Lord Ormont And His Aminta

," . . constant association with her quondam schoolboy lover has done for her what might have been done freely had not this marital bond existed. Her starved soul is fed, and at last the two leave England behind them; not like a guilty pair, --quite the contrary: they are setting out for, not from paradise. They set up the school where honor is to be taught . . . Such, stripped of all sophistry, is the story upon which Mr. Meredith has expended his wit and eloquence. There is a refinement of lust in literature which sets forth unholy situations so delicately that the reader at first hardly knows that he has been poisoned, but the poison works nevertheless. Mr. Meredith has scarcely quickened the pulse of the most sensitive reader by this narrative; he effectually arrests inflammation by a constant use of cooling draughts of philosophy. But he relies for his power on his penetration of conduct, his analysis of human nature, his art of translating good and evil into the terms of the epigraminatist's art; and we do not hesitate to say that the triumph of Weyburn and Aminta is an offense against laws to which the mightiest artists are most humbly obedient. . . ." -- THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, February 1895