The wizardry of song—
His spirit, fashioned after Freedom's mould,
Impatient of the bonds that mortals bear,
Achieves a franchise large and uncontrolled,
Rapt through the void of air.
"What of the night?" For him no night can be;
The night is ours, left songless and forlorn;
Yet o'er the darkness, where he wanders free,
Behold, a star is born!
George Meredith was an old friend of Punch's from the days when he contributed to Once a Week, but he was not exempt from criticism on that account, as I have already shown. In 1894 he was again burlesqued in a parody of Lord Ormont and his Aminta, which ran through three numbers and was decorated with a portrait of the author as a bull in the china shop of syntax, grammar and form. Punch in middle age only dimly appreciated Meredith's genius, and was disconcerted by his obscurity. Punch erred in good company, for Tennyson is reported to have said that "reading Meredith is like wading through glue"; but sixteen years later the mists cleared away, and the verses of May, 1909, reveal insight as well as admiration:—