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Cornell University Library 
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 Life of George Eliot, 
 
 3 1924 013 456 052 
 
|| Cornell University 
 J Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013456052 
 
**(5reat Mriters." 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 PROFESSOR ERIC S. ROBERTSON, M.A. 
 
 LITE OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
LIFE 
 
 GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 1)Y 
 
 OSCAR BROWNING 
 
 LONDON 
 
 WALTER SCOTT, 24, WARWICK LANE 
 
 1890 
 
 {All rights rese?'ved.) 
 
/I -scp-j 
 
 ,/"' 
 
 
 
 
 
 TO 
 
 THE MEMORY 
 
 OF 
 
 MY MOTHER. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Present general views with regard to George Eliot's work ; 
 the Evans family ; Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot) born 
 at Arbury, Nov. 22, 1819 ; removal to Grift House, 
 Nuneaton, March, 1820 ; early days and traits of charac- «^ 
 ter ; schooling at Nuneaton (Miss Lewis) and Coventry ; 
 Calvinistic influences ; leaves school, December, 1835; 
 household cares and pursuits after leaving school ; first 
 known piece of literary composition ; moves to Coventry 
 with her father, March, 1841 ; friendship with Mr. and 
 Mrs. Bray ; life at Coventry ; change in her religious 
 views ; consequent domestic disturbances ; translates for 
 publication the " Leben Jesu" of Strauss; death of her 
 father. May 31, 1849; tour through France and Italy; 
 eight months' residence at Geneva ; returns to England ; 
 assistant editor of the Westminster Review ; meets Mr. 
 Herbert Spencer and George Henry Lewes at Mr. Chap- 
 man's house ; contributions to the Westminster Review ; 
 removes to Cambridge Street, Hyde Park, 1853 ; her 
 union with Mr. Lewes ; they go abroad ; Weimar and 
 Terlin ; return to England, March, 1855 . . . .11 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHArXER II. 
 
 George Eliot settles down at Richmond to a literary life ; 
 magazine contributions — " Worldliness and Other-world- 
 liness," " Silly Novels by I^ady Novelists " ; first attempts 
 at fiction ; " Scenes of Clerical Life" — "Amos Barton," 
 November, 1856 ; "Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story," May, 1857 ; 
 "Janet's Repentance," October, 1857; identification of 
 characters; an impostor claims to be "George Eliot," 
 and consequent end of incognito; "Adam Bede"begunj. 
 October. i8';7 : visit to Munich and Dresden ; history of 
 the comp ositiori of " Adam Bede " : it is published; 
 JFebruary _l8^9 ; ^fn'ffti nn caused bv i ts appearanceTTBfe 
 
 "ripinflknf tlip rhnrartpfg^ rJppiVTpH ; rpmnvoT'TA HJ^fy 
 Lodge, Wandsworth, February, 1859 ; diffidence as to 
 future work ; " The Lifted Veil " ; , dislike of Wands- 
 worth ; " The Mill on the Floss " begun, January,. 1859 ; 
 finished, March, l85o; "much anxiety and doubt " during 
 progress of the work ; visit to Italy on completion of " The 
 Mill on the Floss " 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The idea of " Romola " results from visit to Florence during 
 Italian tour ; plan of future work ; the Leweses move to 
 Harewood Square, Michaelmas, i860 ; and Blandford 
 Square, December, i860; "Silas Marner " begun ; com- 
 pleted March 10, 1861 ; its literary merits ; another visit 
 to Florence, with a view to the production of " Romola," 
 May, 1861 ; period of depression, and despair of being 
 able to write " Romola " ; " Romola " started, January 1, 
 1862 ; first part published in Cornhill Magazine for July, 
 1862 ; finished, June, 1863 ; different opinions of " Ro- 
 mola"; not a "native book"; "The Spanish Gypsy" 
 commenced, September, 1864 ; the Leweses move to The 
 Priory, North Bank, Regent's Park; literary gatherings 
 there ; " The Spanish Gypsy " laid aside ; Lewes edits 
 
 42 
 
ponmgimy Keview ; ." ii'elix ilolt " started, March, 1S65 ; 
 published, June, 1S66 ; the weakest of her novels ; a pause 
 in fiction-writing to collect fresh materials ; " The Spanish 
 Gypsy " taken up again, October, 1866 ; visit to Spain 
 in connection therewith, 1867 ; trip to Germany; " The 
 Spanish Gypsy" finished, April, iS68 ; its origin and 
 purpose ; its literary merits ; rest from work . . .75 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 More poetical productions ; " Middlemarch " commenced, July, 
 1869 ; death of Thornton Lewes ; consequent tem- 
 porary rest from work ; "Jubal " completed, January, 
 1870; "Middlemarch" resumed; a fusion of two inde- 
 pendent stories ; first part published, December, 1871 ; last 
 partj September, 1872 ; its reception ; ideas as to 
 "Daniel Deronda " derived from visits to Homburg, 1872, 
 and Cambridge, 1873 ; progress of " Deronda," 1873-6 ; 
 usual diffidence with regard to its merits ; it is finished, 
 June, 1876 ; George Eliot's sympathy with the Jews ; pur- 
 chase of "The Heights," Witley'; removal there, June, 
 1877 ; meeting with Crown Prince and Princess of Ger- 
 many, June, 1878; " Theophrastus Such" commenced, 
 summer, 1S78 ; ill health of both Mr. Lewes and George 
 Eliot; London life disagrees with her; reason for living 
 so much in London ; meeting with the Russian novelist, 
 Turguenieff, October, 1878; Turguenieff on Victor Hugo ; 
 death of Mr. Lewes, November 28, 1878 ; " Theophras- 
 tus " laid aside; the completed part of " Theophrastus " 
 published, May, 1879 ; least read of George Eliot's works; 
 its merits ; founding of George Heniy Lewes Studentship 
 at Cambridge, September, 1879 ; marriage with Mr. John 
 Cross, May 6, 1880 ; reconciliation with Brother Isaac ; 
 illness, September, 1880; Mr. Cross's account of it ; 
 George Eliot dies, December 22, 1880; funeral, December 
 29tli .... 109 
 
8 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER V, 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Which of George Eliot's novels ranks highest? "Adam 
 Bede " most popular with the general public ; " Silas 
 Marner " with literary men; claims of "Romola" and 
 " Middlemarch " ; a word for "Daniel Deronda"; the 
 outward development of her art ; essentially a student ; 
 no trace of dramatic power or humour in early letters and 
 essays ; novel writing attempted at suggestion of friends ; 
 the object of her writings — to describe the lives of ordinary 
 men and women, their joys and sorrows, successes and 
 failures, good or evil influences surrounding them ; the 
 healthy sadness of her stories intended to teach the deep 
 importance of life, and that life need not be a failure ; the 
 inward development of her art ; she always described truly 
 the inner nature of her characters ; art need not necessarily 
 always deal with the passions of love and revenge ; devo- 
 tion to a cause or an ideal is as true a passion ; George 
 Eliot took this view and progressed from " Milly Barton " 
 to " Deronda " ; but the more common passions appeal to 
 all, and can be described in ordinary language ; the others 
 appeal to the few, and their language is less known ; 
 hence the apparent obscurity of later works ; similarity 
 between later development of Goethe and of George Eliot ; 
 " Daniel Deronda " her greatest work .... 140 
 
 INDEX 169 
 
NOTE. 
 
 THIS book could not have been written without 
 constant reference to the "Life and Letters of 
 George Eliot," published by her husband, Mr. John 
 Cross. I have had access to a considerable number of 
 unpublished letters, but I have only thought it desirable 
 to print four of them. Information about the localities 
 described by George Eliot has been drawn partly from 
 Mr. Parkinson's useful book, " George Eliot's Country," 
 and partly from personal knowledge. The last chapter 
 of this work was originally published in the Fortnightly 
 Review, nearly in its present form. 
 
LIFE OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 CHAPTER r. 
 
 THE name of George Eliot is unique in English 
 literature. No.woman has attained so high a 
 place among the writers of our country. But, omitting 
 considerations of sex, it is remarkable that any one with 
 so few apparent advantages, with engagements which 
 were unfavourable to the literary life, with a strong dis- 
 trust of self within, and little stimulus or assistance from 
 without, should, beginning original production after 
 middle life, have executed so large a quantity of work of 
 the highest merit and of far-reaching influence. At this 
 moment, ten years after her death, it is perhaps most 
 difficult to forecast what will be her ultimate position. 
 Reputations which stand highest at the period of a 
 sudden dissolution, pass for a season into obscurity. No 
 longer regarded as contemporar)% they must wait for the 
 verdict of posterity. George Eliot has often been spoken 
 of as a modern Shakspeare. Full of the racy sap of the 
 English Midlands, her novels, although drawn, as all good 
 art must be drawn, from experience, are objective and 
 impersonal in form. There is also a strong analogy 
 
12 LIFE OF 
 
 between the modern novel and the drama of a past age. 
 In a good novel descriptions are few, conversations many. 
 A character is not analyzed by the author, but suffered 
 to develop itself by speech and action. No English 
 novels have aimed at higher ends, have presented 
 more complex characters, or attempted more difficult 
 problems. What is the essential difference between 
 " Werther " and " Goetz von Berlichingen," between 
 " Faust " and " Wilhelm Meister " ? Goethe, a writer 
 of drama, allowed himself more narrative in the novel. 
 It is possible that "Adam Bede," " Middlemarch,'' and 
 "Daniel Deronda" may eventually have their place rather 
 beside "Hamlet" and "Macbeth" than beside "Tom 
 Jones " and " Clarissa Harlowe.'' But in the general 
 applause of critics a note of dissatisfaction is audible, 
 which may grow louder as time advances. It is said that 
 the language of George Eliot is forced and pedantic, her 
 characters unreal, her tendency to preach and instruct 
 too evident. The reader is too continually before her 
 mind ; she anticipates his judgments, and tells him what 
 he ought to feel. On the other hand, it is possible that 
 she is the creator of a new style, and that coming genera- 
 tions will appreciate and imitate her, as the greatest 
 musicians wrote not for their own half-century, but for 
 the next. 
 
 The present volume, in its short compass, aims at 
 being both a biography and a criticism. Such a book 
 has her own approval. 
 
 "We have often wished," she says, "that when some great or 
 good personage dies, instead of the dreary three- or five-volumed 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 13 
 
 compilation of letters and diary and detail, little to tlie purpose, 
 whicii two-thirds of the reading public have not the chance, nor on 
 the other hand the inclination, to read, we could have a real ' Life,' 
 setting forth briefly and vividly the many inward and outward 
 struggles, aims and achievements, so as to make clear the meaning 
 which his experience has for his fellows." 
 
 The present writer is conscious how little he is qualified 
 to fulfil this ideal. He has no claims to offer but a friend- 
 ship of fifteen years, and a deep and unswerving devotion 
 to her mind and character. No attempt will be made 
 to relate new facts in her life. The Life written by her 
 husband must remain for a long time the received and 
 invariable account. To relate new facts, imperfectly 
 verified and uncorrelated with the whole story of the 
 life, might gratify an unhealthy curiosity, but would con- 
 duce to misconception. Some day, perhaps, George 
 Eliot will undergo the fate of Goethe. We shall know 
 how she spent every week of her existence, and how far 
 the scenes of her novels, even the most sensational, are 
 records of her own trials and experiences. . But Mr. 
 Cross has attempted very little of literary criticism, and 
 the field is still open for a work which, while respecting 
 his reticence and good taste, aims at describing, at once 
 the woman and the author. 
 ■y Mary Ann Evans was born at South Farm, Arbury, 
 on St. Cecilia's Day, November 22, 1819. Her father 
 was Robert Evans, the son of George Evans, who 
 was a carpenter and a builder in the small hamlet of 
 Roston, which lies on the very edge of Derbyshire, 
 overlooking the Dove and the hills of Staffordshire 
 beyond. The family were originally Welsh, and came 
 
14 LIFE OF 
 
 from Northop, in Flintshire. Robert Evans, when he 
 was grown up, moved to the lovely village of Ella- 
 stone, in Staffordshire, divided only by a bridge from 
 Norbury, of which Roston is almost a part. As a young 
 man Robert Evans became connected with the Newdi- 
 gate family. He formed with Mr. Francis Newdigate 
 a friendship similar to that between Adam Bede and 
 Arthur Donnithorne. Mr. Newdigate appointed him as 
 his agent at Kirk Hallara, on the other side of the 
 county ; but a few years later, on succeeding to the 
 Warwickshire estate, Mr. Newdigate took Robert Evans 
 with him. Three years later his first wife died, leaving 
 him with two children, the second of whom, Frances 
 Lucy, afterwards Mrs. Houghton, had great influence 
 over her younger sister. After four years widowhood 
 George Eliot's father married again, and had three chil- 
 dren, of whom Mary Ann was the youngest, being born 
 when her father was forty-eight years old. Her brother 
 Isaac, the Tom Tulliver of "The Mill on the Floss," and 
 the "brother" of the Sonnets, was her senior by three 
 years. The South Farm, Arbury, stands within the limits 
 of Arbury Park, and is approached from the carriage drive 
 through a short avenue of lofty elms. It is described as a 
 small, low-roofed farmhouse, nestling behind a clump of 
 trees, with open flat fields stretching away to the south. 
 It has a neat and well-kept garden, with cosy grounds and 
 surroundings. Within a day's walk of this little farmhouse, 
 as Mr. D. Parkinson tells us,' are all the spots and places 
 
 ' " Scenes from the 'George Eliot' Country.'' Leeds, iS88. I 
 am indebted to Mr. Parkinson for many of the local details which 
 are given in these pages. 
 
of Clerical Life." Looking up the avenue of elms and 
 across the park, one sees, less than a mile distant, the 
 front of Arbury Hall, the Cheverel Manor of " Mr. Gilfil's 
 Love-Story." To the west, about a mile distant, topping 
 a hill, stands Astley Church, the " Knebley Church " of 
 the story. To the north is Stockingford, the " Padiham 
 Common" of "Janet's Repentance." Five miles distant, 
 in the "flat, low-lying fields," is the town of Nuneaton, 
 the "Milby" of the same story; while a straggling 
 suburb of it is Chilvers Coton, known in the " Sad 
 Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton " under the name of 
 " Shepperton." 
 
 In March, 1820, when Mary Ann was four months 
 old, her family removed to Griff House, which stands on 
 the high road a little more than a mile from Nuneaton, i 
 It is a picturesque old residence, two stories high, more 
 like a manor house than a farm house. It is built of 
 deep red brick, covered with ivy. A lawn in front is 
 ■^ planted with tall trees. Behind the house are the farm 
 buildings, and a large garden with an old summer-house, 
 rich in memories of the novelist's childhood. The garden 
 is described in "Adam Bede" as "a true farm-house 
 garden, with hardy perennial flowers, uripruned fruit- 
 trees, and kitchen vegetables growing together in careless, 
 half-neglected abundance." " There were tall hollyhocks 
 beginning to flower and dazzle the eye with their pink, 
 white, and yellow; there were the syringas and Gueldres 
 roses, all large and disorderly for want of trimming;- 
 there were leafy walls of scarlet beans and late peas ; 
 there was a row of bushy filberts in one direction, and in 
 
16 LIFE OF 
 
 another a huge apple-tree making a barren circle under 
 its low-spreading boughs." Round the labourers' cottages, 
 which are close to Griff House, are refuse heaps from 
 deserted coal and iron pits, now changed into grass- 
 grown mounds of earth. At the back of the house are 
 paths leading to the "Round Pool," the "rookery 
 elms," and to the Grifif Hollows, where, under the name 
 of the " Red Deeps," Maggie Tulliver used to meet 
 Philip Wakem. 
 
 In this house Mary Ann Evans spent the first twenty- 
 one years of her life. Here she grew up with her 
 brother "like two buds that kiss" each other on the 
 slightest impulse. As he trudged along she lagged behind, 
 or trotted after him like a puppy. From this house they 
 wandered together with rod and line towards the far-off 
 stream. 
 
 " Our mother bade us keep the trodden ways, 
 Stroked down my tippet, set my brother's frill, 
 Then with the benediction of her gaze 
 Clung to us lessening, and pursued us still 
 Across the homestead, to the rookery elms. '' 
 
 The great events of the day were thepassing of the coaches 
 before the gate of Griff House, which lies at the bend 
 of the road between Coventry and Nuneaton. Two 
 coaches passed the door daily — one from Birmingham at 
 ten o'clock in the morning, and the other from Stamford 
 at three in the afternoon. The children used to watch 
 for their appearance eagerly from the window. George 
 Eliot's mother, Christiana Pearson, was a shrewd, 
 practical woman, not unlike Mrs. Poyser in "Adam 
 
Bede," or Mrs. Hackit in the "Scenes from Clerical 
 Life." She was at the time of her marriage slightly 
 above her husband' in social position. Mr. Cross says : 
 " Her family are, no doubt, prototypes of the Dodsons in 
 'The Mill on the Floss.'" There were three other 
 married sisters living in the neighbourhood of Griff, 
 and probably Mr. Evans heard a good deal about the 
 traditions of the Pearson family. 
 
 George Eliot received her first lessons in the cottage 
 of a Mrs. Moore, who kept a dame's school close to the- 
 gates of Griff. She was not a precocious child, but . 
 learned to read with some difficulty, and was very fond of 
 play. Mr. Cross says of her — " In her moral develop- 
 ment she showed, from the earliest years, the trait that 
 was most marked in her through life — namely, the- 
 absolute need of some one person who should be all in 
 all to her, and to whom she should be all in all. Very 
 jealous in her affections, and easily moved to smiles or 
 tears, she was of a nature capable of the keenest enjoy- 
 ment and the keenest suffering, ' knowing all the- 
 wealth and all the woe ' of a pre-eminently exclusive 
 disposition. She was affectionate, proud, and sensitive 
 in the highest degree." 
 
 At the age of five she went to join her sister Christiana 
 at a school kept by a Miss Lathom, at Attleborough, a 
 suburb of Nuneaton. Here the two sisters continued as 
 boarders for three or four years. The schoolhouse and 
 schoolrooms still exist, and are still devoted to the same 
 purpose. It is described by Mr. Parkinson as a sweet 
 little dwelling-house, covered with ivy, with everything 
 about it scrupulously orderly and clean. The memory of 
 
18 LIFE OF 
 
 Mary Ann Evans still lingers about the place "as an 
 awkward girl, reserved and serious far beyond her years, 
 but observant and addicted to the habit of sitting in 
 corners and watching her elders." Indeed a certain 
 awkwardness of manner was a salient characteristic of 
 George Eliot, and did not entirely disappear till the 
 last ten years of her life, when it was absorbed in 
 that kindly and majestic grace which has impressed it- 
 self on so many who have recorded her appearance. The 
 sisters came home to Griff every Saturday, but Mary 
 Ann's great delight was to join her brother once again 
 in the holidays and to discover all that he had been 
 doing and learning in her absence. The elder sister 
 Chrissey was always very neat and tidy, and was the 
 favourite of the aunts, whereas Mary Ann and her 
 brother were always together. The boy was her mother's 
 pet, and the girl her father's. He often took her with 
 him in his drives about the country. She stood between 
 his knees as he drove leisurely along, and drank in 
 everything with observant eyes. 
 
 The first book she ever read was " The Linnet's Life," 
 a present from her father. An old friend of the family 
 also gave her books which she read again and again 
 until she knew them by heart. Among them were ^sop's 
 Fables and Joe Miller's jest-book. When she was 
 seven years old she left home for the first time for a 
 week's journey in Derbyshire and Staffordshire, the 
 I Stonyshire and Loamshire of "Adam Bede." At the age 
 of eight she was sent to a large school at Nuneaton, 
 kept by Miss Wallington. Here she made acquaintance 
 with the works of Scott and Charles Lamb, also with the 
 
"History of the Devil" by Defoe. Her copy of this, 
 illustrated by strange pictures, is still ^preserved at Griff. 
 "The Pilgrim's Progress" and " Rasselas " were also 
 favourite objects of study. The principal governess of 
 the school was Miss Lewis, who remained- for many 
 years a devoted friend of George Eliot's. Many of 
 her letters to this lady have been published by Mr. 
 Cross. 
 
 The years from twelve to fifteen, most important years 
 of growth, were spent at a school at Coventry, kept by two 
 sisters, daughters of a Baptist minister named Franklin. 
 The house still stands as No 48 of Little Park Street, in 
 the centre of the town, near St. Michael's Church. The 
 younger sister. Miss Rebecca Franklin, was a woman of 
 rare attainments, a beautiful writer, remarkable for the 
 elegance and correctness of her speech. It was to her 
 that George Eliot owed that preciseness of phrase and 
 delivery which afterwards distinguished her; and from 
 her perhaps she acquired her gift of English style, which 
 beginning with formal primness, not devoid of affectation, 
 acquired afterwards the genial fulness of imagination and 
 diction which has placed her in the first rank of English 
 writers. The tone of the school was deeply Evangelical. 
 Prayer meetings wete in vogue among the pupils. Here, 
 as in her own family, she was surrounded by those strong 
 religious influences of a Calvinistic type which so power- 
 fully affected her mind in its first development. I 
 remember her once telling me, when speaking of the 
 attitude which she then held towards Christianity, 
 how her early years had been passed amongst sur- 
 roundings of the strictest orthodoxy. She left school 
 
20 LIFE OF 
 
 in December, 1835, being called home by the illness of 
 her mother, who died in the following summer. Not 
 long afterwards her sister married, and the charge of the 
 household and the farm devolved upon George Eliot. 
 She became an adept at butter-making, and she used to 
 declare in later years that her right hand was broader 
 than her left from the amount of butter which she had 
 made in her youth. She writes to Miss Lewis with fingers 
 tremulous from the boiling of currant jelly, and again 
 with a stupid, drowsy sensation produced by " standing 
 sentinel over damson cheese and a warm stove." At 
 another period sewing is her staple article of commerce 
 with the hard trader Time. Yet she was able to devote 
 a large amount of attention to charitable and intellectual 
 pursuits. She visited the poor and organized clothing 
 clubs. She learnt Italian and German from Signer 
 Brezzi, of Coventry, who often spoke of the marvellous 
 ease with which she acquired languages. She had been 
 the show pianist at Miss Franklin's school, and with 
 ~ developed powers was able to gratify her father's love of 
 music. Her condition at this period is best shown in a 
 letter to Miss Lewis, of September 4, 1839, which also 
 exhibits her innate fondness for the use of scientific 
 metaphor. 
 
 " I have lately led so unsettled a life, and have been so desultory 
 in my employments, that my mind, never of the most highly 
 organized genus, is more than usually chaotic ; or rather it is like a 
 stratum of conglomerated fr^ments, that shows here a jaw and rib 
 of some ponderous quadruped, there a delicate alto-relievo of some 
 fern-like plant, tmy shells, and mysterious nondescripts encrusted 
 and united with some unvaried and uninteresting but useful stone. 
 
My mind presents just such an assemblage of 4isjointed specimens 
 of history, ancient and modern, scraps of poetry picked up from 
 Shakspeare, Cowper, Wordsworth, and Milton ; newspaper topics ; 
 morsels of Addison and Bacon, Latin verbs, geometry, ento- 
 mology, and chemistry ; Reviews and metaphysics — all arrested and 
 petrified and smothered by the fast-thickening anxiety of actual 
 events, relative anxieties, and household cares and vexations. . . . 
 Remember Michaelmas is coming, and I shall be engaged in 
 , matters so nauseating to me that it will be a charity to console me." 
 
 She wrote again on November 22nd, her twentieth 
 birthday : " I have emerged from the slough of domestic 
 troubles, or rather, to speak quite clearly, malhmrs de 
 iuisine" She now begins to take great interest in the study 
 of Wordsworth, and had before this made her first 
 appearance as an author. She had scribbled prose and 
 poetry from her early childhood, but her earliest known 
 composition is the stanzas printed in the Christian 
 Observer for January, 1840, of which the refrain is 
 " Farewell ! " They exhibit the defects of her later poetry 
 without the glow of eloquence to which it occasionally 
 rises. She was also' busied with preparing a Chart of 
 Ecclesiastical History, a design which was given up 
 when a better one was published. Her mind was drawn 
 early to history, and especially to that form of the study 
 which delights in realizing the life of bygone ages. We 
 find this tendency in her later admiration of Monteil 
 and Riehl. "Romola," the best historical novel ever 
 written, and in the opinion of many the foremost of her 
 works, had its roots deep in the foundation of her mind. 
 The life at Griff, so strange a mixture of the practical and 
 the ideal, was put an end to by her removal to Coventry. 
 Her brother Isaac married ; her father was becoming old 
 
22 LIFE OF 
 
 and feeble. It seemed natural that the son should 
 succeed to GrifT and that the father should retire. So in 
 March, 1S41, father and daughter remove to Foleshill, a 
 semi-detached villa just on the outskirts of Coventry. A 
 new hfe with unexpected developments was to open 
 upon George Eliot. 
 
 Her next-door neighbour at Foleshill was Mrs. Pears, 
 who soon grew into the more precious character of a 
 friend. At her house she met for the first time Mr. and 
 Mrs. Bray of Rosehill. He was a wealthy ribbon 
 manufacturer, with a large house in the outskirts of the 
 town. He had at this time published the " Education 
 of the Feelings," and the " Philosophy of Necessity," 
 liis most important work. He was a sincere believer in 
 phrenology, and persuaded George Eliot to have her 
 head shaved in order that a caste might be taken of it, 
 which still exists. His wife was the sister of Mr. Charles 
 Hennell, who had published in 1838 "An Inquiry Con- 
 cerning the Origin of Christianity," a remarkable book, 
 which was translated into German, with a preface by 
 Strauss. There is no doubt that the study of this book 
 produced a profound effect on George Eliot's, religious 
 opinions. Her life at this time is thus described by one 
 who nmst have known it well : — 
 
 ' ' In this somewhat now popular neighbourhood she soon became 
 known as a person of more than common interest, and, moreover, 
 as a most devoted daughter, and the excellent manager of her 
 father's household. There was, perhaps, little at first sight which 
 betokened genius in that quiet, gentle-mannered girl with pale 
 grave face, naturally pensive in expression ; and ordinary acquaint- 
 ances regarded her chiefly for the kindness and sympathy which 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 23 
 
 were never wanting to any. But to those with whom, by some un- 
 spoken affinity, her soul could expand, her expressive grey eyes would 
 light up with intense meaning and humour, and the low sweet voice, 
 with its peculiar mannerism of speaking — which, by the way, wore 
 oft in after-years — would give utterance to thoughts so rich and 
 singular that converse with Miss Evans, even in those days, made 
 speech with other people seem flat and common. At Foleshill, 
 with ample means and leisure, her real education began. She took 
 lessons in Greek and Latin from the Rev. J. Sheepshanks, then 
 head-master of the Coventry Grammar School, and she acquired 
 French, German, and Italian from Signor Brezzi. An acquaintance 
 with Hebrew was the result of her own unaided efforts. From 
 Mr. Simms, the veteran organist of St. Michael's, Coventry, she 
 received lessons in music, although it was her own fine musical 
 sense which made her in after-years an admirable pianoforte player. 
 Nothing once learned escaped her marvellous memory ; and her 
 keen sympathy with all human feelings, in which lay the secret of 
 her power of discriminating character, caused a constant fund of 
 knowledge to flow into her treasurehouse from the social world 
 around her. In Mr. Bray's family she found sympathy with her 
 ardent love of knowledge, and with the more enlightened views 
 that had begun to supplant those under which (as she described it) 
 her spirit had been grievously burdened. Emerson, Froude, 
 George Combe, Roberts, Mackay, and many other men of mark 
 were at various times guests at Mr. Bray's house at Rosehill, while 
 Miss Evans was there either as an ' inmate or occasional visitor ;. 
 and many a time might have been seen, pacing up and down the 
 lawn, or grouped under an old acacia, men of thought and research, 
 discussing all things in heaven and earth, and listening with marked 
 attention when one gentle woman's voice was heard to utter what 
 they were quite sure had been well matured before the lips opened. 
 Few, if any, could feel themselves her superior in general intelli- 
 gence, and it was amusing one day to see the amazement of a certain 
 doctor, who, venturing on a. quotation from Epictetus to an unas- 
 suming young lady, was, with modest politeness, corrected in his 
 Greek by his feminine auditor. One real characteristic belonged to 
 her which gave a peculiar charm to her conversation. She had no 
 petty egotism, no spirit of contradiction. She never talked for 
 
24 LIFE OF 
 
 effect. A happy thought well expressed filled her with delight ; in 
 a moment she would seize the point and improve upon it — so that 
 common people began to feel themselves wise in her presence, and 
 perhaps years after she would remind them, to their pride and 
 surprise, of the good things they had said." ' 
 
 The friendship with the Brays bore such speedy fruit 
 that at the end of 1841 she determined to give up going 
 to church. This nearly produced a rupture with her 
 father, who threatened to leave Foleshill and live with 
 his married daughter, while Miss Evans was to remove 
 to Leamington and to support herself by teaching. After 
 a painful struggle of two months George Eliot went to 
 stay with her brother at the old house of Griff, where she 
 was treated with every delicacy and consideration. She 
 writes, however — "I do not intend to remain here longer 
 than three weeks, or, at the very farthest, a month ; and 
 if I am not then recalled, I shall write for definite direc- 
 tions. I must have a home, not a visiting place." Before 
 the close of the month matters were arranged. Her father 
 received her back again, and she went to church as 
 before. This collision with her father, which she thought 
 might have been avoided, caused her regret to the end 
 of her life. 
 
 Six months later she wrote to her friend. Miss Sara 
 Hennell, her views on the subject of conformity, which 
 showed how her deep-seated charity and sympathy with 
 others made her less inclined to dwell on the value of 
 her individual convictions. She tells her that the first 
 impulse of a young and ingenuous mind is to withhold 
 
 ' Pall Mall Budget, December 31, 1S80. 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 25 
 
 the slightest sanction from all that contains even a 
 mixture of supposed error ; that the soul just liberated 
 from the wretched giant's bed of dogmas on which it 
 has been racked and stretched ever since it began to 
 think has a feeling of exultation and strong hope, which 
 prompts it to proselytize others. But years bring reflec- 
 tion. Speculative truth begins to appear but a shadow 
 of individual minds, and the truth of feeling is seen to 
 be the only universal bond of union. Intellectual errors 
 cannot be wrenched away from the living body without 
 destroying vitality, -i The only safe revolution for in- 
 dividuals, as for nations, is that which arises from the 
 wants which their own progress has generated. It is 
 the quackery of infidelity to suppose that it has a 
 nostrum for all mankind, and to say to all and singular 
 — " Swallow my opinions, and you shall be whole." The 
 best and the only way of fulfilling our mission is to sow 
 good seed in good, that is, in prepared ground, and not 
 to root up tares where we must inevitably gather all the 
 wheat with them. This conviction remained with her to 
 the end of her life. It induced her to say nothing in 
 her books which could hurt the feelings of a single be- 
 lieving soul. "The great thing to teach,'' she once 
 wrote to me, " is reverence^reverence for the hard-won 
 inheritance of the ages." 
 
 In 1842 a number of friends and guests of Mr. Joseph 
 Parkes, the well-known Parliamentary agent of the 
 Liberal party, determined that the best way of helping 
 on the development of free religious thought in England 
 was to translate the " Leben Jesu " of Strauss — a book 
 of unsparing destructive criticism of the sources of the 
 
26 LIFE OF 
 
 life of Christ. Funds were subscribed for the purpose, 
 and Mr. Hennell undertook to find a translator. The 
 work was entrusted to Miss Brabant, the daughter of Dr. 
 Brabant, of Devizes, a lady who, as Mrs. Call, still pre- 
 serves in all their freshness the memories of that distin- 
 guished circle. When the translation had reached to 
 page 218 of vol. i. it was interrupted by the marriage of 
 Miss Brabant to Mr. Hennell; and Miss Evans, who 
 had met Miss Brabant in an excursion to Tenby, under- 
 took to complete the work. It occupied her about two 
 years and a quarter, and had an important effect on her 
 intellectual development. She told me that her greatest 
 difficulty was to find the exact English equivalents for 
 German particles. The training thus received, laborious 
 and even repulsive as it was at the time, must have been 
 analogous to that which is derived from the minute 
 study of the classics. It exercised her mind in scholar- 
 ship, made it easy for her to pursue her reading of 
 Greek Hterature, and formed the habit of piercing into 
 the depths of an author's meaning, which is the character- 
 istic of the scholar. " I can never,'' she once said to 
 me, "understand anything of a Greek writer until I 
 have come to comprehend every word " — a slow and 
 laborious process, — " whereas George," she added some- 
 what archly, " can tell the meaning at a glance.'' It is 
 strange that in the progress of the translation she should 
 complain of the illegibility of a handwriting which was at 
 a later period such a marvel of beauty and neatness. 
 The money for printing the book was only obtained 
 with difficulty, and Miss Evans received a paltry sum for 
 her trouble. Strauss was thoroughly satisfied with the 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 27 
 
 English dress which his work had assumed, and a com- 
 petent reviewer not only praised the easy, perspicuous, 
 idiomatic, and harmonious foirm of the English style, but 
 declared the rendering to be word for word, thought for 
 thought, and sentence for sentence. 
 
 It is only natural to find George Ehot at last dis- 
 satisfied with the purely negative character of the work 
 in which she was occupied. She fairly broke down at 
 the account of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, and 
 of the bursting asunder of Judas. She describes herself 
 as Strauss-sick — it makes her ill dissecting the beau- 
 tiful story of the Crucifixion, and only the sight of 
 " the Christ image and picture " makes her endure it. In 
 her study at Foleshill stood a biscuit copy of Thorwald- 
 sen's grand conception of Christ, and on this she was 
 wont to gaze for inspiration and comfort, just as in later 
 years a cast of the head of the Melian Asclepius stood 
 before her writing-table at the Priory to lift her from 
 thoughts of the modern world. The remorseless analysis 
 of the German theologian did not prevent her from still 
 feeling the beauty of the meeting at Enimaus, so "universal 
 in its significance." "The soul that has hopelessly followed 
 Jesus — its impersonation of the highest and the best — 
 all in despondency ; its thoughts all refuted, its dreams 
 all dissipated ! Then comes another Jesus — another, 
 but the same — the same highest and best, only 
 chastened — crucified instead of triumphant — and the 
 soul learns that this is the true way to conquest and 
 glory. And then there is the burning of the heart, which 
 assures that ' this was the Lord ! ' — that this is the inspi- 
 ration from above — the true comforter that leads unto 
 
28 LIFE OF 
 
 truth." The "Life of Jesus" was published on June 15, 
 1846, and it is satisfactory to know that every copy of 
 the work was eventually sold. 
 
 During this labour she had been greatly saddened by 
 the failing health of her father, who was now advanced 
 in years. In July, 1846, when they were staying at Dover, 
 unmistakable signs of impending dissolution appeared, 
 although the end did not come until three years later. 
 During this period she was cheered by new friendships, 
 and the letters to Miss Mary Sibree, now Mrs. Cash, and 
 her brother John, contain sentences which are worthy to be 
 numbered amongst her wise, witty, and tender sayings — 
 
 "Do not go to old people as oracles on matters which date 
 later than their thirty-fifth year. . . . Love, cherish, and venerate 
 the old ; but never imagine that 1 worn-out, dried-up organization 
 can be so rich in inspiration as one which is full fraught with life and 
 energy. . .. No mind that has any real life is a mere echo of another. 
 If the perfect unison comes occasionally, as in music, it enhances 
 the harmonies. It is like a diffusion or e.Npansion of one's own life, 
 to be assured that its vibrations are repeated in another, and words 
 are the media of those vibrations. Is not the universe itself a 
 perpetual utterance of the one Being? . . . Take long doses of 
 dolce far niente, and be in no great hurry about anything in this 
 'varsal world. Do we not commit ourselves to sleep and so resign 
 all care for ourselves every night, lay ourselves gently on the bosom 
 of nature and God ? " 
 
 Other letters are curious when considered in reference 
 to her future work and life. The future author of " The 
 Spanish Gypsy " and " Daniel Deronda " speaks of the 
 fellowship of race as an inferior impulse which must 
 ultimately be superseded. She declares that the Gentile 
 nature kicks most resolutely against any assumption or 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 29 
 
 superiority in the Jews, and is almost ready to echo 
 Voltaire's vituperation — 
 
 " I bow to the supremacy of Hebrew poeiry, but much of their 
 early mythology, and almost all their history, is utterly revolting. 
 Their stock has produced a Moses and a Jesus ; but Moses was 
 impregnated with Egyptian philosophy, and Jesus is venerated and 
 adored by usonly for that wherein He transcended or resisted Judaism, 
 ■ . . Everything specifically Jewish is of a low grade." 
 
 In another letter she says that the older the world gets, 
 originality becomes less possible, and that genius which 
 is deterred from describing highly-wrought agony or 
 ecstatic sorrow will probably turn itself to the gentler 
 emotions. This throws great light on the development 
 of her art Once again, in an aspiration soon to be grati- 
 fied, she longs for " the bliss of having a very high attic 
 in a romantic continental town such as Geneva, far away 
 from morning callers, dinners, and decencies, and then to 
 pause for a year to think de omnibus rebus, et quibusdam 
 aliis, and then return to life, and work for poor stricken 
 humanity and never think of self again." 
 
 The constant care of her father produced great de-, 
 pression. She dwells in " Grief Castle, on the Ruins of 
 Gloom, in the Valley of Dolour." She is like a poor 
 pebble left entangled among slimy weeds, which hears 
 from afar the rushing of the blessed torrent, and rejoices 
 that it is there to bathe and brighten other pebbles less 
 unworthy of the polishing. Her life is a perpetual night- 
 mare, always haunted by something to be done which 
 she has never the time or rather the energy to do. To 
 steady her mind she begins a translation of the " Trac- 
 
30 LIFE OF 
 
 tatus Theologico-Politicus " of Spinoza. She sat for 
 hours by her father's side, and never was a patient more 
 admirably and thoroughly cared for. At last the end 
 came. He died in the night of May 31, 1849. " What 
 shall I be without my father ! " she cried. " It will seem 
 as if a part of my moral nature were gone." 
 
