Master of all of us,' said R. L. Stevenson. Some critics have dilated on his lack of constructive skill, or even paradoxically affirmed that he violates every canon which the art of fiction should observe; and too much has been made of the obscurity and indirectness of his diction. The idiosyncrasies of his style, which in the later works is often provokingly compressed and elliptical, form a certain barrier to appreciation, and repel many at the outset; but those who have become accustomed to the atmosphere of his thought and utterance are agreed that there are few writers, living or dead, whose works will better repay a careful study. Unintelligibility and obscurity are relative terms; and to the novel in its most complex and highest form it cannot be made matter of reproach that there are some-perhaps many-who lack the intelligence or the sensibility that can alone admit them to the charmed circle of appreciative readers. The difficulties of Mr Meredith's style and manner have been greatly exaggerated, and are felt to be a serious impediment to sympathetic understanding only by those who have not the patience to apply themselves to the study of the higher fiction with the same ardour that they would think necessary in the case of any other art. No one has ever tried to make words convey so much meaning as Mr Meredith, and very few have had so much meaning to express. His power of phrase-making is as wonderful as the variety and appositeness of his use of individual words. It should be noted that with the publication of The Egoist in 1879, there was a marked change in Mr Meredith's style, a change not without its disadvantages—to a more fastidious choice of words, with an increasing command of felicitous phrases, and a more sedulous effort to put the fullest significance and suggestiveness into every sentence. Although Mr Meredith was long in gaining recognition, and is unlikely ever to be a popular writer in the ordinary sense, he is now regarded by the majority of cultivated readers as one of the most powerful and original intellectual forces of our time, distinguished alike for the large sanity of his outlook upon life, the subtlety and grasp of his insight into the springs of character, and his command of many of the most effective forms of artistic expression.

From 'Love in the Valley.' Heartless she is as the shadow in the meadows Flying to the hills on a blue and breezy noon. No, she is athirst and drinking up her wonder:

Earth to her is young as the slip of the new moon. Deals she an unkindness, 'tis but her rapid measure, Even as in a dance; and her smile can heal no less : Like the swinging May-cloud that pelts the flowers with hailstones.

Off a sunny border, she was made to bruise and bless.

Happy happy time, when the white star hovers

Low over dim fields fresh with bloomy dew, Near the face of dawn, that draws athwart the darkness, Threading it with colour, like yewberries the yew.

Thicker crowd the shades as the grave East deepens
Glowing, and with crimson a long cloud swells.
Maiden still the morn is; and strange she is, and secret ;
Strange her eyes; her cheeks are cold as cold sea-
shells.

From The Ordeal of Richard Feverel.'

They believe that the angels have been busy about them from their cradles. The celestial hosts have worthily striven to bring them together. And, O victory! O wonder! after toil and pain, and difficulties exceeding, the celestial hosts have succeeded!

'Here we two sit who are written above as one!' Pipe, happy Love! pipe on to these dear innocents! The tide of colour has ebbed from the upper sky. In the West the sea of sunken fire draws back; and the stars leap forth, and tremble, and retire before the advancing moon, who slips the silver train of cloud from her shoulders, and, with her foot upon the pine-tops, surveys heaven.

'Lucy, did you never dream of meeting me?'
'O Richard! yes; for I remembered you.'
'Lucy! and did you pray that we might meet?'
'I did!'

Young as when she looked upon the lovers in Paradise, the fair Immortal journeys onward. Fronting her, it is not night but veiled day. Full half the sky is flushed. Not darkness: not day; but the nuptials of the two. 'My own my own for ever! You are pledged to me? Whisper !'

He hears the delicious music. 'And you are mine?'

A soft beam travels to the fern-covert under the pinewood where they sit, and for answer he has her eyes: turned to him an instant, timidly fluttering over the depths of his, and then downcast; for through her eyes her soul is naked to him.

'Lucy! my bride ! my life!'

The night-jar spins his dark monotony on the branch of the pine. The soft beam travels round them, and listens to their hearts. Their lips are locked.

