Middlemarch and Julius Charles Hare

Abstract

In his time, Julius Charles Hare (1795–1855) was reputed to be one of the most erudite of scholars, and his major work, Guesses at Truth, had great influence on philosophical, philological, and literary activity throughout the nineteenth century. This article explores the possible impact of Guesses at Truth on George Eliot's Milddlemarch, with special attention to the characterization of the novel's philologist/mythographer manqué, Mr. Casaubon. By reviewing detailed resonances of idiom and interest between the two works, and by reviewing Hare's own place in Eliot's orbit, this article claims a potential new source and analogue for Middlemarch and, more broadly, suggests further lines of inquiry into bringing Guesses at Truth into the ambit of the nineteenth-century novel.