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French epithet scabreux. It would be difficult for what is called realism to go further than in the adoption of a heroine stained with the vice of intemperance. The theme is unpleasant; the author chose it at her peril. It must be added, however, that Janet Dempster has many provocations. Married to a brutal drunkard, she takes refuge in drink against his illusage; and the story deals less with her lapse into disgrace than with her redemption, through the kind offices of the Reverend Edgar Tryan, — by virtue of which, indeed, it takes its place in the clerical series. I cannot help thinking that the stern and tragical character of the subject has been enfeebled by the over-diffuseness of the narrative and the excess of local touches. The abundance of the author's recollections and observations of village life clogs the dramatic movement, over which she has as yet a comparatively slight control. In her subsequent works the stouter fabric of the story is better able to support this heavy drapery of humor and digression.

To a certain extent, I think "Silas Marner" holds a higher place than any of the author's works. It is more nearly a masterpiece; it has more of that simple, rounded, consummate aspect, that absence of loose ends and gaping issues, which marks a classical work. What was attempted in it, indeed, was within more immediate reach than the heart-trials of Adam Bede and Maggie Tulliver. A poor, dull-witted, disappointed Methodist cloth-weaver; a little golden-haired foundling child; a well-meaning, irresolute country squire, and his patient, childless wife ; - these, with a chorus of simple, beer-loving villagers, make up the dramatis persona. More than any of its brother-works, "Silas Marner," I think, leaves upon the mind a deep impression of the grossly material life of agricultural England in the last days of the old régime, - the days of full-orbed Toryism, of Trafalgar and of Waterloo, when the invasive spirit of French domination threw Eng

land back upon a sense of her own insular solidity, and made her for the time doubly, brutally, morbidly English. Perhaps the best pages in the work are the first thirty, telling the story of poor Marner's disappointments in friendship and in love, his unmerited disgrace, and his long, lonely twilight-life at Raveloe, with the sole companionship of his loom, in which his muscles moved "with such even repetition, that their pause seemed almost as much a constraint as the holding of his breath." Here, as in all George Eliot's books, there is a middle life and a low life; and here, as usual, I prefer the low life. In "Silas Marner," in my opinion, she has come nearest the mildly rich tints of brown and gray, the mellow lights and the undreadful corner-shadows of the Dutch masters whom she emulates. One of the chapters contains a scene in a pot-house, which frequent reference has made famous. Never was a group of honest, garrulous village simpletons more kindly and humanely handled. After a long and somewhat chilling silence, amid the pipes and beer, the landlord opens the conversation by saying in a doubtful tone to his cousin the butcher:

"Some folks 'ud say that was a fine beast you druv in yesterday, Bob?'

"The butcher, a jolly, smiling, redhaired man, was not disposed to answer rashly. He gave a few puffs before he spat, and replied, 'And they would n't be fur wrong, John.'

"After this feeble, delusive thaw, silence set in as severely as before.

"Was it a red Durham?' said the farrier, taking up the thread of discourse after the lapse of a few minutes.

"The farrier looked at the landlord, and the landlord looked at the butcher, as the person who must take the responsibility of answering.

"Red it was,' said the butcher, in his good-humored husky treble, — ' and a Durham it was.'

"Then you need n't tell me who you bought it of,' said the farrier, looking round with some triumph; · I know who it is has got the red Durhams o'

this country-side. And she 'd a white star on her brow, I'll bet a penny?' "Well; yes she might,' said the butcher, slowly, considering that he was giving a decided affirmation. 'I don't say contrairy.'

"I knew that very well,' said the farrier, throwing himself back defiantly; 'if I don't know Mr. Lammeter's cows, I should like to know who does, that's all. And as for the cow you bought, bargain or no bargain, I 've been at the drenching of her, dick me who will.'

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"I tell no lies,' said the butcher, with the same mild huskiness as before; and I contradick none, not if a man was to swear himself black; he 's no meat of mine, nor none of my bargains. All I say is, its a lovely carkiss. And what I say I'll stick to; but I'll quarrel wi' no man.'

