“Her novels are perenially fresh. They do not fatigue, or sear, or
narcotise. We return to them with an unfading and constant delight. Her
books engender a feeling of gratitude towards the writer along with a
strong sentimental regret—regret that a life so happy, so sympathetic, so
well balanced, and, in short so beautiful, could not have been prolonged,
that her vivid mind and pen should not have irradiated our particular
generation.
“Could you imagine England personified as a sentient and intelligent
being, on the death of Elizabeth Gaskell, as on the death of Charles Lamb
or Walter Scott, you would expect her to draw a long sigh as one feeling
sensibly poorer for a loss that never could be repaired. You may think
this to be a deliberate exaggeration, but it certainly is not. So far as
artistic perfection is attainable in such a formless and chaotic thing
as the modern novel, it is my deliberate belief that Mrs. Gaskell has no
absolute rival in the measure of complete success which she was enabled
to achieve.…
“If you ask for the normal type of English novel in the highest degree of
perfection to which it ever attained, I should certainly be inclined to
say take _Mary Barton_, _North and South_, _Sylvia’s Lovers_, and _Wives
and Daughters_. Not one of them altogether or entirely attained to the
perfection of which Mrs. Gaskell herself was capable. But they fully and
adequately reveal her power and likewise her intention of subordinating
herself in some degree to a form of the potentialities and limitations of
which alike, it seems to me, she had an intuition surpassing the utmost
efforts of any of her greater contemporaries.” (Introduction to _Sylvia’s
Lovers_, 1910.)