16 AUGUST 1919, Page 16

GEORGE ELIOT.

(To THE EDITOR CF THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—At a small dinner party at Dr. Gott's (Bishop of Truro) the host asked the gentlemen preSent to state their favourite novelist. Nearly each one said "George Eliot." " That is interesting," said the Bishop. I once asked the same question of John Shorthouse (author of John Inglesant), and he saidi " I place Silas Varner as the first novel in the English lan-