ctically broken all
connection with Christianity. She accepted their opinions with the
curious docility and reflexiveness which, strong as was her mind in a
way, always distinguished her; and as a sign of profession she undertook
the translation of Strauss' _Leben Jesu_. In 1849 she went abroad, and
stayed for some time at Geneva, studying hard, and not returning to
England till next year. Then establishing herself in London, she began
to write for the _Westminster Review_, which she helped to edit, and
translated Feuerbach's _Wesen des Christenthums_. It is highly probable
that she would never have been known except as an essayist and
translator, if she had not formed an irregular union with George Henry
Lewes, a very clever and versatile journalist, who was almost a
philosopher, almost a man of science, and perhaps quite a man of letters
of the less creative kind. Under his influence (he had been a novelist
himself, though an unsuccessful one, and was an excellent critic) the
docility above remarked on turned itself into the channel of
novel-writing, with immediate and amazing success.

Some good judges have thought that Miss Evans never exceeded, in her own
special way, the _Scenes of Clerical Life_. But it was far exceeded in
popularity by _Adam Bede_, which, oddly enough, was claimed by or at
least for an impostor after its triumphant appearance in 1858. The
position of the author may be said to have been finally established by
_The Mill on the Floss_ (1860), though the opening part of _Silas
Marner_ (1861) is at least equal if not superior to anything she ever
did. Her later works were _Romola_, a story of the Italian Renaissance
(1863); _Felix Holt, the Radical_ (1866); some poems (the _Spanish
Gypsy_, _Jubal_, etc., 1868-74); _Middlemarch_ (1871); and _Daniel
Deronda_ (1876). This last was followed by a volume of essays entitled
the _Impressions of Theophrastus Such_. Mr. Lewes having died in 1878,
Miss Evans, in May 1880, married Mr. John Cross, and died herself in
December of the same year. Her _Life and Letters_ were subsequently
published by her husband, but the letters proved extremely disappointing
to her admirers, and the life was not very illuminative, except as to
that docility and capacity for taking colour and pressure from
surroundings which have been noticed above.

As a poet George Eliot has been noticed elsewhere. She merely put some
of the thoughtful commonplaces of her time and school into wood