that so conscientious and so thorough an artist does
not practise renunciation unless to some higli end of
art. This one may safely say, without asserting that
George Meredith has, to all appearances, no vehemence
of lyrical genius. It would be interesting to know just
how far his curiously introspective, his restlessly search-
ing spirit — so alert to all that is quintessential in science
and philosophy, as well as to the fiiscinating idiosyn-
cratic lights and shadows, and all the subtler complexi-
ties of human nature— is hampered by the urgency of
his intellectual, as distinct from his purely poetic, vision.
To see clearly is the divine faculty of the philosophic
seer as well as of the poet ; but it is the supreme char-
acteristic of the latter that his vision transcends the
ordinary limitations of the intellect, and beholds all
things in a light that is not of the familiar earth about us,
and that he himself can find utterance in words purged
by stress of emotion into the most exquisite rhythms.
Emerson, for example, was never more than the philo-
sophic seer who saw poetically; Matthew Arnold,
again, was a philosophical seer, an ethical teacher,
affected to poetic utterance by a rhythmic emotion
which possessed him at rare intervals, but never usurped
daemonic tyranny over every nerve and fibre of his
body. Between the Emersonian and the daemonic
types of poetic genius, there is range enough indeed to
obviate any necessity of sweeping conclusions. That
Mr. Meredith could have attained as relatively high, or
higher, a rank as a poet as he has done as a novelist,
had he devoted himself absolutely to the art which he
indubitably loves so well, and has, indeed, long so
loyally served, I feel well assured. But, as it is, it is
significant to find the inmost part of him, his deepest
and subtlest intellectual and spiritual ideas and imagin-
ings, enshrined in verse that is always noteworthy, and
is so often memorable for its dignity and beauty.
In his new volume, the dominant intellectual note is that of a supreme and indestructible faith in the soul — in the imperishable part of man : an almost jubilant, but a serene, foreview of his ascent, and his high destinies. It is this that gives so essen- tially lofty and noble a tone to the book as a whole. The ' Springing To-Be ' is the lure of his spirit when alive with song; for him Death is not merely non-existent, not merely the sudden darkness at the close of day ; it is an impossibility, a thing ridiculous, not disputable, the catchword of myriads who have existed but never lived— as he says in ' Seed-Time,' at once impetuous and serene. Death is the word of a bovine dai/. There is, however, no vanity of metaphysics. Life, noble life, is the one thing essential ; of but little import the mortal brood of our questionings, if we work towards the larger good: 'We children of Beneficence Are in its being sharers; And Whither vainer sounds than Whence, For word with such wayfarers.' This high ethical note reaches, perhaps, its finest utterance in the noble ode entitled ' Meditation under Stars'; and to convey sonife idea of it in a general way, I cannot do better than quote, first, a few passages from the penultimate section, and then the closing lines. The beautiful allusion to the stars in the opening sentence must impress every reader —
' To deeper than this ball of sight
.Appeal the lustrous people of the night.
So may we read, and little find them cold :
Let it but be the lord of Mind to guide
Our eyes : ;
Nor dreaming on a dream ; but fortified
By day to penetrate black midnight ; see,
Hear, feel, outside the senses ; even that we,
The specks of dust upon a mould of mould,
We who reflect those rays, though low our place,
To them are lastingly allied.
So may we read, and little find them cold ;
Not frosty lamps illumining dead space,
Not distant aliens, not senseless Powers.
The fire is in them whereof we are born ;
The music of their motion may be ours.
Spirit shall deem them beckoning Earth and voiced
Sisterly to her, in her beams rejoiced.
Of love the grand impulsion, we behold
The love that lends her grace
Among the starry fold.
Then at new flood of customary morn,
Look at her through her showers,
Her mists, her streaming gold,
A wonder edges the familiar face ;
She wears no more that robe of printed hours ;
Half strange seems Earth, and sweeter than her flowers.'
So far as the mere personal opinion of the present critic is concerned, he would assert that no loftier strains than these have been written since Words- worth's ' Ode to Duty.'
It will be safe to predict that few readers of this book will repeat the echo-cry about lack of music. Music of utterance, happy epithets, and felicities of selection where natural description is concerned, abound. ' The South- Wester ' is the finest of poems to the true lord of all the winds that blow. ' Mother to Babe,' ' Woodland Peace,' ' Outer and Inner,' with its sweet complexities of rh3ane and metre, and the ' Dirge in Woods,' are among the most delightful of the shorter poems. The last-named was written, and in an extended form published, some nineteen years ago ; and it was, as Rossetti himself told me, the direct progenitor of his lyric ' Cloud Confines.' ' The Thrush in February ' is a poem of forty octosyllabic quatrains, and is worthy of the haunting fascination of its title. In ' The Appeasement of Demeter ' a novel and suggestive phase is given to an old theme, with an effect, upon the present writer, as of something definitely decorative, of an actual fresco, or heroic design in tapestry. Not that it lacks the vitality of a living thing; it might well be called the ' Joy of Life.' A remarkable poem follows it. Entitled ' Earth and a Wedded Woman,' it deals with the vague psychical experience of a child of nature, as she lies on her bed and thinks dreamily of her long-absent lover while she listens to the pouring
