64 
PROFESSOR OWEN 
CH. III. 
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, d propos of ‘ Scenes 
from Clerical Life : ’ ‘ The editor’s (Blackwood) 
suspicions had all been directed towards Professor i 
Owen by a similarity of handwriting.’ ' 
There must also have been a certain similarity i 
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 j 
1857.’ From her journal we find that he went j 
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 
