the consequent perception that “it’s an uncommon fine thing, that is, when we can let a man know what you think of him without paying for it."[1] His love of litigation is reconciled with his belief that “the law is meant to take care o’ raskills,” and that “Old Harry made the lawyers” by the principle that the cause which has the “biggest raskill” for attorney has the best chance of success; so that honesty need not despair if it can only secure the professional assistance of accomplished roguery.  And when, notwithstanding this, the law and Mr. Wakem have been too much for him, great skill is shown in the description of poor Tulliver’s latter days; his prostration and partial recovery; the concentration of his feelings on the desire to wipe out the dishonour of insolvency, and to avenge himself on the hostile attorney.  Indeed, we confess that, notwithstanding his somewhat unedifying end, Tulliver is the only person in “The Mill on the Floss” for whom we can bring ourselves to care much.

[1] “The Mill on the Floss,” i. 32.

The reality of which we have been speaking is connected with a peculiar sort of consciousness in the authoress, as if she had actually witnessed all that she describes, and were resolved to describe it without any attempt to refine beyond the naked truth.  Thus, the most serious characters make their most solemn and most pathetic speeches in provincial dialect and ungrammatical constructions, although it must be allowed that the authoress has not ventured so far in this way as to play with the use and abuse of the aspirate.  And her dialect appears to be very carefully studied, although we may doubt whether the Staffordshire provincialisms of “Clerical Life” and “Adam Bede” are sufficiently varied when the scene is shifted in the latest book to the Lincolnshire side of the Humber.  But where a greater variation than that between one midland dialect and another is required, “George Eliot’s” conscientiousness is very curiously shown.  There is in “Mr. Gilfil’s Story” a gardener of the name of Bates, who is described as a Yorkshireman, and in “Adam Bede” there is another gardener, Mr. Craig, whose name would naturally indicate a Scotchman.  Each of these horticulturists is introduced into the dialogue, and of course the reader would expect the one to talk Yorkshire and the other to talk some variety of Scotch.  But the authoress, apparently, did not feel herself mistress of either Scotch or Yorkshire to such a degree as would have warranted her in attempting them, and therefore, before her characters are allowed to open their mouths, she, in each case, is careful to tell us that we must moderate our expectations:  “Mr. Bates’s lips were of a peculiar cut, and I fancy this had something to do with the peculiarity of his dialect, which, as we shall see, was individual rather than provincial."[1]

[1] “Scenes of Clerical Life,” i. 191.

“I think it was Mr. Craig’s pedigree only that had the advantage of being Scotch, and not his ‘bringing up’; for, except that he had a stronger burr in his accent, his speech differed little from that of the Loamshire people around him."[2] In short, except that lucifer matches are twice introduced as familiar things in days when the tinder-box was the only resource in general use for obtaining a light,[3] we have not observed anything in which the authoress could be “caught out.”