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.

By invoking (practically at the outset of his work) “the Comic Spirit” as the patron of his endeavours and the inspirer of his art, Mr. Meredith of course did no more than assert his claim to place himself in the right race and lineage of Cervantes and Fielding.  Nor, though the claim be a bold one, can there be much dispute among competent judges that he made it out.  To the study, not in a frivolous or even merely satirical, but in a gravely ironic mode, of the nature of humanity he addicted himself throughout:  and the results of his studies undoubtedly enlarge humanity’s conscious knowledge of itself in the way of fictitious exemplification.  In a certain sense no higher praise can be given.  To acknowledge it is at once to estate him, not only with Cervantes and Fielding themselves, but with Thackeray, with Swift, with Moliere, with Shakespeare.  It places him well above Dickens, and, in the opinion of the present writer, it places him above even Balzac.  But there are points wherein, according to that same