 It happened, fortunately, that the bereaved daughter 
 was soon able to seek the best remedy for mental 
 suffering in a foreign tour. She left England a week 
 after her father's funeral, and in the company of the 
 Brays, went first to the South of France, then to Nice, 
 Genoa, and Milan ; and then returning northwards by 
 the way of Como, Maggiore, and the Simplon, she went 
 to Chamouni by the valley of the Rhone, and so passed 
 to Geneva. No letter or diary is published relating to 
 this first foreign tour. Her nerves were so shattered 
 that it is said she could not bear the precipitous slopes 
 even of the carriage passes, and the time of year must 
 have been too late for Italy and too early for Switzerland. 
 At Geneva she determined to remain, and spent there 
 eight happy months. Little is known of her studies and 
 occupation during this important time. All great natures 
 require a period of solitude and rest, of self-collection and 
 self-inspiration for the fulfilment of their missions. The 
 quiet and repose of the Genevan sojourn mark the tran- 
 sition from a period of feverish and fitful growth to one 
 of consciousness of power, and a determination of the 
 best means to reveal herself to the world. Although alone 
 she met with kind and sympathetic friends. During 
 August and September she stayed at the Campagne 
 Plongeon, a boarding-house just outside the town, nest- 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 31 
 
 ling amongst trees. In October she took lodgings in 
 the house of M. Albert Durade, 107, Rue des Chanoines." 
 M. Durade was an artist, and his portrait of George Eliot 
 is one of the most precious relics of this period. He was 
 also a musician, and a man of great refinement of cha- 
 racter. He was a little man with a humped back, and 
 may have suggested Philip Wakem. Madame Durade, 
 with " less of genius and more of cleverness," treated 
 her English guest like a mother. " My want of 
 health," she writes in December, ''has obliged me to 
 renounce all application. I take walks, play on the 
 piano, read Voltaire, talk to my friends, and just take a 
 dose of mathematics every day to prevent my brain 
 from becoming quite soft." In another letter she tells 
 the Brays, " I breakfast in my own room at half-past 
 eight, lunch at half-past twelve, and dine at five or a 
 little after, and take tea at eight. From the tea-table I 
 have gone into the salon and chatted until bed-time." 
 Her letters are full of affection for the friends she has 
 left behind her. " My heart ties are not loosened by 
 distance . . . and when I think of my loved ones or those 
 to whom I can be a comforter, a help, I long to be with 
 them again." Otherwise she only thought with a shudder 
 of returning to England. It appeared to her as a land 
 of gloom, of ennui, of platitude. " But in the midst of 
 all this it is the land of duty and affection, and the only 
 ardent hope I have for my future life is to have given to 
 
 ' Her room, still shown, is on the second floor of what is now 18, 
 Rue de la Pelisserie. It has a bed in an alcove, and two windows 
 looking down the Rue Calvin. It is approached by a steep, stone 
 winding staircase. 
 
82 LIFE OF 
 
 me some woman's duty — some possibility of devoting 
 myself where I may see a daily result of pure calm 
 blessedness in the life of another." The severe winter 
 of Geneva tried her much, and she suffered from frequent 
 headaches; yet she was able to attend the lectures of 
 Professor de la Rive on Experimental Physics. In 
 the middle of March she left Geneva, accompanied by 
 M. Durade. They had to cross the Jura in sledges, 
 and suffered terribly from the cold. Arriving in London 
 on March 23rd, she went straight to Rosehill, and must 
 have heard at once of the possibility of her lodging at Mr. 
 Chapman's house in London, a plan which she after- 
 wards carried out. She visited her brother at Griff, and 
 her sister, Mrs. Clarke, at Meriden. But these did not 
 satisfy her. " Oh ! the dismal weather," she writes, "and 
 the dismal country, and the dismal people. It was 
 some envious demon that drove me across the Jura." 
 It would seem that the companionship of Adam Bede 
 and Mrs. Poyser was not as pleasant as the recollection 
 of them in a suburban villa. In May she returned to 
 Rosehill again, and stayed there till November. There she 
 wrote a review of Mackay's " Progress of the Intellect," 
 which appeared in the Westminster Review for January, 
 185 1. This has not been reprinted, as by her express 
 wish no writings of hers have been republished which 
 appeared earlier than 1857. It contains, however, an 
 independent statement of the views at which she had 
 then arrived with regard to the progressive education of 
 the human race. The success of this article seems to 
 have involved her more completely in the enterprize 
 which Mr. Chapman was then inaugurating, — the starting 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 33 
 
 of the Westminster Review under new auspices. She 
 took part in drawing up the prospectus of the new journal, 
 and in September went to live at Mr. Chapman's house, 
 with the definite post of assistant editor. 
 
 In this capacity the choice and arrangement of 
 articles fell principally on her shoulders. She was thus 
 brought into close contact with many of the most dis- 
 tinguished among the advanced thinkers and writers of 
 the day, but she had an opportunity of meeting a more 
 general circle in the fortnightly gatherings which were 
 held at Mr. Chapman's house. Amongst her first friends 
 made in this manner was Mr. Herbert Spencer, with whom 
 she became extremely intimate. He takes her, with Mr. 
 Chapman, to the theatre and to the opera. She writes 
 of him : " We have agreed that there is no reason why 
 ■ice should not have as much of each other's society as 
 we like. He is a good, delightful creature, and I always 
 feel better for being with him." Again, " My brightest 
 spot, next to my love of old friends, is the deliciously 
 calm new friendship that Herbert Spencer gives me. 
 We see each other every day, and have a delightful 
 camaraderie in everything." Mr. Spencer is thus the 
 best living repository of the traditions of that period, 
 which some day he may perhaps give to the world. He 
 it was who first discovered that the genius of George 
 Eliot lay in writing romance. He had always recom- 
 mended her to adopt this course, and one day when 
 visiting at Park Shot, George Lewes told him that she 
 had begun, and showed him the manuscript of the 
 "Scenes of Clerical Life." A letter to the Brays, written in 
 November, 1852, gives a vivid idea of her occupations — 
 
 3 
 
34 LIFE OF 
 
 " I will just tell you how it was last Saturday, and tha 
 you an idea of my days. My task was to read an artick 
 in the North Briiis.'t, on Taxation, a heap of newspapi 
 and all that J. S. Mill says on the same subject. When 
 some way into this magnum mare, in comes Mr. Chapm 
 thick German volume. ' Will you read enough of this t 
 your opinion of it ? ' Then of course I must have a 
 lunch, and when I had set down again, thinking that 
 clear hours before dinner, rap at the door, Mr. Lewe 
 course, sits talking till the second bell rings. After dinn 
 visitor, and so behold me, at II p.m., still so very far at : 
 subject of Taxation, but too tired to keep my eyes open.' 
 
 George Henry Lewes, whose name occurs ir 
 quotation, and who was destined to have so i 
 an effect upon her life, was at this time a w£ 
 figure in London literary circles. Coming to L 
 1839, and contributing to a large number of joi 
 had written a " Biographical History of Phil 
 which, beginning in two small volumes, a 
 e.xpanded into two portly tomes. He had ] 
 two novels, a tragedy, and a " Life of Rob 
 His bright eyes, his long black hair, his plain anc 
 marked features, are well known to many nc 
 who also remember his ready wit, his admirab 
 tality, his exquisite French, and his never-faili 
 ness. George Eliot, when she first met him, c: 
 a Mirabeau in miniature. He was afterwards 
 introduced to her by Herbert Spencer, an 
 rapidly to have gained the first place in her 
 With the exception of a review of Carlyle's 
 Sterling," in January, 1852, she did not contril 
 thing of her own to the Westminster until the 
 
GEORGE ELIOT 35 
 
 " Women in France : Madame de Sabl6," in October, 
 1854. This was followed by "Evangelical Teaching: 
 Dr. Gumming," in October, 1855; "German Wit: 
 Heinrich Heine," in January, 1856; "Silly Novels by 
 Lady Novelists," October, 1856 ; " The Natural History 
 of German Life; a review of Riehl," in July, 1856; and 
 " Worldliness and Other-worldliness : the Poetry of 
 Young," in January, 1857. The last five of these, with 
 the exception of the " Silly Novels," have been reprinted 
 in her works. Yet this is full of humour and sarcasm, 
 and perhaps for that reason the strong moral hold which 
 she always kept over her tongue prevented her from 
 reproducing it. It contains also a sketch of English 
 country life, which announces the future author of 
 " Adam Bede." She complains of the want of reality 
 with which peasant life is commonly treated in art> 
 and goes on to remark — 
 
 "The notion that peasants are joyous, that the typical moment: 
 to represent a man in a smock frock is when he is cracking a joke 
 and showing a row of sound teeth, that cottage matrons are 
 usually buxom, and village children necessarily rosy and merry, are 
 prejudices difiScult to dislodge from the artistic mind which takes, 
 for its subjects such literature instead of life. Idyllic ploughmen 
 are jocund when they drive their team afield ; idyllic shepherds- 
 make bashful love under hawthorn bushes ; idyllic villagers dance 
 in the chequered shade, and refresh themselves most immoderately 
 with spicy nut-brown ale. But no' one who has seen much of 
 actual ploughmen thinks them jocund, no one who is well acquain- 
 ted with the English peasantry can pronounce them merry. The 
 slow gaze, in which no sense of beauty beams, no humour twinkles ; 
 the slow utterance, and the heavy, slouching walk, remind one 
 rather of that melancholy animal the camel, than of the sturdy 
 countryman with striped stockings, red waistcoat, and hat aside, 
 who represents the traditional English peasant. That delicious 
 
36 LIFE OF 
 
 effervescence of mind which we call fun has no equivalent for the 
 northern peasant, except tipsy revelry ; the only realm of fancy and 
 imagination for the English clown exists at the bottom of the third 
 quart pot." 
 
 Her attack on Dr. Gumming is very scathing : 
 
 ' ' Given a man with a. moderate intellect, a moral standard not 
 higher than the average, some rhetorical affluence, and great glib- 
 ness of speech, which is the career in which, without aid of birth or 
 money, he may most easily obtain power and reputation in English 
 society ? Where is that Goshen of intellectual mediocrity, in which 
 a smattering of science and learning will pass for profound instruc- 
 tion, where platitudes will be accepted as wisdom, bigoted manners 
 as holy zeal, unctuous egotism as God-given piety ! Let such a 
 man become an evangelical preacher ; he will then find it possible 
 to reconcile such ability with great ambition, superficial know- 
 ledge with the prestige of erudition, a middling morale with a high 
 reputation for sanctity. Let him show practical extremes, and be 
 .ultra in what is only purely theoretic. Let him be stringent in 
 predestination, but latitudinarian in fasting ; unflinching in insisting 
 .on the eternity of punishment, but diffident of curtailing the sub- 
 stantial comforts of time ; ardent and imaginative on the pre- 
 millenial advent of Christ, but cold and cautious towards every 
 . other infringement of the status quo. . . . Above all, let him set up 
 .as an interpreter of prophecy, rival 'Moore's Almanack' in the 
 prediction of political events, trebling the interest of hearers who 
 are but moderately spiritual by showing them how the Holy Spirit 
 has dictated problems and charades for their benefit, and how, if 
 they are ingenious enough to solve them, they may have their 
 Christian graces nourished by learning precisely to whom they may 
 point as the ' man that had eyes,' the ' lying prophet,' and the ' un- 
 clean spirits.' In this way he will draw men to him by the strong 
 cords of their passions, made reason-proof by being baptized by the 
 name of piety. In this way he may gain a metropolitan pulpit ; the 
 avenues to his church will be as crowded as the passages to the 
 opera ; he has but to print his prophetic sermons, and bind them in 
 lilac and gold, and they will adorn the drawing-room table of all 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 37 
 
 Evangelical ladies, who will regard as a sort of pious ' light 
 reading ' the demonstration that the prophecy of the locusts, whose 
 sting is in their tail, is fulfilled in the fact of the Turkish commander 
 having taken a horse's tail for his standard ; and that the French 
 are the very frogs predicted in the Revelation." 
 
 In the mean time the intimacy with Mr. Lewes was 
 growing gradually stronger. She writes in the spring of 
 1853: "I am in for loads of work next quarter, but 
 I shall not tell you what I am going to do. . . . Lewes, 
 as always, genial and amusing. He has quite won my 
 liking, in spite of myself." And a month later : " People 
 are very good to me. Mr. Lewes especially is kind 
 and attentive, and has quite won my regard, after having 
 had a good deal of my vituperation. Like a few other 
 people in the world, he is much better than he seems. 
 A man of heart and conscience wearing a mask of 
 flippancy." After a summer spent at St. Leonards, she 
 determines to leave Mr. Chapman's house, and takes 
 lodgings on the ground floor of No. 21, Cambridge 
 Street, Hyde Park. It was this change of lodgings, and 
 not the journey to Weimar, as is generally supposed, 
 which marked the commencement of the union with 
 Mr. Lewes. This new life had a favourable effect upon 
 her health. She writes on her thirty- fourth ■ birthday : 
 "I begin this year more happily than I have done 
 most years of my life. . . . We may both find ourselves 
 at the end of the year going faster to the hell of con- 
 scious moral and intellectual weakness. Still there is 
 I a possibility — even a probability — the other way." She 
 now makes arrangements for surrendering the editorship 
 of the Westminster Review. She translates Feuerbach's 
 
38 LIFE OF 
 
 " Essence of Christianity," and announces a book on 
 " The Idea of a Future Life," which, however, was never 
 pubhshed, and perhaps never written. Mr. Lewes was 
 at this time literarj' editor of the Leader, a paper far in 
 advance of its age, the proprietor of which, Mr. Edward 
 Pigott, Her Majesty's inspector of plays, still lives to enjoy 
 the respect and affection of all who know him. Mr. Lewes 
 falls ill, George Eliot has to nurse him, and to do his 
 work for the Leader. At last the translation of Feuer- 
 bach is published, and the workman is free to depart. 
 
 She writes to Miss Hennell on July loth : " I shall 
 soon send you a goodbye, for I am preparing to go 
 abroad (?) " And she writes ten days later : 
 
 " Dear Friends, — all three — I have only time to say good-bye, 
 and God bless you. Foste Restante, Weimar, for the next six 
 weeks, and afterwards Berlin. 
 
 " Ever your loving and. grateful 
 
 "Marian." 
 
 On that very day she left London for Antwerp with 
 Mr. Lewes, and the Leader found itself unexpectedly 
 Tvithout an editor. 
 
 The union of George Eliot with George Henry Lewes 
 ■was the most important event in her life. It was a 
 true marriage, undertaken with all the deliberation and 
 solemnity with which such a step should be contemplated. 
 She had already written in her translation of Feuerbach (p. 
 268), "a marriage, the bond of which is merely an external 
 restriction, not the voluntary, contented self-restriction 
 of love ; in short, a marriage which is not spontaneously 
 concluded, spontaneously willed, self-sufficing, is not a 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 39 
 
 true marriage, and therefore not a truly moral marriage." 
 This union was a source of strength and happiness to 
 both the parties who contracted it. The dedications 
 of the manuscript of each succeeding novel declare 
 in varying language how her beloved husband was 
 the only source of all her insight, and all her strength, 
 She was, I have said, of a nature which peeded some 
 one to lean- upon, and he worshipped and guarded 
 her with a never-failing tenderness of affection. " Polly," 
 as he used to call her, was in his eyes at once the 
 greatest of living geniuses, and the best and the most 
 loveable of women. Without his insight into literary 
 faculty, and his sustaining sympathy, it is doubtful 
 whether she would have produced the writings which 
 have made her fame, and which were only born at the cost 
 of so much travail and' self-renunciation. It is needless 
 to gratify a morbid curiosity as to the origin or develop- 
 ment of the relations between them. Miss Evans fell 
 in love with Lewes as she had fallen in love with 
 others, for she had a strong , passionate nature. She was 
 once, at a period which I have not been able to verify, 
 engaged to an artist whose subsequent career made it 
 a happiness to her that the marriage was never carried 
 out. Perhaps some of the more passionate scenes in 
 her novels are transcripts from Her own experiences. 
 Lewes was evidently subdued by her large commanding 
 nature, and her burning power of sympathy. Marriage 
 in the ordinary sense was impossible, as Lewes's -wife 
 was still alive, and circumstances which need not be 
 here related had made a divorce impracticable. There was 
 some talk at a later period of marriage abroad, but it 
 
40 LIFE OF 
 
 was never put into effect. A fable was invented by society 
 that Mrs. Lewes was dead, but it had no foundation. 
 The travellers went to Weimar as Mr. Lewes and Miss 
 Evans, and it is believed that it was only by the advice 
 of Mr. Arthur Helps, who accompanied them on the 
 second visit to Ettersburg, on August 29th, that they 
 determined thenceforth to call themselves man and wife. 
 The Court of Weimar did not at first understand the rela- 
 tionship, and it was not until just before their departure 
 from Weimar that Lewes was invited to the Palace, 
 and charmed the ducal circle by the fascination of his 
 conversation. 
 
 Of the eight months they spent abroad, three were 
 passed at Weimar, and five at Berlin. They were days 
 of unclouded happiness and steady work. Indeed, it 
 is difficult to understand why George Eliot, who was 
 always most happy and most productive under the 
 circumstances of foreign life, should have lived so much 
 in England, except that her husband was a confirmed 
 Londoner. Their lodgings at Weimar were at the 
 corner of a short street leading out of the Market Place, 
 not far from the Park. They visited Ilmenau, after- 
 wards a favourite resort of George Eliot's. They met 
 Strauss at Cologne, and Liszt at Weimar. At Berlin 
 they moved more freely among literary circles. They 
 were received kindly by Varnhagen von Ense ; they de- 
 lighted in the society of Ranch the sculptor, and in the 
 congenial companionship of Adolf Stahr and Fanny 
 Lewald. " They were very happy months," she says, " we 
 spent at Berlin, in spite of the bitter cold which came on 
 in January, and lasted almost till we left. How we used 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 41 
 
 to rejoice in the idea of our warm room and coffee as 
 we battled our way from dinner against the wind and 
 snow ! Then came the delightful long evenings, in which 
 we read Shakspeare, Goethe, Heine, and Macaulay, 
 with German Pfefferkuchen and Semvieh at the end 
 to complete the noctes cenczque defim.'' They dined at 
 the Hotel de I'Europe, and read books at table ! They 
 walked at night along the Linden, and over the bridge 
 towards the Schloss. The time was well spent. While 
 Lewes worked at his Life of Goethe, in which he had the 
 benefit of her criticisms, she reviewed Victor Cousin's 
 " Madame de Sabld " and Vehse's " Court of Austria," 
 besides nearly finishing the translation of Spinoza's 
 "Ethics." Her power of reading out aloud was very 
 great, her natural gifts having been developed by the prac- 
 tice she had in reading to her father. She could read a 
 German book out aloud for three or four hours without 
 tiring, and her elocution was exquisite. On March 13, 
 1855, they arrived at the Lord Warden Hotel, at Dover, 
 to take up the full responsibility of a married couple. 
 Perhaps in the view of the coming struggles attendant 
 upon fame and triumph, this eight months' sojourn was 
 the brightest spot in their lives. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 FROM her return to England, in March, 1855, 
 George Eliot began the life which she continued to 
 the day of her death, that of a married woman of letters, 
 working hard for her living, endeavouring to fulfil the 
 duties of her vocation; performing with conscientious 
 love and devotion the part of a wife and mother. For a 
 short time she and her husband had lodgings at East Sheen, 
 but afterwards removed to 8, Park Shot, Richmond; where 
 they remained for three years. Here they only had apart- 
 ments. Their piano overhead was likely to disturb the 
 clerical gentleman below, and the scratching of Lewes' 
 pen grated on his wife's nerves as she worked in the 
 same room. It was important that they should both 
 obtain employment. George Eliot was engaged to write 
 the article on Belles Lettres for the Westminster Review, 
 and also articles for the Leader, neither, we fear, very 
 remunerative. An article, published in Fraser, April, 
 1855, on Weimar and its celebrities, is really rather poor. 
 It is an attempt to be popular, and it ends in being com- 
 monplace. It shows nothing of the power which was 
 exhibited in the article on Dr. Gumming, which occupied 
 from June 13th to August 24th of this year. Lewes' 
 
LIFE OF GEORGE ELIOT. 43 
 
 "Life of Goethe" was published and had a large sale. 
 It is still regarded, even in Germany, as the classical life 
 of Goethe. It is a good introduction to the study of the 
 German poet for those who have not before approached 
 him, but there are many sides of Goethe with which it 
 does not deal, and it becomes every year less satisfactory 
 from the growth of knowledge. Lewes had determined 
 to exchange literature for those studies which he 
 believed to be more especially his own, the inquiry 
 into the sources of animal life, and through life into 
 the sources of mind. This led to expeditions to the sea- 
 side — to Ilfracombe, Jersey, and Tenby — with the object 
 of pursuing these researches. It also led to George Eliot, 
 through sympathy with her husband's studies, paying 
 great attention to science, and perhaps exaggerating the 
 use of scientific metaphor which, natural to her from 
 the first, became more habitual as years went on. In the 
 midst of these articles a more permanent occupation 
 was the translation of Spinoza's " Ethics." All this must 
 have been hard work. Lewes, at the age of thirty-nine, 
 had not amassed much money from his varied labours ; 
 while his wife only had a small'allowance from her father's 
 estate. Besides his three boys were growing up, and had 
 to be educated. " I keep the purse," she writes, "and 
 dole out sovereigns with all the pangs of a miser. In 
 fact, if you were to feel my bump of acquisitiveness, I dare 
 say you would find it in a state of inflammation, hke the 
 ' veneration ' of that clergyman to whom Mr. Donovan 
 said, 'Sir, you have recently been engaged in prayer.' " 
 
 In May, 1856, George Eliot, on her way to Ilfracombe, 
 paid her first visit to Windsor, an experience which 
 
44 LIFE OF 
 
 she renewed some ten years later as my guest. At 
 Ilfracombe she accompanied Lewes in his search for 
 marine specimens, and her recollections are full of 
 uncouth Latin names, in which she did her best to take 
 an interest. More to her taste evidently were the shift- 
 ing and indescribable beauties of an Enghsh landscape. 
 To these months belong the essay on Young's " Night 
 Thoughts," " Worldliness and Other-worldliness," perhaps 
 the greatest of her productions in this line, and the 
 review of Riehl, both of which have been reprinted. 
 She was, however, already thinking of adopting that 
 form of composition by which her great reputation was 
 to be attained. She writes in her journal, under the 
 date July 20, 1856, "I am anxious to begin my fiction 
 writing, and so am not inclined to undertake an article 
 that will give me much trouble." And, again, on August 
 1 8th, while walking with Lewes in Kew Park, she talked 
 to him of her novel. At this time she was writing her 
 article on " Silly Novels by Lady Novelists," which she 
 seems to have begun from a course of reading on the 
 subject that then most interested her, and with a view 
 of guarding herself from the faults which others had 
 committed in similar enterprizes. 
 
 The actual genesis of the "Scenes of Clerical Life" 
 can only be fitly told in her own words : — 
 
 " September 1856 made a new era in my life, for it was then 
 I began to write fiction. It had always been a vague dream of 
 mine that some time or other I might write a novel ; and my 
 shadowy conception of what the novel was to be, varied, of course, 
 from one epoch ^fLm^riife-to-Anoth^r'' But I never went further 
 towards the actual writing of the novel than an introductory chapter 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 45 
 
 describing a StafTordshire village and the life of the neighbouring 
 farm-houses ; and as . the years passed on I lost any hope that I 
 should ever be able to write a novel, just as I desponded about 
 everything else in my future life. I always thought I v^as deficient 
 in dramatic power, both of construction and dialogue, 'but I felt 
 I should be at my ease in the descriptive parts of a novel. My 
 ' introductory chapter ' was pure description, though there were 
 good materials in it for dramatic presentation. It happened to be 
 among the papers I had with me in Germany, and one evening at 
 Berlin something led me to read it to George. He was struck with 
 it as a bit of concrete description, and it suggested to him the 
 possibility of my being able to write a novel, .though he distrusted 
 — indeed disbelieved in — my possession of any dramatic power. 
 Still he began to think that I might as well try some time what I 
 could do in fiction ; and by and by when we came back to England, 
 and I had greater success than he ever expected in other kinds of 
 writing, his impression that it was worth while to see how far my 
 mental power would go towards the production of a novel, was 
 strengthened. He began to say very positively, ' You must try and 
 write a story,' and when we were at Tenby he urged me to begin at 
 once. I deferred it, however, after my usual fashion with work 
 that does not present itself as an absolute duty. But one morning, 
 as I was thinking what should be the subject of my first story, my 
 thoughts merged themselves into a dreamy doze, and I imagined 
 myself writing a story, of which the title was, ' The Sad Fortunes 
 of the Reverend Amos Barton.' I was soon wide awake again and 
 told G. He said, ' Oh, what a capital title ! ' and from that time 
 I had settled in my mind that this should be my first story. 
 George used to say, ' It may be a failure — it may be that you 
 are unable to write fiction. Or perhaps it may be just good 
 enough to warrant you trying again.' Again, ' You may write a 
 ^hef-d'auvre at once — there's no telling.' But his prevalent im- 
 pression was, that though I could hardly write a poor novel, my 
 effort would want the highest quality of fiction — dramatic presenta- 
 tion. He used to say, ' You have wit, description, and philosophy 
 — those go a good way towards the production of a novel. It is 
 worth while for you to try the experiment.' 
 
 " We determined that if my story turned out good enough, we 
 
46 LIFE OF 
 
 would send it to Blackwood ; but G. thought the more probable 
 result was that I should have to lay it aside and try again. 
 
 "But when we returned to Richmond, I had to write my 
 article on ' Silly Novels,' and my review of Contemporary Litera- 
 ture for the Westminster, so that I did not begin my story till 
 September 22. After I had begun it, as we were walking in the 
 park, I mentioned to G. that I had thought of the plan of 
 writing a series of stories, containing sketches drawn from my own 
 observations of the clergy, and calling them ' Scenes from Clerical 
 Life,' opening with 'Amos Barton.' He at once accepted the 
 notion as a good one — fresh and striking ; and about a week after- 
 wards, when I read him the first part of ' Amos,' he had no longer 
 any doubt about my ability to carry out the plan. The scene at 
 Cross Farm, he said, satisfied him that I had the very element he had 
 been doubtful about — it was clear that I could write good dialogue. 
 There still remained the question whether I could command any 
 pathos ; and that was to be decided by the mode in which I 
 treated Milly's death. One night G. went to town on pur- 
 pose to leave me a quiet evening for writing it. I wrote the 
 chapter from the news brought by the shepherd to Mrs. Hackit, 
 to the moment when Amos is dragged from the bedside, and I 
 read it to G. when he came home. We both cried over it, and 
 then he came up to me and kissed me, saying, ' I think your pathos 
 is better than your fun. '" 
 
 "Amos Barton " was written between September 22, 
 and November 5, 1856. It was sent by Lewes to Mr. 
 Blackwood with a commendatory letter and was received. 
 The publisher was very cautious, but his criticisms do not 
 seem to be of great value. He congratulates George 
 Eliot on being " worthy of print and pay." Misunder- 
 standing a phrase of Lewes', he says, " I am glad that 
 your friend is, as I supposed, a clergyman. Such a subject 
 is best in clerical hands, and some of the pleasantest and 
 least prejudiced correspondents I have ever had are English 
 clergymen." George Eliot a clergyman ! Heaven save 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 47 
 
 the mark ! The publisher warmed in his appreciation 
 when he saw the story in print. He sent a cheque for 
 fifty guineas, and added, " It is a long time since I have 
 read anything so fresh, so humorous, and so touching. 
 The style is capital, conveying so much in so few 
 words.'' He also made overtures for republishing the 
 series. The story soon attracted attention. Albert 
 Smith has the credit of sounding the first note of 
 approval. 
 
 The first of the " Scenes of Clerical Life " was 
 drawn, like all other good art, from personal experience. 
 Shepperton Church is Chilvers Coton, a suburb of' 
 Nuneaton. In this church Mary Ann Evans was bap- 
 tized, and she attended it during the whole of her 
 residence at Griff. It stands close to the Vicarage. The 
 " little flight of steps, with their wooden rail running 
 up the outer wall and leading to the children's gallery," 
 still exists, and has not been removed in the restoration 
 of the church. This restoration took place wher^ George 
 Ehot was fifteen and must have made a deep impression 
 upon her mind. The Vicarage is a pleasant-looking, 
 old-fashioned house, witli a pretty garden in front, and 
 everything around neat and well ordered. The Rev. 
 Amos Barton was in reality the Rev. John Gwyther, B. A., 
 and Milly Barton was his wife Emma. Mrs. Hackit 
 is supposed to be a sketch of George Eliot's mother. 
 The story told by George Eliot, the struggle of the 
 curate's family to live, the taking of a foreign lady 
 into the family, the death of Mrs. Gwyther, were subjects 
 of common conversation in the neighbourhood during 
 George Eliot's girlhood, and if Mrs. Evans really attended 
 
48 LIFE OF 
 
 at Milly's death-bed there is a strong reason for her 
 daughter knowing all about it.-^ Indeed, Emma Gwyther 
 did not die till 1836, so that George Eliot probably knew 
 her personally. The story shows the full strength of 
 George Eliot's genius mixed with some weaknesses which 
 disappeared at a later period. The dialogue is admirably 
 dramatic. Her power of objective representation was 
 fully grown from the first. The homely wit so 
 apparent in " Adam Bede " here shows itself as a 
 new force in literature. " You're like the wood-pigeon : 
 it says do — do — -do all day, and never sets about 
 any work itself" " When he tries to preach without 
 book he rambles about and doesn't stick to his 
 text ; and every now and then he flounders about 
 like a sheep that has cast itself, and can't get on 
 its legs again." On the other hand, the Greek quota- 
 tion at the end of chapter iv. is not very appropriate, 
 and" is probably inserted to keep up the idea that the 
 writer is a man. The opening reflections of chapter v., 
 a defence of uninteresting characters, are too obviously 
 an imitation of Walter Scott, and are rather long in 
 proportion to the story; and the same might be said 
 of other paragraphs. Nanny, however, the servant, is a 
 most life-like creature, and her conversation is as true 
 and racy as any which George Eliot ever penned. It 
 is heedless to praise the pathos of Milly's death, not 
 less remarkable for its intense feeling than for its strong 
 self-repression. The criticism of Mr. Blackwood cur- 
 tailed the conclusion of the story, which related the fate 
 of the children. Most readers would prefer that it had 
 been left in its original state. 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 49 
 
 " Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story," begun immediately after the 
 conclusion of " Amos Barton," was finished in the Scilly 
 Islands, in May, 1857. It also is laid amongst scenes of 
 her early recollections, although it is not known how far 
 the plot is based on fact. The introduction of the Italian 
 element, which the writer could only have learnt super- 
 ficially from travel, points to the coming " Romola." It 
 is also remarkable that these first two stories depend for 
 their interest on the incongruity between English and 
 foreign views of life and conduct. Cheverell Manor is 
 Arbury Hall, in the grounds of which George Eliot was 
 ■ born. Sir Christopher Cheverell is Sir Roger Newdigate, 
 a family already commemorated by the Oldinports of 
 "Amos Barton." He rebuilt and redecorated his ancient 
 family seat precisely in the manner described in the noveL 
 Maynard Gilfil was the ward of Sir Christopher, who, 
 when at Milan had adopted a little Italian orphan girl,, 
 and had brought her up at Cheverell. It is said that. 
 Sir Roger Newdigate had adopted a village girl with a. 
 beautiful voice. Tina, the Italian girl, is destined to be. 
 Maynard's wife, whereas she is heart and soul in love, 
 with Captain Wybrow, Sir Christopher's heir, whom he 
 wishes to marry to a rich heiress. Miss Archer. Wybrow 
 has no intention of marrying the penniless Italian, 
 but he makes love to her, and excuses himself to his 
 betrothed by alleging Tina's importunity. Tina, furious 
 with passion and jealousy secretes a dagger, she scarcely 
 knows with what object, and going to meet Wybrow 
 in the woods, finds him stretched on the ground dead 
 of heart disease. She runs away, but is recovered 
 and marries Gilfil. She dies within the year and 
 
 4 
 
50 ' LIFE OF 
 
 " Maynard Gilfil's love went with her into deep silence 
 for evermore." He sits down in his bare dining-room, 
 whilst in another part of the house, cleaned by his 
 servants once a quarter, is a chamber with an oriel 
 window, with a dainty looking-glass over a dressing- 
 table, ' a faded satin pin-cushion with the pins rusted 
 in it, a scent-bottle and a large green fan lay on the 
 table, and on a dressing-box by the side of the glass 
 was a work-basket and an unfinished baby-cap, yellow 
 with age, lying in it.' "Such was the locked-up chamber 
 in Mr. Gilfil's house, a sort of visible symbol of the 
 secret chamber in his heart, where he had long turned 
 the key on early hopes and early sorrows, shutting up 
 for ever all the passion and the poetry of his life.'' 
 
 The Knebley Church of the story is Astley Church, 
 about a mile from Arbury, topping a hill with a fine 
 view. The ruins of Astley Castle are close by. Here 
 Mr. Gilfil officiated in the afternoon, " in a wonderful 
 little church with a checkered pavement, which had 
 once rung to the iron-tread of military monks, with 
 coats of arms in clusters on the lofty roof, marble 
 warriors and their heads without noses occupying a 
 large proportion of the area, and the twelve apostles, 
 with their heads very much on one side, holding 
 didactic ribbons, painted in fresco on the walls.'' There 
 is a similar church on a hill at Norbury in Derbyshire, 
 amidst the scenery of " Adam Bede.'' 
 
 The epilogue to "Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story," written on 
 Fortification Hill, Scilly Islands, one sunshiny morn- 
 ing, contains a lovely passage of universal application, 
 which throws a strong light upon George Eliot's philo- 
 sophy : — 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 51 
 
 " It is with men as with trees : if you lop off their finest branches, 
 into which they are pouring their young life-juice, the wounds 
 will be healed over with some rough boss, some odd excrescence, 
 and what might have been a grand tree expanding into liberal 
 shade is but a whimsical misshapen trunk. Many an irritating 
 fault, many an unlovely oddity, has come of a hard sorrow, which 
 has crushed and maimed the nature just when it was expanding into 
 plenteous beauty ; and the trivial erring life, which we visit with 
 our harsh blame, may be but as the unsteady motion of a man 
 whose best limb is withered." 
 
 " Janet's Repentance," the last of the " Scenes," had 
 been begun in the Scilly Islands, on April i8, 1857, 
 but the greater part of it was written in Jersey, where 
 the Leweses had delightful lodgings, at Gorey in the 
 Bay of Granville, within sight of the castle of Mon- 
 torgueil. " It was a sweet beautiful life we led there. 
 Good creatures the Amys, our host and hostess, with 
 their nice boy and girl, and the little white kid — the 
 family pet. No disagreeable sounds to be heard in the 
 house, no unpleasant qualities to hinder one from 
 feeling perfect love to these simple people." They 
 spent their time in - long rambles and long readings ; 
 George Eliot reading aloud "Draper's Physiology" in 
 the " grave evening hours." They dined at five. George 
 Eliot's strength increased in this delicious quiet, and she 
 had fewer interruptions to meet, from headache, than she 
 had experienced since Christmas. She writes to Black- 
 wood on June 2nd : " Lewes seems to have higher 
 expectations from the third story than from either of the 
 preceding ; but I can form no judgment myself, until I 
 have quite finished a thing, and see it aloof from my 
 actual self. ■ I can only go on writing what I feel, and 
 
52 LIFE OF 
 
 waiting for the proof that I have been able to make 
 others feel." Strangely enough, Blackwood did not like 
 the story. He thought that it dealt too much with 
 clerical matters, and George Eliot proposed that the 
 series should close with No. 2, and that "Janet's 
 Repentance " should be included if the tales were re- 
 published in a volume. The Leweses returned to Park 
 Shot at the end of July, probably for the sake of their 
 children's holidays ; and there " Janet's Repentance " was 
 finished on October 9th. "Adam Bede," the thought 
 of which had already begun to burgeon in the author's 
 mind, was begun on October 22nd. She writes in her 
 diary at the former date : "I had meant to carry 
 on the series, and especially I longed to tell the story 
 of the ' Clerical Tutor,' but my annoyance at Blackwood's 
 want of sympathy in the first part (although he came 
 round to admiration at the third part) determined me 
 to close the series and republish them in two volumes."' 
 She received ;:£' 1 80 for the first edition of the "Scenes 
 of Clerical Life." 
 
 " Janet's Repentance " is, again, full of early recollec- 
 tions. Milby is Nuneaton, so-called from a convent of 
 nuns founded in the reign of King Stephen — in later 
 days a flourishing factory town. The main details of 
 the story are said to be based on actual occurrences. 
 Dempster is the representation of a well-known lawyer. 
 The virtues of his wife Janet still live in the recollec- 
 tions of her fellow-townspeople. Mr. Tryan was curate 
 at the Stockingford chapel-of-ease. Mr. Pilgrim was 
 a well-known doctor. Although George Eliot declared 
 that Mr. Tryan was not a portrait of any clergyman 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 53 
 
 living or dead, and was an ideal character, yet it is 
 probable that she frequently introduced into her writings 
 more exact representations of living people than she 
 was herself aware. The name Milby Mill belongs 
 to a corn-mill in the town standing on the River 
 Anker. The " Red Lion " still flourishes as the " Bull." 
 Mr. Pilgrim, the doctor, has all the trace of a real 
 character. 
 
