Meredith certainly worked very hard to instil Comedy into the English mind. His essay is a classic, and our only classic on the subject. And he may be said to have written the whole of his novels in order to illustrate his idea. Meredith’s novels are much more than a mirror held up in Nature; they are a model held up to human nature; and, from this point of view, they are only an appendix to the _Essay on Comedy_. The serious way in which Meredith’s novels are read, however, is an evidence of his failure, and it would be interesting to hear his secret comment on the critics who acclaim him as the grand portrait-painter of women. Did Meredith even set himself to draw a woman? Was his art not rather to “draw out” a woman from the imperfect society his times provided him? Were not his “portraits,” in fact, constructive criticisms of the women he knew? I put these opinions into interrogation out of mere courtesy, for there is really no doubt whatever about them. Meredith drew women still to be, as he hoped they would become. “To love comedy you must know the real world, and know men and women well enough not to expect too much of them, though you may still hope for good.” That is an almost complete summary of the conditions of the comic spirit; but there must be added the “sense of society,” the social sense, which is quite as important. This also introduces a considerable difficulty for us, since if “our English school had not clearly imagined society” in 1877, when Meredith wrote, it is less than ever probable to-day. In 1877, such people of intelligence as were living in England were still more or less homogeneous in their general views about life. They were not eighteenth century—the century of our highest English social culture; but they were not yet what we have subsequently become, discrete and warring atoms of intellectuality. It was possible when Meredith was alive for a group of people to meet, and to create something remotely resembling a salon. The hope of realising a “salon spirit” was not entirely dead. To-day nothing is more improbable than even an attempt to restore a salon. Not only would nobody undertake to do it, but to nobody would it occur that its restoration is highly desirable. But the salon is, as it were, the foyer of the theatre of Comedy, as the theatre of Comedy is itself the foyer of the Civilised Life of Brilliant Common Sense; and if we cannot re-create a salon it is perfectly certain that the greater mysteries are beyond us. We may continue, however, to “hope for good,” since that also is an essential of Comedy.