Page:Cousins's Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature.djvu/279

 Dictionary of English Literature 267

written in a lively style, but is not always to be implicitly relied upon in regard either to facts or the characters attributed to individuals.

MEREDITH, GEORGE (1828-1909). Novelist and poet, b.

at Portsmouth, s. of Augustus M., a naval outfitter, who afterwards went to Cape Town, and ed. at Portsmouth and Neuwied in Ger many. Owing to the neglect of a trustee, what means he had in herited were lost, and he was in his early days very poor. Articled to a lawyer in London, he had no taste for law, which he soon exchanged for journalism, and at 21 he was writing poetry for magazines, his first printed work, a poem on the Battle of Chillian- wallah, appearing in Chambers' s Journal. Two years later he pub. Poems (1851), containing Love in the Valley. Meantime he had been ed. a small provincial newspaper, and in 1866 he was war correspon dent in Italy for the Morning Post, and he also acted for many years as literary adviser to Chapman and Hall. By this time, however, he had produced several of his novels. The Shaving of Shagpat had appeared in 1856, Farina in 1857, The Ordeal of, Richard Fever el in 1859, Evan Harrington in 1861, Emilia in England (also known as Sandra Belloni) in 1864, its sequel, Vittoria, in 1866, and Rhoda Fleming in 1865. In poetry he had produced Modern Love and Poems of the English Roadside (1862), generally regarded as his best poetical work. These were followed by The Adventures of Harry Richmond (1871), Beauchamp's Career (1875), said to be the author's favourite, The Egoist (1879), which marks the beginning of a change in style characterised by an even greater fastidiousness in the choice of words, phrases, and condensation of thought than its prede cessors, The Tragic Comedians (1880), and Diana of the Cross-ways, the first of the author's novels to attain anything approaching general popularity. The same period yielded in poetry, Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth (1883), Ballads and Poems of Tragic Life \Conquerors (1891), Lord Ormont and his Aminta (1894), an d The I A mazing Marriage (1895), exhibit a tendency to accentuate those [(qualities of style which denied general popularity to all of M.'s fworks, and they did little to add to his reputation. The contem- >orary poems include The Empty Purse and Jump to Glory Jane 1892). In 1905 he received the Order of Merit, and he d. on May 9, 1909. He was twice m., his first wife, who d. 1860, being a iaii. of Thomas Love Peacock (q.v.). This union did not prove in ill respects happy. His second wife was Miss Vulliamy, whp d. 885. In his earlier life he was vigorous and athletic, and a great talker; latterly he lost all power of locomotion.
 * (1887), and A Reading of Earth (1888). His later novels, One of our

Though the writings of M. never were and probably never will be generally popular, his genius was, from the very first, recognised by he best judges. All through he wrote for the reader who brought something of mind, thought, and attention, not for him who read merely to be amused without trouble; and it is therefore futile to attribute failure to him because he did not achieve what he did not lim at. Nevertheless, the long delay in receiving even the kind of recognition which he sought was a disappointment to him. Few writers have striven to charge sentences and even words so heavily with meaning, or to attain so great a degree of condensation, with