Archiv der Kategorie: Eliot, George

ELIOT, GEORGE, the pen-name of the famous English writer, née Mary Ann (or Marian) Evans (1819-1880), afterwards Mrs J. W. Cross, born at Arbury Farm, in Warwickshire, on the 22nd of November 1819. Her father, Robert Evans, was the agent of Mr Francis Newdigate, and the first twenty-one years of the great novelist’s life were spent on the Arbury estate. She received an ordinary education at respectable schools till the age of seventeen, when her mother’s death, and the marriage of her elder sister, called her home in the character of housekeeper. This, though it must have sharpened her sense, already too acute, of responsibility, was an immense advantage to her mind, and, later, to her career, for, delivered from the tiresome routine of lessons and class-work, she was able to work without pedantic interruptions at German, Italian and music, and to follow her unusually good taste in reading. The life, inasmuch as she was a girl still in her teens, was no doubt monotonous, even unhappy. Just as Cardinal Newman felt, with such different results, the sadness and chain of evangelical influences from his boyhood till the end of his days, so Marian Evans was subdued all through her youth by a severe religious training which, while it pinched her mind and crushed her spirit, attracted her idealism by the very hardness of its perfect counsels. It is not surprising to find, therefore, that when Mr Evans moved to Coventry in 1841, and so enlarged the circle of their acquaintance, she became much interested in some new friends, Mr and Mrs Charles Bray and Mr Charles Hennell. Mr Bray had literary taste and wrote works on the Education of the Feelings, the Philosophy of Necessity, and the like. Mr Hennell had published in 1838 An Enquiry concerning the Origin of Christianity. Miss Evans, then twenty-two, absorbed immediately these unexpected, and, at that time, daring habits of thought. So compelling was the atmosphere that it led to a complete change in her opinions. Kind in her affection, she was relentless in argument. She refused to go to church (for some time, at least), wrote painful letters to a former governess — the pious Miss Lewis — and barely avoided an irremediable quarrel with her father, a churchman of the old school. Here was rebellion indeed. But rebels come, for the most part, from the provinces where petty tyranny, exercised by small souls, show the scheme of the universe on the meanest possible scale. George Eliot was never orthodox again; she abandoned, with fierce determination, every creed, and although she passed, later, through various phases, she remained incessantly a rationalist in matters of faith and in all other matters. It is nevertheless true that she wrote admirably about religion and religious persons. She had learnt the evangelical point of view; she knew — none better — the strength of religious motives; vulgar doubts of this fact were as distasteful to her as they were to another eminent writer, to whom she refers in one of her letters (dated 1853) as “a Mr Huxley, who was the centre of interest” at some “agreeable evening.” Her books abound in tributes to Christian virtue, and one of her own favourite characters was Dinah Morris in Adam Bede.

She undertook, about the beginning of 1844, the translation of Strauss’s Leben Jesu. This work, published in 1846, was considered scholarly, but it met, in the nature of things, with no popular success. On the death of Mr Evans in 1849, she went abroad for some time, and we hear of no more literary ventures till 1851, when she accepted the assistant-editorship of the Westminster Review. For a while she had lodgings at the offices of that publication in the Strand, London. She wrote several notable papers, and became acquainted with many distinguished authors of that period — among them Herbert Spencer, Carlyle, Harriet Martineau, Francis Newman and George Henry Lewes. Her friendship with the last-named led to a closer relationship which she regarded as a marriage. Among the many criticisms passed upon this step (in view of the fact, among other considerations, that Lewes had a wife living at the time), no one has denied her courage in defying the law, or questioned the quality of her tact in a singularly false position. That she felt the deepest affection for Lewes is evident; that we owe the development of her genius to his influence and constant sympathy is all but certain. Yet it is also sure that what she gained from his intimate companionship was heavily paid for in the unceasing consciousness that most people thought her guilty of a grave mistake, and found her written words, with their endorsement of traditional morality, wholly at variance with the circumstances of her private life. Doubts of her suffering in this respect will be at once dismissed after a study of her journal and letters. Stilted and unnatural as these are to a tragic degree, one can read well enough between the lines, and also in the elaborate dedication of each manuscript to “my husband” (in terms of the strongest love), that self-repression, coupled with audacity, does not make for peace. Her sensitiveness to criticism was extreme; a flippant paragraph or an illiterate review with regard to her work actually affected her for days. The whole history of her union with Lewes is a complete illustration of the force of sheer will — in that case partly her own and not inconsiderably his — over a nature essentially unfitted for a bold stand against attacks. At first she and the man whom she had described “as a sort of miniature Mirabeau in appearance,” went abroad to Weimar and Berlin, but they returned to England the same year and settled, after several moves, in lodgings at East Sheen.