"No,' said the farrier, with bitter sarcasm, looking at the company generally; and p'rhaps you did n't say the cow was a red Durham; and p'rhaps you didn't say she'd got a star on her brow, stick to that, now you are at it.'"

Matters having come to this point, the landlord interferes ex officio to preserve order. The Lammeter family having come up, he discreetly invites Mr. Macey, the parish clerk and tailor, to favor the company with his recollections on the subject. Mr. Macey, however, "smiled pityingly in answer to the landlord's appeal, and said: 'Ay,

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ay; I know, I know: but I let other folks talk. I've laid by now, and gev up to the young uns. Ask them as have been to school at Tarley: they 've learn't pernouncing; that 's came up since my day.''

Mr. Macey is nevertheless persuaded to dribble out his narrative; proceeding by instalments, and questioned from point to point, in a kind of Socratic manner, by the landlord. He at last arrives at Mr. Lammeter's marriage, and how the clergyman, when he came to put the questions, inadvertently transposed the position of the two essential names, and asked, "Wilt thou have this man to be thy wedded wife?" etc.

"But the partic'larest thing of all,' pursues Mr. Macey, 'is, as nobody took any notice on it but me, and they answered straight off "Yes," like as if it had been me saying "Amen” i' the right place, without listening to what went before.'

"But you knew what was going on well enough, did n't you, Mr. Macey? You were live enough, eh?' said the butcher.

"Yes, bless you!' said Mr. Macey, pausing, and smiling in pity at the impatience of his hearer's imagination, —

why, I was all of a tremble; it was as if I'd been a coat pulled by two tails, like; for I could n't stop the parson, I could n't take upon me to do that; and yet I said to myself, I says, “Suppose they should n't be fast married," 'cause the words are contrairy, and my head went working like a mill, for I was always uncommon for turning things over and seeing all round 'em; and I says to myself, "Is 't the meaning or the words as makes folks fast i' wedlock?" For the parson meant right, and the bride and bridegroom meant right. But then, when I came to think on it, meaning goes but a little way i' most things, for you may mean to stick things together and your glue may be bad, and then where are you?'"

Mr. Macey's doubts, however, are set at rest by the parson after the service, who assures him that what

does the business is neither the meaning nor the words, but the register. Mr. Macey then arrives at the chapter -or rather is gently inducted thereunto by his hearers of the ghosts who frequent certain of the Lammeter stables. But ghosts threatening to prove as pregnant a theme of contention as Durham cows, the landlord again meditates: "There's folks i' my opinion, they can't see ghos'es, not if they stood as plain as a pikestaff before 'em. And there's reason i' that. For there's my wife, now, can't smell, not if she'd the strongest o' cheese under her nose. I never seed a ghost myself, but then I says to myself, "Very like I have n't the smell for 'em." I mean, putting a ghost for a smell or else contrairiways. And so I'm for holding with both sides. . . . For the smell's what I go by.'"

The best drawn of the village worthies in "Silas Marner" are Mr. Macey, of the scene just quoted, and good Dolly Winthrop, Marner's kindly patroness. I have room for only one more specimen of Mr. Macey. He is looking on at a New Year's dance at Squire Case's, beside Ben Winthrop, Dolly's husband.

"The Squire's pretty springy, considering his weight,' said Mr. Macey, and he stamps uncommon well. But Mr. Lammeter beats 'em all for shapes; you see he holds his head like a sodger, and he is n't so cushiony as most o' the oldish gentlefolks, they run fat in gineral; and he 's got a fine leg. The parson's nimble enough, but he has n't got much of a leg: it's a bit too thick downward, and his knees might be a bit nearer without damage; but he might do worse, he might do worse. Though he has n't that grand way o' waving his hand as the Squire has.'

"Talk o' nimbleness, look at Mrs Osgood,' said Ben Winthrop. . . . . 'She's the finest made woman as is, let the next be where she will.'

"I don't heed how the women are made,' said Mr. Macey, with some contempt. 'They wear nayther coat

nor breeches; you can't make much out o' their shapes !'"

