during the last twenty-five years of his life his
name commanded immense respect, his home
was a Meccafor literary men, and his death
seemed like the falling of a pillar of literature.
No modern writer has come before the public
with higher "recommendations"; the much-
abused word "master" is here fitly applied; and
the verse tribute of Thomas Hardy and the
prose poem of J. M. Barrie were beautiful
flowers on his grave.

His birthday was the day of Darwin and Lin-
coln; his birth-year the year of Tolstoi and
Ibsen; and even if his work cannot rank in im-
portance with the work of these four, his per-
sonality shines with real splendour.

Although Meredith was born in Hampshire,
England, and spent most of his life in the south-
ern part of the island, his education and his
temperament were decidedly un-English. He
went neither to Oxford nor to Cambridge, but
to Germany; did he unconsciously acquire there
his cumbersome, involved and unmanageable
style? For the only English author with whom
his prose style has anything in common is

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