of Life, appeared. In later years too he contributed occasional | creeds, and tragedies or comedies of his imaginary personalities poems to newspapers and reviews and similar publications, amid the selected circumstances, and inspiring them with the which were collected after his death (Last Poems, 1910). His identical motives and educational influences of life itself, Merecomedy, The Sentimentalists, was performed on the 1st of dith spent an elaboration and profundity of thought and an March 1910; his early but unfinished novel, Celt and Saxon, originality and vigour of analysis upon his novels which in was also posthumously published in that summer. explicitness go far beyond what had previously been attempted From the early nineties onward Meredith's fame had been in fiction, and which give to his works a philosophical value firmly established. His own literary contemporaries still living of no ordinary kind. Simplicity can scarcely be expected of could join hands with the younger generation of enthusiastic his language, for the interplay of ideas is in itself original and admirers in insisting on a greatness of which they themselves complex, and their interpretation is necessarily original and had been unable to persuade the public. He was chosen complex too. But when Meredith is at his best he is only to succeed Tennyson as president of the Authors' Society; involved with the involution of his subject; the aphorisms on his seventieth birthday (1898) he was presented with a that decorate his style are simple when the idea they convey congratulatory address by thirty of the most prominent men is simple, elaborate only in its elaboration. Pregnant, vividly of letters of the day; before he died he had been included by graphic, capable of infinite shades and gradations, his style the king in the Order of Merit; and in various other ways his is a much finer and subtler instrument than at first appears, position as the chief living English writer had come to be popu- and must be judged finally by what it conveys to the mind, larly recognized. The critics discussed him; and new editions and not by its superficial sound upon the conventional ear. of his books (both prose and verse), for which there had long It owes something to Jean Paul Richter; something, too, to been but scanty demand, were called for. One of the results Carlyle, with whose methods of narrative and indebtedness to was that Meredith, with very doubtful wisdom, recast some of the apparatus of German metaphysics it has a good deal in his earlier novels; and in the sumptuous "authorized edition" common. To the novelist Richardson, too, a careful reader of 1897 (published by the firm of Constable, of which his son, will find that Meredith, both in manner and matter (notably William Maxse Meredith, was a member) very large alterations in The Egoist and in Richard Feverel), owes a good deal; are made in some of them. In fact, a reader who compares in "Mrs Grandison in Richard Feverel he even recalls the first and last editions either of Richard Feverel or Evan "Sir Charles Grandison" by name; and nobody can doubt Harrington will notice changes little short of revolutionary. that Sir Willoughby Patterne, both in idea and often in Even in the previously current editions of 1878 onwards, pub-expression, was modelled on Richardson's creation. Careful lished by Chapman & Hall, Richard Feverel had been consider- students of the early 19th-century English novel will find ably shortened as compared with the original three-volume curious echoes again in Meredith of Bulwer-Lytton's (Baron edition; but it was now robbed again of some of its best-known Lytton's) literary manner and romantic outlook.' But he passages. It is no doubt competent to an author himself to was, after all, an originator, and at first suffered in estirevise his earlier published work even to the extent to which mation on that score; he wrote in his own way, and what Meredith in the 1897 edition revised these novels; but certainly is most characteristic in Meredith remains individual. Like it is not necessary to accept his judgment when this involves all the great masters, he has his own tone of voice, his own the excision in old age of some of the most virile passages of fashion of expressing an idea. Feeling, perception, reflection, books that were written in the full glow and vigour of his prime. judgment, have equal shares in determining his architectonic In Constable's memorial edition (1910) of his complete works relation to a problem or a situation. He rings changes on the the excisions were published separately, and are therefore on changing emotions of humanity, but every chime rings true. He record for those to consult who care. But the wise will read is a literary artist. He takes great themes, not little ones; Richard Feverel and Evan Harrington in the original versions. the characters in his fiction are personalities, human beings, neither "heroes" nor "sports"; and he does not descend to pander to lubricity or cater for the "reading public." His gallery of portraits of real human women, not dolls, would alone place him among the few creators in English literature. It is beyond our scope here to enter into details concerning the philosophy which represents Meredith's "criticism of life." Broadly speaking, it is a belief in the rightness and wholesomeness of Nature, when Nature-" Sacred Reality "-is lovingly and faithfully and trustfully sought and known by the pure use of reason. Man must be "obedient to Nature, not her slave." Mystical as this philosophy occasionally becomes, it is yet an inspiring one, clean, austere and practical; and it is always dominated by the categorical imperative of self-knowledge and the striving after honesty of purpose and thought. A strong vein of political Radicalism runs through Meredith's creed. It is, however, a Radicalism allied to that of the French philosophes, rather than to the contemporary developments of British party politics, though in later life he gave his open support to the Liberal party. In spite of his German upbringing Meredith was always strongly French in his sympathies, and his appreciation of French character at its best and at its worst is finely shown in his Napoleon odes. In the main his politics may be summed up as a striving after liberty for reason and conscience and the constant progress of humanity Meredith's literary quality must always be considered in the light of the Celtic side of his temperament and the peculiarities of his mental equipment. His nature was intuitive rather than ratiocinative; his mental processes were abrupt and farreaching; and the suppression of connecting associations frequently gives his language, as it gave Browning's, but even to a greater extent, the air of an impenetrably nebulous obscurity. This criticism applies mainly to his verse, but is also true of his prose in many places, though there is much exaggeration about the difficulties of his novels. When once, however, his manner has been properly understood, it is seen to be inseparable from his method of intellection, and to add to the narrative of description both vividness of delineation and intensity of realization. The essential respect in which Meredith's method of describing action and emotion in narrative differs from that of convention is that, while the ordinary method is to relate what happens from the point of view of the onlooker, Meredith frequently describes it from the point of emotion of the actor; and his influence in this direction has largely modified the art of fiction. Herein lies the secret of the peculiar brilliancy of his style, derived from his combination of the narrator with the creator, or-in its strict sense-the seer. The reader, by the transference of the interest from the audience to the stage, is transported into the very soul of the character, and made to feel as he feels and act as he acts. Moreover, Meredith's instinct for psychology is so intimate, and his sense of motive and action so true, that the interaction of character and character directly dominates the sequence of events depicted in his imaginary world, and discloses the moral idea or criticism of life, instead of the preconceived "moral" being merely illustrated by the plot. In building up the minds, actions, The cry of the conscience of life; And bequeath them no tumbled house. The fact that Bulwer-Lytton's son, the 1st Earl of Lytton. Meredith's junior by three years, took the pen-name of "Owen Meredith," led occasionally to some confusion among uninstructed contemporaries, and even the suggestion of a family connexion. It is part of Meredith's philosophy-and this must be remembered in considering his diction-that verbal expression is itself a test of right thought and action. Hence is derived his passion for verbal analysis. Hence also his impulse towards and vindication of poetry-meaning still "the best words in the best order "; and hence his own dictum, otherwise perhaps hard to undiscerning minds, that Song itself is the test by which truth may be tried. The passage occurs in "The Empty Purse "-a poem which throughout is a careful though mannered exposition of Meredith's general views on life Ask of thyself: This furious Yea Of a speech I thump to repeat, In the cause I would have prevail, For seed of a nourishing wheat, Is it accepted of Song? Does it sound to the mind through the car, Rings it for Reason a melody clear, All forces that make us are one full stream. Meredith is generally ranked far less high as a poet than as a novelist. But he can only be understood and appreciated properly by those who realize that not prose (in the ordinary sense) but poetry was to him the highest form of expression, and that only in it could he fully deliver his message, as a writer who aspired to contribute something more to the common stock of ideas than could be embodied dramatically in prose fiction. On Meredith's 80th birthday in 1908, the homage of the English literary world was again paid in an address of congratulation. But his health, which for many years had been precarious, was now failing. He died at Flint Cottage, Box Hill, Surrey, on the 18th of May 1909. A strong feeling existed that he should be buried in Westminster Abbey, and a petition to that effect, which was approved by the prime minister, Mr Asquith, was signed by a large number of men of letters. But this was not to be. A memorial service was held in the abbey, but Meredith's own remains, after cremation, were interred at Dorking by the grave of