 "I have known Mr. Pilgrim discover the most unexpected 
 virtues in a patient, seized with a promising illness. A good in- 
 flammation fired his enthusiasm, and a lingering dropsy dissolved 
 him into charity. Gradually, however, as his patients became 
 convalescent, his view of their character became more dispas- 
 sionate. When they could relish mutton-chops he began to admit 
 that they had foibles, and by the time they had swallowed their 
 last dose of tonic he was alive to their most inexcusable faults." 
 
 "Dempster's" House in Church Street, "an old-fash- 
 ioned house with an overhanging upper storey," still exists. 
 " Outside it had a face of rough stucco, and casement 
 windows with green panes and shutters ; inside it was 
 full of long passages and rooms with low ceilings." 
 Stockingford, which lies about two miles from Nun- 
 eaton, between that town and Arbury, is called Paddiford 
 Common in the story. It was up Church Street that Mr. 
 Tryan passed "through a pelting shower of nicknames 
 and bad puns, with an ad libitum accompaniment of 
 groans, howls, hisses, and hee-haws." 
 
 It is scarcely to be wondered at that, when the 
 incognito of George Eliot was so carefully preserved — 
 and yet the tales were so full of local incident and colour 
 — an attempt should have been made to claim the 
 
54 LIFE OF 
 
 authorship for another. This was the origin of the 
 myth of Joseph Liggins, who was for some time 
 supposed to be George Eliot. A table-rapper had spelt 
 out the name of the great unknown as Liggers. Mr. 
 Liggins of Nuneaton, a broken-down gentleman of very 
 poor literary pretensions, did not reject the honour which 
 was thrust upon him. He called himself George Eliot, 
 and was more proud than ever after the appearance of 
 " Adam Bede.'' A deputation of D'issenting parsons went 
 out to see him, and found him washing his slop-basin 
 at a pump. At a later period a subscription was got up 
 for him, and George Eliot and Mr. Blackwood found it 
 necessary to interfere. The myth was at last killed, 
 though not without some difficulty, and there is little 
 doubt that this absurd mistake delayed for some time 
 the discovery of the true George Eliot. 
 
 George Eliot now abandoned these swallow flights for 
 a more sustained effort, and began a novel which placed 
 her at once in the first rank of authors, while it will 
 always be regarded as a masterpiece of English litera- 
 ture. The manuscript of " Adam Bede," down to the 
 end of chapter xiii., the second scene in the wood, was 
 given to Mr. John Blackwood on February 28, 1858 — 
 the day on which he was introduced to the real George 
 Eliot for the first time. He wished to examine the 
 novel in order to see whether it would be advisable to 
 print it in the Magazine, and in order to form a better 
 judgment asked George Eliot to tell him the story, which 
 for good reasons she declined to do. In April the 
 Leweses started for Munich, chiefly for the purpose of 
 seeing men of science, who might be useful to Lewes in 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 55 
 
 his researches. They took lodgings at 15, Luitpold 
 Strasse, for twenty florins a month, but did not begin 
 work for some little time. Among those who most 
 impressed them was the chemist Liebig, with whom they 
 dined, seeing " how men of European celebrity may put 
 up with greasy cooking in private life." At last, on May 
 15 th, the eighteenth chapter of "Adam Bede " was 
 completed. George Eliot read it to Lewes, who was 
 much pleased. Eleven days later she had finished 
 chapter xx. On June loth she writes in her diary, 
 " For the last week my work has been rather scanty 
 owing to bodily ailments. I am at the end of chapter 
 xxi., and am this morning going to begin chapter xxii.," 
 the first of Book III. Three days later the entry runs, 
 " This morning at last free from headache and able to 
 write. I am entering on my history of the birthday 
 with some fear and trembhng." The next month saw 
 the completion of the first five chapters of this book, 
 after which they started for Dresden — by way of Vienna. 
 The six weeks' stay at Dresden was one of the happiest 
 periods of George Eliot's life. It is difficult to see why 
 she did not more often create for herself a similar en- 
 vironment of circumstances. The day after their arrival 
 they secured their lodgings : — 
 
 "A whole apartment, of six rooms, all to ourselves, for i8s. 
 per week ! ... By nine o'clock we were established in our new 
 home, where we were to enjoy six weeks' quiet work, undis- 
 turbed by visits and visitors. And "so we did. We were as happy 
 as princes — are not — George writing at the far corner of the great 
 salon, I at my Schrank in my own private room, with closed doors. 
 Here I wrote the latter half of the second volume of 'Adam 
 
5G LIFE OF 
 
 Bede.' in the long mornings that our early hours — rising at six o'clock 
 — secured for us. Three mornings in the week we went to the Picture 
 Gallery from twelve till one. ... It was a charming life, our six weeks 
 at Dresden. There were the open-air concerts at the Grosser Garten 
 and the Briihlsche Terrasse, the Sommer Theater, where we saw our 
 favourite comic actor Merbitz ; the walks into the open country, 
 and the grand stretch of sky all round; the Zouaves, with their 
 wondrous make-ups as women ; Rader, the humorous comedian 
 at the Link'sche Bad Theater ; our quiet afternoons in our pleasant 
 salon — all helping to make an agreeable fringe to the quiet working 
 time." 
 
 To how many workers has Dresden been a similar 
 home of stimulus and repose ! Leaving it at the end 
 of August for Leipzig, they travelled from that town 
 night and day till they reached Richmond on September 
 2nd. By this time Book IV. of "Adam Bede '' was com- 
 pleted, all but the last chapter, which was finished at 
 Park Shot. Her average rate of writing at Dresden 
 was a little more than eight hundred words a day. The 
 chapter of "Amos Barton" describing Milly's death, which 
 we know was written at one sitting, is about double this 
 length. 
 
 The history of the composition of " Adam Bede," as 
 told by George Eliot, is too important to be omitted : — • 
 
 " The germ of ' Adam Bede ' was an anecdote told 
 me by my Methodist Aunt Samuel (the wife of my 
 father's younger brother), — an anecdote from her own 
 experience. We were sitting together one afternoon 
 during her visit to me at Griff, probably in 1839 or 1840, 
 when it occurred to her to tell me how she had visited 
 a condemned criminal — a very ignorant girl, who had 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 67 
 
 murdered her child and refused to confess ; how she 
 had stayed with her praying through the night, and how 
 the poor creature at last broke out into tears, and con- 
 fessed her crime. My aunt afterwards went with her in 
 the cart to the place of execution ; and she described 
 to me the great respect with which this ministry of hers 
 was regarded by the official people about the gaol. The 
 story, told by my aunt with great feeling, affected me 
 deeply, and I never lost the impression of that afternoon 
 . and our talk together ; but I believe I never mentioned 
 it, through all the intervening years, till something 
 prompted me to tell it to George in December, 1856, 
 when I had begun to write the ' Scenes of Clerical Life.' 
 He remarked that the scene in the prison would make a 
 fine element in a story, and I afterwards began to think 
 of blending this and some other recollections of my 
 aunt in one story, with some points in my father's early 
 life and character. The problem of construction that 
 remained was to make the unhappy girl one of the chief 
 dramatis persons, and connect her with the hero. At 
 first I thought of making the story one of the series of 
 ' Scenes,' but afterwards, when several motives had 
 induced me to close these with 'Janet's Repentance,' 
 I determined on making what we always called in our 
 conversation ' My Aunt's Story,' the subject of a long 
 novel, which I accordingly began to write on October 22, 
 
 1857- 
 
 " The character of Dinah grew out of my recollections 
 of my aunt ; but Dinah is not at all like my aunt, who 
 was a very small, black-eyed woman, and (as I was told, 
 for I never heard her preach) very vehement in her 
 
58 LIFE OF 
 
 style of preaching. She had left off preaching when I 
 knew her, being probably sixty years old and in 
 delicate health ; and she had become, as my father told 
 me, much more gentle and subdued than she had been 
 in the days of her active ministry and bodily strength, 
 when she could not rest without exhorting and re- 
 monstrating in season and out of season. I was very 
 fond of her, and enjoyed the few weeks of her stay 
 with me greatly. She was loving and kind to me, and 
 I could talk to her about my inward life, which was 
 closely shut up from those usually round me. I saw 
 her only twice again, for much shorter periods — once 
 at her .own home at Wirksworth in Derbyshire, and once 
 at my father's last residence, FoleshilL 
 
 "The character of Adam, and one or two incidents 
 connected with him, were suggested by my father's early 
 life ; but Adam is not my father any more than Dinah 
 is my aunt. Indeed, there is not a single portrait in 
 'Adam Bede' ; only the suggestions of experience wrought 
 up into new combinations. When I began to write it, 
 the only elements I had determined on, besides the 
 character of Dinah, were the character of Adam, his 
 relation to Arthur Donnithorne, and their mutual 
 relations to Hetty, — i.e., to the girl who commits child- 
 murder, — the scene in the prison being, of course, the 
 climax towards which I worked. Everything else grew 
 out of the characters and their mutual relations. Dinah's 
 ultimate relation to Adam was suggested by George, 
 when I had read to him the first part of the first 
 volume : lie was so delighted with the presentation of 
 Dinah, and so convinced that the reader's interest would 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 59 
 
 centre in her, that he wanted her to be the principal 
 figure at the last. I accepted the idea at once, and from 
 the end of the third chapter worked with it constantly in 
 view. 
 
 "The first volume was writtten at Richmond, and 
 given to Blackwood in March [February 28th]. He 
 expressed great admiration of its freshness and vivid- 
 ness, but seemed to hesitate about putting it in the 
 Magazine, which was the form of publication he, as 
 well as myself, had previously contemplated. He still 
 wished to have it for the Magazine, but desired to know 
 the course of the story. At present he saw nothing to 
 prevent its reception in ' Maga ' but he would like to 
 see more. I am uncertain whether his doubts rested 
 solely on Hetty's relation to Arthur, or whether they 
 were also directed towards the treatment of Methodism 
 by the Church. I refused to give my story before- 
 hand, on the ground that I would not have it judged 
 apart from my treatment, which alone determines the 
 moral quality of art; and ultimately I proposed that 
 the notion of publication in ' Maga ' should be given 
 up, and that the novel should be published in three 
 volumes at Christmas, if possible. He assented. 
 
 " I began the second volume in the second week of 
 my stay at Munich, about the middle of April. While 
 we were at Munich, George expressed his fear that 
 Adam's part was too passive throughout the drama, and 
 that it was important for him to be brought into more direct 
 collision with Arthur. This doubt haunted me, and out 
 of it grew the scene in the wood between Arthur and 
 Adam ; the fight came to me as a necessity one night 
 
60 LIFE OF 
 
 at the Munich opera, when I was listening to 'WiUiam 
 Tell' [May 30, 1858]. Work was slow and interrupted 
 at Munich, and when I left I had only written to the 
 beginning of the dance on the Birthday Feast ; but 
 at Dresden I wrote uninterruptedly and with great en- 
 joyment in the long, quiet mornings, and there I nearly 
 finished the second volume, — all, I think, but the last 
 chapter, which I wrote here in the old room at 
 Richmond, in the first week of September, and then 
 sent the MS. off to Blackwood. The opening of the 
 third volume — ' Hetty's Journey ' — was, I think, written 
 more rapidly than the rest of the book, and was left 
 without the slightest alteration of the first draft. 
 Throughout the book I have altered little ; and the only 
 cases I think in which George suggested more than 
 a verbal alteration when I read the MS. aloud to him, 
 were the first scene at the Farm, and the scene in the 
 wood between Arthur and Adam, both of which he 
 recommended me to ' space out ' a little, which I did. 
 "When, on October 29, I had written to the end 
 of the love-scene at the Farm, between Adam and 
 Dinah, I sent the MS. to Blackwood, since the re- 
 mainder of the third volume could not affect the 
 judgment passed on what had gone before. He wrote 
 back in warm admiration, and offered me, on the part 
 of the firm, ;^8oo for four years' copyright [subsequently 
 raised to ;!^i,2oo]. I accepted the offer. The last ' 
 words of the third volume were written and despatched 
 on their way to Edinburgh, November the i6th, and now, 
 on the last day of the same month, I have written this 
 slight history of my book. I love it very much, and 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 01 
 
 am deeply thankful to have written it, whatever the 
 public may say to it — a result which -is still in darkness, 
 for I have at present had only four sheets of the proof. 
 The book would have been published at Christmas, or 
 rather early in December, but that Bulwer's 'What 
 will he do with it ? ' was to be published by Blackwood 
 at that time, and it was thought that this novel might 
 interfere with mine." 
 
 " Adam Bede '' was published at the beginning of 
 February, 1859. The sensation caused by its appearance 
 has seldom been equalled in literary history. It was 
 felt that a new power had arisen in English letters. 
 Darwin's " Origin of Species " appeared in the same 
 year, and the two books, so different in their characters, 
 so similar in their originality, divided the attractions of 
 •the thinking world. Deeply as men's hearts were stirred 
 by the story of Hetty, perhaps the strongest impres- 
 sion was excited by the racy language of Mrs. Poyser, 
 as amusing as Sam. Wellerin "Pickwick," and more true 
 to life. A month after the book's appearance, Charles 
 Buxton quoted in the House of Commons the words : " It 
 wants/to be -hatched over again and hatched different." 
 George Eliot tells us that all these sayings were her own, 
 ..and were not a product of reminiscence. "I have no 
 stock of proverbs in my memory ; and there is not one 
 thing put into Mrs. Poyser's mouth that is not fresh 
 from my own mint." It is indeed extraordinary that a 
 masterpiece of literature should have been produced at 
 the first attempt by a" woman nearly forty years of age. 
 No doubt this revelation of her powers previously 
 unknown to herself, which produced such momentous 
 
62 LIFE OF 
 
 results, was caused by the union with Lewes — a marriage 
 productive of the greatest happiness to both. The manu- 
 script of " Adam Bede," written in exquisite handwriting 
 on ruled paper, with scarcely an erasure, is dedicated to 
 her husband in these words: — "To my dear husband, 
 George Henry Lewes, I give the MS. of a work which 
 would never have been written but for the happiness 
 which his love conferred on my life.'' Similarly Lewes 
 writes in his journal in January, 1859 : 
 
 " Walked along the Thames towards Kew to meet Herbert 
 Spencer, who was to spend the day with us, and we chatted with 
 him on matters personal and philosophical. . . . My acquaintance 
 with him was the brightest ray in a very dreary, wasted period of my 
 life. I had given up all ambition whatever, lived from hand to 
 mouth, and thought the evil of each day sufficient. The stimulus 
 of his intellect, especially during our long walks, roused my 
 energy once more and revived my dormant love of science. His 
 intense theorizing tendency was contagious, and it was only the 
 stimulus of a theory which could have induced me to work. I 
 owe Spencer another and a deeper debt. It was through him that I 
 learned to know Marian — to know her was to love her, — and since 
 then my life has been a new birth. To her I owe all my prosperity 
 and all my happiness. God bless her ! " 
 
 George Eliot also writes on the last day of 1858 : 
 
 "The last day of the dear old year, which has been full of 
 expected and unexpected happiness. ' Adam Bede ' has been 
 written, and the second volume is in tj'pe. The first number of 
 George's ' Physiology of Common Life,' — a work in which he has 
 had much happy occupation — is published to-day ; and both his 
 position as a scientific writer, and his inward satisfaction in that 
 part of his studies, have been much heightened during the past 
 year. Our double life is more and more blessed — more and more 
 complete." 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 63 
 
 Although "Adam Bede" would never have been 
 written without the stimulus of Lewes' sympathy, it may 
 be doubted whether his specific influence in the com- 
 position of the book was advantageous. Mr. W. Call, 
 a very competent critic, tells us in the Westminster 
 Review that the violent conflict of Adam with Arthur 
 is an oflence to art, and that the commonplace marriage 
 of Adam with Dinah is a disappointing close to the 
 career of the sweet Methodist saint. He also complains 
 that the reprieval episode is an artificial and mechani- 
 cal contrivance. It would have been better if George 
 Eliot had followed more closely the fate of the girl Voce 
 who was condemned to death at the Nottingham 
 Assizes and executed. At a later period she would 
 have done this. Yet, as we have seen, these very 
 features were inserted at the suggestion of Lewes, and 
 would have been absent if George Eliot had maintained 
 more confidence in her own insight and discrimination. 
 " Adam Bede" has still the largest sale of any of George 
 Eliot's works, although "Romola," perhaps, appeals more 
 powerfully to a cultured few. Its power is due to the 
 intensity with which it represents actual life. Here 
 again it is probable that more was drawn from ex- 
 perience than she thought, as I have said. Robert 
 Evans, like Adam Bede, was first a carpenter, 
 then a forester, and then a land-agent. The friend- 
 ship of Adam with Arthur was precisely that of 
 Evans to young Newdigate, the Oldinport of " Amos 
 Barton." We cannot tell how much of the relations 
 sketched in the novel rested on facts. Hayslope is the 
 lovely village of Ellastone in Staffordshire, which begins 
 
64 LIFE OF 
 
 at the bridge over the Dove which separates it from 
 Derbyshire. The village green is still to be seen 
 there, and the Davenport or Donnithorne Arms, a 
 public-house kept by an Evans, a young, handsome, 
 and intelligent cousin of the novelist, serenely proud 
 of the family to which he belongs. The willowed 
 brook still runs at the bottom of the slope, but the old 
 cottage of the Evans family has been changed into a 
 larger residence. The recollection of Dinah's preaching 
 still lingers in the place. One of her favourite sites for 
 preaching was Roston Common, high land, now en- 
 closed, on the Derbyshire side of the Dove above 
 Norbury. A farm in the village was once held by a 
 family named Poyser. Oakbourne is Ashbourne, Snow- 
 field is Wirksworth, Eagledale is Dovedale, Norbourne 
 is Norbury, Donnithorne Chase may be Calwich Abbey. 
 The visitor to Norbury or Ellastone will find several 
 carpenters' shops like Adam Bede's. The elder-tree 
 which is described as growing at the door of the work- 
 shop is an early recollection, and George Eliot once 
 told me, when we were standing in front of Cranbourne 
 Tower looking over Windsor, how closely that tree was 
 connected with the poetry of her life. 
 
 Most remarkable perhaps is the identification of 
 Dinah Morris with Elizabeth Evans, the wife of 
 Samuel, Adam's brother. She was born at New- 
 bold, in Leicestershire, and, after spending a short 
 time at Nottingham, settled at Wirksworth, in Derby- 
 shire, where she worked in a tape-mill. She took 
 early to preaching among the Wesleyans, being re- 
 markable for her natural gifts, and for her deep 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. C5 
 
 spirituality. She joined the Methodists in 1797, and, 
 to use her own words, determined to leave off all 
 superfluities of dress ; and while still a young girl she 
 tramped from village to village all over the bleak treeless 
 Derbyshire Hills, and into the fertile, undulating country 
 of the adjoining county, gathering the poor around her, 
 and' speaking to them of the belief which suffused her 
 own life. " I saw it my duty to be wholly devoted to 
 God, and to be set apart for the Master's use.'' She 
 lived in a rude, thatched, stone-built, four-roomed 
 cottage, standing sideways to the road, with a bit 
 of potato ground in front, just opposite the Harlaam 
 tape-works which Samuel Evans managed, half a mile 
 from the town of Wirksworth. In this cottage George 
 Eliot stayed with her aunt. Although George Eliot 
 disclaims the exact resemblance between Dinah Morris 
 and Elizabeth Evans, advantage was taken of the 
 celebrity given by the novel to erect a tablet in the 
 Wesleyan Chapel, Chapel Lane, Wirksworth, to the 
 memory of Mrs. Eyans and her husband. The inscrip- 
 tion runs thus — 
 
 "Erected by numerous friends to the memory of Elizabeth 
 Evans, known to the world as ' Dinah Bede,' who during many 
 years proclaimed alike in the open air, the sanctuary, and from 
 fjouse to house, the love of Christ. She died in the Lord May 9, 
 1849, aged 74 years. And of Samuel Evans her husband, who 
 was also a faithful local preacher and class-leader in the Methodist 
 Society. He finished his earthly course December 8, 1858, aged 
 81 years." 
 
 No sooner was "Adam Bede" completed than the 
 " Mill on the Floss " was begun — another fragment 
 
 5 
 
C6 LIFE OF 
 
 of real existence. George Eliot writes to Blackwood 
 on December 2Sth, "I have not yet made up my 
 mind what my next story is to be, but I must 
 not lie fallow any longer when the new year has 
 come." So on January 12, 1859, she went into town 
 with Lewes, and looked in the "Annual Register" 
 for cases of inundations, with an obvious view to the 
 catastrophe of the, new novel. This was three days 
 before she had corrected the last proof-sheets of " Adam 
 Eede." Success had brought prosperity. After living 
 since her father's death in lodgings, she was now able to 
 take a house, Holly Lodge, Wandsworth, for seven years. 
 Thither they removed on February 5 th, a deliciously 
 fresh bright day, the omen of a happy life to come. 
 Their first weeks were cheered by the success of " Adam 
 Bede.'' The journal tells us, under date March 26, 
 1859- 
 
 "George went into town to-day and brought me home a budget 
 of good news that compensated for the pain I felt in the coldness of 
 an old friend. Mr. Langford says that Mudie ' thinks he must have 
 another hundred or two of 'Adam'— has read the work himself, 
 and is delighted with it.' Charles Reade says it is ' the finest thing 
 since Shakespeare ' — placed his finger on Lisbeth's account of her 
 coming home with her husband from their marriage — praises en- 
 thusiastically the style — the way in which the author handles the 
 Saxon language. Shirley Brooks also delighted. John Murray says 
 there has never been such a book. . . . Lucas delighted with 
 the book, and will review it in the Times the first opportunity.'' 
 
 At the same time George Eliot is able to write to Mr. 
 Blackwood—" About my new story, which will be a novel 
 as long as 'Adam Bede,' and a sort of companion 
 picture of provincial life, we must talk when I have the 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 07 
 
 pleasure of seeing you. It will be a work which, will 
 require time and labour." A month Jater the old 
 diffidence comes over her — " Shall I ever write another 
 book as true as ' Adam Bede ' ? The weight of the 
 future presses on me, and makes itself felt even more 
 than the deep satisfaction of the past and present." 
 
 It was this feeling perhaps which made her turn to the 
 completion of " The Lifted Veil," which she finished on 
 April 29th, having begun it, she tells us, one morning at 
 Richmond, when her head was too stupid for more 
 important work. The story is interesting psychologically, 
 but not otherwise. It is apparently a sermon on the 
 text, 
 
 " Prudens futuri temporis exitum 
 Caliginosa nocte premit Deus." 
 
 The germ of the tale is "found in the following passage, 
 which might be, and perhaps is, a quotation from a note- 
 book : — 
 
 "So absolute is our soul's need of something hidden and un- 
 certain for the maintenance of that doubt and hope and effort which 
 are the breath of its life, that if the whole future were laid bare to us. 
 beyond to-day the interest of all mankind would be bent on the 
 hours that lie between ; we should pant after the uncertainties of 
 our one morning and our one afternoon ; we should rush fiercely to 
 the Exchange for our last possibility of speculation, of success, of 
 disappointment ; we should have a glut of political prophets 
 foretelling a crisis or no crisis within the twenty-four hours left open 
 to prophecy. Conceive the condition of the human mind if all 
 propositions whatsoever were self-evident except one, which was to 
 become self-evident at the close of a summer's day, but in the 
 meantime might be the subject of question, of hypothesis, of debate. 
 Art and philosophy, literature and sciences, would fasten like bees 
 on that one proposition which had the merit of probability in if, 
 
€8 LIFE OF 
 
 and be the more eager ■ because their enjoyrnents would end with 
 sunset. Our impulses, our spiritual activities, no more adjust 
 themselves to the idea of their future nullity, than the beating of our 
 heart or the irritability of our muscles." 
 
 The story is uninteresting in itself, and the probabilities are 
 not even decently preserved. Why should a seer gifted 
 with such prescience fail to foresee the two most im- 
 portant events in the story, that his brother was going to 
 be killed, and that his wife was going to poison him .■' 
 She writes in 1873 that she does not wish it reprinted 
 at present. " I care for the idea which it embodies, and 
 which justifies its painfulness. There are many things 
 in it which I would willingly say over again, but I shall 
 never put them in any other form." The motto which 
 I expresses the central idea dates from the same year — 
 ' 1873:— 
 
 "Give me no light, great heaven, but such as turns 
 To energy of human fellowship : 
 No powers save the growing heritage 
 That makes completer manhood." 
 
 .4 The rest of the year 1859 was taken up with writing 
 "The Mill -on the Floss," finished on March 21, i860. 
 It does not seem to have been a very happy year 
 for George Eliot. The house at Wandsworth, taken 
 with such hopes of permanence, did not suit her ; there 
 was too much publicity with too many dusty lanes. 
 I Also the new novel made great demands upon her. It 
 was written more out of her own life than out of her 
 reminiscences. 1 It must have been exhausting work to 
 recall in all their fulness of detail those early days with 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 09 
 
 her brother, now passed for ever, and it is probable that 
 some of the more passionate scenes of the grown-up 
 " Maggie " also made clutches at her heart-strings. 
 Further the extraordinary success of " Adam Bede " 
 seems to have saddened as well as gratified her. She 
 was conscious of the weight of responsibility now resting 
 upon her, and her congenital diffidence made her fear 
 that she would never be.able to write another book as 
 good as her first. We find in her diary and letters no 
 trace of the joyous work at Munich and Dresden. What 
 a pity, we are constantly tempted to exclaim, that so 
 much of her life was spent under depressing influences ! 
 "I am assured," she writes to Major Blackwood, "that 
 ' Adam Bede ' was worth writing — worth living through 
 long years to write. But now it seems impossible to me 
 that I shall ever write anything so good and true again. 
 I have arrived at faith in the past, but not at faith in 
 the future." The one happiness she gained at Wands- 
 worth was her friendship with Mrs. Congreve. Other- 
 wise, she writes to her, " I want to get out of this house 
 — cut cables and drift about. I dislike Wandsworth." 
 And again, "This place certainly becomes drearier to 
 me as the summer advances. The dusty roads are all 
 longer, and the shade is further off." There is a curious 
 entry under the date of June 20, 1859— "We went to 
 the Crystal Palace to hear the ' Messiah,' and dined 
 afterwards with the Brays and Sara Hennell. I told 
 them that I was the author of ' Adam Bede ' and 
 'Clerical Scenes,' and they seemed overwhelnied with 
 surprise. This experience has enlightened me a good 
 deal as to the ignorance in which we all live of each 
 
70 LIFE OF 
 
 other." It is indeed very strange that these most 
 intimate friends should not have discovered the authorship 
 as Madame Bodichon was able to do ; and that they 
 should have been surprised that Marian Evans had pro- 
 duced the book. There is rather a patronizing tone 
 about some of their letters, as if they regarded George 
 Eliot as necessarily an intellectual dependant, which 
 she naturally enough resented. A hurried visit to 
 Lucerne in July was rather fatiguing than refreshing. 
 Bad spirits still weighed upon her. " When ' Maggie ' 
 is done," she writes to Blackwood, " and I have a 
 month or two of leisure, I should like to transfer 
 our present house, into which we were driven by 
 haste and economy, to some one who likes houses 
 full of eyes all round him. I long for a house with some 
 shade and grass close round it — I don't care how rough 
 — and the sight of Swiss houses has heightened my 
 longing." And a few days later she says to Mrs. Bray — 
 
 " The weight of my future life, — the self-questioning whether my 
 nature will be able to meet the heavy demands upon it, both of 
 personal duty and intellectual production, — bears upon me almost 
 continually in a way that prevents me even from tasting the quiet 
 joy I might have had in the work done. Buoyancy and exaltation, 
 I fancy, are out of the question when one has lived so long as I 
 have ... I feel no regret that the fame, as such, brings no pleasure ; 
 but it is a grief to me that I do not constantly feel strong in 
 thankfulness that my past life has vindicated its uses, and given me 
 reason for gladness that such an unpromising woman-child was 
 born into the world." 
 
 Meanwhile the work goes on. " Our great difficulty is 
 tivie" she writes to Miss Hennell. " I am little bette~^, 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 71 
 
 than a sick nigger with the lash behind him at present." 
 A remark of hers to Madame Bodichon throws a 
 curious hght on the difference between her earlier and 
 her later novels, between " Adam Bede " and „The 
 Mill on the Floss " on the one hand, and " Middle- 
 march " and " Daniel Deronda " on the other. '• I do 
 wish much to see more of human life — how can one see 
 enough in the short years one has to stay in the world ? 
 But I meant [referring to something which she had 
 written to her correspondent] that at present my mind 
 works with the most freedom and the keenest sense t 
 of poetry in my remotest past, and there are many ' 
 strata to be worked through before I can begin to use, 
 artistically, any material I may gather in the present.'' |^ 
 Her art did strive towards the acquisition of this 
 material, and eventually she accomplished its assimi- 
 lation. 
 
 The first instalment of "Maggie" sent to Blackwood 
 pleased him, and George Eliot writes, on August 1 7th — 
 
 " I am glad that my story cleaves to you. At present I have no 
 hope that it will affect people as strongly as ' Adam ' has done. 
 The characters are on a, lower level generally, and the environ- 
 ment less romantic. But my stories grow in me like plants,, and 
 this is only in the leaf-bud. I have faith that the flower will 
 come." 
 
 Still we find her, in the middle of September, after a 
 short holiday at Weymouth, " in much anxiety and 
 doubt " about the new novel The result of this was a 
 three days' visit to Gainsborough, the prototype of St. j 
 Ogg's, which gave her some new ideas, and put her in 
 better hope. She was always apparently writing with 
 
72 LIFE OF 
 
 a view to the final catastrophe of the inundation. On 
 October i6th she is able to write in her journal, '• Have 
 finished the first volume of my new novel, 'Sister 
 Maggie'; have got my legal question answered satis- 
 factorily; and, when my headache has cleared off, 
 must go at it full speed." More interesting is the 
 sketch given of herself at this period to M. Albert 
 Durade, her host in Geneva, to whom she had not 
 written for a very long period : 
 
 " In the last three years a great change has come over my life. . . . 
 Under the influences of the intense happiness I have enjoyed from 
 thorough moral and intellectual sympathy, I have at last found out 
 my true vocation, after which my nature had alvfays been feeling 
 and striving uneasily without finding it. What do you think that 
 vocation is ? I pause for you to guess. I have turned out to be an 
 artist — not as you are, with pencil and the palette, but with words. I 
 have written a novel which people say has interested them deeply, 
 and not a few people, but almost all reading England. It was 
 published in February last, and already 14,000 copies have been 
 sold. The title is 'Adam Bede,' and 'George Eliot,' the name 
 on the title-page, is my nom de plume. I had previously written 
 another work of fiction called ' Scenes of Clerical Life,' which had 
 a great literary success, but not a great popular success, such as 
 ' Adam Bede ' has had. ... I think you will believe that I do not 
 write you word of this out of any small vanity. My books are 
 deeply serious things to me, and come out of all the painful discip- 
 line, all the most hardly-learned lessons, of my past life. I write 
 you word of it, because I believe that both your kind heart and 
 Madame D'Albert's too will be touched with real joy, that one 
 whom you knew when she was not very happy, and when her life 
 seemed to serve no purpose of much worth, has been at last blessed 
 with the sense that she has done something worth living and 
 suffering for. ... I am very much changed from the ' Minle ' 
 of old days : the years have altered me as much inwardly as out- 
 wardly. In some things, however, I am just the same — in some of 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 73 
 
 my failings, I fear ; but it is not a failing to retain a vivid remem- 
 brance of past scenes, and to feel warmly towards friends whose 
 kindness lies far back in the distance, and in these things I am the 
 same as when I used to walk on La Treille with you or Madame 
 D'Albert." 
 
 The scene between Mr. Tulliver and Wakem, in 
 Book III. chap, vii., was written on November 24, 1859. 
 The second volume was finished on January 16, i860. 
 By this time it had been settled that the novel should be 
 called " The Mill on the Floss," at Blackwood's sugges- 
 tion — in spite of the obvious rejoinder that the mill was 
 not on the Floss, but on a small tributary of it. "Sister 
 Maggie " would have been a far better title. Yet even 
 now she writes — 
 
 " I have been invalided for the last week, and, of course, am 
 a prisoner in the castle of Giant Despair, who growls in my ear 
 tl4t 'The Mill on the Floss' is detestable, and that the last 
 volume will be the climax of that general detestableness. Such is 
 the elation attendant on what a self-elected lady correspondent of 
 mine from Scotland calls my ' exciting career ' ! " 
 
 The last eleven pages of " The Mill on the Floss " t, 
 were written in a furor on the morning of March 21st. i 
 Blackwood had previously consented to very liberal 
 terms — _j^2,ooo for 4,000 copies of the three-volume 
 edition, ;^iSo for 1,000 at 12s., and £^60 for 1,000 at 
 6s. Sixteen thousand copies of " Adam Bede " were 
 sold in the first year, and at this rate George Eliot would 
 have received ;^8,ooo as her share. 
 
 There is no need to dwell on the extent to which the 
 early chapters of "The Mill on the Floss " are a picture 
 of the early life of George Eliot and her brother Isaac. 
 
74 LIFE OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 In this respect it resembles the " David Copperfield " of 
 Dickens. It is more to the purpose to quote her own 
 defence of the book in answer to the criticism of Sir 
 Edward Lytton : 
 
 "I return Sir Edward's critical letter, which I have read with 
 much interest. On two points I recognize the justice of his 
 criticism. First, that Maggie is made to appear too passive in the 
 scene of quarrel in the Red Deeps. If my booli were still in MS. 
 I should — now that the defect is suggested to me — alter, or rather 
 expand, that scene. Secondly, that the tragedy is not adequately 
 prepared. This is a defect which I felt even while writing the 
 third volume, and have felt ever since the MS. left me. The 
 Epische Breite into which I was beguiled by love of my subject in 
 the two first volumes, caused a want of proportionate fulness in the 
 treatment of the third, which I shall always regret. The other 
 chief point of criticism — Maggie's position towards Stephen — is too 
 vital a part of my whole conception and purpose for me to be con- 
 verged to the condemnation of it. If I am wrong there — if I did 
 not really know what my heroine would feel and do under the 
 circumstances in which I deliberately placed her — I ought not to 
 have written this book at all, but quite a different book, if any. If 
 the ethics of art do not admit the truthful presentation of a 
 character essentially noble, but liable to great error — error that is 
 anguish to its own nobleness — then, it seems to me, the ethics, of 
 art are too narrow, and must be widened to correspond with a 
 widening psychology." 
 
 Immediately after the completion of "The Mill on 
 the Floss," Mr. and Mrs. Lewes started for a tour in 
 Italy, to visit new scenes and gather new experiences. 
 This journey forms a dividing epoch in George Eliot's 
 artistic life, nearly as important as that of the journey 
 to Italy in the life of Goethe. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE journey to Italy occupied the second quarter 
 of i860. George Eliot has left us an account of 
 her travels, which does not, however, contain anything 
 particularly original. Rome appears to have pleased her 
 little, Venice more, Florence most. The most important 
 result of the expedition was the novel of "Romola,'' 
 which arose directly out of her visit to Florence. George 
 Eliot was not unlike other geniuses in setting a greater 
 value on what others could do than on what she could 
 accomplish easily herself, and in holding somewhat 
 cheaply those talents which were most completely part 
 of her nature. Although she recogniEed the fact that it 
 was her vocation in life to write novels, she was wont to 
 lament that this work was so much more liberally 
 rewarded than the science of her husband, or the 
 historical researches of other friends. Her mind also 
 had a strong tendency towards erudition. The first 
 literary task she planned was a table of ecclesiastical 
 history. She continued to amass knowledge throughout 
 her life. She revelled in Monteil's " History of France," 
 a book which is neither a history nor a romance, but 
 
76 LIFE OF 
 
 something between the two — an attempt to reconstruct the' 
 life of the Middle Ages as the Gallus and Charicles of 
 Bekker that of ancient Rome and Greece. This tendency 
 induced her to transplant modern psychological problems 
 into the atmosphere of mediaeval Florence — to produce a 
 book which is a marvel of literary skill, which fascinates 
 many minds, but does not represent moral struggles as 
 forcibly as they would appear amongst familiar surround- 
 ings; which gives a picture of Italian hfe, marvellous 
 indeed as an intellectual effort, but unreal to those who 
 know Italy as well as she knew England. The compo- 
 sition of the book was a terrible strain. It made most 
 serious demands upon her physical strength. It remains 
 perhaps, the best of all historical novels, but a warning 
 that no more should ever be attempted. 
 
 Lewes once told me that " Romola " grew out of a 
 projected article on Savonarola, probably a review of his 
 life by Signer Villari. This is hardly consistent with 
 the account given in her letters. She writes to Major 
 Blackwood, on May 27th, "There has been a crescendo 
 of enjoyment in our travels; for Florence, from its 
 relation to the history of Modern Art, has roused a 
 keener interest in us even than Greece, and has stimu- 
 lated me to entertain rather an ambitious project, which 
 I mean to be a secret from every one but you and Mr. 
 John Blackwood." Again she writes to Mr. Blackwood 
 from Berne, on June 23rd, " I don't think I can venture 
 to tell you what my great project is by letter, for I am 
 anxious to keep it a secret. It will require a great deal 
 of study and labour, and I am athirst to begin." On 
 August 28th the secret is told: — 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 77 
 
 "When we were in Florence, I was rather fired with the idea 
 of writing a historical romance — scene, Florence ; period, the 
 close of the fifteenth century, which was marked by Savonarola's 
 career and martyrdom. IMr. Lewes has encouraged me to 
 persevere in the project, saying that I should probably do some- 
 thing in historical romance rather different in character from what 
 has been done before. But I want first to write anotlier English 
 story, and the plan I should like to carry out is this : to publish 
 my next English novel when my Italian one is advanced enough 
 for us to begin its publication a few months afterwards in ' Maga.' 
 It would appear without a name in the Magazine, and be subse- 
 quently reprinted with the name of George Eliot. I need not 
 tell you the wherefore of this plan." You know well enough the 
 received phrases with which a writer is greeted when he does 
 something else than what was expected of him. But just now 
 I am quite without confidence in my future doings, and almost 
 repent of having formed conceptions which will go on lashing me 
 now until I have at least tried to fulfil them." 
 