In 1854 she published The Essence of Christianity, a translation from Feuerbach, a philosopher to whom she had been introduced by Charles Bray. During 1855 she translated Spinoza’s Ethics, wrote articles for the Leader, the Westminster Review, and the Saturday Review — then a new thing. It was not until the following year that she attempted the writing of fiction, and produced The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton the first of the Scenes of Clerical Life. These, published in Blackwood’s Magazine, were issued in two volumes in 1858. The press in general extended a languid welcome to this work, and although the author received much encouragement from private sources, notably from Charles Dickens, the critics were mostly non-committal, and it was not until the publication of Adam Bede in 1859 that enthusiasm was attracted to the quality of the earlier production. Adam Bede, in the judgment of many George Eliot’s masterpiece, met with a success (in her own words) “triumphantly beyond anything she had dreamed of.” In 1860 appeared The Mill on the Floss. After the sensational good fortune of Adam Bede, the criticism applied to the new novel seems to have been disappointing. We find Miss Evans telling her publisher that “she does not wish to see any newspaper articles.” But the book made its way, and prepared an ever-growing army of readers for Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1862-1863), and Felix Holt (1866).

Silas Marner shows a reversion to her early manner — the manner of Scenes of Clerical Life. Romola, which is what is called an historical novel, owes it vitality not to the portraits of Savonarola or of the heroine, or to its vigorous pictures of Florentine life in the 15th century, but to its superb presentment of the treacherous, handsome Tito Melema, who belongs not to any one period but to every generation. Felix Holt, a novel dealing with political questions, is strained by a painfulness too severe for any reader’s pleasure. Where other eminent authors have produced mechanical books, or books which were mere repetitions of their most popular effort, she erred only on the side of the ponderous and the distressing. Felix Holt is both, and it is the only one of her novels which lacks an unforgettable human note. The Spanish Gypsy (1868), a drama in blank verse, received more public response than most compositions of the kind executed by those connected with the drama or with poetry only; and she published in 1874 another volume of verses, The Legend of Jubal and other Poems.

Any depression which the author may have felt with regard to the faults found with some of the last-named books was completely cured by the praise bestowed on Middlemarch (1872). This profound study of certain types of English character was supreme at the time of its writing, and it remains supreme, of its school, in European literature. Thackeray is brilliant; Tolstoi is vivid to a point where life-likeness overwhelms any consideration of art; Balzac created a whole world; George Eliot did not create, but her exposition of the upper and middle class minds of her day is a masterpiece of scientific psychology. Daniel Deronda (1876), a production on the same lines, was less satisfactory. It exhibited the same human insight, the passionate earnestness, the insinuated special pleading for hard cases, the same intellectual strength, but the subject was unwieldy, almost forbidding, and, as a result, the novel, in spite of its distinction, has never been thoroughly liked. The death of Mr Lewes in 1878 was also the death-blow to her artistic vitality. She corrected the proofs of Theophrastus Such (a collection of essays) , but she wrote no more. About two years later, however, she married Mr J. W. Cross, a gentleman whose friendship was especially congenial to a temperament so abnormally dependent on affectionate understanding as George Eliot’s. But she never really recovered from her shock at the loss of George Lewes, and died at 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, on the 22nd of December 1880.

No right estimate of her, whether as a woman, an artist or a philosopher, can be formed without a steady recollection of her infinite capacity for mental suffering, and her need of human support. The statement that there is no sex in genius, is on the face of it, absurd. George Sand, certainly the most independent and dazzling of all women authors, neither felt, nor wrote, nor thought as a man. Saint Teresa, another great writer on a totally different plane, was pre-eminently feminine in every word and idea. George Eliot, less reckless, less romantic than the Frenchwoman, less spiritual than the Spanish saint, was more masculine in style than either; but her outlook was not, for a moment, the man’s outlook; her sincerity, with its odd reserves, was not quite the same as a man’s sincerity, nor was her humour that genial, broad, unequivocal humour which is peculiarly virile. Hers approximated, curiously enough, to the satire of Jane Austen, both for its irony and its application to little everyday affairs. Men’s humour, in its classic manifestations, is on the heroic rather than on the average scale: it is for the uncommon situations, not for the daily tea-table.

