The foregoing remarks were actually written before Mr. Meredith's death: and I have thought it better to leave them exactly as they then stood with hardly any correction; but it may justly be expected that they should now be supplemented. The history of Mr. Meredith's career and reputation, during the half century which passed between the appearance of _Richard Feverel_ and his death, has a certain obvious resemblance to that of Browning's, but with some differences. His work at once arrested attention, but it did not at once in all, or in many, cases fix it, even with critical readers: and for a long time the general public turned an obstinately deaf ear. He followed _The Ordeal_ itself--a study of very freely and deeply drawn character; of incident sometimes unusual and always unusually told; of elaborate and disconcerting epigram or rather of style saturated with epigrammatic quality; and of a strange ironic persiflage permeating thought, picture, and expression in the same way--unhastingly but unrestingly with others. _Evan Harrington_ (1861) is generally lighter in tone; and should be taken in connection with the ten years later _Harry Richmond_ as an example of what may be called a sort of new picaresque novel--the subjects being exalted from the gutter--at least the street gutter--to higher stories of the novel house. _Emilia in England_ (1864), later called _Sandra Belloni_, and its sequel _Vittoria_ (1866), embody, especially the latter, the Italomania of the mid-century. Between them _Rhoda Fleming_ (1865), returning to English country life, showed, with the old characteristics of expression, tragic power superior perhaps to that of the end of _Feverel_. In fact some have been inclined to put _Rhoda_ at the head. In 1875 _Beauchamp's Career_ showed the novelist's curious fancy for studying off actual contemporaries; for it is now perfectly well known who "Beauchamp" was: and four years later came what the true Meredithian regards as the masterpiece, _The Egoist_. Two other books followed, to some extent in the track of _Beauchamp's Career, Diana of the Crossways_ (1886), utilising the legend of Mrs. Norton's betrayal of secrets, and _The Tragic Comedians_ (1881), the story of the German socialist Lassalle. The author's prediction, never hurried, now slackened, and by degrees ceased, but the nineties saw three books, _One of Our Conquerors_ (1891), _Lord Ormont and his Aminta_ (1894), and _The Amazing Marriage_ (1895). No bibliography of Mr. Meredith being here necessary or possible, smaller and miscellaneous things need not detain us; and we are not concerned with his sometimes charming verse. It is the character, and especially the "total-effect" character, of the major novels with which we have to do. This has been faintly adumbrated above, but the lines must be a little deepened and the contour filled in to some extent here.