the kind old Nurse, will come and rock us all to
sleep, and we had better help one another while we may: we are going the
same way--let's go hand in hand!

CONTENTS

PUBLISHER'S PREFACE v
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL xi
GEORGE ELIOT 47
THOMAS CARLYLE 65
JOHN RUSKIN 85
WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE 101
J.M.W. TURNER 121
JONATHAN SWIFT 141
WALT WHITMAN 161
VICTOR HUGO 183
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 209
WILLIAM M. THACKERAY 227
CHARLES DICKENS 245
OLIVER GOLDSMITH 271
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 299
THOMAS A. EDISON 319

GEORGE ELIOT

"May I reach
That purest heaven, be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty--
Be the good 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."

[Illustration: GEORGE ELIOT]

Warwickshire gave to the world William Shakespeare. It
also gave Mary Ann Evans. No one will question that Shakespeare's is the
greatest name in English literature; and among writers living or dead, in
England or out of it, no woman has ever shown us power equal to that of
George Eliot, in the subtle clairvoyance which divines the inmost play of
passions, the experience that shows human capacity for contradiction, and
the indulgence that is merciful because it understands.

Shakespeare lived three hundred years ago. According to the records, his
father, in Fifteen Hundred Sixty-three, owned a certain house in Henley
Street, Stratford-on-Avon. Hence we infer that William Shakespeare was
born there. And in all our knowledge of Shakespeare's early life (or
later) we prefix the words, "Hence we infer."

That the man knew all the sciences of his day, and had such a knowledge
of each of the learned professions that all have claimed him as their
own, we realize.

He evidently was acquainted with five different languages, and the range
of his intellect was worldwide; but where did he get this vast erudition?
We do not know, and we excuse ourselves by saying that he lived three
hundred years ago.

George Eliot lived--yesterday, and we know no more about her youthful
days than we do of that other child of Warwickshire.

One biographer tells us that she was born in Eighteen Hundred Nineteen,
another in Eighteen Hundred Twenty, and neither state the day; whereas a
recent writer in the "Pall Mall Budge