Her method of attacking a subject shows the influence of Jane Austen, especially in parts of Middlemarch; one can detect also the stronger influence of Mrs Gaskell, of Charlotte Brontë, and of Miss Edgeworth. It was, however, but an influence, and no more than a man writer, anxious to acquire a knowledge of the feminine point of view, might have absorbed from a study of these women novelists. One often hears that she is not artistic; that her characterization is less distinct than Jane Austen’s; that she tells more than should be known of her heroes and heroines. But it should be remembered that Jane Austen dealt with familiar domestic types, whereas George Eliot excelled in the presentation of extraordinary souls. One woman drew members of polite society with correct notions, while the other woman depicted social rebels with ideas and ideals. In every one of George Eliot’s books, the protagonists, tortured by dreams of perfection, are in revolt against the prudent compromises of the worldly. All through her stories, one hears the clash of “the heroic for earth too high,” and the desperate philosophy, disguised it is true, of Omar Khayyam. In her day, Epicureanism had not reached the life of the people, nor passed into the education of the mob. Few dared to confess that the pursuit of pleasure, whether real or imagined, was the aim of mankind. The charm of Jane Austen is the charm of the untroubled and well-to-do materialist, who sees in a rich marriage, a comfortable house, carriages and an assured income the best to strive for; and in a fickle lover of either sex or the loss of money the severest calamities which can befall the human spirit. Jane Austen despised the greater number of her characters: George Eliot suffered with each of hers. Here, perhaps, we find the reason why she is accused of being inartistic. She could not be impersonal.

Again, George Eliot was a little scornful to those of both sexes who had neither special missions nor the consciousness of this deprivation. Men are seldom in favour of missions in any field. She demanded, too strenuously from the very beginning, an aim, more or less altruistic, from every individual; and as she advanced in life this claim became the more imperative, till at last it overpowered her art, and transformed a great delineator of humanity into an eloquent observer with far too many personal prejudices. But she was altogether free from cynicism, bitterness, or the least tendency to pride of intellect. She suffered from bodily weakness the greater part of her life, and, but for an extraordinary mental health — inherited from the fine yeoman stock from which she sprang — it is impossible that she could have retained, at all times, so sane a view of human conduct, or been the least sentimental among women writers of the first rank — the one wholly without morbidity in any disguise. The accumulation of mere book knowledge, as opposed to the friction of a life spent among all sorts and conditions of men, drove George Eliot at last to write as a specialist for specialists: joy was lost in the consuming desire for strict accuracy: her genius became more and more speculative, less and less emotional. The highly trained brain suppressed the impulsive heart, — the heart described with such candour and pathos as Maggie Tulliver’s in The Mill on the Floss. For this reason — chiefly because philosophy is popularly associated with inactive depression, whereas human nature is held to be eternally exhilarating — her later works have not received so much praise as her earlier productions. But one has only to compare Romola or Daniel Deronda with the compositions of any author except herself to realize the greatness of her designs, and the astonishing gifts brought to their final accomplishment.

George Eliot’s Life (All three volumes)

Publiziert am 21. Januar 2018 von Jazzybee

George Eliot’s Life (All three volumes) – George Eliot

As if a strong, delightful water that we knew only as a river appeared in the character of a fountain; as if one whom we had wondered at as a good walker or inexhaustible pedestrian, began to dance; as if Mr. Bright, in the middle of a public meeting, were to oblige the company with a song, — no, no, not like that exactly, but like something quite new, — is the appearance of George Eliot in the character of a poet. ” The Spanish Gypsy,” a poem in five books, originally written, as a prefatory note informs us, in the winter of 1864-65, and, after a visit to Spain in 1867, rewritten and amplified, dominates this book. This great poems alone spans across three hundred and fifty octavo pages. But there are many more works included, only to mention “Armgart”, “How Lisa Loved The King”, “Stradivarius” and many more.

