PHOTOGRAPHIC ILLUSTRATIONS TO NOVELS.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 906, 27 August 1910, Page 9

PHOTOGRAPHIC ILLUSTRATIONS TO NOVELS.

We cannot altogether ■ approve of photographs as illustrations of a story (says the "ilauchestor Guardian"), but some of those, that are appearing in .Messrs. Constable's Memorial Edition of Meredith's works have a peculiar interest. They are not strictly-.rele-vant to the text, and sometimes they are astonishingly inadequate to it; most of these houses, and landscapes are ''pleasant and undistinguished till we attach memorable names to them. In the new "Diana of the Crossways" we are shown The Crossways, with the interesting information ' that Meredith pictured this as, Diana's homo, but located it-"on higher ground some miles further south." It is a sixteenth or soventeeth century Surrey farmhouse, and in the photograph it is difficult to see it as 1 the end of Redworth's quest, when on tho sharp winter night, the downs "like a wavy robe of shadowy grey silk," he hammered'at the doors, with his inind strangely divided between Diana aiid tho frizzling of fat bacon. Mereditli transformed these places, as in the' story-of Diana, he transfoimed history. There is a curious analogy .between the two novels now rc-issued. In. "The Tragic. Comedians," too, certain '. incredible events, rigidly fitted into tilt framework of history, are reconciled to humanity., Meredith had great faith in his art as a solution of problems of conduct, and perhaps this faith became a danger when it tempted him to feats of reconcilement. Fortified by the .conviction that life is fantastic; no succession of events was impossible to him, and no one ever did such wonderful embroideries on the theme that'to know all is to forgive all. ,'. And so ho gave us the famous lapse of Diana, about which even tievoted Meredithians disagree unending.ly, and the concession of Clotilde, which is much less vexing., '