Pipe no more, Love, for a time! Pipe as you will you cannot express their first kiss; nothing of its sweetness, and of the sacredness of it nothing. St Cecilia up aloft, before the silver organ-pipes of Paradise, pressing fingers upon all the notes of which Love is but one, from her you may hear it.

From The Egoist.'

'An oath?' she said, and moved her lips to recall what she might have said and forgotten. 'To what? What oath?'

'That you will be true to me dead as well as living! Whisper it.'

'Willoughby, I shall be true to my vows at the altar.' To me! me !'

It will be to you.'

'To my soul. No heaven can be for me--I see none, only torture, unless I have your word, Clara. I trust it. I will trust it implicitly. My confidence in you is absolute.'

'Then you need not be troubled.'

'It is for you, my love; that you may be armed and strong when I am not by to protect you.'

'Our views of the world are opposed, Willoughby.' 'Consent; gratify me; swear it. Say, "Beyond death." Whisper it. I ask for nothing more.

Women

'I could kneel to you, to worship you, if you would, Clara !'

'Kneel to heaven, not to me, Willoughby. I am . . I wish I were able to tell what I am. I may be inconstant: I do not know myself. Think; question yourself whether I am really the person you should marry. Your wife should have great qualities of mind and soul. I will consent to hear that I do not possess them, and abide by the verdict.'

me.

'You do; you do possess them!' Willoughby cried. 'When you know better what the world is, you will understand my anxiety. Alive, I am strong to shield you from it; dead, helpless-that is all. You would be clad in mail, steel-proof, inviolable, if you would . . . But try to enter into my mind; think with me, feel with When you have once comprehended the intensity of the love of a man like me, you will not require asking. It is the difference of the elect and the vulgar; of the ideal of love from the coupling of the herds. We will let it drop. At least, I have your hand. As long as I live I have your hand. Ought I not to be satisfied? I am; only, I see farther than most men, and feel more deeply.'

From 'Vittoria.'

It was he who preached to the Italians that opportunity is a mocking devil when we look for it to be revealed; or, in other words, wait for chance; as it is God's angel when it is created within us, the ripe fruit of virtue and devotion. He cried out to Italians to wait for no inspiration but their own; that they should never subdue their minds to follow any alien example; nor let a foreign city of fire be their beacon. Watching over his Italy; her wrist in his meditative clasp year by year; he stood like a mystic leech by the couch of a fair and hopeless frame, pledged to revive it by the inspired assurance, shared by none, that life had not forsaken it. A body given over to death and vultures-he stood by it in the desert. Is it a marvel to you that when the carrion-wings swooped low, and the claws fixed, and the beak plucked and savoured its morsel, he raised his arm, and urged the half-resuscitated frame to some vindicating show of existence? Arise! he said, even in what appeared most fatal hours of darkness. The slack limbs moved; the body rose and fell. The cost of the effort was the breaking out of innumerable wounds, old and

flame down Milan streets, and Italians stood like the burnt-out cinders of the fire-grate, Italy's faint wrist was still in the clutch of her grave leech, who counted the beating of her pulse between long pauses, that would have made another think life to be heaving its last, not beginning.

A revised edition of Mr Meredith's novels began to appear in 1896, and was completed three years later in thirty-two volumes. There is a very complete bibliography by Mr John Lane prefixed to the study of Meredith published by Mr Le Gallienne in 1890: Miss Hannah Lynch published a book on him in 1891, as did Mr Walter Jerrold in 1903. Mr Basil Worsfold discussed his theory of fiction in The Principles of Criticism (1897); and in Victorian Prose Masters (1902) Mr W. C. Brownell has attempted an appreciative critical estimate. Mr Meredith's profound significance in connection with the Renascence of Wonder has been suggested in the essay introductory to the present volume.

JAMES OLIPHANT.

