George Meredith’s Politics As Seen in His Life, Friendships, and Works by James S. Stone (review)

124 LEITERS IN CANADA 1986 and so on. Moreover in so doing he is able to make clear how Trollope's interest in lawyers and the law is central to the construction of certain of his texts and how that interest reflects wider ethical concerns central to all his texts. McMaster suggests that Trollope throughout his life 'took a hostile view of advocacy: Nevertheless he sees that for Trollope the law of property was another thing altogether: 'Trollope agrees with Burke in seeing a spiritual congruity between the descent of entailed property, the life of the nation, and the idea of society' (p 76). In his discussion of such novels as Ralph the Heir, The Way We Live Now and, especially, Mr. Scarborough's Family, McMaster is very clear about Trollope's notion that responsibility to the land itself and to its tenants and resources is tied to his sense of what makes an English gentleman. To this end McMaster quotes the solicitor Bideawhile from The Way We Live Now as he informs the financier Melmotte: 'You must be aware, Mr. Melmotte, ... that the sale of property is not like an ordinary mercantile transaction: Later he cites Trollope's view in Lady Anna that wealth in money is much less acceptable to 'the general English aristocrat than that which comes direct from the land: Moreover, his analysis of Mr. Scarborough's Family is most sophisticated and detailed in exposing Trollope's consciousness of the subtle nature of the relations between the abstract nature of the law and the way in which it may, in its application, limit the provision of justice. McMaster has been very shrewd in analysing Trollope's notion of the relation of the law to truth. In so doing he cites The Life ofCicero, in which Trollope says, 'It cannot be right to make another man believe that which you know to be false: Here we have the point exactly. It is in the attachment to the truth as well as in his sympathetic portrayal of the English gentleman's feelings about the social values bound up in the conservation of landed property that we find the impetus behind Trollope 's portrayal of lawyers like Mr Chaffanbrass as 'rogues by profession ,' We have McMaster to thank for a careful and learned book to show us just how careful and learned Trollope was (after Orley Farm) in presenting his view of the law as 'an expression of spiritual principles integral to the English way of doing things: Nevertheless, $62.50 seems an awful lot of money. (MICHAEL LAINE) James S. Stone. George Meredith's Politics As Seen in His Life, Friendships, and Works P.O. Meany. 199· $45.00 James Stone's study of George Meredith is, while interesting, a deeply flawed book. The essential problem is its incoherence. While it might have been, given Stone's immense knowledge of Meredith and his ideas, a valuable study of the famous novelist (and poet) from the perspective of his politics, it emerges as a kind ofcauserie, a rather elaborate chat between James Stone and other Meredithians. The most valuable part is, in fact, the far too brief Conclusion, in which Stone summarizes - and finally pinpoints - some of the political elements in the writing, especially in the novels. But before this, in a series of chapters unfortunately arranged chronologically and in which the only structure seems to be the temporal one, Stone moves desultorily through the writings to no real purpose for any student of them. The tone is often wrong. On P 47 one paragraph begins, 'Mind you, Maxse's credo ... '; on P 50 another begins, 'This brings me to an assessment .. . ' Perhaps the awkwardness of the tone, and consequently of a good deal of the writing (which contributes to the sense of an unbuttoned and amiable but rather uncoordinated chat), is attributable to a sense of uneasiness Stone felt about his topic or his approach; this sometimes seems to emerge in gestures like the statement, about The Amazing Marriage , that, 'As grist for my political mill, it is disappointing.' But that is merely speculation. It is not speculation, however, to say that Stone simply gets it wrong too...