his second wife. He had died only a brief span after his old friend Swinburne, his affection for whom had never suffered abatement, and it was felt that, with them, a great epoch in English literary history had closed. They were the last of the great Victorians; and in Meredith went the writer who had raised the creative art of the novel, as a vehicle of character and constructive philosophy, to its highest point-a point higher indeed than most contemporary readers were prepared for. The estimate of his genius formed by "an honourable minority," who would place him in the highest class of all, by Shakespeare, has yet to be confirmed by the wider suffrage of posterity. A carefully compiled bibliography by John Lane was included in George Meredith: Some Characteristics, by R. Le Gallienne (1890). This sympathetic essay in criticism was the first substantial publication addressed to that stimulation of a wider appreciation of Meredith which was carried on by several later books, perhaps the best of which is M. Sturge Henderson's George Meredith: Novelist Poet, Reformer (1908); but such earlier testimonies to Meredith's importance as Justin McCarthy's, in his History of Our Own Times, must not be forgotten. See also J. A. Hammerton, George Mereduk in Anecdotes and Criticism (1909). (H. CH.) MEREJKOVSKY (or MEREZHKOVSKIY), DMITRI SERGYEEVICH (1865- ), Russian novelist and critic, was born at St Petersburg in 1865. His trilogy of historical romances, collectively entitled Christ and Antichrist, has been translated into many European languages, notably English and French. It comprises Smert Bogov (Eng. trans. "The Death of the Gods," London, 1901), the central figure in which is Julian the Apostate; Voskresenie Bogi ("The Forerunner," London, 1902), which describes the life and times of Leonardo da Vinci; and Antikhrist: Petr i Aleksyey ("Peter and Alexis," London, 1905), which is based on the tragic story of the relations between Peter the Great and his son. The influence of Sienkiewicz can be traced in many of Merejkovsky's writings, which include critical studies of Pliny the Younger, Calderon, Montaigne, Ibsen, Tolstoy (Tolstoy as Man and Artist, London, 1902), and of Gorki and other Russian writers. Merejkovsky married Zinaida Nikolaevna, known in Russia for her poems, essays and short stories written under the pseudonym of Zinaida Hippius (or Gippius); her collected poems (1880-1903) were published in Moscow in 1904. MERES, FRANCIS (1565-1647), English divine and author, was born at Kirton in the Holland division of Lincolnshire in 1565. He was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1587, and M.A. in 1591. Two years later he was incorporated M.A. of Oxford. His kinsman, John Meres, was high sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1596, and apparently helped him in the early part of his career. In 1602 he became rector of Wing in Rutland, where he had a school. He died on the 29th of January 1647. Meres rendered immense service to the history of Elizabethan literature by the publication of his Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury (1598). It was one of a series of volumes of short pithy sayings, the first of which was Politeuphuia: Wits Commonwealth (1597), compiled by John Bodenham or by Nicholas Ling, the publisher. The Palladis Tamia contained moral and critical reflections borrowed from various sources, and embraced sections on books, on philosophy, on music and painting, and a famous "Comparative Discourse of our English poets with the Greeke, Latin, and Italian poets.' This chapter enumerates the English poets from Chaucer to Meres's own day, and in each case a comparison with some classical author is instituted. The book was issued in 1634 as a school book, and has been partially reprinted in the Ancient Critical Essays (1811-1815) of Joseph Haslewood, Professor E. Arber's English Garner, and Gregory Smith's Elizabethan Critical Essays (1904). A sermon entitled Gods Arithmeticke (1597), and two translations from the Spanish of Luis de Granada entitled Granados Devotion and the Sinners Guide (1598) complete the list of his works. MERGANSER, a word due to C. Gesner (Hist. animalium iii. 129) in 1555, and for long used in English as the general name for a group of fish-eating ducks possessing great diving powers, and forming the genus Mergus of Linnaeus, now regarded by ornithologists as a sub-family, Merginae, of the family Anatidae. The mergansers have a long, narrow bill, with a small but evident hook at the tip, and the edges of both mandibles beset by numerous horny denticulations, whence in English the name of " saw-bill" is frequently applied to them. Otherwise their structure does not much depart from the Anatine or Fuliguline type. All the species bear a more or less developed crest or tuft on the head. Three of them, Mergus merganser or castor, M. serrator, and M. albellus, are found over the northern parts of the Old World, and of these the first two also inhabit North America, which has besides a fourth species, M. cucullatus, said to have occasionally visited Britain. M. merganser, commonly known as the goosander, is the largest species, being nearly as big as the smaller geese, and the adult male in breedingattire is a very beautiful