as it is able to go on "fighting" while the mouth is "shut fast" on it. She does all sorts of curious things with this mouth of hers, does Mrs. Marsett; in one scene of her career it is said that "she blushed, blinked, frowned, _sweetened her lip-lines, bit at the under one_, and passed in a discomposure." Moreover, this strange mouth was given to the utterance of bad language, for with it and her "slippery tongue" Mrs. Marsett said her own name was "Damnable!" and what was still worse, "had the passion to repeat the epithet in shrieks and scratch up male speech for a hatefuller," whatever that may mean. Of course, it is all very grand and mixed and magnificent, if any one chooses to think so; people can work themselves up into an epilepsy of enthusiasm over prose run mad _à la_ Meredith, as over poetry gone a-woolgathering _à la_ Browning. It is a harmless mania which is confined to the few, and is of a distinctly non-spreading tendency; while those who are not partakers in the craze can look on thereat and be amused thereby--for Meredith is at all times and all seasons both personally and in literature a real entertainment. Whether he be haranguing to the verge of deafness some stray acquaintance in the Garrick Club; whether he be met, a greybeard solitary, stalking up the slopes of Box Hill, at the foot of which he resides; whether he be inveighing against the "porkers," _i.e._, the Public, within the precincts of a certain small and extortionate but rigidly pious bookseller's shop in the town of Dorking; or whether he be visited in his own small literary "châlet," which he built for himself in his own garden, away from his house, what time he had a wife, (a very charming, kindly lady, whose appreciative sense of humour enabled her to understand her husband's gifts better than any of his wildest worshippers), in order to escape from "domesticity" and the ways of the "women" he is supposed to understand--in each and all of these positions he is distinctly amusing--and never more so than when he thinks he is impressive. Yet there can be no doubt whatever as to his natural cleverness, and the original turn of mind which might have made him a distinctly great writer, if he had not forced himself into the strained style of the artificial "groove" he has adopted. Even now, if he would only leave the first spontaneous output of his thought alone, instead of altering it when it is on paper, and weighing it down with all the big words he can find in the dictionary, he would probably write something above the average of interest. However, it's no use being hard upon him, as he has quite recently been Lynched.[1] I cannot endure his novels, it is true--but still, I never wished him to meet such a frightful fate. When we reflect on the barbarity of the institution known as Lynch-law, we cannot but wonder how his admirers have tamely stood by and seen him delivered over to so awful a punishment. Yet it is a positive fact that they have made no defence.