filled owing to his death at the early age of thirty-three in 1902. Master of brilliancy, versatility and epigram, Oscar Wilde was successful alike in lyrical verses, essays, short stories, and the drama. Since Sheridan perhaps, no writer for the stage achieved such signal literary excellence in combination with a knowledge of dramatic craft of the highest order. "Lady Windermere's Fan," published 1893, "A Woman of No Importance," printed the following year, and "The Importance of Being Earnest," 1899, when acted achieved unqualified success. They are all comedy of the happiest type, with real genius underlying their scintillating banter and paradox. In his earlier "Poems," 1881, may be seen faults of æsthetic affectation, alternating, however, with passages of deep and sincere emotion, while in his latest writings, "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" and "De Profundis," owing to the circumstances which brought about a great change in the poet's mental attitude towards life, all the lighter mood has evaporated and the depths of human sorrow and human feeling are exposed without a veil. CHAPTER XXVII THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY WHILE George Eliot was tasting the sweets of success at the time of the publication of " Adam Bede" and Trollope was reaping popularity with his novels about Barsetshire, a new star was rising in the literary firmament. Wavering at first between poetry and fiction, George Meredith took a decided step in the direction of his career as a novelist when in 1859 he produced "The Ordeal of Richard Feverel." Poetic fervour, cynical audacity, humour, concentrated thought and an under-current of deep human feeling combined to make this book one of extraordinary merit, and though nearly a score of years passed before the public demanded a reprint of it, it has been but grudgingly superseded in the minds of many of the author's admirers by any of his later works. "Richard Feverel" was preceded by "Farina," 1857, which in turn had followed "The Shaving of Shagpat," 1855 Before this Meredith had published one volume of poems in 1851. "Richard Feverel" like most of its successors was a novel with a psychological problem. The inward struggles of a soul choosing between opposite courses is of vastly more importance to the author than any elaboration of plot, and it is therefore natural to expect more care from him in developing the subtlety of character than the intricacy of incident. Lucy and Lady Blandish in "Richard Feverel," the vivacious Mrs. Lovell in "Rhoda Fleming," the intriguing Countess de Saldar in "Evan Harrington," Diana and Lady Watkin in "Diana of the Crossways," Clara Middleton in "The Egoist," are all creations which rival in wit, charm, originality and reality the best-known and most dearly loved figures of women ever drawn by masters of the pen. Equally complex and equally satisfying are many of his masculine characters, not only those of heroes who lent their names to the titles of the books, but the subsidiary people, such as the chivalrous Austin Wentworth, old Antony Hackbut, Squire Beltham, Vernon Whitford, Lord Romfrey and others who call to mind the brilliant series of novels which Meredith wrote between 1859 and 1895. "Evan Harrington" in 1861 corroborated the verdict that its author possessed unmistakable genius. "Sandra Belloni," 1864, and its sequel, "Vittoria," are books apart from the others, which deal indirectly and directly with the Italian Revolution of 1848. Between them in 1865, Meredith wrote "Rhoda Fleming," a story with a rustic setting which was received with a mixed chorus of praise and blame. "The Adventures of Harry Richmond," 1871, is in a comedy vein which has something of the fantastic in it. In "Beauchamp's Career," 1876, "The Egoist," 1879, and "Diana of the Crossways," the author's epigrammatic style began to show the defects of its brilliancy which in his latest novels, "Lord Ormont and his Aminta," 1894, and "The Amazing Marriage," developed almost into cryptic obscurity; a fact which has frequently led to comparisons between Meredith and Browning. In poetry Meredith's later work must not be forgotten; in 1862 he published "Modern Love, and other Poems," in 1883 "Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth," and four more volumes appeared before 1901, when he gave to the world "A Reading of Life, with other Poems." George Meredith, who was a native of South Wessex, was born on February 12, 1828, at Petersfield. In 1849 he married a daughter of the novelist Thomas Love Pea- "Then come merry April with all thy birds and beauties ! In the excellent prose works of George MacDonald the Celtic spirit is revealed. MacDonald was born at Huntly in Aberdeenshire in 1824, and Aberdeenshire is the country he makes his own. His first book was a dramatic poem, "Within and Without," published in 1855. Two years later he produced a volume of Poems and in 1858, a Faerie Romance" Phantastes," really for grown-ups, and containing noble teaching on courage and self-control. Better known, however, are his novels, a series beginning with "David Elginbrod," 1863, containing a vein of Celtic mysticism, followed at short intervals by "The Portent," a story of mystical affinity, "Adela Cathcart," "Alec Forbes," "Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood," studies of manners and character in a Scottish parish, and "Robert Falconer," all of which appeared in the sixties. The last named is perhaps the most striking of the author's works, containing some remarkable personalities, the philanthropist hero, his Calvinistic grandmother and the red-haired Shargar. Young people are not likely soon to forget the delightful story "At the Back of the North Wind." Later novels by MacDonald are "Malcolm," 1875, "The Mar * By kind permission of Messrs. Constable & Co., Ltd. quis of Lossie," 1877, "Sir Gibbie," 1879, "Lilith," 1895, and others too numerous to name, several of them with an English setting less suited to his style than the country from which he sprang. "I can write out of my heart in a way I could not do as William Sharp, and indeed I could not do so if I were the woman Fiona Macleod is supposed to be, unless veiled in scrupulous anonymity" are words that throw light on one of the puzzles of identity in the literary world of the early twentieth century. William Sharp was born on September 12, 1855, at Paisley, and being a delicate child spent long months every year by mountain and sea in the charge of a Highland nurse, Barbara, who told him stories of faerie, crooned old Gaelic songs, and introduced to his imagination the Celtic Sagas, with their adventurous Viking heroes, which formed a basis for many of the tales which he wrote later under the pen-name of Fiona Macleod. At the age of twelve Sharp went to Glasgow Academy and afterwards to the University. In 1874 he was put in a lawyer's office, but his health breaking down he was sent on a voyage to Australia. On his return to London he made friends with Dante Gabriel Rossetti, to whom he submitted some of his earliest poems. His first volume was "The Human Inheritance, The New Hope, Motherhood," 1882, followed by "Earth's Voices," 1884, and "Romantic Ballads and Poems of Phantasy," 1888. In 1887 his novel, "The Sport of Chance," appeared and this was followed by several other contributions to fiction and biographical works on Shelley, 1887, Rossetti and Heine, 1888, and Sospiri di Roma, unrhymed poems of irregular metre which foreshadow to some extent his works in a very different vein. In the early nineties came about the desire to give expression to his "second self," which resulted in the publication of "Pharais," 1894, the first of the books written by "Fiona |