who is, perhaps, rather too corpulent, and in other respects is not an Oberlin or a Tillotson, than at the deeds of heroes whom I shall never know except by hearsay, or at the sublimest abstract of all clerical graces that was ever conceived by an able novelist. [Footnote:  Adam Bede, chapter XVII.]

In all her earlier novels George Eliot has shown the artistic possibilities of the humblest lives and situations.  In the most ordinary lives, as in the case of the persons described in Silas Marner, and in the least picturesque incidents of human existence, there is an interest for us which, when properly brought out, will be sure to absorb our attention.  She has abundantly proved that dramatic situations, historic surroundings and heroic attitudes are not necessary for the highest purposes of the novelist.  Hers are heart tragedies and spiritual histories; for life has its tragic, pathetic and humorous elements of the keenest interest under every social condition.  Her realism is relieved, as in actual life, by love, helpfulness and pathos; by deep sorrow, sufferings patiently borne, and tender sympathy for others’ woes.  And if she sometimes sketches with too free a hand the coarse and repulsive features of life, this fault is relieved by her tender sympathy with the sorrows and weaknesses of her characters.  She asks her readers not to grudge Amos Barton his lovely wife, that “large, fair, gentle Madonna,” with an imposing mildness and the unspeakable charm of gentle womanhood.  He was a man of very middling qualities and a quite stupid sort of person, but he loved his wife and made the most he could of such talents as he had.  She pleads in his behalf by saying,—­

I have all my life had a sympathy for mongrel ungainly dogs, who are nobody’s pets; and I would rather surprise one of them by a pat and a pleasant morsel, than meet the condescending advances of the loveliest Skye-terrier who has his cushion by my lady’s chair.

Much the larger number of characters in these novels are of the same unpromising quality.  Most of them are ignorant, uncouth and simple-minded; yet George Eliot gives them a warm place in our hearts, and we rejoice to have known them all.  This ignorant rusticity is discovered to have charms and attractions of its own.  Especially does the reader learn that what is most human and what is most lovely in personal character may be found within these rough exteriors and amid these unpromising circumstances.

Even so fine a character as Adam Bede, one of the best in all her books, was a workman of limited education and little knowledge of the outside world.  The author does “not pretend that his was an ordinary character among workmen.”  Yet such men as he are found among his class, and the noble qualities he possessed are not out of place among workingmen.  Her warm sympathy with this class, the class in which she was born and reared, and her earnest desire to do it justice, is seen in what she says of Adam.