penalty,—­a life of silent wretchedness and secret sorrow and unavailing regret.  But she is at last fortunately delivered by the accidental death of her detested husband,—­by drowning, of course.  Remorse in seeing her murderous wishes accomplished—­though not by her own hand, but by pursuing fate—­awakens a new life in her soul, and she is redeemed amid the throes of anguish and conscious guilt.

“Theophrastus Such,” the last work of George Eliot, is not a novel, but a series of character sketches, full of unusual bitterness and withering sarcasm.  Thackeray never wrote anything so severe.  It is one of the most cynical books ever written by man or woman.  There is as much difference in tone and spirit between it and “Adam Bede,” as between “Proverbs” and “Ecclesiastes;” as between “Sartor Resartus” and the “Latter-Day Pamphlets.”  And this difference is not more marked than the difference in style and language between this and her earlier novels.  Critics have been unanimous in their admiration of the author’s style in “Silas Marner” and “The Mill on the Floss,”—­so clear, direct, simple, natural; as faultless as Swift, Addison, and Goldsmith, those great masters of English prose, whose fame rests as much on their style as on their thoughts.  In “Theophrastus Such,” on the contrary, as in some parts of “Daniel Deronda,” the sentences are long, involved, and often almost unintelligible.

In presenting the works of George Eliot, I have confined myself to her prose productions, since she is chiefly known by her novels.  But she wrote poetry also, and some critics have seen considerable merit in it.  Yet whatever merit it may have I must pass without notice.  I turn from the criticism of her novels, as they successively appeared, to allude briefly to her closing days.  Her health began to fail when she was writing “Middlemarch,” doubtless from her intense and continual studies, which were a severe strain on her nervous system.  It would seem that she led a secluded life, rarely paying visits, but receiving at her house distinguished literary and scientific men.  She was fond of travelling on the Continent, and of making short visits to the country.  In conversation she is said to have been witty, tolerant, and sympathetic.  Poetry, music, and art absorbed much of her attention.  She read very little contemporaneous fiction, and seldom any criticisms on her own productions.  For an unbeliever in historical Christianity, she had great reverence for all earnest Christian peculiarities, from Roman Catholic asceticism to Methodist fervor.  In her own belief she came nearest to the positivism of Comte, although he was not so great an oracle to her as he was to Mr. Lewes, with whom twenty years were passed by her in congenial studies and labors.  They were generally seen together at the opening night of a new play or the debut of a famous singer or actor, and sometimes, within a limited circle, they attended a social or literary reunion.