It does not occur to them that her method has virtues which lack to theirs.
They may give us a little laboured masterpiece of art in which the vital principle is wanting.

George Eliot was great because she gave us passages from life as it was lived in her day which will be vital so long as they are sympathetically read.
George Eliot can be simple enough when she goes straight forward with her narrative, as, for instance, in the scene of Milly Barton's death; then her English is clear and sweet for she writes from the heart.

But take the opening chapter of the same story, and then you find her philosophical Latinity in full swing: the curious and interesting thing being that this otherwise ponderous work, which is quite of a sort to alarm a Frenchman, is entirely suffused by humour, and enshrines moreover the most charming character studies.
These lively and acute portraits drawn from English country life give its abiding value to George Eliot's work.

Take the character of Mr.Pilgrim the doctor who 'is never so comfortable as when relaxing his professional legs in one of those excellent farmhouses where the mice are sleek and the mistress sickly;' or of Mrs.Hackit, 'a thin woman with a chronic liver complaint which would have secured her Mr.Pilgrim's entire regard and unreserved good word, even if he had not been in awe of her tongue.' Or take Mrs.Patten, 'a pretty little old woman of eighty, with a close cap and tiny flat white curls round her face,' whose function is 'quiescence in an easy-chair under the sense of compound interest gradually accumulating,' and who 'does her malevolence gently;' or Mr.
Hackit, a shrewd, substantial man, 'who was fond of soothing the acerbities of the feminine mind by a jocose compliment.' Where but in George Eliot would you get a tea-party described with such charming acceptance of whim?
George Eliot wrote poems at various times which showed she never could have won fame as a poet; but there are moments of her prose that prove she shared at times the poet's vision.

Such a moment is that when the half broken-hearted little Catarina looks out on a windy night landscape lit by moonlight: 'The trees are harassed by that tossing motion when they would like to be at rest; the shivering grass makes her quake with sympathetic cold; the willows by the pool, _bent low and white under that invisible harshness_, seem agitated and helpless like herself.' The italicised sentence represents the high-water mark of George Eliot's prose; that passage alone should vindicate her imaginative power.
G.R.
CONTENTS The Sad Fortunes of the Rev.Amos Barton Mr.Gilfil's Love Story Janet's Repentance SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE THE SAD FORTUNES OF THE REV.