Mainwaring and Vyan—certainly life was a poor business, when a spirited young fellow, with a good appetite for the best of everything, had so poor an outlook."
Of contrasting caliber is Adam Bede, whose vision is
turned outward and even upward, instead of altogether
inward; and whose survey causes a feeling of modesty
rather than injured conceit.[1]
"Adam, I confess, was very susceptible to the influence of
rank, and quite ready to give an extra amount of respect to
every one who had more advantages than himself, not being
a philosopher, or a proletaire with democratic ideas, but simply
a stout-limbed clever carpenter with a large fund of reverence
in his nature, which inclined him to admit all established claims
unless he saw very clear grounds for questioning them."
George Eliot was held in high esteem by George Meredith;
and the two were indeed akin in outlook, and very
much so in the matter of ironic usage, in spite of their
wide difference in general style. But the Meredithian solution
is at once more saturated and more subtle, combined
with greater uniformity of effect. This, however, does not
spell monotony, diversity being furnished by range of
ideas and breadth of subject-matter. Meredith has one
ironic mold, but into it he pours a procession of contents
of great variety. The tone, it is unnecessary to say, is undilutedly
masculine; so is Eliot's, except for the presence of
an element usually reckoned as feminine, and mentioned,
by a curious coincidence, in Meredith's approving characterization
of a French writer. In making out his own
preferred list with accompanying reason, he cites Renan,
"for a delicate irony scarcely distinguishable from tender-*
- ↑ Adam Bede, I, 245. It could not be said of him as it was of Vincy in the above connection,—"The difficult task of knowing another soul is not for young gentlemen whose consciousness is chiefly made up of their own wishes."
