MORE ABOUT MEREDITH.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1485, 6 July 1912, Page 9

MORE ABOUT MEREDITH.

When Mr. Shorter talks of Meredith he does so out of. personal knowledge and with all due reverence for the scruples ,of one who somewhat, resented tho interest of the public in his own. personality. His article in last week's "Sphere," accordingly," is interesting and useful both for tho information it gives and as a contribution to tho questiqn of Meredith's ntli/iiilf towards his ..interest in winch.' has been reawakened bv Mr. Ellis's recent paper in tho "Fortnightly."' For one thing, we are told whv "Tho Journalist," a novel which, nt tlio time of Meredith's death, tho public was assured would bo found lying' completed in his desk and would form one of his' posthumous publications, - never snw the light. It was believed that it had been hold over becanso some of tho originals of the characters were still alive. And, indeed, Greenwood was. to havo been its hero, and Stead and Lord Morley.were to have figured in it; but the.truth is that it was never finished, and the manuscript'was formally burned in Meredith's presence by Dr. I'limmcr. Further, Mr. W. M. Meredith has publicly intimated that his father's letters are to be edited, not,by Lord Morley.but by himsolf, and arc to appear this autumn' It is to be hoped that they will contain enough, of • supplementary, matter to enable a reader to trace tho main outline of the novelist's career.

On the question as to whethor Meredith had any delicacy of feeling on tho subject of his being the son of a'naval tailor at Portsmouth, Mr: Snorter's arguments are hardly convincing. There was much mystery, and, consequently, some wild speculation during his lifetime ,as to the novelist's parentage, and tho public felt that it was being deliberately kept in ignorance. This suspicion now is admitted to be true. It was a point upon which Meredith was extraordinarily reticent, and "ho did not wish it 6houted upon the housetops .that he was. born over a tailor's shop in Portsmouth." Why not? He was averse to personal gossip in, journalism, but so was Tennyson, and yet Tennyson would not have cared although the fact that ho was the son of the rector of Somersby had been shouted from every housetop in Europe. Indeed, it is difficult even for one who has the deepest reverence for the Shakespearean genius of Meredith to avoid the suspicion that the public dissemination of tho fact tbat he was son of the son of tho MeroJith mentioned in "Peter Simple," and that both had been tailors, would have given • his sensitive, aristocratic)' naturo at least a "creepy-crawly" moment, and even awakened in him some faint attenuated form of the vexotion which Sir Piercie Shafton had when he faw tho silver bodkin of tho White Maid of. Avenel, or when Halbert Glendinning alluded, as he thought, derisively to tho "thread and shears" of tho Furies.