from sheer idyllic, through worldly and realistic to a culmination of dramatic grief.  It contains, in measure heaped up and running over, the poetry, the comedy and the philosophy, the sense of Life’s riddle, for which the author is renowned.  But its intellectual appeal of theme—­aside from the incidental wisdom that stars its pages—­is found in the study of the problem of education.  Richard’s father would shape his career according to a preconceived idea based on parental love and guided by an anxious, fussy consulting of the oracles.  The attempt to stretch the son upon a pedagogic procustean bed fails disastrously, wrecking his own happiness, and that of his sweet girl-wife.  Love is stronger than aught else and we are offered the spectacle of ruined lives hovered over by the best intentions.  The hovel is an illustration of the author’s general teaching that a human being must have reasonable liberty of action for self-development.  The heart must be allowed fair-play, though its guidance by the intellect is desirable.

It has been objected that this moving romance ends in unnecessary tragedy; that the catastrophe is not inevitable.  But it may be doubted if the mistake of Sir Austin Feverel could be so clearly indicated had not the chance bullet of the duel killed the young wife when reconciliation with her husband appeared probable.  But a book so vital in spirit, with such lyric interludes, lofty heights of wisdom, homeric humor, dramatic moments and profound emotions, can well afford lapses from perfect form, awkwardnesses of art.  There are places where philosophy checks movement or manner obscures thought; but one overlooks all such, remembering Richard and Lucy meeting by the river; Richard’s lonesome night walk when he learns he is a father; the marvelous parting from Bella Mount; father and son confronted with Richard’s separation from the girl-wife; the final piteous passing of Lucy.  These are among the great moments of English fiction.

One gets a sense of Meredith’s resources of breadth and variety next in taking up “Evan Harrington.”  Here is a satiric character sketch where before was romance; for broad comedy in the older and larger sense it has no peer among modern novels.  The purpose is plain:  to show the evolution of a young middle-class Englishman, a tailor’s son, through worldly experience with polite society into true democracy.  After the disillusionment of “high life,” after much yeasty juvenile foolishness and false ideals, Evan comes back to his father’s shop with his lesson learned:  it is possible (in modern England) to be both tailor and gentleman.