But it is when we consider the great artistic power of these two
writers, with all their eccentricities, that we see even more clearly
that free-thought was, as it were, a fight between finger-posts. For it
is the remarkable fact that it was the man who had the healthy and manly
outlook who had the crabbed and perverse style; it was the man who had
the crabbed and perverse outlook who had the healthy and manly style.
The reader may well have complained of paradox when I observed above
that Meredith, unlike most neo-Pagans, did in his way take Nature
naturally. It may be suggested, in tones of some remonstrance, that
things like "though pierced by the cruel acerb," or "thy fleetingness is
bigger in the ghost," or "her gabbling grey she eyes askant," or "sheer
film of the surface awag" are not taking Nature naturally. And this is
true of Meredith's style, but it is not true of his spirit; nor even,
apparently, of his serious opinions. In one of the poems I have quoted
he actually says of those who live nearest to that Nature he was always
praising--
"Have they but held her laws and nature dear,
They mouth no sentence of inverted wit";
which certainly was what Meredith himself was doing most of the time.
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