A FRAGMENT ON GEORGE ELIOT. 1 



IT is difficult to lay down the ' Life ' of George Eliot without 

 making some effort to record the impression produced upon the 

 mind. 



In one respect the book attains its object. No candid man 

 or woman can lay it down without thinking, i This was a good 

 woman a woman with warm feelings and strong just thoughts.' 

 Unfortunately the book is in the truest sense uninteresting. 

 George Eliot in her everyday correspondence shows hardly a trace 

 of the great creator who gave us Adam Bede, Dinah, Romola and 

 Dorothea. 



There are wise and good sayings to be found here and there 

 at long intervals, but these are not of such merit as to add 

 materially to the fame of the writer. Of mere gossiping interest 

 there is probably enough to carry many readers of the present 

 day from the first page to the last, but this interest depends 

 almost wholly on the great personality of the writer, not on the 

 intrinsic merit of her doings or sayings. The position of the 

 Queen gives an exceptional interest to the record of her likes or 

 dislikes, and to all honest statement of what she does or thinks ; 

 and so the great position of George Eliot gives her a like claim to 

 the attention of us all : but intrinsically the merit of the great 

 writer's autobiography is hardly greater than that of ' Leaves 

 from our Highland Journal,' to which George Eliot's journals have 

 a strange resemblance. 



Well, it may be said, the ' Life ' seems to have given this 

 outsider a fairly clear conception of a person whom he admires 

 and respects the more for what he reads there, and what more 

 can a ' Life ' do ? A biography may reveal to us a friend or at least 

 a companion someone whom we know as we know Dorothea 



1 MS. The beginning of a review which was never completed of the Life 

 of George Eliot. 



