Last of our land's great singers, dowered at birth With music's passion, swift and sweet and strong, Who taught in heavenly numbers, new to earth, The wizardry of song-- His spirit, fashioned after Freedom's mould, Impatient of the bonds that mortals bear, Achieves a franchise large and uncontrolled, Rapt through the void of air. "What of the night?" For him no night can be; The night is ours, left songless and forlorn; Yet o'er the darkness, where he wanders free, Behold, a star is born! George Meredith was an old friend of _Punch's_ from the days when he contributed to _Once a Week_, but he was not exempt from criticism on that account, as I have already shown. In 1894 he was again burlesqued in a parody of _Lord Ormont and his Aminta_, which ran through three numbers and was decorated with a portrait of the author as a bull in the china shop of syntax, grammar and form. _Punch_ in middle age only dimly appreciated Meredith's genius, and was disconcerted by his obscurity. _Punch_ erred in good company, for Tennyson is reported to have said that "reading Meredith is like wading through glue"; but sixteen years later the mists cleared away, and the verses of May, 1909, reveal insight as well as admiration:-- Masked in the beauty of the May-dawn's birth, Death came and kissed the brow still nobly fair, And hushed that heart of youth for which the earth Still kept its morning air. Long time initiate in her lovely lore, Now is he one with Nature's woods and streams, Whereof, a Paradisal robe, he wore The visionary gleams. * * * * * When from his lips immortal music broke, It was the myriad voice of vale and hill; "The lark ascending" poured a song that woke An echo sweeter still. Yet most we mourn his loss as one who gave The gift of laughter and the boon of tears, Interpreter of life, its gay and grave, Its human hopes and fears. Seer of the soul of things, inspired to know Man's heart and woman's, over all he threw The spell of fancy's iridescent glow, The sheen of sunlit dew. And of the fellowship of that great Age For whose return our eyes have waited long, None left so rich a twofold heritage Of high romance and song. [Sidenote: "_Eminent Victorians_"]