Of this ability we have a living example (George Eliot) never hitherto
paralleled among women, and in but few, if any, cases exceeded among
men."
Perhaps the reader who does not know George Eliot would do well to
begin with _The Mill on the Floss_, her finest work, which is full of
humor, lovely pictures of English rural life and an analysis of soul
in Maggie Tolliver that has never been surpassed. Yet the end is cruel
and unnatural, as hard and as unsatisfying as the author's own
religious creed. Next read _Adam Bede_, one of the saddest books in
all literature, with comic relief in Mrs. Poyser, one of the most
humorous characters in English fiction.
George Eliot drew Dinah Morris from her favorite aunt, who was a
Methodist exhorter, and the power and spontaneity of this novel came
from the sharpness and clearness of her early impressions, joined to
her love of living over again her girlhood days, before doubt had
clouded her sky. Also read _Silas Marner_ with its perfect picture of
Raveloe, "an English village where many of the old echoes lingered,
undrowned by new voices." These descriptions are instinct with poetry,
and they affect one like Wordsworth's best poems or like Tennyson's
vignettes of rural life. The pale weaver of Raveloe will always remain
as one of the great characters in English fiction.
Of George Eliot's more elaborate work it is impossible to speak in
entire praise.
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