ABSTRACT
George Meredith 1 (1828–1909) declared that he would “most horribly haunt”anyone who should write his biography. After his death it became known that there were facts about his origin he wished to conceal. They are trivial, but their concealment is significant. Did he hope to dictate the estimate of himself to be held by posterity? Were we to see in him something of proud, elaborate, Olympian indifference, with much of the clearsightedness, touched with light malignancy, of the Comic Spirit? Admit a suspicion of “the taint of personality”and he is seen, not seated overhead with this Spirit, but himself the target of its volleys of silvery laughter. The poet who described the distempered devil of Self was caught in the snares of that “scaly Dragon-fowl.”His proud declaration that “station is nought, nor footways laurel-strewn”consorts ill with evident restiveness under by no means total popular indifference to his work.
