehension. Difficult in part they may seem in the casual reading, owing to combined entanglement of rhetoric and ideas, but few who press their inquiry past the line of a first natural discouragement of perusal can fail totally to be affected by the spell they cast over the mind. Beauty there is unquestionably lurking beneath what seems often a wilful obscuration of theme. Coming here and there upon some apparently dry metrical husk of thought, there falls, as from some frost-bitten flower-pod, a shower of fairy seeds that lodge as a vital donation within the remembrance. Groping in the midst of a Meredithian mystery, even the less sensitive ear catches a ritornello of exquisite, wholly seductive sound. For it is not so infrequently that like his “The Lark Ascending.” “He rises and begins to round, He drops the silver chain of sound, Of many links without a break, In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake—”