Of the story itself little need be said, as it hangs upon a single situation unfolded in one act after a short prologue introducing us to the chief _dramatis personæ_. And can one possibly hope to explain how this situation is worked and twisted and unfolded--how illuminated and ransacked to its most hidden depths for the undiscovered clue of self, for the unrevealed spring which prompts even our everyday ‘yea’ or ‘nay’? To endeavour to do so would be to undertake a task only second to that of the writing of ‘The Egoist.’ Meredith, I should imagine, would shrink from it. It is simply an analysis of the Ego. The universal Ego takes the polished and affable form of a young English squire, the pink of perfection, and highly commendable to ladies of fastidious tastes, the eye of whose soul is turned ceaselessly upon self. There he walks and sits and talks before our newly-illuminated vision, naked to the soul, each beat of the heart discovered without its protection of flesh or garment; not one single young man whom we meet and part with in fiction, but the large pervading personality of human existence crystallized to one permanent shape--not Sir Willoughby Patterne, of Patterne Hall, but the soul of selfishness endowed with a form that might just as well have been yours or mine or our next-door neighbour’s. This is Meredith’s most absolute triumph of art, to which he brought all the resources of his scientific knowledge of humanity--his powerful phraseology and marvellous metaphor.