Mrs. Winthrop, the wheelwright's wife who, out of the fulness of her charity, comes to comfort Silas in the season of his distress, is in her way one of the most truthfully sketched of the author's figures. "She was in all respects a woman of scrupulous conscience, so eager for duties that life seemed to offer them too scantily unless she rose at half past four, though this threw a scarcity of work over the more advanced hours of the morning, which it was a constant problem for her to remove. . . . . She was a very mild, patient woman, whose nature it was to seek out all the sadder and more serious elements of life and pasture her mind upon them." She stamps I. H. S. on her cakes and loaves without knowing what the letters mean, or indeed without knowing that they are letters, being very much surprised that Marner can "read 'em off," - chiefly because they are on the pulpit cloth at church. She touches upon religious themes in a manner to make the superficial reader apprehend that she cultivates some polytheistic form of faith,- extremes meet. She urges Marner to go to church, and describes the satisfaction which she herself derives from the performance of her religious duties.

"If you 've niver had no church, there's no telling what good it 'll do you. For I feel as set up and comfortable as niver was, when I've been and heard the prayers and the singing to the praise and glory o' God, as Mr. Macey gives out, — and Mr. Crackenthorp saying good words and more partic'lar on Sacramen' day; and if a bit o' trouble comes, I feel as I can put up wi' it, for I've looked for help ' the right quarter, and giv myself up to Them as we must all give ourselves up to at the last: and if we've done our part, it is n't to be believed as Them as are above us 'ud be worse nor we are, and come short o' Theirn."

"The plural pronoun," says the author, "was no heresy of Dolly's, but

only her way of avoiding a presumptuous familiarity." I imagine that there is in no other English novel a figure so simple in its elements as this of Dolly Winthrop, which is so real without being contemptible, and so quaint without being ridiculous.

In all those of our author's books which have borne the name of the hero or heroine, "Adam Bede," "Silas Marner," "Romola," and "Felix Holt," -the person so put forward has really played a subordinate part. The author may have set out with the intention of maintaining him supreme; but her material has become rebellious in her hands, and the technical hero has been

eclipsed by the real one. Tito is the leading figure in "Romola." The story deals predominantly, not with Romola as affected by Tito's faults, but with Tito's faults as affecting first himself, and incidentally his wife. Godfrey Cass, with his lifelong secret, is by right the hero of "Silas Marner." Felix Holt, in the work which bears his name, is little more than an occasional apparition; and indeed the novel has no hero, but only a heroine. The same remark applies to "Adam Bede," as the work stands. The central figure of the book, by virtue of her great misfortune, is Hetty Sorrel. In the presence of that misfortune no one else, assuredly, has a right to claim dramatic pre-eminence. The one person for whom an approach to equality may be claimed is, not Adam Bede, but Arthur Donnithorne. If the story had ended, as I should have infinitely preferred to see it end, with Hetty's execution, or even with her reprieve, and if Adam had been left to his grief, and Dinah Morris to the enjoyment of that distinguished celibacy for which she was so well suited, then I think Adam might have shared the honors of pre-eminence with his hapless sweetheart. But as it is, the continuance of the book in his interest is fatal to him. His sorrow at Hetty's misfortune is not a sufficient sorrow for the situation. That his marriage at some future time was quite possible, and even natural, I readily ad

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mit; but that was matter for a new story. This point illustrates, I think, the great advantage of the much-censured method, introduced by Balzac, of continuing his heroes' adventures from tale to tale. Or, admitting that the author was indisposed to undertake, or even to conceive, in its completeness, a new tale, in which Adam, healed of his wound by time, should address himself to another woman, I yet hold that it would be possible tacitly to foreshadow some such event at the close of the tale which we are supposing to end with Hetty's death, - to make it the logical consequence of Adam's final state of mind. Of course circumstances would have much to do with bringing it to pass, and these circumstances could not be foreshadowed; but apart from the action of circumstances would stand the fact that, to begin with, the event was possible. The assurance of this possibility is what I should have desired the author to place the sympathetic reader at a stand-point to deduce for himself. In every novel the work is divided between the writer and the reader; but the writer makes the reader very much as he makes his characters. When he makes him ill, that is, makes him indifferent, he does no work; the writer does all. When he makes him well, that is, makes him interested, then the reader does quite half the labor. In making such a deduction as I have just indicated, the reader would be doing but his share of the task; the grand point is to get him to make it. I hold that there is a way. It is perhaps a secret; but until it is found out, I think that the art of story-telling cannot be said to have approached perfection.