bird, conspicuous with his dark glossygreen head, rich salmon-coloured breast, and the upper part of the body and wings black and white. This full plumage is not assumed till the second year, and in the meantime, as well as in the post-nuptial dress, the male much resembles the female, having, like her, a reddish-brown head, the upper parts grey and the lower white. In this condition the bird is often known as the "dun diver." This species breeds abundantly in many parts of Scandinavia, Russia, Siberia and North America, and occasionally in Scotland. M. serrator, commonly called the red-breasted merganser, is a somewhat smaller bird; and, while the fully-dressed male wants the delicate hue of the lower parts, he has a gorget of rufous mottled with black, below which is a patch of white feathers, broadly edged with black. Both these species have the bill and feet of a bright reddish-orange, while the much smaller M. albellus, known as the smew, has these parts of a lead colour, and the breeding plumage of the adult male is white, with quaint crescentic markings of black, and the flanks most beautifully vermiculated. of Life, appeared. In later years too he contributed occasional | creeds, and tragedies or comedies of his imaginary personalities poems to newspapers and reviews and similar publications, which were collected after his death (Last Poems, 1910). His comedy, The Sentimentalists, was performed on the 1st of March 1910; his early but unfinished novel, Celt and Saxon, was also posthumously published in that summer. amid the selected circumstances, and inspiring them with the identical motives and educational influences of life itself, Meredith spent an elaboration and profundity of thought and an originality and vigour of analysis upon his novels which in explicitness go far beyond what had previously been attempted From the early 'nineties onward Meredith's fame had been in fiction, and which give to his works a philosophical value firmly established. His own literary contemporaries still living of no ordinary kind. Simplicity can scarcely be expected of could join hands with the younger generation of enthusiastic his language, for the interplay of ideas is in itself original and admirers in insisting on a greatness of which they themselves complex, and their interpretation is necessarily original and had been unable to persuade the public. He was chosen complex too. But when Meredith is at his best he is only to succeed Tennyson as president of the Authors' Society; involved with the involution of his subject; the aphorisms on his seventieth birthday (1898) he was presented with a that decorate his style are simple when the idea they convey congratulatory address by thirty of the most prominent men is simple, elaborate only in its elaboration. Pregnant, vividly of letters of the day; before he died he had been included by graphic, capable of infinite shades and gradations, his style the king in the Order of Merit; and in various other ways his is a much finer and subtler instrument than at first appears, position as the chief living English writer had come to be popu- and must be judged finally by what it conveys to the mind, larly recognized. The critics discussed him; and new editions and not by its superficial sound upon the conventional car. of his books (both prose and verse), for which there had long It owes something to Jean Paul Richter; something, too, to been but scanty demand, were called for. One of the results Carlyle, with whose methods of narrative and indebtedness to was that Meredith, with very doubtful wisdom, recast some of the apparatus of German metaphysics it has a good deal in his earlier novels; and in the sumptuous "authorized edition" common. To the novelist Richardson, too, a careful reader of 1897 (published by the firm of Constable, of which his son, will find that Meredith, both in manner and matter (notably William Maxse Meredith, was a member) very large alterations in The Egoist and in Richard Feverel), owes a good deal; are made in some of them. In fact, a reader who compares in "Mrs Grandison " in Richard Feverel he even recalls the first and last editions either of Richard Feverel or Evan "Sir Charles Grandison" by name; and nobody can doubt Harrington will notice changes little short of revolutionary. that Sir Willoughby Patterne, both in idea and often in Even in the previously current editions of 1878 onwards, pub-expression, was modelled on Richardson's creation. Careful lished by Chapman & Hall, Richard Feverel had been consider-students of the early 19th-century English novel will find ably shortened as compared with the original three-volume curious echoes again in Meredith of Bulwer-Lytton's (Baron edition; but it was now robbed again of some of its best-known Lytton's) literary manner and romantic outlook. But he passages. It is no doubt competent to an author himself to was, after all, an originator, and at first suffered in estirevise his earlier published work even to the extent to which mation on that score; he wrote in his own way, and what Meredith in the 1897 edition revised these novels; but certainly is most characteristic in Meredith remains individual. Like it is not necessary to accept his judgment when this involves all the great