 At Michaelmas, i860, Mr. and Mrs. Lewes left 
 Wandsworth, and came to a furnished house, 10 
 Harewood Square, which they took for six months. 
 Here the idea of " Silas Marner " occurred to her, and 
 delayed for a time the composition of " Romola." She 
 describes herself as suffering from physical weakness and 
 mental depression ; as bitterly regretting the loss of the 
 country, as being unable to execute work, and despairing 
 of ever working well again. Still " Silas Marner " pro- 
 ceeded slowly, and only sixty-two pages were written in 
 two months. On December 17th, they removed to 16 
 Blandford Square, and remained there for nearly three 
 years. They hoped by the end of that time to have so 
 far done their duty by their children as to be free to live 
 where they desired. She announced her story to Black- 
 wood in the following words : — 
 
78 LIFE OF 
 
 "I am writing a story which came across my other plans by a 
 sudden inspiration. I don't know at present whether it will resolve 
 itself into a book short enough for me to complete before Easter, or 
 whether it will expand beyond that possibility. It seems to me that 
 nobody will take any interest in it but myself, for it is extremely 
 unlike the popular stories going ; but Mr. Lewes declares that I am 
 wrong, and says it is as good as anything I have done." 
 
 It is a story of old-fashioned village life, which had 
 unfolded itself from the merest millet-seed of thought. 
 By February ist, page 209 had been reached, amidst 
 great bodily discomfort; and a fortnight later, 230 pages 
 of manuscript were sent to Blackwood. Amidst this 
 work there are constant complaints about her health. 
 She feels " old and ricketty,"her " malaise is chiefly owing 
 to the depressing influence of town air and town scenes.'' 
 Why, we ask again, did she not move to more congenial 
 surroundings ? Was Mr. Lewes so uncompromising a 
 Londoner? Mr. Blackwood found "Silas Marner " 
 rather sombre. George Eliot replies to him — 
 
 ' ' I hope you will not find it at all a sad story as a whole, sijice it 
 sets — or is intended to set — in a strong light the remedial iiffluences of 
 pure, natural, human relations. The Nemesis is a very mild one. 
 I have felt all through as if the story would have lent itself best to 
 metrical rather than to prose fiction, especially in all that relates to 
 the pyschology of Silas ; except that, under that treatment, there 
 could not be an equal play of humour. It came to me first of all 
 quite suddenly, as a sort of legendary tale, suggested by my recol- 
 lection of having once, in early childhood, seen a linen-weaver with 
 a bag on his back; but as my mind dwelt on the subject I became 
 inclined to a more realistic treatment. " 
 
 The last pages of the manuscript were sent off to 
 Edinburgh on March 10, 1861. 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 79 
 
 " Silas Marner " is, perhaps, the novel of George Eliot 
 which has earned the highest praise from literary craftsmen. 
 It contains all her merits in high perfection, concentrated 
 ) by the narrow limits in which the work is enclosed. The 
 I hero is one of those ordinary unexciting characters which 
 she loved to choose. His joy over the hoarded guineas 
 is something like that of David Faux, but the story of 
 their loss and recovery has a far higher purpose than 
 that depicted in Brother Jacob'. Godfrey Cass is a 
 reminiscence of Arthur Donnithorne and a foretaste of 
 Tito, one of those weak, self-indulgent characters who 
 are led by the impulse of the moment, and whose soft- 
 ness is a source of ruin to themselves and others. Mr. 
 Macey is a kind of male Mrs. Eoyser, full of witty 
 sayings, hot from George Eliot's mint. "There's allays 
 two 'pinions ; there's the 'pinion a man has of himsen, 
 and there's the 'pinion other folks have on him. There'd 
 be two 'pinions about a cracked bell if the bell could 
 hear itself." "I don't heed how the women are made. 
 They wear nayther coat nor breeches ; you can't make 
 much out of their "shapes.'' "He isn't come to his 
 right colour yet : he's partly like a black-baked pie." 
 These and many other gems sparkle in Macey's conver- 
 sation. Dolly Winthrop is a reflection of Mrs. Poyser, 
 and nothing is more graphic or more entertaining than 
 her views on religious subjects. " I've looked for help 
 in the right quarter, and give myself up" to them as we 
 must all give ourselves up to at the last ; and if we've done 
 our part it isn't to be believed as them as are above us 
 'ull be worse nor we are, and come short o' theirn." 
 " It comes mto my head as them',above Ijas got a deal 
 
80 LIFE OF 
 
 tenderer heart nor what I've got — for I can't be anyways 
 better nor them as made me ; and if anything looks hard 
 to me, it's because there's things I don't know on ; and 
 for the matter o' that there may be plenty o' things I don't 
 know on, for it's little as I know — that it is." "All as 
 we've got to do is to trusten, Master Marner — to do the 
 right thing as far as we know, and to trusten. For if we 
 as knows so little can see a bit o' good and right, we may 
 be sure as there's a good and a right bigger nor what we 
 can know. I feel it i' my own inside as it must be so." 
 The sweeping away of the little chapel in which the first 
 injury was done to Silas is a fine image of the disappear- 
 ance of wrong done in the gristle of early life in the 
 larger and more liberal growth of later years. " Silas 
 Marner" draws but little on the author's personal recol- 
 lections. No scene familiar in early life is described, no 
 friend of early years is portrayed. The experience from 
 which the characters are drawn is part of her life-blood, 
 but in other respects the tale is a pure product of imagi- 
 nation. The success of the book was considerable, and 
 the author appears to have been surprised at it. 
 
 " Silas Marner " ended, " Romola " was resumed, but 
 a long preparation was necessary for its production. The 
 first duty was a visit to Florence, which was reached at 
 the beginning of May. She saw that city mainly under 
 the guidance of Mr. Thomas Adolphus Trollope, who 
 was then engaged in writing his history of the Tuscan 
 capital. She remained there only thirty-four days, and Mr. 
 Trollope told me a few years afterwards how extraordi- 
 nary it was that she should have gained so intimate a 
 knowledge in so short a space of time. However, her 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 81 
 
 bad spirits did not altogether desert her. He told me 
 that one day, taking him aside into a retired street, 
 she assured him that she considered it a great evil and 
 wrong that she had ever been born. Some of her letters 
 speak of her occupations : 
 
 " We have been industriously foraging in old streets and old 
 books. I feel very brave just now, and enjoy the thought of work — 
 but don't set your mind on my doing just what I have dreamed. It 
 may turn out that I can't work freely and fully enough in the 
 medium I have chosen, and in that case I must give it up : for I 
 will never write anything to which my whole heart, mind, and con- 
 science don't consent, so that I may feel that it was something — how- 
 ever small — which wanted to be done in this world, and that I am 
 just the organ for that little bit of work. Mr. Lewes is kept in con- 
 tinual distraction by having to attend to my wants — going with me 
 to the Magliabecchian Library, and poking about everywhere on my 
 behalf — I having very little self-help about me of the pushing andi 
 inquiring kind." 
 
 In her journal she reflects thus upon her visit : " Will' 
 it be all in vain ? Our morning hours were spent in look- 
 ing at streets, buildings, and pictures, in hunting up old. 
 books, at shops or stalls, or in reading at the Maglia- 
 becchian Library. Alas ! I could have- done much more 
 if I had been well ; but that regret applies to most years, 
 of my life." 
 
 The journal notes that "Romola" was begun on October 
 7, 1 86 1. This, indeed, was not the real beginning of the^ 
 novel as it stands at present, which dates from January i, 
 1862. But before this time is reached much had to be 
 gone through. On July 12 th she tells Miss Hennell 
 that she is fresh from six quarto volumes on the history 
 of the monastic orders, and she had just begun a less 
 
 6 
 
82 LIFE OF 
 
 formidable modern book on the same subject, Montalem- 
 bert's "Monks of the West." Further, that she has been 
 reading the Survey of the Middle Ages contained in 
 the fifth volume of the "Philosophie Positive." "Few 
 chapters can be fuller of luminous ideas." . On July 30th 
 she writes : " Read little this morning — my mind dwell- 
 ing with much depression on the probability or improba- 
 bility of my achieving the work I wish to do. I struck 
 out two or three thoughts towards an English novel. I 
 am much affected with hopelessness and melancholy just 
 now, and yet I feel the value of my blessings." The 
 following extracts illustrate the painful efforts by which 
 "Romola" was brought to birth — 
 
 "Aug. I. Struggling constantly with depression. . . . Aug. 10. 
 Walked with G. We talked of my Italian novel. ... Aug. 12. Got 
 into a state of such wretchedness in attempting to concentrate my 
 thoughts on the construction of my story, that I became desperate, 
 and suddenly burst my bonds, saying, I will not think of writing ! . . . 
 Aug. 20. This morning I conceived the plot of my novel with new 
 distinctness. Aug. 24. These have been placid, ineffective days — 
 my mind being clouded and depressed." 
 
 Eleven days were spent at Malvern, during which Mrs. 
 Jameson's " Legends of the Monastic Orders " was 
 read, and the "Storia di San Marco," by Marchese, 
 begun. The journal continues : 
 
 "Sept. 23. I have been unwell ever since we returned from 
 ilalvern, and have been disturbed from various causes in my work, 
 so that I have done scarcely anything except correct my own books 
 for a new edition. To-day I am much better, and hope to begin a more 
 effective life to-morrow. . . . Oct. 4. IVIy mind still worried about my 
 plot — and without any confidence in my ability to do what I want. 
 Oct. 28 and 30. Not very well. Utterly desponding about my 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 83 
 
 book. Oct. 31. Still -wiith an incapable head — trying to write, 
 trying to construct, and unable. Nov. 6. So utterly dejected that, 
 in walking with G. in the park, I had almost resolved to give up my 
 Italian novel, Nov. 10. New sense of things to be done in my 
 novel, and more brightness in my thoughts. Yesterday I was 
 occupied with ideas about my next English novel ; but this morning 
 the Italian scenes returned upon me with fresh attraction.'' 
 
 At last the cloud lifts. On December 8th, she 
 relates to Lewes the conception of the story, with which 
 he expressed great delight. " Shall I ever be able to 
 carry out my ideas. Flashes of hope are succeeded by 
 long intervals of dim distrust." On December 12th she 
 finished writing the plot, and on January ist she began 
 the novel in its present form. 
 
 We learn from these extracts — which appear to me 
 extremely valuable for the intellectual history of George 
 Eliot — that the idea of " Romola" had been present to . 
 her mind for eighteen months before a word of the novel j 
 was written. No wonder that so deep a root was 
 destined to support a tree so stately. " Romola " was 
 eventually published in the Cornhill Magazine, and it is 
 interesting to note that it was conceived, and begun, with- 
 out any reference to the periodical in which it appeared, 
 or to the publisher who should bring it into the world. On 
 January 23, 1862, Mr. George Smith called in Blandford 
 Square, and asked if George Eliot were open to a "mag- 
 nificent offer." What this was does not precisely appear 
 in Mr. Cross's book. On February 27th Mr. Smith 
 offered to give ;^io,ooo for the appearance of the novel 
 in the Cornhill, and the entire copyright at home and 
 abroad. The diary mentions, on May 23rd, that the sum 
 
84 LIFE OF 
 
 given was ;^7,ooo, in twelve monthly payments. I have 
 certainly heard on good authority that the sum eventually 
 paid was ;^i 2,000, with the right of publication for four 
 years. It was thus some time before "Romola" could 
 be included in the regular series of George Eliot's works. 
 The first part was published in the Corn/till for July, at 
 which time three parts only had been completed. There 
 is no doubt that the anxiety of publishing in numbers, 
 and the necessity of producing a certain amount of copy 
 at stated intervals, increased the strain, already too great, 
 of creating a narrative in an artificial and unfamiliar 
 medium. It was indeed a noble enterprize for the con- 
 ductors of the Cornhill to purchase at so large a price 
 the work of the first novelist of the day, and to have it 
 illustrated by Frederick Leighton. But there is also no 
 doubt that, heartily as " Romola " was welcomed, even, 
 in its inception, by competent judges, it for a time 
 injuriously affected the circulation of the magazine. As 
 the author warmed to her work the complaints of 
 depression became less frequent. The summer was 
 spent at Littlehampton, and by the end of October she 
 had again contrived to be three parts in advance. At 
 the end of November she is able to write to Mr. 
 Durade : " In this world of struggles and endurance, we 
 seem to have more than our share of happiness and 
 prosperity, and I think this year's end finds me enjoying 
 existence more than ever I did before, in spite of the 
 loss of youth. Study is a keener delight to me than 
 ever, and I think the affections, instead of being dulled 
 by age, have acquired a stronger activity." However, as 
 she neared the end of her task, the pressure became 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 85 
 
 more severe. She writes on May 6th : " We have just 
 returned from Dorking, whither I went a fortnight ago to 
 have solitude. . . . The weather was severely cold for 
 several' days of my stay, and I was often ailing. That 
 has been the way with me for a month and more, and in 
 consequence I am backward with my July number of 
 'Roraola,' the last part but one." To this' Mr. Cross 
 adds : " I remember my wife telling me, at Widey, how 
 cruelly she had suffered at Dorking from working under 
 a leaden weight at this time. The writing of ' Romola ' 
 ploughed into her more than any of her other books. 
 She told me she could put her finger on it as marking a 
 well-defined transition in her life. In her own words, ' I 
 began it a young woman, — I finished it an old woman.' " 
 Part xiii. was eventually completed and Tito killed, on 
 May 1 6th, in great excitement. The final stroke to the 
 novel was eventually put on June 9th. The manuscript, 
 exquisitely written, with scarcely an erasure, after the 
 date of the commencement and completion, bears this 
 inscription : " To the Husband whose perfect love has 
 been the best source of her insight and strength, this 
 manuscript is given by his devoted wife, the writer." 
 
 It is a peculiarity of " Romola," as distinguished from, 
 other historical novels, that the object is, not so much to 
 present a living picture of a particular period in history, 
 as to create an historical background for characters 
 •whose interest lies in their intense moral significance. 
 Romola, Tito, Tessa, Bardo, have all of them their 
 homologues in other novels of George Eliot, but 
 undoubtedly the form they take is affected and deter- 
 mined by the epoch in which they live. No doubt the 
 
80 LIFE OF 
 
 particular portion of history in which the story is laid, 
 the transition from the mediseval to the modern world, 
 is especially worthy of accurate description; and with 
 George Eliot's historical knowledge no fault is to be 
 found. At the same time, it may be gravely doubted 
 whether she ever really assimilated the essence of Italian 
 life. In reading " Romola,'' with all its exquisite art, 
 one regrets that the types which are drawn with such 
 strength are not placed in an environment which the 
 author can describe without effort. Hence some of 
 those who are best acquainted with Italian life have 
 never been able to concur in the laudation of " Romola." 
 "^ Such admirable judges as Robert Browning and William 
 Story find a difficulty in reading it, from the falsity of 
 life which it represents; and Miss Blind tells us that 
 I Mazzini and Rossetti were of the same opinion. To the 
 last the Florentine contemporaries of Frk Girolamo 
 seemed nineteenth-century men and women dressed up 
 in the costume of the fifteenth. They thought that the 
 book was not " native." Still the intensity of passion in 
 the actors, the beauty of the language, and the charm 
 of Florentine scenery which forms the background, 
 induce many to rank it as the first of her masterpieces. 
 Her own view of some aspects of the book is given in 
 a letter to Mr. R. H. Hutton :— 
 
 " After reading your article on 'Romola' with careful reference 
 to the questions you put to me in your letter, I can answer sincerely 
 that I find nothing fanciful in your interpretation. On the con- 
 trary, I am confirmed in the satisfaction I felt when I first listened 
 to the article, at finding that certain chief elements of my intention 
 have impressed themselves so strongly on your mind, notwithstanding 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 87 
 
 the imperfect degree in which I have been able to give form to my 
 ideas. Of course, if I had been called on to expound my own 
 book, there are other things that I should want to say, or things 
 that I should say somewhat otherwise ; but I can point to nothing 
 in your exposition of which my consciousness tells me that it is 
 erroneous, in the sense of saying something which I neither thought 
 nor felt. You have seized, wiih a fulness which I had hardly hoped 
 that my book would suggest, what it was my effort to express in the 
 presentation of Bardo and Baldassarre ; and also the relation of 
 the Florentine political life to the development of Tito's nature. 
 Perhaps even a judge so discerning as 'yourself could not infer from 
 the imperfect result how strict a self-control and selection were 
 exercised in the presentation of details. I believe there is scarcely 
 a phrase, an incident, an allusion, that did not gather its value to me 
 from its supposed subservience to my main artistic objects. But it 
 is likely enough that my mental constitution would always render 
 the issue ofmy labour something excessive — wanting due proportion. 
 It is the habit of my imagination to strive after as full a vision of 
 the medium in which a character moves as of the character itself. 
 The psychological causes which prompted me to give such details 
 of Florentine life and history as I have given, are precisely the same 
 as those which determined me in giving the details of English 
 village life in ' Silas Marner,' or the ' Dodson ' life out of which 
 were developed the destinie of poor Tom and Maggie. But you 
 have correctly pointed out the reason why my tendency to excess in i 
 this effort after artistic vision makes the impression of a fault in 
 ' Roinola ' much more perceptible than in my previous books. And 
 I am not surprised at your dissatisfaction with Romola herself. I 
 can well believe that the many difficulties belonging to the treat- 
 ment of such a character have not been overcome, and that I have 
 failed to bring out my conception with adequate fulness. I am 
 sorry she has attracted you so little ; for the great problem of her 
 life, which essentially coincides with a chief problem in Savona- 
 rola's, is one that readers need helping to understand. But with 
 regard to that and to my whole book, my predominant feeling is — 
 not that I have achieved anything, but — that great facts have 
 struggled to find a voice through me, and have only been able to 
 speak brokenly. That consciousness makes me cherish the more 
 
LIFE OF 
 
 t proof that my work has been seen to have some true signifi- 
 ice by minds prepared, not simply by instruction, but by that 
 gious and moral sympathy with the historical life of man, which 
 he larger half of culture." 
 
 A remarkable feature in Romola's character should not 
 ss without notice, because it corresponds to something 
 lich George Eliot probably found in her own nature, 
 is the suddenness with which her passionate love turns 
 loathing when she discovers that Tito has been false to 
 r. A woman with more tenderness might have urged 
 :n to confession and repentance, and prevented him 
 )m falling into his worst crimes. Romola's love is 
 sed, not on passion alone, but on a deep admiration 
 r the moral qualities of the object loved. When the 
 ots of that admiration are withered, the love has 
 (thing more to feed upon, and dies. 
 The completion of " Romola " was followed by a long 
 St of more than a year. It is not till September 6, 
 564, that we find the entry in the journal, " I am read- 
 g about Spain, and trying a drama on a subject that 
 IS fascinated me — have written the prologue, and am 
 ;ginning the First Act. But I have little hope of making 
 lything satisfactory." Such was the first commence- 
 ent of "The Spanish Gypsy.'' In the meantime Mr. and 
 Ts. Lewes had moved into the house which they occupied 
 itil George Eliot's marriage with Mr. Cross — the house 
 ost closely associated with her, with the composition of 
 Felix Holt," " Middlemarch," and "Daniel Deronda," 
 id with the gathering of that circle of friends which gave 
 ir the opportunity of exercising a strong personal in- 
 jence, and of becoming acquainted with that large sphere 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 89 
 
 i 
 of society and thought, the knowledge of Wi„ch was 
 
 indispensable to her deepening views of art. Few 
 houses in London have been the scene of stronger 
 and more interesting emotions. The visitor on Sunday 
 afternoon rang at the gate, entered the porch of the 
 house, turned along . the passage to the left, passing 
 by the dining-room and Mr. Lewes's study, and 
 entered the drawing-room by the door at the end 
 of the passage. It was a double drawing-room with- 
 out folding doors, decorated by Owen Jones, and 
 hung with Leighton's drawings for the illustration 
 of " Romola." A bow window, with casements down 
 to the ground, looked on to the garden. Mrs. Lewes 
 generally sat in an armchair at the left of the fireplace. 
 Lewes generally stood or moved about in the back 
 drawing-room, at the end of which was the grand piano, 
 on which, as far as I am aware, she never played during 
 these receptions. In the early days of my acquaintance 
 the company was small, containing more men than women. 
 Herbert Spencer and Professor Beesly were constant visi- 
 tors. The guests closed round the fire and the con- 
 versation was general. At a later period the company 
 increased, and those who wished to converse with the 
 great authoress whom they had come to visit took their 
 seat in turns at the chair by her side. She always gave 
 us of her best. Her conversation was deeply sympa- 
 thetic, but grave and solemn, illumined by happy 
 phrases and by thrilling tenderness, but not by hiimour. 
 Although her features were heavy, and not well-propor- 
 tioned, all was forgotten when that majestic head bent 
 slowly down, and the eyes were lit up with a penetrating 
 
00 LIFE OF 
 
 and lively gaze. She appeared much greater than her 
 books. Her ability seemed to shrink beside her moral 
 grandeur. She was not only the cleverest, but the best 
 woman you had met. You never dared to speak to her 
 of her works ; her personality was so much more impres- 
 sive than its product. At a later time the string of 
 visitors became fatiguing to those who remembered 
 the old days. The drawing-room was enlarged to hold 
 them ; and three fashionably dressed ladies, sweeping 
 in, occupied the sofa, and seemed to fill the room. 
 These Sunday afternoon receptions were a great strain 
 upon her strength. When the last visitor had de- 
 parted she would, if the weather were fine, seek 
 refreshment in a brisk walk to dispel her headache, 
 and to call back the circulation into her feet, the icy 
 coldness of which was one of her perpetual trials. 
 Her own study was a large room on the first floor. 
 In front of her writing-table stood the cast of the 
 Melian Asclepius — a present, I think, from Mr. 
 Deutsch. 
 
 I remember Lewes telling me that George Eliot 
 was to appear before the world as a poet. He said 
 that her poetry had, above all other poetry that he 
 knew, the most direct and immediate connection 
 between the language and the sense. At the same 
 time it may be doubted whether she ever wrote what 
 can strictly be called poetry. She used verse as / 
 a vehicle for the concise and epigrammatic expres- 1 
 sion of thoughts which might have been clothed 
 in prose ; but she lacked the passionate fire without 
 which no poet can excel, and the gift of melodious 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 91 
 
 language which should always adequately clothe ex- 
 pression and sometimes supplement its defects. The 
 two first acts of " The Spanish Gypsy" were written in 
 September and October, 1864, but the remaining five 
 acts gave great difficulty in construction. The third act 
 was, however, finished by Christmas Day. It then 
 appears to have proceeded slowly, and the entry for 
 February 21, 1865, runs, "111 and very miserable. 
 George has taken my drama away from me." By March 
 29th "Felix Holt" was begun, and was published in 
 June, 1866. "The Spanish Gypsy" did not appear till 
 two years later. Just at this time Lewes became editor 
 of the Fortnightly Review, a new periodical based on 
 the lines of the Revue des Deux Monies, whose most 
 important characteristic was to be the signing of the 
 articles and the individual responsibility of the authors. 
 It is strange to see how this movement, which began 
 by a high-mihded protest against anonymous journal- 
 ism, has degenerated into a struggle for notorious 
 names, and resulted in the conversion of magazines 
 into menageries of social and literary lions. 
 
 My own friendship with George Eliot and her husband 
 began through the Fortnightly Review. In the autumn 
 of 1865 I was asked to review Mr. Adolphus Trollope's ( 
 "History of Florence." I wrote the article in the 
 Christmas vacation, and it was published early in the 
 ensuing year. George Eliot was pleased to express 
 approval of it. This led to a personal introduction, 
 and to a friendship which lasted till her death. 
 
 "Felix Holt" was finished on May 31, 1866, having J 
 taken fourteen months to write. Although during that 
 
 3 
 
02 LIFE OF 
 
 time George Eliot suffered from bad health, there is not 
 as much information in her journal and letters about its 
 composition as we find with regard to her other books. 
 It is the weakest of her novels. Scarcely an incident in it 
 appears to have grown out of her own life and experience, 
 and there are few characters or situations which can have 
 made any serious demand on her emotions. Perhaps 
 the central idea of it was the renunciation of Esther, the 
 giving up of a brilliant fortune and marriage for a humble 
 lot with the man she loved and admired, a course of 
 action which George Eliot often described in her writ- 
 ings and did not fail to inculcate in private life. "A 
 supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime rhythm 
 to a woman's life, and exalts habit into partnership 
 with the soul's highest needs, is not to be had where 
 and how she wills : to know that high initiation she 
 must often tread where it is hard to tread and feel the 
 Kchill air, and walk through darkness. It is not true that 
 r love makes all things easy : it makes us choose what is 
 difficult." The greatest pains were spent upon the elabo- 
 ration of the plot : and this was worked out with compli- 
 cated legal technicalities, in which she had the assistance 
 of Mr,. Frederic Harrison. At first she appears to have 
 consulted him on some legal questions, and writes in 
 answer — 
 
 "The ample and clear statement you have sent me with kind 
 promptness has put me in high spirits — as high spirits as can 
 belong to an unhopeful author. Your hypothetical case of a 
 settlement suits my needs surprisingly well. I shall be thankful 
 to let Sugden alone, and throw myself entirely on your goodness, 
 especially as what I wish is simply a basis of legal possibilities, and 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 93 
 
 not any command of details. I want to be sure that my chords 
 will not offend a critic accomplished in thorough-bass — not at all to 
 present an exercise in thorough-bass." 
 
 After an interview the MS. of the first volume was 
 sent to Mr. Harrison, and he was asked to pronounce on 
 political as well as moral questions. She writes at the 
 end of January, " I have received both your precious 
 letters — the second edition of the case, and the subse- 
 quent note. The story is sufficiently in the track of 
 ordinary probability ; and the careful trouble you have 
 so generously given to it has enabled me to feel a satis- 
 faction in my plot which beforehand I had sighed for as 
 unattainable." 
 
 Nearly three yeajs elapsed between the completion 
 of " Felix Holt " and the commencement of " Middle- 
 march." The only work of importance published by 
 George Eliot in this interval was " The Spanish Gypsy," 
 although it saw the birth of some of her other poems. Her 
 literary life may be thus shortly summarized. After long 
 preparation, first by translations and then by articles, her 
 first efforts of imagination and construction were shown 
 in the " Scenes of Clerical Life." Then follow the pair 
 of English novels drawn chiefly from her own experience, 
 "Adam Bede" and the "Mill on the Floss;" both novels 
 of which "Amos Barton" gave a foretaste. "Silas 
 Marner " and " Felix Holt " may be classed together as"! 
 pure efforts of imagination. Each started with a central 
 idea, which was worked out in the one case with success, 
 in the other with failure. " Romola " was an attempt to 
 combine erudition with imagination, to draw a picture 
 of those moral struggles which detained her with so 
 
94 LIFE OF 
 
 fascinating a spell, amid the surroundings of mediseval 
 Italy. Altliough opinions are divided with regard to 
 its artistic and dramatic merits, yet it will always 
 remain one of those books which are indispens- 
 able for introducing the English mind to the appre- 
 ciation and love of Italian scenes. "The Spanish 
 Gypsy " is a companion work, dealing with Spain as 
 "Romola" deals with Italy. After this George Eliot 
 paused. She apparently recognized that her real 
 strength lay in the English novel, but she needed new 
 experience and material to feed her imagination. Her 
 own reminiscences were exhausted. The attempt to 
 construct a novel apart from experience had failed. 
 She determined therefore to go more into the world 
 which her literary reputation now opened up to her, to 
 learn something more of men and their manners, to pene- 
 trate into the springs of the complex life which was passing 
 around her, to prepare herself to write a romance of the 
 modern world in which she lived, as true as the delinea- 
 tion of the society into which she had been born. This 
 newly assimilated material was the foundation of "Mid- 
 dlemarch" and " Deronda," — the first, in the opinion 
 of the best judges, her masterpiece; the second, an 
 attempt to solve deeper problems than she had before 
 attempted, and to convert art to higher uses, perhaps 
 a partial failure, but one more excellent and memorable 
 than many successes. 
 
 The completion of "Felix Holt " was followed by a 
 fortnight's holiday in Belgium and Holland. No sooner 
 had George Eliot returned than she resumed her labours 
 on "The Spanish Gypsy." The journal for August 30, 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 95 
 
 1866, tells us: "I have taken up the idea of my 
 drama, "The Spanish Gypsy," again, and am reading 
 on Spanish subjects — Bouterwek, Sismondi, Depping, 
 Llorente, &c." About the same period she wrote more 
 fully to Mr. Frederic Harrison : 
 
 "At present I am going to take up a work again which I laid down 
 before writing ' Felix.' It is — hut please, let this be a secret between 
 ourselves — an attempt at a drama, which I put aside at Mr. Lewes's 
 request, after writing four acts, precisely because it was in that 
 stage of creation — or Werden — in which the idea of the characters 
 predominates over the incarnation. Now I read it again, I find it 
 impossible to abandon it : the conceptions move me deeply, and 
 they have never been wrought out before. There is not a thought 
 or a symbol that I do not long to use : but the whole requires 
 recasting ; and, as I never recast anything before, I think of the 
 issue very doubtfully. When one has to work out the dramatic 
 action for one's self, under the inspiration of an idea, instead of 
 having a grand myth or an Italian novel ready to one's hand, 
 one feels anything but omnipotent. Not that I should have done 
 any better if I had had the myth or the novel, for I am not a good 
 user of opportunities. I think I have the right locus and historic 
 conditions, but much else is wanting.'' 
 
 " The Spanish Gypsy " was begun in its new form on 
 October 15, 1866. In the beginning of the following 
 year George Eliot and her husband undertook a 
 journey to Spain, similar to the visit to Florence which 
 had been a preparation for "Romola." The crown of 
 their journey was Granada. From that place she writes 
 to Frederic Harrison and Mr. Blackwood : 
 
 " I wish I could believe that you were all having anything like 
 the clear skies and warm' sun which have cheered our journeying 
 for the last month. At Alicante we walked among the palm- 
 
96 LIFE OF 
 
 trees, with their golden fruit hanging in rich clusters, and felt a 
 more delightful warmth than that of an English summer. Last 
 night we walked out and saw the towers of the Alhambra, the wide 
 Vega, and the snowy mountains by the brilliant moonlight . - . . Just 
 now we read nothing but Spanish novels — and not much of those." 
 
 "We are both heartily rejoiced that we came to Spain. It 
 was a great longing of mine, for, three years ago, I began to interest 
 myself in Spanish history and literature, and have had a work lying 
 by me, partly written, the subject of which is connected with Spain. 
 AVhether I shall ever bring it to maturity so as to satisfy myself . 
 sufficiently to print it, is a question not settled ; but it is a work 
 very near my heart. . . . Here, at Granada, the sun shines un- 
 interruptedly ; and in the middle of the day, to stand in the sun- 
 shine against a wall, reminds me of my sensations at Florence in 
 the beginning of June." 
 
 The j'ournal announces her return on March i6th. " I 
 go to my poem and the construction of two works — if 
 possible; " — undoubtedly "Middlemarch" and " Deronda." 
 A little later she tells Mr. Blackwood : 
 
 "The work connected with Spain is not a romance. It is 
 — prepare your fortitude — it is — a poem. I conceived the plot, and 
 wrote nearly the whole as a drama in 1864. Mr. Lewes advised me 
 to put it by for a time, and take it up again with a view to recasting 
 it. He thinks hopefully of it. I need not tell you that I am not 
 hopeful — but I am quite sure that the subject is fine. It is not 
 historic, but has merely historic connections. The plot was wrought 
 out entirely as an incorporation of my own ideas.'' 
 
 In the summer of this year the travellers, fresh from their 
 return, came to see me at Eton College, where I was then 
 residing. I shall never forget the visit, but I regret that it 
 finds no mention in her diary, as it would be interesting 
 to know her impressions of Eton and Windsor. They 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 97 
 
 walked down with me to the playing fields in the 
 morning, where a cricket match was in progress. 
 Both dined at table with the boys in my house, and 
 had an opportunity of seeing how Harold Transome 
 looked when he was an Eton boy. In the afternoon 
 they drove with me into Windsor Park, and enjoyed to 
 perfeciion that loveliest of all views of, Windsor from 
 the green sward in front of Cranbourne Tower, a 
 prospect now made less lovely by the too exuberant 
 growth of trees. In the evening we rowed up the river, 
 and George Eliot talked to me of her Spanish journey, 
 and compared Windsor with Granada. I have been 
 told by those who knew her long that she was awkward 
 in her early womanhood, and had not acquired that 
 repose and dignity which characterized her later years,. 
 I remember on this visit seeing some traces of the old 
 "Maggie," the recollection of which is very precious to me- 
 August and September were spent in a holiday in North 
 Germany, during which little work was done. At llme-- 
 nau, she wrote Fedalma's soliloquy after her scene with 
 Silva, and the ensuing dialogue between her and Juan. 
 From Ilmenau she wrote me a long letter, describing the 
 place, and asking me to join them at Dresden, and, as 
 she expressed it, with kindly exaggeration, " to make 
 some railway-station or corner of a street ever-memorable 
 to them." I received the letter at Pontresina, and it is 
 a deep regret to me that I did not accept the invitation. 
 I have also most unfortunately lost all the letters I 
 received from her during those years. I wrote to her 
 not unfrequently on matters of education and literature, 
 and her opinions on these subjects would have been of 
 permanent value. 
 
 7 
 
98 LIFE OF 
 
 On her return from Germany " The Spanish Gypsy " 
 was seriously resumed. Three thousand lines were com- 
 pleted by November 9th — a third of the projected poem. 
 She wished to have the completed portion in type, to 
 see how it looked, but feared the secret oozing out : — 
 
 " I want to keep myself free from all inducements to premature 
 publication — I mean, publication before I have given my work as 
 much revision as I can hope to give it while my mind is still 
 nursing it. Beyond this, delay would be useless. The theory of 
 laying by poems for nine years may be a fine one, but it could 
 not answer for me to apply it. I could no more live through one 
 of my books a. second time, than I can live through last year 
 again. But I like to keep checks on myself, and not to create 
 external temptations to do what I should think foolish in another." 
 
 " Felix Holt's Address to Working-men," which ap- 
 peared in Blackwood's Magazine for January, 1868, was 
 written in the last week of November, 1867. It was 
 composed at Mr. Blackwood's earnest request, to which 
 it would have been better if she had not acceded. 
 She says of it herself that, " perhaps, by a good deal 
 longer consideration and gradual shaping I might have 
 put the ideas into a more concrete, easy form." I dined 
 with them alone in the middle of December, just as 
 I was starting for Rome. George Eliot sat at the head 
 of the table and carved. The conversation was chiefly 
 on reminiscences of travel ; but I remember it was then 
 she told me the difficulty she had in understanding the 
 full meaning of a Greek sentence, and the ease with 
 which it was comprehended by Mr. Lewes. She de- 
 scribes herself at this time as a bundle of unpleasant 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 99 
 
 sensations, with a palpitating heart and awkward manners, 
 and professes a large charity for people who detest her ; 
 yet no one was ever the object of more enthusiastic 
 worship on the part of her friends. 
 
 At the end of February, 1869, George and Mrs. Lewes 
 paid a visit to Cambridge. They stayed at the Bull Hotel, 
 but were the guests jointly of Mr. W. G. Clark, then tutor 
 of Trinity College, and public orator, and myself. I 
 travelled down with them in the train, the journey giving 
 me the impression that railway-travelling was irksome 
 to her. She reiterated, I remember, strong warnings 
 against reading in the train, a mode of study in which 
 I have spent many happy hours. We dined in the 
 evening, a small party, in Mr. Clark's rooms. I sat 
 next to her, and she talked to me solemnly about the 
 duties of life, about the shallow immorality of be- 
 lieving that all things would turn out for the best, and 
 the danger of fixing our attention too much on the life 
 to come, as likely to distract us from doing our duty 
 in this world. The next day she breakfasted with 
 me in my rooms in college. I shall not readily forget 
 her exquisite courtesy and tenderness to the ladies 
 whom I had invited to meet her. This was the first of 
 several visits to Cambridge, which always gave her great 
 pleasure. At a later period she was on several occasions 
 the guest of Dr. Jowett, at Oxford. I asked her once 
 what struck her as the most salient difference between 
 the society of the two universities, and she replied that 
 at Cambridge they all seemed to speak well of each 
 other, whereas at Oxford they all criticized each other. 
 
 At this time "The Spanish Gypsy" is approaching 
 
100 LIFE OF 
 
 completion, and there are several notices of her work in 
 the diary and the letters. 
 
 " I am reading about savages and semi-savages, and think that 
 our religious oracles would do v^ell to study savage ideas by a 
 method of comparison with their own. Also, I am studying that 
 semi-savage poem, the ' Iliad. ' How enviable it is to be a classic. 
 When a verse in the ' Iliad ' bears six different meanings, and nobody 
 knows which is the right, a commentator finds this equivocalness in 
 itself admirable ! " 
 
 She told me at a later period she always read some of the 
 " Iliad " before beginning her work, in order to take out of 
 her mouth the taste of the modern world. She writes to 
 Mr. Blackwood that she chose the title "The Spanish 
 Gypsy" a long time ago, because it is a title in the fashion 
 of the elder dramatists, with whom she has perhaps more 
 cousinship than with recent poets. Also at a later time : 
 " The poem will be less tragic than I threatened : Mr. 
 Lewes has prevailed on me to return to my original 
 conception and give up the additional development, 
 which I determined on subsequently. The poem is 
 rather shorter in consequence." This, I suppose, refers 
 to an intention to make the catastrophe turn upon the 
 death of Don Silva. The poem was finally completed on 
 April 29, 1868. 
 
