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1846, was considered scholarly, but it met, in the nature and although the author received much encouragement of things, with no popular success. On the death of Mr from private sources, the few real critics were mostly nonEvans in 1849, she went abroad for some time, and we committal, and it was not until the publication of Adam hear of no more literary ventures till 1851, when she Bede in 1859 that enthusiasm was attracted to the quality accepted the assistant-editorship of the Westminster Review. of the earlier production. Adam Bede, in many judgFor a while she had lodgings at the offices of that publica- ments George Eliot’s masterpiece, met with a success (to tion in the Strand, London. She wrote several notable use her own words) “ triumphantly beyond anything she papers, and became acquainted with many distinguished had dreamed of.” In 1860 appeared The Mill on the authors of that period—among them Herbert Spencer, Floss. After the sensational good fortune of Adam Bede, Carlyle, Harriet Martineau, Francis Newman, and George the criticism applied to the new novel seems to have been Henry Lewes. Her friendship with the last named led to disappointing. We find Miss Evans telling her publisher a closer relationship, which she regarded as a marriage. that “she does not wish to see any newspaper articles.” Among the many criticisms passed upon this step (in view But the book made its way, and prepared an ever-growing of the fact, among other considerations, that Lewes had a armyof readers for Silas Marner (1861), Aomo/a (1862-63), wife living at the time), no one has denied her courage in and Felix Holt (1866). The Spanish Gypsy (1868), a defying the law, or questioned the quality of her tact in a drama in blank verse, received more public response than singularly false position. That she felt the deepest affection most compositions of the kind executed by those connected with the drama or with poetry for Mr Lewes is evident; that only; and she published in we owe the development of 1874 another volume of verses, her genius to his influence The Legend of Julal and other and constant sympathy is all Roems. but certain. Yet it is also sure Any depression which the that what she gained from his author may have felt with intimate companionship was regard to the faults found with heavily paid for in the unsome of the last named books ceasing consciousness that was completely cured by the most people thought her praise bestowed on Middleguilty of a grave mistake, and march (1873). This profound found her written words, with study of certain types of their endorsement of tradiEnglish character was supreme tional morality, wholly at at the time of its writing, and variance with the circumit remains supreme, of its stances of her private life. school, in European literature. Doubts of her suffering in this Thackeray is brilliant; Tolstoi respect will be at once disis vivid to a point where life, missed after a study of her not art, seems the question at journal and letters. Stilted issue; Balzac created a whole and unnatural as these are to world; George Eliot did not a tragic degree, one can read create, but her exposition of the well enough between the lines, upper and middle class minds and also in the elaborate of her day is a masterpiece of dedication of each manuscript scientific psychology. Daniel to “my husband” (in terms Deronda (1876), a production of the strongest love), that on the same lines, wras less self - represssion, coupled with satisfactory. It exhibited the audacity, does not make for same human insight, the paspeace. Her sensitiveness to sionate earnestness, the insinucriticism was extreme: a ated special pleading for hard flippant paragraph or an ilGEORGE ELIOT. cases, the same intellectual literate review with regard to (From a Photo by the London Stereoscopic Co.) strength, but the subject was her work actually affected her for days. The whole history of her union with Lewes is a unwieldy, almost forbidding, and, as a result, the novel, in complete illustration of the force of sheer will—in that spite of its distinction, has never been thoroughly liked. The case partly her own and not inconsiderably his—over a death of Mr Lewes in 1878 was also the deathblow to her nature essentially unfitted for a bold stand against attacks. artistic vitality. She corrected the proofs of Theophrastus At first she and the man wThom she had described “ as a Such (a collection of essays), but she wrote no more. About sort of miniature Mirabeau in appearance,” went abroad, but two years later, however, she married Mr J. W. Cross, a they returned to England the same year and settled, after gentleman whose friendship was especially congenial to a temperament so abnormally dependent on affectionate several moves, in lodgings at East Sheen. In 1854 she published The Essence of Christianity, a understanding as George Eliot’s. But she never really retranslation from Feuerbach, a philosopher to whom she had covered from her shock at the loss of George Lewes, and died been introduced by Mr Bray. During 1855 she trans- at 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, on the 22nd of December 1880. No right estimate of her, whether as a woman, an artist, lated Spinoza’s Ethics, wrote articles for the Leader, the Westminster Review, and the Saturday Review—then a or a philosopher, can be formed without a steady recollecnew thing. It was not until the following year that she tion of her infinite capacity for mental suffering, and her attempted the writing of fiction, and produced The Sad need of human support. The statement that there is no Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton—the first of the sex in genius is, on the face of it, absurd. George Sand, Scenes of Clerical Life. These, published in Blackwood's certainly the most independent and dazzling of all women Magazine, were issued in two volumes in 1858. The authors, neither felt, nor wrote, nor thought as a man. Press in general extended a languid welcome to this work, Saint Teresa, another great writer on a totally different