GEORGE MEREDITH [Illustration] GEORGE MEREDITH _A STUDY_ BY HANNAH LYNCH Methuen & Co. 18, BURY STREET, LONDON, W.C. 1891 [_All rights reserved_] To ROSAMOND VENNING. MY DEAR MISS VENNING, Will you, when you read this little book of mine, find fault with my unmeasured Hibernian enthusiasms and antipathies, and quote your favourite Greek advice--μηδὲν ἄγαν? So that you bring to the reading of it some surrender of your reserve and a break in that classic moderation that we poor barbarians do not quite understand--violently tinctured as we are by nature--it will be a fresh debt added to the life-long debt I gladly owe destiny for that memorable first meeting in Athena’s charming little city. The thought of it waves memory back into broad sunshine untravelled by clouds, among sun-stained marble pillars and rose and mauve tinted hills, girdling purple waters, and the long silver olive plain of Attica. Do you remember still our first walk along the cactus-bordered path to the Acropolis? Was it not of ‘Tragic Comedians’ that we talked? So now, years after, I offer you in grateful remembrance this little gathering of ideas you may not wholly share, but will not wholly reject, through affection for your friend, to whom so wide a difference would be nothing less than a real misfortune. HANNAH LYNCH. PARIS, _February, 1891_. PREFACE. A couple of months ago I was asked to give a lecture in Paris on a modern English writer, and I naturally selected my favourite, the subject of this little book. It was afterwards suggested to me that the lecture would bear expansion, a task I the more readily undertook because I was happy enough to learn that my humble effort had sent at least three intellectual foreigners to the fountainhead to study for themselves the novels of Mr. Meredith, curious to see if I had not overrated his merits, as is the habit of enthusiastic disciples, and greatly astonished to find their expectations disappointed, and my estimate unexaggerated. While still engaged upon this work I received from London Mr. Le Gallienne’s book, ‘George Meredith,’ and not having by me copies of ‘Modern Love’ or the other poems of Mr. Meredith, I availed myself of his quotations of the famous sonnet and ‘A Meeting.’ I have also taken from Mr. Lane’s Bibliography, added to Mr. Le Gallienne’s book, the dates of the appearance of each of the novels, as my own copies all belong to the recent uniform editions published by Messrs. Chapman and Hall. HANNAH LYNCH. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. THE GRADUAL RECOGNITION OF GEORGE MEREDITH AS A NOVELIST 1 II. MEREDITH’S STYLE AND INFLUENCE 25