A History of English Literature

Maggie in 'The Mill on the Floss.' Endowed with one of the strongest minds
that any woman has ever possessed, from her very infancy she studied and
read widely. Her nature, however, was not one-sided; all her life she was
passionately fond of music; and from the death of her mother in her
eighteenth year she demonstrated her practical capacity in the management
of her father's household. Circumstances. combined with her unusual ability
to make her entire life one of too high pressure, and her first struggle
was religious. She was brought up a Methodist, and during her girlhood was
fervently evangelical, in the manner of Dinah Morris in 'Adam Bede'; but
moving to Coventry she fell under the influence of some rationalistic
acquaintances who led her to adopt the scientific Positivism of the French
philosopher Comte. Her first literary work, growing out of the same
interest, was the formidable one of translating the 'Life of Jesus' of the
German professor Strauss. Some years of conscientious nursing of her
father, terminated by his death, were followed by one in Geneva, nominally
a year of vacation, but she spent it largely in the study of experimental
physics. On her return to England she became a contributor and soon
assistant editor of the liberal periodical 'The Westminster Review.' This
connection was most important in its personal results; it brought her into
contact with a versatile man of letters, George Henry Lewes, [Footnote:
Pronounced in two syllables.] and in 1854 they were united as man and wife.
Mr. Lewes had been unhappily married years before to a woman who was still
alive, and English law did not permit the divorce which he would have
secured in America. Consequently the new union was not a legal marriage,
and English public opinion was severe in its condemnation. In the actual
result the sympathetic companionship of Mr. Lewes was of the greatest value
to George Eliot and brought her much happiness; yet she evidently felt
keenly the equivocal social position, and it was probably in large part the
cause of the increasing sadness of her later years.
She was already thirty-six when in 1856 she entered on creative authorship
with the three 'Scenes from Clerical Life.' The pseudonym which she adopted
for these and her later stories originated in no more substantial reason
than her fondness for 'Eliot' and the fact that Mr. Lewes' first name was
'George.' 'Adam Bede' in 1859 completely established her reputation, and
her six or seven other books followed as rapidly as increasingly laborious
workmanship permitted. 'Romola.' [Footnote: Accented on the first
syllable.] in 1863, a powerful but perhaps over-substantial historical
novel, was the outcome partly of residence in Florence. Not content with
prose, she attempted poetry also, but she altogether lacked the poet's
delicacy of both imagination and expression. The death of Mr. Lewes in 1878
was a severe blow to her, since she was always greatly dependent on
personal sympathy; and after a year and a half, to the surprise of every
one, she married Mr. John W. Cross, a banker much younger than herself. But
her own death followed within a few months in 1880.
George Eliot's literary work combines in an interesting way the same
distinct and even strangely contrasting elements as her life, and in her
writings their relative proportions alter rather markedly during the course
of her career. One of the most attractive qualities, especially in her
earlier books, is her warm and unaffected human sympathy, which is
temperamental, but greatly enlarged by her own early experience. The
aspiration, pathos and tragedy of life, especially among the lower and
middle classes in the country and the small towns, can scarcely be
interpreted with more feeling, tenderness, or power than in her pages. But
her sympathy does not blind her to the world of comedy; figures like Mrs.
Poyser in 'Adam Bede' are delightful. Even from the beginning, however, the
really controlling forces in George Eliot's work were intellectual and
moral. She started out with the determination to render the facts of life