This kind of writer is a thinker first and a novelist afterwards, and not a thinker only, but a scientific psychologist. The novel is to him the sum of his mental labour, as the system is that of the metaphysician. The simple art of the first story-teller, Homer, and of Scott, no less differs from his method than from Kant’s ‘Kritik.’ His appearance, taking into account the materials of which his peculiar genius is composed, and the bewildering use he makes of them, is rare; and if, happily, he should obtain a hearing, after long strife with the general stupidity of the blockheads and patient endurance of the bites and barks of literary puppydom at his heels, he is sure to create a revolution in the world which subsists on amusement and distraction by this new way of popularizing philosophy through fiction and the rose-lights of imagination. His chance, of course, very much depends upon diction, and this explains to us George Eliot’s immediate recognition. As the first of the modern analytical novelists in England, she had the good fortune to start by a simple and facile style, within reach of the least intellectual reader. Hence, those who did not want to be compelled to think, could, without twist or turning, without racking their brains, or grasping a distracted head in their palms, follow her story even when they ignored the profound mental consciousness from which it sprang. But picture the catastrophe, the wide convulsion and fright her first appearance as the author of ‘Daniel Deronda’ would have created! She would have had to wait, at least, as long for recognition and admiration as her great and inadequately appreciated successor. Remote from her in point of style, though still of her school, by reason of severe thought worked to a conclusion, oftener than hers an unanswerable interrogation, is the only living master in English literature--George Meredith. He stands beside her and Tolstoi in the rank of serious intellectual workers, though we may doubt if foreign nations will ever reach the glib acquaintance with his name and the titles of his books that they are pleased to boast with those of the Russian master. Mr. Meredith is above and beyond all a thinker, less simple and direct, less wholly preoccupied with the mission of improving humanity and beautifying life, than either George Eliot or Tolstoi. Perhaps he has a healthier conviction that the world is very well as it is, and that in the main it is all the better that we are neither so muddy nor so pink as realists and sentimentalists would have us believe, but are just comfortably spotted and well-meaning to escape excess of censure or admiration.