Nelson Evening Mail. FRIDAY FEBRUARY 20, 1920. GEORGE ELIOT

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LIV, Issue LIV, 20 February 1920, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail. FRIDAY FEBRUARY 20, 1920. GEORGE ELIOT

THAT the reputation of George Eliot will surely but slowly revive from the depreciation into which younger generations, a new atmosphere, and a more hustling life has east it down of late is the opinion of Frederic Harrison, D.C.L., in a note in the Fortnightly, on the estimates of For work' (allied out by her centenary. As do Milton and Wordsworth, she will, he says. retain her own body of readers, more select than numerous. And this will be n permanent light : n English literature. George Eliot (says a writer in

The Times) is no mono masculine than George, Sand. Her greatest characters, such as Janet, Dinah, Maggie, Dorothea, .’Romola, and even Rosamond — they arc all woman, because they are all herself. Her best men, Adam and Caleb, are her father; and her second best women, Mrs ilaekit, Mrs Poyser, Mrs Tulliver. Mrs Viney—one is not sure about Mrs Pullet and Mrs Gleg—are mother or aunts. IT ad Sir Walter Scott and Jane Austen been united they might have produced a greater than George Eliot, bid it needed a Caleb Garth, and a .Mrs Poyser to produce the great delineator we have. She. has a supreme genius for youthful. and adolescent reminiscence. The homeland of this genius is restricted; if h> more narrowly local to Mercia,than Mr Hardy ’s is to Wessex. George Eliot lias little historic instinct. She is not safe Avhen she strays from the Midlands and abandons the

! period between "Waterloo and the Crimean Wat. As this is the range tof the three "Clerical Tales’’ so called, "Adam Bede,” "The Mill on the Floss,’’ and " Ariddlemareb,” it eerjtainly does not fall short of the Ascertain magnitude’’ proper to .the higher imaginative work. It is surely a magnificent canvas. And the characters on i( are worthy subjects of the author’s powers of divination. It is marvellous that one plain woman, who seemed in private life to enjoy such stodgy society, find to use such very long words, and In talk in terms of the most, recent scientific reviews, should have found it .possible to invest her leading (diameters, and so many of fliein—for in the two great books of! Tier t>rime there are hardly any failures at all—with sne.li infallible vitality. Take the little Poyscrs. or Hetty, or Old IMr Poyscr —si beautiful silhouette; they are all absolutely alive, distinct and amazing in their versirailib, hide. It is the same with labourers at tho harvest homo or the convivial customers at the Rainbow of Raveloe. These worthies were observed within a very few miles of Griff House, and they are the most memorable. figures in "Silas Marner.” a pastoral dream, or idyll, of (•; ins i< I era bln bean ty, (-onjpa ra b1 e perhaps to "La Mare an Diable’* but not quite the real thing. Tito and Savonarola are two great creations of George Eliot’s Protestant conscience; she wanders about and Ims some wonderful adventures with them in the guise of Romola, but she was incapable of creating an atmosphere in which they could possibly have breathed.* Similarly with Felix Holt, Hester, and their environment; they seem to have every advantage ■except that of animation.* How different it is with the. main characters in "Middlemareh!" The unhappy novelist, struggles and toils with episodes and un-der-plots sullieieut to cpicncb the spirit of the greatest epic poet that ever lived. But she emerges in the end having projected a series of portrait characters as immortal as some of ihe unfading creations of Fielding. Sterne. Scott. Dickens and Thackeray. Some of George F! lot’s outlying work Is almost

incredibly bad. Tier chroniclers, too. havo done little to recommend her life, conversation, and letters to an all-enrious but callous public. The outward part of her existence is not prepossessing. She herself has admitted Tier readers into the inner shrine of her memories. These are eommem.ora.ted for all time in the sacred books that deal with the ordeals of Janet and Dorothea, the harsh visiting of pretty Hetty, the snowwhite sonl of Dinah, the r>assiornate affection of Sister Maggie.