In placing this picture before the spectator, an incomparable view of genteel society with contrasted touches of low life is offered.  For pure comedy that is of the midriff as well as of the brain, the inn scene with the astonishing Raikes as central figure is unsurpassed in all Meredith, and only Dickens has done the like.  And to correspond in the fashionable world, there is Harrington’s sister, the Countess de Saldar, who is only second to Becky Sharp for saliency and delight.  Some find these comic figures overdrawn, even impossible; but they stand the test applied to Dickens:  they abide in affectionate memory, vivid evocations made for our lasting joy.  As with “Feverel,” the book is a piece of life first, a lesson second; but the underlying thesis is present, not to the injury of one who reads for story’s sake.

An extraordinary further example of resourcefulness, with a complete change of key, is “The Adventures of Harry Richmond.”  The ostensible business of the book is to depict the growth from boyhood to manhood and through sundry experiences of love, with the resulting effect upon his character, of the young man whose name gives it title.  It may be noted that a favorite task with Meredith is this, to trace the development of a personality from immaturity to a maturity gained by the hard knocks of the master-educator, Love.  But the figure really dominant is not Harry nor any one of his sweethearts, but that of his father, Roy Richmond.  I must believe that English fiction offers nothing more original than he.  He is an indescribable compound of brilliant swashbuckler, splendid gentleman and winning Goodheart.  Barry Lyndon, Tarascon, Don Quixote and Septimus go into his making—­and yet he is not explained;—­an absolute original.  The scene where, in a German park on an occasion of great pomp, he impersonates the statue of a Prince, is one of the author’s triumphs—­never less delightful at a re-reading.

But has this amazing creation a meaning, or is Roy merely one of the results of the sportive play of a man of genius?  He is something more, we feel, when, at the end of the romance, he gives his life for the woman who has so faithfully loved him and believed in his royal pretensions.  He perishes in a fire, because in saving her he would not save himself.  It is as if the author said:  “Behold, a man by nature histrionic and Bohemian, and do not make the mistake to think him incapable of nobility.  Romantic in his faults, so too he is romantic in his virtues.”  “And back of this kindly treatment of the lovable rascal (who was so ideal a father to the little Richmond!) does there not lurk the thought that the pseudo-romantic attitude toward Life is full of danger—­in truth, out of the question in modern society?”

“The Egoist” has long been a test volume with Meredithians.  If you like it you are of the cult; if not, merely an amateur.  It is inevitable to quote Stevenson who, when he had read it several times, declared that at the sixth reading he would begin to realize its greatness.  Stevenson was a doughty admirer of Meredith, finding the elder “the only man of genius of my acquaintance,” and regarding “Rhoda Fleming” as a book to send one back to Shakspere.