George Eliot's Life (All three volumes)

George Eliot’s Life (All three volumes)

George Eliot’s Life (All three volumes).

ISBN: 9783849673925.

Available at amazon.com and other venues. Read more/Mehr lesen...

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Poems

Publiziert am 21. Januar 2018 von Jazzybee

Poems – George Eliot

As if a strong, delightful water that we knew only as a river appeared in the character of a fountain; as if one whom we had wondered at as a good walker or inexhaustible pedestrian, began to dance; as if Mr. Bright, in the middle of a public meeting, were to oblige the company with a song, — no, no, not like that exactly, but like something quite new, — is the appearance of George Eliot in the character of a poet. ” The Spanish Gypsy,” a poem in five books, originally written, as a prefatory note informs us, in the winter of 1864-65, and, after a visit to Spain in 1867, rewritten and amplified, dominates this book. This great poems alone spans across three hundred and fifty octavo pages. But there are many more works included, only to mention “Armgart”, “How Lisa Loved The King”, “Stradivarius” and many more.

Poems

Poems

Poems.

ISBN: 9783849673918.

Available at amazon.com and other venues.

A short biography of George Eliot (from Wikipedia):

Mary Anne Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She is the author of seven novels, including Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Middlemarch (1871–72), and Daniel Deronda (1876), most of which are set in provincial England and known for their realism and psychological insight. Read more/Mehr lesen...

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Theophrastus Such

Publiziert am 21. Januar 2018 von Jazzybee

Theophrastus Such – George Eliot

Wherever Mrs. Eliot places her touch, she leaves the impression of the profound insight, the serene wisdom, the fine observation, and the subtle humor which so graciously signalize her nature. The short essays in this book are stamped with all of the writer’s peculiarities of thought and style, and are witty, suggestive, and delightful. The book is studded with fine thoughts and fine expressions. It is the peculiar characteristic of George Eliot’s observations—and one exemplified in this her last work perhaps more than in any previous one—that she always puts in the best language thoughts which appear to have been in the reader’s mind often before. In these pages they are crystallized.

Theophrastus Such

Theophrastus Such

Theophrastus Such.

ISBN: 9783849673901.

Available at amazon.com and other venues.

A short biography of George Eliot (from Wikipedia):

Mary Anne Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She is the author of seven novels, including Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Middlemarch (1871–72), and Daniel Deronda (1876), most of which are set in provincial England and known for their realism and psychological insight. Read more/Mehr lesen...

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Felix Holt

Publiziert am 21. Januar 2018 von Jazzybee

Felix Holt – George Eliot

‘ Felix Holt, the Radical,’ appeared in 1866. The title, and what by courtesy could be regarded as the main plot, have reference to politics, but most of the incidents and illustrations of character relate to religious and social peculiarities rather than to the party feelings of Tories, Whigs or dicals. Though inferior in sustained interest to the other English tales of the author, ‘Felix Holt’ has passages of great vigour, and some exquisitely drawn characters—we may instance that of Rufus Lyon, a Dissenting minister—and also some fine, pure and natural description. This is the brightest, the least penetrated with inner melancholy, of all George Eliot’s stories.

Felix Holt

Felix Holt

Felix Holt.

ISBN: 9783849673895.

Available at amazon.com and other venues.

Plot summary of Felix Holt (from Wikipedia):

As the story starts, the reader is introduced to the fictitious community of Treby in the English Midlands in 1832, around the time of the First Reform Act. Harold Transome, a local landowner, has returned home after a fifteen-year trading career in the Far East. Wealthy from trade, he stands for election to Parliament from the county seat of North Loamshire. But contrary to his family’s Tory traditions, he intends to stand as a Radical. This alienates him from his traditional allies and causes despair for his mother, Mrs. Transome. Harold Transome gains the support of his Tory uncle, the Rector of Little Treby, and enlists the help of his family lawyer, Matthew Jermyn, as an electioneering agent. Read more/Mehr lesen...