 Her own account of the origin and purpose of the 
 " Spanish Gypsy " cannot be omitted from this bio- 
 graphy :— 
 
 " The subject of ' The Spanish Gypsy ' was originally 
 suggested to me by a picture which hangs in the Scuola 
 di San Rocco at Venice, over the door of the large Sala 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 101 
 
 containing Tintoretto's frescoes. It is an Annunciation 
 said to be by Titian. Of course I had seen numerous 
 pictures of this subject before, and the subject had always 
 attracted me. But in this my second visit to the Scuola 
 di San Rocco, this small picture of Titian's, pointed out 
 to me for the first time, brought a new train of thought. 
 It occurred to me that here was a great dramatic motive 
 of the same class as those used by the Greek dramatists, 
 yet specifically differing from them. A young maiden, 
 believing herself to be on the eve of the chief event of 
 her life — marriage — about to share in the ordinary lot of 
 womanhood, full of young hope, has suddenly announced 
 to her that she is chosen to fulfil a great destiny,'entailing 
 a terribly different experience from that of ordinary 
 womanhood. She is chosen, not by any momentary 
 arbitrariness, but as a result of foregoing hereditary 
 conditions : she obeys. ' Behold the handmaid of the 
 I>ord.' Here, I thought, is a subject grander than that 
 of 'Iphigenia,' and it has never been used. I came 
 home with this in my mind, meaning to give the motive 
 a clothing in some suitable set of historical and local 
 conditions. My reflections brought me nothing that 
 would serve me except that moment in Spanish history 
 when the struggle with the Moors was attaining its climax, 
 and when there was the gypsy race present under such 
 conditions as would enable me to get my heroine and 
 the hereditary claim on her among the gypsies. I 
 required the opposition of race to give the need for 
 renouncing the expectation of marriage. I could not use 
 the Jews or the Moors, because the facts of their history 
 were too conspicuously opposed to the working out of my 
 
102 LIFE OF 
 
 catastrophe. Meanwhile the subject had become more 
 and more pregnant to me. I saw it might be taken as a 
 symbol of the part which is played in the general human 
 lot by hereditary conditions in the largest sense, and of 
 the fact that what we call duty is entirely made up of 
 such conditions ; for even in cases of just antagonism to 
 the narrow view of hereditary claims, the whole back- 
 ground of the particular struggle is made up of our 
 inherited nature. Suppose for a moment that our 
 conduct at great epochs was determined entirely by 
 reflection, without the immediate intervention of feeling 
 which supersedes reflection, our determination as to the 
 right would consist in an adjustment of our individual 
 needs to the dire necessities of our lot, partly as to our 
 natural constitution, partly as sharers of life with our 
 fellow-beings. Tragedy consists in the terrible difficulty 
 of this adjustment. 
 
 ' The dire strife 
 Of poor Humanity's afSicted will. 
 Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny.' 
 
 Looking at individual lots, I seemed to see in each the 
 same story, wrought out with more or less of tragedy, 
 and I determined the elements of ray drama under the 
 influence of these ideas. 
 
 " In order to judge properly of the dramatic structure, 
 it must not be considered first in the light of a 
 doctrinal symbolism, but in the light of a tragedy 
 representing some grand collision in the human lot. 
 And it must be judged accordingly. A good tragic 
 subject must represent a possible, sufficiently probable, 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 103 
 
 not a common action ; and to be really tragic, it must 
 represent irreparable collision between the individual and 
 the general (in different degrees of generahty). It is the 
 individual with whom we sympathize, and the general of 
 which we recognize the irresistible power. The truth 
 of this test will be seen by applying it to the greatest 
 tragedies. The collision of Greek tragedy is often that 
 between hereditary, entailed Nemesis, and the peculiar 
 individual lot, awakening our sympathy, of the particular 
 man or woman whom the Nemesis is shown to grasp 
 with terrific force. Sometimes, as in the ' Oresteia,' there 
 is the clashing of two irreconcilable requirements — two 
 duties, as we should say in these times. The murder 
 of the father must be avenged by the murder of the 
 mother, which must again be avenged. These two 
 tragic relatiops of the individual and general, and of two 
 irreconcilable ' oughts,' may be — will be — seen to be 
 almost always combined. The Greeks were not taking 
 an artificial, entirely erroneous standpoint in their art — 
 a standpoint which disappeared altogether with their 
 religion and their art. They had the same essential 
 elements of life presented to them as we have, and their 
 art symbolized these in grand schematic forms. The ' Pro- 
 metheus ' represents the ineffectual struggle to redeem 
 the small and miserable race of man, against the stronger 
 adverse ordinances that govern the frame of things with 
 a triumphant power. Coming to modern tragedies, what 
 is it that makes 'Othello' a great tragic subject? A 
 story simply of a jealous husband is elevated into a 
 most pathetic tragedy by the hereditary conditions of 
 Othello's lot, which give him a subjective ground for 
 
104 LIFE OF 
 
 distrust. Faust, Rigoletto ('Le Roi s'Amuse'), Brutus. It 
 might be a reasonable ground of objection against the 
 whole structure of ' The Spanish Gypsy ' if it were 
 shown that the action is outrageously improbable, lying 
 outside all that can be congruously conceived of human 
 actions. It is not a reasonable ground of objection that 
 they would have done better to act otherwise, any more 
 than it is a reasonable objection against the ' Iphigenia ' 
 that Agamemnon would have done better not to sacrifice 
 his daughter. 
 
 "As renunciations coming under the same great 
 class, take the renunciation of marriage, where marriage 
 cannot take place without entailing misery on the 
 ■children. 
 
 " A tragedy has not to expound why the individual 
 
 must give way to the general : it has to show that it is 
 
 compelled to give way, the tragedy consisting in the 
 
 struggle involved, and often in the entirely calamitous 
 
 issue in spite of a grand submission. Silva presents the 
 
 I tragedy of entire rebellion : Fedalma, of a grand sub- 
 
 j mission, which is rendered vain by the effects of Silva's 
 
 rebellion : Zarca, the struggle for a great end, rendered 
 
 ^ vain by the surrounding conditions of life. 
 
 " Now what is the fact about our individual lots? A 
 woman, say, finds herself on the earth with an inherited 
 organization : she may be lame, she may inherit a disease, 
 or what is tantamount to a disease : she may be a 
 Degress, or have other marks of race repulsive in the 
 community where she is born, &c., &c. One may go on 
 for a long while without reaching the limits of the 
 commonest inherited misfortunes. It is almost a mockery 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 105 
 
 to say to such human beings, ' Seek your own happiness.' 
 The utmost approach to well-being that can be made in 
 such a case is through large resignation and acceptance 
 of the inevitable, with as much effort to overcome any 
 disadvantage as good sense will show to be attended 
 with a likelihood of success. Any one may say, that is 
 the dictate of mere rational reflection. But calm can, 
 in hardly any human organism, be attained by natural 
 reflection. Happily, we are not left to that. Love, pity, 
 constituting sympathy, and generous joy with regard to 
 the lot of our fellow-men, come in — have been growing 
 since the beginning — enormously enhanced by wider 
 vision of results — by an imagination actively interested 
 in the lot of mankind generally ; and these feelings 
 become piety — i.e., loving, wiUing submission, and heroic 
 Promethean efforts towards high possibilities which may 
 result from our individual life. 
 
 "There is really no moral 'sanction' but this inward 
 impulse. The will of God is the same thing as the will 
 of other men, compelling us to work and avoid what 
 they have seen to be harmful to social existence. Dis- 
 joined from any perceived good, the divine will is simply 
 so much as we have ascertained of the facts of existence 
 which compel obedience at our peril. Any other notion 
 comes from the supposition of arbitrary revelation. 
 
 " That 'favourite view, expressed so often in Clough's 
 poems, of doing duty, in blindness as to the result, is likely 
 to deepen the substitution of egoistic yearnings for really 
 moral impulses. We cannot be utterly blind to the 
 results of duty, since that cannot be duty which is not 
 already judged to be for human good. To say the 
 
lOG LIFE OF 
 
 contrary, is to say that mankind have reached no 
 inductions as to what is for their good or evil. 
 
 " The art which leaves the soul in despair is laming to 
 the soul, and is denounced by the healthy sentiment of 
 an active community. The consolatory elements in ' The 
 Spanish Gypsy ' are derived from two convictions or 
 sentiments which so conspicuously pervade it that they 
 maybe said to belts very warp on which the whole action 
 is woven. These are — (i) The importance of individual 
 deeds ; (2) The all-sufficiency of the soul's passions in 
 determining sympathetic action. 
 
 " In Silva is presented the claim of fidelity to social 
 pledges : in Fedalma the claim constituted by an 
 hereditary lot less consciously shared. 
 
 "With regard to the supremacy of Love ; if it were a fact 
 without exception that man or woman never did renounce 
 the joys of love, there could never have sprung up a 
 notion that such renunciation could present itself as a 
 duty. If no parents had ever cared for their children, 
 how could parental affection have been reckoned among 
 the elements of life ? But what are the facts in relation 
 to this matter ? Will any one say that faithfulness to the 
 marriage tie has never been regarded as a duty, in spite 
 of the presence of the profoundest passion experienced 
 after marriage? Is Guinevere's conduct the type of 
 duty ? " 
 
 "The Spanish Gypsy " is a deeply impressive work. 
 No one can read it without emotion. It is easy to 
 understand that the author of it was reluctant to withhold 
 it from the world. Its composition raises the question 
 as to whether some things are better said in poetry than 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 107 
 
 in prose. Had " The Spanish Gypsy " been a prose 
 romance, we should have been tired with the perpetual 
 strain of high-flown diction, and with the slight tinge of 
 unreality in the characters. The rhetorical enthusiasm 
 of Schiller's " Don Carlos," difficult to endure in poetry, 
 would have been unbearable in prose. At the same time 
 it is doubtful whether the " Spanish Gypsy " had not 
 better have remained a tragedy in pure dramatic 
 form. The mixture of description and dialogue is 
 awkward, beautiful though the description may be. We 
 also feel that the author's energies did not sustain her 
 to the end. The first part (or act) is re-written and 
 re-modelled to an extent which does not appear to be the 
 case in the later portions. Also it can scarcely be called 
 poetry. It may be doubted whether there is a line of 
 it which has really taken its place among the household 
 words of our language. The best passages are those 
 which deal with psychological subtleties, the effect of 
 the Angel us in the first part, and Fedalma's unconscious 
 recognition of her father. Silva's description of his love : 
 
 ^ ." The only better is a past that lives 
 
 On through an added Present, stretching still 
 In hope unchecked by shaming memories 
 J To hfe's last breath ; " 
 
 Zarca's account of his race, Fedalma's acknowledgment 
 of the claim of filial duty — all these are more finely 
 expressed than they could have been in prose. On the 
 other hand, the lyrics are very disappointing. They 
 halt and hobble. Their music, which ought to sigh or 
 whisper, screeches, now and again, like the wheels of a 
 
108 LIFE OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 Portuguese wine-cart. The only song with a lilt to it 
 is the first of Aria's, and even that is commonplace. 
 George- Eliot had the gift of concentrated expression, but 
 not the gift of song. 
 
 The remainder of the year 1868 was spent in travel 
 and study. Two months were given to a tour in 
 Germany and Switzerland. A visit to Dr. Allbutt, at 
 Leeds, gave her a glimpse of hospital life which bore 
 fruit in " Middlemarch." A journey to Derbyshire in 
 November renewed early recollections. At the close of 
 the year she is able to hint that it has been as rich in 
 blessings as any year of their double life, and that 
 she enjoys a more even cheerfulness, and a continually 
 increasing power of dwelling on the good that is given 
 to her, and dismissing the thought of small evils. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ON January i, 1869, George Eliot's diary announces: 
 " I have set myself many tasks for the year — I 
 wonder how many will be accomplished ? — a novel called 
 ' Middlemarch,' a long poem on Timoleon, and 
 several minor poems.'' Itseemsas if the work upon "The 
 Spanish Gypsy " had opened up a vein of poetry in 
 her, which, although it produced nothing of the same 
 importance, has enriched our literature with much that it 
 could not afford to lose. The somewhat slight poem of 
 "Agatha,'' a recollection of St. Margen near Freiburg — 
 where, as George Eliot tells us, she had " the sensation of 
 standing upon a round world " — and the turning into verse 
 of Boccaccio's story "How Lisa loved the King,'' occupied 
 the first six weeks of the year. Then followed a sprmg 
 visit of nine weeks to Italy. Three days after her 
 return, Thornton Lewes, a young man of twenty-five, 
 arrived from Natal with an incurable spine disease, and 
 George Eliot lavished upon him all the affectionate care 
 of a mother. Her notices of this trial are very touching : 
 "Our poor Thornie came back to us about seventeen 
 days ago. We can never rejoice enough that we were 
 already at home, seeing that we held it impossible for 
 
110 LIFE OF 
 
 him to set out on his voyage until at least six weeks later 
 than he did. Since he arrived, our lives have been 
 chiefly absorbed by cares for him ; and though we now 
 have a nurse to attend on him constantly, we spend 
 several hours of the day by his side. There is joy in the 
 midst of our trouble, from the tenderness towards the 
 sufferer being altogether unchecked by anything unlovable 
 in him.'' He lingered till October 19th, when the diary 
 tells us : " This evening at half-past six our dear Thornie 
 died. He went quite peacefully. For three days he 
 was not more than fitfully and imperfectly conscious of 
 things around him. He went to Natal on the 1 7 th October 
 1863, and came back to us on the 8th May, 1869. Through 
 the six months of his illness, his frank impulsive mind 
 disclosed no traces of evil feeling. He was a sweet- 
 natured boy — still a boy, though he had lived for 
 twenty-five years and a half. On 9th August, he had an 
 attack of paraplegia, and although he partially recovered 
 from it, it made a marked change in him. After that he 
 lost a great deal of his vivacity, but he suffered less pain. 
 This death seems to me the beginning of our own." 
 
 In the meantime " Middlemarch " had been slowly 
 progressing. An introduction was written on July 19th. 
 Characters were meditated on July 23rd, and on August 
 2nd the novel was actually begun, but not in the 
 form in which we now have it. The part first com- 
 posed was probably a portion of Book I. chapter xi. 
 On Sept. ist George Ehot notes that she meditated 
 characters and conditions for "Middlemarch"; and 
 three weeks later she asks Mr. Congreve to get her 
 I some information about provincial hospitals, which 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. Ill 
 
 is necessary to her imagining the conditions of her 
 "hero.'' This shows that in her first conception Lydgate v 
 was to have been the central character of the book. 
 During this interval the " Brother and Sister " Sonnets, 
 which contain so many reminiscences of George Eliot's 
 early life, were written, and the " Legend of Jubal " was 
 begun. After their son's funeral, the parents retired 
 into the country for the remainder of the year : so that 
 1869 marks a comparatively unproductive period in 
 George's Eliot's mental history. ' ' Jubal " was completed 
 on January 13, 1870, and March and April were occupied 
 with a journey to Berlin and Vienna. " Jubal " is the 
 deepest and most eloquent of her poems. Although it 
 has the defect of all her verse, except, perhaps, the 
 Positivist hymn, " O may I join the choir invisible," 
 the absence of that thrilling power of diction which 
 ought to be the , main characteristic of poetry, yet 
 it is impossible to remain unmoved by the deep 
 problems of life and work with which the poeni 
 deals, and the eloquence and intensity with which the 
 theme is treated. Her next production was " Armgart," 
 in some respects a pendant to " Jubal," suggested, prob- 
 ably, by one of the Harrogate concerts. The year 1870 
 passed away, as its predecessor had done, without the 
 production of much literary fruit. 
 
 However we find that George Eliot notes at the end of 
 the year : " I have written only one hundred pages — good 
 printed pages — of a story which I began about the opening 
 of November, and at present mean to call ' Miss Brooke.' 
 Poetry halts just now." There is also a previous entry 
 in the diary for December 2nd : " I am experimenting in 
 
112 LIFE OF 
 
 a story (' Miss Brooke ') which I began without any very 
 serious intention of carrying it out lengthily. It is a sub- 
 ject which has been recorded among my possible themes 
 ever since I began to write fiction, but will probably take 
 new shapes in the development." These hundred pages 
 would bring the story down to the engagement of Casaubon 
 to Dorothea. We thus see that " Middlemarch,'' as we 
 now have it, is the fusion of two independent stories, 
 one concerned with the marriage of an elderly pedant 
 to a young wife, and the other with the struggles of a 
 young doctor in a country town. It is possible that 
 " Miss Brooke " may contain the story which George 
 Eliot intended to have included in the " Scenes of 
 Clerical Life," and which she speaks of as the " cleri- 
 cal tutor." It is also significant that the writing of 
 this tale was preceded by a visit to the Rector of 
 Lincoln College at Oxford, where she saw a good deal of 
 University society, and would have had an opportunity 
 of studying both learning and pedantry in their various 
 phases. 
 
 On March ig, 1871, George Eliot writes, "I have 
 written 236 pages (print) of my novel, which I want to get 
 off my hands by next November. My present fear is 
 that I have too much matter — too many momenti." It 
 appears that by this time the fusion of the two plots had 
 been determined upon, but the final elaboration of the 
 work had not yet become a purpose. The plan, how- 
 ever, must have been formulated by July, at the close of 
 which she wrote to Mr. Blackwood : 
 
 " I don't see how I can leave anything out, because I hope there 
 is nothing that will be seen to be irrelevant to my design, which is to 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 113 
 
 show the gradual action of ordinary causes rather than exceptional, 
 and to show this in some directions which have not been from time 
 immemorial the beaten path — the Cremorne walks and shows of 
 fiction. But the best intentions are good for nothing until execution 
 has justified them. And you know I am always compassed about with 
 fears. I am in danger in all my designs of parodying dear Gold- 
 smith's satire on Burke, and think of refining when novel readers 
 only think of skipping." 
 
 In September she announced to M. Darade that she 
 is preparing " a long, long book." " Middleraarch " was 
 published in eight monthly parts, each being printed as 
 a neat and compact volume in the usual novel type, very 
 different to the parts in which the novels of Dickens and 
 Thackeray first saw the light. The first part was pub- 
 lished on December i, 187 1, under the title of "Miss 
 Brooke." It was at once received as a masterpiece, 
 although in her letters she continually expresses mis- 
 givings that people should rate it as highly as they do. 
 Perhaps she was conscious that it had not been conceived 
 in her mind as a whole. The book also is stronger from 
 representing rather the intertwining and conflicting cur- 
 rents of actual life than attempting to emphasize a par- 
 ticular purpose of instruction. No doubt the effect of 
 the book was intensified by its appearance in instalments, 
 and by the fact that the interest excited by it was similar 
 to that aroused by the gradual development of human 
 action and affairs. The labour was at an end in Septem- 
 ber, 1872, making a period of three years and nine ,|-/' 
 months between the conception of the novel and its final 
 execution. An interesting account is given of it in a 
 letter to Mr. Alexander Main : 
 
 " I have finished my book (' Middlemarch '), and am thoroughly 
 
 I 
 
114 LIFE OF 
 
 at peace about it — not because I am convinced of its perfection, but 
 because I have lived to give out what it was in me to give, and have 
 not been hindered by illness or death from making my work a whole, 
 such as it is. When a subject has begun to grow in me, I suffer 
 terribly until it has wrought itself out — become a complete organism ; 
 and then it seems to take wing and go away from me. That thing 
 is not to be done again, — that life has been lived. I could not rest 
 with a number of unfinished works on my mind. When they — or 
 rather when a conception has begun to shape itself in written words — 
 I feel that it must go on to the end before I can be happy about it. 
 Then I move away and look at it from a distance without any agi- 
 tations." 
 
 Miss Blind, in the chapter on " Middlemarch " in her 
 " Life of George Eliot," devotes much space' to describ- 
 ing the life of the authoress and her husband at Shottermill 
 in Hampshire, where part of the story was written. It was 
 the custom for husband and wife during these later years 
 to spend the autumn months in some retired country spot 
 devoted entirely to work and study. I was more than 
 once employed by them to discover such a place for their 
 summer haunts, but I was never successful in suiting all 
 their requirements. Their address was kept secret even 
 from their most intimate friends, and anything which 
 might interfere with the absolute regularity of their lives 
 was carefully avoided, and although, as a special privilege, 
 I was more than once invited to visit them in their 
 different solitudes, I could never bring myself to take 
 advantage of the permission. 
 
 A very large sum (;^i2,ooo, it is believed) was paid 
 for " Middlemarch," but considering that nearly twenty 
 thousand copies at two guineas had been sold by the close 
 of 1874, the amount paid does not appear excessive. 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 115 
 
 The completion of " Middlemarch " was followed as usual 
 by a journey to the Continent ; this time to Homburg, by 
 way of Treves, Homburg was at that time the home of 
 gaming-tables, and George Eliot witnessed a scene which 
 inspired the opening of " Daniel Deronda." She writes 
 in two letters — 
 
 " The air, the waters, the plantations here, are all perfect— ' only 
 man is vile.' I am not fond of denouncing my fellow-sinners, but 
 gambling being a vice I have no mind to, it stirs my disgust even more 
 than my pity. The sight of the dull faces bending round the gaming- 
 tables, the raking up of the money, and the flinging of the coins 
 towards the winners by the hard-faced croupiers, the hateful, hideous 
 women staring at the board like stupid monomaniacs — all this seems 
 to me the most abject presentation of mortals grasping after some- 
 thing called a good, that can be seen on the face of this little earth. 
 , . Hell is the only right name for such places. " 
 
 And again what is evidently a presentation of Gwen- 
 dolen Harleth : 
 
 " The saddest thing to be witnessed is the play of a young lady, 
 who is only twenty-six years old, and is completely in the grasp of 
 this mean, money-making demon. It made me cry to see her young 
 fresh face among the hags and brutally stupid men around her.'' 
 
 In May, 1873, an interesting visit was paid to Cam- 
 bridge, which probably had also a serious influence on 
 the fortunes of " Deronda." It was the occasion of that 
 momentous conversation with Mr. Frederick Myers, in 
 the roundabout at Trinity, which is thus recorded in his 
 essays : — 
 
 " I remember how, at Cambridge, I walked with her once in the 
 Fellows' Garden of Trinity, on an evening of rainy May ; and she, 
 stirred somewhat beyond her wont, and taking as her text the three 
 
116 LIFE OF 
 
 words which have been used so often as the inspiring trumpet-call 
 of men — the words God, Immortality, Duty — pronounced with 
 terrible earnestness how inconceivable was the first, how un- 
 believable the second, and yet how peremptory and absolute the 
 third. Never, perhaps, have sterner accents affirmed the sovereignty 
 of impersonal and unrecompensing Law. I listened, and night fell, 
 her grave, majestic countenance turned towards me like a sibyl's in 
 the gloom ; it was as though she withdrew from my grasp, one by 
 one, the two scrolls of promise, and left me the third scroll only, 
 awful with inevitable fates. And when we stood at length and 
 parted, am'd that columnar circuit of the forest-trees, beneath the 
 last twilight of starless skies, I seemed to be gazing, like Titus at 
 Jerusalem, on vacant seats and empty halls — on a sanctuary with no 
 Presence to hallow it, and heaven left lonely of a God." 
 
 To use her own words, " We were invited ostensibly 
 to see the boat-race, but the real pleasure of the visit 
 consisted in talking with a hopeful group of Trinity 
 young men." She wrote to me enthusiastically of the 
 visit, and in speaking of one young man, who may have 
 been the prototype of Deronda, said that he was so 
 handsome that for some time she thought of nothing 
 else, but that she afterwards discovered that his mind 
 ■was as beautiful as his face. 
 
 Two months, again, in the summer of 1873, were spent 
 in foreign travel. This is referred to in the following 
 letter to Dr. Clifford Allbutt, which he has kindly 
 allowed me to publish — 
 
 "The Priory, 21, Xorth Bank, Regent's Park, 
 
 "Nov. I, 73. 
 
 "Dear Dr. Allbutt, — Thanks for a very pleasant proof that 
 
 you bear us in your mind and heart. Your letter came just in time 
 
 to find us here, for we only yesterday returned from a house in the 
 
 countr)', to which we went at the beginning of September. Before 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 117 
 
 then, we had been for nine weeks in France and Germany, passed 
 in the delightful region of the Vosges, which was new to us. I 
 cannot say that our health has been particularly flourishing amidst 
 all these enjoyments. Happiness, of which we seem to have more 
 than any one we know, does not have the effect of making us fat and 
 strong. I often laughingly compare ourselves to two medizeval 
 saints painted by a very naive master. Our bodies seem to shrink, 
 like the Peau de Chagrin, with every year of happiness. Just now, 
 however, Mr. Lewes, who has been for some time below his usual 
 standard, is improving, and I have no unusual bodily grievance to 
 complain of. Your ailments are more important, because you are 
 younger and have more working time before you, and I don't like 
 to read of your having worn yourself into an irritable state before 
 you took your holiday. It is difficult to avoid such results, though, 
 for a man whose energy goes out in mental work. Even where there 
 is no external pressure the interest of the work is almost sure to get 
 a wearing intensity. I think this was the cause of Mr. Lewes's 
 flagging in the spring. For two years before he had been in a state 
 of greater intellectual enjoyment than I had ever observed in him, 
 the study of mathematics especially having made the world fresh to 
 him. His first (introductory) volume is soon to be out now, but he 
 is calmly certain that very few will care about its discussions. No 
 human being can be more happily constituted than he in relation to 
 his work. He has quite an exceptional enjoyment in the doing, 
 and has no irritable anxieties about it when done. 
 
 " As to the Johnsonian biography, he has had nothing to do with 
 it, except the recommendation to Mr. Main to set about the work, 
 and the writing of a brief preface. 
 
 "... Your suggestions about lessening the inconveniences of 
 writing could not come to a more appreciative person. I have for 
 the last three years taken to writing on my knees, throwing myself 
 backward in my chair, and having a high support to my feet. It is 
 a great relief not to bend, and in this way at least I get advantage 
 from the long-sightedness which involves the early need of glasses. 
 Mr. Lewes is obliged to stoop close to his desk. But Dr. Liebreich 
 condemns my arrangement as forcing up my knees too much, and he 
 has devised a sort of semi-couch which seems to be perfection so far 
 as the physical conditions of my writing are concerned, liut how if 
 
118 LIFE OF 
 
 I have nothing else worth the writing ! It is in vain to get one's 
 back and knees in the right attitude if one's mind is superannuated. 
 Some time or other, if death does not come to silence one, there 
 ought to be deliberate abstinence from writing — self-judgment which 
 decides that one has no more to say. The public conscience about 
 authorship wants quickening sadly — don't you think so ? Happily 
 for me, I have a critic at hand whom I can trust to tell me when I 
 write what ought to be put behind the fire. 
 
 " Mr. Lewes unites with me in best regards to Mrs. Allbutt and 
 yourself. We do not despair of being in your neighbourhood again 
 some day, and taking a glimpse of you in your new home. 
 " Yours always warmly and sincerely, 
 
 "M. G. Lewes." 
 
 Another letter, written to Dr. Allbutt some years 
 previously, possesses great interest — 
 
 " My dear Dr. Allbutt, — I had conjectured the fact, that 
 some call of duty had summoned you back to Leeds earlier than you 
 had expected. 
 
 " Since you refer to our conversation, I must tell you that I am 
 always a little uneasy about my share in the talk when it has turned 
 on religion. 
 
 " The weaknesses of one's mind are always taken by surprise in 
 hasty discussion, and the chief result left in the consciousness is that 
 of having misrepresented the dearest beliefs. My books are a form 
 of utterance that dissatisfies me less, because they are deliberately, 
 carefully constructed on a basis which even in my doubting mind is 
 never shaken by a doubt, and they are not determined, as conver- 
 sation inevitably is, by considerations of momentary expediency. 
 The basis I mean is my conviction as to the relative goodness and 
 nobleness of human dispositions and motives. ^ And the inspiring 
 principle which alone gives me courage to write is, that of so pre- 
 senting our human life as to help my readers in getting a clearer 
 conception and a more active admiration of those vital elements 
 which bind men together and give a higher worthiness to their 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 119 
 
 existence ; and also to help them in gradtially dissociating these 
 elements from the more transient forms on which an outworn teach- 
 ing tends to make them dependent. But, since you have read my 
 books, you must perceive that the bent of my mind is conservative 
 rather than destructive, and that denial has been wrung from me by 
 hard experience — not adopted as a. pleasant rebellion. Still, I see 
 clearly that we ought, each of us, not to sit down and wail, but to 
 be heroic and constructive, if possible, like the strong souls who 
 lived before, as in other cases of religious decay. 
 
 " I dare not enter on these wide, wide subjects in a letter — for to 
 write a letter at all, except about necessary details, is a difficult 
 overcoming of indolence to me ; but in relation to your despairing 
 words that we seem to ' be reaching the limits of our scheme,' I 
 wish you could thoroughly consider (if you have not already done 
 so) whether it is probable that in a. stage of society in which the 
 ordinary standard of moral possibility, nay, of moral requirements, 
 is still so low as I think you must recognize it to be, the highest 
 possible religion has been evolved and accepted ? 
 
 " If we were talking again, I should like to express what I fear was 
 fai: from evident the other night — my yearning affection towards 
 the great religions of the world which have reflected the struggles 
 and needs of mankind, with a very different degree of completeness 
 from the shifting compromise called 'philosophical theism.' But I 
 am sure your favourite Marcus Aurelius would not have approved of 
 my eagerness to say everything. I should try to make use of other 
 interviews rather to get instructed by your rich practical experience 
 — experience grievously wanting to me, whose life is passed 
 chiefly in study and always in domestic ease. The invitation you 
 give us is very tempting and pretty. If there came some beautiful 
 autumnal weather, and other conditions were favourable in the third 
 week of September, we might perhaps indulge ourselves with a 
 journey into Yorkshire, get some breezes on the moors, and accept 
 for a couple of days the pleasure your goodness offers us of seeing 
 Leeds in your company. It is just the sort of thing I should like to 
 do — to go over the Hospital with you. 
 
 " Mr. Lewes, I grieve to say, is headachy again — frequently 
 suffering from a malaise, which is sadly at war with the ardent 
 interest that prompts him to work. lie unites with me in the 
 
120 LIFE OF 
 
 desire to express sincere gratification that we have come to know you 
 in spite of distance. 
 
 " Believe me, yours always truly, 
 
 " M. G. Lewes." 
 
 Little information about the composition of " Daniel 
 Deronda " is to be found in the published journals and 
 letters of George Eliot. By the beginning of 1875 she 
 had reached chapter xv. Part II., where Grandcourt and 
 Deronda come into contact. But the usual distrust of 
 herself beset her. " I am suffering much from doubt as 
 to the worth of what I am doing, and fear lest I may 
 not be able to complete it so as to make it a contribution 
 to literature, and not a mere addition to the heap of 
 books.'' In August she writes to Mr. Cross, " My book 
 seems to me so unlikely ever to be finished in a way that 
 will make it worth giving to the world, that it is a kind of 
 glass in which I behold my infirmities." In the begin- 
 ning of October she is able to inform Mr. Blackwood 
 that half the book is completed, but she adds, " I can't 
 say that I am at all satisfied with the book, or that I have 
 a comfortable sense of doing in it what I want to do ; but 
 Mr. Lewes is satisfied with it, and insists that since he is 
 as anxious as possible for it to be fine, I ought to accept 
 his impressions as trustworthy. So I resign myself." The 
 new novel received the warm commendation of Mr. John 
 Blackwood and his principal collaborators. He ex- 
 pressed some anxiety about the fate of Gwendolen, and 
 is reassured by the author in the following terms: "It 
 will, perhaps, be a little comfort to you to know thai 
 poor Gwen is spiritually saved, but ' so as by fire.' Don't 
 you see the process already beginning? I have no 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 121 
 
 ibt you do, for you are a wide-awake reader." On 
 cember 25th she is able to record in her diary that the 
 > first volumes are in print, and that the first book is 
 be published on February ist. She adds — 
 
 I have thought very poorly of it myself throughout, but George 
 the Blackwoods are full of satisfaction in it. Each part as I see 
 efore me im IVerden seems less likely to be anything less than a 
 rre ; but I see on looking back this morning — Christmas Day 
 lat I really was in worse health and suffered equal depression 
 ut ' Romola ' ; and, so far as I have recorded, the same thing 
 ns to be true of ' Middlemarch.' I have finished the fifth book, 
 am not far on in the sixth, as I hoped to have been — the oppres- 
 i under which I have been labouring having positively suspended 
 power of writing anything that I could feel satisfaction in." 
 
 3y the middle of March, 1876, she is deep in the 
 rth volume, half of which was finished by the middle 
 *pril : the whole was completed in the first week of 
 
 I. Her absorption in her work did not prevent her 
 giving much kind thought to the affairs of her 
 
 ds. I have in my possession a precious letter of 
 dated March 2, 1875, which I cannot refrain 
 
 publishing. It may be of assistance to others who 
 
 n need of similar help and encouragement. I was 
 a master at Eton, but for many reasons the work 
 
 distasteful to me. I was anxious to transfer myself 
 ;he University, where I had promise of employment, 
 
 I was restrained by the reluctance to desert a cause 
 !ch I believed to be important, and to which I had 
 ■oted many years of my life, and by the disinclinatipn 
 break up my mother's comfortable home. In this 
 iculty I wrote to George EHot, who had now for 
 
122 LIFE OF 
 
 some years been to me a very dear and confidential friend, 
 told her of my resolution to remain at Eton, and asked 
 for her opinion. Her reply was as follows — 
 
 " Your letter shall be sacred. I am g'ad to know that you have 
 made up your mind to endure and persevere — -words easy to write 
 as advice, but hard to follow out in the patient action of days, 
 months, years. Perhaps the most difficult heroism is that which 
 consists in the daily conquests of our private demons, not in the 
 slaying of world-notorious dragons. Certainly it seems to me that 
 the finest course of action you can pursue will be to impose the ut- 
 most restraint on impatience, and look at your life simply as the 
 problem of carrying out your ideas of usefulness at Eton as far as 
 may be without dangerous collisions. To further this happiness and 
 beneficence of your life — even apart from that question of your dear 
 mother's feeling — you should have a precise conception of an alter- 
 native to your present task, an equivalent social contribution, before 
 you unlink yourself. But I gather that your resolution is thoroughly 
 formed, and I rejoice. We shall see you at the end of this fiercely 
 menacing March. You are young enough to dare travel at that time 
 of year which we used to find everywhere cruel, south as well as 
 north." 
 
 The part of " Deronda " about the success of which 
 George Eliot felt most hesitation was that which referred 
 to the Jews. It is not clear when her interest in the 
 Jews began. Perhaps it arose from her friendship with 
 Mr. Emmanuel Deutsch, who impressed her deeply. 
 The treatment of the gypsies in " The Spanish Gypsy " 
 shows her profound reverence for race and for inherited 
 traditions. Her generous sympathies would also be called 
 out by the sense of unmerited persecution. At any rate, 
 she took the greatest pains to prepare herself for writing 
 about this peculiar people. The Jewish colour in 
 " Deronda " is almost faultless ; it is certainly much more 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 123 
 
 free from errors than the picture of mediaeval Italy pre- 
 sented in " Romola." George Eliot obtained access to 
 a large library of Jewish literature in London, and the 
 books preserved still show traces of her untiring labours. 
 By " Deronda," and by the protest against the " Juden- 
 hetze '' contained in the essays of " Threophrastus Such," 
 she has earned the undying gratitude of the best repre- 
 sentatives of the Jewish race throughout the world. An 
 interesting account of her own view of the situation is 
 given in a letter to Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, written 
 in October, 1876 — 
 
 "As to the Jewish element in ' Deronda,' I expected from first to 
 last, in writing it, that it would create much stronger resistance, and 
 even repulsion, than it has actually met with. But precisely because 
 I felt that the usual attitude of Christians towards Jews is — I hardly 
 know whether to say more impious or more stupid, when viewed in the 
 light of their professed principles, I therefore felt urged to treat 
 Jews with such sympathy and understanding as my nature and 
 knowledge could attain to. Moreover, not only towards the Jews, 
 but towards all Oriental peoples with whom we English come in 
 contact, a spirit of arrogance and contemptuous dictatoriainess is 
 '( observable which has become a national disgrace to us. There is 
 nothing I should care more to do, if it were possible, than to rouse 
 the imagination of men and women to a vision of human claims in 
 those races of their fellow-men who most differ from them in customs 
 and beliefs. But towards the Hebrews we western people, who 
 have been reared in Christianity, have a peculiar debt, and, whether 
 we acknowledge it or not, a peculiar thoroughness of fellowship in 
 religious and moral sentiment. Can anything be more disgusting 
 than to hear people called ' educated ' making small jokes about 
 eating ham, and showing themselves empty of any real knowledge 
 as to the relation of their own social and religious life to the history of 
 the people they think themselves witty in insulting ? They hardly 
 know that Christ was a Jew. And I find men, educated, supposing 
 that Christ spoke Greek. To my feeling, this deadness to the 
 
124 LIFE OF 
 
 history which has prepared half our world for us, this inability to 
 find interest in any form of life that is not clad in the same coat- 
 tails and flounces as our own, lies very close to the worst kind of 
 irreligion. The best that can be said of it is, that it is a sign of the 
 intellectual narrowness — in plain English, the stupidity — which is 
 still the average mark of our culture. 
 
