George Meredith as Novelist

Abstract

Moreover, I have vowed not to open Lourdes till I shall have closed with a furious final bang the unspeakable Lord Ormont, which I have been reading at the maximum rate of ten pages-ten insufferable and unprofitable pages-a day. It fills me with a critical rage, an artistic fury, utterly blighting in me the indispensable principle of respect. I have finished, at this rate, but the first volume-whereof I am moved to declare that I doubt if any equal quantity of extravagant verbiage, of airs and graces, of phrases and attitudes, of obscurities and alembications, ever started less their subject, ever contributed less of a statement-told the reader less of what the reader needs to know. All the elaborate predicates of exposition without the ghost of a nominative to hook themselves to; and not a difficulty met, not a scene constituted -not a dim shadow condensing once either into audible or visible reality-making you hear for an instant the tap of its feet on the earth. Of course there are pretty things, but for what they are they come so mnuch too dear, and so many of the profundities and tortuosities prove when threshed out to be only pretentious statements of the very simplest propositions.

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