That his first novel, ‘Richard Feverel,’ should have passed unheeded, in spite of the remarkable review which the _Times_ gave it in 1859, is something to wonder at, for surely such a book might have been expected to startle the best of his country into superlative praise, and meet with immediate popularity. It had already been preceded by a volume of notable poetry, by that extraordinary _tour de force_, ‘The Shaving of Shagpat,’ and by ‘Farina, a Legend of Cologne.’ Yet these were not sufficient to convince his fellows that in their presence stood mighty genius claiming the poor return it is in our power to make it--the hospitality and welcome of our minds. Does such denseness deserve pity or blame? For churlishness it cannot be called, as the neglect shown the great is never deliberate. Two years were we left to sharpen our wits upon the pages of ‘Richard Feverel,’ and, mayhap, acquire a taste for qualities utterly novel to the age and, in a measure, to the nation--for something more than English characteristics go to the forming of a writer like Mr. Meredith--and in 1861 we were asked to make what we could of ‘Evan Harrington.’ The story appeared in _Once a Week_, and was illustrated by the late Charles Keene, under the title of ‘Evan Harrington; or, He Would be a Gentleman.’ Mr. Stevenson makes doleful mention of a serial of Meredith’s that nearly wrecked a newspaper financially, and presumably this was the unlucky experiment, from which it may be gathered that ‘Evan Harrington’ had no greater success than ‘Richard Feverel,’ and that the hour of recognition had not yet dawned. Explain it who can. Was there not a grain of perversity at the bottom of it? And can there be a more thankless task than that of labouring against the tide of fatal dulness, or an unkinder solitude than that of a man who is a head and a half above the tallest of his fellows, and can neither lift them up to his level nor descend to theirs? There are compensations, certainly, but these only serve to mitigate the sufferings of intellectual isolation, and, to the artist, can never fill adequately the place of generous and hearty appreciation. Wrapped in his philosophic cloak, the thinker may make shift to do without his fellows, and call them by hard names, but to the artist and the poet, sympathy and the warm praise of living voices is like sunshine to the human frame. But reliable, if rare, critics had begun to find him out. In 1862, when his second book of poetry appeared, ‘Modern Love,’ the _Spectator_ chose to assail, as an unfledged beginner, the man who had given such work as his to the world; whereupon Mr. Swinburne, wrathful, though not invective--rare chance!--wrote a letter that all disciples of Meredith remember with gratitude. But it is still hard for us to understand how the career of any man of letters could be so slow, and appreciation so long grudged him, as has been the case with a penman of so pronounced a type. That