her warmest
admirers would wish unwritten; but although severe criticism may detect
the weak places, the severest criticism must conclude with the
admission of her standing among the highest minds of literature. In the
matter of eloquence, she surpasses everything France has yet produced.
There has been no style at once so large, so harmonious, so expressive,
and so unaffected: like a light shining through an alabaster vase, the
ideas shine through her diction; while as regards rhythmic melody of
phrase, it is a style such as Beethoven might have written had he
uttered in words the melodious passion that was in him. But deeper than
all eloquence, grander than all grandeur of phrase, is that forlorn
splendor of a life of passionate experience painted in her works. There
is no man so wise but he may learn from them, for they are the
utterances of a soul in pain, a soul that has been tried. No man could
have written her books, for no man could have had her experience, even
with a genius equal to her own. The philosopher may smile sometimes at
her philosophy, for _that_ is only the reflex of some man whose ideas
she has adopted; the critic may smile sometimes--at her failure in
delineating men; but both philosopher and critic must perceive that
those writings of hers are _original_ and genuine, are transcripts of
experience, and as such fulfil the primary condition of all literature.

This clear, intellectual apprehension of what woman can effect in
literature, had much to do with George Eliot's own success. Yet it is
doubtful if she was so true, in some directions, to the instincts of her
sex as was George Sand, Mrs. Browning or Charlotte Bronte. Hers was in
large measure an intellect without sex; and though she was a woman in all
the instincts of her heart, yet intellectually she occupied the human
rather than the woman's point of view. With a marvellous insight into the
heart of woman, and great skill in portraying womanly natures, she had a
man's way, the logical and impersonal manner, of viewing, the greater
problems of human existence. Charlotte Bronte more truly represents the
woman's way of viewing life; the trustful way of one educated in the
conventional views of religion. She has given a corrector interpretation of
the meaning of love to woman than George Eliot has been able to present,
and simply because she thought and lived more near