In

Justin M'Carthy, born at Cork in 1830, early embraced a journalistic career, which, commencing in Liverpool, was most of it spent in England. 1860 he joined the Reporters' Gallery of the House of Commons as representative of the Morning Star, and in 1864 became editor of that paper; later he was appointed a leader-writer on the Daily News. For many years he contributed copiously to the literature of fiction, A Fair Saxon (1873) and Dear Lady Disdain (1875) being perhaps his most successful novels. But Mr M'Carthy's main interests have always been centred in public affairs. Not only did he for many years occupy a prominent position in the House of Commons as an active member and, for a time, the chairman of the Irish party, but his best literary work has been done in the region of political history. The History of Our Own Times, from the Accession of Queen Victoria (1878-97), is an excellent and, on the whole, extremely fair summary of the events of the Victorian era; the latter half of the work has the interest and value which attaches to a description of political events by one who was acquainted with many of the principal personages who figure in his pages. A History of the Four Georges, written after the first volume of the History of Our Own Times had appeared, may be best described in an Irishism as a sequel of antecedent history; it is written on the same scale as the earlier work and treated in the same manner. But Mr M'Carthy is more at home in the history of events which are still politics than of politics which have become history. A similar criticism may fairly be passed on The Reign of Queen Anne (1902). Among other works which blend history with politics are The Life of Sir Robert Peel (1891), Lives of Pope Leo XIII. and of Mr Gladstone, and Modern England (1898). Mr M'Carthy retired from Parliament and from

lived. She tasted her own blood, and herself knew that she lived. Then she felt her chains. The time was coming for her to prove, by the virtues within her, that she was worthy to live, when others of her sons, subtle and adept, intricate as serpents, bold, unquestioning as wellbestridden steeds, should grapple and play deep for her in the game of worldly strife. Now-at this hour of which I speak-when Austrians marched like a merry

to literary work; and in 1903 a Civil List pension was bestowed on him. His Reminiscences (1899) contain effective sketches of contemporary personages; in British Political Leaders (1903) the sketches are too purely journalistic to be of enduring value. His son, Mr Justin Huntly M'Carthy (born 1860), is a novelist, dramatist, and historian.

James Hutchison Stirling, patriarch of British philosophers, was born at Glasgow in 1820, studied at Glasgow University, and practised 18431851 as a surgeon near Aberdare in South Wales; but afterwards went to Paris and Heidelberg, and devoted himself to philosophy. His Secret of Hegel (1865; new ed. 1900), a masterpiece of philosophical insight and expository genius, opened up an unknown world to English readers, and gave a powerful impulse to the study of philosophy; in 1881 came his Complete Text-book to Kant. LL.D. both of Edinburgh and of Glasgow, he delivered the first course of Gifford lectures at Edinburgh -Philosophy and Theology (1890). Other works, hardly less original, incisive, and influential, are an assault on Hamilton's doctrine of perception (1865); a translation, with notes, of Schwegler's History of Philosophy (1867; 12th ed. 1893); Jerrold, Tennyson, and Macaulay (1868); As Regards Protoplasm (1869; complete ed. 1872), a reply to Huxley; Lectures on the Philosophy of Law (1873); Burns in Drama (1878); Darwinianism (1894), a trenchant criticism of the three Darwins; What is Thought? or the Problem of Philosophy (1900); and, finally, The Categories (1903). In Germany, as well as in Italy and elsewhere, the Secret of Hegel was accepted as a profound, brilliant, and authentic exegesis ; Emerson knew no modern British book that showed such competence to analyse the most abstruse problems of the science, and, much more, such singular vigour and breadth of view in treating the matter in relation to literature and humanity.' And Carlyle thought its author 'the only man in Britain capable of bringing metaphysical philosophy, in the ultimate, German or European, and highest actual form of it, distinctly home to the understanding of British men who wish to understand it.'

Lewis Campbell was born 3rd September 1830, at Edinburgh, the son of a cousin of Thomas Campbell the poet, and was educated at the Academy of Edinburgh, the University of Glasgow, and Trinity and Balliol Colleges, at Oxford. He took Anglican orders, and in 1856-58 was vicar of an English parish; from 1863 to 1892 was Professor of Greek at St Andrews, where he delivered the Gifford Lectures in 1894-95. He has edited the plays of Sophocles and three of Plato's dialogues, one of them in collaboration with Professor Jowett, and has translated Eschylus and Sophocles into spirited and graceful English verse. Besides other books and articles on classical subjects he has published sermons, written (in collaboration with W. Garnett) the Life of Clerk Maxwell, and (with Evelyn Abbott) edited Jowett's Life and Letters.