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Daniel Deronda

Publiziert am 18. Januar 2018 von Jazzybee

Daniel Deronda – George Eliot

We recognize George Eliot’s distinctive excellences all through: we never detect a flat or trivial mood of mind: if anything, the style is more weighty and piquant than ever, we may even say loaded with thought. Nobody can resort to the time-honourcd criticism that the work would have been better fur more pains, for labour and care are conspicuous throughout, and labour and care which always produce suitable fruit. But the fact is that the reader uever—or so rarelv as not to affect his general posture of mind—feels at home. The author is ever driving at something foreign to his habits of thought. The leading persons—those with whom her sympathies lie—are guided by Interests and motives with which he has never come in contact, and seem to his perception to belong to the stage once tersely described as peopled by such characters as were never seen, conversing in a language which was never heard, upon topics which will never arise in the commerce of mankind.’ . . . ‘Daniel Deronda’ may be defined as a religious novel without a religion. Read more/Mehr lesen...

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Silas Marner

Publiziert am 18. Januar 2018 von Jazzybee

Silas Marner – George Eliot

‘Silas Marner’ is definitely one of the authoress’s most beautiful stories, the most poetical of them all—the tale of Silas Marner, who deems himself deserted and rejected utterly of God and man and to whom, in his deepest misery, in place of lost gold, a little foundling girl is sent. This tale is the most hopeful of all her books. The contemplation of the renewal of enterprise and energy, which comes with little children, and of the promise with which each new generation gilds the crown of honour for its sires, is pleasant and grateful to her

Silas Marner

Silas Marner

Silas Marner.

ISBN: 9783849673871.

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Plot summary of Silas Marner (from Wikipedia):

The novel is set in the early years of the 19th century. Silas Marner, a weaver, is a member of a small Calvinist congregation in Lantern Yard, a slum street in Northern England. He is falsely accused of stealing the congregation’s funds while watching over the very ill deacon. Two clues are given against Silas: a pocket knife, and the discovery in his own house of the bag formerly containing the money. There is the strong suggestion that Silas’ best friend, William Dane, has framed him, since Silas had lent his pocket knife to William shortly before the crime was committed. Silas is proclaimed guilty, however, after a drawing of lots. The woman Silas was to marry breaks their engagement and instead marries William. With his life shattered and his heart broken, Silas leaves Lantern Yard and the city for a rural area where he is unknown. Read more/Mehr lesen...

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Middlemarch

Publiziert am 18. Januar 2018 von Jazzybee

Middlemarch – George Eliot

To many critics Middlemarch is the greatest novel George Eliot ever wrote. Its scope, its variety, its maturity and insight, are indubitable. Yet to others it lacks something of the charm and spontaneity of the author’s earlier works, and its very inclusiveness and scope lead to a certain confusion of plan- and blurring of outline that mark it as artistically imperfect. Whichever view is correct, the novel is admittedly great. Written late in George Eliot’s career, it is at once weighty with her considered evaluation of the essential factors in life and rich in her observation and experience of human nature. The plot is the most involved of any that the author has presented, and the characters are numerous even for a Victorian “three-decker.” In general there are two main groups of characters, not, it must be confessed, as closely inter-related as artistically they should be. Dorothea Brooke may be regarded as the centre of one group, and Dr. Lydgate of the other. Both represent the tragedy of high aims that fail to take fully into account the actualities of life. Dorothea sentimentally pines to be the helpmate of a genius; but as the wife of the Rev. Edward Casaubon, who is writing a ‘Key to All Mythologies,’ she is disillusioned, and her misery is ended only by the death of her husband. Dr. Lydgate comes to Middlemarch with excellent training, determined to push forward in biological research. However, he marries the attractive but unpractical Rosamond Vincy, is overwhelmed in debts and his possible career fades into nothingness. But George Eliot’s view of life is not distortedly pessimistic. Over against the sombre recognition of the inadequacies and weaknesses of humanity must be placed her portrayal of the fine and strong elements. Dorothea herself is genuine and charming fundamentally; the Garths are sterling, and full of vitality. For all its wavering and crowded plot, ‘Middlemarch’ is permanently valuable because it represents a realism that endeavors to reflect in just proportions the good and bad in life; a realism, moreover, that does not content itself merely with presenting life, but shrinks not from the task of interpretation and evaluation. Read more/Mehr lesen...

