lived until his death.




IV.


CAREER AS AN AUTHOR.

Until she was thirty-six years old Mrs. Lewes had given no hint that she
was likely to become a great novelist. She had shown evidence of large
learning and critical ability, but not of decided capacity for imaginative
or poetic creation. The critic and the creator are seldom combined in one
person; and while she might have been expected to become a philosophical
writer of large reputation, there was little promise that she would become
a great novelist. Before she began the _Scenes of Clerical Life_, she had
written but very little of an original character. She was not drawn
irresistibly to the career for which she was best fitted, and others had to
discover her gift and urge her to its use. Mr. Lewes saw that the person
who could write so admirably of what a novel ought to be, and who could so
skilfully point out the defects in the lady novelists of the day, was
herself capable of writing much better ones than those she criticised. It
was at his suggestion, and through his encouragement, she made her first
attempt at novel-writing. Her love of learning, her relish for literary and
philosophical studies, led her to believe that she could accomplish the
largest results in the line of the work she had already begun. Yet Lewes
had learned from her conversational powers, from her keen appreciation of
the dramatic elements of daily life, and from her fine humor and sarcasm,
that other work was within the range of her powers. Reluctantly she