The George Eliot Letters

~%%iiEORDON S. HAIGHT'S long-awaited edition of The George Eliot Letters,' of which the first three of an expected six volumes are now published, fully satisfies one's impatience. In the completed edition there will be I,9I8 letters by George Eliot and 75I about her; two thirds of the text is hitherto unpublished. The recovery of so many words by a major novelist would in any case constitute an occasion for tossing one's cap in the air, but to learn, as we do, a great deal more about the inner life of George Eliot is particularly gratifying. She was not a chatty correspondent, and her letters, though always sincere and often eloquent, will not take rank with those of Thackeray and Stevenson for charm and wit; but the inner drama of her life was so intense that readers will be fascinated to watch it unfold. George Eliot was never a gregarious person and rarely confided in even her few close friends. The circumstances of her life promoted reticences which her husband J. W. Cross not only honored in his official biography but compounded by suppressions of his own. He admittedly printed no single letter entire from beginning to end. Surprisingly enough, however, the full texts do not materially alter one's concept of George Eliot's character. She becomes less coldly intellectual and more warmly domestic, less forbiddingly sibylline and more morbidly shy and sensitive. But the outlines of her character, long generally understood, need not be drastically revised. Nevertheless, there is a great deal in these first three volumes