In Meredith’s very faults there is an excess of strength. It is this superabundance and an impatience of drivelling sentiment that lead him so frequently to shock our nineteenth-century taste. I think he shocks us with deliberate aim, deeming our taste questionable and unrobust, and our fastidiousness unhealthy. These blows directed against our temple of false modesty are in no book fiercer and more astounding than in ‘Richard Feverel,’ and in no other book has he risen to such supreme heights. Here you have at its best the matchless splendour and majesty of his prose, and pages of prolonged beauty. You have ample scope to realize the vividness of his interpretation of nature, and the delight of young love so magically unveiled by him in those three beautiful chapters on the opening romance of Richard and Lucy--‘Ferdinand and Miranda,’ ‘Diversions played on a Penny Whistle,’ and ‘Time-honoured Treatment of a Dragon by a Hero.’ Which of these three chapters to choose it would be difficult to say, for there is nothing like them in all English literature for sweetness, melody, and pulse-moving charm. If I had to pronounce, I should be disposed to give the preference to the ‘Penny Whistle’ chapter, though, from the fact that the first meeting between Richard and Lucy is oftenest quoted, I judge it to be the most popular. Match me this exquisite picture in prose or poetry: ‘The sun is coming down to earth, and the fields and the waters shout to him golden shouts. He comes, and his heralds run before him, and touch the leaves of oaks and planes and beeches lucid green, and the pine-stems redder gold; leaving brightest footprints upon thickly-weeded banks, where the foxgloves’ last upper-bells incline, and bramble shoots wander amid moist rich herbage. The plumes of the woodland are alight; and beyond them, over the open, ’tis a race with the long-thrown shadows; a race across the heaths and up the hills, till, at the farthest bourne of mounted eastern cloud, the heralds of the sun lay rosy figures and rest.’ Or yet again, this other: ‘The tide of colour has ebbed from the upper sky. In the west the sea of sunken fire draws back, and the stars leap forth and tremble, and retire before the advancing moon, who slips the silver train of cloud from her shoulders, and, with her foot upon the pine-tops, surveys heaven.’ In these three chapters we have Mr. Meredith not only at his best, but better than many of the best poets upon their own ground. He sings rather than speaks. He neither wants to astonish nor affright us, but solely to enchant us. And who can read him and remain unmoved--withstand the spell he casts upon us? Shelley was never more musical, more thrilling, and never so strong.