 " Yes, I expected more aversion than I have found. But I was 
 happily independent in material things, and felt no temptation to 
 accommodate my writing to any standard except that of trying to 
 do my best in what seemed to me most needful to be done ; and I sum 
 up with the writer of the Book of Maccabees, ' If I have done well, 
 and as befits the subject, it is what I desired ; and if I have done 
 ill, it is what I could attain unto. ' " 
 
 The completion of " Deronda " was followed by 
 another spell of foreign travel, from which husband and 
 wife returned much refreshed. They had intended to go 
 to the Maritime Alps, but it was an exceptionally hot 
 summer and they found the rest and refreshment they 
 needed in the higher valleys of Eastern and Central 
 Switzerland. The year ended happily. The journal 
 records on December ist : — 
 
 " Since we came home at the beginning of September, I have 
 been made aware of much repugnance, or else indifference, towards- 
 the Jewish part of ' Deronda,' and of some hostile as well as adverse 
 reviewing. On the other hand, there have been the strongest expres- 
 sions of interest — some persons adhering to the opinion, started 
 during the early numbers, that the book is my best. Delightful 
 letters have here and there been sent to me ; and the sale, both in 
 America and in England, has been an unmistakable_guarantee that 
 the public has been touched. Words of gratitude have come from 
 Jews and Jewesses, and these are certain signs that I may have 
 contributed my mite to a good result. The sale hitherto has ex- 
 ceeded that of ' Middlemarch,' as to the £,z 2s. four-volume form, 
 but we do not expect an equal success for the guinea edition, which 
 has lately been issued." 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 125 
 
 The close of this year was also marked by the purchase 
 of a country house in Surrey : the Heights, Witley, near 
 Godalming. It was in view of Blackdown, the home 
 of Tennyson, and Hind Head. Mr. Cross says of it 
 that it quite fulfilled all expectations as regards beauty 
 and convenience of situation, but that he is not quite 
 sure that it was bracing enough for health. 
 
 The entry in the journal dated November lo, 
 1877, records that the Leweses went thither, at the 
 beginning of June, after a delightful visit to Cam- 
 bridge. I remember the occasion well. George Eliot 
 and her husband were the guests of Mr. Henry Sidgwick. 
 I met them at dinner one day, and they lunched with 
 me on another. The authoress was more tender, more 
 dignified, and more impressive than ever, showing 
 especial delight in the details of my new home and life. 
 I remember the interest she showed in an American 
 type-writing machine, which had recently been given to 
 me, expressing at the same time, with some archness, 
 the fear lest the type-writer should not only reveal its 
 utterances in print, but should multiply them after the 
 manner of a printing-press, thus adding to the number 
 of worthless books. Mr. Edmund Gurney and his wife 
 were of the parly, and Mr. Fuller Maitland delighted 
 George Eliot with music, especially in his performance 
 of Beethoven's Lichnowski Sonata. A rather large party 
 had been asked to meet them, and as most of the guests 
 had never met George Lewes and his wife before, there 
 was some excitement to hear the words which might fall 
 from their lips. The silence was broken by Lewes saying 
 to her, "Why, my dear, you surely don't like that heavy 
 
126 LIFE OF 
 
 black Bavarian beer, do you?" an unexpected beginning 
 of memorable table-talk. 
 
 The year closed with its accustomed retrospect : 
 
 " To-day [Dec. 31, 1877] I say a final farewell to this little book, 
 which is the only record I have made of my personal life for sixteen 
 years and more. I have often been helped, in looking back in it, 
 to compare former with actual states of despondency from bad health 
 or other apparent causes. In this way a past despondency has 
 turned to present hopefulness. But of course, as the years advance, 
 there is a new rational ground for the expectation that my life may 
 become less fruitful. The difficulty is to decide how far resolution 
 should set in the direction of activity, rather than in the acceptance 
 of a more negative state. Many conceptions of work to be carried 
 out present themselves, but confidence in my own fitness to complete 
 them worthily is all the more wanting, because it is reasonable to 
 argue that I must have already done my best. In fact, my mind is 
 embarrassed by the number and wide variety of subjects that attract 
 me, and the enlarging vista that each brings with it. I shall record 
 no more in this book, because I am going to keep a more business- 
 like diary. Here ends 1877." 
 
 A letter to Mrs. Bray, in June, 1S78, gives an account 
 of an interesting dinner at Mr. Goschen's, at which 
 George Eliot met the Crown Prince and Princess of 
 Germany. 
 
 "The Crown Prince is really a grand-looking man, whose name 
 you would ask for with expectation, if you imagined him no royalty. 
 He is like a grand antique bust — cordial and simple in manners 
 withal, shaking hands, and insisting that I should let him know when 
 we next came to Berlin, just as if he had been a Professor Gruppe, 
 living au troisiinte. She is equally good-natured and unpretend- 
 ing, liking best to talk of nursing soldiers, and of what her father's 
 taste was in literature. She opened the talk by saying, ' You know my 
 sister, Louise ' — ^just as any other slightly embarrassed mortal might 
 have done. We had a picked party to dinner — Dean of West- 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 127 
 
 minster, Bishop of Peterborough, Lord and Lady Ripon, Dr. Lyon 
 Playfair, Kinglake (you remember ' Eothen ' — the old gentleman is 
 a good friend of mine), Froude, Mrs. Ponsonby (Lord Grey's grand- 
 daughter), and two or three more ' illustrations ; ' then a small 
 detachment coming in after dinner. It was really an interesting 
 occasion. " 
 
 The summer of 1878 was spent at Witley, in the pre- 
 paration of " Theophrastus Such." The health of both 
 husband and wife was far from satisfactory. " We have 
 had ' a bad time,' in point of health," she writes to Mr. 
 John Blackwood, in September, 1878, "and it is only 
 quite lately that we have both been feeling a little better. 
 The fault is all in our own frames, not in our air or other 
 circumstances ; for we hke our home and neighbourhood 
 better and better. The general testimony and all other 
 arguments are in favour of this district being thoroughly 
 healthy. But we both look very haggard in the midst of 
 our blessings." 
 
 It must indeed be impressed on the mind of any 
 student of George Eliot's life, not only how much she 
 was affected by chmatic surroundings, but how little 
 suited the air of England was to her constitution, and 
 especially the air of London. She lived there possibly 
 for the sake of her husband, who had spent all his life in 
 London literary society, and who perhaps would have 
 found it difficult to carry on his work under any other 
 conditions. There is a touching notice of this in the last 
 paragraph of " Looking Backward," in the " Impressions 
 of Theophrastus Such." 
 
 ' ' I cherish my childish loves — the memory of that warm little 
 nest in which my affections were fledged, Since then I have learnt 
 
128 LIFE OF 
 
 to care for foreign countries, for literature foreign and ancient, for 
 the life of continental towns dozing round the cathedrals, for the 
 life of London, half sleepless with eager thought and strife, with 
 indigestion as with hunger ; and now my consciousness is chiefly of 
 the busy, anxious metropolitan sort. My system responds sensitively 
 to the London %veather-signs, pohtical, social, literary ; and my 
 bachelor's hearth is imbedded where by much craning of head and 
 neck I can catch sight of a sycamore in the Square yonder. I 
 belong to the ' Writers of London.' Why, there have been many 
 voluntary exiles in the world, and probably in the very first exodus 
 of the patriarchal Aryans — for I am determined not to fetch my 
 examples from races where talk is of uncles and no fathers — some 
 of those who sallied forth went for the sake of a loved companion- 
 .ship, when they would willingly have kept sight of the familiar 
 plains, and of the hills to which they had first lifted up their eyes. '' 
 
 It was shortly after this that I saw George Eliot for 
 the last time. In October, 1878, I was asked to meet 
 her, Mr. Lewes, and the Russian novelist, Turguenieff, 
 at the hospitable country house of Mr. Bullock Hall, at 
 Six-Mile Bottom, near Newmarket. The only others pre- 
 sent were the late Mr. Munro, the editor of Lucretius, and 
 Mr. Sedley Taylor. They had driven in the afternoon 
 to see the races at Newmarket, and George Eliot was 
 full of admiration for the beautiful horses. Dogs were 
 her favourite animals, but she had plenty of affection to 
 spare for other species of our dumb companions. As 
 we all sat together in the closing twilight, she made 
 Turguenieff repeat to us, in his slow, broken English, what 
 he had already related to George Eliot in private, the 
 story of a play which he had seen in Paris, the reception 
 of which by a French audience threw, as he considered, 
 a strong and unfavourable light on the French character. 
 A woman in early life had married a scamp, who deserted 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 129 
 
 her, leaving two children, a son and a daughter. She 
 fled with them to the lake of Geneva, where she united 
 herself with a wealthy merchant with whom she lived 
 for twenty years, the children being brought up as his. 
 At last her husband discovered her retreat, came unex- 
 pectedly to the home, and revealed to the son that he 
 was his father. The merchant, afterwards entering, 
 saluted his supposed daughter with the customary kiss. 
 The son immediately struck him on the face and cried, 
 "You have not the right to do that," upon which the 
 audience applauded loudly, as if he had done an heroic 
 action. Turguenieff alone stood up in his box and 
 hissed. George Eliot hung eagerly upon his words as he 
 told the tale. Lewes sat at some distance. Such was 
 the French view of marriage, preferring the shadow to 
 the substance, the legal tie to the bond of custom, 
 affection, and gratitude. The party broke up deeply 
 stirred, and Lewes said that the English would have 
 behaved just as badly. It seemed to me strange that. 
 George Eliot should insist on hearing for a second time 
 every detail of an imaginary story, which appeared to^ 
 touch so nearly the deepest problems of her own life. 
 
 At dinner Lewes proposed Turguenieff's health, in 
 an admirable speech, as the greatest living novelist. 
 Turguenieff replied, repudiating the compliment and. 
 transferring it to George Eliot. In the . drawing-room: 
 Turguenieff told stories of Victor Hugo, of his arrogance 
 and his ignorance. Turguenieff had once asked Hugo who 
 was Galgacus, whom he had included in a list of orators in 
 some poem. " I have not an idea," replied Hugo ; "but 
 it is a fine name." Turguenieff had talked to him of 
 
 9 
 
130 LIFE OF 
 
 Goethe. "Yes," said Hugo, " I admire Goethe; I have 
 read his ' Wallenstein.' " Upon Turguenieff remarking 
 that " Wallenstein " was the work of Schiller and not of 
 Goethe, Hugo said " I have never read a line of these 
 gentlemen, but I know them as well as, if I had written 
 them myself." At another time Hugo said to Turguenieff, 
 " As for me, I look upon Goethe as Jesus Christ 
 would have looked upon Messalina." Mr. Munro was 
 asked by Lewes to inscribe his name in a special album, 
 and Lewes told me that, in his opinion, and in that of 
 competent judges, his translation of Lucretius, apart from 
 all other merits, was one of the finest pieces of English in 
 the language. There was also some talk about Russian 
 literature, and Turguenieff was asked to recite some 
 Russian poetry, upon which he delivered to us a piece of 
 Puschkin. I left next morning earl}', before the rest of 
 the party had risen, certainly with no foreboding that 
 within two months Lewes would be dead, and that I 
 should never see George Eliot again. 
 
 Details of Lewes's last illness are given in two letters 
 to Mr. John Blackwood, dated November 23rd, and 
 November 25 th. The first reads thus : 
 
 " When Mr. Lewes sent you my MS. the other morning, he was 
 in that state of exhilarated activity which often comes with the sense of 
 ease after an attack of illness which had been very painful. In the 
 afternoon he imprudently drove out, and undertook, with his usual 
 eagerness, to get through numerous details of business, over-fatigued 
 himself, and took cold. The effect has been a sad amount of suffering 
 from feverishness and headache, and I have been in deep anxiety^ 
 am still very unhappy, and only comforted by Sir James Paget's 
 assurances that the actual trouble will be soon allayed." 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 131 
 
 Two days later she wrote : 
 
 " Mr. Lewes continues sadly ill, and I am absorbed in nursing 
 him. When 'he wrote about Parliament meeting, he was thinking 
 that it would be called together at the usual time — perhaps February. 
 The book can be deferred without mischief. I wish to add a good 
 deal, but of course I can finish nothing now until Mr. Lewes is 
 better. The doctors pronounced him in every respect better yester- 
 day, and he had a quiet night, but since five o'clock this morning 
 he has had a recurrence of trouble. You can feel for him and me, 
 having so lately known what severe illness is." 
 
 George Lewes died ou November 28, 1878. 
 
 Although overwhelmed with grief, George EUot set 
 herself immediately to rear the most fitting monument to 
 her husband's memory by preparing his papers for publi- 
 cation, and by founding a studentship to be called by his 
 name. The following letter to Dr. Allbutt refers to this 
 subject : 
 
 "The Priory, 21, North Bank, Regent's Park, 
 
 '^ Feb. 20, '79. 
 " Dear Dr. Allbutt, — Your letter is among the most precious 
 signs of sympathy that my kind friends have given me, because of 
 what you say in it about my husband's influence over students. 
 That is what he himself cared for as among the chief aims of life. 
 I am tempted to ask you whether it would be otherwise than repug- 
 nant to you — whether you would have any satisfaction in writing, 
 not a eulogistic, but a plain statement of your observation and 
 experience in relation to the effect of my husband's work, to be 
 printed in quotation, but not (unless you wished it) with your name, 
 simply as a testimony of an experienced physician whose judgment 
 is not simply that of a professional man, but of a scientific experi- 
 menter. I want, if I can, to write a ' characteristik ' of my loved 
 one — no memoir, but a brief sketch of his mental and moral qualities, 
 and his way of looking at the work he tried to do. 
 
132 LIFE OF 
 
 "Just now I am ill. Sir James Paget and Dr. Andrew Clark 
 say I shall get better, but in the meantime my comparative incapacity 
 for the work I want to do makes me anxious. 
 
 " Can you help me with any suggestions as to founding (now while 
 I live) some Lectureships or other efficient instrument of teaching 
 Biology (including Psychology) in memory of my husband, and to 
 be called by his name ? I am trying to get good advice, knowing" 
 how difficult it is to make an endowment a ' good custom ' which 
 shall not in the end become corrupt. 
 
 " Please give my best remembrances to your wife, who I hope is 
 strong enough to enjoy the blessedness of your united life. 
 " Always yours gratefully, 
 
 " M. G. Lewes. 
 
 " I have not yet seen any one except our son Charles, and am 
 unequal to anything more than feeble thinking and writing in 
 relation to those chief objects. Any word you can send me will 
 be valued." 
 
 Her own last work had to stand over for the present. 
 She writes to Mr. Blackwood on February 25 th : 
 
 " Pray do not announce ' Theophrastus ' in any way. It would be 
 intolerable to my feelings to have a book of my writing brought out 
 for a long while to come. What I wish to do is to correct the 
 sheets thoroughly, and then have them struck off and laid by till the 
 time of publication comes. One reason which prompted me to set 
 about the proofs — in addition to my scruples about occupying the 
 type — was that I was feeling so ill, I thought there was no time to 
 be lost in getting done everything which no one else would do if I 
 left it undone. But I am getting better, I think ; and my doctors 
 say there is nothing the matter with me to urge more haste than the 
 common uncertainty of life urges on us all." 
 
 The proofs were soon corrected, and it was arranged that 
 the book should be published with a notice that it had 
 been placed in the publisher's hands in the previous 
 November. On reading the revise she was so much 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 133 
 
 dissatisfied with the work that she thought of re-writing 
 it, but reflection on that "uncertainty of life " and strength 
 induced her to agree to its publication in May, with the 
 possibility of a second series, supposing that she lived 
 and kept her faculties. 
 
 " Theophrastus Such" has probably fewer readers 
 than any of George Eliot's works, but it is well wOrth 
 careful reading and remembering. It contains studies of 
 character, such as might form the rough drafts for future 
 novels, embodying moral lessons which she desired to 
 convey. The style is weighty and periodic, influenced 
 by the English of the seventeenth century which she 
 loved so well. The compact statement of arguments, the 
 subtlety of analysis and insight are as apparent as in any 
 of her works. The humour is sometimes admirable, at 
 others heavy and laboured ; there is little dramatic 
 interest. "Theophrastus" does not exist as a personality, 
 and the veil which divides him from the writer herself is 
 of varying degrees of density. Still the book furnishes 
 many "wise, witty, and tender sayings," and from its 
 inherent truthfulness and absence of affectation is a most 
 valuable source of information for the feelings and 
 opinions which lay deepest at her heart. " Looking 
 Backward " is full of autobiographical recollections ; 
 "the modern Hep, Hep, Hep," the cry with which the 
 Jews were persecuted, is a plain and solemn exposition 
 of the feelings which prompted the defence of the Jews 
 in " Deronda.'' The book shows no failure of intellectual 
 power, but is, perhaps, indicative of a lower degree of 
 physical energy, which prevented her from undertaking the 
 arduous task of constructing a new novel, and submitting 
 
134 LIFE OF 
 
 herself to pangs which her diary so pathetically recalls. 
 George Eliot \vrites of it to Mr. Blackwood at the 
 beginning of April : 
 
 " I enclose the proof of title-page and motto. WTiether the motto 
 (which is singularly apt and good) should be on the title-page or fly- 
 leaf, I leave you to judge. Certainly everybody who does not read 
 Latin will be offended by its claiming notice, and will consider that 
 only the deepest-dyed pedantry could have found the motive for it. 
 But I will not leave it out altogether." 
 
 There is little more to record of George Eliot's life. 
 Her marriage with Mr. John Cross took place en May 
 6, 1880. It would be wrong to attempt to present any 
 other account of this than that which Mr. Cross has 
 himself given in the life of his wife. The marriage was 
 severely criticized at the time by her best friends. This 
 was due to various causes. Second marriages are abso- 
 lutely forbidden by the Positivist creed, and her breach 
 of this rule would be sure to ahenate all who were of this 
 persuasion. The world, which had forgiven her relations 
 with Lewes, on the ground that they arose from an over- 
 mastering devotion, was shocked when it found that the 
 affection which had caused such an act of sacrifice was 
 capable of being succeeded by another equally strong. 
 The difference of nearly twenty years between the age of 
 the bride and bridegroom also gave occasion for remark. 
 On the other hand, no one can have studied the character 
 of George Eliot, even superficially, without being convinced 
 how necessary it was for her to have some one to depend 
 upon, and how much her nature yearned for sympathy and 
 support. No better companion could certainly have been 
 found than Mr. Cross, with his strong vigorous sense. 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 135 
 
 manly character, and business habits. Some crisis seems 
 to have occurred on April 22, 1879, when Mr. Cross tells 
 us that he received the following note : " I am in dread- 
 ful need of your counsel. Pray come to me when you 
 can — morning, afternoon, or evening.'' From that time he 
 saw. George Eliot constantly. They read Dante and 
 undertook many studies together. Under these influences 
 her health and spirits seemed to improve. Madame 
 Bodichon writes of her on June sth : 
 
 ' ' I spent an hour with Marian. She was more delightful than I 
 can say, and left me in good spirits for her — though she is wretchedly 
 thin, and looks in her long, loose, black dress like the black shadow 
 of herself. She said she had so much to do that she must keep well 
 — ' the world was so intensely interesting.' She said she would come 
 next year to see me.. We both agreed in the great love we had for 
 life. In fact, I think she will do more for us than ever." 
 
 The arrangements for founding the George Henry Lewes 
 Studentship at Cambridge had been completed by the 
 middle of September. - In November George Eliot 
 returned to London, and in the beginning of the follow- 
 ing year her friendship with Mr. Cross became more 
 intimate than before. He gives us the following account 
 of it : 
 
 "As the year went on George Eliot began to see all her old 
 friends again. But her life was nevertheless a life of heart-loneliness. 
 Accustomed as she had been for so many years to solitude a deux, 
 the want of close companionship continued to be very bitterly felt. 
 She was in the habit of going with me very frequently to the 
 National Gallery and to other exhibitions of pictures, to the British 
 Museum sculptures, and to South Kensington. This constant 
 association engrossed me completely and was a new interest to her. 
 
186 LIFE OF 
 
 A bond of mutual dependence had been formed between us. On 
 the 28th March she came down to Weybridge, and stayed till the 
 30th ; and on the 9th April it was finally decided that our 
 marriage should take place as soon, and as privately, as might be 
 found practicable." 
 
 She announced her marriage to her friends, Madame 
 Bodichon, and Mrs. Congreve, only the evening before 
 it took place, saying to the former : " I am going to do 
 what, not very long ago, I should myself have pronounced 
 impossible for me, and therefore I should not wonder at 
 any one else who found my action incomprehensible." 
 
 One of the most satisfactory results of her marriage 
 was that it brought about a reconciliation with her 
 biother Isaac, and renewed an intercourse which had 
 long been intermitted. She wrote in answer to him : 
 " Your letter was forwarded to me here, and it was a 
 great joy to me to have your kind words of sympathy, 
 I for our long silence has never broken the affection for 
 I you which began when we were little ones. My 
 husband, too, was much pleased to read your letter. I 
 have known his family for eleven years, and they have 
 received me amongst them very lovingly. The only 
 point to be regretted in our marriage is that I am much 
 older than he, but his affection has made him choose this 
 lot of caring for me rather than any other of the various 
 lots open to him." They returned to England at the 
 end of July, and George Eliot died on December 22, 
 1880. Her illness began to declare itself at the end of 
 September, and its progress must be told in her husband's 
 words : 
 
 " This attack was a recurrence of the renal disorder of the pre- 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 137 
 
 vious year. On the 29th of September we went for ten days to 
 Brighton, as the most accessible place for a bracing change. The 
 first effects of the sea breezes were encouraging, but the improve- 
 ment was nof-maintained. Shortly after our return to Witley, Dr. 
 Andrew Clark, ' the beloved physician,' came down to consult with 
 Mr. Parson of Godalming — on 22nd October. From that time there 
 was gradual but slow improvement, and during November a decided 
 recovery of strength. But an English autumn was not favourable 
 to the invalid. Her sensibility to climate influences was extreme. 
 It will have been noticed in the preceding letters how constantly 
 change of air and scene was required. I had never seen my wife out 
 of England, previous to our marriage, except the first time at Rome, 
 when she was suffering. My general impression, therefore, had 
 been that her health was always very low, and that she was almost 
 constantly ailing. Moreover, I had been with her very frequently 
 during her long, severe illness at Witley in 1879. I was the more 
 surprised, after our marriage, to find thfit from the day she set her 
 feet on Continental soil, till the day she returned to Witley, she was 
 never ill — never even unwell. She began at once to look many years 
 younger. During the eleven years of our acquaintance I had never 
 seen her so strong in health. The greater dryness and lightness of 
 the' atmosphere seemed to have a magical effect. At Paris we spent 
 our mornings at the Louvre or the Luxembourg, looking at pictures or 
 sculpture, . . . always fatiguing work. In the afternoon we took long 
 walks in the Bois, and very often went to the theatre in the evening. 
 Reading and writing filled in all the interstices of time : yet there 
 was no consciousness of fatigue. And we had the same experience 
 at all the places we stayed at in Italy. On our way home, she was 
 able to take a great deal of walking exercise at Wildbad and Baden. 
 Decrease of physicial strength coincided exactly with the time of our 
 return to the damper climate of England. The specific form of 
 illness did not declare itself until two months later, but her health 
 •was never again the same as it had been on the Continent. Towards 
 the middle of October she was obliged to keep her bed, but without 
 restriction as to the amount of reading and talking, which she was 
 always able to enjoy, except in moments of acute pain." 
 
 I well remember the circijmstances of her death. On 
 
138 LIFE OF 
 
 Monday, December 2otli, I was delivering a lecture at 
 Weybridge, and the chair was taken by a relative of 
 Mr. Cross. I asked him if he had heard anything lately 
 of George Eliot and her husband, and he told me that 
 he had heard from Mr. Cross that morning that his wife 
 was suffering from a strange attack in the throat, some- 
 thing like croup, very painful, but not dangerous, and 
 that her recovery was expected in a few days. I went next 
 day to Windsor to keep my mother's birthday, and a 
 friend who was to have stayed with us for Christmas did 
 not arrive at the time expected. He told us when he came 
 that on his way he had called at 4, Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, 
 had found Mr. Cross in despair at the sudden death of 
 his wife, and had remained the night to comfort him. At 
 six o'clock on Wednesday evening they first knew that 
 she was dying, and she expired at ten. She was, happily, 
 unconscious of her approaching end, and indeed had 
 always anticipated a long life. 
 
 I was one of the mourners at her funeral on December 
 29th. As I entered the lower room in Cheyne Walk, her 
 portrait, by Sir Frederick Burton, faced me, and brought 
 back with startling vividness the charm of her living pre- 
 sence. The day was cold and stormy, filled with violent 
 gusts of wind and rain. During the long drive to High- 
 gate Cemetery, Mr. William Blackwood, wjio was with 
 me, told me the story of her works. Despite the miserable 
 weather, the churchyard was crowded with men and 
 women, an orderly and respectful throng, deeply stirred 
 with sympathy. Among the mourners, the most notice- 
 able form was that of Isaac Evans, tall and slightly 
 bent, his features recalling with a striking veracity the 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 139 
 
 lineaments of the dead. The service in the crowded 
 chapel was impressive, and nowhere more so than when 
 the preacher quoted the words of her well-known hymn, 
 which reminded us that her spirit had joined the choir 
 invisible, " whose music is the gladness of the world." 
 Her portrait hangs over my writing-table at Cambridge, 
 and scarcely a day passes that I do not seek to draw 
 from it some portion of that spiritual strength for which 
 I was so deeply indebted to her during her life. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 IT remains for me to sum up in this last chapter the 
 principal characteristics of George Eliot's art, the 
 lines of development which it followed, and the aims 
 which she set herself in working it out. For this purpose 
 her poetry may be set on one side. It was always 
 subordinate to her prose and, as has been maintained in 
 the foregoing pages, was mainly a concentrated form of 
 expression specially adapted to her more subtle and 
 imaginative thoughts. To deal, then, with her novels : 
 Which of them do we rank the highest ? It would 
 probably be difficult to get any large number of people 
 to unite in the same conclusion. The popular vote, as 
 shown by the publishers' account books, is, I believe, 
 in favour of "Adam Bede." It is not difficult to 
 understand this. The title of the novel — the names of 
 the first created man and of the first English writer — 
 strikes the keynote of its character. The scene is laid 
 in the heart of the Midlands. The story is a simple tale 
 of a thoughtless boy and a ruined girl — simple yet full of 
 tragic pathos. The deeper thought of the book is 
 expressed in the forms of Puritanism, like all deeper 
 thought in the great mass of English people. It is the 
 
LIFE OF GEORGE ELIOT. 141 
 
 wittiest of George Eliot's novels. It is written straight 
 out of her own life. Adam Bede was her father, Dinah 
 was her aunt, the name Poyser seems to be compounded 
 of the names of her mother and her stepmother. The 
 story of Hetty was a true one, and may have lain nearer 
 to her heart than is generally supposed. All this goes to 
 justify the popular verdict. / Like the ancient wrestler, 
 she drew her strength from mother earth, and in no book 
 did she touch mother earth so closely. '' 
 
 But although this is the popular, it is not the universal 
 opinion. Men of letters, I believe, give the palm to 
 "Silas Marner." They are attra c ted b y the exquisite 
 workmanshi£^f^jthe_story. The plot was constructed by 
 Ge orge Eliot out of the meres t hint. The story was 
 written_inJiastej_at_one gush.^ It is a perfect gem — a 
 pure \vork>of art, in which the demands of art have alone 
 
 to be considered. A large class of admirers would give 
 their vote to "Romola." It is, as I have said before, 
 perhaps, the best historical novel ever written. Replete 
 with learning, weighted with knowledge in every page, 
 the finish is so rare that the joints between erudition and 
 imagination cannot be discovered. Read it when you 
 have never been to Florence, it will make you long to go 
 there ; read it when you have learnt to love Florence, it 
 will make you love Florence more; read it when you 
 have studied the Renaissance, which George Eliot had 
 studied so deeply, and you will feel its beauties as those 
 feel the beauties of a symphony of Beethoven who know 
 the score by heart. There is the character of Tito, so 
 special yet so universal, the creature of his own age and 
 yet the creature of any age, the embodiment of weak sel- 
 
142 LIFE OF 
 
 fishness which knows not where it goes, now and ever 
 the most fruitful cause of human misery ; and Romola 
 herself, a saint living in the world, a prototype of Doro- 
 thea. Yet, say others, the book has great inherent faults. 
 All historical novels are inartistic ; they are bad, as his- 
 torical pictures are bad, as programme music is bad. No 
 historical picture represents the scene as it actually 
 occurred ; no music ever realized to us the sound of a 
 storm, a nightingale, or a quail. The armour of erudi- 
 tion encumbers the limbs ; the wise man, like the brave 
 brothers in " Princess Ida," throws it off when he goes 
 into action. Again, the novel is not a true picture of 
 Italian life. Men who have lived long in Italy, and have 
 drunk deeply of its spirit, complain that they cannot read 
 the book with pleasure. The life of Tuscany which it 
 describes is to them a nightmare, a Frankenstein, an 
 artificial monster, not hving flesh and blood. 
 
 I might quote the highest authority for the superiority 
 of " Middlemarch,'' in which George EUot returns to the 
 Midlands. It is a great prose epic, large in size, com- 
 manding in structure, affording an ample space for a great 
 artist to work upon. Perhaps even more than " Adam 
 Bede " has it become part of the ordinary furniture of 
 our minds, of the current coin of our thoughts. Casau- 
 bon, Will Ladislaw, Mr. Brooke are types which are ever 
 present with us, like Becky Sharpe and Colonel New- 
 come ; and if Dorothea and Lydgate are more remote, 
 it is because they are rarer characters, not because they 
 are less truly drawn. "Middlemarch" gives George 
 Eliot the chiefest claim to stand by the side of Shake- 
 speare. Both drew their inspiration from the same 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 143 
 
 sources, the villages and the country houses which we 
 know so well. 
 
 If I am asked the question with which I set out, I 
 always reply — her last novel, "Daniel Deronda." I know 
 well, only too well, the criticisms which have been 
 levelled at the book from its first appearance to the 
 present day. I have become tired and sick of hearing 
 that the characters are unreal, that there is not a man or 
 woman in the story whom you can take away with you 
 and live with. I know that Daniel is thought to be a 
 prig, and the Jew Mordecai a bore ; that Gwendolen is 
 thought impossible, and Grandcourt a stage villain ; that 
 the language is held to be strained and uncouth, full of 
 far-fetched tropes and metaphors drawn from unfamiliar 
 science. It is said there is no motive power in the 
 action, no reason for the characters behaving as they 
 behave. What rational person can care for the return of 
 the Jews to Palestine ? Is a young man who stakes his 
 life on such an issue worthy of five minutes' considera- 
 tion? Would a handsome young Englishman, brought 
 up as a Christian at a public school or university, be 
 suddenly overjoyed to find that he was a Jew ? No, in 
 " Daniel Deronda " thought and learning have usurped 
 the place of art. It belongs to the worst type of all 
 novels, a novel with a tendency. The influence of 
 George Lewes, which may have strengthened his wife's 
 mind at first, has acquired in this a fatal predominance. 
 Biological studies have ruined her fine sensibility. 
 George Eliot has passed her prime. As in the " Trans- 
 figuration " of Raphael, we see in " Deronda " the 
 downward movement of a great mind, a movement which, 
 
144 LIFE OF 
 
 if followed, would have disastrous effect upon the national 
 literature. 
 
 With none of this can I agree. To me " Daniel 
 Deronda " is one step further upwards in the career of a 
 soaring genius who was destined, if life was spared, to 
 achieve greater heights than any to which it had yet risen. 
 It is the result of the normal and regular growth of un- 
 rivalled powers which were ever seeking subjects more 
 and more worthy for their exercise. It is as superior to 
 " Adam Bede " as " Hamlet " is superior to " Much Ado 
 About Nothing." It is an effort to realize the highest 
 purposes of art, to seize the strongest passions, the loftiest 
 heights and the lowest depths of human nature. If it 
 fails in execution it is because the task cannot yet be 
 accomplished. But if the work is ever to be done, the 
 way must be paved by partial failure. It is better to have 
 tried and failed, than never to have tried at all. 
 
 Let us trace the development of George Eliot's art in 
 its more outward aspects. Novel-writing did not come 
 naturally to her. She did not, like Currer Bell, spend 
 her girlhood in " making " stories, conscious only of the 
 pleasure which it gave her, and unconscious of their 
 excellence. Nor did she, like George Sand, sit down at 
 nightfall and be halfway through a novel by next morning, 
 the plot of which developed as she wrote. Like Milton, 
 she was from the first a student. The first work she 
 thought of writing, let us remember, was a synopsis of 
 ecclesiastical history, demanding nothing but great learn- 
 ing, clear thought, and untiring industry and ingenuity. 
 Her best mental training, in her own opinion, which 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 145 
 
 I have before recorded, came from the labour of trans- 
 lating Strauss's " Life of Jesus,'' and of finding the 
 exact Enghsh equivalents for subtle German particles. 
 For five-and-thirty years she laboriously acquired know- 
 ledge, became accomplished in at least five languages 
 besides her own, learned all she could of this, but kept 
 the force and flower of her mind for philosophy, and 
 especially for that region of philosophy which borders on 
 religion. Throughout her life she went back to the 
 Greek sources of inspiration in preference to seeking it 
 in the clash and play of human passion. 
 
 Any one who had followed her intellectual growth up 
 to the pubhcation of " Scenes of Clerical Life " would 
 never have guessed that it would have resulted in fiction. 
 She might become a great essayist, a great philosopher, an 
 historian, or a preacher like her aunt Dinah, but a novelist 
 never. Thus the Brays, who knew her mind intimately, 
 never guessed that she was the mysterious unknown, and 
 were surprised when they heard it. So also with her style. 
 The careful student of her letters can trace the unity of 
 the style from her earliest writings to the end, but this 
 will not be apparent to the hasty reader. Her first 
 letters are precise, prim, even priggish, if I may use 
 the word. She is pedantically exact in grammar; if 
 she has learnt a new word she uses it to show that she 
 knows it. There is from the first a remarkable just- 
 ness and accuracy of expression, the fitting of the glove 
 which leaves no fold or wrinkle, an insight into the 
 depths of thought which discovers the truest representa- 
 tion of it, a vivid accuracy of description ; but there is 
 nothing that shows the coming novelist. There is no 
 
14G LIFE OF 
 
 dramatic power, there is no humour. Indeed, the 
 humour of George Eliot, its nature and development, 
 would demand an essay by itself. What can be more 
 irresistible than the humour of " Adam Bede," or of 
 the "Mill on the Floss"? Yet long and intimately 
 as I knew George EUot, I never remember to have 
 heard her say a humorous thing, nor have I ever heard 
 a humorous saying of hers repeated by those who 
 ■ knew her better than I did. There is scarcely any 
 humour in her letters. When she writes to her stepson, 
 with every effort to sympathize with his studies and 
 amusements, there is no humour, and yet a word of Aunt 
 Glegg's would have made any boy ripple with laughter. 
 I used to attribute this persistent earnestness to an 
 exaggerated self-command, to a moral nature which kept 
 a tight rein on all temptation to sarcasm, conscious of 
 the scathing force with which it might be exercised. But 
 had humour been natural to her, there would have been 
 evidence of it in familiar letters, and fragments of table- 
 talk would have been garnered by faithful disciples. 
 ( No; her mind was ever deeply serious, overweighted 
 ( with a sense of the importance of every action and of 
 every word, indeed of every influence which she might 
 exercise upon her fellow-creatures. Slie gave every 
 comer of her best, and spoke sometimes of her novel- 
 writing as if it were a frivolous pursuit compared 
 with the histories and philosophies of her less gifted 
 friends. 
 
 Yet her capacity for fiction had not escaped the pene- 
 tration of those who knew her best. George Lewes 
 knew that she could describe and analyze, but doubted 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 147 
 
 whether she possessed dramatic power. A great 
 philosopher, one of her most intimate associates, had 
 always told her that her strength would lie in novel- 
 writing. At last, on returning to Richmond after a long 
 absence, he heard that his advice had been taken and 
 that she had begun. The first " Scenes of Clerical Life " 
 had been written. Even then she moved timidly and 
 with caution in the domain of imagination. The first 
 stories were reproductions of her own experience ; 
 places and persons were so described as to be easily 
 recognized, names were scarcely altered. Yet she 
 had prepared herself for the/ analysis of character 
 by careful study. I have seen a copy of Benjamin 
 Constant's " Adolphe," a novel of the minutest self- 
 inspection, interlined and marked by her in every page, 
 and thumbed so as almost to fall in pieces. From such 
 elements were those tales produced which shook so- 
 rapidly the heart of England. Based on a wealth of; 
 thought and learning which none of her readers could, 
 rival or understand, they dealt with the joys and sorrows- 
 of simple everyday , men and women. If -the delicate- 
 half-lights were unperceived by critics and admirers, the- 
 main outlines were struck with such vigour ai)d decision, 
 that he who ran could comprehend. / 
 
 From the first there was a tone of sadness in her 
 stories. She set herself to describe ordinary life and to 1 
 sympathize with common joys and sorrows She had no 
 respect for that art which deals only with ^polite society, 
 and overlooks the struggles of the harfidrum people 
 with whom we are perpetually in contact. Nor did she 
 seek approval by making her heroes happy. We have 
 
148 LIFE OF 
 
 been told by experienced playwrights that the catastrophe 
 of a play has much to do with its success. There are 
 some stories which the public will not allow to end un- 
 happily, however much such an end may be demanded 
 by the truth of art. Deep in human nature lies the 
 instinct of compensation, the confidence that everything 
 must be for the best ; that misery in this world is certain 
 to be made right in the next ; and that very probably in 
 our present condition there will be something to set off 
 on the other side. George Eliot's nature rejected with 
 scorn this easy method of making things pleasant. She 
 knew too well that everything is not always for the best ; 
 she regarded this unfounded confidence as one of the 
 most fruitful sources of immoral action. She was never 
 tired of repeating that the good and evil which exist in 
 the world are the outcome of good and bad actions done 
 by generations of human beings. Our lives are certain 
 to add something to the sum on one side or the other ; 
 let us be on our guard, not only that our actions are 
 positively good, but that they are so directed as to inter- 
 fere as little as possible with the good which others are 
 trying to effect. The worst evil is often wrought by those 
 who are free from the most repugnant qualities. Stupidity, 
 f and, above all, an easy, self-indulgent disposition, may 
 'bring ruin on its possessor, and on all who come into 
 -contact with him. Such men are favourites in the world, 
 and are not considered to be bad. They are described 
 as well-meaning, and as "no man's enemy but their 
 own." Yet Goethe and George Eliot warn us with per- 
 sistent iteration that by characters such as this the best 
 lives are wasted. One thoughtless moment of Arthur 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 149 
 
 Donnithorne brings ruin and death to Hetty. Tito sinks 
 by slow gradations of easy selfishness into a villain 
 and a murderer. Edward, in the Wahlverwandschaften 
 of Goethe, ruins characters far nobler than his own. 
 Werther is of the same type, but the glamour of the artist 
 has endowed him with such attractiveness that he rather 
 invited imitators than gave a warning. George Eliot did 
 not intend her novels to wear a robe of sombre melancholy. 
 Nothing was more foreign to her than the belief that 
 most lives must be failures ; no feeling would she less 
 have desired to generate than despair of good and dis- 
 trust of effort. Her personal influence was stimulating ; 
 to many souls she was a prophetess, inspiring them with 
 hope for the struggle of life, ordering their careers, mar- 
 shaUing their forces, making them see the honour of 
 a humble task and an obscure function. Her voice was 
 • like that of a great captain which cheers not only those 
 who are in the forefront of the conflict, but those who; 
 set to guard the women and the stuff, hear the roar of 
 warfare from afar. There lay undoubtedly a deep gloom 
 in the recesses of her own nature, and this dark back- 
 ground may have appeared in her writings in spite of 
 herself. She once said to her friend with deep solemnity \ 
 that she regarded it a wrong and misery that she ever had { 
 been born. But her self command would have crushed 
 this pessimism had she supposed that it could have 
 injuriously affected others. 
 
 She was also profoundly conscious of the little thought ' 
 and value which many people set on life, how little they 
 estimate the result of their actions in themselves and 
 others. She feared that this was encouraged by the 
 
150 LIFE OF 
 
 current theology, which looked only to future retribu- 
 tion, to reward and punishment in a heaven and hell 
 external to ourselves, to a future state where all mistakes 
 and accidents of this life would be comfortably set right. 
 Let us think more of this life, she would say ; here is 
 heaven and hell enough for us. We have no certain 
 knowledge of the details of a future life ; this life we do 
 know, and by care and watchfulness we may repress its 
 evil and increase its good. To inculcate the importance 
 of every action of our lives, whether as affecting the lives 
 of others, or by the invincible force of habit determining 
 our own ; the momentous issues of the thoughts and 
 emotions which slowly build up the human character, 
 and which, long concealed from all eyes, suddenly leap 
 out in the light of unexpected action; such was the 
 kernel of her moral teaching. 
 
 "Let thy chief terror be of thine own soul : 
 There, 'mid the throng of hurrying desires 
 That trample o'er the dead to seize their spoil, 
 Lurks vengeance, footless, irresistible 
 As exhalation laden with slow death ; 
 And o'er the fairest troop of captured joys 
 Breathes pallid pestilence." 
 
 If the lives of Dorothea, of Maggie Tulliver, of 
 Romola, are failures, it is not because George Eliot 
 wishes to teach that most lives are and must be failures, 
 but because she believes that such failures are pre- 
 ventible, and that it is our duty to prevent them as far 
 as possible. We cannot ourselves have high destinies or 
 momentous influence ; but are we not surrounded by 
 those who have or might have? Do we not by our 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 151 
 
 narrowness, by our selfishness or our careless thought- 
 lessness, spoil lives created for the noblest purpose ? 
 
 I know what I have said to be true from repeated 
 conversations with her on this topic. I remember, one 
 summer afternoon in Windsor Park, many years ago, 
 I found myself for a moment alone with her, and 
 ventured to pour into her ears the difficulties which were 
 then assailing me, the struggle between the demands of 
 the life of self-culture and the life of self-sacrifice, which 
 is the common malady of youthful minds, or was so at 
 least a quarter of a century ago. She turned upon me with 
 the eager glance of a prophetess, and said, " I know all 
 you mean, I have felt it all myself;" and then followed 
 a flood of eloquence upon the purpose of life, and the 
 necessities of social effort, and the nobility of humble 
 duties, which from that moment put an end to my unrest 
 and laid the germs of content. • I remember also a 
 dinner party at Cambridge, where she discoursed with 
 earnest self-abandonment into my private ear of the 
 solemnities of this life, and the danger of always grasping 
 at a hfe beyond. But this train of thought is the keynote 
 of the earliest of her published essays, the review of 
 Young's "Night Thoughts," or, as she calls it, " World- 
 liness and Other-worldhness." 
 
 Young, she says in this, has no conception of religion 
 as anything else than egoism turned heavenward. 
 Religion, he tells us, is 
 
 "Ambition, pleasure, and the love of gain, directed towards the 
 joys of the future life instead of the present. He never changes his 
 level so as to see beyond the region of mere selfishness. Virtue 
 
1C2 LIFE OF 
 
 with Young must always squint — must never look straight towards 
 the immediate object of emotion and effect. Thus, if a man risks 
 jierishing in the snow himself rather than forsake a weaker comrade, 
 he must do this either because his- hopes and fears are directed to 
 another world, or because he desires to applaud himself after- 
 wards." 
 
 On the other hand, George Eliot says — 
 
 " I am just and honest, not because I expect to live in another 
 world, but because, having felt the pain of injustice and dishonesty 
 towards myself, I have a fellow feeling with other men who would 
 suffer the same pains if I were unjust or dishonest towards them. 
 Why should I give my neighbour short weight in this world because 
 there is not another world in which I should have nothing to weigh 
 out to him ? I am honest because I don't like to inflict evil on 
 others in this life, not because I am afraid of evil to myself in 
 another. It is a pang to me to witness the suffering of a fellow- 
 being, and I feel his suffering the more because he is mortal, 
 because his life is so short, and I would have it, if possible, filled 
 with happiness, and not misery. In some minds the deep pathos 
 lying in the thought of human mortality — that we are here for a little 
 while and then vanish away ; that this earthly life is all that is 
 given to our loved ones, and to our many suffering fellow-men — lies 
 nearer the fountains of moral emotion than the conception of 
 extended existence." 
 
 I trust that I have said nothing to imply that the ten- 
 dency of George Eliot's teaching was towards unbelief 
 or indifference. Her nature was intensely religious, 
 she had been brought up in surroundings of the most 
 earnest piety, even if accompanied by a narrow dogma- 
 tism. The tenderness and delicacy of her nature would 
 have forbidden her to write a word which could have 
 weakened the faith of a single believing soul. I once 
 heard George Lewes urging her to declare herself, to 
 take a side in religious thought, to bear a part in the 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 153 
 
 conflict against current belief, for which so many were 
 enduring unpopularity and ostracism. She refused and 
 appealed to me. It was, if I remember right, between 
 the- publication of " Middlemarch " and " Deronda." 
 Why should she hurt the numbers who loved and 
 trusted her through her writings? Why, if she deeply 
 sympathized with their faith, even if she had ceased 
 to hold it, should she carry the weapons of scorn and 
 refutation against the host of ideas which were bred of 
 purity and virtue? The first thing to teach, she had 
 written to me, is reverence, reverence for the hard-won 
 beliefs of many struggling ages. The answer to her 
 husband's appeal was given in " Deronda,'' a book in 
 which there is not a word of reproach against the most 
 childlike faith, but where the great mysteries of revelation 
 from w^hich Christianity derives its origin are held up to 
 admiration, preserved throughout the centuries by the 
 joint guardianship of obedience and race. 
 
 This, then, I take to be the key-note of George Eliot's 
 art : — to paint the lives of those she saw about her, to 
 describe their joys and sorrows, their successes and 
 failures, and, by insisting on the deep importance of this 
 world, to teach us to hinder as little as possible the good 
 which is burgeoning around us. This, I say, is the 
 germ ; but how did this art develop ? She died in the 
 fulness of her powers. There is no failure in grasp of 
 intellect or cunning of style. Gwendolen is as com- 
 plicated and difficult a character as she ever painted. 
 Is it not reasonable to believe that, in the maturity of 
 her mind and the. height of her influence, she would in 
 writing " Deronda " have braced herself to a supreme 
 
154 LIFE OF 
 
 effort, have nerved herself to satisfy the claims of the 
 highest art, and to soar with no common or slender 
 pinion beyond the Aonian mount ? 
 
 We have said that from the first she sought for 
 inspiration in the joys and sorrows of ordinary people. 
 But what are their joys and sorrows? The commonest 
 passions we know are love and revenge. They beat in 
 the breast of every savage, nay, of every brute. Heine's 
 old song, " She was lovable, and he loved her ; He was 
 not lovable, and she loved him not," is chanted in 
 various cadences every moment of our lives. What are 
 the outward motives of the most famous tragedies ? In the 
 "Agamemnon" of ^schylus a soldier comes home from 
 the wars. In his ten years' absence his wife has formed 
 another attachment. When he arrives she receives him 
 kindly, invites him to take a warm bath, envelops him in 
 a complicated bathing-towel, and cuts him down with 
 a hatchet. It is true that he has killed her daughter 
 some years before, and has brought home with him 
 a lovely waiting-maid, of whom her mistress might be 
 jealous. But these are only excuses, the plot has been 
 long arranged. Clytemnestra does not intend to desert 
 her paramour .^gisthus for her husband Agamemnon. 
 It is an affair of every day ; we may read it any week 
 in the police news, or hear of it in the purlieus of our 
 great cities. If the plot does not always end in a 
 murder, it is because Agamemnon is often content to 
 solace himself with Cassandra. Again, in the " Medea," 
 an adventurous traveller in unknown and distant lands 
 takes to himself a wife of the country. She was very 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 155 
 
 useful to him with the natives, and dpubtless did her 
 best to ensnare him. She was a hasty, ill-tempered 
 woman, not like a European, and given to magic arts. 
 The traveller returns rich and famous ; the beautiful 
 princess of the wealthiest city in the world falls in love 
 with him and marries him. The dark-haired stranger 
 rages like a mad woman. She poisons her rival and kills 
 her two children to revenge herself on their father. In 
 England she would be tried for murder, and very often 
 is. In Greece she happily escaped in a carriage 
 drawn by winged dragons. Again, in " Faust," the 
 action of deepest interest, although the Germans call it 
 an episode, is the ruin of Gretchen. A simple girl, 
 dazzled by splendid gifts and promises, absorbed by 
 a personality more radiant than any of which she had 
 dreamed, falls, repents, kills her mother and her child. 
 " Yet everything that drove me on was goodness and 
 was love alone." What is this but the story of Hetty — 
 a story to which every one of us could find a parallel ? 
 " Sie war die erste nicht " (" She was not the first ") says 
 Mephisto, to the despairing Faust : nor unhappily was 
 she the last. It is the very simplicity of the pathos, its 
 appeal to universal experience, which gives the story of 
 Margaret its hold on the hearts of men. Read or acted, 
 spoken or sung, treated by Spohr, Gounod, Berlioz, 
 or Boito, it draws tears from men and women of every 
 country. 
 
 But is art never to rise beyond these simple passions ? 
 A complex civilization may produce great criminals, but 
 it is also the parent of acts of heroism which are less 
 likely to be found in a simpler society. A statesman 
 
156 LIFE OF 
 
 is filled from earliest youth with the idea of creating 
 a country, of realizing what generations of dreaming 
 patriots have yearned for during expectant centuries. 
 '\He trains himself in silence for his task, he dares not 
 whisper his purpose for fear it should be thwarted, he 
 learns by patient self-command how to restrain himself 
 at the moment when action is tempting but may be 
 dangerous. He has the flash of the eagle eye which 
 tells him when to take the tiger spring ; he dies prema- 
 turely, worn out with labour, but his work is accomplished 
 and lives after him. A philosopher conceives in boy- 
 hood the outlines of a great constructive system, he 
 knows that it will take a lifetime to work out, and he 
 willingly gives his life to the cause. There is a fire of 
 heroism in the conception, in the first beginning, which 
 needs no patience to sustain it, but the highest quahties 
 of mind and heart are needed for the prolonged per- 
 sistence of weeks, months, and years. Are not these 
 actions as truly heroic as any scene which struts the 
 stage in all the pomp of circumstance? Is not the 
 devotion to an ideal as true a passion as the wooing of 
 a village maiden? Is not the great traveller and dis- 
 coverer as true a hero as the great conqueror? May 
 not Livingstone stand by the side of Alexander ? And 
 surely these modern passions have their tragic catastro- 
 phes no less than their simple antitypes. What can be 
 more tragic than the fate of Gordon, falling at the 
 moment when success seemed certain? He was, we 
 may say, a martyr to duty, to military obedience, but 
 also to that love of the weak and oppressed, to that 
 hatred of slavery which could not exist in a barbaric nature. 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 157 
 
 Napoleon, who offers in his powerful and complex 
 personaHty many grand subjects for art, saw this clearly. 
 In a conversation with the Comte de Sdgur, he com- 
 plained that poets showed no enterprise in drawing from 
 the rich material with Which the grandeur of the modern 
 world supplied them. " What," he said, " can be more 
 tragic than the struggle in the mind of a wise and 
 powerful ruler when he is called upon to decide whether 
 he shall do something which he knows to, be essential, 
 and to be just, but which bears an outward appearance 
 of tyranny and hardship, and will cover his name with 
 ignominy ? " This was his view of the execution of the 
 Due d'Enghien. Art can deal easily enough with the 
 fate of the unfortunate young prince, treacherously 
 seized, hurried to the capital, shot on a grey morning 
 in the ditch of a fortress. Such a scene can be easily 
 described so as to touch all hearts. " More tragic," 
 Napoleon said, " more worthy of the highest art, is the 
 struggle in the mind of the sovereign who feels all the 
 pathos with which men will invest his victim, and the 
 ignominy which they will heap upon himself, and yet 
 chooses wisdom and reprobation instead of weakness 
 and applause ? " Who amongst us has not wept over 
 Mary Queen of Scots? — yet we have no tears for 
 Elizabeth or Burleigh. A friend of mine, an ardent 
 Liberal, once wrote a tragedy called " Cromwell," in 
 which all our sympathy was to be evoked for that great 
 man: We who read it discovered that all the pathos 
 had been given to Charles I., and we would willingly 
 have condemned Cromwell to the fate of his victim. 
 The artist, we allow, should describe what he sees and 
 
158 LIFE OF 
 
 what he knows ; the subjects with which he is habitually 
 in contact. But are our most intimate friends Clytem- 
 nestras or Medeas ? and if there is even in the best 
 men a strain of lower nature, are we to fix our eyes 
 on that, and not on those qualities which give value 
 to the friendship of out friend ? 
 
 Such, in my opinion, was the development of George 
 Eliot's art. She always described those whom she 
 knew. But Milly Barton, sweet and touching as she 
 is, appealing to all hearts, is not a Dorothea or a 
 Romola. Milly, propped up by pillows in the early 
 morning mending her children's stockings, is a far 
 simpler character than Romola, full of ancient learning 
 and enthusiasm, casting herself upon the guidance of 
 Savonarola. In all these types there is a progression. 
 We are taught to feel that the highest forms of 
 heroism are still with us and amongst us if we would 
 but recognize them. Dorothea, she tells us, was a 
 modern St. Theresa. Fedalma, the Spanish gypsy, who 
 sacrifices everything for her race, was suggested, she 
 informs us, by Titian's picture of the youthful Virgin, 
 conscious that she carried in her bosom the destinies of 
 the world. 
 
 But art in attempting to describe these higher passions 
 has great^ difficulties to deal with. It must appeal to a 
 smaller audience. Many more are touched by a simple 
 tale of every-day experience than by complicated 
 struggles of mind or character. So a sweet-toned ballad 
 will always have more to listen to it than a quartett' of 
 Beethoven, although the last may contain a hundredfold 
 more melody, and be destined to live long after the 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 159 
 
 ballad is forgotten. The analogy of music might be 
 pressed more closely. There is scarcely a masterpiece 
 of music of the highest rank which was not at the time 
 of its production condemned as complicated, artificial, 
 unmelodious, and unintelligible. Mozart's great quartetts 
 were returned by the engraver as so full of mistakes 
 that they could not be printed. The best works of 
 Beethoven were not performed till forty years after his 
 death. Some of the^best works of Bach have never been 
 performed at all. Much of the popularity of Handel is 
 due to his simplicity and straightforwardness ; and we 
 have been told by a great critic that a capital defect 
 in Shakespeare is his fondness for obvious characters. 
 
 Another great difficulty with those who attempt to 
 extend the domain of art hes in the poverty of language. 
 The language of ordinary passion is well known; it is 
 ready to our hand, and strikes directly to our hearts. 
 The death scene of Milly Barton, the conversation 
 between Faust and Margaret, are expressed in the 
 simplest words and produce their full effects. The 
 moment this domain is left the instrument fails. We 
 have no simple vocabulary in which we can paint the j 
 inspiration of Dorothea, the long-drawn yearning of 
 Mordecai, the chivahous self-devotion of Deronda, or 
 even the artistic conscience of Klesmer. If we merely 
 describe or analyze we cease to be passionate; if we 
 would be passionate we must borrow the language of 
 passion, but we must transmute its meaning. We must 
 change it so as to apply not to bodies, but to souls, 
 not to realities, but to abstractions. We can no longer 
 
ICO LIFE OF 
 
 speak with forcible directness, we must use metaphor, 
 and metaphor kills. 
 
 In this we shall find an extenuation and an excuse for 
 one of the chief transgressions with which George Eliot 
 has been charged. Her husband, it is said, had a bane- 
 ful influence over her. Absorbed in science he led her 
 away from art, her language becomes more and more 
 unintelligible ; we find long periodic sentences, far- 
 fetched allusions, recondite terms, scientific analogies, 
 till what ought to be a novel reads like a paper at the 
 British Association. The charge against Lewes is unfair. 
 Her very first published essay begins with a scientific 
 metaphor. To study men as a branch of natural history 
 was the inherent tendency of her mind. But as her 
 characters became more complex, and their struggles 
 more subtle, they can only be made intelligible at all by 
 metaphor. Scientific metaphor was the best and truest 
 instrument at her hand, and no one can deny that she 
 wielded it with extraordinary power and success. 
 
 If the development of George Eliot's art led her to 
 place before us complex characters, stirred by passions 
 which are not familiar to the mass of mankind, the 
 development of Goethe's art led him into a similar 
 although a slightly divergent path. His earliest works 
 were characterized by their preciseness and directness. 
 In the "Sorrows of Werther" the intractable German 
 tongue is made to speak with a melodious softness un- 
 known to any language since the Greek of Plato. The 
 style is simple and easy. Werther pours out his com- 
 plaint with childish naivete. In the more tragic parts 
 the pathos is produced by the means nearest at hand. 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 161 
 
 The description of Werther's death and funeral is a 
 mere transcript of Kestner's letter describing the death 
 and funeral of the young Jerusalem who, as every- 
 body knows, was Werther's prototype. In " Goetz von 
 Berlichingen " we see the same qualities applied to 
 the portrayal of a massive character. In this play 
 the unities of time and place are recklessly disre- 
 garded, the scene shifts from one spot to another to 
 the despair of stage-managers. The characters speak 
 in short, pithy sentences, they come on without prepara- 
 tion, they say a few words and are off again. Let me 
 give a specimen from the fifth act, in the very agony of 
 the climax. The scene lies in the courtyard of an inn. 
 The previous scene has shown us the judges of the 
 secret tribunal meeting in a narrow, gloomy vault. The 
 next scene will show us Goetz and his wife Elizabeth 
 in the tower of his castle at Heilbronn. Here we have 
 Maria and her page hastening to her brother Goetz ; and 
 this is what they say : M. " The horses have rested 
 enough, we will away, Lerse." L. " Stay till morning ; 
 the night is too wild." M. " Lerse, I have no rest till 
 I have seen my brother. Let us away. The weather 
 becomes clearer ; we may expect a fine day." Z. " As 
 you please." 
 
 That is all. Yet every word carries with it the 
 sense of hurried, anxious flight. So in the first part 
 of " Faust," the more dramatic parts, and those which 
 were earliest composed, have the same qualities — 
 they are the quintessence of dramatic simplicity and 
 force. Yet what did De Quincey, the great English 
 critic, tell us about Goethe some fifty years ago? 
 II 
 
162 LIFE OF 
 
 He says that his reputation is founded on his obscurity, 
 and that it cannot last. Goethe had the art, even the 
 cunning, to write unintelligibly, and to excite the 
 curiosity of readers as to what he meant. As long as 
 there is something to find out he is studied : when 
 everything is cleared up, and it is known either what 
 he means, or that he has no meaning, he will be read 
 no more. 
 
 But what produced this change ? What transmuted the 
 dear, sharp language of the gifted boy into the obscure 
 and dreamy dialect of the mature man ? Why did the 
 author of the first part of " Faust " ever write a second 
 part ? It was because he strove after the development 
 of art; because he wished to apply it to worthier 
 subjects. Werther is a foolish, sentimental youth who 
 shoots himself because he cannot gratify a hopeless 
 passion. Goetz is a simple knight of the Middle Ages, 
 rough and rugged as the ashlar of his castle walls. 
 These characters spoke to Goethe's generation as the 
 style speaks to us still : one was typical of the men of 
 the eighteenth century which was passing away, the 
 other of the new-born strength of awakened Germany. 
 But compare them with Faust. Here, in the less 
 dramatic and more philosophical parts, we are brought 
 face to face with the problems of our own day. The 
 opening soliloquy, the struggle of Faust with the tempta- 
 tion of his lower nature, his dialogues with Wagner and 
 with Mephisto, are all modern. They appeal to us as if 
 they were written yesterday. And yet they are very 
 obscure. The language is difficult in German, un- 
 intelligible in a translation. And if this is the case even 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 163 
 
 in the early Faust, what shall we say of Goethe's later 
 writings, of the second part of "Wilhelm Meister," of 
 Pandora, of the Xenien, the proverbs, the West-ostliche 
 Divan, the second part of " Faust " ? 
 
 The German language has a power, which English 
 does not possess, of lending itself to the correct ex- 
 pression of the most complicated abstract ideas. Its 
 malleability, its comprehensiveness, the ease with which 
 its component parts can be thrown together and kneaded 
 into new shapes at the will of the writer, makes it an 
 unrivalled instrument in the hand of a man of genius. 
 If Goethe wished to exhibit recondite passions, he need 
 not, like George Eliot, have recourse to metaphor, he 
 could extend the compass of his own language at his 
 will. If he tried — what George Eliot did not attempt — 
 to deal with the universal instead of the particular, to 
 say things true for all time instead of for his time, appli- 
 cable to all men and not to one man, dealing sometimes 
 with all nature or with the whole universe — again the 
 material was ready for him. He had a speech which 
 would obey his most soaring fancies, even as the Greek 
 language lends itself to the wild imaginings of the 
 Alexandrian Platonists. Goethe used this liberty to 
 the utmost. He who had taught German to speak with 
 limpid music in "Werther" and with rugged force in 
 "Goetz," preferred in the maturity of his might to utter 
 abstractions of which few discerned the meaning, and 
 which many declared to have no meaning. Yet they, 
 are becoming current coin to our generation. The 
 second part of "Faust" is acted in many a German 
 city, and the press ■ of Germany teems with cheap 
 
164 LIFE OF 
 
 editions of its great poet, not with his masterpiece only, 
 but with everything he ever wrote, his scientific treatises 
 included. 
 
 I may, now come back to the question with which 
 I began. Which of George Eliot's novels do we rank 
 the highest ? If I have at all carried my readers with 
 me in my reasoning, they will agree with me that there 
 is a gradual progression from first to last, that during 
 her twenty-five years of literary production she was ever 
 conceiving deeper views of the problem of life, and was 
 filled with a stronger sense of the responsibilities of her 
 mission. She strove more and more to grasp the diffi- 
 culties of complex characters such as she met in the 
 course of her London life, and such as she learnt to 
 have more sympathy for ; to express not only their 
 appearance and their manners, but the very inmost 
 secrets and battles of their hearts. In one of her 
 essays there is a criticism of Dickens, which has been 
 but little noticed. She says : — 
 
 ' ' We have one great novelist who is gifted with the utmost power 
 of rendering the external traiits of our town population ; and if he 
 could give us their psychological character, their conceptions of 
 life, and their emotions with the same truth as their dress and 
 manners, his books would be the greatest contribution art has ever 
 made to the awakening of social sympathies. But while he can 
 copy Mrs. Plornish's colloquial style with the delicate accuracy of a 
 true picture, while there is the same startling inspiration in his de- 
 scription of the gestures and phrases of ' Boots ' as in the speeches 
 of Shakespeare's mobs and numskulls, he scarcely ever passes from 
 the humorous and external to the emotional and the tragic without 
 becoming as transcendent in his unreality as he was a moment before 
 in his artistic truthfulness." 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 165 
 
 George Eliot never failed to deal with the inner nature 
 of her characters. But what a chasm there is between 
 her first story and her last ! In the " Sad Fortunes of 
 the Reverend Amos Barton " there are but few characters, 
 and those of the humblest kind. An underbred clergy- 
 man of very ordinary appearance and capacity, a loving 
 wife and mother, a countess who had been a governess, 
 her brother a retired tradesman, a sympathetic neighbour, 
 an outspoken country servant — these make up the whole 
 of the dramatis per sonce. Others are indicated with marvel- 
 lous truth, but they hardly enter into the action. They are 
 all simple characters, such as may be met with any day 
 in any country town. Compared with this, " Deronda " 
 assumes the proportions of an epic poem. It is of 
 great length, and the plot is of rare complexity. There 
 are episodes which might be detached from the main 
 action. The simplest characters, the Gascoignes and 
 the Meyricks, have a touch of rareness and elevation ; 
 whereas the main actors are played upon by the stormiest 
 passion which can influence humanity in these modern 
 days. How complicated is the character of Gwendolen, 
 how difficult to grasp, her feet on the well-known 
 ground of vanity and ambitious selfishness, yet endowed 
 with a nature which led her at once to acknowledge the 
 supremacy of Deronda, and yield herself to his guid- 
 ance. Myra, a tender plant reared among the worst 
 surroundings, charming Deronda as the pearl of woman- 
 hood, yet in her despair tempted to suicide as Gwendolen 
 was to murder ; Mordecai, the embodiment of a strange 
 religion, his frail life at once consumed and sustained 
 by an absorbing yearning ; Deronda, far different, indeed, 
 
166 LIFE OF 
 
 to the ordinary product of a public school or a university, 
 yet so hke nature that his prototype has often been 
 recognized ; Klesmer, the embodiment of German 
 culture, so little sympathetic to Englishmen ; Deronda's 
 mother, so powerfully drawn, a fiery nature well fitted 
 for the weird fortunes of her youth ; Sir Hector, now 
 the trusted man of common sense, with the romance of 
 his young life buried deep beneath its ashes : — all these 
 characters, created, not only in their external appear- 
 ance, but in their inmost souls, and woven together in 
 an intricacy of plot which is the true representation of 
 real life, such as few authors have the courage to describe, 
 just as few painters dare to paint with realistic accuracy 
 the true colours of a glowing sunset. 
 
 This, as it is the sum and glory of George Eliot's art, 
 is also one of the great masterpieces of our literature. 
 But it is not a book which he who runs may read, and 
 it may be better understood fifty years hence than it is 
 at the present day. It deals with persons and problems 
 which are only possible in a highly civilized society, and 
 become more common as civilization advances. Litera- 
 ture began with Homer, with strife and battles, the 
 virtues and the vices of semi-savage tribes. Human 
 nature is there, but human nature in germ. The Greeks 
 of the Homeric age are with us still ; they are to be 
 found in South Africa and the Soudan ; we have spent 
 several millions n killing them with Remington rifles 
 and Gatling guns. But you will not find amongst them 
 a Faust, a Wilhelm Meister, a Deronda, or a Gwendolen. 
 Living art must deal with the circumstances which 
 environ it, with the deepest problems of advanced 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. Vol 
 
 humanity, not only with the joys and [sorrows common 
 to all human beings. To do this well and worthily is 
 the privilege of the highest genius, and it was to this- 
 stupendous task that two of the greatest writers of this 
 century set themselves in the maturity of their powers. 
 The attempt to compass this, perhaps the partial failure, 
 .will link together indissolubly for future ages the names- 
 of Goethe and George Eliot. 
 
 THE END. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 A. 
 
 "Adam Bede,'' its composition 
 and publication, 52, 54-61 ; its 
 reception, 61, 66 ; Mr. Lewes's 
 share in its production, 61-63 • 
 the originals of its scenes and 
 characters, 63-65 ; George Eliot's 
 opinion of it, 69 ; its relation to 
 her other works, 93 ; the most 
 popular of her novels, 140-141 
 
 "Agatha," 109 
 
 Allbutt, Dr., 108 ; correspondence 
 with, 116, 118, 131 
 
 Arbury, 13, 14-15 
 
 " Armgart," in 
 
 B. 
 Beesly, Professor, 89 
 Berlin, 40-41, in 
 Blackwood, Messrs., 46, 47, 48, 
 51-52, 54, 59, 60, 61, 66, 69, 70, 
 
 71. 73. 76. 77. 78. 95. 96. 98. 
 100, 112, 120, 127, 130, 131, 
 
 132.. 134. 138 
 Blandford Square, 77 
 Bhnd, Miss, quoted, 86, 114 
 Bodichon, Madame, 70, 71, 136 ; 
 
 quoted, 135 
 
 Brabant, Miss, 26 
 
 Bray, Mr. and Mrs., 22, 23, 24, 
 
 30, 69, 70, 126 
 "Brother and Sister" sonnets, 
 
 in 
 Browning, Robert, his opinion of 
 
 " Romola," 86 
 
 Call, Mrs., 26 
 
 Cambridge, 99, 115, 125 
 
 Cambridge Street, Hyde Park, 37 
 
 Carlyle's " Life of Steriing,'' re- 
 view of, 34 
 
 Cash, Mrs., 28 
 
 Chapman, Mr., 32-4 
 
 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, 138 
 
 Clark, Mr. W. G., 99 
 
 Congreve, Mrs., 69, 136 
 
 Cornhill Magazine publishes 
 " Romola," 83-84 
 
 Coventry, 19, 21 
 
 Cross, Mr., George Ehot's hus- 
 band and biographer, 13, 120, 
 134-138 ; quoted, 17, 85, 125, 
 
 13s. 136-137 
 Gumming, Dr.,- George Eliot's 
 opinion of, 36-37 
 
170 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 D. 
 
 " Daniel Deronda," preparation 
 for, 94, 115, 116 ; its object, 
 94 ; composition, 120 - 121 ; 
 Jewish element, 122-124 ; re- 
 ception, 124 ; claim to be con- 
 sidered the best of the novels, 
 143-144, 164-167 
 
 Deutsch, Mr. E., 90, 122 
 
 Dickens, George Ehot's opinion 
 of his work, 164 
 
 Dorking, 85 
 
 Dresden, 55-56 
 
 Durade, Mons. and Mdme., 31, 
 72-73, 84, 113 
 
 EUot George (Mary Ann Evans), 
 present views of her work, 
 11-12 ; birth, 13 ; father and 
 family, 13-14 ; removal to 
 Griff, near Nuneaton, 15-16 ; 
 mother, 16-17 ; early days and 
 influences at home and at 
 school, and early traits of 
 character, 16-22 ; removal to 
 Coventry, 22 ; hfe there, 22-24 ; 
 dispute with her father on reli- 
 gious subjects, 24 ; views on 
 conformity, 24-25 ; translates 
 the "Leben Jesu" of Strauss, 
 25-28 ; letters at this period, 
 28-29 ; death of her father, 29- 
 30 ; foreign tour and residence 
 at Geneva, 30-32 ; reviews 
 Mackay's "Progress of the 
 Intellect," 32; removes to Mr. 
 Chapman's house as assistant 
 editor of the Westminster 
 Review, 33 ; friendship with 
 
 Mr. Herbert Spencer and Mr. 
 Lewes, 33-34 ; contributions to 
 Westminster Review, 34-37 ; 
 removes to Cambridge Street, 
 Hyde Park, 37 ; union with 
 Mr. Lewes, 37-40 ; retires from 
 Westminster Review, 37 ; 
 translates Feuerbach's "Essence 
 of Christianity," 38 ; goes 
 abroad with Mr. Lewes, 38, 
 40-41 ; settles at Richmond, 42 ; 
 magazine articles, 42 ; trans- 
 lates Spinoza's "Ethics," 43; 
 "Scenes of Clerical Life" 
 ("Amos Barton,'' " Mr. Gilfil's 
 Love-Story," and "Janet's 
 Repentance"), 44-53; visit to 
 Munich and Dresden, 54-56 ; 
 "Adam Bede," 54-65; "The 
 Mill on the Floss'' begun, 65; 
 removal to Wandsworth, 66 ; 
 "TheLiftedVeil,"67-68 ; "T^le^ 
 Mill on the Floss," 68-74 : diffe- 
 rence between earlier and later 
 novels, 71 ; a sketch pf herself, 
 72 ; visit to Italy, 74-75 ; the 
 idea of " Romola" results from 
 visit to Florence, 75-77 ; re- 
 moval to Harewood Square and 
 then to Blandford Square, 77 ; 
 "Silas Mamer," 77-&0 ; com- 
 plaints of ill-health, 78; "Ro- 
 mola," 80-88 ; second visit to 
 Florence, 80-81 ; ' ' The Spanish 
 Gypsy" begun, 88 ; removal to, 
 - ^and hfe at. The Priory, North 
 Bank, Regent's Park, 88-90 ; 
 her poetry, 90-91 ; ' ' The Span- 
 ish Gypsy " continued, 91 ; 
 " FeUx Holt," 91-93 ; a pause 
 
INDEX. 
 
 171 
 
 in fiction-writing, 93-94 ; trip to 
 Belgium and Holland, 94 ; 
 "The Spanish Gypsy" re- 
 sumed, 94-100 ; visits to Spain, 
 95-96 ; Eton, 97 ; Germany, 97 ; 
 ' ' Felix Holt's Address to Work- 
 ing-men,'' 98 ; visits to Cam- 
 bridge and Oxford, 99 ; origin 
 and purpose of "The Spanish 
 Gypsy," 100-106 ; its merits, io6- 
 108 ; visits to Germany, Switzer- 
 land, Leeds, Derbyshire, 108 ; 
 "Agatha" and other poems, 
 109 ; visit to Italy, 109 ; death 
 of Thornton Lewes, 109-110 ; 
 " Middlemarch " begun, no; 
 " Brother and Sister" Sonnets, 
 III ; "Legend of Jubal," in ; 
 visit to Berlin and Vienna, in ; 
 "Armgart," in; "Middle- 
 march" completed, in-114 ; 
 visits to Homburg and Cam- 
 bridge furnish ideas for " Daniel 
 Deronda," 113-116 ; visit to the 
 Vosges, 117 ; views on religion, 
 118-19 ; "Daniel Deronda," 
 120-124 ; ^'si' '° Switzerland, 
 124 ; purchase of The Heights, 
 Witley, 125 ; visit to Cambridge, 
 125 ; meets Crown Prince and 
 Princess of Germany, 126 ; 
 " Theophrastus Such" begun, 
 127 ; ill-health, 127 ; meets Tur- 
 guenieff, the Russian novelist, 
 128-130 ; death of Mr. Lewes, 
 130-131 ; founding of a student- 
 ship in his memory, 131-132, 
 ^3S ; "Theophrastus Such," 
 132-134; marriage with Mr. 
 Cross, 134-136 ; reconciliation 
 
 with brother Isaac, 136 ; illness 
 and death, 136-138 ; funeral, 
 138-139 ; which is the best of 
 her novels? 140-144 ; the out- 
 ward development of her art, 
 144-147 ; her humour, 146 ; the 
 tone of sadness in her stories, 
 147-149 ; her moral teaching, 
 149-151 ; her treatment of 
 religion, 151-153; the object of 
 her writings, 153-154 ; her art in 
 its inner development, 154-158 ; 
 similarity in the artistic growth 
 of Goethe and George Eliot, 
 160-164; "Daniel Deronda" 
 the ' ' sum and glory " of George 
 Ehot's work, 164-167 
 
 Ense, Varnhagen von, 40 
 
 Eton, 96-97 
 
 "Evangelical Teaching : Dr. 
 Cumming," 35, 36 
 
 Evans, Christiana {George Eliot's 
 mother), 16-17, 20 
 
 Evans, Christiana (George Ehot's 
 sister), 17, 18 
 
 Evans, Elizabeth (George Eliot's 
 aunt), 56-58, 64-65 
 
 Evans, Frances Lucy (George 
 Eliot's sister), 14 
 
 Evans, George ;(George Eliot's 
 grandfather)f 13 
 
 Evans, Isaac (George Ehot's 
 brother), 14, 18, 21, 24, 136, 
 
 138 
 Evans, Mary Ann, sec Eliot, 
 
 George 
 Evans, Robert,. (George Eliot's 
 
 father), 13-14, 21, 24, 2S, 30, 58 
 Evans, Samuel (George Eliot's 
 
 uncle), 65 
 
172 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 F. 
 
 "Felix Holt," its composition, 
 91-93 ; the weakest of George 
 Eliot's novels, 92-93 
 
 " Felix Holt's Address to Work- 
 ing-men,'' 98 
 
 Feuerbach's "Essence of Chris- 
 tianity," George Eliot's trans- 
 lation of, 38 
 
 Florence, 75, 80, 81 
 
 Fortnightly Review, The, Mr. 
 Lewes edits, 91 
 
 Fraser s Magazine, 42 
 
 G. 
 
