Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/236

210 210 SIK W. ROBERTSON NICOLL way. It is another passage from the same pajjer on Meredith : — In Aberdeen I found a fellow-admirer in William Minto. We often discussed him and the obstacles to his popularity, and his astonishing genius. We proposed a pilgrimage to Box Hill, and I took my journey there one morning many years ago. I went into a bookseller's shop, and asked if he had a photograph of Meredith. A bright child in the shop turned round and said, Meredith was beginning to get a vogue. There is a story of five men meeting and resolving that Meredith should be boomed. These were Grant Allen, and Saintsbury, and Minto, and Henley, and another unnamed. The result of the gathering was that Meredith was boomed. How nobly George Meredith demeaned himself through all this I He never whined, he never uttered even a complaint. It is needless to say that he never lowered the pitch of his writings. He did his very best, adding to the permanent stores of literature one noble book after another, without for a moment stooping to the spirit of a hireling. In fact, it might almost be said of him that he became so used to standing alone that he moved away as the world crept up to him, and went further into the wilderness. His life was as noble and stainless and simple as his books. No more august and majestic figure has been seen among us. The next extract is from the paper on Richard Garnett (which begins : "When I woke up on Good Friday morning, 1906, the first thought that passed through my mind was, *I shall see Dr. Garnett and talk to him about J. R. Lowell.' He had written in the current Bookman an article on Lowell, and it must have been almost the last thing that came from his pen. Shortly after, I opened a paper, and read there that Dr. Garnett was dying — in fact, he was dead."). The qualities betrayed by it do not need anno- tation. We declare our affinities by what we honour. The incident here recorded, the courtesy remembered fondly, tell us much of the qualities the writer's
 * 'Why, you are speaking about my father." By this time