Dinah; but it is not
possible you should see as I do how her entire individuality differed from
Dinah's. How curious it seems to me that people should think Dinah's
sermon, prayers and speeches were _copied_--when they were written with hot
tears as they surged up in my own mind!

As to my indebtedness to facts of _locale_, and personal history of a small
kind connected with Staffordshire and Derbyshire--you may imagine of what
kind that is when I tell you that I never remained in either of those
counties more than a few days together, and of only two such visits have I
more than a shadowy, interrupted recollection. The details which I knew as
facts and have made use of for my picture were gathered from such imperfect
allusion and narrative as I heard from my father in his occasional talk
about old times.

As to my aunt's children or grandchildren saying, if they _did_ say, that
Dinah is a good portrait of my aunt--that is simply the vague, easily
satisfied notion imperfectly instructed people always have of portraits. It
is not surprising that simple men and women without pretension to
enlightened discrimination should think a generic resemblance constitutes a
portrait, when we see the great public so accustomed to be delighted with
_mis_-representations of life and character, which they accept as
representations, that they are scandalized when art makes a nearer approach
to the truth.

Perhaps I am doing a superfluous thing in writing all this to you, but I am
prompted to do it by the feeling that in future years _Adam Bede_ and all
that concerns it may have become a dim portion of the past, and I may not
be able to recall so much of the truth as I have now told you.

Once more, thanks, dear Sara. Ever your loving

MARIAN.

When, in 1876, a book was published to show the identity of Dinah Morris
and Elizabeth Evans, George Eliot wrote to the author to protest against
such a conclusion. She said to him that the one was not intended to
represent the other, and that any identification of the two would be
protested against as not only false in fact and tending to perpetuate
false notions about art, but also as a gross breach of social decorum. Yet
these declarations concerning Elizabeth Evans have been repeated, and to
them has been added the assertion that she actually copied in _Adam Bede_
the history and sermons of Dinah Morris. [Footnote: "Dinah Morris and
Elizabeth Evans," an article by L. Buckley in The Centur