Molière was denounced as a plagiarist; Voltaire was well lashed; Scott did not quite escape; Bulwer has been severely criticised; even Dickens was always roughly handled in certain respectable prints.
But George Eliot is faultless. This is the sober and often repeated verdict of every quarterly, monthly, and daily critic in the empire, except of one writer, who tried to stem the torrent of adulation in the 'Quarterly Review,' and failed because, being no critic, he selected certain of that excellent writer's beauties, and held them up for faults.
Now perhaps some people will open their eyes if we tell them that this prodigious writer often borrows ideas from Charles Reade, and sometimes improves them, sometimes bungles them. But, as in matters of art it is sometimes kind to open people's eyes, we shall assure you that this is so; and moreover that in a single instance the two writers have come into competition on fair terms, and the comparison is so unfavourable to the favourite, that the said comparison, though obvious, has always been dexterously avoided.
In 'It is Never too Late to Mend,' published in 1856, one of the situations is as follows: Good Mr. Eden, having to deal with a hardened thief, goes down on his knees in that thief's cell, and prays aloud for him; and softens him a little. In 'Adam Bede,' good Dinah goes on her knees in the cell of Hetty, an impenitent criminal; and softens her a little.
Reade uses few words, after his kind; and Eliot uses many words, after her kind. But amplification is not invention: the inventor and the only inventor of that famous scene in 'Adam Bede' is Charles Reade.
Mr. Eden preaches a sermon in the gaol. The author shuns the beaten track, and gives the very words of the sermon.
George Eliot profits by this, and gives her Dinah the very words of a sermon. And in one respect she goes beyond her original: for her sermon is fuller, and has a distinct merit, being composed—with great heart and beauty of—homely English, often Saxon, and nearly always monosyllabic. But she falls behind in one thing—she makes Dinah preach her sermon to strangers; and that shows a want of constructive art.
Charles Reade has since returned to his own invention, and has made his Rhoda Somerset preach a remarkable sermon, at which those personages
