SOURCE: Watts-Dunton, Theodore. “Introduction: George Eliot as a Plot-Novelist.” In Silas Marner, The Lifted Veil, Brother Jacob, by George Eliot, pp. vii-xix. London: Oxford University Press, 1954.

In the following excerpt, originally published in 1910, Watts-Dunton finds “The Lifted Veil” to be a remarkable story.

As to the two short stories, “The Lifted Veil” and “Brother Jacob,” appended to this edition of Silas Marner, lack of space prevents my making any comment except upon the first of them. In many ways this is a remarkable story. It does not deal with the supernatural world, but rather with what may be called transcendental physics, or transcendental biology. The hero, after a very severe and peculiar nervous illness, passes into a wonderful condition of sensitivity to the impressions that are shed upon him by his fellow men. He most unwillingly and to his great misery becomes what it is now the fashion...