Meredith's first appearance in print was in the character of a poet, and his first published poem "Chillian Wallah," may be found in Chambers's Journal for July 7, 1849. Two years later he put forth a small volume of Poems (1851), which was at least fortunate in eliciting the praise of two judges whose opinion was of the first importance to a beginner. Tennyson was at once struck by the individual flavour of the verse, and declared of one poem, "Love in the Valley," that he could not get the lines out of his head. Charles Kingsley's eulogy was at once more public and more particular. In Fraser's Magazine he subjected the volume to careful consideration, praising it for richness and quaintness of tone that reminded him of Herrick, for completeness and co herence in each separate poem, and for the animating sweetness and health of the general atmosphere. At the same time he censured the laxity of rhythm, the occasional lack of polish, and the tendency to overload the description with objective details to the confusion of the principal effect. No doubt as a result of Kingsley's introduction, two poems by Meredith appeared in Fraser's Magazine shortly afterwards; but apart from these, and a sonnet in the Leader, he published nothing for five years.
In the meanwhile he was busy upon his first essay in prose fiction. It was on Dec. 19, 1855, that the Shaving of Shagpat, a work of singular imagination, humour and romance, made its appearance. Modelled upon the stories of the Arabian Nights, it catches with wonderful ardour the magical atmosphere of Ori entalism, and in this genre it remains a unique triumph in modern letters. Though unappreciated by the multitude, its gen ius was at once recognized by such contemporaries as George Eliot and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the latter of whom was one of Meredith's intimate friends. For his next story it occurred to Meredith to turn his familiarity with the life and legendary tradition of the Rhinelander into a sort of imitation of the grotesquerie of the German romanticists, and in 1857 he put forth Farina, a Legend of Cologne, which sought to transfer to English sympathies the spirit of German romance in the same way that Shagpat had handled oriental fairy-lore. The result was less successful. The plot of Farina lacks fibre, its motive is insufficient, and the diverse elements of humour, serious narrative, and ro mance scarcely stand in proportion to one another. But the Ordeal of Richard Feverel, which followed in 1859, transferred Meredith at once to a new sphere and to the altitude of his accomplishment. With this novel Meredith deserted the realm of fancy for that of the philosophical and psychological study of human nature, and Richard Feverel was the first, as it is perhaps the favourite, of those wonderful studies of motive and action which placed him among the literary demigods. It depicts the abortive attempt of an opinionated father to bring up his son to a perfect state of man hood through a "system" which controls his circumstances and represses the natural instincts of adolescence. The love scenes in Richard Feverel are gloriously natural and the book marked a revolution in the English treatment of manly passion. Certain chapters were omitted from later editions. In the following year Meredith contributed to Once a Week, and published in America (186o; 1st English edition 1861) as a book the second of his novels of modern life, Evan Harrington, originally with the sub title "He Would be a Gentleman"—in allusion to the hero being the son of "Old Mel," the tailor—which contains a richly humorous—in its unrevised form, splendidly farcical—plot, with some magnificent studies of character. Afterwards revised, a cer
tain amount of the farcical element was cut out, with the result that, considered as comedy, it has weak spots; but the countess de Saldar remains a genuine creation. In 1862 he produced his finest volume of poems, entitled Modern Love, and Poems of the English Roadside, with Poems and Ballads. An attack upon the dramatic poem which gives the volume its title appeared in the Spectator, and is memorable for the fact that Meredith's friend, the poet Swinburne, with one of his characteristically generous impulses, replied (Spectator, June 7, 1862), in a spirit of fervent eulogy. Some of the "sonnets" (of 16 lines) into which Modern Love is divided rank with the most subtle and intense poetic work of the 19th century.
Returning to fiction, Meredith next published Emilia in Eng land (1864), afterwards renamed Sandra Belloni (1886). His powerful story Rhoda Fleming (1865) followed soon afterwards. Vittoria, published in the Fortnightly Review in 1866, and in book form in 1867, is a sequel to Emilia in England. Four years later appeared The Adventures of Harry Richmond in the pages of Cornhill (187o-71). Its successor was Beauchamp's Career (Fortnightly Review, the novel which Meredith usually described as his own favourite. Its hero's character is supposed to have been founded upon that of Admiral Maxse. Sandra Belloni, Rhoda Fleming, Vittoria and Beauchamp are all master pieces of his finest period, rich in incident, character and work manship. "The House on the Beach" and "The Case of General Opie and Lady Camper" (New Quarterly Magazine, 1877) were slight but glittering exercises in comedy; the next important novel was The Egoist (5879), which shows an increase in Mere dith's twistedness of literary style and is admittedly hard to read for those who merely want a "story," but which for concen trated analysis and the real drama of the human spirit is an astounding production. In an interesting series of lectures which Meredith delivered at the London Institution in 1877, his main thesis was that a man without a sense of comedy is dead to the finer issues of the spirit, and the conception of Sir Willoughby Patterne, the central figure of The Egoist, is an embodiment of this idea in the flesh. The Tragic Comedians (188o), the next of Meredith's novels, slighter in texture than his others, combines the spirits of comedy and tragedy in the story of the life of Ferdinand Lassalle, the German Socialist. The appearance of Diana of the Crossways (1885), a brilliant book, full of his ripest character-drawing, though here and there tormenting the casual reader by the novelist's mannerisms of expression, marks an epoch in Meredith's career, since it was the first of his stories to strike the general public. Its heroine was popularly identified with Sheridan's granddaughter, Mrs. Norton, and the use made in it of the contemporary story of that lady's communication to The Times of the cabinet secret of Peel's conversion to Free Trade had the effect of producing explicit evidence of its inac curacy from Lord Dufferin and others. As a matter of historical fact it was Lord Aberdeen who himself gave Delane the informa tion.