'Inspiring, Exhilarating--Yes, Exalting'

“Until recently, I considered David Copperfield to be the best English-language novel I’d read. No longer. This side of Tolstoy, I know of no greater novel than Middlemarch. To think that one belongs to the same species as the genius who produced it is inspiring, exhilarating--yes, exalting.” 

I knew my friend had been reading Middlemarch for the first time and knowing his tastes and well-exercised experience as a reader, I expected him to appreciate the novel, but his reaction has almost revived my faith in humanity. He is no fly-by-night, fashion-driven reader. He loves fiction and reads it as more than mere entertainment or distraction. His email made my day: “exalting.”

 

In 1885, Henry James reviewed John Cross’ biography of Eliot, who had died five years earlier. James had famously written mixed reviews of Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda, and judged Romola her finest accomplishment as a novelist, but here he concedes she was among his literary mentors:

 

“The great foundation, to begin with, was there—the magnificent mind, vigorous, luminous, and eminently sane. To her intellectual vigour, her immense facility, her exemption from cerebral lassitude, her letters and journals bear the most copious testimony. Her daily stint of arduous reading and writing was of the largest. Her ability, as one may express it in the most general way, was astonishing, and it belonged to every season of her long and fruitful career. Her passion for study encountered no impediment, but was able to make everything feed and support it. The extent and variety of her knowledge is by itself a résumé of an existence which triumphed wherever it wished. Add to this an immense special talent, which, as soon as it tries its wings, is found to be capable of the highest, longest flights, and brings back great material rewards. George Eliot of course had drawbacks and difficulties, physical infirmities, constant liabilities to headache, dyspepsia, and other illness, to deep depression, to despair about her work; but these jolts of the chariot were small in proportion to the impetus acquired, and were hardly greater than was necessary for reminding her of the secret of all ambitious workers in the field of art--that effort, effort, always effort, is the only key of success.”