[The Life of Sterling]

The notice of Carlyle's Life of John Sterling (185I} which opens the 'Contemporary Literature of England' section in the first number of the Westminster edited by George Eliot has long been attributed to her hand. There is no positive external evidence for the attribution, though W. M. W. Call assigned it to her as early as 1881 in his memorial article in the Westminster, and Cross identifies it as hers in the Life. George Eliot had read the book more than two months before the notice appeared, and her comments on it in a letter to the Brays are exactly in the spirit of the review:

I have been reading Carlyle's life of Sterling with great pleasure—not for its presentation of Sterling but of Carlyle. There are racy bits of description in his best manner and exquisite touches of feeling. Little rapid characterizations of living men too—of Francis Newman for example, 'a man of fine university and other attainments, of the sharpest cutting and most restlessly advancing intellect, and of the mildest pious enthusiasm.' There is an inimitable description of Coleridge and his eternal monologue, 'To sit as a passive bucket and be pumped into, whether one like it or not, can in the end be exhilarating to no creature.' ¹

These points taken together, though they do not provide certain authority, make it overwhelmingly probable that the review is George Eliot's, and are supported by the evidence of style. It seems safe to conclude with Professor Haight that it is 'clearly GE's work'. ²