Page:Literary studies by Joseph Jacobs.djvu/22

 halo and attraction of the unknown about what may still come from him: this fades away with his death. Then again his friends have no longer the same motives for keeping his reputation at the highest pitch. Friends, too, die away. London again is the fount of literary reputation, and Londoners, like all inhabitants of great cities, are always eager for some new thing. Old writers compete with the new ones, it is true, but the competition of the novelty is still more efficacious.

All these causes have co-operated to lessen George Eliot's influence and reputation. But there are other more special causes that have tended in the same direction. Mr. Cross's Life was a disappointment: his extreme reticence about personal details and careful excision of all humanising touches made the book dull, and the total impression of George Eliot's personality unattractive. Her last books, Daniel Deronda, Theophrastus Such, and the collected Essays, were a progressive series of anti-climaxes, and it is the latest works that give the final impression in more senses than one. Their didactic tone was too obvious, and the British public resents nothing more than being preached at too obviously.

But above and beyond all these reasons there has been a subtle and gradual change in the public mind which has told against George Eliot's work in two directions. There is a fashion in the art of