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Romola

Publiziert am 17. Januar 2018 von Jazzybee

Romola – George Eliot

Romola, one of the best-known novels by George Eliot (C. P. P.), was originally published in 1863. The scene is in Florence, Italy, at the end of the fifteenth century. Roinola, the heroine, a daughter of the Italian family of Bardi, marries Tito Melema, a Greek, but the marriage proves a failure, and she sacrifices herself in devotion to the people during the plague. A marvellously able story of the revival of the taste and beauty and freedom of Hellenic manners and letters, under Lorenzo di Medici and the scholars of his Court, side by side with the revival of Roman virtue, and more than the ancient austerity and piety, under the great Dominican, Savonarola. The period of history is one which of all others may well have engrossing interest for George Eliot. Treasures of learning and discipline, amassed for mankind ages before, for ages stored and hidden away, see again the sun, are recognized and put to use. What use they will be put to, with what new and fruitful effects on the State and the citizen, with what momentary and with what lasting consequences, this she strives to discover ; this she follows through the public history of Italy during the modern invasion of Charles VIII., and the events which succeed his invasion, and through the private fortunes of her admirably chosen group of characters, some of them drawn from life, all of them true to nature. Read more/Mehr lesen...

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The Essays of George Eliot

Publiziert am 17. Januar 2018 von Jazzybee

The Essays of George Eliot – George Eliot

George Eliot prepared for the press a few essays which she had written before she became famous. These essays she left, with the injunction that no fugitive writings of hers prior to 1857 should be republished, other than those thus prepared. Then they have been published as a volume in Harper’s edition of the Works of George Eliot. The subjects presented are, Worldliness and Other-Worldliness, (the poet Young.) German Wit, (Henrich Heine). Evangelical Teaching, (Dr. Cumming.) Influence of Rationalism, (Mr. Lecky’s History.) Natural History of German Life, (The books of W. H Richl.) and an Address to Working Men, by Felix Holt.

The Essays of George Eliot

The Essays of George Eliot

The Essays of George Eliot.

ISBN: 9783849673840.

Available at amazon.com and other venues.

A short biography of George Eliot (from Wikipedia):

Mary Anne Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She is the author of seven novels, including Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Middlemarch (1871–72), and Daniel Deronda (1876), most of which are set in provincial England and known for their realism and psychological insight. Read more/Mehr lesen...

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Scenes of Clerical Life

Publiziert am 17. Januar 2018 von Jazzybee

Scenes of Clerical Life – George Eliot

The first of the three stories, ‘The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton,’ is the slightest and simplest. Mr. Barton, a curate, with an income of eighty pounds a-year, with an angelic but sickly wife and a host of hungry little children, allows himself to be duped by the title of a ‘Countess Czerlaski,’ the handsome English widow of a Polish dancing-master. The countess quarrels with her brother, Mr. Bridmain, and throws herself on the hospitality of the Bartons. Her visit lasts beyond all reasonable time, the unfortunate couple are eaten up by the expense of providing for her, Mr. Barton’s character is aspersed on account of his kindness to her, and Mrs. Barton dies of working for her. Mr. Barton loses his curacy, goes into another neighbourhood, and, after many years, revisits his wife’s grave in company with his children. The next story tells how the Rev. Maynard Gilfil loved Tina Sarti, an Italian orphan, who had been brought to England by Sir Christopher and Lady Cheverel, and lived under their shadow in a dignified country house. Tina, however, had fixed her affections on Sir Christopher’s nephew, Captain Wybrow; and when the captain pays court to a beautiful, rich, and lofty heiress, the little Italian girl is so exasperated by his conduct, that she resolves to stab him at an appointed interview. She is happily spared this crime, as, on reaching the place of meeting, she finds the faithless captain dead from a sudden attack of heart-disease. After a decent interval she marries Mr. Gilfil, but dies in giving birth to her first child; and Mr. Gilfil is represented to us (as the writer professes to have known him) in age—a clergyman of the ‘old school, a good deal of a humourist, and to outward appearance as unromantic a person as need be, but keeping a chamber in his house sacred to the memory of his wife, and cherishing in his heart a lifelong sorrow for his early bereavement. The last “Scene of Clerical Life’ shows how Robert Dempster, a brutal and drunken attorney in a little country town, came by his vices to a bad end—how his wife Janet, who had taken to drinking in order to support his outrageous treatment of her, was reclaimed—and how Mr. Tryan, an “evangelical’ curate, who had contributed to her reformation, succeeded in establishing an evening lecture at the parish church in the face of strong opposition, and died in consequence of his zealous pastoral labours. Read more/Mehr lesen...

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