GEORGE ELIOT.

(1819-1880.)

GEORGE ELIOT has been dead a little more than twenty years, and as yet no woman has arisen to contest her right as the foremost woman novelist in English literature. "Silas Marner" and "Adam Bede," "The Mill on the Floss" and "Felix Holt," "Romola " and " Middlemarch," have as yet no rivals from the pen of any woman, and it may be said with equal truth from the pen of any man, since she passed away. She remains indisputably the first. Her novels are perhaps not read as generally as they were twenty-five years ago, for novel readers are always seeking out some new thing and running after strange fancies; but the place of George Eliot in English literature is as assured as that of any other writer of the Victorian period, and her novels will long remain as pictures of the time in which she lived.

George Eliot has sometimes been called the English counterpart of George Sand; but save in

the respect that both assumed masculine pseudonyms, and both were novel writers, not much of a parallel can be instituted between them. Both formed an irregular marriage relation, to be sure, but in the case of the Englishwoman it was single and permanent, while the brilliant Frenchwoman picked and chose as her fancy led. She never had to be forgiven; but it was only the commanding genius of George Eliot that at last compelled the austere Britons to forgive the fault of Marian Evans. In the last ten or twelve years of her association with Mr. Lewes she was accepted in high social and literary circles as his wife, which she never was.

In literary productiveness as well as in vivacity of temperament George Sand far surpassed George Eliot. Two hundred volumes of fiction stand to the credit of the Frenchwoman, while in twenty years George Eliot wrote but eight novels. But then the eight are literature and the two hundred are not, though perhaps several of them stand a chance for the twentieth century. George Sand computed that by her novels she had earned a million francs, or two hundred thousand dollars. For "Daniel Deronda" alone George Eliot received forty thousand pounds, or two hundred thousand dollars, while she was

paid almost as much for "Middlemarch," and already had received a very comfortable fortune for her other novels. Neither Scott nor Dickens, by far the best paid of our novelists, was better paid than she, considering the years of labor and amount of production.

George Sand matured early, George Eliot matured late. She was thirty-seven when she commenced novel writing, the "Scenes From Clerical Life" being her first. These stories were sent to Blackwood and appeared in 1856, and her great career began. From an obscure sub-editor of an unpopular review she rapidly rose to be the most distinguished woman in English letters. "Silas Marner" ushered in her fame. The story of her first successes is told in the recent biography of John Blackwood. The secret of her sex was kept from him and from the world for several years, and Dickens was probably the first to guess it. Certain passages in "Scenes From Clerical Life," he declared, could only have been written by a woman.

Among the novels " Middlemarch" stands foremost for literary power, and completeness. As a picture of certain aspects of English life and manners it stands second to the "Newcomes. " It is a prose epic and portrays characters that live.

Dorothea, Mr. Casaubon, Mr. Brooke, Lydgate, Caleb Garth, Will Ladislau and Rosamond Vincy are living, moving human beings. It is called a study of provincial life, and no one can read it without being fully acquainted with that life. Around Dorothea and Casaubon we see country society-the gentry, the clergy, the doctors, the bankers, the shopkeepers, the surveyor and farm manager, the horse dealer and all the various persons that go to the making of such a community. And they are drawn with a power and a distinctness almost Shakespearian. The novel is one of the masterpieces of our time.

"Adam Bede," published in 1859, was the most popular novel of the day and perhaps is still the most popular of these novels, though "The Mill on the Floss" almost rivals it. Mrs. Poyser remains unequaled in character drawing.

As a story with a plot "Silas Marner" is the best of all, for it contains the fewest faults and blemishes in construction, while the old weaver of Raveloe remains in the memory forever.

"Daniel Deronda," though containing many striking features, has been placed somewhat below the other novels. It is a religious story without a religion and there are few readers who do not think it disappointing.

George Eliot possessed a lofty character and was actuated by noble purposes. In learning she was one of the most accomplished of women. Her books show how extensive her reading was. She knew and could read and converse in French, German, Italian and Spanish. Greek and Latin she read with ease as well as pleasure, and Hebrew was a favorite study. There was hardly any kind of learning of which she did not possess some knowledge, and what she did not immediately know she knew where to find. She had great capacity for continuous thought and sustained labor. She was not greatly in love with life and was naturally pessimistic. She accepted the philosophy of Comte.

She once wrote: "The highest calling and election is to do without opium and live through all our pain with conscious, clear-eyed endurance. Life, though a good to men on the whole, is a doubtful good to many, and to some not a good at all. To my thought it is a source of constant mental distraction to make the denial of this a part of religion-to go on pretending things are better than they are."

While she lived she did her best to expose and shatter the shams of life. That her works will long remain a power in the world cannot be denied.