X.

GEORGE ELIOT (MARY ANNE CROSS).

1819-1880.

Birth at Arbury Farm-Griff House and its surroundings-Brother and sister-Fishing in the canal-At school at Nuneaton and Coventry— Housekeeping-Constant depression-Removes to Foleshill-Intimacy with the Brays-Influence of Miss Hennell-Translates Strauss's Leben Jesus-Death of her father-At Geneva-Rosehill-Work on the Westminster Review-Meets Mr. Lewes-A winter in Germany -Begins The Sad Story of the Rev. Amos Barton-Janet's Repentance -Adam Bede-The Mill on the Floss-Silas Marner-Felix HoltThe Spanish Gypsy-Middlemarch-Daniel Deronda-Death of Mr. Lewes Marriage with Mr. Cross-Death.

I

WELL remember the short December day in the winter of 1880, when the news came that George Eliot was dead. Nothing had been heard of her illness; she passed away so suddenly that her death seemed like a translation. The world felt a great deal poorer without her. It was as though a mighty forest tree had been hewn down, and we could no longer rest under the shadow of its greatness. In spite of the joyous bustle of Christmas, in spite of the merry chime of Christmas bells, a feeling of sadness would break in, as we remembered what a vast, sympathetic nature had faded away into that region far beyond our ken. In her life, as well as in herself, we find many startling contradictions, many unexplained inconsistencies. She was

AS NOVELIST AND POET.

217 at once diffident and ambitious, nervous, easily depressed, and even hysterical, and yet with a keen, clear vigour of intellect more masculine than feminine. With a clinging, lovedemanding nature, she amply abounded in strength for others; plain in features, she exercised a marvellous personal attraction. Naturally of a religious turn of mind, she shook herself free from all creeds, and, intensely pure in thought and feeling, she yet took a step that drew down upon her the condemnation of many, and even now creates a sort of painful surprise. It is well for us that we are not called upon to pass judgment upon her actions, but only to state facts and to draw our own conclusions as to their motives.

Fortunately, about her merits as an author there are not many differences of opinion. "It reminds us of George Eliot," "As good as anything of George Eliot," are hackneyed phrases, which, though they often mean nothing, are supposed to convey the very maximum of praise.

She was one that all, even Saturday Reviewers, delighted to honour. She has even been classed with Shakespeare and Dante. But such comparisons are more likely to confuse than to enlighten our ideas about her as a writer.

Her novels are immeasurably superior to her poems. She has not the true "bird-note." She wrote poetry because she wished to try that form of expression, not because she must. So, though her poetry has many beautiful thoughts and graceful lyrics, though it is always polished and cultured, we miss the fire and inspiration of a born poet. Her greatest power was in her presentment of different varieties of character. She takes us to a country village, or to a small town with its surrounding farmhouses. She brings us from house to house, and we see into the very souls of the various inhabitants-some homely, some aspiring, some humorous, some infinitely sad and pathetic— most of them working out the problems of life under prosaic conditions, and often bruising themselves against the wires of their cage in so doing. We see the faint, ignorant prompt

ings of good in Bob Jakin, and in honest Dolly Winthrop, and then pass on to the soaring aspirations-the passion and the pain that work in the souls of Maggie Tulliver and Dorothea Brooke. Character in her hands was no hard, cast-iron material, but subject to a hundred changes, as shifting and as variable as we find it in real life, where the same man is alternately generous and stingy, wise and foolish, petty and great. To George Eliot the secrets of human nature seemed open. She had a calm mastery over them. Other writers are like knight-errants soiled with dust, stained with blood, and charging blindly and furiously into the very thick of the fray, while she seems to be looking down from some height, able to weigh, to ponder, and to pass judgment on the conflicts that are going on. She takes a place in literature all to herself.

Her Life, told in her letters and journals, and edited by her husband, Mr. Cross, enables us to trace the many phases through which she passed. Mary Anne Evans, was born at Arbury Farm, in Warwickshire, on the 22nd of November, 1819. Her father, Robert Evans, a native of Derbyshire, was a farmer and land agent for the Arbury estate of Mr. Francis Newdigate, and was also employed by Lord Aylesford, Lord Lifford, Mr. Bromley Devonport, and others. Robert Evans is still remembered in the neighbourhood as a worthy, upright man, and suggested more than one character in his daughter's books, especially Caleb Garth in Middlemarch. We may remember that Caleb is described as one of those " rare men who are rigid to themselves and indulgent to others." Robert Evans was a man of great physical strength and determination of character. At Griff, one day, while two of the labourers were waiting for a third to help to move the heavy ladder used for thatching ricks, he braced himself for a great effort and carried the ladder alone from one rick to the other, to the astonishment of his men.

In 1801 Robert Evans married Harriet Poynton, and two