The Works of George Meredith, Volume 11C. Scribner's sons, 1897 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
asked Beau beauty Bevisham boat borough candidate canvass Captain Baskelett Captain Beauchamp Carpendike Cecilia champ château Colonel Halkett Commander Beauchamp Cougham d'Henriel d'Orbec dear Devereux Dianet Dollikins England English Everard Romfrey eyes fancy father feel fellow French Garde Française gentleman girl give glove gondola Grancey Lespel hand head hear heard heart hero honour hope imagine Itchincope lady laughed letter Liberal listen Livret look Lord Palmet Lydiard ma'am Madame d'Auffray man's marquis ment mind Miss Denham Miss Halkett morning Mount Laurels never Nevil Beauchamp night Otley papa party person Peter Molyneux politics Radical Renée Renée's replied Roland Romfrey's Rosamund Culling Rouaillout seemed sentiment Shrapnel smiled speak spoke Steynham Stukely Culbrett sure talk tell There's things thought Timothy Tory Tourdestelle Tuckham Turbot uncle Everard Venice vote walked Whig wish woman women word young
Popular passages
Page 85 - Colour was stedfast on the massive front ranks : it wavered in the remoteness, and was quick and dim as though it fell on beating wings ; but there too divine colour seized and shaped forth solid forms, and thence away to others in uttermost distances where the incredible flickering gleam of new heights arose, that soared, or stretched their white uncertain curves in sky like wings traversing infinity. It seemed unlike morning to the lovers, but as if night had broken with a revelation of the kingdom...
Page 106 - The secret of Captain Baskelett's art would seem to be to show the automatic human creature at loggerheads with a necessity that winks at remarkable pretensions, while condemning it perpetually to doll-like action. You look on men from your own elevation as upon a quantity of our little wooden images, unto whom you affix puny characteristics, under restrictions from which they shall not escape, though they attempt it with the enterprising vigour...
Page 53 - ... drink in all his impressions through her. Her features had the soft irregularities which run to rarities of beauty, as the ripple rocks the light; mouth, eyes, brows, nostrils, and bloomy cheeks played into one another liquidly; thought flew, tongue followed, and the flash of meaning quivered over them like night-lightning. Or oftener, to speak truth, tongue flew, thought followed: her age was but newly seventeen, and she was French.
Page 161 - ... who fought the grand, and the grisly, old battle with nature for bread of life. Those grimy sails of the colliers and fishing-smacks, set them in a great sea, would have beauty for eyes and soul beyond that of elegance and refinement. And do but look on them thoughtfully, the poor are everlastingly, unrelievedly, in the abysses of the great sea.
Page 84 - A crowd of mountains endless in range, erect, or flowing, shattered and arid, or leaning in smooth lustre, hangs above the gulf. The mountains are sovereign Alps, and the sea is beneath them. The whole gigantic body keeps the sea, as with a hand, to right and left. Nevil's personal rapture craved for Rene'e with the second long breath he drew ; and now the curtain of her tent-cabin parted, and greeting him with a half smile, she looked out. The Adriatic was dark, the Alps had heaven to themselves....
Page 2 - ... old ships, a couple of experimental vessels of war, and twenty-five thousand soldiers indifferently weaponed. We were in fact as naked to the Imperial foe as the merely painted Britons. This being apprehended, by the aid of our own shortness of figures and the agitated images of the red-breeched only waiting the signal to jump and be at us, there ensued a curious exhibition that would be termed, in simple language, writing to the newspapers, for it took the outward form of letters: in reality,...
Page 289 - I venture to state," he remarked, in anything but the tone of a venture, " that no educated man of ordinary sense who has visited our colonies will come back a Liberal." As for a man of sense and education being a Radical, he scouted the notion with a pooh .sufficient to awaken a vessel in the doldrums. He said -carelessly of Commander Beauchamp, that he might think himself one. Either the Radical candidate for Bevisham stood self -deceived, or — the other supposition.
Page 26 - Heroes, in (so she esteemed it) a style resembling either early architecture or utter dilapidation, so loose and rough it seemed; a wind-in-the-orchard style, that tumbled down here and there an appreciable fruit with uncouth bluster...
Page 21 - ... work. In the later life of the family, they preferred the provincial state of splendid squires to Court and political honours. They were renowned shots, long-limbed stalking sportsmen in field and bower, fast friends, intemperate enemies, handsome to feminine eyes, resembling one another in build, and mostly of the northern colour, or betwixt the tints, with an hereditary nose and mouth that cried Romfrey from faces thrice diluted in cousinships. The Hon. Everard (Stephen Denely Craven Romfrey),...
Page 43 - Meredith then refined his point: "With every inducement to offer himself [Beauchamp] for a romantic figure, he despises the pomades and curling-irons of modern romance, its shears and labels. . . ."He continued: "It is artless art and monstrous innovation to present so wilful a figure, but were I to create a striking fable for him, and set him off with scenic effects and contrasts, it would be only a momentary tonic to you, to him instant death. He could not live in such an atmosphere