The Rhythm of Life, and Other Essays — Context and Discussion

The Metrical Mind

Meynell's title essay establishes a vocabulary of recurrence: 'periodicity,' 'orbit,' 'elliptically or parabolically or hyperbolically curved.' She applies this framework to disease, distress, and gaiety, arguing that emotional states follow predictable arcs even if unmeasured. The voice is confident but not dogmatic; she admits that 'distances are not gauged, ellipses not measured.' This restraint gives the prose authority without overreach. In later essays, the same attention to pattern appears in literary judgments. Discussing Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, she praises his 'temperate' humour and notes that 'fifty per cent. of the things they say—no more—are good enough to remain after the bloom of their vulgarity has worn off.' The numerical precision echoes the metrical theme, applying a critic's measure to comic personages.

Voice and the Trivial

Meynell's critical voice is distinctive for its willingness to dwell on 'significant trivialities.' In the essay on Holmes, she defends this choice: 'It is often a question which of several significant trivialities a critic shall choose in his communication with a reader who does not insist that all the grave things shall be told him.' This self-awareness about the essayist's craft—the deliberate selection of small details—marks her style. She connects Holmes's humour to 'the New Humorist' and traces a lineage while absolving the earlier writer of 'any fault of theirs in the bastardy.' The tone is wry, precise, and unapologetically literary. Her own prose avoids the 'artificial violence' that 'throws life out of metre,' preferring instead a natural cadence that mirrors the periodicity she describes.

Fancy, Not Imagination

Meynell draws a careful distinction between fancy and imagination, attributing to Holmes 'fancy rather than imagination' but calling it 'more perfect, more definite, more fit.' She illustrates with Holmes's extended simile of a crow and king-bird, noting that 'the comparison goes on after this at needless length, with explanations.' This critique reveals Meynell's own preference for economy: she values the precise image over the elaborated one. Her essays themselves rarely overstay; they move from observation to reflection without padding. The closing essay on 'Penultimate Caricature' or 'The Lesson of Landscape' likely continues this pattern of concise, pointed commentary. The reader attuned to Meynell's own rhythms will find a writer who practices what she preaches—a prose that keeps time with its own internal metre.

Meynell's essays reward attention to her sentence rhythms and the way she builds an argument from a single, resonant phrase. The reader might note how often she returns to the language of measurement—'metrical,' 'periodicity,' 'temperate'—even when the subject shifts from literary criticism to nature or memory. These verbal recurrences are themselves a demonstration of the principle she names. For a full appreciation, read the essays aloud; the cadence is part of the meaning.

Meynell’s quiet insistence on recurrence—the tide returning, the syllable counted—reminded me of an old summer when I read her beside an open window, and the same unhurried rhythm surfaced again in In a Green Shade: A Country Commentary — Inside the Classic. That book felt like finding the same bench in a different garden, familiar but shaded differently.