. George Meredith; his life and friends in relation to his work. The influences of surrounding Nature were finelyexpressed at this period by Meredith in the Ode tothe Spirit of Earth in Autumn; but more succinctlypicturesque is his Autumn Even-Song, written duringhis first autumn at Copsham Cottage in 1859,and which at the close again suggests a personalpicture. Merely a matter of individual opinion,I regard this as Merediths most exquisite a wealth of observation is here enshrined, andhow fine the antithesis of the last line of eachverse. This poem is a succession of vividly con-tra
. George Meredith; his life and friends in relation to his work. The influences of surrounding Nature were finelyexpressed at this period by Meredith in the Ode tothe Spirit of Earth in Autumn; but more succinctlypicturesque is his Autumn Even-Song, written duringhis first autumn at Copsham Cottage in 1859,and which at the close again suggests a personalpicture. Merely a matter of individual opinion,I regard this as Merediths most exquisite a wealth of observation is here enshrined, andhow fine the antithesis of the last line of eachverse. This poem is a succession of vividly con-trasted pictures. It suggests those wonderful dark-shadowed twilight scenes drawn by Hablot at the height of his art, particularly TheGhosts Walk, in Bleak House, where also paleon the panes of the old hall gleams the lone spacebetween the sunset and the squall. Copsham Common was a great resort for gipsies,beggars, tinkers, and so forth, and Meredith de- The illustration, drawn by Phiz, for this poem in Once a Week,1859, gives a fair idea of the cW 5 5W c^ en 00 o ^ W g = > ?* U Q -S 04 O J U g -5. X o •:;< < o d X a!.2 OS AUGUSTUS JESSOPP 113 lighted to converse with them. As he said, he wasan associate with owls and night-jars, tramps andtinkers, who taught him human nature. Much ofhis work at this period embodies their elementalphilosophy; and, needless to say, his first-handknowledge of nomads was to find its most vividexpression a few years later in The Adventures ofHarry Richmond. He gave some interesting detailsof his attitude to poetry at this time, and incident-ally of his life at Copsham, to the Rev. AugustusJessopp, a stranger and an admirer of Meredithswork who had written to express appreciation, andwho, in result, was to become one of the authorsintimate and trusted friends.^ Jessopp had told Meredith that there were threemen he particularly wished to see in life : Hiunboldt,Bunsen and the author of Richard Feverel; andthat he and his Camb
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