Page:Literary studies by Joseph Jacobs.djvu/78

The novel method of extracts arranged in order of time tells the tale spontaneously, and George Eliot the woman stands forth revealed to the world in all the strength and refinement of her intellect, in all the clinging trustfulness of her moral and emotional nature. And as regards George Eliot the writer we learn as much as it is needful to know about the motives and processes of her art and the outward circumstances of her activity as author. The interest of the work naturally divides into the personal and the artistic sides of her life. By a kind of coincidence these are chiefly represented in the first and third volumes respectively, while the intermediate one is a sort of glorified Baedeker, giving George Eliot's impressions of her foreign travels between I860 and 1870. The modern interest in development causes us in the first instance to concentrate our attention on the first volume, dealing with the life up to the production of the first book, Scenes of Clerical Life, including the difficult problem of her relations with George Henry Lewes. We see there a drama of religious development which is peculiarly significant, a display of intellectual precocity and progress, and, above all, a peculiarly sensitive affectionateness, which rules throughout the life and forms its most distinctive as well as most novel feature.