 Gainsborough, 71 
 
 Geneva, 30-32 
 
 Genoa, 30 
 
 " German Wit : Heinrich Heine," 
 35 
 
 Germany, Crown Prince and Prin- 
 cess of, 126 
 
 Goschen, Mr., 126 
 
 Granada, 95-96 
 
 Griff House, Nuneaton, 15-21, 24 
 
 Gumey, Mr. E., 125 
 
 H. 
 Hall, Mr. Bullock, 128 
 Harewood Square, 'j'j 
 Harrison, Mr. F., correspondence 
 
 with, 92, 93, 95 
 Heights, The, Witley, 125, 127 
 Helps, Mr. A., 40 
 Hennell, Miss, 24, 38, 69, 70, 81 
 Hennell, Mr. Charles, influence 
 
 of his "Inquiry concerning the 
 
 Origin of Christianity," 22, 25, 
 
 26 
 Homburg, 115 
 
 Houghton, Mrs. (George Eliot's 
 
 sister), 14 
 " How Liza loved the King," 109 
 Hugo, Victor, 129-130 
 Hutton, Mr. R. H., on "Ro- 
 
 mola," 86 
 
 Iliad, The, 100 
 Ilmenau, 40, 97 
 
 I- 
 ' ' Janet's Repentance," written, 
 
 51-52; the originals of its scenes 
 
 and characters, 52-3 
 Jersey, 51 
 Jews, George Eliot and the, 29, 
 
 122-124 
 Jowett, Dr. , 99 
 
 Leader, The, 38, 42 
 
 Leeds, 108 
 
 '' Legend of Jubal," iii 
 
 Leighton, Sir F., illustrates " Ro- 
 mola," 84 
 
 Lewald, Fanny, 40 
 
 Lewes, George Henry, 34, 37-40, 
 41-46, S4-6o, 61-63, 66, 74, 
 76-78, 83, 85, 89, 90, 91, 100, 
 117, 119, 120, 125, 128, 129, 130, 
 131, 161 
 
 Lewes, George Henry, student- 
 ship, 131-132, 13s 
 
 Lewes, Thornton, 109, 110 
 
 Lewis, Miss, 19 
 
 Liebig, 55 
 
 "Lifted Veil, The," 67-68 
 
 Liggins, Mr., claims to be 
 " George Eliot," 53-4 
 
 Liszt, 40 
 
INDEX. 
 
 173 
 
 Littlehampton, 84 
 Lucerne, 70 
 
 Lytton, Sir E., his criticism of 
 " Tiie Mill on tlie Floss," 74 
 
 M. 
 
 Main, Mr. A., 113 
 
 Maitland, Mr. Fuller, 125 
 
 Malvern, 82 
 
 Mazzini, his opinion of " Ro- 
 mola," 86 
 
 "Middlemarch," preparation for, 
 94 ; commenced, no ; its com- 
 position, 111-113 ; publication, 
 113 ; sum received for, it, 114 ; 
 its claim to superiority over the 
 other novels, 142 
 
 Milan, 30 
 
 " Mill on the Floss, The," its com- 
 position,65-66, 68-73; diffidence 
 with regard to its merits, 69, 70, 
 71. 73 i the sum received for it, 
 73 ; early chapters autobio- 
 graphical, 73-74 ; George EUot's 
 reply to Sir E. Lytton's criti- 
 cism, 74 ; its relation to the 
 other novels, 93 
 
 "Miss Brooke," 111-113 
 
 Monteil's "History of France," 
 
 75 
 
 " Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story," sketch 
 of plot and identification of 
 places and characters, 49-50 ; 
 quoted, 51 
 
 Munich, S4-5S 
 
 Munro, Mr., 128, 130 
 
 Myers, Mr. F., 115 
 
 N. 
 "Natural History of German 
 Life," 35, 44 
 
 Newdigate, Mr., 14 
 Newmarket, 128 
 Nice, 30 
 Nuneaton, 17, 18 
 
 O. 
 
 Oxford, 99, 112 
 
 Pall Mall Budget, quoted, 22-24 
 
 Parkes, Mr. Joseph, 25 
 
 Parkinson, Mr. D., his "Scenes 
 from the George EUot Coun- 
 try," 14 ; quoted, 17, 18 
 
 Pigott, Mr. E., 38 
 
 Priory, The, North Bank, Re- 
 gent's Park, 88-90 
 
 R. 
 
 Rauch the sculptor, 40 
 
 Reade, Charles, his opinion of 
 "Adam Bede," 66 
 
 Rehgion, George Eliot and, 19, 
 22, 24, 27, 116, ii8-2o, 151-153 
 
 Richmond, 42 
 
 Rome, 75 
 
 '''Romola," the circumstances in 
 which it was conceived, 75-77, 
 93 ; its inherent defects, 76, 
 142 ; preparations for its pro- 
 duction, 80-83 ; pubhshed in 
 the Cornhill Magazine — the 
 amount received for it, 83-84 ; 
 its composition, 84-85 ; physical 
 strain of writing it, 85 ; its 
 merits and demerits, 85-86, 94 ; 
 George Eliot's own view of it, 
 86-88 ; her likeness to Romola, 
 88 ; its claim to superiority 
 over the other novels, 141 
 
174 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Rossetti, his opinion of " Ro- 
 mola," 86 
 
 S. 
 
 " Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos 
 Barton, The," its composition, 
 45-47 ; identification of scenes 
 and characters, 47-48 ; its merits 
 and faults, 48 
 
 "Scenes of Clerical Life," origin 
 of, 44-46 ; its relation to the 
 other novels, 93. See "Sad 
 Fortunes of Rev. Amos Bar- 
 ton," " Mr. Gilfil'sLove-Stor)-," 
 and "Janet's Repentance " 
 
 Scilly Islands, 50-51 
 
 Shottermill, 114 
 
 Sibree, Miss, 28 
 
 Sidgw ick. Mr. H.. igi; 
 
 'Silas Mamer," its composition, 
 77-78 ; its merits, 79-80, 93 ; 
 its claims to superiority over 
 the other novels, 141 
 
 I Silly Novels by Lady Nove- 
 lists," 35, 44 
 
 •Ispansn tiypsy, i'he," its com- 
 position, 88, 91, 94-96, 97, 98, 
 -1. 99 ; a companion to " Romola," 
 94 ; George EHot's account of 
 its origin and purpose, 100- 
 106 ; its literary worth, 106-108 
 "Sp^cel, Mr.^-Her'bert, ^, (a, ijg 
 Spinoza's "Ethics," George 
 
 Eliot's translation of, 41, 43 
 Stahr, Adolf, 40 
 
 irx 
 
 Story, Mr. W., his opinion of 
 "Romola," 86 
 
 Stowe, Mrs. H. B., 123 
 
 Strauss, 40 ; George Eliot's trans- 
 lation of his "Leben Jesu," 
 25-28 
 
 T. 
 
 Taylor, Mr. Sedley, 128 
 
 " Theophrastus Such, The Im- 
 pressions of," its composition, 
 127 ; publication, 132-133 ; 
 merits, 133 ; quoted, 127 
 
 TroUope, Mr. T. A., author of 
 " History of Florence,'' 80, 91 
 
 Turguenieff, the Russian nove- 
 list, 128-130 
 
 Venice, 75 
 Vienna, in 
 
 V. 
 
 W. 
 
 Wandsworth, 66-70 
 
 Weimar, 40 
 
 Westminster Review^ contribu- 
 tions to, 32, 34-37, 42 ; George 
 Ehot assistant editor of, 33-37 
 
 Weymouth, 71 
 
 Windsor, 43, 97 
 
 " Women in France : Madame de 
 Sabl^," 33 
 
 " Worldliness and Other-worldli- 
 ness : the Poetry of Young," 
 35-44 ; quoted, 151-152 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN P. ANDERSON 
 (British Museum). 
 
 ' I. "Works. 
 n. Miscellaneous. 
 III. Selections. 
 
 IV. Appendix — 
 
 Biography, Criticism, etc. 
 Magazine Articles, etc. 
 
 V. Chronological 
 List of Works. 
 
 I. WORKS. 
 
 The Works of George Eliot. 
 (CabiDet edition.) 20 vols. 
 Edinburgh [printed] and Lon- 
 don, 1878-80, Svo. 
 
 Novels of George Eliot. (Illus- 
 trated edition.) 6 vols. Lon- 
 don, Edinburgh [printed], 1867 
 [-78], Svo. 
 
 Complete Poems of George Eliot. 
 With introductory notice by 
 Matthew Browne. Special 
 limited edition, with illustra- 
 tions. Boston [1889], Svo. 
 
 Scenes of Clerical Life and Silas 
 Marner. Edinburgh [printed] 
 and London, 1863, Svo. 
 
 Adam Bede. 3 vols. Edinburgh, 
 1859, Svo. 
 
 Adam Bede. Seventh edition. 2 
 vole. Edinburgh, 1859, 12mo. 
 
 Tenth edition. Edinburgh 
 
 [printed] and London, 1862, 
 Svo. 
 
 New edition. Edinburgh 
 
 [printed] and London, 1867, 
 Svo. 
 
 New edition. Edinburgh 
 
 [piinted] and London [1873], 
 Svo. 
 
 Agatha. [A poem.] London, 
 1869, Svo. 
 
 Appeared originally in the 
 Atlantic Monthly for August 1869. 
 Eeprinted with the Legend of 
 Jubalt etc., in 1874. 
 
 Armgart (Macmillan's 
 zine, vol. 
 187). 
 
 Reprinted with the Leg&nd of 
 Jubal, etc., in 1874. 
 
 24, 1S71, pp. 161 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Brother Jacob. (Cornhill Maga- 
 zine, vol. X., 1864, pp. 1-32.) 
 
 Beprinted with SiUis Manner and 
 the Idfted Veil in a volume of the 
 "Works," 1878. 
 
 A College Breakfast Party. [Mac- 
 millan's Magazine, vol. 38, 
 1878, pp. 161-179.) 
 
 Included with the Legend of 
 Jubal, etc., in a volume of the 
 " Works," 1879. 
 
 Daniel Deronda. 4 vols. Edin- 
 burgh and London, 1876, 8vo. 
 
 New edition. 4 vols. Edin- 
 burgh [printed] and London, 
 1876, 8vo. 
 
 George Eliot's Life, as related 
 in her letters and journals. 
 Arranged and edited by her 
 husband, J. W. Cross. 3 vols. 
 Edinburgh and London, 1885, 
 8vo. 
 
 ■ Cabinet edition. 3 vols. 
 
 Edinburgh [1886], 8vo. 
 
 Essays and Leaves from a 
 Note-Book. By George Eliot. 
 [Edited by C. L. Lewes.] 
 Edinburgh, 1884, 8vo. 
 
 Felix Holt, the Eadical. 3 vols. 
 Edinburgh [printed], London, 
 1866, 8vo. 
 
 New edition. 2 vols. Edin- 
 burgh [printed], London, 1866, 
 8vo. 
 
 Another edition. 2 vols. 
 
 Leipzig, 1867, 16mo. 
 
 Vols. 897, 898 of the Tauchnitz 
 Collection of British Authors. 
 
 Another edition. Edinburgh, 
 
 1868, 8vo. 
 Cabinet edition. 2 vols. 
 
 Edinburgh, 1878, 8vo. 
 
 How Lisa loved the King. With 
 new illustrations. Philadelphia, 
 1883, 4to. 
 
 Appeared originally in Black- 
 wood's Editiburyh Magazine, or 
 
 May 1869. Reprinted with the 
 Legend of Jubal, etc., in 1874. 
 
 Impressions of Theophrastus Sw)i. 
 Edinburgh and London, 187iJ, 
 8to. 
 
 The Legend of Jnbal, and other 
 
 Poems. Edinburgh, 1874, 8vo. 
 
 " The Legend of Jubal " appeared 
 
 originally in Matanillan's Magazine, 
 
 vol. xxii., 1870. 
 
 "The Lifted Veil." A short 
 story. (BladcwoocH s Edinburgh 
 Magazine, July 1859.) 
 
 Included with Silas Mamer and 
 Brotlier Jacob in a volume of the 
 " Works," 1878. 
 
 Middlemarch, a study of pro- 
 vincial life. 4 vols. Edinburgh, 
 1871-72, 8vo. 
 
 New edition. 4 vols. Edin- 
 burgh [printed], London, 1873, 
 8to. 
 
 New edition. Edinburgh 
 
 [printed], London, 1874, 8vo. 
 
 The Mill on the Floss. 3 vols. 
 Edinburgh and London, 1860, 
 8vo. 
 
 New edition. 2 vols. Edin- 
 burgh [printed] and London, 
 1860, 8vo. 
 
 Fifth edition, Edinburgh, 
 
 1862, 8vo. 
 
 New edition. Edinburgh, 
 
 1867, 8vo. 
 
 New edition. 2 vols. Edin- 
 burgh, 1878, 12mo. 
 
 Bomola. London, 1863, 8vo. 
 
 Appeared originally in the Corn- 
 hill Magazine, from July 1862 to- 
 August 1863. 
 
 Another edition. 2 vols. 
 
 Leipzig, 1863, 16lno. 
 
 Vols. e82, 683 of the Tauchnitz 
 Collection of British Authors. 
 
 Illustrated edition. London, 
 
 1865, 8vo. 
 
 Another edition. With illus- 
 trations by Sir F. Leighton. 
 2 vols. London, 1880, 4to. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Scenes of Clerical Life. 2 vols. 
 Edinburfth, 1858, 8vo. 
 
 Originally published in Blade- 
 tvood'8 Magazine, from Jan. to Nov, 
 1857, the series comprising "The 
 Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos 
 Barton," " Mr. Gilfll's Love Story," 
 and '* Janet's Repentance." 
 
 Second edition. 2 vols. Edin- 
 burgh [printed] and London, 
 1859, Svo. 
 
 Third edition. 2 vols. Edin- 
 burgh, 1860, Svo. 
 
 New edition. Edinburgh, 
 
 1868, Svo. 
 
 Silas Marner : the Weaver of 
 Raveloe. Edinburgh [printed] 
 and London, 1861, Svo. 
 
 Seventh edition. Edinburgh, 
 
 1861, Svo. 
 
 Another edition. Mobile, 
 
 1863, Svo. 
 
 New edition. Edinburgh, 
 
 1868, Svo. 
 
 The Spanish Gypsy, a poem. 
 Edinburgh [printed] and Lon- 
 don, 1868, Svo. 
 
 Second edition. Edinburgh 
 
 [printed] and London, 1868, 
 Svo. 
 
 Third edition. Edinburgh 
 
 [printed], London, 1868, Svo. 
 
 Fifth edition. Edinburgh, 
 
 1875, Svo. 
 
 The Essence of Christianity. By 
 Xi. Feuerbach. Translated from 
 the second German edition by 
 Marian Evans. London, 1854, 
 12mo. 
 
 No. vi. of " Chapman's Quarterly 
 Series." 
 
 Second edition. London, 
 
 1881, Svo. 
 
 Vol. XV. of the "English and 
 Foreign Philosophical Library." 
 
 The Life of Jesus, critically 
 examined by Dr. D. F. Strauss. 
 Translated from the fourth 
 
 German edition [by Marian 
 Evans]. 3 vols. London, 1846, 
 Svo. 
 
 II. MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Westminster Review — 
 Mackay's " Progress of the In- 
 tellect," vol. 54, 1851, pp. 
 
 353-368. 
 Carlyle's "Life of Sterling," 
 
 vol. 1 N.S., 1852, pp. 247- 
 
 25L 
 Woman in France — Madame de 
 
 SabU, vol. 6 N.S., 1854, pp. 
 
 448-473. 
 Prussia and Prussian Policy 
 
 (Stahr), vol. 7 N.S., 1855, 
 
 pp. 53-89. 
 Vehse's "Court of Austria," 
 
 vol. 7 N.S., 1855, pp. 303- 
 
 335. 
 Dryden and his Times, vol. 7 
 
 N.S., 1855, pp. 336-367. 
 Evangelical Teaching — Dr. 
 
 Gumming, vol. 8 N.S., 1855, 
 
 pp. 436-462. 
 German Wit : Heinrich Heine, 
 
 vol. 9 N.S., 1856, pp. 1-33. 
 The Natural Histo(y of German 
 
 Life, vol. 10 N.S., 1856, pp. 
 
 51-79. 
 Silly Novels by Lady Novelists, 
 
 vol. 10 N.S., 1856, pp. 442- 
 
 461. 
 Wordliness and Other- Wordli- 
 
 ness : the poet Young, vol. 
 
 11 N.S., 1857, pp. 1-42. 
 
 The last four, excluding "Silly 
 Novels by Lady Novelists," were 
 collected m a volume of "Essays" 
 published in 1884 hy Charles L. 
 liowes, which also includes "Leaves 
 from a Note-Book," and from 
 
 Three Months in Weimar, vol. 
 51, 1855, pp, 699-706. 
 
 12 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Fortnightly Review — 
 
 The Influence of Rationalism — 
 Lecky'a History, vol. 1, 1865, 
 pp. 43-55. 
 Blackwood's Edinlurgh Magazine — 
 Address to Workini? Men, by 
 Felix Holt, vol. 103, 1868, 
 pp. 1-11. 
 
 III. SELECTIONS. 
 
 Character Readings from " George 
 Eliot." Selected and arranged 
 liy N. Sheppard. New York 
 [1883], 8vo. 
 
 No. 293 of "Harper's Franklin 
 Square Library." 
 
 The George Eliot Birthday Book. 
 [Short extracts from the works 
 of George Eliot; in prose and 
 verse, lor every day in the 
 year.] Edinburgh and London 
 [1878], 8vo. 
 
 Wise, witty, and tender sayings, 
 in prose and verse, selected 
 from the works of George Eliot 
 by A. Main. Edinburgh, 1872, 
 8vo. 
 
 Second edition, with supple- 
 mentary sayings from " Middle- 
 march." Edinburgh, 1873, 8vo. 
 
 Fourth edition, with supple- 
 mentary sayings from " Daniel 
 Derouda " and " Theophrastus 
 Such." Edinburgh and Lon- 
 don, 1880, 8vo. 
 
 IV. APPENDIX. 
 
 Biography, Ceitioism, etc. 
 
 Acton, Lord. —George Eliot. Eine 
 biographische Skizze. tjberset- 
 
 zuug von J. Imelmann. Berlin, 
 1886, 8vo. 
 
 A translation of an article which 
 appeared in the Nineteenth Century, 
 1885. 
 
 Adams, W, H. Davenport. — Cele- 
 brated Englishwomen of the 
 Victorian Era. 2 vols. Lon- 
 don, 1884, Svo. 
 George Eliot, vol. ii., pp. 86-182. 
 
 Ames, Charles Gordon. — George 
 Eliot's two marriages. An 
 essay. Philadelphia, 18S6, Svo. 
 
 Axon, ^W-H-Ham E. A. — Stray 
 Chapters in Literature, Folk-lore, 
 and Archjeology. Manchester, 
 1888, 8vo. 
 
 George Eliot's TTse of Dialect, pp. 
 161-168. 
 
 Barine, ArvWe. — Portraits de 
 Femmes. Madame Carlyle — 
 George Eliot, etc. Paris, 1887, 
 Svo. 
 
 Blind, Mathilde. — George Eliot. 
 London, 1883, Svo. 
 
 Part of the "Eminent Women 
 Series," edited by J. H. Ingram. 
 
 Bolton, Sarah K. — Lives of girls 
 who became famous. New 
 York [1887], Svo. 
 George Eliot, pp. 213-239. 
 
 Bray, Charles. — Phises of opinion 
 and experience during a long 
 life : an autobiography. Lon- 
 don [1884], Svo. 
 Miss M. A. Evans, pp. 72-78. 
 
 Brown, John Crombie. — The '^ 
 Ethics of George Eliot's AVorks, 
 etc. Edinburgh, 1879, Svo. 
 
 Keprlnted ^ Philadelphia In 
 1885, with an Introduction by C. G. 
 Ames, author of " George Eliot's 
 two marriages." 
 
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 A talk with George Eliot, pp. 
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BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Clbveland, Rose Elizabeth. — 
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 Cone, Helen Gray, and Gilder, 
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 Conrad, Hermann. — George Eliot. 
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 Cooke, George Willis. — George 
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 George Bliot, pp. 168-19S. 
 
 Dowden, Edward. — Studies in 
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 GeorRe Eliot, pp. 240-272; "Middle- 
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 — Dronsart, Marie. — Portraits 
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 George Eliot, pp. 213-289. 
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 Eliot, George. — Daniel Deronda. 
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 George Bliot, pp. 361-362. 
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 The Life of George Eliot, pp. 203- 
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 Hazeltine, Mayo W. — Chats about 
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 George Eliot, pp. 1-13. 
 Hey wood, J. C. — How they strike 
 nie, these Authors. Philadel- 
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 An Inp;enious Moralist (George 
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 George Eliot, 8th Deel, pp. 105- 
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 Huuon, Richard Holt. — Essays, 
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 George Eliot, vol. ii., pp. 294-367. 
 
 Essays on , some of the i 
 
 modern guides of English » 
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 London, 1887, Svo. 
 
 George Eliot as Author, pp. 145- 
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 James, Henry. — Partial Portraits. — 
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 The Life of George Eliot, pp. 37- 
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 Jenkin, Fleeming. — Papers liter- 
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 A Fragment on George Eliot, vol. 
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 Kaulmann, Professor David. — 
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 Lancaster, Henry H. — Essays and ■■• 
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 George Eliot's Novels, pp. 351- 
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BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 _ Lonsdale, Margaret. — George 
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 her hooks, and herself. Lon- 
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 McCarthy, Justin. — Modern 
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 George Eliot and George Lewes, 
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 McCrie, George. — The Religion of 
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 Thomas Carlyle, Eohert Brown- 
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 1875, 8vo. _ 
 
 Montfegut, Emile. — Ecrivains 
 Modemes de I'Angleterre. 
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 George Bliot, pp. 3-180. 
 
 Morgan, William. — George Eliot : 
 a paper read before the " Ports- 
 mouth Literary and Scientific 
 Society," March 29th, 1881. 
 London, 1881, Svo. 
 
 Myers, F. W. H. — Essays, 
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 George Eliot, pp. 261-276. 
 
 Parkinson, S. — Scenes from the 
 " George Eliot " Country. 
 With illustrations. Leeds, 
 1888, Svo. 
 
 Parton, James. ~- Some noted 
 Princes, Authors, and States- 
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 A meeting with George Eliot, by 
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 Paul, C. Kegan. — Biographical 
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 George Bliot, pp. 141-170. 
 
 Robertson, Eric S. — English 
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 George Eliot, pp. 327-334. 
 
 Roslyn, Guy, •pseud, [i.e., Joshua 
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 an introduction, by G. Barnett 
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 Russell, George W. E. — George 
 Eliot : her genius and writ- 
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 Scherer, Edmond. — Etudes Criti- 
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 George Eliot (Silas Mamer), torn. 
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 Temps, 
 
 Etudes sur la Litterature 
 
 Contemporaine. Paris, 1878, 
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 Daniel Deronda, par George 
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 Etudes sur la Littfrature 
 
 Contemporaine. Paris, 1885, 
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 George Eliot, torn, vili., pp. 187- 
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 Schmidt, Julian. — BQder aus dem 
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 4 Bde. Leipzig, 1870-75, Svo. 
 George Eliot, Bd. i., pp. 344-409. 
 
 Seguin, L. G. — Scenes and 
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 with introductory essay and 
 descriptive letterpress by L. G. 
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 Shepard, William. — Pen Pictures 
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 York, 18S2, 12mo. 
 George Eliot, pp. 41-67. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Solomon, Henry. — Daniel De- 
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 Stephen, Leslie. — Article Cross, 
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 Taylor, Bayard. — Critical Essays 
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 George Eliot, pp. 339-347. 
 
 Victorian Era. — Queens of Litera- 
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 George Eliot, pp. 186-258. 
 
 Welsh, Alfred H. — Development 
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 George Eliot, vol. ii., pp. 470-487. 
 
 Whipple, Edwin Percy. — Eecollec- 
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 Daniel Deronda, pp. 344-379 ; 
 George Eliot's private life, pp. 380- 
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 Wilkinson, William C. — A Free 
 
 Lance in the Field of Life and 
 
 Letters. New York, 1874, 8vo. 
 
 The Literary and Ethical Quality 
 
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 Wolzogen, Ernst von. — George 
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 Magazine Abtioles, Etc. 
 
 Eliot, George. Littell's Living Age 
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 Eliot, George. 
 
 578. — Contemporary Review, by 
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 403-422 ; same article. Eclectic 
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 562-573, and Littell's Living 
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 St. Paul's Magazine, by Geo. B. 
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 de Prieux, tom. 104, 1876, pp. 
 672-683.— Melbourne Review, 
 by Miss C. H. Spence, April 
 1876, pp. 141-163.— Victoria 
 Magazine, vol. 31, 1878, pp. 56- 
 60. —Nation , by W. C. Brownell, 
 vol. 31, 1880, pp. 456, 457.— 
 Nineteenth Century, by Edith 
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 801 ; same article, Littell's Liv- 
 ing Age, vol. 149, pp. 791-805.— 
 Blackwood's Edinburgh Maga- 
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 268 ; same article, Littell's Liv- 
 ing Age, vol. 148, pp. 664-674, 
 and Eclectic Magazine, vol. 33 
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 pp. 154-176. — Cornhill Maga- 
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 1881, pp. 152-168 ; same article, 
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 pp. 731-742, and Eclectic Maga- 
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 455. — Harper's New Monthly 
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 923 ; reprinted in Biographi- 
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 tury Magazine, by F. W. 
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 25, 26, 40-42, 56-58, 72-74, 89- 
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 152-164, 168-170, 184-186, 200- 
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BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Eliot, George. 
 
 264-266, 2S0, 281, 296-298, 312- 
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 390-392 ; vol. 24, pp. 8-10, 73- 
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 — Andover Eeview, by C. C. 
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 Adam Bede. Edinburgh Re- 
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 Blackwood's Edinburgh Maga- 
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 — Dublin Review, vol. 47, 1859, 
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 Dinah Morris and Mrs. 
 
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 Eliot, George. 
 
 Adam Bede and /'arson 
 
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 Adam Bede's Library. 
 
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 Critic (from the Pall Mall 
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BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Eliot, George. 
 
 Matthew Browne, vol. 2, 1866, 
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 and, Shakespeare. Black- 
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 as a Christian. Contemporary 
 
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 as a Moral Teacher. West- 
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 1882, pp. 65-81. 
 
 as a Novelist. Westminster 
 
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 — — as a Poet. Contemporary Re- 
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 Spectator, April 28, 1883, pp. 
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 Bray on. Spectator, Jan. 10, 
 
 1885 ; same article. Critic (New 
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 Catholic View of. Month, 
 
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 Children in Novels of. Mao- 
 
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 Matheson, vol. 46, 1882, pp. 
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 The Clergy as dravm by. 
 
 Charing Cross, by E. Clarke, 
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 Cooke's lAfe of. Literary 
 
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 1885. 
 
 Cross's Life of. Atlantic 
 
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 article, Littell's Living Age, 
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 — Dial (Chicago), by R. John- 
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 — Edinburgh Review, vol. 161, 
 1885, pp. 514-553.— Fortnightly 
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 vol. 37 N.S., 1885, pp. 309- 
 322 ; reprinted in " The Choice 
 of Books," etc., 1886; same 
 article, Littell's Living Age, 
 vol. 165, pp. 23-31.— Gentle- 
 man's Magazine, by H. R. 
 Fox Bourne, 1885, pp. 257- 
 271. — London Quarterly Ee- 
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 pp. 241-256 ; same article. 
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BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Eliot, George. 
 
 506-520, and Littell's Living 
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 Nation, by A. V. Dicey, vol. 
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 —New Englander, by F. H. 
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 —Time, vol. 12, 1885, pp. 374- 
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 CouTiiy of. Century Maga- 
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 OrUicisms on Contemporaries 
 
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 Daniel Deronda. Edinburgh 
 
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 man's Magazine, by J. Picciotto, 
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 Victoria Magazine, by A. S. 
 
 Eliot, George. 
 
 Richardson, vol. 28, 1876, pp. 
 227-231. — Canadian Monthly, 
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 344; vol. 10, pp. 362-364.— 
 Nation, by A. V. Dicey, vol. 
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 — Saturday Review, vol. 42, 
 
 1876, pp. 356-358. — Deutsche 
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 Deronda's Mother. Tem- 
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 Mordecai : a Protest 
 
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 1877, pp. 101-111 ; same article, 
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 pp. 112-121. 
 
 Early lAfe of. Littell's 
 
 Living Age (from the Pall Mall 
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 Essays. Athenseum, Feb. 
 
 23, 1884, pp. 241-243; same 
 article, Littell's Living Age, 
 vol. 160, pp. 762-766.— Spec- 
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 day Review, March 8, 1884. — 
 Academy, by H. C. Beeching, 
 March 15, 1884. 
 
 Felix Holt. Edinburgh Re- 
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 ' ing Age, vol. 91, pp. 432-439. 
 — Blackwood's Edinburgh Maga- 
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 — Westminster Review, vol. 30 
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 temporary Review, vol. 3, 1866, 
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BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Eliot, George. 
 
 124. — North American Review, 
 by A. G. Sedgwick, vol. 103, 
 1866, pp. 557-563.— Nation, by 
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 — Chambers's Journal, 1866, 
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 First Bomance of. Gentle- 
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 Genius of. Dublin Review, 
 
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 Southern Review, by Mrs. S. B. 
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 Humour of. Spectator, Jan. 
 
 31, 1885, pp. 146, 147 ; same 
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 Ideal Ethics of. Littell's 
 
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 in Derbyshire. London 
 
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 Last Words from. Harper's 
 
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 Later Manner of. Canadian 
 
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 Legend of Jubal. Maemillan's 
 
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 Life and Writings of. Inter- 
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 vol. 10, pp. 447, etc., 497, etc. 
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 Life of, illustrative of the Re- 
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 Literary and Ethical Quality 
 
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 Married People of. Catholic 
 
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 Middlemarch. Quarterly Re- 
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 Quarterly Review, vol. 57, 
 1873, pp. 407-429. — London 
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BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Eliot, George. 
 
 MiddUmarch and Daniel 
 
 Deronda. Contemporary Re- 
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 Moral Influence of. Contem- 
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 • Morality of. Christian World, 
 
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 Novels. Quarterly Review, 
 
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 National Review, vol. 11, 1860, 
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 197-228 ; afterwards reprinted 
 in "Essays and Reviews," 
 1876. — Macmillan's Maga- 
 zine, by John Morley, vol. 14, 
 1866, pp. 272-279 ; same article, 
 Eclectic Magazine, vol. 4 N.S., 
 pp.4 88-495. — Atlantic Monthly, 
 by H. James, jun., vol. 18, 
 1866, pp. 479-492.— Seribner's 
 Monthly, by W. C. Wilkinson, 
 vol. 8. 1874, pp. 685-703. 
 
 Eliot, George. 
 
 On Mental Decay. Know- 
 ledge, by R. A. Proctor, Aug. 
 14, 1885, pp. 127-129. 
 
 On the Gospel. Christian - 
 
 World, Feb. 28, 1884. - 
 
 Opinions about Eeligion. 
 
 Month, vol. 53, 1885, pp. 473- 
 482. 
 
 Poems. North American 
 
 Review, by H. James, jun. , vol. 
 119, 1874, pp. 484-489. 
 
 Polities of. Gentleman's 
 
 Magazine, by F. Dolman, vol. 
 259, 1885, pp. 294-300; same 
 article. Eclectic Magazine, vol. 
 42 N.S., pp. 675-679. 
 
 Portrait of. Century Maga- 
 zine, vol. 23, 1881, pp. 47, 48. 
 
 Private Life of. North 
 
 American Review, by E. P. 
 Whipple, vol. 141, 1885, p. 
 320, etc. ; afterwards reprinted 
 in Becollections of Eminent 
 Men, 1887. 
 
 — •— Religion of. Dublin Review, 
 by William Barry, vol 6, Third 
 Series, 1881, pp. 433-464.— 
 Christian World, January 29, 
 1885. 
 
 Reminiscences of. Graphic, 
 
 Jan. 8, 1881. 
 
 -Bomola. Westminster Re- 
 view, vol. 24 N.S., 1863, pp. 
 344-351. — Blackwood's Edin- 
 burgh Magazine, vol. 116, 1874, 
 pp. 72-91. — Christian Remem- 
 brancer, vol. 52 N.S., 1866, 
 pp. 468-479. — Revue des Deux 
 Mondes, by E. D. Forgues, vol. 
 48, 1863, pp. 939-967. 
 
 In Florence with Eomola. 
 
 Seribner's Magazine (illus- 
 trated), by E. H. and E. W. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 ^ 
 
 Eliot, George. 
 
 Blashfieia, vol. 2, 1887, pp. 
 693-721. 
 
 Muitic of, and Thomas Eardy. 
 
 Merry England, by C. Kegau 
 Paul, vol. 1, 1883, pp. 40-51. 
 
 Scenes of Clerical Life. 
 
 Saturday Review, vol. 5, 1858, 
 jpp. 566, 567. 
 
 Silas Marner. Revue des 
 
 Deux Mondes, by Cucheval- 
 Clarigny, torn. 35, 1861, pp. 
 188-210. 
 
 — Silas Marner and 
 
 Holmes's Elsie Venner. Mac- 
 millan'a Magazine, vol. 4, 1861, 
 pp. 305-309. 
 
 Sonnet on. Temple Bar, vol. 
 
 67, 1883, p. 123, and also in 
 the Eclectic Magazine, vol. 38 
 
 N.S., p. 80. 
 
 Spanish Cfypsy. Edinburgh 
 
 Review, vol. 128, 1868, pp. 
 523-538. — Westminster Review, 
 vol. 34 N.S., 1868, pp. 183-192. 
 — London Quarterly Review, 
 vol. 31, 1868, pp. 160-188.— 
 Blackwood's Edinburgh Mafjat. 
 zine, vol. 103, 1868, pp. 760- 
 771. — British Quarterly Review, 
 vol. 48, 1868, pp. 503-534.— 
 Fraser's Magazine, by J. Skelton, 
 vol. 78, 1868, pp. 468-47fl.— 
 Macmillan's Magazine, by John 
 Morley, vol. 18, 1868, pp. 281- 
 287 ; same article, Eclectic 
 Magazine, vol. 8 N.S., pp. 1276- 
 1282. — St. James's Magazine, 
 vol. 1 N.S., 1868, pp. 478-486. 
 —St. Paul's, vol. 2, 1868, pp. 
 583-592.— North American Re- 
 view, by Henry James, jun., 
 vol. 107, 1868, pp. 620-635.— 
 Nation, vol. 7, 1868, pp. 12-14. 
 — Revue des Deux Mondes, by 
 
 Eliot, George. 
 
 Louis Etienne, torn. 90, 1870, 
 pp. 429-446. 
 
 Surrender of Faith by.— 
 
 British and Foreign Evangeli- 
 cal Review, by W. G. Blackie, 
 vol. 35, 18a6, pp. 38-65. 
 
 — —Theophrastus Such. Edin- 
 burgh Review, vol. 150, 1879, 
 pp. 557-586.— Fortnightly Re- 
 view, by Grant Allen, vol. 26 
 N.S., 1879, pp. 145-149.— 
 Westminster Review, vol. 56 
 N.S., 1879, pp. 185-196.— 
 Fraser's Magazine, vol. 20 
 N.S., 1879, pp. 103-124.— 
 Canadian Monthly, vol. 3, 1879, 
 pp. 333-335.— British Quarterly 
 Review, vol. 70, 1879, pp. 240- 
 242. — North American Review, 
 vol. 129, 1879, pp. 510-513. 
 
 Village Life according to 
 
 Fraser's Magazine, by T. E. 
 Kebhel, vol. 23 N.S., 1881, pp. 
 263-276 ; same article, Littell's 
 Living Age, vol. 148, pp. 608- 
 617. 
 
 A Weeh with. Temple Bar, 
 
 vol. 73, 1885, pp. 226-232; 
 same article, Critic (New York), 
 March 7, 1885, pp. 116,117, and 
 Littell's Living Age, vol. 164, 
 pp. 743-746. 
 
 Work of . Le Correspondant, 
 
 bv Pierre du Quesnoy, torn. 113, 
 1878, pp. 438-470, 660-682, 826- 
 847. 
 
 Works of. British Quarterly 
 
 Review, vol. 45, 1867, pp, 141- 
 178. — Revue des Deux Mondes, 
 by ArvMe Barine, torn. 70, 
 1885, pp. 100-130.— Revue des 
 Deux Mondes, by Emile Monte- 
 gut, torn. 56, 1883, pp. 305-346. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 V. CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF "WORKS. 
 
 Strauss's Life of Jesus 
 
 {Traits.) . . . 1846 
 Feuerbach's Essence of 
 
 Christianity (Trans.') 
 Scenes of Clerical Life 
 
 1854 
 1858 
 
 Adam Bede 
 
 1859 
 
 The Mill on the Floss 
 
 1860 
 
 Silas Marner 
 
 1861 
 
 Romola . 
 
 1863 
 
 Felix Holt 
 
 1866 
 
 The Spanish Gypsy . 
 
 Agatha 
 
 Middlemarch . . ] 
 
 1868 
 
 1869 
 
 871, 72 
 
 Legend of Jubal and other 
 
 poems .... 1874 
 Daniel Deronda . . 1876 
 
 Impressions of Theophrast- 
 us Such .... 1879 
 
 Essays and Leaves from a 
 
 Note-Book . . . 1884 
 
 Life, as related in her letters 
 and journals . . . 1885 
 
 PrinteA by Walter Scott, FeUing, Newcastle-on-Tyne. 
 
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