Probably more readers are offended by his mannerisms of style than by any other defect; and they are undeniable. The opening chapter of "Diana" is a hard thing to get by; the same may be said of the similar chapter in "Beauchamp's Career." In "One of our Conquerors," early and late, the manner is such as to lose for him even tried adherents. Is the trouble one of thought or expression? And is it honest or an affectation? Meredith in some books—and in all books more or less—adopts a strangely indirect, over-elaborated, far-fetched and fantastic style, which those who love him are fain to deplore. The author's learning gets in his way and leads him into recondite allusions; besides this, he has that quality of mind which is stimulated into finding analogies on every side, so that image is piled on image and side-paths of thought open up in the heat of this mental activity. Part of the difficulty arises from surplusage of imagination. Sometimes it is used in the service of comment (often satirical); again in a kind of Greek chorus to the drama, greatly to its injury; or in pure description, where it is hardly less offensive. Thus in "The Egoist" we read: "Willoughby shadowed a deep droop on the bend of his neck before Clara," and reflection shows that all this absurdly acrobatic phrase means is that the hero bowed to the lady. An utterly simple occurrence and thus described! It is all the more strange and aggravating in that it comes from a man who on hundreds of occasions writes English as pungent, sonorous and sweet as any writer in the history of the native literature. This is true both of dialogue and narrative. He is the most quotable of authors; his Pilgrim's Scrip is stuffed full of precious sayings, expressing many moods of emotion and interpreting the world under its varied aspects of romance, beauty, wit and drama. "Strength is the brute form of truth." There is a French conciseness in such a sentence and immense mental suggestiveness. Both his scenic and character phrasing are memorable, as where the dyspeptic philosopher in "Feverel" is described after dinner as "languidly twinkling stomachic contentment." And what a scene is that where Master Gammon replies to Mrs. Sumfit's anxious query concerning his lingering at table with appetite apparently unappeasable:
"'When do you think you will have done, Master Gammon?'
"'When I feels my buttons, Ma'am.'"
Or hear John Thrasher in "Harry Richmond" dilate on Language:
'There's cockney, and there's country, and there's school. Mix the three, strain and throw away the sediment. Now yon's my view.'
Has any philologist said all that could be said, so succinctly? His lyric outbursts in the face of Nature or better yet, where as in the moonlight meeting of the lovers at Wllming Weir in "Sandra Belloni," nature is interspersed with human passion in a glorious union of music, picture and impassioned sentiment,—these await the pleasure of the enthralled seeker in every book. To encounter such passages (perhaps in a mood of protest over some almost insufferable defect) is to find the reward rich indeed. Let the cause of obscurity be what it may, we need not doubt that with Meredith style is the man, a perfectly honest way of expressing his personality. It is not impossible that his unconventional education and the early influence of German upon him, may come into the consideration. But in the main his peculiarity is congenital.
Meredith lacked self-criticism as a writer. But it is quite inaccurate to speak of obscure thought: it is language, the medium, which makes the trouble when there is any. His thought, allowing for the fantasticality of his humor in certain moods, is never muddled or unorganized: it is sane, consistent and worthy of attention. To say this, is still to regret the stylistic vagaries.
One other defect must be mentioned: the characters talk like Meredith, instead of in their own persons. This is not true uniformly, of course, but it does mar the truth of his presentation. Young girls show wit and wisdom quite out of keeping; those in humble life—a bargeman, perhaps, or a prize-fighter—speak as they would not in reality. Illusion is by so much disturbed. It would appear in such cases that the thinker temporarily dominated the creative artist.
When all is said, pro and con, there remains a towering personality; a writer of unique quality; a man so stimulating and surprising as he is, that we almost prefer him to the perfect artist he never could be. No English maker of novels can give us a fuller sense of life, a keener realization of the dignity of man. It is natural to wish for more than we have—to desire that Meredith had possessed the power of complete control of his material and himself, had revised his work to better advantage. But perhaps it is more commonsensible to be thankful for him as he is.
As to influence, it would seem modest to assert that Meredith is as bracingly wholesome morally as he is intellectually stimulating. In a private letter to a friend who was praising his finest book, he whimsically mourns the fact that he must write for a living and hence feel like disowning so many of his children when in cold blood he scrutinizes his offspring. The letter in its entirety (it is unpublished) is proof, were any needed, that he had a high artistic ideal which kept him nobly dissatisfied with his endeavor. There is in him neither pose nor complacent self-satisfaction. To an American, whom he was bidding good-by at his own gate, he said: "If I had my books to do over again, I should try harder to make sure their influence was good." His aims, ethical and artistic, throughout his work, can be relied upon as high and noble. His faults are as honest as he himself, the inherent defects of his genius. No writer of our day stands more sturdily for the idea that, whereas art is precious, personality is more precious still; without which art is a tinkling cymbal and with which even a defective art can conquer Time, like a garment not all-seemly, that yet cannot hide an heroic figure.