Friedrich Max-Müller (1823-1900), son of the German poet Wilhelm Müller, was born at Dessau, and educated at Leipzig, Berlin, and Paris; and through Bunsen was, as an accom

plished Sanskritist, asked to England to edit the Rig Veda for the East India Company. Settling at Oxford, he was successively Taylorian Professor of Modern Languages and, from 1868, of Comparative Philology, a study he did more than any one else to promote in England, though many of his favourite doctrines have been superseded. Besides a history of Sanskrit literature and books on the science of religion, of thought, and of mythology, he issued in singularly nervous, polished, and idiomatic English the essays he called Chips from a German Workshop (1868–75), and the Glasgow Gifford lectures on natural religion (1889-93). He held numerous academic and other honours, and in 1896 was made a member of the Privy Council. Auld Lang Syne (1898-99) was autobiographical; and his wife edited his Life and Letters (1902).

Thomas Hodgkin, born of Quaker stock at Tottenham in 1831, and educated at University College, London, became partner in a large banking house at Newcastle-on-Tyne. Devoting learned leisure to historical writing, he has recorded the history of Italy after the fall of the Roman Empire in Italy and her Invaders (7 vols. 1880–98); and as parerga wrote monographs on The Dynasty of Theodosius (1889) and Theodoric the Goth (1891), and a Life of Charlemagne (1897).

Frederic William Farrar (1831-1903), born in Bombay, graduated at London University and at Cambridge. Ordained in 1854, he was for many years a master at Harrow, and in 1871-76 head-master of Marlborough College; in 1876 he became canon of Westminster and rector of St Margaret's, archdeacon of Westminster in 1883, and Dean of Canterbury in 1895. An eloquent preacher and a copious author, he wrote Eric and other stories of school-life, books on philology and education, a Life of Christ (1874) which ran through twelve editions in as many months, a Life of St Paul, besides Lives of the Fathers and a History of Interpretation. One of several volumes of sermons was Eternal Hope (1878), disputing the doctrine of eternal punishment. Darkness and Dawn (1892) was a story of Nero's days, and Gathering Clouds (1895) of Chrysostom's. His Life by his son was published in 1903.

Frederic Harrison, born in London in 1831, was educated at King's College School, London, and Wadham College, Oxford, taking a classical first-class in 1853. He became Fellow and tutor of his college, but was called to the Bar in 1858, and practised conveyancing and in the Courts of Equity. He has served on more than one Royal Commission, from 1877 till 1889 was Professor of Jurisprudence and International Law to the Inns of Court, and was an alderman in the London County Council. He is an advanced Liberal and HomeRuler, and his outlook on the world is largely conditioned by his zeal as a convinced Comtist. Since 1880 he has been president of the English Positivist Committee. An eager student of history and

literature, as a critic he wields a versatile and trenchant pen. He has written on the meaning of history (1862), on order and progress, on education and the choice of books, on Byzantine history, and on early Victorian literature; edited the Positivist Calendar of Great Men, and published much on Positivist matters, especially on Comte's Positive Polity; is author of books on Cromwell, William the Silent, King Alfred, and Ruskin (1902), the latter containing much original and suggestive criticism; and we have further had from him a collection of critiques of Tennyson, Mill, and others, and a volume on Washington, with other addresses delivered in America (1901).

