ollege
Breakfast Party" and "Self and Life," her thoughts take a more truly
philosophic form than in any of her other poems, but the first of these is
the poorest piece of poetic work she gave to the public. Nothing new in the
way of teaching appears in these or her other poems.

George Eliot is the poet of positivism. What is beautiful, touching and
inspiring in that conception of the world she has sung, and in as poetic a
manner as that philosophy is ever likely to inspire. Her poetry is full of
the thoughts and sentiments of the time. It reflects the mood of her
generation. Prof. Sidney Colvin has truly said that "there is nothing in
the literature of the day so rousing--to the mind of the day there is
scarcely anything so rousing in all literature--as her writing is. What she
writes is full of her time. It is full of observation, imagination, pathos,
wit and humor, all of a high class in themselves; but what is more, all
saturated with modern ideas poured into a language of which every word
bites home with peculiar sharpness to the contemporary consciousness." This
is true even more of her poetry than of her prose. That poetry lacks where
the age lacks, in true poetic quality. The ideal, the breath of eternal
spring, is not in it.

XVIII.

LATER ESSAYS.

The later essays of George Eliot have the same characteristics as the
earlier ones, and are mainly of interest because they furnish additional
evidences of her philosophical, ethical and political opinions. While they
indicate the profound thoughtfulness of her mind, her deep concern about
the largest problems of human existence, and her rare ethical tone and
purpose, they add little or nothing to her literary reputation. It is very
plain that while George Eliot was not a poet in the largest, truest sense,
she was still less an essayist in that genial, widely sympathetic sense
which has adorned English literature with so many noble books of comment on
the foibles and the virtues of man. Her manner is heavy, her thoughts
philosophical, her purpose doctrinal: and the result is far from
satisfactory to the lover of fine essay-writing.

She needs the glow of her imagination, the depth of her emotions, to
relieve and lighten the burden of her thoughts. But in her essays she is
less wise, less racy and expressive, than in the didactic passages of her
novels. She could best make her comment on the ways of life while
describing a character or studying an action