Has George Meredith’s vigorous, almost massive harp a message for humanity? is the natural inquiry of those who reading Wordsworth or Tennyson find in their works sure faiths and consolatory teaching. And is such message so abeyant that only those of his readers who are endowed with power of subtle divination may find it? Certainly in the case of the seer the debt of clear utterance is obligatory, just as from the lyricist we look for delight and tears and mellifluence; it is a responsibility that falls from heaven with the mantle of inspiration, only a congenital inceptitude for lucidity excuses it. Too often, it must be confessed, it is only the ghostly sense of a message that trails through Mr. Meredith’s work, glimpsing and disappearing in will-o’-wisp fashion. The thirsting traveller chasing such mirages of meaning over the sands of obscurity may be pardoned if he conclude that to only the very privileged few does the Fata Morgana of his muse grant a kindly haven of specific instruction. But while this is true of passages and poems, it is not true of all his poems. There is much in his volumes of verse that state distinctly his philosophical principles. The ground-work of Mr. Meredith’s philosophy is the worth of nature as distinct from the artificial institutions of man. In nature pure exists the true temple of wisdom; it is the tribunal whereat all knowledge and sentiment must finally receive its endorsement or its condemnation. In nature we open the real book of life. It is, therefore, that in his verse we find continually a worship of the liberty of the forest, a recognition of its power to promote the vital growth of heart and head. Mr. Meredith would not have us forget that the mind and spirit are integral elements of nature. Particularly in “The Woods of Westermain,” beginning,
“Enter these enchanted woods,
You who dare—”
is this philosophy stated forcibly and at length. Naturalness in all things is the keynote of his utterance. It is from his poetry that we gain the clue to that humorous and seemingly harsh, satirical attitude towards worldliness which distinguishes his novels and has occasioned the frequent outcry that Mr. Meredith is a heartless epigrammatist. The truer criticism is that he derides the artifices, the sham decencies and mawkish sentimentality of society as the earnest champion of the natural. Thus we find Sir Willoughby Patterne in “The Egoist” demonstrating the pursuit of a spurious worldly philosophy, as we find the hero of “Richard Feverel” proving the mistake of yoking nature to an artificial system, while his women, such as Clara in “The Egoist,” Nataly in “One of Our Conquerors,” and Diana in “Diana of the Crossways,” are clear, protesting voices against masculine prejudices and feminine bondage. This is also the teaching of his remarkable poem entitled “Modern Love.” George Meredith has within the last few months added to his poetical works a work called “Odes in Contribution to the Song of French History” (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons), which while having a Pindarian sublimity of intent, a plentitude of rapt and fiery passages is too involved and vague to constitute a real master-work. Whatever be said of Meredith’s faults, a serious reading of his verse cannot but persuade one that he is a poet who is distinctly virile and worth while. Though much that he has written may have the mark of mortality, there is much also that wears the amaranthine wreath of eternal life, either for beauty of phrase or for profundity of philosophic truth.
THOMAS HARDY.
Genius proves itself as much by the tenacity of its taste for one handicraft as by anything else; it evidences itself not so much in versatility as in volume. It is rather a mark of mediocre mentality when a man must needs lay his hand to the doing of this and that. Genius, as a rule, has no such itch; generally speaking, he is content to fulfill himself in one given direction—to maintain his being in a single sphere with a passion superior to that of his fellows. Thus it is we seldom find after leaving the regions of facile talent writers whose inspiration expresses itself in prose and poetical form with equal seriousness; one is the vehicle of the divine voice, the other a mere diversion. Goethe, it is true, has given us “Wilhelm Meister,” Victor Hugo was a great poet as well as a great romancer, George Meredith, as we have endeavored to show, is a singer of peculiar force as well as a master novelist, and among the later literary figures of especial power we have Kipling, whose prose and poetry about balance the scale of worth; but the exceptions are few, and the logic of letters tends to show oneness of aim in the case of genius.
Thomas Hardy undoubtedly belongs to the ranks of great novelists; his series of romances has been laid on the firm basis of beauty and knowledge; he has hallowed a part of England peculiarly rich in unique personality and natural charm; it belongs to him and the heirship of his memory as validly as though it had been granted him by the Crown. So well has he filled the office of fictionist that there seems no need of an attempt on his part to enforce his fame by appearing as a poet. The publication of “Wessex Poems” (New York: Harper & Bros.) is indeed no positive declaration of such ambition; it is perhaps put forth hesitatingly rather in response to public demand than because of a conviction of its intrinsic merit. It represents the fruit of odd moments punctuating a long literary career. The character of the volume is what one might have anticipated, although had it been of a wholly different sort it could scarcely have created surprise. There are two Hardys—the man on whose heart weighs the melancholy facts of human existence and the happier artist in close and peaceful communion with the sweet infinite spirit of nature. It is the former Hardy that figures in the volume singularly unsoftened by any intimation of the other phase of the writer.
The character of Hardy himself as existing behind the art-self is one that inspires a peculiar interest. One would know it not simply to gratify a curiosity that, indeed, is too much indulged of late in lines of gross private revelation, but to weigh the justice of the charge of wilful pessimism so generally made against him. The gloomy brow of Hardy’s art seems far from being of that impersonal sort which makes much of the modern melancholy of literature inexcusable as a mere degenerate seeking.