At the first sight of such poetry a good judge would naturally exclaim, "How is it that I never heard of this wonderful poet before?" But a further examination will easily furnish the reason. Meredith is uncommonly difficult as well as uncommonly deep. He has the obscurity of Browning, and yet a profundity exceeding Browning's; he is essentially a psychological poet, but he is also an evolutional philosopher, which Browning scarcely was. He did not study in Germany for nothing, and he alone of all living Englishmen really expresses the whole philosophy of the modern scientific age. Now such a man necessarily found himself in a peculiar position. The older thinkers of his own time could scarcely understand him; he was uttering new thoughts, and uttering them often in a German rather than in an English way. The younger thinkers of the period were still at school or in the university when he began to express himself. His audience was therefore extremely small at first. Now it is very large, and he is known as well in France and Germany as at home, but we may say that he gave his whole life for this success. A word now about his philosophy. Meredith is a thinker of the broadest and most advanced type, but he is essentially optimistic--that is, he considers all things as an evolutionist, but also as one who believes that the tendency of the laws which govern the universe is toward the highest possible good. He believes the world to be the best possible world which man could desire, and he thinks that all the unhappiness and folly of men is due only to ignorance and to weakness. He proclaims that the world can give every joy and every pleasure possible to those who are both wise and strong. Above all else he preaches the duty of moral strength--the power to control our passions and impulses. He has, however, very little compassion in him; he is a terribly stern teacher, never pitying weakness, never forgiving ignorance. He never talks of any theological God--not at least as a God to believe in; but you get from all his poetry the general impression that he considers the working of the universe divine. It will not be necessary to say more here about his opinions, because we shall find them better expressed in his poems than they could be in any attempt at a brief _résumé._