We must be careful not to found too much on _suggestions_ of character in George Eliot’s books; and this must particularly be borne in mind in the ‘Mill on the Floss.’ No doubt the early part of Maggie’s portraiture is the best autobiographical representation we can have of George Eliot’s own feelings in her childhood, and many of the incidents in the book are based on real experiences of family life, but so mixed with fictitious elements and situations that it would be absolutely misleading to trust to it as a true history. The writing of ‘Romola’ ploughed into her more than any of her other books. She told me she could put her finger on it as marking a well-defined transition in her life. In her own words, “I began it a young woman--I finished it an old woman.” She told me that, in all that she considered her best writing, there was a “not herself,” which took possession of her, and that she felt her own personality to be merely the instrument through which this spirit, as it were, was acting. Particularly she dwelt on this in regard to the scene in ‘Middlemarch’ between Dorothea and Rosamond, saying that, although she always knew they had, sooner or later, to come together, she kept the idea resolutely out of her mind until Dorothea was in Rosamond’s drawing-room. Then, abandoning herself to the inspiration of the moment, she wrote the whole scene exactly as it stands, without alteration or erasure, in an intense state of excitement and agitation, feeling herself entirely possessed by the feelings of the two women. Of all the characters she had attempted she found Rosamond’s the most difficult to sustain. With this sense of “possession” it is easy to imagine what the cost to the author must have been of writing books, each of which has its tragedy. J. W. CROSS: ‘George Eliot’s Life.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: Her MSS.] George Eliot was the most careful and accurate among authors. Her beautifully written manuscript, free from blur or erasure, and with every letter delicately and distinctly finished, was only the outward and visible sign of the inward labor which she had taken to work out her ideas. She never drew any of her facts or impressions from second-hand; and thus, in spite of the number and variety of her illustrations, she had rarely much to correct in her proof-sheets. She had all that love of doing her work well for the work’s sake, which she makes a prominent characteristic of ‘Adam Bede,’ and ‘Stradivarius.’ ---- ----: ‘George Eliot,’ _Blackwood’s Magazine_, February, 1881. * * * * * [Sidenote: Inscriptions on MSS.] The manuscript of ‘Adam Bede’ bears the following inscription: “To my dear husband, George Henry Lewes, I give the MS. of a work which would never have been written but for the happiness which his love has conferred on my life.” The manuscript of ‘The Mill on the Floss’ bears the following inscription: