It is part of Meredith’s philosophy—and this must be remembered in considering his diction—that verbal expression is itself a test of right thought and action. Hence is derived his passion for verbal analysis. Hence also his impulse towards and vindication of poetry—meaning still “the best words in the best order”; and hence his own dictum, otherwise perhaps hard to undiscerning minds, that Song itself is the test by which truth may be tried. The passage occurs in “The Empty Purse”—a poem which throughout is a careful though mannered exposition of Meredith’s general views on life—
Ask of thyself: This furious Yea
Of a speech I thump to repeat,
In the cause I would have prevail,
For seed of a nourishing wheat,
Is it accepted of Song?
Does it sound to the mind through the ear,
Right sober, pure sane? has it disciplined feet?
Thou wilt find it a test severe;
Unerring whatever the theme.
Rings it for Reason a melody clear,
We have bidden old Chaos retreat,
We have called on Creation to hear;
All forces that make us are one full stream.
Meredith is generally ranked far less high as a poet than as a novelist. But he can only be understood and appreciated properly by those who realize that not prose (in the ordinary sense) but poetry was to him the highest form of expression, and that only in it could he fully deliver his message, as a writer who aspired to contribute something more to the common stock of ideas than could be embodied dramatically in prose fiction.
On Meredith’s 80th birthday in 1908, the homage of the English literary world was again paid in an address of congratulation. But his health, which for many years had been precarious, was now failing. He died at Flint Cottage, Box Hill, Surrey, on the 18th of May 1909. A strong feeling existed that he should be buried in Westminster Abbey, and a petition to that effect, which was approved by the prime minister, Mr Asquith, was signed by a large number of men of letters. But this was not to be. A memorial service was held in the abbey, but Meredith’s own remains, after cremation, were interred at Dorking by the grave of his second wife. He had died only a brief span after his old friend Swinburne, his affection for whom had never suffered abatement, and it was felt that, with them, a great epoch in English literary history had closed. They were the last of the great Victorians; and in Meredith went the writer who had raised the creative art of the novel, as a vehicle of character and constructive philosophy, to its highest point—a point higher indeed than most contemporary readers were prepared for. The estimate of his genius formed by “an honourable minority,” who would place him in the highest class of all, by Shakespeare, has yet to be confirmed by the wider suffrage of posterity.
A carefully compiled bibliography by John Lane was included in George Meredith: Some Characteristics, by R. Le Gallienne (1890). This sympathetic essay in criticism was the first substantial publication addressed to that stimulation of a wider appreciation of Meredith which was carried on by several later books, perhaps the best of which is M. Sturge Henderson’s George Meredith: Novelist, Poet, Reformer (1908); but such earlier testimonies to Meredith’s importance as Justin McCarthy's, in his History of Our Own Times, must not be forgotten. See also J. A. Hammerton, George Meredith in Anecdotes and Criticism (1909). (H. Ch.)
MEREJKOVSKY (or Merezhkovskiy), DMITRI SERGYEEVICH
(1865–), Russian novelist and critic, was born at
St Petersburg in 1865. His trilogy of historical romances,
collectively entitled Christ and Antichrist, has been translated
into many European languages, notably English and French.
It comprises Smert Bogov (Eng. trans. “The Death of the
Gods,” London, 1901), the central figure in which is Julian
the Apostate; Voskresenie Bogi (“The Forerunner,” London,
1902), which describes the life and times of Leonardo da Vinci;
and Antikhrist: Pëtr i Aleksyey (“Peter and Alexis,” London,
1905), which is based on the tragic story of the relations between
Peter the Great and his son. The influence of Sienkiewicz
can be traced in many of Merejkovsky’s writings, which include
critical studies of Pliny the Younger, Calderon, Montaigne,
Ibsen, Tolstoy (Tolstoy as Man and Artist, London, 1902),
and of Gorki and other Russian Writers. Merejkovsky married
Zinaida Nikolaevna, known in Russia for her poems, essays
and short stories written under the pseudonym of Zinaida
Hippius (or Gippius); her collected poems (1889–1903) were
published in Moscow in 1904.
MERES, FRANCIS (1565–1647), English divine and author, was born at Kirton in the Holland division of Lincolnshire in 1565. He was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1587, and M.A. in 1591. Two years later he was incorporated M.A. of Oxford. His kinsman, John Meres, was high sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1596, and apparently helped him in the early part of his career. In 1602 he became rector of Wing in Rutland, where he had a school. He died on the 29th of January 1647. Meres rendered immense service to the history of Elizabethan literature by the publication of his Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury (1598). It was one of a series of volumes of short pithy sayings, the first of which was Politeuphuia: Wits Commonwealth (1597), compiled by John Bodenham or by Nicholas Ling, the publisher. The Palladis Tamia contained moral and critical reflections borrowed from various sources, and embraced sections on books, on philosophy, on music and painting, and a famous “Comparative Discourse of our English poets with the Greeke, Latin, and Italian poets.” This chapter enumerates the English poets from Chaucer to Meres’s own day, and in each case a comparison with some classical author is instituted. The book was issued in 1634 as a school book, and has been partially reprinted in the Ancient Critical Essays (1811–1815) of Joseph Haslewood, Professor E. Arber’s English Garner, and Gregory Smith’s Elizabethan Critical Essays (1904). A sermon entitled God’s Arithmeticke (1597), and two translations from the Spanish of Luis de Granada entitled Granados Devotion and the Sinners Guide (1598) complete the list of his works.
MERGANSER, a word due to C. Gesner (Hist. animalium iii. 129) in 1555, and for long used in English as the general name for a group of fish-eating ducks possessing great diving powers, and forming the genus Mergus of Linnaeus, now regarded by ornithologists as a sub-family, Merginae, of the family Anatidae. The mergansers have a long, narrow bill, with a small but evident hook at the tip, and the edges of both mandibles beset by numerous horny denticulations, whence in English the name of “saw-bill” is frequently applied to them. Otherwise their structure does not much depart from the Anatine or Fuliguline type. All the species bear a more or less developed crest or tuft on the head. Three of them, Mergus merganser or castor, M. serrator, and M. albellus, are found over the northern parts of the Old World, and of these the first two also inhabit North America, which has besides a fourth species, M. cucullatus, said to have occasionally visited Britain. M. merganser, commonly known as the goosander, is the largest species, being nearly as big as the smaller geese, and the adult male in breeding-attire is a very beautiful bird, conspicuous with his dark glossy-green head, rich salmon-coloured breast, and the upper part of the body and the wings black and white. This full plumage is not assumed till the second year, and in the meantime, as well as in the post-nuptial dress, the male much resembles the female, having, like her, a reddish-brown head, the upper parts grey and the lower white. In this condition, the bird is often known as the “dun diver.” This species breeds abundantly in many parts of Scandinavia, Russia, Siberia and North America, and occasionally in Scotland. M. serrator, commonly called the red-breasted merganser, is a somewhat smaller bird; and, while the fully-dressed male wants the delicate hue of the lower parts, he has a gorget of rufous mottled with black, below which is a patch of white feathers, broadly edged with black. Both these species have the bill and feet of a bright reddish-orange, while the much smaller M. albellus, known as the smew, has these parts of a lead colour, and the breeding plumage of the adult male is white, with quaint crescentic markings of black, and the flanks most beautifully vermiculated.
