otations from, her contributions to
periodical literature, and a leading newspaper gives expression to a
general wish when it says that "this series of striking essays ought to
be collected and reprinted, both because of substantive worth and because
of the light they throw on the author's literary canons and
predilections." In fact, the articles which were published anonymously
in _The Westminster Review_ have been so pointedly designated by the
editor, and the biographical sketch in the "Famous Women" series is so
emphatic in its praise of them, and so copious in its extracts from one
and the least important one of them, that the publication of all the
Review and magazine articles of the renowned novelist, without abridgment
or alteration, would seem but an act of fair play to her fame, while at
the same time a compliance with a reasonable public demand.

Nor are these first steps in her wonderful intellectual progress any the
less, but are all the more noteworthy, for being first steps. "To ignore
this stage," says the author of the valuable little volume to which we
have just referred--"to ignore this stage in George Eliot's mental
development would be to lose one of the connecting links in her history."
Furthermore, "nothing in her fictions excels the style of these papers."
Here is all her "epigrammatic felicity," and an irony not surpassed by
Heine himself, while her paper on the poet Young is one of her wittiest
bits of critical analysis.

Her translation of Status's "Life of Jesus" was published in 1840, and
her translation of Feuerbach's "Essence of Christianity" in 1854. Her
translation of Spinoza's "Ethics" was finished the same year, but remains
unpublished. She was associate editor of _The Westminster Review_ from
1851 to 1853. She was about twenty-seven years of age when her first
translation appeared, thirty-three when the first of these magazine
articles appeared, thirty-eight at the publication of her first story,
and fifty-nine when she finished "Theophrastus Such." Two years after
she died, at the age of sixty-one. So that George Eliot's literary life
covered a period of about thirty-two years.

The introductory chapter on her "Analysis of Motives" first appeared as a
magazine article, and appears here at the request of the publishers,
after having been carefully revised, indeed almost entirely rewritten by
its author.

"GEORGE ELIOT'S" ANALYSIS OF MOTIVES.

George Eliot is the gr