File:George Meredith in anecdote and criticism (1909) (14586557598).jpg

Identifier: georgemeredithin00hamm (find matches)
Title: George Meredith in anecdote and criticism
Year: 1909 (1900s)
Authors: Hammerton, John Alexander, Sir, 1871-1949
Subjects: Meredith, George, 1828-1909
Publisher: London, G. Richards New York, M. Kennerley
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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w the reader to think as he goes on.The neglect of this rule spoilt the two best poems in Reverberar-tions, Balder and Thor, which, whatever were the faults ofthe rest of the book, were true and noble poems, and the neglectof it spoils Apollo and Daphne. Mr. Meredith is trying allthrough to mean more than the form which he has chosen allowshim. That form gives free scope to a prodigality of objectivedescription, of which Keats need not have been ashamed; but if hehad more carefully studied the old models of that form-—from thesimple Scotch ballads to Shakespeares Venus and Adonis —aballad and not an idyll,—he would have avoided Keats fault of too^muchness into which he has fallen. Half the poem would bear cut-ting out; even half of those most fresh and living stanzas, wherethe woodland springs into life to stop Daphnes flight—where Running ivies, dark and lingering,Round her light limbs drag and twine ;Round her waist, with languorous tendrilsReels and wreathes the juicy vine,
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SOME EARLY APPRECIATIONS 137 Crowning her with amorous clusters ;Pouring down her sloping backFresh-born wines in glittering rillets,Following her in crimson track. Every stanza is a picture in itself, but there are too many ofthem, and therefore we lose the story in the profusion of its acci-dentals. There is a truly Corregg-iesque tone of feeling- and drawingall through this poem, which is very pleasant to us. But we prayMr. Meredith to go to the National Gallery and there look steadilyand long, with all the analytic insight he can, at the Venus andMercury, or the Agony in the Garden ; or go to the EgyptianHall and there feast, not only his eyes and heart, but his intellectand spirit also, with Lord Wards duplicate of the Magdalen —the greatest Protestant sermon on free justification by faith everyet preached; and there see how Correggio can dare to indulge inhis exquisite lusciousness of form, colour, and chiaroscuro, with-out his pictures ever becoming tawdry or overwrought—na

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