She was too keen a woman to
plead, as Diana pleaded, that she did not recognize the importance of
this secret, for the defense is cut away by her admission that she was
promised thousands of pounds by the newspaperman at the very time that
her extravagances had loaded her with debts.
Space is lacking here to do more than mention three or four of
Meredith's other novels that are fine works of art. These are _Rhoda
Fleming_, _Sandra Belloni_, _Evan Harrington_ and _The Egoist_. Each
is a masterpiece in its way; each is full of human passion, yet tinged
with a philosophy that lifts up the novels to what Meredith himself
called "honorable fiction, a fount of life, an aid to life, quick with
our blood." The novel to him was a means of showing man's spiritual
nature, "a soul born active, wind-beaten, but ascending."
A score of novels Meredith wrote in his long life. The work of his
later years was not happy. _The Amazing Marriage_ and _Lord Ormont and
His Aminta_ are mere shadows of his earlier work, with all his old
mannerisms intensified. But if you like Richard and Diana, then you
can enlarge your acquaintance with Meredith to your own exceeding
profit, for he is one of the great masters of fiction, who used the
novel merely to preach his doctrine of the richness and fulness of
human life if we would but see it with his eyes.
STEVENSON PRINCE OF MODERN STORY-TELLERS
HIS STORIES OF ADVENTURE AND HIS BRILLIANT ESSAYS--"TREASURE
ISLAND" AND "DR.
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