masters, he has his own tone of voice, his own the excision in old age of some of the most virile passages of fashion of expressing an idea. Feeling, perception, reflection, books that were written in the full glow and vigour of his prime. judgment, have equal shares in determining his architectonic In Constable's memorial edition (1910) of his complete works relation to a problem or a situation. He rings changes on the the excisions were published separately, and are therefore on changing emotions of humanity, but every chime rings true. He record for those to consult who care. But the wise will read is a literary artist. He takes great themes, not little ones; Richard Feverel and Evan Harrington in the original versions. the characters in his fiction are personalities, human beings, neither heroes nor sports"; and he does not descend to pander to lubricity or cater for the "reading public." His gallery of portraits of real human women, not dolls, would alone place him among the few creators in English literature. Meredith's literary quality must always be considered in the light of the Celtic side of his temperament and the peculiar ities of his mental equipment. His nature was intuitive rather than ratiocinative; his mental processes were abrupt and farreaching; and the suppression of connecting associations frequently gives his language, as it gave Browning's, but even to a greater extent, the air of an impenetrably nebulous obscurity. This criticism applies mainly to his verse, but is also true of his prose in many places, though there is much exaggeration about the difficulties of his novels. When once, however, his manner has been properly understood, it is seen to be inseparable from his method of intellection, and to add to the narrative of description both vividness of delineation and intensity of realization. The essential respect in which Meredith's method of describing action and emotion in narrative differs from that of convention is that, while the ordinary method is to relate what happens from the point of view of the onlooker, Meredith frequently describes it from the point of emotion of the actor; and his influence in this direction has largely modified the art of fiction. Herein lies the secret of the peculiar brilliancy of his style, derived from his combination of the narrator with the creator, or-in its strict sense-the seer. The reader, by the transference of the interest from the audience to the stage, is transported into the very soul of the character, and made to feel as he feels and act as he acts. Moreover, Meredith's instinct for psychology is so intimate, and his sense of motive and action so true, that the interaction of character and character directly dominates the sequence of events depicted in his imaginary world, and discloses the moral idea or criticism of life, instead of the preconceived "moral" being merely illustrated by the plot. In building up the minds, actions, It is beyond our scope here to enter into details concerning the philosophy which represents Meredith's "criticism of life." Broadly speaking, it is a belief in the rightness and wholesomeness of Nature, when Nature-"Sacred Reality "-is lovingly and faithfully and trustfully sought and known by the pure use of reason. Man must be "obedient to Nature, not her slave." Mystical as this philosophy occasionally becomes, it is yet an inspiring one, clean, austere and practical; and it is always dominated by the categorical imperative of self-knowledge and the striving after honesty of purpose and thought. A strong vein of political Radicalism runs through Meredith's creed. It is, however, a Radicalism allied to that of the French philosophes, rather than to the contemporary developments of British party politics, though in later life he gave his open support to the Liberal party. In spite of his German upbringing Meredith was always strongly French in his sympathies, and his appreciation of French character at its best and at its worst is finely shown in his Napoleon odes. In the main his politics may be summed up as a striving after liberty for reason and conscience and the constant progress of humanity The cry of the conscience of life; The fact that Bulwer-Lytton's son, the 1st Earl of Lytton, It is part of Meredith's philosophy-and this must be remembered in considering his diction-that verbal expression is itself a test of right thought and action. Hence is derived his passion for verbal analysis. Hence also his impulse towards and vindication of poetry-meaning still "the best words in the best order "; and hence his own dictum, otherwise perhaps hard to undiscerning minds, that Song itself is the test by which truth may be tried. The passage occurs in "The Empty Purse"-a poem which throughout is a careful though mannered exposition of Meredith's general views on life Ask of thyself: This furious Yea In the cause I would have prevail, Is it accepted of Song? Does it sound to the mind through the car, Rings it for Reason a melody clear, All forces that make us are one full stream. Meredith is generally ranked far less high as a poet than as a novelist. But he can only be understood and appreciated properly by those who realize that not prose (in the ordinary sense) but poetry was to him the highest form