CHAPTEE XII. 



CHARLES DARWIN CONTINUED. 



LITERARY opinions of Mr. Darwin's own may, in further 

 illustration, be referred to here. We are told of the 

 novels, for instance, which are read to him. Novels, 

 lie says (i. 101), "have been for years a wonder- 

 ful relief and pleasure to me, and I often bless all 

 novelists." In proof, he is very simple and honest, when, 

 like all of us at first, High-school boy, or Boarding- 

 school Miss, in regard to novels, he would have a law 

 passed against their ending unhappily. It is in the 

 same spirit he avows, " A novel, according to my taste, 

 does not come into the first class unless it contains some 

 pei-son whom one can thoroughly love, and if a pretty 

 woman all the better " (what would one's wife say) ! " He 

 would on no account know beforehand how a story 

 finished." He " generally kept to the books of the day, 

 il >t;iined from a circulating library." For all that, "Walter 

 Scott and Miss Austen with Mrs. Gaskell were read and 

 re-read till they could be read no more." " He often spoke 

 warmly in praise of Silas Marner ; " but he did not care 

 so much for the Mill on the Floss. Yet, after the scene 

 where Mrs. Poyser puts her landlord to the rout and 

 drives him before her with her knitting-needles, I know 

 of nothing in all George Eliot so good as Mrs. Tulliver's 

 visit, in the Mill on the Floss, to the enemy lawyer with 



