The first half of The Adventures of Harry Richmond has been called by some critics Meredith’s best piece of writing, but the last half shows less power.

Meredith grew more introspective in his later years, as is shown in such long, analytical novels as, One of Our Conquerors (1891), Lord Ormont and His Aminta (1894), and The Amazing Marriage (1895).

General Characteristics.-Meredith’s novels afford him various opportunities for an exposition of his views on education, divorce, personal liberty, conventional narrow-mindedness, egotism, sentimentalism, and obedience to law.  His own personality creeps into the stories when he has some favorite sermon to preach; and he sometimes taxes the reader’s patience by unduly delaying the narrative or even directing its course in order to accentuate the moral issue.

The chief excellences of his novels lie in the strong and subtle character portrayal, in the brilliant conversations, in the power with which intense scenes are presented, and in the well-nigh omnipresent humor.

Meredith’s humor frequently arises from his keen intellectual perception of the paradoxes in life.  One of his egotistical lovers, talking to the object of his undying affections, “could pledge himself to eternity, but shrank from being bound to eleven o’clock on the morrow morning.”  Meredith does not fly into a passion, like Carlyle, because society is sentimental and shallow and loves to pose.  He proceeds in the coolest manner to draw with unusual distinctness the shallow dilettante, the sentimentalist, the egotist, and the hypocrite.  By placing these characters in the midst of men and women actuated by simple and genuine motives, he develops situations that seem especially humorous to readers who are alert to detect incongruity.  This veiled humor, which has been aptly styled “the laughter of the mind,” gives to Meredith’s works their most distinctive flavor.

His prose style is epigrammatic, rich in figures, subtle, sometimes tortuous and even obscure.  He abhors the trite and obvious, and, in escaping them to indulge in witty riddles, fanciful expressions, and difficult allusions, he imperils his clearness.  In the presence of genuine emotion, he is always as simple in style as he is serious in attitude; but there are times when he seems to revel in the extravagant and grotesque.

Meredith is the novelist of men and women in the world of learning, of letters, and of politics; he is the satirist of social shams; and he is the sparkling epigrammatist; but he is also the optimist with the sane and vigorous message for his generation, and the realist who keeps a genuine rainbow of idealism in his sky.

THOMAS HARDY, 1840-

[Illustration:  THOMAS HARDY. From the painting by Winifred Thompson.]