of expression, and that only in it could he fully deliver his message, as a writer who aspired to contribute something more to the common stock of ideas than could be embodied dramatically in prose fiction. On Meredith's 80th birthday in 1908, the homage of the English literary world was again paid in an address of congratulation. But his health, which for many years had been precarious, was now failing. He died at Flint Cottage, Box Hill, Surrey, on the 18th of May 1909. A strong feeling existed that he should be buried in Westminster Abbey, and a petition to that effect, which was approved by the prime minister, Mr Asquith, was signed by a large number of men of letters. But this was not to be. A memorial service was held in the abbey, but Meredith's own remains, after cremation, were interred at Dorking by the grave of his second wife. He had died only a brief span after his old friend Swinburne, his affection for whom had never suffered abatement, and it was felt that, with them, a great epoch in English literary history had closed. They were the last of the great Victorians; and in Meredith went the writer who had raised the creative art of the novel, as a vehicle of character and constructive philosophy, to its highest point-a point higher indeed than most contemporary readers were prepared for. The estimate of his genius formed by "an honourable minority," who would place him in the highest class of all, by Shakespeare, has yet to be confirmed by the wider suffrage of posterity. A carefully compiled bibliography by John Lane was included in George Meredith: Some Characteristics, by R. Le Gallienne (1890). This sympathetic essay in criticism was the first substantial publication addressed to that stimulation of a wider appreciation of Meredith which was carried on by several later books, perhaps the best of which is M. Sturge Henderson's George Meredith: Novelist Poet, Reformer (1908); but such earlier testimonies to Meredith's importance as Justin McCarthy's, in his History of Our Own Times, must not be forgotten. See also J. A. Hammerton, George Meredith in Anecdotes and Criticism (1909). (H. CH.) MEREJKOVSKY (or MEREZHKOVSKIY), DMITRI SERGYEEVICH (1865- ), Russian novelist and critic, was born at St Petersburg in 1865. His trilogy of historical romances, collectively entitled Christ and Antichrist, has been translated into many European languages, notably English and French. It comprises Smert Bogov (Eng. trans. "The Death of the Gods," London, 1901), the central figure in which is Julian the Apostate; Voskresenie Bogi ("The Forerunner," London, 1902), which describes the life and times of Leonardo da Vinci; and Antikhrist: Petr i Aleksycy ("Peter and Alexis," London, 1905), which is based on the tragic story of the relations between Peter the Great and his son. The influence of Sienkiewicz can be traced in many of Merejkovsky's writings, which include critical studies of Pliny the Younger, Calderon, Montaigne, Ibsen, Tolstoy (Tolstoy as Man and Artist, London, 1902), and of Gorki and other Russian writers. Merejkovsky married Zinaida Nikolaevna, known in Russia for her poems, essays and short stories written under the pseudonym of Zinaida Hippius (or Gippius); her collected poems (1889-1903) were published in Moscow in 1904. MERES, FRANCIS (1565-1647), English divine and author, was born at Kirton in the Holland division of Lincolnshire in 1565. He was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1587, and M.A. in 1591. Two years later he was incorporated M.A. of Oxford. His kinsman, John Meres, was high sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1596, and apparently helped him in the early part of his career. In 1602 he became rector of Wing in Rutland, where he had a school. He died on the 29th of January 1647. Meres rendered immense service to the history of Elizabethan literature by the publication of his Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury (1598). It was one of a series of volumes of short pithy sayings, the first of which was Politeuphuia: Wits Commonwealth (1597), compiled by John Bodenham or by Nicholas Ling, the publisher. The Palladis Tamia contained moral and critical reflections borrowed from various sources, and embraced sections on books, on philosophy, on music and painting, and a famous " Comparative Discourse of our English poets with the Greeke, Latin, and Italian poets." This chapter enumerates the English poets from Chaucer to Meres's own day, and in each case a comparison with some classical author is instituted. The book was issued in 1634 as a school book, and has been partially reprinted in the Ancient Critical Essays (1811-1815) of Joseph Haslewood, Professor E. Arber's English Garner, and Gregory Smith's Elizabethan Critical Essays (1904). A sermon entitled Gods Arithmeticke (1597), and two translations from the Spanish of Luis de Granada entitled Granados Devotion and the Sinners Guide (1598) complete the list of his works. MERGANSER, a word due to C. Gesner (Hist. animalium iii. 129) in 1555, and for long used in English as the general name for a group of fish-eating ducks possessing great diving powers, and forming the genus Mergus of Linnaeus, now regarded by ornithologists as a sub-family, Merginae, of the family