The  late  George  Parsons  Lathrop,  another  American  critic  who
wrote  of  Meredith  with  insight  that  rivals  the  best  of  his  English
critics,  has  a  notable  passage  on  this  subject  in  his  study  in  the
Atlantic  Monthly,  February,  1888,  which  I  am  constrained  to  add  to
Mr.   Newman's  indictment:

A  cardinal  fault  in  Meredith's  novels  is  that  they  are  lame  in
movement.  He  lacks,  on  the  whole,  narrative  and  dramatic  skill,
although  he  shows,  in  places,  that  he  can  command  it.  He  is  too
much  like  a  biographer.  We  look  for  a  novelist,  and  find  an  annal-
ist. The  mere  bulkiness  of  his  novels  cannot  wholly  account  for  our
disappointment ;  because  some  of  George  Eliot's  books  are  just  as
bulky,  but  do  not  oppress  us  so  severely  by  their  size.  The  difficulty
consists  rather,  I  think,  in  the  fact  that  Meredith  tries  to  give  an  epic
largeness  to  every  history  that  he  undertakes.  The  result  is  a  want
of  proportion ;  just  as  it  is  when  painters  choose  a  canvas  too  large
for  their  composition,  or,  conversely,  paint  figures  which  are  too
large  for  the  canvas  on  which  they  are  placed.  This  was  the  case
with  Madox  Brown's  'Work,'  and  with  the  'Rest'  of  George
Watts.  It  was  also  the  case  with  some  of  the  Russian  Verestcha-
gin's  early  paintings.  The  effect  of  disproportion  found  in  these
paintings  of  the  Russian,  and  of  two  English  artists  representing  a
certain  school,  meets  with  a  curious  correspondence  in  the  dispropor-
tion of  Meredith.  We  discover  the  same  thing  again  in  Tolstoy's
Anna  Karenina.  Russian  and  English  !  It  is  curious  that  these
two  peoples,  so  opposed  politically,  should  develop  the  same  uncouth
disproportion    artistically.      One    does    not    perceive    the    defect    in


LITERARY   CHARACTERISTICS  165

Daudet  or  Zola,  however  heavy  their  outlines  or  gross  their  delinea-
tion may  be.     They,  at  least,  preserve  the  sense  of  proportion.
