Miscellaneous Prose

Miscellaneous Prose

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Title: Miscellaneous Prose
Author: George Meredith
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
Release Date: September, 2003 [Etext #4498] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on March 5,
2002]
The Project Gutenberg Etext Miscellaneous Prose by George Meredith
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[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making
an entire meal of them. D.W.]

MISCELLANEOUS PROSE
By George Meredith

CONTENTS:
INTRODUCTION TO W. M. THACKERAY'S "THE FOUR
GEORGES"
A PAUSE IN THE STRIFE.
CONCESSION TO THE CELT.

LESLIE STEPHEN.
LETTERS WRITTEN TO THE 'MORNING POST' FROM THE
SEAT OF WAR IN ITALY.

INTRODUCTION TO W. M. THACKERAY'S "THE FOUR
GEORGES"
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY was born at Calcutta, July
18, 1811, the only child of Richmond and Anne Thackeray. He
received the main part of his education at the Charterhouse, as we know
to our profit. Thence he passed to Cambridge, remaining there from
February 1829 to sometime in 1830. To judge by quotations and
allusions, his favourite of the classics was Horace, the chosen of the
eighteenth century, and generally the voice of its philosophy in a
prosperous country. His voyage from India gave him sight of Napoleon
on the rocky island. In his young manhood he made his bow
reverentially to Goethe of Weimar; which did not check his hand from
setting its mark on the sickliness of Werther.
He was built of an extremely impressionable nature and a commanding
good sense. He was in addition a calm observer, having 'the harvest of
a quiet eye.' Of this combination with the flood of subjects brought up
to judgement in his mind, came the prevalent humour, the enforced
disposition to satire, the singular critical drollery, notable in his works.
His parodies, even those pushed to burlesque, are an expression of
criticism and are more effective than the serious method, while they
rarely overstep the line of justness. The Novels by Eminent Hands do
not pervert the originals they exaggerate. 'Sieyes an abbe, now a
ferocious lifeguardsman,' stretches the face of the rollicking Irish
novelist without disfeaturing him; and the mysterious visitor to the
palatial mansion in Holywell Street indicates possibilities in the
Oriental imagination of the eminent statesman who stooped to conquer
fact through fiction. Thackeray's attitude in his great novels is that of
the composedly urbane lecturer, on a level with a select audience,
assured of interesting, above requirements to excite. The slow
movement of the narrative has a grace of style to charm like the dance
of the Minuet de la Cour: it is the limpidity of Addison flavoured with
salt of a