Page:Literary studies by Joseph Jacobs.djvu/89

 intellect and the emotions necessary to the artistic impulse. Everything seems to show that George Eliot's memories of her home life would have slumbered for ever but for this moral crisis in her own life, which stirred her to the depths of her being and withdrew her from the conventions of society. There is not the slightest indication throughout the biography, except the chance shot of Mrs. Bray mentioned above, which could lead her friends to imagine any other future for George Eliot than one similar to that of her friend Miss Sara Hennell. Her attitude of moral defiance to the world threw her back on the resources of her own life and gave birth to the peculiarities of her art. What those peculiarities are, and the light thrown upon them by the book before us, must now demand our attention.

The problem of George Eliot's life is to explain how a mind of so eminently a speculative turn should have shown the artistic impulse for creation so late in life and should have succeeded so eminently. The characteristics of her art show us the reverse of this difficulty. We have to reconcile her distinct power of realising her characters with her equally marked capacity for what we may term moralising them. A well-known example will illustrate the union, in this case