rge Eliot came like some _enfant de
miracle_, born late in the mother's life, at the cost of infinite pain,
much anxiety, and amidst the wondering trepidation of expectant circles
of friends.

Even in her best books we never quite get over the sense of almost
painful elaboration, of a powerful mind having rich gifts striving to
produce some rare music with an unfamiliar and uncongenial instrument.
It reminds us of Beethoven evolving his majestic sonatas on an untuned
and dilapidated old piano, the defects of which he could not himself
hear. The conventional critic in _The Vicar of Wakefield_ is told to
say that "the picture would have been better if the artist had taken
more pains." With George Eliot too often we are made to feel that the
picture would have been, at any rate, more enjoyable if the artist had
taken less pains. To study her more ambitious tales is like an attempt
to master some new system of psychology. The metaphysical power, the
originality of conception, the long brooding over anomalies and
objections--these are all there: but the rapid improvisation and easy
invention are not there. Such qualities would indeed be wholly out of
place in philosophy, but they are the essence of romance. In romance
we want to feel that the piece is only brought to an end by time and
our human powers of listening; that there is "plenty more where these
come from"; that the story-teller enjoys telling stories for their own
sake, and would go on with the tales, though the audience were reduced
to a child, an idiot, and a deaf man.

This explains the paradox that the most popular, and most certainly the
most praised of George Eliot's works, are the simpler and the shorter.
Every one enjoys the _Scenes of Clerical Life_, short stories of a
hundred pages each, with simple plots and a few characters in everyday
life. I have no doubt myself that _Silas Marner_ comes nearer to being
a great success than any of the more elaborate books. Yet _Silas
Marner_ is about one-fifth part of the length of _Middlemarch_; and its
plot, _mise-en-scene_, and incidents are simplicity itself. There is
no science, no book-learning, and but few ethical problems in it from
beginning to end; and it all goes in one small volume, for the tale
concerns but the neighbours of one quiet village. Yet the quaint and
idyllic charm of the piece, the perfection of tone and keeping, the
harmony of the landscape, the pure, deep humanity of it, all make