Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/632

 Henceforth he abandoned any idea of a compromise with his readers. He determined to write in his own way, upon his own themes uninterruptedly. In 'The Egoist' (3 vols. 1879) or 'Sir Willoughby Patterne, The Egoist,' as it was first called when it began to run through the 'Glasgow Weekly Herald' in June 1879, he develops a new novel-formula consisting of a kind of fugue — innumerable variations upon one central theme, that of the fatuity of a pontifical egoism, mercilessly exposed by the search-lights of the Comic Spirit. 'I had no idea of the matter,' wrote Stevenson when rereading the novel, 'human red matter he has contrived to plug and pack into this strange and admirable book. Willoughby is of course a fine discovery, a complete set of nerves not heretofore examined, and yet running all over the human body — a suit of nerves ... I see more and more that Meredith is built for immortality.' The noble but 'coltish' Vernon Whitford is sketched after the author's friend Leslie Stephen. The book was hastily written in five months, by night as well as by day, to the injury of health. It was the first among Meredith's novels to provoke a crossfire of criticism. Henley reviewed it three (or four) times, frankly as regarded the ingrained peculiarities of the style, but with an almost reverential admiration for its analytic power. Mr. William Watson attacked (in National Review, October 1889) the plethoric mentality of the writer, his fantastic foppery of expression, oracular air of superiority, and sham profundity. The controversy did the author no harm. The three volumes of 1879 were followed by a second one-volume edition in 1880. This fact, the reprints of 'Shagpat' and 'Feverel' and 'Love in the Valley,' the appearance of 'Feverel' and 'Beauchamp's Career' in Tauchnitz editions, and the reproduction of several of the novels in America, all began to point to a rediscovery on the part of the public of the Meredith revealed by 'The Times' in 1869 and then obscured for twenty years.

Meredith next published 'The Tale of Chloe,' a short story of a singular and grievous pathos, in the 'New Quarterly Magazine' (July 1879), and then began sketching in the first instance from newspaper reports, and from 'Meine Beziehungen zu Ferdinand Lassalle' by Hélène von Racowitza (Breslau, 1879), a contemporary romance, the love story and death in a duel of Ferdinand Lassalle, the German socialist. Meredith called his dramatic recital 'The Tragic Comedians,' and enriched it with some of his most brilliant and original epigrams. It first appeared in the 'Fortnightly' (Oct. 1880-Feb. 1881), and was enlarged for separate publication (by Kegan Paul) in December 1880. In spite of his imperfect materials, Meredith accurately assessed the values of his hero and heroine, Alvan (Lassalle) a Titan, a sun-god, inured to success, of Jewish race, a revolutionary and a free-liver, and Clotilde (Hélène von Dönniges) a Christian girl from a noble and exclusive, demagogue-hating family of the Philistines. The book attracted attention, was taken over by Chapman & Hall in 1881, and was reprinted in America and in the Tauchnitz collection. In 1879 he had by hard exertion carved out a good holiday, spent partly in Patterdale with Mr. John Morley, and partly in Dauphine and Normandy. But premonitions of advancing ill-health, a growing sense of neglect, and the necessities of unremitting labour saddened him. For a time he was estranged from his son Arthur, but news of Arthur's spitting blood in June 1881 awoke the old tenderness, and next year he made a Mediterranean excursion with him. Meanwhile the enthusiastic devotion of literary friends was increasing. In 1882 he joined Leslie Stephen's society of Sunday Tramps, which more than once made Box Hill a base for the ascent of Leith Hill. In 1882 the Stevensons visited him. In 1883 he met Sir Charles Dilke and Prof. R. C. Jebb for the first time. He was cheered by Browning's appreciation of his verse.

In May 1883 he brought out his most notable poetic volume, 'Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth,' no testimony to his wisdom, he describes it. Here we have, with a few personal poems, such as the verses to J[ohn] M[orley] and 'To a Friend Lost' (Tom Taylor, whose 'Lady Clancarty' he had applauded), the finished version of 'Love in the Valley,' and lyrics such as 'The Lark Ascending,' 'Earth and Man,' 'Melampus,' and 'The Woods of Westermain,' which satisfactorily answer the complaint that Meredith's 'Philosophical Lyrics' contain too much brain and too little music or magnetism. He urges the need of the mutual working of blood (the flesh, senses, bodily vigour) and brain, and the steering of a course between ascetic rocks and sensual whirlpools, in quest of spiritual exaltation.

In 1884—5 there ran through the 'Fortnightly Review' chapters i.-xxvi. of 'Diana of the Crossways' (so named after a beautiful old Surrey farm house, pictured in the memorial edition). The book (with a dedication to one of his