Of George Eliot's more elaborate work it is impossible to speak in entire praise. If you have the leisure, and these books I have named please you, then by all means read Romola, which is a remarkable study of the degeneracy of a young Greek and of the noble strivings of a great-hearted woman. The pictures of Florence in the time of Savonarola are splendid, but they smell of the lamp. Middlemarch is also worth careful study for its fine analysis of character and motive. In all George Eliot's books her characters develop before our eyes, and this is especially true in this elaborate study of the pathos and the tragedy of human life.
George Eliot wrote little poetry, but one piece may be commended to careful attention, "The Choir Invisible." It sums up with impassioned force her ethical creed, which she put in these fine lines:
Oh, may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence: live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end in self. * *
This is life to come
Which martyred men have made more glorious
For us who strive to follow. May I reach
That purest heaven, be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love.
[86] Beget the smiles that have no cruelty—
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,
And in diffusion ever more intense.
So shall I join the choir invisible,
Whose music is the gladness of the world.
This was the creed of George Eliot, which she preached in her books and which she followed in her life. This was the only hope of immortality that she cherished—to "live again" in minds that she stimulated.
Ruskin The Apostle of Art[ToC]
His Work As Art Critic and Social Reformer—Best Books Are "Modern Painters," "The Seven Lamps" and "The Stones of Venice."
John Ruskin deserves a place among the great English writers of the last century, not only because of his superb style and the amount of his work, but because he was the first to encourage the study of art and nature among the people. So enormous have been the strides made in the last twenty years in popular knowledge of art and architecture, and so great the growth of interest in the beauties of nature that it is difficult to appreciate that a little over a half century ago, when Ruskin first came into prominence as a writer, the English public was densely ignorant of art, and was equally ignorant of the world of pleasure to be derived from beautiful scenery.