Sir Leslie Stephen, son of Sir James Stephen, for many years Colonial Under-Secretary, was born at Kensington Gore, 28th November 1832. He was educated at Eton, King's College, London, and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. It was his intention to follow a clerical career, and he took holy orders, but in consequence of increasing intellectual dissatisfaction with the creed of the Church, he abandoned the idea of becoming a clergyman and devoted himself to literature. Settling in London, he contributed to the Pall Mall Gazette as well as to the Fortnightly Review, Fraser's Magazine, and Macmillan's Magazine. In 1871 he was appointed editor of the Cornhill Magazine, and retained this position till 1882, when he resigned in order to undertake the duties of editor of the Dictionary of National Biography. The first volume of the Dictionary appeared early in 1885, and under Stephen's editorship twenty quarterly volumes were published. He afterwards appointed Mr Sidney Lee-since 1883 his assistant -joint-editor, and early in 1891, in impaired health, he abandoned the editorship to his coadjutor, but continued to be contributor. In 1895 he was appointed president of the London Library in succession to Tennyson, and in June 1902 was created a Knight Commander of the Bath. A thinker of singular independence and energy, a critic of exceptional learning, breadth, and sanity, Sir Leslie Stephen has been an industrious writer, amongst his works being The Playground of Europe (1871), Hours in a Library (three series, 1874-79), The History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (1876 and 1881), Essays on Freethinking and Plain Speaking (1879), The Science of Ethics (1882), Life of Henry Fawcett (1885), An Agnostic's Apology (1893), Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen (1895), and Studies of a Biographer (4 vols. 1898-1902). His great work on The English Utilitarians (3 vols. 1900) consists mainly of studies of Bentham, James Mill, and John Stuart Mill. A disciple of Hume, Bentham, and the Mills, in his Science of Ethics he retains on the whole the utilitarian system, modified by the new light thrown upon the ethical development of man by the theory of Darwin and the speculations of Spencer.

Course

Stopford Augustus Brooke, born in 1832 at Letterkenny in Donegal, had a distinguished at Trinity College, Dublin, and taking orders, became a curate in London. His first incumbency was St James's Chapel (1866-75); his second, Bedford Chapel, Bloomsbury, where, in virtue of his independence of thought and the literary grace of his sermons, he came to be till his resignation in 1894 amongst the foremost London preachers. In 1880, on dogmatic grounds connected with miracles, he severed his connection with the Church of England. For a time he had been a royal chaplain. His Life of Robertson of Brighton (1865) from the first ranked as a classical biography; his Primer of English Literature (1876), unique amongst primers, was followed by his History of Early English Literature (2 vols. 1892) and a one-volume work on English Literature to the Norman Conquest (1898). Amongst his volumes of sermons and theological works are Jesus and Modern Thought and The Gospel of Joy. A poet himself, he is a critic of sympathetic insight, and he has published, besides a little book on Milton, important studies of Tennyson (1894) and Browning (1902). With a colleague he prepared A Treasury of Irish Poetry in the English Tongue (1901); and the first section of the present work (Vol. I. pp. 1-30) is from his pen.

James Cotter Morison (1832-88), son of the proprietor of Morison's Pills, was educated at Lincoln College, Oxford, and lived much in France. His masterpiece, The Life of St Bernard (1863), was dedicated to Carlyle. For his friend Mr Morley he wrote Gibbon (1878) and Macaulay (1882) in the 'Men of Letters' series; his last work, The Service of Man (1887), was a criticism of revealed religion from the Positive point of view.

Sir Lewis Morris was born at Penrhyn in Carmarthen in 1833, and educated at Sherborne and Jesus College, Oxford, where in 1855 he took a first in classics and won the Chancellor's prize. He practised at the Bar as a conveyancer from 1861 to 1881, and subsequently devoted himself to local work in Wales in connection with education and politics, but failed (as a Liberal candidate) to gain a seat in Parliament for a Welsh constituency. Songs of Two Worlds (3 vols. 1872-75) by ‘A New Writer' showed taste, grace, craftsmanship, and the influence of Tennyson; The Epic of Hades (1876), by the same anonymous New Writer,' retold in a sufficiently modern spirit the myths and legends of ancient Greece-of Helen, Endymion, Marsyas, and the rest. These pretty idyls were welcomed with joy by a great public. His critics were willing here, as in his later work, to recognise attractive narrative, metrical skill, clear and sometimes forcible thought, unmistakable talent, but refused to acknowledge evidence of true poetic genius. He has since published Gwen, a Drama in Monologue; The Ode of Life; Songs Unsung; Gycia, a Tragedy; A Vision of Saints (1890), Idylls and