The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Ethics of George Eliot's Works, by John
Crombie Brown

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Title: The Ethics of George Eliot's Works

Author: John Crombie Brown

Release Date: November 28, 2005 [eBook #17172]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ETHICS OF GEORGE ELIOT'S WORKS***

Transcribed from the 1884 William Blackwood and Sons edition by David
Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

THE ETHICS OF GEORGE ELIOT'S WORKS

BY THE LATE JOHN CROMBIE BROWN

FOURTH EDITION

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCLXXXIV

_All Rights reserved_

PREFACE.

The greater part of the following Essay was written several years ago. It
was too long for any of the periodicals to which the author had been in
the habit of occasionally contributing, and no thought was then
entertained of publishing it in a separate form. One day, however,
during his last illness, the talk happened to turn on George Eliot's
Works, and he mentioned his long-forgotten paper. One of the friends
then present--a competent critic and high literary authority--expressed a
wish to see it, and his opinion was so favourable that its publication
was determined on. The author then proposed to complete his work by
taking up 'Middlemarch' and 'Deronda'; and if any trace of failing vigour
is discernible in these latter pages, the reader will bear in mind that
the greater portion of them was composed when the author was rapidly
sinking under a painful disease, and that the concluding paragraphs were
dictated to his daughter after the power of writing had failed him, only
five days before his death.

PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION.

It is a source of great gratification to the friends of the author that
his little volume has already been so well received that the second
edition has been out of print for some time. In now publishing a third,
they have been influenced by two considerations,--the continued demand
for the book, and the favourable opinion expressed of it by "George
Eliot" herself, which, since her lamented death, delicacy no longer
forbids them to make public.