When you re-read coldly and critically a book which in former years you have read warmly and carelessly, you are surprised to see how it changes its proportions. It falls away in those parts which have been pre-eminent in your memory, and it increases in the small portions. Until I lately read "Adam Bede" for a second time, Mrs. Poyser was in my mind its representative figure; for I remembered a number of her

epigrammatic sallies. But now, after a second reading, Mrs. Poyser is the last figure I think of, and a fresh perusal of her witticisms has considerably diminished their classical flavor. And if I must tell the truth, Adam himself is next to the last, and sweet Dinah Morris third from the last. The person immediately evoked by the title of the work is poor Hetty Sorrel. Mrs. Poyser is too epigrammatic; her wisdom smells of the lamp. I do not mean to say that she is not natural, and that women of her class are not often gifted with her homely fluency, her penetration, and her turn for forcible analogies. But she is too sustained; her morality is too shrill, too much in staccato; she too seldom subsides into the commonplace. Yet it cannot be denied that she puts things very happily. Remonstrating with Di

ness of color; the constant sense, namely, of a superincumbent layer of “gentlefolks," whom she and her companions can never raise their heads unduly without hitting.

My chief complaint with Adam Bede himself is that he is too good. He is meant, I conceive, to be every inch a man; but, to my mind, there are several inches wanting. He lacks spontaneity and sensibility, he is too stiff-backed. He lacks that supreme quality without which a man can never be interesting to men, the capacity to be tempted. His nature is without richness or responsiveness. I doubt not that such men as he exist, especially in the author's thrice-English Loamshire; she has partially described them as a class, with a felicity which carries conviction. She claims for her hero that, although a plain man, he was as little an ordinary man as he was a genius.

Yet

nah Morris on the undue disinterested-
ness of her religious notions, "But for
the matter o' that," she cries, "if every-"He was not an average man.
body was to do like you, the world must
come to a stand-still; for if everybody
tried to do without house and home and
eating and drinking, and was always
talking as we must despise the things
o' the world, as you say, I should like
to know where the pick of the stock,
and the corn, and the best new milk-
cheeses 'ud have to go? Everybody
'ud be wanting to make bread o' tail
ends, and everybody 'ud be running
after everybody else to preach to 'em,
i'stead o' bringing up their families and
laying by against a bad harvest." And
when Hetty comes home late from
the Chase, and alleges in excuse that
the clock at home is so much earlier
than the clock at the great house:
What, you'd be wanting the clock
set by gentlefolks' time, would you?
an' sit up burning candle, and lie a-bed
wi' the sun a-bakin' you, like a cow-
cumber i'the frame?" Mrs. Poyser
has something almost of Yankee shrewd
ness and angularity; but the figure of
a New England rural housewife would
lack a whole range of Mrs. Poyser's
feelings, which, whatever may be its
effect in real life, gives its subject in a
novel at least a very picturesque rich-

such men as he are reared here and
there in every generation of our peas-
ant artisans, with an inheritance of af-
fections nurtured by a simple family
life of common need and common in-
dustry, and an inheritance of faculties
trained in skilful, courageous labor;
they make their way upward, rarely
as geniuses, most commonly as pains-
taking, honest men, with the skill and
conscience to do well the tasks that
lie before them. Their lives have no
discernible echo beyond the neighbor-
hood where they dwelt; but you are
almost sure to find there some good
piece of road, some building, some
application of mineral produce, some
improvement in farming practice, some
reform of parish abuses, with which
their names are associated by one or
two generations after them. Their em-
ployers were the richer for them; the
work of their hands has worn well, and
the work of their brains has guided well
the hands of other men."

One cannot help feeling thankful to the kindly writer who attempts to perpetuate their memories beyond the generations which profit immediately by their toil. If she is not a great dramatist,

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