64 PROFESSOR OWEN ch. in. 



here. He is a deuced clever-looking fellow, with 

 a pair of eyes in his head ! I should not wonder 

 if he is the author of ' Scenes from Clerical Life ' 

 and had come to unbosom himself." 



Mr. Blackwood's conjecture was not a mere 

 surmise founded on Owen's appearance. The 

 idea that he was the author seems to have grown 

 out of a certain similarity which existed between 

 Owen's handwriting and that of George Eliot. In 

 a work by George Willis Cooke called ' A Critical 

 Study of George Eliot,' he says, apropos of * Scenes 

 from Clerical Life : ' ' The editor's (Blackwood) 

 suspicions had all been directed towards Professor 

 Owen by a similarity of handwriting.' 



There must also have been a certain similarity 

 of thought and feeling, for Professor Owen often 

 used to remark that no works of fiction appealed 

 to him like George Eliot's, and that his favourite 

 novel was ' The Mill on the Floss,' of which she 

 sent him a copy soon after its publication. 



Concerning his work this year at the British 

 Museum, there are brief entries in his own diary, 

 to which he has added : ' See Carry's diary for 

 1857.' From her journal we find that he went 

 over to Caen in the middle of June to look at a 

 collection of marine fossils which had been offered 

 for sale to the British Museum, and that, after 

 spending a week there, the purchase of these 

 fossils was concluded. There is also a record of 

 a meeting of the Trustees of the Museum on 



