The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-09-03
NEW HAVEN MORNING TUEsDAY

verley" at thirty-four; his earlier works are ballads and metrical romances; and from boyhood, at home and abroad, he was never without his tale of adventure and character, Jane Austen and Maria Edgeworth 'llsped" in novelettes, as Pope said he "lisped in numbers" Though Charlotte Bronte published so little, she wrote stories incessantly from childhood Lytton, Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope, invented tales as part of their daily lives, and from the earliest age, George Eliot was thirty nine when her first tales were pub lished, and she was forty before she was known to the public as novelist at all, And so little was novel-writlng her natural gift, that her most intimate friends never suspected her power, nor did she herself altogether enjoy the eX- ercise of her art. To the last, her peri ods of mental gestation were long, pain ful and unhopeful Parturition was dangerous crisis, and the long-expected infant was reared with misgivings and a superfluity of coddlng. The TO- mances of George Eliot came like some enfant de miracle, born late in the mothers life, at the cost of infinite pain, much anxiety and amid the wondering trepidation of expectant circles of friends.
 It is to me truly melancholy duty to have to admit that so much in the mo- ble conceptions and rich thoughts of George Eliot was not complete sue cess in ultimate eXecution-and that, in great measure, because the conception and aim were so great and the execu- tion so profoundly conscientious. I knew her well; was among those who had the deepest regard for her mental power and her moral insight. I always recognized her as one of the best and most cultured minds of her time. I had great faith in her judgment, and could respect her courage even when I repu- diated her opinions. But never was one of those who exaggerated her gifts as an artist I never could count any thing later than 'Silas Mariner as a complete and unqualified masterpiece. George Eliot was most thoughtful ar | tist, but she was more of a thinker than an artist; she was always more the ar tist when she was least the thinker, and when she conceived work of art in her sublimest aspirations Gas notably in The Spanish Gypsy) she almost makes us doubt if she werS5en artist at all. She was an artist; and the younger generations will make an unpardonable error if they fail to do justice to the permanent survival of her best and ear Hest work. They will also be guilty or unpardonable blindness if they fail to note how completely she stands above all her contemporary rivals in romance, I in thought, in Knowledge, in nobility of aim. She raised the whole art of TO- nance into higher plane of thought,
 of culture, and of philosophic grasp. The art of romance, in the widest and loftiest sense of the term, is even yet in it's infancy. Ancient literature, mediae-
 val literature, knew nothing of it. Nor indeed did modern literature entirely
 conceive it in all it's fulness until the
 days of Le Sage, Richardson, Fielding, z. Goldsmith Nay, we may say that its
 power was not quite revealed before
 Scott, Goethe, Manzoni, Jane Austen,
 Balzac and George Sand. Its subtlety it's ffexibility, it's capacity for analytic
 research, its variety of range and facil-
 ity for reaching all hearts and all minds I-all this is simply incalculable, And
 we may be sure that the star Of TO-
 nance in it's best sense has not yet
 reached it's zenith. It is the art of the
 future-and an art wherein women are
 quite as likely to reign as men. II
 would be treason to art to pretend thai
 George Eliot came near to such perfec-
 tion. But she had certain qualities that
 none of her predecessors had quite pos
 sessed, and she strove for an idea
 which may one day become something
 more than a dream--a dream that as vet eludes and escapes from the mind
 as it struggles to grasp 1t and to fix It
 Frederick Harrison in the Forum.