But as a rule what we get from Meredith is not social criticism in its broad sense, but merely caste criticism, the self-discipline of the privileged orders. Meredith’s greatest novel is “The Egoist,” a quite amazing study of one of these superior males, a creature who has been brought up from infancy to regard his sublime self as the purpose for which his own family exists, and one of a small group of select persons for whom the British Empire, and therefore the world exist. Meredith lays him bare for us in every turn and movement of his being, and we loathe him heartily, and sympathize with the series of females with whom he dallies in courtship. Meredith is one of those super-sophisticated novelists who are unwilling to allow us to be interested in a course of events. The intellect in him has eaten up and sterilized the emotions. In reading him we are tormented by a feeling that his story and his characters would be delightful if only he would give them a chance; but he has such a brilliant style, he has so many ideas to convey to us, and so much shining wit and corruscating metaphor to display. It is like an exhibit of fireworks, which can be most ravishing for a few minutes; you catch your breath, and think you have never seen anything more lovely. But after an hour or so you decide that fireworks lack variety. This infinitely subtle and delicate, witty and charming personality invites us to sit with him as gods upon Olympus, to look down upon the tragic fate of mortals, and find pleasure in the irony of their failures. As in the case of Corneille, we are concerned with the strife and clash of aristocratic egotisms; we take part in deadly intrigues, and in duels without mercy. But times have changed, and now no blood is shed, no corpses cover the ground; it is a duel of wit, with a death-blow in a phrase or the lifting of an eye-brow. Watching the conflict, we find ourselves asking, precisely as we asked with Corneille: What have we to do with these puppets? How do they concern us? What reality is there, what permanence to the conventions which dominate their puppet minds? What real wisdom is there behind their volleys of cleverness? So we realize that we are still in the Victorian age; and Victoria and boredom are two words for one thing. CHAPTER XCVIII THE CULTURED-CLASS HISTORIAN We are getting down to modern times, and have come to the first great artist of whom I can say that with my own eyes I saw him. Shortly before the war, coming out of the dining-room of the New Reform Club in London, my host, H. G. Wells, stopped me and whispered: “There sits the Great Cham.” He may have said “Great Buddha” or “Great Jupiter”; anyhow, I looked, and seated at a table in solitary state was a large elderly gentleman, with large bald head shining whitely, and jaws moving meditatively. I knew him from his pictures; and besides, there was at that time only one Great Cham, or Great Buddha, or Great Jupiter of international letters.