It may be questioned if the author ever bettered those faithful sketches of old-fashioned life in the Warwickshire of her girlhood, with their genial and lcindly humor warmth of sympathy, power of desciption and moving but unforced pathos. 'Scenes of Clerical Life) could not be called a popular success, but with her next novel 'Adam Bede) (1859) written partly in Eng land, partly at Munich and Dresden, the read ing public was taken by storm, and it has re mained the most popular of George Eliot's works. The genesis of the story came to the author through an aunt, a Methodist preacher, who had occasion to pass a night with a girl condemned for child murder, the aunt and girl respectively becoming the Dinah Morris and Hetty Sorrel of the novel. George Eliot was put to considerable annoyance by the claims made to its authorship, especially by one Lig gins in her native county, and only the inter vention of Blackwood the publisher set the mat ter at rest. It then became known that Marian Evans, the Westminster reviewer, and George Eliot were identical. 'The Mill on the Floss' (1860) is to some extent autobiographical, the charming portraits of Maggie and Tom Tulli ver being drawn from her own and her brother Isaac's childhood. 'Silas Marner,> which many regard as her most perfect story, followed in 1861. In 1860 George Eliot had spent the sum mer in Italy collecting material for her great historical romance, 'Rom°la,) first published serially in Cornhill, for which she received the then unheard-of sum of f7,000, and which ap peared in book form in 1863. In order to write this she went through a course of reading that would have qualified her to write a history. Her husband says that, °it ploughed into her more than any of her works,'" and she herself pys she ((began it a young wornan, and finished it an old woman.'" Although it must be pro nounced a masterpiece, reflecting her powers at their very highest, it cannot be regarded—in spite of the fine character drawing in it, espe cially of Tito Milema and Tessa— as a faith ful and lifelike reproduction of the Florence of the Renaissance. The appearance of 'Felix
Holt the Radical) in 1866 seemed to betoken diminishing powers. She then essayed poetry, 'The Spanish Gypsy) appearing in 1868, and 'Agatha) in 18M; and these revealed that her art did not lie in that direction. The only poem of hers that is certain to live is the noble piece beginning '0 may I join the choir invisible.) 'Middlemarch) (1871-72), a novel which may be regarded as inspired by her life at Coventry, as her early works drew their stimulus from childhood and girlhood, is notable for some fine characterizations of middle and upper class life in an English provincial town, and is replete with pregnant thought. 'The Legend of Jubal and Other Poems) appeared in 1874. 'Daniel Deronda,) her last great work, was published in book form, and in the opinion of at least one noted critic is the best of her novels and marks the culminating point in her career. On 2,8 Nov. 1878, Lewes died. This bereavement was a crushing blow to George Eliot; for weeks she saw no one and wrote no letters; and she busied herself preparing his unpublished work for the press, and founded a scholarship in his memory for scientific investigation. 'Theo phrastus Such,) written sometime earlier, ap peared in 1879. She never really got over the shock of Lewes's death. In the months of sor row and depression following on that event she had been lifted somewhat by the fore thoughtfulness and helpful sympathy of J. W. Cross, an American —'an old friend of her own and of Lewes— to whom she was married on 6 May 1880. But their married life was cut short, for, after contracting a chill at a concert, she died on 22 December of the same year. The first collected edition of her novels ap peared 18713-80, and a 25-volume edition was issued at Boston in 1908. See ADAM BEDE ;