GEORGE MEREDITH
GEORGE MEREDITH
A STUDY
BY
HANNAH LYNCH
Methuen & Co.
18, BURY STREET, LONDON, W.C.
1891
[All rights reserved]
To
ROSAMOND VENNING.
My dear Miss Venning,
Will you, when you read this little book of mine,find fault with my unmeasured Hibernian enthusiasmsand antipathies, and quote your favourite Greek advice—μηδὲν ἄγαν?So that you bring to the reading of it somesurrender of your reserve and a break in that classicmoderation that we poor barbarians do not quite understand—violentlytinctured as we are by nature—it willbe a fresh debt added to the life-long debt I gladly owedestiny for that memorable first meeting in Athena’scharming little city.
The thought of it waves memory back into broad sunshineuntravelled by clouds, among sun-stained marblepillars and rose and mauve tinted hills, girdling purplewaters, and the long silver olive plain of Attica. Do youremember still our first walk along the cactus-borderedpath to the Acropolis? Was it not of ‘TragicComedians’ that we talked?
So now, years after, I offer you in grateful remembrancethis little gathering of ideas you may not whollyshare, but will not wholly reject, through affection foryour friend, to whom so wide a difference would benothing less than a real misfortune.
HANNAH LYNCH.
Paris, February, 1891.
[viii]
PREFACE.
A couple of months ago I was asked to givea lecture in Paris on a modern Englishwriter, and I naturally selected my favourite,the subject of this little book. It was afterwardssuggested to me that the lecture wouldbear expansion, a task I the more readilyundertook because I was happy enough tolearn that my humble effort had sent at leastthree intellectual foreigners to the fountainheadto study for themselves the novels ofMr. Meredith, curious to see if I had notoverrated his merits, as is the habit of enthusiasticdisciples, and greatly astonished tofind their expectations disappointed, and myestimate unexaggerated.
[x]While still engaged upon this work I receivedfrom London Mr. Le Gallienne’s book,‘George Meredith,’ and not having by mecopies of ‘Modern Love’ or the other poemsof Mr. Meredith, I availed myself of hisquotations of the famous sonnet and ‘AMeeting.’ I have also taken from Mr.Lane’s Bibliography, added to Mr. LeGallienne’s book, the dates of the appearanceof each of the novels, as my own copies allbelong to the recent uniform editions publishedby Messrs. Chapman and Hall.
HANNAH LYNCH.