Anatidae. The mergansers have a long, narrow bill, with a small but evident hook at the tip, and the edges of both mandibles beset by numerous horny denticulations, whence in English the name of "saw-bill" is frequently applied to them. Otherwise their structure does not much depart from the Anatine or Fuliguline type. All the species bear a more or less developed crest or tuft on the head. Three of them, Mergus merganser or castor, M. serrator, and M. albellus, are found over the northern parts of the Old World, and of these the first two also inhabit North America, which has besides a fourth species, M. cucullatus, said to have occasionally visited Britain. M. merganser, commonly known as the goosander, is the largest species, being nearly as big as the smaller geese, and the adult male in breedingattire is a very beautiful bird, conspicuous with his dark glossygreen head, rich salmon-coloured breast, and the upper part of the body and wings black and white. This full plumage is not assumed till the second year, and in the meantime, as well as in the post-nuptial dress, the male much resembles the female, having, like her, a reddish-brown head, the upper parts grey and the lower white. In this condition the bird is often known as the "dun diver." This species breeds abundantly in many parts of Scandinavia, Russia, Siberia and North America, and occasionally in Scotland. M. serrator, commonly called the red-breasted merganser, is a somewhat smaller bird; and, while the fully-dressed male wants the delicate hue of the lower parts, he has a gorget of rufous mottled with black, below which is a patch of white feathers, broadly edged with black. Both these species have the bill and feet of a bright reddish-orange, while the much smaller M. albellus, known as the smew, has these parts of a lead colour, and the breeding plumage of the adult male is white, with quaint crescentic markings of black, and the flanks most beautifully vermiculated, of Life, appeared. In later years too he contributed occasional | creeds, and tragedies or comedies of his imaginary personalities poems to newspapers and reviews and similar publications, amid the selected circumstances, and inspiring them with the which were collected after his death (Last Poems, 1910). His identical motives and educational influences of life itself, Merecomedy, The Sentimentalists, was performed on the 1st of dith spent an elaboration and profundity of thought and an March 1910; his carly but unfinished novel, Celt and Saxon, originality and vigour of analysis upon his novels which in was also posthumously published in that summer. explicitness go far beyond what had previously been attempted in fiction, and which give to his works a philosophical value of no ordinary kind. Simplicity can scarcely be expected of his language, for the interplay of ideas is in itself original and complex, and their interpretation is necessarily original and complex too. But when Meredith is at his best he is only involved with the involution of his subject; the aphorisms that decorate his style are simple when the idea they convey is simple, elaborate only in its elaboration. Pregnant, vividly graphic, capable of infinite shades and gradations, his style is a much finer and subtler instrument than at first appears, and must be judged finally by what it conveys to the mind, and not by its superficial sound upon the conventional car. It owes something to Jean Paul Richter; something, too, to Carlyle, with whose methods of narrative and indebtedness to the apparatus of German metaphysics it has a good deal in common. To the novelist Richardson, too, a careful reader will find that Meredith, both in manner and matter (notably in The Egoist and in Richard Feverel), owes a good deal; in "Mrs Grandison " in Richard Feverel he even recalls "Sir Charles Grandison" by name; and nobody can doubt that Sir Willoughby Patterne, both in idea and often in expression, was modelled on Richardson's creation. Careful students of the early 19th-century English novel will find curious echoes again in Meredith of Bulwer-Lytton's (Baron Lytton's) literary manner and romantic outlook.' But he was, after all, an originator, and at first suffered in estimation on that score; he wrote in his own way, and what is most characteristic in Meredith remains individual. Like all the great masters, he has his own tone of voice, his own fashion of expressing an idea. Feeling, perception, reflection, judgment, have equal shares in determining his architectonic relation to a problem or a situation. He rings changes on the changing emotions of humanity, but every chime rings true. He is a literary artist. He takes great themes, not little ones; the characters in his fiction are personalities, human beings, neither "heroes nor 'sports"; and he does not descend to pander to lubricity or cater for the "reading public." His gallery of portraits of real human women, not dolls, would alone place him among the few creators in English literature. From the early 'nineties onward Meredith's fame had been firmly established. His own literary contemporaries still living could join hands with the younger generation of enthusiastic admirers in insisting on a greatness of which they themselves had been unable to persuade