Then there is the sisterly attachment between Rhoda and Dahlia Fleming that leads Rhoda's puritanic nature into a dictatorial fanaticism as disastrous in its results as Sir Austin's; there is friendship masculine between Beauchamp and Dr. Shrapnel; and friendship feminine between Lady Dunstane and Diana. It is not that Meredith has a monopoly on the portrayal of human affection. Lytton has to his credit the Chillinglys[1] and the Caxtons; Gaskell has the Gibsons; Dickens, Amy Dorrit, and Joe Gargary; Brontë, Caroline Helstone and her mother; Trollope, Lily Dale and hers; in Barry Lyndon,Thackeray gives us a base soul redeemed by love for a child, and in Colonel Newcome, Helen Pendennis, and Amelia Osborne, he presents a rather one-sided devotion, as does Eliot in Mrs. Transome,—though the latter does not feel called upon to exclaim, "By Heaven, it is pitiful, the bootless love of women for children in Vanity Fair!" But it is true that Meredith through the richness of his well-rounded nature was more able than the others to lift emotion fearlessly to a height of intensity, preserved there from any danger of a fall into bathos, because supported by intellect on the one hand and humor on the other.
Any final alignment must be left flexible, because of the numerous factors in the test. Writers may excel in one way or another. When, however, the same author reappears on every count, it begins to look suspicious, and the suspicion falls most heavily on Meredith. Others may come to the top twice or even thrice, but he alone is never wholly submerged, and is nearly always dominant. When
- ↑ The relation between Kenelm and his father is particularly fine, and is reflected in the youth's remark to a comrade,—"If human beings despise each other for being young and foolish, the sooner we are exterminated by that superior race which is to succeed us on earth, the better it will be."
