Not  any  single  article  of  his  on  Meredith— and  he  wrote  many — had
the  least  suspicion  of  the  gush  of  the  log-roller.  The  volume  of
criticism,  not  always  appreciative,  that  now  began  to  pour  forth
from  busy  pens  had  no  taint  of  log-rolling.  '  Boom  '  is  an  unhappy
word  applied  here.  Meredith  had  merely,  in  the  fullness  of  time
and  his  own  powers,  awakened  the  attention  he  deserved.  '  The
Egoist  '  was  first  published  in  three  volumes  by  Kegan  Paul  and
Co.,  and  a  second  edition  in  one  volume  was  issued  by  the  same
firm  within  a  year.  It  had  not  appeared  in  serial  form,  probably
because  he  was  already  busy  on  '  The  Tragic  Comedians,'  of  which
an  abridged  version  was  arranged  for  the  Fortnightly  from  October,
1880,  to  February,  1881.  That  complete  work  appeared  in  two
volumes  in  the  winter  of  the  latter  year,  and  as  evidence  of  growing
popularity  a  two-shilling  edition  in  Ward  Lock's  series  of  '  Select
Authors  '  and  a  Tauchnitz  edition  came  out  in  the  same  year.