the public. He was chosen to succeed Tennyson as president of the Authors' Society; on his seventieth birthday (1898) he was presented with a congratulatory address by thirty of the most prominent men of letters of the day; before he died he had been included by the king in the Order of Merit; and in various other ways his position as the chief living English writer had come to be popularly recognized. The critics discussed him; and new editions of his books (both prose and verse), for which there had long been but scanty demand, were called for. One of the results was that Meredith, with very doubtful wisdom, recast some of his earlier novels; and in the sumptuous "authorized edition " of 1897 (published by the firm of Constable, of which his son, William Maxse Meredith, was a member) very large alterations are made in some of them. In fact, a reader who compares the first and last editions either of Richard Feverel or Evan Harrington will notice changes little short of revolutionary. Even in the previously current editions of 1878 onwards, published by Chapman & Hall, Richard Feverel had been considerably shortened as compared with the original three-volume edition; but it was now robbed again of some of its best-known passages. It is no doubt competent to an author himself to revise his earlier published work even to the extent to which Meredith in the 1897 edition revised these novels; but certainly it is not necessary to accept his judgment when this involves the excision in old age of some of the most virile passages of books that were written in the full glow and vigour of his prime. In Constable's memorial edition (1910) of his complete works the excisions were published separately, and are therefore on record for those to consult who care. But the wise will read Richard Feverel and Evan Harrington in the original versions. Meredith's literary quality must always be considered in the light of the Celtic side of his temperament and the peculiar ities of his mental equipment. His nature was intuitive rather than ratiocinative; his mental processes were abrupt and farreaching; and the suppression of connecting associations frequently gives his language, as it gave Browning's, but even to a greater extent, the air of an impenetrably nebulous obscurity. This criticism applies mainly to his verse, but is also true of his prose in many places, though there is much exaggeration about the difficulties of his novels. When once, however, his manner has been properly understood, it is seen to be inseparable from his method of intellection, and to add to the narrative of description both vividness of delineation and intensity of realization. The essential respect in which Meredith's method of describing action and emotion in narrative differs from that of convention is that, while the ordinary method is to relate what happens from the point of view of the onlooker, Meredith frequently describes it from the point of emotion of the actor; and his influence in this direction has largely modified the art of fiction. Herein lies the secret of the peculiar brilliancy of his style, derived from his combination of the narrator with the creator, or-in its strict sense-the seer. The reader, by the transference of the interest from the audience to the stage, is transported into the very soul of the character, and made to feel as he feels and act as he acts. Moreover, Meredith's instinct for psychology is so intimate, and his sense of motive and action so true, that the interaction of character and character directly dominates the sequence of events depicted in his imaginary world, and discloses the moral idea or criticism of life, instead of the preconceived moral being merely illustrated by the plot. In building up the minds, actions, It is beyond our scope here to enter into details concerning the philosophy which represents Meredith's "criticism of life.” Broadly speaking, it is a belief in the rightness and wholesomeness of Nature, when Nature-" Sacred Reality "-is lovingly and faithfully and trustfully sought and known by the pure use of reason. Man must be "obedient to Nature, not her slave." Mystical as this philosophy occasionally becomes, it is yet an inspiring one, clean, austere and practical; and it is always dominated by the categorical imperative of self-knowledge and the striving after honesty of purpose and thought. A strong vein of political Radicalism runs through Meredith's creed. It is, however, a Radicalism allied to that of the French philosophes, rather than to the contemporary developments of British party politics, though in later life he gave his open support to the Liberal party. In spite of his German upbringing Meredith was always strongly French in his sympathies, and his appreciation of French character at its best and at its worst is finely shown in his Napoleon odes. In the main his politics may be summed up as a striving after liberty for reason and conscience and the constant progress of humanity- The cry of the conscience of life; The fact that Bulwer-Lytton's son, the 1st Earl of Lytton, Meredith's junior by three years, took the pen-name of "Owen Meredith," led occasionally to some confusion among uninstructed contemporaries, and even the suggestion of a family connexion. |