BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
No. DCCCXXXII. FEBRUARY 1885. VOL. CXXXVII.
THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
George Eliot's Life, as related in her Letters and Journals. Arranged and edited by her husband, J. W. Cross. In 3 vols. William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh and London. 1885.
It is not to be supposed that so remarkable a specimen of the human intellect as George Eliot's should have passed through its early stages without giving signs of what manner of spirit had come among us. While still making an idol of her doll, she was filled with that passion for books which invariably marks the childhood of those endowed with a powerful literary faculty. A child who loves meditation, or the observation of nature, or the practical work of life, better than books, may become a remarkable person, – a philosopher, a discoverer, or an organiser; but the literary genius must in early life be fed upon books, and these not few in number nor peculiar in scope, but embracing a wide range of subjects and of writers. In the young mind so predestined and so nourished, what is poor and bad passes off, what is good is retained; the more various the material, the richer the result – namely, that power of expressing the best ordered thought in the best ordered language which constitutes excellence of style. Whether a really omnivorous young reader, seizing on and assimilating all kinds of lore (and this wide ranging and wide pasturing is very uncommon even among children who are said to be fond of books), will become a fine writer, may be augured with a good deal of certainty by a little observation. If the effect be to puff him up, to cause him to put away childish things, to seek grave converse and the praise of his elders, he will probably develop into one of those fluent phenomenons, oracles of the general herd (always gregarious of opinion), who possess a fatal facility of expatiating in oily sermons, gushing essays, copious journals, trivial histories, or pretentious novels. But if he preserve his
